Best Of Growth, Discipline & Daily Habits

Welcome to the Legacy All-Stars Podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavlosky.

Welcome to the Legacy All-Stars Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Pavlosky. Today we are featuring a special best of episode with clips from past interviews. Today's focus is growth, discipline, and daily habits. Featuring highlights from episodes with David Parsons, Don Reed, Maureen Meehan, and Manoj Mohan. I hope you enjoy the show.

This clip features David Parsons III from an episode that originally aired on January 29th, 2025.

About a year after I started singing, and then the next week was just absolute hell. I had to learn 2 hours worth of music, and for the next year I I— that's what I did. I just went into every single restaurant and hotel that I could find on island, and I said same thing. Just, you got— you got a space for another person to play music, whether they had it or didn't have it. And so that was a real pivotal point in my life, and, and that was the start of, of my music as a career that pays income. Um, and then I, I said there's two stories, and I think the other one, which is more serendipitous is— it's a little darker, but it's such a beautiful part of my journey is I struggled a lot. And Alan and I have known each other for 20 years, and I don't even know if you know this, but I struggled a lot in college my second year, and I actually had a point where I was in a really dark place and I was going to commit suicide. Was sitting at the train station in West Covina, California, at this little train stop, dirt parking lot. I had my suicide note in hand and I was ready to— I knew when the train was coming and I just said a little prayer and I just said, "Hey, if I'm still supposed to be here, please—" My faith plays a big role. I said, "Just please, God, help me to have some courage in this moment." This song came on. Pandora, random song comes on, and the song— there's lyrics in the song that says, um, no one loves me like, like you do, no one loves me the way that you do. And it gave me just enough hope that things were gonna— I had a really rough childhood growing up, and I think that's important to know for my viewers, because when I sing, I try to sing with all the emotion that I have, whether I'm playing original music or cover song music, or, you know, for a wedding or whatever it might be. I try to go back to those places in my life where I had an emotional response to something happening, and I tried to really sing and write music from that place. And so that song in my life in that moment gave me enough courage to call somebody else in my life to come get me and to take me to the ER, Baldwin Park Kaiser. And that started a really long healing process for some really difficult things in my childhood, some child— some real trauma, not pity trauma, but like real trauma that I dealt with as a kid. And why I tell that story is because there's a full circle to it, and, and this music as a career has really been a thread of my journey longer than— but like even before I knew that I could sing, even before I knew I could write music. And what happened is about 3 or 4 years later, I was sitting in my office and I get a message on Facebook from a good friend that knew the impact of that specific song in my life. It's Jars of Clay, "No One Loves Me Like You." He said, "Hey, Jars of Clay is playing a private concert at our college, and I think you should go to it." So, I went that night, packed everything up really quickly, got in my car, went down to the school that was a couple miles away from my office. Been attending. I graduated already, but I went on campus and I was standing at the back. And because my work with celebrity athletes, and at the time, somehow somebody at the back of the concert just sitting in the pews approached me and said, hey, are you David? I said, yeah. He said, you know, I know about your story working with celebrity nonprofits. Can I ask you a couple questions about how you run 501(c)(3)s? I said yes, and I answered his questions. And at the end I said, he said, I'm actually the band manager for Jars of Clay and I run their nonprofit foundation and we're just starting it up. And so I wanted to ask you how you get these things done. Mike Linda is his name. And I said, Mike, I got to tell you about why I'm here. And I proceeded to tell him how this song that they wrote changed my life because I wouldn't be standing here. And at the end of the concert, he takes me by the hand. He walks me down backstage, and he introduces me to the guy that wrote the song that saved my life at the train station. And I got to tell him face to face, thank you for writing this song, because, because of your endurance in bringing this to market and to recording it and writing the lyrics, and I'm standing in front of you today alive because of that song. And here I am. That's And that's before I knew I could play guitar. That's before I knew I could sing, right? And then we fast forward, that was 2010, and fast forward in 2014, 2013-14 is where I, when I first started playing my first couple chords and writing music. So I tell those two stories because those are the kickoff points in my career as a musician. And I'm certainly not an Ed Sheeran or, you know, an Elvis or anything like that. I just am trying to make a difference in my little sphere of, of people in my life through my, through my craft and just trying to get better. So I would say those are the two pivotal points.

