In our 100th episode, Dan T. Rogers joins us to discuss the importance of effort, intentionality in the workplace, and his transformative journey from physical labor to leadership. We explore the concept of creating impactful and fulfilling work environments and the paradox of progress in business.
Key Takeaways:
- Strive for the Top 16: Effort and dedication can position you among the successful, regardless of academic history.
- Intentional Training: Learning to practice and uncover skills can lead to personal and professional growth; now offered as a course by Dan T. Rogers.
- Classy Problems Newsletter: A daily reflection encouraging attention to attention and self-awareness.
Guest:
Dan T. Rogers, Restraint Artist and founder of WORKP2P and Classy Problems newsletter.
Resources Mentioned:
- Dan T. Rogers: LinkedIn and website
- Newsletter: Classy Problems
- Events: Secret Sidekick Suppers and Intentional Training Course
Quotes:
-“Effort and dedication can outshine natural talent when pursuing excellence.” – Dan T. Rogers
-“Creating a positive work environment requires intentionality and accountability from everyone involved.” – Mark Wright
Listener Challenge:
This week, reflect on your top 16 achievements and share how effort and dedication played a role in your success using #BEATSWORKINGShow.edia using #BEATSWORKINGShow.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
[00:00:00] Mark Wright: Dan Rogers, welcome back to the show that you created, BEATS WORKING. Great to have you here. So
[00:00:05] Dan Rogers: Number 100. Pretty cool.
[00:00:07] Mark Wright: we’re a hundred shows in. We’ve had all kinds of exceptional people on the show. All of them doing good through their work, showing that work actually can have a positive impact on us and a positive impact on the world. We’ve worked together for a little more than a year and a half now, Dan. And one of the things that I’ve noticed about you is in pretty much every area of your life, you’re ahead of the curve.
[00:00:32] Mark Wright:, you think differently. You anticipate, I think, differently., I’m just going to ask the question, are you having to explain the mission of redeeming work the same way that you did a year ago? Because I think sometimes when people hear redeeming work, what’s that? Has anything changed in the past year for you, Dan, when it comes to this mission?
[00:00:53] Dan Rogers: well, I hope so., I mean, I think if nothing had changed, there, there would have been some grave mistake [00:01:00] by somebody. But yeah, no, I think a lot has changed., I think, in fairness, I think, Maybe, hopefully I’m explaining it a little bit better., I think, I learned very early in my life to escape into the future.
[00:01:11] Dan Rogers: And so I frequently am out in front of people, but, a dear friend says, Hey, some people are in yesterday. Some people are today. Some people are in tomorrow. You’re frequently next week and sometimes next month. And maybe a year ago we were talking next month instead of next week. So hopefully we’re closer to next week, I think is at least what we’re hoping for.
[00:01:31] Dan Rogers: And then maybe even get it to tomorrow, but I think we’re, I think we’re still probably better off talking about next week than tomorrow.
[00:01:38] Mark Wright: one of the things I think has been really cool about these last 100 episodes, Dan, is that we’ve built a community through the show., a community of people who are all on this same page of trying to redeem work to make work better., what’s been your perspective on the discussions that have taken place?
[00:01:57] Mark Wright: And also, if those of you listening, haven’t checked [00:02:00] out Contributors Corner, it’s where we bring past guests of the show back to lead a deep dive on a topic so that we can have some shared learning., how did you get that idea for Contributors Corner, Dan? Because some of the best conversations that we’ve had in terms of learning have happened on Contributors Corner.
[00:02:17] Dan Rogers:, I knew the people were brilliant. And,, a lot of this started in, with a conversation with a friend I said to him, I was like, we need to record this and, make no mistake., he’s a fairly brilliant person., when you do my ratio of wisdom per syllable spoken, the ratio is pretty low, but, but I make up for it with volume.
[00:02:40] Dan Rogers:, but, but occasionally we just knew that we were uncovering some, Deep learning for ourselves. And, those conversations were becoming fairly routine with him, but those conversations happen. And I felt like if we tried to not manufacture them in a, simulated way, but [00:03:00] just created an environment where that conversation could happen.
[00:03:03] Dan Rogers: That they would. And I, essentially, I think the first contributors corner that went That at least posted, I don’t know what order they got recorded, but at least the one that first one that got recorded, I knew, all the people on the call. I had heard some of them say some of the things they had said before, but the cool thing about what has happened is my idea wasn’t terribly specific.
[00:03:24] Dan Rogers: I was just super confident that if we did the footwork, the boss would provide the magic and so the magic that was provided in that first call is like, okay, this is definitely the right thing to do. We just need. Brilliant people that are engaged to engage with each other and that the conversation itself will provide the value and I hope that’s what people are finding in Contributor’s Corner.
[00:03:45] Mark Wright: Yeah, I’ve been a little bit struck by the response, some of the top entrepreneurial coaches, consultants, people in the industry, they’re, these are some of the busiest, smartest, most expensive people, if you had to [00:04:00] hire them in North America, and almost to a person, they’ve said, We’re in, just let me know when the next recording is.
[00:04:08] Mark Wright: And I’ve been really struck by that. I’d love your to that, Dan., these are amazing people that if you had to hire them, I couldn’t afford to hire them, but yeah.
[00:04:22] Dan Rogers: like, I can’t either. Like we, we collectively can’t Mark., no., so I think there’s a couple of things. One is, there’s a reason why they’re brilliant. I mean, they’re brilliant because the boss made them, they’ve got some serious capacity, but they’re also, they’re linked in to some, more than others, but they’re all linked into a greater purpose.
[00:04:45] Dan Rogers: And so they saw this as an opportunity to get closer to being on purpose on that. And so it’s not so, I mean, It’s humbling and it’s heartwarming that they want to participate. But if I was to step back and watch somebody else, I’d be like, Oh, well, that makes [00:05:00] sense. You know, and I don’t want to start, there’s too many people to name.
[00:05:02] Dan Rogers: So I’m going to try not to use too many names today. Cause there’s, we’d have to, we just spend the whole time running through all the names. But when you look at who some of these people are, it’s not, that’s not surprising for them to do that sort of thing. It’s humbling that they, they’re doing it with us.
[00:05:18] Dan Rogers: So. But I’m going to, I’m going to throw a little love at you, almost to a person. They’ve all talked about the environment that you create, Mark. And I think, we knew when we first started talking about the podcast, I believed in the project. I believed in the idea, and I also believed that I wasn’t the host.
[00:05:36] Dan Rogers: And I think you being a host to sort of lay the groundwork has made that also possible. These people know where we’re coming from. There’s no, there’s no angle. We’re here. To highlight them as people, to highlight their individual missions and let that demonstration sort of speak for itself and that, that shines through.
[00:05:55] Dan Rogers: And it, it takes, it takes a host like you to do that. I’ve been on other people’s [00:06:00] podcasts and we’re grateful anytime anyone asks us to be, but some people invite you on the podcast to talk at you and some people invite you on the podcast to interview you and then some people invite you on the podcast because they actually just want to learn about you as a person.
[00:06:14] Dan Rogers:, and I think you definitely fall more into the third category where we’re learning about these people. And a lot of these folks, I was excited to get on the show. Cause I just wanted to hear the rest of the story that I knew I was missing. So, yeah.
[00:06:25] Mark Wright: Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And yeah, it’s just amazing what we learn when we just sit down with these people and get to hear their story and get to hear, their take on life. We’ve had a number of guests on the show who all say the first key to success at work is to know yourself and that is to really know your strengths and weaknesses.
[00:06:46] Mark Wright: I’d love to ask, Dan, in your work life, we’ve talked in, I’d love to talk a little bit later about Breeder Rolling and Furniture Moving and Event Shipping, because I think that past has really shaped who you are [00:07:00] and how you learned, what you know about life and what you know about business.
[00:07:04] Mark Wright: When did you first come to the realization that knowing yourself was really the key? To, to being successful at work.,
[00:07:12] Dan Rogers: Well, I don’t want to turn this into my therapy session, but we could, um,
[00:07:17] Mark Wright: That could be
[00:07:18] Mark Wright: interesting.
