Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring Dan Pontefract

Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And you're joining us on this LinkedIn Live, which is a special edition of our Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast. And today, I'm really excited because Dan is not only an amazing thought leader, a killer speaker, but a friend and someone I admire very, very much. And we've known each other for what, 8, 10 years, maybe?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So I'll give you just the quick— for those of you who don't know Dan, you should. But if you don't, he's a leadership and corporate culture strategist. He helps leaders become better leaders. He's had senior roles inside of large companies like SAP and TELUS. And he just released his 6th book, which is called The Future of Work Is Gray. Prior to that, he had Work-Life Bloom, which was awesome. Lead Care Win, Open to Think, The Purpose Effect. And the Flat Army. So this is not his first rodeo. So welcome aboard, Dan. What's going on?

Peter, I mean, friends first. So I hope everything's going well. Thank you for that. It's always a— it's just, you know, fun hanging with you, whether we're having a cocktail, those old fashions, or chatting leadership strategy. So either way, it's just a pleasure to hang out with you, man.

Sometimes we do both at the same time. I recall London.

So anyway, I kind of recall, but yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly. So I just let's— I want to stick to for a little bit. Well, actually, let's go backwards. Give the world sort of your— the world, like the 3 people listening to us, whatever, but we'll call them the world because they mean the world to us. Your short— your— how did— how the hell did you get here? Like, because your journey from like musician to chief learning officer to like— how did— this isn't a nonlinear You know, follow the recipe. So how did you wind up here today?

It is. Yeah, you know, I never thought of it that way. It is very nonlinear. There's a couple of First Nations indigenous bands that have this metaphor essentially is that we're all meandering on our own river to the waterfall. And I think that's pretty apropos for me. I have definitely meandered my own river. How did I get here? I guess I've been a lover of people forever, Peter, and Platonically. There's only one lover lover in my life. But, um, I— yeah, like, as a kid, I kind of always was gravitated to the kid who was not doing well at school or on the court or on the pitch. You know, I, I don't know how, but I always ended up being like captain of, uh, all the teams. I used to be president of all the student councils. Like, I always just kind of—

That guy. You were that guy?

Yeah, I was that guy. I ran—

Were you the one that reminded the teacher on Friday afternoons at about 2:30, wait, you forgot to give us the homework you told us about? Were you that? While—

why? Yeah, while I was cleaning the chalkboard brushes. Like, I would be that guy.

And one of us on this call may have been the class clown. We won't tell you who.

It's not Jess. It's definitely not Jess. So yeah, I just kind of— anyway, I found my way into that. And I had a really serious injury as a kid when I was playing soccer. I was at the tryouts for the Canadian national team and my knee blew out essentially. And so I had surgery for 6 months and physio and it was just not great. So, but through all that, I was like, oh wow, these doctors and physios, they help people. Maybe that's what I'll do. And so I kind of pushed myself to go be a doctor, and then I thought I'd be a physio. And I was like, huh, I don't think that's good enough. Now, I have all respect for doctors and therapists and healthcare practitioners, but here I was at McGill University of Montreal. I was like, I'm gonna switch. And so I would go to the guidance office and I said, hey, um, I, I don't, I don't want to be what my dad is. My dad's an engineer. I want to get out of this. Healthcare stuff. What do you got? And they're like, well, you're like smart, so you should go be an engineer. I was like, no, I don't want to be an engineer. And they're like, you should stay. You should stay what you're doing. I was like, no. And then I kind of flipped through the list essentially, Peter.

And I'm like, you just kind of looked at the menu and said, you know, I don't like the veal. Do you have any sea bass tonight? Is that kind of what that was?

Kind of, yeah. And we're not sure if you're allergic to shellfish, but let's have— let's give it a go. So, so I said, hey, you've got education. And this woman looked at me like, yeah, well, maybe I'll be a teacher. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I'll be a teacher because that helps people get better than what they were. She's like, you can't be a teacher. I was like, why? She's like, you're too smart. And I was like, oh my, okay.

Ouch.

