Most People Don't... But You Do!

EPISODE SUMMARY

Bart reconnects with one of his earliest podcast guests, Gail Lowney Alofsin, speaker, author, URI professor, and founder of Leadership at All Levels, for a conversation that feels less like an interview and more like two old friends solving the world's problems over coffee.

Gail shares how a childhood of intentional giving, literacy volunteering at 17, and decades of mission work in Haiti shaped her philosophy of abundance: giving freely without expecting anything in return. She and Bart unpack the difference between customer service (what you do for people) and customer experience (how people feel because of you), and Gail introduces her "Black Napkin Theory," a quietly powerful story about a server who noticed what you were wearing before you even sat down.

The conversation moves through resilience, dealing with difficult people, the power of using someone's name, and what it means to notice, anticipate, and over-deliver, not just in hospitality, but in everyday life. Bart shares stories of gratitude stones, United flight attendant Nick Pino, and playing the "how many people can we help right now?" game in a coffee shop line. This episode is a masterclass in Humanality, and proof that small, intentional acts of seeing people can change the room.

KEY TAKAWAYS

• The Black Napkin Theory. A great experience is never announced. It is felt. When a server silently swaps your white napkin for a black one because you are wearing dark pants, no words are needed. That is the standard. What is your black napkin moment?
• Customer service vs. customer experience. Service is what you do for people. Experience is how people feel because of you. Know the difference and train for both.
• Use their name. Names are free. They are the cheapest, most powerful way to make someone feel seen. If someone gives you their name, hand it back.
• Abundance is a practice. Gail has given introductions, leads, and opportunities freely since day one, not because she expected anything back, but because she genuinely believes in people. Abundance taught early becomes a lifelong reflex.
• Bless and release. Difficult people, bad managers, arrogant behavior. Gail's answer is always the same: let them vent, stay grounded, and release it. Do not leave your good job because of one bad season.
• Four touchpoints by 10am. Want to build a human culture? Start small. Know the name of the person cleaning the floor. Ask the overnight front desk staff how their night was. Four meaningful human moments before the workday starts sets the tone for everything after.
• Notice, anticipate, over-deliver. It is not a hospitality strategy. It is a human one. Anyone, anywhere, can play the game: look around and ask "who could I help right now?"

Learn more about Gail Lowney Alofsin and her work at [email protected] and connect with Gail Lowney Alofsin on LinkedIn. To learn more about her book Your Sunday Is Now: What Are You Waiting For? reach out directly at [email protected].

Candice built her framework the hard way. After a stroke and brain hemorrhage in 2018 rerouted a decades-long corporate finance career, she gave herself the "graceful pause" to ask where she really wanted to go, and discovered her true gift wasn't the numbers, but being a bridge and connector of relationships.

Out of that came ACE: Align your strategy and structure, Connect to the right systems and people, and Expand intentionally. As she puts it, even a great cup of coffee is useless without a container to hold it.

Together they get into relationship capital most people never optimize, why you should be "more interested than interesting," and the mindset shift that changes everything: stop checking boxes and start experiencing life.

What you'll take away:

1. Alignment before achievement. Most people try to perform their way to growth. Get clear on who you are and what uniquely makes you a blessing to others first, the authentic results follow.

2. Be interested, not interesting. Relationship capital is built in the moment. Lead with "How can I help you?" and let the connection evolve organically instead of pitching.

3. Structure holds the vision. Opportunities mean nothing without the systems and container to support them. Align the team, then connect strategically.

4. Bring in a mirror. You can't see your own "spinach in the teeth." A trusted accountability partner, internal or external, sees what you can't. Refusing feedback is why many businesses stall.

5. Check your patterns. Be a continual learner: pause, read the landscape, spot the pattern, and only make moves that open the next door.

6. Go through, not around. Every challenge, even a horrific culture or a health crisis, is a place to learn. You don't have to agree with how you're treated to grow from it.

7. Stop checking boxes. Living is checking boxes. Experiencing life is staying agile when you end up on a road you never planned to walk.

Most people don't realize authentic growth starts with alignment, not achievement. Our listeners do.

