A Life-Defining Moment: Learning Accountability And Responsibility With Steve Parker
There are certain lessons that we get in life that would define the rest of it moving forward. In this conversation with Chad Burmeister, Steve Parker, the CEO and founder of Levelwing, shares his life-defining moment when his father taught him a very important lesson in accountability and responsibility. When he was still a small kid, Steve used to roam around on the football field to pass the time. One day, he happened to enter the locker room and come across lots of pens and pencils lying around. He had a finders-keepers mentality and collected 70-80 of them. But then his father told him to apologize in front of the team and return what he'd stolen. To this day, Chad practices accountability and responsibility, as we all should. What’s your life-defining moment?
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Listen to the podcast here:
A Life-Defining Moment: Learning Accountability And Responsibility With Steve Parker
I've got another podcaster with me who runs a show called Parker on Tap. He talks with his audience about similar types of conversations. This ought to be fun. We are going to go deep and quick. Steve is the CEO and Founder of Levelwing. Steve, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
You moved from South Carolina. We lived in North Carolina for a time. We made our way to Charleston once or twice. You moved from Charleston back to Nashville. It sounds like you are going to be commuting a bit. What brought you back to Nashville?
Accountability And Responsibility: Taking responsibility gives you a great opportunity to build a better relationship with someone because they know they can trust you.
I grew up here. It's funny because when I meet people here, they were like, "You are one of the few that are original." The way people know Nashville is it's this big city, all of this entertainment and things that are going on. It has always been an entertainer city but it was more of a farm horse town back in the ‘70s and ‘80s when I was growing up and graduated high school in the early ‘90s, it still was that way. It started to change probably in the late ‘90s. I moved to New York around that time and started this company Levelwing, which is an award-winning marketing agency. I'm proud of what we do. Our first office was in New York.
After a few years, we scaled it and opened an office in Charleston, which is where I moved from. We decided in 2020 to open an office in Nashville, which had been on our radar for a couple of years to make that decision. It finally came to fruition. We are super excited about that. It was good to come home in a little bit, even though I would come in for personal and work reasons probably 8 or 10 times a year anyway. I will be doing a little bit of commuting back and forth to Nashville and Charleston primarily once New York is back up and running up there a bit too.
With my Nashville story, I remember FedEx. We went to Memphis all the time. There was one sales kickoff where we drove up the road to Nashville. We stayed at the huge hotel, the Opryland Hotel. I’ve got lost every night that I was there. I remember many years ago that it flooded. I saw pictures of where I had stayed. It was up to where the restaurant was. I was like, "Are you kids like a fishbowl in there?"
They had 30 or 40 feet of water in that place. I went there not long ago. It's beautiful again.
I like to get my audience to know you by going back to when you were a kid. A lot of times we move through life. You go to college and then you’ve got your first job. A lot of times what's interesting about people is what they are passionate about when they were younger. If you think back to 6, 7, 8 when you’ve got up in the morning, what excited you? What were you passionate about at that young age?
When I was 6, 7, 8, that whole probably range of few years there, what did I dream about? I dug in the dirt, climb trees. I would fall out of them a few times, got attacked by a dog, going fishing. I’ve got scars on my calf to prove it. I'm playing in the creek that was outside of our house. I would pick up and play with a ball anytime I could. There's even a picture of me on the cover of the school, little flyers with a poem called There's Nothing Better Than A Ball. I loved having a ball around. We played outside a lot when I was that age. I was a bit of a country boy here in Nashville.
We didn't have a ton as a family back then. My parents both worked full-time. They sometimes do two jobs. My dad was a History teacher at a junior high. In the summers, he had to have another job to make ends meet. It was fine. As kids like me and my siblings didn't know any different. I would love to explore the woods back behind our house, which seemed huge back then. If I look at them, they were very small. You can get up in the morning, go back in the woods, come back at launch, go back again and come back at dark. There wasn't a whole lot of oversight back then.
