Founders Focus

Importance of Personal Branding and Compassionate Design

Episode Summary

What should founders take into account as they develop their story and personal brand? How can leaders use this theory of compassionate design as they lead their companies?

Episode Notes

Personal branding is the conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them to be trusted and provides credibility to future investors, employees and partners. 

Dave Carroll, musician, speaker, and author behind United Breaks Guitars, joins Scott to talk about building a personal brand and compassionate design.

Have feedback? Connect with Scott Case on LinkedIn.

Visit foundersfocus.com to join the live video sessions, watch past sessions, and see what topics are up next.

Episode Transcription

Scott Case  0:00  
Welcome to Founders Focus, a podcast made for founders by founders. I'm Scott Case, CEO and co founder of Upside, and I created Founders Focus to help share free resources and actionable advice. Together we're building a community for business leaders, entrepreneurs and founders to come together to tackle today's challenges. This podcast is powered by my awesome team at Upside. Please visit foundersfocus.com to join the live video sessions or to catch up on past topics.

Dave Carroll  0:28  
Hey, thanks Scott and Hi everybody. My name is Dave Carroll. I live in Halifax Nova Scotia up on the east coast of Canada. And I have been a singer songwriter and a storyteller for both 30 years. And I'm probably best known for a little over a decade ago when United Airlines broke my guitar on a trip and we were on our way to Nebraska and my guitar got broken and someone saw the baggage handlers throwing our instruments and I tried to get them to take some responsibility for that. Which they didn't do. And I decided I would write and produce three music videos and put them on this thing called YouTube that I'd heard about. And the first of the three is the workhorse of the three videos that are all up there. But the first one went viral very quickly when I didn't know what a viral video was. And it changed my life in a whole bunch of different ways and created a path and the for the last 10 years that has been kind of unimaginable in certain ways. And the the journey continues.

Scott Case  1:30  
That's awesome. Dave, you know what, as entrepreneurs, we we spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, being being thoughtful and purposeful about how we, how we build things and create technology. And there is there's oftentimes a little dash of luck and timing that goes along with things and I think you hit the mark there. So we're going to do something we haven't done before. We're going to show the first minute and a half or so of Dave's video so you can all get a sense of what this was like. So if you're capable going back in your wayback machine I think this was released in 2000. Well, the version that I have is 2009. So almost exactly 11 years ago, July 6, so I'm going to share my screen here. And let's see if I get this right. So you should all be able to see it. If anyone of you can just give me a thumbs up if you see the stream that would be good. Okay, very good. All right, here you go enjoy.

Dave Carroll  2:27  
I flew United Airlines on my way to Nebraska, Halifax connecting into Chicago's "O'Hare." While on the ground, a passenger said from the seat behind me. Oh, my God, they're throwing guitars out there. The band and I exchanged a look, best describe as terror at the action on the tarmac, and knowing whose projectiles these would be. So before I left Chicago, I alerted three employees who showed complete indifference towards me. United, United, you broke my Taylor Guitar, United, United, some big help you are. You broke it, you should fix it. You're liable, just admit it. I should've flown with someone else or gone by car. 'Cause United breaks guitars.

Scott Case  4:06  
That gives you a flavor for it. And so by my memory I think that this video got about a million views in four days, which was like a billion kajillion times as many as you thought I was going to get Dave. So why don't you tell us a little bit about like, what happened next and maybe give your backstory you talked about being a storyteller and a performer but what? What were you doing before this? Why were you traveling with your guitars? Instead of what was the result of this video for you?

