Tell me about your vision.
Well, I guess before I tell you about my vision,
would it be helpful if I kind of frame why I have the vision?
Yeah, I'd love to hear that.
Yeah, so in my day job, I help my clients
in valuing their businesses and intellectual property assets.
I've done that for a long time.
And one of those IP or intangible assets
that I valued is people, human capital.
And you've heard every CEO on the planet
pound the table and say, our people
are our most valuable asset.
But let me ask you a question to put you on the spot here.
This most valuable asset, do you know
where that appears on a financial statement?
There's only how many people you hired?
I'll give you the spoiler alert.
People don't even appear on a balance sheet.
So your machinery and equipment, so your desks, your chairs,
your computers, that's all you can find in a balance sheet
and fixed assets.
But your most valuable asset that
goes home on the elevators every night
is not a line item on a balance sheet.
So I've valued the human capital in my profession
for a number of reasons throughout the years.
And I never thought that we kind of told the whole story
about the value that people contribute
to the value of a business.
And decided to write something about it.
And when I was writing a couple of books,
which were my journey to really prove that people are
companies with valuable assets.
So my vision then is that one day people
will have a line item be recognized as a line item
on the balance sheet for the most valuable asset
that they are.
That my profession will do, I'll call it a better job,
in the way we value people to consider all the things that
are beyond the cost to replace associated with people.
And that vision goes even further
to expand to the way people are treated inside organizations.
So my hope is that CEOs and managers and leaders
in organizations will get wind of this construct
and treat their people in a way that demonstrates that they
actually care about them.
And oh, by the way, what's in it for them,
the companies that actually do those right things
about their people outperform their peers.
Thank you for sharing that.
Where would you say, and you told me the background story
of where this stems from.
But why do you care about it?
Why have you internalized that?
And what's your why behind this vision of yours?
Yeah, thanks for asking that.
That's a really insightful question.
So there's a couple of reasons around my why
behind the story.
One is that as a leader, I've had situations
where I've worked for managers who I would describe as,
their style was management by spreadsheet.
So have you ever worked for anybody
who only looked at the metrics and never really
knew who the people were?
I think everybody out there listening
can probably relate to that.
So I've had situations where I'm trying
to get a superstar employee, for example, promoted.
But the metrics didn't tell the whole story.
So that's one component.
Then there's another circle, if you will.
And that is I was a single dad for about a dozen years or so.
And during that time, I got to work for a couple of leaders
that I would say were true, empathetic, considerate leaders.
They treated me professionally.
They recognized that as a single dad,
I had certain responsibilities and circumstances
that I had to contend with that maybe some of the other employees
didn't.
And they gave me latitude and flexibility.
And I would walk through fire for them.
Then I worked for some other folks during that period of time
that didn't quite get it.
Maybe they'd roll their eyes if I
had to get a sick kid from daycare at 3 o'clock.
They'd say things like, it must be nice leaving work at 3,
as if I was going out to the golf course or something.
So that's the other circle.
So that intersection is what led me
to start to really internalize the idea of people really
are your most important asset, because I could sort of feel
the employee engagement needle inside of me, if you will,
and how it moved to the right for the guys and gals that
led with empathy, and how it moved to the left for the folks
that didn't quite get it.
Wow.
Well, I don't know if you do have this,
but what are your core values with your business
model that you practice?
It's pretty fundamental.
It's basically treat people the way you'd want to be treated.
So it's courtesy, it's respect, it's decency, it's empathy,
professionalism, communication, transparency.
This is just the stuff that I would want.
And it's really quite that simple.
Thanks.
Wow.
Thank you for sharing that.
I think a lot of times, I have been fortunate enough
to not face that in a long time.
But a lot of times, the corporates
are looking at one metric, and they
disregard what keeps their employees happy, what
keeps the employees motivated to be work with them.
And attrition is a big problem in a lot of businesses,
which I think could be solved by what you're mentioning here.
So how do you?
Attrition is huge, because there's not just
the cost to replace the people, which is, by the way,
more than you think it is.
It's multiples of individual salaries.
