Who is Dave Young and why does he make such a good side kick? Is it a short attention span or his years of radio and business acumen? Let’s find out.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Simple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients, so here’s one of those.
[Waukee Feet Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast, Dave Young, here alongside… Wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute, is that you Matt?
Matthew Burns:
It’s me, Matthew.
Dave Young:
Where’s Stephen? What the heck’s going on here?
Matthew Burns:
We’ve done this in the past where we gave you a week off, so we’re going to do that for Stephen this week. And we’re going to find out why the heck Dave Young even exists in the Empire Builder Podcast world.
Dave Young:
Geez, I feel a little existential dread now.
Matthew Burns:
That’s okay, because Stephen felt a little bit of the same. I have this really awesome job with the podcast and I get to sit back and listen to everything after it’s already completed and then write the social media posts and get it all put up on the blog. And I have always wanted to be a little bit of an ego play. I want to get myself onto the recordings and so I said, “Hey, let me do the interviews for the behind the scenes stuff.” And that’s what we’re going to do today.
Dave Young:
All right. I’m the guy that has to fake my own imposter syndrome.
Matthew Burns:
Yeah, because you still have that. Come on, give me a break. The number one question is are you really seriously kept in the dark until the beginning of things? So the podcast starts and you’re always like, “Well, you just told me that we’re talking about eggs,” whatever the podcast title is. Is that how it goes down?
Dave Young:
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think it’s what makes it fun to do this. I mean, for two reasons, one, first and foremost, Stephen does all the research and I don’t have to do any of that.
Matthew Burns:
So you’re lazy, I see.
Dave Young:
This is my role.
Matthew Burns:
Oh, sorry. My bad.
Dave Young:
It’s not lazy. It’s using someone’s talents to the max., if that makes sense.
Matthew Burns:
Absolutely.
Dave Young:
So I feel like one of the things I got pretty good at when I was doing live radio was just being live and in the moment on things and being able to handle curveballs, just improv and ad lib. I’m pretty good at that. If somebody says, “Hey, we need somebody to fill 10, 15 minutes on a stage.” I’d be the first to say, “Okay, I don’t have a comedy routine, but I could probably keep people sitting in their seats for 15 minutes.”
Matthew Burns:
Put me in coach.
Dave Young:
You know what I mean?
Matthew Burns:
Yeah. Random conversations with any of our partners is everybody tells me how quick Dave Young is, just quick. It’s, “This dude’s quick.” And they mean in response and your depth of knowledge. And you can get involved in a conversation very quickly and have some mastery of it somewhere, whether it’s direct or relatable, which is wicked, and it does make it very easy for Stephen to go and be completely masterful of the content that he wants to talk about for each episode. And you go, “Oh man, you know what? When I was… We used to…” An El Camino, whatever that thing, and then you bring yourself all the way in and you make it very personal, and that’s been the most brilliant part of it. And then it also makes it very natural that the banter is not now been created, it is what it is. It’s exactly what it is. It’s natural and authentic.
Dave Young:
Unless we’re talking about where we want to land something, which is very seldom. It’s all just the way we started. And just like I said, he usually waits till about either right before… We record using Riverside and it gives you a five-second countdown.
Matthew Burns:
Right.
Dave Young:
It’s actually more fun if he literally tells me the topic during the five-second countdown.
Matthew Burns:
5, 4, 3, Volkswagen, 1.
Dave Young:
Exactly. “Oh, yeah. Hey.”
Matthew Burns:
Yeah, no, and it definitely has come across that way more and more. And I get to listen to the episodes as soon as they’re produced and I’ve got to think about how to translate it into something that the audience is going to want to read and then go, “Okay, I want to listen to that episode.” I found that in listening to the most recent, but even after episode 10, it became the banter and the laughing and the strange pauses and the caught off guards. Those are what make the podcasts really, really interesting.
Dave Young:
Hopefully what happens is it feels spontaneous, which it is. My ultimate goal is for the listener to feel like they’re just a third person sitting at the table in a conversation.