Dave Carroll  4:42  
Yeah, so my brother Don and I are the sons of Max Carroll. So we had a band called Sons of Maxwell named after our dad. And we traveled all over the world as indie artists, so that has challenges and benefits. But as a challenge, I guess it means that even if you're successful, you do very rarely have the momentum to keep going. So we had some of those challenges but travelled all over as far as China and that sort of thing. And we had been living in Waverly Nova Scotia right here as part of Halifax, members of the volunteer firefighter at station 41. And at around that time, we had the opportunity to go to Nebraska and, and the guitar got broken at that point. And I just decided that I should probably write a song about it because that's what songwriters do as a storyteller. That's kind of the path that I went down and, and as I say, we went to the Waverly fire hall, that's where we shot the video and the people that were in the, in the video were part of the volunteer firefighting force there and, and so it was very much a rootsy, organic type of a of an effort. And like I said earlier, I didn't know what a viral video was, I didn't even know much about social media. But I did realize early on that, in my experience having played bars with my brother, we would sometimes play in a place that had, say 150 people of different ages and different groups. And there were certain songs that would get people's attention to stop talking and having a beer to watch the stage for four or five minutes at a time and certain songs like Johnny Cash, his Folsom Prison blues, but always do that. So that was sort of the template for United breaks guitars, not so much because I'm a country artist, but because that one always worked. And so I thought that will be the template. And I considered that maybe social media was like a busy frenetic pub in that it's bringing together together all sorts of people, and I'm trying to get their attention for a short amount of time. And they either have other options, so maybe a song like that would work. And if you could make something that looks good and sounds good and makes people want to tell their friends about it, then maybe that's what social media is. And I've sort of stuck with that definition for the last 11 years is it's really just about trying to find the Make something that looks good, sounds good. It makes people want to tell their friends about it. And that's kind of how we were off to the races with that project.

Scott Case  7:09  
So what was your intent in producing the video? What did you hope to accomplish by doing it? Was it something that you thought hey, maybe this will be something that helped me book more gigs? Or was it you hoped that you would get united attention to think differently about things? What, why did you create it?

Dave Carroll  7:27  
So the reason I promised that I would do it or I committed to it is because I'm a person of principle and and I promised Ms Earlwig, the customer service rep. She had I met about seven or eight months into my ordeal after the guitar was broken. Finally, I met this customer service rep named Ms. Earlwig. And we communicated by email and after about eight or nine emails, it was kind of like we were in a relationship together and she finally broke up with me. And she said, Mr. Carroll, we're not obligated to do anything for your guitar because you didn't open a claim within 24 hours. And so we're, we're through basically. And at that point, I was as frustrated as you can imagine. And I remember looking at my guitar that was sitting right beside me, and I thought, I've got other tools at my disposal than suing United Airlines. But that was what I was prepared to do. So I told her, I said, If I were a lawyer, I might sue your airline. But instead, I'm going to and right off the top of my head said, I'm going to make three videos with my friends. And we're going to talk about the experience from three different angles. I'm going to put these on this thing called YouTube. And we're going to try and get, it was almost like Austin Powers, a million views in the next year with all three videos combined, because it seemed like a big number. And I was just going to share it and that was my intention just to get it off my chest and let people know what happened. And I quickly discovered that because it had been so long, the song, the first song came together really quickly. I wrote it in about a day and I imagine all the funny things that we ended up putting in the video are some of them, and sent it to my friends, and they got behind it and they said, we'll donate our time. And then I called my friends in the film industry and they said they would donate their time if I did all of the other things. So I had to learn on on the job, how to do a music video where you're in charge of everything from sandwiches to makeup and costumes. And, and my budget was $150. And so that's what, that's what we did. And we showed up at the Waverly fire hall. And we did that.

Dave Carroll  9:25  
And by then, it had been so long that my intention was really not about the result. And that was one of my big takeaway through all this is that it's never really about the destination. It's always about the process. And through the process of writing the song and recording it and having our friends show up for that fun day at the Waverly fire hall. I realized that if nobody ever watched that video, it wouldn't matter because we just brought our friends together in a really great way. And I just put it on YouTube, but Monday, July 6 at 11:30pm, and I didn't have a social media strategy. I just posted it to YouTube with too many In the glory days of Facebook, you could send one message and all of your friends will get it as a direct message. And so I had 400 Facebook friends, and I had about 300 in Outlook Express, which is what I was using at the time. And those two messages were kind of identical. I just said United broke my guitar, can you watch this video, and I've never really asked anyone to watch it again. But I went to bed that night with six hits, and was convinced all six were mine. And because I was gonna watch it a million times if I needed to, but what I didn't realize is social media had really started to work already. If you watch a video 1000 times from your house, it only ever counts as one hit but I had six people or five others who had watched it and I thought they were mine but in the morning I had 300. And very quickly the the number started to go up. So by the end, four days into it, I hit the 1 million view mark. And there were messages coming in from people all over the world that were saying you're doing something good for customers, thank you for what you're doing, don't take the money that the airlines is going to offer you. And thanks for what you're doing. So my intention was changing almost by the day when I realized maybe I had a platform and maybe a responsibility.

