Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Sadist podcast where power is refined, impact sharpens and leaders move from success that contains to ecstatic legacy.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Elara Sage, creator and founder of Ecstasia Academy, which is the school of power and creation.
And I'm also a mentor for high level leaders. I activate and transform them from the state of hustle, from the state of performance into power, presence and impact.
And today on our show we have a special guest.
David Etheriot is the founder of Aphid Vines, an organic champagne importer based in Atlanta.
He's also the managing principal of the Avid Group, a group coaching firm guiding leadership teams through scale, transformation and uncertainty. David, welcome.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: It's a pleasure to be with you. Olara.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: So I love to start this off with what is the thing in your business or in your life, your personal life or your entrepreneurship that you want to celebrate that has perhaps been one of your glorious moments or your greatest gifts or your highest achievements?
[00:01:40] Speaker A: I'm fortunate to have had several and they span the different kind of chapters in my life.
But if we focus this on business, I would say that they include really launching a company from, you know, from nothing to being on the Inc. 5000 list for six years in a row, principally on the basis of a solid, wonderful product and subscription based business where we helped individuals interact with the US Stock market, making decisions, using alerts and signals and indicators to create strategies for buying and selling. And that technology was licensed to very large online retail brokers at the time, to E Trade, to TD Ameritrade, to interactive brokers and the like and put us on extremely solid, you know, growth ground for growth and scale.
And then other highlights in my career have been, you know, both of that was a 20 year journey and then the, the journey of which there was some overlap in joining the entrepreneurs organization EO and then having the privilege to lead it as its chapter president here in Atlanta just a couple of years ago.
And what a privilege to be able to lead other leaders and move a chapter for the better through the course of the year in being a resource to what our mission is, which is to create these spaces to connect and grow among peer entrepreneurs who are lifelong learners and in an environment that's full of trust and respect.
It was a highlight.
Following that experience in leadership. I also then was a glutton for, for taking the helm and bringing a international global conference to Atlanta the next year under the theme of perseverance, which is a strong, heavy, loaded word for me. And for three days of learning in Atlanta from all over the world, where we brought speakers that were just amazing and to talk about the power of perseverance in their lives and the routines that help them persevere across family, business, and personal.
And that probably too is a very recent and meaningful achievement.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Beautiful achievements, and I deeply desire to celebrate you and the 20 year, you know, scaling that business from nothing to what you achieved, the leading of other leaders, which is such an impactful and intimate space, as well as your. Your big event. And perseverance is a delicious word. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Gene Keys by Richard Rudd.
No, It's a beautiful journey into self.
And I have what's called one of the gene Keys of perseverance. So I have a very intimate experience with perseverance. But I would love to hear yours because it sounded as though you had an emotional relationship to the word perseverance.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Yes. So it's somewhat rooted in the way that I've raised my children and the way our family operates.
Gosh. I mean, it's a. There's a bloodline related to this as well. When I think about the journey that my grandfather had, escaping one place in the world from revolution in order to arrive in America with my dad.
Perseverance is the definition that we used for the conference. And it's my stamp. It's my version of what perseverance is. And it comes from part of the trifecta of Angela Duckworth's grit, passion and perseverance and. But perseverance for us and for the purposes of this conference, you know, even kind of left a little bit of how she defines it.
It's simply perseverance is the daily commitment to meeting our better future version of ourselves and, or and our businesses.
And this daily commitment is a routine. It's like an atomic habit.
It is the. It's the habits and the routines that we get to curate and that we get to shape and choose and form that lead us to better versions of our businesses and better versions of ourselves.
That relationship between where we are now and where we want to be is a healthy one. And it's judged by how well we curate.
These routines and these routines can form, are rooted in the basis of wellness and health. What we eat, how we sleep, what we, you know, our exercise routines, these build the bridges to our better versions that we're going to meet, drop off the keys and go, hey, there you go. You know, I did my part, now it's yours to meet the, the guy that's 10 years ahead of us.
