094: Why Being Broke is Your Greatest Teacher with Dwayne Clark

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback? On this podcast, I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who at their worst, learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from nothing. Dwayne Clark grew up poor. So poor that his mom used to steal potatoes from her employer to feed her children for a week. And Dwayne, he had to learn how to negotiate as a child to ensure that they'd have utilities and running water. But Dwayne learned a powerful perspective as a young boy, and this perspective shift changed his life. He learned that he could view poverty as poor himself, or he could view poverty as being the greatest school ever. And he chose that. Today, Dwayne is a serial entrepreneur and runs one of the nation's premier assisted living communities with over 30 locations, 2,000 staff members, and over 60,000 residents served. He also is an award winning film producer, author and major philanthropist as CEO of the Aegis Living Community, one of the most sought after assisted living facilities in the U.S. he's also the producer of the award winning film Big Sonja and Full Court, the Spencer Hollywood Story about the iconic NBA hall of Famer. In his latest book, 30 Summers Left, he shares the lessons from longevity that he has amassed from those latest health and wellness research on living the best life possible. Join in today and learn exactly how Dwayne Clark levels up and created everything from nothing. Today on Leveling Up, I've got Dwayne Clark. And I'm so excited to chat with you today, Dwayne, because Duane is an author, he's a playwright, he's also of this CEO of Age Is Living, which is a senior housing community. And I am so excited to talk with you because you're so successful. People see you thrive in your space, but I know that's not always who you were. So, Dwayne, thanks for being here. And I'm dying to jump into who you were before all of this.

Well, Natalie, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. I'm jazzed to be here. I'm honored to be on your show and I'd love to tell my story.

Yes. Let's go. So who are you before all this?

Well, you know, I grew up. My mom was a single mom, kind of struggled. She was an immigrant, I was the youngest of four children. My closest sibling was almost eight years older than me. I was kind of the oops child of our family. And we grew up poor. And I always like to define poor because I think people use that term very loosely. You know, it's like, well, we're poor. We can't buy the new Jordan tennis shoes. We were more than that kind of poor. We were poor that we didn't have food to eat.

Wow.

And I was kind of a juvenile delinquent in that, you know, my two favorite things growing up were girls and racing cars. And sometimes the order split, which was the priority. I decided I really didn't need high school. And so I got in some trouble when I was a teenager and my mom decided to pull me out of public school, Send me away 100 miles and send me to a private Catholic high school. So I lived with a family by myself when I was about 16 years old. And my mom was a line cook in a restaurant. So she finally got enough money to move and move us into this little ratty one bedroom apartment. And she comes home one day and she says, you know, we don't have any money. And I go, you know, smart Alec kid. I'm like, what's new? Yeah, we don't have any money. And she walks over to her little refrigerator in a kitchen just off the main room, opens this old antique refrigerator, and there's a can of milk in it, an onion and a half a cube of butter. And she turns around, looks at me in a very solemn way, and she said, I'm going to have to steal potatoes from work. And my mom was a very, very proper woman, very well mannered, never did anything dishonest, stole anything in her life. And I was kind of shocked at this, you know, and so she said, if I steal enough potatoes, like 10 or 12 pounds of potatoes, we can eat this for the next two weeks and this will be our substance. And she would. She refused to steal any meat or anything else because it was too expensive. And she said, and I want you to know when I get paid, we're going to pay these back with interest. So this is just a law. So the next morning at four in the morning, it was like a bike, a bank heist, you know, we drive to her work, she goes in the kitchen, five gallon bucket of potatoes she brings out. Then we made potato soup for two weeks. And during that time, you know, she gave me an infinite amount of wisdom. She said she was a great cheerleader of mine. And one of the things that parents don't do enough today is breed confidence into their children. And she said, I know you're going to go on to be something incredible. You're going to have a fabulous life. You're probably going to. Maybe you're going to be president of this country or whatever, but, you know, I know you're gonna have people work for you. And what I want you to remember is if you're always there for your people, your people will always be there for you. Wow. And, you know, I didn't really realize the gravity of that advice when I was 16 years old. I do now. And because of that, you know, when I started my company, we have almost 3,000 employees now, the first thing that I did was I started the Potato Soup foundation. And we went on to supply grants and all kinds of things for hundreds of people that are going through crisis. We have a dollar meal program where you can get a full on balanced meal for $1. You can take home a meal of five for your family for $5. So no one will ever go hungry in our company. Gosh.

What I love so much about that initial experience with your mom is, you know, desperate times call for desperate acts, and I get that. But what I love about that is I think a lot of people in that situation, they don't explain it to their kids. They don't. They just kind of do it. And I loved, like, kind of the ethical stance behind it. Like, she was desperate, she wanted to feed her kids.

Right.

And she. But how she explained it to you and like, I'm going to pay it back. This is not right. Interest. I mean, wow.

Yeah. Yeah.

I just got chills hearing that.

Yeah. Yeah. It left, you know, it just an absolute incredible, indelible imprint on me. And I think, you know, you know, now that I'm a CEO of a company, I've got thousands of people work for me. It bred a sensitivity into me that I probably wouldn't have had if I didn't have that experience.

