Finding Joy In and Outside of Work Through Dreams (feat. Dane Espegard)

Hi, I'm Susan Drum and welcome to the enlightened executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. Today we're focusing on the use of dreams in building culture and I'm delighted to introduce Dane Espagaard. Dane is a consultant who teaches and executes the implementation of a culture centered around dream achieving. The system works from the bottom up and puts emphasis on development and personal lives of the team members. Dane works to get culture started and leaves companies with easy to implement steps. Dane's been public speaking and training individuals for 15 years while implementing his system for vector marketing where he's a division manager operating one of the top performing teams in the nation. Dane brings his successful people oriented method to market in his number one Amazon best selling book, the Dream Machine. So other leaders can benefit from the extraordinary transformation to their teams. So welcome Dane.

Happy to be here.

I am really excited to talk to you about the use of dreams in building culture and teams. So can you share a little bit about your methodology?

Yeah, absolutely. So the system is, there's a few different parts to it and the main part is really the setup and it's helping the team members create their own dreams list. We kind of call it a menu. And so we go through about nine different categories which the purpose of that is to kind of touch all different areas of life and we help individuals to create a list of somewhere in the ballpark of 100 to 300 things on their list. Through that activity we also have them share and that creates some bonds within their team. And then we also give them a place to actually take some action on some of those dreams as well. And so after that setup, what we typically find is that each team member has something in their calendar, something that they're really looking forward to over the course of the next month to three months. And that at least gets kind of the ball moving with this culture of dream achieving. And then there's a lot of things that the business owner or the executive is able to do to maintain and continue to grow the dreams system. System. One of the things that we talk about with that is that it's ground up where the onus is really put onto the individual team member. And it's not meant to be this massive system that's heavy on the time and implementation, but it's something that's able to kind of grow organically within the team members.

Got it. So when you say dreams, tell me what you mean. By that.

Yeah. So, you know, we're all familiar with goals. And at work, we talk all the time about goal setting. And I really like the difference that dreams can conjure up the different meanings. And so one of the things with goal setting, I find all too often that when you ask somebody to set a goal, they set something that they know they can accomplish. Right. And we want to hit our goals. And so, especially in the workplace, nobody.

Wants to fail, right?

Yeah. So we'll set something that is. It's not a stretch thing, but it's something that. Yeah, I feel pretty good about this. And what I find when we take somebody through the dreams exercise is it's, you know, purposely, it's ungrounded. It's meant to be, hey, if anything were possible. And it gets people back to that, you know, refreshing period of your life where maybe you didn't have all these constraints or these perceived constraints of finances and time and your family and mortgage and all of these things. And it's just, what if? And so once we get somebody started on that, sometimes it takes them a little bit to crack out of the normal style of thinking. But once they start doing it, it's just the floodgates open. They get so many things on there. And what's great is it allows them to rediscover some things that were important to them before life caught up and got really busy.

And so these are personal and work goals or anything, really, anything in your.

Life, I would say it's actually more personal than it is work. You know, we have career vocation, finance as that category. So that's one of the nine. But everything else is very much about the individual. And so, you know, we're in the midst of the. I've heard it called the great resignation right now. Right. And in September, I think it was 4.4 million people quit their jobs, and it was the highest amount. 3% of the workforce quit their jobs. And it's a time where people are due to Covid reassessing and reevaluating what's important to me, what do I want? And something that's really important in the workplace is somebody to feel valued and connected to as an individual, not as a cog in the wheel or a dollar amount on the line item. And so I think this is really timely in terms of in line with exactly what employees are looking for right now.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more because truly, I think people are feeling isolated. And if we look at some of the statistics, over half of employees feel lonely. But they're never going to share that they feel lonely. But according to some of the research they actually do, they or they feel really burnt out or isolated. And ultimately I talk a lot about building connectivity in an isolated workforce. So. So this sounds like one methodology to do that, which I'm excited to dig in further. I'm going to be a little bit the skeptic here for a minute and say, okay, I'm a business owner and I'm like, what is them dreaming about skiing midweek on a powder day have to do with me hitting our business objectives?

