With “EDGY Conversations,” entrepreneur Dan Waldschmidt looks at the extraordinary successes of ordinary people
Dan Waldschmidt’s small office hardly seems big enough to contain his liveliness. He burns some energy working at a stand-up desk that takes up most of the room at the NEXT Innovation Center. The space is pretty much straight to the point, much like Waldschmidt.
His new book, for example, starts off with probably the grittiest, bottom-of-the-barrel scene a person could imagine. It’s a scene from Waldschmidt’s own life, when he was ostensibly successful, yet troubled enough to consider suicide. He has shared the story with audiences before to illustrate how his quick rise to success – being a CEO at age 25 – was driven by a dysfunctional, fearful state in which he believes many people live.
A decade later, he has a brighter outlook, and his multiple companies have him dealing in areas including marketing, tech, real estate and business development.
Waldschmidt said the search for happiness and success taught him several lessons, one of which was that most of the advice out there isn’t any good. He couldn’t find anybody among his friends and colleagues who had benefitted from the prescriptions in self-help and business books.
So he decided for four years to look away from the popular business experts and toward everyday people who had proved to be successful one way or another. More than 150 of those stories appear in his new book, “EDGY Conversations: How Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Success.”
For several years Waldschmidt has shared unconventional business expertise on his blog, also called “EDGY Conversations,” rated one of the top seven sales blogs by the Wall Street Journal. He writes for outlets such as Business Insider and has been featured in Inc. Magazine. As managing partner of the business consulting firm Waldschmidt Partners and founder of Jackson Stanley Realtors, he can talk about many aspects of business. But he says the book aims simply to inspire. He wanted to help people looking to change their lives but who remain baffled in today’s economic landscape.
“There’s a lot of people even in the small- to medium-sized business world who are just like, ‘I guess I’ll try more of the same?’”
Waldschmidt talked with UBJ about the book and the lessons he’s learned in his own life and career. Among dozens of topics and ideas, some pieces of advice stood out in the conversation.
Be brutally honest. Waldschmidt says he is working on following up his brutal honesty with conversations that help build people up, especially if he just had to tear an idea down. But honesty with ourselves is the really important thing. Being reflective about true motivations behind our actions, admitting when we’re lazy, and chucking excuses are crucial to success.
Keep trying, or admit you’re quitting. He says this basic idea has been lost among today’s entrepreneurs. Too often he hears them say, “I tried that once.” He suggests at that point that perhaps they should try again. He points out that Henry Ford experienced multiple bankruptcies before revolutionizing the auto industry, and Colonel Sanders tried more than 1,000 recipes before finding the one on which he built his empire, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The term “pivoting,” for which Waldschmidt has zero respect, has become a substitute for quitting, he says. “Instead we just give it a new name, pretend like it’s awesome, but then [actually] go and do something else. So over time we just delude ourselves.”
Forget about balance. Waldschmidt believes it’s impossible to be both balanced and successful. Sometimes extreme effort is necessary to succeed, and trying to stay balanced can get in the way of that.
Waldschmidt is incredulous about images of a neatly compartmentalized life where work and personal hours are strictly scheduled. It’s silly to make rules about not taking work calls after certain hours.
“So if my wife calls during the day, does that mean I don’t pick up the phone?”
Instead, he urges people to strive for harmony. Harmony allows for times of intensity the success demands, but it also means that the overall result comes together well.
It’s always what it’s not. Waldschmidt says the really interesting information lies in what is not being said or discussed. He wonders how people are really doing when they bump into each other at his talks and say they’re doing great.
“You’re not great. You’re here because you want to be better. That’s okay. Why don’t we start talking about that?”
There’s a palpable sense of depression around the country that Waldschmidt says he doesn’t see when traveling abroad. Marketers in particular should think not about how to sell their products or services, but how to transcend the everyday pain and fear under which most people are operating.
It’s not what you do; it’s who you are. “It kind of sounds cheesy, but there’s a reason why we’re called human beings, not human doings.” He says the constant focus on what people are doing – how they spend their time, earn their money, where they went to school – misses the point. The reason why most companies will never be successful is because they’re more concerned with following formulas than working on their character.
[callout]
EDGY is an acronym for:
Extreme behavior
Disciplined activity
Giving mindset
Y(h)uman strategy.
Learn more:
danwaldschmidt.com
edgyconversations.com
