My guest today is David Berens, who is the head of business development at One Tap Away. In this episode, we discuss how David lost 30lbs switching to a plant-based diet, how to apply a bullshit filter in daily life, the importance of a career coach, when to trust your gut instinct, overcoming decision fatigue and how David became employee #10 at Opendoor. For show notes, guest bio, and more, please visit: www.designmba.show Level Up Your Design Career (Free Email Course): https://levelup.designmba.show/
David Berens is hardwired to build. He has a strong passion for building successful businesses, developing human potential and creating healthy lifestyles. As an early employee at Opendoor (est. valuation $3.8B), he launched the first three markets, built out the sales and customer experience teams, and personally executed over 500 transactions generating $150M+ in company revenue. Over the last 10 years, he has supported companies which operate in real estate, financial technology, bio-technology, and manufacturing. He has multi-year experience with developing and executing go-to-market playbooks, building out sales and operations teams, conducting user research, assisting product development, company culture development, and company level strategy. David’s superpower is helping companies and individuals align their values with their vision, put the strategy into motion!
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Namaste and welcome. This is Jayneil Dalal and you are listening to The design MBA. This podcast is a real-life MBA program for designers where we interview design hustlers and learn the skills, mindset necessary for a designer to launch a business venture. You can learn more. Find past episodes and stay updated at designMBA.show.
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Jayneil Dalal: Today's amazing guest is David Berens. David is hard wired to build. He has a strong passion for building successful businesses, developing human potential, and creating healthy lifestyles. As an early employee at Open Door, estimated valuation of now 3.8 billion dollars, he launched the first three markets, built out the sales and customer experience teams and personally executed over 500 transactions generating 150 million dollars plus in company revenue. David is currently the head of Business Development at One Tap Away, an early stage prop-tech startup that's focused on unlocking next generation residential amenities that enrich tenant experiences, increase owner's profit, and simplify life for property managers. David's superpower is helping companies and individuals clearly define their mission, develop a practical strategic roadmap and execute fiercely.
David, so excited to be talking to you, my friend. How is the vegan lifestyle going on for you?
David Berens: First of all, Jayneil, so glad to be on this. I’m pumped that you're launching this podcast. It's about time. World needs more of these types of podcasts. So, kudos to you on that.
Jayneil: Thank you.
David: Yeah, in terms of my dietary lifestyle, it has been a really interesting journey. So, for context, my mom is a naturopath and my dad is on the allopathic side. I was raised in a household that really saw value in both – natural medicine, foods that can heal you and also pharmaceuticals. And I was raised as an omnivore. So, dairy, animals, fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds, everything. And for the most part, I thought I was eating healthy at least. And at that point, I would refer to myself as a ‘yesketarian’. This is not a real term or if it is, I’m not aware of that. So, yesketarian meaning you put food in front of me, I’ll say “Yes, I’ll eat it.” And then one day, about two years ago now, I come home from work and my wife says “I just saw this documentary and I’m never going to eat any animal products again. If you still want to, I’m happy to cook for but I’m done.” And this really came out of left field. I thought “What the heck!” And she said “No, no, no, it's called “what the health!”” – “What the health?” So, documentary, I’m sure a lot of folks out there have now heard of it, hopefully. You've seen it as well. I always want to keep an open mind and never want to be dogmatic and think that I know everything. And so, I watched the documentary and candidly, I had zero intention. I’m changing how I ate but the best way I can describe it, Jayneil, is literally within two hours a flip switched in my brain where I no longer had an appetite for eating animals. And I was not looking to change. I could have lived off of sushi prior to this movie. And so, now, I have zero appetite to consume animals, fish, poultry, beef, whatever. You name it, I’m not going to eat it. So, at that point, I realized, looking back at the photos, my face was puffy, my body was inflamed. And then, sure enough, within about three months from going, pun intended, cold turkey over to the whole food plant-based diet, which is much more of how I would describe it. Between that and learning about intermittent fasting which also is a fantastic thing to explore if folks have not had the chance to, I literally dropped about 20 to 30 pounds in a three-month span. And just for the record, it was not working out. So, it was strictly dietary related. My co-workers, they saw what had happened and they started referring to it as a transformation. And I thought “Guys, come on. It wasn't that big of a change” but apparently, it was because it happened so fast and, from my standpoint, because I didn't have the cravings or the temptation. It was actually surprisingly easy. So, now, when people meet me and then they look at a photo of me say two or three years ago, they say I look three years younger now than I did back then. So, I would testify, very clear mental acuity, strong energy, consistence, perseverance. And from a data tracking standpoint, prior to going vegan and doing intermittent fasting, my resting heart rate, and I realized it's not healthy but this is where it was, it was in the 80s, my resting heart rate. That is not good, as a 20-some-year-old at the time. So, now I’m 31. My resting heart rate, keep in mind, I am not working out, hardly at all, low 60s.
Jayneil: You definitely look right now like you're definitely working
out.
David: It's because I’ve got two little kids who like to wrestle. It's my exercise.
