and what your best experience is.
I haven't prepped for anything.
I'm coming in dark.
I find this the best.
I'm just gonna come in blind.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
And welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm your host, Jackson Calame,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And man, I've got something special today.
Dave Goodall is as good of a man as he is all good at business.
Look what I did there. See my dad jokes coming out already.
I know Dave will make fun of me for that,
but he'll also appreciate it.
All right, anyway, man, Dave's got this business
called tapmental.io.
I can't wait to talk about it.
I'll do a formal introduction of who he is.
But first, without further ado,
I want to give a shout out to our sponsors, Epiphany.
Rick Meekins of Epiphany is one of my best friends.
And you could consider him a competitor in business,
so to speak, because he also helps businesses with growth.
But when you live in a world of eight billion,
there's so many win-win-win opportunities,
like why would you not seek them out?
So Rick's strengths are in his proposals.
If you have a business of 30 employees or more
and you're looking for somebody to help you
with the system architect stuff
and making sure that things all go well together,
he's phenomenal at what he does.
Definitely seek a proposal from him.
Ablehealth.us as well.
Dr. Seth Yates, who has a clinic as a naturopath,
as a doctor of chiropractic,
who also specializes in oriental medicine things,
I will call them, to be professional about it,
like acupuncture, he's amazing.
And what we're building over at ablehealth.us,
you should definitely check out.
Even if you're a doctor,
think about the opportunities to strategize with him.
If you are a naturopath,
think about the opportunities to utilize the supplements
that he's scaling out that are natural, organic.
It's just amazing what he's building over at ablehealth.us.
You've got to check it out
if you're into holistic medicine and health.
So without further ado,
actually one other key point, the water project,
right there where my finger's pointing,
the water project, if you have the capacity,
the abundance to be able to get at least a dollar,
please do so.
The water project helps people in Africa
who are in remote villages
that don't have access to sanitary drinking water,
get access to that water,
learn how to maintain those systems,
whether it's a borehole well or a sand dam.
I don't think there's a more important message
that I could be delivering to the world.
So I'm taking the opportunity to enlighten your minds.
If you've never heard of the water project,
go check it out and go see what they show you
about how they deliver their systems.
And let's make sure that more people have the opportunity
to survive given the access to clean drinking water.
Finally, great project to support.
So without further ado,
I've got Dave Goodall coming onto the show.
Dave Goodall helps entrepreneur-minded leaders
align their energy, skills, and business processes
to realize their dreams.
He grew up in his grandfather's countertop
manufacturing plant.
And he fell in love with the idea of business
at a young age because of that.
He's gifted with dyslexia.
And I love that he puts it that way.
He realized that he could see things
that others struggle to see.
And his electrical engineering
and neuro-linguistic programming education
allows Dave to bring an analytical approach
to solving problems.
Now he spent over 20 years developing tech teams
and delivering product support
and change management integration solutions
in the IT industry.
That went over my head.
It may have gone over yours as well.
But through that IT experience, the IT experience rather,
Dave realized that there were two tracks
of challenges in business.
And I will tell you this, along the way,
he also developed a personality
or he had that going into it,
which is kind of rare for IT people.
And so he's great at these two tracks
of challenges in business,
the logistical and the human.
With a proven track record of delivering a strategy
and knowing that everything starts with your team,
not your systems.
Dave sought to understand workflows,
human element better.
Synthesizing his understanding of NLP-based mental
and emotional programming and human interaction
into his well-established consulting practice
has taken his business to the next level.
And if you're an entrepreneur looking to take your business
to the next level, then collaborating with minds
like Dave's, like Rick's, like mine,
can absolutely open new avenues for you
to grow your business.
So Dave, thank you so much for being here today, my friend.
We appreciate having you on the show.
Thanks for having me, man.
I'm excited to be here today.
I just met you a few weeks ago
and just the banters we've had
over the last three or four weeks,
I'm so grateful to be a part of this new family.
Dude, I love that.
And brother from another mother, exactly.
And I hope we talk more often
than my blood brothers and I do.
I know that we will.
That's just something that's interesting to talk about.
As entrepreneurs, let's go off script a little bit
and talk somewhat about that.
You've got people in your life that are important to you
and always will be, and you have missions to accomplish,
especially as a provider of your family, right?
You can't always make time for the things that you want
and the people who even may have meant the most growing up.
And that has a lot to do with prioritizing, again,
that role of providing.
So you call the family right away.
I as well, I can easily reciprocate that
because of what we've experienced and been through.
Why is that and so important to do in business?
And how do you balance that with actually having,
like your extended family that you wanna see?
What does that look like in your world, Dave?
Yeah, it's been interesting.
I'm a child of the seventies.
So I grew up latchkey kid, key around my neck at the age
of six, seven, eight years old, walking to kindergarten.
I remember walking to kindergarten by myself.
In bell bottoms.
Probably.
With an afro.
Or short shorts.
But anyways, like who would let their kid walk
to kindergarten by themselves or with two other kids today?
It's just unheard of.
So on my journey, so what I was trying to get there
is we, I grew up in a generation
where it was highly competitive.
It's like, what's the other guy going?
So there's this competition, competition, competition.
And when I got out of college and started my career,
it was highly competitive.
But when you get to the entrepreneur world
and you go through all the training
and the evolution that I went through,
it's all about tribes.
