The Success Nuggets

Success Nuggets #40 - Success Insights from the Stage with Dave Crane

• David Abel • Season 2 • Episode 19

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Get ready for an enlightening journey with Dave Crane, a well-known motivational speaker and public figure whose career spans journalism, hosting events for global leaders, and emotional intelligence training. This episode is packed with wisdom and practical strategies designed to inspire listeners to cultivate a successful mindset, build genuine connections, and maintain their pace in the often chaotic journey of life.

Dave’s charismatic storytelling combined with practical wisdom makes this episode a must-listen. Join us and discover how to drive your life in the right direction while enjoying the journey.

Nugget of the day: "Life is a journey, not a destination." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

With thanks to One Golden Nugget and Maxwell Preece for editing, support and artwork

Don't miss out on this motivational episode! Be sure to subscribe, share, and leave us a review to help others find the show.

Speaker 3:

Amazing, amazing wisdom entrepreneurs success, success around the world.

Speaker 2:

This is the Success Nuggets podcast. Have you ever wondered what you could learn and how inspired you'd be if you asked incredible people from around the world about the patterns that drive progress? Get ready to dive into a world of insights and inspiration, of insights and inspiration. This is the Success Nuggets podcast, with the founder of the Digital Lightbulb and your host, david Abel.

Speaker 3:

Welcome back to the Success Nuggets podcast, where we dive into the minds of game changers and innovators. Today, I'm thrilled to have someone who transcends the title of motivational speaker. He's an architect of thought leadership and a master in personal branding Dave Crane. Welcome, dave, thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

David, it's really kind of you to say such wonderful things. I don't think anybody's said nice things like that for a very long time. It's a good job. I sent you it to read out.

Speaker 3:

Dave, your career is nothing short of extraordinary, whether it's been as a BBC journalist or lighting up stages around the world. Been as a BBC journalist or lighting up stages around the world, coaching you've seen and done it all. It's really powerful stuff. You can't really sit still. I think your ambitions still go on a lot further. How do you use NLP techniques to transform your mindset?

Speaker 1:

Great question. Let me give an example. Last week I was training about 300 people from nuclear power plants and motivating as a team building exercise for about four hours and then two days later, I jumped on a plane, went to Zurich in Switzerland and then I hosted an event for the Vatican and the United Nations called the World Changes Summit, for a room full of dignitaries at Davos World Economic Forum and the evening for that, while everyone was just relaxing and connecting, I jumped in a car, went back to Zurich. In the morning I was flying back to Dubai. When I arrived in Dubai at three o'clock in the morning, I was on a call to America for a big event I was doing, and that evening I was hosting an event for the launch of a new token, tico Tokens, and I was on stage with a really big Arabic artist called Aresh, one of the world's biggest DJs, afro Jack.

Speaker 1:

But the point is that I think the way you deal with it is you see the opportunities as being there and you also realize that you're in a vehicle and you're driving and you've got to drive it at your own speed. You don't drive at the same speed as everybody else. I was talking to my daughter about this and it might be the analogy we're looking for. It might sound completely crazy, but we're driving to school to drop her off today and I said, one of the things that's different to me and other people on the roads of Dubai is I learned in the UK how to do defensive driving and that means I'll get there in one piece and if anybody wants to be crazy, they can go crazy past me. My job is to avoid cars in front, cars behind, and get there at a leisurely pace on time and just get there right.

Speaker 1:

And I remember years ago my dad used to travel to um're moving from scotland down to england. So what he used to do is used to drive down to england, then drive back on the on the weekend afterwards, and so he timed it. It was about two and a half hours and he decided that for an experiment he'd put his foot down and go as fast as he could up to the traffic lights, staying within the speed limit, but just basically overtaking to get there. And so when he did that, all the risks that came from driving dangerously he managed to shave off 15 minutes from his drive. That's it, as opposed to taking his own time and getting there. I was 15 minutes longer, so I'm really of a mind about the fact that your life is the way that it is.

Speaker 1:

You've got to drive it the way that you want it to be. You can react to people in a good way or a bad way, but look after your own mental health and your well-being, and one day it ends. So it's a one-person journey. You get traveling partners that come with you and just be kind to people, and I think that mike tyson probably hit the nail on the head when he turned around.