Now, did you have siblings?

Was it just you had siblings? But by that time, you know, again, my closest sibling was eight years older than me. So they were pretty much out of the house on their own, doing their own thing.

So being poor as a child, and I mean, I get what you're saying. Like, here you are really struggling, and then here your mom takes a stand, like, she saves money to even get you into private school, which is pretty telling.

I got a church scholarship to go. My mom didn't have the money to pay, so I got a church scholarship.

Yeah, okay. Even better, because I'm sure applying for that wasn't easy either. What did you believe about yourself as a child growing up that poor?

I just thought it was a way of life. I think, you know, you, you get thrown into a paradigm of life where, you know, no different. Right. And, you know, I didn't grow up with computers and the Internet and iPhones and those things. I grew up in the, in the 70s and the 80s where we didn't have those things. So my exposure was limited to my environment. But the thing I would see, whether, you know, you're watching a television show or whatever, you'd kind of fantasize about this lifestyle. And I think I learned at a very early age that I had two choices in life about poverty. One, I could say, poor me, I grew up poor. Why is everything against me? Why is the world against me? Why have I had to have this? Or I could say, man, growing up in poverty is the greatest university I could ever go to and use it as rocket fuel to run as far from poverty as humanly possible. And I chose the latter because I wanted to say I am so lucky to have grown up in that kind of atmosphere because I know what I didn't want. I didn't want to have bill collectors call me. My mom would work all day and the bill collectors would call us all day long. And I would be 10, 11 years old negotiating with the phone company to keep our phone on for three more days.

At 10 or 11 years old.

Absolutely. And you know, I'd ride my 10 speed bike down and say, hey, I've got a dollar and 62 cents. If I come down and pay it right now, will you keep it on for another week? So, you know, absolutely, absolutely. Because I think people took pity on an 11 year old bringing in their piggy bank to pay the phone bill. But here's what it taught me. You know, a lot of people say, oh, that's so sad. So it's not sad. You know, you can look at it that way. You can say it's sad, but reality it. You know, at, at 10 or 11 years old, I learned the skill of negotiation.

You learned vulnerability too?

Absolutely. Vulnerability. But you learn, hey, this is how I interact with people that want something from me. And this is how I negotiate with manners, with being polite, with being sincere, with being honest. And so that became one of the strengths of mine was negotiation. In fact, my first job before I got into healthcare, I worked in law enforcement and I became a hostage negotiator so I'm not sure that I would have those kinds of experiences and that kind of resolute kind of personality if I hadn't had those experiences in poverty.

I love that mindset shift, because you're right. It's really like that victim versus being accountable. And you chose, like, instead of being a victim, to be responsible and change your perspective around poverty. And I love that you did that. And it sounds like you decided that at a pretty early age. And it was a gift.

Yeah, it was an extreme gift. You know, I'm sure you probably remember Dr. Wayne Dyer, who passed away a couple years ago. Sure. Wayne was actually a mentor of mine, and he. You know, I had an abusive father growing up, and my mom divorced him when I was about 6 years old, and he was physically and verbally abusive. He was a horrible man. And so I would bemoan to Wayne about my father. He goes, oh, your dad was awesome. And I would look at him and go, no, I don't think you understand. He would beat my mom. He would beat my sister. He's like, yeah, he's incredible. And I'm like, I'm not communicating with you here, Wayne. He's like, well, let's look at this. Are you a good father? And go, well, I'm a phenomenal father. I would never do any of those things to my kids. He goes, do you love your children? Yeah. He says, are you a good husband? I am a phenomenal husband. He goes, well, yeah, your dad taught you parenting in reverse. And so he taught me this concept, Dr. Dyer, about, well, things happen to you, and sometimes you just learn in reverse because of the things that happen to you. You're going to flip that. Well, I'm not going to be that person. So I think, you know, I think for your listeners out there, there's a lot of opportunity for us to look and say, well, I can learn in reverse on this thing, because otherwise the poor me thing doesn't get you anywhere. It doesn't. Doesn't advance you in life. One step so powerful.

It's really a shift in perspective. It's all how you look at things.

Absolutely. Yeah. So I just feel so fortunate, Natalie, that I had that experience, because, you know, I feel like I went to Harvard University growing up, and it allowed me to do a lot of things that have made me very successful in life.

And it sounds like your mom also taught you about being responsible, so you learned that she wasn't a victim, like she was taking responsibility. I mean, even the leaving your dad yeah, yeah.

My mom, you know, my mom would work, like, 16 hours a day. She took care of her mother. So after she worked 16 hours a day, she'd go to the nursing home to see her mother for two hours a day, come home, get very little sleep, make me dinner, whatever, and, you know, just had an incredible work ethic. And, wow, I really admired that about her. And so, you know, she never sat around or, you know, we never had public assistance or welfare or any of that thing. I mean, she had to go work three jobs. She worked three jobs, and she taught me that mentality. I started working when I was seven years old. I was a dishwasher in an airport restaurant where she was the line cook. And I was so, so little that I used to have to stand on a milk box to open the dishwasher. And, you know, I thought this was phenomenal. God, I'm having fun and I get to use this machine. And, you know, it's just what I did. And so I work, not full time, but every year of my life since I was seven. Seven years old. And I look at that as a blessing, you know, it's just incredible that I've been able to do that.

