Transcript
Living Your Glory Days Today
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Ken: Kurt, [00:00:30] when you're six foot nine and your siblings, which you've had several as you know. Well aware they're all above the average six foot. What other...?
Kurt David: 6'7". 6'6". 6'1" sister. A 5'11" sister. We did have one runt to the litter, right? She was only 5'6". She was our track runner. All six of us were on athletic scholarship and two of us played professionally. Imagine that household growing up.
Ken: I don't even know what the stats of that. I mean, for one person to make it to professional sports is [00:01:00] phenomenally small in the stat world and then they all had scholarships. So with the height question is, and this is an honest question, I'm thinking, because it's not just you're kind of tall, but if that's what you grew up in your siblings, that's normal for everyone. So when you live a life and go out in the world, do you feel tall or does just the world seem short?
Kurt David: Well, first of all, I always tell people I'm four foot and 33 [00:01:30] inches. I don't tell them right off the bat. They got to earn it. I get asked so often that it's four foot and 33 inches. If they failed math, I tell them, I'm six foot nine, but yeah. For me, it was a normalcy. There was a certain normalcy growing up. First of all, being around a family of that size and we weren't always that size. To be honest, my spurt...
Ken: You weren't born that size.
Kurt David: I was not born that size. I would feel from my mother if that was the case. But my biggest spurt was I was 5'11" at the beginning of my seventh grade year and 6'5" by the end of my eighth grade year.
Ken: Oh, wow.
Kurt David: So [00:02:00] I grew up six inches between the start of my seventh grade and the end of my eighth grade. Very painful. I was very active and so it was very painful. Every joint in my body.
Ken: Growing pains are real.
Kurt David: It's very real. Yeah. And the good news was I was dunking a basketball in eighth grade. That was the good news. Bad news is I had to pay for it. But probably the biggest adjustment for me, not to skip ahead, but when I was done playing was being back in normal population. You're so used to being around people of my stature, that was the norm. And all of a sudden, when I came back to the real [00:02:30] world again, it was like, wow, this is... Probably my first real understanding of that was I was playing at a national tournament in Kansas City when I was in college and we were ranked eighth in the nation. This other team we played against was out of California. They were ranked pretty high. And in the scouting report we had heard about this other team, particularly they had a guy that was seven foot eight. Wow. Literally he was seven foot eight in this team.
Ken: Now, do you feel short in that situation?
Kurt David: Well, here's the rest of my story. His team [00:03:00] was staying at the same hotel we were in downtown Kansas City and I'm in the elevator and this guy comes walking in and I'm literally looking up at him thinking, oh my goodness, this is what everybody else has to do with me. It was my first experience of really understanding that. And he's stuck in the elevator, but it was really my first experience in understanding what normal sized people are dealing with me, so that was an aha moment for me.
Ken: Yeah. Interesting. So, it's obvious what sport you played.
Kurt David: Well, [00:03:30] not necessarily. Horse jockey didn't quite work out for me, but the Clydesdales weren't too fast, but yeah. Basketball... I mentioned the six in the family. There was eight of us in a household and six kids and five of us played basketball and the one was a track runner. She was really good. She ran at Central Michigan university and basketball just became our sport. I ran track and did some other sports as well. But when I played baseball, the strike zone was just way too big. And I hated having a ball thrown at me all the time and first base. [00:04:00] So I'm like, this is not my sport.
Ken: So it wasn't your first love?
Kurt David: No, I just kind of came into it. And fortunately I had some older siblings and I saw the success they were having and always played with older kids. And so even though I was bigger, I was still young and playing with older kids, which helped. But yeah, I think when I first realized that basketball was going to be my ticket was probably my freshman or sophomore year in high school. And we started doing very well as a team. And I started seeing success and numbers were starting to come as far as personally and as a team [00:04:30] and that's when I started realizing this could take me somewhere.
Ken: Even if you have a physical lean towards a certain sport, like height for basketball, that does mean you have the agility for it.
Kurt David: Absolutely not. I know a lot of tall guys.
Ken: Well, that's what I'm saying is they're kind of, even with taller larger guys, then you have these small basketball players that are just all at it and they have all this speed and agility. Is that maybe a negative that taller people don't have that you got to work a little harder?
