Shownotes
This week's Five Random Questions is a blend of light-hearted banter and profound life lessons as Dave Campbell opens up about his journey as a podcaster and musician. Dave reflects on the significance of community and connection, both in his personal life and through his various podcasts.
He also touches upon the impact of social media on relationships and the importance of engaging in open, respectful conversations that bridge divides, encouraging listeners to embrace diverse perspectives and foster genuine connections.
Answering the questions this week: David Campbell
Dave is from Ontario Canada. He has been chased by a Moose, been in 3 tornadoes, heard himself on the radio, Dave wonders why people love puzzles, and he can’t swim. Dave is fairly sarcastic and his wit makes him slightly dizzy at times. His wife does find Dave mildly entertaining (in small amounts and from a safe distance). Dave is the host of 8 different podcasts, and over the past 5 years Dave has created content, community and stories - speaking with guests from around the world - everyone has a story! Dave pursues curiosity and coffee in the search for creative people and stories. Dave is an empty nest Dad with 3 adult children. Dave loves his rescued animals, Dave has been an active musician for over 45 years and he has more stories than what can fit into a standard podcast recording. Dave operates True Media Solutions and supports podcasters by handling podcast editing, growth and promotion. https://truemediasolutions.ca/
Further reading for this episode
- The Dad Space Podcast
- The Amazing EBow :: The EBow Story
- UpCycle Canada - Upcycle, Home and Home Decor, Home Decor
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Transcripts
I wish I was better at waiting and enjoying those moments when the kids were little and they couldn't explain without crying or whining. And I wish I wasn't so pressed to have them hurry up and grow up, because all my kids are gone, Danny. They're out of the house.
All I have is their stuff. And we charge them admission to come in the house and storage fees because we're not allowed to get rid of any of this stuff.
But they're on with their lives and they don't need me in the way they did when they were little.
Danny Brown:Hi, and welcome to Five Random Questions, the show where every question is an adventure. I'm your host, Danny Brown, and each week I'll be asking my guest five questions created by a random question generator.
The guest has no idea what the questions are, and neither do I, which means this could go either way. So sit back, relax, and let's dive into this week's episode. Today's guest is Dave Campbell. Dave is from Ontario, Canada, which is where I'm from,
funnily enough. He's been chased by a moose. Okay.
Been in three tornadoes, heard himself on the radio, and his wife finds him mildly entertaining in small amounts and from a safe distance. Dave is a host of eight different podcasts, so I feel he's actually beating me here, which is unusual.
And he's also been an active musician for over forty five years and has more stories than what can fit into a standard podcast recording. Dave operates True Media Solutions and supports podcasters by handling podcasting, editing, growth, and promotion.
So, Dave, welcome to five Random Questions.
Dave Campbell:I love this show, and I can't believe I'm sitting here with you. I have no idea what's coming next. So I'm nervous. I have this little weird feeling in my tummy. But, hey, I'm in good hands.
Danny Brown's here, so this is good.
Danny Brown:Very kind, and we've spoken a few times. We spoke at a Canadian podcasting event in Calgary, in Canada, a couple of months ago.
Actually, we met for the first time there, and I've been on your show recently, so, you know, thank you for that. So, yeah, we're in. We're in comfortable territory here. If you.
Dave Campbell:When we sat down at Pod Summit, I'm like, I got to talk to the Danny Brown. And I looked at my wife and she's like, who's that guy? I'm like, oh, that's the Danny Brown. So, yeah, it's exciting to be here.
Danny Brown:I feel your wife had the right reaction there. Unless she was on about The Danny Brown, Detroit rapper.
Dave Campbell:There you go. Yeah. I can tell from your accent you're not from Detroit originally. So this is great.
Danny Brown:Unless I'm hiding it really well. And I have to get the proverbial Canadian elephant out the room first.
Dave Campbell:Oh, okay.
Danny Brown:You got chased by a moose. And I know there's a lot of non Canadians feel that's like a rite of passage. A rite of passage. And I can see. No, it's not.
So what happened there, mate?
Dave Campbell:So they're also known for people who don't know what a moose is. They're also. We also call them swamp donkeys. They're not the smartest creatures in the world. They're big, huge animals.
But when I was in high school, I was out riding my bike in a small northern Ontario town. It feels like a movie set up here. But anyway, riding my bike, and everyone knows everybody in this town, I go riding my bike down the road.
I go to turn right, and as I turn right, there's all these cars, which is not normal for a small town. And everyone's kind of waving at me to stop.
And as I turn the corner, I come face to face with a female moose who's taller than I've ever experienced. This thing is huge. And it just looks at me and starts to decide to follow me, let's say follow me at a very fast clip.
And I'm riding my bike as fast as possible to get away from this thing. And eventually it peeled off in a different direction.
But to come face to face with something huge like that is probably something everyone should experience, I think. But, yeah, it was pretty interesting. And a lot of people don't believe me, but it happened. I had proof people were there with me. So, yeah.