Jayneil: So, are you also teaching your kids the same transformation
that you've had as in like what if they go to their friend's place and there's
some meat there or let's say you're having friends over? Is it like “Absolutely,
no more am I ever going to eat meat again” or is it like “If I feel like it, I’ll
still try a little bit but not every day”?
David: It's a really interesting question. And we've had quite a few friends ask us and they usually ask it in a semi-loaded way like “Are you imposing your beliefs and values on your kids?” And I realize that is a fairly charged question. I would also like to flip the question to parents who are omnivores who have their kids consume animals “Are your kids aware of what they're actually eating, how that food was prepared, how those animals were treated, how it was shipped?” Are your kids aware of that because if they're not, that omission of information, in my perspective, is just as much of an issue.” So, from our standpoint, yes, both of our kids eat a whole food plant-based diet. We take them routinely to the doctor, health checks, zero issues. The doctors continue to say “You both continue to do exactly what you're doing. Your kids are unbelievably healthy. They're strong. Their color, their complexion, everything checks out perfectly.” I had a health exam, just a routine one, about six months ago and my results came back on the stellar preferred, the highest of high. And I’m not even really trying. It almost feels like I’m cheating because I’m not doing the typical hitting the gym hard three times a week. Yeah, guilty of not doing that. So, when I look at that and I see my life, that you're sort of transforming literally within three months, I see my wife's health continue to improve, our energy getting better as we're getting older rather than the other way around. And now that we have kids, this is totally a great lifestyle for us. So, if you ever get a chance to see our kids, you can see they are vibrant, full of energy, they love it. Interestingly enough, on the dairy side of things, so your question about going to parties, both of our kids have allergic reactions, lactose intolerant. And we discovered that when my eldest son, he consumed some dairy and immediately had a skin outbreak, a rash that would last a few days. Nothing life threatening at all but it turns out most people actually have dairy allergies. They just choose to disregard that and they live in a life of inflammation from the inside out. So, that part actually becomes fairly easy. In terms of consuming animals, Ben, he's not even three years old yet, when he is of the age to really understand what's going on, he's going to be able to make his own decisions. By no means are we going to be in a position to force our kids to say “You have to eat this way the rest of your life.” They're free agents. We're going to teach them the best we know, I’ll let them know why we arrive at our decisions but I’m a strong believer that each person is on their own path.
Jayneil: So, David, when it comes to health and fitness and food, the
dietary choices, I feel like there's so much information out there in the media
that it almost feels like you don't know what is bullshit and what is right. So,
how did you figure out this actually makes sense or this is just or bullshit propaganda
being pitched by some big giant corporation to just increase their sales? How did
you go about that decision when you first saw the documentary and you're trying
to figure out is this genuine or is this just some kind of paid movie or
something like that?
David: It's a really interesting question. The parallel question that I’ve reflected often on whether it's about food or a whole variety of topics that I come across in life is what's the personal gain of the person who's pitching me. So, is it monetary, is it status, is it power, is there something that I’m not aware of and I’m just the sucker at the end of the pitch? So, if you look at the whole food plant-based diet, we're talking about fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds, things that come from the earth, there's not really a big industry around Big Broccoli. You don't really hear about those types of marketing campaigns. And part of it is the profit margins in those industries, they're not as large as the animal industry. And if you look at government subsidies, it is heavily biased towards the animal product industry. Now, this is not a place to get into politics per se but this is just looking at the objective data that's out there of how various food verticals are and are not subsidized by the government. That's how I think about that element though.
Jayneil: So, actually, once you saw the documentary, it seems you
did your own due diligence, you did your own research to kind of make sure that
whether this message that you're getting is genuine or not.
David: Here's what's painful. When I see that the average older adult, so we're talking 40s, 50s and up, is on something like five plus medications every day for the rest of their life, go and research this, don't take my word for it, when you realize that the average American is on that much medication indefinitely until the day they die, as a young person who's on zero medication, I think “How did they get to that point?” If we're in one of the best countries in the world with some of the best healthcare, best medical advancements, where are we getting it wrong? And if you look at our health institution, it's all about reaction – “You're sick? Great. Let's treat it” – rather than proactive. And from a business perspective, there's just less money in proactive. So, you can think of the vitamin or the surgery, just as a stark simple contrast here. So, when I look at what could a possible hidden agenda be, sure, the skeptics might say fruits and vegetable industries are just looking to make so much more money off of people. I have a hard time believing that. So, from an agenda standpoint, I would say “Okay, let's just do a 30-day experiment.” So, you'll hear plenty of these people say, I think it's called Veganuary where January, the first month of the year, people will commit to go to a whole food plant-based diet and see how they feel. Try it even for a week. See what happens. This is what I’m telling myself. Worst case scenario? Okay, I’ll just flip back but when, no joke, within days I’m noticing instantaneous change, I’m now personally skeptical of how good this could be.
Jayneil: This is amazing, David. So, when you look at some information, it seems to me that you are first of all doing your background research, you're doing your due diligence but then it's almost like you're doing your own mini experiment to kind of see that “Okay, by implementing this feedback or this advice that I just heard, is that giving me the results that it was meant to give me?” and then you're coming to a conclusion “Whether I want to continue on this path or not.”