We are programmed as humans to be tribal, right?
And the one thing I learned is if your tribe
is kicking the crap out of you
and not pushing and encouraging to grow,
you're in the wrong tribe.
If the tribe is constantly celebrating
and not pushing you out of your comfort zone,
you're in the wrong tribe.
The tribe that you join with that when you fall down,
they grab your hand, kick you in the butt and say,
get your ass up and get up here with us.
We got things to do.
That's your tribe.
I love it.
Right?
And so I think I kind of forget the question you asked,
but as families, what I've learned
in this entrepreneur journey is as I've had to find
other members on the journey that are at or ahead of me,
because that inspires me.
It's like, cause I can get ahold of you.
Hey, Jackson, what struggles have you had
that you could teach me that I don't have to make them?
So I can almost meet you where you are and get forward.
And once I learned that in my consulting business,
I took a different shift because I've recognized
that a lot of the business owners,
I might not be a $10 million business owner,
but I've managed to navigate a 10, 20, 30,
$50 million contracts in the IT industry.
And when we're in our own crap,
I don't know if we can cuss here,
but if we're in our own crap, we can't see it.
So having a third party that understands
and can see that stress, that's a tribe member.
They can be like, hey bro, here's your blind spot.
Let me help you.
And in the entrepreneurial world, we need that family.
We need those people to inspire us
to get out of our own day way.
We do.
We absolutely do.
And I love that you use the word tribe.
One of my favorite leadership books
that I'm in the middle of right now actually
is Tribal Leadership.
And that is a very thick, well thought out,
well researched book.
If you, as an entrepreneur, if you have not read that yet,
it's all about unlocking the languages necessary
to help people transition from tribes
like Dave talked about, where if you're stuck in a tribe
or you're getting put down or things are negative,
then it's important to learn the language,
the thought patterns, the habits of shifting
to a inclusive tribe that's looking to help build you up.
And like Dave said, the key words that I heard you say
were we have things to do.
We have things to get done.
Ed, go ahead.
And here's what happens.
And that just popped in my head is I had a client
and when I first got into this,
it was more of self justification.
Am I smart enough or good enough?
And if I can help people,
then that validates me as a human being.
And my first growth opportunity was about three years ago
into my business.
It was an epiphany I had.
I had a 29 year old kid, amazing kid.
We took his Amazon store from about 2 million
to about 5 million.
And when we first started our journey together,
he wanted to sell his business
for a couple, for four or $5 million.
And beginning, I'm looking at this kid in his 20s
and I'm like, you're gonna sell your business
for a couple million before the age of 30.
I'm like, sure you are, right?
It's just like that unrealistic, unknowing this.
But what I did is I helped him develop his team
and put a systems in place.
And then after a year, he's like,
hey, I'm gonna go hire me an EBITDA coach.
And I'm like, but we're doing, you know,
it was like, I took that personally.
Yeah.
And I didn't realize, I'm like, wow,
he's outgrown my tribe.
He needs to go find another tribe
that can get his EBITDA and his evaluation.
Six months after he left, he called me back and said,
thank you, I just got a bid for $4.2 million
before the age of 30, I'll be a multi-millionaire.
And it was right there.
It was like, I got like personally hurt about,
well, this is our tribe.
But he had to go to that next tribe
to get to that next goal.
And that was just an awakening for me to realize
that my clients might not be with me forever,
but I will always want to know about their journey
and their successes.
But I'll take them as far as I can.
Take the training wheels off and go,
go find your next tribe to get you to that next level.
That's wisdom that most entrepreneurs overlook right there.
And most people in life overlook that opportunity,
spread your wings and fly and grow,
but also they need to have multiple advisors in life
and at different stages and different ways
and different roles.
A lot of people pin that on their spouses, for instance,
and the spouse is not the hero.
They're there to be there for different reasons.
They're not your therapist.
They're not your business partner in most cases.
And the pressure that that creates in relationships
is unfair, but let's talk about this real quick.
So Dave, who should listen to you?
Why should they listen to you?
And what are they going to get out of today's show?
Who should listen?
If I go back and look at a lot of my business owners,
a lot of them are in some form of a construction.
And when I say construction, there's a design element
with an estimating and a build,
some sort of a custom something.
I work with sign manufacturers, interior framing,
but I've worked with SaaS companies,
e-commerce website development with automation,
almost like SaaS type stuff.
So anybody, any of an entrepreneur
that's at that one to 2 million or more,
they've got that team of three or more,
and they're trying to get that 10, 20.
Why should they listen to me?
Because I've been in the trenches with these guys
for the last five, six years,
plus going back 22 years in the IT industry,
working with the Apple change management community.
My equipment was for all of the Apple,
iPhones, chip development was all stored on my equipment.
So I had a small team that we were responsible
for managing that infrastructure across the globe.
So we have systems, teams development,
how to develop the teams, find out what they're good at,
what they're bad at, how do you allocate
or reallocate job roles and responsibilities?
A lot of our business owners get in the trenches
and they put it all on their shoulders.
All the knowledge is in their head,
nothing's documented and delegated.
So what are they gonna get out of today's show?
Learning that, hey man, you're the owner of the business
and yeah, it does feel a lot alone.
