175 - The Art of Listening: How It Propelled a CEO to New Heights with Level 9 Virtual Joe Rare
15 Apr 2024 · 32 min
In this episode of Listening with Leaders, host Doug Noll interviews Bill Rare, CEO of Level 9 Virtual and serial entrepreneur. Bill recounts his upbringing in Northern California, early inspiration from Rich Dad Poor Dad, and his first venture selling door‑to‑door knickknacks, which taught him relentless sales skills. He describes how a single virtual assistant hired in 2008 sparked the creation of Level 9 Virtual, a company that builds and runs digital businesses entirely with remote virtual assistants (VAs). Bill explains the core philosophy: design repeatable processes so VAs can operate the business, allowing him to focus on vision and strategy. He outlines his diversified portfolio – a wedding‑venue marketing agency and SaaS platform, a campground digital marketing firm, a freight‑dispatch service run by VAs with a flat‑rate pricing model, and an identity‑resolution data product that matches anonymous website visitors to detailed profiles using bulk‑purchased data. Bill emphasizes the social impact of employing hundreds of Filipino VAs, noting the multigenerational economic ripple effects in their communities. He discusses how low‑cost, high‑skill VA labor enables other entrepreneurs to scale without raising equity. Bill also shares his real‑estate investment approach, aiming to build a legacy of rental properties for his children. The conversation turns to the importance of listening: Bill cites the book Who Not How, stresses that solving problems is about finding the right person, and describes his personal practice of improving listening by asking more questions, even with his children, and launching his own podcast to become a better interviewer. Doug briefly outlines his own listening technique (UCM) used in mediation. The episode closes with Bill’s self‑description as a perpetual learner driven by curiosity.
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Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.
Bill Rare, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO of Level Nine Virtual, which can be found at levelninevirtual.com. But you're also a serial entrepreneur with a whole bunch of digital companies that you created and sold over the years. And so we're going to be interested in hearing about your journey. Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
So we were just talking before the show. You were, you were a, a Californian. Your wife actually was raised not too far from where I live here in the Central Sierra Nevada. Yeah. But you migrated to Bozeman, Montana.
Yes. We're just south of Bozeman, but yes, we're, we're close.
Near the Big Sky Resort down in the canyon there. All right.
Yeah.
Well, tell us a little bit about your backstory.
Oh, you know, I actually— well, I mean, I didn't grow up that far from you either. A couple hours in Northern California. I grew up in the Delta. And, you know, I grew— I guess my entrepreneurial journey kind of started, you know, really took off, I guess, as a blood in me that was just like boiling that I had to do something with. I was— I think I was just about to graduate high school or something or the year before, and I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. And so just the concepts of that book helped me recognize that if you're working for yourself, you have the opportunity to grow your own wealth. If you are working for somebody else, you're growing their wealth. And, you know, I watched my parents— my, you know, my mom was a waitress, my dad was a— my stepdad was a police officer. And, you know, you know, there was just a ceiling, right? They could only go as far as they could go. And I just knew I wanted something different, something more. And I thought, you know, I should do my own thing. And so that was really how it kind of started. And I went to college to play basketball and found out that I wasn't going to play much. I'm 5'11". You know, the NCAA doesn't really— there's not that many 5'11" players out there. So I sat the bench for a year and then decided, you know, I should probably just, you know, do something else. And so college wasn't my thing and I, I ended up starting a business and that was my door-to-door sales era. And, you know, I worked within a company and kind of learned the ropes and then— but yeah, we did door-to-door sales selling knickknacks and widgets and whatever, you know, we had consigned to us for the day and we sold it face-to-face and hardcore rejection and getting kicked out of places and getting the cops called on you. And the way you learn it It was. And it was, you know, I look back now and I say nothing that we do and have could have probably happened without that experience because that really set me up to be able to do sales at any level. And so it was really powerful. And then from there, I grew that company to 40 employees and, and then I sold it. Probably didn't make as much money as I could have because I was in my 20s and didn't know what I was doing. And so then from there I got into real estate and into marketing and all kinds of other stuff. And so that was kind of the journey to get going.
And so where are you today? What you have— you own, I think, 2 or 3 companies.
So we have 6 right now.
