Dave Carroll on Turning Direct Mail Into a $30M SaaS, Protecting Your Time, and Staying Focused

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey there, my name is Danny Lebrandt and in this episode of
Local Marketing Secrets, I am with Dave Carroll, the founder
and CEO of Dope Marketing, a software company that offers
laser focused direct mail at no minimum order for small
businesses and agencies. Dope just landed on the Inc 5000
for the second year in a row, hitting 475 last year and 675
this year. Dave's a serial entrepreneur who

(00:22):
built and still owns a home service business, Lion's Share
Maintenance. Five years ago, he launched Dope
Marketing to make offline mail as automated as digital ads.
Today, his team of more than 100runs a full scale print and
fulfillment operation that integrates with CRMS like Go
High Level and Zapier, sending postcards, handwritten notes and
even branded goodie bags or boxes.

(00:45):
Goodie bags and boxes triggered by real time customer actions.
Now that further ado Dave. Welcome to the show.
Danny, thanks for having me, man.
Making me making me blush on a Saturday morning.
Yeah, man. No, it's like I was saying you,
I would say you're one of the top names in the home services
space. It's so incredible what you've
done with dope marketing and even with your home service
business, but I can't believe how fast you guys have grown.

(01:08):
I I just want to ask you, First off, this is just kind of a
spontaneous question, but I, I do want to dive into your
background. Yeah.
You just told me that dope went from I think it was 0 to 2
million, then 2:00 to 8:00, then8 to 17, then 17 to around 30.
Like how how does that feel, man?
Is it is it overwhelming or doesit feel expected?
You know a lot of the stuff, Danny, I talk, I talk to

(01:29):
business owners all the time. I've been an entrepreneur for 15
years and when I get asked aboutthe growth at Dope, I look back
on, you know, what was our vision when we started?
What was the plan? And it, it wasn't the numbers,
it wasn't this many employees orthis much revenue.
I just have an opportunity to solve a problem.
And you know, as, as you build abusiness, I think it always

(01:55):
feels like things should happen faster than they're happening
with Delp. When I look back, you know, the
weeks turn into months and the months turn into years.
I just, I still have to pinch myself sometimes for where we're
at. But at the same time, like it's
my first time growing a company going towards $100 million

(02:15):
valuation or having 100 employees or doing 10s of
millions of dollars in revenue. And I mean, I still have the
same feelings at night, during the day when I'm working through
things that I had when I was growing and still very involved
in lion's share maintenance. And so I think as business
owners, as entrepreneurs, as founders, you know, the problems

(02:36):
are relative. Another zero is just another
problem. Yeah, it's bigger.
It's stressful. But I don't experience any less
stress now, you know, 15 years in or doing whatever level of
revenue or managing whatever number of employees than I did
when I was driving around in a van.
I couldn't afford shovel and gasstations to pay the bills over
the winter. Lion's share.
Like it's the same feel. Interesting.

(02:58):
OK, so stress is relative and it's still kind of feels the
same no matter where you're at. I think it's how you manage it.
I mean, like, you know, running a business is hard, Managing
employees is hard. Working at McDonald's would be
really hard. So it's like pick your, pick
your difficulty. I think when you, when you look
at, you know, I think our definitions of success change

(03:20):
over the years, different chapters in life, different
phases what we're going through.But like the relativity of
running a business, I think is very similar regardless if
you're hiring your first employee or you're hiring your
thousandth employee. I want to ask you this also.
And I, I feel like growing in business and just in life, it

(03:41):
requires you to level up. What what would you say are that
the points where you had to level up?
I think it's like recognizing the things that you do, the way
it is that you operate, even down to your vices, like the
things that make you comfortableor the things that you like.
Resort back to some of the big points in my life.

(04:04):
Me and my wife gave up drinking.It'll be 4 years coming up this
spring. I think that was a big point for
me of just like getting dialed in, being focused.
I think I, I've had a lot of a lot of opportunities to get
around, you know, some big namesor backstage or in the
mastermind groups. And I just over the years, Danny
found that like a lot of the people that I define as

(04:26):
successful are kind of doing a lot of the same things.
Like they, they manage their time well, they have a good
morning routine, they're focusedon Wellness or their health or
recovery. And in running and scaling
businesses, I think it gets so easy to get into the grind and
the 10:12, 14/16/18 hour days when you take a step back and

(04:49):
realize, here you go to the questions, you know, like Dave,
what would you tell yourself, you know, when you were starting
out, when you were 25 years old?I just look back at like some of
the decisions I was making, someof the ways I was balancing my
stress, some of the habits that came to be naturally or cut.
And I don't mean just the, the smoking, the drinking, the bad
stuff. I think like being reactive,

(05:11):
kind of helicoptering in on the business, going back to whether
they're whether they're the worst through the best versions
of yourself. And I think that holding
yourself accountable as a manager, as an owner, as an
entrepreneur, it's like, you know, you get to choose what

(05:33):
your heart is. And I think that some of the
people that I find in my life the most successful, they're
kind of all focused on the same things.
And so for me, you know, as cliche as it is, when I really
got dialed in and when I made the decisions with Dope to
really, it wasn't even go all inwith the business, with this

(05:55):
being a serial entrepreneur. I knew when I started Dope, I
was putting the horse blinders on anything from the the
partnerships, the affiliates, the potential investments, the
opportunities. This one for all the businesses
I've owned, I've been a part of like I really put on myself.
And I think when I when I look back on the past five years of

(06:16):
dope and some of the glass ceilings I hit with my personal
life, with some of the ways thatI naturally operated with some
of my my strengths and my weaknesses.
I think one of the biggest aha or clarity moments for me as I
look back as I just really made a commitment to like as again,
as corny as it sounds, just likefocus on being the best version

(06:38):
of myself. So then all the people as we
were growing that depended on me, I could share that with and
not be like a selfish with. It was as I historically had
been in my career. Yeah, no, there, there's so many
good points there. I want to touch on that, that
last one of the the horse blinders.
I feel like our nature as entrepreneurs, it's the natural.
You want to start as many businesses as possible.

(07:00):
You want to take as many opportunities as possible, talk
to as many people like we're doing here, do as many podcasts
as possible. But you do have to learn how to
say no. And like you said, put on those
horse blinders. So what was it for you?
Why did you put on those horse blinders?
So in any business, there's always going to be opportunity.