[00:07:18] Dan Rogers: could be, could be interesting. Uh, yeah, no, I, I look, the most authentic answer that I have is. I’m still continuing to learn that today. I get wrapped around the axle pretty fast the minute I start trying to act like the role of the title that I’m supposed to be in, of the chair that I’m sitting in.
[00:07:39] Dan Rogers: because I have an intellectual understanding or story around what that’s supposed to be instead of showing up as me. Who’s got that job. And when I do the second part of that, it goes much better than the first., there’s times actually when I intellectually show up, it’s not awful, it’s just not the [00:08:00] same, right?
[00:08:00] Dan Rogers: I mean, that’s gotten better over time, but it just, that’s, that’s still, again, this is why I think work is a great to get paid to practice. I really do. I mean, I’m hoping that I show up more as authentically as, you know, a member of my family and as a friend, because I get to practice showing up as me as a CEO or whatever the hell I am, uh, a founder of a podcast or whatever, like whatever ridiculous title we’ve given ourselves.
[00:08:29] Dan Rogers: So, yeah, I mean like, that’s, I think, that’s why I think this is a great place to practice and why not get paid while you’re practicing?
[00:08:35] Mark Wright: I went back yesterday as I was doing some yard work and listen to our first episode that we did together. And I was surprised I had forgotten this, but you say that your experience helping Taco Del Mar grow a restaurant chain start that started in the Seattle area, you would borrow money. To pay to have that experience again, because it taught you so many things about systems.
[00:08:59] Mark Wright: It [00:09:00] taught you so many things about managing people. That’s a pretty, that’s a pretty bold statement, Dan., do you still stand by that? And what was the biggest thing that made Dan Rogers, Dan Rogers through that experience?
[00:09:13] Dan Rogers: so this is, this is what I would say is, is I don’t, I would be, I would put my two plus years of experience, Up against anyone’s sort of, like lab college experience or whatever the appropriate is. I mean, I didn’t get the undergrad piece or whatever, but you can’t get the level of learning that I got.
[00:09:36] Dan Rogers: In school, you just can’t and that’s why I would borrow money for it. Um, I mean, I think there are jobs that we definitely are or professions that we want folks to have very rigorous training in because the basics are needed and all that. And so I, I don’t want to argue with those, but I think for the more.
[00:09:55] Dan Rogers:, creative, portions like business and all that. I mean, I, I laid the ground, I mean, you [00:10:00] need the, the sort of, the book smarts for business. I had some of it, intuitively, and then I learned the rest of it on the way. But what I learned at Taco Del Mar was that this was like everything else.
[00:10:12] Dan Rogers: This was like every sport that I played. This was like every class I took. This was like every single interaction in life, which is you can show up, you And sort of see where you sit and stay there, or you can show up and see what you can contribute and see where that puts you in class. And so Taco Del Mar was a great place, and the cool thing about working in a high growth opportunity is you’re frequently given opportunity that you’re not even remotely qualified. And, I was there. I was probably for a couple of the things I did at Taco Del Mar, I was the most qualified person in the company., but I wasn’t qualified to do it. And, this is a sidebar, but I’m going to tell it anyways a guy came in with a suit and like [00:11:00] 95 or 96, like, you know, we were, we were rolling at the point, like rolling, rolling, rolling burritos.
[00:11:04] Dan Rogers: We’re popping stores at a failure to click. And a guy walked in with a suit and a briefcase because it was the 90s and people still did that., and he wanted to talk to an owner and there was one owner in the building and me. And so the owner did what the owner did is he sat me down to talk to the guy.
[00:11:18] Dan Rogers: That’s why I had a job. And the guy basically pitched himself. He worked for another much nicer sort of sit down chain in the local Seattle area. I let them protect the innocent, but, he basically pitched me on my job and I told him, I said, look, like, this is my job. That you’re asking for, but you already do it for this other cooler chain.
[00:11:39] Dan Rogers: There’s only one owner here, but I’m going to go talk to him and see if he’ll talk to you. And I went up there and I talked to talk to him and he looked at me. Like I had three eyes and he’s like, we have you. And I was like, but this guy’s more qualified. And he’s like, we have you. And I was like, he’s like, Dan, we have you.
[00:11:53] Dan Rogers: And I said, well, what if we had two of me? He’s like, we don’t need two of you. And so I went down and I said, look, here’s the thing. This is the guy that’s up [00:12:00] here. Now, the guy that you want to talk to isn’t here. His name is James. I’m going to, you know, if you want to reach out to me, I’m not, trying to like, I’d love to have you on the team, man, but they’re not, apparently they’re smitten.
[00:12:10] Dan Rogers: And, he was way more qualified to do the job way more, but, they trusted me and he was unknown., he, I’m not saying he wasn’t trustworthy. He was just unknown. And I, they knew what they had with me. Good, bad, right or wrong. Five foot seven and bald as it was, or five foot seven and balding at that point.
[00:12:26] Dan Rogers: But, but, uh, yeah, but at least they knew, right. Like I was a known entity and, we worked with Google for about six or seven years when they were still reasonably small. And, we ran into people there that were doing things they weren’t qualified to do at all., comparable, right?, because Google has grown so fast.
[00:12:43] Dan Rogers: So it, when you’re in a high growth opportunity, the blessing and curses is that you get to do things that you probably shouldn’t be doing, but it’s paid practice.
[00:12:52] Mark Wright: Yeah, and that’s, I think, something we should restate is getting paid to practice BEATS WORKING [00:13:00] to get paid., explain that, Dan, to maybe that employee or that manager who wants to implement that into the workplace because it’s a mindset that I don’t think a lot of people have intuitively, but if you could break that down, I think that’s such a key, to making work better.
[00:13:17] Dan Rogers: So, I’m going to start with what most people, I don’t know, I’m just going to start where it started for me and it’s hard for people to believe this, but, there are people still a handful of people still alive that will testify to this., in 1994, I was not verbal. I didn’t talk a whole lot.
[00:13:36] Dan Rogers:, if you knew me before 1994, I was a little yoked up dude that. Had abnormally, abnormal, I was very good at physical labor. The way I would tell the story is if you own the crew, you wanted me on the crew. If you were part of the crew, you were hoping I was on another part of the job. Because I was just that guy.
[00:13:56] Dan Rogers: I was that guy that was going to show you that I could do more and be [00:14:00] more. And I didn’t say anything about it, I just showed it. And then every once in a while someone would try to, and I would be like, okay, let’s see where you are at lunch. Let’s see where we are tomorrow. And, but I was just, I thought I was angry.
[00:14:11] Dan Rogers: I was scared. And so that was a great physical release for the terror, was to do these fits of strength or whatever, or just repetitive motion. I mean, moving furniture, basically, it’s just like all day aerobic exercise, right? Like, that’s all you’re just carrying weight all day. Took the job at Taco Del Mar.
[00:14:29] Dan Rogers: The, primary part of the job was to roll burritos for humans. Like they would come in and they would like be standing there and like, they were three feet away from me and I, like, I had to talk to them. And so I was like, okay, I’m going to use this as an opportunity to figure out how I can just practice being sociable and not an asshole, which sounds funny, but like, that’s all I knew how to do was like, so that in very short order.
[00:14:53] Dan Rogers: Like tripled my pay. I went from six bucks an hour to making, there was, at one point I used to wait tables. I did a [00:15:00] whole bunch of other things. I moved furniture during the day and then I worked in restaurants at night. I made better money at times at Taco Del Mar than I did all but a couple restaurants that I worked at. And I used to tell my coworkers, I’m like, look, if you act like a robot, if you act like a machine, they will treat you like a machine. If you act like a human, they will treat you like a human and they’re going to get like 81 cents. Or a 1. 81 and you’re going to hand it to him right next to the tip jar.