David: That's exactly right. So, maybe one mental mindset here would be a personal A/B test. Let me be really stringent and say “For one week I’m going to do this, try this, eat this,” whatever it might be. And then the next week, keep all the rest of the variables consistent, change that one variable. And then just be critical. Do your best as a human to remove bias. I understand it's virtually impossible but at least if you're aware of a bias that you might have, you can weigh yourself. That's really hard to cheat. The scale is going to tell you how much you weigh. You can check your resting heart rate, really hard to cheat. So, you figure for the next week, change nothing about how you're living, how you're eating, how you're sleeping and take both of those benchmarks. Weigh yourself every day and do a resting heart rate. Average that out for the week. And then for the next week, try a whole food plant-based diet and do the exact same thing. Weigh yourself every day. Do a resting heart rate. That's going to be really hard for you to argue and say “Well, it's biased.” That is straight objective data. There's one simple data point.
David: So, when I look at new things that I want to try or experiment with, I try to one, make sure that I’m giving it enough time. So, if someone said “Yeah, I tried the whole food plant-based diet for two hours and just didn't work for me,” okay laughing, I would say “Great, you tried it for one meal and you have noticed no change. Sure.” So, giving ourselves some grace here of is that an adequate runway to see some results would be a critical component.
Jayneil: It's really funny that as a designer myself, and I see a lot of designers, we all use A/B testing to test websites, designers and managers and everybody, but I find it so ironic that we use this principles for corporations and websites and other software products but we fail to apply those same principles in our own life.
David: Absolutely.
Jayneil: I kind of feel like sometimes, when I think about it, it's like the truth can be really, maybe the right word is ‘cognitive dissonance’ or something like we don't want to like break our own reality, we want to feel like we're doing everything right but then if I were to start logging my own journey and my own things that I’m doing, I think maybe at sometimes, even I would be afraid to see what's out there. And I think also that part of it I feel like some of the giant corporations there, they have an amazing PR machine, the PR engine. The Kool-Aid out there, the amount of propaganda they just spit out there, it's almost brainwashed so many people – “Oh, this is what you're supposed to do. This is what's good for you” – and then they'll pay celebrities and stuff like that. I remember, back in India, Coca-Cola would pay the film stars a lot of money to drink Coke on screen but then when at their bodies, you're like “If they're drinking as much Coke as many times I see them in the ads, they would not have that kind of physique, okay?” They probably would spit out the entire Coke after the ad. They didn't even drink it. Even to the point where one of the Bollywood superstars promised a date with a lucky girl whoever drank Coke and sent him that code or something. And I believe there's like a lawsuit going on because he never came through on the promise.
David: Oh my gosh!
Jayneil: That was so bizarre for me to find out that people would go to those extreme lengths to just market some product. It's almost like capitalism at any cost, I feel, with no conscience, people don't care what happens to other human beings. I’m kind of wondering now, given that you have such an analytical framework that you use to test and almost I want to say like David's bullshit filter, maybe it's bullshit framework where he just analyzes it. So, how do you apply that or do you apply that in your day-to-day work life or career as well?
David: Sure. So, candidly, I would say by no means do I wake up and spend every living moment that analytical. It would be much more applied to more significant and weightier decisions that I would perceive as something that might have a larger impact on either myself or my family or my community and then, sure, I’m going to be a bit more rigorous. For the sake of transparency, this has been a powerful area of growth for me, especially over the last five years. I made some extremely painful mistakes that have led me to this schema that I now try to operate to every time but still fail. It's a growth area but man, if there's an opportunity to pass on some of these lessons that I’ve picked up along the way, I would absolutely love to. And I think part of what this whole mental model stems from for me is how do I know what is true. Really, what is truth? And we're at a curious juncture in our society where there's this constant debate about absolute truth versus relative truth. So, Jayneil, what's right for you is right for you but what's right for me, well, that's right for me and don't impose your values on that. And it's a curious line of thought. It's applied to a lot of different spheres of life, diet in particular, since we've talked about diet. People will say “How can the whole food plant-based diet be good for every single person in the whole world? How can you make a blanket statement?” Well, first of all, I’m definitely not making that blanket statement. Some people on the podium do and the relative truthers will say “You don't know my body, you don't know my blood type, you don't know my genetic makeup, my eating disorder, whatever it might be that can affect it.” That's accurate. However, when we have access to really large studies on both sides of it that are not funded by an industry that has a bias for an outcome, that lends a little bit more viability towards truth. So, when I’m applying this now to individual decisions of how I suss through if someone is blowing smoke around the opportunity or if they're actually shooting straight with me, first of all, I wouldn't say it's a formula. There are definitely some variables. I’m happy to chat through but I’m not going to be saying “If you follow David's one, two, three, you're going to make the best decisions for the rest of your life.” Unfortunately, life is not that straightforward. One of the elements that I will strongly encourage every listener here is if you do not already have personal advisors in your life, and this is not someone that you're paying, this is a mentor, this is a friend, this is a relative, a colleague who is willing to tell you what you need to hear rather than what they think you want to hear and they have wisdom and experience to back that up, it is so powerful. I particularly have a few life advisors. They genuinely love me. They genuinely want the best for me. They don't have some mixed agenda of “If I make this decision versus the other, there you have personal gain.” They just genuinely want me to reach my own personal success and potential. And sometimes that means the opinion that they express goes against my natural inclination. And then it's on me to make the final decision but at least I know I have someone who cares enough about me to disagree to my face with love. That, by far, Jayneil, if that was the only takeaway around sussing through personal life opportunities like who you should marry, where you should live, what job you should take, really, really big life decisions, if you are operating rogue in a silo around those, you could be incurring some lifelong debt around that because some of those are irreversible decisions.
