Daniel Moneypenny interview on “The Best Podcast Ever”

Alex has a chat with CEO of emaginit Daniel Moneypenny, aka the guy who knows a guy, about branding, marketing, networking, and business development. Daniel also shares a bit of his journey which includes serving in the Army, becoming a male model, attempting to steal something from Phil Knight, and more. As Alex says, “to know Danny is to be in awe of him.” We think you’ll agree.

Notes

How Alex and Daniel met
The secret to Daniel’s energy
Daniel describes his childhood
Moving to California and becoming a Forest Fighter
Enlisting in the Army and joining the US Prix Leclerc Team
Having a ton of interesting jobs including becoming a make model, running antique shops, and starting a fitness shoe store
College and starting emaginit
Naming, branding, and building his reputation
Shifting from branding to networking and business development
Big failures and big rebounds
Creating the correct work environment
Lightning Round

Transcript

Alex Gertsberg: [00:00:01] Best Podcast Ever is sponsored by the Hertzberg Law Firm, a full service business law firm in Cleveland and Chagrin Falls. That’s changing the way businesses retain their attorneys. Go to Hertzberg Law.com to learn more. While you’re there, check out Cover My Six. A complete legal audit of the six areas that most often create or prevent business lawsuits and government investigations. Go to cover my six dot com to learn how we keep you safe. Enjoy the show.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:00:29] Ladies and gentlemen, you’re about to listen to the best podcast ever recorded.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:00:42] Would treat other people’s time like you want your time again. It’s your life. It’s not just time. It’s part of your existence.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:00:48] You’re giving up. Yeah. Hey, folks. Happy New Year, everyone. I hope it was an awesome holiday season for you. All Challenges Considered. You’re about to hear a really cool interview with a very interesting guy. Daniel Moneypenny is. He may be one of the most interesting guys I’ve ever met. And you’ll find out why. Here he is, the CEO of a company called Imagine It. He is in his seventies and has the energy of a 16 year old. He is a connector, a marketing guy, a creative guy. Just a really fascinating thinker. Right. And he’s got a great story that will take us back well over 70 years. So enjoy that. Here’s something really interesting that we’re doing. We’re starting 2021 off in an interesting way. So we are going to be releasing a series of podcast episodes that are going to be a little different from the ones that you’re used to here. So I am an example of this, but I believe so strongly that entrepreneurism is mostly about failing, right? It is. It is a constant challenge, constant struggle, constant losing of customers, clients, suppliers, employees, partners. There is a constant change. There’s constant turnover and just a constant pain that happens from being a good entrepreneur. And the reason for that is that we’re we’re risk takers. Right. We decided a long time ago that the lifestyle we are pursuing is one where risk is involved. Very little security, very little job security and paycheck security. We traded all of that in for an unlimited upside. Right. Because we didn’t want to work for other people. We wanted to work for ourselves and we wanted to create our own destiny, write our own outcomes.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:03:13] And when you put those elements together, you combine them risk sticking your neck out, working for yourself. There is fear and there’s failure there. And that’s something that to be I believe, to be a good entrepreneur, you’ve got to get really used to. So we thought it would be really interesting if we took some of our favorite guests from the 140 plus episodes of Best Podcast Ever that we recorded and brought them back some new some are returning guests, and we asked them to tell us the story of their greatest failure, their greatest entrepreneurial failure. And so for the next 5 to 10 episodes, that’s what you’re going to hear. You’re going to hear from some of my favorite guests who are going to come back and give us ten, 15, 20 minutes of just their story of overcoming the ball drop being dropped, the customer being lost, the existential crisis that they had in their business. That’s it. So we’re calling it my colossal failure, I think, until we come up with a better name for it. But I think that’s going to be it. And and stay tuned. We’re going to release them in relatively quick succession, probably one every few days for the next month or so. I hope you like it. And I hope you tune in and you give me some feedback and you learn from it. I know I did. I mean, I’ve loved these these episodes, these interviews. I’ve recorded most of them already. And they are empowering.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:04:59] They give you a lot of confidence knowing that some of these guys who are now, you know, running $100 Million Enterprises had the same existential crisis and the state the same. What, in retrospect, were the dumbest decisions they could have made that we make every day. So enjoy those. They’re coming. And you should be seeing those in the next few days. But for now, enjoy. Daniel Moneypenny, one of the most interesting people on the planet. Thanks, guys. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here. Welcome to another exciting episode of Best Podcast Ever. And today may be the best episode of Best Podcast ever. You’re in for a real treat here, folks. I’m sitting across the table as we speak from the illustrious, the notorious Daniel Moneypenny to his close friends, Danny Moneypenny. But never. Dan Right. Never. Dan Never. Dan Or else you’re you’re itching for a fight here. Danny, sit back and relax. And I’m going to tell everybody how I met you and what our little story, how it unfolds. So a few years ago, you were introduced to me and to my firm by fella that used to work here. And the way he introduced you is he said, well, you’ve got to meet you’ve got to meet Daniel Moneypenny because he knows everybody. But buckle up, right? Because he’s he’s got he’s got a lot of energy. And so I took the meeting with you and you came in here and you had more energy. And today you’re 70 years old, right? But then I guess you must have been 67.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:06:57] A big difference between 67. I know.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:06:59] I know. But you came in here and it was just like fireworks shooting out of every spore and part of your body. I mean, it was you insisted first on on helping me name a new company that we had, which ended up being covered by six. And we had an hour long session where after telling you what cover my six was, you threw out about 150 names in what had been more than probably a couple of hundred names. And it was just energy. It was energy coming out of you. And I couldn’t believe it. And then a few years later, this year, we met again. I dialed you up. I can’t remember why. And you have been helping me, as you do with all of your clients, with business development. There really, I don’t think has ever been anyone that I’ve ever known that has introduced me to more people than you in such a short period of time. And so for folks listening to this that run your own businesses, if you haven’t heard of Danny, well, you’re you’re you’re fortunate to to hear of him now. So Danny is the founder, the proprietor, the visionary behind Just Imagine It. And that’s spelled just just imagine it is spelled m a g i and I t imagine it. You’ve got to just imagine it. You’ll learn more. So, Danny, welcome, welcome. I’m so excited. I’ve been I’ve been dying to get you in here so that I can. I’ve heard a lot about you from other people, but I’ve heard a lot of your story that I’m going to try to extract from you today, from you. And so I’m excited to get kind of a drill down. But above all, welcome and happy Veterans Day. Today’s Veterans Day, you’re a vet.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:08:54] Happy Veterans Day to you, Alex.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:08:56] Thank you.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:08:57] Thank you. And happy Veterans Day to all the vets listening to this podcast.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:09:00] Yes, yes, yes, yes. Danny, by the way, do you know why Veterans Day is on November 11th? Armistice Day? Yeah. Yeah, it was it was supposedly at 11:11 a.m. on November 11th, 1918.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:09:16] That’s why I’m.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:09:16] Here. That World War One came to an end.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:09:18] Mm hmm. Yeah.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:09:20] Let’s through a little history lesson for the day, folks. You’re welcome, Danny. 70 years old.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:09:27] I feel like I’m 69. I feel.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:09:28] Great. You look like you’re 49.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:09:30] Thank you. Yeah, I dye my hair this white color to enhance the.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:09:37] Every time I see you. You seem to have even more energy than the time before. So before we get into your your your vitals and your biography, I want to know what your secret is so I can be as energetic as you are when I’m 70.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:09:49] Well, there’s probably a number of secrets. I mean, I’m highly motivated because I came from 11 children and we had to survive in that atmosphere. I always tell people. Few of us live long enough to be ourselves, and few of us live long enough to grow up. I love what I do. I love to do branding. I love the network we have with the 1200 and some firms that I love to do, the transactional and sourcing and deals to people. But the energy comes from a lot of good fortune I’ve had. There’s a lot of things in this world. A lot of bad luck happens to a lot of people. I try to stay on the magic side, not the tragic side. I work out a lot. I’m fortunate I’ve had some health issues in the last ten years, but I’ve surmounted both of those and I just like this life. And I know if you live to be 120, it’s not enough.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:10:38] Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re going to. I think you’re.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:10:41] Maybe.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:10:42] 11 kids. Where did you grow up?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:10:45] We started out in Portage County, Windham. Roots down mogadore places like that graduated from high school in 68.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:10:55] Would your folks do well? Your mom was a mom.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:10:57] Mom is definitely a mom. And my father was working at the Chrysler stamping plant in Twinsburg as a foreman in 1962.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:11:05] All right. So you grow up in the in the Portage County area. Yes. And you at some point decide to leave. Right. And go to California. Is that where.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:11:19] You. Two days after I graduated, got on a Greyhound bus for $55, went to Los Angeles.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:11:24] Because you couldn’t wait to get out of there. Or what was what was your childhood like before we go there?