He was also the football coach at the junior high. Every day after school, I would get dropped off at the junior high on one of the buses. I would watch practice from this hill that overlooked the entire practice field. I would find stuff to play with. I would make up stories or pretend I was playing something. I would sneak into the football stadium adjacent to the practice field, create things, pretend I was playing, a superhero or whatever would come to mind. I love that. Those are great memories. It was a lot of freedom. I had to make up a lot of things on my own.
I have to believe from looking over the hill, you probably picked up some ideas on strategy. When you have a different vantage point, it changes your perspective on everything.
It does.
If you think of the connector between then and what you are doing as a CEO, building an office in New York, Charleston and Nashville, does any of that passion when you were younger? How does that tie into what you are doing?
It does. Funny enough, I have thought about this a lot over the years. A few years ago, we as a company decided everyone in every four years could take a one-month fully paid sabbatical. I insisted that. Our senior leadership team does the same, myself included as the CEO. I would have worked at companies that had false benefits before where it's like, "You have all this vacation. Good luck on taking that then," which we encourage it. I remember on that trip. In your mind, because you were gone for so long, it frees you to think. I thought about work and personal stuff a lot. I took a lot of notes, probably typed on my iPad 30, 40, 50 pages of notes like a small book essentially. Part of it was thinking about back when I was a kid, what things that I enjoy, how did that translate to now, especially as a father. I have two kids. What aspects of things that I appreciate to make sure I bring into my kid’s life?
This was back when I was a kid, before the internet, before you had TV shows at your fingertips. When we’ve finally got any cable, it was the little slider thing if you remember that. Compared nowadays, it was awful. Having to be resourceful, makeup games, ideas and explore, a lot of those things connect. When I would be at my dad's football practices, for example, I was alone a lot during that time, those couple hours. I was in a safe area but not with a ton of oversight. I had to make that time work for me. I did things. You didn't question it because you were a kid. If there was a secret connection to who I am and how that's impacted my career, I would say that's it. I have always been able to do things on the fly, be resourceful, figure it out, create something. If I have a thought or idea that I like, I will bring it to reality. Whereas most people will say, "It's crazy. Don't do it. Don't try it. It's too hard. It's too expensive." That allowed me to overcome and find the resourcefulness to solve problems.
There are always a bump in the road, 2 or 10 for all of us. There are always a handful of them. Sometimes we think of them as monster size bumps. If you are looking down on them, they were probably not as big as we think. Is there something in there that was painful at the time where you were like, "That sucked. It was the worst thing that happened to me?" Looking back, you say, “That was one of the inflection points.”
I will throw out life there is. There are plenty of them. I will save you this one but I will touch on it. When I was small and we didn't have a lot, this apartment we lived in was roach-infested. They would fall out on my cereal boxes. That's my full life terror. When I see any roach, I will burn the house down over it. More tangible and relatable is I will stay on this theme a little bit since we mentioned it. At those football practices, I would have time to roam and explore. One day, I went into the locker room while practice was going on and there wasn’t anything special. I was seven at this point. You’ve got to remember, this is Nashville. It's a Country town. The school had a great football team, a well-known team. Galison was the name of it. That's North of Nashville.
It had a lot of rich history. The locker room was all green and yellow because we were the Green Wave. That was our colors that looked like the Green Bay Packers. The locker rooms were all painted green with wood. They had chicken wire in them. That was what held everything. You would have a hook in there. You could put your helmet or shoulder pads on. The bottom of the locker, which was sitting height up was also chicken wire. I walked in one day and noticed there were lots of pencils and pens that were lying around in all the kids' lockers. I collected them. I had this bundle of probably 70 or 80 pens and well-chewed number two pencils. I loved it. I was like, "I found a gold bar." I was excited to have these things, which is the stuff that excites you at seven.
After practice, my dad and some of their coaches all sit in this one office and talk about practice or talk about whatever they talked about, fishing or something. I would get in the car with my dad and we would go home. On the drive home, my dad didn't notice it. He would always chat with me and stuff. When we went to get out of the car, he said, "Steve, where did you get all those pens and pencils?" I was like, "I found them." Being seven, I remember it crisp and clear because it was a defining moment. He said, "Where?" I said, "In the lockers." He was like, "Son, those are not your pens and pencils." I'm like, "I found them, dad." He was like, "They were not yours. Tomorrow you are giving them back." I cried. I don't think I had the mindset of finders' keepers. It was, “I worked for this. I created these things.” Whatever thought you have.