Yeah, and I think that's a really valid question, especially a time when people are, there's so much time that needs to be given right now to like, is the way that we're doing business right now the right way to do it? And should I be spending all my thought time on innovating and our programs? But I think that, you know, at the core of everything is the individual that's on our team. And when you think about those individuals, what would you rather have? Would you rather have somebody on your team asleep at the wheel for four, five, six years because it's just easy and comfortable and you know they're going to show up or would you rather have that really engaged on fire person for two or three years? And I don't think it has to be that disparity of time. But you know, sometimes I get asked the question from people of, well, what if I engage this person about their dreams and aspirations and their dream isn't to stay here at this job. And I said it probably, you're probably right, it probably isn't. Very rarely has somebody dreamt about that 70k a year job at XYZ Company and that's okay. What I find though is, hey, if I can engage somebody, maybe it's in their health, right? Maybe I have somebody. And on their list they chose something like, you know what? I really want to sign up for a tough mother. And over the course of the next three months they're training for this. Are they going to bring extra energy to work? Probably. Are they going to have maybe a little bit more energy to solve problems and find solutions? Probably. So what I like about this is that it engages your employee in life. Not necessarily. It's not going directly to how do I get him engaged here. You've probably tried everything under the sun to get your employee engaged in this. And it's, you know, some of them work, some of them don't. So this process kind of strips that back and Says, how can I just get a more alive employee, a more alive team member, and then understanding that that person. You can't. There's only one life. I can't get them to turn that off when they come to work.

Right.

If I'm alive at home, I'm probably going to bleed over into work and be pretty fired up there, too.

Got it?

Yes.

So you're able to bridge and deal with the whole person versus compartmentalizing or just having a narrow focus. What does this mean for me, for business? And really, the tagline of the show is your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. I recently talked about, you know, what are some things we can start to do in the new year, some out of the box personal growth programs. And one of those was to connect back to something you used to love to do as a child. And because that lit you up and maybe you forgot about that. For me, it was horseback riding. I used to love horseback riding, and I hadn't done it in a while, and I recently got on a horse and reconnected to how much I loved it. And so I have a feeling that your process allows people to maybe go back to what used to light them up and bring them joy. And if they have joy outside of work, they're more likely to bring joy inside work is what you're saying.

Absolutely. And there's a different level of loyalty and engagement that's created when work was the entity that connected you with those things. Right. Where it's no longer as work, my paycheck. It's so much more than that. But to your point, I love that you brought up horseback riding. So our family over the course of the last three years has become a horse family. And we moved out of Minneapolis kind of an hour east, and my wife has gotten into horses. And now, like, you know, we have nine categories that we take people through on the dreams list. She has a 10th category. Essentially, that's like just horses and all the dreams within the horse category. But, yes, this does reconnect people with that. And so for me, what I use when I run the workshops that I always talk about is on my dreams list. Not all the things are checking off the list, but some of them are how you want to live. So for me, on my dreams list is play basketball once a week, every week. And the reason is when I do that, it allows me to tap into things that. And I went in a certain stretch of my life, adulthood, where I didn't have that competitive outlet. And once I reconnected with that Thing that I did all the time growing up, I'm a better dad, I'm a better husband. I'm a better leader at work when I play basketball once a week, and there's nothing that my wife or my work can do to engage me to get that same thing out of me. And so, yeah, I do find often that people are like, you know what? I need to go back to playing that instrument, or I need to. I'm going to sign up for art classes or something like that. That gets that creative energy and those creative juices flowing as well.

Do you ever find people struggle a bit with the opposite problem where they do the dream work, but it all feels so lofty that it almost makes them more depressed because they're like, how am I ever going to make this happen?

I haven't experienced that because I think we handle that in the process. And one of the ways that we handle it is we do. We give permission to dream big by, you know, the whole process, I'm giving thought joggers nonstop. And so they're hearing big things, but they're also hearing really small things that you'd say, that's not a dream. But under this banner of dream setting, it is. I had a guy on my team during COVID that I called, and like, this was May. So, like, Covid had just hit his business was being impacted negatively. And I just called the check in. It was more like a mental health call than anything. And I said, hey, this guy's name is Robert. I said, robert, how you doing? How you holding up? And he said, actually, great. And he goes, I've had more time this month to go after things in my dreams list. He goes, I just crossed another thing off my dreams list yesterday. I said, oh, that's exciting. What'd you do? He goes, I just finished flossing for 30 days straight. And I said, just. I said, that's on your dreams list? And he said, oh, yeah, that was on my son. The dreams don't need to be these big, massive things. Sometimes they're just things that. Little things that we could do right now, we just don't. We just don't do. But putting them down on paper, you know, is the first step for that.

Is the first step. What kind of results does this produce for the leader in doing this work? And if you could talk about that in general, but then also give us an example, I think it would be super helpful for listeners.