Yeah. No, it truly. Because you've had a lot of different things that you've done, like, a lot of different career paths. Like. Like here, hostage, negotiator, author, playwright. Like, what did you want to be when you grew up when you were a kid?

Well, I thought I wanted to be a famous criminal defense attorney.

Why that?

Well, I think I watched too much Perry Mason, Dragnet things, so, you know, I was a little bit of a latchkey kid who watched a lot of television.

Okay.

And. And, you know, so I grew up thinking, well, this would be cool to be this. This defender of the vulnerable and, you know, and so on. Yeah. So I got a scholarship to go to college. I went to college my junior year. I ran out, my scholarship ran out, and I ran out of money. And a friend of mine said, I think you're too nice a guy to be a criminal defense attorney.

You're too what?

He said, I think you're too nice a guy to be a criminal defense attorney. You don't really want to be around criminals. And I said, oh, yeah, I can do this. He goes, all right, well, since you're out of money, why don't you go see if you can get a job in a prison? And I said, okay. So I went and worked in a maximum security prison, which was one of the worst prisons in the United States. It was in Walla Walla, Washington. And the year I went to work there, it was Rated as the 10th most dangerous prison in the United States.

And what makes it dangerous that working.

There was dangerous or people being murdered constantly? I mean, stat, there was probably six murders my first year. Wow. Staff were being assaulted, hostages were being taken. So it was, it was out of control. And so I thought, well, I'm going to work here one or two years, save enough money, go back to school. I ended up working there in the system for six and a half years. And that's where I was trained as a hostage negotiator. Was, was on the tactical SWAT team. I did a bunch of things that are kind of crazy. Worked as an institutional investigator, worked undercover, did all kinds of things. And so then in my last year there, I got. In the last couple of years, I started to get more in the healthcare bend. I really liked healthcare. And so I ran a prison clinic and would hire doctors and dentists. And, you know, I'm young, I'm like 23, 24 years old doing this, and I'm like, I really like doing this. I really like healthcare. So I was going to quit because I just, it was too crazy a life. My sister called me, this is in 1985, so a long time ago.

Okay.

And she calls me and she said, well, if you're going to quit, I said, I think I'm going to quit. I'm going to go back to law school. I've saved enough money. She goes, why don't you go work in senior housing? And I said, I don't know anything about old people.

That's so random and opposite from what you were doing.

Absolutely. That's what I said to her. And I said, you know, I know about bank robbers and rapists and murderers. I don't know anything about old people. And she goes, well, you work in an institution, you do service, you do activities, you do security. She goes, so you have some common skills. I'm like, okay, I think that's a stretch, but okay. She goes, well, I'm just ask one favor, go down to the library. Because this before computers, 1985, she said, read this study called the Grain of America. It's like a 400 page study produced by the federal government. So I go down to the library, spent like three days reading this 400 page study, and I'm like, oh my God, the world is going to be white. You know, the world's going to be filled with seniors. You know, it's going to Be all these gray haired people walking around. So I left and I interviewed with this company and they hired me as a manager in training. And you know, I shot up to a vice president. I was recruited away by an executive vice president public company, took a company public. And then 22 years ago I started Aegis Living, which we've been voted best company to work for 12 times and Glassdoor top 50. So.

So take me back a little bit to the vision of that because, okay, so when you hear, read the study Graying of America and you hear the world's going to be filled with seniors, what was the motive then? Was it that I, that's the business to be in because there's a lot of people, or was it more a motive of like, I want to help these people? What was the vision or the motive behind that? Because the reason I'm asking is that I typically find that people find success in things when they're focusing out, when there's like a, when there's a bigger thing besides themselves and money. And that's what I'm curious about.

Well, again, going back to Dr. Wayne Dyer, we tend to learn in reverse. And what I learned working in the prison system is my friend was right, that the fact that I wasn't really loving working with criminals and that, that it was incongruent with my personality, my skill, that I had made more friends with the criminals than I had enemies. And that wasn't a good characteristic of a guy that's going to be really good in that industry that you became friends. And not friends like I'd go out to beer with the murderer, but friends, like people respected me and liked me. And so I had a different. I wasn't the John Wayne, you know, kind of macho guy in this business. So my personality was one where, you know, compassion, vulnerability, love.

Yeah, that's what's coming up for me. That you actually heard them, you saw them as people, not criminals.

Exactly. And that's why they like me. So I made that discovery about myself when I was 26 years old. And so when I read this study, I said, well, here's where part of me can come out. I've never really looked at it as, hey, this is a phenomenal business opportunity. Now I'm smart enough and intelligent enough and savvy enough to know that. I mean, my company owns $3 billion worth of real estate. So it is a business opportunity. We know that. But before that, you have to be compassionate with your staff. You have to be compassionate with the people you Serve. You have to be compassionate with their families, the daughters and the sons and so on. And that's where my personality came out. That's where I found this richness in my life that, you know, you can have a job that you absolutely love and you feel good about what you're doing in the world. So that that's the twofer for me.

