The Art of Work-Life Integration with David DeWolf, President and Chief Executive Officer of 3Pillar Global

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:01) Today, we're talking to David, president of Three Pillar Global, about the art of work-life integration and more. You're listening to the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:14) What's up, buddy?

(David DeWolf at 00:00:16) Good to see you again. How are you doing?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:17) Doing good. So I was actually pretty excited to find out just today that you have a show that you were doing. Can you tell me about that? The Evolving Leader?

(David DeWolf at 00:00:27) Yeah, yeah. So it is a podcast. The Evolving Leader was really formed out of continual questions I got about my journey and individuals wanting a piece of time to just understand what are the lessons learned from the 16 years that I've been building this business. And I have a love for investing in others, and especially around the topics of leadership and helping others grow.

(David DeWolf at 00:00:52) I think that I was so fortunate in having mentors that were willing to invest in me that I wanted to give back, but I started running out of time. And there are only so many people that you can pick up and have a breakfast with. And so we decided to start to share some of those lessons learned, and I brought in some of those mentors, some of those great executives that I had learned from, that I had grown with over the years, and we just told stories. And so it was a great hit. We had a lot of fun doing it, and we've shared a lot of leadership lessons through that experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:21) Nice. How do people find that?

(David DeWolf at 00:01:23) They can go to daviddewolf.com. There's a link on the website there for the Evolving Leader podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:30) That is so cool. And you did that all in person, and that was just a fixed series deal. Are you going to continue to do it?

(David DeWolf at 00:01:36) It was a fixed series. This was a bit of an experiment that we ran. We got great reception from it, and we've talked about potentially doing another season. So we'll see what happens in the future. Have some ideas around that.

(David DeWolf at 00:01:46) You know, one of my ideas is I think one of the ways, Joel, that we learn the best is through failure. And so one of my thoughts was, why don't we take out some of those really fun stories of failure and great challenge, and what are the lessons learned from that. And so we've started talking to some folks around that. We'll see what comes of it. Definitely not the topmost priority in my life right now, but it is definitely something that I enjoy doing and passing on those lessons learned.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:12) Well, I'm noticing it. I mean, you definitely, since we met a couple years ago, have stepped up your personal branding and sharing your experiences. And honestly, I kind of look forward to the posts that you do.

(David DeWolf at 00:02:25) Oh, I appreciate you sharing that. No, it's something, you know, all of my blogging started off as myself just reflecting on lessons learned for myself. And from there, it grew to different people picking them up and saying they learned something from it. And I've realized that actually sharing your message, sharing your stories, sharing your lessons not only impacts the world, but it allows you to create an influence.

(David DeWolf at 00:02:45) And I think very important in the world today is that we have principled leaders. And sharing the lessons I've learned of how to be a principled leader and how to be an authentic leader in this world is something that just allows me in a very small way to give back.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:01) Yeah. And I've gotten to meet a couple of your leaders in person. Great people.

(David DeWolf at 00:03:06) Great people. I've been very fortunate to work with some of the best. No doubt about it. And I think what's common amongst all of them, all have different skills, talents, gifts that they've got that they put to use, but character matters. And we look at those values, at that character that they have first and foremost when we're hiring.

(David DeWolf at 00:03:23) And so that's one thing I'm really proud of is that we've always maintained that culture. We've always maintained the integrity with which we founded the company. And I think that's what people experience is leaders who may have a different style, may have a different tone, may have different gifts, but are principled. And we hang our hat on that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:43) Nice. The Product Mindset, that was big. I know we gave a lot of those books away when that was—I mean, this is, we're talking three or four years ago. Three years ago. Time goes by fast.

(David DeWolf at 00:03:53) Doesn't it? Yeah. It's amazing how time flies. And, you know, interestingly, I think the lessons from The Product Mindset are still valid today and maybe even more so. You know, since we first talked and The Product Mindset was launched, COVID has hit and totally disrupted the pace of innovation, right? Digital just hit us in the face because we had to. And so it's accelerated this digital transformation, and the lessons from The Product Mindset are more relevant today than they ever were before, and the numbers are bearing that out. Right? We've seen over a 2x adoption of digital goods and services in this economy.

(David DeWolf at 00:04:34) And if you look at research from, like, the World Economic Forum, for example, they predict that over the course of this decade, and we're only two years into it, 70% of the economic growth in the world is going to come from digital products and services. Like, that just blows my mind that that's where we are today in terms of this digital adoption taking place.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:55) Dude, the metaverse is coming.