And it's the same with the business in terms of a growth plan. Like, what is the vision in five years, and how could we market in three and then show, you know, a path for each year that we want to reach and achieve to get there, and then becomes the quarterly and almost weekly routines that we're going to commit to, that we all agree that this is important. The vision and the purpose of what we're doing, a better version of our business, a better version of ourselves. Once that agreement is made, we make that commitment to these routines kind of stop there. But that's on that basis. Every speaker that we had, we had a retired colonel and former senator from Arizona, Martha McSally, come to visit. And she's a one of the first female, you know, top gun fighter pilots.
And she certainly talked about what are her routines and, you know, how did she leverage those routines to achieve the kind of success that she had? And how did she persevere through systemic gender bias, both in the military and then in government, to achieve what she was able to achieve?
If you don't have routines that are highly curated, you're not going to need a future self that's better than where you are right now.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. Perseverance, to me, is very much how we show up in those moments where it's not looking like we want it to yet. You know, we set out these goals, we set out our desires, our intentions of what we want to create, and we have to build that, just as you said, day by day in those little commitments and actions, strategy that we use to get there.
And along the way, we generally reach some challenges. You know, we generally face parts of ourselves that we have to address and let go of and move through conflict and move through different resolutions. And perseverance, to me, is how we show up in those moments. Right, because it's easy on the days that everything's going right, to believe in your own dream.
But the greatest inventors, they're the ones who persevered, you know, the thousands of times they failed. And everybody told them that they were crazy.
Everybody told them it wasn't possible. And the perseverance was, you know, a level of delusion that they would reach that goal, they would succeed in those moments when they feel that everything is falling apart and nothing is going right. How you show up in that moment, to me, is that perseverance. Do you show up as the person who has already created that end result in mind, or are you the person who's, you know, falling back or believing in the Illusion of the conflict or the illusion of the challenge. I would love to hear, how has this shown up for you? Where have you met some of these very real challenges in your entrepreneurship or your leadership?
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I think what you kind of describe is certainly a beautiful added dimension of perseverance. I kind of look at it as like, that's almost the definition of grit. How you show up in those moments is where is, you know, what's the fuel cell that you're tapping into? But it is still the routine and the habit, the process that you're going to follow, you know, that's going to, in that moment, take a lot of grit or take a lot of, you know, perseverance to. To.
To climb through and to walk and to achieve where this has shown up. I tell a kind of funny story about where this has shown up in my life, and it relates to, again, how I raised.
How I raised my kids.
You may have described, as I've mentioned before, I'm a dual citizen of France and America, and it was very important for me that my children tap into this very rich cultural heritage that I have found and is used as a source for grit and.
And perseverance in my life.
It comes from when my father immigrated to the country from an area of France that was one of its colonial territories in what is now known as Algeria.
And that movement, half the family went to southern France, the other half came to America.
And as I said, it's very hard to have a parental language imparted to children. Most children take the maternal language and they run with it.
So I had to build environments in the house when they were growing up that included as much contact with French elements as possible. That meant music, that meant movies, that meant if you sent a little palouse or a toy stuffed animal that talked, I would say thank you, and I would return it, get the Canadian version that spoke French, you know, not on sale and twice the price, and put it in front of my child and be like, okay, this is where you're going to talk to, or this is the gift from. From aunt whomever.
But it also meant having a young Jean fille pair, a young au pair.
Not young, but just an au pair from France who lived with us every year, a different one every year.
And this was all during their, you know, as they would grow up and the pact.
This was a, you know, I work on agreement and commitments, whether with my clients or raising my kids. And though we wouldn't necessarily have agreement on French is important, I made the commitment on their Behalf and mine to say we're going to have French in the home. And frankly, when you come home from school, you may take an hour at French at school, that's great, but it's nothing.