The next day, I get dropped off at practice and watch practice. A lot of times I would erase some of the players back to the field house, the locker room. On this one day, my dad at the end of practice blew the whistle like usual. They always have a little talk. He called me over. He had those pens and pencils with him. He handed them to me and said, "My son wants to say something to all of you." I remember being terrified. It's funny. I've told this story to a few people over the years and some people are like, "That was mean. He shouldn't have done that." I'm like, “The way it's impacted my life, it was the right thing to do." I had to stand there and I had to say, "I apologize for stealing all of your pens and pencils."
My dad had probably talked to them prior to the practice and said this was going to happen. He wanted them to take them from me, one by one these big, looked like gladiators to me, even though there were 7th and 8th graders at the time. They were in their full uniform, hot and sweaty. They come by one by one and take a pencil or pen. Some of them would say, "It's okay." I stood there, cried and boohooed. The thing I took years later that I can remember is it taught me to be accountable and be responsible for the choices I make. I have threatened my kids with that a few times. They have never quite done what I did but there had been a few instances. I told them that story. They might have the fear of God in them that I will ever do that to them. They stay clear. It was a great lesson to learn.
I'm writing a kid's book on choices. I have talked to a dozen people, including my mom and dad. I said, "How do you make choices?" It's depending on who you ask. Rich Blakeman is a CRO that works for me. He says, "I look at how it affects other people, how it affects my family and then me." He's a selfless individual. He looks at people, family, him. Other people might say, "Whatever's best for me." It seems to me there's no perfect guidebook when you get to the why in the road which choice do you make. From that lesson that you learned, if you were to define how to make a good choice, can you share something with the audience from that experience?
Accountability And Responsibility: It's all a matter of what you want to accomplish and how much you want to risk.
It taught me things like for lack of a better term, how to man up. When you are wrong, take responsibility, say you are sorry, stick your tail between your legs, take your shot, move on and learn from it. Don't do it repeatedly. That's certainly taught me accountability, responsibility. I say this all the time. My wife and kids know this, anyone that works for me, a lot of them have heard this. It's a great opportunity to take responsibility. A lot of people don't. When I'm being attentive to this, I noticed a lot of people avoid responsibility. They avoid being accountable. Let’s say someone sends a report and there's something wrong with it, very rarely will someone say, "That's my fault."
They will say, "We miss that. We will fix it. We will get back to you." Say you are sorry. Say, "It's my fault," even if it's not. If you are part of the team, take that accountability. Over the years running a marketing ad agency, anytime I have ever had a client call and they were upset with something that wasn't done well, right or maybe felt expectations in some way, the first thing I always say is, “It's my fault.” Ninety-nine percent of the time, I have no clue at that moment what they are talking about. I wasn't part of what had happened.
It's your structure with the processes and the people that are on the bus. It ultimately rolls to you.
I have even had a couple over the years say, "Steve, it's not your fault. It's so-and-so. It's on your team." I'm like, "It is mine." I will see it through. I will make sure it's corrected. I will use it as a coaching moment. We will improve. It's fine. That's how you build relationships. I truly don't think you can build relationships if everything's good all the time. I don't have a single friend in life that I haven't fought with or had a disagreement with. When I say fought, not physical. I don't have any that I haven't had disagreements with. Even my wife, I had disagreements. It's normal. In some ways, that has been a big gift to me that I don't have a whole lot of concern about taking the responsibility for something. I do it. It usually works out. In fact, it has always given me a great opportunity to build a better relationship with someone because, at that moment, they know they can trust you.
I was on the receiving end of the pencil hack where someone in my junior high school I remember I had moved towns to another small town in Castle Rock. All of a sudden, my mom gives me my pencils and pens. They were all missing. The bag was unzipped. I remember looking. The person who did it was right there and caught red-handed but I didn't see the pencils in his hand. I knew who it was. He never claimed responsibility for it. I called him out. I'm like, "You did that." He was like, "I don't know what you are talking about." I know it was him to this day. You can see beyond a person in how they respond to those. That's an amazing lesson that your dad gave you. To your point, at the time it's like, "That's mean." Those are the kinds of lessons that are important to pass to our kids, their kids and so on.