Matthew Burns:
I’ve asked this to Stephen, and I have to ask it of you differently because I asked him, why did you choose Dave? Tell me what it was like when Stephen said, “Hey, listen, I’ve got this idea. Would you like to join the journey?”
Dave Young:
I’m all in. I actually just love it and I loved the idea when Stephen came up with it. I feel like my sidekick and interviewer is like a real sweet spot for me. I edited the first maybe half dozen episodes.
Matthew Burns:
That’s right, yeah.
Dave Young:
And I mean, my background is radio, since I was 13 years old I had been on the radio.
Matthew Burns:
And that’s right, I mean, you do have this longstanding radio background and you’ve already said that’s what prepared you to be easy to go off the cuff and very instantaneous and jump into any conversation. You show that all the time. But I think more than that is how long have you been a Wizard of Ads partner?
Dave Young:
22 years.
Matthew Burns:
22 Years. You’ve had lots of clients. You’ve been around, I mean, I don’t remember the number now, but we’re at 70 some odd partners. And so you’ve seen a lot of campaigns come and go and how companies are working. I mean, you’ve got a breadth of experience that the average human being doesn’t have on how to move the needle and what is expected. Because what I find very interesting when you are speaking is you instantly relate. You’ll take this concept that Stephen’s coming up with and you’ll relate it to something else, like you go, “Yeah, it’s just like this.”
Dave Young:
Sure.
Matthew Burns:
And you do that early on in a podcast or you do it when the lesson starts to be talked about. This is what other businesses can take away from this story. Why is it that Dave Young is so multifaceted, so well-rounded?
Dave Young:
Gosh, I could go so many directions with that. You could say that it’s Jack of all trades, master of none, but I’ve always hated that phrase. And Jack of all trades what I think of it is, I’ll go deep into whatever I’m interested in. And I’ve been interested in a lot of things over my life, I’m 60 years old. And part of that, I don’t know if Stephen and I have talked about it on the podcast, but I didn’t find out till about five years ago that my entire life I’ve struggled with ADHD.
I just didn’t know what I was struggling with, I just thought it was just a broken human, but I’m broken in a very specific way. So what that means is I have the capacity to be really focused and interested in something as long as I’m interested. And when it stops being interesting, I’m the first one to like, “Oh, well maybe I’ll check email or check Facebook.” So one thing that keeps me engaged in these podcasts is I didn’t do the research and I don’t know the topic, and as long as Stephen keeps my interest, I know we’ll keep the listener’s interest.
Matthew Burns:
Oh, interesting.
Dave Young:
So if he can keep me focused and if I can help by interjecting either wise cracks or interesting questions when I see patterns, and seeing patterns is another part of it that I’ll go into here, but it’s that ADHD… People think ADHD just means, “Oh, I saw a squirrel so I got distracted.” That’s not really it. You can go deep, they call it hyperfocused. And as long as things are interesting, you’ll stay in that moment. I think that’s the right approach in writing ads as well. If you’re writing a 62nd ad, it better not get boring 20 seconds in.
Matthew Burns:
If Stephen was to come up with another 125 episodes you’re in?
Dave Young:
Oh, sure. Yeah.
Matthew Burns:
Because I think that’s where we’re at. I think while we’re recording this, we’re launching to the world episode 124 Harry’s.
Dave Young:
So thrilled with that number. To me, that’s an amazing feat for me. Now, I’ll say this again, I don’t do the heavy lifting here. I do my part of it and my part of it may feel like a heavy lift to someone else, but I don’t have to do the editing. I said that earlier, I did about the first six episodes, and I knew six episodes in, that this is not sustainable if I have to do the editing, because it will not sustain my interest. It’s like, “Okay, I’m editing something that first of all, I’ve already experienced.” And so if you’re editing something, you have to be engaged with the work you’re doing, right?
Matthew Burns:
A hundred percent, yeah.