You will, you will starve unless you can ask for what you need and want at home until mommy comes home from work. And I work from home. Growing software company. My wife worked in an office.
And.
And so these kids quickly realized, darn it, you know, I can scream and cry and do whatever I want, but if I really want something, I'm going to have to ask for it in French.
And this went on for years.
And at one point I was like, you know, when the complaints were at their peak, I pulled out my phone one day and I was like, look, you don't. This was before they had their own devices. But I would say, you're not going to believe this, but just to tell you how important this is, not necessarily to me, but I got off the phone, I hit this app, I dial in an access number and I get a code and I make a call and I'm able to speak to the future versions of yourselves. And do you know what they tell me? They're like, what?
They say, thank you, Daddy. They cannot stop thanking. And the reason why is because the youngest one has her toes in the sand, you know, in the Mediterranean with our family over the summer and is having a blast with her cousins. And the older one, you're telling me, I get thank yous all the time from the job opportunities that you have, what you've taken in terms of your studies and how you've translated that into a job. You know, it's just fantastic. I love talking to them. I just, I say, you're welcome, sweethearts. I can't believe it. And I talk maybe once every six weeks and that's it. Like, well, can we talk to ourselves?
Where does that make sense? Of course you can't talk to yourselves. I mean, this doesn't make any sense.
I took a hit in, later in life in terms of my credibility as a parent, but it was a trade off because they, for whatever reasons, they continued to not only take the French, but actually realize these things that I had told them once. My youngest spent the last three summers in France. My oldest studied abroad for the year and is set up to become, you know, graduate with an architecture degree and start work in France. I mean, these are real things that, what it left me with. You have to be very. This is a very powerful exercise and you have to be careful about what you actually envision for someone else besides yourself, such as a child. But in this, in this delicate balance, I was able to, you know, paint a picture of the future for them.
And then, you know, now I make it a point to not say anything. I never. There are no more rules about French. Whether they speak another word in their lives or not. I know it's in them and I know that they, you know, that they value it and I don't have to say another word about it. In fact, the more that I do, it just doesn't, it doesn't work anymore because it's theirs to do with which they please.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Beautiful story. And sometimes that can be a little bit harder.
Bringing that type of teaching into children versus into your clients as the mentor that you are, even into your employees, because there is a level of choice in that participation, whereas children and parents, that's a soul level, level choice, but not necessarily an embodied human decision and choice.
And that takes definitely, as you mentioned, a level of balance. Is there an area that you're experiencing this call for perseverance in your businesses right now?
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Yes, Yes, I would say that, you know, the efforts to.
The journey of becoming a growth coach has been somewhat, fairly recent. It's only. It's been less than a year or so. And I've surrounded myself with routines and habits that are necessary for the start and the growth of a successful practice. And those elements include everything from a solid framework, a community of other coaches, even in a very effective software that helps us and it helps me drive a lot of the group dynamics wherein I really work with the CEO and the leadership teams to drive change and growth or it's profit or it's freedom gaining back time for the CEO and for the leadership team so that it's not costing themselves.
We want to arrive at better versions of the company and ourselves and the leadership team in doing this.
So right tool set, right community and.
But the perseverance has come to the right, I should say the right, the highest impact activities that I can do to gain the next client, to earn the next referral has been quite a challenge. When I had this with the software company, we had an excellently rated tool and a fantastic service around it.
And it was, you know, it was, I don't want to say easy to sell, but it was, it was aided in these, in the sales process.
And now I'm the product and the service.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: And it turns out, oh, I'm not the best marketer of my own, you know, self.
And so I've had to have conversations with many inner voices and head trash that I've had to remove, you know, conversation at a time.
And I always don't. I don't necessarily always identify who the voice is, but it's a. It is sometimes just these. These voices where I have to say, okay, let's give. Let's give you the chair.
Think through and say out loud whatever it is you're trying to say. And not just throw feelings at me, but try to. Let's. Let's have. Let's have. State your case.
