Bob Burg reveals what the essence of influence is for each person as he shares with host Mike Domitrz in this thought-provoking conversation. Find out what the “others” focus is.
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Danny’s BIO:
Danny Clarke is a leading trainer, coach and speaker in the online space. He has personally coached over 2600 clients in less than 2 years. He is a freedom guy and spends his free time with his wife and 3 kids.
Links to Danny:
Books Danny Recommends:
- Key Person of Influence – Dan Priestley
- Exactly What To Say – Phil Jones
- How To make Friends and Influence people – Dale Carnegie
YOUR HOST: Mike Domitrz is the founder of The Center for Respect where he helps educational institutions, the US Military and businesses of all sizes create a culture of respect throughout their organizations. From addressing consent to helping corporations build a workplace free from fear (reducing sexual harassment and helping employees thrive by treating them with respect every day), Domitrz engages audiences by sharing skill sets they can implement into their lives immediately. As an author, trainer, keynote speaker and coach, Mike Domitrz loves working with leaders at all levels. Learn more at http://www.CenterForRespect.com
READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPTION of the EPISODE HERE:
Mike Domitrz:
Welcome to the Respect podcast. I’m your host, Mike Domitrz from mikespeaks.com where we help organizations of all sizes, educational institutions, and the U.S. military create a culture of respect. And respect is exactly what we discuss on this show, so let’s get started. This week we have Dan Clarke that is founder, speaker and coach. He helps small business owners grow their businesses online. Dan is a dad of three kids, world traveler, and happily married. Welcome, though, thank you so much for joining us, Dan.
Danny Clarke:
Hi. I appreciate being asked to jump onto the podcast. I’ve heard some great things, and, yeah, look forward to speaking to you.
Mike Domitrz:
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Here we talk a lot about respect. How does respect play a role when it comes to loyalty to someone’s clients and business and to their staff because we hear out there the customer is always number one. Now, there’s more pushback about we got to be careful of that. So how does respect play in when it comes to clients, customers, and those that we employ, staff?
Danny Clarke:
I love that question. I love that you spoke about loyalty as well. My two biggest personal values are loyalty and respect. They’re super high for me. I think what I love about them because a lot of people tend to say integrity is more important than loyalty. I prefer loyalty and respect is because I think it’s more of a selfless act because it is about others as opposed to myself. I think that as you kind of jump into business and start to have a bit of success, and things start to go pretty well for yourself, it does very much become about serving other people. To me that is very much serve and leadership, so it’s huge for us. It’s huge for what we do inside of our organization. It’s huge for what we do in terms of what we coach and teach people. I think it’s just that little bit that we can do to try and make the world a little bit of a better place.
Mike Domitrz:
And when you say it’s a difference of being self-focused, is it integrity is do I have integrity? Loyalty is about others. So you’re saying that when it comes to integrity, people who tend to think do I integrity, too, it’s just do I have integrity versus loyalty I have a loyalty to that person, that organization, that entity?
Danny Clarke:
I think so. Yeah.
Mike Domitrz:
So then with that, how does respect and loyalty, how do they go hand-in-hand?
Danny Clarke:
The key thing with loyalty and respect is it’s kind of a two-way street, right? They kind of fit into one another because when you have loyalty, it tends to generate that mutual respect between people. I think it’s very hard to respect someone who doesn’t have a loyalty to themselves, loyalty to their goals, loyalty to their team. So I think it’s much of the same really. I think they’re very, very exclusive to one another.
Mike Domitrz:
Well, let’s start with how do you define loyalty?
Danny Clarke:
Well, for me, loyalty is something which is you doing an act, or you speaking about a person, or doing something for a person in a certain way, regardless of whether somebody knows about it or not.
Mike Domitrz:
Very interesting because usually when we hear of loyalty, people will say, “Oh, it’s commitment, dedication to a person, organization.” How loyal am I to you based on weird things like we’ll have this test to see how loyal they are. This will test their loyalty. Do they stay with us, or do they go somewhere else? Where what you’re describing is very different.