Now I'll show, I'll show you. So honestly, I kind of meandered as to your point. I, I fell into a BA, B.Ed., so Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Education. Um, she was right eventually because I only lasted being an educator, like a high school educator, for 2 years. I was like, what am I doing? So that was when I was 22 and 23, 24. I had married my beloved French babe Denise. Right, right after university, we got married right there.

Wait, wait, I don't like when the guests get technical, but French babe—is is that a technical term? Technical term.

My French babe, Denise Lamarche. Et tu parles français, Peter? Ah, no. Okay, that's fine.

We'll go. That's about it.

So Denise and I moved from Montreal to Vancouver, and we're teaching at this high school together. in the same school. And I'm like, what am I— like, it's not— I'm not against educators, surely, but it's just the clientele. I just wasn't made for 14 to 18-year-olds. So after, after like 6 weeks in the gig, I say to Denise, I, I'm gonna have to retool and re-vector here. She's like, what? Yeah, don't worry, we'll figure it out.

Right.

So we, we moved to Ottawa. So we spent 2 years in Vancouver, moved to Ottawa. And I take one of those, you know, 18-month all-you-can-eat tech, uh, certifications. Okay, so I had my Microsoft, my Novell, my CompTIA all through this, uh, college.

You're gonna be like the— no, if the teaching thing didn't work out, I'll be the Novell networking guy.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm gonna be the guy that, uh, lays out cable, I guess. Now I'm beginning to piece it together. So now I'm 25, I'm like, okay, I like business, I like tech, and I like people, like the educating of people. So, so now I'm, uh, I'm now just about turned 26. I finished this thing, and Denise and I also loathing winter in Ottawa because Vancouver is a rainforest, it doesn't have winter. So I, I put together a— this is how old I am— a VHS tape that is a That is a 5-minute introduction to Dan Pontifrack to the Dean of Computing and Academic Studies at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, at BCIT. And he gets this VHS tape that basically says—

But wait, that was a risk because what if he was a beta guy? Like, it would have been lights out, right? If he was a beta guy.

Or LaserDisc.

Yeah, like you didn't get the format right.

Yeah. Well, it didn't get sent back, but I did get an invitation, uh, because in the video I had realized that the institute had just opened up a downtown campus in Vancouver. It was 8 floors, brand spanking new. And I was like, you need someone with ideas maybe to sort of help career changers. So they thought—

Just as a friend, we're gonna rebrand part of that story that you were the pioneer in short-form content and video.

Yeah, see, I'm not— I'm Canadian. We're not very good at marketing.

That's why you and I have worked together, right? So you were one of the pioneers in short-form video content. Let's just take that away.

Right. So I still need Peter in my corner to help me with my narrative, right? Yeah, that's basically what I'm hearing. Okay, so they hire me, and this is now '97, and I'm like unleashed. Like, there's the academic campus, you know, 20 minutes away by car, and then there's this downtown campus, and it's— some of the floors are rented out already, but there's basically these 3 floors where the team at BCIT said, all right, like, figure it out, essentially. And I built—

Startup academic, like, that's kind of weird, right? Like, like, that's—

It was wild then. Totally wild. And it was, get this, it was cost recovery, meaning there was no, uh, government funding. So anyone that came through the doors came with a check and it wasn't subsidized by the government. So long story short, uh, that was like a 6 or 7 year training ground where I built with, with a team. I had a great team, um, high-tech, uh, business program, like change program. So it could be 12 months, 6 months, 9 months. I was helping executive assistants become better executive assistants. I was helping people with a degree, uh, become, uh, like business development technology guys and gals, right? You name it, we were doing it.

Sounds like you found your lane though. Now it sounds like all the— yeah, all the pieces start to come together.

I am now thriving. So team was amazing. We built it up to be like a $5 million business. Like it was, uh, fun. Okay. Yeah. But, but I had again, the meandering part of the river, you know, what was happening kind of by year 4 or 5, it was like, okay. So they paid for my MBA. Fantastic.

Cool.

Um, but now I'm, now I'm thinking if I want to be a really good professional and even a better academic, Yes, uh, I better go into the real world. Meaning corporate? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I started listening to calls, like people would phone because they'd hear me, hear of me, or I'd meet them. So long story short, then in 2002 on the fall, I decided to leave this cushy, awesome, fun family-like entrepreneurial team and entity that we had built for what eventually became SAP.