Danny Brown:And let's say they are very big. I was amazed. I've only seen one before in my life and I was flabbergasted at how big they actually are.
Dave Campbell:Yeah. If you want context, if you're in your car, driving, listening to this, imagine coming up to a moose on the road.
The moose body is above the height of your car, the roof of your car, just to give you context. So you just see the legs. That's all you're going to see.
Danny Brown:Yeah. And if you hit that, that there's a good chance that you'll be the roadkill, not the moose.
Dave Campbell:Yeah. No.
Danny Brown:Especially speed.
And just before we get into the random questions for this episode, there is a little bit of a random, like a bonus random question I'm going to ask you as well. So you mentioned you've been a musician for over forty five years.
So following the sort of, you know, the flavor of the show, what's the most random story you can share during that time? Like a random event that happened or an experience that happened to you?
Dave Campbell:One thing I love when it kind of relates to podcasting, which you and I are in love with, is being in the studio recording with a band. And we had laid down all of our tracks, and it was time for vocals. We usually do that at the end.
And the vocalist was in the booth, and I'm sitting with the engineer. And it's kind of interesting because it does relate to podcasting. The vocalist went through the entire recording, did the track. It sounded great.
But then the. The producer pushed the little talk back button and speaks into the booth and says to the singer, great. Really good take. Can you do it one more time?
But this time I want you to smile. And I looked over at the producer and went, smile. And he said, yeah, you can actually hear a smile. So I've never forgotten that moment.
And as I do podcasting, especially when we're doing podcasts on our own, there's no one here. Nobody can see you. Nobody can experience the moment with you. You're talking to a computer.
So I'm like, how can I demonstrate how I'm excited about the topic or whatever we're talking about? So remember to smile.
Just show up, right, and put yourself in that moment, because you can actually hear it and experience it, even just with audio only. It's an amazing experience.
So for anyone listening, if you're ever thinking about starting a podcast, like the amazing Danny Brown, smile when you get onto the microphone, and it's going to translate. So that's a great little teachable moment that I've never been able to forget.
Danny Brown:And it's very true. Like you say you can. You can hear that emotion in the voice, right?
And it's almost like if you're watching a video and someone might look grumpy in the video, but their eyes tell a different story. They might be smiling inside a private joke or whatever. So, yeah, one hundred percent.
I can always tell when someone's smiling at something they just said, because you can hear that coming over there. Just like. They're like, oh, giggle now. So, yeah, you can hear it.
All right, well, that was one bonus random one, but we have five proper random questions for you, so if you're ready for these, Dave, I'm going to bring up the random question generator, and we will start the random questions all Right, Dave, here's a nice, simple one to start things off for you. Question number one. When things break, do you prefer to fix them or replace them?
Dave Campbell:Okay, I love this. Okay, Danny. So my very first podcast, this, I Promise is related, is around a small business that my wife and I started ten years ago.
It's called Upcycle Canada. And what we do is we take things people break or don't want or going to throw away. We repurpose, we recycle, but we upcycle.
So we take something that was one thing and we turn it into something else. So furniture turned into a shelf, a piano turned into something else. So we're always repurposing and saving things.
I'm trying to divert as much from the landfill as possible and extend the life of something beyond what it was so that we use less trees and less resources and less all that other stuff. So I'm all about repurposing, whether that's content, whether that's physical products in the world.
So I would much rather fix, replace, repair, upcycle, then replace them. So I'm totally into fixing and replacing.
Danny Brown:It's funny, the timing of this question is really ideal, for want of a better word. My mind's just gone. What word I want to use there.
I saw a reel on Facebook last night, and it was a person, like a lady that does similar to what you and your wife does. It finds items and then, you know, up, up fixes them or up up replaces them or whatever.
So she found, like, one of these little bubble gum machines, and we have a miniature one in our kitchen actually for the kids, but we actually use it for bubble gum.
So it's like the little almost like the popcorn thing that you get at movies, right, where you've got the little plastic ball globe at the top and then the gum dispenser with the twisty arm thing. So she found one of them and took it back, and she made a video saying, you're never going to believe what I made from this.
And so she cleaned it out, she painted it, gave her a different color, and that turned into a dog treat dispenser so her dog could just wander up and get a little treat now and again, which I thought was awesome.
Dave Campbell:That's amazing. See, that's great. That's thinking outside the box. And I think we're so disposable in life, general terms.
In our world today, everything we buy seems to have an end date. Anything we can do to increase that end date, it's going to help us to be better for the planet. So, yeah, Upcycle Canada. That's where we started.
That was my first podcast.
Danny Brown:Very cool.
And what's been one of the best or most interesting things that you've taken and changed it to either something completely different from what it was originally built for, or just you were surprised at how it came out because you weren't sure if it would actually, you know, become a nice project.
Dave Campbell:Yeah, we've done lots. But I want to share an example from somebody else that we worked with. They. They take pianos, and we all.
Everybody seems to have a piano they don't want, and nobody wants to buy it. So these pianos end up in the dump in the landfill. So what he does is he takes pianos and he redoes them. And he.