Jayneil: Absolutely. How does one actually go through, I would say, finding a life advisor, to your point? Because I’m assuming that these are not necessarily your family friends. This could be just people that are mentors to you maybe in your work life or something like that. So, let's say you've identified that “Okay, this is a person that I admire. I like their wisdom.” How does one enlist their help as a life advisor because the other person has got to spend time mentoring you and stuff like that?
David: Sure. This would be one approach to finding it. Again, I will not say this is overly prescriptive or formulaic for “Going to Lifeadvisors.com, type in your zip code and there you go. Swipe right on Bill. He's great.” This is much more of one recognizing that you want it. So, having the self-awareness that life is not meant to be done alone, really large life decisions are not meant to be made in a silo, that's a huge first step because this whole western mentality of “I can do everything on my own. I don't need anyone's help. I got this,” that's just so contrary to how I now live. I actually need a ton of help. I need a lot of support around me. I need cover. So, step one, recognizing and admitting to yourself you need help, you're looking for it.
Second element. When we're thinking about finding potential candidates to be the life advisor, there's this really funky category of finding “successful”. So, if I were to say “Hey, name someone who's successful to you in the general public,” it's so easy for us to over-index and overweigh how rich they are in terms of financial prosperity.
Jayneil: Yeah, that's so true.
David: We are overly skewed to a detriment as a society when we only look at that variable of “How many zeros are after that first figure? Okay, great. Then they must be successful.” What we're not looking at though is what marriage are they on, how close are they with their children, is there an addiction to drugs or alcohol, how is their health. Yet we don't look at any of that. How's their mental wellbeing? We only look at the dollar value and this idea that that represents success. I personally reject that entirely as a standalone variable.
David: Now, as one component completely, that's one thing to recognize that if I’m talking with someone and they have two dollars to their name and they're trying to give me financial advice, yeah, I’m going to have a second thought about it but at the same time, if I have someone who is well to do, on their first marriage, has a fantastic relationship with their children, is in good physical health, that to me tells me that they have a much better, more holistic understanding of success that I’m now prescribing to on a personal level. So, that's part of the context that I’m coming from, Jayneil. When I suss out opportunities and I’m in an engagement with someone in conversation, I’m assessing them across these different spectrums of “How are you with relationships? How do you treat the server when we're at a meal? Do you treat them as a human or do you treat them as a nuisance, someone just to take your order?” How other people treat other people is a massive indicator of their true character. Those are some elements of how I think about the higher-level components but it would be helpful. Happy to dive into some specific decisions that I’ve made great and other ones that I’ve made poorly as well, if that's good.
Jayneil: So, David, the eye-opening thing for me was that you don't co-relate that “Okay, if someone has 10 million dollars in their bank account, then that means that their decision-making framework is impenetrable.” What you're saying is that “That's good. They're good at making those decisions in the financial realm but that does not mean that I should only seek those kinds of mentors or life advisors that just have that much amount of money in the bank.” It's almost like you isolate that “Okay, what is their success in that specific realm whether it's like personal life, whether it's work or money?” and then you look at that more holistically. That was something eye-opening for me because I absolutely agree with you. A lot of times it's like we look at people and we see that “Oh, they're so successful, they're rich, they have those nice cars, a nice lifestyle. We should just ask them all our questions,” not realizing that well, they're good in that area but that doesn't mean that they are going to be good in all other areas. And corollary to that, what I learned from this statement you made, is sometimes certain life advisors can be helpful to you in certain areas and they may not be that rich or that famous.
David: That's exactly right, monetarily rich but they may be rich in other areas that are not easily observable. Exactly. One particular person, Robin Williams, the celebrity who passed away a couple years ago, he was one of my all-time favorite actors and unbelievably funny. So, when it came out that he was severely depressed and in the end took his own life, it was such a sobering reminder that we cannot make a quick snap judgment about someone based upon what's portrayed in social media, what I see in a movie, what I read in an article, what I see in a book. That tells one aspect of the story. In the same way, look at Jeff Bezos. He's the richest person in the entire world right now. Is that right?
Jayneil: Yeah.