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:11:29] It was interesting. We had a lot of siblings. We had a wonderful mother, we had a dad. That was a challenge with various things like a lot of families have, and we lost him in 1962. And that kind of changed all of our lives into almost a good a great trajectory for almost everyone so that we were living in a woods town when that happened. He was killed in a car accident. But our mom was a saint. She lived to be 86 years old, outlived him by 50 years, died in February of 2013.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:12:01] All of your siblings survive healthy.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:12:04] We have nine living. We lost a little boy when I was one and he was two back in the day in 1951. And we lost my oldest brother, Rick, to suicide. And in 2000, he was 56.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:12:16] Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:12:18] A great guy. By the way.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:12:19] Where are you? In the pecking order there.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:12:22] All my psychiatrists tell me I’m in the right spot. I’m right in the middle. Okay. Classic middle child. Yeah.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:12:32] Gosh, I just couldn’t imagine. Your your. I’m reading this book right now called The Laws of Human Nature by Robert GREENE, one of the best books I’ve ever read. By the way, I recommend it to everyone. It is so dense with history and psychology and it’s fantastic. But. So many of what he calls the laws of human nature. So much of human nature depends on your upbringing and your childhood and your relationship with your parents. And so I’m trying to imagine what being in the middle of an 11 sibling family does for you in terms of attention, in terms of security, insecurity, social ability. What did it do for you?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:13:23] A lot of those things you just listed there, but being a middle child, you’re pulled between everyone all the time and you become a clown. Sometimes you become the instigator. Sometimes I was both. I was in the trouble a lot and made a lot of people laugh a lot. So I did both sides of it. But our mom was a saint and she kept us on the straight and narrow. We went to parochial Catholic schools up until about 63 or something like that. So that was a good background too. But our mom was the saint and we’re all a lot more extroverted. I tend to be probably the most extroverted. It’s not a I’m not bragging, it just is the way it is. So I’ve monetized my neuroses and I’ve done that. And to this day we’re a fairly strong family and everyone just kind of went their own way. But going to California was, as you asked earlier, was just to get out of Ohio. And The Mamas and the Papas had a song in 66 California Dream. And I took that to heart, went out there. And the day I arrived in Los Angeles, Bobby Kennedy was shot in the head by someone in the Ambassador Hotel, died the next day.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:14:32] And that was in L.A., wasn’t it?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:14:34] That was the day I arrived at the bus station. Kennedy was shot down the street, the Ambassador Hotel, and died the next day, of course. And then I got a job in the Forest Service for about nine months, went up and fought forest fires in Big Bear, California, east of LA, and built trails. When we weren’t doing the fires, we built the Pacific Crest Trails, the famous trail. To this day, we built eight miles of it.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:14:55] What makes you want to join the Forest Service to fight fires?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:14:59] I needed a job, and one of our relatives out there could give me a job in the Forest Service. It was a government job, so I was a GS three or four when I left, so came back home.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:15:08] Wait, how long did you do that?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:15:09] Nine months. One fire season and some other time around that.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:15:13] What’s that like?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:15:15] It was. It was hard work. Building the trail was the hardest work of all. Go in for 14. Excuse me. In for ten days. Out for four. In for ten out for four. Building trails with chainsaws, dynamite blasting rocks, cutting down trees, blasting trees. A crew of eight people and a crew leader who became like my father figure later on, Bill Conley. But you go in and you sleep out in the open at night, you’re exhausted. You wake up in the morning, breakfast, walk out to the trail where you stopped working and start to build more trail. And it was extremely hard work. When I went to California, I was five foot eight, £115. When I came back a year later, I was 511 and 165 in a year. I mean, people didn’t even recognize me. I grew a lot. I was a wow, the hard work, very hard work. The fight of fires. We didn’t do the fires like you see on TV, the giant fires. We did a lot of brush fires and we had a couple of large fires, but it was mostly brush fires and lightning strikes where a helicopter would fly us out to a tree that was burning one single tree or two trees. Drop us in there. We got the tree down, put it out. They come back next day and pick us up.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:16:18] Could you imagine if you were doing that today? You’d be so busy. That’s all. That’s all they have in California’s forest fires.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:16:24] Now, five and a half million acres burned down this year.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:16:26] It’s insane.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:16:27] The record before that was not even 2 million. Yeah.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:16:30] All right, so. So then you’re like hell with this. I’m coming back home. Why did you leave?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:16:35] Fire season was over, and everybody kind of went back to Massachusetts, Ohio, Nevada, Kentucky, West Virginia.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:16:43] So then what’d you do?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:16:43] Came back where? It was working at the railroad in Akron, Ohio. The Akron-Canton Youngstown Railroad did that for a while, and then the service, Vietnam was hot and heavy. So I even got drafted. Or if I joined, I got some choices. So me and a state champion golfer from our high school class, Paul Nelson, we went down and joined on October 17th and our parents couldn’t believe it was the height, the Vietnam.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:17:06] War years.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:17:07] This 1969, October 17th. We just did it. We got a few choices, but not really. We both went to Fort Campbell for Basic and Fort Polk for advanced jungle training. And instead of going to Vietnam, as I talked about earlier and I’ll talk about again, I tried out for this track team in Europe, but you had to be qualified. So I went 82nd airborne spot in Germany. So for two years, instead of going to Vietnam like my friend did, he had a luckily he came back, I ran for the pre declared team and competed all over Europe and Naito jumped out of airplanes, chased girls and it was like a pentathlon shooting obstacle course and running. You jump out of the airplane, run a 1500 meter, do an obstacle course in front of thousands of people. And then you went to a range and shot three and four centimeter targets, and that was the competition.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:17:56] It’s crazy because I’ve never heard of that, but.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:17:59] It’s not a well known, but it’s a there’s a website.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:18:02] But but that was a really big deal back then.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:18:04] That was a big deal back then. It was Naito and France wasn’t in Naito at that time. They were in before that. But we were we were treated well. We worked very hard. A lot of people tried out for it. 12 people made two squads. I made the first squad. I was a good runner. That’s what helped me. Jumping was not the hard part. Shooting was good, had good eyesight. The obstacle course was the toughest because you had to be brutally strong to do the poles, pits, ropes and everything. I did it, but I wasn’t the best guy on that.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:18:33] So then would you? How long are you in the army?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:18:36] Two years. Came back home. Home? Ten days. Bought a brand new car, a Dodge Dart swinger. It was. I paid cash for with the money I saved. The military came back the next day. I told the car and almost totaled myself. Had 40 miles on it and it was a piece of junk. One day after I owned it, I was drinking, goofing around, celebrating, coming home. So I go through all that stuff in Europe, jumping and everything come back and I was really in a bad crash, my face scars and went to the windshield and all kinds of bad stuff. So.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:19:07] So you come back to Ohio.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:19:09] Come back to Ohio.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:19:10] Then what do you do?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:19:10] And then I went back to the railroad for a while because I kept my seniority and my family was my grandpa worked at the railroad for 55 years and raised 12 children. 1910 to 1965. So getting a job at the railroad was a piece of cake for a money penny. A lot of people work there and our family did that for a while, left that insurance for two months, car sales for two months, male modeling for about a year that I had an antique shop stop. Yeah.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:19:37] I can’t throw out male modeling and they just keep on running.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:19:40] Yeah, you.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:19:41] Didn’t male modeling.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:19:42] And that’s for that year. Not full time but I, my, my claim to fame. I was on the G flash cubes at Needle Park in Cleveland, but all over the world when cameras used to have a big flash on them. Yeah, you know, I was on I was selling a lot of packaging and stuff. I just did it because I wanted the money out of here and got a lot of free clothes, too.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:20:01] You know? Is this like were you clothed modeling or was this.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:20:05] No, it was all clothes. It was all clothes.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:20:06] Yeah. And it was it was dorky.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:20:11] Seventies, close to it was wild.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:20:12] But I always imagine whenever I hear whenever I hear a story that involves modeling, it’s always like some you know, some executive trying to seduce a woman. You should you should go into modeling. Let me introduce you to a guy. How does Daniel Moneypenny get into the modeling world?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:20:32] Somebody saw me or something like that. I used to have black hair and I was, you know, that was okay. And I was then I was 511 and 145 150, and it just worked and I could do it. I was doing live shows and shopping malls and things like that. Then I would go to some other live shows and model clothes for certain designers and stuff like that.