Start Before You’re Ready and Let Confidence Catch Up with Davide “Davi” De Pierro

How do you speak life into somebody else that wants to make a jump and to try something new, to write a book, to start creating content, but they can't bear to put themselves on video? What advice can you give to someone to make a transition?

It always looks impossible until it happens. You know, whoever out there is thinking, I can't do this, I can't do that. That's just a story that you're telling yourself. It's not based on in reality, it's not based in fact. My story prior to six months ago was also, oh, TikTok or videos. What are you nuts? It suddenly becomes very obvious and very doable once it happens. You have to fight through that doubt. You have to fight through the feelings of maybe a little bit of embarrassment. You can't wait for the doubts or the uncertainties to disappear in order to begin. You have to begin while you're still not so sure. And then you'll be rewarded for that effort and you'll gain confidence as you go because you'll suddenly see the result and say, wow, now I believe in myself because I see it.

Come on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow.

I'm ready for my close up.

Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited you're here with me this week. I'm so excited for this episode. You have no idea. Okay, I want to welcome my guest today, Davide. Let's hope I don't completely debauch his name dipiaro, which I did, but okay, he's better than Navi on TikTok and Instagram. He is a writer, a storyteller, and he's exploring questions of love, relationships and heartbreak with playful seriousness. He's freaking hilarious. He has a following of over 4 million across TikTok and Instagram. He is a voice for those navigating love, memory and loss. And he is also a newly defined as an author. He's also a lawyer, which I had no idea. Happy day. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks so much, Heather. I'm excited to be here.

Oh, my. I can't take it. Okay, you guys, if you have not followed him on Instagram before, first of all, where have you been, like, come to life? I watched you, Davide, like, scale and blow up in the past. I guess it's six months. It's unl, like astronomical growth. What has been going on with you?

I don't know what's Been going on prior to starting this exactly around six months ago, first on TikTok, and then eventually I carried it into Instagram maybe three months ago. I was, as someone used to say about me, chronically offline. I was that guy that girls say they want, the one that doesn't use social media. That's like, the new thing now. Oh, find yourself a guy that doesn't use social media. But I. I just randomly tried it one day because I want to give credit where credit's due. A girl I was dating at the time said, you know, you should try TikTok. And I said, what, are you out of your mind? At the time, I was 37. I'm 38 now, so I was like, 37. I'm gonna do what? I'm gonna make videos about what? Am I gonna dance? I'm gonna. I'm gonna. There's nothing I can do. I'm gonna take my shirt off or something. And. And she said, no, no, just talk about whatever you want. And so I did exactly that. One day, I, I. I went into the car because I wanted the privacy of not being seen. I was so ashamed that I was actually doing it. And now the car is a thing. People enjoy seeing me in the car, but I went into the car just for the privacy of it, and I just started talking about whatever was on my mind, the kind of things I would talk about with friends, you know, and it kind of immediately just took off. And it's been. You're right, it's been. It's been a trajectory that I think is uncommon from what people are telling me in terms of the speed of it. So I don't know what's going on, but people seem to like it. I think mainly I'm just saying what. People relate to what's already on their mind. And maybe I'm saying it in a way that they find entertaining or enlightening, I don't know. But I just have fun with it, really. And it's just. It's easy for me because it's just me being myself.

Oh, my gosh.

I love that for you. I'm so excited for you. Okay, so this was. I was stalking you. I call it stalking when I start DMing people. I don't know. I was stalking you online, trying to get you to do the show. And when we first spoke, you explained to me, you have this whole, whole other life, which was really shocking to me because. And this happens to me a lot when people follow you online. They only know what they see online. So they think that's everything. Right. So for me, I just. I know your personality from Instagram, from your videos, from your lives, and I think I know you. However, I'm hoping you can enlighten everybody on your backstory and this other side of your life that people don't see online.