6. Okay.
Yeah. Well, technically it's more than that, but our— the biggest company that we have is Level 9 Virtual. It's a virtual assistant services company. And that one, you know, I had my marketing agency and virtual assistants were always a part of my journey. They were always a part of how we operated the companies. And the reason that I used virtual assistants was simply that I'd read another book, The 4-Hour Workweek, and I'd built an e-commerce business using virtual assistants to actually do fulfillment and to manage, you know, manage the team and marketing and all those things. And so I hired my first, my first team member in November of 2008, and I've had a team working with me every single day since. And One day, one of the team members said, hey, you know how you always just tell people how to hire VAs? Why don't you just offer the service? And I'm like, nah, I don't want to do that. And so she said, well, you know, we could just run the company for you. And so then she showed me really what type of a business opportunity I was letting go. And I looked at the numbers and I said, wait a minute, that's like, that's like a real business already. And that's how much I could have been making. I'm like, what am I doing? So we launched the business and then you know, and it scaled really quick. And so we had a lot of success with it.
Wow.
And so yeah, that was the, that was kind of the start of the start. And then, you know, really then the next thing was we figured out a good model that we could use and kind of my claim to fame has been I build businesses that are run by VAs. Ah, and that became the crux. So as soon as we figured out how to create a process, create our operations so that virtual assistants can completely run companies, we can build anything. And so now we build digital companies, basically hands-off virtual companies. And as soon as we can get it to launch and we got our processes down and we've got everything in line, I can step out of the business and the business can be run.
So you sound like you really love creating stuff and then turning over operations.
100%. That is exactly it. I love the visionary side of it. I like the creation, but as soon as it gets to a certain point, Yeah, it just doesn't, it doesn't drive me anymore.
Yeah.
You're not big on operations.
You're big on— No. But what's great is that there's so many people who are amazing at operations. Mm-hmm. And I can let them do it and they get joy out of that. And so then I can turn and I can go do the thing that I'm, you know, most driven towards.
So tell me, you've got a, a bunch of companies going now. Just give us a quick, quick idea of what kind of companies they are and what they do.
Yeah. So we have, uh, so virtual assistants, we have a marketing agency that works with wedding venues. We have a SaaS company, a software as a service company that provides the software for the wedding venues. So those two work hand in hand together. We have a digital marketing company for campgrounds. We have a— the— what the two that we actually started last year were a freight dispatching company, which very strange. This is kind of funny. So my partner in the business, who actually works within Level Nine Virtual as well. He comes to me, says, hey, I have an idea. And I'm like, how much is this going to cost? And he says, he says, I think we should start a dispatching company. And in my head I'm like, I thought he meant like 911 dispatching. And I'm like, I don't think you can just do that. I think there's like regulations around it. And he goes, no, freight, you know, like the truckers and stuff. And I'm just like, all I think about is like, oh, there's like a Walmart over there and there's Amazon over there. They have their own trucks. And he's like, there's so many independent truckers and they use dispatchers to get them the loads so that they could pick up and they can say, hey, I want to go from Las Vegas to Dallas and then I want to end up in, you know, in Salt Lake City. And that route, all the drops in between have to be— it's logistics. And I'm like, I'm not that guy. And he goes, no, no, no, we got it. Virtual assistants can actually do it. And I'm like, you're No way. Sure enough, we got a team of VAs, we got a bunch of truckers, and they pay for our VAs to dispatch for them. And it's a fantastic business.
And is it— is there software involved in it? Do you— we—
not really, no, because it's mainly like load boards and the backend systems that the trucker— that they all use, that the freight brokers use. And it's mainly— it's just, I need to connect this person to that person. Okay, great. You guys agreed on the load, you agreed on the price, done. And you're going, they pick it up, gone. We know that it's done and we're off. It's not a lot of tech.
Wow.
Pretty cool. Yeah, it's actually pretty cool. And then the last business that we have is a, is an identity resolution business. So it's tech-based. It's, it's essentially anonymous website visitors hit your website, the majority of them leave and bounce through and you have no idea who they are.
Right.
Well, we have technology by buying big data, and we can actually match a lot of the visitors that hit your website to user profiles that have been established using hundreds of thousands of millions of data points. And the cool thing is, is, you know, you've gone in and you've opted in to receive some sort of communication from Hulu or Netflix, or you've taken out a car loan, or you bank at Wells Fargo, or any of these companies. They all sell data, all of them. Oh, with those sales of data, we buy data in big bulk and we're matching all of these different data points. When somebody hits your website, we, we pixel them, match them to IP addresses and so forth, and then we establish, hey, this is the most possible data match. And we have name, email, phone number, address, all of the data points so that you can then run marketing to those people.