(07:21):
You know, we all have the same 14140 minutes in the day.
And when I started Dope, it was like I knew that through I'd
already been an entrepreneur for10 years.
I had relationships, I had partnerships, I had connections

(07:43):
and I knew that the problem thatI was setting out to solve, like
it was bigger than just me, but there were also a couple
unconventional ways that we approached solving a problem.
I mean, Danny, if you told me five years ago I'd own a print
shop, I'd tell you you were nuts.
That wasn't the plan. Our whole plan was like broker
this workout. But what I saw very quickly,

(08:05):
within three to six months of owning this business was like,
that was a problem that we had to be willing to solve ourself.
And I've been in the data business for almost 10 years
when I started DOPE. So I had a lot of partnerships
and relationships, people that owned regional print shops,
national print shops, but I was asking to do something that

(08:26):
wasn't really common, that like wasn't the industry standard.
And when I thought about like all the opportunities that came
in offering the million different pieces of mail or all
the different things you could print, we leaned in very quickly
a dope into yard signs. Because I truly believe that any
business that used yard signs could truly use the service that

(08:48):
I set out to offer with Dope, which was automated, direct
mail, no minimum order, laser focused, hyper targeted.
But all those buzzwords don't really mean much until you're
doing something. And so like with Dope, because
we had set out in the home service space right away, it was

(09:08):
what I knew we break the home service space in Dope down to 75
different verticals, like 75 different types of businesses.
And when you hear the things like riches are in the niches, I
was taking on a responsibility to kind of simplify or
templatize the relativity of howdirect mail could work for a lot

(09:31):
of different businesses. And in that the agencies, the
franchises, the the private equity companies, the owner
operators and just all their different needs, like all the
ways that we could provide valuewith my experience in the
experience of our team, very quickly came the affiliate

(09:53):
deals, the Rev share deals, the partnership.
I mean, without, you know, ego aside or trying to not brag like
Danny, we've been beating away private equity with a stick
since we started this thing. A lot of it because of some of
the relationships or the background of me and my team and
just really being like not only like strategic but very

(10:15):
disciplined in like not every opportunity is a good
opportunity. And I think with, you know, I'm
a visionary to a fault and chasing the squirrels and
looking at the different exciting things.
And I mean, you don't, I mean it's not even start with AI over
the past couple, all the different things that you can

(10:38):
do. One of the reasons that I
believe dope got to where it's at in the amount of time that it
did is because of the disciplineof having those horse blinders
on and not chasing every squirrel and every possibility,
but really staying focused on like our value proposition, what
we offer because we truly cannot.
Dope help so many different types of businesses from a owner

(11:03):
operator that just started last month all the way to a multi
location business. However they're set up,
franchise owner operator, whatever that's been open for 50
years. I mean, we work with all of them
and I think that the discipline in staying tried and true to
what we focused on has led to some of the success we've
experienced. Yeah, absolutely.

(11:24):
I, I think the reason and you, you kind of, we're touching on
this, that a big reason of why you guys are successful is
because you come from the home services space.
You've had your, your company Lion Share Maintenance for, you
know, 15 years now or so. So you, you've been in the
industry, you know, all the things that you needed yourself
as a home business or a home service business owner.

(11:45):
And I, I want to dive a little bit more into your background
because I know we kind of skipped that, but I, I had some
questions I really want to ask you.
So, so tell me how you originally got started?
How did you start Lion Share maintenance?
Was there anything before that? And kind of how did that
progress? Dan M&X Knucklehead man I was.
I started getting in trouble when I was like 14.

(12:07):
I went to nine different high schools.
Ended up hitting the home run ofgetting in trouble.
I was in prison from when I was 21 to right before I was 25.
Never had a job in my life when I was in a halfway house
transitioning out of prison, I got a job at a window cleaning
company and I was just like the worst employee in the history of
employment. Like you would never.

(12:28):
I'm, I'm really bad at a lot of things.
I'm good at a couple things. You would never want to hire me
as an employee of your business.And so very quickly
transitioning out of being in some trouble most of my life
went kind of back to the same shit for about a year.
Like they say in sobriety or in treatment, you know, sick and
tired of being sick and tired. I was just like, I don't want to

(12:50):
keep doing this. I just met my wife.
She just very quickly after this, she was pregnant with our
first child and I was just trying to figure it out, man.
And, and in the home service space is pretty like low barrier
to entry. You can kind of get after it and
grind. And I just didn't really know
anything else. So I just dove in head first,
doing the sales, doing the customer service, doing the

(13:13):
booking jobs, doing the actual work.
And I'd never really done labor in my life, had never really run
a business. I sold drugs my whole life and I
just like, I like anything I hadever experienced before, man.
I just went all in and then veryquickly this was right when
Facebook was coming out. There was still like the online,

(13:34):
like the, the, the posting boards, those old like PHP chat
boards and shit like that. But Facebook had just come out
and I just saw the opportunity and Facebook and creating
content. I just went all in with that
while running the business, learning how to run ads,
learning how to do videos. We were talking before before we
were started recording like did if you search my name on

(13:55):
YouTube, there's videos of me 15years ago like putting power
washers together and stuff like that.
And I got an opportunity to speak at a power washing
convention. Like 2 years into my business.
We had started experience some success from like a top line
revenue and hiring standpoint inthat business.
And I just saw these business owners doing $1,000,000 a year

(14:18):
and I was like, Oh my God, that's success.
That's what I need to figure outhow to do.
And so I had started back in theday, there's this app called
Voxer if anyone my age remembersthe next telephones like the
Chirp used to have like Young Jeezy on the commercials stuff.
And I would throw out a safety vest where we are trying to go

(14:41):
get like commercial work, like strip malls, property managers,
stuff like that. Man.
I would throw on a safety vest to get myself all worked out,
find a strip mall and I would look like there's a Great Clips,
there's a McDonald's, there's a,you know, Bob's dog food store.
I'd try to find like the local small business, not the
corporate one, whether it'd be like a younger person working.

(15:02):
I get myself all worked up, set off the boxer when I walk.
Bob, hold on one SEC, ma'am. I need, I need to immediately
find water access to this building.
Who's the name? What's the name of the property
manager? I need the property manager's
information immediately. Well, I did because if I was
ever going to do work there, I'dneed to know who the property
manager was. But what I would do is I do an
estimate on every service at theStribble, like what it would

(15:24):
cost to wash the sidewalks, whatit would cost to do the awnings,
what would cost to wash the windows.
I would go around town and I would find the property managers
information. I would send them like
unsolicited bids lost to clean this the shopping center.
And then I'd just follow up on them.
I'd get these like etched candy jars with our logo and I'd go
into the property management office with it full of candy.

(15:44):
They're like, what the hell are you doing here with this safety
vest on them? Nothing.
I don't need actually need anything.
I'm going to leave this candy jar here when it's when it's
empty, text the number on the jar.
I'll come back and I'll fill it up every month for free.
And I'd build this route and then I'd start sending them bids
on their properties. And if if anyone doesn't know
not to tell anyone to go do anything illegal, But like you

(16:07):
can literally get away with anything if you have a safety
messed up like you can do anything that you want hard hat
on your in there wherever you want to go.
And so I would, I started developing these methods and
just putting content out of likehow to generate commercial
sales, how to get in front of businesses, how to hire, how to
do the services. And then I came out with a piece

(16:28):
of salt. I couldn't spell software, but
three years into my home servicecompany, I took what would now
be like a DocuSign or a Panda Dock, just like a glorified PDF
merger. I paid this dude dirty.
I couldn't spell $30,000, but I,I paid this guy $30,000 at the
University of Minnesota to create this.
It was called close the job.com.I think the domain is still
active. It was called proposal.