What have you learned about seniors? Because there is the graying of America and there is so many of them. What have you learned about them?

Well, I've learned a lot. Last week I interviewed Margaret, who's 106 in July, and Ina, who's 101 this month. And sitting down with people, those two women who are beautiful in every way and have 207 years combined on this planet, you learn a lot about life. First of all, I have a book coming out called 30 Summers More. It comes out in September. I spent the last five years researching why people live well and how they live long. I've traveled extensive, traveled to 82 countries. So every time I go to a country, I sit down with seniors and people and talk about it. So this book is filled with all kinds of juicy nuggets about how to live well and long. But in talking to Ida and Margaret, what I discovered was a variety of characteristics about those two issues. Living long and living well. First of all, they have no fear of death. None. In fact, Ida told me, hey, I already got my angel wings picked out. I'm ready to go whenever the good Lord calls me. All of them had a belief system. You know, whether it's a religious belief or belief in a higher power, they both had a belief system. Both of those ladies walked a ton. Margaret is 106, never had a driver's license, so she walked everywhere. I learned that both of them had a sense of purpose. You know, people tend to retire in their 60s. You know, they want to go play golf or go skiing or go boating. The rest of life, those people, and there's good science behind this, actually die early. So Ina and Margaret actually worked into their 80s doing some kind of things. So you have to have this purpose in life. In fact, Harvard has the longest longevity study in the history of man. It's been going on for almost 80 years. John F. Kennedy was a member of it originally. And what they found is they studied genetics extensively, diet, longevity, all these things. And what they found was if you're in a happy marriage at the age of 50, not just a marriage, not a bad marriage, but a happy marriage at the age of 50, it'll add as much as 10 years life expectancy to your life. So these guys were married. They were married happily into their 50s. They ate very little meat. They had lots and lots of vegetables, but they said maybe two or three ounces of meat. We weren't big meat eaters.

Two or three ounces of meat, like a day, a week or what at.

A serving, you know, but you know, their plate was 2/3 vegetables and 3 ounces of meat. So you learn a lot about how to live well, how to, how to live long and develop this perspective of fortitude with seniors that I find so refreshing.

You know, what about community? Because I know, we know, we hear a lot about that, about the importance of community and tribe. Was that, was that a big theme with them or.

No, Absolutely. And that's a big part of my book is community is huge. And one of the things that I tell people is it's not just community because some people say, well, I have a religious community or work community or whatever. One of the things I try to encourage people to do is have a community that's 10 to 15 years younger than you. And this is important. And here's why I love that as you age, you will start to get into a routine of doing things with the friends their same age. And here's what happens. You go to dinner and they go, oh God, my hip is killing me. They're like, well, I just had my knee replacement last week. Like, hey, well, look at the skin cancer I had taken off my arm. So that is the, you know, that's the bulk of your conversation.

You're preaching to the choir with me right now. I don't know if you know my, my book's called Aging in Reverse for this exact reason.

Oh, okay. Well, good. Well, you're, you've got to be 30 years old looking at you.

I'm 47, but thank you.

Well, I, I'm 60, so I got a couple years on you. But so what happens, you know, and where. This was an aha moment for me, we have this friend who's a well known Hollywood actor and he came to town and he's 44 and 42 at the time and his girlfriend was 27. And they said, well, let's go out on the town. And my wife, who's very vibrant, active and healthy, they're like, okay. And you know, going out in the town to us means you go to dinner, maybe go to a show or movie, and you're home by 11:30, 12.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah, you know, I'm ready to go to bed at 10:45. So we go out of town and when we find ourselves in this club at two in the morning and I look at my wife and I'm like, it's two in the morning. She goes, yeah, isn't this phenomenal? Wow. So we went to this club with them and then we went. There was this all night ice cream shop that we found ourselves having ice cream at 3 o' clock in the morning. And my wife and I walk into our car and we said, when is the last time we did this? I was 58 at the time, she was 56. She goes, I don't remember, but this feels good. We feel vibrant together.

Yes. I love that. I love that you're saying this. You know, it's funny, I recently realized a lot of friends at different ages. I do have a lot of friends, 10, 15, even 20 years younger than me. And I find that my energy around them makes me feel younger because I get out of that mindset of what's old or the aches and pains or whatever else is going on and you start adopting that as the norm. I love that you just said that.