It's rare. most people I do believe will work hard and spend a lot of energy to avoid being accountable and responsible. I don't think they are doing it to their detriment intentionally or even realize that. It's like you don't want to be at fault. I get that emotionally and psychologically. People will avoid that for anything, everything, the smallest things, things as simple as being on time.
The chaos on the backend of taking accountability is better than keeping it inside.
If you are late say, "I'm late. It's my fault.” Not, “Traffic is bad." No one cares, especially if it's someone that has a lot more seniority to you that you are working on their dime, they certainly don't care and they shouldn't. Take the hit. Move on but don't make it a fault to something else. People rarely do the opposite of that. Throughout most of my life from the time of the pencil incident. It worked out very well.
If there's something you could accomplish that would change everything for you, what would that be? It doesn't have to be accomplished. That's a different word. What's the one thing you would love to see the change in your life?
The easy answer for me is to find daily calm or peace. My whole life, I have been amped up. If you want to call it to type A, label it what you want to put on. It's fine. I'm excitable, get passionate about things. At times, it’s maybe my detriment. Asking me that question, the answer is not going to be more money or more opportunity in life. I have had plenty. I want more but it's more of a desire versus a need at this point. If there's one thing I would say would change everything, it would be defining that calm.
Do you remember that deodorant commercial from the ‘80s? It's like, “Never let them see you sweat?” They have actors and actresses. They were like, "Never let them see you sweat when you are under pressure when you are intense.” It’s like that. Not so literal but not getting too fired up, not getting too emotional. Still having the passion and the desire but not allowing that angst if you read an email and your heart starts to beat because it pisses you off. Most of the time, it's nothing even be angry about at that moment when it does it to you. If I could find a way to read that I would.
Have you heard of this app called 75 Hard? There's a book. There's an app. I did it in Q4. There are only six things you have to do every day. On the surface, it sounds like it's not that hard. By day 21, it wasn't that hard. You work out twice a day for 45 minutes each. You don't have to do anything fancy. You don't have the bench 250 pounds or anything. It could be stretching. You do a Peloton for 30 minutes. Maybe you do Peloton meditation for ten minutes. You hit your 45-minute mark roundup. One has to be outside. When it's snowing in Colorado, you are running in boots that are a little muddy. You drink a gallon of water a day. You read ten pages in any book a day and no drinking for 75 days.
When you talk about a level of calm to anything that's going on, that level of commitment, it brought that for me. I was like, "This is awesome. Let's see what day 76 does." It was a letdown. It went from 6 steps to 20. I was like, "I thought it would go from 6 to 3. Let's go to one workout a day because we are done with the 75 days." What I'm in process of building to is whenever I have an idea, I go do it. Most people sit back and let it wait. I'm going to build an app that's like that but gets to the calm and also helps people connect with what their God-given talents are. A lot of people are playing in a game they shouldn't be playing. They should realize what they were when they were six, what they are passionate about, and go, "That's how the dots should connect." You have connected the dots.
I have connected some of them. By no means, it's perfect. The keyword that you say was commitment. I talk about this all the time with our team, even with clients and myself at times. What are you committed to? I love working out. I hate to run. Running does not work for me. I was always a sprinter. If you told me to run 0.5 miles, we are kidding ourselves. Years ago, I decided I wanted a hard New Year's resolution. I said, "I'm going to commit to running at least 1 mile per day every day." The commitment wasn't the mile. The commitment was every day. I can give you ten excuses not to go do it, lots of reasons. Once you start to do it and it becomes a habit, then it becomes much easier.