Danny Clarke:
Because I think it’s very easy to have surface level loyalty, almost like show loyalty, oh, I’m going to write that thing on social media because it looks like I’m being loyal to this person, or I’m going to say this thing in a meeting when in actual fact behind the scenes they’re showing up in a completely different way. Yeah, I think there are different types of loyalty. People sometimes are in our life for a reason, some people for a season, and whatever, but I think true loyalty is being committed to somebody in that way for the long-term. It’s the good and the bad. It’s the acceptance of that. It is knowing that that person will properly make mistakes as you will make mistakes, but still remaining loyal to that person.
Mike Domitrz:
Well, and I love that you said the good and the bad because a lot of times when we think of organizations, or at the business level, or the corporate level, people go, “Yeah, I’m loyal as long as they don’t screw up too much.” Well, then that as long as is not loyalty, right? There’s a precursor there. True loyalty wouldn’t have that, right? No matter what, I’m going to be there. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to employ you. If you are not following our core values, you’re not doing your job, I can actually fire you then still be loyal to you as a person, right? In theory?
Danny Clarke:
Yeah, in theory, but I think of loyalty is like I have three kids. I’m loyal to my kids. It doesn’t matter what they do in their life. It doesn’t matter how much they mess up. I’m still loyal to them. I’m always going to love them. I’m always going to be there for them. I’m always going to pick up the pieces, whatever they do. I think that’s a great way to lead an organization, to lead a business because the people who have always been my best members of staff have been the people who have always done something terribly wrong at some point. They made a huge cock-up. They’ve done the wrong thing, or they said the wrong thing, but by giving them the opportunity to make it right, I think it builds that trust and builds respect. It is to me loyalty of we’re in this together because if I do something wrong in the future, I’m also giving you permission to give me a second chance as well. It’s a two-way street.
Mike Domitrz:
Yes, and that’s what’s beautiful about it. So how do you define respect?
Danny Clarke:
For me, respect it’s almost more like a feeling as I suppose to an action. When I tend to think of it at a deeper level, as in when I feel wanted, trusted, needed, I think respect is very much an emotive subject. It’s very hard to literally describe what respect is unless you’re kind of giving people almost like a score chart that they have to achieve. Often people say that I don’t feel respected. So I think it’s hard to kind of constitute what it is, but I think respect in terms of a feeling tends to be coming from people having a sense of knowing, and trust, and contentment with that person, which I think comes a little bit with depth of trust.
Danny Clarke:
I think that’s how a lot of it comes, for example, my wife, I respect her because I know, for example, she’s on holiday at the moment with the girls on a yoga retreat. I trust her implicitly. So, therefore, I have respect for her. I know that she has respect for me because I know that there wouldn’t be anything there. It doesn’t even come onto my radar. To me that’s respect. It’s a feeling that I have of trust.
Mike Domitrz:
I love it, and speaking of your spouse, you work side-by-side together?
Danny Clarke:
We do, yeah. We try our best.
Mike Domitrz:
Yeah. What are the techniques, strategies, approaches you two take for helping that thrive in a way that can be respectful? Because that can be tough for a lot of couples. It’s not a good choice for some couples like you. Some couples have loving relationships, they shouldn’t work together. There are other people who have loving relationships, who it works beautifully for them to work together. So how did you figure that out? What are paths that you’ve taken along the way that have taught you lessons?
Danny Clarke:
Well, the one thing I know is that it’s impossible to have two alpha characters. Somebody has to be alpha. Someone has to be B. You can’t have two people competing for almost like the top role, which is kind of weird when you’re in a marriage, and you’re equal, and you both bring your skills to the table, but still, I think in business, especially, when you’re working as a couple, one person has to take a leader role. I think the key with it is is communication between us because, for example, at the moment I’m leading a lot more than my wife, but I don’t want to always be leading. There’ll be her chance, and there’s been times in the past where she has taken a more dominant role in the business because it would be serving her strengths better than mine.