Speaker 1:

He was asked about the fight that he had, where he made about $20 million and got beaten, and so he says don't you worry about the fact that you're losing your legacy? To Logan Paul, and he said I couldn't care less about my legacy when I'm dead. Nobody's going to say anything I want to hear anyway, because I'll be dead, so I'm going to make the most of it now, and so I think that that's an interesting way to look at it. I don't know if other people feel the same way and if I can learn a better way. I'll happily take that on board, but after my eight billion years on the planet so far and that's not including reincarnation. I'm talking about the gray beard then. It's kind of working for me right now.

Speaker 3:

One thing you touched on there that was really interesting was about emotional intelligence and how we sort of learn, change, grow, and it's a big part of being authentic, and I think one of your successes on stage is really your authenticity. How does emotional intelligence fit into your leadership blueprint when you're talking to these organizations?

Speaker 1:

Well, I think you can only be yourself because everyone else is taken, as Oscar Wilde said. I remember when can only be yourself because everyone else is taken, as Oscar Wilde said. I remember when I was studying emotional intelligence, I was studying under one of the guys that created the whole firm one of the best practitioners on the planet and I was on this course. I was invited to be on a course there's about 60, 70 HR directors, life coaches, really prominent business people and we're learning incredible stuff about the different elements of what goes into emotional intelligence to be able to be certified to deliver it to organizations. And I won't mention the name of the guy, but he was on stage and he was talking about how he had a bad relationship with his father and he burst into tears on stage and says you know, I didn't get on with my dad. I never got a chance to say anything to him, but I loved him and all the rest of it, and he's just crying about it. Then other people were invited to come on stage and just because everyone was sharing their stories, so we had about 10, 15 people going up on stage and crying about their relationships with their parents and their exes and how they'd love to fix it and how they couldn't fix it. And I'm sat there thinking what is wrong with everybody in this room? You're meant to be emotional intelligence experts with NLP, neuro Linguistic Programming Intelligence, uncertified and Hypnosis. Why don't you just go to a therapist or drop you into a trance state, go back and talk to your dead dad, get it out of your system and come back and carry on? You know he's gone, but what you can do is you can change your relationship with the way you feel about him and if you're really at the top of your game and you're telling the world this is how emotional intelligence should work, why are you not dealing with it? Why are you using as a badge of honor to say I'm messed up like everybody else, so I went to lunch with everybody and then after lunch I got in the car and I never went back to the course. I'd already actually done it before with another practitioner, so I was certified. But I just thought why do people leave themselves wide open for problems when they could deal with it better?

Speaker 1:

Now, I'm not into politics. I was up until about two months ago and the current world of politics I hate. In almost every country, apart from the UAE, where I love the politicians because they don't really care what your thoughts are. They just make a really good country for you to live in, which is the best way we can do it. And how do you deal? You deal with politics well. You can only fight battles. You know you can win. So if you can't win that battle, just don't fight it. Let people do what they're going to do. Protect yourself, protect your family, protect the people that invest in you with their emotional energy and their friendship and their finances, and let the other people do what they're going to do, because you won't be able to win it all. I don't want to go up in flames and go. Haha, I gave it my best shot. No, I'd rather not be in flames, thank you that's really transformative there.

Speaker 3:

Meditation do you practice meditation on a? I used to do a lot of it.

Speaker 1:

I haven't done it for a long time because I've got to get up early to get my daughter to school. So I'm up about 4 30 because I'm a horrible man and what I mean by that is I'm really grumpy when I wake up. But if I leave myself about an hour 45 minutes, then I realized by the time she wakes up and go Hi babe, how are you doing? But if I get woken up in the middle of the afternoon, I've had a nap. I'm just like oh, I'm like Grinch, I'm just the worst.

Speaker 1:

So I used to practice meditation During the pandemic. I used to do a lot of meditation, the art of living, breathing exercises and, uh, self hypnosis, uh, and combined with that with with riding my bike or power walking, I had a perfect hour and a half of really getting my head in the space. I'm not done it for ages. So I found I managed to deal with kind of substitute for that with macadamia peanuts. These are really tasty, so you have them but you feel better. It doesn't cover the things that are missing, but it gives you that little bit of happy and sometimes that's enough that's lovely.

