Struggles and Success with David Parsons III (Part 1)

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

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast where we talk to inspirational people making a difference in the lives of others. I'm your host, Alan Pavloski. Today we are speaking with David Parsons iii, who has dedicated his life making a difference in the lives of others. He is a recording artist, an entrepreneur, a father, and an amazing friend to anyone who is fortunate enough to know him. Just full transparency. I've known David for 20 years. We worked together in my sports business where David was an instrumental part of my organization. And he and I have maintained a close friendship over the years. So I'm really proud to have him on the. So let's get right to it and start our conversation with David. David, my man.

Yeah, so good to see you. Good to see you too, man. Aloha.

Let me just ask you the first question. Can you share a bit about your background and what inspired you to pursue the path of making music?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I moved to the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian chain in 2013, and I actually didn't know I could sing at that in my life. I had spent about eight years starting a marketing agency out of Los Angeles, California, and I worked with Alan, working with professional athletes and entertainers, building their personal websites, gained a lot of knowledge on personal branding. And I had started that career early in my professional life in college. So I didn't have much of a life in college. I was carrying two cell phones, a business and a personal one, to class, and I was the only one that was dressed up in full business attire every day and getting to travel with Alan to different places in the US and then when Alan and I stopped working, I continued that business. I arrived to the shores of Kauai with a very entrepreneurial spirit, but purposely moved to an island in the middle of the Pacific to live the life. I felt like I didn't get to have both growing up, but specifically in college. I wanted to move here, hit the reset button, be a server, learn how to surf, just do life in the slow lane for a little bit to figure out what I really wanted to do because I loved marketing, but I knew there was something else out there. And so when I moved here, I actually had my guitar, I knew three chords, and I had no idea that I had this potential within me. And so really, as I started surfing and my landlord, who got me introduced to surfing, kept asking me, why don't you come play music with me. So finally we started doing that two or three times a week. And he just, for about six months, he's like, you gotta sing, you gotta sing. I'm like, mitch, I don't sing. I'll just play with you. And then I had some stuff happen to my family. And one night I came home from work, I was really pissed off. And he's like, just sing. Just sing from where your heart is. And I was ticked. And we were singing a Johnny Cash song. And so I just started singing as loud as I could and as pissed off as I was. And that kind of, that honestly was the start of my music career. Right there at this little house that was up a canyon on an island in the middle of the Pacific. And now I support my family full time, writing music and recording and gigging. I do over 350 shows a year. And before kids, I was traveling off island twice a month. Still travel off island, but not quite as much. And I pinch myself. I'm living the dream, playing music and built a recording studio on the island. That's the premier recording studio here. And yeah, it's just. It's been amazing. Yeah, it's been absolutely amazing.

Fantastic. You've already probably answered most of the question and was there a pivotal moment or experience, other than that experience with your landlord that motivated you to start the work?