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:20:49] Like on runways, like.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:20:51] Those kind of in venues. Yeah, like on a runway.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:20:53] And then did they teach you how to do the runway walk?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:20:55] No, no, I just.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:20:56] I just just walked, he just did the Danny money, and.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:20:58] I did my thing and had fun. And I like people. So I would talk to people and try to sell these clothes for these particular retailers or whatever. Yeah.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:21:05] Good for.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:21:06] You. Yeah, I stole three or four belts, too. I feel bad about that. I stole some belts.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:21:10] You know what I feel like I don’t even know you anymore, Danny. All right, so then what do you do then?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:21:17] I that was about 1974 and five. Then I had an antique shop, two of those two big houses full of antiques. Then I started the finish line running store because I was a fairly good runner. I was getting into running all of United States and ten ks and five ks, all kinds of stuff. Now, when.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:21:35] You say you started.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:21:36] The store, I started a store and of course they named it the finish line. Who couldn’t do that? I did that in 1978.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:21:42] Hang on a.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:21:42] Second. Yeah.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:21:44] This is still a shoe store today, isn’t it?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:21:46] Well, I lay no claim to the chain, but I have to finish line with three other guys.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:21:53] And so so.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:21:55] Many of us in Akron, Ohio and North Hill.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:21:57] Is this unrelated to the finish, the big finish line?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:22:00] As far as I know, yeah. But again, we were all runners, so who couldn’t come up with that name.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:22:04] All right. So, so. Okay, got it. Got it, got it. I wanted to make sure, particularly the lawyer in me wants to ensure that the finish line brand doesn’t come knocking on our door saying, hey, no. Okay. You started you started a clothing and shoes to our fitness store and you called it the finish line.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:22:22] The finish line with.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:22:22] The seventies.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:22:23] Three wonderful partners. And this is an interesting story we had. There’s four of us, and I’ll jump to the end. I’m the only one alive. And Ric Sare went to five Olympic trials. He was a 212 marathoner, won Christchurch, New Zealand and Montreal and LA and San Francisco and 86 and both of them in one year we had Jim Colette was a runner. We had Bill Heidemann, who was almost world class and all three of those gentlemen there. We started the store together. I started with Jim Collette, then we brought in Rick because everyone wanted to come and buy shoes for Rick because he was five Olympic trials, stellar guy. And then Bill Heidemann was a wonderful person and a great runner himself. They’re all gone and every one of them with heart. It’s amazing. So.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:23:09] So, so, so. By the way, have you read a shoe dog, Phil Knight.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:23:15] I met Phil Knight. I tried to take his I tried to steal his Nike one license plate off his Mercedes in 1982 in Seattle at a party. I couldn’t get it off. I kept bending it and everybody’s laughing. I was drinking. It was Nike one, and, you know, I couldn’t get the plate, but I sure.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:23:28] Try to steal Phil.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:23:29] Knight’s honest car.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:23:31] You got to read that. That book. It’s it’s one of the best books for entrepreneurs that I’ve ever. I recommend it to everybody all the time. It is. It’s all about how he started Nike. And it takes you all the way up to the day that it went public.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:23:46] With Bill Bowerman and a waffle maker in the whole deal. I know all about it.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:23:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Track. That was his track coach. That’s right. Morgan What’s great about that book is, you know how it ends. You know that Nike becomes this giant, enormous international conglomerate of companies. But what you have no idea is how many existential crises they had, one after another. Every single day was just a struggle for those guys. And it just makes you feel great about running, starting and scaling a business.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:24:16] You might say they did some soul searching before they got the waffle hooked up.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:24:20] Danny, your your what was the one what was the one you did? Oh, yeah. I said, yeah. I said, I asked you earlier, I said, Can you think of any existential crises you’ve ever had? And you said, I do, but I can’t tell you about them.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:24:36] Emmanuel, can’t I put up my Kierkegaard? I don’t want to tell you what it was.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:24:41] Anyway, you’re a ham. Thank you. I like it. I love it. Okay, so finish line.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:24:45] So Finish Time was a wonderful experience. I was in that for about a year and a half and sold my part of it to those three gentlemen and started going to undergrad at 26 on the GI Bill. Started the imaginative business, which we’ll talk about in my sophomore year in 1977, but I got out of that. They’re all great friends at the time. Still were friends till the DDT. Bill Heideman died in 94 and Rick died in 2011 of a heart attack after a run, lived in Oregon, lived in lived a life again. He ran 67 marathons and won 13 of them all over the world. We were dear friends.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:25:18] Do you ever run a marathon?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:25:19] Yes. I ran Boston and to 44 I ran Cleveland CO in 243. My better races were those were 602a mile. My better races were ten ks around 31 flat, stuff like that.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:25:31] Wow. Yeah. I want to I’ve run two halves.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:25:34] 109108 for us on that.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:25:36] Geez.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:25:37] Yeah. See I could run Rick Circuit run 104 half.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:25:41] Yeah. You’re you’re a better man than I am. But you were an athlete. I mean, you just pentathlon and but. Well, and it takes a lot of training. I mean, see, that’s the part that that really screws me up is I want to run a marathon, but I know that it will take two months of weekly, lengthy running beforehand. Right.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:26:01] I have the time. I had the time back then.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:26:03] Yeah. Yeah, I don’t I can’t I can’t scrape, you know, a 45 minute run together anymore.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:26:08] And the thing about a marathon is you can train, train, train and go for PR. So all this kind of stuff and the day of the race, you can either have a wonderful, glorious day and finish through. You could be in the best shape your life and make it to ten and drop out. Cramps, blisters, weird stuff to finish a marathon and get a good time is next to a miracle for the world class guys. For anybody. Yeah, because it’s 26. You can’t fake 26. You can fake two miles, three miles, stuff like that. You can’t fake 26. It’s for ten days back to back.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:26:38] So, all right. What happens after finish.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:26:40] Line college or GI Bill is free. I actually did well, there was 500 bucks a quarter. We were getting 450 a month from the veterans to go to school and then started the ImageNet, the branding thing and start working that got out of school, started walking around the marketing firms, ad agencies with yellow tablets full of a bunch of stuff on them and showing people what I could do and get a lot of laughter. A lot of this, a lot of that. Then I start hiring women to type because I couldn’t type. I can still hardly not type. And then I start putting things together. I go to marketing firms all over the state of Ohio, Western PA, stuff like that, and occasionally fly to Chicago and act like I knew what I was doing. Faking it to making it is really true. And even after you’ve made it, it still takes a great deal of faking. So we’ll get into that. So the branding. Not campaign naming, positioning, corporate positioning, product positioning. I would go to a marketing firm and show them 500 names for any kind of a product that they might have in their marketing firm that they’re actually is their client. And so people couldn’t believe what I was doing. And then I got hired a few times for 500 bucks. And then I would show somebody like Alex, I’d say, Alex, look what I did for 500 bucks. I like this. What did so-and-so pay you? They pay me a thousand, and so you pay me 1000. Then the next time it’s, you know, what did somebody pay you? 2000. 3000. So an important point here is and I speak at schools and other places about escalating your fees and getting your talent commensurate to your fees.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:28:13] Now, a lot of people have talent, all kinds of things. So if you’re in the branding space or the creative space, and if you don’t have talent, it will show up pretty quick. So I would name name something, show somebody. They would say, This is great, we’ll pay 2500 bucks. And then I took that. And the next time I want somebody for the same kind of work, either a name and ad campaign, whatever it was back then used to call them slogans. Slogans were $2,000. And I went to corporate positioning. That’s 20,000. So the same thing, just different nomenclature. So I built a reputation of slow and hard and telling a lot of fibs about my fees. But I could do what I was purporting to do because they could see it and I always had a zero fee schedule. So to this day, if someone’s pay me 30 or 40 K occasionally. The contract reads, you get a trademark entity that you like a lot and I get paid. So here in the Cleveland area, we brought a lattice to Cleveland, a layer of aluminum that was a two $4 billion, two or $4 billion know what it is now. That was 45 K, stuff like that. So if we didn’t get a name to take the other creatives out of the mix, if we didn’t get a name, but they had a lot of creative names in there, but none of them clear trademark. We never got paid. That is a way that’s a that’s a selling proposition. It takes a lot of people out of the equation. And it also brings truth to the the talent set so.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:29:39] That other companies Polaris is one.