David: And yet his marriage ended. I wonder how much pain that really caused him to say “I reached the top of the top financially and yet I’m alone.” If I had the chance to talk to him, I would ask him “Is it actually worth it to have reached that type of financial status and yet you're no longer with your partner when you made a vow to?” So, I look at examples like that, and there are hundreds out there, of celebrities who have reached the “top of the ladder,” realize there's nothing there and they end their lives. The suicide rate is startling, which tells me, as someone who's still assessing life, there's got to be something else here. I can't just be chasing money to gain the world and lose my soul. That doesn't make any sense. And I would love the opportunity to learn that vicariously through others rather than saying “No, no, no give me 10 million. Let me go make the mistakes on my own.” Interestingly enough, Jayneil, there was a story I heard recently of a man who had won the lottery and prior to that he was not well financially at all. He was about to move back in with his folks and really reassess a lot of life but he won the lottery, instantly game changing for him. So, he has a fat load of cash, direct access. He can do whatever he wants. He can invest it, live off of dividends, he can spend it, give it away. You have a greater optionality when you walk into something like that. Well, fast forward a number of years, he cheats on his wife, his wife leaves him for that, they had two kids and he spends enough of their money where now he actually has to go back to work. It’s so painful when I heard that. So, when I look at an example like that, Jayneil, it makes me wonder “Did money solve their problem, did it create a problem or did it amplify the pre-existing problem? That problem, the problem he said that he had, it was always there and all the money did was put him under a microscope, zoom way in and said “All right, we're just going to serve as an accelerator. If there are character flow issues here, it's going to happen a lot faster.” And it's hard for me to say is he was successful at that time before he lost his marriage and his kids and had to go back to work just because he had a lot of money to his name. If we really start thinking critically of how we think about how we think, we might start arriving to different conclusions.
So, let's apply this to career opportunities. There was one in particular where the compensation package that was offered to me was highly attractive. The role that was pitched was highly attractive. And I was at a time in my life where I was not seeking advice from my life advisors. I was in a moment of fear, a moment of desperation. So, rather than doing things like background checks on the employer, diligence, asking questions like “How many people have you fired within the last six months?”, trying to identify churn, “How many people have quit? What's the culture really like?”, back channeling feedback rather than just going directly to the interviewers. I did nothing of this sort. What I did do is become hyper-fixated on the money component. Fast forward six months after I said yes to it, I realized this is one of the biggest mistakes of my professional career, it was nothing as I thought it was going to be and essentially had to walk away from the entire compensation package, leave and start all over. And that was such a painful and sobering and humbling moment in my professional trajectory to recognize “I am incapable of making really good sound career decisions in a silo. I can't do this rogue.” And it was so hard for me to admit that to myself because I had all these justifications of “Here's why it's good. Here's why it's going to be great. I can make it.” And yet, if I would have just did a quick sound check, a gut check with my life advisors, they would have told me in a heartbeat this is a wrong opportunity but instead, I chose to follow my gut totally blind and it bit me in the butt really hard.
Jayneil: And when that was happening, David, did it help the fact that, obviously, you work with a lot of startups, they have their own hype machine, they all have their executives just singing praises of the company as a real-life version of Tony Robbins, so did that help or like did that also contribute to you also believing the hype or drinking the Kool-Aid when you were meeting with them?
David: Part of my personal issues, I’m easily excitable about new opportunities. The term that we jokingly say is pathologically optimistic. You are always looking for the best in the person and the opportunity. I’m naturally an overly trusting person. I want to give every single person the benefit of the doubt rather than approaching it a bit more skeptically. So, knowing that much more intimately now about myself, because I have the awareness, I can now invite others around me to say “Hey, I know I’m wired this way. I know I’m probably thinking about it very myopically. Please start poking some holes and help me think about it differently.” So, that personal realization, accepting it and then having people around me to fill that gap in has probably been one of the most powerful gestures of extending raising hands saying to my community “I need help in this area.” And it's now perceived as a place of strength rather than weakness because self-awareness helps you build the right team around you. Teams can operate powerfully when they know how to fit together.
Jayneil: So, you're not only just relying on your own gut and stuff but you're saying that “The collective wisdom of a bunch of people together is going to be greater than mine” and you're accepting that. So, even if you have a hunch whether you want to take this opportunity or you're still going to your life advisors and your friends and saying that “Hey, this is what I feel about this opportunity and what do you think?” and then you're seeing if their opinions are contradicting with yours and if they are, then why? And it seems like you're trying to dig into that why.
David: That's exactly right. So, if we apply this on the romance side of life, there's a phrase that says “Love is blind.” And when two people fall in love, they just throw life out the window and wisdom out of the window and rationale and their friends are looking at each other thinking “Oh my gosh, this is going to last, I don't know, 8 seconds” and then, sure enough, we fast forward to our current day divorce rate and it's fairly depressing. So, it makes me wonder if people begin to admit to themselves “I have a skewed version of reality and I can generate a more accurate version of reality when I accept different data points and those data points will come from people that love me.” For example, when I was dating my wife at the time right before we were engaged, I had learned fortunately I needed other people to speak into my relational side of life. I did not always make the best decisions in the past. So, when I had a unanimous strong conviction, strong confirmation from my friends, my family, people who’ve known me for a number of years, affirming that the person I was dating was fantastic for me, gave me such peace of mind. Part of the reason is I never had that in the past. It was always “Tell me more about what you see in this person” and it was me trying to convince them rather than me presenting the relationship and letting them come to an honest assessment. So, having this backing of my community that loves me was so powerful. So, my wife and I were coming up on our sixth wedding anniversary in January, and how fast did that go, and yet so many marriages don't even make it this far today but by having this community around me to say “When my groomsmen are up there, they've got my back. They're going to be asking hard questions. They're keeping me accountable. They're supporting me,” those types of gestures say this life is not meant to be done alone. We're now not talking just about marriage. We're talking about the community, how do we operate as a society and part of that is tough love. So, a personal transition that I’ve been making is less around the pursuit of happiness and much more round of the pursuit of healthiness and eating an apple versus eating some candy. It may not yield the same immediate happiness chemical reaction in my body but you better believe it's keeping my body in a healthier state where I’ll be able to play with my kids longer in the end. So, I’m changing the types of questions I’m now asking myself and I’m finding the yield on that, from a career standpoint, from a health standpoint, from a relationship standpoint, even finances now, it's making a difference because I literally just changed the frame of questions.