But until you build your tribe by getting your knowledge
on paper, documented and delegated to the people
that you trust, that's willing to go to that next level
with you, locking arms,
you're gonna struggle in your business.
And you might get to 5 million,
but you might be divorced and your kids hate you.
Yeah, yeah.
That's, you don't wanna get there.
If you can avoid that, fantastic.
Now, I wanna see if you know
what your maximum threshold is,
because you've talked about the minimum threshold,
not even the minimum per se,
but if you're that one to two million mark,
you're a great fit.
For me, for instance, I think that my maximum threshold
from like, hey, I'm out of my comfort zone
to a point where I'm not sure I'm the right fit
for the entity would be probably 2,500 employees.
Maybe even at the 1,500 employee level.
So in other words, I don't do campaigns for Nike
and Vivint and Forbes companies.
If they asked me to do something off the cuff,
we'd have to do some serious back and forth,
checking of like, does this make sense?
Before I would dive into anything like that.
Do you have a maximum threshold as well?
Yeah, let me see, I've got a company right now
where about 25 employees.
I don't wanna put a threshold,
but I probably should put that threshold
around 100 employees.
Because we really need to break down the departments.
I had a great coaching call on Friday
and we were talking about hiring
and building out a sales department.
And a lot of my questioning to the owner was,
what problem are we solving?
How much are we willing to spend on solving this problem?
How much revenue is it gonna create for our company
and how much time will you personally get back
once these people are in production?
So that being said is probably the 100 employees.
I don't know where the owner sits in that,
but a lot of where I like to meet
is the owner or the founder.
But then again, I've worked with department heads too,
understanding what their targets are gonna be for the year.
So I don't wanna put limits on myself
because it depends on what department,
but I'm loving the sweet spot of that 50 and under,
but I would love that challenge of 100.
But that would require us to break out
into the different department heads, right?
I'll put something out there too to make that more fair.
If Mark Cuban were to come today and say,
Jackson, I want you to help me run
my conglomerate of companies
and I'm gonna pay you a million dollars per month
in order to do that.
I would immediately tell all my clients,
as long as we were signing good monies in the bank, right?
This is like a legitimate thing.
I would tell all of my clients,
I would send them a thank you.
I will let you guys know that, you know,
we're gonna invest in your brands from here
and help you take off in new levels
that when there's a will, there's a way.
There's an ability to make things happen.
And while I know I'd be in new territory,
like you would be in new territory,
and the same thing, if Mark did the same thing to you,
he's coming to you because you have that adaptability
of being able to see things in a different light.
And I love that you also talked about the gift of dyslexia
as part of that process of being able to see things
from a new angle.
I'm gonna shelve that for later
because we might be able to bring it back up.
But first, I wanna start with Dave.
What's your personal vision?
My personal vision, well, yeah,
actually it goes back to the dyslexia.
Growing up with dyslexia, I had this belief,
it was undiagnosed till I was like a junior,
senior in high school.
I had this belief that I was stupid.
And through my journey, I recognized I could see things
that others couldn't.
So we often don't know what we don't know.
So I love to meet business owners where they are
and help them identify what they don't know
or the misconception or improper language
they're speaking to themselves.
Because we create what we speak.
And if they have a negative self-talk,
and man, five, 10 years ago, mine was horrible.
I wouldn't even talk to a friend the way I spoke to myself.
Once you can alter that self-talk, doors open.
So my vision is to meet business owners
to truly allow them to see how amazing and great they are
and the tools that they can develop
and the adventures, the amount of money, the teams.
I always talk to my business owners.
It's like, hey, how many employees?
No, I did have a client.
He had 80 employees.
And I was like, you feed 80 families every night
because of the ideas in your head
and the businesses you've built to employ these people.
And when he saw that perspective, he was like, wow,
that's some cool stuff.
So my vision is to empower our leaders
to understand the importance of where they are
so that they can continue to grow
and feed the families that are part of their business.
I love it.
We knocked both out.
So your personal vision was to overcome that obstacle
and continue to live with that positivity
and mindset of the value that you are to the world
and your vision for those you serve
is to bring that to others and help them also
see the value that they're putting out there.
Anything you would add?
Yeah, I mean, for me, it was an epiphany
and a growth opportunity too.
Cause I was able to help this one owner
that had approximately 80 direct reports
in his organizations.
And did I lose you?
No, you're good.
We were a little bit late.
We're gonna mix it up.
So that all the people like myself continue to watch.
And this is a little selfish perspective for me
is the sense that, wow, I helped one person
who helped 80 people in his company.
So me helping one person grow through
their negative self-talk probably will have an impact
of over 250 people or more,
just through that conversation, that work we did together.
Which to me, it's just like, wow, I'm in purpose.
I'm aligned.
I need to continue with more of this.
Cause one person I can affect 20 to a hundred.
Exactly.
Johnny Appleseed style too.
Work is going beyond contributions.
And that is a wonderful feeling.
Now let's dive deep and dark for a minute.
What is your worst business experience ever?
So part of what we do is I do this
energy leadership index assessment.
And in the beginning, I thought it was kind of woohoo-y,
but what I've learned being electrical engineers,
everything is electricity.
We're vibrating molecules.
Our molecules and atoms vibrate
based on our energetic presence.
What I learned through me taking the assessment
seven, eight years ago is I've got a lot of level six energy,
which is very creative, roll up our sleeves,
let's develop solutions for the world.