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:29:41] With Polaris in Cleveland. The other billion dollar one we named was a brush Wellman Brush material on their material. Now, that was a nice large fee and it was again, it was commensurate. So if we didn’t get it, Mr. Hipwell was running the firm at that time. He retired, then we don’t get paid.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:29:57] It’s really interesting because I mean, I watched this happen. I watched the the money penny is brain dump happen. It was fascinating. And you you had that steel briefcase right there, you. Aluminum.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:30:11] Anodized aluminum.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:30:12] Pardon me? Anodized aluminum briefcase. You pulled out a stack of paper from it and it was just like it was like a symphony. Like I would, you know, tell you about the company I wanted to name and what it was doing and you would just start writing shit down. And it was just hundreds of names came out. It’s a fascinating thing to watch. And you have to. I guess this I was going to ask this question later, but it’s appropriate now. I mean. I talked to people all the time about finding your unique ability. Find the one thing that puts you in that state of flow. Find that one thing that you do that you believe you do better than anything else that you do. Right. The thing you are uniquely capable of doing. At this point in your career. So this is still in the seventies, right?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:31:03] Late seventies.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:31:04] Late seventies. Did you know? Because you continued to do that even to this day. So for 40.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:31:10] Years, I still did a branding assignment about a month ago.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:31:12] And so so at what point I mean, was it was it then that you that you felt like this is what you are uniquely capable of doing, that it puts you in that state of flow that it’s it’s just it brings you joy. It brings you money. I mean, when does that click for you?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:31:30] It clicked at about 78, 79. And it was a breakthrough year. The 79 I was 29 at that time doing a lot of cool things, still had some of the smaller businesses and got rid of a couple of them, started to go around to the marketing firms locally in northeast Ohio. But, you know, you know, you’ve got some sort of talent set when people start to pay you for it and then you just escalate the fees, you tell fibs you have to. Because if you don’t, people people would rather pay you 2010 thousand.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:31:58] Well, and it’s all pretty arbitrary. I mean, you set your you set your own price. Yeah, right. You set it. And if people are willing to pay it, it becomes the market price for your value.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:32:06] Yeah. And so over the years you just escalated. So we’ve got about a million, 200,000 names in database that I’ve cranked out over the last 42 years. Probably haven’t sold 3% of them because we do four or five or 600 names for one client. We keep the rest in a database. We use them if we can. About 850,000 marketing campaigns, head campaigns, corporate positioning, product positioning, all that kind of stuff. So so it’s one thing.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:32:33] It’s just you. This is just.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:32:35] You, just me cranking that up. So it’s one thing to say you can do something. We always showed up with far too many, far too many candidates, but that’s how we built this thing. And if we didn’t get it, we have a 94% hit rate on getting something that clears trademark. A lot of people can crank out fun, creative, wonderful names or whatever, but if they don’t trademark, they’re absolutely worthless. So that’s how we built our business on. And the contract zero fee is how we did it.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:33:04] So at some point you get into the business of networking, of business development, right? Connecting people with other people. And it’s quite a circle of friends that you’ve got. Danny. Danny just pulled out a sticker that says, To know me is to pay me. That’s outstanding.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:33:29] So let me let me help you out here. So I still do the branding. I do it less now. Maybe 15% of my work life is still doing the creative and I love it. It’s like therapy to get to do it. So I’m in San Francisco Airport, 1984, 85, something like that. And some way before 9/11, somebody at the airport in the concourse yelled across, Moneypenny, come here, we owe you dinner and this kind of stuff. And there was somebody from Cleveland area, and I said, Why do you owe me dinner? I’ll definitely take that. But well, remember you were telling me you after you do this, this and that brand, this company do it, they’re going to sell it. Well, I was giving away information. These people bought it. And so no commission to me, no nothing. Maybe a $30 dinner back then in the airport. So I’m a slow learner and that kind of stuff. So I started to think about I was always putting people into situations anyhow behind my branding clients to solve problems for people. When you do a branding assignment, you’re getting every problem a company has. So my role is to fix the name ad campaign, the marketing branding aspect of it. In the meanwhile, though, they tell me about board problems and SEC problems of insurance and personnel and HR. So I start slotting in people just for the heck of it and people thank me. And then around that time I started getting carrying a card or two with my name on it and started to leave a trail behind me after I did the branding. And they were happy and they paid me. Then I start slotting in talent behind that. That’s where it got to be very interesting. And when people when you charge them to put you in, they pay more attention to you. So hold.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:34:56] On. Hold on. You said something really interesting. I started slotting in talent. So do you mean that after enough conversations with people about branding, you realized that you you heard their needs, you understood that they had a challenge or a goal that they wanted to accomplish. And by sheer virtue of the of the number of people you’ve talked to, you were able to address their need. You were able to connect them to somebody else, right?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:35:29] Yes.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:35:29] Yeah, yeah. It’s I’ve noticed that about you. Right. Like, I mean, there really isn’t, you know, I mean, folks, it’s. I love getting I love interviewing people that I’ve got a personal experience with because I’m not I’m not selling anything. I’m just telling people what my experience was with. But literally, after a series of conversations with you about what I need, you were able to rattle off three for ten people who could serve that need. Right. So so that’s what you mean by slotting people in. Right. And that’s how you go from branding and marketing to biz dev.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:36:09] And you take a risk. I took a lot of risk when I was younger because if you start slotting people in and they don’t perform, you make no money on that. You actually get you actually get grief from that and pain points in that. So the longer I started to do that, start to carry different people’s cards, start to make them ask for a front end fee. They could pay me 500 car plus commission, so I got smarter about who to put in and got deeper. You get to this in a moment. By now I carry well over 500 different business cards with my name on each card and each one of those people in that the my briefcase. I’ll pull them out when I need them. And they’re all clients, they’re friends. And if you’re in the network, when you call someone, they’re in the network. It’s it’s a love fest on the phone. You’re not going to get a bunch of flack. We’re we’ve gotten really good about putting in the right skill set to the right skill set, the right need. So we made a lot of mistakes early on, but these days everyone’s happy and yeah.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:37:12] So when does when does that happen that you sort of start slotting in the talent? When does the shift to business development happen?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:37:21] I did it for years for for no remuneration at all. Yeah. I started carrying people’s cards in the late eighties, probably by 1990 I probably had 20 or 30 business cards with my name on them and I got a kick out of that still do to this day. And then it just started to pick up and people started to take it more serious. We start escalating those fees also, and we love to it’s a win win win with us. I mean, I was doing this for no money for a long time and enjoy doing it and got kudos for doing it and again, got grief for doing the wrong person at the wrong time. A lot of information was getting passed around and that kind of stuff. So we just streamlined it, got smart about who to put in. I don’t carry everyone’s card that I meet. Our network is well over 1000 firms in this network all over the world. I carry about half that many cards and it seems cumbersome to some people. It’s the real deal for us. When I pull out a card and hand to somebody, that person is happy and the person I’m handing the card to. If then the network is going to be happy that we’ve done that. We send out Excel spreadsheets to everyone. We’re tracking about 21,000 leads right now.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:38:33] Yeah, it’s it’s a it’s a pretty amazing operation you’ve got. And yeah, it’s and I’ll be honest with you, I was really I was like, there’s just no way this guy is not for real. And then but just getting to know you, Danny has been a real eye opener, you know, and and door opener. I mean, you’re you’re you’re the real deal. Earlier I asked you if you wanted to do this experiment with me. So contemporaneously with this podcast, we’re doing these brief 20 minute. Tell me about a time when you overcame your biggest failure kind of themed podcast, and you said to me, Alex, I’m not doing that because there’s too many of them, right? But I want to hear about one. I want to hear about a time when you had that existential crisis. I want to hear about a time when Danny Moneypenny, who sits across the table from me, a positive, sprightly, young, 70 year old, energetic cat, thought that the world was coming to an end and he was flat on his ass and wasn’t sure if he was going to get back up. But he did anyway.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:39:49] Business or personally or both either.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:39:52] Well, what’s the first thing that comes to mind that you feel like you can talk about?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:39:55] Well, there’s so many failures of so many seminal points in my life where I’ve probably the car crash I had was an eye opener because I was in critical condition for a while and it’s pretty well messed up. Three marriages fail three times, failed two times. I’m in my 30 year gig right now with a wonderful lady practice manager. Yes, practice engaged four times. A lot of jewelry in my life. Not for me, but for other people. I mean, when we lost, our dad was terrible. But I was 11, almost 12. That was terrible. It’s an adult. My toughest year was probably 24, 23, 24 out of the service. Not started college yet. Not sure what I’m going to do. Goofing around, doing some pretty nasty things. So I think my 24th year was pretty ragged. That was 1974.