🎧 Guest: Candice Gaddy, Allegiant Commercial Expert LLC

🔗 More: https://mostpeopledont.com

📍 Connect with Candice Nicholson-Gaddy on LinkedIn and subscribe to her newsletter, The Strategic Growth Architect, where she teaches leaders how to align strategically, connect to the right opportunities and systems, and expand their impact through the ACE framework.

What if treating people like humans, not transactions, was your biggest business advantage?

Bart Berkey welcomes back his friend Kelly Bishop, Senior Director of Experiential Strategy & Organizational Engagement at Blood Centers of America, for a heartfelt conversation recorded live in Los Angeles. Kelly is one of the few guests Bart has ever invited back, and this episode is equal parts friendship and masterclass in human-centered leadership.

Together they explore the abundance mindset, why being genuinely happy for others is rare and powerful, and "humanality," Bart's term for making people feel cared for, valued, and seen, rather than processed, managed, or ignored. They dig into why so many experiences have become transactional, why a manager isn't always a leader, and why kindness absolutely moves the bottom line. The episode closes on something bigger than business: the "generosity crisis" and the blood shortage where one in three people will be affected.

What you'll take away:

• Abundance over envy. Being genuinely happy for others is a choice that lets you give instead of compete.
• Humanality defined: making people feel cared for, valued, and seen. "Emotional intelligence on steroids."
• The signs of people who truly care: they look you in the eye, they listen, and they don't interrupt to make it about themselves.
• A manager isn't a leader. We promote too many people who were never built to lead, and teams suffer for it.
• Kindness pays. Engaged people deliver better service, higher satisfaction, and more referrals.
• Help someone else win and you win too.
• Most people don't stop. Stop and look. Stop and ask, "Are you okay?"

Timestamps:
00:00 Abundance and being happy for others
02:00 Spotting people who truly care
04:00 Defining "humanality"
06:00 The generosity crisis
07:00 Managers vs. true leaders
09:00 The watered-down soup lesson
11:00 Kelly's role at Blood Centers of America
17:00 "60 Seconds of BCA" on the trade show floor
19:00 The blood shortage and the power of stories
21:00 "Most people don't..." Kelly fills in the blank

Learn more about Blood Centers of America at bca.coop and connect with Kelly Bishop on LinkedIn.

Most people see opportunity and hesitate. Nik Agharkar sees it and jumps - even when the timing looks insane. In this episode, Bart sits down with the founder and CEO of Crown Point Tax & Wealth Council, a tax attorney who quit his job with a three-month-old at home, built 122 clients in nine months entirely alone, and eventually discovered that the real gap in the market wasn't just tax strategy - it was someone who actually cared enough to explain it.

Nik unpacks the business philosophy he built Crown Point around: client first, always. Not as a slogan, but as a system - every process engineered from the client's perspective, every call returned even when the news is bad, every strategy explained so thoroughly that clients never wonder why they're doing something. He traces that ethos back to law school, to a fiduciary duty he took seriously when others didn't, and ultimately to his parents, who instilled a simple principle that stayed with him: think about the next person in the room.

The conversation deepens when Bart asks Nik about what he's learned from working with the ultra-wealthy. Nik introduces the concept of "resulting" - the mistake of judging a decision by its outcome rather than its process, and warns that many people who rode the wave of a hot industry confused luck with skill. Then he flips it: for the person doing everything right but not yet seeing the financial results, his message is equally clear. Time is undefeated. Keep going. Consistency is the strategy.

The episode closes on something rare, a conversation about identity, manifestation, and the inner voice. Nik challenges listeners to stop borrowing their parents' programming and start asking what they actually want. His version of manifestation isn't about timelines or vision boards; it's about identity. Who are you? What does that person's life feel like? And are you willing to believe, especially when the evidence disagrees, that you are the kind of person things always work out for? Most people don't believe that. Nik does. And it shows.

Key Takeaways

1. See the canoe. Get in the canoe. Nik's signature move is taking action when others hesitate. Opportunity doesn't wait - and most people let it pass by waiting for perfect conditions.