So high level optimism.
I'm very trusting.
I've probably trusted two to three marketing agencies
that have taken probably 25, 30, $40,000
of my good earned money with promises that sounded great
that have turned into nothing.
So sometimes I can be over trusting with the pitch.
So my worst experiences is not truly aligning
and listening to my gut or doing my due diligence
to follow up on their validations.
So you tied that to the blessing of the lesson learned too.
I appreciate that.
And yeah, I think most entrepreneurs,
I shouldn't say most, I don't know most entrepreneurs,
but a lot of entrepreneurs out there
go through that experience of unpaid invoices,
partnership agreements that fell through,
chargebacks that occurred that weren't fair.
There's a lot of realities that can exist there
and being undercut.
So thank you for being willing to share that.
Talk about the best experience in business.
What has that been?
Well, for me, it was laid off about six years ago
from the tech industry.
And I was on this journey of personal self-development,
getting my NLP certification,
getting my coaching certifications.
I wanted to be a better leader in my industry.
And one of the pushes was me being dyslexic
and my daughter's dyslexic and dysgraphic
and my oldest daughter's autistic.
So I got obsessed with the neuroscience perspective of it.
And so a lot of that and having hypnosis and all that,
I've been really able to help evolve my oldest daughter
with autism with her mindset, internal self-talk,
using hypnosis and different strategies that I've learned.
So my best experience, this is five years ago,
was my wife saying,
you're not gonna go back and get a job.
You're gonna do what you've been doing,
but you're gonna work with these small business owners
like your grandfathers,
because you got the skills and the tools
to help your daughter, we gotta help business owners.
And through that twofold,
my youngest daughter plays fast pitch softball
at a high competitive level.
And we're doing pre-college travel.
Because I own my business
and I'm able to help these businesses,
I've got the flexibility and the freedom to be on the road
with one, my oldest daughter,
we used to race mountain biking,
and now my youngest daughter,
we spend 28 months in July in hotel rooms for her softball,
but I'm able to run my business on the road
and be a father that I never had.
Wow, man, that's super powerful.
And that I love that your best experience
ties right into family.
And I wanna honor your wife,
because as an entrepreneur, it's so hard on the family.
There's pros and cons people don't understand
from the outside of being involved in that.
And so the fact that the woman by your side,
probably ignore some of the safety and security
that can come from going to the corporate lifestyle,
stood by your side and helped you understand the value
of keeping your business moving forward is just awesome.
So that's amazing, man, thank you for sharing that.
And next thing, what powerful lesson
can other visionaries learn from your experience?
Do it.
I mean, if you have any inkling to do it, do it.
But we'll go back to the very beginning,
it's make sure you have a tribe.
I've got several men in business
that are similar area of IM in their own personal business,
but we do man night once or twice a week.
I've got a big front porch with couches
and it's beautiful, we got the swing
and I've got a humidor with cigars.
I've got a fridge in the garage with beers
and bourbon at the wine sink, right?
So for me, it's really sitting down with that group
of three, four or five men and just getting vulnerable.
Like I'm scared shitless today, here's why.
And having other men kind of that have gone through it
or other business partners and understanding
and being able to share like, you're scared of that?
I was scared of this and you come to find out
that your fears are legit, right?
But really having that tribe in your corner
is gonna help you navigate because if they can do it,
I can do it mentality, right?
It's kind of weird when we're around our tribe,
you're like, oh, Bob did that?
Bob's kind of an idiot, if he can do it, I can do it.
So we're funny, but that's how we work as humans, right?
We're always comparing ourselves to what is possible.
And so what I've learned on my experience
is really just get around other people that are doing it
and ask, how'd you do it?
People love to talk about their business
and talk about themselves.
So if you ask those questions, they're gonna tell you.
And if not, they're the wrong person, go find another one.
Right, right, I laugh because I know a few Bobs in my life.
And I've been known as the Bob a number of times too.
So I can relate on both angles of Bob's the idiot.
Right, right.
That's funny.
If you get inspired by me, by your podcast,
you podcasters are listening and you're like,
if he can do a podcast, I can do a podcast.
Power to you.
I love you and I appreciate you.
Right.
All right, man.
So that powerful lesson you said, do it.
You even made that more efficient than Nike, impressive.
So do it.
Now I wanna go back to your perspective.
I was a 21 year old kid who decided to do it,
to go right in for entrepreneurship.
And that's a very different perspective though,
that most people that I know that are older than me
can't relate to because I did it from the get go.
The reality is you had a successful career of,
was it 20 years as an employee or as a contractor?
Walk us through what that was like
because here's what I'm getting at.
Those of you who are younger
and maybe you're diving right in,
maybe aren't going to understand the angle
that Dave's gonna talk about from what he did in corporate.
Those of you who are corporate are likely thinking like,
oh, well, he didn't really just mean go do it now.
But let's let Dave tell that story with more depth
because I see far too many entrepreneurial spirits
waiting and waiting and waiting.
Dave, let's get them out of that weight zone.
Tell us about your background
and how you got to this point of deciding to do it.
Perfect.
Well, I can go back to when I was like six, seven,
eight years old and my grandfather had a countertop
manufacturing plant in Columbus, Ohio.
And he provided probably 80% of the countertops
for Ryan Holmes back in the seventies, early eighties.