Dave Young:
And if I am one of the people on the podcast and I’ve already just heard it, guess what I’m no longer interested in? That episode. I find editing to be that way in general. Even if I’m editing something I’ve never heard before, you have to take a pass through something, make some editorial decisions, and then you go through with a fine tooth comb and you get rid of mistakes and hiccups and belches and curse words, if that’s depending on your rating. But I’m decent at it, but it’s not where I can stay focused for any real length of time.
Matthew Burns:
You like the engagement during the recording and then you’re happy to be gone after it’s done.
Dave Young:
Yeah. I love the editing process.
Matthew Burns:
When it’s fresh to you.
Dave Young:
When it’s fresh. Yeah, exactly.
Matthew Burns:
If Stephen can keep you interested and engaged, as long as he’s keeping you interested and engaged, you can see this running for a very long time?
Dave Young:
I mean, even inside a specific episode, if he can keep me engaged, then I know the listener’s engaged.
Matthew Burns:
Because it’s fresh for you while you’re in the moment of it. It’s always fresh for the listener. Quite possibly the first time anybody’s heard this story about the specific company. Now there’s some like Henry Ford, right? I mean that story’s taught a lot in the marketing world. It’s not usually taught all over the place. But we found some pretty interesting and brand new… I mean, what was the one that we did last week we posted, which was the meat sticks, Chomps.
Dave Young:
Oh, yeah.
Matthew Burns:
Right. That’s a very new company. It’s not an old legacy company. But they became an empire very quickly through determination and grit. People haven’t heard these stories. The goal here too, is Stephen’s powerfully driven to find the data. He really wants to know the data. And what I find is that because he really deeply wants to know the data, you are this perfect match that makes the data emotional.
Dave Young:
Yeah. Oh, that’s a good way of putting it.
Matthew Burns:
Right? Because the data in itself, “Hey, this company did this thing and then they grew big.” And you’re like, “Yeah, that’s fine.” “Oh, 500 million. Okay, yeah, that sounds nice. 500 million is a great big number.” But that’s boring, right?
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Matthew Burns:
It’s, “Hey, this is what they did and this is how they felt.” “Oh my God, that company, you know how many times I had to interact with that? Oh, this is the story, my sister, my brother…” I remember the Dollar General episode where you related to the Dollar General episode completely. And you got to tell your story about Dollar General. And you didn’t know it was going to be Dollar General, and you dived right in and you made it personal and emotional. And that part of the story makes it engaging to somebody to get to the lesson and get to the end.
Dave Young:
Can I tell you a deep dark secret? You brought up Dollar General, and this happens to me all the time at Wizard Academy, my other day job, where I’m vice chancellor. Students come in and many of them are already listening to this podcast, and so I’ll have someone say, “Oh, man, that episode you did on…” Let’s say it’s Dollar General. “Oh, that was so cool when you asked…” I’m like, “Yeah.” I just smile and nod. I don’t often even remember. You just said Dollar General, I don’t even… Honestly, dude, if you’d asked me whether we’d done an episode on Dollar General, I probably couldn’t tell you.
Matthew Burns:
Oh my God.
Dave Young:
We could do it again and it would probably sound like a completely different episode.
Matthew Burns:
Yeah, no kidding.
Dave Young:
I’ll see you or Gary Bernier post something on Facebook, it’s like, “Oh, this episode goes live.” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that’s that time we talked about such and such.” And often it’s like a surprise to me, “Oh, yeah, oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah.” You guys don’t even nag me to share them. I just have to stumble across them sometimes and go, “Oh yeah, this.”
Matthew Burns:
And you do record and go away. You’re in the recording booth, and then that’s it.
Dave Young:
Stay tuned, we’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.
[Empire Builders Ad]
Dave Young:
Book your starter session on this podcast website. Just visit the empirebuilderspodcast.com and click on “Get Started.” Let’s pick up our story where we left off, and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.
Matthew Burns:
I want to give the listeners something, a little bit of insight for you. So I have this question in mind, seems moot, but maybe, maybe there’s this glimmer shiny little gold nugget that we can get out of this, and I’m not sure. What was your favorite podcast? Since you don’t listen to them, you don’t remember half the ones you produced, do you have one that did stick in your mind? Or is there one you went, “I couldn’t believe that that was the case?” But something that stuck around.