(16:50):
Didn't know the first thing about SAS, but I started
Speaking of these trade shows and within four months we signed
up 300 people for $90.00 a monthfor the SAS.
I was like, shit, dude, this is easier than washing windows all
day. So I'm managing the software
company. I have no clue what I'm doing.
I'm growing the window cleaning company.
Me and my wife, we bring my brother-in-law in, we're hiring,
but we're in a seasonal businessin Minnesota.

(17:12):
They're not, you know, you know,it doesn't happen in January and
February in Minnesota. There's not a power washing and
window cleaning, not a lot of that going on.
So I started selling the software that was growing,
running the home service company.
We're having some success with both.
Fast forward a couple years, I keep trying to turn the, the
software into a CRM got into some failures there.

(17:32):
I, I have 4 violent felonies. And so you got into this
arrangement with this staffing company in Canada.
I find out they're up charging our invoices.
I try to sue him but I'm a dumbass.
Our contract says I have to sue him in Canada.
Well I can't go to Canada because I'm a felon and so go
back and fuck I'm just learning.I don't know anything.

(17:53):
What are they saying in that Ozark shot?
I don't know shit about fuck. I'm figuring all of this.
How would I go and we end up having to pay off this this
staffing company? Like I had a bill for like
$120,000. We haven't ended up having to
settle it for 40,000 learned a lot there.
But what I really learned was how to aggregate lists for

(18:19):
residential, but like homeowners, businesses and I got
into the world of brokering datajust kind of like stumbled into
it. That was about like 11 years ago
and ended up opening an agency to help agencies with audience
targeting. And then I met our friend Dennis

(18:39):
Yu and Dennis at the TraffickingConversion Summit out in San
Diego. Acts like got in with Dennis
real quick. He's got all these huge
accounts, Ashley Furniture, Nike, TiVo, U Pack.
We start doing audience targeting for these Fortune 500
companies and started getting more into the agency space,

(19:00):
selling dated agency. I I think a lot of times success
is when preparation meets opportunity.
And what happened was Facebook started taking away all of their
audience targeting, like homeowners, credit score,
income, home value. Well, I very quickly figured out
how to get like 9095% match rates uploading audiences into

(19:20):
Facebook that Facebook took away.
Then through the agency, we're starting to do consulting.
We're making some decent money removing myself from the home
service business that starts growing.
But what I saw Danny, was when Iwould sell lists, two of them
would be to a small business owner, four of them would be at
a telemarketing company, four ofthem would be to a direct mail
company. No matter who I sold a list to,

(19:41):
I would have to do a level of consulting.
It wasn't just the transaction of selling the data.
I would have to show them and consult on how to use them,
whether I was selling it to an agency acting on their behalf to
their clients or I was selling it to clients on my own.
Love small businesses, love working with them, helping them
grow. I have a lot of background in
small business, so that was attractive.
Telemarketing. I didn't love call centers.

(20:02):
The rules were changing with ringless voicemails and text
messaging and outbound dialing over the years.
I felt like not really in control of that.
Direct mail was like direct mailspaces ran by 70 year old fat
guys who suck at golf whose kidsdon't want to work for.
A lot of innovation in the printspace and direct mail.
So I saw a lot of opportunity. And I made the decision I wanted
to build a piece of software that could do automated direct

(20:25):
mail. And instead of sending like
blasts of like 20,050 thousand, 100,000 pieces, spray and
praying, crossing your fingers, hoping it's working.
I saw a different vision that you were trying to send.
Like you could get more success sending more mail to less
people. So getting really into the
targeting, considering mail, notthis spray and pray approach,

(20:46):
but more like like little tiny billboards that you can put in
people's hands and have it really automated, have it really
laser focus, have it really targeted.
But then all these print shops are like, you can't do these low
minimums. It'll take two weeks to produce
it. You got to stack them up.
I looked at the technology that was going on in the print shop.
So I was like, no, you don't. I think you can do it a
different way. And so I had the vision.

(21:08):
We started writing the software for Dope a little over five
years ago. We launched the company about
five years ago, started really focusing on the software.
At first we're just like brokering mail, like it wasn't a
SAS platform as much. Four years ago we launched like
the SAS side, the automations, the neighborhood blitz, the
different version first was justcalled Dope.

(21:29):
We're the dope 3 point O now going into 2026.
We're actually going to rename the software soon.
But yeah, we we we got into homeservice with just offering
direct mail connecting with CRM is making it too good.
Like draw a shape on a map, sendmail within the shape, filter
things out like home value, how many acres is the property?

(21:49):
What's the square footage? When was the house built?
And then in the connection with the CRM and the business owner
or the agency really getting into the analytical side, like
what is this model of your customer?
How do we create like what people would define as like a
look alike audience of the people that already like used
your services and just really getting in deep with the

(22:11):
strategy, the design, the automation, the tracking and and
Fast forward four years. I turn I turn 40 next month into
whenever people are seeing this.I think we're recording it in
October. I'm sure 40 next month in
November. Dope is just turning 5 years
old. And yeah, man, it's been a, it's
been a wild ride. No, man, you're, you're crushing

(22:32):
it. Thank you for giving that that
whole back on us. I mean, I can't believe I, I, I
want to touch on that a little bit more of yeah, like the ups
and downs. It seems like there's a lot of
downs earlier on of nine different high schools went to
prison, some lawsuits. So how does, I don't know
exactly how to put it in a nice way, but it was almost like you

(22:53):
were set to be a failure. You were going down the wrong
path. Like, how does a person like
that end up being as successful as you are?
And what do you say to that person?
So I think success is in the eyeof the beholder, right?
I don't, I don't wish, I don't wish your story on anyone,
Danny. I don't wish my story on anyone.
It's ours to own. But I think that, you know,

(23:16):
regardless of your upbringing, if you grew up in a amazing
household or the opposite of that, you know, you made some
decisions growing up. You got caught for some stuff
that you did. Maybe everyone's got a back
story, right? All the things that you did that
you didn't get caught for, been in jail for 100 years.
The idea is like, you know, we are what we make of the

(23:40):
decisions that we choose to be apart of.
And I think in my life, I met people that grew up in the worst
places, drugs, abuse, you know, all of it, all the way to grew
up in Connecticut in a 20,000 square foot house and dad was
ACEO of a Fortune 100 company. And both people ended up the
same and opposite. You have people that came from