Oh, wow. If we were doing a movie, this is the part where we cut to the French babe rolling her eyes going, here we go again, Dano.

Yeah, she's like, what? We don't have any kids. You've got a pension. What are you doing? Yeah. So, so, um, so I joined a company called Crystal Decisions. It was a business intelligence company. Uh, it was about $350 mil in rev. Uh, it had about 3-ish thousand people, of which there's about 600 headquartered in, in Vancouver, which is where it was founded.

Okay. So real business.

Yeah. Yeah. Real biz. Um, 6 months after I joined as its global education director, they were purchased by a French company called Business Objects. And so, you know, now I'm having— now, so I'm getting my real-world experience here, Peter, right? It's like, oh, so that's how this real world works. There's acquisitions and things. So they make me, uh, the, the now the head of, uh, what we eventually called the University of Business Intelligence, UBI. So I have, I have an internal team of about 100-ish people. Uh, we are working on the development of people inside the company, but also the production and, uh, delivery of, uh, software training for clients and partners and consultants.

Okay.

So I have revenue generation ed services, if that's what we used to call it, then I have internal development of people. So I'm running a corporate you.

Cool.

And it's, it's fun. Like, it's again built up this culture, it's wild, it's awesome. And then, and then the summer of 2007, SAP knocked on the door and purchased Business Objects. And so So now I'm in like— and by the way, during the Business Objects era, we've made like 18 acquisitions. So I'm going through post-acquisition integration stuff, learning all those things. Again, countries all over the world I'm flying to to learn about culture. And so I'm just— it's an amazing training ground. And that's where a lot of my thinking is beginning to form. I have the academic side. So I'm a high school teacher for 2 years. I'm at higher ed for 6 years. Now I'm in high tech. And I'm going into my 7th year in this—

High tech with a concentration in M&A, right? Integration, post-M&A integration.

Totally. So I'm in Palo Alto a lot, like I'm down in the Valley riding that 101 a lot. Just anyway, so SAP purchases Business Objects and I try— it's kind of one of my failures in life, I think. I take umbrage with this on myself, but I tried really, really hard To help the senior leaders of SAP see that, yes, they bought now an 11,000-person, $1.1 billion revenue company, but what they inadvertently acquired was like the best damn culture that you should repeat.

Right.

And yeah, it just didn't work. They didn't see it that way. They thought, no, we've acquired you. Thank you very much. So I had a couple options, right? Which is my boss at the time, Dan Klein, was so good. He's like, look, you should stay because you can grow your career here at SAP. It's gonna be wild. Or there's this manila envelope that I've procured for you. And, you know, give it a couple months, decide what you wanna do. There's no deadline.

Right.

But just see what you wanna do. So after about a year of me trying, I went back to Dan. I said, I think I'm gonna take the envelope. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I took, uh, I took 6 months off, um, and was a free agent. And we had a 5, a 3, and a 1-year-old. And my French babe Denise was like, are you, are you ever gonna work again? Like, what's happening?

Yeah.

Um, but I was trying to, I was trying to decide through the interviews and the discussion Do I go back to academia and run like executive ed, right, for, you know, UBC or McGill or someone like that who I was chatting with? Or do I, do I continue with my evolution of understanding what the corporate world's all about? And I had offers from a big bank, uh, in Toronto.

Yep.

Um, Adobe in San Jose, uh, and TELUS in In Vancouver, so it was like banking Toronto, high tech again, this time in the U.S., and that was an interesting opportunity to be living in the U.S. as a Canadian, or sticking around Vancouver and helping this telecom who wanted to change its culture. I chose option C, and so became chief learning officer at Telus in the right when Fannie Mae Fannie Mac blew up and the fiscal cliff crisis occurred. I became the guy to help. Help people, you know, go through the storm of that in 2000, the end of 2008. Um, I'm really rambling, but then eventually, 10 years later, in various roles at TELUS, both, uh, producing books and beginning to unleash myself externally, I left the CLO role after about 5 or 6 years, created my own external consulting firm at TELUS to help other clients. And then went on my own since 2018. And that's where we sit today, my friend.