[00:15:29] Dan Rogers: And if every one of these burritos you make, you throw an extra dollar in your pocket, you’re going to make more than James, which is, was the founder of Talk No More. And there’s no question on that. There’s that that’s better math for sure. So, I mean, I, I just saw it. So then they asked me to supervise people and we just kept taking that.
[00:15:47] Dan Rogers: And so then when I was supervising people, then it was like, how can I, and look, I was the drill sergeant. Like I only knew how to lead manual labor crews and that’s a little, that’s closer to the military, right? [00:16:00] Certainly not, you know, and so I got to perfect that. And because the job was so repetitious and the turnover is so high, I got a lot of practice on how to be, and then they asked me to manage more stores.
[00:16:10] Dan Rogers: And so then it was just that times six stores or times 12 stores or times 24 stores. And so it was just, it kept practicing on what’s the next level of communication that, you know, that I can get paid for. And I, I remember I was talking to my dad and I said, they’re actually paying me to use my head.
[00:16:28] Dan Rogers:, like I’m not, it was like, I, I, when I was like fully out of the stores and all that, at least when I was rolling burritos, it wasn’t like manual labor, but like I was doing it. Right. And I remember when I got all the way out of the stores and I wasn’t really doing anything, I was like, they’re paying me to think.
[00:16:44] Dan Rogers: And he’s like, well, those are the best. It’s usually the highest paid people on the planet, Dan. Like it’s, you know, so, like, but, but I just continue to use it as practice and I think it still is. I mean, I, I still think it is. And you’re, right. Your co workers will testify that, that I am still [00:17:00] practicing.
[00:17:00] Dan Rogers: Yes. Yes. Still practicing, still working on it.
[00:17:02] Mark Wright: one thing that you told those employees at Taco Del Mar is to be your authentic self. And I think that’s such great wisdom because, I mean, gosh, we’ve had guests on the show all the way from former Starbucks president, Howard Behar, who that’s one of his key lessons that he’s taught for decades is stop wearing so many hats, wear one hat and be that one person at home, at work.
[00:17:28] Mark Wright: Is that something that you had an aha moment? Was that just something sort of built into you that you were just Dan wherever you went?
[00:17:36] Dan Rogers: In 94, I came to the harsh reality that I only had one life and there was no compartmentalizing. And so that, that unfortunately got, that got smashed in a way that it’s been very difficult to rebuild, there’s times when that’s frustrating, but it, it’s way better to just have one life.
[00:17:53] Dan Rogers:, the issue then is that you, that for me as a person, then I had to realize I didn’t know who the hell I was. [00:18:00] And, so full disclosure, what I used to tell folks at Taco Del Mar was just., pick a persona, or pick a character. And Seinfeld was really big at that point, and there was the suit Nazi, which is, you know, it’s amazing how things changed.
[00:18:12] Dan Rogers: It’s probably not the word we use now, but that’s what it was. And I was like, look, you can be an asshole to everybody, but you just have to be an asshole to everybody, then you’ll be the asshole. And you’ll get tipped because like, you just have to have, have a personality. Right. And then I used to tell people, pretend you care, like, but I will warn you.
[00:18:29] Dan Rogers: If you start pretending you care, you’ll actually care. Right. You know, and time will go by and it’ll be faster. Right., but it sort of gets back to that first point that we’re making. I’m still sort of discovering who I am. Right. Like, is this story I’m telling about myself, about myself? Is it, is it really accurate or is it some other version?
[00:18:46] Dan Rogers: That isn’t so I, I think, folks can definitely, compress some time off of my learning. If you pick a persona and when that doesn’t fit, maybe pick your persona instead. But, I would encourage you just to [00:19:00] go, to yourself. It’s by far the easiest role to play., it’ll be the most terrifying and the most challenging, but much harder is having success at something that you’re not.
[00:19:11] Dan Rogers: I found that out too. That sucks. I mean, it’s a classy problem sucky. It’s way better than just straight sucking. But it’s still pretty sucky.
[00:19:21] Mark Wright: So you learned a lot about systems at Taco Del Mar, then that you parlayed that knowledge, and interest in systems in furniture moving in, in event planning, event shipping, I should say with point to point transportation, which was an event shipping company that you founded, or at least. Took over.
[00:19:41] Mark Wright:, tell me more about systems, Dan. Because I think every business owner who listens to this could benefit from how do I build the best system within my business? What was the key, Dan? Because you had an eye for moving people in parts and things through space and time. That [00:20:00] really led to amazing success because it was so accurate, in how it responded to the needs of customers.
[00:20:08] Mark Wright: What’s the key to building? Great systems in a business.
[00:20:12] Dan Rogers: well, I mean, I, I think, I’m personally grateful to the boss that I just, I mean, I was given a brain that sees some of it., other people have different strengths that I don’t possess, but I do have an ability, to see some of this stuff. And I, ironically, on a different track, I might’ve ended up in a happily, very, very happily, like in a basement of a, of a college somewhere, not trying to redeem work in any way, shape or form and not being a janitor, but like, yeah.
[00:20:40] Dan Rogers:, this is the path that was given, but ironically, grounding it out in physical labor, look, it’s one thing. People don’t believe me when I say I’m lazy, like, but I am, but more importantly, I would say up until. Well, really, there was only a couple times that, up until 90, four when I was rolling [00:21:00] burritos that I didn’t work, at a place on a crew that really knew how to do it.
[00:21:05] Dan Rogers: So, I may or may not tell this full story, but like, there’s a right way to shovel. Like, you can dig a hole with a shovel however you want, but there’s, the shovel itself is designed for a certain form and technique. And I learned that in steamboat springs at like 8400 feet above sea level on a race to keep my job.
[00:21:26] Dan Rogers: Like, I learned the right way to shovel by looking at somebody else. So have an obsession with next version of next and closer to right when it just comes to getting the equation right., but a significant part of that is also the willingness to look to dropping whatever bad idea it is and letting it go.
[00:21:46] Dan Rogers: And, that can be incredibly painful for those about us. And so we try to implement those changes with some structure, but I would say, respectfully, most people today, our society is wired this way. There are benefits to what I’m [00:22:00] going to say, except we’ve just sort of, we’ve sort of squeezed all the blood out of the rock we can, is that we are, focused on efficiency instead of effectiveness. And as a manual labor, you focus on effectiveness, not efficiency.
[00:22:15] Mark Wright: Hmm.
[00:22:16] Dan Rogers: And so it sounds silly, but like, and, and look, no one moves furniture anymore. Like the art is gone. Like everyone just packs up their own thing and that’s fine or whatever., but back in the day, like there was like, if you walked a house with another furniture mover, then you went out, like you grab something cause you never go into a place with empty hands and then.
[00:22:35] Dan Rogers:, if there was two of us, that knew what we were doing and we said, how are we going to load this? We would have run through the first 30 pieces and been exactly the same because there’s a right way to do it. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to start here and we’re going to take it down.
[00:22:47] Dan Rogers: And this is how, this is how you can take the most amount of stuff and the least amount of space at the fastest and not break it. Like there’s actually a right way to do it. Like the couch goes on and feet to the wall, right? Like this is the right way we fold. [00:23:00] Everything had a right way and it wasn’t just the right way.
[00:23:03] Dan Rogers: Cause the guy was a jerk and he would scream at you if you got it wrong, which also happened if you didn’t do it right. You got yelled at, but it was also the least amount of work or it set us up for success on the next thing. I mean, we would open the doors. We, you know, we back it up and we back the truck up, you open the doors and they’re going to make a decision.
[00:23:21] Dan Rogers: Did we hire the right people or not? And then we make a decision on what the truck looks like. And look, the pads, I bet you, I folded truck pads that were older than me in 1990. But they, when they were folded, they didn’t look older than me. Like, I mean, this is just all stuff. It just, so there was a right way to do it.
[00:23:41] Dan Rogers: And then there, there was effectiveness first and efficiency second, which just driven in. And so that’s what I would say is like, is it necessary? Is there a way that we can do this? It isn’t necessary. And I’ll give you an example of. of how we, how I [00:24:00] learned effectiveness versus efficiency is we would come and we were doing a local.
