July 30, 2025 • 29 mins
Teamwork expert David Burkus share advice on creating great teams, and tips for better networking
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome David Burkis to the show.
David is the author of several best selling business books,
including Best Team Ever and Friend of a Friend. He
(00:35):
speaks on leadership topics to all sorts of audiences. So, David,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, excited to have you on. So why don't you
tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah? I mean how far back do we want to go? Right? Right?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Far? Do you want to go?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Right? Yes? So I was born No, just kidding, I
was an organization I'm or organizational scholars by training. I
was a business school professor for about ten years. I've
always been fascinated with teams and human connections and network
dynamics and that sort of a thing, And around twenty
thirteen twenty fourteen started to write more less for an
(01:10):
academic audience and more for practitioners, and that led to
invitations to speak and to consult and what have you.
And then around COVID. You know, everyone's life got really
really difficult in COVID, but I started to get a
whole lot more. Hey can you do this webinar for
our people? Can you design this whole training? Et cetera,
et cetera. So when university said, hey, we're bringing classes
back in person, I basically said, no, I'm not going
(01:32):
to be there. I'm going to be doing this other stuff.
So I made the leap into doing that full time,
I guess about five years ago. Now, wow, wow, that
seems weird. And it's just absolutely loving it. I mean,
it's fun to teach the next generation of business folks
how to create a better working environment, how to have
better teams, but it's a whole lot more fun to
teach the people who can go apply it later that day. Right,
So absolutely loving it.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I absolutely love the practical ideas one can can do today.
And a lot of your recent work, as you said,
has been on teams.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Recent book a best team Ever? I guess what actually
makes something the best team ever? The high promise.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah right, absolutely, So when you look at the research,
you find that culture plays a much larger role than
you would anticipate. I mean, I don't mean to diminish
things like talent, getting the people with the best knowledge, skills,
and abilities, et cetera. Talent's great, but we've all probably
seen that example of putting a talented player on just
a terrible team and watching the team sort of degrade
(02:26):
them down. So if you can get high talented people, great,
but more importantly, work on a culture that helps turn
talent into performance. And in particular in the book, we
outline kind of three areas where high performing teams shine
in the habits and norms of behavior that they have. Well,
one is how much common understanding or shared understanding they have.
So I know my role, but I also know enough
about everybody else in the team, not just their technical roles,
(02:49):
but also their personality where we connect and overlap, I
can kind of predict their behavior from it. The second
element is a sense of psychological safety. So I understand
how to help build candor on the team. I understand
what somebody who's speaking up because they disagree looks like,
and I give them the space to do that. I
even psychological safety even responds to how we embrace failure, right,
(03:12):
And so you tap into much a bigger growth mindset
on a team when you can talk about fairs in
a way that doesn't just sort of like punish everybody
and have them diminish it. And then the third element,
the third kind of norm, is that these teams constantly
remind themselves of their purpose, but not purpose as like
why we do what we do. We actually in the
book call it pro social purpose. They're reminded of who
is served by the work that you're doing, and that
(03:34):
not only increases motivation, but there's a lot of recent
research that suggests that that increases the amount of team
work behaviors on a team, right, because when you know
that you're doing this for someone else, you're much more
likely to put your own ego aside and do what
the team needs in order to get that person served
to the highest level. And so that's it common understanding
psychological safety and pro social purpose. That's the easy answer
(03:56):
to what makes for those best teams?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Ever, Yeah, that sounds great. Here's a sort of practical question.
How big is the best team?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Ever?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I mean, I know that we don't always get to
decide this, but is there is there a sweet spot
where where it's easier to get those three things?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Then?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, So generally, I mean, obviously if we're talking about
work teams, if we're talking about a sports team, it's
as big as you know, there are positions right right
Generally in the day to day work like what we do,
large teams do suck. The sweet spot tends to be
between about six and eight members of the team. After that,
it becomes really hard to keep one conversation in meetings.
It becomes really hard to keep one sense of clarity,
(04:32):
and you may actually be better off thinking of it
as like, let's break the team. If you've got a
team of fourteen people, it might actually be better to
have two teams of seven.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah. Yeah, I know that's going to say. It's sort
of like a dinner party.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, six to eight is the right number past that
you've got two conversations going at the table. But you know,
let's say that somebody has a team that you know,
they're listening to this and they're managing a team and
they would like to make people feel, you know, more cohesive.
Is there something they can to try, you know, today
or tomorrow to make that happen.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, I mean I'll give you the in depth answer
and then maybe I'll give you us a smaller answer.
My favorite activity to run teams through is this activity
we call the Manual of Me. And it's exactly what
it sounds like, writing the user's manual to what it's
like to work for you, with you or for you?
You know, what are your strengths and weaknesses? Where are
the opportunities you tend to contribute. I typically when I
work with a team, I come to them with four
(05:25):
questions that have to be answered, and then I let
them ask whatever else they want. But we kind of
start with four fill in the blank questions. I'm at
my best when blank, and I'm at my worst win
blank or one and two, which are strength to weaknesses questions,
but also like context questions. Right, some people are at
their best when they're at their office being social, other
people when they're in like monk mode at home, right,
(05:45):
So we want to know that. And then the third
and fourth questions are you can count on me too,
meaning historically, this is where I make contributions to the team.
This is where I help most often I'm a whiz
with Excel formulas or something like that. Right, And then
the fourth question is what I need from you is
meaning this is where I've historically needed help. And it's
funny because I give people those questions and the most
common reaction I get is somebody goes, well, I don't
(06:08):
even know the answers of that for myself, Like, great, well,
you've got a week to reflect and kind of figure
it out, and then we come back together and share
out those answers, leave some time for discussion. It's like
what I like in it too, is it's like taking
the most in depth personality differences test you could take.
Whether you want to call that disc or Myers Briggs
or whatever. You're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for
(06:29):
a multinational site wide license to administer and doing it
for free. First of all, you could just steal those
questions feel free too, and you get the same level
of conversation about differences and about appreciation for how people
are and how we're going to change the way we
collaborate based on this information. So that's like, my that's
my favorite. You probably can't do that tomorrow. You could
start tomorrow, but you're gonna have to give them some
(06:50):
time to it. But you also, if you wanted to,
can sneak those questions into regular meetings. Right, Those are
like good ice breakers instead of saying what's your favorite movie?
Which is helpful to know, those are real questions around
how you work. So just pick one and ask one
per week, and that's something you could do tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, David, what's your fun fact? When somebody asks you
your fun fact about you? As an icebreaker?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
My fun fact, I've actually spent the last nineteen years
training in this really esoteric martial art called Brazilian jiu jitsu.
That's my fun fact that I go through.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Fun fact. Yeah, exactly. Well, we may come back to that.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
All right, welcome to it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
But I'm curious. What do people get wrong about team building?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
I am sure you've seen some atrocious team building over
the years.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing I tell people is
team building is not an activity. It's a habit. It's
not a one off thing. The biggest thing people get
wrong it's like, oh, great, we're gonna do this activity.