Dave Young:
Gosh, nothing jumps right out at me. I’ll have to say that some of my favorites are what I would classify as old-timey businesses, where we go back to somebody that made it big in the early 1900s or late 1800s.
Matthew Burns:
The Wrigleys guys or Ford we talked about.
Dave Young:
You can see the innovation in what they did. You don’t know their origin stories, but you can see what they did has trickled in and affected other businesses since they did it. We talk about that business problem topology, we’ve mentioned that before. And to me, that’s one of my favorite things to study. And when you look and say, “Okay, well, this is how that business solved this problem, and here’s a business that’s facing a problem that’s got similar dimensions to it, could they use that same type of technique?” And so there’s a connect the dots’ aspect to a lot of these stories where you can say, “Okay, I can see the repercussions down through the years where…” Let’s say something as rudimentary as Henry Ford, they say he invented the assembly line, but he didn’t really invent the assembly line. He used it to great advantage. He deconstructed a disassembly line, and I think he changed manufacturing all over the world as a result of that.
Matthew Burns:
Absolutely. Some of my favorites are the ones that are super old, and even the ones that there’s some that took a long time to manifest. I mean, it just showed the true grit that it takes if you really believe in something, you got to keep pushing. You can’t just give up because somebody said no to you, which isn’t a marketing lesson, it’s a life lesson. So yeah, no, I agree with you. I like some of the older ones as well.
Dave Young:
A good example, this was early this morning. I woke up early and just farting around, found a documentary on Evel Knievel.
Matthew Burns:
That would be cool.
Dave Young:
It would actually be a pretty good podcast episode. All the research is in this documentary. But it’s Johnny Knoxville from Jackass, produced this documentary on Evel Knievel
Matthew Burns:
Makes sense actually.
Dave Young:
Oh, yeah. But one of the things he talks about is, and man, I remember watching Evel Knievel in the seventies as a kid, and he was on Wide World of Sports. And they mentioned on the ABC’s Wide World of sports, seven of their top, top episodes had Evel Knievel in them. What people don’t understand is before Evel Knievel, there wasn’t anything like him. He invented the genre of almost live superhero, right? So they get-
Matthew Burns:
Of dare-devil, right? Yeah.
Dave Young:
Yeah. They’ve got interviews with Tony Hawk and most of the things that are being done by Red Bull and X Games and all of those things.
Matthew Burns:
He trail-blazed that.
Dave Young:
Nobody had the nerve to throw their body on the line the way Evel Knievel did for a thrill.
Matthew Burns:
That’s a lot of the podcast episodes, like the old tummy ones, they were all trailblazing. They were all setting up for what could happen. And I mean, Kreisler stood on the shoulders of Ford.
Dave Young:
Yeah. Well, and the first people out the gate are usually seen as just sort of lunatics, right? That’s right. Evel Knievels, like nobody could figure that guy out, but man, you couldn’t take your eyes off of him.
Matthew Burns:
Exactly.
Dave Young:
The quote that they had was, I think it was attributed to him, is like, “Nobody wants to see me die, but nobody wants to miss it if I do.”
Matthew Burns:
That’s powerful. And again, I think that’s why Stephen likes the research so much because he likes figuring out, “Hey, wait a second, these guys, they didn’t wake up and go, Hey, I want to make Chapstick, and then Burt’s Bees happened.” That’s not the way it worked. It was trial and tribulation. There’s a saying that I’ve been using lately, there’s no evolution without revolution.
Dave Young:
Right.
Matthew Burns:
Right? If you want everything status quo, if you want everything to be calm and cool and collected all the time, guess what? That’s going to have and you’re going to stay exactly where you are.
