Forward to Better, with Dan Moore – Episode 435 of The Action Catalyst

As he exits his role as Action Catalyst host, Dan Moore shares his wisdom from spending half a century with the same company, helping young people grow, bringing a 150+ year old institution into the modern age, some of the most impactful lessons learned from 5 years in the host chair of The Action Catalyst, the value of wearing emotional blinders, and digging for acres of diamonds.

About Dan:

Dan Moore began his career as a university student running his own business in the Southwestern Advantage summer sales and leadership program. He paid for his tuition at Harvard by selling educational systems to families and building sales teams, all through his undergraduate years. 

Dan was promoted to District Sales Manager with Southwestern Advantage upon graduation. Among other roles within the company, he also served as Vice President of Marketing for many years and was credited with modernizing the company’s sales school, developing its highly regarded product line and helping to launch new businesses within the company. In July of 2007, he was named President, serving in that role until 2023.

He will also be recognizable to Action Catalyst listeners as the show’s host from  2018 to 2023.

Additionally, he has served as a Co-founder and Senior Partner with SBR Consulting, an adjunct faculty member at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Business, and has an active speaking career through Southwestern Speakers. While he has spoken to a variety of business audiences, his favorite audiences are university students across North America and Europe.

In his spare time, he enjoys playing the guitar and piano, and is an avid runner. Since the age of 51, he has completed 21 half-marathons in four countries. Never one to slow down, Dan is now completing his first book.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Adam Outland
Today we’re joined by the one and only Dan Moore, who’s no stranger to listeners here on the Action Catalyst, having hosted the show for the last five years. In addition to his duties here, Dan has served as the longtime President of Southwestern Advantage, a role from which he has recently retired, which frees him up to chat with us today.

Dan Moore
Hey, Adam. Hey, similar jackets on today, buddy. From the waist down. I’m wearing gym shorts.

Adam Outland
That’s the secret. It’s your pant. Well, Dan, it’s super good to see you. Again. It’s a role reversal for what you’re used to, which is typically the person doing the interviewing on the Action Catalyst. And today, we have the opportunity to grill you with the same questions used to grill everybody else with.

Dan Moore
Well, I’m going to start by saying I’m totally guilty, so we can save the trial and save the cross ex.

Adam Outland
Perfect. Perfect. We have a lot to talk about. And Dan, you and I have have a long history of working together compared to people from the outside world were long and today’s tenure of working with someone in the company is about three years, we’ve known each other for about 17. I can probably speak for you can say you’ve probably known people that you’ve worked with for 25, 30 years, maybe more. So is it safe to say you keep up with someone?

Dan Moore
Absolutely true. I actually talked to the person that got me into the business world two weeks ago. So we keep in touch. He interviewed me in January of 1974, when I was a freshman in college. And then also Dave causer, who’s the president of southwestern advantage was in many ways, my first mentor, somebody I sought out for advice at the end of my very first summer. So we’ve been colleagues and friends for nearly just shy of a half a century. So keeping up with these great relationships so important. My own district sales leader, keep in touch with him, the former president of the company, Jerry Hafele, we stay in regular contact, in addition to people like Henry Bedford, the chairman of our board, I’ve known Henry since 1978. So we’re going to continue to stay in contact. I have such respect and admiration for Henry. So there’s no quarter no way in the world, I’m gonna lose that contact.

Adam Outland
Yeah, it’s really amazing. I mean, in any part of history, I think being in one organization for half a century. Like to put it that way, is a feat. I mean, it’s it’s something that’s simply not done often. You know, so many people probably would have questions listening to this podcast about that. But what kept you around?

Dan Moore
I could finally tell you the truth, Adam. I never had enough confidence go through job interviews.

Adam Outland
Didn’t want to put yourself out there, right? Just it’s safer here to stay. I’m sure that’s the truth.

