In this episode, Dave Howard shares valuable insights into the power of curiosity, community, and engaging learning experiences in business. He emphasizes the significance of small, daily actions, the value of surrounding oneself with a community of entrepreneurs, and the impact of understanding local context. From using flip books to fostering client engagement to the clarity exercise for decision-making, Dave's wisdom offers a refreshing perspective on personal and professional growth.

Guest Bio:

Dave Howard is an experienced entrepreneur and advocate for fostering meaningful connections in the business community. With a passion for engaging learning experiences and the power of curiosity, Dave brings a wealth of knowledge on cultivating lasting relationships and making impactful decisions in the business world.

Key Points:

- The value of exchanging ideas with a community of entrepreneurs (00:58)

- Using flip books to attract and engage potential clients (06:15)

- The impact of the clarity exercise for better decision-making (14:30)

- Embracing curiosity and understanding local context (20:45)

- Focusing on relevant, personalized solutions for clients (28:20)

Main Quote:

"Curiosity opens doors to opportunities that learners do not see." - Dave Howard

Guest's Website:

For more information about Dave Howard and his work, visit: https://grandconnection.ca/facilitators/dave-howard/

Welcome back to another episode of the One Small Change.

And as always, I'm thrilled that you took time out of your busy schedule

to come and share exploration and something that might

help you transform. As always, I'm your host Yvonne McCoy,

and I bring almost 30 years of entrepreneurial spirit,

experience, and passion for discovering the power of seemingly

small changes. And I wanna thank you again for joining me. And

this week, we are talking with Dave Howard.

Dave and I have a passion for learning and learning in

ways that are relevant and useful. And so we're gonna talk

about how small and unexpected and insignificant

decisions, can really spark a remarkable transformation

and a growth in both your personal and your professional life.

So, Dave, I am so glad that you're here. You and

I spend a lot of time together, in the course

of a month. And so our our challenge is

gonna be to stay focused.

So tell me we're already off to that brand.

Oh, tell me tell me what's a small

change and how it changed your business and and

made it what you're doing now? Well, I think it's

interesting. I used to think a lot about setting goals

and having large aspirations to work towards

and then breaking them down into little subtests and doing all those various and sundry

things. And I started to realize that that's often really challenging to

do, and you still end up with a lot of larger than you'd like chunks

to work with. And I think maybe part of what changed some of my thinking

around this was reading Atomic Habits and realizing that it's really all about the

little things that you do every day or the little things that you do

as part of an overall direction that makes a difference. And I

realized that that is particularly true, I think, about the way we learn and

the way that we should learn, which is not to try to cram everything we

need to know something about into half an hour or a

15 minute workshop or 6 hours of training. But to be able to

learn in smaller chunks may be able to learn when it's

relevant for us to know that particular thing and to go back and learn more.

And that's what I think engages people and interest them, and that's the kind of

learning we all do every day. So that's

really what I think is the key is small changes in learning,

small changes in understanding the world around you, and the things that you do in

your business make a huge difference over time. They compound.

Well, I think one of the things that that we've shared in the past

is that the world is changing very

quickly. And so whether you know it or not or whether you

do it consciously or not, we are all put in

a situation where we really you either need to learn or

you start to stagnate and fall behind. It's

you know? And so can you address that a little bit?

Sure. I I think you know, it's interesting. I spent some

time looking at customer education organizations that work

on trying to take people who sign up for their software

or their program of one kind or another and educate them how to use it

effectively. And very often that education is just

absolutely dreadful. It it doesn't really meet the needs of people. It doesn't

solve their their challenges. It doesn't move them forward in a particular

way. And so I think the answer in many cases to the to

the issue of what's the right kind of learning to be doing, it's the kind

of learning that makes sense to the learner in the context of the

circumstance. And so very often, what I think we see is people

providing a lot of learning resources or a lot of course

content that they never take the time to explain or

to understand how it's relevant to the learner. And then that

is what motivates us to continue to learn. We do continue to learn

in the directions that are important to us. If we need to figure out the

new system at the supermarket so that we can buy food and feed our family,

we figure it out. It's not hard to learn, we do it. If it's important

for us to know something out onto the job or in our business, we take

the time to learn it. But unless we see the relevance of that learning, unless

we see the importance of it, then it's hard to maintain that. Yet we're still

learning every day. We're learning about the things that matter to us, not about the

things that we can't find relevance for. Well, you

know, I've told you this story before that when I did workforce

training, I would show up and I'd say, this is what we're

gonna, you know, this is what we're gonna work on. You know,

what why are you here? And they would say, because I was told to be

here. And I'd say, well, it since you are here,

let's find something that would make this useful for you in your life.