(David DeWolf at 00:04:56) Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Who knows what it's going to look like?

(David DeWolf at 00:04:59) I think we're still trying to figure it out, but there's no doubt that the way we transact, the way we do business, the way that we add value to the world in this day and age, it's all digital. No doubt.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:09) Yeah. Zuckerberg's throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, trying to figure out what it's going to look like and how it's going to be. For me, it's too—currently because it looks like the Wii characters and everything. I just don't know when it'll be right for me, but I know that when I see it...

(David DeWolf at 00:05:26) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:26) I'll know if it's right. Like, when I see it, I'm like, that's it. That's the thing that's going to do well. Then I'll jump in.

(David DeWolf at 00:05:31) I feel like it's a little bit of Back to the Future as well, right? You talk about the Wii, but it's also remember Second Life, right? What was it?

(David DeWolf at 00:05:37) Oh, yeah. Fifteen years ago, Second Life was everything, and it was going to take over the world. It never came about. You know, I'm not sure I've figured out this whole metaverse thing. I think human connection matters. I think the real physical life we live in matters. And so I think we've got to navigate, yes, there's always innovation. There's always growth in technology and digital, but I'm not sure it's this total virtual world we're going to be living in like people talk about. I think that's an extreme we've been talking about for decades. We're going to figure out how it changes, but we don't know what it is yet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:09) Yeah. And I think we're more likely along the Elon Musk type concept of merging with them versus going completely in. I talked to a person the other week where they built a contact lens, and you put the contact lens in. And let's say you open up Google Maps on your phone, you're like, I'm going to go to this restaurant, walking directions. And then you just look out in the distance, and in reality, a green arrow will just appear and animate. It's called Mojo Vision, and...

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:38) Oh my goodness. And I asked him, I was like, is this here today? He's like, yeah. He's like, I don't wear contacts. I've worn this, and it took me a while because they've been working on it for years. But, man, I was blown away that stuff exists. They had an example of somebody playing golf and your score just kind of popping up over the green. And dude, I think we're going that way where it's going to sort of merge with us and be a part of our lives versus just digital, 100% digital.

(David DeWolf at 00:07:04) That right there, those are real use cases that do provide more convenience. They do answer needs, right? The pure digital world, we're going to live in this fantasy world. I think those are tough because they don't solve real problems. It's one of the principles of The Product Mindset, right? You've got to solve for need if you want people to truly adopt your products and use them. And so I couldn't agree more. And I also think that that follows the trends that we've seen over history with innovation, right? Innovation blends in more with life, the real life, the more we move on, right?

(David DeWolf at 00:07:33) And I love the example of just devices themselves, right? You are talking about contact lenses. That's a really, really small device that blends in with your natural life. The phones we have now that are so prominent are an example of where laptops came from, right? The laptop became the phone.

(David DeWolf at 00:07:59) Before the laptop was the desktop computer, before the desktop computer was the mainframe, right? Things have been getting smaller and smaller and more and more part of our everyday life. I think there's a continuation that happens. No doubt about it. But this change from being an external device to it is the world we live in and it's a totally virtual world, I'm not sure that's a total game changer for sure if it happens, but I think history has shown us what happens is what you just described. Things merge into our life. They become less and less of an external piece of us and closer and closest to who we are, but to who we are. We're not somebody different. We don't become something virtual.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:41) Yeah. We use the technology, and it's amazing. We sort of expanded the show. I started bringing on interesting technology and people doing really cool things, like putting electronic stents in their brains so they can control computers. And what I noticed going through that is we are exploding so many advancements in so many different areas.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:03) I've literally made it my full-time job with 15 other people to try to track this, and it's overwhelming. We can't even do it. So the average person that has to work a job, you know, it's so tough to stay up, and we're just—it's an explosion. So for me, I'm really grateful, and I'm super excited to be alive right now. I think this is the greatest time ever, and it sometimes gets to the point because I get so excited that I get too into it in the work. And so I've started a new thing where I hard stop at five. I used to just work 18 hours a day, and then I was like, alright. I've got to invest in my family and things like that because if I do that, then the time I spend at work is actually more potent than if I were to work those 18 hours. So how do you handle that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:45) Because that was what spawned this whole interview, work-life balance. I saw your post on LinkedIn. It was a great story. You don't have to reference it verbatim, but you were generally talking about balancing work and life. What are your thoughts there?