Wow.
And so that's that. We launched that one last year too.
Where'd that idea— that's a great idea. Where'd it come from?
Well, I've been buying data for a long time and, you know, I kept coming across people who were starting to kind of dig into this. But the problem was, was the way data was delivered, it was, it just, it was cumbersome. So we would buy all of this data and then it's like, well, how do you use it?
Right?
You know, you got to, you've got to be able to figure out how to use like a SHA-256 email address or you have to be able to, take this data and put it into a CRM and try to run marketing there. And nothing was automated. And so it became work for somebody to do it. And then the other side of it was it was cost prohibitive. It was very expensive to buy that much data. And then, you know, now just with AI and all of this technology, we can, we can make it happen.
So, wow.
And there you go.
And you're, and you're masterminding all of this from Big Sky, Montana.
Yeah, this is where the magic— I don't know if this is where the magic happens, but this is where something happens. I'm using a lot of brainpower. I know that.
So you stay pretty busy during the day?
Well, I mean, I don't— I don't operate the company, so I'm not— you know, it's like my, my job is to be with my kids, to be with my family, and that's my focus. And, you know, then I spend all of my extra time, I guess, either snowmobiling if there's good snow or, you know, thinking through like, you know, I, In each of the companies, my role is a strategic advisor and an investor, which is great. So I get to play visionary and I get to be creative in that sense. So I say, hey, where's the company today and where do we want it to go? Here's how we should probably get there. Please go execute. And then the team goes and executes. Well, I deploy resources, whether it's human capital or financial capital, whatever that might be, so that they can go execute. And then we review, we decide if it was a success, and then we go from there.
Are you pretty much self-financed?
Yeah, 100%.
Wow.
I've never taken a dollar of investment money.
Wow. That's amazing. Yep. Nice, huh? You don't owe anybody anything.
Yeah. I mean, you know, my mortgage company, but that's about it. Yeah, that's leverage, right? That's leverage.
And so, so, so what is it that gets you up in the morning? It gets you really excited about your businesses?
Well, we've got to cut— we've got two sides to it. There is the fact that we employ hundreds and hundreds of people, you know, primarily in the Philippines.
Mhm.
And the trickle-down effect in, you know, in that culture is so much more dramatic than it is anywhere else that I've, that I've experienced in the world. So you can have one person who works for you who's responsible for 3 households of people, meaning, you know, we have one person who works in our company who who his brother and his family live with them, his mom and like, you know, other siblings live with them, and they've got like 3 different generational groups of people living in one house under one income. And we happen to be the one who employs that. Then that— then what happens there is then you get that one person who then brings their brother in to work with us. Then we get a sister and we get a cousin, and, you know, we have 8 family members who all work within our company. So our impact into the community is gigantic. And that part of me is like, I don't know how I could give back more than employing people and giving them opportunity. And, you know, we get to say like, hey, we're one of the, the best paying virtual assistant companies that exist. So we pay our team very well. And so for me, that opportunity is huge. And then on the flip side of it, with clients as an example, we get to provide cost-leveraged service. And I think back to, you know, you start a business, one of the hardest parts is there's all of these things you need to do in your business to get it going. Well, you're either the master of all of them or you need to hire for the things you're not skilled at. Well, the problem is the moment you hire somebody, you have no more money. So do you go give up equity and go try to raise capital? Most people can't do that. And so they remain small and they never get to, you know, live out their full potential as their business. Well, using virtual assistants allows them to have lower cost labor, same skill set or better, in my opinion. And we provide the opportunity for them to create leverage in their business and actually allow it to flourish where it should be, giving them the opportunity to have genuine freedom.
Wow.
So those two things are pretty, pretty important to me.
Right. Huh. So what do you— how do you just see yourself doing this, continuing to create businesses and create stuff down the road until you get tired of it?
Well, it's, you know, when, when a problem— a lot of the times it's, it's when a problem gets brought to my attention, I'm like, you know, that's not really that hard to solve, or I think I could solve it. Then all we do is we try it and we figure it out. You know, the one of the biggest things was with the freight dispatching. It was a, it was a huge challenge because freight dispatching, a lot of times they do this model where they take a percentage of every, of every shipment, every load. Well, that's very prohibitive to the driver. They know for a fact, no matter what, I'm going to lose X percent of my, of my income going to a freight dispatcher that no matter how big or small the load is, they're just doing the same work.