Kurt David: [00:05:00] It's a great question, Ken. I think part of it is there is a certain height of the hoop. It's 10 feet, right? And so as a result, predispositions towards taller people because you're closer to that hoop. And if you're strong and agile and can jump even more so. It is more difficult for somebody of a different stature, a lower statue or a shorter stature to excel because of that. And not that there's not other parts of the game, but it's a big man sport.
Ken: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I [00:05:30] mean, middle-school tackle football they put me as a left guard, which is usually the huge people, but they didn't have a lot of agility and I was small and used to being kind of actually bullied. So I was tough.
Kurt David: Yeah. And around. Just get around him.
Ken: Yeah. Get around him. You're faster. Maybe a little meaner. Yeah, that was my thing. I didn't fit the physical form at all.
Kurt David: I mentioned about the seven foot eight guy. Another aha moment... In fact, I was probably 19 or 20 years old. [00:06:00] In college, we had a gentleman that came from Japan. His company from Japan sent him over to get American degree. And this guy literally was four foot 11. And he would hang out with us basketball players, which was kind of comical in itself. You see this four foot 11 guy hanging out with these 6'10", 6'9", 6'7" people. And one night, he and I were screwing around. We had a couple pops and so he and I were just kind of screwing around and punching each other and kicking each other and just messing around. I'm just kind of pushing him. Well, all of a sudden [00:06:30] this four foot 11 guy snapped. Something happened. I did something and he could have literally threw me through a plate glass window. It's the first time in my life that I had felt like I had zero control of my body.
I had no control of my body. He could have done anything he wanted to me at four foot 11. And here I'm in one of the best shapes in my life. And this guy just he had his way with me. I mean, he could have done anything he wanted. And after we calmed down a little bit, I said, whoa. I said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get you upset or anything." I said, "What was that all about?" [00:07:00] He goes, well, I'm a double black belt. And that was my aha moment at 19, 20 years old to realize size is important, but if you know what to do, it was great for me to learn that in that capacity versus some other way that it wouldn't have turned out so fortunate.
Ken: Right. So you saw basketball as a career?
Kurt David: Yeah. It became a ticket. Yeah. It's what I did. I think one of the biggest challenges for athletes is, is it who you are or is it what you do? Because I think that helps with that transition, which again, not to get too far [00:07:30] ahead, but it's what I did. I love basketball. It provided a lot for me as far as the scholarship, as far as playing professionally, but it's just what I did. It wasn't who I was.
Ken: And it ended why?
Kurt David: I literally was having a blast over in Europe. I was playing over in Europe and I came back. I had a free agent tryout in San Francisco. There was 18 of us by invite only. All I saw was a gym and a hotel for three days straight. It was toughest basketball I've ever experienced but for three days. [00:08:00] I went in for knee surgery following that tryout and found out it was time to get a real job. The doctor, when he went inside, the orthopedic said, you know what? You can keep playing basketball and not walk by the time you're 40, or you can give it up.
And here I was, I think I was 27... 26, 27, 28 years old. And literally limping like an old man all the time. And I knew there was something wrong. I didn't think it was that bad. So faced with that decision. It's like, hey, you can keep playing or you can give it up. But I had opportunities to still play but I knew that I wanted to walk when I was 40. And so [00:08:30] it was one of those choices I had to make.
Ken: So how did you feel at that time? I mean, it's easy just to talk about it in retrospect. You skim past it, but what kind of emotional impact?
Kurt David: Yeah, no, that's a great question. I was angry. I was very angry. I remember laying on my parents' couch, just laying there, just being angry. How could this end this way? Here I'm having the time of my life, enjoying the world and just traveling again and getting paid and it's over. It's all over. And remember sitting there just being angry. And after a bit of time, I realized, you know what? [00:09:00] I was tired of being angry and I got tired of feeling that way. And at some point I took a year off just to kind of regroup and figure out what I wanted to do. And partway through that year, I got so tired of being angry and so tired of just sitting around. I said, "I need to do something productive." And I decided to start working at a master's, went and got a master's degree in counseling, and so that helped my direction to get that new direction and the real sense of purpose.
Ken: So counseling is great with middle-school, right?
Kurt David: Yeah, I did. In my previous professional life, I was a middle school counselor.
Ken: [00:09:30] But in the deepest part of you, did you always feel like I should have been a basketball player? I should've went farther. This is pretty good to suggest how life goes so that you have your book From Glory Days. You've interviewed I think about 50 former athletes, professional athletes about their former glory days. Did you feel like you had glory days and now you're just making a living?