(David DeWolf at 00:09:57) You know, it's interesting. I take a different tact from what you do. You just talked about, you know, cutting off having a hard line at 5:00. I've actually said that work-life integration is what it's all about. I know that I am a single human being, and I think that too often people pit their work against their life, their family, their friends.

(David DeWolf at 00:10:18) And I've said for myself, what works better is if I say, I am a dad even if I'm in a boardroom, and I am a CEO even if I'm tucking my kids in at night. And in real time, I have to make choices and prioritize what's important. But I'm going to look for every single moment where I can get leverage by combining those together. So I'll give you a great example. One of my favorite trips of all time, business trip, but I brought my 15-year-old daughter at the time with me to visit our office in Noida, India.

(David DeWolf at 00:10:52) And it was a fabulous experience for me as a father. I got closer to my daughter that time than I ever would have been able to any other way. She traveled out of the country for the first time with me, went overseas, experienced the world. It was educational for her. But you know what? It was also incredible for our employees. They got to experience me as a dad. They got to interact with her, and they were amazing hosts. And my daughter went to the office with us for three days and did her homework there, but still had this amazing experience. And it just created a lot of leverage for me all the way around.

(David DeWolf at 00:11:28) Right? My employees could see me as a human being, as a dad, not just a boss. And my daughter could learn a lot, see the world, and connect with me in a way that I otherwise couldn't. I have found that when I live that way, I'm able to get more leverage out of my own life and stay, quote, balanced, but not by pitting one against the other, by truly living as an integrated person.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:51) Yeah. And I fully agree with that. I call it at our company, I say work-life ratio. It'll change what you're working on. I definitely put a hard stop at five for the meetings I'm scheduling. You know, routine stuff. I don't do team meetings after five. I'm not doing podcast recordings after five. But at 5:00, I built a studio on my property. So I got...

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:18) Oh, yeah. So I was in Florida last time we talked. We sold everything when COVID happened. Our house and everything, bought an RV, traveled the United States for 10 months with our kids and our dogs, and then found a little farm in Nashville, like 40 minutes outside of Nashville and bought that and built a studio on it. And so now I walk back and forth. So I'm there at 5:00. I eat dinner. But you're exactly right. I trade off with myself, but I also my wife is involved because she's my business partner, essentially. I bounce everything off of her. So sometimes I'll look at her and be like, alright. This is a six-figure deal. Do you want me to? She's like, go take it. I was like, okay. Cool. So it's definitely not a science. It's more of an art and kind of reading the moment of am I getting that? Is that kind of what you're doing?

(David DeWolf at 00:13:02) Absolutely. And for me, it is in all aspects of my life. So I use the example of work and family. But my charitable giving, exact same thing. I look for opportunities where can I, through my charitable giving, bring my family into the picture and teach my kids something about generosity, for example, or you name it, all parts of your life?

(David DeWolf at 00:13:23) Great example. You were asking before about the podcast I did in The Evolving Leader. I went back, looked through all of the relationships that I had, and I invited some of my best friends because I wanted to connect and tell stories with them again, right? Help me be a better friend. I am looking for those leverage points. And then what you said is so key. It's an art, not a science, right? There can be some science to it. Right? For example, my morning routine and the discipline of how I get up in the morning. Right? I always start with my prayer time. I then go exercise. I then have dedicated space to plan my day and optimize my performance, and then I get into deep work before I host any meetings, right, every day. That helps me be more productive and a better person. Right? I'm able to get more done by sticking to that routine. That's science.

(David DeWolf at 00:14:08) But the art is as priorities come up, as things change, am I aware enough of who I am to live in the moment and make deliberate decisions? And I think in this day and age, it's harder than ever because we have all these devices around us that are popping up saying this needs your attention, that needs your attention. And I have found getting out of that noise, turning off those notifications, really being deliberate can be really helpful for making sure that you stay present. As my good friend, Alan Stein says, be where your feet are. When you are where your feet are, you can take a curveball and make a judgment call and then live your best self.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:47) How long ago in your life did you — because just to share, about a month or two ago, I was at church and our pastor had said something along the lines of, paraphrasing, you know, your YouVersion notification in the morning is not a Bible reading routine. And so I was like, alright, well, that kind of hit me hard. And so I realized that I'm, you know, 34.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:09) I grew up in church with most of my life in church, and I've never actually, like, sat down and read the Bible. And so I said, okay. So he had, like, a thirty day challenge thing, and this is about six weeks ago. So I started doing that, and I realized, you know, I already had a really specific morning routine, so it was easy. I just stacked it on top of it. Right? Because you and I both know, if you have the one thing that's important that has to get done, it has to get done first. Right? And so I stacked that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:33) And I'll tell you what, man, these past six weeks, it's been extraordinarily beneficial. How long have you had that in your routine?