Danny Clarke:
So I think that’s the key is to kind of drop the ego. It’s really easy to have an ego in a relationship, and bring that into business of I think I’m bad. No, I think I’m better. And it just leads to a battle, a competition, but not in a good way, but I think it’s giving somebody that opportunity to say, hey, you stepped forward. I’m backing you. I think you’re the person to lead this. It’s that little bit of a nod of respect to say you’re the person. I am now going to do my job in the best way possible by being supportive to you as opposed to being in that secondary position and thinking, hey, you’re a bit of a dick. I wish I was doing this where it’s not all in on that. And that for us has worked really, really well for us where one’s led, but the other has been very supportive in that more secondary role.
Mike Domitrz:
Well, and I get what you’re saying. I can hear people listening to you. What do you mean? They both can’t be equals in that role, but there does come a point where if you disagree, somebody has to have the final say. If there’s only two people, somebody’s got to be one of those two people. If you don’t have that established when it comes to this the final say is person A, but when it comes to this the final say is person B. If you don’t have that established, yes, it can cause a lot of rift.
Danny Clarke:
Yeah. It comes down to those agreed commitments. You need to agree those beforehand so it then reduces any friction of, well, whose opinion is more important? If you’ve agreed beforehand, when emotion is involved, you’re going to be the person that leads this project, well, then it rests with that person who makes the decision. Whether it’s right or wrong it doesn’t matter, that person is leading. If they choose to ask for help, well, then that’s cool, right? Because there’s nothing worse then somebody offers you advice when you don’t want it. That’s the key really is when it’s in a non emotional state, very much a logical business conversation then, yeah, it allows for that future conversation to be less stressful, should we say?
Mike Domitrz:
Yes. And you travel a lot with your kids. Are you running your business while you’re doing that, or are those separate?
Danny Clarke:
Yeah.
Mike Domitrz:
So you are, okay. So how does that work? That’s a unique discussion a lot of our listeners haven’t had before, which is traveling, working, and you have three kids, so how does that work for you?
Danny Clarke:
So our business is fully online. I mean, literally it’s a mobile phone and a laptop business. We have a team that work for us. We have employed staff, but they’re all remote workers. So we don’t have a central office base as such. In terms of how you make it work when you’re traveling, and you’re homeschooling, and you’re kind of doing all the things it just comes down to probably three things, which is huge discipline. Saying that you’re going to do something and making sure that you do the bloody thing. Second, you’ve got to be super organized. That was the hardest thing for me because I’ve always been a freedom kind of guy, so I’ve always kind of pushed back, and rebelled against routine, but, actually, once you commit to it you recognize how much more freedom it does give you.
Danny Clarke:
And the third thing is you can’t just schedule business stuff. You have to schedule family stuff, and husband and wife stuff, and downtime. It all needs to get put in there. You can’t just write a to-do list of I need to run my sales page, I need to do my email, I need to do this, blah, blah, blah, just business stuff and think, “Oh, I’ll just kind of fill in the family time around it.” It needs to be just as big, if not more so a priority when you’re actually planning your work, and planning your schedule across the next seven days, 30 days, however far in advance you need to go to make it work for you.
Mike Domitrz:
Yeah. People used to ask me, they’d see my schedule and be like, “Oh my gosh, you’re doing 40 events in three months. How are you doing that with kids?” We’d always say, “Well, look closely at the schedule.” What you’re going to see is that Mondays are all off because at that time my son had high school soccer games and they were Monday, Wednesday, so that would ensure I was at, at least, if not more than half the games. You got to be dedicated to that.
Danny Clarke:
Yeah. People laugh when I tell them that I have to schedule in a time to eat lunch with my wife, and I have to schedule in time to just spend with the kids and watch TV. It’s kind of a weird thing to schedule in, but if I don’t then I can find myself defaulting into work mode because it’s often easier. I find working easier than home life because three kids, they’re seven, five, and three, they’re a handful. There’s often times where I don’t want to have to perhaps do the bath and bed routine because I know that it’s probably going to be pretty crazy, and I’m maybe stressed with work that I need to do somewhere. So if it’s scheduled in, though, and I’m disciplined and committed to doing it, it takes the pressure off.