So I want to just— on the TELUS side, because I know the backstory here, you're at that point the in-house guru, right? So you've got a job and a P&L and things that you're responsible for. And simultaneously, you're doing a TED Talk, you're starting to speak a little, you're writing a little, you're doing your thing. And they were really— and tell me if I'm recollecting wrong. You know, they're supportive, they're digging it. You know, it's good for you, it's good for them because you're really sort of telling the stories of the culture that's built, and it's, it's good for them to do it. And then at some point you hit a fork in the road and say, wow, and sorry French babe, here I go again. I've got this great gig, but I want to do something else. There's a theme here. I hope she gets good gifts on her birthday and anniversary and all that.

Fluevog shoes, man. Fluevog shoes.

Oh, there we go. Okay. It's all about the shoes. But then you're like, wow, I like this speaking thing. I like this TED thing. I like this writing thing. I think it's time to go. And I remember you told me a story once where you went to your boss and said, okay, sorry, boss, but this is where I want to go. And your boss kind of said, well, you can't do that. Like, why do you— why does this need to be binary? And they became your first client, right? Which was kind of— which is really, really cool. And even I would say to this day, a lot of the things that you do Come from, you know, there's still a dividend or a halo effect that goes back to TELUS from their culture and all that stuff, right?

And, and that's, that's spot on, mate. I mean, uh, we parted full-time ways the end of 2018, but on January 1st, 2019, I became what's called an ex-IDT member, like the letter X. So I was a T-IDT member, T for TELUS. Yeah, X is a contractor, essentially. That's what they use it for. And What are we, 2026? So that's been 8 years. Yeah. And I'm still running the TELUS MBA that I cooked up when I was CLO for TELUS. And I still am privileged to do things for TELUS leaders in various ways on occasion. So, I mean, I'm really—

So one of the lessons there, because I've shared that story with many other thought leaders that are at that place where I think I need to go and like, well, maybe you do, but, you know, redefining a relationship. And I see thought leaders do this all the time where a client becomes a vendor, right? And a vendor becomes a friend and a friend becomes your publisher and your former employer becomes a client. Like, my point here is be creative because as long as everybody's getting what they want, need, desire, the only way to work for a company is not W-2 or 9-to-5 or whatever. There's other ways to redefine those relationships. So I want to move into your sort of— now you're a thought leader, now you're a speaker, now you're an author, right? And I called you a thought leader. You didn't because you can't call yourself that. That's like violating rule one.

No.

One of the things, and you and I have worked together, is you do a little bit differently than many thought leaders is you don't only stick to the thing. There's clearly themes of what one expects from you. But the new book is not necessarily the logical thing I would've expected from Dan based on Flat Army and Cult, like all the other things. So tell me why you won't take my advice or tell me why you do that.

Why does this guy continue to change lanes? What is it?

And it works, man. It might not be the easiest way, but it clearly— and you're not the only one like Dan Pink that There are, I would say, very few thought leaders that can successfully move. And you're not going into baking. I mean, it's still in the business genre, but it's sort of like if you were a radio station and I left you in my car as jazz and came in the next morning and it's Sid Vicious, I'd be like, whoa, who messed with the dial? Right? That's kind of a little bit of you.

Yeah.

So tell me how that happens. And then I want to talk about Um, the future, future work?

Sure. Well, first of all, I, I have an insatiable curiosity quotient. I mean, I am constantly poking holes, reading, trying to flip up, you know, rocks and see what's under it. And, um, I think that's the duty of, of someone that self-appoints themselves as a leadership strategist. When I'm at SAP or when I'm at TELUS or Business Objects or BCIT, like a leader's, at least I think my responsibility is to be wide and deep. And if ergo I am into an individual career now, particularly so, and I get hired for consulting or retainers or a speech, you know, I don't want to be known, and that's just me. I mean, but I don't want to be known as the change guy. I don't want to be known as The thinking guy. I don't want to be known as the coach. That is just— it's not helpful to me and the people who I work with, and nor a guy who wrote a book about purpose. Is that being true to what makes me tick?

Right, right.

I would be miserable if I only wrote about longevity.