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's. There's two. The first one that really kind of made me go all in, which is really ironic. We, Mitch and I always tell the story. He plays with me. He plays ukulele. So he plays on a lot of the stage tour stuff that we do together. But my, I think my kickoff moment in my musical career as a profession, I'm a very all in kind of guy. If I figure out something that I love to do, I try to. There's. There's no real gray space. I just put everything I have into it. And after playing with Mitch at his house for two, three years, you know, he had people that would come from all over the world staying at our place. We started playing music for the guests, and people started asking us, do you have a cd? And I just would crack up. I'm like, do we have a cd? We don't have a cd. We're just two dudes that love to play music. But with my marketing background, right, it was like, hey, you know, if some stranger is asking you and is willing to give you $25 for a CD right there on the spot, then maybe you have A product that's worth selling. So after about a year of this, just playing at his house two or three times a week and getting asked multiple times a week, hey, do you get. Where can we hear your music? I decided to. One night I was working, you know, I work seven days a week, six days a week. I was working double shifts as a server at the time and as a, you know, a busboy at dishwasher kind of tasks. And I said, you know what? I got Friday off. There's a art walk down the street from where I was living, and they were allowing musicians to come set up underneath the. It was at night. And so they would allow musicians to basically set up and play their music under the street lights. And so it was my first Friday off in probably two years since I had moved to the island. And I. And I decided I was going to take my guitar, I was going to go down there, and I knew three songs by heart at that point. So I opened up. I went down as far down as I could where there was no lights, and I. And I opened up my guitar case as a little tip jar because that's what everybody was doing. And I closed my eyes because I was so nervous. There was hundreds of people walking through this outdoor, you know, Friday night under the lights art shop extravaganza that they do every Friday on this street downtown. So I'm down there and I start playing, and I got my eyes closed. And when I open my eyes up after the third song, I look around and there's about 10 or 15 people standing around, and there's $43 in my. In my guitar case. And I was so excited. I said, okay, I'm doing this as a career, right? And that same night, as I was on this total high, my brother and I, anytime something big happens in our business or in our life, we always call each other and we go and we buy these little ice cream packs as a celebration. So I went into the store, the local grocery mart, that night after I packed up from the little farmer's market street fair. And I went in, I called my brother, I said, you're never going to believe what happened. I just made $43 in less than an hour playing music. I'm going to do this full time as a career. And he starts laughing, and we open up the ice cream, and I'm walking out the grocery store door, and I look across the street and there's a steakhouse. And my marketing and sales background kicks in and goes, why don't you go ask Them if they have live music. So I walked right across the street, same night as that, that street fair. I walked in, I said, hey, do you guys have a manager here? And they said, yeah. I said, you guys ever have live music? I'm a musician. Would you be interested in that? And the lady at the counter goes, wait, did somebody call you about that today? I said, no, I was just curious. She says, we were just in a manager's meeting and they wanted to start live music. She goes, we would love to have you come play. So the manager walks out. Her name is Marissa. And she goes, yeah, we'd love to have you play. Can you start this week? I said, sure. She goes, can you fill a two hour time gap? I know three songs. I said, yeah, sure, I can fill. She goes, what do you charge? I go, 100 an hour? She goes, 200 bucks? I said, yeah. She goes, great. I go, really? She's like, yep. So that was, you know, that was about a year after I started singing. And then the next week was just absolute hell. I had to learn two hours worth of music. And for the next year, 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 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 that was the start of my music as a career that pays income. And then 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. 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. And I was sitting at the train station in West Covina, California, at this little train stop dirt parking lot, and I had my suicide note in hand and I was ready to. I knew when the train was coming and I just said, you know, a little prayer. And I just said, hey, if I'm still supposed to be here, please, like, you know, my faith plays a big role. I said, just please, God, like, help me to have some courage in this moment. And this song came on Pandora. Random song comes on and the song, there's lyrics in the song that says, no one loves me, like you do. No one loves me the way that you do. And it gave me just enough hope that things were going to. 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 E.R. 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. Why I tell that story is because there's a full circle to it. And this music as a career has really been a thread of my journey longer than, like, even before I knew that I could sing, even before I knew I could write music. And what happened is about three or four 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. And he said, hey, Jars of Clay is playing a private concert at our college, and I. And I think you should go to it. And 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. I hadn't 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 C3s? I said, yes, and I answered his questions. And at the end, 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 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.

I got chills.

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 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 an Elvis or anything like that. I just am trying to make a difference in my little sphere of people in my life through my craft and just trying to get better. So I would say those are the two pivotal points, man.

I mean, and I obviously knew you back then, but at the time, we hadn't really been talking to each other for probably a year or so at that point. And you did fill me in on that later on, and I was shocked. I was like, why didn't you call me? Why didn't you let me help you? And I. I was kind of pissed off at you, actually. But I'm glad you're still here. And it's. It's. Everybody else benefits by you still being here, so I really appreciate that story.

I'm certainly glad I'm still here, too. And I think it's just when you get in a spot like that, you're just. You're not chemically in the right spot, like, mentally. And it doesn't really matter what people say or you're not thinking about that. You're just thinking about the pain that. That you've. For me, it was the pain that had accumulated over so many years of dealing with some real personal stuff in our. In our family.

Yeah.

That just kind of came to a T. So.

Yeah.

But I do appreciate you being willing to be there for me, so. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Let's go on to the next question. It's tough to follow that one because that's such a. Such a high impact.

Moment in your life, and it's hard to. Hard to beat that as a impact. But how would you describe the mission that Drives you every day.

Yeah. I think I was very blessed to always find myself on.

Teams that performed very. At very high levels. And I wasn't necessarily the leader in all of those teams, but I was around really good leaders on those teams.

In high school, I was on a constitutional debate team. I actually was the team captain on that. But we extremely rigorous competitional debate team that centered around law and the constitution and stuff and got to perform on the house floor. And then in college I found, you know, I was a bench warmer. I always joke I played left bench, but I got to be on this team that. And it was a walk on. And you know, made my way onto the team with. I was one of 72 guys that tried out and I was the only guy that actually didn't. Red shirt. Of the three guys that made the team from the tryouts.

Not on scholarship baseball, of course, nobody knows, but we are talking about baseball.

Yeah, Azusa Pacific. I got to play on a baseball team there. And that was a World Series team who got to participate in the World Series. We crushed every record that was in the NCAA Division 2. It was NAIA Division 1 at the time, but so I found myself on really.