Danny Clarke:
Obviously, we didn’t always have three kids, we build them up over time. When you have one kid, maybe even two kids, you can quite easily try and do both at the same time. You can do laptop, [inaudible 00:13:00] for the kids. When you’ve got three, there is not a chance on this earth that you can do family and business at the same time. So it’s really a blessing for us to have three kids because it made us draw a very clearly defined line between work and family life, which turned out to be a total blessing for us.
Mike Domitrz:
I love it. Now, what do you think as you’ve been doing that, where do you think has been the most difficult aspect? Is it that idea that, no, I need to finish this right now. That’s scheduled for three o’clock, I need to get it, but this is so important. How do you avoid the trap of this is so important? The business is so important.
Danny Clarke:
Experience of knowing that the things actually couldn’t be that wrong, or go that badly if you just leave it another day or so. I mean, I’ve always been taught that you need to have urgency. It needs to get done straightaway. Actual fact, yes, urgency is important but not day-to-day. Yes, there are times where you have to push, but there are also times where you just have to maintain. Once you’ve been doing it for quite a while, we’ve done a few years now, you learn to kind of relax into it. You realize that one person that’s messaged you at 11 o’clock at night who needs to have an answer straightaway actually is okay if you message them tomorrow morning between nine and 10, which is when you scheduled your time to reply to clients, so it comes with experience.
Mike Domitrz:
Yeah. This is a really key one that a lot of people struggle with. I have this fire I have to get to right now. the fact is, if you weren’t in your email right now, you wouldn’t have saw the fire.
Danny Clarke:
Yeah. Building a team protects you.
Mike Domitrz:
Yeah. The person who emailed you didn’t know you were in front of your computer at that moment, checking email. They might even know you’re on your computer, but they didn’t know your email was up. So if you didn’t see it, they wouldn’t have known the difference, and you would have responded tomorrow, and that would have been just as soon as you saw it. So that’s this big thing we think everything’s a fire, right? Versus not too many things like a doctor has lives on the line, and if they don’t respond that’s very different. Very few of us are in that category.
Danny Clarke:
Totally agree. Having a team has been super helpful with that stuff as well because it’s just brought an extra layer of protection between me with the day-to-day running of things, which is where you tend to see the drama as opposed to having more of a bird’s eye, 20,000 feet view of the business. So it’s only fires are brought to you because it’s really important as opposed to it’s just a little tiny flame flickering, but it could turn into something big. So that’s been super helpful as well.
Mike Domitrz:
Well, you specifically are in the online space. You help people build online businesses. How do you help people do that? For instance, social media, everybody’s trying to sell on social media without feeling like they’re selling, but it feels like everybody’s doing, right? And people are getting more creeped out, right? By I looked up this in Google, and now it’s in front of me, and people are getting very creeped out. I’m going to ask two different questions. How do you sell on social media without selling per se? How do you run that online business ethically without crossing those lines?
Danny Clarke:
Yeah, so I think the first thing is in terms of how to sell on social media is I get to meet a single person that actually enjoys any level of selling whatsoever. The problem that people have is they don’t enjoy it. They don’t enjoy receiving it. I always give those examples. We have this over in the UK. I know you guys have this in the U.S. If you ever go down the high street, or your main shopping street you’ll tend to always get this as a weekend where you’ll see the youngest person tends to be a millennial who is holding a clipboard, and they’re trying to get you to sign up to some form of charity, right? And what everybody does when they see that person is they just either put their head down, they pretend they’re on their mobile phone, or they just ignore them, or they dive into a shop, or whatever. People don’t like to be sold to.
Danny Clarke:
It’s just how we are just as a human species we tend to think, “Oh, danger. I’m going to get sold into something.” But the truth is that we all like to give to charity, but it’s just that we don’t like to be sold into it. So instead what we need to do is just recognize that we need to bring people into our world first before we start to sell them because we can’t actually give any sort of genuine recommendation to a person without understanding a need, which means that we have to have some level of engagement first. We then have to have a conversation to then be able to make a recommendation.