Jayneil: But, David, let's say, if you're dating someone that people around us think that they're not the right fit for us or we're pursuing an opportunity that people are skeptical about but we somehow feel like “Oh no, but you know, I want to be the one that shows the world kind of like just the start of Kool-Aid that we took the shot on something that everybody, the whole world thought was stupid but guess what, we proved them wrong” and there's this innate built-in thing. I don't know if it's influenced by the media or that's just the way we are as human beings. So, when does one figure out that “Okay, I’m going to go against the grain. I’m going to go against what my community tells me in this area and I’m going to follow my gut” and when is it, I guess, advisable to listen and not listen to your gut? How does one draw the line?
David: I love your question. So, the framework that I operate from that is unpacking the why behind the what. So, the what in your case, Jayneil, could be things like “You shouldn't date them. You shouldn't pursue this work opportunity.” So, rather than stopping the conversation there and judging it of “You're right,” “You're wrong,” “Okay, I’ll consider it,” I’m going to challenge and encourage you to unpack the why – What has led them to that conclusion – because that data, in my opinion, is actually 10 times more valuable than the conclusion itself because if you can now understand how they arrived at it, you now have the ability to assess “Oh my gosh, there's this whole other data set that I haven't considered.” For example, “Are you aware that she has a gambling addiction?” – “Oh my gosh, I didn't even ask that question. Yeah, that's kind of a factor I should probably consider it.” “Are you aware that this company has three months of a financial runway?” – “Oh, my goodness, I didn't even think of asking that question.” So, arriving to the conclusion is so much more powerful on the receiving side when the giver of the advice or the criticism unpacks the why with the what. So, there's this mindset I try to operate from, I call the ‘power of preface’. When about to process difficult feedback or provide critical advice, I try to lead into the conclusion rather than the should – “You should do this. You shouldn't do that.” It comes across so much more abrasive but if I can help unpack the “Here's how I’m thinking about it. Here's how I arrived at it. Here's some of the data that I was analyzing that helped me come to this,” it gives the receiving side so much more ability to walk with you to the conclusion rather than get hit across the face with it.
Jayneil: Wow! So, you're explaining almost your thought process behind it, how you're coming to that conclusion also with the person instead of just saying one line – “No, that's a horrible decision.”
David: There's a shirt that I want to make someday that says “Don't should on me.” And this idea is everyone wants to should on you – “you should date this person,” you should work here,” “you should live here,” “you should eat this,” “you should buy my product,” “you shouldn't do this” and so on. And I think “Okay, I get what you're trying to do. Help me understand why” because that, candidly, is what I’m assessing. If I were to say “Jayneil, I want you to shift your diet over to a whole food plant based” and I just left it at that, what's the first question you're asking yourself? Why? But if I lead into it to say things like “Jayneil, I care about your physical wellbeing. I want you to be able to live a long and prosperous life, not in medication, not restricted to a wheelchair, not with disabilities. I want you to live with vibrancy. And what I found, based upon studies and data and personal anecdotes, this type of diet yields that,” how different is it on the receiving side to think “That's where he's coming from.” It has nothing to do with “him against this” or “him for this.” It's “He made this decision based upon this data. I know his heart. I know his mind. I know his perspective” – 10 times better rather than just the should statement “Jayneil, you should do this.” – “Maybe but I don't know why.” And that why is just so powerful, why we believe certain things, why we take certain stances and just really start challenging what we have been spoon fed since birth and just have never taken a step back and criticized it versus the decisions now as adults that we're owning completely.
Jayneil: But, David, sometimes I feel like this journey that you're on, it's almost like you're constantly updating your mental models like whatever you're born, with whatever David was five years ago is no longer the way David operates now. Sometimes it's really hard. Even before I go to that, I think one thing I want to ask is sometimes it's really hard to listen to this feedback. Even if you're telling me why or the reason behind it, sometimes really the feedback or the reason is really brutal. So, how do you go about listening to this harsh feedback or something you just don't want to hear from your life advisors or people around you.