It's not only those things, it's the athletics things. So I have a foundation called D1 foundation and it's compromised of high school, male high school athletes that are super athletes. All these guys have anywhere from 5 to 45 D1 college offers. So these are two of my kids, are the number one football picks in the United States for class of 19 and 20. So these are supreme athletes. So I took them out two nights ago and I surprised them. And these are kids that come from impoverished homes, much like me, that are super athletes but need some guidance in life. And I took them out the best clothing store in Seattle and I got them all made to measure custom suits, which these kids have never had a suit before, but let alone an Italian made to measure. And they were phenomenal. And so we did the town. These kids are 17, 18 years old. We did the town that night and we were out till 11 o' clock at night. We were walking the streets and laughing and using language that they were teaching me and a handshake that I'd never done before that I still can't remember. And I just, you know, and I came home and my wife's like, you are just buzzing. And I'm like, yeah, I was with my boys, you know, and it's, it's so interesting how youth can actually trigger our immune system. In fact, you know, this is probably not a great example. But the current North Korea leader's grandfather was big into longevity. And so he would go for two hours a day and watch a grade school kids and be amongst their energy. And he felt like that would add years to his life. And there's a lot of proof to that. You know, I know the 101 year old was a teacher that taught for years and years and years and she said my children are the ones that extended my life expectancy.

Yeah. Having a daughter later in my life I feel has done that for me. You know, like I was a little bit later having her. But I love that I still, I'm around that energy.

Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's good. You know, you pick up on this. You and you get out of your routine. I'm a member of an organization called YPO. Young Presidents Organization. Once you turn 50, they put you in kind of the old barge club. You know, you're in the old guys club. So you know, I'm 60 now and you know, but I still hang out with these 40 year old CEOs and you know, I mean they, they do. I was just with them in Italy. They do the craziest things. You know, they want to run up these mountaintops and jump out of airplanes and go hella skiing and. Yeah, and we did a couple years ago we did a. We hired 20 Navy SEALs from Afghanistan that desert maneuvers in Arizona. And you know, he's like, what should I be doing this at this age? You know, and then you're like, I'm all in, you know, racing cars and you know, I mean all kinds of crazy stuff. But it's this vibrancy of life. You know, you start to forget your age, which I think is great. We should forget our age and be ageless. Yeah, absolutely.

I love this. I love this. It's. You're so up my alley right now with everything you're saying and it makes sense. And so how do you do that? And what's coming up for me is you work with seniors. Like that's your, your main business. They're amongst other seniors. How does the vibe stay that way with that? Because you're in a senior community, you're watching people get sick, you're watching people die, you've got people older. It's like basically you're at the end of your life community. What do you find works or doesn't work with them?

Well, I call it moments of joy. And if you think about your day and you reflect back on it, what was my moment of joy today. And it could be your daughter came in and said, I love you, mom, and gave you a big hug. It could be you got an unexpected check in the mail. It could be someone said, you look really nice today, whatever that is. What we try to do in ages is we try to thread together, string together moments of joy for these residents. And sometimes it's the simplest of things. Sometimes it's giving hugs to people, Sometimes it's reminiscing with people. One of the tragedies of our country. And we do it more than Asia does it or Europe does it or whatever. We tend to put old people in a box, and we don't see them. We don't see them for who they are. We look at them and go, oh, God, must be sad to be you, and you're old and you're frail and so on. And we forget these people had phenomenal careers and lifestyles and mortgages and businesses and sex lives and all these things. They're people. They're people, right? So we forget and we judge them and categorize them based on they are who they are and all people want to do. Just like you, just like me. We want to be seen for the contribution we made to this land. So, you know, if we can just acknowledge people for, hey, this is the contribution you've made. I mean, some of the most incredible people I've met, you know, people who worked on the Manhattan Project. I met the woman who put the O in Cheerios. I met, you know, you know, people that were involved in NASA. I met, you know, movie stars. I met the originally original Jane. She lived in our building from the Tarzan movies. So all these, you know, all these incredible people that you go, oh, well, tell me about your life. You know, what did you do? And that's when you see the blood come up to the front of their face, and they get excited about telling you about your life. Just like, you know, doing a podcast. Right? I mean, we're telling you about our life. This is what I'm excited about. We tend to steal those moments from. From seniors.

Gosh, that's so insightful, what you're sharing here. You know, I saw a post going around social media recently. It went. I think it was viral on Facebook. And it had, like, somebody had done this. This artist series of. They took somebody that was elder and they would have them standing in a mirror. So you see them now and a picture of them when they were, you know, 40, 50 years ago.

Right. Wild.

I mean, it was that's why it went viral. I mean she's like, it's so true. Because that what you're saying really makes sense. And it must be sad that they're not, they don't feel relevant anymore. They don't feel heard or seen and people do dismiss.

Yeah. If you just look at what makes Natalie Natalie and then look at seniors, will you take away their story, you take away how they're going to dress today, you take away their food choice, you take away their family, you take away all the things that you value and pretty soon who are you? What are you? What's your history? That's the sensitivity that you have to have, that's the compassion that we train the age of staff with is you have to look at that and you have to give them back those things, let them dress a little crazy today because it's their choice, their identity, it's their brand. You know, I have a film company called True Productions and we make socially conscious films that are all true stories. And we made, we made a film about four years ago called Big Sonja and Sonia is a 90 year old, she may be 91 now. 91. 92 year old Auschwitz survivor from the Holocaust. And she was in Auschwitz, I think she was 13, 14 years old. And the movie's about her stories of courage, but she runs a tailor shop at 90 years old in an abandoned mall in Kansas City. And the movie's just gone crazy. It's what I'll call it, Film festival awards and so on. But what's been so great about sonia? She's about 4 foot 10 and she dresses as leopard. So everything's leopard from the steering wheel on her car to, you know, her favorite clothing, her shoes, whatever. And what's been so great about her is she has this identity and she goes out and lectures everybody from prisoners to high school kids about what courage is and you know, living through Auschwitz and so on. And what's, you can see the vibrancy in her because she's got back the ability to give to people. And again, I think that's one of the greatest thefts in America is we take away seniors purpose and their ability to give back to our community. So that's a big deal.