Danny Clarke:
So how do we do that on social media? It’s really interesting because my eldest, Sienna, she’s seven years old, and she really loves this stuff. Obviously, how we live our life is going to rub off on her, but she’s really into it. She reads the book on her own. She’s reading stuff on target market. She’s reading the clickfunnels books, and all that kind of stuff, right? Obviously, I know the questions that I need to ask her to kind of prompt a certain response, but intuitively she knows how to deal and treat people. She knows it because there’s no filter there. There isn’t anything that she’s been taught, there’s no salesmanship in there. There’s just genuine normalness to her.
Danny Clarke:
I think in many ways what we do, it isn’t the case of learning people’s stuff, it’s the case of just unlearning all of this programming that we’ve been taught. I think we’re also in this kind of a weird place where stuff that was taught before, salesmanship, selling stuff, which did work in the ’80s, ’90s, the early 2000s with this kind of rising consciousness that we seem to be seeing around the world now, and people kind of waking up a bit more, and the rise of female empowerment, and the Me Too movement, and all this kind of stuff where people are kind of wakened up, and information that’s available online it’s all coming together at this one point where people are pushing back and rebelling on what was so they can now go forward with what is, which is actually just being a normal person, and doing a decent job, which actually isn’t that difficult to do when you just remove all of the BS.
Mike Domitrz:
I love this because as a speaker, we both speak, and there’s a lot of people out there saying, “You’ve got to put content out, put content out, put content out.” It almost feels like there’s so much. I’m watching people who are very good at doing that, that are constantly putting quotes up, constantly putting this, but I also think this isn’t what social media was for. They’re not sharing their lives. They’re sharing things to make you share them.
Danny Clarke:
Yes, and it’s the intention behind it.
Mike Domitrz:
Yeah, and I’ve done it. I’ve made the mistake because people said, “That’s what you need to do. That’s what you need to do.” So, all right, I’ll pop out these quotes. I think social media was just for us to be social and connected. I find the more that I just post a picture of a sunset.
Danny Clarke:
Normal stuff.
Mike Domitrz:
People are like, “That has nothing to do with your business. Why are you posting sunsets?” You know what’s interesting? I get more people commenting about my sunsets.
Danny Clarke:
And that what it’s about. It’s all about creating an audience. If you were say in a huge mega room, and there was eight different speakers on a stage you’re not trying to sell the hardest because the person that sells the hardest doesn’t necessarily sell the most. The person that sells the most is the person that has the most people standing in front of their stage. And people will stand in front of your stage if you’re talking about your selfie of the sunset because they want to know more about it. They’re welcomed into your world. Before people used to follow-up people until they joined. I think now the flip is actually what we’re doing is we’re loving people in. We’re loving people into our products. So we’re just encouraging them closer and closer and closer until they’re ready to make a buying decision. So a lot of what we used to do would pitch, sell, and then follow-up seven to 12 times because that’s actually when people join. Instead, now what we do is we teach seven to 12 exposures before we make a pitch.
Mike Domitrz:
Is the difference the seven to 12 touches? Yeah, they’re not salesy at all, right? They’re not jerking at you you need to see seven quotes from me. You could just see my son graduated, here’s a sunset, here’s this, and by the way, we have this new thing.
Danny Clarke:
There needs to be some business stuff there, right?
Mike Domitrz:
Right, right.
Danny Clarke:
Because if it’s just lifestyle all the time then no one knows. So we tend to say there’s four key pillars of content. A blend of lifestyle, value, social brief, and entertainment, which kind of gives you pretty much most things, right? Lifestyle is the stuff we’ll talked about. Value is something which is going to help your target audience, specifically, solve problems, get them closer to where they want to get to. Social brief, you’ve got to show your own journey because that’s very attractive and magnetic, someone who’s having success, but also people care more about themselves. You’ve got to show social proof of clients similar to them that have the results that you’ve been able to help with them. And entertainment, I mean, it’s social media, right?