(24:00):
the worst places that graduated from Harvard or started $100
million business. You have people that started
there that ended up on drugs, debt or in prison.
And I know all of them. And it's like for me, it's
really big Danny on accountability on you.
You are you are the decisions you make.
You are the people you surround yourself with.
And I started making a lot of decisions at a very young age

(24:22):
that I just wanted every day of my life to be a rap video.
And it was, man. I was 17 years old, found
$1,000,000 in a hotel room. Like I, I look at some of the
things that I exposed myself to.Not like, dude, it's not like I
grew up in some terrible place, horrible neighborhood, whatever.
But like I, as a father of five now I look at, you know, I

(24:47):
remember my father asked me, I was, it was, I was about a year
into my, my bed. My dad was sitting across me and
my parents were married three times each day.
My parents were married. They had three kids, knew each
other in high school, moved nextto each other, ran off together,
had me and my brother rolling together for like 5 years.
And then my dad is still with his third wife.
My mom is now passed, but was divorced from her third husband

(25:10):
for like 15 years or something like that.
And like, I think everyone's gottheir story, everyone's got
their upbringing, everyone's gotthe decisions they've made.
I think I made a lot of decisions to put myself in a
position to be what you would define as a failure.
But I also, you know, I approachlife, parenting, relationships,

(25:32):
business. Like, man, you breathe.
You bleed me too. Like I can do anything that
anyone's ever done. And I'm not an inventor, I'm not
an engineer. I'm thankful to employ some
really good ones these days. But like I, I just look at life
like you can literally accomplish anything you want to

(25:54):
wake up a little bit earlier, dowhat you say you're going to do,
don't cut, collect the check till the money's done.
Make sure people are happy and go to sleep a little bit later.
I mean, again, we'll talk a lot about success.
And I think success is, I know my personal definition of
success has changed a ton over the years.

(26:14):
But when I think about like, youknow, my father asked me once
when he came to visit me, you know, David, what did I do as
your dad to make you think that it was OK to go pick up a gun
and go hurt someone? I was like, dad, by the time I
was making those types of decisions, I wasn't at a point
where I was thinking that hard about that type of shit.
That was my life. And I, I think about now, Danny,

(26:40):
like, what am I doing as a parent to not be sitting in that
situation that my father was sitting in?
And I think that, you know, I, Itip my hat to my wife and the
people involved in our lives because we are very present
parents in the Carroll household.

(27:00):
And I just what's life about, you know, success and the, the
grind and the stuff like all that's fun.
I'm not going to take it away from anyone.
But I think for me, my my definition of success now is
very simple. I walk in my house and the
people that depend on me love me.
And all the decisions I made in my life LED up to that, because

(27:21):
my version of success up until that point was was very
different. So awesome, man, I love how you
speak with so much passion and energy.
You get me fired up that I just I love your mindset.
Anything's possible and it's it's clear that's that's what
you're doing right now. And I also want to ask for
relating what you're saying on the, on the back end of that of,

(27:42):
you know, raising your kids and what's really important, how do
you balance raising 5 kids and still being a part of and
growing this company? We're in control of very few
things in this life are given reaction to any situation.
We're always in control of, regardless of we, we always

(28:03):
accept that responsibility. But the other thing man, is just
like what your kids are exposed to and these little people that
you know, they only know what you show them.
For me, the other thing that I take very seriously in my life
is my responsibility for my time.
I'm one of those crazy people, man.
I wake up at 435 o'clock every morning with no alarm.

(28:24):
I always have. That's not like a not a new
thing for me, but I take a lot of responsibility and getting
myself ready for the world and getting the world ready for me
every day. And in that planning, that
preparation is the intentionality around, you know,

(28:46):
my kids will grow up differentlythan a lot of traditional
households like my daughter is. She's going to turn 13 beginning
of next year and she's a spitting image of my wife.
Spitting Image, she's experienced every phase of this
from us not being able to afforda $400.00 van payment because I
got our second vehicle too soon at my cleaning company, all the

(29:07):
way to like us getting our second home in Puerto Rico and
living there as a family and seen all this shit.
And then like my youngest Kobe, who's 2 is all he knows.
You know, us living in the housewe live in now, experiencing the
life we have now. When I started Dope, I always
knew the work that would have togo into it because again, I

(29:29):
didn't know where we would get revenue employees, that that was
never the plan. I didn't sit down like we're
vision board, we're going to getto Inc 5000 and we're going to
do this stuff. All that shit is just a
byproduct of hard work. But what I will say is like when
I think about how I work and howI manage my day now, being an
entrepreneur who's about to turn40, who's been doing this 16

(29:52):
years now, I just treat my time as my most valuable currency.
And I'm very, very intentional. It's not even about the
discipline, it's the intentionality, man.
If I don't, if I don't spend some time with myself in the
morning, if I don't get my my workout in, if I don't have my
check insurance, if I don't justdo my stuff that I know keeps me

(30:12):
on track, can get into all the, you know, the, the diets and the
saunas and the cold plunges and the workouts.
And it's like, oh, that's good and great for me when I got
very, very disciplined about my time and the balance.
I'm not going to say I don't have a call at six O clock some
nights. I'm not going to say that my

(30:33):
kids don't wake up and I'm not on the computer or doing
whatever we are very intentionalwith.
We have an amazing nanny that isa part of our family that allows
us to be kind of flexible. We have like I don't have a
personal chef where I can like hit my walkie-talkie at 2:00 AM
to get a growth interview. But we have people that like we,

(30:54):
we take some of the money that we make and we buy our minutes
back, which allows me to get, ifI want to go to go on a run at
one PMI can, if I want to pick my kids up from school one day
when I wasn't planning on it, I can.
And I just with some of the previous businesses I was in,
that wasn't the case. Like I would, that wasn't my
intentionality. I was doing the ten 12/14/16

(31:17):
plus hour days, but I think that's a part of it.
You got to paint the room beforeyou hire the painter.
You got to know what you're goodat, what you like doing, what
you're not good at, what you don't like doing, and understand
that. Like dude, hiring scary.
But what's not scary is the factthat you can literally take your
minutes during the day and make as much money as humanly
possible to be able to hire people to do the shit that you

(31:38):
don't like doing and you're not good at.
I don't like doing laundry. I don't like, you know, having
to remember to pay a bill or do a thing or like just I am very,
very, very intentional about focusing on the things that I am
naturally good at or that I get excited about doing.
And I try to figure out how to just simply Danny, how to make

(32:00):
enough money to pay the people to do all the shit that I don't
want to do. So I can focus on what I'm good
at. Because that's if I look back in
the past 1516 years of my life, when I am honed in on the things
that come to me naturally or that I'm excited about, then
those things happen faster and Ican delegate the things that
don't come to me naturally. Like, dude, I'm the worst