Yeah. I want to say, first of all, that the person that I am online is not, so far as a character, because I know that for some people, they put on a complete different character online. Maybe they even have a different accent, and that's fine. And they're having fun with it. They're playing a role. The person I am in those videos is one of the people that I really am. In other words, I mean, we all have a little bit of a multiple personality going on, and especially, you may have heard the phrase, it's become popular as of late, code switching, which is when people have kind of different dialects depending on who they're hanging out with. So. So when I'm hanging out with my Jersey boys at the diner, I sound exactly like I do in the video. But when I'm in court, so I'm a lawyer. When I'm in court, obviously, I'm not saying, hey, your honor, listen, you know, the defendant is guilty. You know, I'm talking a different dialect. Perhaps my accent gets slightly toned down, though I'm certain it's still very Jersey. And so I have different parts of me that are not in the videos. The most obvious, I guess, would be what I really do well, what I have done for the last 14 years, which is I'm an attorney. But what I've always wanted to be is a storyteller, a writer. And I just never thought that I would actually do it. I thought that I would just keep it all to myself. And then when this social media virality happened, it occurred to me, oh, my goodness, there's these millions of people now who seem to like me. Maybe I can show them what I'm writing. And that's exactly what I did. I published. It's an audiobook for now. I also thought that would be best for now because my followers know me through my face and my voice. Rather than giving them something in print, I thought it would be a little bit more intimate if they could hear me. And so I recorded an audiobook. It's called the Letters I Never Sent. You can find the link in my bios on TikTok or Instagram.

And.

And basically, it's the backstory of the content because it explores all of the same themes What I speak most about in the content is relationships, dating, love, romance, and all that comes with that. And really, this is almost like as if I published my journal. Essentially, it's something that I've written for years. I've been writing it for over 10 years, and like I said, I was just going to keep it to myself. And now that I'm no longer chronically offline and people know that I exist, I figured, you know what? Let me give them something else in case they want to know more. And so far, people have been loving it, and that's really exciting for me. It feels validating, obviously, when people enjoy what you're doing, what you're saying. And I'm excited to show people more of me because the videos are inherently comical. But great comedy, I think, is just saying something serious in a funny way. And so what I do in the book is I delve a little bit more deeply and profoundly, and I hope emotionally in the same subject matter. And so far, the returns have been. Have been positive. People are really liking it. People are really enjoying it. And so that's. That's great. And I hope more people. Hope more people check it out, because I think it's. It's really, really great.

Oh, my gosh. Your content's amazing. Your book's amazing.

Okay.

But thank you for explaining that. However, I want to come back for a minute. Let's run this back. So one of the things I think is cool, when we spoke offline, you talk a lot about your family, the importance of family to you, like, what that means to you, if you could talk a little. Because I think that shows, like, a whole unique side of you, especially in this day and age, around the importance of family, how you got into law. Just give us, like, a brief overview.

Oh, you know, certainly, certainly. Yeah. So I'm Italian, so family is incredibly significant. We've always eaten together. We've always done everything together. Everyone is always around. Sometimes that's too much. But, yeah, there's just pros and cons to everything. My father became an attorney later in life, in his 30s, which is interesting to me now because now I'm in my 30s, and it's, you know, to realize that he started being a lawyer at that age is incredible still, that he reinvented himself later in life, and so he became a lawyer in his 30s.

You're reinventing yourself at the same age he did, but go ahead.

Yeah, exactly. A bit of a different reinvention. Although he is supportive of my online presence, he's excited about it as well. But the reason I became a lawyer is because I just followed what essentially at that time had become the family business. It was basically like a pizzeria. But lawyers, it was a family business because my father, after he worked for a brief moment with some larger firms, eventually decided, I'm going to open up my own thing. He opened up his own practice. My older brother, who went to law school before me, followed suit. And then it just became clear to me, not really knowing what I wanted to do. All right, I guess I'm just going to follow along and join the family business, which just so happens to be law. So. Yeah, so for years I've worked with my father, with my brother. There was a period of time we even had my best friend working with us. Then he moved on to another firm. So you can imagine it was just like a hangout and we were practicing law simultaneously. So, uh, yeah, that, that, that's how I got into it. It's. It's just my usual tendency to be with family, which I think is a part of me. Uh, we're also. I come from a very religious family. Um, my parents have always. From the day I was born, we were going to church on Sundays. So when you add the mixture of religious family and an Italian family, it all just was a perfect storm for the fact that I was unable to at any point distance myself. But we'll. We'll see how that goes. Now. Now I'm starting to break away a little bit. But they're. But they're still involved. They're excited. They' I'm doing this and I haven't quit my job yet, to be clear.