Right.
And so that's challenging. Well, so what we looked at is like, well, what are their biggest headaches? Number one, it's service. They don't get great service. We could solve that problem by, by going over the top because we can get labor for less so we can provide more service, more attention, and then we could actually cut the cost and make it a flat rate so that they have the same rate every single week regardless. And we charge them weekly. And so they know, like, no matter what, here's my cost. And that's it. I have a flat monthly cost. It's not going to vary. It's not going to go up and down. It's not a percentage of income. It's flat rate. And they know that they're going to get really good service. It's going to be the same rate. And we never lose clients. Like, it's amazing. And so when I look at that problem, we were able to solve each of those problems simply by saying we could just do it better. And that's how we got involved in it.
How many, how many truckers do you have?
Subscribed?
I want to say we're up to like 60 or something.
Wow.
Yeah. So not bad.
Yeah, not bad, but not many. And it's turning money.
Well, I mean, think we haven't even been in business for 6 months.
Wow.
So what's that?
And you got 60 truckers and we don't. Yeah.
And it's all run, you know, the entire company is run by one guy who has his team. And he's in the Philippines and he's incredible. And so we don't like— I don't talk to truckers. We don't, right? Yeah, we never have any conversation whatsoever. So it's pretty, it's pretty amazing.
Wow. Yeah, that is.
So I just, I enjoy finding a problem and then figuring out a solution. We just keep doing it.
And you're young, you're going to keep doing it, keep making money, have fun.
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's, uh, we what our focus is, is, you know, the businesses provide us the opportunity to invest in real estate. And so we buy rental properties and things like that. And down the line, that'll be the legacy that I leave for my children is they'll have a portfolio of real estate, hopefully. And, you know, hopefully they take care of that. And who knows what the world's going to hold. So we better continue to acquire assets.
Yeah. Like we were talking before, buy land, right? Buy dirt.
I mean, yeah, it's I know we just keep looking. We're like, I don't know how things are going to turn. It may just be one of those things. You have to just keep buying dirt and keep, keep acquiring.
So are your real estate investments all over the place or are they located west?
Yeah, yeah, unfortunately. Well, maybe fortunately, I don't know. Yeah, we had a property in Northern California outside of Loomis in a small town called Penryn, and my wife was just back there because one of them is an Airbnb. And they just got nailed with that storm.
Right.
And so she was there for it. Power's out every day, you know, and no internet and, you know, a crack in our window and like all— I mean, it's just like it was just constant. So there's some of those things that are not fun, some things that, you know, but on the, on the flip side of it, I mean, real estate's been a great asset to hold. We've done well with them, so we just continue there. And it's simple. You know, I'm a pretty simple guy, so if the business model gets too complicated, then it doesn't interest me very much. And so somebody said it one time, I don't know where I read it or heard it, that if the business model is complicated in the beginning, it'll, as it scales, it's only going to get exponentially more complicated. So if it starts out very, very simple, it gains complexity anyway. So you might as well keep it as simple as possible for as long as possible.
So do you have your VAs running your property management firm too?
No, I have them prospect for properties though.
Okay.
Yeah. So we don't have them doing property management. Most of the properties we actually oversee ourselves. Yeah, but you know, then we contract, we have, you know, plumbers and contractors.
Sure. Right.
You know, handymen and all that kind of stuff. But for the most part, we try to do all of them ourselves.
And it sounds like you're mostly investing in housing.
Yes. Yeah, single family. Yeah. Yeah. The plan is, is to grow into multifamily and get into commercial, you know, residential eventually. Yeah. And it's just, you know, the market's weird. Montana, you know, where we are, you know, it's as expensive as lots of most of California, right?
It's crazy.
It's— yeah, it's unbelievable. And so I haven't spent enough time, you know, really evaluating those deals on multifamily. Just simply because I had, you know, it's like, well, it's winter and then all I want to do is snowmobile. But yet that's like a downtime when people aren't really making moves because it's winter and you can't see the ground. And, you know, and I'm probably missing opportunities because I'd rather snowmobile than hunt.
Well, you should have some good weather coming in the next couple of days. It slammed us here in California, that's for sure.