Okay. So of all the topics out there, because there are many that are interesting, that pique your curiosity, that you dive into, Then you land on The Future of Work Is Gray, right?

Yeah.

So obviously it's topical, right? You know, the aging work. I mean, there's a lot, there's a demographic piece to this, although you're not a demographer, right? Like, but like the way you come at it, really, when I read it, it's like, okay, this only Dan could write this because there's a cultural piece to this. There's a performance piece to this. There's a people piece to this. You know, you're, this isn't a, you know, and I hate that, you know, okay, boomer, right? Like this isn't that. Right. Or one of the things I love is you're the few people that say it out loud, because I totally believe it 1,000%. It is absurd that we label people by their birth year. Oh my God. Right? Like, you and I are the same Gen X. We have similarities, but we're really different. And just to say, well, Dan and Peter are both Gen Xers, therefore treat them like this, that is so absurd and ridiculous and offensive and If you change Gen X to a racial thing or an ethnic thing, you'd say, how dare you say that? But it's almost become— it is acceptable to say, oh, well, we have Gen Z and Gen Y, and this one doesn't do this, and this one doesn't do that. So give me the backstory and the what is future of work, the world according to Dan.

So a couple of really short stories. That aforementioned BCIT, so I get the job. I'm, um, uh, I guess I'm 26 at that point in that fall. Um, I'm downtown at the campus for the first couple of weeks, and then I go to my first faculty and staff, um, meeting at the big campus on the sprawling kind of, uh, campus out there in Burnaby, British Columbia. I go, I go— at the time they had staff washrooms and student washrooms, so I go in the staff washroom. There's a there's an older gentleman in there. He looks at me.

He's an older gentleman, meaning probably younger than you and I today.

Maybe I don't like he had grays, so I'm not sure. Like I can't I can't tell age these days. I have no idea. He's definitely older than me, and maybe by twenty or thirty years. I have just no idea. Yeah, maybe thirty years. So so he looks at me and he says, "Son." So right away you know, right? Son. Uh, mind I remind you that this is a staff washroom? So I pull out my lanyard. I was like, I work here.

I thought you were gonna say something else. I thought you were gonna say something else. It was your lanyard? I just wanna— okay, sorry.

This is a gay car friendly show, is it? Yeah. And, uh, so he looks at me, looks at me at the lanyard. He's like, oh, well, that's a shame. And then he says, shame? Ouch. I didn't know we were hiring people so young these days. So I got this reverse ageism really early on in my now new higher education career. I was like, whoa, what is— like, who is this? What is happening? Am I the young one?

It's a nice onboarding. That's— thank you. Welcome aboard. Good luck. Can I help you? Right?

That's, you know, like week 2. I was like, whoa. So fast forward to just a couple years ago, um, just, just to turn 50 or 51. And I get a form letter from one of my speaker bureaus. Now I'm past TELUS, now I'm on my own. And the speaker bureau letter goes something like this. Hey Dan, loved working with you, past tense. Just so you know, we're no longer gonna have you on our roster. Thanks for everything, you know, love X. So I follow up with a phone call. I'm like, what is this? Like, we've been together 10 years. I mean, I know I'm not exclusive, but I just, I don't understand. Yeah. Right, right. And so, so then I get the, oh well, we're, we're refreshing the roster. Ouch. Yeah, I was like, okay. So 25 years later, right, I got the other end of it. So that irked me. And however, uh, Pete, honestly, like, mea culpa, because I just told you my whole career, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I assure you that never once, whilst being a chief learning officer or chief envisioner, whatever the executive roles I had in charge, Peter, of leadership development, culture, and so forth, I never once thought about age. Meaning, I'm a hypocrite, at least back then.

Yeah.

where I said that I was here to develop people and leaders and culture, but because I was blind, naive, ignorant, uh, absent about people both younger and older than me— I was just like doing my jam, uh— I'm trying to rectify something that I missed also with this book.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and I now— I realize, because I can look in the rearview mirror, I, I know there will be other 20, 30, and 40-year-olds, maybe even 50-year-olds that are as blind as I was. And the key thing about this book is not just a love letter to fix what I got wrong, but it's actually enlighten all people of all ages to the, to the very precise, um, absolute facts that are happening in every single organization. And then hopefully with an antidote, uh, on how to fix that.