So I was kind of attached to his hip.
Unfortunately, we lost him when I was about 10 years old.
So great thing was he planted the seed.
Bad thing was, is I missed all of that knowledge.
He was a love man standing room only at his funeral.
I was so young, I don't even remember
what was going on at that time.
So I think that was the seed, right?
And so when I was coming out of high school,
I was not a good student.
I was a DF student.
I hated being in school.
Come to find out I had a reading level
of like a second grader, third grader,
my junior year, senior year in high school.
Luckily my science teacher happened to be
my swim team coach,
cause I was always that tree climber, active kid,
full of ADHD, whatever.
I was involved in BMX, swim team, soccer, all the above.
They got me elevated in a reading program
and I was in architecture class
and I kept talking to my architecture teacher.
I was like, I think I want to go be an architect.
And he's like, yeah, your art kind of sucks.
You're drawing.
CAD maybe, but CAD wasn't really available yet, right?
But I loved the math and he walked me into the electrical
or what was it?
Yeah, electronics classroom.
Next thing I know I'm ace in that, ace in that.
And then I get thrown into an engineering program.
So four years, I did pretty good.
I did like a three, four GPA getting out of college
with electrical engineering degree
and worked with IBM for a little bit as a field tech.
And I was running around all the banks and stuff
and replacing, you know, so I got that field,
managing a van, managing parts, doing all the ordering.
So it's like that great company.
Yeah, it was that responsibility stuff.
And then a lot of my college buddies took a job
with Cisco systems and they went out to California
and they were moving here to Raleigh, North Carolina
and starting up that program.
So two of my college buddies I graduated with
hired me to come down to Raleigh
and start up this onsite services organization.
We were installing, this is, I go back.
So Bank of America was our client at the time.
And I forget, which is, yeah,
I forget what it was at the time,
but it was Bank of America.
They had ATM machines all over the Southeast
and we had ISDN modems.
I'm dating myself now.
We would dispatch field techs
and I would dial in through a modem at my desktop
in my office in RTP.
And a lot of it was Bank of America held contracts with us
to make sure a truck didn't back up
and rip the ATM out of the ground.
But we would do all the remote configuration,
making sure that ATM machines were up
and all that other stuff.
So I got into a lot of the communication world
and I spent 11 years at Cisco systems.
I was part of the integration
when Cisco bought a company called Stratocom.
They had the first analog to digital voice over IP
integration.
I was one of the first people testing tip and ring
and voice calls from Goldman Sachs, London,
to Goldman Sachs, New York.
So we were running the tech team supporting the integration
of voice over IP back in the mid 90s.
So I spent, I can't remember how long I spent.
How patient or awful were they with that process?
I'm just kidding.
Oh my God, it was, well it was new technology,
but, and everybody wanted it because everyone was tired
of paying, you know, long distance calling, right?
Like I couldn't even think of the word
because we haven't talked about long distance calling
and how long, right?
Again, dating myself.
So long distance calling, everyone wanted to get rid of it.
And you know, you could just tap over the existing line.
So I mean, it took five years to kind of get it dialed in.
Now, I mean, we're, you're sitting in San Antonio.
Were they patient or angry and mean about the process?
Oh, they're patient.
I mean, they were just trying to get things running,
but you know, again, there's always that learning
people's mindset, frustrations, all that stuff.
Sure.
Great clients usually are on your team and supportive.
So that's cool.
Well, here's what's cool is like a Goldman Sachs, right?
They would go to their tech teams,
like we're tired of long distance.
We need to get rid of this $1.5 million bill.
Go figure it out.
And then they come to our tech team.
And then I would do all the services and support structure
and we would one install it.
And then my team would be responsible for maintaining it,
upgrading it, you know, and evolving the configurations
and all that other stuff.
So we had to put team always.
So it's like Goldman Sachs didn't give a crap.
They just wanted to make sure
that their bill was cheaper, right?
And how we did it, they didn't care.
Just that's how it was.
Yeah. Right.
So I spent 11 years there.
And then I went across the street to a company called NetApp,
which was a data storage company.
And when I was at Cisco,
we were doing the data consulting.
Like I was attached to Goldman Sachs
or Federal Reserve Bank.
I was kind of like the service contract negotiator.
I was the one that responsible for the service contracts.
Right?
And then we'd build teams around them
to support the services and all that stuff.
So when I interviewed at NetApp,
they hadn't quite developed that out yet.
They had like a team of three or four.
I had had five or six years experience in that area
at Cisco, like, hey, come on board.
And I helped them build that out.
So then I spent another 10 years at NetApp.
And this is my other gift and fault.
I'm very dedicated.
So the longevity of those attachments,
I probably should have left sooner,
but I'm like committed to a fault at times.
But I did the same thing over at NetApp.
We built out all the tech teams.
And again, you're ordering parts,
you're dispatching engineers, you're a global presence.
I had to do, I learned all about the oil and gas industry.
Walmart was a client, Apple was a client.
I've been to London with Chevron and BP.
So you're right, as an entrepreneur,
I spent 22 years in the trenches with those Fortune 100s
and the Fortune 500s and the politics
and all that kind of crap.
So it was a master's or a PhD.
I'll back up at Cisco.
I did get my CCIE,
which is a Cisco Certified Internet Working Engineer.
