Ep228: The Link Between Telling Your Story & Identifying Your Purpose (And How to Do Both) | with Dan Davis

Zack Arnold

I am here today with Dan Davis, who is an award winning documentary filmmaker with over 250 films worldwide. That's quite a number. Very impressive, especially for somebody of your age, if anybody's thinking 250, how old is this guy, still pretty young and spry. User are the founder and CEO of a Stiry, which is stories that stir, you're also a husband, you're a father of four, which blows my mind, because two is barely enough for me to even be able to manage to survive. So might have to talk a little bit about how you balance all of those things. And you're also a writer of the book. This is my story. So Dan Davis, it is an absolute pleasure to have you here today.

Dan Davis

Thank you so much for having me excited to jump in on our conversation.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I'm excited as well. And the here's the the big reveal right away is that this is actually the 21st century version of you've been served. Because after reading all of the work that you've done, I'm going to have to sue you for plagiarism, because our ideas are so similar. And essentially, even the one of the message that I got from Debby, my Podcast Producer was, Dan stole your book. And I looked at him like, yep, Dan stole my book, alright, because I had had an idea and doesn't mean that I wouldn't still continue to flesh it out. But all about the importance of creating memorable moments in your life. And your talk all about this idea of identifying what are their perspective moments in my life? And how can I construct a story around those so you've been served my friend. All kidding aside, there's so much overlap in the work that you do, and the work that I do and how we serve people. And I'm doing it more from an educational perspective, you're doing it more from you know, a filmmaking and a production and a storytelling perspective, to help people better tell their stories. And that's the purpose of today's conversation for me, is I want those that are trying to figure out what is the next direction? What are the next major stages in my life? How do I construct a story around it? So there's actually meaning and there's purpose and more importantly, I can surround myself with other people who are drawn to that story that have similar stories, and you serve from the work that you do, you're the guy to talk to, I gotta say that this is probably the most exhaustive prep experience getting ready for a podcast where it was so emotional. By the time I got ready to connect, and like I'm already exhausted. I don't know if I could do that. Like, I mean, the the pieces that you did just completely slayed me. So aside from, you know, entrepreneurship, and everything you've accomplished, just as a filmmaker, you're very, very good at what you do.

Dan Davis

Thank you, thank you, that means a lot.

Zack Arnold

So the place that I want to get started in helping people to better structure their stories and better tell their stories, is I just want to get to know a little bit more about your story, because I find that the value of the messenger is usually just as are usually more important than the actual message. And I think that your story and how it factors into helping other people tell theirs is so important. So let's just start with what's the DAN DAVIS Stiry?

Dan Davis

Oh, my gosh, it's, it's, it's a lot of emotion. It's pretty heavy. It's been an emotional roller coaster, the last few years, especially. I've had significant health issues, how to opportunity that that many people with these rare syndromes that I have, sometimes don't get, and my life was preserved this last year. And that's a big story in and of itself, we can dive into and I'm totally jazzed about that as well.

Zack Arnold

Let's dive into it. I love human interest and inspirational stories. So I think I think you've identified this is the place to start. So yes, tell me more.

Dan Davis

Yeah, I mean, really, my, that part of my story is so interconnected with Stiry, what I'm doing here, and honestly, I would have never had that life preserving surgery, or figured out what these rare syndromes were that that really could have killed me. I wouldn't have known what they were unless I started staring. And so when you connect the dots between all these prospective moments I've had over the course of my career and course of my life, you realize that, you know, first of all, I believe there's somebody else that's in control and helping us along in this journey. And then the second thing is, is when you when you work off of inspiration, things tend to work out. And this is a situation where it worked out for me, and I'm still here for my four kids. I'm still here for my spouse, and my employees and, and all of that, and, and really, it's kind of cool, because over the last year, I've like traced it back to see all those prospective moments that happen in the timeline of my story. And I'm like, wow, and then I do it again. And I'm like, Whoa, wow. You know, and there's just one after another. It's like, I can't believe how all connected this, this journey and this experience is to get us to this point where sometimes we think it's random or inconsequential, or we get lucky. And there's there's too much in my story the last few years have had has really He just told me that this is a testament to, you know, there's there's no such thing as luck. It's all pretty connected. And if you're living with purpose and living on inspiration and doing the right thing, things tend to work out even if it's not according to plan, which most of the time, my experience as well as it's not according to plan, nothing goes according to plan. I've never, I don't I can't think of a single example right now where everything just went according to plan. So. So anyway, that's kind of where where I look at this. And for those that are listening and thinking about, you know, whether or not things are going to work out for them, I always just tell people focus on living with inspiration and purpose, and they will work out and it'd be better than planned.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I mean, I can certainly attest to the value of building a life that's driven by the definition of success that is trained within us, and realizing that that leads absolutely nowhere. And if we don't have a mission and a purpose, or a deeper why that we are connected to, then it just all feels empty, no matter what it is that you accomplish, and spent the first least 10 years if not 15 years of my career in Hollywood, working towards the definition of success that was understood, I'm gonna get the gold statues, and I'm going to work on the biggest credits and the highest profile shows. And when I go to all the networking mixers, people are going to Ooh, and odd, all the things that I've done, and I've accomplished. And that's just what I'm supposed to do. And I was excited about that until I realized this is completely and totally pointless. And this is not what I want. And I want to a life that's driven by impact, right? So I want to be able to pay my bills, and I want to be able to, you know, buy some cool stuff or take some nice trips. But it's not driven by materialism, for me currency is impact, like if money to me is the more money I can make, the more impact that I can create, and the more of a difference that I can make. And once that transition happened, and that transition is still happening, because there's I'm sure you'll talk about more definitely doesn't happen overnight. And it doesn't make your life easier. It just makes it easier to get through the hardest stuff. And something that I teach my students all the time is I've very much teach them how to plan. Here's how to time block, here's how to, you know, create these bigger picture goals, break them down into smaller steps. And by the way, none of it's going to happen like this, none of it right, you have to be prepared to be unprepared. So as soon as you're prepared, just be ready for it all to fall apart. That's where you need the tools and the skills to be able to manage life, because it's never going to work out the way that you think it is. But as it sounds like you can attest to it oftentimes works out better than the plan if you allow the plan to fall apart. And it sounds like that's something that you can relate to either, you know, in building Stiry or an even what's happened in the last year or so.