The story was one of his relatives had a piano. It was a husband and wife. The husband would write music and play music on this piano.
He sadly passed away very young, and she had to move from their home into a smaller location. Couldn't take the piano, his piano, with her perfectly operational, great piano. But she would have to get rid of it. There's no way to take it.
So she gave it to this gentleman.
He took it apart and created this shelf out of the wood from the piano, which was then turned into a shelf she could take with her to her new location. And on that shelf was an urn with his ashes.
And so that piece of that piano, with an emotional attachment for her to her late husband, was able to come with her to the new location. And I'm like, that's a great example of something being repurposed and extended the life of. What a great story.
To be able to have that piece of that instrument to go with her into the future. I love that. So that's kind of the idea.
Danny Brown:No, I like that because like you say, when you mention a piano, you think, okay, well, you've got the key. So you have to keep the keys in a piano. Otherwise it's, you know, they're. They're gone. So I guess with the keys and once.
So for a project like that, I don't know if you know or not, would the keys go to maybe a music store or something like that? Or these. What was happening with the keys, do you think?
Dave Campbell:So this same gentleman, because he came on my show as a guest. His name is Stan. He created for me a key holder. So you think by the door as you leave, you hang your keys on. So.
But it actually has keys from a piano.
Danny Brown:Wow.
Dave Campbell:On a key holder. So. And he put the logo from our podcast in a little glass case inside of this unit, but it actually shows the piano keys.
And then below it you hang your keys. And I'm like, well, there you go. See? So we actually have a piece of his with us, which is amazing.
Danny Brown:I like that. That's a. Like you say, it's a really nice way to personalize something for, you know, someone that can mean so much to them. But then the.
Not the junk stuff that's left over. Cause that's a horrible word to use. But the stuff that you might expect. Okay, I can't use that now because the piano is gone. They can still be used.
And especially in such a cool little way that. Well, I keep my keys with the keys. It's key holder, and it is key holder. That's pretty cool.
Dave Campbell:It's amazing.
Danny Brown:Awesome. So I like that. That was a nice little positive entry into the episode here. So thanks for that, Dave.
Let's have a look at what we have for question number two. I feel this is a really good one for a podcaster and a musician. So, Dave, question number two. What sound do you love?
Dave Campbell:Well, I can go many directions in this. Obviously. I love the sound of my. The voice of my children. I love the sound of my wife's voice.
I love when my dog howls when I leave the house because he misses me so much. Those are lots of different examples. But let's go musical with this. I'm a guitar player.
That was the first instrument I started on when I was ten because my parents told me I had to pick between the accordion and the guitar. The guitar. So I'm like, well, I don't know a lot of fancy famous accordion players. I'm sure there's a polka Kings out there.
But guitar seemed to be the more attractive to me when I was ten years old. I love. I have this little thing it's actually got right here. It's called an Ebow. Now this is. I'm holding it up so you can see it, but it's Ebow.
And what it is is an electronic bow. And you hold it on your guitar and it vibrates the strings and creates a consistent vibration. So you have a note that never ends.
So you'll hear this on some songs on the radio. And it's so cool because it's all magnetic and it makes the strings move without you having to touch them.
So you can actually move your fretting hand up on the fretboard and it makes this haunting, eerie sound that just kind of continues forever and ever and ever. So an Ebow, this is like a cool tool that most guitar players would never ever know what to do with or ever you heard of.
But when you can find a tool that nobody uses in real life on a regular basis and then put that into something, it makes people go, what. What is that sound? Like, how are you doing that? That's impossible that that note never ends.
So I love finding things that people don't know about and then putting them into stuff when they're not expecting it.
So for me, I love the sound of an Ebow because it creates that everlasting note that I could just hold that note as long as the battery lasts in this little doohickey, I can make that note last forever. So I love sounds that make people go, what was that? That's what I love to do.
Danny Brown:And would that work? Obviously, the guitar is perfect for that. Would that work on any string instrument instrument, you think, where you'd use your fingers on the.
Dave Campbell:You could probably. I've used it on acoustic instruments as well. Not just electric, but. Yeah, it. It's got a lot of different uses.
As long as it's a stringed instrument, it's going to vibrate those strings. And it's quite interesting. So, yeah, it's called an Ebow. E B O W Ebow, Ebow.
Danny Brown:It's like an electronic book, electronic bow. Ebow. It's really easy to remember.
And are there any songs like musicians, like famous songs of that that we might have heard that being used on without realizing it?
Dave Campbell:Yeah, there's several. You'll hear some similar sounds when you listen to any U2 songs. The Edge likes to make those kind of sounds, like, with or without you.
That would be one. The Jones Gang has a song out as well, where it's the beginning of the song. So there's a lot of different bands that use this.
There's another band called the. The Allies. They use it for a song called Last Chance Cafe. It's this haunting, kind of weird sound that just. You just are like.
That is so different from everything else I've ever heard. So, yeah, if you go onto YouTube and just type E B O W Ebow, you'll find all kinds of artists. Keith.
