Sean: There are some things that for me are extremely difficult for someone to be able to do. And I would say that I know human nature to do to a certain degree, I am a lot younger than you are. So I know you have much more wisdom to share and, you know, human nature much more than I do because you've read tons of books. I haven't read any of them. But I know that when you have that kind of discipline, that means you have extremely strong areas of discipline in other areas of your personal life. Can you share some of that with us?

Dave: And so for a lot of my life, I was effectively kind of an outsider. And I think that that fundamentally was a blessing, not a curse for me because it taught me to be very introspective and very observant of human nature, as well as it gave me a really, really thick skin and frankly speaking, not giving a darn about what other people think of me. And so I know that it's really hard. I know it's really hard not to get caught up in what other people think of you, what other people are doing, how you measure yourself about other people. But I fundamentally think I was blessed because I really don't care about that stuff. And I think it goes back to this notion that - for a lot of my life I was effectively alone. Like I was not part of the crowd. I was not one of the cool kids. You know, I had these scars. I was fat. I was obese. Right. Like I was definitely not part of the crowd. I think that actually built resilience in me, which actually propelled me through my career.

Dave: And I would say that thematically, I have seen something very similar among people that are very successful. I'm not saying that they have the same thing as me, but I think that when you deal with some level of adversity, that tends to isolate you. I think that there are kind of like two major reactions, actually. One is they don't maximize their potential and they live tough lives. Right. But for many of the successful people I know who dealt with that type of adversity, it actually hardens them and makes them plow their own path and not care about what anybody else thinks. And so, unfortunately, if you're not born with tremendous adversity, I think you have to think about how to manufacture it. But I think that that's fundamentally what really helped me and not really caring about what other people think and also helping me be very mindful and disciplined about what I wanted to accomplish.

Dave: Because one of the things that I realized when I was a junior person and I was still kind of introverted and not very outspoken, was that if I didn't take ownership of my career and fundamentally change and break some of these stereotypes, I was going to end up in an office dungeon for the rest of my life. I was going to end up being a junior guy crunching away on spreadsheets that nobody cared about, was highly replaceable, and probably underpaid. And I didn't want that for myself. I wanted to ultimately become a senior leader and be really successful. And so I took it upon myself to isolate those skill gaps that I had, whether it be salesmanship or gregariousness, or presentation skills. And I practice and practice those like crazy, just constantly, just like, you know, a basketball player after a game shooting a thousand hoops, I would do the same thing. I would practice presenting in front of mirrors, in front of my dog, in front of my family. Right. I would. I would really analyze the data around like - is my methodology working is effective and I would analyze that and I would iterate, but I think the root of it all comes down to my own resilience, from my own upbringing and really trying to take ownership of my life and not worrying about what other people think.

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