Yeah, well, I'm hoping maybe it'll just keep coming. I mean, it's snowing today. I see it's snowing now, so I'm hoping it keeps, keeps dumping because I'm supposed to snowmobile here soon.
Well, there you go. Yeah. So this show is called Listing with Leaders, and you've had a really interesting and what I would call a very different career trajectory than many business owners. How important has listing been as you've progressed in your career?
Well, it's the way we find the answers to every problem that, that presents itself. So it kind of coincides. Have you ever heard of the book Who Not How?
No.
Fascinating book. I keep referencing it every time I'm interviewed on a podcast because it's just been hitting me so much more. We always look for like what we're going to do or how we're going to do something to create an answer to a problem, get a solution, you know, execute X, Y, Z. It's never the what or the how. It's always who. And what's interesting is that there's always a person, there's always a connection, there's always a network somebody somewhere that's going to put you in the position or connect you with the right person or be the right person to provide the solution to execute every single time. If you think of any big problem that you come across, you're like, oh man, I need to figure out how to— you know, we did a deal, we need to do a bridge loan, right? To finance a deal. And it was who? It wasn't the bridge loan. It was who had the capital. And that became, that became the answer. Was that person. And, um, if I were to back up, it wasn't that person, it was the person who introduced me to that person that became the solution. And so I, I, I think about all of these problems, and when it comes to listening, it's the answer is always in hearing what other people's, uh, you know, like, potential solutions are. It's hearing what the market is telling you about trends, about a service, about the needs of businesses, about the economy. Being in the wedding industry as an example, we get to watch what's happening with why bookings are slow. Well, bookings are slow because of— we found out as we listen to our clients, we listen to our prospects, we listen to the venues that are out there. The market is the, you know, is a challenge. It's scary for people. Well, if we just decided just to keep pumping advertising and doing our thing and we didn't actually sit down and actually hear what the market's telling us, we would have no success and we would waste a lot of money and probably hurt, you know, hurt our clients. The listening aspect of all of business is the answer to every question that comes up. And so it's been, it's been important. I always get told I talk a lot and I do. But one of the things that's been successful that's, that's really helped is the fact that when I'm with prospects and clients and so forth, I ask an enormous amount of questions and I don't want to be the most intelligent person in the room. I want to learn. And the only way you learn is by listening. And so for me, I don't know if that answers the question, but that's how it's really made an impact is I've had to learn because I do talk a lot. I've had to learn to ask more questions than speak.
And so it's been hard for you because you—
oh, super hard. Super hard. It's super hard. I get, I get caught all the time and I sit, sit around and, and I'm like, oh my God, like how much I just spoke is crazy. You know, if it wasn't on somebody else's podcast, it'd be obnoxious, you know? And so I have to, I have to work really hard to sit back and go, okay, let me ask questions. And one of the ways actually that I challenge myself to do it is taking my kids to school in the morning and I ask them questions over and over and over and I try to have them fill the conversation and I want to hear what are they saying, how are they saying it, like what does it feel to them as they're speaking it and some of those things. And so I'm learning and I'm getting better at it, I hope. And then like one last thing I'll leave is, you know, I'm starting a podcast here this year and we've been really kind of going through that organization process and building things out. And one of the reasons I really want to do it is so that I can stop talking and start listening more. And I think it'll actually do me really good for self-development and my own growth if I could be good at asking questions and be a better interviewer than an interviewee.
Right.
Because I think I can tell a great story and I can probably tell, you know, like how to do all these things that we— but I, but I don't know that I'm the best at interviewing other people yet. So I want to do that.
Right.
Well, you'll learn.
Yeah.
You'll learn to ask really open-ended questions.
Right.
And let people run with it.
And that's one of the reasons that I also do this as research for myself, is I get on interviews and I say, okay, well, when I get to go relisten to it, that was a good question that he asked. Oh, and then he penetrated it deeper with this second question. And it's stuff like that I really want to learn because there's amazing interviewers out there and, you know, and it takes a lot of practice and I'd love to get better at it.
Yeah, I came into this. This is my second— my first podcast ran from 2006 to 2009, and it was— that was before the word podcast was even invented. Where they internet radio in those days.
Yeah, yeah.
And then I, uh, started this one a year ago. But I think what makes it a little easier for me is I was a trial lawyer for 22 years, so you just— I tried a ton of trials, and so, you know, I know how to ask questions.