Do you know? And then I then I got buy in. Then I got people

to say, okay, I wanna I wanna do this. I wanna, you know, I

wanna be involved in this. I wanna learn something. And I think the other

thing is that, you know, in school, in the time

frame that we were in, I think, we were not taught to be

curious about things, you know, and kind of like, if you

do this, then what's gonna happen? You you know, the our training

was pretty much just do this. You know, there's a

right or wrong answer. You're not taught to be curious.

You know? And I just found an article that said,

some of the signs some of the things that your

children do that drive you crazy are signs that they're probably, you know, highly

intelligent. You know, like, taking things apart and using them in different

ways where as parents, you know, or our parents at

least would say, don't do that. You know?

Don't take that apart. Leave leave it the way it is. You

know? And I think that that's a belief that

we have to overcome. And again, I

think part of that is because things are moving so fast. So give

me some if you can, I don't wanna put you on spot, but have you

got a some examples either in your own life or,

with clients where you found having just that shift in the way

they view learning

has changed how they learned and and the, you know, the rate that

they learned? Sure. Sure. One of the things that you know

that, you you and I and and our our

good colleague, Rob Rooter, like to work on is something called flipbooks. And digital

flipbooks are you've probably seen them. There are pages that turn

when you go through a document and you've probably seen a number of them and

thought that they were particularly dull, boring and uninteresting other than the fact that the

page has turned. And what Rob discovered a while ago is that you

can do almost anything you want with a flipbook. And so he brought that to

me, and I had seen them before. And, of course, I thought immediately, they're dumb.

They're not particularly useful. But then I thought, I should be curious about

this. Why does Rob think that this is valuable?

There's somebody I respect, and I want to understand why it is that he

sees value in it. And when I was curious, and I had him explain to

me what he saw, all of a sudden I thought, wow. This is a

tremendously underutilized resource. This is something that we could be

making very engaging, very interesting and

involving learning for people online using this simple

technology that's been around forever and is proven. So that's one

example of being curious. Another example of being curious is,

you know, that, we've also been working on the idea of taking some ideas

from few thought leaders, Cathy Sierra in a book that she wrote

called Badass Making Users Awesome, Vanessa Cirroli who talks

about the experience of going around the world and really listening to what people

need and then finding a way to help them. And Michelle Thomas who

believe that people who create learning are responsible for the success of

that learning, not the learner. And what strikes me about that

in particular perhaps is Ernesto Cirroli's idea that you can't really help

people unless you shut up and listen, unless you're curious

about what it is they're trying to accomplish, unless you're curious about what do

they know how to do and what do they not know how to do, unless

you're curious about where are the opportunities that they don't see

that you can help them to see. And it's that taking the time to be

curious and to open up to those things that I think makes all the

difference in the world. And so when we've had success in taking

clients of ours and encouraging them to look at flipbooks, it

usually is because we had them be curious about how how this

technology is different and look at it from a curious perspective and

say, what could we do with this? And pretty soon we're in this conversation where

it's saying, oh, well, could we do this? And we're yeah. Absolutely. We could do

that. That would be that would be great. And we end up with this interactive,

engaging learning resource that the user is curious about

too. They wanna turn the page and see what comes up next. They wanna do

the next exercise, watch the next video, and they are engaged in

it much more so. And all of that comes back to curiosity. So I

100% agree with you about curiosity. Well, I I'm I'm

I'm gonna, kinda jump on your toes a little bit by saying you're gonna

give us, a link to a flip book, right,

for a learning community that we're both very passionate about,

called the All For One Academy. And one of the other

things that we talked about about that is that too

often, when we put ourselves as the expert and the

person who has all the knowledge, we kinda shut down

the channels of engagement as opposed to saying I mean, this is what I

with I was not taught to be a teacher, but when I got

into training and teaching, I you know, I was like, I wasn't quite

sure of my skills. And so I would always say to the people,

if you don't understand it, it's not you. It's me.