Dan Davis

Yeah, yeah, I to that point, like, I really thought I was creating Stiry to help save other people's lives really, mentally, physically, emotionally. And I thought this was for everyone else, I'm creating this valuable business for everyone else. And just sum up, you know, that misconception I had was when I was filming this documentary that we just had in a film festival. I'm in the middle of filming this documentary. And something was happening, I could feel that it was it was brewing and and both both from a physical standpoint, my health was doing really poorly, but just also kind of spiritually and mentally, I was just feeling some momentum coming something happening. And then my health really took a dive. And during that, during that experience, I got a blood clot I had really high risk of a pulmonary embolism and just felt I felt like I was dying. And I was telling my doctors, hey, I don't I don't feel so good. I feel like I'm dying. And when I got the blood clot, they thought, oh, you know, we should have listened to this guy months before because now he's got a blood related cancer or some other disease or syndrome that we we don't understand or have found Yes, we better get serious about this. And I went down this long, lengthy path of you know, doing what, you know, most people do where you just go to doctor after doctor and say what's wrong with me. And I had nobody that that I had a lot of doctors that they gave up on me that just said we don't know what's wrong. I remember one doctor, I went in there and I said, I'm not leaving until I get a at least a diagnosis that we can chase after and go down that road. And he looks on his computer and he says I think you have chronic fatigue syndrome. And I'm like, You're just telling me I'm tired. And that's why I feel like I'm dying. I said I don't think that's it. My gut told me it was something else. And I said See you later I'm gonna go see somebody else. And even after I saw these people, it wasn't until I was filming and interventional radiologists, this doctor that was working on this patient that we were filming a documentary on that during that the interview that I'm filming, I wasn't doing super well and I kind of half jokingly said, during a break, I said, it was probably an hour, hour and a half into the interview, we needed to take a 15 minute break. I said, Hey, you should try to figure me out. I'm kind of a medical mystery. And she got this really stern look on her face. And she asked me a bunch of questions. And I answered all of them. And she goes, I think you have this, this, this that. She just listed them all off. And I'm like, never heard of any of these syndromes. That were they're quite rare. And she goes, I I do testing on all of these for a specialist here in Utah where I live. And I was like, okay, lady, there's no way you figured it out. And I just, I kind of dismissed it. And then that night, she pulled up my medical records, because she was in the same healthcare system is is I all my records were in. And she emails me and said, I was right. You do have this problem with your kidney. And you do have that you likely have these other syndromes. And they were all blood flow related. And it made total sense to me. I didn't like that answer, because it meant I got something pretty, pretty rare but also dangerous, if we didn't address it. But if I wouldn't have been doing that documentary, I always tell people, these are the dots that connected in that moment, if I wouldn't have been doing that doctor documentary. We weren't even supposed to interview this interventional radiologists. But someone else recommended that we do for this doc. And I the night before was like, Hey, should we be spending our money and resources and time on this? Now I feel just ridiculous. We're even questioning that. And because I did that interview, because we did the documentary because I knew, Imagine Dragons is one of our clients. That's how I met the person we were doing the documentary on. And if I wouldn't have a when a church service mission, and I went with this guy that has brothers with Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons, I had no idea at the time. And if I wouldn't have done that church service mission, I never would have been connected with magic dragons. And then I just keep going back and back. And I can connect 20 dots. And I'm like, Whoa, you know, this, this was me thinking I was starting another venture because I felt, you know, very purpose driven and had a mission. But, but then, you know, when all of a sudden done, I'm like, it actually saved my life. And I had that life preserving surgery this last year, all because of all those dots that connected. And that's when I tell people all the time, if you're in alignment, that's when things work out for you. Never according to plan, like you were saying. But but that's when they work out for you.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, and I found the same thing as well as like when you use this term, when things are in alignment, it's when you when you see the purpose and the reasoning behind the actions that you're taking, it's not a matter of, I'm going to time block the next six months of my life. And I'm going to do all the time blocks, it's a matter of, I understand how this two hour block or this one week goal, or this three month project connects to the larger purpose. And I just have to assume all of its going to completely go to crap and fall apart. But it's still moving towards that purpose or being in alignment with your work. And for many of the people that are listening today, I don't want to assume across the board, but I'm going to guess that a lot of people are listening don't have that alignment. They don't have that clarity of purpose. They're not connected to their why. And I know that because they reach out to me in droves by email every single day saying exactly that. So let's actually rewind before Stiry to your previous life, so to speak, where you two were in complete and total misalignment who didn't have the purpose, which then led you to say, I'm going to create a more purpose driven business and career.

Dan Davis

Yeah, really, my professional experience before Stiry was I was always an entrepreneur, I have been since I was a teenager, I wanted to run my own business and be in charge of my own destiny. And I had some stops in between these entrepreneurial adventures that I had gone on where I worked for somebody else. And some of those were more entrepreneurial than others. But I found in those situations that I truly still wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I needed to provide for my family a few times during that experience. And I had some really unfortunate things happen with a few of my businesses. And so I I just I just kind of said all right, what's the next step for me and kept taking that that leap of faith into different different things. And what's amazing is when I had sold my first business for like next to nothing, it was enough for me and my my wife to go on a trip to Hawaii and cry, you know, that it didn't work out. And I sold that business and I got a job to work for a film director to run his business to be his essentially his CEO run the business side of it while he ran the creative side. And little did I know that that would turn into a passionate Mind and less on the business side and more on the creative side is what ended up transpiring. But during that time, I just, I fell in love with film, I fell in love with the medium that allows you to touch people's hearts in a way that's better, oftentimes, even better than in person. When the music comes together, the edits come together, the the cinematography comes together, all those, all those things came together. And I realized, like this is, this is such a tool to move people's emotions. The problem was, I was doing commercial film work. And that was 90% of our work. And 10% of it was the moving stories, that the things that actually made a difference. And I just felt that suck on my soul. Just every day, and I got worse and worse to where I felt like, you know, had dried up raisin, you know, by that time I, I resigned from that position, because we were just at the mercy of our clients all the time. And there were too many voices going into the creative process. And our staff was working right up until Christmas every year and wondering if they were going to, you know, have time off during Christmas, and, you know, things like that. And I'm like, this is not, this is not what I wanted, it is what I signed up for, even though I didn't know what I was signing up for when I first got into it. But I'm like, there, there's nothing about this, that makes me want to stay here long term. And so I left that position, I had grown that company really well I had grown my salary grown my ability to buy a nice home and provide for my family and, and none of that mattered all of a sudden, you know, Brian, for my family mattered. But that was the only thing. Everything else just kind of fell apart. And I just thought, What am I doing. And at the time, Verizon was one of our big clients. And I remember thinking, I don't go home at night going, Hey, that awesome commercial, we made just sold more widgets for Verizon. And I feel pretty good about the work I did today. I thought, now that this, like, I just don't think it matters, you know, and we're working with East Coast and West Coast clients, advertising agencies and, and large companies. And, and that was when I just thought, I don't know if I'm gonna come back to film. But while I was there, we worked on a feature length film, that won a bunch of awards and got into a lot of festivals. And I was like, This is what I love, this type of film. And our director was very talented and created this heartfelt film that did really well. And I thought to myself, This is great. The only problem is, this is only 10% of my time. And, and so I left it thinking, I don't think I'll ever come back to film because there's nothing that exists where you can do 100% of your time, is dedicated towards film that matters. And so I left and long story short, I became a CEO of a health care company in Arizona. And that was not my mission and purpose. But it was a necessary step. And when that didn't work out, I actually spent several months being unemployed and, and finding myself and that I tell people all the time, that was the best experience I've had in my professional career up until starting Stiry. Because I actually got to sit and think, and I wasn't working 50 60 70, even 80 hours a week at some of these jobs. And and I finally got to free my soul and figure out what I was meant to do versus just what I was good at.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And there's no question that I want to dig deeper into this idea of the value of unemployment, because I know that's something that you emphasize, I emphasize as well. And certainly given everything that's going on in the current job market, just you know, nationwide in the slowing economy and all industries cutting jobs, but specifically in the entertainment industry. I don't know exactly when our interview is going to drop. I'm confident that I'm not going to say ooh, the industry is slow. And somebody listens to this. And like, How long ago did they record this? The industry is booming. I'm not worried about that problem right now. I want to put a put a pin in this just for a second. Because I want to go back to this idea of prospective moments and you realizing the 10% of what I was doing is what I want to do and 90% Wasn't and I want to kind of use this as a preview for us actually going through a workshopping exercise that is part of the process of helping people find their story, which is me kind of interjecting what I have such a similar experience that I just I wanted to share it with you to see does does this kind of meet the criteria of this is what you call a perspective moment. Because there's a difference between i i made my own documentary film. It was about the first Quadra pelagic with muscular dystrophy to become a licensed scuba diver. And the general story would be working as a high level Hollywood Film and Television editor. And I decided that I was going to tell the story of my former friend who passed away because that's the story that needs to be told I really enjoy the process. And now I've decided to pursue another path. fairly interesting. But what there was one moment where I knew my life was gonna, gonna completely change. And I want to break this down. So we can help people understand that there's a way to take your own story and your own moments and shape them into storytelling. So the story that I tell people is that I was at a film festival, very small film festival called the Bakersfield Film Festival. Anybody that's been to Bakersfield, California knows that this is, this is not a Sundance or a Toronto, it's a very local festival. But it's specifically focused on films about disabilities or films made by people with disabilities. So as largely the disability community, not just physical ones, mental ones, people with autism, or whatever the ailment might be. And I have a really hard time telling the story. After my film was screened, I was more rotted and deluged by people in tears, giving me one hug after another, saying you have no idea the impact that story you had on our life. And I said, this, this is life, this is the life that I want to create. It was that one moment, it wasn't Oh, I like documentaries more than TV it was this is the life I want to create, is having as many of these moments as possible, does that meet the criteria of being one of what you call your perspective moments?