Dave Carroll  11:13  
And the one thing I think that struck me a lot at the beginning, were some of these people that were saying thanks for what you're doing. They would also say, I wish I played an instrument, because then I would have a voice too. And I think they were wrong, because I believe everybody has a voice and a cool story to tell. But there I was sort of struck by how many people believe that they don't have a voice and that they believed in me to do something with that for them. So that became part of the intention early too.

Scott Case  11:41  
So talk a little bit about that notion of having a voice and being a storyteller. And, like, we have a bunch of founders and business owners here. Some have developed a personal brand, some have tried to develop the brand for their for their company, but sort of focusing in, I've noticed some of the things that a lot of entrepreneurs I talked to haven't done is invested in becoming, you know, practicing being a storyteller, working to build a personal brand and sort of establish what those values are. So can you tell me a little bit about, or tell our audience or our group here a little bit about, you know, how do you think about that? Why is it important and, and how to be intentional?

Dave Carroll  12:23  
So, I lived through the United Breaks Guitars experience, but I've also met a lot of people that have studied it, there's been, I think, 400 books that have talked about it in one way or another or use it to prove a thesis. And so I think the importance of storytelling can't be overstated, because every musician I've met that's traveled enough with their guitar always has had a guitar being broken by an airline. So there was nothing remarkable about the fact that my guitar got broken. But the remarkable thing is that my story of my broken guitar became the number one music video in the world for a month in July of 2009, and the number six most talked about story on YouTube of any topic or genre. And so it meant that there's something in the way that I told the story using social media, a song that was a little bit humorous. I've sort of looked at it from all the angles.

Dave Carroll  13:15  
And we forget sometimes that, maybe we're so immersed in our company that we forget that there's a story there that other people would like to be immersed in, and, and drawn into, and you can't engage people that way. With a data dump, there's got to be something speaking from the heart to the heart of other people. That's where that's where engagement comes from. It's not from giving people information. So I learned that a long time ago from songs as a musician, there are certain songs that evoke an emotion and get people fully engaged. And I've discovered that if you get them on that song, they're gonna listen to other things. So that was an important lesson.

Scott Case  13:58  
So in a world now where we're kind of flooded with social media, right? There's not just YouTube, but there's everything from Instagram and Snapchat and Tiktok. And in addition to Facebook, what, I guess, what breakthrough strategies or what things do you see now that that still matter from a storytelling similar to draw you in? What do you think the key elements are?

Dave Carroll  14:26  
The beauty of storytelling, I think, is that it's timeless that you can come up with new technology and a new platform to communicate with people but the elements of the story that make a story good or not, are still there. You have every good story has some tension. I heard a screenwriter, famous screenwriter talking about if you if you were telling a story and saying Jane had is driving to California, there's no story there. But if you say Jane has to be in Los Angeles by Tuesday or, and then you fill that in, that's much more engaging. And so sometimes, especially with entrepreneurs and founders, there's a zillion of them out there and, and what makes your story unique. And it's got to be about the passion and your why of why you do that, and what problems you're gonna solve. But it's really about finding that tension and the problem that exists in the world and how you're going to solve it creatively, like nobody else ever has. And you can do that with enthusiasm and the way you lay out the story, and it doesn't mean has to be a long story, but it has to be engaging and it can't just be on the cerebral level, it has to be I think, from the heart.