I haven't said it in a way that makes sense. And I

think that is a huge shift in terms of

you know, because then people are not saying, I don't get it. I'm not

interested. I'm, you know, they're not connecting with me, that kind

of thing. And I and I think the other thing is,

you know, we all learn in different ways. So, you know, if you're if you

don't know, there's the visual, the audio, and the kinetic. And the

more way we we use them all, but we are more in tune

with 1 or 2 than all 3 of them. And when

I first started taking, they weren't online courses. They

were on the phone courses. And I'm very visual.

I had to have a toy to play with because I'm visual kinetic. I have

to see things and feel things. And I actually had to play with a

toy in order for me to be able to focus and listen

to the class. And so the more ways that you can get out

into the people that you wanna attract to the potential clients,

whether it's video, whether it's,

you know, a podcast, whether it is, you know, written,

the better chance you have of interacting with them and bringing

them into your sphere.

I think we talked about a couple of other things. We talked about, you

know, not making yourself the expert, but being

open to people. Oh, I know what I wanted to say. When

we're in the All For One, academy, and

we do our our monthly, you know, meetings, we

do an exercise that I think is really based on

curiosity, and I don't know if you wanna share that or not. Sure. Sure. Yeah.

I think that's one of the unique things that we've adapted from a couple of

different places, and Rob sort of introduced part of it. And then another member of

the academy actually suggested some, really interesting

ideas and twists on it. And the idea is a clarity exercise.

And the purpose of the exercise is for someone to bring a challenge or something

they're working on and pose it to the group, and then

have people not provide suggestions for answers,

not provide, oh, in my experience, this works or that works, but to say,

here are the questions you should be asking yourself. And

it's based on the philosophy that the answers lie within for most of us. Most

of us have all of the pieces that we need once we

clarify a few things to make the right decision for us in the right circumstance.

And if we're making it based on our internal feelings and our internal understanding,

it's going to be in alignment with how we wanna go ahead and and work

with that later. So it's gonna be more successful because it's not

imposing something on us. It's in alignment with our with our own

thinking. And so the idea is there are no answers provided.

There are no suggested solutions. There's no discussion.

It's just a collection of questions that you take away where you

can sit back and ponder and say, well, that's a really good question. What's my

answer to the question about why is this important to me? Or what's

the my answer to the question of why would I do

this versus that? And the questions allow you

to really let it percolate and come together in a way that makes sense

and that actually gets you faster to a solution

than trying to evaluate a bunch of different people's suggestions or

whether their opinions, whether they're factual, whether they would work for you, whether they

won't. None of that comes into it. You're just simply asking yourself

intelligent questions, and I think that's a great way to go.

And what what was kind of the unexpected? One of the things we said is

we don't want you to say it verbally. We want you to put it in

the chat. And what was one of the unexpected things that came out of

that? Well, I think the fact that people

became very thoughtful and they really kind of took away a whole

list of opportunities and things that they could see, They appreciated

the peace and quiet, the ability for everybody to just work on their own ideas

and questions and contribute it. So there wasn't any competition for

well, here's my suggestion, and I'm listening to your suggestions now and forgetting

my own. Everybody was just contributing them together. Only took about 5

minutes or so. And invariably, the people we've done it with have said,

it was a very powerful exercise to be the a participant in both from

the questioning standpoint. Often people realize questions they have themselves

that they haven't been contemplating about their own business. But also for

the person who's at the center of receiving all these questions, really powerful to

have that much focus on them and their issue and their circumstance

without having to kind of evaluate all those various things. I'm not sure if that's

what you're thinking about, but that Well, that that that was what I was thinking

about. But I think, the other thing that we realized was that the

questions that people posted, when you looked at

that whole list of questions, it was a great list of questions for you

too. Yeah. That's true. Everybody, actually, even though you were

doing it for that one person, the questions were really

good questions for you to ask about your own business. And I found

that because I it's really I mean, the reason I say

be curious not judgmental is because I spent most of my life being

very judgmental and telling

You know, coming from the manager model, we need to get it done. This is

what you need to do. And so when you realize that you're

making a question, your first inclination is, this is what you should

do. And just having to make a question out of

that, you know, what's the question that led me to

that solution? Or what was the piece do you know? Made

me stop and go, okay.