Dan Moore
Well, it’s interesting, because I never even created a resume. When I was in college, I was encouraged to do one. So I remember getting out my old typewriter. People go to the museum and see typewriters. I started typing. And I read back the first word I wrote, which was resume, but I misread it and thought I said, resume, so I just went back to work. Wow. Anyway, in more seriousness, I think what made such a difference in my tenure here is deep, deep conviction to the mission that we have. You know, when I got into the program, as an 18 year old, I was kind of shiny on the outside and pretty messed up on the inside, I was going to Harvard evidently had everything in the world going for me. But inside was a massive insecurities, no real anchors in my life. And I desperately needed some path that I could get on that could restore my self confidence and self image, and be around people that would really bring out the best in me. But when I met my student manager, and then my district sales leader, there’s just something about those gentlemen and the other student leaders in the program. And then I get to know the first year is a similar striving to be the best that we could possibly be. And so the program was massively important to me that first summer got me really back on track back feeling good about myself, I got back to college and immediately forgot every lesson of the summer, it took less than 24 hours for me to feel like I just lost it all. So I needed a second dose for sure, which was the next summer. And with the guidance of the district sales leader and other people, I came back and began to build a team build an organization began to really fulfill these habits. So in many ways, because the program was such a massive impact on me, I felt if this could be for me, it could work for somebody else. And partly because my own upbringing was you we should make the world better when we leave it than we found it. I said, I could spend an awful lot of years trying to find the best way to help the world. Or I could find that focus on what I’ve got going right now and help the world from right here. So that deep, deep conviction to the mission, first of all, personally experiencing the benefits second, seeing so many other people grow, and then having the opportunity to develop other skills within the company. There was there was no need to think about doing anything else. That said I was distracted a fair amount of my 20s as many people are by something that looks cooler and better and more lucrative. But each time with great guidance from my most important life advisor That’s my wife Maria. She would constantly say but what drives you what moves you what motivates you in the mornings? What gets you out of bed, what makes you feel good about your work, and always came back to the same thing seeing young people grow and develop than before? I’m slightly older them become leaders in their own right, and live good, productive, happy lives. That’s what drives me. And she said, can you accomplish that here? And I said, Of course, if you’re like I am right now she said, the why would you even think about going into warehouse? If he’s like, Well, that really makes sense to me, honey. So she’s always been really good at grounding me, telling me what to deal with asking the right questions so that I could come to that conclusion. So I guess it’s a combination of external influences and internal conviction. And at some point, I just finally said, Who am I kidding, this is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is what this is what I am meant to do. And I quit looking right, quit looking left and just focus on looking forward.

Adam Outland
Such a good answer. I think in passing, we’ve talked a little bit about you growing up in New Mexico, right?

Dan Moore
That’s right, Los Alamos, my hometown.

Adam Outland
And if I remember right, you said your dad was a engineer of some type.

Dan Moore
My dad was a mathematical statistician. He had a PhD in that subject, and was one of the early guys working on computer programming at the lab. They’re at Los Alamos National Laboratory. So he started working there in 1953, when a computer would fill, basically an auditorium or a gymnasium, and would run almost as fast as a hand calculator will run now. So he was very involved in that and Los Alamos National Lab at that time was primarily in nuclear weapons development, making weapons of mass destruction provided the living for our family. And my dad, very principled man kind of made the decision after roughly 20 years, that that’s not how he wanted his whole life to be spent. So he reengineered himself and found other work still in the public sector, he always was a public sector employee, that decision to leave what was very steady, secure, safe work, to follow a principle definitely had an impact on me. Seattle, Los Alamos is really important part of my upbringing, it’s there that a friend got me into the speech and debate team, which was a funny story in its own right. Because at the time I was playing basketball, now you’re tall fell out, um, I’m not very tall. But I was the same height when I was 12. So I was a pretty good basketball player and, and my buddy said, he had to join the speech team. And I said, Why don’t I want to do that? He said, there’s two reasons. First of all, there’s twice as many girls as there are guys on the team. And second, I think you could learn a lot be good at it. So I went to the first meeting. And sure enough, it was a great experience. So we started getting involved in competitive speaking and debating. The girl I was dating at the time, got me into choir and got me into theater. And so in my career, the benefits of being exposed to public speaking, and theatrical performance, have had a huge, huge impact. So the NBA lost a real star. But those upbringings experiences in Los Angeles were super, super helpful to me, mild speech teacher, Paul black, probably is gonna listen to this episode, he’s still living at the age of 90, something that’s incredible. And a number of us have been fundraising for renaming part of the auditorium for Ross and Lola Ramsey, who are our drama teachers. So these impacts from way back have definitely paid forward and hopefully helping other people too.

Adam Outland
So your dad is this mathematician that’s obviously brilliant enough to be hired to work on these things. And typically, one doesn’t think deep mathematical labor for a career as being correlative to high level communication skills, which is a stereotype. But I’m thinking in my head, how did Dan not end up being Bill Gates and computer whiz or mathematician versus public speaking and personal development? Similar your dad different than your dad? What was it that drove you kind of a more of a, I guess, kind of a liberal arts direction.

Dan Moore
You know, gene pools are not circular, nor are they a uniform depth. So not all those mathematical genes passed on to me, they skipped me and got to my son instead, I couldn’t do math, but it was kicking and screaming. So it’s not not a natural attribute of my own. But my dad started off as a journalism major and had an amazing sense of humor. He could really spin a story, he could write brilliantly. So that part did stick with me the writing skills, being able to be as good storyteller, making people laugh. These are things that I’m sure got from him. My mother as well, who is an artist. So these impacts from our parents hit us in different ways. So Bill Gates was actually a classmate of mine, although we never met. And I’ve always admired what he accomplished out of his dorm room. At the same time, I was trying to accomplish something else out of my dorm room.

Adam Outland
How incredible is that? You guys were the same class.

Dan Moore
Well he never actually graduated, he was little bit busy building his small enterprise called Microsoft.

Adam Outland
And you just couldn’t manage to recruit him to our company.