[00:24:06] Dan Rogers: So I’m moving something, you know, from say Bellevue to Bellevue or like Seattle to Seattle. We’re staying in town. I’m not over the road driver and we load everything up and we get to the new house and we start blowing stuff off. And I used to be the guy with the clipboard that would collect the check at the end, right?
[00:24:21] Dan Rogers: It was the guy that drove the truck. And so I would say, say, Hey, look, this is how this works., the longer we stay, the more it costs. If you want to stand by the door and tell us exactly where one of these pieces is, our guys will stand here and we’ll totally do it. I got no problem with that, but like, that’s going to be a really big check.
[00:24:36] Dan Rogers: So what works really well is we’ll just blow it in. You can tell us like what room and we’ll set it up and then we’ll all walk and we’ll just go straight now. We’ll move as much as you want. We probably moved three couches total after we were done. And I probably half the time, like I was going to set up totally different, but this makes all the sense in the world.
[00:24:55] Dan Rogers: It was a way more effective way to use. Either me and [00:25:00] one other guy or me and two other guys was like, just let us get the work done, get all the big stuff done. And then we could fine tune., and that was just, cause I didn’t want to, I didn’t want them to freak out on the check. And quite frankly, I just there’s nothing worse than standing around watching somebody go, Oh no, six inches more, six inches more.
[00:25:15] Dan Rogers: So, but like, but that, that was, I mean, I was 19 years old talking to adults that I was going to catch a check on supervising probably two guys that were 10 to 20 years older than me., like that was like. It was also a way more effective way to work the crew. Like, I could keep them, I could keep them from getting all of us in trouble if they didn’t have to deal with, the owner of the house asking them to move the thing six times.
[00:25:40] Mark Wright: Yeah,
[00:25:40] Dan Rogers: There was a reason why they were furniture movers in their 30s.
[00:25:44] Mark Wright: And so Dan, as you got into event shipping, and we’re talking thousands of events, multiple trucks, shipments all over the world, as you’re shipping for some of the biggest, most successful companies in the world, how did that knowledge [00:26:00] then translate itself into a system that gets it right in shipping?
[00:26:04] Dan Rogers: So, if we move your house, or if I move, look, if I move your, first job was delivering appliances. We moved it from our warehouse in Redmond, Washington to your house somewhere in King County. Okay, that’s all you need to know. That’s the entire thing. I don’t want to ruin it for you. There’s a beginning, middle, and end.
[00:26:21] Dan Rogers: Everyone suffers from precious thinking. One of its most common manifestation is special snowflake syndrome, thinking that your stuff is unusual. It’s not. It’s so completely ordinary. Right. So, by the time I got off the trucks, I went to work for a company that was world class and specialized shipping as well.
[00:26:41] Dan Rogers: That was where I was selling., we would move. Anything that was tough, the only thing that, that I’ve never really done any con of any consequence or at all is hazmat, you know, hazardous material. If you look at moving every other commodity out there, we’ve moved a ton of it. So the harder it [00:27:00] was, the more time sensitive it was, the more of it we did.
[00:27:02] Dan Rogers: So we ended up in the event business because believe it or not. On many levels, that is the top of the top of the distribution network. And the reason how you can see that is, is no one does it. and so, we ended up migrating there cause that was where we could be world class. And that was still where service actually matters.
[00:27:22] Dan Rogers: And it sounds funny, but I had, another business owner who does, about 20%., they manufacture a product. They ship it globally. It’s sort of an infrastructure product. Just going to leave it there, but there’s a large business. He does business on multiple continents. And he’s telling me, Oh, you should go help Amazon.
[00:27:41] Dan Rogers: And I’m sorry, I’m going to call it Amazon. And I’m like, Amazon doesn’t want it to be any better than it is. There’s a reason why, like, I, I’m, I live in a 15 house, modest little, uh, neighborhood, it’s a cul de sac. And it’s a rare day that we don’t [00:28:00] have Amazon trucks or vans, plural. If any of the guys that I got paid for as a furniture mover were running that outfit, there’d be one truck, probably one truck per week, right?
[00:28:10] Dan Rogers: Cause that’s how you do it. If you’re trying to do it, right. They’re doing it. They’re just buying time until the way they want to really do it 10 years from now. Right? So, the top of the food chain, as far as I can see it around distribution, or at least higher to the top of the food chain is the event business.
[00:28:26] Dan Rogers: The rest of this stuff, it’s quaint, but it really doesn’t matter. There’s a reason why if you go to the largest retailers on the plan, I won’t out any of them. Right. But they’re missing a buttered croissant or they’re missing straws or they’re missing something and no one gets fired. And I’m not suggesting anyone should, but like in the event business, if the thing doesn’t show up, somebody gets fired. Usually somebody that’s at the company paying for it. And then certainly the vendors that are responsible for that delivery. And so it’s just a much, much more [00:29:00] critical delivery, but it is just the same thing over and over and over and over and over again., When one of our clients, the reason why we really got deep into advance is in 97, one of our clients asked us, to help them with the onsite experience during a sales meeting.
[00:29:12] Dan Rogers: And I had no idea of what a sales meeting was. And I mean, I was barely off the truck. And so then they explained it to me. My thought was, Oh my God, this is just an office move. This is just an office move. Like this is not, this is super cool that you think this is. And now what I will happily tell everybody is I think of these events as just really short retail locations. You know, we did a ton of store fixtures in the 90s. Did a bunch of store fixtures, all sorts of store fixtures, opening up new stores. And an event is just a three day retail experience. It’s a pop up store.
[00:29:42] Mark Wright: Yeah,
[00:29:43] Dan Rogers: in whatever year it was, probably 19, we could look it up on the internet, but my guess is it’s somewhere around 88, 89, you know, Bellevue Hyatt installation.
[00:29:53] Dan Rogers: Like it’s just the same game over and over and over and over again. We’re moving something through time and space., that’s the game.
[00:29:59] Mark Wright: I want to [00:30:00] touch on this and, we did touch on this in the first episode, but the fact that you grew that event shipping company without a sales department, I think is a lesson that we should restate for those business owners, those managers who maybe don’t have the right mindset when it comes to how they view potential customers.
[00:30:19] Mark Wright: And, Dan Rogers became the guy that just helped people. Like you would refer business to a competitor if it was a better fit. And I think that’s such a rare thing, in today’s world. I’ll go to a business sometimes and they’ll say, well, we don’t do that or we don’t have that. Do you know anybody who does?
[00:30:36] Mark Wright: And they clearly should. But most often they’re like, no, we really don’t. No, we don’t. I’d love for you to talk mindset, Dan. And this is sort of a generosity mindset, isn’t it? When you start to have the agenda of just helping that potential customer, helping that person as opposed to selling.
[00:30:54] Dan Rogers: Yeah, I mean, look, I don’t want to be the old guy that screams, get off my lawn, but, [00:31:00] there’ll be video rants and email posts that talk to this stuff more in greater detail, but all I’ll say now is just that, that, I don’t want it to be a hundred years ago. I don’t want it to be 50 years ago.
[00:31:12] Dan Rogers: I don’t want it to be 20 years ago. I was on a podcast a little while ago and somebody said, what would you tell your, what would you do? I’m like, I would do it all the same. I mean, I’m very happy with who I am. I would, there’s obvious mistakes, but like, I’m happy with who I am.
[00:31:24] Dan Rogers: And I need all, I need all the interactions that I did before to become the person I am and, I’ll take what it is. So I don’t want to go backwards. I’m not suggesting we should go backwards, but there is a price to progress. BEATS WORKING. and so there’ll be a post probably like the paradox of progress or something that’s sort of the thing I’ve been working on.
[00:31:43] Dan Rogers:, but, and there’s a lot of facets to it. And one of the, one of the sort of granular examples of this would be is a 97. When I was going out on quote unquote sales calls, I was meeting with people who had a job title that they were going to have for [00:32:00] 10, 15, 25 years. And so they were really good at their job because they could be, Like, and, and I think I’ve said it before.