Danny Clarke:
Just because we’re on social media all day, every day as a business owner, it doesn’t mean that our customers are. They’re on their mobile phone whilst they’re [inaudible 00:21:29] whilst they’re grabbing a sandwich in their lunch break, 10 minutes before they go to bed whilst they’re watching a box-on on Netflix. So you’ve got to think about their user habits, and you can’t make people think too much. I think we’ve gotten to a point now where people are just having to think so much their mind just can’t comprehend it. I think people are too clever.
Danny Clarke:
Instead what we need to do as a business owner is just get someone to come a step closer to us. So rather than asking open questions in actual fact a closed question is far better because I can get a micro commitment from someone. So rather than me saying, “Hey, what do you think is the best way to build a business on social media?” If I just said, “Do you think using Instagram is the best way to build your business? Yes or no?” It’s easier for someone to answer that. They’re going to give me the same answer, but it’s easier for them to engage with it, which means that they’re committed to taking some level of action with my world. Then I just keep doing that and doing that and doing that until they’re ready and comfortable to make that buying decision with me.
Mike Domitrz:
Yeah, I love the simplicity, it’s brilliant. You have some very powerful personal stories. You nearly died twice in 24 hours between an earthquake and the tsunami in Bali followed by an airplane falling. Is that correct?
Danny Clarke:
Yeah, that was a pretty intense 24 hours. Yeah, this was when we traveled around the world. So it was in Bali. We had the three kids with us. My mom was traveling with us at the time. She came up for two, three months. We brought her out with us, and that was a lot of fun. So for one night only we said, “Right, we’re going to head over to Lombok.” Because if you’ve ever seen Bali on Instagram the image of the swings and the sea it’s really famous and everyone wants to go there. Well, that’s over at Gili Island, so we thought we’re going to go over there. We went over there, we did the drive, everything was fine. Literally, as soon as we got into the hotel the earthquake happened. It was 7.6 on the Richter scale. It was just 10 kilometers below the surface, so it was super powerful. Yeah, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, sadly, were killed during the earthquake.
Mike Domitrz:
A quarter million I remember if I remember correctly, right.
Danny Clarke:
It was a pretty crazy experience to go through, and then there was the treat of the tsunami. So we had to run up the hill, and whatever, to escape. The tsunami wasn’t actually that bad, but the threat of the tsunami is the fear thing, right? We kind of managed that. It was a weird thing because, I mean, my wife, she was petrified, but I actually thought it was kind of cool. My instinct just kind of took over of it being kind of a fun experience, really, kind of being outdoors, and escaping from danger. It was pretty weird. Later on, the next day, obviously, we wanted to get off the island because we wanted to get back home, get back to the kids, and everything like that, and make sure everyone’s safe. Basically, our plane was supposed to leave at half past seven at night. It was 7:25. We’re literally queuing to walk onto the plane, and then they said, “Oh, by the way, your plane is canceled.”
Danny Clarke:
We’re like, “That’s insane. There’s no way that we could literally be told your plane’s arrived. People are walking to it to board it, and now it’s actually never even arrived.” So people are thinking something weird is going on. Two, three minutes later, another plane is announced, nobody has a ticket for, nobody knows what it is, but it’s been announced. So people are like, “What the hell is going on?” We’re thinking this is obviously our plane, or something like that, and what it was doing because Bali is super corrupt. They had this plane, and all of a sudden all the Balinese people jump onto this plane. A lot of people are kind of kicking off and complaining about this situation. Then I noticed there was a Chinese couple with their young kids, they sneak through security, they ran down the little runway across the tarmac, and they jumped onto this plane.