David: If someone doesn't want to change, myself included, we're not going to change. And I’m not sure if it's much more complex than that. If someone gives me advice that I have a contrary belief, thought, opinion on, I’m not going to take it. Now, whether I think they're right or think they're wrong or I think I’m right or wrong, it becomes less relevant. What becomes more relevant is if I were to ask myself before I received the advice, before I knew what they said, “Am I genuinely open, willing and able to change?” If I’m not, I should not ask for advice. All I’m doing, and this is probably my candid perspective, if my answer is no to that, when I’m asking someone for advice, what I’m actually doing is asking for validation of the decision that I have already made. So, for example, this is a really common scenario, especially in marriage, “Hey, honey, how do I look in this outfit?” Boy, talk about a trap! There are at least a few answers I can talk about.
Jayneil: It's not a tricky question.
David: So, what's so fortunate on my end is my wife looks fantastic in everything. So, I got off easy on that one but for a lot of these married folks out there, it's tricky where some of it just look great but you get the point. So, if you ask me candidly, you say “David, what's your advice on XYZ?” and you're honest with yourself realizing “I’m only looking for validation,” don't trick yourself. It is self-deception to think “I’m totally looking for advice” when you're not whereas the analogy that I try to give myself is “Am I listening with both of my ears?”, the yes, the no or “Is one of my fingers plugging in the ear and I’m only looking for that validation?” And I am so guilty of doing that on so many decisions, just looking for validation, making me feel better about the decision that I’ve already arrived at rather than candidly looking for a critical assessment for someone to say “Have you thought about it this way?”
Jayneil: So, David, applying all this stuff, you worked at one of the most successful startups out there, Open Door, which lets people buy and sell homes online. So, you were one of the first hires at Open Door that is now worth billions of dollars. What was going on through your mind or the decision framework when you jumped on board that opportunity?
David: So, this is about five or so years ago. I get a phone call from a close friend of ours and he says “Hey, David, I just dropped out of Harvard Business School to go join a real estate tech startup and I want you to join me.” Now, I don't know about you, Jayneil, but I don't have any other conversations in my life that have started that way. So, I thought “This is really intriguing.” So, I started out as the 10th employee, there were nine folks back in San Francisco, and quite candidly, the friend of mine, he took a bet on me when he brought me on. If you look at my resume on a paper standpoint prior to that, there is no way that I would have got through the stack, just total candidate assessment. This has nothing to do with modesty or humility. This is me now as a recruiter and an interviewer, if I were to look at my resume, I’d say “Nope,” totally pass on that candidate. So, the opportunity that was presented was completely out of someone who saw the potential in me that I didn't see myself. And fast forward, this is one of his super powers when he builds companies, his uncanny ability to assess talent that's still in the raw state and then help cultivate that and foster and bring it forth. So, when I look at some of those earlier years that were really formative in my professional development, the amount of feedback that I got, it was invaluable. I get to take it with me the rest of my life. And now, I genuinely think of feedback, when delivered and processed correctly, it’s a gift. Otherwise, it’s not the direct question, if you ask me, but, as I’m reflecting on my early time at Open Door, the feedback culture that we were able to cultivate there, it created safety, it created trust, it empowered the employees to make autonomous decisions so much faster, knowing that we are operating in this environment of when I skew, when I make a mistake, my team is not giving me feedback because they hate me. They actually give me feedback because they care about me, they want me to improve and they want to empower me with the opportunities of future decisions.
Jayneil: So, David, one of the best advices you’d given me, I think recently, when I’d asked you how does one filter through the bullshit that a company is saying or a person is saying when you meet them, whether it's for some opportunity or engagement, whatever the nature might be, and you said that you kind of plan in advance what that conversation might be and then you listen for some positive signs and stuff but one of the things that caught my eye that you said is you also pay attention to what is not said. So, can you elaborate on what does that mean to pay attention to what is not said?
David: It’s tricky. This is not like go read a book and you're going to figure it out. What I think is helpful, so when you and I were working on that project together, I had a fairly clear idea in my mind of what I was generally looking for this person to say if they would be the right candidate to help us carry that project forward. Now, I had no idea what the exact words would be but thematically, they would say X Y and Z, which, from my mental model going into conversation, if they were not saying those types of things and they were emphasizing other attributes, that tells me there's likely a disconnect, there's a misalignment. So, the critical part then, moving forward, is knowing what you actually want. And I would say a lot of these conversations whether it's an interview, a pitch, a project, whether you're dating, assessing a new career opportunity, people don't take the personal time to ask themselves, and give them genuine time, this is not a five-second exercise, and they ask “What do you actually want? You. not your family, your friends, your life advisors, career people. What do you want?”
David: Another way to think of the same question is “What are you trying to optimize for?” Speed, cost, quality, those are work related ones but then you can apply it on a personal side. So, for me, a lot of what I’m optimizing for is my family. I’m from Phoenix. I have a lot of friends and family in Phoenix. Now that I have a wife and children, it's really important to me that I live in Phoenix. So, what I’m trying to optimize for decisions, I keep that on the forefront of my mind. So, that way if someone says “Hey, we've got a killer opportunity over in London, New York, San Francisco, Seattle,” name it, it's no longer viable for me based upon what I’m trying to optimize for.
Jayneil: So, you don't have any FOMO that “Oh my God, like, there's this amazing startup in Silicon Valley and I’m not going to move there.” How do you deal with that?