I write at the airport once. I was on an international flight. I knew that if I’ve got on that flight before I ran, I would pass the international dateline and have an asterisk like Martin Maguire. It's like steroids or something. It's that thing. I ran in six different countries, in parking garages and wherever it took me. Sometimes at 11:00 at night or 5:00 in the morning because I knew I had something that was going to be in my way the whole day. It became easy. I hit day 365. The next day, I didn't think I would do anything but I ran. Eventually, I tore my patellar tendon. I stopped at 371. It became normal. I averaged 2.1 miles per day. It didn't even matter.
The funny thing was I had a lot of people that gave me the grief of, "0.5 miles is not a lot." I'm like, "Do a 0.5 mile with me." There was one guy. He was so a good friend of mine but hassling me. I said, "Why don't you run 100 yards a day? I will do a mile." He wouldn't do it. I'm like, "Your problem is you can't commit to it but you are going to talk the armchair quarterback all day. We have a problem." People find it hard to commit but if you truly commit yourself to things, it becomes easy to achieve them.
Have you heard of a guy named Dan Martell by any chance? I went on his trip to Canada for Maple Summit, the ski trip years ago. He talks about commitment. He does a lot of great shows. He talks about the $1, $10, $100 and $1,000 problem and about playing in a different game. I'm moving off the topic of the last one we were talking about. Have you found that the higher you move up, your mindset has to change? If your company loses $100,000 in a quarter, that's a different feeling than if you lost $50 on investment. Talk a little bit about that.
It's a lot different. The stakes get higher in some ways and not as much in others. If you have been able to be financially responsible and find a way for your personal life to be well balanced there, then you can risk some other things, particularly if you are the owner of the business. I would look at it in two different ways. I can remember the first time everyone in Las Vegas losing $25. To me, it was painful. Now, let's keep going. I can do that a few times and it's not an issue. Don't even think about it. By the same token in business, we have had moments where we have a very large well-known retailer in this country that filed bankruptcy and stuck us with a bunch of money. It sucks. What are you going to do about it? It was six figures. It wasn't $5,000.
We deal with a lot of media. It's incumbent upon us to be good stewards of those dollars. If we make a mistake, I don't go back to the client ask for those dollars. We eat it. It's not their fault. It doesn't happen ever. I can't recall it happening in the last many years because we have better tools and systems in place. Back in the earlier days of the business when we were trying to do a lot of stuff in spreadsheets, there are a lot of human errors. I remember once we had a $400,000 human error and we had to eat it. It sucked. It was a bad year. We have had to overcome getting hit where you might lose a client. On a given Tuesday, that was a couple of million bucks in revenue to you. It sucks. It's a bad Tuesday.
Depending on where you are in the scale, scope and size of your business, that could completely shut you down or it can be a bad couple of month. Thankfully for us, it's a bad couple of months. We have to regroup from that. The stakes are different. What you are trying to achieve is different. I always try and remind myself that there are a lot of people that would love to have that. I'm not going to complain to you, even if you ask me to complain. There are a lot of people that would like to have my problems. I recognize that extremely well from the way I grew up. My dad's not here anymore. He has passed away but he would love my problems. He would be thrilled at them. He would be beyond overjoyed at them. He never had that. My mom's here thankfully. She benefits from it and appreciative of it. You have to put it in proper perspective.
It makes me think of the choices conversation. A lot of senior people that have wisdom and experience might say, "Take a stable job. Work there for twenty years. Avoid risk. Never find yourself in a $2 million problem." It's like, "If you can't find yourself on a $2 million problem, then you are not going to find yourself in a $50 million company either. You are going to be in $100,000 a year job taking no risks."
Accountability And Responsibility: Commit to reset yourself every once in a while, knowing you're not perfect and neither is anyone else, and just have honest conversations.
I have mentored and worked with a lot of people, startup founders, people that run other successful businesses that were peers, people that I have hired that worked for me and even people on the outside that come to me sometimes for advice. I always tell them the same thing, “It's all a matter of what you want to accomplish and how much you want to risk.” When I started Levelwing with the guy who Cofounded it, Jeff Adelson-Yan, we quit our jobs cold turkey in New York City and started this business. There wasn't one single person in my life that told me that was a good idea. Not one, including my parents.