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:40:50] And Go to.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:40:51] Jail, girls. No, I’ve definitely done things I would have went to jail for. But the statute has run out on all that, trust me. And no, just a girls and stuff and goofing around and drinking too much and partying and never, never drugs, although alcohol is a drug. So I guess I did that, but just kind of lost it. 24 And I kind of got it together. Then I got married at 26 and 36 and 42, and it sounds like a play in a football thing, but there was this times. It was kind of a low period there. So I started to find myself again running and sports. Not that sports. It is a metaphor for life. But running kind of pulled me out of the kind of got me going in the seventies. After I was in college, I ran cross-country and made the varsity team at age 30. Of course, if you’re a running person, you know that 29, 30, 31, 32, your best distance runner years of your life.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:41:45] So not varsity versus high school.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:41:49] Well, I mean. Well, the first the first squad in college.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:41:52] Yeah. Oh 30.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:41:53] Yeah. Well because 30 year.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:41:55] Olds start you started college.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:41:56] Late at 26, but 33 years old you’re a distance runner is the best in the world at 28 to 31.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:42:02] What about business wise? Biggest challenge. Biggest failure. You’ve obviously overcome it.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:42:10] I’ve overcome a lot of things. I mean, probably about 1987. I had a I had a spate of failed branding assignments where I didn’t get it. And I was getting kind of worried because I’d already been doing it for like ten years with big with big clients. Well, the number one was American Greetings in Ohio here. I took in two things. And neither of them. Neither of them worked. And then I had stuff with Dirt Devil, which I ended up naming all the Dirt Devil vacuums for T.I and Dirt Devil in Cleveland here. But I had a lot of misses and I was starting to spend a lot of money and have some misses, and so I tweaked that out and just change the atmosphere, creating and stuff like that.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:42:54] But can you can you be more specific? I want to.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:42:57] I would turn I turn in assignments for large money and I didn’t get the trademark and I would not.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:43:03] Get paid. What did you tweak? What was the what was the change?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:43:06] The venues I was working in, I traveled to a lot of cities and I personally cannot create in any city. I have to come back to the Midwest somewhere and they frame stuff like that. So I was trying to create actually on site for some of these clients Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Raleigh, places like that. So I finally tuned in. I’m actually I’m a state, I love nature and I create a nature and I deliver in the rat race. When it comes to branding, I cannot create a whole host of names, campaigns and cities and stuff. To me, distractions. I can’t get in the zone, so I get in zone in libraries, a library here in Ohio, we just donated a bunch of money to them because I couldn’t afford offices back then. And so we gave him some money, got nice plaque for that. I was using other people’s offices, had no money to a lot of libraries. Help me out, create a lot of work, a lot of libraries. But you have to get in the zone and certain locations, certain colors is not a feng shui thing, but it is a color set and a feel.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:44:09] Well, I think I agree with you and I think I actually feel pretty strongly about this. There are circumstances about your day and your productivity that. Give you the most energy. And but I think it’s completely internal. I think it’s all between your ears. But but it’s palatable. It’s real. So whatever you believe to be true will be true. If you believe that your best effort, your best work comes from a certain place, certain time of day, if you truly believe it, you make that happen. You go into that place and that time of day and you will get the best work.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:44:46] That’s exactly that’s a good point. It took me a long time to figure that out. My creative, not the networking stuff that’s 24 seven kind of the creative world that I have lived in for years, 10:00 to 3:00. Two or three hits would get the job done 5 hours at a time, work out hard the day before. Don’t eat much food. Food. Make you silly some coffee. But 10 to 3 was my zone.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:45:11] I’ll tell you I’ll tell you my personal example of that. I have no clue whether this this science is true or not. I just know that I believed it at the time and I made it work for me. I read some study that says that all animals have this sort of witching hour that is specific to them, but for most animals is from an hour after you wake up to 4 hours after they wake up. Right. And that that is the time when they are most creative. It it was something primal. It comes from from when they hunted for food, which is why there is a time in the morning when you step outside, if you live in the woods, like I’ve got a lot of woods behind my house, you step outside and there’s an hour in the morning where it is like deafeningly loud. You know, it is so loud. You hear every animal in the woods for miles. So I had read this study and I convinced myself that that it was definitely true for me too, because I’d noticed that some of the best output that I created for anyone happened in these this several hour window in the morning shortly after I woke up. And I believed it so strongly that I started sort of prioritizing my day that way and putting blocks of time in the morning for just creative output. You know, I later then go back to that study and I read the fine print, you know, and the fine print said it is different for everyone. This study studied this group of people. It doesn’t mean that it’s you. And it’s just in this study based on. So I drew conclusions from this study, applied it to me, believed it enough. So it was kind of self fulfilling. It was kind of placebo. But you believe it enough, you will make it work.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:47:00] It’s indigenous to you. The state of Ohio, in the Midwest in particular is very good for me in a creative sense. So I get a lot done here creatively. The people, the way it looks here, the way it is here. But I deliver in larger markets, in the creative space, in the networking space, our stock and trade is probably compressing the time that it takes for someone, my client, to meet, someone they want to meet, instead of going golfing 20 times and dinners and drinking and outings and stuff like that. If you’re in a network and you want to know people, we know it’s instantaneous. It’s a phone call. We always tell people if we give you a spreadsheet with 100 people on it, 90 going will meet with you. It’s true just as well.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:47:39] And you’re careful about who you let into the club. We know that your your your screening process is, is, is good. And although you let me in, which is crazy. So it must actually it’s a horrible process of rarely.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:47:51] We have we do have we have errors.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:48:02] Hey, folks. Alex Hertzberg here. I’m CEO of the Pittsburgh law firm and cover my six. And I wanted to share with you something we figured out long ago. The biggest value lawyers can give their clients is not getting them out of trouble. It’s helping them avoid emergencies before they blow up. That’s what Cover My Six is all about. To help you see why we’re so confident in this audit, we’re offering a no cost, no obligation business vulnerability assessment. My business lawyers will meet with you in person and go over your customer contracts, your employee handbooks and other key legal documents and identify any legal minefields they see. We’ll also give you guidance on how to stop those minefields from destroying your business. We know lawsuits cost businesses far more than money, but we also know that most of them are entirely preventable and we know how to stop them before they start. Go to cover my 6 p.m. to see if you qualify and sign up today. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show. Danny, you ready for the lightning round questions, my friend?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:49:11] Sure.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:49:11] All right. I’ll try not to stress you out too much, but these are stressful. Go ahead. Ready? The nonreligious book or author whose words you apply the most in your life on a day to day basis?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:49:22] Robert Frost I was in his grave two weeks ago in Bennington, Vermont, and on his headstone it says, I had a lover’s quarrel with the world. There you go.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:49:31] The problem when I came to a park in the woods that diverged.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:49:34] He spoke at John Kennedy’s inauguration and died four months later. I go to his grave in Bennington every time I’m in New England, which is a lot and wet behind the church. And he was dying in 1863, born in 1874, but he had a lover’s quarrel with the world. So there you go.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:49:50] It’s fascinating. You are a professional boxer. What is the song that’s playing as you’re entering the ring?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:49:59] Elgar’s adagio. Wow. Went classical. I mean, my goodness. Elgar. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. Listen to.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:50:10] That. Elgar.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:50:12] Sir Edward Elgar. The adagio. Yeah. It was in Platoon. It was in the movie Platoon in 1979.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:50:19] Wait, was it the final scene of Platoon when everyone’s dying and. Uh huh. Oh, I remember that. Wow. A lot of spoilers here. Sorry, folks, if you haven’t seen Platoon, but you know what? It’s been around forever. Got to see it. Charlie Sheen. Oh, that movie’s amazing. If you could ask one question of anyone who ever lived, who would it be? And what would you ask them?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:50:42] Anyone that ever left. I would ask Sir Isaac Newton to explain gravity to me.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:50:51] All right. All right. I like it. What is a habit or routine that you still do on a regular basis that’s given you the most mileage?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:51:04] And there’s actually a book out on it now. And I make my bed every day. I may I start off my day by making my bed and there’s a book.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:51:11] Mcraven.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:51:12] That’s right.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:51:12] Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:51:13] I mean, yeah, I start why not start the day off with one of the accomplishment that goes from there?