Keith Urban just did a song on his recent album with it as well. It's a unique little thing that not a lot of people know about. So anything unique and creative. I think that's our advantage, Danny, in life.
Danny Brown:No, for sure. And I'll be checking that out. And I was going to say, I'll leave the links to Some of these songs and artists in the show notes.
But, you know, as Dave mentions, if you go type Ebow into YouTube, you'll bring up a lot of artists there. I almost wonder as well, of Enya. Enya. Enya did a similar effect because her vocals are just really haunting.
And sometimes on her songs, she's always got that note that's playing behind her like a choir. All kind of note effect. And I wonder if it's like a vocal equivalent for that. Or maybe that's just in post production on the producer side.
Dave Campbell:Yeah, possibly. Yeah, that's a great idea.
Danny Brown:All right, so, Ebow, Ebow we go to question three. What a really poor little. What a little connection that was. Okay, so let's have a look to see what we have then. Interesting one.
This has never come up before.
Dave Campbell:Okay.
Danny Brown:All right, Dave, this is a real interesting question and could go either way, obviously, but what's question number three? What's your personal image of God?
Dave Campbell:Wow. Okay.
So, Danny, not a lot of people know this about me, but I actually have a bachelor's degree in theology, so I can go all kinds of places here with you. I was in my twenties. I graduated from college with my degree, and I went to work with. Here in Ontario, we have provincial police.
Okay, the OPP, Ontario Provincial Police. For the US listeners, that'd be state police. So here in Ontario, I was able to partner and work with the provincial police.
And I was one of the people that would go into, like, work with youth that were in trouble. And the police didn't have a liaison between themselves and the public.
So people saw the police as threatening, and I was less threatening, so I would come in. An example was a high school student smashed his dad's vehicle, and the police came to the house to confront the person. But. And sadly, the.
The teenager exited this world because of the fear of facing his father. But the police didn't know how to deal with this person. So I was the type of person that they would call on to kind of be a person in between.
I'm not a police officer, but I am closely able to reach into that audience.
So I was able to take my theology degree, which is typically forces you into the path of working in a church, for example, But I was able to take it outside of the church and work with people in real life in public. So I love. That was an option for me. So my personal image of God, I would say, is someone.
It seems to be that anything to do with church, religion, and all that stuff makes people kind of put you in a box where you're a judgmental person if you believe in a certain thing. I like to be the opposite of that, Danny.
In my podcasting, in my interactions with people, I talk to people who would not necessarily agree with me on my personal views, but I like to give a stage to everyone.
I want to be able to, to interact with people and give them the opportunity to see what it's like to believe in God without feeling judged by that person in the same breath. So I love a free and open communication with people and I spend a lot of people on time with people on my show.
Danny, that the two of us should never be in a room together because we are kind of diametrically opposed to each other and now we look at life. So my image of God is someone that would be open to everyone.
Not someone who is closed off in a certain building on a Sunday, irrelevant to the world, but someone that brings harmony and peace and conversation and the opportunity to grow in relationship and community even if we don't agree on everything.
That is my image of God because I think anything that you believe in, no matter what your belief is in this world, it should bring conversation, not separation. We see it in politics, we see it in religion. We see us being so separate right now in this big world of ours.
I would love for that to breathe something that brings us together, that doesn't push us apart. So my image of God brings us together and never separates us in conversation, in life and in community. That's my image of God.
Danny Brown:And do you think you'd mentioned a really good point there about how if you're religious or non religious like on the other side as well, and it can sometimes push you or have people push you into this sort of bucket of.
Well, you're not open to other ideas because you're either, you know, you're religious, you're not religious, you have this belief in this religion, you don't have this belief in these religions and everything in between. Do you feel that some religions are not. Not religion, some aspect of religion?
Let me try clarify this because I want to make sure this is clear and, and not mistaken has been co opted by groups that use it for their very own personal needs. And that's why religion, and the bigger, wider scope to your point of being open to everyone, that's why that's.
Maybe religion has gotten not such a bad name, but maybe come against, you know, less beliefs now or people that are pushing back against it because of the more extreme personal co opting if that makes sense. I hope that makes sense.
Dave Campbell:Yeah, I think in just big terms, if we talk like big ideas, I just think anything to do with religion, anything to do with politics, all of those things, as soon as somebody finds out who you are and what you believe, whatever that is, then they quickly put you in a bucket. So I'll give you a non religious, religious example. You can have the Van Halen. For people, again, go back to music.
You have the David Lee Roth era and you have the Sammy Hagar era, the David Lee Roth's era. They have nothing to do with Sammy Hagar on Van Halen, and the Sammy Hagar group has nothing to do with David Lee Roth. I lean more to Sammy Hagar.
So you can have this kind of. This world even within something just as small as a band and music. But opinions are great because everyone has them.
But the best thing, I think is conversation.
So even if you don't agree that Sammy Hagar was the best vocalist for Van Halen and that was the best years of recording for Van Halen, doesn't mean that we can't be friends and unite under the fact that we love music and we love Van Halen as a big overarching thing. If you like one different than I do, that's great.