For years, it looked that way. The first year we were in business, which is not a full year, we made $6,000 each. It's New York City. It's 2002. I'm not going to tell you what I paid in rent but it's plenty. That $6,000 didn't go very far. The next year, we had a huge year. It quadrupled. We made $24,000. It's New York City. It's in different $0. It took four years for things to happen. I had one million reasons to stop at any given moment. There are lots of opportunities out there. I'm glad we did though and overcame those frustrations, challenges and uncertainty because it paid off. It took a lot of effort for that to happen. That's hard for people to see unless they have done it or they have been there at that moment.
I heard the CEO of Boots speak at an event in New York City years ago. He had a very similar story. He moved from Australia thinking, "Boots are going to sell like crazy." He gets to South Cal. He sold $2,000. Next, he had the same thing. He goes, "I doubled it. I did $4,000 in Southern California." He finally goes out and gives it to these models to be on the cover of a magazine. People looked at it like, "Those are models. Those aren't surfer girls and guys. They don't look like me." Pam Anderson got a hand of them on her own accord and got in a photo in a newspaper. Everyone was like, "I need one of those." It jumped like crazy. It went from $1 million, $2 million to $5 million. Someone bought his company. His partner took them out. They brought him back. It turned into this interesting ride.
The inflection point for him was that Pam Anderson model thing and Oprah also. It's the same thing with Dan Martell at Maple Summit. The guy who built that showed up in our snowcat one day. He has got this long beard. He was the owner. We were like, "Who is that guy?" Later we found out that's the owner. He spoke to us and he was like, "I was a snowboarder. We rented this truck to drive up the mountain. They wouldn't rent it to us for more than a day but we kept it for a year. We paid them for a day. We kept it for the whole year." He limped his way through. The inflection point was when an influencer came, and then Warren Miller came and filmed everything in the backcountry. Our boots story, that story, influence our marketing. You are in marketing. Have you seen big brands make an inflection point when they have a celebrity influencer get involved in some way?
We worked with a lot of them. We worked with a lot of celebrities and athletes that are in the NFL, in the PGA, in auto racing, both NASCAR, IndyCar, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, Olympic athletes. We are doing our third Olympics campaign. Big brands and small brands both have the same challenge when it comes to influencers. That is, “Are you aligning well with your brand, with these people? How far are you willing to allow them to take it if at all?” Sometimes brands are willing to spend a lot of money but tell influencers what they have to do, which is maybe in some ways counter-intuitive to the purpose of it. It's no different than any other form of marketing.
You need to plan well, have a good foundational structure for your plan, know how to execute well against it, know what your measurement goals are and then hold yourself accountable to them. If they change or aren't successful on the way, be able to pivot, change and move, be somewhat nimble within that structure. We have seen lots of success with it. I hate the term influencers because some of these people are truly unknown people that become known through social media. You have people that are athletes that may have been known since they were in high school that we work with. Some are country music stars. You and I were having a conversation before about one that we do a lot of work with in front of your family.
Those things can be very successful if they are done well through authentic, planned and executed if there's a good foundational structure to how you are managing it. If there's not, then it's just activity. Activity doesn't work unless you have an ungodly amount of money that you can spend and it doesn't matter. Most brands don't. Even large well-known brands don't have an unlimited budget. It's smart to be prudent, be thoughtful and create structure around all your planning. That's where the success or the failure happens.
Tell me a little bit about the show so our readers can find you there. Parker on Tap, what's it about? How do they find you?
In 2020, I decided I was going to do shows. I have been fortunate through my career of getting to meet a lot of unique people. Some people that you would know very well, they are very well-known and other people that you don't know but they are hyper-successful, amazing individuals too. I have been able to leverage that in some ways at different times and all the right manner. I would always be very careful with it. I want it to be focused on people that are the very best in the world at what they do. You might find equally good people but you won't find better. I will put together a list of twelve people that I would love to have on the show and reach out to all of them. They all agreed to do it. It’s people like Frank Abagnale.