(David DeWolf at 00:15:43) So I have been fighting for it for probably about twenty years. But I'll tell you, here's what I have struggled with for almost my entire life is, for me to be able to both have my prayer time in the morning and my exercise routine, I had been good for about fifteen years about getting one or the other, but I really struggled to get them both. It was COVID, actually, that helped me learn how to do both. And I would say probably the last two and a half to three years is where I really cracked the nut and got good at doing both, and it was discipline.

(David DeWolf at 00:16:16) And the secret for me was giving myself space. I've actually taken my calendar and said that morning routine is so important that I'm actually not going to start my, quote, workday until 10:00. Not because I don't do work before 10:00, but because so often there were things I needed to get done that they were encroaching on one of the two of those. And so I made the decision that I was going to get up — I get up at 5:00 every single morning. I have my prayer time first and foremost.

(David DeWolf at 00:16:45) From there, I go, I do my daily planning, I do exercise, and then I plan for a block of deep work to be productive and to get mental work done. That space and saying, I'm not going to schedule any meetings until 10:00 — and sometimes we'll fudge it and it'll become 9:00 — but giving myself four to five hours in the morning really gave me enough space to prioritize it like it needs to be prioritized to make it happen. And I think it's so true. And, you know, just look at what's popular in society today. Not everybody, you know, will have their prayer time like I do. Right? My faith is really, really important to me. But look at these meditation apps that have crept up. Right? People all know that to be able to spend time just focusing and centering yourself really, really is important.

(David DeWolf at 00:17:32) I have found that to be so true. And for me, the way I practice that is in my prayer time. And any time that I start my day that way, I have not only a more productive day, but I'm more joyful, I'm more fulfilled, I make better decisions because I'm putting first things first.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:49) Absolutely. I'm working my way through this book right here, Timothy Keller on prayer. I just went on Amazon. I was like, what's the most popular book on this so I can learn?

(David DeWolf at 00:17:56) That's awesome. That's awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:57) But I was curious. I've got young kids. I've got three now, under five. One's only about four weeks old. So we just had our third child who's a boy.

(David DeWolf at 00:18:06) Congratulations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:06) At what point in time — because you have older kids, right? What's your youngest age? The youngest one.

(David DeWolf at 00:18:10) My youngest is two, but my oldest is 21. So I've got eight of them in there. So about one at every age gate. I've got eight kids. That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:19) First of all, that's awesome. So the thing I'm struggling with now is consistency. The nights that, like, they come in and, you know, wet the bed or something at three in the morning, and they're up screaming for an hour or two or whatever it is — I noticed that kind of throws me. I mean, I'm getting it 80% of the days. I'm getting it 80% of the time, and I try to reduce the anytime that, like, I'm off. Like, if I notice myself off the routine, my goal is to reduce that to as little time as possible.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:47) How do you handle that? Like, you're getting up at five, but you're getting woken up at three. Like, what do you do?

(David DeWolf at 00:18:53) Yeah. So the first thing I'd say is a little bit of a different question, but I answer it first because I've found it to be so important, which is 80% is awesome. So often, I was beating myself up about the one missed day in my routine that it would set me off and cascade to more misses and more misses. And I finally learned to give myself a break and say, you know what? This routine is here to serve me. I'm not here to serve the routine. And if I'm hitting the 80%, I should be celebrating. Right? So first and foremost, congratulations. That's awesome that you're doing that well.

(David DeWolf at 00:19:25) Secondly, I found that just like my morning routine is important, what allows me to hit that is actually my nighttime routine. When I go to bed between ten and 10:30, eight or nine times out of 10, I'm going to hit my morning routine the next morning. If I am staying up late and I'm getting lazy and I'm going to send one more email, I'm going to go work on one more thing, and I get distracted, it's tough. And it's harder to wake up. It's harder to not be groggy and distracted in the morning, those types of things.