That's amazing. I love this and I love that you've made this. I can tell you're very passionate about this and you care and I believe that's why you're so successful. I don't believe it's always about a business mind. I think that if, if somebody goes into Something with just the business savvy. If there's no true passion, compassion and care for what they're doing, I believe that's why it doesn't work.

Well, it's thinly veiled, right? I mean, the people that, that go in saying, oh, I mean, everybody wants to be socially conscious this day because it's the, it's a cool thing to be, but it's thinly veiled. And people see through that and they'll say, well, why do you believe in that? What's your story? What's the background? What, what rooted you in that? Did somebody just tell you you should put that in a mission statement? That's why you're doing it? So I think people want to see the soul of a company. We changed corporate office at our company about two years ago. And the reason we did this is we had a very nice office. I owned it personally. Had a beautiful two story waterfall in it. And I was walking around one day. I like to walk and read. So I'm walking through the office and I'm reading this recruiting brochure for ages and I'm reading it.

How do you walk and read? That's a whole other skill set.

Very carefully. And so I'm reading this and I'm like, well, how does this potential employee really see the soul of our company? So I went to our CFO and I said, we're going to buy another office building and we're going to build it so that people see the soul of our company. And he's like, what do you mean by that? I go, well, there's this little flat piece of paper. How are they going to tell who we are, what we do? And so he's like, okay, so we went and found this office building and we built a building. You know, people can go on my website and see it, that has phenomenal art installations. We even have a tree house in the backyard so you can be a little child. I mean, the treehouse with candy and lay on the floor and so on. I love it. But we built all kinds of things in here that show the soul of our company. Now our closing rate on potential employees in our old building was like 68, 70% in terms of getting them talking to come work for us. Our closing rate in our new building is like 97%. And you say, well, why, why is that? Is it because it's a newer building? No, it's because they can see the soul and the purpose and the intent of our company. So we have a whole wall of our office building, probably 30ft across. It's called the Purpose Wall. And every year we have this conference that I put on for a variety of people called epic. It stands for Empower people, Inspire consciousness. And we have world class speakers that come to it. That's how I first met Dr. Wayne Dyer and everyone from Hollywood. Movie stars like Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis and Ashley Judd, two great philosophers like Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer. So one of the things we do at Epic, we started about five years ago is I said, take your iPhone and I'm going to give each team of eight people $500. And I want you to go out there and change a person's life. And then I want you to bring back the video and we're going to have a competition about who changed this person's life the most. So we have 11 teams and we have five judges. About two years ago, Sharon Stone was one of our guests and she said, well, can I help judge? I swear we cried for two hours together watching these videos. So they're emotional. And then we post the stories of what each team does on this Purpose Wall. So when you go in, there's a little colorful little tag that says, okay, I'll give you an example. One woman hadn't had running water for five years. Her house had not had running water for five years. She would go out her neighbor's garden hose and fill a bucket and bring it in to flush the toilet or whatever, like five times a day. And this is in the middle of Seattle. This isn't in, you know, someplace out. So this, this team went in and they found out that her water main in her front yard had broke. So each of these teams are challenged with leveraging their $500.

Yeah.

So this was like. So they had to go out and found a construction company. They got people to make donations. They challenged the neighbors to help. So I mean, this was like a $20,000 job. And they dug up this woman's yard, fixed the main, and they have a video of her turning.

You know what I love about that? I hope people really hear this, especially in a world of social media and fakeness and having to look perfect and everything's together. People really do care when they see real vulnerability and authenticity. And when people ask for help, people do care, right?

Yeah.

I think there's a lot of people afraid to share because of being judged, but I hope more people do share because.

Absolutely. Yeah. So what makes our world better? Right? I mean, it's one of the reasons that you do your Podcast, you know, it's. It's life improvement. You know, going back to your question of what I've learned from seniors, I just had a birthday party two weeks ago that my wife put on that was a blowout party for 350 people. And I wanted to do a video with people about what I've learned over the last 60 years. And so I did a video. It's now on YouTube. It's called 60 Years of Wisdom. And it's largely based on what I've learned from what I call my oracles, my seniors, that have taught me. And the thing's going viral now, I think. We posted two days ago and got several thousands of views.

That's incredible.

It's the kind of thing that you bring this perspective of life, and you get perspective from all kinds of people. And where I find I get most perspective are not with the people that are most like me, but the people that are most unlike me. So whether that's a homeless person, whether that's an impoverished kid, whether that's a senior, whoever it is, whether it's a woman in Afghanistan, you know, that you met on your travels, it's the people that most unlike you that you gain worldly perspective. And that's what makes people interesting, is to have great perspective.