One of the things that that I took from the book that really surprised me is you talk about how most organizations spend their development dollars, their learning dollars, right? And it's front-loaded to the younger folks.

Yeah.

So there's an— and whether it's by intent, design, history, this is the way we've always done it, whatever, the curiosity thing says, well, okay, I have resources as the CLO and I've got people. How do I spend them? Okay, well, the younger folks need more stuff because they've been doing this less. So that would make sense. But then The flip side of that, does that mean that once you've hit 45, we're going to stop investing in you because you're a short-term, you know, you're leaving soon? Why would I continue to upskill you or whatever? So I, you know, I thought about that and thinking, you know, hey, as a leader, how do you not do that? Right? And I don't know if the answer is, because I think that answer is very contextual to the organization. Do you divide it equally? Do you spend more money on the older population? Like, I don't know, but I think you need to just rethink and say, are we investing our dollars in a way that are aligned to what our business objectives are in an age-blind way, right? You know, like, I think that's just a new question, which is a good question.

There's a poll that just came out with YouGov, actually. Funny you should bring this up. And they asked 1,000 hiring agents in America what their likelihood to hire a 60-plus individual for an AI-related job versus someone who was 35 and younger. And it's a 90/10 split.

Which is absurd because AI has only been a thing for the same, you know, is it— we could debate whether it's 3 years or 5, it's not 30.

Exactly. And so that— there's my point, is that the biases that we have, like to your point about how we invest in the training and development dollars, right? The bias is Similar to that just new YouGov poll that, well, the younger people definitely are going to stick around longer, so we'll invest in them and they need the delta gaps, of course. Why would we invest in the 45 or 55-year-old when they're not going to be along around longer? But that data suggests that the 45-year-old stays longer than the 25-year-old because they're off looking at other gigs and wanting more different experiences.

So Again, the 45-year-old is also less risk-averse. They might have, other than if they're Dan and the French baby's rolling her eyes, they have a mortgage, they have kids, they have like, they're probably less likely to be churning every 18 or 24 months or 36 months. Because the time to do a lot of that is quite frankly in the beginning of your career. Hey, if you don't like it, move on. If you don't change or you've gotten what you need outta here or the culture doesn't jive or whatever.

So, Yeah, which is why I go back to my own biases. Here's a guy, CLO in a couple of big companies, not thinking about it.

Yeah.

Then the fact of the matter is, way more so than my time as CLO, but right now and going forward, we weren't talking about demographic disruption back in the day. Now you can't pick up New York Times, Atlantic, et cetera, without demographic disruption actually societally being a conversation point, yet we're not having that conversation in the organization. Make that make sense to me, Peter.

Yep. So I want to go back to the breaking or the shattering of that generational thing that you do in the book. And then so now it's like, okay, if this whole Gen Z, millennial, if that doesn't exist anymore, okay, so that's cool. Let's go. Let's move forward. But you really come up with this really beautiful analogy, which is the rivers, the rocks, and the rubies. And I remember when we talked about this a couple of years ago when you were starting on this book, I'm like, that's pretty cool because, A, a river is not better than a rock and a rock's not— like, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of— like, they're all good. Like, a river is supposed to flow and a rock is stability and a ruby is this polished, beautiful thing. And you don't have an exact date, expiration date, that a river can only be 21 to 28 and a half, like whatever. So talk to me, how did you come up with that? And then maybe unpack it a little bit, define it.

So I'm paying homage a little bit to a theory that's been out there, which I'm trying to debunk a little bit, which is 2 types of intelligence in our workplaces. One's called fluid intelligence and the other is crystallized intelligence, right? So Dr. Polanyi, back in 1948, if I can get my math right. And, um, and so it basically goes to show, or says, it stipulates that, you know, you have— you're young and then you have ideas and questions, and then you get old and you have wisdom. And I was like, well, that's not really true, because if you, if you think about a Taylor Swift, uh, Eras Tour, She actually did a fantastic job of saying, well, here was when I was young, and here's my middle age, and here's my current, essentially, right? I was like playing around with that because 2 of my 3 kids are big Tay Tay fans. I was like, Eras Tour, actually, we're all on an Eras Tour. Yeah.