And at the time there was only about 150 of those engineers
with that WAN technology, wide area networks, fiber optic.
I was a specialist, also navigating these contracts.
And that was a challenge.
That took a year of my life.
It's almost like passing the bar.
You have to do a lab practical, in a lab, locked down.
I mean, it's a big deal.
So I was blessed to have certain successes
of engineering certifications and team development
and certain contracts and client engagement.
I didn't know how important it was until like six years ago,
when I looked at my journey and what had I accomplished.
To me, that was normal.
And I never again, I'm gonna go back.
I didn't see myself as smart
because of my high school stories up through.
And in the engineering world, I had to escalate
to the specialist engineers.
Those guys were smart, right?
These escalation engineers.
So when people are like, are you smart?
I'm like, no, I just bought Robin.
Rob can go down to the code level
and he can write a patch, right?
Like, that's not me.
So when people ask, are you smart?
I'm like, no, I'm an idiot.
But I didn't realize that I was doing the team development.
I was doing the consulting work.
I was getting the end customers to trust our solutions
and to take our advice when, hey guys,
I'm sorry, you need to come in at three o'clock
in the morning, we have to do an upgrade.
We have to get this patch.
Well, I don't wanna do that.
I'm like, cause I don't wanna sit on a call next week.
I don't wanna call next Saturday
at three o'clock in the morning when shit's on fire.
And your boss is like, why am I losing money right now?
And so that was a lot of the conversations I had to have
with those change management teams,
which I'd rather do the front end than the back end.
Cause I hate sitting on those four day conference calls
where it's like, are we done?
Are we done hemorrhaging?
So long story to your question,
but that was kind of a quick wrap up of 20 years
of being in the trenches and getting my kind of piece.
So how in the world do you go from that where,
okay, I get it.
Like you, I understand when we have the curse of knowledge
where we don't think that anything we've learned
is important, everybody knows what we know.
You're this super genius IT guy.
I'm gonna hit that as many times as I can.
Every time we talk is that the brilliance
of all that you just explained in your capabilities,
because we should as champions,
we gotta rise up to the reality
or we realize our value to the world.
That's how you compete at a championship level.
But how in the world did you go from that to,
yeah, I should start a company.
Well, what I really realized was I was working for the man
and basically, and not to be disrespectful,
but they were pimping me out.
Realistically, they were billing me out at three times
of what they were paying me.
And with my knowledge and skills and background,
I'm like, why am I sacrificing my family life?
My engagement with my children.
I actually was sitting in a conference room
with my team one night,
and they were asking for after hours engagement.
And I was like, look, I'm sorry,
I'm not gonna be available that night.
I run my daughter's soccer team
and I'll be working with my daughter that evening.
And I had one of my female team members say,
don't you have a wife for that?
That right then was one of the nails going,
I gotta get out of this crap.
It's like, I sacrifice my weekends,
you're not taking my one night with my daughter.
Like, so that was kind of like when I finally got let go
and they gave me a severance
and I had a year's opportunity to kind of figure it out.
You know, my passion is around, you know,
again, getting all the skillset to help my daughter
also helped me get out of my crap.
Our words create our world.
I don't know how many times I can say that
on the podcast today.
What we speak externally or internally
is the energetic resonance that creates the matrix
or the vision in front of us.
And we can debate that all day long,
but if you sit around and go on, I suck, I suck, I suck,
you're gonna find 10 pieces of evidence
to prove that you are.
It's like, if I'm a rock star, I'm a rock star,
I'm a rock star and I love what you just said,
how you were saying that.
Yeah, I was a super IT guy.
I didn't believe it until I started
really reflecting on my story.
And yeah, now I kind of forget the question you asked.
So I'm sorry.
No, it's perfect.
More so just exploring this reality.
Now, strange question.
The lady who asked you that question,
are you grateful for her or mad at her?
Are you grateful for the question
or upset about the question still to this day?
Curious.
No, it's funny.
I laugh.
I was upset about the time.
And actually I'll do a two-fold to answer your question.
I was such a mess up.
She said, don't you have a wife to handle that for you,
to do that for you?
Yeah.
Well, what I would say today,
knowing what I know now,
I would have said,
I'm sorry that your daddy didn't love you
the way he wanted you to.
That's how I respond today.
My daughter's gonna have a daddy that loves her
and is gonna be there to support her.
But again, hurt people hurt people.
That's all that was going on there.
Hurt people do hurt people.
I appreciate you saying that, recognizing that.
And yeah, no need to contribute back to it.
But those are the manipulations that exist
in toxic environments.
And it's corporate,
there's all sorts of stuff that goes on
to keep people in their box.
When you have the majority flowing along with it,
then you look like the prick
when you're the one who does the right thing
and says, I have a family
and I'm not only proud about the pictures I have with them,
I'm in their life too.
Right.
Good for you, man, for allowing that to catapult you.
And I'll add to that.
It's one of those, there's these epiphany things
that are said to us at the time pissed us off,
but you never reflect on it.
It was God's way of moving you.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
So when I was sitting down at the table
when I was signing up from engineering program
and the college recruiter was in my kitchen
and they needed a $250 application fee,
my dad kind of turned around my mom
kind of half ignoring me going,
what the F are we gonna do with him
when he flunks out of college?
And right then I was like,
oh, hell no, brother, watch this.