2. Client first isn't a value - it's an engineering principle. Like Apple designing the iPod from the user's perspective out, Crown Point builds every process, every touchpoint, and every communication strategy around what the client needs - not what's easiest for the firm.

3. The inner voice was programmed by someone else. Reclaiming your own thoughts, separate from your parents', your culture's, your industry's -is the work that leads to a life that's actually yours.

For more information, contact [email protected] or www.crownepointtax.com

EPISODE SUMMARY

For 18 years, Shawn Walchef has run Cali BBQ in San Diego -three restaurant locations including a spot at Snapdragon Stadium and the local Navy base. But the story most people know isn't about brisket and peach cobbler. It's about the media company he built on top of his barbecue business after he sent a press release to 14 San Diego writers celebrating Cali BBQ's five-year anniversary and got zero replies. Crickets.

That moment was the pivot. Shawn stopped waiting for legacy media to tell his story, started telling it himself, and 13 years later runs Cali BBQ Media - producer of 15 different shows including Digital Hospitality (nine years running) and Restaurant Influencers (with Entrepreneur Magazine), with brand partners that include Toast, Pepsi, US Foods, Amazon, and Google.

In this conversation, Shawn and Bart dig into the courage it takes to look stupid on the internet, the "digital flash mob" metaphor for building an audience from zero, the grandfather lessons that shaped everything (stay curious, get involved, ask for help), why every business - yours included - is secretly in the hospitality business, and the truth that took Shawn five years to learn: no one is coming. If you build it, they will NOT come. The Field of Dreams is the biggest lie ever told to entrepreneurs.

You'll also hear Bart's story about Storyville Coffee in Seattle - the $13 coffee where someone's entire job is bringing water to seated customers, and where they ask "What can we create for you today?" - and a tease about Bart's personal "humanality" framework for inserting human kindness into transactional moments.

If you've been waiting for the perfect moment to start telling your story, or thinking "no one would care anyway" - this is the episode.

Most people pick a lane. Jesse Sieff built a whole intersection.

He's a Pittsburgh-raised classical percussionist who taught himself piano at age six, trained for the 2008 Beijing Olympics in gymnastics, earned a civil engineering degree, and spent five years studying music at Indiana University of Pennsylvania before driving down to Washington, DC, to audition for the United States Marine Drum & Bugle Corps — "The Commandant's Own." He won the spot with a composition called Chopstakovich, which is currently the #1 best-selling snare solo in the world with over 700,000 YouTube views.

Four years active duty and two reserve years later, Jesse founded Sieff Studios in Annapolis, Maryland — a Veteran-owned media production firm built around a single question: "Who is the most important person in your ecosystem, and how do you need them to feel?"

In this conversation recorded live at Sieff Studios, Bart and Jesse dig into the non-linear path (engineering → music → Marines → entrepreneurship), the difference between drive as a push and drive as a pull, what 87 miles to Mount Everest Base Camp does to your relationship with control, the science of vibration and the Schumann frequency, and Jesse's philosophy for high-performers everywhere: the playful pursuit of perfection.

You'll also hear Bart's powerful Invisible Backpack exercise for releasing guilt about distant family, and Jesse's vision for using drum circles to rewire audience attention at keynote events.

If you've ever made a radical career pivot, struggled with perfectionism, or felt like you were watching life from the audience instead of being on stage, this one's for you.

CHAPTERS:

00:30 Welcome to the Studio: Introducing Jesse Sieff of Sieff Studios

02:25 What Most People Don't Do: The Posture of a Student

04:45 Pittsburgh Roots: How Music Found Jesse First

08:52 Hearing the World Differently: How Musicians Perceive Sound

11:37 "Chopstakovich": The World's #1 Snare Solo and a YouTube Phenomenon

14:06 From Drum Corps to the Marines: Auditioning for The Commandant's Own

18:34 Olympic Gymnastics Training and the Physical Test of Boot Camp

20:00 Ambassadors in Uniform: Representing the Marines Around the World

21:44 What Really Drives a Polymath: Pull vs. Push and the Growth Mindset

25:47 87 Miles to Everest Base Camp: Fear, Altitude, and Transformation

31:40 The Invisible Backpack: Letting Go of Guilt and Doing Your Best

37:56 The Playful Pursuit of Perfection: A Philosophy for High Achievers

42:43 What Is Sieff Studios? Feeling Through Media and the Humanality Framework

46:08 Who Sieff Studios Serves: High-Trust B2B and Why Authenticity Beats Credentials