Danny Clarke:
I’m thinking, “Whoa, this is insane.” So I said to my wife whilst the security guys are holding back people who are shouting and angry because it’s pretty obvious what was happening at this moment. It’s a real corrupt situation. I just kind of give her a nudge and said, “All right, we’re going for it.” So we ran through and we sneaked onto this plane. We’re expecting this plane to be full. It’s about a 100 seater plane, there’s 10 people on it. So it’s a real dodgy situation. We kind of sat down on the plane. We’re praying and thinking, “Oh, my God, just don’t get arrested. Don’t be stuck in some sort of Bali prison.” We didn’t know what was going to go wrong with this.
Danny Clarke:
Anyway, the plane takes off and it was 30 seconds, 45 seconds in, and the plane just makes all the crunching noises, and it just drops out of the sky. I’ve been in bad turbulence before, but I’ve never experienced a plane where literally I’ve been lifted out of my seat because it’s dropped so quickly, but it was okay. It didn’t dive or crash, and it kind of kept going. Yeah, it did that then for the next 20 minutes all the way home. All that’s coming into our head is if you’ve ever seen what’s the film? Final Destination where death kind of follows you around trying to get you.
Mike Domitrz:
Right.
Danny Clarke:
We’re thinking, “Oh, shit, this is our time.” So we were just panicking because nobody knew who was on that plane. It was an unlisted, unnamed plane, so thinking all the worst things in the world that could have happened.
Mike Domitrz:
Now I’m going to take you all the way back because that’s while you were successful building the business, but speaking of death and life, you had an experience that springboarded you into success that most people wouldn’t think of, which is an attempted suicide, and how that springboarded you is what you’ve said to success. What do you mean by that as far as how did that do that?
Danny Clarke:
Basically, I had what I would say kind of in quotations a successful life. I’ve always done pretty well. I’d earned six figures, had a nice house, had all the things that you should do, nice car, whatever, right? I’ve always struggled my entire adult life with happiness, and for many years tried to achieve happiness. I’d done all the things, and there was always this kind of feeling inside of me of I just don’t really know what it is. I would see other people, they say they’re happy, and I’d be thinking, “Well, I didn’t really feel happy in this situation, but everyone else is.” So I always felt like a bit of an outsider, a bit on my own. I couldn’t quite figure out my own thoughts. I was probably a bit weird with all this stuff.
Danny Clarke:
Then there was just a period where we just went through a real shitty six months. The company that I was working for, I was self-employed, but I was working for a company, they basically got shut down. It cost me tens of thousands of pounds. I’ve lost money where from we were literally just about to buy an incredible beautiful house to, actually, we really don’t have enough money to even afford our bills this month. It was a real drastic shock. The day that it happened where we basically went through the process of looking to do something and didn’t go ahead with it. And what it made me realize was having kind of come through the other side of it is, actually, when things, even when as horribly wrong as they could have ever gone, I mean, I don’t think there’s a much worse situation than that where it’s so bad that you want to finish things, you want to end things, and to then bounce back from that, and, actually, kind of a week or so later you just kind of think to yourself, “Well, do you know what? It’s not that bad, actually.”
Danny Clarke:
When you faced yourself for your absolute worst, it kind of removes all fear from you because you think, “Do you know what? Fuck it. I might as well go for it.” Because all this stuff that held me back, and this fear, and this worry about judgment, and whether I’m doing the right thing and self-doubt I thought, “You know what? I completely failed trying to do what everyone else tells me to do. Screw it. I’m just going to do what I think is best from now on. I’m going to stop listening to people who say they’ve got my best intentions, but maybe don’t. I’m going to trust my gut, and I’m going to follow my heart. I’m going to go for it, and see what happens. And even if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t matter because it didn’t work out very well the first time anyway.” And that was it.
Danny Clarke:
It just took the shackles off me. I just made a decision that I was going to go for it. From that moment on, I just asked myself two questions. Does this make me happy? Does this take me closer to freedom? If the answer is no, then I just stopped doing it. I just progressively get closer and closer to happiness, and freedom, my version of that for me, and my family, and my life, and that’s all I do. That’s all my life is. That’s my pursuit now. I just pursue happiness, more enlightenment, more joy, more love in my life as simple as that.