We're gonna all rank the items we need in the
metaphorical shipwreck, like you've done that activity, right, or we're
gonna use these wooden planks to cross the imaginary river
and then magically that's going to turn us into a team.
(07:52):
The research is really clear on this. Then unless you
have that. That's not to say don't do any of
these activities, but unless you have an active and then
a conversation about how what we learned in that activity
translates into day to day behaviors I can hold people
accountable to you don't see any lasting change from those
team building activities, So it's much more about the habit.
(08:13):
And so to me, I don't know. Maybe I'm just
no fun right, Maybe I'm a spoil sport. Maybe, but
I just find it more useful to jump jump into
something like the Manual of Me and like, let's just
jump to the conversation about habits and norms instead of
have to do the activity first. Right, So that's me.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
It turns out that a trust fall does not in
fact make you trust your team members.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah no, no, not not at all. It felt great
at summer camp when we were all like nine, but now.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, past that, not so much.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break,
and then I'll be back with more from David Burkis. Well,
I am back talking with David burkis Is, the author
of several business books, including Best Team Ever. We've been
talking about some ways to make your team a better team.
(09:01):
You're also the author of a book called Friend or
a Friend, which, and I know a lot of people
are listening to say, like, oh, no, networking not that
so right up there with team building in terms of
how much we.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Enjot me, I've just go right after all the things
we hate about work, all.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
The fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So what you know, somebody's listening to this and you're
trying to convince them that they're not terrible at networking.
What are some practical things we should be doing to make,
you know, relationship building more fun and yeah authentic?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing I'll say
is that if you if you hate networking, if you
feel sleazy and weird and what have you like, I
totally get it right before. The motivation for writing that
book was that I read a lot of networking books
earlier in my career, and then I attempted to apply
their advice and the thing I ran into was that
like I feel inauthentic. Well, of course I feel inauthentic
because I'm doing so and so's version of networking. I'm
(09:51):
not doing my own right. And so the point of
Friend of a Friend is it's really a book that
is kind of a way to explain here's the science
of how social networks form, how humans actually create interactions
of what have you. And it's called Friend of a
Friend because I think the biggest insight in there is
that you don't actually have to go to any of
those networking events where you serendipitously try and meet strangers
(10:12):
if you don't want to. You don't. You don't have
to make the perfect elevator pitch between the existing network
that you have and the ones that those people could
potentially introduce you to. You have everything you need to
have a robust enough network to achieve your career goals. Right,
I don't even call it friend of the book actually
is like friend of a friend of a friend of
a friend. But that's because we had a great graphic designer.
(10:32):
But I don't even care about like we talk about
six degrees of separation, but you don't need to like
chase down six introductions in order to meet the CEO
of a major tech company or whatever. One or two
is usually enough in terms of practical kind of habits.
What I would say is the single most neglected thing
that people do is they don't spend enough time continuing
to nurture what we would call dormant ties. Right, So
(10:54):
maybe you've heard, if you're listening to this, you've heard
of the famous paper by Mark Ranovt or the Strength
of Weak Ties. But there's a specific form of a
week tie called a dormant tie. Someone we know, but
because we haven't talked to them in a while, we
we kind of fell out of touch with right and
so as a result, they're often their world doing something.
We're oft in our world doing something. And the truth
is most of our kind of cool, serendipitous. Hey, I'm
(11:16):
looking for a new job, I want to make a
career change. I just need advice on this thing, or
could somebody please help me get tickets to Taylor Swift
whatever it is. Most of those opportunities come from those
dormant ties, because they're people that know you enough to
want to help you, and vice versa, you know them
enough to want to help them. And they're in a
different world, They're in a different industry or sector or
geographic region, and so they have available to them opportunities
(11:38):
you can't see. So what does this mean, Like, practically,
whatever system works for you to make sure you stay
in touch with them, you know what I do. I
actually kind of took it to I used to play
a game I called cell Phone Roulette where I would
basically just scroll to the bottom of my messages once
or twice a week and I would send a message
because you know, it sorts most frequent So at the
(11:58):
very bottom of your messages app is the person you
haven't talked to in the longest, that's that you know
enough to be in your phone, and I would just
send them a Hey, thinking about you today. Now that's
true because I scrolled to the bottom and saw them,
so now I'm thinking about them and just kind of
a check in that. That worked really really well for
a time. Now I can't exactly scale that. So one
of the things I've started to do in pursued or
(12:20):
pursued persuaded by my friend's v is I send a
regular update. So about once every four to six months,
I just send an update out to all of the
people that I care enough about to keep informed in
my life and want to hear from, and it says, hey,
here's what I've been up to. Personally, here's what we did.
We took a family trip to Hawaii. Professionally, here's what
I've been doing, doing a lot of work on LinkedIn
learning courses or what have you. Here's what I've been reading,
(12:41):
here's what I've been wondering about, et cetera. And at
the very end of just say hey, what's going on
in your life? And the coolest part about it isn't
writing it. It actually feels really weird to write it because
it feels like I'm writing a Christmas letter, but like
multiple times a year, right, exactly exactly. The coolest thing
is when people write back and they say, this is
what I'm up doing this, so I haven't heard of you,
and it's just the flood of conversations that happens. Is
(13:02):
that little check in point. Now I'm doing that before
I need it, right, there may be a time by
the end of the year where I'm like, hey, I
really need somebody who has a connection to this. But
it's really awkward to do that unless you're constantly kind
of staying in touch with those dormant TIPE people. So
that's what I should do. Whether you want to play
the text message roulette or you want to do the
quarterly update, either one which everyone feels more authentic to you,
(13:23):
is probably going to work really, really well to keep
those dormanties activated.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Well I'm curious about that because people want to know, like,
what's the reason I'm reaching out to those people? And
I mean, yes, you scrolled through your phone and saw
their number and said thinking of you because you thought
of them when you saw their number. But I wonder
if you know, I think I think a lot of
people struggle with that, like comes up with the authentic
reason to do it?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Yeah, well I get it, I get it, I do.
And I think part of the reason for that is
that so many times when we're on the receiving end
of one of those messages, it's because somebody wants something
from us and we're just sort of waiting for that
to drop. And so the idea behind doing this on
a regular basis is that I'm training lots of people
that I actually legitimately care about them and don't want
something from them, which is true and I think it's
(14:05):
true for all of us. Right. Yeah, So if you're
doing it on a regular basis, if you're sending that
update quarterly or every six months or so whatever, you're
training people that, like I just want to stay in
touch with you. There might be a need you have
for me later. I might need you later, but that's
not what this one is about. And so it makes
it easier when you actually do have one of those
conversations where you need a favor or something like that,
because they're trained to not expect that shoe to drop.
(14:29):
I totally get why it's awkward, and doing it the
first time, by the way, always super awkward. But here's
what I would tell you. Let's roll reverse. Right. If
you're listening to this, you're like, I could never do it.