[00:32:08] Dan Rogers: It was very easy to get a sales appointment. You just had to like, you, you better know how to do something when you show up or they’re going to like, have you go. It’s awesome that everyone has this upward mobility or whatever, but like no one actually figures out what they’re doing at the time. So no one’s qualified to actually be helpful where they are because we’re in this growth mode that gets you an opportunity that you’re not qualified to have.
[00:32:32] Dan Rogers: And if you don’t, if you’re not qualified to have it, it’s very difficult to help somebody to the side. However, if you take on the mindset of, I just actually want to be helpful, even if I don’t know, I probably know somebody who’s better equipped to answer the question. And that’s what I would say is you don’t necessarily have to.
[00:32:53] Dan Rogers: Because I don’t know how practical it’s going to be to make all of your people world class and highly, highly informative. But it’s like, [00:33:00] are we being helpful? How could we just be more helpful to the people that we’re attempting to do business with regardless if it gets us paid or not? And we have, we’re fortunate.
[00:33:11] Dan Rogers: We have some consulting clients., and one of them works with doctors and we have profound respect for doctors. And I’m like, look, we’re not going to talk to them about being doctors. We’re going to talk to them about picking out golf clubs., like it will be something else that isn’t directly related to what you do for them or what they do.
[00:33:30] Dan Rogers: Like, as a person, like what, like how could you be helpful to them?, I think that would be the mindset that I would start with. And it also starts with, if you’re in a position of leadership, how can you be helpful? to the people on your team. And they’re far more likely to sort of adopt that and share it with others if they’ve, if they’re receiving it themselves.
[00:33:51] Mark Wright: Yeah. And I think what’s really cool, Dan, is that when someone is helpful to another person, regardless of the information or the outcome, the result is [00:34:00] always, I feel better when someone says, Hey, let me try to help you with that.
[00:34:03] Mark Wright: Let me call so and so I’ll try to do., and it’s just like, wow, that was a great interaction. And I feel really good about that person because they actually took a minute.
[00:34:16] Dan Rogers: And look, my ego does not express itself in the sort of usual ways., And so there’s very little virtue in my learning. There just isn’t like most of this has been for many of the wrong reasons, but, but it ended up working out. Okay. Like I frequently just wanted to impress people. Like I wasn’t going to do business with them anyway.
[00:34:38] Dan Rogers: So I wanted to impress people. I don’t even know that my intent was right, but eventually the habit sort of took place. And then all you have to do is look, If this will ruin it for you in a minute, just go be helpful and see what happens. You’ll feel better. Oh, don’t do that again. That would suck. Right?
[00:34:58] Dan Rogers: Right. And [00:35:00] eventually, if you’re like me, you might just end up like enjoying being helpful for the sake of being helpful. If you can’t start there, I didn’t start there. Like, I mean, I wanted to be the number one employee at Taco Del Mar. That’s what started it. I mean, like, I was like, every crew I joined is like, how do I get to number one?
[00:35:17] Dan Rogers: I don’t know that I made it. I talk with Omar might be the only place I made it to number one at quite confident. I didn’t make it anywhere else., so like that was just the game, but, but so it wasn’t terribly virtuous, but the things I was willing to do to be number one, the list continues to get shorter as time goes on.
[00:35:33] Dan Rogers: So the virtues sort of come in after the fact.
[00:35:39] Mark Wright: So you created the BEATS WORKING podcast to further the mission of redeeming work, the word, the place, and the way. I think our society is still kind of in denial when it comes to the statement that work is broken. But I started looking up some, some surveys last night and just blown away. All kinds of surveys have found at least half of Americans say that work is broken.
[00:35:59] Mark Wright: Some [00:36:00] say as many as seven and 10 Americans just don’t like their jobs. They hate their jobs. Uh, one survey found that more than one in three Americans actually dreads the start of their work week, dreads it. And there are lots of reasons why. So I think, you know, again, we talked about being ahead of the curve, but it’s clear that work is broken in a lot of ways.
[00:36:21] Mark Wright: I think the challenge, Dan, is trying to figure out at each business, like where do you start? In terms of trying to fix it. And I’d love to just kind of ask an open ended question. Should these managers and owners start with themselves or do they start with a process because we talked about environment and you said that business owners, it, their obligation is really to create that environment that’s conducive, to humans and conducive to work at the same time, but I just want to throw that as kind of an open ended question to you.
[00:36:53] Dan Rogers: Yeah. Well, they’re going to create an environment one way or another. Right. So why not have one you can brag about? Okay. uh, you’re going to profit, hopefully you’re [00:37:00] going to profit either way. So why not be able to brag about how you profited? But, anyhow, so couple things, and then I promise I’ll get to the question, but, but, And I think you framed it right.
[00:37:08] Dan Rogers: But just think about how far we’ve watered down. This is a great example of this is not lip service. When I say my ego doesn’t express itself in normal ways. Like it’s my grandiosity is just off the charts and it always has been. I think, Mark, I mean it from the bottom of heart. I think you framed like the stats that you cited are valid.
[00:37:29] Dan Rogers:, but what about like just disengagement, which is, I think over 80%? And what I would say is, people are not rioting in the streets. They’re not demonstrating. Let’s walk it back 10 percent just so we don’t overhype it. 70 percent of U. S. are disengaged. That means that all of us, we, all of us, you, me, everyone else has accepted that it’s okay for 7 out of [00:38:00] 10 to just like go through the motions and I, I just expect more out of myself and then consequently usually the poor souls that are close by that like I just, I’m sorry that I want more for all of us.
[00:38:17] Dan Rogers: I just want more. I think there’s more available. And it may or may not be directly working shoulder to shoulder, but it’s certainly available. And so I think the numbers that you cited more pointed, but you can even take it back even further and say, like, we’ve just, I respectfully, I think we’ve set our sights too low.
[00:38:40] Dan Rogers: We set our sights too low. I know more people than I can count that own private jets. Not that many, but I’d have to like think through. So that’s more than I can count., that’s not enough people to be trading time for money. If 90 percent of the people were getting the life that they wanted, be disengaged and hate your job.
[00:38:57] Dan Rogers: But if you’re [00:39:00] not getting like the experience, if you’re not getting something out of that, then, we failed. So I think it starts with make a decision. Do you want to create an environment? You’re going to create an environment. One way or another, what environment is it that you want to create first with yourself and then ultimately outside of that, but the results are inevitable.
[00:39:22] Dan Rogers: It’s just, are you going to be happy with them? We don’t, sometimes the feedback loop is so slow in the system. We fool ourselves into thinking that we’ve outrun it or that we have some power. We don’t not. So the, the impact is inevitable. And. My position, our position is, I just believe that the world, our species, would be far better if people were more intentional with that impact.
[00:39:49] Dan Rogers: There’s going to be more people than we want to admit that will have. A quote unquote negative impact, a self centered impact, maybe even a [00:40:00] criminal impact, maybe even things worse than that. Absolutely, that will happen. However, that small group of people will be offset by the people that make this other massive impact.
[00:40:13], I’m taking the field on impact. That’s the answer is if we can all get closer, I have no idea what people’s impact is supposed to be. We have an exercise every Friday. If you want to join us, we’ll help you get closer to it., that maybe you can uncover your own impact.
[00:40:27] Dan Rogers: So I don’t know what yours is, but we have a way to help you find it., but I just feel like, that’s part of the way that part of the way that we’re going to redeem work is people have to understand what their impact is.
[00:40:36] Mark Wright: Yeah. Wow., that really made sense, Dan, that, the environment is going to be what, it’s going to have, a feeling it’s going to have, you know, an effectiveness to it., so why not, make it the best that it can be? So we’ve talked about the word, that you kind of touched on the place, in your answer there, but I think it’s interesting that one of our early guests on the show, Dr.