Yeah. And asking and being curious about people, I would imagine. And that's something that sounds like you do very well.

You know, I know your podcast is all about stories. I love hearing people's stories because we all have a story to tell, you know?

Yeah.

And you just got to. You got a mind for it.

And it's interesting to me that a lot of people don't bother asking about people's stories. But, like, I don't know about you, but I can tell you, I totally change my opinion about people when I know their story. Like, I'll meet somebody and I have, like, my judgment comes up, my opinions, then I get to know them, and I'm curious. And I have a whole different love for them.

You know, it's funny you say that. So I told you about epic, this conference we put on, and every year there's a theme of Epic. And so I think it was two years ago, we did a. We did a. The theme was judgment. And what I wanted to do was I wanted to change people's perception of how they judge people, because we judge so many people by the media. So we had all these people that had been judged in the media come as speakers. So I'll tell you the lineup. I can't Remember them all. I think we had eight that year, nine speakers that year. But we had Amanda Knox, you know, the young woman who was allegedly murdered her roommate and then found innocent. We had Monica Lewinsky, we had Lance Armstrong, we had Macklemore. We had a guy named Sonny Barger who was the founder of the Hells Angels. Okay, so we had all these people. And I said, I just want you to give your perceptions after you talk with them. And, you know, you. You know these people for meeting me in the media and who they are and their reputation, their brand, whatever. And then I want you to listen to them, and then I want you to ask some questions. And then I want you to say, did my perception change? And if. If your perception changed after meeting these people and talking to them, I want you to walk away thinking, you know, maybe I should not rush to judgment about people without listening to their story. This totally flipped people's perception of judgment. It was an incredible learning for people about, well, maybe, maybe I let CNN guide me too much or Fox News guide me too much, or, you know, ABC News guide me too much, or Bloomberg, and maybe I should just hold my judgment until I really know the information.

So good. That's so powerful. I love that you did that. Gosh. Okay, so I have so many questions that I'm not gonna take up your entire day asking you a million questions, but I'm. There's some important ones I really want to understand. So you mentioned that you had. You have 3 billion of real estate that your company owns. Tell me about that. What. How does that tie in with what you're doing? How did you get to that?

Well, we started from zero, so it's been a pretty good scale. But, you know, we. We have about 6 or 700 million under construction right now. You know, we have 40 properties. We're the best in class. Aegislvitt is the best senior housing operator in the country. You know, we.

Was that your vision initially, though? Like, I'm wondering that too, because, like, sometimes people say, like, I want to be a billionaire. I want to be a millionaire. I want to have it. Did you have a vision, or was it more like a one step at a time?

It was never my vision to be a millionaire or billionaire. My vision was to have an employee first. Phenomenal culture because it was about my daily happiness. And yet I was smart enough to know, if I build an incredible culture, then I'll have an incredible company. And that usually ties to wealth creation and so on. And I'm incredibly fortunate. I live in Seattle. We have some incredible service order companies that were founded here. Starbucks, Nordstrom, Boeing, although it's gone through some bad news here, Zillow, really, you know, Amazon, I mean, really incredible service oriented companies that were, that have been great for us. And so I got to know a lot of those CEOs and I would go and I'd say, well, what's your story? How did you do this? Whatever. So I got a lot of mentorship from those. Microsoft, you know, I got a lot of.

Did you find a theme with them? Was there certain things that they all.

Said, well, it's all about the people. It's all about the people you have. You know, if you take the kind of emperor mindset that hey, I'm great, I'm the greatest, I'm king, whatever, and I'm going to do this on my own because I'm super smart, you know, you'll lose. I always tell my people I'm the guy with the average intelligence in the room. I just know how to hire super smart people. And so you got to check your ego at the door and you got to be comfortable with hiring people smarter than you. And I call it the making of the quilt. If you think about a quilt with all these patches, that's what I do. I try to add a patch to the quilt at a time.

That's such a good analogy.

That's accretive. So you know, my, my new president who just started a few months ago, he was the president of Starbucks. He oversaw 18 billion in revenue and 183,000 employees. My chief people officer was the head of Amazon HR. She oversaw Amazon Marketplace and 35,000 employees. My head of marketing was never 2% at marketing at Nordstrom.

It's just such golden advice because, and I hope people listening really hear this because I think the tendency of a lot of people that are set out to be entrepreneur start a business is they hire people that are not smarter than them. So they could like manage or tell them what to do and I'll tell. And whether they realize they're doing that consciously or subconsciously, that's what I see happen. And because they think they can't afford or they can't attract the smarter than, but you can't afford not to like hiring the person smarter than you that's gifted at that is what builds a company.

Absolutely. And that's, that's where the ego check has to take place. Because if you don't do that, you know, you're never going to advance. You get, you got to advance beyond your intelligence and your paradigm and your experience. The only way you advance is by adding new people with new experience and new intelligence. So pretty simple equation.