(David DeWolf at 00:19:53) And so that discipline has been really important to me. But the reality is I'm still a dad. Yeah. You used the example, the kid that woke up at night. Here's another example. Your kids get older. As soon as they're teenagers, they don't start talking to you until 10:30 at night. And so a lot of times, if you want to have conversations with them and they're 16, 17 years old, you better be staying up till 11:30 at night. And there's been a couple times my wife and I have found ourselves in the kitchen chuckling to ourselves like, oh my gosh, it's so past my bedtime, but this conversation is rich and great, and I want to be a good dad.

(David DeWolf at 00:20:26) So I go with the flow, and I give myself a break. And I try to get up in the morning, but if I don't, like, that's part of the art we were talking about before — of being present and making that judgment call. And in that moment, you know what? Being a present dad and having that conversation and connecting with my kids is more important than having my routine for the sake of my routine the next day. And so if I don't get up when my alarm goes off and I hit snooze too many times, you know what? I'm probably going to cut my exercise up. You know what? I'm probably going to pull back slightly on the amount of time I spend in deep work and do an hour and a half instead of two hours. Right? Those are the types — maybe I'm not going to take as long of a shower. I'm going to push myself to get in and get out versus being a little — right? I look to tighten it up a little bit. And so I want to hit it, but I'm not going to do it perfect every time, and I'm going to give myself a break and give myself some grace to be human.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:19) I know exactly what you mean too because, so, I'm building a pantry, man. I started, like — I needed my outside of time. I needed to integrate something that wasn't digital because my hobbies were digital. My work was digital. And so I said, you know what? We want to do this pantry, tear down a wall, make a big pantry. I was like, I'm going to buy all the tools, and I'm going to do it myself, and I'm just going to learn how to do this stuff because my dad, all his brothers and everything are in construction. It was their family business, and he went into engineering, like electronics and hardware and software. So me and my brother, we've always kind of been, like, the black sheep of all the cousins and everything because we're the only ones that aren't home builders. So, like, I'm going to do it this time. I'm going to — that's great — they won't laugh at me because of my hands being soft. I got a farm now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:55) So I buy all this stuff, and I'm working on it. And then I was getting ready to get into it and work for a couple hours that evening. And she's like, Daddy. She's like, I love you. You're my best friend. Can I sit next to you? And I'm like, yeah. She's like, Daddy, can we go for a walk? And, Daddy, can we do — I was like, okay. Like, yep. I'm going to prioritize this because this is so rare that, you know, she'll walk up to me and be that way. And so I was like, I'm going to go along with this. And so as you were saying, it's more of the art side of things too.

(David DeWolf at 00:22:30) Yeah. And that is so hard. You know, I find those younger kids to be the hardest because they're so cute. You love them. You want to spend time with them. But, you know, my five year old son right now is in a phase of he loves Legos. And I remember as a kid, I loved Legos too. And I can sit there for ten minutes and build Legos with him. But, gosh, on the weekend, on a Saturday, when I'm laying on the floor playing Legos and the clock ticks to an hour and a half, an hour and forty minutes, like, oh, my mind's racing, and I'm dying to get back to work. I'm dying to go dive into an email. I'm dying to go do something that feels productive. But it's important that we spend that time and invest in our kids and build those relationships. So kudos to you for doing that because it's not always easy. Right? And that's part of being human too. It's just acknowledging that some of these things can be hard. Right? Too often we show up and we talk about how great we are at doing this or that. Right? When my little girls want to play dolls, it's really hard for me. I'm horrible at it. And I may try to force myself, but I'm not great at it. And it's okay to admit that and say, I'm working on it. I want to be a better dad.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:33) Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that seems to be, like, the tone of life. Right? Like, continuous small improvements and then being okay with that. I used to be the person that tried to do, like, big giant energy swings in my twenties and stuff and, you know, all night coding sessions. And then I realized that if you just have a consistency thing, you're going to win long term. But I want to talk to you about your family ventures. I saw you have DeWolf — it's DeWolf Family Ventures. So are you teaching the teenagers, the ones that are older, about investing in this type of stuff?