[00:40:57] Mark Wright: John Medina, Renowned brain [00:41:00] scientist in Seattle told us that the workplace is not designed with the brain in mind. He said, if you wanted to create an environment, not conducive to learning and productivity, it would look exactly like a classroom or a cubicle., I’d love your takedown on what the American workplace looks like today.
[00:41:18] Mark Wright:, and taking the ideas of redeeming work. What, what should the place look like and feel like? And I know that you’ve talked at length. You connected me with Jeff Koss who owns a manufacturing company, north of Seattle and just an amazingly enlightened company on, all counts, in terms of what the place looks like, but what are your thoughts on the place?
[00:41:40] Dan Rogers: So, I’m going to sort of flip the script a little bit on this one, and then we’ll go the other direction on it. So, look, I think,, there is individual responsibility for the worker. In what I’m going to describe, and I can’t stress enough that, if look, there’s other books that can be read, [00:42:00] but this is sort of the unarguable one, man’s search for meaning proves that environment.
[00:42:06] Dan Rogers: But that, that as humans, we have tremendous power over, we can have a tremendous power over our own agency, uh, in terms of the environment., so it all starts with, I mean, if it’s leadership, they’ve got to start with themselves. If it’s the workers, they have to start with themselves too. And, so I, I think that’s, that there has to be sort of that shared accountability to each other that we are going to bring our best effort.
[00:42:31] Dan Rogers:, cause otherwise it, you know, I mean, look,, historically it was definitely slanted to the, to ownership, to the company. There’s no question. And look, the boss doesn’t draw a straight line. So it’s not going to go back the other way for exactly the same amount of time. But now, in a lot of ways, it’s drifted too far the other direction, you don’t make things right by, like, if you and I got into an argument, and I was a jerk for ten [00:43:00] minutes, we don’t make it right by you being a jerk to me for ten minutes.
[00:43:03] Dan Rogers: That isn’t how we fix things, right? Like that isn’t how it works. Like I correct my behavior and then we’re different going forward. That’s what it is. It’s not this like, well, tit for tat thing. So like, yeah. So I think the workplace looks like there’s a shared accountability to what actually is effective for us to get done. And that can take a lot of different looks. And I had my first remote coworker in 1997 when I bought the company in 2002, we were virtual. We were a virtual team for a very long time.
[00:43:39] Dan Rogers: We’ve had remote workers, our whole entire history., I’m a massive, massive, massive fan of it. And what I learned. In that was, and I am not one of these people. I don’t work from my own house. I very rarely ever work from home., we’ve had people that were wildly, wildly, wildly, wildly, wildly, wildly productive.
[00:43:58] Dan Rogers: Did I say wildly? I mean, [00:44:00] ungodly productive at their house. And then we’ve had the others. I won’t mention any names because I think they’re still working and it’s their story to tell. But one of our team members, who’s no longer with us, was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever heard. I said to her, I was like, look, you don’t have to come in.
[00:44:17] Dan Rogers: She’s like, I come in because this is where I can be most productive. And she’s like, I could get this all done, but I would just waste an entire day. And so I’m going to come in for three hours. I’m like, oh my God, how great to know yourself. Right? So this whole idea that we should all be remote, we can all work from anywhere.
[00:44:32] Dan Rogers: Like, no, you can, pretend to stay busy and give the facade of being effective, but can you actually produce, you know, deep, thoughtful, effective work? In the environment that you’re working in, maybe, maybe not. And I think there is a time and place where that’s everybody has a shared space called an office.
[00:44:52] Dan Rogers: And then there’s the other 1, but, but it isn’t. The idea that every single person can be effective in that work from home or work remote [00:45:00] environment is comical. I’ve just, I mean, I’ve been supervising people since the late eighties. It’s just like, that’s not everybody. And I’m throwing myself into that category.
[00:45:11] Dan Rogers: I do much better with a physical change of space where like, this is where I come to get my stuff done. And that’s not everyone’s story doesn’t need to be, but, and there’s also other work. That is just wildly wild, more productive, when there’s the proximity. So, I think, the environment really, is a shared accountability of what, is the effective thing that needs to be done and effective thing that needs to be done.
[00:45:35] Dan Rogers: Not like, what do we do to look busy? Not do we not, what do we ask people to do? So we feel good that they’re doing something. I mean, I, I mentioned that we’ve got consulting clients. So And at the end of 2023, they knew that we shut down for a couple of weeks and, and I’m desperately going to try not to use names because it’s their story.
[00:45:54] Dan Rogers: But, but I was like, dude, what are they going to do? He’s like, nothing. I’m like, [00:46:00] well, why would you have them come in?, why not pay them to stay home and get the goodwill? Right? So again, I think, that’s a little bit of what it looks like. And it sounds crazy, except I understand why people, you will sound very smart, you will sound very wise, you will sound very practical, you sound very pragmatic, and you’ll impress a lot of people when you talk like a 1950s manager about workers.
[00:46:28] Dan Rogers: If you then say, okay, it’s now 2024. We have all this incredible technology. And you’re saying that you’ve not hired trustful people, like trustworthy people. I mean, if you don’t have a trustworthy team, that’s on you.
[00:46:41] Mark Wright: Heh. Heh.
[00:46:47] Dan Rogers: the providers. I tried to blame the employees pretty soon. I was like, oh shit, I’m in charge. It’s my fault. Like, I gotta fix this. The reason why I hate my job is because of me, not because of somebody else, right? And I’ve surrounded [00:47:00] myself with the people that I want to work with and I’ve, and I’ve created the company that I want to run.
[00:47:04] Dan Rogers: And both of those things needed to change. But like, it wasn’t imposed upon me and I would respectfully put out there is the workers can have their version of that story and so can ownership. Like, I just think we all have the same story. You have the exact life that you want, whether you like it or not, it’s exactly the way you want it to be.
[00:47:23] Mark Wright: I love that statement, shared accountability. And I think I was, you know, a little kid growing up weeding carrots and working on my uncle’s organic vegetable farm. And I just watched them work. And I was in grade school at the time and I was probably really slow. But I saw them really working hard every day with intention.
[00:47:42] Mark Wright: And I just sort of adopted that as my mindset., and I thought, you know what, if, and I’ve had some crappy jobs over the years, but I didn’t let the job define whether I was going to work hard or not. Like I was a dishwasher and I just busted my ass and I was, weeding. Carrots and hoeing [00:48:00] corn and doing all that stuff.
[00:48:01] Mark Wright: And there’s no downside. And when, when you have that idea that work is honorable, regardless of the job, I love seeing janitors who whistle, who smile, who just pour themselves into the job. And I just think that idea of shared accountability, Dan, is just so important. It’s not a win lose.
[00:48:19] Mark Wright: It’s not a give take. It’s not, you need to do your job as a, as an owner or an employer.,
[00:48:24] Dan Rogers: so I only have, one life and I don’t know if this is too much information and, my, my son drew is nine, at the time of this recording, so he can be embarrassed for the rest of his life. But, I only have one life and I only got, I’m trying to be the same guy in all those places.
[00:48:40] Dan Rogers:, so this is an infomercial, for work P2P or for, trying to get to be part of my family., but at work P2P, we have three core values and in order it’s be opinionated, put things in sequence and then be a truth teller. And that’s how we want people to think. Like, your think, know what your thoughts are, understand what your opinion is, what we want you to judge, what we want you to feel, is we’re a systems company, [00:49:00] so, put it in sequence.
[00:49:00] Dan Rogers: Like, maybe there’s some work that you need to do based on your opinion, right? Like, maybe you need to go short up. And then at the end, just tell the truth. At home, how I want people, how we’ve decided as a family want to think is family first. And that’s not our silly little family that the four of us that live together, it’s like the species.
[00:49:17] Dan Rogers: And so I had a conversation that I’m gonna get to like on Saturday at about 3. 30 that I’m gonna get to here in just a second where Drew, my oldest at nine, understands that it’s the largest number of people he can hold in his head. That’s what it means now. That’s what family first means. The second one is always do your best.