I love this. I have a couple more questions for you. So one, you. Do you have such a strong resume? I mean, from being hostage negotiator, to working in the presence, to author, playwright. Tell me how author and playwright fits in.

I love to write. You know, I really feel like my purpose on this planet is to teach. To teach in a big way, whether that's through television shows or movies or books or whatever. And I just feel like I've gained a lot of wisdom and I want to share it with people to help them in their lives. And I'm sincere about that. So whatever format that that takes. What you know, I've written six books, I've done seven or eight movies. I've written this play that's got a reading going on on Broadway in November. I just feel like that. And the play was a true story about. I went through a divorce and joined a men's group. And it's sad and comical and everything else. So it's called 7 Ways to Get There. But I just feel like that's my journey. How I got into the movie industry was I started meeting all these celebrities doing epic. I'd have all these guys come in and I mean a list celebrities and they'd become friends with me. They'd say, dwayne, I'm making this documentary that's a fashion project. Would you give me $100,000 to help do it? And so on. And so I did this three or four times. And then I said, why am I doing this for other people? Why don't I do this for myself, for things that I really care about. And so that's when I started True Productions and I started about five years ago and I started making these social worthy documentaries.

That's so awesome. So it's kind of like a passion project of yours.

It's absolutely passion project, but it falls in line with my teaching. I feel like I can teach and I can tell a story about this. And you know, I've made everything from civil rights movies to, you know, I told you about Big Sonia, the Holocaust survivor, to, you know, love stories in China, to, you know, all kinds of things.

So cool. Yeah, I love this. I love this. If somebody's listening right now and this is a question I ask everybody. Dwayne, someone ask you too if somebody's listening and they're in their own personal hardship. So whatever that is, to them, they're probably in the victim mindset, too, because sometimes they don't realize it, but usually when you're in a hardship, you. You tend to. People tend to. They don't get out of it until they change that mindset.

Right.

I'm curious if somebody is listening and they're in their own personal victim spot or they hardship, whatever that is, that maybe it's a divorce, like what you were going through, or it's financial, whatever it is. If you were to give them three pieces of advice that they can start shifting to start changing their perspective and create everything from nothing, what would you tell them?

Well, I give you two pieces of advice that my mother gave me. And they were sayings. She used to say, you have to walk through the darkness to get through the light. That was one thing she would say. The other thing would say she would say, the gift is on the other side of the pain. And so I think. I think people get stuck. Stuck in the darkness or they get stuck in the pain. And what you have to do is you just have to advance. It may not be you're going to run through the pain, you're going to get through it, but that pain is going to be a gift. At some point, that pain is going to help you. That darkness is going to help you. But every day you have to advance. You have to move the ball forward. And that may be maybe you're depressed and you're stuck in bed or whatever, and you don't want to get out of bed, and you're like, hey, I'm just going to get up and brush my teeth today. And tomorrow I'm going to go to the kitchen, and the next day I'm going to go buy groceries. And it's just advancing the ball. And then finally you'll get to the point where you say, I'm seeing the light now. I see the light. And then you have to take those painful moments and say, you know, instead of wallowing them, say, how did this serve me in life? What did this teach me? How's this going to make me better? You know, when you do that, then that's how we become richer. You know, don't let it just be a wound that you carry through life.

Well, I just love everything about this conversation and your perspective and your attitude and your. How accountable you are and how compassionate. And I think this is incredible. I want. I know listeners are seeing that too, or hearing that too. I have a couple questions on how to find you and find out more like, like how do people find out about your senior living communities? Like how, where is everywhere?

Yeah, we're on the west coast, so we're in Seattle, San Francisco, L.A. san Diego, Las Vegas.

Okay.

But you can just go to Aegis Living. It's A, E, G I S living. L I V I N g dot com. So that's our, that's our company. You can find me. I have my own personal brand. So it's Dwayne D, W, A, Y N E Dwayne J. Just the letter J period. Clark C, L A R K dot com.

And are you on social media at all, Dwayne?

I'm on social media, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. Dwayne J. Clark on Instagram, you know, so. And if you go through my personal website, it'll link you into those things.

Okay. And your books, are they in stores or where can people.

My books are on Amazon and the newest book, 30 Summers More, which is a phenomenal book. Dr. Ordon from the Doctors wrote the foreword and he's a great guy.

I'll order the book stat because I need some more.

It's going to be out in September. So about Labor Day. It'll be out.

Can you probably pre order it? Can we pre order it? No, not yet.

I think probably next month. You pre order it. One of my books, My Mother, My Son, is a true story about me growing up with my mom. I love that it's being made into a Hollywood movie. So that is a great. That book's done really, really well.

Congratulations on that.

That's incredible. Read it with a box of Kleenex because you'll do that. All right.

I love it. Well, this has been fabulous. I really enjoyed chatting with you. I hope listeners enjoy this. If you, if you are listening to this podcast, please if you love it, leave it A review screenshot it tag us both on Instagram. Let us know what you thought. And thank you so much for being here today.

It's been an honor. I love what you do.

Thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful so others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would leave me a five star review. I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find valuable and come interact with me over on Instagram @nataliejofit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Creating everything from nothing.