You know, and so working through that says, you know what? That really makes no sense when we say it out loud.
Okay, you're dismissed.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: And.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: We know better now are just some of the ways that I have to kind of remove that head trash. And it comes back down to, you know, routines that I've always known, which is fall back on communities, fall back on peers, fall back on those that I want to surround myself that are doing this.
And, you know, and it will come.
It will come.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: This is a really beautiful example because it's something that many of us as personal brands really understand.
You know, when you're selling a product, there's a specific product that you're selling that is outside of yourself.
And generally it's a physical item. Even software has some level of physicality to it, right? And as a mentor, it's much more obtuse. And it's very personal. You know, it's literally a personal brand. And I love how you speak to the inner critic, that inner voice, you know, that's what I was referring to when I said the aspects of self.
You know, these are subconscious programs that we have that we've learned, you know, in various different areas of our life. People that we heard or even things we saw on television, that our subconscious mind as it is, it's a little sponge. It soaked it right up and, you know, it's always there. And that's what's so beautiful. One of my favorite things about being a personal brand is you can't hide. You know, there is no external product to just. That's what I'm selling. When you're selling yourself, you have to address what you actually believe about yourself. You have to address the belief around your internal value, your internal worth.
Are you enough?
And these are really big questions that a lot of people don't ever have to face. And so to me, the personal brand is one of the hottest of flames, but it's the most delicious because we go through the personal transformation ourselves. And then we are capable of supporting others in those various degrees that they may or may not be even aware. Because regardless of who the person is, everybody on the planet has an inner critic. Everybody in the planet has a sense of, am I worthy enough? What value do I really hold? Am I received by others? Right. This is a human dilemma. It's not a personal dilemma.
So that level of perseverance that you're speaking to, I'm sure has helped you lead these other leaders.
Is that right? And can you speak to anything like that?
[00:21:25] Speaker A: I mean, my gosh, you know, I think you nail it, and not just on the head, but you come at it from so many different angles that, you know, it's clear that we're walking similar journeys here.
A couple things that come to mind, you know, one is just if I sit with. If I sit with myself long enough, the right voice comes in and says, hey, you know, you got this. And what you think, like, sometimes, you know, for example, on this journey that I somehow had fallen into a frame of like, you know, the growth coaching is like this.
I'm coming in to save a company that's spiraling. And one of my first clients was kind of spiraling out of control. It was such that though it was very validating to be able to deliver value that was well received and surrounded by gratitude, the outer macro elements of the business, like missing payroll, were greatly hampering the ability to do the growth work. And yet it left me with kind of thinking like, is this what this is going to be like? Am I. Am I here to turn around? Am I a turnaround artist and getting more specific about who I wanted to work with and the kind of clients that I could see myself really impacting, it turned into a frame that was like, look, this is not medicine. In fact, this is a ticket to ride. Here is your ticket. And we're going to do this well, and we're going to do this in a way where we arrive as a better version of ourselves and a better version of the company and a better version of this team.
And, you know, if this is the kind of ride that you want to be on, promise you it's going to be full of experiences that, you know, that we will make this.
That do what? That turn a leadership team into being single individuals in roles, into a team that really thrives on mutual accountability, that has an outward mindset that thinks about my output is your input. I better care about that.
And the fact that as curators and custodians of this business at this level, we're here to solve the problems that can't be solved departmentally below in the company. They rise to this level because they involve a certain kind of orchestration coordination that, that we had better be able to solve. And if we're not, we're clearly where we are. With my clients when I start in a gap where it's not happening, and I tell every CEO that I start the engagement with is like the answers to where we're going to be going over the next 90 days, over the next six months. They're in this room and they're in your leadership team. And the only reason we're not able to get to them clearly is because there is some kind of psychological safety, there is some kind of trust, or this is the lack of vulnerability that's needed that we're going to start to inject in here in order that people start to see themselves as, you know, as mutual custodians of what we're doing here.