Scott Case  15:35  
Yeah, that authenticity is such a key thing. So you've done a lot since the the video did its thing and like you, you've I think you've written a book and you've done a lot of speaking. And you kind of arrived at something that I think you call compassionate design, and it's got some elements to it. Can you just sort of share what those what the idea is, what the pillars are, and maybe give some examples?

Dave Carroll  16:00  
Yeah, so I had never done any speaking before this, it happened even on stage my brother did most of the talking, in Sons of Maxwell. So I had a chance to become a speaker. And I had to put up a talk together that took people on a bit of a journey and came up with some takeaways. I learned what a takeaway was the week before my first talk. And one of my early takeaways was that we are ultimately connected. And I talked about that for years, that the reason the video was popular is because you and I and everybody in the world are fundamentally connected with one another. And then I started to think more deeply about that and thought, if we are all connected, and we have more in common with people than we don't, then that means maybe we have a fundamental obligation to care for one another more than we maybe have before. And I started looking at businesses and asking, why are some successful, more successful than others and have amazing cultures with the churn rates really low or they're able to scale and they have loyalty from employees and suppliers and customers that others don't. And I think the the answer might be in the idea of becoming more compassionate and creating a compassionate culture.

Dave Carroll  17:16  
So compassionate design started as a metaphor around a triangle where if you just had an everyday triangle, there's nothing really remarkable about that, it's flattened two dimensional. But I discovered that I believe that every business has five stakeholders, which would be your customers, your employees, your suppliers, the greater good like a social conscience, and shareholders. And those five stakeholders make up every business that that you have potentially. And a triangle tends to only focus on say shareholder value. So there's four stakeholders that are missing. But if you were to take a triangle and add one line for each stakeholder in a very particular way, you can arrive at a pyramid, and to me, that seems like the preferred option. If I were starting a company, especially as a founder, I would aspire to have a company that stands out in the horizon, like all of the people who travel to Egypt every year just to stand in front of the pyramids and have a selfie with them in their family so they can show everybody else who would they have been hanging out with, I would like to have a brand like that. And they stand for a long time they've got, you know, for four sides of a solid base, and as opposed to being flattened two dimensional.

Dave Carroll  18:30  
So the idea of having three dimensions to the compassion, that's where that came from. But essentially, compassionate design is founded on three simple principles. And it has to do with the first one, loving and respecting yourself. That I think in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs before you can get to that very top part of self actualization. There's the self love and self respect aspect and I think that's missing with a lot of companies and individuals personally and in business. So if you can do something to improve that, I think you're in good position. And the second of the three points for compassionate design is to stop broad stroking people and putting them into boxes. And, and when you're dealing with somebody look for the individual that you're talking to receive them as an individual see them as a unique person that's never been around before, because that creates curiosity of what makes them unique and what makes them special. And then the third, maybe most important aspect is once you see that individual in front of you, try to find yourself in them because if you look for yourself and everybody you meet, if you look hard enough, you will always find the yourself and if you love and respect yourself first, then that's a great basis to build a relationship upon. So that's what compassion design is about.

Scott Case  19:51  
Awesome. I think that the being in tune with yourself being, you know, focused on seeing each person as an individual, I think that practicing that is so, so important. It's so challenging because our brains are actually pretty aggressive at bucketing people almost immediately upon seeing them, right? And it's being intentional about that. And then and then, like you said, making that connection from yourself to the other. I know that, that you know, our group, they're all founders, they're different. You know, they're at different stages, they're building different things. I'm curious as when you think about yourself, and a lot of ways you're an entrepreneur, how are you applying those pillars? How do they show up in, in your practice, whether that's producing music or going on tour or interviewing, you know, working with other people giving speeches? How do you bring those elements to the table?