If you walk into your local grocery store and go to the ice cream section, there are so many types of ice cream.
Now, I might like one kind of ice cream and you might like a different type of ice cream, but that doesn't mean that your ice cream's wrong and my ice cream's right. We all love ice cream.
So whether it's vanilla or rocky road or tiger tail or double chocolate with nuts and cookies and whatever, we all love ice cream.
So if we can all kind of come to that agreement that whether you like music this way or this way, you like religion or faith one way or this way, as long as we can talk in big terms and go, hey, I respect you, Danny, and whatever you believe is great, but I would also like to have a conversation about what I believe.
And in this conversation, I think that makes us stronger because we're not trying to figure out what bucket to put you in, but the fact that we can have a great conversation and walk away from this conversation, even if we disagree and have a great friendship and a great relationship where we don't have to choose sides. So that's what I think we need in this world. It's less sides, more community.
And I think podcasting is a great way to do that because we can share voices and people can listen to you and they might not agree with you, but at the end of the day they know you have a good heart and that you're not there to judge, you're just there to put out the information and start a conversation. So that's kind of my image.
Danny Brown:No, I like that. And I feel I completely agree with you. That conversation seems to have like two week conversation and we in two way viewpoints with respect as well.
Like respectful conversations seems to be, you know, fewer opportunities for that. Now to your point, podcasting is great because it does allow people and it can take.
It can give some anonymity as well, which can help more open conversations because it's just two voices on audio. If you're not doing a video podcast, for example, so you don't even have to be on screen for that. But I'm wondering if maybe the.
Obviously the popularity of social media, we keep talking about this in all kinds of aspects of life, but it's super easy to block someone that doesn't agree with you. And I wonder if that sort of encouraged an echo chamber where you're only starting to build a community circle. Not community circle.
A circle, I guess, of people that just subscribe to your viewpoints and your beliefs. And then you're not open to anybody that might have a slightly different one but has valid points.
And I wonder if maybe socials kind of as much as it's opened up the world and anybody can talk with anybody, no matter how far apart you are, it's also closed over because it makes it easier to really just focus on these little groups that you want to lead or be part of.
Dave Campbell:Yeah. And I've had people come on my show and we come on camera. I do an audio podcast as well, but I use video during the recording.
And they come on camera with me and they look at me and they go, oh. And I'm like, what? They're like, you can see it on their face. This is a white guy in his fifties. I know where this conversation's going. Right.
I feel like I have to work extra hard to dismantle that presumption of what I believe about you. And I bring people on my podcast that again, I. I probably wouldn't interact with.
They're not in my social circles and they're in a different part of life than I am at and they have different beliefs. So I want to have that conversation. I want to give a place to that because I'm a curious person.
So I think in general terms, I think we need to learn how to listen. Not to be able to speak next, but learn how to listen to hear people.
Because I think we always are in this moment where we're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you finish your top, your topic. Because I just want to jump in and share my thought.
I think we need to stop doing that and listen more to what's being said so that we can interact with people in a better way. So don't listen to react, listen to hear the person in front of you.
Danny Brown:And as a podcaster, that's perfect advice, especially if you've got an interview show. I always, there's people always ask whether it's at Captivate support, where I work or online, et cetera.
What makes a good podcast host, and I always answer based on my preferences for listening, is the host lets the guest speak and then follows the guest. You know, as opposed to, you know, this shows five random questions, so that's perfect.
I have to worry about trying to stick to a script or anything, but you can tell when someone's got, say, ten bullet points in front of them for an interview. And Dave, you've said you've spoken about, you know, this topic just now. I might have. The next question is nothing to do with this.
And I just cut you off after you finished with that. All right, Dave, now we're going to speak about this. Yeah, so you say. That's great. I was just using a podcast, an example there.
But great advice to be a listener. I think that's a really good, important skill in life in general to be a good listener and an open listener.
Dave Campbell:That was an interesting question, Danny. Wow, we really went there. That's good. Love it.
Danny Brown:Yeah. And like I said, never appeared before on the show, so that's a nice first as well.
So with that being said, let's have a look at question number four. All right, interesting, because I see you as a fairly patient person, but I could be wrong. Maybe this is why your wife enjoys you in small doses.
Dave. But question number four, where do you not mind waiting?
Dave Campbell:Wow. Okay. Well, I would say I am patient. My wife might disagree, Danny.
And she might email you with follow up information and examples of me not being patient. But I would say that I'm a pretty patient person. Where do I not mind waiting? I would say I would not mind waiting.
As a father, I think when my kids were little. I have three kids, they're all adults. I'm an empty nester now with my wife Jen.
When my kids were little, I was in such a hurry for them to hurry up and grow up. Like, can you just start talking?
Because if you could talk, I could understand what you want and then I can help better this whole whining, crying thing. Can we just get to the talking bar part? Right? So then I'd push them quickly to that part. I couldn't wait for them to get talking.