Yeah. So I think what it does is it reengages that person with the work that they're doing here. The whole process is almost taking steps back to say, hey, let's forget about what you do at work right now. What are the things that you want to do in life that would get you back on a path of being alive and saying, wow, this is great. And if we can do that. Well, work is a big part of our lives and it's probably the source of the income that you're going to need to do a lot of things on the dreams list. I mean, most of the things on the dreams list do require some sort of financial investment. Right. Even signing up for a tough mudder. And so what I love about it is it flips the I have to go to work because of this obligation and it switches to, I get to go to work. And this is the vehicle for me to be able to live the life of my dreams. And that switch is such a big thing in the way that somebody has perspective on their task. You know, it's the whole the janitor story at. I think it's the janitor at NASA. Right? Like, what do you do? Are you cleaning the floors? It's like, no, I'm helping put people on the moon. Yes, right. It's the perspective of what we believe that we're doing makes the biggest difference. So I think that that is the big piece. What I got to see and the reason that I wrote the book was because of COVID I've been doing this program in my organization since 2013. And I know, you know, it's one of those things where how do you measure it? It's one of those kind of like, you know, out there topics. So it's not necessarily in the bottom line that you can say this is because of the dream system. But what I really got to see during COVID was as that happened in a lot of organizations just worldwide were dealing with the effects of it. Our organization nationwide was having all sorts of challenges. My specific team, I didn't lose one person on my team during that. And you know, that was the time for me that I saw not only were they here, but they were mentally very fit during that. And a lot of our people use that as opportunity to charge forward instead of retreat. And it was during that time that I was like, there's so much here that maybe I didn't even recognize when I've been doing it over the years that this has to get out there. I need, I need to start sharing this with other companies and what's the.

Relationship between this work and culture? So when you Talk about like a dreams culture.

My answer to that is everything, right? So what does this have to do with culture? If you were to ask anybody in our organization, you know, what's the culture in our organization, they'd say dreams. They would go right to that. And dreams is woven into every single meeting that we have. Every meeting we do something called dream spotlighting. It's the simplest thing ever. It's at the beginning of any meeting that we do, we recognize anyone that just accomplished a dream. And what's great about that is it keeps this whole process non obligatory. Right? So in other words, it's not, hey, Susan, have you gotten any dreams done on your list? Come on, what are you doing? But instead it's giving the people that are living their dreams the spotlight for just a moment to say, hey Susan, I know that you just went on an RV trip with your family for a month and that was on your dreams list. Give us a, you know, 60 seconds of highlights from that. What it does is it puts people over profits. And we're starting our meeting with talking about Susan and living the life of her dreams in this epic vacation that she had. And that's a really friendly nudge to the other people on the team to be like, I got, I need to get back to my list. And so because we do that, it's always at the front of individuals minds. We also do it through gifting. So we do it with, you know, let's say I'm going to do Christmas shopping. We're in that season right now. Instead of just doing what I used to do, which was go online and find something that's great, maybe personalize it and order eight of them and send them out. I now just pull up everybody's dreams lists. I know what my budget is and I pick things that are on their dreams list. So when I.

That makes gift giving easy.

It's easy. And I also know that a hundred percent of the, like the intended purpose of those dollars will meet that outcome. Right? They get it. And they're like, how did you know? Of course I knew. I have your dreams list, right. And I'm also able to buy things that I know will maybe sometimes get them out of their comfort zone. Last year I bought a guy on our team singing lessons. I don't think he would have paid for that on his own, but it was on his list. And he's like, oh my God, this means I have to do it. And he was, you know, nervous but really excited about it. And it was such a unique gift, that is for sure, something he's going to bring up to other people. So when I have a, let's say, a review with somebody on my team and we're in a sales organization, so it lines up really well with this, hey, let's talk about what your personal outcome is for this next month. Great. Or the next quarter or the next year. And then, hey, talk to me about that. That's going to get you to this place financially. What are some of the things that you're going to be accomplishing this year personally? So that's in everything that we do. So there's no doubt that the individuals on my team know that they're valued for who they are first and what they provide. Business is a second.

Yes, Right, right. And then that brings that connectivity that I think is missing so much. You know, we talked about the reason people are leaving is because work has become so transactional.

Yes.

With this environment, even with hybrid, where you're half on, half off, and when you don't have a sense of loyalty or connectivity, then it becomes more transactional and therefore you're easily lured away by pay.