And, and so I think also the, the, the litmus test that I just did on that is, you know, I know a lot of people my age that were out the day the wisdom was handed out, right? So there's no guarantee Uh, correlation is not causation. There's a lot of— fair enough. Some of them are my best friends. They were out that day.

Like, well, but in fairness too, like, the wisdom might not be deep, but they, they may know the tacit knowledge, right? The, the where the bear— the bodies are buried, the how we always did this, and hey, we did this in 2008.

What a VHS tape is. Yeah, right. What a VHS tape was.

Which way does it go in? I mean, yeah.

Be kind, rewind. Remember that?

So, so basically I was like, okay. And again, paying homage really to some of my First Nations friends, uh, and they've helped me immensely in my thinking over the years. And, and this idea of the river again came back to, oh yeah, we're all in a river. So we're all in a river chasing our way down to our own waterfall. That is life, right? That's— you have your own path, I have my own path, but We're all rivers nonetheless. So we're full of that fluidity when we start. Maybe you start 16, maybe you start 23 after college, whatever, whatever, right? Who cares? But you're full of ideas, questions, mistakes, looking for answers, trying to figure out how this whole quote work thing works. And it might be in your first gig, third gig, fifth gig, doesn't matter. But eventually you start to develop some rocks that, to your point, the stability, like the, oh yeah, This is what I believe in, or this is what I'm good at. And so you, in your own river that continues to flow, you've now developed rocks along the way. And so your rocks era, maybe it starts at 30, maybe it's 40, maybe you're a leader, maybe you're not, doesn't matter. What it— what matters, however, is that you have, uh, developed stability. You've developed a cadence and processes that begin to work. People look up to you.

Sure.

You can, whatever, right? But what I also realized eventually that you're, you're continuing your river and you continue to develop rocks, but the river is continuously flowing against the rocks in which you've developed. And then over time, those rocks crystallize into rubies. And the ruby is the depth of wisdom. And again, maybe you're 50, maybe you're 60, maybe you're 70. It doesn't matter. It's up to you when you think you've evolved into the ruby era.

Right.

And that might be at the workplace, you might be retired, doesn't matter. Again, it's just that I realize, and having chatted with a bazillion people for this book in Japan, in Korea, in Germany, in the US, and Canada, that this tracks. This is what we all go through, like it or not. It's just that when you're a river, you can't see it yet.

Yeah.

And when you're a rock, you're usually the sandwich generation, and you're so stressed from raising kids and dealing with old aging parents and just the workplace, you don't know that you're this rock. But eventually, when you get to the ruby, everyone can look in the rearview mirror, Peter, and say, oh yeah, that makes sense. So I guess, long story short, I'm trying to create this metaphor so that more rivers and rocks, more younger and middle-aged workers can see where they're at. And then maybe they can make a difference for their team, maybe some of the organizational processes and traits, whatever it is.

Yep. Love it. Love it. All right. So the last sort of segue here is you've been around the business of thought leadership, not the business of business, but this weird business of thought leadership for a while, right? A couple of decades now.

Yeah.

What are you seeing works? What's not working? At the end of the day, you're still doing— and tell me if I got this wrong— the majority of your revenue, let's say, comes from keynoting. That's the thing that probably pays the most.

Is that fair? It pays the most on a per-instant basis, but my, my, my 3 streams are retainer/consulting, workshops, and then keynotes. And it's, it's a 50/50 split actually between the keynotes and workshops and then the consulting.

Okay. Got it. So tell me about the business side of that and what you learned along the way. Because you're a Ruby of that right now.

Interesting.

If I give you your own stuff. Nice. Because a lot of people say, oh, I want to be a Keenan. I want to do this thing. I want to be a thought leader. But it's usually driven by the work, the ideas, the models, that piece.

Yeah.

Which is great. That's what gets you out of the bed every day. I want to do the research. I remember talking to you multiple times during this book. You were so jazzed and pumped and figuring it out, and then you get stuck. And then Like, that's fun. But a lot of thought leaders or those that wanna be professional thought leaders are like, huh, like, what's the business? Like, how do these guys make their, like, what do they do? So tell me a little bit, you know, whatever you're comfortable with, like, what does that look like for you?