Are you a Vietnam vet?
You didn't go to college, you flunked out of college,
you're an amazing man.
And we have a great relationship today.
He doesn't even remember saying it.
I think he was just in that moment of his life.
Just in a bad moment.
Yeah, he just didn't want me to experience
the shit that he did.
Like he left and went right to Vietnam.
He was an onboard electrician on the C-130s.
He was dropping ammunition off,
running for Air America.
I'm glad you catch that.
We live in a society that not only says negative things
about their parents and the problems that parents had,
but ultimately defines parents by their worst moments.
Whereas, yeah, I could say a lot of negative things
about my dad.
And at the same time,
now that I've been through what I've been through in life,
I've realized like, wow, I get it.
He wasn't there, but the difficulty,
the darkness of trying to be there
when everybody's against you
and everybody wants to talk bad about you,
it makes you want to disappear.
So thank you again for honoring that.
Yeah, and I'll add to that.
And again, there's a moment in your life in your mid-20s,
you need to own your own crap.
Like you can only blame your parents for so long
and recognizing, you know, I've got teenage daughters.
There's no playbook.
I did the best I could with the tools I had, right?
And did I mess up?
Oh, a lot.
Are there a lot of things to be grateful
for the successes of my children?
Yeah, but now I'm kind of slowly handing
these successes over to them.
They're not because of me.
I just created an environment for that, right?
But the one thing when I reflect on my dad,
my dad's father, my grandfather was shot down in Korea
and my dad from the age of eight didn't have a father.
So what was his role model?
He was passed around to grandparent to grandparent or this.
Like he doesn't know, right?
And actually it was just this year, three months ago,
some church community flew him back to South Korea
and there's a big monument
where his grandfather was shot down.
So he got to say goodbye to his dad at the age of 75.
Imagine that crap he's been carrying.
You know what I mean?
So it's like that one moment of time,
like can I really carry that today and be angry?
But what I learned as business owners,
there's certain things that we're not delegating
because of something that was said,
that was by mom, dad, a brother or sister or sample,
a teacher, a coach, and we're this, right?
And we're just stuck in that crap.
Okay, so let's talk about, again, this transition.
So it's fascinating me.
You had the severance, you mentioned you had a year.
If you could go back,
and this is not a question of regret,
those who are listening,
this is just a question of looking
at optimization of timeline.
Would you have dove in differently to entrepreneurship?
Would you have dove in with more force
or would you have taken more time?
What would that have looked like?
To be honest for me, because of the let go and habits,
it was almost like a 22 year relationship.
I was hurt, right?
So it was almost like coming out of a,
my girlfriend broke up with me after 22 years.
Who the hell am I?
I'm defined by, we're defined by our careers often.
That's what we believe it is.
So I think to answer your question,
I had a toe in the water.
I was-
So here's a new question.
I'm gonna shift my question with that background.
My question is this.
What have you learned since then
that could have sped you up on your journey?
To be honest, I'm gonna plug my company.
Mental emotional release.
Please.
Mental emotional release.
I studied under Dr. Matt James,
who got his PhD in University of Indiana.
Dr. Matt James is the NLP expert.
It's the son of Tad James.
Tad James was the right hand man to Tony Robbins.
So Dr. Matt learned how we store all of our angers,
sadness, fear, hurt and guilt on a timeline.
And we keep it with us.
Aches and pains in the body.
I mean, you can call it woo hooey,
but you do trigger release,
you do mental emotional release, the body releases.
I was hanging onto a bunch of crap.
My crap, my old stories.
Actually, I came up with this analogy.
Have you ever seen a dung beetle?
No, teach me.
I need it.
So a dung beetle is an African beetle.
Okay.
And they've got this ball of...
Do what?
Is it the one in Lion King?
No, I don't think so.
But anyways, basically they fight a big ball
of elephant dung poop.
And that's their food.
And the dung beetle with the biggest ball of poop
is the best beetle in the tribe, right?
And basically they roll this ball of poop around Africa
for their family to eat and survive off of.
But what I've recognized is we humans are no different.
Tell me about the last hangout with the boys or friends.
They're walking in the door with a big ball of it, SHIT.
And we're gonna sit down at the table
and talk about whose shit is bigger.
It's just the battle of whose life sucks the worst, right?
Nine times out of a 10,
that's the conversation that lead to.
So what I learned is my biggest growth was
had I had access to MER earlier on,
I wouldn't have been able to bring my ball of crap,
those stupid stories, those non-true beliefs that I had.
I took a year for me to grow through a lot of that
and to go through other coaching and other,
like to get my own help to get out of my own crap.
So I spent my first year and a half with a toe in the water.
And a toe in the water is not telling God,
universe, I'm all in.
I was half in.
So it took me longer.
It wasn't until that year two, two and a half,
when I really understand who my client was,
what I'm doing, the solution I'm providing.
Once I knew that, oh man, game changer, game changer.
You just blew my mind
and you just expanded my bridge of communication
and ability to influence and help others
with this, not only with the analogy,
but with the reality that you taught me.
And I thank you for that.
Yeah, you're welcome.
I will tell you the shift here of why this is helpful.
I grew up with my mom and five older sisters.
Yeah.
Okay.
The way that women think in general,
it's different than the way that women think.
And it can be emotional.