And we'll get to a level of agreement and commitments that then start to unlock, you know, a safer space to connect and grow. And once we do that, then the rest of how a business operates, KPI's quarterly priorities and right people in the right seats even, will start to shake out and make sense.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: That is so delicious. You literally are speaking to something I spoke to yesterday. Where we're moving from hierarchy into synerche, where we work as a team, no matter what our positions are, through a level of safety and vulnerability, a level of connection, a level of the ability, synarchy from hierarchy.
Synarchy?
[00:25:06] Speaker A: What is synarchy?
[00:25:07] Speaker B: It's just what you said, it's the ability to work together.
This is actually a word from Richard Rudd, the man that I told you earlier in the conversation.
So this is where our world is moving. It's moving from hierarchy, where there's one person in control that dictates what everybody else does to a place where we're co creating, right? We are listening to each other, we're in presence, we're in vulnerability, we're in a state of safety where each individual genius of each person, because of the safety and the vulnerability gets to blossom. And, and when that happens, we're all at our best and we're all connected to each other and we are all aware of not just, as you said, what we're outputting, but also, I love how you put it, that our output is somebody else's input. We're aware of how our actions and our presence and our words and everything that we're doing is affecting others individually as well as the team at a whole. It is truly a co creation. And then these problems that seem to have been there, they fall away because there is flow of energy. There is flow, there is higher creativity. You know, there is higher cognizability, there is emotional stability and it's just humanity increasing their individual capacity and then together that capacity and therefore flow and communion and co creation. So. Yeah. So beautiful. I love that so much.
I would love to ask you.
This has just been a delicious conversation. I've adored it. Where do you think is your next edge? So what I mean by that is where do you feel that you have this potential for increasing your own capacity? Maybe it's just a knowing that you have or it's something that you're actually working on that you.
Yeah, you feel that, you know, that, that feeling like it's an edge, that there's something there for you that's uncomfortable. Right. Because of course in our discomfort is where we grow.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: So the question is kind of like, what's my, what's the area of discomfort that I tap into or that you're ready to.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Where's your next area of growth that you feel called. That's uncomfortable?
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's into, you know, it's very much into the. These different arenas with clients, you know, to be able to.
And I come back again, I mean, it was extremely validating to be able to find a client outside of my fintech background and be able to say, like, is my value only related to what I can do within an industry that I know? And being able to go into my early clients that were well outside of my, you know, my industry was empowering to say that, look, the elements of business and trying to scale are.
There's enough commonality here. And had I had, I had a coach of my caliber now back then in the software company, my goodness, we would have gone even farther and even faster, you know, than we did. And so that, that is a source of, of confidence as well as the, you know, as you say, the culinary delight of uncertainty. This deliciousness of stepping into the arena. Into an arena or into what is really, you know, again, not to be taken lightly. And that's part of this process, the sales process of generating comfort.
When a CEO invites you into the, literally the inner circle of their, of their deliberations, you know, in order to say, hey, I need to tune up or you know, the, the, the model that we were using is being outstripped by reality.
And I I, you know, I could use this help.
That's a very, you know, to get to that position of trust certainly does take time, and it takes certain steps.
And the way I approach it is to say, start with value. Just start giving value, you know, from day one and from conversation one. And it doesn't matter, you know, what they take and what they, you know, what they. And if they turn around and give the engagement or not, I feel authentic by being able to at least say, you know, with every interaction, I'm delivering value. I'm trying to show a way that is an area of. Not discomfort, but it is an area of continuous challenge to be in. In the. It comes from having and staying in an abundant mindset. But then, okay, being abundant, but then being practical about this is something relevant that can help you. And with every conversation you have with me here, here, that is.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: And I feel like it takes a level of ability to listen and capacity of presence, because if these people are just coming to you and you don't know a lot about them, right. You have to be able to listen and feel, know intuitively on some level from yourself, whether you call it intuition or not, what value they truly need. Right. What is the value that is going to serve them? When we know somebody for a long time or we know, you know, more detail, that can be easy. But if we've just met somebody, bringing forth that value, it requires that ability to really hear what they're saying and be fully present to their situation, both the spoken and the unspoken.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: It's.