Mike Domitrz:
Those two questions are so powerful. I mean, that’s just incredible to just stop if everybody thought, does this make me happy, and does this bring me closer to freedom? I think that combo is so, so powerful. It’s an awesome way for us to end the show because you’ve been fantastic, Danny, so appreciate it. I said Dan to start the show, so I apologize because I know you go by Danny. I just want to make sure I apologize for that. I want to make sure people can find you. We have links in the social media and everything as far as on our show notes for everyone to find you. Instagram is obviously a main site for you because that’s what you provided. It’s instagram.com/dannyclarkeofficial. I love that. I love that you have the official on there so nobody can steal your way. And then on Facebook, your official, Dan and Liz, correct?
Danny Clarke:
Correct.
Mike Domitrz:
Awesome. Any other way that’s great for people to find you?
Danny Clarke:
Just via our website, which is www.jointheVIP.co.uk.
Mike Domitrz:
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.
Danny Clarke:
It was my pleasure.
Mike Domitrz:
And for our listeners, you know what’s coming up next? That is question of the week. Before I answer this week’s question of the week, I’d love to ask you a question. Would you please subscribe to this podcast, the Respect podcast with Mike Domitrz. By subscribing, you can make a huge impact. Now you might be wondering, Mike, how does my subscribing to your podcast make a huge impact? Well, here’s how. For every person that subscribes it raises the rankings of the show in the search engines. So for people who care about respect like yourself, when they’re doing a search for podcast, they’re more likely to find this show, thus providing an awesome opportunity for us to spread more respect around this world. And all you do is hit subscribe under your podcast. Plus, The second benefit is by subscribing, you automatically get every episode right into your phone, or whatever device you’re listening to the podcast on. It happens automatically, so subscribing also makes your life easier.
Mike Domitrz:
Now, let’s get into this week’s question of the week. Oh, and by the way, you can always ask your questions for the week by joining us on Facebook on our discussion group. It’s called the Respect podcast discussion group. Go there on Facebook and ask whatever questions you would like me to answer, and/or address in this segment of the show, and then listen to each episode to find out when your question is included. This week’s question is, hey, Mike, we know you like to scuba dive, so what is an experience you would love to have scuba diving you haven’t had yet? Would you like to dive with sharks? Well, I’ve scuba dived, and been near sharks, around sharks, having some under me, having some over me, so, no, that’s not it. That for me is not the moment I would love to experience with a creature.
Mike Domitrz:
For me, I have a dream of diving with whale sharks. They’re these giant, massive, magnificent creatures that are known for being so gentle. I would love to just be swimming alongside them and to have that serene, quiet experience with such magnificent size of a creature. I think it would be beautiful, awe-inspiring, and incredible. So for me, that’s it. It is swimming. Now I don’t mean swimming on top of the water. Underwater scuba diving with whale sharks.
Mike Domitrz:
What’s yours? I’d love to hear. Tell us at our discussion group on Facebook. All you do is look up the Respect podcast discussion group. I’d love to hear your answer to what’s an experience you’d like to have? It doesn’t have to be scuba diving. What’s just an awe-inspiring experience you’d love to have? Do you know what I would love? I would love to hear your answer to this week’s question of the week. So would you please answer what your answer would have been if you were asked that question today on the show. All you do is go to our Facebook page. We have a special group where we have these discussions called the Respect podcast discussion group. So the Respect podcast discussion group and share with us. What would your answer have been to this week’s question of the week, and take a moment, post us a new question for future episodes. What question would you like to hear me answer on an upcoming episode? That’s all done on Facebook in our special group, which is the Respect podcast discussion group. Can’t wait to see you there.
Mike Domitrz:
Thank you for joining us in this episode of the Respect podcast, exploring work, love, and life. And this episode, like every episode, is brought to you by our organization, The Center For Respect, which you can find at centerforrespect.com. Of course, you can find me your host, Mike Domitrz at mikespeaks.com. Thank you so much for joining us.