Speaker 3:

You're a proud father. I can imagine when your children were small did you read from a book or did you make up your own stories?

Speaker 1:

Bit of both. I've got one daughter. She's mine, she's 14 years old. She went from being the little mermaid to becoming Wednesday Addams overnight. So it's like going from daddy I love you, my little princess, to how's it at school today? It's all right. Why do you ask? I'm just checking. Did anything happen? No, nothing good. Okay, do you want to tell me about it? Why do you want to know? Okay, I'm glad you're in the car and not being dragged behind it. That's great. And now she's kind of mellowed a little bit because I think she's coping with it a lot better.

Speaker 1:

As far as the bedtime stories, we had a really fascinating childhood because I'm a hypnotist and one of the things I like to do is, with my corporate trainings, I'll drop a whole room full of executives into a trans state and take them on a journey to experience the very best of themselves. And so I used to do a lot of that stuff where I drop people into trans states and get them to understand that they can change their emotions and they can future pace on what they want to happen in the future. And so with my daughter, we had a. I started talking to her about a bedtime story one time and it just evolved into a waking hypnosis every night where we created a thing called what was it? Maya's monster squad or something, where all the female heroes from the stuff that she loved, like hermione from harry potter and judy hops from zuropia is it the? All the female characters from disney movies and stuff all the princesses became a gang like the Avengers that she was in charge of and shared special powers. And my dogs were dragons or wolves of wings, I can't remember and so we just had adventures every night and I would just make it up as we go along and then she would be happy and she went to sleep For about a year or so it was probably during the pandemic, maybe. Actually we did this and I always wanted to turn it into a book of some description. But now she's 14.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'll never have that opportunity, unless people think why are you writing books for kids? Dave, your daughter's over there. She's in a band, I know, but maybe she'll, she won't come back. She hardly talks to you. What you're on about, um, no, she does talk to me. She's an amazing daughter. Um, so, yes, I did, I did that, I did the hypnosis route, but one of the things about when you're a hypnotist or a life coach or or any kind of practitioner of medicine or complimentary medicine is. You should never, ever, ever use it on your own family because you've got such a hold over them emotionally as much as everything else. It's just unfair. That's why doctors are never encouraged to look after their own family members and so on. If you have to, you've got to do it, but other than that you know you don't.

Speaker 3:

That's a really important point there. Thank you for sharing that. I wouldn't put it past you to write a children's book. You've been a reality TV star, super speaker, business coach, nlp, and I'm sure there's more. We're going to put children's author in there. Are you musical? You said your daughter was in a band um, yes, I my first career.

Speaker 1:

I actually I came second in the equivalent of britain's got talent. In scotland it was called search for a star. When I was 11 it was against adults and I came second. And the reason I came second and I can't verify because I was 11 is because the guy putting it together, a guy called archie mccullough, who in the time was one of the most famous presenters on TV in Scotland, maybe Britain as well he needed to have a winner that he could then take on the road and do shows with, and an 11-year-old boy is not that.

Speaker 1:

So I started my life as a singer. I took part in a lot of shows and then we moved from Scotland down to England and I went to a non-musical school. So I tried to put a band together with my friends and we were terrible, and you kind of need a peer group who's into it to be able to form a band and so on. So a lot of the best groups of all time come from the fact that they were at school together and so they just practiced in the garden or in the garage and did some stuff and worked my way up to wherever it was. So I would have been a pop star. I have no doubt I would have been a pop star, because the things that I've done in my life involve big stadiums and singing to audiences. So what I ended up doing was I ended up becoming a DJ. So I became a radio DJ Because it's kind of like being a musician but not, and so I took that to the highest levels I could do.

Speaker 1:

In the UK used to have, in the old days, radio on road shows when I was like in my teens which again is 8 000, a billion years ago and it was a highlight of a summer, because what you'd have is a DJ going out onto and there's live radio show in front of thousands of people at some pier in some seaside town, and then you get pop stars to come on and mine to their latest song and then you interview them. I thought that's a pinnacle. That's what I want to do. So I aimed my career towards doing that. At the same time as they changed the industry, it'd gone from radio DJs to become radio journalists because the BBC had to justify its license for me. So you have to be a journalist. I'm like. Well, I don't want to be a journalist. I don't want to be a journalist, I don't want to play music and talk to pop stars, and so I reluctantly went away and became a journalist and got a job at the BBC. I got a freelance job at BBC for about three years or so and in the end I threw myself into Blind Date and won the TV show and so on.