What's the question that I need to come up with? And it

stopped me from, you know, being judgmental and

saying this is what you need to do. And so the sharing,

even though you're sitting there in silence,

actually was going back and forth, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Yeah. And

I I think it's really powerful that everybody, because it's in the chat, can go

away with a copy of the questions and figure out, oh, which ones of these

are relevant from or what did this trigger for me, or what did I think

about with respect to this? So you're right. There's a lot of value there. And

that I think is sometime I think, you know, we had this theme

today of curiosity. And I think part of it is, as you start to

think of the questions you're going to recommend this person think about,

you're being curious about the issue yourself. You're being curious about

what would my questions be about this. What would I want to

know if I was in that circumstance? And I think that's a a

very, very powerful place to be instead of

evaluating answers, evaluating questions, or entertaining

questions. And, you know, I think I'm reminded of it, and it's a little bit

of a stretch. But, you know, that on my email, I have a quote from

Alan Alda at the end where he says, one of the things he's learned

is I'm not I've come to understand I'm not really listening unless I'm

prepared to be changed by what you say. Something along that lines.

And I think that's a really powerful reason to be curious.

Because when you're curious, the opportunity is there for you to get a new

perspective, to understand things from a different view, to see

how something could be different than you understood it before and use that

information for your own benefit, for your own direction, and for your

own increase and understanding. And so when you go back to the example of

being a manager and things being very directive, I remember those days as

well. That was the way you got things done, was you told people what to

do, and they did it. When you started getting the ideas that, well, you should

try to work with people to have them set their own goals and objectives, to

have them figure out what's important in their job, to have them figure out what

they need to learn. Because then it's them that came up with these suggestions,

not you. So they can't really say, well, Yvonne made me do this, and I'm

not really into it. Mhmm. They said, hey. I kinda came up with this as

something I should work on. It's gonna be hard for me to go back to

Yvonne and say, hey. Change your mind. I don't really think I should be working

on that anymore, or I better have a good reason for it. So I think

it's a way more powerful way to manage and to do your

business. Well, you know, getting back to to your business,

I think, you know, the whole purpose

for those of us that are in a service business

is to help people transform in some

way, either transform themselves, transform their business,

whatever, which requires change, which usually

requires additional information. But I think,

you know you know that one of my favorite quotes is,

you know, if you want a gooey brownie, you don't want the recipe. You know,

if you walked into a bakery store and you want the gooey brownie and they

said, okay. Here's 2 cups of flour. Here's some cocoa. You know?

That would really turn you off. And yet, in terms of us engaging,

and I'm not even you know, which some people call sales,

engaging with potential clients, that's exactly what we

do. We say, I'm gonna give you 2 cups of flour and, you know,

quarter cup of cocoa and, you know, do you've got do you

have an oven already? Do you, you know? And, you know, the

process is so long when in fact what they want is

the gooey brownie, you know. In the in the end, you're probably gonna teach them

how to make it, but, initially, you're you're That's the key. That's

it. If if you if I'm motivated by the gooey brownie

and I go in and I eat it 5 or 6 times and I pay

you $10 every time I go and buy a gooey brownie from you, pretty soon

I start to get motivated to figure out how to do this myself because I

really like these things, and I could be saving $10 every time. So I think

over and over and over again, when you're presented

with the outcome that you were looking for, the result that you

want, it leads to you wanting to learn how to do it. And that's really

you know, I mentioned Kathy Sierra earlier. That's really one of the things that she

pushes really hard is that once people can do successfully

what they set out to do, they will take the time to learn what are

the elements that go into doing that repeatedly and reliably over and over

again. And so they will learn the elements that you wanna teach them. But if

you teach them just the elements at first and they are not yet being

successful at what they wanted to do, it's discouraging. They still

can't snowboard. They still can't do this. They're still learning to do it,

and it's discouraging. And I'm I wanna I wanna kinda make this

just to me, relevant to me. I mean, there are certain marketing

buzzwords that have always turned me off because I didn't get

it. I mean, it's no matter how many times people tried to

explain it to me, I didn't get it. And, you know, the benefits of

your service was always something that is, like, I don't know what the benefits

are. You know, you do know, but but in that

framework, maybe not. And so that to me, when

I say you want the gooey brownie, that I get.