Kurt David: Yeah, no, I think one of the biggest things is understanding who [00:10:00] I am because I think that's the difference. I think I alluded to it earlier that who I am was different than what I did. I played basketball. That's what I did. It's not who I am. To back up a little bit, to get to who I am, I have to go back to my foundation, which was growing up with eight of us in a house with one bathroom.
Ken: Wow. Did you have one toothbrush?
Kurt David: I hope not. I don't remember. I think I would remember that. I've been traumatized, but not that much, but yeah. And so it was very difficult. You realize early on in life, that life is not about you when you live [00:10:30] with eight of you in one bathroom. My mother was a teacher at a local private school. My dad was the director of social services, so I was doomed. I was doomed from the start to be in one of those industries where you just give back. You think about others because that's what my parents did.
Ken: Right. So what led you from the middle school counselor, which is noble, back into doing something with professional sports, having producing television shows, writing books about other professionals?
Kurt David: It was four o'clock in the morning. I think it was three or four o'clock [00:11:00] in the morning. It was one of those aha moments. Literally, I woke up middle of the night and it was crystal clear. I had the thought and like I tell kids or anybody, every good movie, every good TV show, every book starts with one thing and it's an idea. And at three o'clock in the morning, I had this idea that wouldn't it be neat to sit down with other former professional athletes and hear about their transition after pro sports and more importantly, how they recreated her success?
And that spawned the idea of my book From Glory Days. And so I interviewed [00:11:30] 20 former Detroit Pistons, Tigers, Redwings and Lions. Being here in Detroit, I thought, okay, let's start here in Detroit. I interviewed these 20 different hall of Famers, everybody from Dave Bang and Allen Houston to Lem Barney, to Jim Northrup, Ted Lindsay, I could go through the whole list. And so I sat down with them and talked about not just the glory days. We talked about that transition from sports, which is very real. A hundred percent of professional athletes ultimately lose their job. Undeniable fact, a hundred percent.
Ken: A hundred percent [00:12:00] of people listening or viewing this watch podcasts.
Kurt David: There you go. I would hope so. And so that's a good stat to know, but when they get done with their sports, how did they recreate their success? So those were the target of who I interviewed for the book. The book ended up doing well. It became a regional best seller. My agent and I, at that time said, "Boy, this is bigger than a book. Let's create a TV show." So we literally created a TV show based on the concept of the book, did nine interviews in season one, where we interviewed former professional athletes about their life after pro sports, how they recreated [00:12:30] a success, and it just continued from there. We've done four seasons, won an Emmy in season four from interview with Rocky Bleier in Pittsburgh, and we continue to scale it.
Ken: So what I appreciate about what you do is it's not just going back and reminiscing about the good old sports days and the home runs that were hit and all this, it encourages people in their personal lives, businesses, and that not to live in your glory days. Give some more stats [00:13:00] about what it's like after a professional athlete. We see their glory days, but we don't see what happens after their glory.
Kurt David: Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that Ken, because my production company, Glory Days Productions looks to inspire others through the stories of highly successful people that live a life of significance, right? That's our mission. And when you talk about pro sports, a hundred percent of professional athletes ultimately lose their job. 25% of NFL players are bankrupt within the first year out. 25%. 78% of NFL players [00:13:30] are broke within two years. 60% of NBA players within five years are broke. And there's up to an 80% divorce rate.
From job loss to disaster, that is the reality for these pro athletes. And so with the show from glory days, talk about not only their glory days, but we talk about that gory transition, right? And some of them, like one of the guys we had to show was Darren McCarty. Darren had a very public and ugly transition out of pro sports. Good news is he's been sober. He's recreating [00:14:00] his success. And so we had him on the show to talk about that. How did that happen? What did you do? And every athlete that we have on the show, not that they don't go through that very serious transition, but they found a way to recreate their success again.
Ken: Right. So not a lot of us can relate to being a professional athlete.
Kurt David: Correct.
Ken: And making tens of millions of dollars and whatnot. We can relate to a career change. We can relate to a failed relationship.
Kurt David: Absolutely.
Ken: We can relate to disasters and this or that. And we don't really hear those after [00:14:30] stats that you just gave. That is actually worse a lot of times than most of our normal lives and we only see their glory days. So it's not just about their glory days, then it's not just about pointing out, feel better about yourself because their lives go in the toilet afterwards. It has to lead somewhere. And then you being a counselor shows compassion and caring for the human person. So what is the next step? [00:15:00] How do people come back and have what I like to say a new glory day where they're not living in the past? You can appreciate the past, but have a new fulfilling, satisfying life looking forward.