Dan Davis

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's yeah, the way we define it is, it's that moment where you see your story differently. And you see the stories of others in the world around you differently. And that and so that moment, and you just saw all of a sudden, you saw your own story differently. And then you also saw the stories of the people that were giving you hugs differently. And realizing the work you were doing was actually giving them perspective moments that would that would be this ripple effect that changed the way they saw their their own story and the stories of people around them. And that's why they were given you a hug, because you gave them a life changing experience. And film can do that. I mean, that's what's so amazing is if you use your skills, and your talents and your abilities, and I'm sure you have so many listeners that have incredible talent, but they might be doing something where they're investing their talent into something that doesn't give that type of personal return. Once you actually invest in projects, or a business or you know, a company that that gives you that kind of personal return. I tell people, it's an addiction. And it's a really healthy addiction. Because every time you invest in those things, it just, it just comes right back to you and everybody around you. So so that's a perfect, perfect perspective moment that that, really, when we when we tell stories, we dig those out of people. And that's what makes our stories I feel like so powerful is just that that key ingredient was get that perspective moment, create a safe place for somebody to share that. And that's your story. That's your storyline. It's not all these. I mean, I haven't read any of these storytelling books or you know, the art of storytelling, the science behind it. Sure, we're practicing some of the same principles. But at the end of the day, we just focus on creating that place that allow people to share those prospective moments.

Zack Arnold

It's funny, because I'm already thinking about if I'm going to create a top five playlist about storytelling, you're going to be in it with other artists talking about the art of storytelling. And literally the science of storytelling is one of my episodes, the guy that wrote the book called The Science of storytelling. On the podcast, we'll put a link in the show notes. But coupling all of those together. Like here are the world's foremost experts talking about story structure. And from a neurological perspective, why are we so drawn to story? Why do we need it for survival? And then you coming in and saying, Yeah, I don't know anything about story. But you know, I want to help people tell their stories. I just I love the way that we can all be doing the same thing from very different perspectives. And one of one of the areas that I focus with my students, which is so ironic is that it is literally our job. It is what we do for a living, to tell other people's stories and to create those moments. So when people ask me what I do as an editor, I say I create meaningful moments. And it's all very manipulative. I mean, if you're and I don't say that in a bad way, but it's my job as an editor to know where your attention is every single frame in which you're feeling. If I don't know where your attention is, or what you're feeling, I'm not doing my job, and I want to guide you on an emotional journey. And I manufacture moments, taking this one shot, whether it's a close up versus a wide shot, and at this very moment you pull the sound out and you bring the music up, that creates an emotional moment. That's what we do as filmmakers. But the ironic thing is, we suck at telling our own stories. I had a student just this week and the timing of this Coming with this conversation is it's one of those things where there's some form of a hand or whatever it is, everybody has their own various beliefs. But I don't believe that we're just all alone. And there isn't some energy that we don't understand. But somebody said to me earlier this week, when we were talking about structuring their story, just more in a networking setting, if you're going to go to one event and introduce yourself, they started with, well, you know, my story isn't nearly as interesting as yours. And I said, I'm going to stop you for a second, I guarantee your story is as good as mine, I'm just better at telling mine right now than you are. Everybody has an amazing story. And there's never been once that I've talked to somebody on this podcast, that I wasn't fascinated by their life or their choices, everybody has a story, they just are not good at telling it. And some of the worst are the ones that do it for a living for others. So essentially, what I want to do is start to give storytellers frameworks to tell their own story. So that's why I brought up this idea of perspective moments. And also this idea of, we're all sitting at home, unemployed, what can I do with my time that I can control? And I think that learning how to better structure and tell your story is a vital part of it. So with all of those pieces coming together, let's workshop, how do we help people tell their stories, you've got an entire book about it. But let's break it down to get people started and get motivated to number one, buy your book. And number two better tell their story.