Do you know? This is you know, so when I'm talking to my clients, I

can say, are you tired of this? Do you want

this? You know? If you said to me, list the benefits, I would

be stuck like a deer in in the headlights. And I

think that's, you know, the other thing is that one

size does not fit all. There's so many different variables to

every situation. People need to feel confident

enough that they can tweak and

adjust. You know, and, you know, I talk about

situational awareness, which I thought was a great phrase. But when I

looked it up, it turned out that somebody else had already invented it.

It was actually for for first responders and military people you need to

be aware of your surroundings to stay safe. Right? But the

same is true of us as as business owners.

If you have a fire in an ashtray, you don't call the fire department.

You know? You have to be aware of what you're doing. So if you need

to make a small change in your business, you don't

necessarily need to pull out the big guns and change everything. And I and I

I think even when I was managing, one of the things I always hated

was you got a new person on top, and they changed

everything without taking the time to say, what works?

Right. Right. What's working here? What if you know? And

it used to be like, oh my you know, I remember when I would

became a district manager, one of the people walked in and she goes, you're the

6th district manager that I've been through. So Yeah. I'm

not really paying you any attention. I was like, gosh.

I mean, people have common set you know, people have common set if

you don't That's the thing that strikes me most about, you know, I mentioned

Ernesto Cirroli. His education in this whole thing was going into

Africa as a young idealistic, save the

world teenager, early 20 something, and trying to help a

group of people to plant tomatoes in a very verdant area of

Zambia or something like that. And his story in short

form of his story is they planted everything. They got amazing tomatoes

better than anything he'd ever seen in Italy. He was so amazed and so impressed,

and he couldn't understand why the local people hadn't done this a 1000000 times over

because it was so obvious it was a great place. And he woke up one

day and the whole tomato field was smashed down, eaten, destroyed,

whatever. And he said, what happened? They all said, what what happened? And the local

people said, well, of course, the hippos came through last night, ate and destroyed

everything. That's why we don't plant tomatoes there.

Alright. Before we we you know, like I said, our problem is gonna be to

stay focused and stay within time. So just

a couple of action steps that you think people can take

and talk about the free gift that you're gonna give. Okay. Action steps

I think that you can take are I'm gonna come back to being curious. I

think if you try to gain an understanding

of the things around you that may be beneficial to you to your

business by talking to other people, I think that's a benefit. And why

we are so energized, I think, about All For

One is I think a belief that we have and share that the

collective wisdom of a group of entrepreneurs coming together and

sharing ideas and experience, maybe incomplete experience, maybe

incomplete ideas, is more valuable to me as an entrepreneur

than some guru trying to teach me their system that work for them under a

certain set of circumstances, which I can't relate to. Yada yada

yada. So the idea that you can surround yourself with a group of

people who are willing to help, are willing to exchange their ideas for

yours, and exchange for your ideas to help them, and are willing to make

your path to success much better is a really, really good

strong way to go. There's a lot of knowledge in the collection of

people who are trying to do business together. So find yourself a community like

that would be my first step. The second step is find a way

to attract people to you, and this is where the flip book idea comes

in. We work a little bit around in a model of

attracting people to you and then engaging them in what it is that you're

doing and building a relationship with them over time. Not so much a

transaction, a sale, but on a transaction to or

a transformation to them saying, this person knows a lot or this person

had a lot of interesting ideas or resources. I wanna stay connected to

them. I can't see what I need to buy from them today, but I don't

wanna lose this relationship. It's too valuable to me. And so a flip

book can be a really good way to gain attention. We had somebody early on

when we were doing this say to us, you know, you tell me you have

a 25 minute video. I look at it. I say, I don't have time to

watch a 25 minute video. I'm busy. I won't I'll I'll look at it later.

You give me a flip book. I love the way you broke that video

down into all these little things. I was flipping the pages I'm going through, and

we go back and look at how long did they spend going through the flip

book, and they spent 45 minutes going through the flip book. Why?

Because they were in control. It felt like everything was going at their pace. They

knew when they could stop. They could keep going. So they did have the time,

but it didn't feel like they were making the time because they were engaged and

involved in it. So one of the things that we're offering is a is an

introductory portion of a course that we have on creating flipbooks

that will show you how flipbooks are a simple technology that's

overlooked and that can be used in order to attract

people to your offer, to your ideas in a way that engages them and involves

them. And you talked earlier about kinesthetic aspects of

learning. That's one of the things that got me about flipbooks.