Imagine someone you hadn't talked to that you worked at
IT in the last company or whatever, texted you out
of the blue and was like, Hey, I was thinking
about you today. I haven't talked to you in a
long time. I hope you're well, I hope everything's going
on with you. Wouldn't you kind of like to receive
(14:51):
a message like that, I mean, you're I get that
some of us are kind of inherently skeptical that, like,
what do you want from me? But as soon as
you figured out that they didn't actually want anything from you, Like,
I can't think of a person, a former colleague or
an old friend from college that I wouldn't love to
be on the receiving end of that message from Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So you've just shared a couple of things that you
do to make yourself more productive on the networking front
to hear, whether it's cell phone roulette or sending a
regular update on your life. I'm curious if you have
any other routines, like in your daily life that you
use to make yourself more productive.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Yeah, yes, okay, So I kind of have three average days,
right if you think about it. So, now that I'm
not teaching full time, I have home days, I have
on the road days where I'm speaking or working with
a client, and then I have kind of summer schedule, right,
which is what we're in the midst of is we're
recording this right. Home days. I've become a huge fan
of kind of time blocking. So the average day for
(15:48):
me during the school year, I have kids that are
in middle school, in elementary school the average day from
during a school year, get up, help them, get ready,
get them off to the school bus, and then I've
got about ninety minutes or so of kind of the quiet,
focused time I deliberately try and do like if I'm
writing a book or working on a piece or something
like that, I try and do it in that time.
I find I can get about one ninety minute block
before I get hungry again and also want to beat
(16:10):
everybody else to the noontime gym rush. So then I'm
going into like a snack and exercise, whether that's going
to the gym, ju ju jitsu, whether that's my wife,
and I become a huge pickupball fans. It's been terrible
for my knees, but a ton of fun, right, some
kind of some way to sweat, right, And then we're
back at about twelve thirty one o'clock, and that's when
I try and schedule almost all of my what I
(16:31):
would say reactive work. If you want, if a client
wants a phone call with me, if I made an
exception for you because you know we're old school friends.
But if you want to do a podcast interview something
like that, anything that doesn't require deep thought just requires
conversation that's in that afternoon bit until around when they
come from school, and then I'm right back into like
parent mode and we've got soccer practices and tube lessons
and all that sort of stuff. So that's like home schedule,
(16:53):
speaking schedule. I'll be honest with you, it's a free
for all. It's entirely determined on what the client needs
and what has But one of the things I've been
learning is i've been getting older, is like a lot
of us will fly in the night before an event.
We'll speak in the morning, and then we'll rush to
the airport home. And I'm trying to do that less
because I've realized how much stress it adds into my
life to be like gotta get home, got to go.
(17:14):
I try and just add an extra day because then
you can linger at the event, you can hang out
with people, they tell you how great you were, and
that's great for the ego, right, and you just don't
necessarily feel that stress. So I'm trying. I'm not succeeding yet,
but I'm trying to kind of take back my calendar
to add more of that kind of downtime. And then
summer schedule is like total free for all. Right, everyone's
(17:34):
around all everybody's around. I mean literally, we had to
sleepover last night. So I have three kids in the
house as we're recording this, and you just have to
react to everything. And here's the thing that used to
annoy the heck out of me. And then I got
to the place where a good friend of mine, Jim Shields,
hit me with this a couple of years ago, and
he said, look, you only get eighteen summers with your kids,
then whether you get any more is determined by how
(17:57):
well you did in those eighteen summers. And so I've
kind of just sort of embraced that, right and just
tried to say, like, it's a it's a total mess
for two months out of the year, but we're just
gonna love the mess and do the best as we can.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Absolutely, all right, We're gonna take one more quick ad
break and then I'll be back with more from David Burkis.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
So I'm talking with David Burkis. We've been talking some
of his routines. Now, are you do you have any
sort of morning routine other than getting the kids out
the door or is that that just.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Not I don't Yeah, I don't have to the younger
one school bus picks him up at six fifty in
the morning. I'll be honest with you, I do not.
I do not have time for.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
A morning There's no morning routine before that.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah, I mean I would say my morning routine happens
after they leave, right, And it's much more about what
do I do to kind of transition into that work mode.
We structured all life such that there's a I have
to go downstairs from our main living area into the
basement where my office is, so that kind of feels
like a commute. I usually now candidly, I'm usually looking
at my phone while I'm like getting them breakfast, having
(18:58):
breakfast myself. And I found, even though people say like, oh,
don't do that, do all of your do of your amazing,
you know, big work before you ever look, I find
it actually helps me to clear all of that out
and kind of have an idea of what I need
to respond to for the day before I then go
into that deep work. I just have to tell myself
none of these are fires. I don't have to put
them out right away, right, So that's kind of it.
We do have a pretty strict sort of nighttime routine,
(19:20):
right in terms of like when we are as a family,
when we are like okay, computers off, TV off, et cetera,
we're in bed, we're powering down where I do kind
of have that in order to sleep a bit better.
So we do have routines, they just don't usually happen
in the morning. I know that seemed weird on it
before breakfast.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Well I don't either, because I have to also get
people out the door. I mean, I love writing about
people's morning routines, but when you have multiple school age children,
often they.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Are the morning route.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
There's a there's a productivity YouTuber I love named Ali
Abdall and he just had a son, and I put
it when he owt or just had a child. And
when you put it on Twitter, I announced like, congratulations,
your content has just gotten so much more relevant for me.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Now, yes, exactly, Well, there is something to be saying.
People are giving productivity advice and maybe have never even
been responsible for like a puppy before. Exactly exactly, wonder
you wonder. But we have a wide variety of people
listening to this, so we we enjoy all that. But
I'm curious, when are you in bed to be up.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
For the morning.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Let out, let's out of ten pm, ten pm. Yeah,
we we figured this out. Okay, So all right, this
is probably too much information that I'm going to regret
sharing on a podcast. But we were one of those
weird American families that actually co slept until our kids
were like ten and eight. Yah, right, so we lived.
We got this weird because my wife is at your
resident and now you our physician. I left the universe
(20:42):
like everything. We kind of we kind of went from
a nice, you know, class family to being blessed with
with what we do now all at the same time.
And when I started doing the numbers, I was like
we were living in a little tiny starter house that
was supposed to just be for like us in one kid,
but we stayed in there longer and moved to like
the dream house, the one we picture the kids being
like teenagers in. But that house is too big for
eight or a six year old and an eight year
(21:03):
old and what have you. And so they didn't want
to be in their rooms, right, they were used to
being much closer to us, So we just rigged up
a mattress like on the floor near us, and we
slept in the same room. You know, even though we
had this house that we now they don't. We had
this house that we're like, you're going to be teenagers in,
you're going to think of as your home home. It
was way too big for us. So we all just
slept in the same room and had to go to
bed at like nine thirty ten because that's when they
(21:25):
had to go to bed. And then I realized, like,
that's sleeping. Actually sleeping for eight hours a night is
like the ultimate life hack, right, Like there's before you
try anything else, try that one, right and see how
that one works for you. And so now we still
adhere to it. I mean literally, we put them to
bed nine thirty on a school night, ten o'clock on
a not school night, and we are we are lights
out within five to ten minutes after that.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I am a fan. Although I can't sleep in the
same room as my kids because they wake me up.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Oh I don't think I could do it now. I don't.