Yet being the operative word. So explain me this because I find this interesting. Someone who. I reinvented myself at 43. And there's a lot, at least for myself and for a lot of people I know there's a lot of trepidation around. We have an identity with a job. So you as a lawyer, me as a former C suite in corporate America. Right. Like, you start identifying in that way. And to actually jump from that, leap from that and say, okay, now I'm going to go try this new thing. I could fail. I don't know how I'll do with that. For a lot of people, that's super scary. How has that transition been for you?

Honestly, for me, it is a welcome transition. I've always hoped I could find something else to be passionate about. I always knew it had something to do with storytelling. I didn't quite think it would happen this Way, there were times where I thought maybe it would never happen. But for me, the transition is only exciting. Now. It could be that I come from a very entrepreneurial background with, with my father, who was always starting a new business, who was always reinventing himself. I mean, my father, at 18, marries my mother and goes from New Jersey to Italy. And he starts a business In Italy at 18 years old, you know, which is a high school diploma and barely any. Any Italian language skills. Then a few years pass by and we come back here and one thing leads to the next, and next thing you know, he's trying law school. So I had a family that instilled in me a sense of possibility, a sense that you can always do something different, that it's never too late to reinvent yourself. And there's a line that my father would often quote. I think it may be from George Eliot, but if not, I'll just quote my father who says that it's never too late to be who you might have been. And I think that we all harbor so many different facets. We are not one dimensional. We're not just a lawyer, we're not just a father, we're not just a son. We can be so many things in this life. And life is long. It's the longest thing we do. And I think that we, we shouldn't be afraid to try something even as silly as doing a video in your car, because anything could happen. And for me, it seems, in fact, like now anything is possible. So it's exciting.

That is. That's so exciting. Okay, so let's get to your content. Thank you for the backstory. Look, your content is hilarious and it coming from, I think I'm so funny. Your content is like every time hilarious and so dry, sarcastic, like, you kill it. The weirdest thing for me is that, and I know for a lot of my friends, in a world where everyone's out dating and so many of these guys are completely clueless morons, how do you know what's going on? You know, everything that's going on in every. Like, are you actually a 45 year old woman? I don't know, like, who is feeding you this information?

School us a little bit.

Listen, I wish that I could tell you that there was a secret. The closest thing I can come to giving credit elsewhere is the fact that I did grow up around a lot of women. My mother was the eldest of nine and five of which were girls. So I had a ton of aunts. And again, being an Italian family, because sometimes people might Think, okay, great, you have an aunt, so what, you see them at Thanksgiving? No, that's not the way it works with us, okay? These women raised me, okay? They were always around, we were always together. We spent so much time together. And then as I got older, the conversations obviously got more profound and deeper. And then we would talk about dating and they would give me advice and I would tell them I had a crush and they would say, well, this is what you ought to do. So I certainly had a lot of guidance in my life from women beyond that. I think some of it is intrinsic. Perhaps I came into the world this way. I'm observant, I'm neurotic, I'm hyper self aware. So I'm always seeing myself outside myself. And I think that certainly causes anxiety at times, but it also causes an ability to understand what's happening around you or at least take note of it and be informed by it. So I pay attention, I pay attention, I listen, I try to learn. And so I guess I've just accumulated some understanding. I don't think I really have all the answers. I've never positioned myself as a relationship guru or a coach of some kind. I don't think I ever would. I just say the things that I think should be obvious and which is why the character, again it's not fully a character. It is a side of me in the car or elsewhere. Now I'm even doing the videos in other places. I think he comes across as so exhausted because he is saying what he thinks should be obvious and all the women commenting agree is obvious. But somewhere along the way someone is missing this. And what I do is I speak directly to men, which is, I think interesting. The character is speaking to men, but it's mainly women who are consuming it and just like high fiving each other. Which is fine, I think it's fun. But yeah, I don't know, I think that's the best I can respond to where I get this from and is.

It the same for you in real life? Like so, for example, you're out on the weekend hanging with your guys, they all don't get it and you just get it.