Speaker 1:

And I found that I got really frustrated because of the musical side to me, the entertainment side to me. I never really got a chance to do anything with it to a level that I wanted to, until I left the UK and came to Dubai and it was just an emerging market where, if you imagine, any country that's just starting to do stuff. And so I got a chance for the number one radio station to be one of their top presenters and so I got to work with James Brown and Enrique Iglesias and the Spice Girls and you name it. They came to town then I got a chance to be on stage with them. So I didn't get the musical career that I wanted, but I did get enough of it to be able to say I've been involved in music and I also created some talking word CDs like that.

Speaker 1:

Now that's what I call hypnosis. I did a number of ones like that which are really effective, but I was too far ahead of a curve. Everyone does it now. All the life coaches and hypnotists, all do you know meditation cds. But at the time of doing it, about 20 years ago, I was the only person who's doing it and I had it commercially in the shops and it worked really well. But there was no community to imagine inventing rap music like 20 years before. Everybody else you know, and people just don't get it. But now everyone gets it and nobody believes that. You were the first person, apart from the picture of me there.

Speaker 1:

But one of the things I started doing for fun was I started doing spoken word music videos where I was talking to camera and I was doing it during a pandemic. So I'd have a camera like this, I'd walk around holding it and I'd just rap, not rap. I'm not a rapper, I'm the least rapping person. I'd talk motivation and then I'd add music to it and then I'd get graphics put up with it and I started doing that. It was really exciting to a point where probably the doing some speaker training, which was in the, the world trade center in dubai, and I filmed me getting out of my car, talking to camera, all the way into the building and in the elevator, still talking to camera and still doing it and rhyming it and all the rest of it, until I arrived at the top floor, came out the elevator and went and looked out on the window which is got dubai below it and I did music to. It became a really effective cd, a really effective video. So I did a number of things that were really challenging. But what I found is when I put them on linkedin they worked really well. Everyone's like oh my goodness. But then everyone else started doing it and as everyone else started doing it, nobody remembered or cared if I'd started that trend and I kind of just stopped doing it. I just went. You know what, if everyone else has taken it and getting more likes and comments than me, then they can keep it and run with it. Of course they all disappeared off the map because it needs to go and develop. So I think my musical career will probably not go much further than it has done, but I can't complain.

Speaker 1:

I've been with the pop stars I want to be with with. I was with a load of djs the other day and I was watching them on stage and they're really big names and most of the djs don't actually play live anyway. We just press play and fake it. I was watching a guy do a an hour set with everyone bouncing where he's just, he's doing this and I'm thinking, without any headphones on, there's nobody noticed, you've not put, you're not listening to any music, you're just pressing buttons to pretend you're doing it and then go hands in the air and I'm just watching it.

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking I can still do that. But the reason I stopped doing it is when you get older and you don't want to dj anymore because you don't want to meet chicks. When you're married with a kid and you don't want to be out that late, you're like I really could do with a cup of tea and I've got to get up in the morning to get my daughter. Why am I doing this? Why am I still playing? So I stopped. Does that answer your question about musical career?

Speaker 3:

absolutely, dave, absolutely, and I opened up more avenues of more jobs that you've done and excelled at, and video. I put video editor, music producer dj onto the list as well of entertaining things. Just one more more on the speaking thing it's about building rapport quickly. That must be a key skill. Whether you're you know the real excitement of meeting all the pop stars or the very high-level VIPs that you've spoken to, is it crucial to build rapport quickly with these people.