Then I couldn't wait for them to start walking. Then I couldn't wait for them to get into school so I could have time back then I couldn't wait for them to get in high school and then college.
I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing. I just were like, oh, I just wish you'd hurry up now as an empty nest dad.
I wish I was better at waiting and enjoying those moments when the kids were little and they couldn't explain without crying or whining. And I wish I wasn't so pressed to have them hurry up and grow up because all my kids are gone, Danny. They're out of the house.
All I have is their stuff. And we charge them admission to come in the house and storage fees because we're not allowed to get rid of any of this stuff.
But they're on with their lives and they don't need me in the way they did when they were little. And if somebody could come to me and say, hang on, Dave, slow down, enjoy the moment.
You have eighteen summers with these kids and then they're going to be off to doing something in life.
And the moment, Danny, when your kids leave the house and everyone's not under the same roof, when you go to bed at night and you lock the door and you climb into bed, that moment is gone forever when they leave you. So that's why I created my Dad Space podcast, because I wanted to say to dads, slow down, don't be in such a hurry.
The waiting is the part is the part that's the best, the waiting for them to grow up, you need to let that happen and don't rush it, because if you rush it, you're going to regret it. So enjoy the waiting as a parent, because you're going to miss it. I'm going to tell you right now, as an empty nester, you're going to miss it.
So slow down and enjoy those moments. Don't let them frustrate you. Enjoy the waiting.
Danny Brown:That's real good advice I had not the same, because I've still got my kids at home at the moment anyway. They're getting older, and at the weekend just passed, my son had a soccer tournament in the U.S. so he was with my wife and my daughter.
She does competitive cheer, so she had to be south from where we live for that weekend. So she had a couple of sleepovers with friends near her or cheer gym.
So I essentially had the house to myself on the Friday night and Saturday night and it felt really, really weird, but I knew I'd be having people coming back, so I was enjoying the quiet. But it was nice to have people come back and have the noise and the hustle until like this morning or yesterday.
I was also thinking, okay, my son was like saying some random crap or whatever. I really should go on this podcast actually. He speaks random very well.
And I just thought, go to school, you know, just go, it's, you know, it's morning, go catch your bus or whatever. So, you know, to your point there, I feel that as much as I'm saying that to him now, I will really miss that in.
He's fourteen now, so I'm guessing maybe four years, five years time if he decides to go to college, university, etc. So I feel that's really great advice to the kids now. Do you feel, you know, that they're adults?
You mentioned that they come back, they've got some storage stuff in that when they come and visit. Do you find yourself being more in the moment even though they're adults now because of what your lessons were, now they're an empty nester.
Dave Campbell:Yeah, there's a lot of regrets, Danny, I gotta tell you.
As a, as a dad that was focused on job and career and I drove and commuted to work all the time and I'd get leave early, they'd be all in bed, I'd come home, they'd be in bed. I miss a lot of years with my kids and you know, a lot some of my kids are not even in the same city now, so I don't even get to see them often.
So it's, it's a very, very weird feeling to, to not have them all under one roof. And I would give everything I own to have that again and go back in time.
If I could do the back to the future thing, I'd love to go back and just tell myself to slow down a little bit because you're going to miss this one day.
Doesn't seem like it in the moment because you might be frustrated and overwhelmed, but I'd give everything to be frustrated and overwhelmed again right now.
Danny Brown:Yeah, I'm not, I, I, it's weird. I, I'm looking forward to them being independent and forging their own lives, which I'm sure you. You are as well.
And you enjoy seeing them grow and making their own paths and making their own mistakes, learning from that, being good people. But I'm also, like you said, I'm wary of what happening. Right. Because then, okay, well, now it's just me and my wife.
Are we going to still like each other?
Because now there's no one else to sort of, you know, bounce or our attention onto, if you like, as opposed to trying to keep a conversation going with just two adults in the room that may or may not have a lot to say afterwards. Who knows?
Dave Campbell:So, Danny, I feel like we've got so deep on this.
I know you have episodes where you talk about poop, so I'd love to see what the next question is going to be, because I don't want people to go, wow, this is a real downer. But, no, we're having a great time. This is good.
Danny Brown:Well, you know. And that sometimes happens. I know with Em. Who was on, I think maybe episode nine or ten. And bless her, she got so.
Every single question was like a deep one almost. And she got really personal on that, bless her. But, yeah, not a problem. Dave, let's have a look at question number five. See what this pops up.
Okay, here's what. Here's one I feel is like a nice, fun one to close this section off. So, Dave, question five.
What's something you've tried that you'll never, ever try again?
Dave Campbell:Okay. Okay. Well, when we were at. All right, here we go. I am. I am the most boring person when it comes to food.
Danny, I don't know how you are with food, but I. I'm very predictable. And it makes my wife very annoyed that I have a very small selection of things I like to eat.
And I always spin it back to her that she's like, why don't you try new things? I'm like, well, I'm the type of person who, when I find something I like, I stick with it. Like you, my wife.