That is what I find interesting. I don't know many men who don't get it. So my friends are fairly like minded. I know people are not going to say give us, send us their name and numbers, but they're fairly like minded. We have these conversations together. Really the things I talk about and in the videos are exactly the things I talk talk about with my friends. When we're hanging out at the diner. In fact, when this all happened, they started saying, I can't believe that you're going viral. Literally just saying the things that we talk about whenever we hang out. But I don't know where these men are, but I know that they're out there. I've heard of them, but for the most part I want to give credit to my friends and say that they're fairly well adjusted men. You know, we got some problems and nobody's perfect, but they're typically intelligent and empathetic and not totally clueless.

Meet a different guest each week.

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I asked you to try to find your passion. Okay so. So that's good to know. There are others out there. All right for the win. Davide, what about this? As anyone knows, when you start growing an online audience, haters are going to come. It's just something that part for the course. We know that. Are you getting hate and are you ever getting hate from former girls you dated saying like oh, why didn't you show up that way when we dated?

That's a great question. So I have to be honest again. As I said earlier, I was always offline, but I always heard about how scary a place the Internet is and how there's so much bullying. And honestly, I have gotten 99% positive feedback. Occasionally you'll get a comment, always from a guy that'll say something along the lines of oh, you're pandering to girls. Oh you're such a simp. Which I had to look up because I'm 38. I have to look up the Internet language, but that's so few and far between that I hardly ever even notice. Generally the comments are positive. I seem to generally just be in a little bubble of people who like me, so I'm protected from that. As far as my exes go, maybe this is controversial, but maybe it shouldn't be. I have good relationships with them. They're all very excited about this. I've Only had two serious exes. So I've dated many girls. But I've had two real, what I consider girlfriends where you actually, you know, did life together. And both of them are super excited. And I think they would probably not say a bad word about me. Not because the relationship was perfect, but because I think there was a general understanding between us that we were all trying our best. No one was malicious, no one was thoughtless. We made mistakes. But I have a, I have a really good memory of both of them and they do of me too. So they say. Because again, I speak with them. You know, who might disagree with the Persona in the content? Some girls that I casually dated, you know. Well, why didn't you keep following up? Well, why don't you keep dating me? Well, why didn't you respond? For the same reasons that we didn't become a couple. Evidently. We just, you know, we didn't connect well enough for me to continue to see you or speak to you. And that's, I think that's different. But I don't think I've ever been malicious to someone or thoughtless to someone that I was seriously dating. May I have been a little bit careless in my casual dating? I'm sure that I have. And to them I issue a formal apology here and now. Please don't come after me.

Okay.

Something interesting that you said is that you would never give relationship advice. And what's funny is after following your content, I always start thinking to myself once I knew that, you know, formerly were a lawyer, still are a lawyer for the moment, but that obviously you have this trajectory ahead of you and it's so obvious that you're going to spin off out of what your current main job is to doing something very different. I can see that clearly. But for me, what I anticipated you would say is that you would start getting into coaching women online, like having a show where you're giving feedback. But you said obviously you're not qualified to do that. To me, it's like the obvious next step for you.

You know, I don't want to close the door to that. You know, I was being self deprecating as usual. That's just my, my general tone. But I could see myself potentially doing some kind of a show. I don't know what that looks like now, but I don't know that I would enjoy coaching. So I don't know if I would go that far. Anything is possible. But I've never wanted to be a teacher. I love the literature. I was a literature student in college. And one of the options was, okay, I could go be a professor. But I thought the, the idea of having to teach people something felt like it would really trigger my impatience. So I just followed my father, my brother, and went into the law. But where I could be less patient with people and just tell them what to do. But, you know, anything is possible. I just, I don't think I want to position myself as a guru, coach, mentor, but, but in terms of having a show, that's. That I see differently because that would allow me to still do what I do enjoy doing, which is just entertaining and storytelling and sharing ideas and thoughts and connecting. And I feel a little bit safer in that space rather than being responsible for people. And you know, well, he told, he told me to do this and it didn't work out. And now I don't mean that's a lawyer in me too, trying to be risk averse. Try not to have liabilities here. But yeah, I don't know, we'll see. Anything is possible, Heather, as we know as one. One minute you're a lawyer or you're working in corporate America, and then the next minute, you know, you're in your beautiful kitchen having a conversation with me.