They're way bigger now and I could like hear them breathe.
But absolutely, when they were younger, it was great.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, well here's a question for you, because going back,
I always big on life logistics, and your wife is
a physician and er.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I'm sure is like random hours. I mean maybe she
picks up certain shifts on a regular basis. But you
were talking about how you try to stay at a
event for an extra day. Yeah, so how does that
work out with the family scheduling?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah? Not well as of late.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
All right, Well that's good to know.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I mean it used it used to work out great
because generally we would know, like a client would reach
out and say, can you we're doing this meeting, can
you be a part of it three to four months
ahead of time, sometimes even six months ahead of time,
and that's before you put in for your schedule with
the hospital. So it would just work like, Hey, I
have a thing on this day and this day, so
put in to not work on that day. And we
(22:46):
still try and do that as much as we can.
But I'm sure you've run into this too in your career,
Like some clients reach out like four weeks ahead of time,
and that's a little more difficult because the shifts are
already set right er hospitals, a lot of the shift
work of a physician is actually really easy in perfect
conditions to balance with what we do because the schedule
(23:07):
set ahead of time, there's no on call, there's no
charting you have to do afterwards or any of that
sort of stuff. It's way easier than being like a
general practitioner or somebody who have to be on call.
But when those short term clients things come in, it
gets a little more difficult. Now I think where we are,
that's starting to get longer. But that was just sort
of like a post COVID reaction. I'm sure you saw
the same thing of like clients were suddenly like, we
(23:28):
don't even know if we're going to have an event,
so we're not even going to reach out to somebody
to be a part of it until we know for
sure we're going to do it. And that was a
short timeline, so it didn't work out all of that
well for a while. But it's starting to get to
get better and better, which is why I'm starting to
kind of push for that a bit more.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, I've noticed that too.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I mean it was in the past it would be like,
you know, if you wanted a keynote speech in October,
you were definitely reaching out in the spring, yeah to
book that, And now I feel like I definitely will
get people being like, yeah, we want something in yeah,
a couple of weeks, Like did you not plan this
event before then? Like or maybe I'm your second choice.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
That could be too but it's you.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Know, you're not too far off. My theory is like,
especially for an internal event, like we are kind of
a commodity, don't ever. I mean, if you're listening to this, no,
Laura and I are the absolute most in demand, best
people in this field. But the truth is, like everybody
has to go to that internal company meeting anyway. It's
not like associations and ticketed events and things like that
are back to a normal planning schedule because people want
(24:29):
to know who the speakers are before they buy a
ticket to it. But like an internal event where it's
like the company on hands meeting, Like we're like the
cherry on the cake. People are coming for the cake anyway.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah, they have to be there.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
So if if it works out to have an external speaker,
that's awesome, and if it doesn't, then they force their
VP of sales to give.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
The talk exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Also it's happening regardless exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Also, Cherry on the Sunday I don't know why you
would put cherry would be terrible. I wouldn't. I would
not enjoy that cake.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
So, David, I always ask people a question of what
is something you've done recently to take a day from
great to awesome?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Yeah? You know, okay, I think most days are great.
And this isn't just because I'm like super but like
you're still alive therefore a day is great. So the
thing that I have been doing for like twenty years
now is trying to remember that. And I don't have
a sophisticated like gratitude practice. I don't bullet journal or
anything like that. Here's where I learned this. Twenty years ago.
(25:26):
I got married, and when you're engaged, you get all
sorts of marriage advice from people who probably shouldn't give
you marriage advice, Like I wish I would have written
it all down and then had a column for be
like did you get divorced later? Like you know, who
should I actually be listening to? But the one piece
of good advice I really really got was actually not
marital advice. It was wedding advice, and it was Hey,
that whole day is going to be a blur. So
(25:47):
as many times as you can throughout the day, stop
and remind yourself, this is my wedding, right, like and
literally the only memory I have. I have lots of
memories of looking at photos and video and what have you,
But the only memory I have of like that actual
day is standing there at the altar, looking at her
and saying to myself, this is it. This is our
actual wedding. Like that's my one internalized memory, because there's
(26:08):
something about taking a second and like absorbing the moment.
Just stop and let's do it right. And so I
try and do that a lot. Right On a normal day,
it might just look like walking outside and sitting on
the deck for a few minutes and be like this,
this has been a really great day. On a travel day,
it might be like reflecting on how cool it was
that we sort of did something. One of the things
I like about again that trying to stretch out and
(26:29):
be less stressed traveling to and from work travel is
it gives you more opportunities to have that moment I'm
sitting at the like I pack a swimsuit now, And
part of my thing is like I might swim at
the pool or sit in the hot time and think like, oh,
that was a really cool opportunity, and I just all
I need is like a moment five minutes of not
having to think about anything other than the fact that
this day happened, and because it happened, it was already great.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah. One of my favorite speaking events.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I was at a resort and I brought my swimsuit
and I went on the Lazy River by myself.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Like I've been on so many lazier rivers with small people.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
I'm like hurting along too, So I was like, I'm
just sitting on this tube, follow myself.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah, no, same to you. I bet In fact, I
bet you I know what hotel was if it was
in Orlando. It's the marriout that has the amazing Lazy
River and the slides. I did the same thing, except
it was the water slide, and because it was ten
thirty in the morning, I was the only person and
it was awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Who's that dude with no kids with them? Right? Right?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
So David, what are you looking forward to right now?
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah? I mean this, We're recording this in July, which
is kind of like halftime, right, it's the slow down,
reflect and then plan. So I'm actually really looking forward
to the to the next year. We've got from a
family perspective, We've got some really cool things happening. I
have one kid who's like, has been aspiring to be
in marching band since he was picked up for the
school band. Got another that plays soccer and it's kind
of moving into another competitive level. Got some cool I'm
(27:50):
just looking forward to again. Every day is great, So
I'm just kind of looking forward to the second e
of the year. I don't have any big plans. I'm
not in the midst of writing another book or anything
like that. I'm just trying to make every day great.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Yeah, where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Oh? I'm so I've been really blessed mine. Look can
you you? Probably the same way. My name is really rare.
There aren't a lot of David bergers is out there.
There is a twenty four year old Hungarian filmmaker and
that's the only one I've met. So if you just
type it into Google, you will find me. You'll find
the platform you want to connect with me on. If
that's too difficult for you and you're listening to this
in a podcast app like, just swipe up or swipe
to the side. It's in the show notes. Anyway, while
(28:23):
you're there, maybe even leave a review, let Laura know
how great this podcast is, and then then you'll find.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Me absolutely all right, Well, David, thanks so much for
joining us, and thank you also to everyone for listening.