Dave Young:
I’ve got just one other observation about if we talk about my role and how this works, is if you’re familiar with Myers-Briggs, and we use it quite a bit at Wizard Academy and in ad writing and all kinds of things, but I’m an NT, so that means I’m an intuitive thinker in Myers-Briggs terms. And intuitives tend to look for patterns. So when Stephen brings up one topic and we start diving into the specifics of how they succeeded and built their empire, I can look for patterns in what they did and relate them to other businesses, other stories that I’ve heard, and that just closes the circle back with the business problem topology mapping.
And even ADHD, it’s looking at it and going, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” In fact, there’s an impulsiveness to ADHD that when you think of something, you have to interrupt people and blurt it out. And I do that with Stephen, right? You recognize that in the podcasts. And I think there’s probably a frustration to some people if they’re having a conversation with me and I try to temper that. If we were just having a conversation, we’re sitting around with six people having a conversation, the ADHD person is usually the one that will blurt out something that they find that got triggered in their head that related to a story about something else. And so in that case, they’re following a thread that takes them off even the subject of the conversation.
Matthew Burns:
Right.
Dave Young:
I try to keep that focused and aimed, if you will, During the recording of a podcast. So it’s like, “Oh, well, I’ll think of something and I’ll find a place to slide that in.” And often, sometimes that’s a place where I feel like maybe the listener is also getting a little satiated with the details of the story. And that’s where you interject something that has just some weird new twist or spark to it that takes it in a tangential direction. It doesn’t mean that you give up on the story, but it throws a little bit more spice into it, a little more fuel into the fire if you will.
Matthew Burns:
And again, I go back to that whole Stephen is this deep fact finder dude. You see the pattern, you interrupt the pattern with emotional connection that takes you to something else. You bring, what do we say? Known to the unknown. I’ve listened to a whole bunch of episodes and I’m like, “This is cool stuff.” And I wanted to do this interview, so it’s because I want to know where your head sits. I mean, I do know you a bit, we don’t work on a lot of accounts together, but getting to know you has been great. And this whole idea of ADHD, and it’s almost like hit it and quit it. You get in there, you’re engaged, it’s awesome, and then you’re out. So much so that when I say, “Hey, what’s your favorite episode?” I like learning about the old-timey stuff, but there’s not one that sticks out of my head, it’s because you were thoroughly engaged while it happened.
Dave Young:
The real answer to that is the episode I’m currently recording, is my favorite episode every time.
Matthew Burns:
There you go. The one that I hosted, this is great news. Did everybody listen to that? Dave’s favorite episode is this episode.
Dave Young:
But as soon as Stephen hits the countdown for the next episode, that’s now my favorite.
Matthew Burns:
Damn it.
Dave Young:
So enjoy it while you can.
Matthew Burns:
I’ve got literally 14 seconds left, this is great. Dave, thank you for your time, I appreciate it. Any last words you want to leave with your audience that you’ve built?
Dave Young:
“Walky feet. Walky feet.”
Matthew Burns:
Walky feet.
Dave Young:
Have we played any Walky feet ads on the podcast yet?
Matthew Burns:
We are putting in a Walky feet ad in this episode.
Dave Young:
Excellent. So those are the ones that you’re writing and I got to be involved in the strategic creation of some of that, so that’s been fun. I love that role too. Yeah, Walky feet.
Matthew Burns:
I’m writing a campaign that I’m very proud of, but you help me see what that campaign could look like, because you bring those extra connection points. So it’s like, “Oh man, that’s brilliant. Okay, I’m going to do that.” Even when I’ve written an ad and presented it and you go, “Hey Matt, do me a favor, change these three things. Just this word here, move this over here. Because of this emotional tangent that can go on.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, I didn’t see it.”
Dave Young:
I’m glad people will be able to hear some of those, because they’re awesome. Walky feet.
Matthew Burns:
Awesome. Okay, well I appreciate it and I’m going to turn it back over to Stephen for the next podcast.
Dave Young:
All right, well let’s do this again sometime.
Matthew Burns:
Awesome. Thanks buddy.
Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big fat juicy five star rating and review. And if you have any questions about this or any other podcast episode, email to questions at the empirebuilderspodcast.com.