Dave Carroll  20:51  
I think being intentional is is important. So compassion, creating a compassionate culture and and being compassionate, it's a practice, it's not something you do in a three hour course get the certificate, and then you're good for forever, it takes daily practice. And you know, to be honest, I have my my bad days too where I'm not being as compassionate as I would like to be. But the beauty of it is you can do a restart all the time. So rather than just accepting, I guess you should accept that you're not going to be your best self every moment. But the idea is, you can be your best self here and here and here. But maybe you shorten the distance between those points to get to a point where you're mostly that way. And so companies, if you have a culture that's compassionate, what I try to do in my own business dealings is to be intentional, do those things I said, have respect for myself and respect and look for the individual,  and the people I meet, whether that be in audiences. On going back years, sometimes I would play to bars and there wouldn't be very many people there. Be an off night. And but I would still play to the people that were there because those six people decided that was a better place to be than any other place that they had to go. And I appreciated that. And those six people went away and some of them came back again with more more friends. So I build my brand on caring about the people before me and appreciating who who they are and why they were there.

Scott Case  22:22  
Awesome. It is the case that you're starting small and starting a small audience can build and even your story earlier about, they're only six views and then there were 300 views. And then there were a million just demonstrates the power of a story carrying and obviously the technology can make it move faster. So there was a question that came in. Now, one of the things that I've talked about is, from a communication standpoint, especially when you're talking about marketing, it's often about making sure that I'm telling a story that is about you, your hopes, your needs, etc. Like you've said, connecting with the individual, how do you split out the notion of telling my story, right versus telling a story that's relevant and compelling to to my audience? And, you know, where's the balance there? Obviously, you were in the case of the United example that it breaks guitars you were telling your story of your experience, but you tuned it in to be to feel relevant in the case of that sort of humorous. Are you conscious of that? Do you think about it? And how do you how do you balance out those elements?

Dave Carroll  23:33  
When it comes to storytelling, I think the best again, maybe using the music metaphor, and the best songs I've written that seemed to touch people the most. It wasn't an intention thing where I said, I'm going to frame this story that I wrote and impose it on other people. I try to find the aspect of the story that will resonate with people to find that common thing to get away from the head and get to what's in common for everybody else. Because that's people want to see themselves in the story and if you can show them that, that draws them in. There is one example I've written a song about a man who has to put his wife in an old age home. She's got Alzheimer's, and he's trying to explain to her that he's sorry that he had to do it, but she's getting older, he can't take care of her. And I performed that at a house concert for an friend of mine was there and he was with his wife and his wife's mother was in late stage Alzheimer's. And I've said, Dave, I'm going to do this song tonight. But maybe I won't because your mother in law's here and he said, Don't worry, she's, she's in a degraded state. We just didn't have anywhere to take her. So we brought her here, but go ahead. And so I told the story. I sang the song. And you know, half hour later the show ended and everybody was leaving. And the mother was shuffling out of the room and she looked at me and she broke away from them and she shuffled over and she said, that song you sang I have that. And it blew her daughter's mind because they hadn't connected with her on a human level, she didn't know who she was, but this music brought her back to a point where she knew who she was, knew what her problem was. And her daughter got to see that and the song was effective that night but the ripple effects of this the story go on to another family, right, and it affected me and now I just told you that story and I feel that when every time I tell it and that's what storytelling can do, I could just tell you information that I wrote a song called about Alzheimer's but that does nothing but when you can reach people at the heart that's everything.

Scott Case  25:36  
Absolutely. So I want to turn to your your entrepreneurial endeavors, you back in the day, you started a company in college, but more recently you had you had dreams of dominating the the intergalactic Canadian market with a business. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened? Like what what your thesis was? Your journey along the way. It was a couple of years and then sort of where you ended up.