Well performing teams, whether as a leader or as a spectator on the team. And one thing that I've learned about that is to have a process and to trust the process. That was something my coach in college always used to say, baseball coach, like, trust the process. If you commit yourself to excellence 100% as often as you. As you practice, like, trust that that process will produce results. And so I think I've really tried to do that in my life, you know, is. And another like, mantra I've always had is like, leave it all on the field. Like, give it everything that you've got right. Playing music. I play music six nights a week. Often I have two or three gigs a day. And it could be very easy to feel sometimes I do the same songs right over and over again. And it can be very easy to get in a rut of complacency or not to. And I just try to remember that is like, I gotta leave it all on the stage, I gotta leave it all on the field. I gotta give every lyric that I have the best of me and come and come from that place because that's what music's about. It's about coming from a place that really connects with other people. And you can only do that if you're authentic in it. And if. And people can feel it or they don't feel it. And they either connect or they don't connect. You know, it's pretty. It's pretty instant, you can tell for sure. So that definitely is something that drives me every day. Yeah, that mantra.

What are some of the biggest challenges you faced along the way? I mean, you talked about some of your personal challenges, but what are those challenges that you faced in the music career and how did you overcome them? Sure.

So I started doing music full time around 2016, where I have other businesses, but if I were to stop those other businesses, music would have supported me. And then I got married in 2020. So I think the biggest challenge of the last five years, like many people, was Covid. And so I have another business that I run in April 2020, living on a small island with a small economy that's based on tourism.

In two weeks, in the second week of April, I lost 263 accounts with that other business, which is a service industry business. It's a window cleaning and power washing company. We lost 263 accounts. And then over the course of the next three months, I lost over 250 or so music gigs that got cancelled both on island and off island. And I ended up finding myself sleeping on.

I don't even know if you know this, Alan, but I ended up. I was pretty much homeless, so I was sleeping on the floor of a spec house of a friend. And because I was 100% supported on my own through my businesses and the business is completely dried up and I was the owner. I got no ppe. I didn't get any of that. I got one small $7,500 handout that I think over 90,000 businesses in the state of Hawaii applied for and only a thousand got, but that was it. And so that was a huge challenge. Trying to pivot and not having any unemployment and.

Not knowing what to do and then just realizing like, you know, no handouts, I had to figure this out. And it was actually during that time that I really discovered like I had been dating my wife for about a year, year and a half, and it was like her being there with me, being willing to sleep on the ground in a construction home by my side and not giving up on me. It was like, okay, this is the girl that I know I want to be with when the shit hits the fan. And so that was hard. Coming back from that was really difficult.

But yeah, so we're going to take a break real quick and listen to one of David's songs, but before we play it, it's called Top Down before we play it. I want David to explain the significance of this song and some of the thought that goes into it.

Yeah. So top down, I wrote during COVID during this experience that I just talked about. And line, the second verse just says. I really wrote it as a mantra for myself. And it says, never give up. Never lose hope. Never lose sight of the dreams that you sow. Lean on love Sometimes you have to let some go. You know, sometimes you have breakups. Sometimes you have things that you love to do that don't pan out the way that you had hoped or dreamed or wished. And it's about being okay with that and trying new things. And that's what the course talks about. It's. You know, I wrote it envisioning myself in the thick of when the crap hit the fan, just enjoying the island life of driving at sunset with the windows open or, you know, imagining a convertible top down, just feeling the wind and the freedom and the liberty of that moment and just driving from kind of surf spot to surf spot, jumping in the water and that feeling of freedom, of letting, like, all the kind of cares and the troubles go. So that's where I wrote this. And there's this really cool story about kind of the reckoning of that experience and then writing the song. And then this song getting picked up by a whole bunch of ABC7 played it, and radios across stations across Hawaii started playing it, and California started playing it. And again, I think it just goes back to. You have to write from that point as a musician or an artist. Like, you have to write from that point of vulnerability, because that's when you really connect with people. So that's what the song's about.

All right, this is top down from David Parsons, the third.

Well, I sing top down, look around, go Stop Never gonna know if you'd never try, baby Top down, look around, go Stop Never gonna know if you never fly, baby, higher.

You got to fly higher.

I got the sunshine falling down on me Got blue sky steps far as I see Got the woman of my dream sitting next to me Lean a little closer than you'll see It's a good day if you make it that way have a little faith it'll all be okay Take a deep breath, my friend.

Will I sing top down, go round, go Stop Never gonna know if you'd never try, baby top down, go round, go Stop Never gonna know if you never.

You can hear the rest of that song on all the streaming platforms. Just look for David Parsons iii. I want to sincerely thank my guest, David Parsons. Iii. You can find his music on all streaming platforms or visit his website@davidparsonsiii.com if you want to learn more about me and how I help others learn about leaving a legacy through passive income, visit me@Alan Pavlovsky.com and see you next time on the Legacy All Stars podcast.