This clip features Don Reed from an episode that originally aired on July 8th, 2025. Yeah.

You told me an incredible story about visiting Fremont High School, your alma mater, and seeing how arts programs had vanished. What was that moment like for you?

Um, I was glad that I could be there, but it started out on a lower note, and that was that, um, when I was at Fremont High School, I graduated in 1977, they had a music program. And now here I was 35 years later visiting, and they didn't even have a music program at all. And so myself and a couple of the founders showed up, and I gave a presentation to the students. But if I can go on a side note for a moment, while I was giving the presentation, one of the students was being really disruptive. He was talking in the back. He was, you know, pushing people and just super disruptive. And at some point, he started doing a beat. cry right on his. His desk, where he was sitting right in the middle of me speaking. I'm like, okay, this isn't cool, but how do I work around it? So at one point, I said, hey, hey, hey, do that beat a little louder. He's like, no, no, no, no, I'm not. And he sat back in his chair. He's like, no, I'm not doing that. I said, no, do the beat. I'm going to do something with you. He kept saying no. And his friend's like, you know, maybe, you know, try it. So he started going, doo doo cah, doo doo cah, doo doo cah. I went, with him. And he was like, what? At that moment, from then on, he was kind of like the, he was clearly the biggest physical guy, looked like the leader of the crew and the class. And after that, if any student made a peep, he said, "Hey, hey, hey, he's talking. Pay attention. Hey, hey, hey." I'm like, "Oh, he's on my side now." Sometimes it just takes a moment to engage them and empower them with their talent in that moment. And the beat was on point. It wasn't like, "Hmm." It was like, "This is a good beat." So I was able to engage him, bring him in, and that aided him in helping the entire presentation.

Yeah, meeting kids where they are, man, is so important. Absolutely.

Yeah. And it's fascinating. You never know when it's going to happen. You never know. But if you stay in there and go that extra step, you'll find, you'll find some magic to bring to them for sure. Yeah.

I mean, you know, you and I have talked about this, but you never know when the tipping point is going to be on the impact you make on a young person. As you know, my wife and I own a school. It's a preschool and it affects young people. But any level that you can get into a kid's head and start changing their perspective on what they can do with their lives. You never know where that impact is going to be made, and you never know the long-lasting effects that impact will be. Absolutely.

You know, one school, one elementary school in Oakland that we visited, um, after I spoke, there was this one kid who the teacher said he doesn't engage very much, but at the end of it, he came to me And he had a notebook where he'd drawn words, all these different words, but in his own special font. I said, "That's some art right there, my friend." I said, "You know, you look forward in your life, you know, you can create font styles and every time someone uses them, you could be paid." He's like, "What?" [Speaker] That's right. [Speaker] And I spoke to that teacher about maybe 6 months later and he'd still been, he said, Don Reed came to the school, he told me that I could sell these one day. And he got a lot of great, great motivation from that, from that moment. So you never know where you're gonna hit 'em. It could be an instrument, it could be them making their own font like this young man was doing. Yeah.

Or just building confidence in general. Yes, absolutely.

So important.

This clip features Maureen Ann Meehan from an episode that originally aired on October 21st, 2025.

We love our job. We love helping people in mental health.

Yeah, what a great track record. You know, the resources being put there rather than in enforcement and putting people in jail as a result of mental health seems to be the right path. I'm not trying to editorialize here. I'm just saying that it seems that it's less expensive as a society for us to treat mental health rather than to incarcerate mental health. 100%.

And, you know, we started this program, we rolled it out to the rest of the state and then to the nation as a pilot. Some people have adapted to it. Some counties and states have adapted to it. Some haven't. Those who have adopted our collaborative approach have done very, very well, like San Diego, for example. Other counties in California haven't, and it's very evident. Those who really take the wraparound and collaborative approach to helping people with mental health issues, which there are a lot of, our courtroom's packed. My calendar is always very busy. But I end every hearing telling the people via Zoom or Teams or whatever we're using, WebEx, so grateful to meet you or nice to see you again. Thank you for your time today. I hope everything turns out well. So we approach it as a very loving environment and a safe environment to get mental health treatment so that people embrace it. And I think we do a good job.