Okay, so I think you gotta make a decision first and foremost. Are you looking to build a business and a practice?

Yes.

Like with staff and people, or do you wanna be a solopreneur?

Yeah.

So I chose solopreneur. I chose company of one. I actually mocking myself about it. I think you'd be right about that.

in our book that you're making that deliberate decision of company of one, because it's not a right or wrong decision. It's the right decision for Dan.

The irony is my business is called Pontifrack Group. I'm one person.

And the group can fit on a unicycle, right?

Exactly. So that's kind of decision one. Now you can, you can evolve or retrench, right? You could say, oh, I want now, Dan, I want to create a business now of people and build up a practice. Okay. I have, I reserve that right. Hard to dial it back, but I have seen some thought leaders build up a practice and say, ah, not for me, and they, they dial it back down to being themselves. Okay, so that would be kind of decision number one. But then you gotta— I, I always talk about the Trivial Pursuit pie graph, right? And so what's— what are your pie pieces? If you're, um, if you're just a keynoter, then my advice is to have a speech and sell that speech a billion times.

Yep.

Now for me, that's boring as hell. Never do that in my life. I, in fact, I've never given the same speech twice. I tell everyone everything's curated and tailored for you. But if you want to go out on your own as a quote thought leader and you want to make a bunch of money doing keynotes, the event planners and the bureaus, they need to know how to sell you.

Yeah.

And you can be much more sellable when you have a singular topic and a singular speech because that's rinse and repeat territory. That's not me. My, uh, biggest gap between working with bureaus and event planners is like, you, you do what? What? No, can you, can you tell me what's your topic? What's your speech? So I have to do a heck of a lot of convincing, Peter, if I so choose, on why they might hire me and what I can do for them. The, the thing that is really the Ruby wisdom coming out now, The really big takeaway, and I'm okay with it, but it's the bureaus and the event planners who can't make the connection between how I can tailor and curate and customize anything in any realm basically under leadership arena.

But the deal there, with all due respect to those, Lovely folks, bless their heart, as they say down south, is you know they're tasked with doing an event, and I call them checklist people. Right? They've got you know what do we need for the event? Oh, we need food. Okay, great. Oh, we need veg. You know vegans are going to be here. We need food for the vegans. Oh, the hotel needs to be. Oh, we need a speaker on something. What's the something? Innovate. You know one word: innovation, resilience, grit. Oh yeah. Okay. Check, check, check. So that's one person. that you need to satisfy. But the real person you need to satisfy is the buyer, that business leader that says, I'm bringing in Pontefract because this is the guy that speaks to whatever that thing is that we're working on. And he could— it's not that he's going to give the same performance. This isn't Broadway, 8 shows a week. He's going to make the points that I need to be made for this group at this moment in time. And I have to trust that he's going to help get me there. And I think that's a— Exactly. That's a different It's just different.

It's a different— so you're right. And it's— and so what I've learned over, you know, the last 15-ish years is that there's a very unique, different type of buyer that's more interested in me than maybe some of my colleagues that are just keynote speakers of their one book and one topic. I have nothing against the change speaker or the speaker, right? Yeah. But I am also more than a speaker. So that's the other thing. I don't brand myself as a speaker. I just happen to do 20 or 30 keynotes a year. Great. But when I do work with groups who are trying to get to know me or beginning to get to know me, they're like, oh, you do psychometric assessments?

Yeah.

Oh, you can do organizational design? Oh, you could help us with our board strategy? You could help us with our purpose? Then that's the good stuff that I get to do, which is, oh my gosh, Dan, you're an onion. And I'm like, yeah, I'm terrible at branding, but yeah, I'm more like an onion.

Exactly. All right, well, this, this has been great. I appreciate your time. I always, uh, appreciate your work, and we always have some fun when we have the opportunity to chat or connect. So thanks for coming on today, Dan.

Peter, thank you always for the love and support, and can't wait to support your new book coming out on July 21st, somewhere around there.

Yes. Yes, thank you, thank you. Appreciate it.

Looking forward to it.

Great.