The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 029: Dave Carroll – How To Create A Movement Through Storytelling (United Breaks Guitars)

Episode Date: June 18, 2015

Episode 029: Dave Carroll – How To Create A Movement Through Storytelling (United Breaks Guitars) Known as a master storyteller, Dave Carroll’s incredible talent was introduced to millions when his 2009 anthem ‘United Breaks Guitars’ became a worldwide sensation. The song chronicled his experience in the customer service process with United Airlines. His creative use of social media to share that message as an Independent Musician, has reached over 150 million people. As the #1 most watched YouTube Music Video in the world in July 2009, United Breaks Guitars has been called ‘one of the most important [videos] in Google’s history,’ and became a metaphor for change and innovation. Dave Carroll and United Breaks Guitars are now recognized as ‘household names.’ United Breaks Guitars won the 2009 Music Nova Scotia Video of the Year Award and Dave Carroll was award the 2009 Music Nova Scotia Digital Artist of the Year. Dave was also nominated for the 2010 ECMA for Entertainer of the Year. Episode 029: Dave Carroll – How To Create A Movement Through Storytelling (United Breaks Guitars) Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio   The Learning Leader Show “Your comfort zone can be your worst enemy.” Some Questions I Ask: Why is storytelling so powerful? What is your process for writing a song? What was your thought process when writing “United Breaks Guitars”? When was a specific moment that you knew you had created something special? How can regular people make a viral video? What does the term learning leader mean to you? In This Episode, You Will Learn: How Whoopi Goldberg gave him the idea to license “United Breaks Guitars” About Dave’s song creating a 10% drop in United’s stock… Worth $180 million Dave’s feelings on Harvard Business School using his video as a case study The specific moment when Dave realized he had gone viral Startups he’s involved in The elements that define a quality life  “Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.” – John Wooden Continue Learning Go To Dave’s website: http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/main/    Read Dave’s book: United Breaks Guitars Follow Dave on Twitter: @DaveCarroll You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector With Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 002: How To Take Over And Set Bigger Goals With Chris Brogan Episode 004: How Todd Wagner (and Mark Cuban) Sold Broadcast.com To Yahoo! For $5.7 Billion Episode 010: Shane Snow – How To Accelerate Success Using Smart Cuts Did you enjoy the podcast? This was a jam packed episode full of great content.  Dave Carroll is leader who has created a drastic change in the customer service industry. Who do you know that needs to hear this?  Send them to The Learning Leader Show! Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell   Bio From http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/bio/     Dave Carroll is an award winning singer-songwriter, professional speaker, author and social media innovator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He began his music career with his brother Don in the band Sons of Maxwell and has been enjoying success as a solo artist since 2008.  He released his debut solo album Perfect Blue in 2008 and a second solo album in 2012 called Raincoat in Vegas. For over two decades, Dave has charmed fans with his approach to music. His ability to extract the essence of a message and craft it into song is a rare gift that is attracting fans of all ages, while his sense of humor and disarmingly warm stage presence makes each live experience a memorable one for audiences around the world.   Known as a master storyteller, Dave’s incredible talent was introduced to millions when his 2009 anthem ‘United Breaks Guitars’ became a worldwide sensation. The song chronicled his experience in the customer service process with United Airlines. His creative use of social media to share that message as an Independent Musician, has reached over 150 million people. As the #1 most watched YouTube Music Video in the world in July 2009, United Breaks Guitars has been called ‘one of the most important [videos] in Google’s history,’ and became a metaphor for change and innovation. Dave Carroll and United Breaks Guitars are now recognized as ‘household names.’ United Breaks Guitars won the 2009 Music Nova Scotia Video of the Year Award and Dave Carroll was award the 2009 Music Nova Scotia Digital Artist of the Year. Dave was also nominated for the 2010 ECMA for Entertainer of the Year.   The United Breaks Guitars trilogy has awakened companies everywhere to the importance of focusing on the customer and on delivering exceptional customer experience. Dave Carroll is a musician with a message, demonstrating the power one voice can have in today’s socially driven world. Dave has become internationally famous as one of the world’s top media relations innovators & customer experience authorities. He is also widely sought after as a content creator & songwriter. Dave  has been featured in major news media around the world (including ABC’s ‘The View,’ ABC’s 20/20, CNN, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Rolling Stone Magazine, Wall Street Journal & BBC to name a few). Several case studies and book references about United Breaks Guitars have been published including one’s by Harvard Business School, University of Toronto and a Thesis by Allison Soule for University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. On February 16th, 2011, Dave Carroll and United Breaks Guitars were featured as part of a question/answer on the hit show Jeopardy.    Dave has testified (and sung) on Capitol Hill in Washington, delivered keynotes at Columbia University’s Brite Conference, TedX Hoboken, NewComm Forum, Mesh Conference, Atlantic Brand Confabulation (with Gene Simmons), SXSW Interactive, The Power of PR CPRS Conference, G-Force Prague, G-Force Melbourne & other significant customer service & corporate events (including for RightNow Technologies & Sandvik Coromant).    

I know myself. I like to be in environments where I'm good at something in a room full of people who appreciate good things, but the best growth happens when you're not the smartest person in the room or you're the least talented person in the room because if you're willing to absorb the lessons from other people. So networking with people who are better at what you want to do than you are is often the best medicine to propel you forward. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused, work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. And welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I'm Ryan Hawk. Tonight's guest is Dave Carroll. Dave is an award-winning singer-songwriter, professional speaker, author, and definitely a social

media innovator. He's based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Really cool place. best known for its incredible viral video titled United Breaks Guitar. Check it out on YouTube. It's got over 15 million views. It's been called one of the most important videos in Google's history. I like to talk with Dave about a few things. Certainly want to get into the YouTube video, how he made it, how he wrote it, everything that went into it, the importance of customer service and treating people the right way. And also the fact that Dave has been called a master storyteller by many people. That's so important in today's world,

whether you're writing a book, a song, giving a speech, or just simply talking with a friend. Also, why it's important to be both relatable as well as funny, which when you watch the video on YouTube, you'll know that Dave is both of those. Very, very excited. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado,

it's Dave Carroll. All right, hey, Dave, how you doing, man? Great, Ryan. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm excited, really excited to have you, and obviously you've got a lot of fans really worldwide from your big hit United Breaks guitars on United,

but I'm sorry, on YouTube, but there's also a lot more to you than that. So I wanted to give you here, give you the floor here for a second to give the little intro about what you're currently doing and really the process of how you got up to this point. Sure. So I'm a Canadian. I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and I've been a professional singer, songwriter now for 25 years. And as you mentioned, I'm probably best known today for a song called United Breaks guitars that was made into one of three music videos, the first of three that I promised

United Airlines when they broke my guitar at a route to a gig. And that was back in 2008 and the video came out 2009. But I've been writing and singing songs and touring the world doing that for quite a while. And when the video came out, it was early times for social media. And so it was pretty transformative because that was one of the first times that a real-life example of a social media customer service issue was turned into something really relevant to business, as opposed to something that was just on YouTube, like a cat that flushes the toilet. This actually had repercussions and businesses around the world realized in real time that one customer could affect your brand. So out of that, I've become actually quite busy as a speaker, traveling around the world, speaking to audiences large and small, about the power of one voice and customer service and

social media and branding, and I guess at the heart of it, the power of effective storytelling and the need that we all have today to become better storytellers to cut through a pretty frenetic social landscape. And in addition to that, I've written a book about my experience. I still am a, I consider myself a musician and singer-songwriter first and foremost, so I still play regular gigs, but I even enjoy writing songs for other people that want to bring out the essence of their organization or what they're about, and they just don't have that talent. So my plate's pretty full these days, and I'm also involved in three startups that we can talk

about if you're interested a little later. Yeah, for sure. So for the people who haven't seen the YouTube video yet or read your book, could you give us this story that led to your, you know, your viral, you know, what 15 million views or more of United Breaksvick guitars on YouTube? Sure. I was traveling with my brother Don and our band called Sons of Maxwell. And Don and I and a couple of other players in our band were on route to Omaha.

We were going to play six shows in Nebraska, and we stopped in Chicago to catch our connector plane. And when we were de-planning, there was a woman behind our bass player, Mike Heltz, who looked outside the window and said, oh my God, they're throwing guitars outside. And it turned out that I found out in Nebraska that my guitar, my Taylor guitar that cost $3,500 when I didn't really have $3,500 to buy that guitar, was really badly damaged. And it was the only guitar in our band that was damaged. But it was badly affected. And so I tried to get United to take some responsibility for it for nine months. And at no point in the nine months did anybody even ask what I wanted.

but the guitar went from being a write-off, I was told, to me giving it to somebody else who fixed it for $1,200. And eventually I ended up hearing from a customer service rep by email, and I asked if she would just, if United would just give $1,200 in flight vouchers to cover the real cost and dollars that I spent to fix the guitar. And they said no, and they never would. So at that point, I promised in an email that I would make three music videos with my friends and three songs, three music. videos and I would try and reach one million people in the next year with all three videos combined and left it at that. In January of 2009, I began the writing process and did one at a time and got my friends to help out.

And in June, about seven months later, we recorded the first, we filmed the first video. And on July 6th, I posted it to YouTube and it went viral in just four days and it reached a million and four days. Now, as you alluded to, 15 million hits. and the other two videos are completed. So I did, took a little more than a year, but I did put all three videos up almost on time. And each one tells a little bit of the story. And United, I guess, had to deal with the followout of that.

They did try and contact me and offer me $1,200 in flight vouchers, which I declined. And according to the Economist and BBC News, my video dropped their stock, at least for a short time, by $10%, or $180 million. dollars. And that's why it became so important around the world, I guess, is a real-life example of how your brand is susceptible to being negatively affected if you don't take care or shoot to take care of every customer you have. Incredible. I remember reading about the stock part of how it really just damaged their company. The one other thing, though, about it, could they potentially sue you for using their name and this story and making a song of it? Was there any of that going on? There was a concern I had. Before I shot the video, I sent the lyrics to a lawyer who took a look at them.

And of course, anybody can make your life miserable, I guess, whether they could win or not. But I was told that, especially in the United States, that satire is your right. And as long as what you're saying is truthful and authentic, then you're protected from losing a lawsuit. And to their credit, they didn't do that. It probably would have been a bad thing, especially five years ago, with the groundswell of support that I had if they had gone instead of saying I'm sorry and they unleashed a pack of lawyers on me that probably would have affected their brand even more negatively. So I'm glad they didn't. And I think I've been fair in the way that I

presented, especially in my speeches. I don't come across as antagonistic or I just sort of tell the story as a metaphor for other companies. It's not really, I don't really have any malicious intent towards United. So when you think of something that goes viral, I feel like in your specific story, there's always a couple factors in near the professional here, so I'll let you get to that. But my thought process when I, when I first heard your story, watched the video, your book, everything. One, we can, everybody listening, everybody in the world can relate to a story like that. So it's so relatable. It also combines a lot of humor and then a catchy melody, something that we actually enjoy listening to.

So when you look at, and then the video too, the actions of you guys and like playing the broken guitar and like just all the things to you guys all sitting in. a car and all those things. It seems like it was like the perfect creation for a viral moment. And was that part of your thought? I know you wanted to hit a million people. Was it part of your thought process of like, okay, I got to relate to everybody because everyone's already gone through this.

Okay, this song has to actually be catchy. They have to really enjoy the music part of it. And it needs to be funny because people love things that are funny. Was that part of your process or what was your process as you were going to write this and then produce it. Well, in terms of the trilogy, I sort of thought about that deliberately. I thought, I can't write three songs at once, so I have to write just one at a time. So the first one I decided would be sort of a chronological retelling of the facts as they

happened. So the song is actually very, very true, but the visuals in the video are wildly exaggerated. I'll be the first to admit that. Yeah. The lyrics are accurate. And when I wrote the first one, that's exactly what you described is what songwriters do. I like to think that I have a good sense of humor and I think of funny things all the time

so I wanted it to be a little humorous and if I had written the song three days after the guitar got broken it probably would have been a much angrier song but it had gone on so long that I wasn't angry anymore but I wrote the song with the idea of telling the story as it happened and all songwriters always try and write with broad strokes rather

you know I could have written a song just for Taylor Guitar players. But instead, my goal was to write a song that anybody in the world could appreciate because it's not really about the guitar. It's about people disrespecting things that are valuable to you and not treating you with the respect that I think you're entitled to. And everybody can relate to that. Everybody has a bad airline experience and comedians and everybody's been making fun of airlines forever. So I knew that it was relatable, but I didn't understand the impact that it would have. And when the video, in the early days, it was taking off. It occurred to me right away because I think I received around 10,000

email in the first two weeks. And there was many, many messages from people saying, congratulations, you're doing something great for customer service and don't take the money from United that's coming. But often they would then say, I wish that I had the ability to write a song because then I would do that too. I don't have a voice or that sort of thing. And so it told me that people felt disempowered. And because they were also saying things like they didn't have the, that they all had their own airline stories and they would often share those or bad customer service story. And again, reminded me how relatable it was. So it wasn't part of a master plan per se, but it was a sort of a perfect storm of conditions. Do you have a relationship

with United right now? Not really. Or no, I guess the simple answer. In the first year, people still even to this day send me stories of broken guitars and things like that and they ask if I can help. And I haven't really heard, they don't write back to me anymore. But for about a year, I would send a message of a broken guitar that was similar to mine, and I would send it to the VP of customer service, and they would usually take care of it. And when I was on the view, I did a lot of media things, and I was on the view about six months after the video went viral. And Whoopi Goldberg asked me on there in response to a quote from United that they put on the screen that said, United's using Dave Carroll's video as a customer service tool to improve

customer service at United. And she asked if they were paying a license fee to use my intellectual property. I said, no, they're not, Whoopi, and she said, mm-hmm. And so I called United and explained that Whoopi Goldberg suggested I should be being paid a license fee for my intellectual property. And to their credit, they said yes, and they became a customer of mine. But seriously? Yeah. Wow. And so are they're not still or they were for a while? I gave them the license to use the video, as I have for many companies. If you're going to show a video like mine to your customer service meeting or share it with your employees in an official sense, that's an education tool or that's something that requires a license.

And other companies gladly paid it and so did United. So I gave them the license. They said they weren't going to use it anymore. And I don't know if they did or not, but I'm letting them off the hook if they are, I guess. Well, I know it's become like a case study that many people followed and, including the Harvard Business School, or were to say, this is your story, what you've done when it comes to customer support,

how you treat people, how a company could get crushed by one person if they're not careful, so to speak. When you see that, I mean, what are you thinking that the thing that you did, you created, has been able to have an effect on that many people? Yeah, it's pretty mind-blowing.

I had a couple of experiences that told me how far it had gone. And in the first year, we got invited, my band and I got invited to go to Siberia and play some music shows there. So it wasn't speaking. It was pure music. But we were in the middle of nowhere right inside the Arctic Circle. If you drew a line up between India and Thailand and above the Arctic Circle, you sort of intersect there. And we were playing these shows, and the audience couldn't speak English at all. And I had a translator come up and give a couple of introductions to maybe 10 songs.

just to give context to what we were singing. But when we did United Breaks guitars, all these Russians had their cell phones up and, like, ladders, and they were swaying them back and forth singing, United Breaks guitars. And I thought, man, that's... That's cool. That's awesome. I love those stories where it's like, it's a global phenomenon, almost where it's everywhere. And I can't imagine the feeling of, because you had a goal that wasn't, I don't, it, it was kind of a stretch.

I mean, a million views is, is tough. So it's not like you just said, oh, I just hope, you know, a few people watch this or whatever. You went into it with a goal that was, I think, a stretch. And then you just absolutely obliterated that goal, which I got to believe is an incredible feeling. There was a lot of videos and there still are that I say are kind of crap. The content's really weak or it's completely not memorable. It's the type of thing that somebody watches for 10 seconds and then they just click and they share it with their friends, but they never think about it again.

My intention was to create quality content with a song that I really put effort into writing and really professional musicians giving their all to record a really good sounding recording. And the film crew was, and the camera was top quality. So we had all those inputs to make good content. And by doing that, I figured if I could do the three things of make something that looks good and sounds good and makes people want to tell their friends about it, that essentially was my social media strategy. And I thought if all these other videos have millions of hits, surely I can get one million with something that a stronger message that's well put together.

Was there a specific moment? I love specific moments in people's lives to where you said or you were you vividly remember this moment where where you said yourself, wow, I have done something that's incredible that truly is going to change people's lives for the better where, you know, I've heard different stories where the people remember. where they were sitting or what they were looking at or what they're eating or drinking or where they were. Can you picture that moment? Yeah, it sort of happened in different ways for me. I say in my keynotes, instead of saying the biggest takeaway for me is that I'm an independent singer-songwriter struggling for 20 years and with this video, I get the number one music

video in the world for a month, which is what happened. And that was cool. But in so many ways, the things I remember are the things of how this video affected the people close to me. So when it was on CNN in the Situation Room, I thought that was cool, but I thought it was cool because Wolf Blitzer was telling the world about this while my three friends in sombreros were behind him singing their guts out. Or my grandmother ended up getting a movie role in an Olympia de Kaucus movie as an extra because of her work and United Brakes guitar song too. Oh, nice. And one of the coolest experiences that reminded me of how connected we are all are, was in Australia after a speaking event.

I was coming home, and I was in a taxi with the men that ended up being from Romania. And he was talking about world politics, and right out of the blue, he starts talking about how there's no social movements in the world without money. And he says, but sometimes you get lucky like the man from United. And I said, what did you just say? He says, my friend, you wouldn't know, but there's a man from Halifax, Canada, who wrote a song called United Breaks guitars. And I thought, this is unbelievable because, you know, I believe that everybody, you and I and everyone in the world are connected, but we don't get a chance to experience that often.

And here I am 13 times zones away from where I live, talking to a man who lived in a communist country for most of his life. Now he's driving cab in Sydney. And he's telling everybody at that time, at least, that's coming into his cab from around the world, about this thing called United Breastkechart. takes guitarist because he knows they will all agree with him that it was relevant and authentic to everybody. That was cool. Yeah, that's really cool. Why do you think a company would treat people this way?

Why? And it's not the only one. I'm not just trying to pick on them. But I mean, I think the way for success, obviously, any company you study anyone, like I think of Southwest. Like if this had happened on Southwest, I can't fathom. I mean, they're known for their customer service and the way they treat their own. employees. I can't fathom something like this happening, but why do companies not understand

the value and treating their customers the way they should be treated, especially in a case like this where it was very simple. Their people or the, I don't know, the people putting the bags on the planes broke your guitar in this case. And they've done other things, obviously, but why is that? I think it has to do with maybe a mix of factors, all. playing on each other. It's not just the size, but United is a very big company. And I know that they have big problems in terms of the culture between management and the employees. When the video had gone viral, they had just come out of bankruptcy protection. And the CEO, I'm told, got something like a $25 million bonus for taking the company through these troubled times.

Meanwhile, when the employees came back from the bankruptcy protection, a lot of their pensions were eradicated and the amount of work they had to do from week to week had increased for less money and it's created this divide. So while the video was going on, I've been asked, did you ever hear from anyone from United angry at you? And a couple, like, I mean one or two times, yes, but I also received letters on the letterhead of the Pilots Association and the Flight Attendants Association that essentially said, if you think it's bad flying up with us, try working here.

And so the customer gets caught in the middle between these things. is angry and resentment. And so in the case of the guitarism and the mishandling, maybe it was just a bad day for the people they were angry at something else and took it on on the customers. But do you go in and consult with companies too and teach them? Because, I mean, the number one way to get your employees to treat customers right is to treat your employees right.

I think that's a basic tenant of having a successful company that people for some reason forget. Is that part of what you do too? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What I try to teach in the keynote and in workshops afterwards is this thing of connection. The relevant part about the connection piece is that it means that just as you care about yourself, if you believe that you and I and your customers and your suppliers and your employees are all connected with each other, caring about them is a natural outgrowth of that. You don't have to pretend or go to a three-day workshop to learn how to care about,

customers because you just will if you see yourself and everyone you come around. And sometimes I think in the airline industry, it's so close to moving cattle sometimes that people forget that these are people and that you can care about the individual and still do your job. Disney does a very good job at that. They move incredible amounts of people around their parks all the time, but their customers are gold to them. Everybody's left feeling like a million bucks.

airline should maybe take a closer look at that. Oh, definitely. What would you be doing if this career path wasn't available to you? If the video hadn't happened? Yeah. Well, it's kind of funny. I'd been a musician for, as I say, 20 years at the time. And as an independent band, we never felt that we were lacking talent,

but indie artists have a hard time breaking through because they're not part of the N-crowd or the major labels. They help their own artists, but they act as impediments to really strong indie artists a lot of times. So if you don't have the right manager or publicists, that sort of thing, you really are the thing stacked against you. So sons of Maxwell had a great career. We had many, many high points, great concerts, played the symphonies and travel all over and stuff. But sometimes you'd have to wait between the high points and just sort of, you know, we'd play a wedding or we'd whatever. We'd do it.

We had to do, play bars. And my wife, I remember, we just got pregnant with her son Flynn. and I didn't want to be a thousand miles away playing at another bar gig, waiting for the next cool thing to come along. And so my brother, Don, and I, we had already been volunteer firefighters for five years at the time. And it turned out the Halifax Fire Department was hiring. And so a thousand people applied for 20 positions, and my brother got picked in one of the 20. And I was told that in the following year that I was on a short list and that I might get that job.

And in that intervening year, I picked up with my solo CD, which I just realized. East and played the Outsons of Maxwell show and worked on this United thing that I had remembered and had the time to work on. And if I hadn't have done the video, I did get a job offer. I probably would have gotten out of the music business as a sole profession and probably would be fighting fires right now. Wow. Incredible how specific things and moments that happen can just completely shape your life.

So I want to think of the people listening and just really regular people. people out there and they're listening to this and they're saying, wow, that's an incredible story. That's really, really neat. But, you know, I don't think that could happen to me or I don't know if I could do anything like that. I'm not a good singer. I can't play guitar. I can't write like that. So for people that are thinking that, how, what would your advice be to them to say, how can you, you know, lead change or have a positive effect, you know, from a negative experience that could, I don't, it doesn't have to have 15 million views on YouTube, but you know, but do something that, that, that actually puts a dent into a problem or helps other people.

And maybe, and I'm not, like I said, these people might not necessarily have guitar skills or or singing ability or songwriters, but, but I'm just thinking of a regular everyday person who wants to do something that could, that could affect change. Well, you touched on one of the key points in my key notes in my book, and that is the idea that everybody has the power. What happened to me could happen to anybody. I think I'm living proof that it can, and it does. And everyone has the ability to share a powerful message, but it has to come from the heart, so you have to believe in what you're saying. And everybody's good at something. You don't necessarily have to play a guitar. I've been doing it for a long time, so that's

the way I express myself. But there are lots of videos on YouTube that have millions of hits, and it's just one person looking at the camera and speaking from the heart. And that's enough sometimes. So you have to believe in what you're saying. Speak to the audience and communicate in a way that's relevant to everybody. I say that we're all connected, but we often live at the head level where someone can say your religion or the color of your skin or your culture, that makes you completely different.

But if below that, at the heart level, we're all the same. And so that's where we should be communicating a little more often. And one of the other things that I started to learn through this in the process was to enjoy the process. If you go into something like this and say, I'm going to make a viral video as though it's like ordering a hamburger. You can't do it that way. That wasn't my intention.

I said I was going to make this thing. And I like writing songs. So by writing the first song, I instantly felt better like I had regained some power. And I stopped being angry as I went along. And by the time the video came out, I didn't even really care if anyone ever watched the video, because when I saw the clips of it, I thought, this is really funny. We got this video with my friends and I were shooting this thing, and we'll be able to look back on it for years,

and it doesn't matter if anyone watches it. So too often, I think people put all the effort into the end result and say, I'm only going to be happy if I reach a million hits, and when they don't, they feel like it was a waste of time. I think if you live in the moment and enjoy the process, and instead of putting the count before the cart. In other words, you know, don't worry about the end result, worry about the process and enjoying it along the way.

You'll be transformed through the process, whether you reach your goal or not. You think some of that has to do with people are not always willing to jump outside of their comfort zone. The comfort zones are things I talk a lot about on this podcast, so this is not a surprise to hear me say it. But part of the reason that I'm doing this podcast is because it's more comfortable, not to do it. Now, I love it. I'm passionate about it, and it's so cool to learn from really inspiring

and interesting people like you, Dave. And then leaping outside of my comfort zone has just, you know, really helped me grow. And I hope it maybe inspires just one other person to do that. But if you had to talk about that, to talk to people about that, to say it seems like, you know, you're regimented, you have a schedule and you're comfortable, you know, maybe there's a problem there. There's not enough fear and some of the things that you're doing. What do you say to people when it comes to comfort zone and getting out of it? Well, the comfort zone can sometimes be your worst enemy. I think you just sort of alluded to that.

And I'm as guilty as a lot of people about getting in a comfort zone. But if anything, this video and this whole experience has shown me that when you leave your comfort zone a little bit, even just in the way I wrote the song, this song and video is the most successful thing I've ever done. and it's the thing I tried in a sense the least and worried about the least because I felt like I had nothing to lose and it was just I would just have fun with it so I had more fun making this than anything I'd ever done before and too often we we weigh ourselves down with responsibilities of you know this will only work if I try really really really really hard and for me as a songwriter this is unlike any song I'd ever written it's it's really really kind of quirky and does all these things that other songwriters would never try. And if I had a major label deal and I'd propose that song to them and said, I want to release this, they probably would have said, forget it. This isn't a radio single. They would tell me all the reasons you

shouldn't do it. And I broke a bunch of the rules. And as I say, it's the most successful thing I've ever done. So I go back to that lesson myself all the time and say, when I have an idea and say, that probably wouldn't work. That's the idea I go for. Not the one that everybody else is doing. I look for the one that's a little different. different than what everybody else is doing. And if nothing else, I'll enjoy the process. So important. It seems to be the thing that's in common with every successful leader that I'm talking to here, other than the fact that they're always striving to learn. That's the kind of the basis for why this show is called what it is. They're always striving to learn about, you know,

how to improve and how to get better. And the other thing they're doing is they eliminate the fear of doing things that are outside of their comfort zone. And you have to make a conscious decision to do that though it doesn't just happen because what happens naturally i think for people is your routine right that the regular things that you do every day you wake up you do your morning routine whatever it may be you know people with families and stuff that it can get it can get busy but if you're not deliberate and jumping outside of it it just won't happen oh you're absolutely right and uh to your point about you know getting out of the zone and uh i know myself i like to i like to be in environments where I'm good at something in a room full of people who appreciate good things,

but the best growth happens when you're not the smartest person in the room or you're the least talented person in the room because if you're willing to absorb the lessons from other people. So networking with people who are better at what you want to do than you are is often the best medicine to propel you forward. Absolutely. You got to get in the room with people that, one, I think, that don't necessarily agree with everything you say because if everyone just nods their head and says, yes, you don't get anywhere. But certainly that in the room with people who are smarter than you, more experienced than you, maybe have been through certain things that you haven't been through, so you get a different

perspective, completely agree. The other thing that you do, obviously, the main thing you do that I'm fascinated with is writing both, you've written, you know, some of many songs and then a book writing. So I'm fascinated by people who can write movies, books, and songs. That's one thing where it's like I haven't been able to do those things, although I write a lot. It hasn't produced anything like that. What's your process like? What's that look like when you're writing both a song as well as your book?

I think a lot about storytelling just in general these days. And it occurred to me fairly early on that United Brakes guitars is really about stories. And so when I had that epiphany, I realized I've been doing that for a long time. And as a songwriter, that's what I do. I try to encapsulate an entire story in four or five minutes, three, four, or five minutes. And there's certainly an art to it and a process. And just like in high school, when we were taking English classes, they gave you the stages of the story where you have the setting, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the denouement, the wrap-up. And a good story should have that.

You should have those sort of the pacing and the tension and all these things that. and perspective, whose eyes are you looking through when you're telling the story? All those things combine to make a compelling thing that people want to remember and give them the ultimate goal of every story is to create moments, emotional moments for people. So when I'm writing songs or I'm writing books, I like there to be a flow. I like to draw people in in a way that hopefully relates to them. I think being conversational is very important. It's a key rule, I think, for songwriting.

So the process for songwriting is I write the music first, sort of get a structure and a framework, and essentially it's like building a house. You build the framework of the house, and then you fill up with nice furniture, and the furniture, in this case, would be the lyrics and stuff. And when it comes to writing the book, I'd never done it before. So my process that seemed to work for me

was to find some quiet time between 8,000. and 10 in the morning before the everyday stuff. Phone started ringing that sort of thing and just commit to sitting down and seeing what came out of the page and then editing it later, later on. I like that. I'm always fascinating, like I said, by what it looks like, you know, the time of day, how you do it? Do you write a bunch at a time or just little spurts like in notes on your phone

and all those things, how it gets put together? I like hearing about that because it seems to be, for me, like ideas and things come to me at any moment in time. So I always need some sort of device or even a pad and a pad of paper to write down to say, oh, I thought of this. Because when I don't have anything there to write it down, I seem to always forget it, you know? Yeah, and I used to sort of write down on sticky notes. If I have to, I still do. But I found I was losing my sticky notes.

So I was losing my ideas. And so I keep it on a phone. If I have a lyric or a song title or just an idea that can be built into something for a keynote, I'll put it in the phone. and I've got a list in my memos of content ideas and stuff that I can always go to. If I can't think of anything, if I'm sitting down to write, or I'll go to that and riff off one of those things. Very cool. So you said earlier you're involved in three startups. Yeah.

Talk a little bit about that. So this is all since United Brakes guitars, and there are three companies that I'm involved with, and one of them is called the Five Stories Workshop. and I'm partnering with a group called the International Thought Leader Network out of the U.S. And together we're forming a scalable storytelling workshop that's based on five perspectives that people and companies should understand. Because in my story, as I mentioned, there isn't just one perspective. I was telling the story as a consumer.

United in its response would be giving the perspective of the company. But even within that company, the employees have a different perspective because they wrote me letters telling me so. And so if you're a company facing in this case social media wildfire, you need to know what all their perspectives are, articulate them, and then come up with a response that speaks to all of those. And United didn't do that. And so every company needs to know what these five perspectives are and how to run them and develop them. And that's what we are building. And I find that really exciting because I think that's transformational. There's a company out of Halifax here called LifeRafed. And it's a social media.

a monitoring company. It provides social intelligence, and right now the verticals that we're looking at are for law enforcement and education. And essentially, the idea is to empower law enforcement and educators to know what people are saying when they, it's a threat detection system. It's so many people are being bullied or self-harming in colleges and high schools, that sort of thing. And the technology allows to put a geo-offence around a certain area of us. Could be a school or it could a mall and hear any comments of someone if they were to say, I have a gun and I'm bringing it to school, somebody can be told about that and intervene. Or if somebody's being bullied, you can intervene and help the person who's being bullied

and change the direction and the life of the bully itself too. So got a lot of potential, and it's just starting to take off some of the biggest law enforcement agencies in the world are really looking at it now, and we're optimistic. It'll be the premier tool in the coming years. Nice. What's the third one? A third one is called Flamingo, and it's an Australian-based company that's now just shifted the base to the United States.

But Flamingo is run, and it was the brainchild of Dr. Katrina Wallace, brilliant customer service expert out of Australia. And Flamingo is going to close the gap between companies and customers by giving companies the ability to empower customers to make their own decisions and customize the services that they have. So customers around the world have said, we want to customize, we want to choose the services on a cable bill or if we're going into a hospital, we want to decide when we get our meals and what we're eating. But that's really difficult to do unless you have a system like this. So Flamingo integrates with a CRM and it allows companies to offer this thing and still be

very profitable and scalable. Wow, that's a cool sounding company. And so, I mean, I got to believe that all three of these, because they relate to what you've done. They came to you and said, we'd like to partner with you? Yeah, the five stories was sort of a co-development between myself and the Greg Kaiser and Greg Gray of the International Thought Leader Network.

Liferaft was very much like that. Darren McLeod reached out and he knew that obviously monitoring social media would have really helped United to get a handle on what people were saying and empowered them to do, make different choices if they had chosen to listen to what people were saying. And that could be the same for every brand. Today, your brand rests upon the stories of other people, and it's based on the conversations that are going on around about you.

So it's incumbent upon every company now to know what people are saying, and LifeRaff can be that solution. And Flamingo, I had done a fair bit of work down in Australia, and I met Katrina Wallace and a few things, and we got along famously, and I think she's great, and she's a great businesswoman too, and she had this brainchild, and I said I'd like to invest in it myself and be an advisor. So she said yes. So it dovetails nicely with everything I'm about.

I don't feel conflicted with these companies at all because it's social media, I think, is what brought me here. It's important to, I don't hate companies. I want to inspire companies to be more proactive and work better, and all of these things. will help reduce conflict and detention. So let's say somebody's using life raft and it's a big company and they do something that's stupid. And all of a sudden on Twitter and Facebook and I see these things, you know, from people and it's usually as airlines, but whatever company is not doing a good job and customer service for that person, that individual, and then all of a sudden it kind of spreads and more.

Oh, yeah, that happened to me too, blah, blah, blah. And then it spreads more. So what will life raft do at that moment where are they able to see like, hey, we got something, we got something brewing here, we need to get out in front of this, or what exactly do you do to counteract that? Well, in terms of an airline, airlines could use this just by monitoring, say, the United States. We're going to listen for any bad comments on Twitter or Facebook about our airline. And bam, Dave Carroll says, I just saw someone throw my guitar in the tarmac in Chicago. So I leave the plane and a designated person at whatever airline I was flying would get this notification showing my name, my picture of me, a picture of where I was when I made that tweet or that posting on Facebook, the time and everything. And they could in real time meet me at the airport and be able to find me in a crowd of 10 or 20 people and say, Mr. Carroll, we heard you had a problem.

Let's go and talk about it. They could do that if they wanted to. That's incredible. Wow. And again, another thing with life wrap that's really unique is that you can go back two years. You can put a geo fence around something in two years. So from a law enforcement perspective, you could put a geo fence around the finish line of the Boston Marathon. And, you know, when the explosions went off, they would be looking for as many witnesses as possible.

And you would be able to see anyone who tweeted or made a posting right there at the finish line. and you'd know their names, where they were when it was going on, and you'd be able to have a forensic tool and instantly have hundreds of witnesses that you would have otherwise had to ferret out. That's just, it's amazing the things that technology can do and how, in this case, they could really, really help. I love it.

Yeah. Dave, I have one more question for you. Before we get going, you've been very respectful with your time, and I know it's, you have a lot going on. So one more question. When you hear the phrase learning leader, and I'd ask you what, when you hear that phrase, what would you say your definition of a learning leader is? Question.

I would say a learning leader is probably, first of all, the type of person you'd want in your organization because, number one, they don't claim to know everything already. They're open to learning more and being innovative and nimble. I think in today's world, you have to be both of those things and a learning leader is somebody who values the input from other people. So it's probably the greatest compliment you can give a leader. Perfect, man. That's a perfect definition. I really, really like that.

And it's simple and it's absolutely true. Dave, Carol, I really, really do appreciate you investing this time with us here at the Learning Leader Show. It's obviously you've lived in a very, very cool life with great experiences and have helped, who knows, and so many people with some of the acts that you've performed. So thank you for that and thank you for being a guest here on the show. Thank you, Ryan. And thanks for getting on such a pro show. Cool. Well, thanks, man.

I really appreciate it. And we'll definitely have to keep talking soon, man. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. See you.

This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.