I've been in video for a long time. I have a radio and television arts

degree originally. That's my background. And I was used to saying to people,

here's a video. It's very engaging. And they would sit and watch it for 5

minutes. And if they were if we were lucky, they stayed awake. They didn't drift

off during that. We put that same content into a flip book, and now

there are other things they can click there to find more information. They turn the

page every time they go to the next piece of information. They're physically

involved in moving the learning forward instead of just sitting there

passively having it flow over them. So we're gonna provide a link to you so

that you can come and take that free introductory program that shows you a little

bit about how this can be an amazingly effective, attractive,

piece for what you're doing, and it's relatively easy to learn. And we do have

options and courses to help you to build those or to build them yourself, or

we can help you to build them. Lots of different ways we can go, but

we're just interested in getting you a way to get to your audience in a

way that's different, unique, and engages them for longer. Because we

know that the biggest challenge most entrepreneurs have is not selling to

people, but finding the time to get the conversation to the point where they

can share what they could do for them. If you can get people's attention and

have a conversation, many entrepreneurs are excellent at finding

relationships that turn into business. But it's getting that attention that's so

critical. So that's the couple of things along that line.

I have to tell you, even though I know about flipbooks, I'm

in. I am definitely in. So So let me ask

you the quick question before we end up. And that

is the the $1,000,000 question is, when was the last time you

did something for the first time? I

I think just earlier this morning. No. I I

I I am a small business entrepreneur, so I am constantly doing things for

the first time. And it's been actually really interesting. I've been working with a colleague

of mine, who has been a lifelong manager in an education

department, worked inside a fairly conservative organization for a long time. And he's

now gone out and he's hung out his own shingle, and he's doing some consulting

work. And it's been really fun to to to talk to him and to

work with him because he's learning about the possibility of doing

things he's never done before and feeling like so

here's where that community of people comes together again. I could I could give

you a half dozen examples over the last couple of weeks where I've taken

on something that we're going to do as an organization that I have

no idea how we're going to do it. What I do know is I know

people like you. I know people like Rob. I know people in the offer one

community. I know people in the other communities. And amongst those people

are the answers I need to be able to do this. And if not, I

can always go to some place like Fiverr or Upwork or someplace, and I can

hire somebody who has the expertise that we don't have at a relatively good rate

to do it. So I almost never say I can't do that. I

always try to do it on my own. I always try to figure out what

I can, and then I go and get the help that I need from other

people, and I let them fill in the gaps. So I think I do something

new and different every day. And and I love that attitude. I

love that attitude. Alright. I am sorry, but we're gonna have to wind this up.

And so for those of you that are listening, make sure that you subscribe,

share, and engage with the podcast. You can find the previous

podcast, you know, and listen to them. We've had some great

guests. And it's my way of giving back to the community and helping

you fuel your quest for growth and and impact. So I

hope you will continue to join me for one small change and see, you

know, what kind of small shifts we can have that will yield

monumental transformations. And I wanna make sure that,

you know, you dive into your world with your bold vision and

innovative possibilities. So, Dave, real fast, what's

your your last word? What's your take, you know, that you wanna leave us

with? My take is I I'm gonna go back to be curious. I think we

developed that really well. Be curious about what's around you. Be curious about the opportunities

that exist in your day to day life. As Ernesto Saro

says, shut up and listen. Keep listening until you really understand

what the circumstances, what the person is trying to accomplish, and how you might

be able to help them to get there. Or as Alan Alda said, until you're

changed by what you're hearing. That is a true

means of reaching success, I think, for small business people.

This is fabulous. I wish we had more time. Thank

you. Always talking to you is one of the best

times of my week. So I wanna remind my audience,

you know, that remember change is simple but it's not always easy. And

it requires courage, resilience, and a willingness to step outside your

comfort zone. So make sure that you join me again for the one small change,

again, as we embark on this journey of a bold vision and innovative

possibilities. And I will see you on the

next One Small Change podcast, and

I hope you will listen to more. Thank you so much, Dave, for coming

and sharing My pleasure. Thank you for your help. Wisdom.