Kurt David: It's so important because we all deal with transitions. We all deal with change. We all deal with adversity, right? All of us in our lives, whatever it might be personally, professionally. Part of it is understanding that this is a phase, right? This is just a temporary phase. In other words, one of the things that I learned from my research with the athletes for [00:15:30] the book and then interviewing the TV show, and then my counseling degree is that I realized there was a commonality of success.
That these athletes, as they went through this transition, there was a commonality for those that found success again. And being the simple mind that I am, I created an acronym to remember what those five things were and that's rules, R U L E S. And each letter stands for something. Each letter means something. And I could do a 90 minute presentation just on that alone, write what those rules are, how does it apply. And I'm getting more and more requests [00:16:00] to speak to military and more and more requests to speak to organizations and corporations that are going through transition and change because they apply not just to professional athletes in that transition, they apply to all of us in life as a result.
Ken: So you actually have spent time with professional athletes going through counseling them through these five steps?
Kurt David: Yeah, with their transition. Absolutely.
Ken: You don't have to reveal the magic five steps. Are the five steps revealed in your book?
Kurt David: No, the book is all interviews. It's interview. Each chapter is interview with a different athlete, Lem Barney or [00:16:30] Ted Lindsay. And it talks about their glory days. It talks about their transition, but also talks about how they recreated success and what
Ken: So the gist of your five, what would that be in a synopsis?
Kurt David: In a crib note version? The first letter R stands for refocus. What I found is that any athlete or any company or individual had a refocus, and the best way to refocus is to look at your current goals and establish new goals.
Ken: Not to interrupt. I think that's so important when you just said, because it's not trying to [00:17:00] refocus to get back to what you have lost. It's actually refocusing on where you're at now, where your life is at now,
Kurt David: Where you'd like to be.
Ken: And where you'd like to be from here on out.
Kurt David: And part of doing that, it recreates that passion and purpose again. As athletes, we're extremely passionate people, extremely passionate, over the top passionate. And so that passion is an important part of establishing a new life and a new phase of finding that. There's nothing that's going to replace professional sport. Nothing. [00:17:30] You can say, oh yeah, I'm doing this and it's not going to replace it. It's not going to be the same. Certainly you might have the same level of passion or same level of excitement. But finding that new passion and purpose, that's so important to redeveloping that fire again in their gut.
Ken: Do you think it's equally as hard, or maybe more difficult when you see, whether it's professional athletes or on a more personal basis, a level of our career or different things we're involved in where you need to refocus while you're in [00:18:00] it and not stay in it too long?
Kurt David: Yeah. That gets to the third one, which I'll get to, which is the L actually is what you're talking about. So the R is refocus. The U is using network. What I found is that, as an athlete, you have a vast network of people around you and using and tapping into that.
Ken: I contacted you on my LinkedIn.
Kurt David: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Tapping into that network of people. And I always tell people, I'm not talking about using and abusing people, but once you have your refocus, you know which direction you want to go, it's tapping in your network to say, "Hey, listen, this is where I'm [00:18:30] heading. How do we create a win-win between us?" And so tapping that and work is very important. Again, I could go 90 minutes on this alone. The L is letting go, which bar none is the most difficult for professional athletes.
And for a lot of us actually. And that's what you were just alluding to was that letting go part. When do you know that I should start letting go of something? And everybody's different. Everybody's pattern, everybody's.... I mean, I've talked to some professional athletes at 15 years later, still feel like they could still play. They didn't let it go.
Ken: Then they hurt themselves.
Kurt David: [00:19:00] And I've talked to others that a week after they got cut, I sit down with a former Detroit Tiger pitcher that got released after spring training and a week after he and I sat down, he was done. I mean, he let go, he moved on and he's doing very well. And so everybody's different, but it's such an important part of moving forward, whether it be from sports or whatever it is, letting go. And so that's the L. The E stands for execute.
In other words, what I've discovered is that this process of transition and change isn't a one and done. You've got to continue to execute. And again, I can go a lot deeper into that. [00:19:30] A great example of that is a gentleman that I interviewed that was a hall of Famer out of Washington, DC, basketball player went on to Syracuse, became a hall of Famer in college, went on to be a number one draft pick by the Detroit Pistons, went on to become an NBA hall of Famer, went on to build a $500 million a year business. He went on to then become mayor of Detroit. And then continued to execute over and over and over again, so it's not a one and done. I just don't transition once. I continue to execute [00:20:00] and that's so important. And the S, the last letter in the acronym of rules stands for someone.