(32:20):
manager ever. I'm not the systems in the
process person. Like my direct reports have a
harder day than people that directly reports like people
that are managers like. And I know that.
And I explained that I own in a in a in a, in a company in dope
with 100 plus employees. I have three direct reports like
that's it. And that was set up

(32:43):
intentionally because as the CEOof a business, look, I said this
earlier in the interview, man, this is my first time running a
company this big. Also, I'm like, what I've
realized is if I am not taking things off of my plate and
delegating, like we get stuck just like anything else that

(33:06):
I've ever done. And I think that for me, whether
it's family, whether it's business, whether it's
relationships, the way that I balance everything is I am very,
very selfish with my time. I'm very intentional with my
time. And it's not just because we
figured out how to make money. I was selfish with my time when

(33:27):
I was working 18 hours a day. It's just being intentional
about it. Yeah, definitely.
No, I can, I can totally relate to that too.
The time it's one of the few things that's is limited, right?
I mean you can have as much money as you want, you can have
as many cars as you want hypothetically, but in time we
can't get it back. So I've seen that with all the

(33:50):
high level entrepreneurs that I've talked to as well that you
have to protect it like it is the most valuable asset because
it actually is. And a kind of related to that or
adjacent to that. And what you were mentioning
earlier was the different habitsthat someone like a high level
CEO will have, maybe like the sauna and the really good diet

(34:11):
and the working out and, you know, going to bed at a certain
time. That definitely applies to the
high level CEO. And really it's like the place
you're at right now. But do you think that still
applies to the beginner that's just getting the company going
or is it like the non-stop grindat the beginning?
Everyone's got to start somewhere, right?
I think if I look back in all the stress I used to manage, the

(34:32):
hours I used to work, if I knew what I knew now about my body.
I mean, look, man, like your body's different at 25 than it
is at 40. But it's also like, I'm very
blessed that I focus me, my wife, my family, and this stuff
rubs off on our team too. Like dude, I got Ided by and
Zen's the other day. Like I'm I'm very fortunate to.

(34:56):
I think that health cliches again, man, health is wealth.
This everyone's a beginner when you start something, and I think
the sooner anyone listening to this watching on this, just
focus on your health dude. You know my favorite thing in
the world to do is smoke cigarettes.
If I could smoke for this whole day every day 24/7, I would, but
I can't like I can't. That was not good for my health.

(35:20):
I feel worse. It doesn't, it doesn't serve me
for anything. And it's like, I think that
people get caught up in the like, well, I don't have, I
don't, I don't have enough time to do all this stuff.
You know how expensive it is to like do some push ups or go on a
run. You have to spend your most

(35:40):
valuable currency on it. If you look at expense.
But like, I believe that if you put some intentionality around,
dude, if you are your biggest leg, we're not employees.
A lot of us, our resume is not our last job, it's our last
success. It's our vision, It's the
project we did, it's the thing we're working on, it's you.

(36:04):
And so if you are your biggest investment and you're not
investing in your health, your Wellness, your recovery, like
again, cliche, what are you doing?
You're grinding, plowing Red Bulls, eating Adderall, smoking
lung darts. Like, what are you doing?
Managing the stress, eating likeshit during the day because it's
quick. I mean, I, I want to be a cliche

(36:30):
here in the sense of like, if you are not focused on your
health or your Wellness, you're just leading towards getting a
scary reminder of like having, Ihave friends that have been in
their early 4, early 30s, forties, fifties, 60s.
What are you going to do when you get a diagnosis of a health

(36:52):
scare? And now all this grinding and
caffeine and up and whatever. Like all that leads to one
thing. And I think that when you see
all this focus on, you know, getting enough sleep, taking
your protein, taking your creatine, doing these things,

(37:14):
everyone's not doing this shit because it's cool.
I heard years and years ago we went out to see Gary Vee right
when we started Dope. And he said something about
like, look, someone asked him, so you work out, you grind, you
run, you do this, Gary, you're 1,000,000 miles an hour.
What about when you're not working out?
He's like, dude, when I when I'mdisciplined, when I'm on my

(37:34):
stuff, I'm eating good, I'm working out, I feel better.
When I'm not doing all those things, I feel worse.
I would rather feel better. So I just do it all.
And like, I just took that to heart and I'm human too, man.
I go in my phases, my stuff, my whatever.
But I know if I am not staying focused on my working out, my

(37:57):
Wellness, my recovery, just the things that you see successful
people doing, I don't operate ata high, at that high of a level
and I don't feel as good. And I like feeling good and I
like operating at a high level. So I just do it.
Yeah, yeah, No, definitely. I mean, I see like being cool as
in like being spontaneous and not really caring.

(38:18):
But if, if that's the case, if not caring is being cool, then
you can't build a company, you can't do the things that you
want to do. So it's not about being cool,
but it's about, I mean, how can we optimize for the goal, our
goals and the things that we want.
There was a phase in my life where I was the guy that your
wife or girlfriend didn't want you hanging out with a very long

(38:42):
time for a lot of very valid reasons.
I think what's cool now is beinga good boss, being a good dad,
being a good husband, taking care of yourself.
Like just being someone. It's cool when people look up to
you, right? Like someone's like, man, I see
you, you're killing it. I admire you, but what about

(39:05):
when you can just look at yourself in the mirror and be
like, man, I put in a good day today or I'm setting the tone
this morning. We're like, these are the things
I'm going to do. And just like energy to me is
big. The universe to me is big.
Words are powerful, Energy is powerful, manifestation is
powerful. And when you get in these rooms
and talk to these people, they're just all up to the same

(39:26):
shit. And I'm just trying to be
feeling as good as they feel andbe impacting people the way they
feel. And just, I mean, I don't mean
to downplay the work that goes into a Danny, but it's all just
pretty simple. Yeah, no, I mean, you look
young, so I actually can't see you getting ID for for Zen's or
whatever else. Feel like I have more eye bags
than you. I don't even know if that's
possible. I wanted something I wanted to

(39:48):
make sure to touch on during theshow.
And I mean, we kind of talked about it during the beginning,
but this is like the other half of it, which is how fast you
guys have grown. And we talked about the levels
that kind of requires as a humanbeing to to level up.
But just for people that are looking in on the outside and
maybe haven't even touched theirfirst million, maybe they're
just getting started. They've been in business for a

(40:10):
while. Maybe they're plateauing or even
starting to lose growth. How have you guys with dope
grown so fast? Is there like a secret to your
success or what? What is it?
I think it was in the book the go giver, they were talking,
guys were having a conversation about like, all right, we're
going to come out with a business.