If you have feedback on this or any other episode,
you can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam
dot com.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and
here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
(29:05):
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome David Burkis to the show.
David is the author of several best selling business books,
including Best Team Ever and Friend of a Friend. He
(00:35):
speaks on leadership topics to all sorts of audiences. So, David,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, excited to have you on. So why don't you
tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah? I mean how far back do we want to go? Right? Right?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Far? Do you want to go?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Right? Yes? So I was born No, just kidding, I
was an organization I'm or organizational scholars by training. I
was a business school professor for about ten years. I've
always been fascinated with teams and human connections and network
dynamics and that sort of a thing, And around twenty
thirteen twenty fourteen started to write more less for an
(01:10):
academic audience and more for practitioners, and that led to
invitations to speak and to consult and what have you.
And then around COVID. You know, everyone's life got really
really difficult in COVID, but I started to get a
whole lot more. Hey can you do this webinar for
our people? Can you design this whole training? Et cetera,
et cetera. So when university said, hey, we're bringing classes
back in person, I basically said, no, I'm not going
(01:32):
to be there. I'm going to be doing this other stuff.
So I made the leap into doing that full time,
I guess about five years ago. Now, wow, wow, that
seems weird. And it's just absolutely loving it. I mean,
it's fun to teach the next generation of business folks
how to create a better working environment, how to have
better teams, but it's a whole lot more fun to
teach the people who can go apply it later that day. Right,
So absolutely loving it.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I absolutely love the practical ideas one can can do today.
And a lot of your recent work, as you said,
has been on teams.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Recent book a best team Ever? I guess what actually
makes something the best team ever? The high promise.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah right, absolutely, So when you look at the research,
you find that culture plays a much larger role than
you would anticipate. I mean, I don't mean to diminish
things like talent, getting the people with the best knowledge, skills,
and abilities, et cetera. Talent's great, but we've all probably
seen that example of putting a talented player on just
a terrible team and watching the team sort of degrade
(02:26):
them down. So if you can get high talented people, great,
but more importantly, work on a culture that helps turn
talent into performance. And in particular in the book, we
outline kind of three areas where high performing teams shine
in the habits and norms of behavior that they have. Well,
one is how much common understanding or shared understanding they have.
So I know my role, but I also know enough
about everybody else in the team, not just their technical roles,
(02:49):
but also their personality where we connect and overlap, I
can kind of predict their behavior from it. The second
element is a sense of psychological safety. So I understand
how to help build candor on the team. I understand
what somebody who's speaking up because they disagree looks like,
and I give them the space to do that. I
even psychological safety even responds to how we embrace failure, right,
(03:12):
And so you tap into much a bigger growth mindset
on a team when you can talk about fairs in
a way that doesn't just sort of like punish everybody
and have them diminish it. And then the third element,
the third kind of norm, is that these teams constantly
remind themselves of their purpose, but not purpose as like
why we do what we do. We actually in the
book call it pro social purpose. They're reminded of who
is served by the work that you're doing, and that
(03:34):
not only increases motivation, but there's a lot of recent
research that suggests that that increases the amount of team
work behaviors on a team, right, because when you know
that you're doing this for someone else, you're much more
likely to put your own ego aside and do what
the team needs in order to get that person served
to the highest level. And so that's it common understanding
psychological safety and pro social purpose. That's the easy answer
(03:56):
to what makes for those best teams?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Ever, Yeah, that sounds great. Here's a sort of practical question.
How big is the best team?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Ever?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I mean, I know that we don't always get to
decide this, but is there is there a sweet spot
where where it's easier to get those three things?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Then?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, So generally, I mean, obviously if we're talking about
work teams, if we're talking about a sports team, it's
as big as you know, there are positions right right
Generally in the day to day work like what we do,
large teams do suck. The sweet spot tends to be
between about six and eight members of the team. After that,
it becomes really hard to keep one conversation in meetings.
It becomes really hard to keep one sense of clarity,
(04:32):
and you may actually be better off thinking of it
as like, let's break the team. If you've got a
team of fourteen people, it might actually be better to
have two teams of seven.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah. Yeah, I know that's going to say. It's sort
of like a dinner party.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, six to eight is the right number past that
you've got two conversations going at the table. But you know,
let's say that somebody has a team that you know,
they're listening to this and they're managing a team and
they would like to make people feel, you know, more cohesive.
Is there something they can to try, you know, today
or tomorrow to make that happen.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, I mean I'll give you the in depth answer
and then maybe I'll give you us a smaller answer.
My favorite activity to run teams through is this activity
we call the Manual of Me. And it's exactly what
it sounds like, writing the user's manual to what it's
like to work for you, with you or for you?
You know, what are your strengths and weaknesses? Where are
the opportunities you tend to contribute. I typically when I
work with a team, I come to them with four
(05:25):
questions that have to be answered, and then I let
them ask whatever else they want. But we kind of
start with four fill in the blank questions. I'm at
my best when blank, and I'm at my worst win
blank or one and two, which are strength to weaknesses questions,
but also like context questions. Right, some people are at
their best when they're at their office being social, other
people when they're in like monk mode at home, right,
(05:45):
So we want to know that. And then the third
and fourth questions are you can count on me too,
meaning historically, this is where I make contributions to the team.
This is where I help most often I'm a whiz
with Excel formulas or something like that. Right, And then
the fourth question is what I need from you is
meaning this is where I've historically needed help. And it's
funny because I give people those questions and the most
common reaction I get is somebody goes, well, I don't
(06:08):
even know the answers of that for myself, Like, great, well,
you've got a week to reflect and kind of figure
it out, and then we come back together and share
out those answers, leave some time for discussion. It's like
what I like in it too, is it's like taking
the most in depth personality differences test you could take.
Whether you want to call that disc or Myers Briggs
or whatever. You're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for
(06:29):
a multinational site wide license to administer and doing it
for free. First of all, you could just steal those
questions feel free too, and you get the same level
of conversation about differences and about appreciation for how people
are and how we're going to change the way we
collaborate based on this information. So that's like, my that's
my favorite. You probably can't do that tomorrow. You could
start tomorrow, but you're gonna have to give them some
(06:50):
time to it. But you also, if you wanted to,
can sneak those questions into regular meetings. Right, Those are
like good ice breakers instead of saying what's your favorite movie?
Which is helpful to know, those are real questions around
how you work. So just pick one and ask one
per week, and that's something you could do tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, David, what's your fun fact? When somebody asks you
your fun fact about you? As an icebreaker?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
My fun fact, I've actually spent the last nineteen years
training in this really esoteric martial art called Brazilian jiu jitsu.
That's my fun fact that I go through.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Fun fact. Yeah, exactly. Well, we may come back to that.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
All right, welcome to it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
But I'm curious. What do people get wrong about team building?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
I am sure you've seen some atrocious team building over
the years.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing I tell people is
team building is not an activity. It's a habit. It's
not a one off thing. The biggest thing people get
wrong it's like, oh, great, we're gonna do this activity.