Dan Davis

Yeah, I mean, it, it's, I tried to keep it simple. I'm a simple mind, you know, and that's probably why I don't dive into the science behind some of these things. Because I'm just, I'm just looking at, I guess, this science, of personal experience, from seeing how people connect, and, and seeing how you connect with yourself. And that's what I did during that time that I was unemployed is I finally figured out how to connect with myself. And I finally figured out what what I call divine potential because it's, it's bigger than you. And once you uncover that divine potential, all of a sudden, you have this fire inside of you, that doesn't go away. And I think most people have just that little flicker inside of them. And then it gets turned off, because they go and work their day job, right, or they go work, you know, or are in a bad relationship, or whatever it is, they're going through difficult times, and they don't invest in their own story. And like you said, they could be telling other people's stories, but for some reason, they're not using that level of introspection to find out what they're meant to do. And that feels, it feels too big, oftentimes, and so people don't dive into that. They say, Well, I must be meant to be an editor right now. Or a DP or a producer, whatever it is. I'm, I meant to work at the I had a neighbor that worked at the post office, and he was like one of the happiest guys I've ever met. You found his calling he was meant to do that was I meant to do that? Absolutely not I when I think about it, I think I'd be if I had here I'd be pulling my hair out. Because that that wouldn't feel fulfilling to me. But for him, he found his purpose. And he found his meaning and he was happy. And so I think you have to take the time. That's the first step, really, in this process is you have to take the time to ask yourself the tough questions. Am I doing what I meant to do not just what I'm good at Great. And that that one hurts, it should sting for some people with an ink. Because I asked myself that during this time of being unemployed. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, for the last 10 years of my career, I've been doing things that I'm good or even great at. But I haven't been doing what I'm meant to do. Okay, well, now that I answered no to that question. I'm not doing what I meant to do. What do I do next? And it felt like this hopeless feeling that was coupled by this? Oh, well, now I know what I'm supposed to do next is to figure that out. And if I can figure that out, then I'm going to be in this state of alignment. And if I'm in a state of alignment, doesn't matter what's going on around me, I'm gonna have this flame inside of me that carries me through, you know, whatever brick walls I gotta run through. And as soon as I figured out what I was meant to do, I had to run through a lot of brick walls. And things were not easy, but it was what was awesome is I had the strength and the courage and the, you know, fortification and the bravery to go through whatever was next. And it was back to that flame, because I felt like, I know what I meant to do. I'm just gonna go full steam ahead. So really, I would say the first thing you do like in our book, we talked about creating a space for yourself to do that quiet space. And we have these rules we live by that we say, Look, if you're gonna go through this experience, it's not just a book you read, it's a workbook. You have to create a safe space for yourself. That's quiet, that has no distractions to actually start to, you know, I believe it's communicating with God. Other people might believe that's energy or nature, whatever that is. If you know what it is, you know what those feelings are that you're, you're going after those inspired feelings, go find a place to do that. And you cannot do that. If you have, you're always putting limits on your time, and you're too busy for that, you're not going to just go, I'm gonna go spend five minutes on my lunch break outside, you know, if you're working in California, and I'm gonna go have lunch on the beach, and I'm gonna get my answer and 15 minutes, I'll eat my turkey sandwich, it doesn't work like that. Typically, it could, but you got to put in some consistent time. So maybe what you need to do is get out of your environment for 24 hours, 48 hours, and go work on yourself. And if you're unemployed, you got plenty of time to do that. Go work on yourself, because you're going to waste a lot of time searching for what you could do, versus what you're meant to do. If you're just gonna go apply to a bunch of jobs, you can still do that. You can still send your resume out, you can still apply to a bunch of different opportunities, but dedicate a majority of your time to figure out what you're meant to do. So that safe space, I always tell people in that quiet space is the most just the simplest, most important thing you can do to start that process.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, so the there's a lot of what you're talking about that I've actually again, I can help supplement all of the the assumptions that you're making. I love the fact that you're like, I'm just going to come at this with a very, very simple process. And I'm the opposite. My biggest struggle is overcomplicated everything. And with my team, it's constantly then saying, What if well, what if this were just simple, let's look at this as if it were simple. So I feel like you, you can help fill a gap where you're very strong at something and I'm very weak at something. But when it comes to digging in with some of the world's foremost experts in complicating all of this, the first thing I thought about is my conversation with Dr. Tal Ben Shahar, who is one of the leading experts in happiness has actually created the first master's program and being certified in the field of happiness and happy psychology. And he talks about this framework of you either have a job, you have a career, or you have your calling. And you're talking about how and kind of that that transitional period where you not only had a job, I mean, you were unemployed when you were done with it, but you were very gainfully employed with jobs, and you actually were building a career, but you weren't not working your calling. And that's where the disconnect was. And the reason I think it's so important for people to consider this now is because we're in another version of a forced pause. To me at least from my perspective, this feels like we're, this is a repeat episode of the middle of 2020, where we all had this false sense of perspective. And as an entrepreneur who was just transitioning, to starting to figure out how do I make a living doing what I'm doing, I thought, Oh, I'm screwed, like, there's no way I can make a, nobody's gonna pay me money for this stuff. And my business more than doubled in like nine months, because everybody came to me saying, I have no idea what to do with my life. But when when the world goes back to normal, I don't want to do what I was doing before, helped me find the meaning and the purpose and get my time together and meet the right people, all these things, which was people not connected to their calling. So I say all that in a very long winded way to emphasize what you said, which is, you have to hit the pause button, and take the time to think about this. And right now in our industry. This is the involuntary pause button, this is the work to be doing. You want to update the font choices on your resume. Go ahead, you want to update your website. Sure. This is the real work that's going to lead to change in 10 years, as opposed to I can get my next paycheck when you know the work comes back. So what I want to clarify in your process is that you kind of break it down similar to the filmmaking process, which is why I think it's so valuable to our community because they know the vocabulary. And you have step one, which is uncover your story, you consider that pre production. Now the stepping away and giving yourself space, I kind of feel like that's in a way kind of sort of step zero. Like I just I need to have the space now it's time to get into pre production. So if we're in step one pre production, uncovering your story, what's kind of the brief overview or summarization of how I start to uncover my story, how can I make this easier?

Dan Davis

Yeah, I mean, it's all about asking yourself questions. And what I discovered during that time when I was unemployed is I started to ask myself the right questions I'd never asked before and I knew the answers are, the answers would come after some reflection. And so really, this is a time for you to start asking those tough questions. But really, it's asking the questions that are necessary for you to discover yourself and understand yourself and your motivations and what matters to you your your morals, your moral compass, and documenting all of that stuff because like you said, most of us are not great storytellers for ourselves, even though we could be for other people. It's time to start asking those questions and documenting them, and starting to formulate a plan versus saying, What's my plan? And I think that's what we all we all want to do. We want to just say, Okay, what are the next five steps I need to take to get a new job, find purpose or find my calling, and I say timeout to that, like, just spend some time asking yourself questions, the right questions, the ones that will start to really stir something within you, we called stories, stories that stir for a reason, because there's something in you that you can ignite and stir the start to uncover some of these answers. And I think that pause is really important, like you said, the step zero, I like how you put that. And then the second step is just let's give you some warm up questions. Let's just Let's just get that you know, your soul moving a little bit, because most of us, if we're in this part of the process, or so, either got a little crushed, or ignored, or just hasn't been given the attention that it needs, and you just need to wake it up. And that's really what the first part of the process is. And uncovering those prospective moments, asking yourself the right questions. Stop worrying about getting all the answers. Yeah, you know, that's, that's gonna come if you just trust and get yourself into that space where you can trust yourself to answer some tough questions,

Zack Arnold

As both my students in my community can attest to and anybody that listens to the podcast, they know how obsessed I am with the idea of asking yourself better questions, because it leads to better answers and a better quality of life, I actually yet again, have another podcast guest and author and expert. His name is Mark champagne, had him on the show relatively recently. And he wrote the book Personal Socrates all about, here's some great prompts and questions to help you better identify well, how can I be more connected with my life and my relationships and my purpose? So again, I feel like I'm gonna, I just need to have a recording of me saying, I will put a link of this in the show notes. Because there's so much synergy and overlap of your interests in mind. I know already know the answer to this question is, it's all in the book. But for somebody that doesn't have the book in front of them yet, let's workshop what you think could be one or two actual questions that are part of step one, pre production, uncovering your story.