Dave Carroll  26:03  
Yeah, so I'm a living example of not every entrepreneurial adventure ends and millions of dollars and sometimes you put a lot of work in and it doesn't always work out. But you learn along the way. So through United Breaks Guitars, I met some interesting people and one of my adventures led me to a man who ended up becoming the CEO of a company called Ande which is short for accelerated nuclear DNA equipment. And they make these amazing DNA tests. And it's basically a, an instrument that accepts a chip about that size. And it can take up to five swabs from a semen stain or a buccal swab in the mouth. And if within 90 minutes it can deliver a DNA ID. That's a accurate to a one in a trillion trillion chance. And so it was used to identify Kobe Bryant for instance, and the family, and murders. And also it does. So it's so amazing. And it's going to change the world and I had the opportunity to take over the rights to sell it in Canada exclusively. And there were a lot of things that I didn't know about DNA and starting a business. But I jumped through the hoop because it seemed like a great opportunity. And I have an entrepreneurial spirit. And I understand what it's like to envision what something could be like. So I jumped in. And it turned out that I made some critical errors in judgment. And there were some things that were beyond my control. And the company is still going to be successful, I believe, but they've decided to turn towards a channel partner relationship rather than giving exclusivity to an entire region. And that I think negated the whole reason for my business because I couldn't sell an exclusive product if everybody else could sell it too, so I had to walk away from the deal, but I learned a lot about myself and how to be an entrepreneur. So I don't regret it at all. But they all they all can't be winners.

Scott Case  28:05  
Are you? Are you working on designs for your next adventure?

Dave Carroll  28:10  
Yeah, so after that I sort of licked my wounds a little bit and thought maybe I'll just go back to the dance was the one that brung it, which is music and storytelling and getting back into that sort of thing. So that's kind of where I've been putting my head in, and then the pandemic came. And so that means if you're a guy like me, where everything you do kind of requires an audience, it sort of causes you to pause. So for the last couple months have been working hard, but kind of like Obi Wan Kenobi when he's fighting the dark sith and the walls separate him and his opponent so he just kneels down until it's time to fight again. I kind of feel like I'm that guy getting ready for the next round, but I've been working on I've got two boys that are 11 and eight now and a couple of years ago, I wrote a story about Tom the Tomato Plant, this plant that is smaller than all the other tomato plants but eventually gets picked up by a family who gives him the care and attention and respect and, and hopes for him to to be everything he wanted to be and, and what that could be like. And so I'm working on that as an illustrated children's book that could also be a business parable for workshops on leadership and resilience and that sort of thing. So that's kind of where what gets me excited these days is still speaking, still performing. And, and being sort of diverse into audiences, whether they're young or old, doesn't matter. I just like connecting with people that way.

Scott Case  29:39  
So you've had, you've got a lot of different projects and a lot of different things that have kicked off, you've established this, this framework around Compassionate Design. You talked a little bit about having sort of five constituencies and credit creating that pyramid, which I think you said employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders and the greater good are sort of the five points? So as you look where you started 2009 to now, how intentional are you about what your brand represents? So I hear you about Tom, the tomato plant and I hear about creating more songs or you were doing this DNA testing, you know, equipment. How do you tie that back to like what you represent as Dave Carroll? How are you expressing that in the world? And how do you maintain that sort of those brand values? Or it can even share what you what you see those brand values to be for you?

Dave Carroll  30:36  
Yeah, well, I think I've been very intentional on the brand. The one consistent thing I've done since in the last 30 years, even when Don and I were just playing is we would play to the people who showed up, not to the ones who weren't there. And so, be present and when we're when the show starts, be present for who's there and do the best that you can, and try and be consistent and aligned with your brand, no matter what you're doing. So When united breaks guitars sort of went viral, I sort of decided that my brand, or the essence of it would be to improve the world one experience at a time. And I can do that as a speaker as a songwriter. If I was selling DNA instruments for me as a storyteller, it's the stories of what's possible the people, the problems I could solve with that. I can't imagine what it would be like to be raped. But it'd be nice to know that a quick solution would be there to identify the rapist, or if, you know, there's so many in all directions. So ultimately, I tried to be present and consistent and align. But I'm a storyteller, which allows me to be a communicator. And that means I can go in different directions and feel quite comfortable in that space. As opposed to saying, I am a guitar player or I am selling DNA machines. I'm a storyteller, and I'll try and find the good stories and no matter what I'm doing, which motivates me and hopefully motivates other people to be a part of it.