And she's like, oh, I hate when you do that. So anyways, I find something I like and I just stick with it. I'm very quite boring.
So I like my pizza on Monday nights, and I like it from a certain place, and I like this and I like that. So I'm kind of predictable, which is very boring to her. She likes to try new things. We went to Pod Summit, as we talked about earlier.
And after was over, we stayed an extra day and we met with my friends who would live in Calgary. And they took us up to Banff and we went for dinner. So I have no choice here, Danny, and where we're going for dinner.
So that makes me super nervous because my friend loves to throw curveballs at me and take me places I would never go. So we go to this Cajun restaurant in Banff. Nice little place. Look at mom and pop shop. Not very many tables and it's all Cajun based. Okay, so hang on.
I'm not a Cajun eater. I live in Canada. I live in Ontario. I'm quite vanilla with my food choices. So here we sit down and they're like, we're going to get appetizers.
And here we go. Danny. They chose for me a shared appetizer for the four of us, my wife and the other couple. We're going to have alligator bites.
Now, alligator bites are alligator, like actual alligator meat in bite form. And I look at my wife and she's like, oh no, no, no, no, don't do it, don't do it. You're going to try this. She was game.
She's like, oh yeah, I'll try that. And they look at me, they're like. They took me about five minutes to convince me that I should try this. Danny. I was totally out of my element.
I would never order alligator for any reason at all, ever in my life. So it made me forced to try something. Now would I ever try it again?
To your question, maybe, but most likely no, because it's something I would never even think it would be on a menu. The fact that you could eat something that eats people. No, I'm not really interested in that. So that's something that I tried.
I don't know if you've ever tried alligator meat or if you ever would, Danny, but it was very interesting. Quite chewy, by the way.
Danny Brown:No, well, when you mentioned Cajun and I'll have to go there, actually we go to Calgary next year for PodSummit. I'm going. My friend lives up Banff area. Canmore, I think. Yes. So anyway, we're trying to hook up this year, but just no time really.
You know yourself how busy that conference was. But next year we want to try spend a bit more time there. So I would definitely go there from a Cajun point of view because I love Cajun spices.
I love trying different spicy foods and that.
So I thought you were just going to say, you know, I'm a vanilla, you know, give me my poutine, give me my, you know, my fries, give me that kind of stuff. And I might put some ketchup on now and again. I thought that was going to be your thing.
So I was expecting the Cajun spices to be the one that kind of threw you off. But when you. I mean, they must have. I guess they must import that from like, I don't know, fl.
Florida or somewhere, because you don't really get a lot of alligators up in Calgary.
Dave Campbell:No, no, not so much. No. No.
Danny Brown:Did it have a taste? Did it have a taste that you could like, compare to? You know how they say frogs taste like chicken And I'm guessing they don't.
I've never had frogs, but I can't imagine they do.
Dave Campbell:I know. And everyone listening are probably yelling at them at their speakers right now if they've had it before.
It's kind of chewy, kind of like gristle and meat. You know that part that's hard to chew when you have a piece of meat. So that's kind of what it tastes like. It felt like to chew. And it was.
It wasn't like fishy or anything like that. It was. It was. It was actually not that bad, I gotta say. Like, again, would I do order it on my own?
Probably not, but with peer pressure, I could probably try doing it.
Danny Brown:And was the spice okay for you?
Dave Campbell:Yeah, it was all the spice. I like spice, but.
Danny Brown:Right.
Dave Campbell:Cajun spice is a different type of spice for a Canadian. So, you know.
Danny Brown:No, no, I. one hundred percent. I was in a. Where was I? I was somewhere. I think it was Louisville, Kentucky.
And it's not like the Cajun capital, obviously, but they had a great Cajun restaurant there. And I was there almost every night.
I was there for four days for a work event and throughout the four days for lunch or whatever, I'd always go to the Cajun place because I just once I found really good Cajun. I'm all in. So, yeah, I'm up for that.
Dave Campbell:Beautiful.
Danny Brown:So we reached the end there, Dave. We got through the five random questions.
We had that little quite in depth moment in the middle that was like two really good questions and two awesome answers. So thanks for being open and sharing that with us.
As is our want on the show though, just to make it fair on every guest because I put you on the spot for the last thirty, forty minutes or so. This is the time of the episode where new where you can ask me your own random question.
Dave Campbell:Okay. Are you ready?
Danny Brown:I'm as ready as you were for your five.
Dave Campbell:So I'm curious, Danny, what do you want to be known for?
If you were to walk out of a room and the people you love, your family, your friends, your community were gathered there talking and doing life, and you left the room and anybody could say anything that they wanted to about you in that moment, what do you want them to say about you? What is your legacy?
Danny Brown:That's a good one, because you've got a mix of people there, right? You have your fam. Well, I guess it's the same. Well, probably the same answer, but you got to make family, friends, maybe colleagues, peers, etc.
I mean, the obvious one is you want to be known as a kind of person. Right.