If you have watched the movie Catch Me If You Can, that's his life story from the time he was 16 to 20, which is when he created all that fraud and excitement. If you watch that movie, it's played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Tom Hanks was on it for the people that don't know. It's a fantastic movie. He's a real-life human being. He happened to be someone who lived in my neighborhood and I’ve got to know. He's a great guy and his wife, Kelly, is amazing. I know a lot of his history and stories that you don't know in the real world or that people generally don't know. A lot of what's in the movie is true. Some are built-in there by the directors. He committed all those things when he was very young. When he had got out, he worked for the FBI for years.
One of the awesome things that he mentioned on the show when I interviewed him as he told me something on the show that he had never told anyone before. Everyone knows he's continued to work for the FBI for years but he's never charged them a dime. Even though at this point, they were willing to pay him. He's never charged the US government. Any government agency that's ever asked him to do anything, he's never charged. Not even for his hotel or his flights. It was interesting to see that change and what he's become. People like Andrew Hawkins who works for LeBron James and Maverick Carter. He's probably the preeminent digital content maker for sports that exist.
There are other good people but he's certainly at the very top of that. There are people like Erika Nardini from Barstool Sports. She's honest and forthcoming. She's not good at everything every day. She's a lot of failures. Someone like Jen Wong. You probably don't know her name off hand but she's the COO of Reddit. Everyone knows Reddit. That was an amazing conversation. It's good people. I have enjoyed doing that show. All twelve of those episodes are out. We will probably start doing the second season here before too long.
A friend of our family named Robert White graduated 1.3 million people from his mindset courses at 2 or 3 different companies, including the late great John Denver. What's interesting is that he has his book called Living an Extraordinary Life. The punch line at the end of the book is, “We are all extraordinary.” We all have our own individual fingerprints. When we did the first show event and there are twelve people from all different walks of life, we’ve all got to know each other to a level that was so deep where we were like, "You are the principal of a high school with 240 kids in Arizona that got kicked out of their normal high school, gang bangers, everything else." She's their last line of defense before they get into bad trouble. She does a really good job at it. You were like, "What a superhero kind of a woman that can take that role on."
Another guy, Darryll Stinson works with NFL players. He wrote a book called Who Am I After Sports? He was suicidal. God visited him in the psych ward by two different people and said, "God asked me to come and say hi to you." It's two people within the same hour. He was like, "This must be real." He has written a book on it. He helps coach people off the ledge. It's amazing how many awesome people are sitting all around us and we don't take the time to explore how extraordinary they are, including ourselves. Sometimes we forget how extraordinary we are. When you are looking for the calm and when you do take a minute to realize it, you were like, "I'm good at what I do."
Often, even people that are close to you. This is why when people do things that are so horrendous that we hate to see when they harm themselves, it's like, "I never knew." You’ve got to dig deep with people to know that they are bothered. Not by any stretch that is easier and perfect. It's where we all let ourselves down as human beings, especially in this culture of everything so quick, fast and easy. You can scroll, click and get things whenever you want them. I can click on Amazon. I can get something still ordered tonight. I can still have things by 10:00 PM. It's insane. You don't take the time to think through the depth of what could be. I'm at fault for that too as much as anyone at times. It's getting yourself back, reset periodically. That's important. That's where commitment comes from. It's being committed to resetting yourself every once in a while knowing that you were not perfect and neither is anyone else. Have honest conversations.
What role does blind faith play in your journey?
It's a windy road. I have moments of clarity and frustration. I have to complete another commitment a lot and indifferent at times. I have found happiness and joy in it, also lots of anger and frustration. I will put it this way. If someone says, "What's your faith?" I would say, "I believe in God." I struggle with it sometimes. I have lots of questions that are still unanswered. That's an honest take. I don't know how to be more honest about it. I do pray every night. I have done it since I was a little kid. Even when I have been angry and maybe didn't believe for a while, I still did it. It was this thing in me I felt the desire to do.
There had been lots of things a lot of times, especially when I was younger. I used to pray for things I wanted. I don't do that anymore. It almost feels selfish to want. It's not a bad thing to want. I'm not condemning it. There are plenty of things I want. I can give you a laundry list of things I want. It's more about finding calm, health and wellness, whether that's mentally, physically, financially or whatever else. Not just myself but others. I have a lot of trust in my faith. I believe it but also question in a fairly healthy amount. I don't think that's bad but that's me.