Alex Gertsberg: [00:51:18] You know what?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:51:18] I wrote the book about four years ago.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:51:20] I hear he’s got another one now called Sea Tales. I think it’s called Yeah, yeah, it’s ten story. But you know what? It’s so funny that you say that. And actually, you know, we had like 100, almost 140 episodes. That one comes up a lot. And it is an me too. Like, I started making my bed every day. I made it occasionally first thing in the morning. But after watching that speech, it does start your day off with a check mark.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:51:44] We did. We did that as children. And I’ve been doing it my whole life. And it has nothing to do with his book or anything. But it is a good point. It’s a nice way to start your day, get your bed squared away, walk out of the room and then go do your thing.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:51:55] Is it like hospital corners or is it just.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:51:58] It’s pretty it’s pretty tight, but it’s that hospital course pretty tight. Not not not jump school. 82nd Airborne type. Right. Just Silverlake type.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:52:06] Danny, at the end of the day, you come home, you throw your bag down, you pour that glass of scotch, you sit down and you’re ready to call it a day. What is the metric? You’ve used to decide whether it was a good day.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:52:24] Whether I made every meeting and appointment and phone call on time is a good start. To make sure that you’re prompt and treat other people’s time at the time is very valuable. It’s not just your time, it’s your life. So this meeting right here, we’re giving away a part of our life. So I’m prompt. I tell people if I’m not there, I’m probably deceased. Did I try to be always truthful and not to too much BS? I did a lot of BS when I was young. To get to where I’m at now that I help someone was nice to someone. Those kinds of things. Mainly just that I do the best with what I’ve got that day and then come home and be nice to my wife and children if I can.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:53:03] That’s great. I get a lot out of these questions, out of asking people and hearing their answers, because it reminds me of some pretty basic shit, you know, like just being on time. So. So a few years ago.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:53:16] Where was I today? Here.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:53:18] You were here a half hour early.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:53:21] Half hour early. The one minute late.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:53:23] Someone a few years ago said, next time you’re late anywhere, slow down. What what just happened? And think about how it’s perceived to the other guy. Right? So slow that down. So what you just did right is send him a message or her a message that their time is that much less valuable than yours, number one. Number two, you’ve just compressed the amount of time that you had previously established for yourself to get the shit done that you wanted to get done. So you just shortchanged both of you and and whatever client you’re working for. Number three is if you are going to give them that time, write the right amount of time, then you’re you’ve just made them late for their next meeting, which means all of that same stuff that you just did that you just realized you were doing, you just did to the next guy. Right? So you’re causing stress. You’re causing ripple effects.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:54:19] It’s a daisy chain of inadequacy.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:54:21] Exactly. And and the reality is the reality is that if you then step back and ask yourself, well, why was I late? It’s all totally avoidable. Sure. Right. You just have to be aware. It just takes awareness. That’s it. You have to be aware enough to realize that there are number one, there are these ripple effects. And number two, everyone will get it. Everyone understands that you have to cut them off at some point so you can get to your next meeting.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:54:47] Exactly. But treat other people’s time like you want your time treated. I mean, again, it’s your life. It’s not just time. It’s part of your existence you’re giving up.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:54:56] Yeah, yeah. It’s so basic. It’s such a basic thing. And I’ll be honest with you, you’re way better at it than I am. I’m late. Way more than I want to be. So. So I need to work on my self awareness for sure. Not just there, but everywhere.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:55:10] Maybe don’t make your bed. Say, that’s four or 5 minutes right there.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:55:15] Please take the OC. What question? Now, what question would you hate for me to ask you right now if you absolutely had to tell the truth, but you don’t have to answer it.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:55:30] Okay. I wouldn’t want you to ask me if I wet the bed til I was 11 years old because I did. But don’t ask me that, please.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:55:38] My gosh, I wonder if that’s the next the answer to the next question. So the next and the final. Actually, no, there’s I’m going to sneak in two other ones here.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:55:46] Michael Landon wet the bed, too. So we’re both cool.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:55:49] Yeah. Do you know that comedian Sarah Silverman? Sarah Silverman? Yeah. She went to bed until she was like 15, and it made her the brilliant comedian that she is today.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:55:59] I did tell I was 11, so she’s better than me.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:56:03] Well, you’re 70 now, Danny, so don’t start again, okay?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:56:05] No, no, no.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:56:08] All right. Hey, favorite time period in history, if you could. If you had to leave this period right here, where would you go?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:56:15] 1780s and nineties in Europe. France. It’s that right? Just before the guillotine was implemented. I like that a lot.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:56:24] Man. Like you and I are both students of history. I’m reading a book right now called The Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. It’s like a thousand pages long, but it’s all about Europe in the 13th and 14th century. Medieval Europe. It’s fucking fascinating. It’s such a good book. Oh, my goodness.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:56:43] Is that when the plague came through?