Yeah.

So my sense is that if I feel connected or more loyal to the people around me, I'm less likely going to leave for a pay reason. But if I don't have that connectivity, I will.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's what we're talking to leaders a lot about is how can you do this type of work in a much deeper way?

And, you know, once somebody tells us they're leaving or they're looking, it's too late. Right. And so I always have the outlook that everybody's temporary. Even somebody's been with me for five years. They're three months away from leaving. And so if I'm operating from that, that forces me to constantly be courting that person. It doesn't mean I don't have standards that I hold them to in terms of accountability and performance, because I do. But what it does is there's always got to be for me that next I know how I feel when I have something in my schedule, a vacation or something else that's a couple months from now. It's that anticipation is just as great as the experience itself. And so for my people, if I always have something that's coming a couple months down the road, well, there's always a next thing. And there's never this lull of just like, well, here we are again.

Yeah.

Right.

Right. How about. Can you share any examples from this type of work that you've Done with other companies?

Yeah, for sure. So I did Amber, somebody that we both know, right, she runs a company called ngng. And I had the opportunity and the pleasure of taking her company through an online version of this in, I think it was May, April or May. And she had, she has a team of about 30. And so they were all on. We took them through the process. The average person, her team brainstormed over 200 dreams on their list just during that initial stage, which is pretty awesome to see. And the energy from that is so cool. We did it on a Friday, so it's, hey, whatever, you clear your schedules, we're going to have a day focused on you. And so it already sends the message of, oh, this is pretty cool. But then what happens is we started to do the sharing and the stealing portion. And so what happens is we take people and we put them in groups of four or five and then they hand select the ones that they want to share with other people on the team. And I was, you know, because it was on zoom, it was kind of nice. I was popping in and out of different rooms and just kind of eavesdropping. And I also, I get the honor of being able to steal from everybody. So I'm hearing cool ones and I'm like, oh, I didn't even think of that. I'm writing them on my list. But what was cool is that they work together and her team works virtually. So they all know each other. But this was a one hour portion of the meeting where they really got to know each other. They got to hear that, you know, Janet over here in account services, Janet wants to swim with sharks and do these like day long hikes. Like she's an adventurer. Maybe I didn't know that before. And so there's just like that type of stuff. I was in the midst of watching her team and I started texting Amber and I said, amber, your team is just filled with rock stars. And she's like, I literally want to cry right now listening to my people's dreams. And so the bonds that are created from that are so special. And then what happens is through the sharing, all these connections get made where we start to recognize that we're one phone call away from living some of these things. Things one person on her team said she shared there's a sharing portion. And she said, I want to take burlesque classes. And somebody else totally random goes, wait, are you in Denver? My cousin is actually one of the top burlesque trainers in Denver. And it was like took 30 seconds. And all of a sudden, this person was going to have that dream checked off their list. So there's just. There's a lot of cool things that happen with that. And Amber has texted me so many times since then of, hey, somebody else just accomplished a dream. So great. Somebody just bought their first home because of the class. And what it does. That's not the reason, but it brings all those things into focus in a time where even executives. It's like, how often do we do these types of things for people on our team, but we don't do them for ourselves?

Yes. Yeah.

And so it's just giving people the time and space to actually, like, you know, spend time on them.

What about for the leader? Is it this mostly for the team and the leader, you know, they probably have more expensive dreams, and they might be a little embarrassed by or just feel like, oh, I shouldn't really share the fact that, like, yeah, I've already done, you know, some of those things, and now I'm looking even bigger. What do you say to that?