Scott Case  32:01  
Got it. Cool. All right, we've got time for another couple of questions. If folks have questions, post them in the chat, I've picked up a few. I've got a couple of more. So, talk about being a storyteller. Is there a formula that you that you use or a starting place where you'd say hi, if you want to start to a story, here are the few elements you talked about tension? Are there other elements that you think are important to make in a story effective? Zero, your formula you found to work for you?

Dave Carroll  32:32  
Yeah, but I think you probably everyone remembers that sort of graph that this starts in the setting and the rising action, the climax and the falling action and then the conclusion or the to get fancy that denouement, and I think every story should sort of have that sort of thing where what is it that you're trying to say, where are you, bring people into the challenge is that you have, the tension, and then show a crisis, a good story, as crisis you you wanted to start a business and you wanted to go into, say, the medical field, and there were competitors. And then the crisis came when you were cash strapped, and you needed an investor. And then you've maybe found a breakthrough technology that brute drew somebody else in and then you start focusing on who, what problems you're going to solve, because you did this, 1 million people are going to now have a treatment for a disease that would have killed them. And you focus on the human side. So the best stories always come back to other people. And the ones that catch on are the ones when people can see themselves in your story.

Scott Case  33:43  
Push on that a little bit. That's really important. So the best stories are the ones where they can see themselves in the story. Are there some techniques or tactics that you use to kind of make that happen or to or to kind of pressure test whether you're there or not?

Dave Carroll  34:03  
For me, it's basically how does it make me feel? You should always start with yourself. If you don't feel anything for it, nobody else will for sure. And because I'm a songwriter, and you have a very small number of lines and ways have to communicate in a short amount of time, you really have to be efficient in, in your dialogue. And so you really got to get to the crux of it. So I spend a lot of time sometimes thinking about, well, what's the heart of the story here? Where literally, where is the heart in the story? What, where's the pulse? What is going to make anybody else excited about it? And if you think about it, you'll find it and and then start saying, Would this apply to my customers? Would? Would my suppliers be interested in this? Would my shareholders be moved by it? And a good story should be able to be told to everybody without changing anything and have everybody feel the same thing for different reasons.

Scott Case  34:58  
That's a big difference. That's a big, big point, I want to put a fine point on that. I find a lot of entrepreneurs thinking, Oh, I'll have a story for my shareholders. And I'll have a story for my employees and have a story for my customers. And there's two realities. One is that's a bad idea. Because if you don't have one story that resonates with everybody, you're kind of missing something. The other is especially true. And in 2020, everybody has access to everything. And we all wear different hats at different times. So if you've got a consistent story that resonates for all of your calling, broadly, stakeholders, you're much more likely to find something that resonates. It's harder work. But it's so so important. What we're, we're gonna wrap up here, I don't think we have any other questions that have come in recently, but I do have one for you, Dave. And it's, it's it's probably one that you've gotten before because I suspect that there aren't that many famous singer songwriters from your world. But the question is, how do you know Sarah McLaughlin?

Dave Carroll  36:05  
Personally?

Scott Case  36:07  
I mean, what are the ways they're to know her? Right? Like personally, like, I'm sure you performed with her. You can tell us It's okay.

Dave Carroll  36:13  
I've never performed with her but I do have a claim to fame that we have a violinist who plays with us sometimes. And so Sarah was from Halifax. I'm originally from Ontario, but our violinist fiddler is from Halifax and she beat Sarah and a singing contest way back in the day.

Scott Case  36:31  
Wow. So you managed to you've managed to add the the band member who was more talented at the time than Sarah McLaughlin.

Dave Carroll  36:41  
Yeah, that's it. That's what I'm going with. Yeah. Our Fiddler would be appalled at that statement. But I'm done with that.

Scott Case  36:51  
Fair enough. Alright well, Dave, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. And thank you all for participating in this.

Scott Case  36:58  
Thanks for tuning in. This episode of Founders Focus. What did you think you got any feedback for us got a topic that you'd like us to discuss, or maybe a future co host? We'd love to hear from you. Just hit me up on LinkedIn at T Scott Case. And join us at foundersfocus.com to stay up to date with the latest episodes. And join us live every week at our Founders Focus sessions. Hope to see you there!