We're gonna all rank the items we need in the
metaphorical shipwreck, like you've done that activity, right, or we're
gonna use these wooden planks to cross the imaginary river
and then magically that's going to turn us into a team.
(07:52):
The research is really clear on this. Then unless you
have that. That's not to say don't do any of
these activities, but unless you have an active and then
a conversation about how what we learned in that activity
translates into day to day behaviors I can hold people
accountable to you don't see any lasting change from those
team building activities, So it's much more about the habit.
(08:13):
And so to me, I don't know. Maybe I'm just
no fun right, Maybe I'm a spoil sport. Maybe, but
I just find it more useful to jump jump into
something like the Manual of Me and like, let's just
jump to the conversation about habits and norms instead of
have to do the activity first. Right, So that's me.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
It turns out that a trust fall does not in
fact make you trust your team members.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah no, no, not not at all. It felt great
at summer camp when we were all like nine, but now.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, past that, not so much.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break,
and then I'll be back with more from David Burkis. Well,
I am back talking with David burkis Is, the author
of several business books, including Best Team Ever. We've been
talking about some ways to make your team a better team.
(09:01):
You're also the author of a book called Friend or
a Friend, which, and I know a lot of people
are listening to say, like, oh, no, networking not that
so right up there with team building in terms of
how much we.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Enjot me, I've just go right after all the things
we hate about work, all.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
The fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So what you know, somebody's listening to this and you're
trying to convince them that they're not terrible at networking.
What are some practical things we should be doing to make,
you know, relationship building more fun and yeah authentic?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing I'll say
is that if you if you hate networking, if you
feel sleazy and weird and what have you like, I
totally get it right before. The motivation for writing that
book was that I read a lot of networking books
earlier in my career, and then I attempted to apply
their advice and the thing I ran into was that
like I feel inauthentic. Well, of course I feel inauthentic
because I'm doing so and so's version of networking. I'm
(09:51):
not doing my own right. And so the point of
Friend of a Friend is it's really a book that
is kind of a way to explain here's the science
of how social networks form, how humans actually create interactions
of what have you. And it's called Friend of a
Friend because I think the biggest insight in there is
that you don't actually have to go to any of
those networking events where you serendipitously try and meet strangers
(10:12):
if you don't want to. You don't. You don't have
to make the perfect elevator pitch between the existing network
that you have and the ones that those people could
potentially introduce you to. You have everything you need to
have a robust enough network to achieve your career goals. Right,
I don't even call it friend of the book actually
is like friend of a friend of a friend of
a friend. But that's because we had a great graphic designer.
(10:32):
But I don't even care about like we talk about
six degrees of separation, but you don't need to like
chase down six introductions in order to meet the CEO
of a major tech company or whatever. One or two
is usually enough in terms of practical kind of habits.
What I would say is the single most neglected thing
that people do is they don't spend enough time continuing
to nurture what we would call dormant ties. Right, So
(10:54):
maybe you've heard, if you're listening to this, you've heard
of the famous paper by Mark Ranovt or the Strength
of Weak Ties. But there's a specific form of a
week tie called a dormant tie. Someone we know, but
because we haven't talked to them in a while, we
we kind of fell out of touch with right and
so as a result, they're often their world doing something.
We're oft in our world doing something. And the truth
is most of our kind of cool, serendipitous. Hey, I'm
(11:16):
looking for a new job, I want to make a
career change. I just need advice on this thing, or
could somebody please help me get tickets to Taylor Swift
whatever it is. Most of those opportunities come from those
dormant ties, because they're people that know you enough to
want to help you, and vice versa, you know them
enough to want to help them. And they're in a
different world, They're in a different industry or sector or
geographic region, and so they have available to them opportunities
(11:38):
you can't see. So what does this mean, Like, practically,
whatever system works for you to make sure you stay
in touch with them, you know what I do. I
actually kind of took it to I used to play
a game I called cell Phone Roulette where I would
basically just scroll to the bottom of my messages once
or twice a week and I would send a message
because you know, it sorts most frequent So at the
(11:58):
very bottom of your messages app is the person you
haven't talked to in the longest, that's that you know
enough to be in your phone, and I would just
send them a Hey, thinking about you today. Now that's
true because I scrolled to the bottom and saw them,
so now I'm thinking about them and just kind of
a check in that. That worked really really well for
a time. Now I can't exactly scale that. So one
of the things I've started to do in pursued or
(12:20):
pursued persuaded by my friend's v is I send a
regular update. So about once every four to six months,
I just send an update out to all of the
people that I care enough about to keep informed in
my life and want to hear from, and it says, hey,
here's what I've been up to. Personally, here's what we did.
We took a family trip to Hawaii. Professionally, here's what
I've been doing, doing a lot of work on LinkedIn
learning courses or what have you. Here's what I've been reading,
(12:41):
here's what I've been wondering about, et cetera. And at
the very end of just say hey, what's going on
in your life? And the coolest part about it isn't
writing it. It actually feels really weird to write it because
it feels like I'm writing a Christmas letter, but like
multiple times a year, right, exactly exactly. The coolest thing
is when people write back and they say, this is
what I'm up doing this, so I haven't heard of you,
and it's just the flood of conversations that happens. Is
(13:02):
that little check in point. Now I'm doing that before
I need it, right, there may be a time by
the end of the year where I'm like, hey, I
really need somebody who has a connection to this. But
it's really awkward to do that unless you're constantly kind
of staying in touch with those dormant TIPE people. So
that's what I should do. Whether you want to play
the text message roulette or you want to do the
quarterly update, either one which everyone feels more authentic to you,
(13:23):
is probably going to work really, really well to keep
those dormanties activated.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Well I'm curious about that because people want to know, like,
what's the reason I'm reaching out to those people? And
I mean, yes, you scrolled through your phone and saw
their number and said thinking of you because you thought
of them when you saw their number. But I wonder
if you know, I think I think a lot of
people struggle with that, like comes up with the authentic
reason to do it?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Yeah, well I get it, I get it, I do.
And I think part of the reason for that is
that so many times when we're on the receiving end
of one of those messages, it's because somebody wants something
from us and we're just sort of waiting for that
to drop. And so the idea behind doing this on
a regular basis is that I'm training lots of people
that I actually legitimately care about them and don't want
something from them, which is true and I think it's
(14:05):
true for all of us. Right. Yeah, So if you're
doing it on a regular basis, if you're sending that
update quarterly or every six months or so whatever, you're
training people that, like I just want to stay in
touch with you. There might be a need you have
for me later. I might need you later, but that's
not what this one is about. And so it makes
it easier when you actually do have one of those
conversations where you need a favor or something like that,
because they're trained to not expect that shoe to drop.
(14:29):
I totally get why it's awkward, and doing it the
first time, by the way, always super awkward. But here's
what I would tell you. Let's roll reverse. Right. If
you're listening to this, you're like, I could never do it.