So, okay, so I like that you were able to make this leap so quickly with confidence into this online world and, you know, blow up so quickly. Then for you to take that leap of faith and say, okay, wait a minute, now I think I'm gonna bring my journal forward and turn this into a book. What did that look like? And how did you make that decision to actually do that?

For me, it was as simple as an eagerness to begin to position myself the way I see myself. And so what was happening online, though, it was exciting and was opening up doors, I didn't want to let it get so far where I was going to be pigeonholed into, oh, this guy's a comedian. I never considered myself a comedian again. That's another thing that could happen someday. Maybe I'll do some comedic writing or maybe some stand up. I don't know. It's not, it's not being ruled out. I'm being approached with things like that and we'll see what happens. But I wanted to very quickly take this audience and bring them into the thing I care about most, which is real profound storytelling. Not just as a one minute videos that are fun and entertaining and even helpful, I think. But I wanted to give them the thing that I think I do best. I didn't want to limit myself to just these videos. And I saw it as an opportunity. I saw it as an opportunity to finally let the world know, look, this is what I also do and care about. And I hope you'll care about it, too. And so that's what I did, and we'll see where it goes.

So let's talk a little bit about the letters I never sent. I want to hear some feedback that you're getting from people on it.

Like I said before, I'm getting nothing but love. Honestly, I haven't gotten one message saying, hey, the book was trash. Can I get a refund? So, which I think, you know, when you're selling a product of any kind, of. To be batting a thousand, I think is not typical, but everyone is loving it. I get messages saying, this book is so beautiful. You made me think about my own experiences. I found it to be healing. I found it to be therapeutic. I connected to it. It felt like you were retelling my own stories. All of this kind of feedback, which just makes it all worthwhile because, I mean, at the end of the day, when you're writing something again, it could be a video where you're trying to make people laugh, or it can be a more serious or more profound work. What you hope for, the best case scenario, is that there's a universality to it, that it connects with people everywhere and anywhere, that there's a timelessness to it that has some value. And so far, the reception has been one that seems to be recognizing value. And that's a dream scenario for me. Like I said, I never even thought anybody would read this. I never thought anybody would read anything I had to say. And so for. Not only to. Not only to have thousands of people already reading it, but loving it and wanting more and asking me, when is the print coming out? And when is the one, you know, is it going to be another one? Is there a part two? Are there more letters? That enthusiasm is validating and affirming. So I'm excited to see that it's going so well.

Did you find it and I've written two books, and I find writing books more challenging for me than, you know, doing a podcast or doing a video. Did you find it more challenging to write, or do you find it easier to write and more challenging to create content online?

I think it's harder to write, write something more significant. Again, I don't. I don't want to delegitimize the videos. Obviously, there's value and relatability there as well, but it is ultimately more fun and entertaining and at times just flat out funny. But writing something really emotional or kind of cathartic too. I mean, the act of writing something so personal, I think also helps you navigate that memory and those experiences. There's a difficulty to that. It's no different than, you know, journaling when you're doing therapy. I mean, that's a different kind of writing than something a bit more easygoing and relaxed and fun. So, yeah, I would agree with you that a project like a book is certainly more taxing physically, emotionally, mentally. Just the work itself is more difficult than making a video, at least for me. I know other people struggle with the videos, right? But for me, it comes pretty easily because, like I said, I. Reinventing the wheel. I'm not doing anything incredibly gimmicky. I'm doing one take. There's no edits, there's no lighting. There's no, like, dexy camera work. I'm just holding my phone like I'm on FaceTime, saying something for a minute and getting out. And so that. That. That comes really easy, easily. To me, the book was. Was definitely a much harder work, but it was definitely a labor of love. I loved making the book and I couldn't wait to put it out there.

What about the element of vulnerability for you with the book? Was that an issue and feeling fearful of putting it out?