Speaker 1:

It is. But I mean it comes down to one thing, which is getting the wi-fi code of the people in front of you. So I've got a skill in that, in the same as simon cowell's got a skill in being able to work out what's going to be a pop hit or a big star or not. And I watched simon cowell being interviewed by stephen bartlett ages ago and he was talking about the fact that he can't sing, he can't play an instrument, he can't produce music, he's got no musical talent whatsoever and he deliberately has kept it like that so he can tell what's a hit, what's not hit, without having to say, oh, add a bit more pepper and a bit more spice. And he doesn't do any of that, he just goes yes or no and gets people to fix it who know more than him about it. And so, growing up as the only kid I'll say black kid, but I wasn't, I'm mixed, my dad was was white, so I grew up as a mixed kid um, not mixed up kid, mixed kid in generally white areas. Scotland was challenging being English and and that as well in the 80s 70s was a bit challenging. But I ended up with two things that I could actually do. I could actually be very good at fighting or very good at getting on with people, and because I was small and I don't want to get punched in the face, getting on with people is a much better thing. So you end up profiling people very, very quickly, and that turned into a superpower that allows me to walk out in front of 50,000 people at an event and instantly get them to do exactly what I want them to do for three days, which I did for 20 years at the Dubai Rugby Sevens, and so when it comes to talking to dignitaries and so on, I think you've got a combination of your own confidence, but also working out what's right for that person. So when you're interviewing somebody, I mean you and I know each other and we're friends, but sometimes you do an interview and you just don't get on with people. But professionally you have to get on with them, otherwise it's going to be a very challenging interview, and so you have to find the right way to get that wi-fi code to work for both of you, and I've worked with some people that are fantastic, and I've fallen in love with that relationship um, not in a creepy, stalkery way, it's just a great buzz. You come off of a session, you go. It was amazing.

Speaker 1:

I've worked with people who just think are complete idiots and I won't say who is at the top of the food chain Kanye West. I won't say Kanye West and his entourage, who are just unbelievable. But some people don't want to connect. Most people do, and I think that the important lesson that many people don't realize who are in the influencer world is be kind to people on the way up, because you never know when they have to be kind to you on the way down. Nobody stays at the top of the food chain. Everyone gets older and it's really difficult to maintain where you are all the time. So you shouldn't try and maintain it if you can't do it.

Speaker 1:

But I did make a mistake and I think I might have taught you about the, the red queen's hypothesis. Did I mention this to you before? Go on, tell me. One of the biggest lessons I learned in the last two or three weeks was it was actually looking for a linkedin post and somebody was talking about continuity, and we're talking about consistency as well, and we're talking about the importance of turning up, and I and I mentioned the red queen's hypothesis. So what it is is al is Alice in Wonderland. You know Lewis Carroll's famous chain of books and the Red Queen of cards played by Johnny Depp or whoever it is in the movie was talking about. You've got to go all around to get back here, to stay back here, which in Alice in Wonderland language means complete rubbish, but what it really means is you have to keep moving to maintain your position. So if you're on a treadmill you've got to run really, really fast If it's going really, really fast, to not move and not fall off.

Speaker 1:

And what I did years ago was I got to the top of the food chain in the UAE as a DJ. I was like the top DJ and I was always busy and I never queued for anything, hardly paid for anything. Me and my friends were treated like gold dust whenever we went to restaurants or opening an event. And I got to a point where it was really hard to maintain, because it wasn't worth that much to me, because I only did it really to prove, after leaving the UK, that I was worth it. So I proved myself I was worth it, and so then, because it was difficult to maintain, with people always trying to push you off and backstab, I went. You know what I'm stopping? I'm resigning from the industry of immediate effect. And I did, and from the moment I resigned the next day I never got another call to an opening of a restaurant or to be a VIP at anything with immediate effect. It was like I just died and I hadn't died. I was just no longer that guy on the radio, and it taught me a lot about things and I never regretted leaving. But what I did realise with the Red Queen's hypothesis is I shouldn't have resigned from the radio. I'm glad I did. I should have just used that notoriety to open more doors and done other stuff.

Speaker 1:

Now, at the time, in my defence, there was no social media. So you're either working in a radio station or you're not working in a radio station. That was it, and you've got to deal with the management and all the stuff that goes with it, whereas nowadays, being a media celebrity is a combination of old media radio, tv, newspapers, magazines and new media, social media, podcasts and so on. And so if it had been a different world, things would have happened differently. But I've got no complaints about it because I'm not dead yet and I'm just enjoying every day of the adventure more than ever before, right now.