David: First of all, yes, I have FOMO. I think I would be lying to myself if I said “No, no, no, I have no desire at all.” Of course. I have so much respect for the folks over there. I know amazing and talented people who are in the Bay Area and there are unique opportunities that are not open for folks who are not willing to relocate. Totally get that. So, from an optimization standpoint, one way to think about it, Jayneil, and this is not me quoting it that someone else did, the greater yes – “What is your greater yes?” And the greater yes helps you say no to other opportunities in an easier fashion because you're saying no from a place of strength rather than from a place of fear. So, the FOMO aspect, if I were to do self-analysis and I re-asked the question in a different way “What am I fearful of missing? And is it things like monetary value, career progressions, skill set development, network expansion?” All of those are possible, even if I lived there. So, what I would not want to do is over index on just because I live in a certain place, automatically means that I now gain all of what I listed whereas in the inverse, just because I live in Phoenix doesn’t mean I get access to it, doesn’t mean I don’t get access to it. A lot of what I’m seeing, especially in today’s day of IoT, the world is becoming so much more interconnected that we’re going to be doing this in person, this is through a remote basis. The last two companies I worked for, I worked completely remote. I’m seeing that type of transition decreases the amount of FOMO that I may have felt five years ago of “Man, all of the opportunities back in the Bay Area.” No doubt there's incredible opportunity but there are also amazing entrepreneurs, founders, visionaries, dreamers all over the world now who have access to the types of resources that were not previously available.
Jayneil: So, David, despite you working constantly to update your mental models, the way you design, it's almost like, David, you've designed literally how you make decisions. You literally designed that framework for yourself. Now, does that still mean that despite you making this entire framework and you're updating it, you still might make bad decisions or you might have like false-positives?
David: That's a good question. So, part of what has been freeing for me is, you used the phrase, “bad decision”. Us as humans are really interesting when we place labels on things like “That was a bad decision.” And if you were to counter right after someone says that with a question “Well, did anything good come out of it?” and they pause and think “Well, sure. I met this person and we actually got married,” “I developed this new opportunity,” “I developed this skill set.” So, sure, I guess some good stuff came out of it. So, then if you were to ask the question “What made it a bad decision?”, what that tells me is what I was hoping for, expecting, the desired yield did not come to fruition. That could be very myopic like “I needed to make X amount of dollars,” “I needed to sell this product,” “I needed to establish this relationship,” – single variable based. There might even be a few variables there that people are trying to optimize for. So, a bad decision would say “Well, you didn't get what you were looking for but you found something else.” Maybe one way to think of that would be redemption. So, is the element of redemption a possible justifier, liberator from this strict and straight bad decision. So, freedom that I have found that I get to enjoy a bit more is “I’m going to make the best decision I can with the information that I have.” Now, hindsight is 20:20. Totally get that but, as I’m moving forward at the speed of life, I will operate with the best information that I have at the time. So, prior to seeing the documentary two years ago, I was making the best decision I could with the information that I had. Then I gained new information. So, am I going to say “Well, this violates everything that I’ve been telling myself for the last 20 years. So, I reject it” or am I willing to keep my mind open and admit “Okay, this information trumps the way that I used to think. So, I’m going to shift over to it.” And that's self-humility. This is not even about social humanity. This is self-humility that I’m wanting and willing and able to evolve as a person understanding that there's never a “I’ve made it.” You're not there. It's the journey aspect of “I’ve got a thousand more lessons to learn. This is fantastic.” AND I think part of what's been so liberating is the whole bad decision is less in my mindset now. I’m rethinking it as “How can I do this differently in the future? What would I do differently? What would I ask differently? Who would I pull in when I run across this?” rather than trying to optimize for zero bad decisions.
Jayneil: So, David, if you had like the final few words to the listeners on how do they go about making better decisions in their life or how do they go about designing a framework that works for them to help them design better decisions in life, what would your parting advice be?
David: Know what you want, know why you want it and be willing to defend that to yourself, your friends, and your family. And if you have that type of package, from my perspective, it gives you this superpower called conviction. And when you have that conviction, you're able to run through walls, you're able to wake up tomorrow and continue to work harder than the person next to you because you know what you want, why you want it. The hardest part is figuring out how to get there but fortunately, you don't have to do that alone. You can reach out to folks around you and expand your network, be willing to be vulnerable. There's a documentary by Brené Brown on Netflix called ‘The Call to Courage’. I strongly encourage folks to watch that if you're on this type of journey. And there's this powerful moment about the freedom of vulnerability and that if you've never been in the arena of life totally getting hosed by all the adversity that comes, then don't take advice from that person. Take advice and perspective from folks who have been in the arena, who have had their teeth kicked in because it's really difficult. They have shared empathy. They know what it's like. So, when you establish to your core “This is exactly specifically what I want. Here's why I want it,” the only person you have to defend that to and convince is yourself but once you've reached that hump, you're unstoppable.
Jayneil: Wow! That's phenomenal, David. Thank you. Thank you so much, man, for taking the time to share with me how you go about designing your decision-making framework mental models.
David: Absolutely. This has been awesome.
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