I certainly knew that there would be people that would assume the book is entirely autobiographical. And so I did impart fear. I definitely was concerned that people would assume, oh, this is a memoir, this is exactly the story of his life, and that's just not true. There is some fiction to it, there's some editorializing, some romanticizing. At the end of the day, I set out to do a work of fiction, but like all fiction, it's still based on facts. It's still based on your experiences, it's still based on your observations on the things you've gone through and the things you've picked up along the way. I didn't completely invent a new world. So there's an interplay in the book between romances I've actually had, women I've actually met and things that are entirely fictitious or a bit different than the truth. So notwithstanding the fact that I know that, I presume that a lot that most people would think this is just the story of my life. And of course, that did make me feel a little uneasy. But I just wanted to do it anyway, hoping that the worst case scenario, they think it is my life, and so what? As long as they enjoy it and they think it's a beautiful work and it's helpful to them in some way. They can think it's a memoir and I'll be fine with that.

Who should buy this book? Who did you write the book for?

Wow. I think I wrote the book mainly for myself. It was a way to work through the things I've gone through and experienced, which are in no way unique. They are the things that we all go through, like, just like the videos. I'm never saying anything groundbreaking. I'm saying the things that we all understand and have gone through. And so in writing the book for myself, it's also for everyone, because there is no other story to tell. We all go through the same experience. It's just slightly different. There's different names, there's different places. But ultimately, what it means to be a human being has been and will always be the same for everyone and anyone everywhere. And so when you're talking about love and relationships and romance and dating and heartache and loss and reconnecting with someone and your first love and your last love, everyone has experienced this in some fashion. And so I think the book is for anyone who wants to remember, who wants to think about their own lives, who wants to connect with someone else who has endured love and loss, you know, youthful yearning and mature regret. And I think in that way, I hope the book is universal and. And for anyone.

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I asked you to try to find your passion. Okay, what advice do you have? So many people listening right now are saying oh my gosh, well of course he can do it. This is what I hear from people all the time. They say this to me well of course you can do it. But I couldn't do it. How do you speak life into somebody else that wants to make a jump and to try something new, to write a book, to start creating content, but they can't bear to put themselves on video? What advice can you give to someone to make a transition?

I know that it may seem to those people you just described that this was so obvious for me, of course Davide can do it, but the fact is that I didn't do it. For 37 years there was no indication that I could do this. Everyone around me is shocked. No one said, oh yeah, we knew this was going to happen. It was what? Davide is viral. Like, my friends and my family think this is outrageous. It's absurd, right? So it always looks impossible until it happens. You know, whoever out there is thinking, I can't do this, I can't do that. That's just a story that you're telling yourself. It's not based on in reality, it's not based in fact. Because my story prior to six months ago was also oh, TikTok or videos. What are you nuts? So it suddenly becomes very obvious and very doable once it happens. You have to fight through that doubt. You have to fight through the feelings of maybe a little bit of embarrassment. The videos. I went into the car precisely because I was ashamed. I didn't want my girlfriend, even though she, it was her idea. And nevertheless I still was too ashamed to see, to have my girlfriend see your 37 year old boyfriend making videos. Even within the effort there was doubt. And so I think that you can't wait for the doubts or the uncertainties to disappear in order to begin. You have to begin while you're still not so sure. And then you'll be rewarded for that effort and you'll gain confidence as you go because you'll suddenly see the results and say, wow, now I believe in myself because I see it. And you can see it even in my content. I mean, I can anyway. You would have to really go back, but if you were to scroll, it would take you a long time because I post a lot. But if you were to scroll back to five months ago, it was a slightly different person in that car because you gain experience, you gain enthusiasm, you gain your voice, you gain your, your composure as you go. You can't wait to be a finished product or to have all the answers before you start something new. And I would encourage everyone to just try. What's the worst that can happen? You know, my father used to tell me when I didn't want to study or go to school because I was lazy. He would say, you know, go to law school because these four years are going to pass by anyway. And I think sometimes we do this. We're like, oh, it's going to take so much time. And then I don't know if I'm going to. It's going to work out, that time is going to pass anyway. But if you go do that thing, at least you'll discover something. Maybe it'll work out, maybe it won't. But if you do nothing, you know for sure where you'll be. You'll be exactly where you are. But if you at least try that time is passing anyway and you might surprise yourself. And I think people generally do. I think rarely do people look back and say, oh, I wish I hadn't taken that leap. You, what you do here is I wish I had that you hear more often. I wish I did this, I wish I did that. No one ever says, oh, I wish I had never tried to pursue my dreams. You never hear that. So just give it a shot. What's the worst that can happen? The worst thing that can happen is that you end up where you've always been anyway. So give it a shot.