Dan Davis

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna roll over here and grab my book, because I want to, I want to be thoughtful in that response. So one of them that came to mind is, it's funny when you talk to people that haven't gone through this, this process, they they forget how much of this is really simple. And these questions are not that complicated. So it's interesting when I transitioned from lots of different, you know, opportunities, throughout the course of my career, I never sat down and asked myself what my moral compass was. And that sounds so silly, I had been raised on good Christian values and had really, you know, solid moral compass, but I'd never thought about, you know, what those things are, put them down on paper. So I would say that's one of them. And if that doesn't match up with what you're currently doing, you're out of alignment. And you got to go find something that matches that, that moral compass, you know, one of the one of the other things, here's a great, this is a good exercise for anybody that will get things going, but have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and, and looked into your own eyes and just stared at yourself, it sounds really silly, and it feels silly to say it even to this day. But unless you've done that, I think you don't fully understand what's inside of you. And so that's one of the things that I, we need to we need to ask ourselves, what do you see, when you actually look at yourself in the mirror? I'm not talking about what shirt you're wearing, you know how your hair looks, or your eye color, but actually, you know, look into your eyes and try to take a minute minute to breathe and stare into your soul. And I know, like I said, it sounds funny. And everybody's thinking, How do I gotta go do this? That sounds kind of awkward. But when you do that, and ask yourself, this is one of the first questions we ask is, what do you see? And I'm telling you, you're gonna see something, and it's going to be pretty powerful. And you're gonna, you're gonna have some of these prospective moments come to you, and you get to write them down. So those are a couple of the questions I would say, anybody could do right now, even if you didn't buy my book, you could, you could go stare yourself in the mirror for free, you know, and, and write down what you see. And you're going to start to get some answers there.

Zack Arnold

Doesn't only sound just a little bit funny and a little quirky. It sounds like it's kind of scary, too. I think that's probably the reason we don't do it that often. Because we might see things that we didn't know that we're going to see or discover things that we didn't know that we're going to discover. And I'll just I'll double down on your recommendation to not figure out what is your moral compass in the 15 minute break that you have between edit sessions. That was going to take a little bit of time, and scanning through some of these questions. The this is some heavy, heavy emotional lifting. Like you just go right for the jugular. I mean, the here's open it knife deeper salt is like, what's, what's your most painful memory? And why it's like, whoa, holy cow, like you, you go deep. Right? So, before we dive right into step two, I still want to continue to dig a little bit deeper, no pun intended, by the way into really collecting, what are some of these perspective moments? And what are the things that define me that define my journey? So as we go through this further, how do we start to not only collect some of these things, but as the ideas start to pop up, how do we eliminate all of the crazy voices that are saying, number one, we don't have time for this crap. And number two, well, what if I had discovered this is what I meant to do? But I could never do it. But is this really the thing like there's, there have got to be? My guess is that answering these questions, leads to having more questions than answers oftentimes. So we're not ready for diving right into starting Oh, you answered a few questions. So let's get to writing. We still got some more development work to do, right?

Dan Davis

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's super important. I mean, honestly, there's we've had people we've helped, I mean, hundreds of people through this process that we know of 1000s of people have bought the book. But like, there's, there's so many people, we don't know, their experiences, we haven't gotten all of that feedback, but I'll share with you some of the feedback I have gotten is step zero for some people, is to just go sit with yourself. Like that, that might be what you need to do to get this process going for yourself, you might just have to say, I'm going to leave one hour early from work this week. And I'm going to go sit in the mountains, on the beach, you know, in a park, in my car, outside of my house, whatever it is, and just sit in that stillness. And so many people, we've had to do that with while we're filming them, we say we're going to, we're going to take you through an exercise to warm you up. And we're just going to give you some opportunities to breathe for a second here, with no expectation of coming to resolutions or answers to anything, you're just going to sit in that stillness. So if you're in that state, do that first and do some deep breathing, I don't need to teach you about, you know, we do do some of these exercises with people where it is box breathing, and all these other things. But look, you don't have to take a deep breath. Just sit in your car for a minute and take a deep breath until you go through this, you know this process. So that that might be for some people, other people, they come to us and they're just like, I'm ready. Like, let's let's make this happen, I will answer whatever question you're gonna give me. And I want to get to this point where I'm living with more purpose, and I'm highly motivated to do so right now. Let's do it. And then we've had people in between that are saying I'm depressed. But I'm willing, and I'm here. And so there's lots of people on that spectrum. And I would just say, there is no, there is no wrong way to approach this. Based on where you're at, in your own story. If you're recently divorced and disappointed your relationship didn't work out, you might be a little different than somebody that's really happy in their their career and, and feeling like you know, they have great relationships in their life. Regardless of where you're at on that spectrum. One of the first things you got to do is not beat yourself up for where you're at. We're not talking about future state, we're not talking about past state. Don't beat yourself up for where you're at. Because here's the cool thing. You are exactly where you need to be right now. Because that means you're stepping into if you're willing, you're stepping into where you need to be in the future. Right now, you're exactly where you need to be to discover what's next for your future. So I would say I mean to you to answer your question. Start with where you're at. Start with where I'm at, where you're at, start with where were all these listeners are at currently in your journey. And that's, that's the perfect place to start.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, once again, you and I are literally plagiarizing each other because one of the key principles of my entire program is that you have to be willing to run your own race. It has to be about accepting that this is where I am now of all the things that I thought I was going to have achieved or what happened my life. best time to plant that tree was 20 years ago. Sorry. Next best time to plant that tree is today and don't worry about where everybody else is worried about where you are yourself. So again, you and I are completely and totally on the same page. And there's it doesn't matter again like what spiritual background you have They're just some spirit, there are some universal truths amongst so many of them, whether it's Christianity, or Buddhism, or whatever were the things that you say, are just kind of universal. There's so many of those beliefs. And this idea of just taking a breath and sitting in the pause and sitting in the present monumentally important to this process, and I couldn't agree with all of the things you said any more than I already do. So if we're gonna go through, and we're going to start collecting all of these perspective moments, and all of these kind of realizations of whether it's this big aha moment where it's like I want I want to surround myself with all these people that I can impact at this one film festival. And I can duplicate and scale this to whatever the other perspective moments or introspections might be. At some point, it's got to be more than a bunch of random ideas in our head or scribbles on a paper or posted notes or journaling process, whatever it might be, at some point, we probably actually have to start, I don't know writing a script. So how do we start making sense of all of the chaos that happens both emotionally and intellectually as you go through this process? Because man, is this process? Exhausting? Be ready, if you're gonna buy this book and set aside an afternoon, you're severely limiting yourself and you're setting the wrong expectations. This takes a lot of work, but holy cow, is it worth it on the other end? But it's also confusing and overwhelming. So how do we start to put all that together to get a sense of what is my story?