I would actually say that they are far more logical as well
than my male counterparts.
But the reality of the difference is
the way you just described that environment
is one that I have never understood.
And I think it's because of having grown up with women
that were also quite wholesome in nature.
They had their problems, certainly.
Yeah.
They had their difficulties
and they probably have their own way of,
they have their own way of self-deprecating as well
and talking about the negative.
But the idea of comparing who's is worst and all that
didn't quite exist growing up.
So I've never ever understood those man cave moments.
Yes.
I've never understood it.
And I never wanted to be a part of it.
And I never could hang in those moments
because I did not understand what you just opened my eyes to.
I never felt the need to try to make my life was,
I always found the positive and the great.
It wasn't until years later,
I realized my normal was not normal for everybody.
And the amount of stuff that I went through
was extremely difficult and challenging.
But again, you've unlocked my ability to now connect
with an incredibly different audience
that before I couldn't relate to.
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
And it's weird and this might poke a lot of societal today,
but there's the masculine and feminine.
And you are probably hearing what you just said,
you have a lot of more into this with the feminine
just because of the household you grew in.
Doesn't mean you don't have masculine in you.
When I go back to Dr. Matt James,
and he was like, he embodies a lot of the feminine.
So when it came to the,
he shared the stories of this with his children
and his ex-wife,
he had a lot more of the mother and roles
just because of that's his programming.
He understands more of that emotional with the language
and all that other stuff.
So I can't wait to get the panels running for this
because I used to talk about masculine
and feminine energy a lot.
Yeah.
Because it relates to like, I get it.
And I know what it's like to, for me,
that's just how I would define it.
To me, it's all semantics game, but Justin Nopay
is also a client of ours that specializes in neuroscience
and I think linguistic program.
All that stuff's a little bit hard for me to understand,
but I appreciate it.
Right?
And I appreciate the practices
that come along with it a lot.
And so he was like, Jackson,
I don't like the whole fat masculine feminine thing.
And so I've kind of silenced a little bit since then
as I, and it's not because he controls it.
I just like, oh, there's more I need to learn
about the reality of how these energies work
and how we talk about you and him.
I need to get you guys in the same room.
Awesome.
Yeah. So what I didn't understand is I heard about NLP
and I know hypnosis and it sounds all woohoo-y,
but basically all NLP is a neuro brain,
linguistics, language, programming.
Yeah. The words we speak is a linguistic,
has an emotional response
and triggers a thought in our brain.
So programming or in other words, teaching ourselves
how to use language in a healthy fashion.
In a health, exactly.
So my wife grew up in a household, very toxic,
alcoholic mother, et cetera, et cetera.
She had opportunities for a lot of things,
but when my wife would complain, she would be like,
shut up, just be grateful for what you got.
So her programming of grateful is not good.
Grateful to her that you and I would think gratitude,
I'm like, gratitude, man, things are good.
She's like, oh, shut up and know your spot.
That's her program.
And we're all individually programmed.
Right, we are.
And a lot of it's locked in by the age of seven.
And then we carry that programming until we recognize,
oh, that's not normal to societal standards
and like what is, right?
So when I would, my wife and I-
It makes it harder.
Correct.
To progress.
So the pseudo science behind NLP, it's about 85% accurate
because your programming could be different from others.
But when you're building rapport,
you're reading facial language, you're listening to tone,
you can understand how your words land
with other people's people.
So NLP is an effect because you actually listen
to the words other people use
and trying to decipher what it means,
knowing what it means to you,
but really getting understanding what it means to them.
Right, you're building empathy.
You're building the ability to have more empathy
so that you can ultimately progress further in life
or help the person who's talking to you
progress further in life as well
and have some harmony about it.
Dave, this has been absolutely awesome.
Looking back to having you on the show in the future
and diving in deeper, I'm gonna be excited
about hosting that panel too in the near future.
So we'll get that going.
Now I can see exactly why too,
you would gravitate towards helping construction companies
and companies with an IT background,
technology, SaaS, et cetera,
any entrepreneur could benefit from the leadership experience
and wisdom that you've gained over your career
and of course over the time developing TapMental
and understand why this,
I guess even not even understand
why you've gone more from IT towards the human side,
but it doesn't really matter.
You have the skillsets of both.
That's a huge unfair advantage to the market.
So what's the best way for people to get ahold of you?
Yeah, so the website is tapmental.io down there
in the corner.
And on that is there's a book of call.
I'm also on Twitter, TapMental.
I think it's TapMental.
I'm on Instagram, David Goodall.
Yeah, there's a bunch and I'm also on LinkedIn.
So Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter,
and then just hit the website.
There's a book of call and you'll get a 30 minute
breakthrough, figure out where you are,
what current problems are in front of you
and if there's an opportunity for us
to potentially work together.
Awesome, that makes perfect sense, Dave.
Well, thank you so much for being here in Vision Pros.
We're glad to have done this extra bonus episode
for you guys this week.
If you need anything, don't hesitate to reach out to us.
You can drop comments, of course,
about questions that you may have.
And if you also are big into the neuroscience space,
we'd love to speak to you.
I'm sure Dave would love to collaborate as well.
We're win-win-win people in this environment.
So you guys have an excellent rest of your day.
And Dave, thanks for being our guest today.
Thanks for having me, it was a pleasure.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well,
invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.