(David DeWolf at 00:24:03) You know, that's the hope over time. Right now, my older ones, you know, they're not as interested as you'd love them to be as a father. Right now, we're just investing family assets into angel investments. And, you know, whenever I have an opportunity, whether it's those investments or charitable giving, anything like that, I try to bring my kids in. Again, integrate things together. But right now, it's just opportunistic. Right? In the role that I'm in, I get lots of folks reaching out to me for advice that may have a software company they're starting, maybe looking for investment. And I found that over time, there were enough great ideas out there and some incredible leaders that what we did was we put a little fund together and we're investing in the next generation of leaders that are building software companies. And it's a lot of fun to do and make those investments. And I've been fortunate enough to be able to, you know, hire a business manager to help us run those because I've got a full time job. It's not a full time job for me, but I do like to be aware of them and know what we're doing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:00) Oh, nice. Yeah. Investment manager, of course. So is it a lead gen for you to acquire companies, or is it just — do you keep those things separate?

(David DeWolf at 00:25:08) It's really separated. It is really just family assets that are being invested into emerging software companies, and the underlying underwriting all goes back to the quality of the leader. Right? So, really, it goes back to what we're talking about. The only thing that is similar is the same way we hire great employees at 3Pillar — character based, looking for folks that have high integrity, share those values. That's what we're looking for in great leaders that are starting software companies that may be looking for mentorship and investment, and that's how we underwrite the deals.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:43) Finding people with character within your company, like, when hiring, do you have it more systematic than just it's in the culture and your leaders being a part of that culture? It's contagious and they understand how to look for them, like, intrinsically? Or is it more of, like, do you have, like, a personality quiz? Have you gotten more, like —

(David DeWolf at 00:26:02) Yep. We have a couple of different tools that we use. So first and foremost, I think way too often, values are something that are on a wall and most people don't even know. Right? When I talk about culture, what I'm talking about is the behaviors of an organization and whether or not they reflect those intentional values. Do you see actions taken that are in alignment with those values on a day in, day out basis?

(David DeWolf at 00:26:28) And if you do, you have an intentional culture. And if you don't, you have an accidental culture. We've been deliberate about building an intentional culture that lives those values. Right? In our organization, they're so front and center. We are so deliberate about them that they can tell you that our values are intrinsic dignity, open collaboration, continuous improvement, and outsized impact. And they can speak to each one of those and why they matter, why they matter in the context of our purpose of harnessing the power of team to help make an impact in the world and to lift every single person that is involved in that team. Right? And so that has become a living, breathing thing that absolutely we performance manage against it. Our systems are built to make sure we live those. We assess people on, are you living that culture? Are you living those values? Exact same thing for hiring. We are deliberate. Every single person that comes in has a cultural interview, and we ask questions about, how do you live the value of open collaboration?

(David DeWolf at 00:27:39) Walk me through examples where you had to get in a room with a team and change your perspective. Right? Or build on somebody else's idea or share openly even when it was hard. Right? Asking those questions. So we've definitely tried to be deliberate about systematizing that, making it front and center, truly what we live, not just the poster on the wall.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:58) I love it. I love it. Yeah. I think if you boil it down to a few things that you really focus on, it makes it a ton easier than, like, having eight because your competitor has eight.

(David DeWolf at 00:28:08) Totally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:08) I want to talk a little bit about the economy. I saw you had a couple posts, and so you probably have some interesting thoughts on it. It's been very volatile lately. You're an investor. We just talked about investing. You're also on your non family assets at 3Pillar — you're actually, it seems to me, that you're actively acquiring. I see a lot of M&A activity. What's going on in the marketplace? What should we expect for this next year?

(David DeWolf at 00:28:32) Yeah. Well, you know, if any of us had a crystal ball, I think we'd be doing something different. Right? So nobody really knows. But here's what I think. I would say number one, I think we're already in a recession. Right? Recessions, you don't really know till you get on the other side and say, oh, we can see it. It's a lag measure. But I think we're in it already.

(David DeWolf at 00:28:50) I think it's a very volatile recession as well. Right? There's a lot of bouncing around. There is so much liquidity that's been poured into this economy that I think it's really hard to know what is going to happen because there's a lot of different signals saying a lot of different things. That said, when I step back and look at the reality of what's going on, I think one of the weird dynamics we have is that we're hitting this recession on the other side of a pandemic, which had people stuck at home saving up money.

(David DeWolf at 00:29:24) And so I think over the summer months, you had a ton of travel and just recreation type spend that we haven't had in years, and I think that propped up the economy a little bit. And I think some of the volatility that you're seeing now is getting to the other side of that. Right? Now that we are in October, we're out of results coming from the August time frame when everybody was traveling. We're past Labor Day.