Dan Davis

Yeah, I mean, I think when you say write your script, without going through the first step, people think, oh, my gosh, they have this anxiety just boiled up, you know, it's coming out, and you can feel it in your chest. And that's how it was for me. When I asked myself that question, when I was unemployed, what am I meant to do? Oh, man that gave me it gave me some anxiety, heartburn, made me feel depressed, made me feel disappointed. I had some feelings of shame. There's all these feelings that kind of welled up during that time. And that's what was so cool. Why I preached this about perspective moments. I just started with one perspective moment, and I wrote it down. I said, Okay, let's look at this prospective moment that happened in my last job. Let's look at this prospective moment that happened when I had my first kid. And I started writing that, that down, and then the light bulb clicked, and I'm like, Ah, I'm writing my script. That's all this is, this isn't me going, I have this, hundreds of pages of my story. And now I got to write a script for it. It's like now just boil it down to those prospective moments, and you'll start to see your script be written. And so speaking from personal experience that went going through this about seven and a half years ago, I started to realize that it wasn't that complicated, just ask yourself the right questions, answer them. And let's start compiling, you know, those answers. So one of the things that I ask is, What mistakes have you made, you know, this is part of the writing your script stage. So you kind of warm yourself up, you've answered a lot of these questions, your mind is fresh enough, that we did this order on purpose, because a lot of these things were fresh on your mind. So on one side of the table, you have mistakes that you've made you, you write them all down, and you're like, oh, my gosh, you know, I failed at this, or I made this mistake, or I ruin this relationship, or whatever it was big or small, you start writing those down. And then on the right side of the table, we put lessons learned. And this is where you get to look at that and go, Oh, I actually did learn something from I, you know, ruin my relationship with my mother, because she had these expectations. And I chose a different path. That felt like a mistake at the time. And now I realize, you know, I have the opportunity to heal that relationship with my mother, because I discovered XYZ throughout that experience of Blazing my own trail. So you start to mistakes on this side, and lessons you've learned on this side. Once again, you're writing your script. So I think, oftentimes, especially in film, we feel like we've got to have these really expensive and intrusive and stressful script writing sessions. To get the story and personal development and personal growth and helping yourself find your what you're meant to do. Take that stress off your shoulders. And just start writing and answering these questions. And you'll see your your scripts start to develop right in front of you.

Zack Arnold

So what does this look like on a practical level? We've gone through step one, we've gathered these prospective moments where we see our, our perspective shift in some way we've paused to reflect on so many of these kinds of bigger life questions that are both bigger and deeper, and some even terrifying even look at the empty blank space on the blank space on the page and think, God, I know what the answer is, but I don't want to write it down. But you start to collect all this and you're writing it Whether it's in the workbook for your book, or it's a notebook or otherwise, how do we actually start to turn it into a script, so to speak, because we haven't even really got to what the end result will look like. And one of them can certainly be can be a Stiry story. But if I'm just going to do this on my own, how do I start to actually formulate this into a thing? Am I doing it in final draft? And it looks like an episode of television? Am I writing giant paragraphs? Like, what am I actually doing? What does it what does the process look like?

Dan Davis

Yeah, so So for me, it's, it's once again, it's going back to asking those questions, and not overwhelming yourself with trying to write a thesis, you know, on your story. It's about saying, Okay, now that I understand these prospective moments, these experiences I've had, now I'm gonna write down what I want. What does your future state look like? So one of our questions we ask is, who, who lights you up? So you think about these people in your life that light you up, that support you? And all sudden that sparks these things? Like, oh, those people that light me up are people that have meaning and purpose? And you start to realize, oh, that's what I want. You know, what, what? Who do I spend time with, you know, as another thing that that not only who lights you up, but who I spend time with the that's allowing me to just be me, you start answering questions about the people around you that support you. Another thing that we do is we start writing, you know, instead of just answering these questions, we start, we start talking about our dreams and our ambitions. And it's it sounds so funny, because so many of us are like, Yeah, my dream is to do this. And what's what's neat is when people go through this process, the dream changes in such a beautiful way. And because they've answered these questions about themselves, they may have thought of, for example, I've heard a ton of people in film, say I want to be a director. And for whatever reason, it's like, that's the pinnacle of success if I become a director. And what's so interesting is I've watched people leave film, and go do other stuff. And I've watched people come into film, and kind of seeing that, that highway that interchange go both ways. Because they thought they in their mind before they answered all these questions, they had figured out what what a future desired happy, called to do state looks like. And as soon as they start asking, you know, these these questions, they realize they have something way bigger and way better off for the world. And that might be a completely different thing. So I had somebody I took through the process that was a firefighter. I think most people would say, that's so cool. That was his childhood dream. He's doing so much good. And he came to a call, he called me on the phone. It's kind of funny story. He called me on the phone. He said, after you took me through this process, he's like, I quit my job. And I was like, timeout, you're married and have kids, did you talk to your spouse about this first? I don't want I don't want my name dragged through the mud now because I you know, you just went and quit your job without talking to you know, one of the most important people in your partner, right? Because no, I did. I did. I did. I said, Great. So you're a firefighter, you had a lot of purpose, and you quit your job. Why? And he said, I realized that, what I thought was my purpose was not my purpose. And I had something bigger to do. And that was to tell people about my experience, trying to take my own life three different times. And while I'm a firefighter, I don't have that time to share that message. And it was just like, boom, here's a guy that is now just mission driven. He's He's going after that he's providing his for his family. Has he had some ups and downs? Yeah. You went through a divorce after that he went through these experiences that were really, really tough. But he he feels in alignment. And it's because his his perspective moments led to this desired state where he actually asked himself the next question, which was, what am I? What am I dreaming of that I meant to do? Now that's different than when I started this process. So I think this is the time where you start to start to uncover and write down your future state. After ask asking yourself the questions don't do that before because that your answer is going to change.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, and one of the processes that I take my students through that it's very similar there's some really cool things you're doing that I might even experiment with it and grading obviously, with your permission of course, there's there's a lot of a lot of overlap. But I to agree that you have to you have to really start with digging into why it is that you want to do this thing. What is the purpose? How do you get yourself in alignment? But so often what happens whether it's right after the pen hits the page, or shortly after it's, oh my god, this would be my purpose. Oh, but I could never do that. Like that. That's not for me. Other people accomplish that. They get that there's so much doubt cast upon them. that I've now discovered it, but I could never do it. I mean, this is crazy, right? So but before we even get to actually producing your story and taking these ideas and these moments and writing them all down and turning it into an actual story, how do we get ourselves to believe that it's even possible? Because that, to me seems to be one of the biggest barriers that I and my coaches deal with the students that we have in my program.