52:42 Drum Circles as a Business Tool: Jesse's Vision for Keynotes That Rewire the Brain

CONNECT WITH JESSE SIEFF:

Sieff Studios: https://sieffstudios.com

Jesse on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jesse_sieff

Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessesieff

"Chopstakovich" snare solo: Search "Chopstakovich Jesse Sieff" on YouTube

CONNECT WITH BART BERKEY & THE PODCAST:

Most People Don't... But YOU Do!

Email: [email protected]

If this episode resonates with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you'd like to be a guest or know someone who would, reach out — we'd love to keep these conversations going.

#MostPeopleDontButYouDo #JesseSieff #SieffStudios #Podcast #Leadership #Music #Marines #Everest #Perfectionism #Humanality

Most People Don't… But YOU Do! with Erik Meltzer

Bart sits down face to face with Erik Meltzer in a community room in Old Town Alexandria for a conversation that starts with an unusual career path and keeps opening into something deeper. Erik traces his journey from a kid who talked his way into covering President Clinton at age 14, through journalism school and TV news, to writing newscasts for a dissident Chinese station that was literally saving lives, to a dozen years training TV stations around the world, and finally into entrepreneurship: blockchain-backed real estate through Plutus Properties and a heart-centered networking group called The Salon Circle.

The thread running through all of it is curiosity, and Erik is refreshingly clear about where his comes from. A hard childhood led him at fifteen to find a free meditation practice he has now kept for 26 years, one that reshaped how he handles adversity. That sets up the heart of the episode: a shared belief that every hardship, good or bad, is raw material for becoming better.

Bart and Erik trade stories on mindset, the mentors and friends they both learn from, why most people never ask a single question about anyone else, and what it actually takes to be a connector who gives without keeping score. It is a warm, honest conversation about curiosity, humility, and the quiet power of making other people feel seen.

What you'll take away from this episode:

Curiosity is a muscle, not a personality trait. Being interested in others is intentional. Left on autopilot, everyone defaults to "me, me, me."

Disarming beats impressive. Erik gets access to remarkable people by being non-threatening, sincere, and genuinely uninterested in extracting anything. People feel safe, so they open up.

Every hardship is raw material. Gold gets forged through heat. The skill isn't avoiding hard times, it's shrinking them, taking it from minutes to moments.

"What do you do" is a weak opening. "Why do you do it" is the real one. The upgrade isn't avoiding the question, it's going one layer deeper.

Connecting is the strategy. Business and meaning both flow out of relationships, not the other way around.

Moments worth remembering:

"Being curious is an intentional behavior. If I am not being intentionally interested, then I will default back to me, me, me."

"People find me not terribly threatening, and I'm a pretty good listener. I don't really have anything that I'm trying to gain from other people."

"Everything that happens in life, whether it be good or bad, is a good thing, because it can lead to self-improvement."

"It's not 'will I never be upset?' It's, can I turn it from minutes to moments?"

"It's okay to know what people do for a living. Where it gets real is, tell me more about why you do what you do."

Connect with Erik Meltzer:

Instagram: @theerikmeltzerLinkedIn: Erik MeltzerThe Salon Circle: joinsaloncircle.com

Connect with Bart and the show:

If this episode resonated with you, do three things. Follow the show so you never miss an episode. Share it with one person who needs the reminder that curiosity and connection change everything. And leave a rating and review, it helps more people find these conversations.

Learn more about Bart's keynotes, training, and book at mostpeopledont.com.

A Kitchen With a Mission; Waioli Kitchen and Bake Shop

Ross Anderson — Co-founder

Restaurant veteran of 30+ years (formerly ran Hawaii's largest restaurant company). Now leads a mission-driven cafe on the Salvation Army property in Manoa that hires women coming out of the prison system. Co-founded with his wife Stephanie, a pastor who served at the women's prison.