(40:30):
How much can we charge? And then like how big can we
get? Like how much can we make?
And when you think about like how much you can charge, you
know, I think about like the petrock.
So like guy, guy made $1,000,000selling rocks with googly eyes
and some like streamers on it orwhatever.
And when you think about like growth and how much you can

(40:51):
charge and how many people you can help, if you're going to
sell rocks for a dollar, you know, you got to get a stand,
you got to find the rocks, you got to sit on the thing.
And they're like, only so many people want to buy a rock for a
dollar. Now, are you finding like maybe
some gemstones or a little nicheor something where you could
like make some more? But like only so many people
want to buy a rock for a buck and it doesn't take much skill,

(41:13):
right? Like anyone could do what the
pet rock guy did. But then you go like like, let's
say like the best brain surgeon in the world that can charge the
most money that any one of thesetop 100 people in the world
would have a blank check to comefix whatever was wrong with
them. Well, that guy or woman had to
like go to school, become the best, figure it out, solve the

(41:36):
problems. And then like they can only they
only have so many minutes duringthe day that they could be doing
these things to charge an amountof money.
So whether you're looking at it from like an approachable thing
of like, all right, how much canwe charge?
Well, how much you can charge isbased on the level of problem
you can solve. Are you selling a rock?
Are you doing brain surgery or somewhere in between?

(41:56):
Well, it's like, how much can you make?
Well, how much you can make depends on how many people you
can help. And you know, I forgot who
though, was a Robert Kawasaki who did the blue ocean thing
where it's like opportunity in business.
There's no blood in the water, right?
There's no sharks everywhere grabbing everything.
It's a lot of opportunity. It's a blue ocean.
What I saw with Dope was the opportunity to standardize the

(42:20):
way that something that a lot ofpeople heard of.
Like dude, the problem we fight at Dope has been said for 100
like direct mail is dead. Like great.
So we're Facebook ads if you approach him the way that you
did 10 years ago with dope, the way we grew so fast is we took
something that was out there like everyone heard of direct
mail. Everyone's like literally every
say there's the United States has broken down into 180 million

(42:42):
parcels. Like in the United parcel being
like there's a property or groupof properties on a parcel.
You know what? Every one of those parcels has a
mail. Oh, an inbox.
Yeah. And so it's like when I looked
at Dope and how direct mail was being done by, you know, these
guys and girls were lighting their their cigars with $100

(43:04):
bills since the magazine's publications, junk mail, like
all that type of stuff. And I just saw it different and
I positioned the business. I think one of the things that
helped Dope grow as I wasn't trying to grow it like it, I had
no intention whatsoever. I'm like where you write a
business plan, right? I was never like not the best

(43:26):
advice, but I was never really big on business plans.
If you need a bank, you need a loan.
If you need a thing like go write a business plan.
But as an entrepreneur, I was just like, we're going to figure
some shit out. And if you would have asked me
five years ago how big was dope going to be, I couldn't tell
you. I just knew that there was a big
enough problem and I had come upwith a solution that is still

(43:46):
changed like along the way. We're a startup, we're agile, we
look at the market. I mean, there's some things that
came out with the post office that we accidentally got right.
That's going to double our multiplier in the next two
years. Like double.
Like literally if we're worth 50mil, 100 mil in less than 12
months just because of like something we did at the
beginning that some shit happened.
I said it earlier in the podcastis like, success is truly when
preparation meets opportunity. And so for me, none of our

(44:11):
growth was planned. But I'm an entrepreneur, man,
I'm a founder, I'm a hustler. I I take a problem and I come up
with a solution. If anything, man, one of my
strengths and weaknesses is I'm a problem solver to a fault to
the fault of like I don't reallyset goals.
I don't really operate in a like, let's celebrate.
This is all great. Look at dude.

(44:31):
I have my eye of Mordor pointed on what's wrong always, always,
and I've had to untrain that muscle in the way those things
are delivered because we're not a little dingy anymore with
however many like the size of our business.
We're not the Titanic, but like change management processes,

(44:52):
rolling things out. It's not me and four people
anymore where I can make a decision today and roll some
shit out tomorrow. It's bigger than that.
And that happens in all phases of business when you go from
just you and your buddy or your wife or husband or whatever to
having one employed, having two to having five to having 10 to
having 20. Like it's all relative like we

(45:12):
were talking about earlier. But I think with dope, with the
growth man, I, one of my strengths is I don't really get
scared. I don't really get worried.
And it's just because that's alldistraction.
Like when you give something energy, it gets more powerful.

(45:33):
And so for me, being a problem solver, I used to approach
situations whether it was like a, a, a deal negotiation, a
proposal. We're trying to hire someone and
I'm trying to navigate it of a tough conversation with an
employee, with a customer where we messed up.
I used to sit around Danny and Iwould sit and obsess for hours,

(45:54):
like, what could happen? What are they going to say?
What am I going to say if they do this?
What if it goes this way? What?
And then I realized, man, like, the more you pour into that
level of thinking more you're giving those outcomes energy.
And not that don't plan, not that don't be prepared, not that
don't study, but don't be so obsessive to the point where

(46:17):
you're literally creating an outcome because of the energy
you're pouring into it negatively.
What if you just sat around and said and thought about all the
things that went right? If you came up with a plan and
you communicated what your planswere to people and you set your
expectations for what you were going to happen?
Like, I'm not a system and process guy, but what I've

(46:38):
learned over the years is if youexpect something from someone
and they don't do it, you're only going to be disappointed.
And if you expect something fromsomeone and they do it, you're
not going to think about it thatmuch because you expected it.
What if you look at business andcommunication and relationships
of just like putting the work into setting the expectations

(47:00):
around what you want to happen. Figure out how the people that
you're depending on are working with like communicate and then
like go to EOS and if no one's read traction and rocket fuel,
Gino Wickman, get your shit together because you need to.
But like the idea is there are operating systems for business,
for relationships, for life, andall of them boil down to one

(47:23):
thing. It's setting expectations and an
expectation is simply communicating what you want to
happen. And now you get into the what
they make easy in business. The rocks, the KP is the service
level agreements, the Slas, the goals.
Figure out what you want to happen, lay out your

(47:44):
expectations and figure out how to communicate around like the
metrics of the. This is where the shit gets
really easy. So when I get asked about growth
and business and dope and how fast it is, man, I haven't done
this for, but a bunch of people have.
And all I did was look at all the different ways that people
grew. Businesses that went from zero

(48:06):
to 100 thousand, 100,000 to 1,000,000, a million to five
million, 5 million to 10 million, 10 million to
50,000,050 million to 100 million, a 100 million to a
billion. Look, I got terrible news for
all you entrepreneurs. Someone right now is going to do
100 times better at exactly whatyou're doing then you will ever
fucking figure out ever in your life right now that happened
regardless of what you do. And if you just take that

(48:30):
instead of this, like, oh, fear,stress, like, dude, that shit's
going to be there. But how much energy do you give
it versus the energy you give laying out the expectations of
what you want to happen, puttingon the horse blinders and just
getting disciplined with that shit?
And I know it sounds. I have a good or bad habit of
making things sound inherently kind of simple.