Imagine someone you hadn't talked to that you worked at
IT in the last company or whatever, texted you out
of the blue and was like, Hey, I was thinking
about you today. I haven't talked to you in a
long time. I hope you're well, I hope everything's going
on with you. Wouldn't you kind of like to receive
(14:51):
a message like that, I mean, you're I get that
some of us are kind of inherently skeptical that, like,
what do you want from me? But as soon as
you figured out that they didn't actually want anything from you, Like,
I can't think of a person, a former colleague or
an old friend from college that I wouldn't love to
be on the receiving end of that message from Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So you've just shared a couple of things that you
do to make yourself more productive on the networking front
to hear, whether it's cell phone roulette or sending a
regular update on your life. I'm curious if you have
any other routines, like in your daily life that you
use to make yourself more productive.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Yeah, yes, okay, So I kind of have three average days,
right if you think about it. So, now that I'm
not teaching full time, I have home days, I have
on the road days where I'm speaking or working with
a client, and then I have kind of summer schedule, right,
which is what we're in the midst of is we're
recording this right. Home days. I've become a huge fan
of kind of time blocking. So the average day for
(15:48):
me during the school year, I have kids that are
in middle school, in elementary school the average day from
during a school year, get up, help them, get ready,
get them off to the school bus, and then I've
got about ninety minutes or so of kind of the quiet,
focused time I deliberately try and do like if I'm
writing a book or working on a piece or something
like that, I try and do it in that time.
I find I can get about one ninety minute block
before I get hungry again and also want to beat
(16:10):
everybody else to the noontime gym rush. So then I'm
going into like a snack and exercise, whether that's going
to the gym, ju ju jitsu, whether that's my wife,
and I become a huge pickupball fans. It's been terrible
for my knees, but a ton of fun, right, some
kind of some way to sweat, right, And then we're
back at about twelve thirty one o'clock, and that's when
I try and schedule almost all of my what I
(16:31):
would say reactive work. If you want, if a client
wants a phone call with me, if I made an
exception for you because you know we're old school friends.
But if you want to do a podcast interview something
like that, anything that doesn't require deep thought just requires
conversation that's in that afternoon bit until around when they
come from school, and then I'm right back into like
parent mode and we've got soccer practices and tube lessons
and all that sort of stuff. So that's like home schedule,
(16:53):
speaking schedule. I'll be honest with you, it's a free
for all. It's entirely determined on what the client needs
and what has But one of the things I've been
learning is i've been getting older, is like a lot
of us will fly in the night before an event.
We'll speak in the morning, and then we'll rush to
the airport home. And I'm trying to do that less
because I've realized how much stress it adds into my
life to be like gotta get home, got to go.
(17:14):
I try and just add an extra day because then
you can linger at the event, you can hang out
with people, they tell you how great you were, and
that's great for the ego, right, and you just don't
necessarily feel that stress. So I'm trying. I'm not succeeding yet,
but I'm trying to kind of take back my calendar
to add more of that kind of downtime. And then
summer schedule is like total free for all. Right, everyone's
(17:34):
around all everybody's around. I mean literally, we had to
sleepover last night. So I have three kids in the
house as we're recording this, and you just have to
react to everything. And here's the thing that used to
annoy the heck out of me. And then I got
to the place where a good friend of mine, Jim Shields,
hit me with this a couple of years ago, and
he said, look, you only get eighteen summers with your kids,
then whether you get any more is determined by how
(17:57):
well you did in those eighteen summers. And so I've
kind of just sort of embraced that, right and just
tried to say, like, it's a it's a total mess
for two months out of the year, but we're just
gonna love the mess and do the best as we can.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Absolutely, all right, We're gonna take one more quick ad
break and then I'll be back with more from David Burkis.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
So I'm talking with David Burkis. We've been talking some
of his routines. Now, are you do you have any
sort of morning routine other than getting the kids out
the door or is that that just.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Not I don't Yeah, I don't have to the younger
one school bus picks him up at six fifty in
the morning. I'll be honest with you, I do not.
I do not have time for.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
A morning There's no morning routine before that.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah, I mean I would say my morning routine happens
after they leave, right, And it's much more about what
do I do to kind of transition into that work mode.
We structured all life such that there's a I have
to go downstairs from our main living area into the
basement where my office is, so that kind of feels
like a commute. I usually now candidly, I'm usually looking
at my phone while I'm like getting them breakfast, having
(18:58):
breakfast myself. And I found, even though people say like, oh,
don't do that, do all of your do of your amazing,
you know, big work before you ever look, I find
it actually helps me to clear all of that out
and kind of have an idea of what I need
to respond to for the day before I then go
into that deep work. I just have to tell myself
none of these are fires. I don't have to put
them out right away, right, So that's kind of it.
We do have a pretty strict sort of nighttime routine,
(19:20):
right in terms of like when we are as a family,
when we are like okay, computers off, TV off, et cetera,
we're in bed, we're powering down where I do kind
of have that in order to sleep a bit better.
So we do have routines, they just don't usually happen
in the morning. I know that seemed weird on it
before breakfast.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Well I don't either, because I have to also get
people out the door. I mean, I love writing about
people's morning routines, but when you have multiple school age children,
often they.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Are the morning route.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
There's a there's a productivity YouTuber I love named Ali
Abdall and he just had a son, and I put
it when he owt or just had a child. And
when you put it on Twitter, I announced like, congratulations,
your content has just gotten so much more relevant for me.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Now, yes, exactly, Well, there is something to be saying.
People are giving productivity advice and maybe have never even
been responsible for like a puppy before. Exactly exactly, wonder
you wonder. But we have a wide variety of people
listening to this, so we we enjoy all that. But
I'm curious, when are you in bed to be up.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
For the morning.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Let out, let's out of ten pm, ten pm. Yeah,
we we figured this out. Okay, So all right, this
is probably too much information that I'm going to regret
sharing on a podcast. But we were one of those
weird American families that actually co slept until our kids
were like ten and eight. Yah, right, so we lived.
We got this weird because my wife is at your
resident and now you our physician. I left the universe
(20:42):
like everything. We kind of we kind of went from
a nice, you know, class family to being blessed with
with what we do now all at the same time.
And when I started doing the numbers, I was like
we were living in a little tiny starter house that
was supposed to just be for like us in one kid,
but we stayed in there longer and moved to like
the dream house, the one we picture the kids being
like teenagers in. But that house is too big for
eight or a six year old and an eight year
(21:03):
old and what have you. And so they didn't want
to be in their rooms, right, they were used to
being much closer to us, So we just rigged up
a mattress like on the floor near us, and we
slept in the same room. You know, even though we
had this house that we now they don't. We had
this house that we're like, you're going to be teenagers in,
you're going to think of as your home home. It
was way too big for us. So we all just
slept in the same room and had to go to
bed at like nine thirty ten because that's when they
(21:25):
had to go to bed. And then I realized, like,
that's sleeping. Actually sleeping for eight hours a night is
like the ultimate life hack, right, Like there's before you
try anything else, try that one, right and see how
that one works for you. And so now we still
adhere to it. I mean literally, we put them to
bed nine thirty on a school night, ten o'clock on
a not school night, and we are we are lights
out within five to ten minutes after that.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I am a fan. Although I can't sleep in the
same room as my kids because they wake me up.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Oh I don't think I could do it now. I don't.