What I've discovered is having a mentor, so to speak, a person that helps you get to where you want to be. Once you have that refocus and go through those other steps, understanding there's one person in particular that can be like a mentor to you.
Ken: Have you had mentors?
Kurt David: I've had lots of mentors in different phases of my life, depending on what phase I was involved with. I have producers right now that are my mentors from the TV production side of it. One of the guys is a former producer [00:20:30] of the movie, Rudy. He's in orange county, California, and he and I connect. And I consider him one of my mentors to learn from and help me connect. I mean, he's in his seventies now and has nothing to prove as he says, other than helping others. And so he'd be one of mine, professionally.
Ken: So I have here... I actually looked it up. I loved... I heard you in an interview and you were talking about the all glory is fleeting story from history. Share that.
Kurt David: I love history, not just sports history, but history in general. And so one of the analogies [00:21:00] that I like to use is from the Roman empire. For anybody that studies at the Roman empire, when these generals came home from their conquering lands... These generals would come home back to Rome and have their plunder and everything that they got from these kind of green lands. They always had something called a campaign, and it was a big parade.
It was basically like the Superbowl parade of today. In other words, they would come back to their home in Rome. And it was a big parade. They'd be on their chariot. It was such a big deal that even their kids were dressed in white and be on other chariots behind them. [00:21:30] But one of the things you can read about in history, it's just true that as these generals are going through the streets of Rome getting all these accolades about all these big triumphs that they had, they have somebody whispering and chirping in their ear the whole time, all glory is fleeting.
Ken: Yeah. That's crazy.
Kurt David: So in other words, great, you did this. What's next, right? And that's just an attitude to have. And I love that story. I love that part of history. And I think it's applicable very much so today still.
Ken: Oh, it definitely is. I'd like to... I was looking up to see if I could find another one. I can't [00:22:00] outdo that one, but I found one. And if you want me to, I want to read it from what I got off. This isn't just, Hey, I Googled. I found this on different websites state at different times. Former secretary of state James Baker. Remember James Baker?
Kurt David: Yes.
Ken: Once said, someone asked me what was the most important thing I had learned since being in Washington. I replied that it was a fact that temporal power is fleeting. And here's his little quick backstory on that. Baker went on to observe that once driving through the White House gates, [00:22:30] he saw a man walking alone on Pennsylvania avenue. And he recognized him as having been the secretary of state in a previous administration. There he was alone. No reporters, no security, no adoring public, no trappings of power, just one solitary man alone with his thoughts and that mental picture continually serves to remind me of the impermanence of power and the impermanence of place.
Kurt David: [00:23:00] A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. It's one of the biggest challenges for athletes that I hear is they say it gets so quiet. The phone stops ringing. Yep. And the one of the Redwings I interviewed, he was funny about it. He says, "Why is that when I'm making all this money, everybody gives me free food, free cars, free suits, but then when I'm not making all this money, you have to pay for everything?" And it's kind of that attitude that all of a sudden, it's like, wow, it's reality. I call it reality is what it is.
Ken: Yeah. So I'm not trying to sum [00:23:30] up your career and all this, but I just love the whole theme of it's fun, especially for sports fanatics to hear and see their stars, to hear their stories. But frankly, you can get that in other venues, but to hear their struggles and to be able to relate to their struggles, humanizes them.
Kurt David: Humanizes them. That's the goal and audience watches our shows and they look at it and say, "Wow, I didn't know. He [00:24:00] went through that and I can relate." Right?
Ken: Yeah.
Kurt David: Probably one of the most impact... I mean, I've had a lot of impactful stories. One was a guy by the name of Charlie Batch. Charlie Batch was a quarterback in the NFL. He was at Eastern. He's from Pittsburgh originally. He was at Eastern Michigan University. It was a funny story how he ended up there. He's like, "I never even knew where Ypsilanti was, but they were the only one that offered me a scholarship, basically, so I went to Eastern." Charlie Batch's junior year at Eastern Michigan. He got a phone call from his mom back in Pittsburgh. And his mom said, "Hey, listen, you got to come back home." And he's like, "Well, mom, [00:24:30] I'm right in the middle of school football workouts."