Oh my gosh, that was a masterclass minute in confidence built through action and done is better than perfect. I love it. I'm so with you and I appreciate you doing that for everyone listening. Okay, so have you learned anything from a strategic standpoint? So people listening want to create content. They don't know what to create. As you said, you built confidence along the way, you built your voice along the way. Now, do you look at. And obviously certain videos that you create do better than others, right? Like I've seen it. Some are truly viral. Millions, millions of views. And others not as much. So you see, like there's a recipe or a framework that, you know, oh, if I lean into this or this topic, like how do you figure out and do you know something's going to go viral before it does?

Occasionally I think something is really good and I'm able to predict that it'll do well. But generally that's not the case. I put the same effort into each one. I post them because I think they're good. But some do better than others.

Right.

If anything I've learned is that virality is a tricky little game. There is no science, as far as I can tell. What I would just suggest to people is be as real as possible because people are much smarter than we give them credit for. There's a great Line, It's a semi political line. But William Buckley Jr. Who was this brilliant conservative journalist back in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, he had a long career. He said, you know, I would rather be governed by the first 200 names in the yellow pages, this is back in the day when we had yellow Pages, than by the faculty at Harvard University. And what that suggests is that the average person is really smart, is really commonsensical. And I think that when you're lying to people in your videos or when you're not being yourself, or when you're not being authentic, the average person more likely than not will pick up on that and we'll just flip on to the next video. And so I think the best thing you can do is to put forth honest content, say things you actually believe. And while it's not a science, I think the chances of doing well online grow exponentially because people can sift right through the bs, generally speaking. So, you know, that would be my, the closest thing I can give to advice on how to make successful content. I would say, speak truly, be yourself. Don't try to copy someone else who is being successful at it. I see this sometimes. Apparently there are people doing my content in like other languages around the world and I wish them well, but I suspect that they're not going to do as well as me. Not because they're not as capable. Or maybe they're smarter, maybe they're better, maybe they're better looking. There's some guys out there who are doing my shtick and I think they're more handsome than me. But I don't think it, you have to be who you are because people like my content because it's just the guy being himself. And I think that, that if you can take any suggestion from me, it would be that be whoever it is that you are and it'll be more likely to take off.

I love that. And of course people are imitating your content. I, that's a, you know, best form of flattery is when you know, yeah, I love that for you. Of course they're doing that. Okay, so what is next for you? What do you foresee? Or do you have a focus that, okay, this is my next initiative, I'm going to leave law here. And when, like, what does the future look like for you?

Well, being very conservative in my approach to everything and not being a risk taker, you know, just being calculated generally, I don't think I'll leave the law practice entirely until I feel that I have sufficiently replaced it. So I'm trying to wear both hats right now. It's really hard, actually. It's hard to do all these things at once. I'm fortunate that I work with family so that I can kind of hybrid move away slowly. If I was working at a larger firm or a firm where I wasn't working with family, I'd have to make a decision because I simply can't be there as often as I used to be. I can't be as diligent and work as much as there in the office as I used to because I'm doing so many other things. So I think that though I'm trying to do it gradually, there's going to be a precipitous break coming up really soon. I think it's around the corner. Ideally, I would love for the audiobook to really take off and then for some publishers to sweep in and turn it into a traditional style print book, e book, maybe get another book deal and work on a second book and all the while just keep exploring all the other things that could come along, whether it be being on podcasts, whether it be maybe having a show, whether it be starting to meet people and do some live events. I don't know. Anything is possible. And I'm open to any and all things as long as they make sense and they're exciting and fun for me. So, yeah, I think that the shift away from the law practice is around the corner. But like I said, I work with family, so there's also so little actual risk for me because I could always just fall back, you know, on my diploma. Which is funny. My father always used to say when I was going to law school, somewhat against my will, he said, listen, it's an insurance policy. It's an insurance policy. You have the degree in case you ever need it. Of course, I ended up just being a lawyer and I never used it as an insurance policy. But now, in a strange course of events, it's about to become an insurance policy. You know, I'll always be a lawyer. It's always there if I need it. But I'm very excited about moving away from that and trying to be whatever it is that I'm becoming. I have no idea, but I'm excited to find out.