I have told a few people in this show. My son was burned badly, 2nd or 3rd-degree burns. He caught himself on fire with an oil accident cooking on the stove. It blew up in his face. All you can have is faith as a parent. He calls from his college apartment. "I was in a cooking accident." We thought he was in a car accident. We were like, "What? Cooking?" He was like, "Half of my face burned." We were like, "What does that mean?" As parents, you go through like that. We meet him at the hospital. It swells up beyond reason. After several days, it starts to come down. You were like, "I see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are going to get through this." It then gets worse. The nose looked like it's going to fall off almost. All you can do is pray. We put it out to United Airlines. My sister-in-law is a flight attendant there. We put it out to different churches, all over the place. All we could do is have faith.
He did the surgery. It's a new thing called Recell. They take a little 2-inch piece off the bottom of your leg. They put it in a mixture, on his nose, under his eyes and on his hands. Five days later, they take the bandages off. You were like, "Brendan, you are back." You can push on his nose and it's like, "That's the same nose you had two weeks ago." I remember praying about it. My mother was up all night. My prayer was, "I never asked you for a miracle my whole life." The only way you can describe it is miracle. To see it occur the play by plays every day to where the day before it had got worse before it had got better if you were knee-jerk back to faith. Everyone prayed on it. It was like, "I felt like I was in a video game. The download occurred and there he was." It is amazing when you can hand the keys of the car over and go, "You drive the car."
No matter where people are in their life with faith, even if they don't believe, you center yourself somewhere on something. You can use a different term but you have to have trust, belief, faith or something. There's a purpose for being here. Otherwise, we are all wasting our time. There are a lot of stuff I waste my time on it versus not something bigger than that. Not that you would know the difference that there wasn't at that moment but that's terrible if that's the case. You have to have some level of belief in something. I never judged people for what they believe in. Even faith or religious conversations are contentious for a lot of different reasons. Some legitimate and some not.
Having conversations like this with people is important, regardless of the topic. It doesn't have to be about faith. Even if it is, having the topic about what works or what doesn't work well. If someone's struggling and it's a constant raincloud over them daily, “What's working for you and what's not? It doesn't seem like the things you are doing are working well.” Let's try something different. It could be a big change for them. I appreciate people but you’ve got to be centered somehow.
Steve, I appreciate you coming on the show. We have been talking with Steve Parker from Levelwing. They work with some pretty cool people up there, big brands. If your company needs a jumpstart marketing strategy branding, reach out to Steve. I'm sure they could help your organization. Steve, I appreciate you diving deep into the show.
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. I always enjoy conversations that have some depth to them. Certainly, this one was focused there so that's great. Thank you.
Everybody, we will catch you on the next episode. I'm signing out. Cheers.
Important Links:
Rich Blakeman – LinkedIn
Jeff Adelson-Yan - LinkedIn
Frank Abagnale - Parker on Tap past episode
Andrew Hawkins - Parker on Tap past episode
Erika Nardini - Parker on Tap past episode
Jen Wong - Parker on Tap Past episode
About Steve Parker
CEO & Co-Founder of LEVELWING, a leading digital agency committed to FUNDAMENTALS, TRANSPARENCY and SETTING EXPECTATIONS. As leaders in our industry, we have produced record setting and award winning advertising campaigns on the largest of stages – thirteen consecutive Super Bowls, The Olympic Games and The Indianapolis 500 to name a few. Additionally, we deliver over $6B in revenue to clients each year. We help clients leverage control and structure of their media, technology and marketing assets to deliver world-class efficiency, insights and creative. We have delivered our work across four continents.
We deliver high performance marketing experiences for leading brands: Lenovo, Bridgestone, Ford, Under Armour, Novo Nordisk, Gildan, Twinings, Firestone, Mercedes-Benz, Amgen, Mellow Mushroom and many others. Learn more about us at www.levelwing.com We help marketers be better marketers™.
Additionally, I am a founding Partner in Third Prime VC. A VC firm with a focus on early stage companies. Please see www.ThirdPrime.vc for more.