She's like, "No, you need to come home now." And he's like, "Well, mom, what's going on?" And she finally opened up on the phone and said, "Your 17 year old sister was just murdered by a gang bang related shooting drive by shooting." So Charlie talked to the coaches at Eastern Michigan university said, "I got to go home and help bury my sister, help my mom. I don't know if I'm going to be back. I may not be back." So he went home, buried his sister. Mom's like, "Nope, go back to Eastern, finish your degree, finish your career." Broke every quarterback record at Eastern Michigan after that. Got drafted by the Lions and traded to Pittsburgh. Won two Superbowl's [00:25:00] with Pittsburgh. And this is where the story goes. And this is why I bring it up is that Charlie to this day now has a foundation where he has inner city kids involved with sports and education to get them off the street.
And he said, "If I can save one life in honor of my sister, this is worth it, what I'm doing here." And so those are the kinds of stories we want to get out there that people don't know about. And it also helps people understand. Yeah, I can recreate. Turn a tragedy into triumph. I mean, Eric Hipple is another great example, right? Had a very public, very ugly transition [00:25:30] because of his own personal situations and then his son. And he turned that tragedy and turned it into a triumph now and travels all over talking about depression and helping people and advocating.
Ken: Right. I want to go back to one of the statistics. You said 80. Was it 80?
Kurt David: 80% divorce rate. Yes.
Ken: Divorce rate. So this can't just be that they were gold diggers or they just wanted to be sitting in the stands and now their season tickets are gone because what's going on there?
Kurt David: Yeah. Well the divorce rate... People [00:26:00] say, "Oh, they're out cheating on their wives." There's some of them are, but imagine this, like I tell people, I don't care how much money you make. If you go and take a 95% pay cut while you're all of a sudden, not on the road. I mean, these guys are on the road six months out of the year. So you go from not being on the road anymore to toe-to-toe with your spouse with a 95% pay cut. What marriage would survive that? And that's the reality, right? They take a 95% pay cut. They go from being on the road every day. And all of a sudden they're toe-to-toe [00:26:30] with this big pay cut. And that's probably the main reason why there's such a high divorce rate as a result.
Ken: Yeah. That's crazy. So you announced big news lately.
Kurt David: Yeah. We just publicly went with the fact I'm no longer hosting the show. We've done four seasons. I've been the host and executive producer, but we just hired Doug Flutie. Heisman trophy winner and sports broadcaster, Doug Flutie, is going to be our new host, which is great. Doug's a class act. He's a lot of fun. And he's going to a whole new level of what we're doing with the show.
Ken: When I first [00:27:00] read your announcement on that on social media, I first read not hosting the show, I'm like, Aw. And then you're like Doug Flutie and I'm like, well, that really makes sense to me. To me that would be like, Ken's not hosting this podcast anymore. Well, why? But then, oh, because this is about compassion and community.
Kurt David: And Mother Teresa coming in your place.
Ken: That's exactly who I was going to say, but Mother Teresa's going to host the show and I was like, oh, that's a no brainer. That makes sense.
Kurt David: Yeah. And so we're excited about it, and I've said from the start when I first created a show that if somebody [00:27:30] with better cheekbones helped sell this show better, I have no ego. I'm all for that because it's still my baby and I'll still be involved on a day to day with it.
Ken: So give a little more... Just we're throwing out his name, but I mean, some of the teams he's played on
Kurt David: Yeah. Doug was in Boston, obviously at the famous hail mary pass when he was playing at Boston College. He went on to play with the Buffalo Bills, went on to play in New England. Played in the CFL, won a couple championships in the CFL. And since then he's been a broadcaster, [00:28:00] been a sports' broadcaster with NBC Sports. I think this is his ninth or 10th season now with them. And so we've been talking to him for a while and during the pandemic we had to hit the pause button for a while, but now we're resurrecting that and really excited about getting things rolling out again. And Doug is bringing a whole list of different level of guests, all of his friends, so-called friends, so to speak, which is very exciting.
Ken: Good. And purpose point.
Kurt David: Yes.
Ken: What's that about?
Kurt David: Three years ago, Davin Salvagno and I were at an event [00:28:30] called C12. It's a Christian business owner organization, a national organization. And he and I were at this.
Ken: And those are like executives?