[00:49:36] Dan Rogers: That’s the judgment I want him to make. What does best look like today? Not be perfect, but what does best look like today? And then how I want him to act is, no quitting. You can stop, but no quitting. Quitting is an unplanned stopped, right? Like walking away cold is not cool. So he faced some adversity at nine. And so, [00:50:00] he’s, he reads above nine years old. So this is the conversation I said, Drew, this is how I think life is. And you’re going to get to decide which group you want to be in. If we take a hundred that, that let’s put a hundred people in our head. My experience is if you ask a hundred people, do you want to be an all star?
[00:50:20] Dan Rogers: Do you want to be a top performer? Do you want to be part of a select team? Unfortunately, 20 of them will say no or they just won’t answer. They’ll be afraid to answer and that’s unfortunate. So we set them aside. We’re left with 80 people left. If you look at the next group of 64, which by the way is 80 of the 80, they will give you some version of, well, when an all star opportunity shows up, I will act like an all star.
[00:50:43] Dan Rogers: When a select opportunity shows up, I will act like a select player. When a top performer opportunity shows up, I will act like one. I said the last group is the group that I would encourage you to decide if you want to be a part of, and that’s the group of 16, the last 16. Those people [00:51:00] show up and give their best effort regardless of what the environment or what the game is.
[00:51:05] Dan Rogers: And I said, look, man, I know your mother, you’ve seen me, you’re not going to be a professional hockey player more than likely. But what hockey can teach you, is how do you fight and struggle to get to be in the top 16 of everything that you do. And at some point you might want to decide that hockey, and, today might be the day that you’re done with hockey.
[00:51:27] Dan Rogers: But we’re going to get on something else that you’re going to be fighting for to get into the top 16 because that is what life is. And that’s what, that’s how we’re going to show up., that’s how we show up. And then as you get older, you can rig the game a little bit and only play the games that you’re in the top 16 at.
[00:51:45] Dan Rogers: So, that to me is, unfortunately that’s been my experience supervising people about the breakdown. I wish the breakdown was different. The good news is, if I’m even remotely accurate, it ain’t that hard to get in the top 16. You just have to try. And it’s, it is [00:52:00] amazing. I mean, I, I had a huge epiphany early on at Taco Del Mar.
[00:52:03] Dan Rogers: I was like, basically all I’m doing is showing up. I was like, I could. Like it’s too long ago, no one remembers, but I mean, it was a fast food restaurant in Seattle in the mid nineties, you know, I mean, people just thought it was like, whatever. And I was showing up that it was like the chance for me to be the world’s best burrito roller, the number one, employee in the company. So it’s available, it’s available, but you’re going to have to try to be in that top 16. And the thing that I absolutely guarantee you. Almost to a person, the people that we’ve been interviewing on these podcasts, that’s how they show up. That’s how they show up. And now at this point in their life, they’re at a place where they’re just playing in their deep water.
[00:52:45] Dan Rogers: But if you knew them as little kids,
[00:52:48] Mark Wright: Yeah.
[00:52:49] Dan Rogers: you know, and, look, knowing some of them, they, some of them probably didn’t have really terribly good grades, but there was a level of effort that was being put out there, right?, it’s not, this is [00:53:00] not, it’s not rocket science. It really isn’t. But what I will tell you is it’s terrifying to try if you’re not sure you’re already in the top 16. We’ll find out. They either call and say we want more ice time or we’ll see you next weekend. One of the two, like that’s how you find out. So I get it. I get why people are afraid but you’re guaranteed not to get there. If you don’t.
[00:53:23] Mark Wright: What a great lesson for a nine year old to learn because I think too often parents tend to, you know, make up excuses and say, well, that coach just doesn’t realize your value or whatever, but it is what it is. And I love that. What a great story.
[00:53:39] Dan Rogers: So we, can report back on, next year., cause, so I told him, I says, look, so there’s three basic, three basic options at this point. We can walk. If you’re going to be done, I said, look, in between now and next Saturday, you’re either in until March or not. If you want to walk away, this is, this can be a stop after Saturday.
[00:53:59] Dan Rogers: [00:54:00] It’s a quit and we don’t quit. The second option is you can just say, I don’t care. I just have fun. It’s a bunch of group kids. It’s really great families. It’s a wonderful thing, right? Or you can look at yourself in the mirror and say, the reason why I wasn’t there is for the last 365 days. I didn’t take this that seriously. And I said, look, Drew, I can’t be, only the boss knows what’s going to happen, but this is based on my experience. If you go for it and you put your best effort for the next 364 days, whether you get on the team next year or not, you’re going to be clean. Cause you’ll be like, look, I’ve, I’ve done my part.
[00:54:33] Dan Rogers: And that’s, that’s the paradox of appropriate effort is it’s terrifying to put that much effort out there. But when I do it, I get the benefit that I actually don’t give two S’s what happens. And we’ve all experienced, I hope we’ve all experienced that on some level. It’s just so easy to push away when it isn’t a life or death circumstance, or it isn’t something really fun to chase.
[00:54:58] Dan Rogers: You know what I mean? We do it all the time with [00:55:00] hobbies. Cause we fool ourselves into thinking those are fun. Well, that’s just a story you’re telling yourself. You could tell yourself about your crappy job you have right now. Could be a story that you’re like, I mean, yeah, anyway, too much out of me, but
[00:55:13] Mark Wright: No, I love it. I love it. Hey, I want to touch Dan before we wrap things up on how people can more closely interact with you. You started a newsletter recently called Classy Problems. Tell us about that.
[00:55:26] Dan Rogers: yeah. So, we’ll get to the point in a minute, but classy problems are the by product of unearned wisdom. So, I can’t stress enough. Like you cannot overstate the benefit of survival. And we are swimming in and surrounded by the success of our predecessors. BEATS WORKING. And, you, well, I will speak only for myself.
[00:55:46] Dan Rogers:, I am leveraging significant unearned wisdom just in this interaction with you, let alone just getting to work today. So The byproduct of unearned wisdom, using tools that I don’t know how to use, is not only do [00:56:00] I not know how to use them, I also can’t possibly get the full benefit out of them because I don’t have the wisdom to use them.
[00:56:05] Dan Rogers: And so we just have layers and layers and layers of that in it. So we’ve got very, very classy problems. So, classy problems will be, a daily reflection for folks that want to look at it to, to get a chance to, pay more attention to their attention.
[00:56:21] Mark Wright: Yeah, that’s awesome. I’ve been enjoying those in the first couple of additions that have come out. You mentioned intentional training earlier, and we’ll put links to all this stuff in the show notes. But, just a brief description of that, Dan, this is, stuff that you were working with, your employees.
[00:56:36] Mark Wright: back in the day in terms of intentionality and getting things done and some accountability and stuff like that. But it has such a larger application to life, right?
[00:56:46] Dan Rogers: Yeah, no, I, so work again for me has been a place to get paid to practice. And I have uncovered things that seemingly never work. There’s nine restraints around that. And then we have a group of [00:57:00] courses that help a person bring those restraints into their own practical experience.
[00:57:04] Mark Wright: And so we’ll put links to that as well. And finally, secret sidekick suppers. This has been a really cool monthly event over the summer where we all get together and have intentional conversation over food. And I was blown away at the first one, Dan. I had high expectations.
[00:57:23] Mark Wright: But our first gathering, I was just absolutely blown away at how quickly and deeply the conversation, happened over dinner., and, uh, so I’d love for you to explain the purpose of the secret sidekick suppers and I’m in, I mean, I just, I love the feeling, the learning, the compassion, the feeling of community.
[00:57:44] Mark Wright: It’s just, it’s just amazing.
[00:57:46] Dan Rogers: Yeah, so, if we’re going to have any success at this mission, on this mission of redeeming work, we’re going to have to be world class at community development., we think we’re decent at it now., we’ve got, some [00:58:00] things that support that we’re on the right track., so this is a chance for us to demonstrate that.