Alex Gertsberg: [00:56:44] Yeah. So it’s so it’s it’s right. Plague is right in the middle of it. Crusades 12 were in the 1200. So it’s a lot of nights. But man, you ever want to feel great about the time that we’re in right now, you know, I mean, the things that we have to worry about today, man over there at that time, right. Literally like in France, I mean, just random mobs would come and, you know, rape women and children in front of their husbands and then decapitate all of them. Just the disease, the random acts of cruelty by kings and princes. It’s just. Yeah, we’re we’re in a good place.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:57:25] This is a good place. And human nature rules the day. And we’ve done well over 500 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:57:33] What’s an assumption that you had about people or life for a long time that you later found to be totally bullshit? Hmm.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:57:47] That everyone told the truth. Oh, when I was younger, you know. Interesting.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:57:53] Okay. Final one. Ready?

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:57:55] Sure.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:57:56] What’s an embarrassing and you can’t say the 11 year old what the bed.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:58:00] I was going to say I was going to do that again.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:58:01] No, that’s not. You already said that I was going. You didn’t have to answer that one.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:58:05] You chose to. Did I just want to cut that all the way.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:58:08] What’s an embarrassing thing about yourself that only a few people know and. And part two for extra credit. Bonus points that no one else knows.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:58:21] Well, take your time. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:58:28] That’s a that’s an homage right there. He just died.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:58:31] Yeah. Great guy, too. He helped a lot of people out. Um.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:58:37] And embarrassed. We’re looking for an embarrassing thing that very few people, if any, know about Daniel Moneypenny.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:58:45] There’s several of them. I can’t stand in our bathroom, in our home. I can’t stand trash in the waste cans. So every time I leave the room, I take the trash and the waste can. It’s an odd thing. Only my wife knows that she thinks I’m nuts because I am. But if there’s trash in the waste can in the bathroom on the way down in my home, I’ll take it down. I want the trash can and the bathroom empty. It’s kind of odd, but it’s just. I just like that. And it’s odd. And after my. I had cancer four years ago, and I had to wear a defense diaper for like two months. And so I was incontinent and I was actually in United States. So I was in our continent. And and I would actually I would actually be in meetings that people say, Daniel, don’t you have to go to the restroom? No, I just did in my I just did. So that’s all good now. No more. It depends. I got that all fixed up. That’s good. But that was I wasn’t embarrassed by it, actually. I was kind of because other people I want other people to feel comfortable because a lot of guys go through that. But I wear depends diapers and didn’t have to go to the restroom. Was it because of the chemo? No, it’s because of the surgery. They do. It makes you incontinent for a while, so.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:59:48] Wow.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:59:48] Yeah. And then it goes away and I’m all good now. So it was somewhat embarrassing, but I actually had fun with it with people.