(48:51):
But how hard do you want things to be?
So you need to have systems in place, and the way the systems
are powered are by expectations.Or don't.
I can see where that gets you. Yeah, OK.
And I also want to get clear on another point.
You said that was the easier easy part.
Then what is the hard part? Showing up everyday, like not

(49:13):
being the worst version of yourself, like look what got us
here won't get us there. If I operated the same way I
operated 15 years ago, 12 years ago, nine years ago, six years
ago, three years ago, we wouldn't be where we're at right
now. Like the business is going to be
held back by the way the owner operates.
One of my business coaches told me so like I've been doing
public speaking for over 10 years.

(49:34):
But what I found over the years is I would try to kind of like
put up a wall because I'm a lot to deal with.
Like I me directly communicatingwith every level of employee in
a business I run hasn't always led to success.
It gets distracting or it gets confusing or it gets like the
maybe the best directions not being given.

(49:56):
What I've realized is like if I am not getting better, what my
business coach told me was like,Dave, that version of you that
you give people on stage and when you're on a podcast, that
has to be the version of you that your team gets.
It can't be like this other. I've all seen it, man.

(50:17):
The whether it's the hot headed,the reactive, they're just
moving too fast. Like business.
My man, I, I named, I named my third for any hip hop fans.
My son is named Nipsey, my 3rd and Nipsey, Nipsey Hussle for
anyone not for you, look him up doing yourself a favor.
Nipsey Hussle, a lot of his career and his message was like,

(50:41):
it's a marathon, It's not a Sprint we're running.
I can, I can leave my house today and run a marathon right
now. Like that's how prepared I am
for anything, for business, for life, for any of it because of
the work I put in. Well, business.
What people fail to realize whenyou think about like the New
York Marathon, you have heats ofwhen it starts, you got the
front runners, you got the second heat, the third heat, the

(51:02):
4th, the 5th. And what happens is some of
those men and women on the firstheat are finishing the marathon
as the people are starting the 5th, 6th, 7th.
That's a founder. You're in business.
Like when you're 345 laps ahead of your team, you have to
realize it's your job to either communicate directly with your

(51:26):
team or put the people in place that are communicating.
Like you're always going to see the forest through the trees a
little bit more. You're always going to have a
level of understanding, whether it's the conversations you're
having with yourself at 2:00 AM,six AM, whatever.
It's the stress that you're feeling about making payroll,
the decisions you're making through marketing.
Like whatever it is. One of the things that was the
biggest aha light bulb moments for me around the growth, the

(51:52):
time being spent, the people that are involved, just how to
balance it all is like taking the responsibility that I'm
always going to be further aheadthan anyone on the way.
I see things happening. But one of my Achilles heels
that I would reactively communicate like this is wrong
and I know it in my gut. But there weren't processes in

(52:12):
place. There wasn't systems, there
wasn't rocks, there wasn't KP isthere wasn't goals.
Fuck my feelings. Could an outside, could Danny
come into our company? Look at our org chart, look at
the goal, the rocks, the goals and an individual employee.
What are the five things they'reresponsible for?
What are the five things that they have to do on those things
they're responsible for? What is the checklist of the

(52:33):
employee knowing what they're supposed to do during the day?
So someone could objectively come into the business and be
like, Julie's doing a good job or not because of the heat of
her scorecard. Is it red, yellow or green and
all that Shit's good and great, but it's like I get asked a lot
of Danny in that same thing. When did you come up with the
systems? When are the process what we had
to for the same reason of like you can't depend on in business,

(53:02):
there's facts and there's feelings and me reactively
emotionally coming in with my feelings to how something's
operating because I'm 4 laps ahead of everyone.
And then the people doing the job are like, I don't even know
what I'm supposed to be doing right now.
It's like you create all this stuff.
And through the years when I started to just take the

(53:23):
accountability and realize like this thing's going to get as far
as I allow it to. And being self aware enough that
I'm not the top systems process person, I had to find and look
at the things that the men and women had done before, steal
like an artist and be inspired about coming up with my versions

(53:43):
of those things and be disciplined and accountable in
my least favorite word in the dictionary.
Patience. Like be patient enough to just
allow these things to happen andlet them go wrong.
Because until you give up control, you're never really
going to have any control. And it's not like, oh here, just
do it and figure it out. It's like am I setting my

(54:04):
expectations, am I communicatingand do we have checklists and
rocks and goals in place to givesomething enough time to be like
this is working or it's not? It's not about my feelings
anymore. It's about the facts that are
driving the business. So sorry like long winded answer
to your question. No, no dude, I I love it.
So business is a marathon, not arace.

(54:24):
If you are lapping your employees, you either need to be
on track with them or you need someone kind of an in between to
connect you with those employeescoming back to systems.
And then also you have to keep showing up every day, right?
And it's every single day. Love that whole concept.

(54:46):
Dave, as we start to wrap up here, what one question I want
to ask, cuz I, I know you're bigon reading, learning, and also
one of those the final things you're saying there's, you know,
I actually forget the quote, butessentially like a good artist,
you know, creates artist, great artist deals.
Yeah, yeah. So who are the artists, I guess
that you've stolen from or maybejust over all the people that

(55:10):
you've learned the most from? Books, speakers, podcasts?
Or what are you consuming? What's helped the most?
So I'm really good at buying books.
I'm not always the best at reading them.
Most people, yeah. But but it's, it's that
discipline, right? I think like leaders or readers.
One of my dear friends that I'm really inspired by is my friend

(55:31):
Tommy Melo. I've met Tommy almost 10 years
now before, you know, a 1 was just getting started some of the
other stuff. Tommy's a definition of a
visionary entrepreneur when I met at six companies, Tommy is a
huge person. Anyone in home service that
doesn't know who Tommy is hidingunder a rock?
My man Jesse Itzler, I got, I got in with Jesse a couple years

(55:54):
ago in his men's group. Jesse's been a huge driving
force in my life. And not only the business side,
but more like the, the Wellness,the activities, the mental
health part of it. Anyone that's not up on the Gino
Wickman with the, the EOS stuff is again, also under a rock with

(56:17):
Gino. He gives you permission to steal
like an artist because like, we don't follow EOS to a, a rigid
thing. We have our version of it, but
it serves us really well. I'm a I'm a marketer, I'm a
copywriter. I'm a data guy.
So let bond Halpert the boron letters is that I don't think a
lot of people are up on bond helper was one of the best

(56:40):
copywriters in the history of copywriting.
Who are some other people that another gem I always go back to
is the go giver is a great book gap in the gain is one of my go
TOS. You know, understanding the the
concept of being in the moment and not like in in business, in

(57:02):
life, there's two really big feelings.
There's anxiety and there's depression.
And I think finding that middle of not anxiety is worrying too
much about things that haven't happened.
Depression is like laying in sulking and things that have
already happened in the past. And not the people don't have
their pains or their traumas, but figuring out how to like