[00:58:06] Dan Rogers:, on a more public level. And, so what we’re trying to do there is just build a community of like minded people. It’s not surprising to me. I mean, it’s, I’m thrilled to hear your experience with it. Other folks have said similar things. We have., a growing list of people who basically are just like, I’m in, and that’s great to hear.
[00:58:25] Dan Rogers: And I think what is available is, as humans, we are wired for community, like That’s one of those of us that weren’t wired didn’t make it. That’s one of the, that’s one of the unearned wisdoms that we have is that we’re really, really good at it. if we’re just intentional about environment, it’s instantaneous.
[00:58:45] Dan Rogers: And so I don’t ever take it for granted, but we’ve done it online. We’ve done it in person. Like, I have unbelievable confidence in humans and team human that when we hold that space, when we create the right environment, that that’s, in [00:59:00] fact, what happens., and that’s all we’re trying to do there is, is hold that.
[00:59:03] Dan Rogers: So people can get that. And then ideally. There is some, some takeaway from that, but it is, it’s for us to continue to demonstrate and, I say perfect, we’ll never get there, but to continue our learning around, how we do that,, how we can build community and, hold that space for people to go from total strangers to hugging each other.
[00:59:24] Dan Rogers: We, I mean, one of the coolest things I saw One of the recent events was we had a person, a very thoughtful, accomplished, wildly successful person was concerned about COVID for obvious reasons. There was a spike going on. And they, entered the room considering whether or not they were going to wear a mask and not shaking hands to hugging their table mates at the end.
[00:59:50] Dan Rogers: So I mean, like, that’s just, and be clear that the compliment goes to their table mates, like, right? So it’s not surprising, but that’s the type of transformation that’s available [01:00:00] because we’re just so dying for community. So, we’re just trying to put, put our money where our mouth is on that.
[01:00:05] Mark Wright: Well, as we wrap up, Dan, I’ve never had a job like this, like literally never. It’s, and it’s been the best work experience of my life when I think back of the other jobs that I’ve had, the other work that I’ve done, and I think the thing that strikes me most is that I’ve never had an employer who is so keenly invested in helping me develop into a better human being. And this isn’t just like, Oh yeah, Dan wants us to get to be better people so we can make more money. That’s like the furthest thing from the truth., this mission that you’re on to redeem work is so deeply rooted in your mission to improve others around you. And I just, I’m blown away by that. And I’m, super grateful for that.
[01:00:46] Mark Wright: I’d love to know, Dan, what, you hope this work leads to in terms of Legacy in terms of impact on the world. Like when you look back five or 10, 20 years from now, what, what’s going to be [01:01:00] the overriding thought, the overriding intention?
[01:01:04] Dan Rogers:, I’ll eat some of my own dog food. When we’re successful, uh, you won’t be able to find us in it. You won’t be able to see us. So I look, the first chunk of my career, I was, the team was so good, I was the pretty face. And I was a little bit of the personality for sure.
[01:01:21] Dan Rogers: But, but like when you looked at actually what was happening, it was always right. It, and then anyone that got close would see that I wasn’t really involved., and so if you think of the usual suspects, I used to say, my business model is Kaiser Sosay. And we, I think I did that as an individual and I won’t bother to share people with how we made money.
[01:01:42] Dan Rogers: We also did that part of our business model actually directly reflects that it’s all perfectly legal, but, huge part of what we do. I just think it’s the right way to arrange the work. And so getting back to what we hope this is going to be is when we’ve been successful, there won’t be anything but a society.[01:02:00]
[01:02:00] Dan Rogers: Like, it’ll look, I mean, how do you pick out people in a crowded stadium? You don’t like, that’s ultimately what we’re hoping that would be. And so, the visual that I’ve used before, I think, I don’t know that we’ve said it here, I think I’ve used it with you is like, we’re trying to draw a line in the sand.
[01:02:15] Dan Rogers: For the community to come put an X at that we can build the sandcastle like that’s all we’re trying to do but like You won’t see the line in the sand on top I mean the sandcastle will be on top of it. Like that’s ultimately what it is And look, there’s no virtue in that we’ll get ours Like we’ll get ours too.
[01:02:30] Dan Rogers:, I think i’ve said this before there isn’t a sane Logical successful person on the planet that doesn’t understand If you were surrounded by highly energetic other people developing themselves, would you be more successful or not? Like, I mean, it’s not, this is not, no. Will some of them like go do other things?
[01:02:56] Dan Rogers: God, I hope so. Right. Will they? Competition [01:03:00] does not like people executing at that level. You don’t, you’re not. There is no competition when you’re in the top 16. There is no competition in the top 16. You’ve already crossed over the line. Like you don’t have to worry about that. So, the boss tapped me on the shoulder, made it crystal clear to me that like, this is what I want you to do.
[01:03:17] Dan Rogers: But that was all I got. Like I didn’t get, I didn’t get the blueprints of the, sandcastle or even where the X is supposed to get placed. So we’re trying to put our, best effort out there and find other like minded people. But I, think. Saying that work needs to be redeemed, I mean, the first couple of times I said it four years ago, people looked at me a little crazy.
[01:03:38] Dan Rogers: They’re looking at me less crazy because it’s becoming more and more obvious for. Some of the reasons that you said, but, what I’m hopeful of is it’s not just cause it’s absolutely jacked up broken., it could just be really awesome. And I know that doesn’t sell a lot of newspaper. We really love fear and dread and all that, but like, what if it was just awesome?
[01:03:56] Dan Rogers: Like what if you woke up without an alarm clock, [01:04:00] excited to go to work and you didn’t need money that would suck. Like what an awful life. Like I’m doing what I want to do, you know,, with money, like fourth or fifth on the priority list, like, that would be awful, you know?
[01:04:13] Dan Rogers: So anyway, I just think, there’s a lot there and the most successful people. And if we just, if we define success is 360, you know, they have full lives. They can brag about the things that they do in a way that, that that’s what people have done their whole entire lives. The, you know, the people that, that worked, that were workaholics or whatever, that pushed to the end, unless they were doing it because they were at a economic level where they were putting bread on the table or something.
[01:04:40] Dan Rogers: Like, they were work. They worked to the end because there was other people in their family or in their network that needed it. There isn’t any honor in that. The people that we celebrate are the people that are like, oh, they did this because. They were drawn and they were called to do it.
[01:04:54] Dan Rogers: I mean, you’re a musician. So, you know, I mean Look, I I don’t pretend to [01:05:00] know some of these people I’ve met but I’ve met a couple of them and when you meet people that are performing live shows in to their 60s and 70s They’re long, they’re not doing big stadiums anymore. I know a couple of them that don’t need the money.
[01:05:17] Dan Rogers: They’re doing it because they want to perform. You know, we have a friend that was on the show who still rides his bike at a ridiculous, I mean, Dr. Jeff at his age, which he can share for himself, rides a bike today faster than I’ve ever ridden a bike in my life. And he’s, you know, I mean, he’s, practically, 20 years older than me.
[01:05:37] Dan Rogers: He rides that bike every day because that’s what he’s drawn to do. That’s part of where he goes and puts in some work, you know? So, this is what’s available. If we get in touch with that impact and that intentionality, it doesn’t become, Oh, I’m doing this because I have to do it for something else.
[01:05:52] Dan Rogers: I’m doing it because I’m called to do it. It’s way cooler than I’m doing it to get paid. So I’ll, I’ll stop there.
[01:05:58] Mark Wright: that’s a beautiful [01:06:00] statement to end things. Dan, thanks so much for your time, for your wisdom, for the opportunity to do what we do. Congrats on 100 episodes and here’s to what’s next.
[01:06:10] Dan Rogers: Yeah, big, big kudos to you, Mark. I think, I don’t, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, we wouldn’t have, well, we had, I think we had six in the can that we weren’t going to air. And still have it., we got everyone back on that, that I interviewed as the host. I’m thrilled that you’re the host.
[01:06:24] Dan Rogers: You’re a huge part of it. Thanks for your massive contribution.
[01:06:27] Mark Wright: All right. We’ll talk soon. Thanks, Dan.