Speaker 3:

That's a wonderful story, and it's so true that it feels like you're visiting all these new places all the time. Why can't we just camp down here? It's nice and comfortable for a while. It always changes on you. Where can the audience follow you, or people who even want to work with you?

Speaker 1:

on you. Where can the audience follow you? Or people who even want to work with you? No more. Well, there's lots of places. First of all, I'd say to.

Speaker 1:

If you're interested in my particular stuff I do go to book dave cranecom. That's my profile. If you want me to train your team to be great speakers or grow your brand, then go to speak on stagecom. Speak on stagecom is my business end, but book dave cranecom is me as an entertainer. But more than anything, just connect with me on any social and message me.

Speaker 1:

I tend to do more on linkedin because it's where the grown-ups live. It's really boring, it's like facebook in a suit, but uh, it tends to be where the conversations turn into a little bit more than look at my dinner, even though it's kind of heading in that direction. In fact, I might actually start talking about my dinner on my LinkedIn. I'm not difficult to google while people still do google. So I'll be more than happy to help you in some capacity, whether it's working with you directly or pointing you in the right direction or just getting you to subscribe to my regular stuff, and then you can get all that stuff in your own time. So I'm more than happy to do that that's good.

Speaker 3:

Go and check Dave out, guys. Fantastic human Dave. And finally, what is your one golden nugget for?

Speaker 1:

life To do stuff I really want to do. That challenges me. So jumping out of a plane doesn't interest me. One, I might die. Two, I hate heights. And three, why would I have to do that? Just stop.

Speaker 1:

But I mean, I've just written this book, the Thought Leaders playbook, which is available, and so I'm getting that out to as many people as possible. I do have a big plan, and the big plan is to see how far it goes before it all gets taken away. And getting taken away means I pop my clogs, I move off this mortal coil and I'm dead. Until then the adventure continues, whether I'm at the top of the food chain or at the bottom of the food chain. But the big difference for me is I'm not resigning myself to just going. You know what you've made it. You should stop now.

Speaker 1:

I'm kind of living an experience now which is like do you remember in John Wick in the first one, where they kill his puppy and after everyone stops crying and his house is burnt to the ground, he goes into his bedroom of what's left of it and he takes up all the cement that's covering a trap door, opens it up and inside his bedroom he's got more guns and military than the SWAT team from New York and he takes it all out and starts using it and becomes John Wick and the last one of how many movies and he may be back. I kind of feel like that because I achieved everything I wanted to achieve with all the interviews and all the stuff I'd done, and I got all the footage but I just buried it in back garden under a trap door and left it. But now I'm going back into stuff and going, ooh, I've got all this stuff. So, for instance, yesterday I posted on LinkedIn all about when I worked with Enrique Iglesias and people are going, wow, and I'm going. Yeah, it's Enrique's story.

Speaker 1:

And so I'm not saying from an arrogant point of view, but I'm really excited to see where this is going to take me. I'm not fascinated by meeting great people. I'm not fascinated by any of that stuff unless it makes me a little bit happier or a little bit closer to where I want to be. And I think that if I can be happier day by day and get people to travel with me on that journey and have a big smile before I go to sleep, and I think that's not bad ticking all the boxes, that kind of work for me, so that works for me.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, dave. That was highly motivational and I can't wait to see what you bring out of your taller shed that you've been hiding in there. It's been an incredible episode, really inspiring to have you here. Thanks for coming in. Thank, it's been an incredible episode, really inspiring to have you here. Thanks for coming in.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, it's been a lot of pleasure to catch up and also to have people paying attention for long enough for me to stop ranting. That doesn't happen in my house. It's nice when I leave and other people join in.

Speaker 3:

Well done, hey, and you survived the success nuggets for all your tours.

Speaker 1:

This is hopefully this one did make you happy, dave chance. You always does. It's an amazing podcast, you do an amazing job and you're incredibly talented, fella. So thank you so much for inviting me on. It's an honor for me. I really mean that.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, dave, for the listeners out there, keep tuning into the success nuggets and do go and follow dave crane. He is a legend. Be sure to check out our next episode and, until then, keep pushing boundaries.

Speaker 2:

Join David and his incredible guests next time on the Success Nuggets podcast and to find out more, visit onegoldennuggetcom. Thank you for listening.