They're way bigger now and I could like hear them breathe.
But absolutely, when they were younger, it was great.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, well here's a question for you, because going back,
I always big on life logistics, and your wife is
a physician and er.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I'm sure is like random hours. I mean maybe she
picks up certain shifts on a regular basis. But you
were talking about how you try to stay at a
event for an extra day. Yeah, so how does that
work out with the family scheduling?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah? Not well as of late.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
All right, Well that's good to know.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I mean it used it used to work out great
because generally we would know, like a client would reach
out and say, can you we're doing this meeting, can
you be a part of it three to four months
ahead of time, sometimes even six months ahead of time,
and that's before you put in for your schedule with
the hospital. So it would just work like, Hey, I
have a thing on this day and this day, so
put in to not work on that day. And we
(22:46):
still try and do that as much as we can.
But I'm sure you've run into this too in your career,
Like some clients reach out like four weeks ahead of time,
and that's a little more difficult because the shifts are
already set right er hospitals, a lot of the shift
work of a physician is actually really easy in perfect
conditions to balance with what we do because the schedule
(23:07):
set ahead of time, there's no on call, there's no
charting you have to do afterwards or any of that
sort of stuff. It's way easier than being like a
general practitioner or somebody who have to be on call.
But when those short term clients things come in, it
gets a little more difficult. Now I think where we are,
that's starting to get longer. But that was just sort
of like a post COVID reaction. I'm sure you saw
the same thing of like clients were suddenly like, we
(23:28):
don't even know if we're going to have an event,
so we're not even going to reach out to somebody
to be a part of it until we know for
sure we're going to do it. And that was a
short timeline, so it didn't work out all of that
well for a while. But it's starting to get to
get better and better, which is why I'm starting to
kind of push for that a bit more.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, I've noticed that too.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I mean it was in the past it would be like,
you know, if you wanted a keynote speech in October,
you were definitely reaching out in the spring, yeah to
book that, And now I feel like I definitely will
get people being like, yeah, we want something in yeah,
a couple of weeks, Like did you not plan this
event before then? Like or maybe I'm your second choice.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
That could be too but it's you.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Know, you're not too far off. My theory is like,
especially for an internal event, like we are kind of
a commodity, don't ever. I mean, if you're listening to this, no,
Laura and I are the absolute most in demand, best
people in this field. But the truth is, like everybody
has to go to that internal company meeting anyway. It's
not like associations and ticketed events and things like that
are back to a normal planning schedule because people want
(24:29):
to know who the speakers are before they buy a
ticket to it. But like an internal event where it's
like the company on hands meeting, Like we're like the
cherry on the cake. People are coming for the cake anyway.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah, they have to be there.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
So if if it works out to have an external speaker,
that's awesome, and if it doesn't, then they force their
VP of sales to give.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
The talk exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Also it's happening regardless exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Also, Cherry on the Sunday I don't know why you
would put cherry would be terrible. I wouldn't. I would
not enjoy that cake.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
So, David, I always ask people a question of what
is something you've done recently to take a day from
great to awesome?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Yeah? You know, okay, I think most days are great.
And this isn't just because I'm like super but like
you're still alive therefore a day is great. So the
thing that I have been doing for like twenty years
now is trying to remember that. And I don't have
a sophisticated like gratitude practice. I don't bullet journal or
anything like that. Here's where I learned this. Twenty years ago.
(25:26):
I got married, and when you're engaged, you get all
sorts of marriage advice from people who probably shouldn't give
you marriage advice, Like I wish I would have written
it all down and then had a column for be
like did you get divorced later? Like you know, who
should I actually be listening to? But the one piece
of good advice I really really got was actually not
marital advice. It was wedding advice, and it was Hey,
that whole day is going to be a blur. So
(25:47):
as many times as you can throughout the day, stop
and remind yourself, this is my wedding, right, like and
literally the only memory I have. I have lots of
memories of looking at photos and video and what have you,
But the only memory I have of like that actual
day is standing there at the altar, looking at her
and saying to myself, this is it. This is our
actual wedding. Like that's my one internalized memory, because there's
(26:08):
something about taking a second and like absorbing the moment.
Just stop and let's do it right. And so I
try and do that a lot. Right On a normal day,
it might just look like walking outside and sitting on
the deck for a few minutes and be like this,
this has been a really great day. On a travel day,
it might be like reflecting on how cool it was
that we sort of did something. One of the things
I like about again that trying to stretch out and
(26:29):
be less stressed traveling to and from work travel is
it gives you more opportunities to have that moment I'm
sitting at the like I pack a swimsuit now, And
part of my thing is like I might swim at
the pool or sit in the hot time and think like, oh,
that was a really cool opportunity, and I just all
I need is like a moment five minutes of not
having to think about anything other than the fact that
this day happened, and because it happened, it was already great.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah. One of my favorite speaking events.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I was at a resort and I brought my swimsuit
and I went on the Lazy River by myself.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Like I've been on so many lazier rivers with small people.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
I'm like hurting along too, So I was like, I'm
just sitting on this tube, follow myself.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah, no, same to you. I bet In fact, I
bet you I know what hotel was if it was
in Orlando. It's the marriout that has the amazing Lazy
River and the slides. I did the same thing, except
it was the water slide, and because it was ten
thirty in the morning, I was the only person and
it was awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Who's that dude with no kids with them? Right? Right?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
So David, what are you looking forward to right now?
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah? I mean this, We're recording this in July, which
is kind of like halftime, right, it's the slow down,
reflect and then plan. So I'm actually really looking forward
to the to the next year. We've got from a
family perspective, We've got some really cool things happening. I
have one kid who's like, has been aspiring to be
in marching band since he was picked up for the
school band. Got another that plays soccer and it's kind
of moving into another competitive level. Got some cool I'm
(27:50):
just looking forward to again. Every day is great, So
I'm just kind of looking forward to the second e
of the year. I don't have any big plans. I'm
not in the midst of writing another book or anything
like that. I'm just trying to make every day great.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Yeah, where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Oh? I'm so I've been really blessed mine. Look can
you you? Probably the same way. My name is really rare.
There aren't a lot of David bergers is out there.
There is a twenty four year old Hungarian filmmaker and
that's the only one I've met. So if you just
type it into Google, you will find me. You'll find
the platform you want to connect with me on. If
that's too difficult for you and you're listening to this
in a podcast app like, just swipe up or swipe
to the side. It's in the show notes. Anyway, while
(28:23):
you're there, maybe even leave a review, let Laura know
how great this podcast is, and then then you'll find.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Me absolutely all right, Well, David, thanks so much for
joining us, and thank you also to everyone for listening.
If you have feedback on this or any other episode,
you can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam
dot com.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and
here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
(29:05):
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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