There's nothing about that that scares you. That's so wild to me, the reason.

Why it doesn't scare me is maybe because I am taking a careful approach. I know that there's other people, God bless them, and it's worked for them, and I think it's Beautiful. If you have that kind of willpower, there are people who just drop it and go in. My father was that. I mean, my father did that many times. He just dropped whatever he was doing, you know, moved to other countries. I don't have that level of guts. So I think that I'm. I don't have that much fear in what I'm doing now because I think I'm doing it carefully, I think I'm doing it gradually. I'm not. I'm not taking a tremendous risk because I. I do have a pretty decent career that I can always fall back on. So for me, it's really just excitement, eagerness, enthusiasm. I can't wait to see what happens. I'm excited for it. I'm hopeful that it's going to be great and, you know, we'll see. We'll see where we end up.

I'm a firm believer that when you go all in on something, great things start happening. So I'm going to be cheering you on that you rip the band aid off, go all in, because that's when the unlock will happen for the show, for the next opportunity, for the book deal. I truly believe when you just actually go like your dad and go all in on it, really big things are going to open up for you.

Heather, I think you're probably right. I agree with you in part. I have to find the bravery to do it. But I agree with you that all of those really great things are only going to happen when I do officially say, that's it, I'm done. I'll see you guys when I see you. I'm going all in on content, on writing, on comedy, on whatever it is. So I'm working towards that courage. We're getting there.

Wait, you said you're not. No matter what happens, you're not moving from New Jersey.

Well, you know what? I love New Jersey. I think it'll always be my. My headquarters. You know, I'm fortunate that this viral moment didn't happen to me when I was, like, 23, because I would have done some crazy. You know, at this point, I'm. I'm a pretty domesticated person. I'm not going to do anything wild. I'm not going to go, you know, go live a crazy life. But I would love to travel more. I would love to be fully remote, whatever that means, so that I can be somewhere else for months at a time if I want to. But I think I'll always pay taxes in New Jersey, which is probably a horrible financial idea, but you know, I'll always be a New Jersey resident for now. You never know when the big bucks start coming in, Heather, then you got to think about Texas and Florida, you know, you know how it is. But for now, I'm going to say New Jersey. It's fine. My family's here. I don't want to. I don't want to be too far from, you know, my family, my nephews, my niece, my. My aunts, my uncles. So there's that consideration, too. You know, there's pros and cons to everything. I'm sure that there are great opportunities elsewhere, but you make your decisions in life, and to me, family is important. I don't want. I don't want to forget myself, so to speak. So I'll probably always be a Jersey boy.

All right, so for now, Jim Tan laundry. And in the future, we will see a Charlie Sheen type Netflix documentary on you.

Listen, I would be shocked if one day you find out of my horrible demise. I don't think that's in the cards for me. Hopefully God heard my prayer. I think I'm going to try to remain somewhat grounded, responsible, but doing things that I love and that I enjoy and doing great things. I mean, I hope I do great things. I just don't think I'm going to be leaving my friends and family behind to go do them somewhere.

Okay, tell everybody. Where can they follow you? Where can they get your content? And where can they get the letters I never sent?

So you can go on my Instagram, which, if you just type in my name, David dipied, or the way it's actually written on Instagram, I think is David Davi87DP. That's my Instagram handle on TikTok.

First handle of all time, but go ahead.

Worst handle of all time. That's what you do when you make handles, when you don't even know what you're doing. You know, when you're just, you know, just a dude making an Instagram and who doesn't even realize that he's viral. And then on TikTok, I'm Davi. So if you type in Davi, I'm sure I'll come up click on the one with the most followers, not on the fake ones that have less followers, because that one's me. And on both pages, you'll see the link in the bio. It's in a store. It's that you access through this link and it's called the Letters I Never Sent.

Well, Zabade, I'm cheering you on, guys. Follow him get the book. You will not regret it. You can thank me in advance. And thank you for being here today.

Thanks so much, Heather. It was a pleasure.

All right, guys. Until next week. Keep creating your confidence. You know I love you. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're getting here. Start learning and growing. Inevitably, something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.