(David DeWolf at 00:29:49) And I think some of what you're seeing now in this most recent dip is related to kind of all of that pent up savings getting out of the system and flushing a little bit. I suspect that for the next twelve to eighteen months, we're gonna have a pretty soft economy. I think the prudent businesses in this economy will be investing and really trying to take advantage of everybody pulling back, but there will be definitely a pullback. There's a pullback in consumer spend. We see a lot of things jumping around.

(David DeWolf at 00:30:19) But I think if we get on the other side of the next major election, I think you're gonna see a lot of the instability taken out of the system. People will know what's going on next, and I expect after twelve to eighteen months, things will start to grow again. That's my best guess. I'm no expert in economics. I'm no expert in the markets.

(David DeWolf at 00:30:39) But I—You're evaluating

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:41) companies, and those companies have customers that are other companies. So you have some ideas. Like you typically work with, like, Fortune 500 companies. Am I correct?

(David DeWolf at 00:30:50) Yeah. A lot of Fortune 500, a lot of high growth emerging enterprises.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:54) Yeah. So you're able to detect—I mean, I own a business. I can tell you how sales are doing. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:59) Like—Well,

(David DeWolf at 00:31:00) and so what do we see right now that leads to that? Right? We see, number one, decisions are elongating. People are becoming uncertain in their decisions. For a long time, especially in digital transformation, people felt so far behind and the economy was so strong that they were making immediate decisions.

(David DeWolf at 00:31:18) During the pandemic, our sales cycle went from about an eighty-two day sales cycle down to, like, a ten day sales cycle for a period of months. It was unbelievable to watch. I'd never seen anything like it. That sales cycle is starting to elongate. We're seeing people postpone decisions till after annual budgeting.

(David DeWolf at 00:31:35) We're seeing people take—they're continuing to invest, but they are consolidating their investments and refocusing them on things that are gonna drive very tangible growth. Right? And so what we're seeing is more prudence and smart decision making and slower decision making. And that's what I think is leading me to say these signs are real. There's definitely something happening.

(David DeWolf at 00:31:59) There's good signs. There's bad signs, but businesses undoubtedly are pulling back and kind of circling the wagons for a soft period of time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:07) Yes. Oh, a hundred percent. And you just look at the CEO studies. I mean, over here, I stopped looking at the market, and I just prepared for a recession. I was like, alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:17) I was like, what we—and the way I did that, whether it's right or wrong, is I just pulled up that P&L and started looking at things that were necessary and unnecessary. I actually found a way to restructure our production teams that made them, like, twice as efficient. And so I was like, that's great because now we make twice as much money. So, you know, and just moving things around. Obviously, all those things take time and months to maneuver.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:41) But, yeah, just having that mindset of just a lean mindset and, obviously, still putting money where things matter and, you know, not being shy there. I had one guy explain it to me. The CTO, he's been on the show a bunch. His name is Brad Sosa. He's also, like, a pastor.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:57) He was telling me a story about this media company that he was working with back in the 2008 recession or whatnot. And all the other companies in his industry were holding back and not dealing with it, waiting for that floor, and he decided to—like, he felt it was right to, after prayer and stuff, to, like, invest in there. He grew it, like, 10x or something, and I asked him—I was like, that's interesting. He goes, yeah. He goes, the way I see it is I work for God.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:22) He's like, this is God's economy, and, you know, I'm not—it's not the American economy. It's not the Indian economy. It's God's economy, and I work for him. And so, uh, I'm gonna, you know, trust what I get from that relationship, and it worked out super well. And so, you know, when the urge struck me to, like, sort of retract, I didn't retract in a, uh, a manic way and just, like, slash and burn.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:46) I just made sure we were being, like, as you said, prudent, efficient, intelligent with the money. And, of course, I follow, like, Dave Ramsey's financial advice, so we do a lot of saving and stuff at the business. You know, I took my personal life and then applied those principles to my business, and that worked out pretty well. I know I said a bunch of stuff there, but I mean, look at that.