Alex Gertsberg: [00:59:55] Somehow. I knew you would have no trouble with that question.

Daniel Moneypenny: [00:59:57] Danny Okay. And other things too. It’s embarrassing.

Alex Gertsberg: [01:00:00] It’s funny because you and I both have the same sort of weird combination of ADD and OCD.

Daniel Moneypenny: [01:00:06] And we monetize it.

Alex Gertsberg: [01:00:07] Both of us have. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can’t work.

Daniel Moneypenny: [01:00:10] In your favor. It could be a good thing, actually.

Alex Gertsberg: [01:00:13] I have I learned recently about this thing called pure OCD, which is where you’re very obsessive but not compulsive. So what you just described as compulsive, you probably obsess over stuff, too. But that’s that’s more compulsive than obsessive. I tend to obsess more than be more than be compulsive. So like I will there will be things that somebody says. Right. And I will not be able to get it out of my head. Right. It would be very difficult for the longest time for me to leave like a trial, leave a.

Daniel Moneypenny: [01:00:46] Courtroom. So criticism we have a hard time with criticism. And you kind of karthik’s on that all day long sometimes.

Alex Gertsberg: [01:00:53] Yeah. Yeah, it depends.

Daniel Moneypenny: [01:00:54] You get older, you won’t do that by the time you’re my age. That’ll really back off a lot.

Alex Gertsberg: [01:00:57] A lot? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, there’s I mean, my therapist could probably compartmentalize the things that I obsess over much better than me. But the point is, I’ve gotten a lot better at it by. Through meditation. Sure. Right. That’s helped me a lot. It’s helped me realize that the obsessive thoughts that I have are not voluntary. They happen and that they are not me. They are just there that I can choose to observe without following them.

Daniel Moneypenny: [01:01:26] One of the best things we can all do, and this is cliche almost, but be present and I’m working on that hard the last 1015 years just to be present. I’m always rushing around and doing stuff. I’m being present right now and it feels nice, but it’s not an easy thing to do. But if you can kind of be present with people, clients, friends, family, it’s really cool.

Alex Gertsberg: [01:01:45] It’s especially not easy for for you and because and for me for the same reason you have ADD and you have channeled it in a way and we’ve talked about this and you and you told me that it’s never been diagnosed, but I’m diagnosing you. Yeah, you and I both have the same strain of ADD, but. But you channel it really, really well.

Daniel Moneypenny: [01:02:04] I’ve worked at it, actually. It’s, it’s my career. I do exactly who I am for a living. Yeah, yeah. And that’s what I do. And I have channeled it and I’ve never been diagnosed, but I know that I probably have these things and other things too. But I have it’s worked. I’ve worked it and it’s what I’m creating. It’s nirvana for me. When I’m creating, when I’m networking people, it’s nirvana for me. Yeah, I love it.

Alex Gertsberg: [01:02:28] It’s okay to have A.D.D. and OCD of I try not to have. Ed Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Moneypenny: [01:02:34] Yeah. That’s up and coming.

Alex Gertsberg: [01:02:37] Danny This was awesome. I really appreciate that you that you shared your time with me. And it is true that to know you is to be awed by you and you are, in fact, great at what you do. And I will tell you, folks listening at home that if you. Run your own business, and I know a lot of you do and you can afford it. Danny Not not all of you can. Then you should have a conversation with him. And if you are lucky enough for him to accept you as a client, then. Then you’re. You’re in for a pretty good ride. He is. He. It took me a while to come around to. But he is the goods. Danny, you are the goods.

Daniel Moneypenny: [01:03:23] I appreciate you. Thank you, Alex. Thanks, everyone. Be safe. We’ll get through all this stuff that we’re going through right now. Be safe and we’ll have fun later on.

Alex Gertsberg: [01:03:31] Very good, folks. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time.

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