(57:22):
understanding the gap in the game is really important.
So anyone that hasn't read the gap in the game, huge artists
are very influential man. I got two of two of my kids are
named after Nipsey Hussle and Kobe Bryant.
So I finding your people and your messages around, you know
for me, Kobe is huge. The mom of mentality, the

(57:46):
dialing in, just the sign in thecontracts with yourself is big.
Nipsey Hussle was a huge influence in my life.
I saw Nipsey Hussle at the Houseof Blues 15 years ago in LA, and
he was just a huge part of my life.
But I think the reason I bring up like, Nipsey and Kobe is
like, if you're not inspired by something, you're inspired by

(58:07):
nothing. And so whether it's an artist
that does like creates paintings, art, if it's a
musician, if it's an author, if it's an entrepreneur, having
something that regardless of thechapter in your life that you're
inspired by, like, I'll say it again, if you're not inspired by
something that you're not inspired by anything.
And I think that renor's responsibility to constantly

(58:29):
find inspiration because again, I said it earlier, man, I'm not,
I'm not an inventor, I'm not an engineer, but I am, I am easily
inspired because there's a lot of smart people doing a lot of
cool shit in the world. I like to watch.
Amen man, love that. So you've got to find the people
that are inspiring, get inspired, whatever that might.
Because if you, if you don't find them, if, if no one's

(58:50):
inspiring you, then you, you won't be.
And I got a shout out, man. I'm gonna interrupt.
I got a shout out. Our guy Dennis you, Dennis, huge
inspiration in my life. If I if I hadn't met Dennis you,
I wouldn't be at where I'm at today.
Me too, man. No, I know he's he's been in a
big influence on on my life too.So we were connecting on that
before before we started recording here.
So awesome. What we'll start to wrap up the

(59:11):
show here. Last question I have for you,
Dave is what is your message forthe business owners out there,
maybe for the home service owners, maybe for the software
company owners like like yourself, what do you want to
tell them? What do you think they need to
know? It's the same as I'll give the
same answer that I give when when I'm asked.

(59:33):
Like Dave, what would you tell your 18 year old self?
Slow down. Just slow down like we always
feel like it should happen faster, but if it did, you
wouldn't appreciate it. It's like the when I look back
on aha moments, inflection moments, pain points, light

(59:55):
bulbs, all of it through my career.
You know when you're when it's good.
You got to always remind yourself that it could get worse
or don't always be worse. And when it's the bad, when it's
the worst, when we were talking about, you know, set up to be a
failure, some of any of the things we've gone through in our
life, relationships, breakups, partnerships, legal.

(01:00:17):
So whatever it is, any time it'sas bad as it could possibly be,
it can only get better. And I think when you look at the
practice, the real practice, thereal muscle that needs to get
trained for all of us, it's justcatching yourself when you're at
your worst moment, when you're going to go back to that thing
that is inherently the most comfortable for you.

(01:00:40):
Feel that ginger ale bubbling upand you're going to be reactive
or you're going to jump in or you're going to say that there,
whatever it is, it's like, like improvement is about pattern
interruption. And when you understand, like
you know yourself better than anybody, and when you understand
getting back to behaviors or habits and just catching that
ginger ale, slowing down and just realizing that like you

(01:01:04):
made the decision to start all this.
Like whatever you're doing, whatever you're going through,
whatever's on your plate, that thing was empty before you
started putting stuff there. And the stress and the hardship
and the pain and just all of it that comes along.
Man, I've been doing this a while.
And when I look back on any single inflection point

(01:01:25):
crossroad of my life, slow down a little bit.
Take it in, feel that emotion and just understand like you're
the one that's in control to anyreaction to anything that you
put on your plate. And it's, it's a beautiful
thing. Like if you, if you allow it to
be that pain, that hardship, that stressing about payroll,
that losing that big client, that lack of accountability to

(01:01:47):
all that stuff. It all leads like it all leads
towards, look, what's the saying?
Like you, you, you, you look back 10 years ago and you
probably have everything you asked for right now and life is
that simple. So being in the moment and just
slowing down a little bit, I think it's really important.
And then then, and not just for success, but also just to enjoy

(01:02:10):
your life, right. I feel like a lot of business
owners that they're just, I mean, we've talked about all
this of it. They get stuck in the grind and
all this stuff and they actuallydo a lot of them achieve what
they wanted to, but they never enjoyed it throughout the
process. And now they're just, they wake
up at 40 or 50 or 60 and they'relike, Dang, you know, I mean, I
just did all this stuff, but youknow, I was so stuck in it.

(01:02:32):
I feel like that's a really important message.
It's understated. One thing, and I think this is a
good a good ending point is likeI used to talk to one of my my
mentors about this. Everyone says like stop and
smell the roses, right? Just stop slowed down the stop
and smell the roses. I'll take a step back more often
and just like realize the flowers are growing.

(01:02:52):
Hey, man, man, love that. Well, thank you so much for
coming on, Dave. This has been so awesome.
This is genuinely I, I one of the best shows I've done.
Dude, you're, you're such an inspiration.
You're, you're so awesome. And like I said to you, I love
your energy. I, I feel hyped up and inspired
after listening to you. So thank you for coming on.
I I really appreciate your time and but where can people find

(01:03:13):
you on social media and and connect with you?
Yeah, so anywhere you can type in dope marketing.
DOPE marketing. Outside of being a cute name,
dope stands for data on previousengagement.
So whether you're on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook,
Google, any of it, I'll be the bald guy yelling on the Internet
about automating direct mail. Awesome.

(01:03:34):
And also, I know we didn't talk about dope too much, but if
you're cool with it, could you give like an elevator pitch of
what dope is and why people needit?
Dope enables business owners to truly be be using cross channel
marketing. I like to say like entrepreneurs
got 5 fingers on their hand for a reason. 4 things that are
working, one thing that can always replace something you're

(01:03:56):
doing. Dope marketing makes direct mail
simple and we use it by enablingbusiness owners to make
data-driven decisions. We take a little bit of a
different approach for direct mail and print and as a business
owner or agency owner, we would love to show you how we do that.
Awesome. So definitely go contact Dope.
We'll leave the link in the description.
Also all the links to all their socials.

(01:04:16):
And what about you personally, Dave?
Can people follow you on LinkedIn or Facebook or
anything? I'm everywhere, man.
I'm everywhere. Dave or Dave and Carroll.
Look me up, you'll find me. I'd love to connect.
Awesome. Cool.
So I'll link those into the description as well.
And thanks again so much for coming on, Dave.
It's been a blast. Me, Danny.
I appreciate it man of. Course.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Danny Leibrandt

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Dave Carroll on Turning Direct Mail Into a $30M SaaS, Protecting Your Time, and Staying Focused