Kurt David: Yeah. It's CEO or business owners, and so we're at this meeting and afterwards he came up to me and he says, "Hey, I have this idea I've been wanting to run. I've been wanting to do this for a while." And he and I were looking at it and I said, "Yeah, let's do this." And so that's how it spawned. It started with Davin's idea. He's the founder and he's also our CEO of Purpose Point. It's a leadership organization or leadership development organization, where our [00:29:00] focus is to help individuals and organizations reconnect with their purpose. In other words, often we see organizations that start with a purpose and as they continue to scale and grow, they have to add more people.
And when you add more people, you have to add more processes. And when you have to add more processes, you have to continue to look at the bottom line to say, boy, we have to continue to be sustainable, but they've lost original sight of that original purpose. And so our goal is not that we don't talk about people, we don't talk about processes or don't talk about profits because you have to have all those to be sustainable [00:29:30] and continue to scale, but reconnecting the purpose throughout all that, and so that's what we do with Purpose Point.
Ken: So you basically get them refocused on their initial core value.
Kurt David: Yeah. Absolutely. And we do it through different ways. We have keynote speakers. We have coaching. We actually have purpose summit that we do annually. Our next one's very exciting. We're going to be down at the University of Notre Dame is where we're going to host it at this next year in 2022. So it's going to be a big deal. And yeah, it's really exciting to see people. What wakes me [00:30:00] up every day and gets me out to leave my family is to go and see other people excited about their lives and helping people develop their lives.
Ken: Right. One last topic. This was so vague on social media. I don't remember if it was a picture or a video clip, but it was entitled birthday cakes for homeless kids.
Kurt David: Yes. Yeah.
Ken: And I don't get choked up that easy, but I got to say just the thought of that. And you're walking into a room with kids and you had a birthday cake. [00:30:30] Who does that, or what is that?
Kurt David: Many years ago, I read something very important to me. It said to those that have been given much, much will be demanded. I had read that and it really resonated with me because I felt at that point in my life, I was in high school at that time when I first read that and realized, boy, I've been given a lot. I've been given a lot and continue to be given a lot and so much will be demanded. And so giving back has always been at the core of my values. And so I've always looked at ways of how do I give back? How do I give [00:31:00] back? And I've been an ambassador to Detroit Rescue Mission in Detroit. They have 14 different homeless facilities. And I've always talked to the CEO and the marketing director down there. And I said, "I want to find a way to give back."
And we were looking at different options. And he said, "Well the kids get overlooked here that are in our shelters on their birthdays." It's not another special day for them. And so that spawned the idea of doing birthday cakes. And I started it about two years ago, two and a half years ago. And I would literally go deliver these birthday cakes anywhere from three to 13 [00:31:30] a month down there and just walk in with the cake. And the neat thing is we don't have a sponsorship with Costco, but I would love to because they have these nice sheet cakes. These feed like 40 people. And so when I walk in with one of these, everybody's excited because the other kids are like...
Ken: Everyone's getting some.
Kurt David: Yeah, everybody's getting some. It's not just his birthday. We're getting cake today, and so we did that and it was just a great way to give back to see the excitement of the kids to know that they were honored in their special day. And everybody from one year old kids to 15, 16 [00:32:00] year old kids over in this homeless shelter. We had to stop, unfortunately, because of the pandemic, but we're looking to resurrect it again and get going again with that because to me, it was special to be able to give back and just say, thank you for what I've been given. It's very important to me.
Ken: No, that's awesome. Well, thank you for being here.
Kurt David: My pleasure.
Ken: And if people want to reach out, if they want a copy of your book, if they want to watch your programs, if they want to learn about... There's so much. Purpose Point, if they want to... Companies book you as a speaker. How many times? [00:32:30] I know there was COVID, but the year before, how many speaking engagements?
Kurt David: Yeah, in 2019, I did over 140 speaking engagements. Last year during the pandemic, I did seven. So that was painful. It was very painful. It's starting to get more and more now and the topic of my presentations is sudden change. In other words, I speak about facing change, about leading change and communicating change, which is a pretty important topic right now.
Ken: All right. We'll put all those links in the show notes.
Kurt David: kurtdavid.com is easiest because that connects to all the others as [00:33:00] well.
Ken: Gotcha. All right. Thanks again, Kurt.
Kurt David: Yeah, my pleasure.
Ken: And wherever your favorite podcast listening or viewing venue is make sure you like and subscribe and share this one. This is, as always, brought to you by Executive Wealth Management. And we're going to close out with learning a little more about them.
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