Yeah, I actually. I think this is as much for the leaders it is for anybody else. And the reason, one of the things that has to happen in order for this to work is the leader has to be willing to live out loud. And I think that goes with everything. If I want culture in my organization, like, I have to embody that. I have to model it. So I made this decision. I had a horizontal shift within the company that I worked for back in 2012. So I was taking a new territory, starting from scratch, bigger market. And so it was a new opportunity to start from scratch with culture again. And so that's when I got back to this dreams concept. And I said, I want to do this as my culture. I want to be known as the dreams division. And so my then girlfriend, who happens to now be my wife, I said, hey, we need to do this. But it was very selfish. I was having to do this solely so that this would extend to my work. But we made our dreams lists, and then we started something that's now become a tradition. And on New Year's Eve that year, we took out our dreams list. We shared them with each other, and we chose 5 to 10 from each of our lists that we were going to accomplish that next year. And this was the first iteration of this program. So I just said, hey, look, I'm going to help people make their list, and then I'm going to live my dreams, but I'm going to do it out loud. And hopefully that'll empower other people to do the same. Yeah. And in the past when I would take really cool trips or something like that, I'd be really hush hush about it because I was, you know, maybe some guilt or I know they, maybe they can't afford the same trip or they can't just take off like I can. But what I didn't recognize is that when I was younger, coming up in this organization, those were the leaders that I wanted to work for, were the people that have these epic lives. And then I was getting to a place where I was living that and I was trying to not shine the spotlight on it. And so what this does for the leader that really wants to implement this, it gives them permission and freedom to say, hey, those cool things that you do, you should do more of them and you should do them out loud because that actually gives permission to the other people on your team to say, hey, I should be doing some of these things as well. And you don't have to share the exact dollar. You can make whatever private you'd like to, but I think it's important to share.

Well, yeah, I think leaders underestimate the power of inspiration that might give to, yes, I'm leaving this amazing life. You know, I remember I had the opposite experience when I graduated law school and went to work for law firms during the summer. What I saw was the second year associate was unhappy, the fourth year associate was unhappy, the sixth year and the partner was happy. But it seemed like just because they were making money and I just thought, oh my God, I want to get out of here. And that's really to some degree what had me shift. I also just felt like for me, it wasn't the right move. But what if that had been different? What if I just experienced people loving both who they were outside of work and that translated into inside work, then I probably would have stayed and wanted to follow in their footsteps. So not to underestimate that, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So getting back to that 2012, like when I started doing with my girlfriend, but 2007, I was at a corporate conference and my company paid Matthew Kelly, who's an author and a speaker, to come in and give a keynote. And Matthew had us all make our own dreams list right from stage. So I was in there just like everybody else, cranking away my computer. And the goal was to make a hundred. And I remember doing that. I remember being very inspired, saying, this is great. This is such a cool thing. And then like a lot of things at a conference, I went home and I didn't really do anything with it. Right. And then when I, five years later, was going back through, you know, hey, I need to figure out what I want my culture to be, I settled back on this. So I dug my original list back out, added to it, had my girlfriend then do it, and then since then, it's really taken off. But my now wife, Brooklyn, we do this every single year. And I would say this is one of the keys to our relationship, because what it's done is it's allowed us to understand the other person at a deeper level and also be able to show up in a way to support the other person like we normally would. You know, I mentioned the horse thing if we didn't have the dreams list. I think it'd be difficult for me if my wife was like, hey, I want to buy a horse, and I want to buy another horse. And that's not a cheap hobby.

Yeah, Right.

But what I've seen from her is it has dominated her dreams list. Like, this is her passion now in life. And. And I don't think she would have found that if it wasn't for the dreams list, which I like about that because so many people are, like, constantly looking for their passion, and they think that it has to come from work. Yes. And I think that's unique when somebody's able to find a role, a calling at work that lines their passion. But for a lot of people, I think it's easier to find their passion if they're experiencing a ton of things in life. Right. And to be able to still be alive with that. So my wife and I now do this. We do this with our girls, our two little daughters, and I mean, it's been a full extension to our family as well, which I love.

I love it. I love it. Well, this is really inspiring. I can't wait to delve in and do something similar. But not as many. I put 100 things I want for my life about. I want to say 10, maybe it was eight years ago, and I feel like I need to revisit that list and put it in context of the dream.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

It's a living thing. Right. Because we change.

Yes.

And so there's. It's not uncommon for me to look at my list and be like, what was I thinking? Right. And take something off, and then I have mine connected to my phone. So I'll be traveling, or I'll talk to somebody random at an airport, and I'll find a new place. I'm like, I got to put that on my travel list. So we're constantly living that list and it's growing all the time. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, how can people learn more if they want to do this type of work with their own team?

Yeah. So we run custom workshops for people to get them started with this. And then we also have integration programs beyond that. But on my website, which is just Danespegard.com they can find out about the custom workshops. We usually just do a call to walk people through because it's really dependent on the size of their team and are they hybrid in office virtual so that that's really the way for somebody to learn more and to get started that way.

All right, excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining today. This was very inspiring and I think it's the right time in our lives to be focused on. So thank you.

Yes, you bet. My pleasure.

If you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Dr. Amir Kafir who discusses his method for identifying and resolving deep rooted organizational problems. Let's lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. And I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive. Sam.