(David DeWolf at 00:34:05) You're living an integrated life. You just said it. Right? You're integrating the way you think about your personal finances is the same as the way you think about your company finances, and I think that's prudent. Right? But I would say I'm totally with you in terms of our responsibility as leaders and thinking about, uh, our faith and how it applies to how we're living our life. But even just from a pragmatic perspective, right, in economy and when it's shrinking, it's just like when you're driving a race car. What do you do? You tap the brakes into the curve and you accelerate out of it.

(David DeWolf at 00:34:36) Right? Over and over again, if you go back in history and look at the case studies, just from a prudent business perspective, the right way to navigate an economy is to tap the brakes, not jam on the brakes, right, to your point. You don't just start slashing and burning. You tap the brakes going into the curve, and then you accelerate out of the curve. And so you want to be investing in your business to take advantage of that economy coming back.

(David DeWolf at 00:35:03) And, by the way, the reality that other people are going to panic, and you'll be able to take market share if you're accelerating out of the curve. And I think just from a very pragmatic business perspective, that's what prudent leaders do in a recession.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:18) Where are you at in that, uh, analogy? Are you still tapping? Or—

(David DeWolf at 00:35:22) Yeah. I think Q4 is the transition point for us. Uh, I think we're tapping. We're being smart. We're still executing on some of those, but we're starting to look at right now where are those opportunities to invest.

(David DeWolf at 00:35:34) Um, I think we're gonna gauge that based on what we see as the bottoming out. I don't think we've hit the bottom yet. I think we're aware of it. So we haven't started executing, but we've started to plan for the reinvestment coming back.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:48) Nice. What's the most important thing right now for 3Pillar? What's going on in your world?

(David DeWolf at 00:35:54) So, you know, one of the brutal realities of what's happened, you mentioned the acquisitions we've done. We've had a lot of organic growth as well. We talked about the pandemic and what happened to our business through that period of time. Right? A lot of digital disruption.

(David DeWolf at 00:36:06) When you're going through growth like what we've experienced, it becomes easy to just focus on the growth and grow, grow, grow, grow. And you plow through several inflection points, and I can say that we plowed through some of those inflection points. And it's really important that as you get on the other side of that and as you're managing through that, you continue to go back to how do we scale a business. Right? Because if you're not being intentional, you create a lot of organizational debt.

(David DeWolf at 00:36:36) And so we are at a point now where we've been focusing. The tapping of the brakes for us going into this curve has been, okay. We've been doing a lot of growing, but we haven't been focused on how do you scale and create a lean, efficient organization to be able to scale really well, to make it easy to do work. Right? And so we've been very focused on those operational improvements, on making sure we're building a great business, not just growing with the economy itself.

(David DeWolf at 00:37:04) And so that real business building, working on the business, not in the business, uh, has been a key part of what I'm focused on right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:12) Amazing. And I'm watching time here. I wanna make sure we're businessmen. What does your company do, and how can people learn more?

(David DeWolf at 00:37:18) Yeah. Thanks, Joel. So it's been a lot of fun chatting with you. 3Pillar Global is the name of the firm. We build digital products that help our clients compete in this digital economy.

(David DeWolf at 00:37:28) These are the goods and services that they're actually selling to their customers using this software to actually deliver those goods and services.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:35) They can—

(David DeWolf at 00:37:35) go to 3pillarglobal.com. Would love to work with anybody that is looking at investing in this digital economy and figuring out how to compete.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:43) I love it. And I liked you guys. I think the way I met you was through that Product Mindset book, and I was like, let's have these people on. That book to this day is the book—the link I send to people when they, you know, want me to explain. I get a call from my cousin or somebody.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:57) Hey. Can you make an app? Like, how do you do this? I'm like, go read this book.

(David DeWolf at 00:38:01) Appreciate it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:01) Go read this book, and then we'll talk, and it helps form the conversation. It's a great, great thing to have out there. So that's Product Mindset, and that's still on Amazon. Right? You still buy that?

(David DeWolf at 00:38:11) That's exactly right. You can read it at Amazon, and the thinking in that book has led us to build digital products for what we estimate to be about 75% of Americans use our products. They just don't know it's us that's built it. And so, um, you know, it's the secret that we've built a business on, and I think, uh, we've given away the secrets. We want the world to know it because the digital economy's here.

(David DeWolf at 00:38:30) It's real. You gotta know how to do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:31) I love it, man. Well, we made a podcast, David. How do you feel?

(David DeWolf at 00:38:34) Uh, it's great. It was a lot of fun chatting with you, Joel. Thanks for going there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:38) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.