But I know I make mistakes there where I don't mean to be mean, but I say something and I instantly regret it, and then I try and make amends after. But it's not always easy to do that. I think. I think I'd like to be known as. And this is going to sound a bit stupid, but hopefully it'll make sense.
As I mention it, I'd like people just to think, yep, that was so Danny. Right.
So whatever that is to them, if that's hopeful, it's integrity or, like I say, kindness, something like that, where you do want people to think positively of you, or fair. I think fair is a really good description for anybody to want to achieve. Right. That person is fair.
They might not agree with you, but they're respectful and fair to your earlier point about being open to conversations from opposite sides of the gallery, if you like. So, yeah, I think so. This is a good question. You've got me thinking about it, which is always good.
But I think if there was one sort of overarching theme, it would be that I'm going to give you an example and not of me. I'm going to use an example. So I watch a lot of Stephen Colbert. I love his show, and I think he's a really good host, person, human being.
And he had Keanu Reeves on. Here's a segment. I don't know if it's every show with every guest, but I've seen a few segments like this.
And so you ask a question that, what do you think happens to us when we die? And the guest answers that question. And Keanu Reeves answered. He thought about it. He took a pause and he thought about it.
And then he came back and he says, well, I think the people that love us will miss us. Which I thought was an amazing response.
It wasn't trying to get deep into, you know, what might be beyond or what happens if there is a beyond, and if there's not, etc. It was a simple. I think the people that love us will miss us.
And maybe that's a good, a good thing to want that when you leave somewhere, whether it's a room to your point, or whether you leave visiting family or you've seen friends you've not seen for years, when you've left, you're missed and people were looking forward to the next time they see you. I think that maybe be my answer.
Dave Campbell:So the idea behind that question, just anybody listening, is if that's your goal, then start there and reverse engineer how to get to that goal. Right? So work your way backwards in time and what can I do today so that people one day will say that about me?
So my answer to this, and I'm kind of pre prepared for this, so my answer is I want people to know that Dave was a collector of people. That through podcasting, through life, through relationships, community, Dave wanted to add as many people to his collection as possible.
Because connection with people with you, Danny, like with others that I come in contact with, if I can add more people to my. My world, I think my world will be better and that people will recognize that I was more about them than I was about myself.
So that's kind of how I do it. I want to be a collector of people.
Danny Brown:Having spoken to you at Pod Summit and seeing you interact with people, I get completely where you're coming from. I would say you're pretty much meeting that mate, so I can understand that for sure.
Dave Campbell:That's high praise coming from the source, Danny. I really appreciate that.
Danny Brown:Like I said, I've really enjoyed this. And as I mentioned, this is what I like about the show.
Sometimes the answers can be ridiculous, sometimes can be really deep and in depth and we never know where it's going to go.
So, again, I appreciate you, you know, being open and honest with your answers and being open to, you know, going to places where you might not always feel comfortable. So I appreciate that. For people that want to connect with you, either online or maybe, you know, meet you in person at events, etc.
Or listen to your podcast, one of the eight part all of the eight podcasts that you currently have up and running, where's the best place for them to either connect online or check out your work and listen to your show?
Dave Campbell:Sure, my overarching website would be TrueMediaSolutions.ca because we're in Canada and that's where I have all the different podcasts that I host or that I work on. For other people, all on that one website, TrueMediaSolutions.ca.
And yeah, I would just want to say to anyone listening to please go and support Danny as he continues to podcast. He's a. An amazing human being. And again, I was so thrilled to have time with you, Danny, at Pod Summit.
That was very kind of you to make time to kind of stop over and sit down beside me. And that spoke highly of you. I do admire you. I have been listening to you for a very long time.
I love what you do and what you and Mark do as a team with all the great people at Captivate. So thank you for showing up for us as listeners and community members. Danny, you're just a. You're a very sweet man in podcasting.
There's something special about what you do, and I just want people to know that.
And I would encourage everyone listening to please go and support Danny whatever he has to put in front of you, any ask that he makes of you, he only does it because he wants to help his community grow. So please respond and like, share, follow, do all that stuff for Danny, because I want more. We need more Danny in this world.
And that's something I'd ask of you as a listener. So, Danny, thank you so much for doing this and allowing me to be one of the amazing guests on the show.
I don't know how I kind of snuck in be underneath the tent to get into onto the show because you've had some outstanding guests on here and many more to come. So thank you for letting me hijack the show and jump in here and answer some questions today.
Danny Brown:No, you're welcome. And first, thank you for these kind words. I mean, really, that was really kind of you, Dave. So I appreciate that.
And as far as you getting on the show, it's no contest. You know, I have interesting people that I like on the show. That's how people get on here.
Dave Campbell:So excellent.
Danny Brown:I think that answers your question, mate. I want to join the podcast. So again, like I say, as always, I will leave the links to Dave's website, podcasts, and everywhere you can find Dave.
Maybe not everywhere, but I'll leave that in the show notes and be sure to check them out whatever podcast app you're listening on. And that will click you right through to Dave and connect with Dave. So again, Dave, thanks for appearing on Five Random Questions.
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