Yeah, it sounds like it. You know, mental health is such a pressing issue. What have 19 years on the bench taught you about compassion, resilience, and justice? Justice, for that matter?

I find that it to be something highly embraceable. I feel like our clientele, as a team and as a whole, with respect with whom we serve, cares a lot. We're very compassionate. We're very caring. We're loving. It's not punitive at all. It's collaboratively helping people get better if we're at all able to do it. And I think we do a pretty darn good job doing that. And it's taught me to be patient, to be a good listener, to understand, but for the grace of God, we could all be in a different place at any given moment in life. And losing my husband 11 years ago reinforced all of those things in my family as that the loss and resilience and trying to help people in our mental health program, because I, you know, Honestly, I was really depressed when my husband was dying and my children were depressed. And we did have grief therapy during that process and after. And the grief therapy was critical to us healing as a family. And I encourage people to get help when you need it. I've been there. I needed it. I was in grief therapy up through November of 2023, 9 years later. So I'm all about getting help when you need it. And there's nothing wrong about asking for help. I've asked for help, and I encourage other people to do the same. We all need it from time to time.

This clip features Manoj Mohan from an episode that originally aired on October 28th, 2025.

I've been wanting to ask you this since our last conversation. What is a story from earlier in your career that shaped your values around protecting people and data? And are there any mentors that you still think about today?

Yeah, good question. So early on in my career, you know, just like every new engineer on the block, I was obsessed with being able to ship software as fast as possible, build features as fast as possible, and so on. So for the most part, I would be focused on rolling out feature after feature. And once, in one such instance, you know, we were rolling out a system and something that I was not paying attention to would have potentially resulted in logging some sensitive user-centric data, and that potentially could have translated for vulnerabilities in terms of breach and so on. So I didn't realize it. It was my ignorance. I was still focused on rolling out the feature quickly, and that's when a senior engineer caught me and told me, "Manoj, if you're trying to move fast, And if you're trying to move so fast that you end up breaking people's trust, you are not innovating, you're not adding value, you're essentially gambling. So that, I think, landed hard. It was good feedback. And I have kind of imbibed that since then. And that's how I've changed to not undermine the importance and not to think about it reactively in all of the work that I have done ever since. And so for me, the way now I think about it is like scale without trust is like speed without control, right? It's pretty dangerous, and we should never take that sort of approach. And all of the leaders that I admire have taught me that protecting people's data isn't a side task or a nice-to-have. It is the capability of how you can steer the car to be on the road with the right guardrails at all points in time, right? So that's how I see it. Yeah. Yeah.

So listen, as a follow-up question, can you give me an example of when you prioritized a user's or a teammate's well-being over a short-term metric and what happened? Okay.

So, you know, there was an initiative that I was working on back at Apple where we were actually running behind schedule on that particular project. The work in itself was about implementing, you know, all the privacy checks and the guardrails for one of our critical AppleCare systems that we were scheduled to launch for our users. And we were behind on schedule. So, the easy call at that point in time would have been to just go ahead with, you know, making the launch date and then continue working through implementing all of those safety checks and balances behind the scenes. But however, instead, I choose to take a different approach. I guided the team to do the right thing, even if it meant I was having a tough conversation with my bosses or all of my stakeholders as to why we are not ready for the launch. So we did all of that extra diligence. And, you know, sure enough, we caught a handful of bugs. That could have exposed some of the sensitive customer data. In the short term, I think we did end up missing the launch date. We had to extend it by a couple of weeks. But for the longer term, we did end up protecting the brand. You know, I think that's the fine balance, right? I think, in my opinion, I think that servant leadership, I think, is remembering that the real scorecard isn't the one that's immediately ahead of you. It's actually the trust that compounds over the years that you're trying to serve for your stakeholders. So, so that's, that's how I see it. Yeah.

Yeah, most definitely. Thanks again for tuning in to this best of episode of Legacy All-Stars Podcast. Please click the subscribe button and enable notifications. See you next time.