Dan Davis

Yeah, I, one of the things that was missing in my journey, and my story was being proud of myself. You know, I talk a lot about that, like, I think oftentimes was shame and guilt and disappointment. We associate ourselves as failures. And we think that all these experiences that didn't work out, weren't for our benefit, and there was a purpose to them. And so to get yourself to that point where you're proud of yourself, it's, it's hard, it's a lot of work, especially for somebody, I can speak to this because I grew up in a very just a beautiful home with two parents that loved me, but expected so much of me. And that, that continued on through my career, and through my family. And those expectations were really high, when they weren't met, I became less and less proud of myself, for when things didn't work out. Some of them not even in my control, I became less proud of myself. So one of the final, you know, pieces that we have people go through, before they move on to really starting to produce the story that they're creating for themselves, is to write a positive note to yourself, and tell yourself how proud you are of these of these things that you've been through. Not just your accomplishments, the things that you actually made it through that you survived. And so I think that's a critical part of our stories and writing our script and writing a better script and producing a better story is to actually go through and say, I'm proud of myself for my first business failing, I first business failed. I carried that debt for years. And I can never say to myself, Oh, that was worth it. Until I went through this process. And I went, Ah, I'm actually really blessed that that didn't work out because it led me to this, this and this. But I never realized that until I sat down, I wrote those perspective. And then I suddenly became proud of myself for trying for putting everything into my first business, even though I've failed. And I started to recognize that my first business was once a cancer to me, because I thought, I failed at something and it wasn't for my benefit, all of a sudden became a blessing to me. And I use that story, that experience every day, in my conversations with people that to tell people that that it's not just a matter of being positive, actually, really bothers me when people say, Yeah, you're a really positive person. And I'm like, No, I just, I spent some time in the darkness, my friend, I spent some time looking at all these mistakes I've made and and I've learned how to forgive myself, learn how to be proud of myself. That comes off as positivity. Great. But what it is, is I'm just, I'm really secure and where I'm standing right now. Because I've done this work of asking myself these questions. So that would, I would say, that's the next step is start to be proud of who you are and who you're becoming. And that will give you the motivation to become take it to the next step, and start to actually do the things that will will change your life.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I think that that's fantastic advice, whether or not you're going through this three step process, or just trying to figure out how do I stay afloat in this giant mess, that is life, which is being okay with the fact that you're human, and you're going to make mistakes. And I've really reshaped my perspective from again, this idea of, I need to define myself by success as defined by society, as defined by whether it's family or an industry or peers or whatever it might be. But not only working towards the definition of my own success, but being okay with defining myself by failure, because I used to remember I call myself a recovering perfectionist, valedictorian of my high school, top 5%, University of Michigan, those were all things that define me. And I realized I had never learned how to deal with failure because I refuse to do things that will lead me to failure because I had to be defined by success. And what I found wouldn't just because I've basically made it, I've made a living now in doing nothing but failing constantly, and talking about and sharing those failures and point in my life. I love my life so much more, because it's surrounded with nothing but failure. But when people will ask, especially when they're out kind of on that precipice of I want to do something that's scary. I wanted to do something that's uncomfortable. I see my purpose, but I have all these doubts about doing it. How do you deal with all this failure? I said, it's not failure. They're just lessons and the difference for me and it all comes back to Storytelling, I think right now I'm writing my story. And whatever this failure was, I can either say, well, that story is over and I failed. Or, man, this is going to be a good story when I succeed, right? So the one of the stories that my audience knows, but I'll give you the briefest version. So you have some context, I decided about five and a half years ago, vastly out of shape, award winning Dad Bod, really overweight, really depressed and burned out, I'm going to become an American Ninja Warrior, that would be fun. Spent the last five and a half years doing that. And by my definition, I have failed because I have not achieved the goal, which is that I want to be able to run through the course successfully, I want to have the featured story, and I want to inspire others. In that sense, I'm a failure. And the two times that I failed on the course, after you know, some initial frustration and whatnot, it was, man, this is going to make the story so much better. But it's it's reframing it that way is really, really difficult when you've been trained to only chase after success. So I say all of that, just to just emphasize how important as you said, it is to not only embrace those failures, like you said, mistakes versus lessons, let's say, that was okay, it's okay that I did that. And that's all part of the experience, and give yourself permission to be proud of what you took from it. So just so much alignment and all the things that we're talking about, I've just i My concern is that we're only an hour and 15 minutes into this. And I've gotten through about 10% of the the notes and the conversations I want to have. So we could do this for hours. But in order to to make sure we can close this specific loop and I can get you out on time to get you to your next meeting. Third step of this is that we now need to take all the information that we've captured, and we've written down and done some writing, but we actually have to produce it. So not only what does it mean to produce your story, but what's an example of an end result we're going to get from this. So I just have a paragraph that I put in my back pocket to walk around with, do I have this giant poster? Like what how do we both produce all the information we're putting together? But what does it actually look like? How do I make it useful in the world?

Dan Davis

Yeah, I mean, one of the just a really easy take away would be we call them billboard moments, you know. And we ask our storytellers that when we film them, and people that go through this process, have the opportunity to we have this you know, you'll see what the the book the way this design is, we actually want to keep it light and fun. Because this is a tough process. Right? And you're asking yourself, like you said earlier, some really tough questions. And, and so one of the things that we ask people is Terrell, what's your billboard? Either moment, or what matters most to you, if you had an opportunity to throw that on the highway? And say this is this is Dan Davis. And this is what Matt, this is what matters most today. And it's hard to ask that question very beginning of this process, like you got to go through some really deep stuff to get to that point. And your answer is going to change most likely. And sometimes it doesn't. And that's great, too, because you're just confirming what you've discovered through your prospective moments throughout your whole life. But just writing that down, and telling people what matters most to you. It could be something you keep in your pocket, it can be something that you memorize to say, look, for a long time, I thought this matter most to me that this is what matters most to me. It's being in alignment with God, it's being in alignment with my career, and being able to do something meaningful that benefits not just my family, but but all the other humans on this planet. That's what matters most to me, when you actually put that billboard statement up on paper, it's pretty cool to watch. Because suddenly, you're you're reminding yourself of that as you make decisions. And you're writing a different story for yourself. And that's the whole goal. That's why step three in our process is called produce, produce the story you want to tell right at the story that you thought you wanted to tell at the story that others wanted you to tell the story you want to tell. And that comes from putting all these prospective moments that you've discovered by answering all these questions. At the very end to say, this is what matters to me most this is what would bring me happiness. I mean, those are all part of the experience of really defining what you're called to do, what you're meant to do versus what you thought you were meant to do or what you thought you were, your experience would would give you and, and really it's just compiling that all together to say, I get it. All these prospective moments collectively mean that I have purpose. And here's my purpose.