The One-Sentence Story

A seasoned hospitality leader thought he could fix lives with checklists and tight supervision — then discovered that the real transformation only began when he stopped trying to give the women jobs and started helping them become who they were created to be.

The Big Idea

Relationship over Transaction. Waioli's entire model is built on the premise that human beings heal in community, not in process. Ross and Stephanie set out to open a restaurant on a mission — and discovered that mission only worked when they put the person before the program.

Story → Insight → Application

The Story

Stephanie volunteered at the women's prison and watched the same painful loop repeat itself: women who thrived inside the walls would walk out the gate, fall back into broken relationships, and return. Recidivism was staggering. She told Ross, "We can do better."

In 2018 they opened Waioli Kitchen and Bake Shop on Salvation Army property — alcohol-free by design ("My restaurant friends said don't do it, you're losing your big profit driver"). They expected to do what Ross had always done: hire, train, supervise, repeat. The first three years their recidivism rate was nearly 80%.

Then COVID hit. The neighborhood rallied around them. They stayed open. And on the other side of it, Ross changed the entire approach — from teaching women a trade to helping them discover their identity. For the last three years, recidivism has been zero.

The Insight

Most well-meaning programs try to fix people with systems. What actually changes a life is being seen — by a boss, a coworker, a customer, a community. Ross stopped running a restaurant that helped women and started running a community that happened to serve breakfast.

The Application

Lead with why, not with process. Ross opened by saying, "We're a restaurant on a mission." The mission is the product; the food is the proof.

Replace checklists with conversation. The pre-shift huddle is now 15–20 minutes of reading and discussing scripture together — not because every business should do that, but because the principle holds: invest in the person before you deploy the worker.

Make people visible to one another. Customers now know the staff by name, ask about their kids, celebrate their milestones. Visibility is the antidote to invisibility.

Be willing to throw out what worked before. Ross's 30 years of restaurant expertise didn't change these women's lives. Letting go of "what I know" was the unlock.

Memorable Quotes

"We're a restaurant on a mission."

"Anybody can — you give me a dollar, I give you a donut, and we're on our way. But now we're starting to have relationship. And that's what it is."

"It takes a community to heal the community."

"It's harder than getting something to go viral. It's harder than getting a bunch of clicks — but it matters, and it's gonna last when the next shiny penny shows up."

"We started focusing on helping them be who they were meant to be, rather than trying to get them to go into their next career."

"Our first three years our recidivism rate was almost 80%. For the last three years it's been zero."

Connection to Humanality

Ross is a living case study for humanality — making people feel cared for, valued, and seen in a world that defaults to transactional. He named it without using the word:

"Most of the girls that come out of prison are invisible to this neighborhood. They would walk right by them, not even see them. But now they've become visible to each other."

Instagram: @waiolikitchen

Facebook: Waioli Kitchen & Bake Shop

#waiolikitchenandbakeshop

Website: waiolikitchen.com

The Generosity Crisis — with Mike Parejko & Benjamin Prijatel

Most People Don’t… But YOU Do!  |  Episode #228 recorded live at the Blood Centers of America Annual Conference, Universal City  |  Released: May 2026

What happens when 97% of the country opts out of an act that takes 40 minutes and saves three lives? Two blood center CEOs name the real shortage — and it isn’t blood. It’s generosity.

Recorded live at the Blood Centers of America annual conference in Universal City, Bart sits down with Mike Parejko (CEO, ImpactLife) and Benjamin Prijatel (CEO, Shepeard Community Blood Center, Augusta, GA) to unpack what most people don’t know about the blood supply that quietly props up American healthcare. Only 3% of the population donates blood — and just 1% of that 3% provides the type-specific products needed for pre-hospital trauma transfusions. May, Mike notes, is the kickoff of “trauma season.”

Beyond the numbers, the conversation lands on something larger: what Mike calls “the generosity crisis.” More money is coming from fewer people. Devices distract us from the people in front of us. Younger donors are disappearing. But the path back is simple, and the guests offer the language and stories to walk it — Benjamin’s “force the choice,” Mike’s “you don’t have to, you get to,” and the story of an executive assistant who is alive today because strangers showed up. This episode turns a topic most people avoid into one they want to talk about at the dinner table.