Yeah, no, it's, it's fascinating. Yeah, I'll have to have you on as a guest so that you could get the reverse treatment.
What I do, what I do, which I think you'll be really interested in, is I teach people How to Listen to Emotions Rather Than to Words.
Okay.
And when you learn how to pay attention to people's feelings and then you reflect back what they're feeling using a UCM, like you're really angry or you're really frustrated, it has a profound effect on the speaker. They, if they're really upset or irritated, it immediately calms them down and they can't help themselves. So it's a de-escalation technique that I developed. I developed that because one of the things that I use, I'm a professional mediator. So I walk into these intense conflicts and people are hiring me to help them get the get a matter resolved. And I had to have a way to get people calmed down. So I just came across this by luck 20 years ago, and it's been life-changing.
That's interesting.
So that's what I do. And so Listening with Leaders is sort of— I've learned how important listening is so that I can listen.
How—
not everybody says listening is important, but the question is, how do they know how to listen? And what do they listen for? And to your point, I mean, you're very open and authentic.
Say, well, yeah, well, you know, I mean, to— I'll call it to my I think to everybody's defense, I don't think listening is taught.
No, it's not.
You know, you're taught to sit down, shut up, and I'm going to tell you.
That's right.
But that's not like, okay, listen, internalize, reflect, and be able to then articulate what came out of that.
Exactly correct. And that is a skill that can be taught. And the thing that's really amazing is it doesn't take long. Once somebody shows you how to do it.
Yeah.
It's a skill that you can master very quickly. Typically, my clients learn in about 6 weeks. So it's really fast. Okay. So that's why, that's why I get interested in it because I just, I, to me, it's kind of the foundational skill of life. When you know how to listen, then everything else in life flows from that.
Well, I like, you know, beyond business, business is fine, but, you know, you think about the leader side of it where you lead your family and how much better of a What better father could I be if I learned more effectively to listen to my children?
That's right.
You know, as a, as a husband to my wife.
Right. Absolutely.
You know, and so forth. And yeah, that's it. That, that's, gosh, that opens up so many doors.
It does. That's why I love it. It's fun.
Yeah.
All right. One more question. I'll let you go.
Yeah, please.
Oh, what, Joseph, what's one thing about yourself? That we would never know about unless you revealed it to us? One thing.
Oh man, this is a tough question. I don't know. I'm a— I guess I mean, I mean, I feel like people could figure this out, is that I'm a learner, so I can obsess over learning something. Because I just have to figure it out. And so I love the idea of a concept that could solve a problem in life, in the family, in investing, in business. And I can go down a rabbit hole and I can immerse myself to ungodly ends to master it in a very short period of time. And I don't know that many people necessarily know that specifically about me, but I think that's helped me with a lot of the growth and the, and the opportunities that are presenting themselves. Because I, you know, for a lot, I don't have a ton of experience sitting in a boardroom with billionaires. But tomorrow I literally go— I fly down to Vegas this evening and I sit in it. I sit in it. So there's a new hotel called Fontainebleau in Las Vegas. It just opened however many weeks or a couple of months ago. And I'm sitting down with the owners of the hotel to do a deal. And I've never sat in front of billionaires before and I have zero concern about it. Like, it's going to be the easiest thing in the world. And I think that's just because I've, you know, played this game where I've learned what do masters do in these types of negotiations, in these types of deals, and whether I've ever done something to that degree or not, it's— I feel like I've put myself through the wringer enough times, you know, whether it be, you know, visualization or whether it's been on a smaller scale.. And I feel like, you know, that massive learning curve and, uh, is something a lot of people don't realize that I'm obsessed over.
I would say that you have an insatiable curiosity.
Yes.
That's a good way to put it.
And that's, uh, and that's what drives you.
Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely, it's definitely curiosity. I mean, and, and what's, what's, what's magnificent is to watch it in my children. Oh, cool. Watch their curiosity. And then, um, You know, it's really tough because parents, you know, we get busy and we get all this, but I've tried throughout their life to be very, very good at allowing that curiosity, allowing them to ask obnoxious questions, allowing them to just try something different and new and, and all those things just to see. And, uh, so I hope, I guess I had it since I was a kid. I hope that I'm doing a good job with my kids about that, but sounds like you are.
Well, thanks for being on the show.
Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
You're welcome.
Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnoell.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please Please share this episode on social media. Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.
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