Zack Arnold

Mm hmm. Yeah. So this idea of purpose or like you said, whatever your calling is, even if it's not a matter of well, when I'm done with all this, I'm going to produce a 15 minute documentary short about myself. And I know what all the beats are going to be and I know the music choices and I know how to structure because I had this worksheet. I mean what We're gonna get to in a second what you actually do, I want to make sure people understand the services that Stiry provides and how it fits into this. But not everybody walks away with a 15 minute documentary short on YouTube, it's probably not the best fit for them. But knowing your why is what I believe is the foundational component for being able to set boundaries in your life. If you don't know what your goals are, and you don't know why you're doing them, it is so much easier to fill your life with the busyness and like you said, you have to pause to do this process. But whenever I have students that come to me that say, Well, I've got this opportunity. And it sounds really good. Or my gut says this other opportunity. I don't know if I should take it. We'll ask them, we'll just kind of on a more superficial level, or what are some of your goals? Sometimes they can't even answer that. But if they have the more superficial defined by society's version of success and goals, well, you know, I want to be able to make it into the editor's chair, I want to direct my first feature, and they're going to pay me this much or that much. And I just asked a question that stops them dead in their tracks, I say, Okay, why? Ha? I guess I don't know, well, then how do you know what's a good opportunity versus a bad opportunity? If you're not connected with your calling and your purpose? And everybody thinks, Well, my, my calling is that I need to be a director of action movies. And I need to, you know, get the house in the Hollywood Hills. And that could be part of it. But what does that serve, and you might find that your calling or your purpose is served. by directing a movie, it can also be served by writing a book, it can also be served by volunteering for charity, all of them are different versions of achieving the same objective. But until you connect with that calling or that purpose, you don't know what is the yes or what doesn't know, or how to set boundaries. So I'm glad that you provide such an important and useful framework. So people can in these three simple steps, right? Simple and easy are two very different things. But in three relatively simple steps, they walk away and have a sense of oh, this is why I do what I do. So I'm fascinated by all this, and I don't know if you're Are you familiar with David Mead? or familiar with Simon Sinek? The book find your why. Sure. So I did a conversation with David Mead, who co wrote find your why was Simon Sinek, who's a huge, you know, a less thought leader and expert and author that has the book Start with Why. And I think that to me, this is just an accompaniment or a deeper dive into a very similar process, which is, like you said, How do I align myself with what's meaningful in my work, which is essentially having gone through the process myself, I've realized I want to facilitate that process for others, just like you do. Which then leads me to kind of the next question, which is, what is it that you actually do at Stiry? And how does this process facilitator like you, you actually have resources to help people do this beyond just the book? So now we come to the question that many would ask at the beginning. I waited until the end. What is Stiry?

Dan Davis

Yeah, I mean, we we have decided that we're not, we're not going to build a company that is a production house, a gun for hire, for great stories. Do we have a production arm? Absolutely, you can see all of our films we've done over 250, we'll do another 50 this year 60, probably. And we have great cinematography, great stories that people that we tell stories on, but really is the framework that we use, that is very non traditional storytelling. But it's there's a lot of science behind it, that we're not focusing on this perfect story arc. I think that is important for a lot of, you know, especially scripted content, what we do is not scripted. It's very unscripted. And we take people through these processes, where we ask them the same questions that we have in our book for asking them on set to people. And so we create films based on that. And we use the answers those questions to fill in the B with the the B role in supporting footage to make these stories shine, and that emotion shine. So really, we're just getting people to uncover those perspective elements, and we're putting them on film. So we do that for individuals. We do that for nonprofits. We do that for businesses that want to tell a better story. And, you know, one of our producers that we first hired said, was really good at making people cry. And I and at first I took a little bit of offense to that. I'm like we're we're great storytellers. We're not just people that make people cry. But I think what what she meant by that is, we're good. We're great. I think we're best in the world, that world class at helping people feel emotion, uncover that and unpack that emotion and portray it in a way that allows the person on the other side, have a soul stirring experience. And if they can do that, then we've changed their perspective forever. And so that's our goal with every piece of content. It's not can we win this award? Can we get this many The views on YouTube, it's we have people have this life changing experience by watching one of our films. So we have our films. And then we have, we're actually creating two technologies right now one of them is a distribution platform for all of our films and also curated content that will do the same, that will stir your soul. And then we have a third thing that we're doing that technology that allows people to go through this experience without us sitting in the room with them and interviewing them, and capturing their own story, and getting it to us to put the Stiry and touch on it and then sending it right back to that storyteller. Versus like I said, this is big productions that we do on people's stories. So those are the three things we we do. And all of it comes back to just the simple, prospective moments. That's the process we take people through is really we're just great at asking questions that stir your soul and get you to think about life differently.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, so my guess is that it's not a coincidence, given that everybody says, Well, we're really good at making people cry. The you decided one of your goals has become to become the Kleenex Kleenex brand of this type of emotionally inspiring storytelling and wanting to become a household name. So it wasn't a coincidence that you decided that you wanted to be this Kleenex brand of type of film, I'm guessing that.

Dan Davis

That yeah, that came to mind. You know, in the very first year of Stiry, I was like, we want to be a household name, what's the household name, and I'm like Kleenex, we want people to be grabbing the tissues. When they're watching a Stiry film, and we want people to use the word stories synonymously with stirry, when it comes to these, you know, stirring stories that we produce, we want people to say I want to tell my Stiry. And what's been cool over the last couple of years is actually when people reach out to us, they say it's time for me to tell my Stiry. They don't even use the word story, where I want my Stiry done. Businesses say that we want you to come and do Stiry stories for us, not just stories, not just ads, not just these other things. But we need a Stiry story. And so we're not a household name, yet, we recognize that it's an ambitious goal. But we're going to fight like hell to make sure that it's in every home across the country on everybody's phones, they can experience one of these stories, so that they can have these prospective moments wherever they're at, in life, physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, be able to have that kind of experience. And hopefully grab that tissue because it's changed your, your, your spirit, your soul in some way.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, well, given all of that, for anybody that wants to dive deeper, the most important question of the entire conversation. And it is the shameless self promotion portion of today's conversation. If I've listened to this, and I want to go through the exercises in the book, if I want to hire you to create my Stiry story, or otherwise, where can people find you?

Dan Davis

No, thanks for asking. And I appreciate you doing that for the folks listening. So if you just go to stiry.com, you can't miss it, it will say buy the book, and go there. And once again, it's a workbook. So you're not going to listen to it on Audible, you're going to actually have to sit down and go through the experience. But that's where you can find it on stiry.com. And it's s t i r y.com.

Zack Arnold

I love it. Well, I have a feeling that this is going to be the very beginning of a much, much longer conversation offline between the two of us who knows, maybe it becomes a part two of a podcast at some point. But at least for this moment, I want to make sure to thank you for the time and all of the value and all the inspiration that you brought to both me and my listeners and my viewers and cannot thank you enough for saying you know what, this 90 minutes of my life is valuable and I'm going to be intentional for this conversation. So cannot thank you enough, Dan.

Dan Davis

Thank you for having me. And thank you for the thoughtful questions and allowing me to be who I am and share what I believe and and I have a recipe resonated with folks and they have some life changing experiences that through this. So thank you for your experience that you provided me today.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai