Amplify your Uniqueness and Flaunt your Weakness w/ David Rendall -17

[Shawna]

Author Daniel H. Pink said it best. David Rendall has a radical prescription for chronic dissatisfaction. Stop working on your weaknesses and start amplifying them instead. During the last 15 years, David Rendell has spoken to audiences on every inhabited continent. His clients include the US. Air Force, Australian Government, and Fortune 50 companies such as Microsoft, AT& T, United Health Group, Fannie Mae and State Farm. Prior to becoming a certified speaking professional, he was a leadership professor, stand up comedian, and nonprofit executive. In between presentations, David competes in ultramarathons and ironman triathlons. David has a doctorate management degree in organizational leadership as well as a graduate degree in psychology. He's the author of four books, which we will talk about during this conversation and tell you more about at the end. Thank you so much for being here, David. I'm glad you can make it.

[David]

I'm excited to be here.

[Shawna]

Yes, and I think this whole concept you have about amplifying people's weaknesses, tell me about this.

[David]

Well, I mean, it started as a personal experience, right? I was always in trouble when I was a kid because I couldn't sit still and be quiet and do what I was told. And then as an adult, I became a professional speaker, and I realized, wait a second, people are paying me to stand up, not to sit down. They're paying me to talk and not to be quiet, and they're paying me to run my own business, not to do what other people tell me to do. So I learned that my weaknesses were strengths and that I shouldn't have spent most of my life trying to fix them. And all those well-intentioned people who were trying to help me were wrong, and I should actually be turning up the volume on those characteristics instead. And once I realized what it was doing for my life, I got passionate about helping other people see that their weaknesses are probably strengths and that sometimes the things that the well-intentioned people around them are trying to show them about how they need to get better are actually making them worse and actually keeping them from becoming the best version of themselves. And so I'm just passionate about the topic, passionate about what it can do for people, for families, for relationships, for children, for organizations. Yeah, it's my life's work.

[Shawna]

It's amazing. And now the title of one of your books is Pink Goldfish. Tell me more about Pink goldfish in that title and how it ties in.

[David]

So Freak Factor is the book that started it all about how weaknesses were strengths. And my friend is in marketing, and he's also an author, and he said, hey, he's got a series of these books called goldfish. So it's like blue goldfish and yellow goldfish and green goldfish, and they're on all sorts of different topics around organizational effectiveness. He said, I want to do a marketing one and on differentiation, and I want it to be based on your concept, but for businesses instead of for people. And so it became pink goldfish. And the reason it's pink goldfish is because I'm well known for my pink. So, you see, my wedding ring is pink. I actually have pink tattoos now so that no one can ever accuse me of not wearing pink. I forgot. Oh, wait, here.

[Shawna]

Got it built in.

[David]

I forgot to switch. So I have pink glasses, and my car is pink. My triathlon bike is pink, and my helmets are pink, and my suits are pink, and my shoes are pink, and my socks are pink. My watchband only isn't pink because I recently got a new one, and sometimes it takes a little while for the new watch bands to come out in the colors that I need. And that was an example of sort of what I talk about. Like, I have all daughters, and so I make these jokes about how living with all women in my house is turning me into a woman. So I started wearing some pink as a representation of that, but also as a way to challenge people's perceptions of what's right, what's normal, what's masculine and feminine. People will say, you know, pink isn't a man's color when you do a gender reveal. Pink is for girls and blue is for boys. And so I want to be practicing what I'm preaching as I tell people to be different and to stand out and to be unique, that I'm doing the same. It's not fair to stand up there in khakis and a light blue polo shirt telling people to be weird. And so it's just a way to demonstrate that I believe what I'm saying. And so, yeah, pink has become, I mean, to the point that when I did my first Iron Man, instead of being impressed, some people online were like, no pink? Like when they saw me cross the finish line. And if I ever post a picture of any kind on any kind of social media and it doesn't have some kind of pink, people are like, it's all a lie. We thought we thought you were someone else.

[Shawna]

You're known for it.

[David]

It's a great way to be memorable by going against kind of the norms. And that's why the book is called The Freak Factor, because to flaunt your weaknesses, to be willing to be yourself in a world that wants to shame you into being what they want from you, it's going to make you different. It's going to make you unusual and been taught that normal is good, so that different is bad. And even when we don't teach people directly that different is bad, we teach people that normal is good so consistently that you would have to assume that different is bad. And so it's just a way to live what I'm talking about and show people that I'm the primary customer for this. Right? I'm not selling this. This is something that I'm living, and as I see it working effectively in my life, I get more passionate about sharing it with other people.

[Shawna]

That's very exciting, and I love it. So the iteration of the work with kids kind of came a little bit later in your publications. So tell me more about how that transition was. Is this something you realized from the beginning, and then it naturally evolved to that?

[David]

Well, most speaking engagements, as you can imagine, aren't in front of children, right? That's not the audience. They don't run conferences. They don't run events. So the only way to really speak to kids would be at schools. And I wasn't particularly like a school speaker. There are some people like that who are like middle school speakers or something like that. That's sort of the last thing I would have anticipated. I became a college professor precisely because I wanted my summers off, but I didn't want to deal with small children. Right. I didn't think I'd be effective in that environment. So what would happen is I would go to these events, and sometimes I remember one time, it was very specific, and I think this is a good explanation. It was an event for people who were leaders of healthcare companies, and the people who organized it were very specific. They're like, we want this to be about business and managing people and making them more engaged and productive. This is about leadership. This is about making your company more effective. So I did the presentation. What are the ways that seeing your employees weaknesses or strengths, can make people more engaged and more productive and improve teamwork and all those kinds of things? And those are all legitimate benefits of it. It was no problem to do it that way, but they were just very specific, like, don't get up there to goof around or talk about personal value. This is about business success. And then the first person that came up to me was like, that's great. Yeah, I'll use that up my business. So I've got this kid with ADHD, so I've got this kid with Dyslexia, so I've got this kid with autism, so I've got this kid who's being bullied, so I've got this kid who doesn't fit in. So I've got this kid who also likes to wear a bunch of pink and they feel like they shouldn't. So I did a marketing presentation once. It was pre-paint goldfish, but it was the first time I did the Freak Factor for marketing, and it was for a marketing association and then at the Q and A and I didn't use any personal examples. I didn't use any, I used only business examples to illustrate all the points, which was very unusual. And the first question for the Q and A was, now, this applies to parenting too, right? Like, if this was true, it wasn't me being some kind of, like, genius or seeing the writing on the wall. It was like people consistently saying, what do you have for kids? What do you have for kids? What do you have for kids? What do you have for kids? So it actually did, I think it came pretty fast. I mean, I've updated the book and done some stuff with it, but I think it came pretty fast after their freak factor was like people just kept saying, I want something for kids. I want something for kids. Then a teacher used it with, like, second graders, and the kids totally got the concept, and they did this project where they drew pictures and talked about one of their weaknesses that might be a strength and how it might be true. And they put them on the wall in the hallway, and I'm like, Holy cow. If a second grader can get it, then this is a thing. And I wish someone would have told me when I was a kid. And if I can get the kids directly, that's everything else. Then when they become a manager, when they become a teacher, when they become a parent, when they become a spouse or a partner, right, they can use this. And I've talked to kids as young as five years old, kindergarten kids, and a lot of the events I do end up being family events. Now, again, even when it's entrepreneurs, they're like, can we bring spouses? Can we bring partners? Can we bring children? Can you do an event for the children? So I talk about Dumbo and I talk about Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, and I talk about these stories that we know and we teach the kids, and then we don't actually let them live like that as they grow up. We tell them, but we don't actually want them to learn the lesson of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, because as soon as they get weird, as soon as they have a red nose, as soon as something is wrong with them, as soon as they're unusual, we want them to be normal and fit in and follow the rules and all this kind of stuff. So we don't actually let kids live out the lessons of Dumbo had gigantic ears, but instead of going and getting it fixed at the plastic surgeon, dumbo learned how to fly. We're like, no, just go get fix it. Don't be a weirdo, and certainly don't have physical abnormalities if you can just get plastic surgery and make them go away. So we tell these stories and that we don't actually let kids live out the lessons that they learn in these stories.

[Shawna]

So when you came to the first book, in the first decision to have this be kind of your platform, you were a professor at that time. Did it kind of just click? This is when you realize, how did it happen? Tell me more.

[David]

No, not at all. I mean, it was just an idea. It wasn't a book right away. It was just I remember I was driving and listening to a book on strengths, and I never heard anything like that before. And I was like, Wait a second. They're talking about strengths. But I wonder if my biggest weakness might be a strength. It seems like when I stand up in front of people, they like, it when I stand up and talk. But my whole life, people were I mean, my parents called me “Motor Mouth” for most of my life because my problem was I couldn't shut up. I'm like, Wait. But people seem to like it. I seem to like it. It seems to be working. I wonder if my strength is a weakness. I wonder if my weakness is a strength. I wonder if they're connected somehow. And so when I was a professor, I would just like, initially, it was just like a 10-15 minutes thing. I wonder if weaknesses might be strengths. I wonder if this might be true. Here's a couple of examples. Do you have any examples? Does this resonate with you? And gradually it started growing, and then I started blogging about it and started finding examples. The more it's confirmation bias, but in a positive way. When you start thinking about something, you start noticing things you might not notice. So, Rudolph, I was like, holy cow. One of the most famous stories of all time is a freak factor story. The weakness turned out to be a strength. In the right situation, the weakness became a strength. People made fun of something that they told him to fix, and his parents were afraid. I even lost respect for Santa. He was ashamed that brewed up and his parents covered up the nose. So you start seeing this everywhere. And so I started blogging about it, and it was probably three years. Nobody paid attention to the blog. Nobody cared. But gradually, I had, like, 30,000, 40,000 words and stories and examples, and I'm like maybe this is a book. And as far as presentation, there was no idea. Like, this is my platform now? Absolutely not. When I was speaking, I was just people be like, can you talk about time management? I'm not sure. I know a bunch about time management. I studied time management. I can talk about that. Can you talk about stress management? Sure. So when I came up with this idea, I just added it to the menu on my website, right? I can talk about this and this and this and this. And there was, like, probably 15 things. And then what started happening was very quickly was like, can we get that freak factor thing? Sure. Can we get that freak factor thing? Sure. And then the next referral was, these people said that we need to hear you, but we need to hear you do the freak factor. Can you do the freak factor? So it's like I was being referred, but also the message was really the thing being referred, and I think I do a good job delivering it. I'm funny and all these kinds of things, but people don't say, like, can you just come in? Like, it's like a band that still has to play their song from 30 years ago. They're like, we don't care about your new stuff at all. Like, we don't care what you're interested in. We want you to do that thing. Right? So even though I think I do it well and there's not other people doing it, people don't just say, whatever you do, I'm sure we'll be fine because you're a good speaker. It's like, no, we want to hear that topic. We want to hear you talk about that thing, because we've heard that that thing is really valuable and important.

[Shawna]

So it really, really resonates.

[David]

Yeah. So there was no sense that it was my platform. I didn't even know if people would like it or think it was stupid or ridiculous. I mean, imagine your weaknesses are strengths. Flaunt your weakness, be unique. Meanwhile, here's five ways to improve your time management. Here are four ways to be a better leader. Those are things that everybody can look at and go, “our organization needs that” or “I want my people to be more productive” or whatever the be weird, freak out. Even the name. I didn't know the name. I was taking a chance. There is the freak factor. In fact, I've even had some people who tell me I can't say freak and freak is a bad word and that freak is going to hurt people's feelings. And they don't want people to see themselves as freaks, and they feel like that can be offensive and could I take that part out? So that was taking a chance to even call it the freak factor instead of “discovering your uniqueness” or just something much more neutral. So, yeah, no idea that it was going to become the platform. No intention behind it other than this seems to be helping me. I think it might help other people. I'd love to share it, but at that point, I didn't have like, the ability to say, like, you will listen to me talk about this. You're at the mercy of who's willing to hire you to do a presentation, and they control what they think is going to be valuable for their members or their employees to hear from you.

[Shawna]

Well, it sounds like the resonance, it starts as your work, being with organizations and leadership and management, but the resonance is so much deeper, and that's kind of why it's really stuck as people see in their families and their lives. And more personally, do you have a lot of people that come back and tell you the stories of how it's affected them?

[David]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the most meaningful part of what I do. People saying, hey, I went home and took my 16 year old son out to lunch and apologized. I know I did one in Australia. I did a whole series of them in Australia for the Department of Education and this woman came down afterwards and said, our daughter has dyslexia and now we have hope. One of the kids that got the kids book, one of the first kids that got the kids book, he was ten years old. His name was Leo. I'm still friends with his mom on Facebook and still get to watch him growing up, but she came back the next day after buying the book with this little scrap piece of, like, yellow legal pad paper. So he had ADHD and his mom's like, I think this book will be perfect for him. And she got in the book, and she came back the next day with a little note from him and said, thank you, Mr. Rendell, for the book. It made me feel better about who I am. Right?

[Shawna]

Yeah.

[David]

Because I was the first person who told him that his ADHD, the thing that people thought was the worst thing about him, might be the best thing about him, it might be the most positive thing about it, might actually make him successful instead of making unsuccessful. No one else was telling him that. In fact, everybody else was telling him the complete opposite. So, yeah, I mean, even just recently, I've been speaking to, I do a lot more school stuff now because, again, I'll talk to the entrepreneurs or to the business people or whatever, and then they say, you should talk at my kids’ school. You should talk for schools, you should talk in front of people at schools and stuff like that. So I just did a recent series to about four or five different schools in New Jersey, and one of them was a school sort of for special education, for kids with autism. And this woman was like, “I had to leave three times because I was crying so hard during your presentation, and this was so meaningful to me. And I think I was on the verge of potentially committing suicide last year, and if it wasn't for one of my disabled kids, right, whose uniqueness sort of cheered me up and their unique approach sort of lifted me up every single day, I might not have made it and your message just resonated with me so strongly and encouraged me in the work that I'm doing, that what I'm doing is really meaningful and is really the right thing to be doing.” I obviously need to make money. I need to pay the bills, I need to take care of my family. But this work is incredibly, when I say it's my life's work, I mean it in that sense, this is incredibly meaningful to me, and I think it's important work, and so I'm passionate about it beyond just like, “Hey, can you buy the book?” Or, “Hey, can you book me to speak?” it's “Hey, I want this to change.” In fact, the kids book is free YouTube. I just had somebody read it and turn it into a video.

[Shawna]

Yes.

[David]

And put it out there right away as soon as I made it because, well, for two reasons. Number one, I'm interested in the message being shared more than I am in the money being made. But second of all, because maybe some of the kids with ADHD aren't going to be able to read it. Some of the kids with autism aren't going to be able to read it. Some of the kids with Dyslexia aren't going to be able to read it. And so it makes it in a format, you know, why is it fair to put out a book that tells a kid who can't read very well that maybe it's okay in a form that requires them to read it? Right. So I wanted to make the format as accessible as possible, but I put that out on YouTube right away because that's how passionate I am about it. That's not a sneaky way to make money or something. There's no money to be made at all from having it on YouTube and then that way teachers can use it in their classrooms and people can share it in other ways.

[Shawna]

That's amazing. We're definitely going to make sure that link is on the show notes so people can be able to access that quickly and easily so that message can get to those kids. That's incredible. If you start in organizational development, you become a beacon for kids, which is a great road to end up on.

[David]

Yeah, well, I mean, I did start out, my Masters is in psychology, my undergraduate’s in psychology. When I started, I was in nonprofits helping kids with disabilities to get job opportunities, then moved on to help adults with disabilities to get job opportunities. In fact, that's part of where the freak factor came from is I was helping people with developmental disabilities to get job opportunities. And one of the biggest things I would notice is that there's a lot of different kinds of definitions and there are words that have come in and out of favor. But basically, the people that I dealt with, one of their primary characteristics was what's called sub-average intellectual functioning. IQs in the seventies and low eighties, the inability to do what we call jobs or tasks of daily living, like shaving yourself or getting yourself dressed. So these are people with significant barriers, especially to employment and just to accomplish some of the things that a lot of us take for granted. And so I was responsible for this program and part of it was helping people get jobs. And people would, my employees would take the person out to an interview and then they would come back and complain to me about the person and oh my gosh. They smell bad and they fell asleep during the interview and they weren't paying attention and their clothes were dirty. And I would listen as long as I could and then in my most sarcastic voice say “Yeah. It's weird. It's like they got a disability or something. It's like something's wrong with them. I wonder what it could be.” And it's like, how much genius does it take for you to tell me how disabled this person is? Like, we already know that. I've got a stack of papers. Since the day they were born, there's been this continuing file built on this person defining every possible thing that's wrong with them. And some of it isn't even correct, because once you start deciding something's wrong with somebody, you just keep looking. They do it wrong because you're going to interpret it in a negative way. I said, here's what matters. I said, what matters is what do they like and what are they good at? None of this stuff. That's where the genius comes in. You find something that this person can do and likes to do in this giant pile of things they can't do and don't like to do. That's genius. That's intelligence. That's insight. That's what I need from you. And so and we do this every day. We think we're so smart because we can pick what's wrong with our kids or pick what's wrong with our spouse or talk about what's wrong with our coworkers. And yet so I learned that that lesson I learned there is actually true for everyone. We all really only need to focus on what do we like and what we're good at. We all can't, really. I mean, one of the features of a developmental disability that makes it different, some other issues that people might have is it's just not fixable. There's no therapy. There's no program. There's no process. The limitation just is the limitation. Right. Those are static. You can't change those. So you have to deal with what you have. Yeah, I think that's more true for the rest of us than we think. I think. Oh, people say you can be anything you want to be if you just want it bad enough and try hard enough, and that sounds so encouraging. And motivational speaking is like music. There's no limits. That's total nonsense. And that actually traps people and makes people feel poorly more than it encourages them. Because if I could be a nuclear physicist and be in the International Space Station right now, then I'm a huge failure because I'm not. If I could be a professional football player and making $27 million if I just had wanted it bad enough and tried hard enough, then I'm a failure because I'm not, right? And so I'm six foot six. I'll never be a jockey and ride the horse to victory in the Kentucky Derby, right? Anybody who tells me that's an important dream or go for it, and then we'll make a movie about how hard you tried, even though you failed. That's total nonsense. Right. So I think what we need to do is help people tap into who they are and build on it instead of telling people everything out there is a potential option for you. It's not. I was so skinny. I was 145 lbs when I graduated from high school and I was six foot four. I wanted to play football. I dreamed about it my whole life. I wasn't even allowed to play junior high football. There were girls who could beat me up. Right? There wasn't an opportunity that was available to me. Someone coming along and told me, Dave, there's no limits. And people would, oh, just drink a shake, just go lift some weights. There's no amount of anabolic steroids that would have turned my body into the body of a football player. And so we really do people a disservice when we don't acknowledge that there are limitations. Right?

[Shawna]

Yeah.

[David]

But George Elliott said every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. And so what I show people is that the things I can't do foreclose certain opportunities so that I can focus on those things that I can do and move in that particular direction. I don't think there's limits on our happiness, on our fulfillment, on our impact, on the meaning we can have in life, but there are certain specific things that we are just not designed for, that we are not made for. And that needs to be OK instead of no. If you just pushed it, you could make it happen.

[Shawna]

Yeah. No, that's so true. And I love it that you found those places in yourselves kind of naturally and then realized, wait a minute, these are all the things that people said were a problem most of my life, and these are actually the gifts that got me where I'm at.

[David]

Well, and that's what's the important part is, what you said, I found it naturally. So I stumbled across it, I accidentally found that my weaknesses were strengths and that's why I'm so passionate about this, because most people won't. Most people aren't going to accidentally have this realization. I didn't even know professional speaking was an occupation until somebody said, ‘Hey, can we pay you to do this talk?’ when I was volunteering to do some other work for the nonprofit that I was doing. So the number of things that had to go right for me to discover this and to have it transform my life is just absolutely insane. And so I know that that's unlikely for most people. And so I've taken it on as my responsibility to try to share it with as many people as possible. Because not only are most people not going to stumble across it naturally, it's not a message that most people are sharing. 

And in fact, the message that people will share is, ‘Be careful. Some of your strengths, if you overuse them, might be weaknesses.’ And then if you came along and said, ‘Oh, so does that mean that all of my weaknesses are potentially strengths?’ Ooh, don't be a weirdo people. There’s tons of people. If you Google ‘Can my strengths be weaknesses?’ It's coaches, and leadership folks, and all sorts of advice givers that are like ‘Ooh, be careful. Oh, you know, you love to be active. Don't get too active.’ That's why this is called amplify. ‘You love to be organized? Don't get too organized. Don't take it too far and let it become a weakness. Don't get too obsessed and let it become a problem.’ I'm like, no, that's where success happens, is session amplification. They called me motor mouth. Don't talk too much. And it's like, no, people give me money to talk to me. 

Right now, there's an absolute flood of inquiries, especially since the pandemic is over, because people are having events again. And it's just like, ‘Dave, can you speak on this?’ I mean, next week, I can't do a two day event in one city because I'm doing a two day event in a different city. Last week, I gave a keynote to one of the friends of mine because I was already speaking at one place, and I couldn't be speaking in another place. So I pay my bills, I send my kids to college. I pay for my house. I bought a house for my parents with the money that I make doing the thing that people spend their whole life telling me to stop doing. And I don't do it part-time. I do it full-time sometimes. I do it every single day of the week. It isn't in the moderation, the reduction, the elimination of these characteristics, it's in the amplification of them that we find success. And that's one of the lessons that we just do not hear. And in fact, we hear the opposite so much. ‘Well, be careful if you really get into that, if you really go too far, if you really do it too much.’ And that's why I call it amplify, because I want to encourage people to go in the opposite direction. So you can see I'm passionate, I get fired up about this.

[Shawna]

I love passion. I love getting that's definitely something that's very welcome here, David, so keep that up. People need to hear this and be reminded of this. Do you have examples of other people you've heard stories about or worked with at all, what some of their weaknesses are that they've been able to really amplify and do amazing things with?

[David]

Oh, I mean, that's everything that I talk about. So one of my favorite examples is dyslexia. Obviously, you have dyslexia. You struggle to read and struggle to write, which means you're going to struggle in school. And so then we're taught ‘Oh, if you struggle in school, you're going to struggle in life.’ 

So they were studying millionaires in the United Kingdom, which is one of a good example of a positive study, right? Instead of saying, ‘What's wrong with people? And how do we fix it?’ It was like, ‘Hey, these people are millionaires. How did they get there? How can we learn?’ And again, we don't tend to do that in medicine. We don't tend to do that in psychology. So anyway, they discovered that 50% of the millionaires in their study have dyslexia.

[Shawna]

Oh, wow.

[David]

That's surprising.

[Shawna]

Yes.

[David]

We would tend to think that you wouldn't see a single millionaire that had dyslexia. And when it's just a sample of people, you didn't have every person in the society in your study, right? Then they were doing a study in the United States of entrepreneurs and discovered that 35% of the entrepreneurs had dyslexia. 

Ingvar Kamprad, the billionaire founder of Ikea had dyslexia. Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of the Virgin series of companies, had dyslexia. And so that when some people say, ‘Okay, that doesn't prove anything. Those people fought through their dyslexia, learned how to read like good, normal people, and then they had success.’ But Richard Branson, they actually asked him how his dyslexia affected your success? And he said, strangely, ‘I think my dyslexia has helped.’ So what he's saying, and science is starting to back it up, is that people with dyslexia don't have broken brains. They have different brains. And the same brain that caused them to struggle in school causes them to succeed in real life at a higher level than most of the rest of us.

Well, there's a guy named Paul Orfalea. He had Dyslexia and ADHD. He got kicked out of four schools, and then when he would get jobs, he got fired on the first day. Then he went to work for his own dad. Then he got fired by his own dad, and then he started his own business. He built it into a multinational corporation. He called it Kinkos, and he sold it to FedEx for $2.4 billion. Right? Just that is and the reason I like to use more extreme versions of a weakness, like a diagnosable disability, is because sometimes people are like, ‘Well, you don't understand. I'm really messy.’ You're like, look, if dyslexia has an upside. if a thing that makes you illiterate has an upside of a thing that makes you fail school and be unable to accomplish the basics of reading and writing of school, and you can be a billionaire? Not even though you have dyslexia, but because you have dyslexia? Paul Orfalea is famous for saying, ‘I think everyone should have dyslexia’, right? They asked him, if you could have a pill that would cure your dyslexia, would you take it? And he said, ‘Absolutely not.’ So I have example after example. 

You know, Michael Phelps had ADHD. You call them hyperactive at school, when he's in the pool, nobody calls him hyperactive. They call him the champion. And that's one of the key lessons of the concept, is that his mom didn't give him medicine to make him successful at school. She put him in a situation, athletics, that rewarded a high level of activity instead of punishing a high level of activity. She didn't change him, she changed his environment. Right?

[Shawna]

Yeah.

[David]

And so that's one of the key lessons of the Freak Factor, is that we don't find success by fitting in. We find the right fit. And the right fit is a situation that puts the spotlight on the best things about us instead of the worst things about us. Both pieces are always there, but when I'm in school, I'm in trouble for talking too much and being disruptive. When I'm on stage, I'm praised and literally given money for doing the same thing. 

In fact, there's been times I did a talk recently in New Jersey, and they had no air conditioning. It was like 90 degrees. And then you put a bunch of people, 400 people in a room, and it was just sweating. I've never just the sweats just dripping down my face, and it wasn't because their air conditioning was broken. They didn't have any. So I literally made 20, like improv jokes about the heat throughout the presentation that actually had everybody rolling. I was disrupting my own presentation, right? I still have that same instinct, but now I'm getting paid for it instead of punished for it. And so the alignment is really the crucial thing. If you put me in certain situations, I would look just as bad as when I was a kid.

[Shawna]

Yeah.

[David]

If you put me in corporate situations; if you made me work for somebody who was difficult; if you made me play politics; if you made me keep my mouth shut; if you made me be dishonest about what I was really feeling and say what somebody else wanted me to say; sooner or later I'd break down, and it would be a real problem. I'm not a better person. I'm in situations that reward me for being myself, and I have the privilege to stay away from situations that don't require me to be someone else. And that's, I think, the really, really crucial part of this whole thing, is finding that alignment. So I love to tell stories about people who found alignment, and helped other people find alignment because I think that's the crucial thing.

[Shawna]

I love that. ‘Situations that reward you for being yourself’, I love that. I think that's a very crucial key takeaway from this. This is amazing. I love it.

[David]

Well, yeah. We talked about, at the beginning, self-care. I think that's the ultimate self-care if you can see it. For me right now, it's 6:00 where I live. I've had a full day of work, and I think you can tell I'm not exhausted, I'm not worn out, I'm not struggling. If anything, the reality is, when I'm done talking to you, my energy level will be higher than when it started. And how many people wish they had work. That's their ultimate self-care. 

If you could go to work and get filled up instead of going to work and getting emptied out. It's not about the Starbucks, it's not about a massage. It's not about a nap. And we talked about the other part, meaning. If you could do something that was meaningful and energizing, something that was enjoyable to you and had purpose and meaning, that's the ultimate self-care. You can't ever be burned out when you're doing that. You can't get overwhelmed when you're doing that because when your work is filling you up, where's the burnout going to come from? Right? Where's the ‘Oh, that's too much’? 

If you told me, ‘Dave, you need to immediately after this, I have a different podcast, and it's for kids, and this message is so important, I need you to do that.’ I wouldn't be like, ‘No, I'm kind of tired and I just can't be bothered.’ I'd be like, ‘Sign me up!’ instead of ‘No, I have to manage my mental health, and I'm not doing more than what we agreed to, and you're not going to push me around.’ Right. 

I don't need to meter my energy and my time. If what I'm doing is filling me up and doing something that's valuable, that should be the goal not to—I think that's what they said. The goal is to have work like you don't need a vacation from or whatever. And that might sound unrealistic to a lot of people, but I do; I have work I don't need a vacation from. In fact, my work, as we talked about, is a lot of travel is often a form of vacation. Right? 

And the most important part, if I went on a trip to do a speech and they canceled the speech but told me they'd pay me and everything, but they just didn't need me to do the speech, I'd be bummed out. That's the whole reason I'm there. ‘You don't get to speak to these 400 kids. You don't get to speak to these 400 teachers. You don't get to do the thing that you love almost more than anything else on Earth. We just don't need it today. Here's your check. Have a nice day.’ Can you imagine being upset when you didn't get to do your job? That is a possibility. If we can understand that our weaknesses, our strengths, and then find that alignment, find that situation that rewards us for who we are.

[Shawna]

That's incredible. That where was I thought to transition to, about the selfcare spotlight, and you just did a beautiful spotlight. That your selfcare is to be in alignment is to be using what is your strength, which others saw as a weakness, to really be able to make a difference, to be stepping out and doing that.

[David]

Well, let's talk about that as it relates to self awareness. I think in order to do self care, you have to have self awareness. And if you don't understand yourself, you don't know what self-care would look like. Maybe there's a Starbucks for somebody else. Maybe it's a quiet walk. But for somebody else, maybe it's an activity with a bunch of people. That's what's going to fill them up, right? It's totally different. So you can't go borrow somebody else's self care. 

But even for me, one of my strengths, weaknesses, I don't like to be told what to do, which means I like to be in charge. I like to be in control, not of you, but of me. I don't like to have people in charge of what I'm up to, telling me when I work and when I don't work and what I can do. So, for example, one of the things that I do that's a great form of self-care is I get enough sleep every night. Because I get to decide when I sleep and when I wake up and what I have to do, because I run my own life and I run my own business. And like we talked about, I'll sleep on the plane if I need to. I'll take a nap if I need to. But if you're just like, ‘Hey,’ I'm at work, and, ‘Hey, boss lady, I'm just going to go ahead and knock off for about 45 minutes.’ You know,  just put my head down on the desk. I just need it. That's just part of my rhythm as I get tired in the afternoon. But I know if I can get a nap, that's going to bring my energy level up, it's better than caffeine. It's better than a five-hour energy. And then I basically feel like the day started over and I'll be back to being super productive. So I'm just going to check out for a little while. You don't get to do that. You just don't get to do that. 

So part of it is, can you build a life where you have permission to run on your rhythms? You have permission to stay up late. You have permission to get up early. You have permission to take a nap when you need to. You have permission to say, ‘You know what? I need to get out and get moving. I can't sit around anymore. I need to go for a walk. I need to exercise. I need to work out, I need a snack.’

Or do you feel constrained? ‘I can't, because that's not acceptable around here. I can't take care of myself because the people around me define that as a negative behavior.’ And so that's part of what it is for me. I've created a life where I have enough control, which is one of the things I really, really value. That I can take care of myself in the ways that I decide without needing somebody's permission to rest or to take a walking break or to, you know, I'll do phone calls while I walk around or something like that. And maybe somebody else, ‘You can't do that. You need to be on Zoom. You need to be in the office. You need to be at your desk. You need to be touching the mouse and letting us know that you're online.’ I don't have to do that. 

And so can you create a situation where you're allowed to take care of yourself? Right. And where you know what that care would be like? And I think that's the thing. When you don't have control for too long, you forget what you really wanted to begin with because you haven't had it in so long. When someone says do what you want, you're like, ‘I don't know.’ You got to step back. ‘I've had to deny that for so long. I don't know what it is anymore.’

[Shawna]

Yes, that self-awareness might be that first step. That for self care is understanding what you need to care for yourself and what in your environment is preventing that so you can find a way to get back to that. 

[David]

Yeah.

[Shawna]

I like that. And that is something because we are big on self care. We actually have a line of coloring books and it's called “The Color of Grit”. And we actually, as a thank you for all of our guests for being here, we offer you a free coloring book. He did a nice little cheer with his hands. So you guys missed it, that was awesome. So we have one that's already out. It's called “Vintage Mermaid” and “Magnificent Ocean”. And one that's coming out that's called “You Got This”, which is funny and inspirational quotes. And you get to choose which of those two you would like.

[David]

Well, I was going to go Mermaid because of the pink and because of my daughters, but I think I'm way more excited about Inspirational Quotes, to be honest with you.

[Shawna]

Well because you are a talker and quotes and, you know, it all kind of gets together. So I kind of like that. Alright!

[David]

Alright, I love me some quotes.

[Shawna]

Alright, when that comes out, you will be one of the first people to get a copy of it when it comes out. So “You've Got This” is what we will be sending you as a thank you because we value you taking time to be with us today and sharing with all of us. So thank you for that.

[David]

I love it.

[Shawna]

And so for all of our guests, or all of our friends who are out there listening to us today, what is something that they can kind of walk away with and apply tomorrow or today to kind of what do you think is a high-level thing they need to take away from our conversation today to apply to their life?

[David]

Well, you can't do anything else until you know how your strengths and weaknesses are connected, right? So there's a free assessment right on my website where you pick your strengths from a list of 52. You pick your weaknesses from a list of 52 and then it shows you how they're connected. So it all starts with an assessment, right? It all starts with an  assessment, and that's what Amplify’s going to be. It's going to be a more advanced version of that assessment. But right now, it's just a three-page PDF, and it's also in the book. And you just go on there, pick your strengths, you pick your weaknesses, and you go to page three, and it's like, hey, guess what? Persistence, your strength and stubbornness, your weakness, they're the same thing, right? It's the same thing, and you can't be more persistent and less stubborn at the same time. So that's where it starts. 

You can't find alignment unless you know what you're trying to align, right? So it all starts with self-awareness. So I think any assessment is good. I don't care if you take the disk, you take the MBTI. But again, be careful when it tells you, ‘Okay, now we know this is true about you. Now let's fix it’, right? ‘Let's work on the downside. Let's balance you out. Let's make you more well-rounded. Let's not have any deficiencies. Let's not have any imperfections.’ Start with the assessment, but just don't let them give you that. Don't take that advice of fixing it and adapting and adjusting. Start thinking about, ‘Okay, if this is who I am now, how do I find that alignment?’ But it all starts with assessment. 

So I think starting with assessment, that's the place to start. Get to know who you are. Be really clear on how those weaknesses and strengths are connected, and you'll oftentimes find that you don't have to do the assessment. I do an activity in my presentation where I just tell them a bunch of bad things about one of my daughters, and then I tell them to tell me the strengths when I'm done, and they do. So, and even just when I started, especially when I would do it on Zoom, it was hilarious, because I'd go—because in real life, people have to wait till the end, and then they raise their hand, and they tell strengths. And this is after, like, five or six minutes in Zoom. I would just say, ‘My daughter is difficult.’ And as soon as I would say that, people would jump on the chat and just start typing in things that they thought were awesome. 

So it really is if you just start doing it, if you just start asking, ‘Okay, every weakness has a corresponding strength. That's what Dave believes. I don't know if I believe that yet. Let me start looking.’ Just look at your kids. And when you're frustrated with something, ask yourself, is there an upside? When you're frustrated with your spouse or your partner, the thing that you're frustrated with is probably the reason you married them. You just don't realize it's the same thing.

[Shawna]

Yes! Yes.

[David]

You're mad they're gone all the time, and they work so hard. And when somebody asks you, ‘Why did you marry them?’ You go, ‘Because he's a hard worker. I really respected them for that.’ And now you're like, ‘You're a workaholic. You suck.’ And you're like, ‘Wait a second.’ And that doesn't mean there doesn't need to be some discussion there. But recognizing that the weakness is a strength of the thing you're frustrated with is also a positive characteristic. Meanwhile, somebody else is upset because their spouse is a lazy piece of garbage. Why? When you ask them why they marry them, they said, oh, ‘Well, they're so relaxed and easy going, they don't let anything bother them, and they just go through life and they just take it as it comes.’ And then now you're like, ‘Hey, can you ramp it up and get worried and get focused on your career and be a little more anxious?’ And I was like, Wait, that's not what you signed me up for. That's not what you loved about me. So once you start looking for it, you'll start to see it. The assessment can help. But even if you just start with that, walk through your day every day, and every time you see a weakness, ask yourself what the other side might be and you'll find yourself discovering it. It's a fairly obvious thing in reverse, but it's just something nobody is really talking about.

[Shawna]

No, that's brilliant. I love it. I think there's a lot to do with that. So everyone here can start doing that as they want for their day. There's an assessment to help. We'll make sure we have that link in the show notes. But just in general, as you're trying to find yourself, finding challenges, even in yourself, when you're getting frustrated with yourself, to do the flip side and with your partner and your kids to see what it is, that's awesome. I love it. And what is the best place to find you?

[David]

drendall.com. So, d-r-e-n-d-a-l-l.com. I couldn't get davidrendall.com, and then somebody asked me one time, why is your website Dr. End All? They thought it was like euthanasia. You win some and you lose some. And that was like the old system for email, right? Was your first initial and your last name. Right? So I did the best I could. And then it turned out to be a Jack Kevorkian website, Google Search.

[Shawna]

Oh, I love that.

[David]

You forget it's “Dr. End All”. But also, if you Google David Rendall, if you Google the Freak Factor, I'm the first thing that comes up. The funny thing about that, I'm the first thing that comes up. The pictures are me, the books are me, the website is me, the videos are me. And then it says, I was born in 1940 and I'm married to some lady named Matilda and I'm from England. So there's a David Rendall opera singer, and it pulls some of his information and combines it with all of mine. So every one of the other Google search results is correct, but that little box they create where it kind of has your personal info is mixed up with some 70-year-old guy from England who used to sing opera.

[Shawna]

Oh, you're not going to sing opera for us?

[David]

If you just Google David Rendall or Google the Freak Factor, it's the first thing that comes up. I'm right there in the search results.

[Shawna]

That's funny. Yeah, because that's how I found it, was the searches, so I definitely didn't know about the Dr. End All, but that is a good way to remember it.

[David]

Dr. End All.

[Shawna]

We will remember that you were Dr. End All. And finding you on LinkedIn is also a good way to connect with you as well.

[David]

My LinkedIn and Facebook. Yep.

[Shawna]

Awesome. And the books are “The Four Factors of Effective Leadership”, “The Freak Factor”, “The Freak Factor for Kids”, which is also on YouTube. And we also have that link and “The Pink Goldfish 2.0”, which lends towards marketing a little bit.

[David]

Marketing and strategy. Yeah, it's like the business applications of what we talked about.

[Shawna]

That is incredible. So thank you so much for being here, David. This has been a wonderful conversation. I think there's a lot of value in it, and I think our audience is going to get a lot out of it. So thank you.

[David]

Thank you. I had a lot of fun.

[Shawna]

If you're interested in getting your copy of one of our coloring books, just Google “The Color of Grit” or look it up on Amazon. We also have downloadable pages available. You can find more about that on our website, thegritshow.com.

Self-care is most important. After all, you're the only one of you that this world has got, and that means something. 


Are you a warrior who is a little weary? Do you work in a high stress profession? Someone who's had a before and an afterlife carved through your life? If so, then I'm here to tell you about a podcast that was made for you. I'm Shauna Rodriguez, host of The Grit Show and someone who can identify. Like many of you, I'm ready for the other side. 

The Grit Show is your place for self care and learning, room to breathe and live a life with a little more ease. Come laugh with us, cry if you need to at thegritshow.com or on your favorite podcast platform, The Grit Show: Growth on Purpose.