But when you think about a good employee that's been with you,
pick a number of years, five years, 10 years, what have you,
they're accumulating the institutional knowledge.
It's all those soft skills stuff that any newbie is never
going to really understand until they've been there
for a similar amount of time.
And it could be as subtle as knowing
when to approach you about financing for a project,
for example, when to ask Joe for more resources.
You can tell by the look on certain person's face
or the way they're holding a pencil
in a particular conversation.
That little nuanced stuff is really hard to replace.
And it goes out the door when people leave.
Yeah, it totally does.
It totally does.
I want to talk about you now.
So I see you're an author.
You wrote a book, which is very impressive,
because let me share my screen for a second.
I think this is a lot of times when people come on our show,
you want us to promote the book.
And then I go right here and say,
you have two ratings or three ratings.
You, on the other hand, Dave, have 84 ratings,
which is, I would say, a successful book launch
to some extent.
There's a lot of hard work that goes into that.
Talk to me about your journey of how the book came about,
and then how did you get into business
from being a job employee, and then get into the path
of not doing podcasting.
Yeah, so if anybody were to ask me today,
would you ever want to write a book,
I would say, heck no, it's way too much work.
But here's the interesting thing.
I never intended to write a book, honest to God.
I knew I needed to write something that would help
to shine a spotlight on the way my profession values
human capital, and highlight the fact
that our most valuable asset isn't on a balance sheet,
like I mentioned to you at the top of the program here.
And at the time, I also had a platform besides LinkedIn.
I was a contributor to the business
section of the Huff Post.
So my article appeared there as well as LinkedIn.
And same word, same pictures, but on the Huff Post,
platform had carried a lot more cache,
and apparently got a lot more reach.
And people started to show up in my life asking me,
well, what's next?
And there was never a what's next, man.
It was like, OK, I thought I was one and done.
But I was inspired to explore the journey,
because I realized that we're all
climbing the same mountain, about trying
to prove that people matter.
But the people that I was meeting,
they're all climbing the mountain
from different sides.
But we're all looking to get to the same spot
on the top of the mountain.
So I learned from those folks.
And we wound up collaborating, and that one article
turned into a series.
Ultimately, it had to become a book,
because I needed to aggregate everything.
My vision was that CEOs would have a chance
to read all this great content, and linking them
from article to article to article
didn't seem like an efficient way to do it.
And ultimately, the best way to do it
was to consolidate it and call it a book.
So that's how book one was born.
Fun fact, on book one, somebody actually turned it into a play.
It blew my mind.
They hired a playwright.
They got actors, got a venue, and brought
the story of the new ROI, Return on Individuals, to life.
And just to put a cherry on that Sunday,
having not intended to write a first book,
I didn't intend to write the second one either.
But that's the story of conversations
that I've had on my podcast, which
is called Behind the Numbers.
So the book is called The New ROI,
Going Behind the Numbers.
And it's conversations with leaders
who have demonstrated what they've done to do culture change
and how that's driven corporate value.
And how did the business side of things come about?
When you were not working for an employee anymore,
how did you start the business side?
No, I've been always fortunate.
I spent a little bit of time doing
some independent consulting.
But for the preponderance of my career,
I've been a part of an organization.
And what do you focus on now?
Like, what's your main area of expertise and focus now?
So the main area of focus, what pays the mortgage, as they say,
is business valuation.
So there's a lot of reasons why companies need valuations.
And I like to tell people that Shark Tank made what I do sexy
because they brought the word valuation
into your living room.
I mean, even my kids know that I do something in valuation
because they saw Mr. Wonderful and Mark Cuban talking
about it.
So there's a lot of reasons why companies need valuations.
That's what I do day to day.
Thank you for sharing that.
One more question for you.
And that will be the last question for today.
What is your goal for being on the show today, Dave?
My goal for being on the show today
was to add value to your audience.
I mean, I am a show host myself, so I
understand what it means when you have guests on the program.
The most important thing is that whatever
the host is trying to tease out of the guest
is to the benefit of the audience.
So I'm just here to serve.
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 going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.