• Most people don’t think about blood until they need it.

• Most people don’t write five handwritten thank-you notes a week to strangers.

• Most people don’t reframe obligation as privilege.

Mike and Benjamin do — and that’s why the system holds.

1. The generosity crisis is real. Only 3% of Americans donate blood, and the post-pandemic reset has shrunk that pool further. “More money from fewer people” is the trend across nonprofits — blood is no exception.

2. Trauma season starts in May. Warmer weather brings more accidents, more pre-hospital transfusions, and more demand for type-specific products that only 1% of donors can provide.

3. “Force the choice.” Benjamin spent eight years asking others to donate before he was eligible himself. The day the rules changed, he removed “choice” from the equation. Most action problems are really permission problems.

4. “You don’t have to — you get to.” Mike’s reframe to his college-aged kids becomes a tool any leader can borrow tonight: same task, same effort, completely different identity.

5. The path matters more than the pitch. Donatingblood.org. 40 minutes. No appointment. Walk in, walk out. People don’t refuse because they’re selfish — they refuse because no one ever asked, and no one ever showed them the path.

“There’s a little bit of what I would call a generosity crisis that we’re facing.”— Mike Parejko  |  [00:08:00]

“It wasn’t a choice. I had to do it. If people who are listening didn’t think it was a choice, they could do it, too.”— Benjamin Prijatel  |  [00:39:00]

“You don’t have to do that — you get to do that. That little spin on the words makes a big difference.”— Mike Parejko  |  [00:42:00]

Mike Parejko — President & CEO, ImpactLife (Iowa). Chair, Blood Centers of America. 40+ years in transfusion medicine.

Benjamin Prijatel — President/CEO, Shepeard Community Blood Center (Augusta, GA). Former journalist, AARP board member, 12 years in blood banking.

Guest contact details

Benjamin Prijatel — President/CEO, Shepeard Community Blood Center  |  [email protected]  | 

Mike Parejko — President & CEO, ImpactLife  |  [email protected]  | 

In this energetic conversation, Bart sits down with Richard Dolan — investment banker, family office veteran, and trusted advisor to three former U.S. presidents, Oprah, Ellen, and a long list of athletes and artists including Juwan Howard, Drake, The Weeknd, and Ice Cube.

Richard explains how a chance moment sharing a stage with President Bill Clinton turned into a career advising icons not just on their money, but on what he calls "celebrity equity" — the often-overlooked value of name, image, and likeness. He unpacks why the people closest to the top need advisors who think beyond the balance sheet, and why his real superpower is being a futurist: helping legends and leaders "cause and create what comes next" when the game, the tour, or the spotlight ends.

The conversation then turns to a looming crisis Richard is determined to solve: a baby boomer turns 75 every seven seconds, with trillions of dollars in motion — yet there are only about 100,000 financial advisors for the more than two million people retiring each year. His mission now is building the next generation of financial thought leaders to fill those empty chairs.

When Bart asks the signature closing question, Richard's answer lands hard:

Most people don't forgive themselves, forgive others, or forgive life itself — and just roll with the punches.

The episode wraps with a genuine, heartfelt exchange of gratitude, including a Tiger Eye stone, a surprise on-camera endorsement from Richard, and a reminder that proximity to creators — not takers — shapes who you become.

Major Takeaways / Learnings

Advising goes beyond money. True advisory includes brand, image, reputation, and long-term legacy.

Celebrity is equity. Name, image, and likeness are assets that must be managed like investments.

Success creates a new problem: “What’s next?” High performers often need guidance after their primary career peak.

Proximity shapes outcomes. The people around you influence your direction more than you realize.

Great advisors create the future. They don’t just react—they help design what comes next.

Listening is a strategic skill. Understanding both the person and their desired future is key to effective advising.

 Memorable Quotes

• “Experience is everything.”

• “What feels effortless is never accidental.”

• “Details create the difference.”

• “Execution is what separates good from great.”

• “Consistency builds trust"