The Best Stories Are Yours

Edward David Gil never pursued money. He pursued adventure.

That pursuit carried him from a working-class Philadelphia upbringing into international shipping, where deals crossed oceans, markets never closed and a person’s word was their bond. Along the way, Ed traveled the world, negotiated across cultures and collected stories involving a mysteriously missing ship, the Bohemian Club and more than a few famous names.

At a crossroads, Ed found himself facing two questions: Who are you, and what do you want?

The answers led him to walk away from shipping, move to Los Angeles and talk his way onto the Paramount lot. He went on to work with Ted Danson’s production company and at Paramount, Sony and Disney before eventually reinventing himself once again in data and analytics.

It’s a conversation about adventure, improvisation and knowing when it’s time to jump to the next lily pad—even when you don’t know exactly where you’ll land.

Dik Shicotte grew up on Chicago’s North Side in a third-floor apartment filled with strong women. With his father largely absent, Dik’s mother raised three children while taking on whatever work was necessary to keep the family moving forward. Her example was simple: never give up.

Left largely to their own devices, Dik and his friends explored the city, swam in Lake Michigan, collected bottles for candy money and grabbed the bumpers of moving cars to “skitch” through snowy streets. He watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, witnessed the unrest of 1960s Chicago outside his window and celebrated the moon landing from a Chicago beach in the summer of 1969.

After a little teenage arrogance led his mother to make him pay for his final year of private high school, an unfinished paper produced another lesson. Dik casually told his teacher not to worry because he would finish it. The response stopped him in the hallway:

“I’m not worried, Shicotte—but you ought to be.”

The words landed. His teacher had done his part; what happened next belonged to Dik.

That lesson followed him through college, football, an international internship in Finland and months traveling across Europe. It gave him the confidence to sit across from business leaders, present an idea and accept opportunities that carried him through AT&T, NCR and eventually Teradata.

Dik shares a story about personal responsibility, persistence and the people who help shape our lives. His mother taught him never to give up. His wife reminded him that when one opportunity failed, the next one would work. His colleagues and friends helped open doors—but Dik understood that walking through them was ultimately up to him.

Jane Theodore’s first lesson about work came in a soybean field in rural Iowa. She started working in sixth grade, walking fields and detasseling corn in brutal summer heat—and quickly learned that effort and reward were not always distributed fairly.

Years later, a communications degree and an internship carried her to Chicago with dreams of writing and international travel. When the company failed, Jane was left alone in the city, living paycheck to paycheck and trying to determine what came next.

An MBA opened an unexpected door at Arthur Andersen, where a liberal arts graduate who knew almost nothing about computers was trained in COBOL and sent to clients as an expert. That unlikely beginning eventually placed Jane inside the Smart Store, a research center exploring self-checkout, electronic shelf labels, RFID and smart shopping carts decades before many became commonplace.

There, Jane recognized what she was built to do: bring together technology, marketing, data and the story a business needs to understand what comes next.

Jane shares a story about critical thinking, calculated reinvention and the relationships that shape a career—and why helping the next person matters when you remember what it felt like to have no one to call.

Mike Robinson grew up in Kingsville, Texas—a small university town where the King Ranch owned the bank, the lumberyard and the only department store with an escalator.

As a boy, Mike rode his bicycle for miles, helped publish a neighborhood newspaper on a mimeograph machine and built a miniature golf course using tuna cans for holes. By his teens, friends were driving at fourteen, the Beatles had arrived in South Texas, and Mike had become the drummer in a garage band despite never having played the drums.

But growing up in the late 1960s also meant watching the Vietnam draft lottery determine the futures of young men around him. Mike remembers receiving his number, friends who faced very different outcomes, and parents who were prepared to send him to Canada rather than risk losing him to the war.

After college, Mike went to work at a Levi Strauss factory manufacturing women’s clothing. Managing a cutting room taught him that the theories he had learned in school rarely survived contact with actual people—and that getting someone’s paycheck wrong could erase nearly everything else a manager did right.

From house painting and homemade wind chimes in a red Datsun to factory floors and the beginning of a career at H-E-B, Mike shares a funny, thoughtful and occasionally sobering story about growing up, learning to think and discovering that the most valuable lessons rarely come from a textbook.

Joseph Garfield’s first employer fired him because he wouldn’t work Sundays. His next hired him after watching him help customers for free.

From stocking produce at A&P during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics to selling computers at Sam’s Club, Joseph discovered early that he loved solving problems and helping people. After high school, he joined the Army, endured basic training as the six-foot-nine recruit everyone called “Lurch,” served a two-year church mission, and was called to active duty following 9/11.

When Joseph returned home without a clear career path, he and his wife moved into his parents’ basement. One reluctant phone call led to an entry-level help-desk job—and the realization that he had finally found something he was built to do.

Joseph shares how hard work, constant learning, and a willingness to begin again carried him from retail and military service into technology and consulting. Along the way, he developed a habit of mastering each new challenge, outgrowing the comfortable, and searching for the next big problem to solve.

Joseph calls himself a monster slayer. If there isn’t a monster in front of him, he’ll go find one. And if he can’t find one, he just might create one.

Raj Roy’s working life began far from the typical teenage job. At eighteen, he was guiding tourists from Hong Kong into communist China—crossing guarded borders, learning whom to trust, and once finding himself handcuffed with two bayonets pointed at his chest.

After his father’s death, Raj moved to Australia, briefly pursued a dream of playing professional cricket, and attempted to sell cars despite not knowing how to drive. His journey eventually brought him to Minnesota, where a door-to-door vacuum demonstration—and a wedding ring missing for two years—taught him never to judge people by appearances.

From paper maps and green-screen computers to FoxPro, software testing and data governance, Raj shares how curiosity, pattern recognition and a willingness to begin again carried him across three continents and into a career he never planned.

It’s a story about immigration, reinvention, unexpected opportunity—and discovering that sometimes the things that don’t work out are precisely what point us toward home.

[As a side note, this was the first podcast I recored. In the beginning, you will hear me refer to the show by it's old name - Rich]

Denise Scruggs grew up between South Florida and South Jersey, packed her 1969 Camaro and headed north for college, then found herself building a career inside the spectacle of Atlantic City’s casino era.

She shares stories of alternative music, unforgettable concerts, working as a graphic designer at the Trump Taj Mahal, creating an elaborate invitation for Donald Trump’s 50th birthday, and meeting everyone from casino high rollers to the stars of Star Trek. Along the way, Denise and Richard remember a world of rotary phones, printed catalogs, fax machines, Polaroids, and friendships that existed long before social media.

It’s a funny, affectionate trip through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s—and a reminder of how much the world changed while we were busy living in it.

Ken Nguyen grew up watching his immigrant parents build a life in America through hard work, determination and a series of family-run grocery stores.

His own path was just as unconventional. Ken began working at a young age, skipped the traditional school-college-career route and found his way into computers before most people understood how much they would change the world.

I’ve known Ken for over seven years, but during this conversation I heard stories I’d never heard before—and learned more about him in thirty minutes than I had in all the years I’d known him.

It’s a conversation about family, opportunity and the remarkable stories hiding inside people we think we already know.

Everyone has a story worth hearing.

Season 1 of The Best Stories Are Yours features eight conversations with people just like us—people who’ve lived full lives, taken a few unexpected turns, and collected some incredible stories along the way.

These aren’t celebrities. They’re us.

Listen to the trailer, then join us beginning September 3. You're sure to smile. You’ll probably laugh. And I think you’ll feel pretty damn good when it’s over.