Yeah, it's very much around sometimes conversations I have about, you know, pairing wine with food and trying to understand, like, you know, somebody.
It's not so much for me to say, hey, I chose something and tried it. It's more like I'm listening to you in terms of, what do you like about the dish? What sounds good to you on the menu or in times where I love to cook and I make a menu, what is it that you enjoyed the most?
And that's one level. Another one could be, you know, we all meet around my table or something and someone's talking about a recent trip to, you know, to France or to Alsace or Germany or someplace. And like, oh, okay, well, you know, did you have some wines that look like this? You know, and, yeah, it just comes down from, as you said, from listening and then being able to intuitively say, where are you in the, you know, on this journey?
And again, bringing it back to a client and a CEO, it's just, what, what, what do they feel they need, you know, are they growing and profitably growing, but at the expense of their health? I mean, that's a freedom that's being given up for, for something and it had better be worth it or frankly it never really is in my mind.
So, you know, how do we correct that?
[00:32:05] Speaker B: I love the analogy of comparing the wine with the food. That's, that's wonderful. Is there any last thing that you would like to comment? Mention?
[00:32:19] Speaker A: I don't know. What's your favorite food?
[00:32:22] Speaker B: What's my favorite food?
Oh, I really love wild caught salmon. When it's done well, it's just something, I've even adored it when I was a child.
It's such a strong fish, but it has so much flavor and I just adore it. Not always. Sometimes it's not cooked the way I like it and then it just tastes really fishy. But when it's done well, ah, I love it to death.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Okay, so I would say great. I'm going to make a salmon dish for Alara and the prep for that is to take a beautiful, not farm raised, but wild caught piece of salmon skin on.
And when you, you can elevate almost any fish, but certainly salmon in this way by sprinkling sugar on it and Salt. Waiting, waiting 20 minutes. What happens? The salt and sugar go into, and break down into the, into the fish and it pulls out moisture, the kind of moisture that you don't want to be tasting later as what you would call fishy of some sorts. But if you spend 20 minutes and then you rinse off with water, the fillet or the piece, and then pat it dry, your fish is prepped and ready for, you know, for, for cooking. And the way that's done is Eric Ripert and LE Bermandin in New York is, you know, to put it on skin side down and never turn it, but just see it as the temperature kind of cooks from the bottom and then stop it halfway, take it out and, and then spice it however you want. Salt and pepper, lemon, a little tahini or anything else that you would add to it. And it is ready to go.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: I just learned something. Thank you. And I did know about the salt, but I didn't know about the sugar as well. So I'll have to, I'll have to try that.
So how can people find you? Reach out. Just tell us briefly how they can connect to you and anything specific that you kind of want to call attention to. Feel free to.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you. Well, you know, Avid Coach is the website. It'll direct you to my coaches page. And the other way really is LinkedIn. Let's start a conversation on LinkedIn. If you've got questions about, you know, how what the road ahead is and whether how you started is keeping up with the realities of your business and growth, let's have a conversation about how we can arrive at a better future version of ourselves for you and for the business. All that can start at LinkedIn.
My name David Efariat and or.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Perfect. I'll make sure those links are below for everybody. And David, this has been a delightful conversation. I very much appreciate your presence, your wisdom, your celebration and your edge.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: It's been delicious.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: And to the listeners, thank you so much for joining us here today. As mentioned, those links are below that you can reach out to. David until next time, much love.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the Sacred Sadist podcast from Bound to Liberated.
Connect with us on Instagram at the Sacred Sadist or on YouTube @aloRage.
Until next time, SA.