Dan Moore
I don’t think we ever met. I doubt we ever crossed paths.

Adam Outland
But had he, it could have even changed his future too.

Dan Moore
Might have done well.

Adam Outland
So you came to Southwestern Advantage. And over the course of your career, you ended up taking over the role eventually as president and so 2007 to today, what are some ways that you feel like you’ve really shaped the company for the future or some of the changes that you feel like have occurred inside Southwestern Advantage since your your tenure as President?

Dan Moore
Well, as president of the company, I was privileged to work with Henry Bedford. He was chairman and CEO, and he was my direct boss for a number of years in there. And Henry is a real visionary, he can take a look at where we are in the business and forecast something around the corner that nobody else can even see to the corner. And he quickly identified that we need to be in the online sphere, as well as selling hardcover print books. And then we need to have a recurring revenue model to benefit everybody, not only the company, but the students and the consumers, because this recurring online revenue can be updated regularly, so they’re getting better and better product all the time. And so a big part of my role is to help facilitate that mission. And help make sure that those things happened in a really good way than I’ve often said. And I believe this, that Henry may have saved the company by developing this model and being willing to invest and put that energy into it. So I felt like a big part of my role as President was to help facilitate the mission. And that means being a great link between what the students do and what the sales leaders do, and what the overall corporate philosophy and structure is about in the old Hippocratic Oath, the first thing that doctors pledge is do no harm. And I became president, the company, one of my great concerns was, can I even do this thing? This is a legacy of more than 100 years. And it was a really scary thought. So I said, if I just stay true to the mission, and stay focused on doing what’s right for young people, I want to do any harm. And then I want to make it better by continuing to amplify the notion of doing the right thing. So our values, our focus, doing the right thing, staying true to our mission had been things that I’ve tried my very, very best to maintain and help other people see that as well. You know, soon after I became President, we had the major housing crash in 2008 2009. Whole country was in recession, it was it was not a fun time to be in any kind of business. And I remember giving a presentation at our great recruiters seminar theme basically was if there’s going to be a recession, we’re just not going to participate. And here’s why we’re not. And it was a lot of our background, our history, our theme, and feel like that may have been a moment when I when I stepped up to say, Let’s lean into our values, let’s lean into what’s always made us successful. Let’s don’t worry about externalities. Let’s focus on who we are, where we’ve been, and carry that forward. Over the years, I’ve developed a presentation that I do for young people that I call life one on one, and live one on one is basically, if you’re going to choose a paid lifetime partner, how do you go about doing that? So through the course of that, I felt like it was not dictating who to who to marry, or who to spend your time with. But instead learn to ask the right questions. Everybody wants to find the answers. But I really think if we ask the right questions, the answers ultimately reveal themselves. So I feel like that’s been a presentation that hopefully is continued to be impactful and make a difference. When I’ve traveled campuses, both in Europe, and in the US, the whole focus is to be a spokesperson of our mission, which is developing young people. So the presentations that I give are generally not at all about selling generally not at all about recruiting, but more about understanding how our brains work, how our minds work, how our hearts work, so that we can pull together a statement for ourselves, we want to move forward in life. I’ve been blessed with a tremendous team of people in the office, they’ll tell you that I’m definitely not the best best manager because I’m generally not a present manager usually gone someplace. But they’ve carried on just brilliantly making sure that the backbone and the infrastructure of the company continue to grow, regardless of the obstacles, and I can’t give them enough credit. For what happened during the pandemic years, when we had to really retool, when we face the very real prospect, we weren’t going to be able to sell anything door to door, we really stepped up to innovate in such good ways, and to really figure out how we could sell if we couldn’t go door to door for so we were able to do that. But that’s been a permanent change. It’s implemented well, we’ve impacted what we’ve done our company, with our European people unable to come due to the travel ban, we had to get really creative there. So I was very involved in reopening the UK so that they’d have a place that they could knock and sell books retain that group of people for the future. If we believe anything that we try to teach about overcoming obstacles, developing themselves through persevering through getting through every possible setback, and we’d have been very hypocritical, we hadn’t found a way to make it happen. In fact, a big part of our whole motto as a company is find a way anybody can find an excuse, but it takes a personal real character to find a way over around under right through any obstacle that stands in their path. So finding a way was such an important theme. So getting through those adversities is a matter of of character. And it’s a matter of belief. And it’s a matter of teamwork, because nobody can do that stuff alone. There’s an old saying that what’s hardest about our businesses, what’s best about it, don’t take it personally be the best person you can be that there’s certain things in life, they can control, they should really control those other things they should influence, but there’s a huge number of things they just need to accept for now. It’s what we call the CIA fn philosophy, control what you can influence it you can accept what you need to for now, and just roll forward. So I guess it’s been an activist role in certain ways. It’s been a passing of the baton role in other ways, is trying to make sure that our mission is first and foremost and people’s hearts and minds and the legacy of the past and the responsibility feature have always weighed strongly on me.

Adam Outland
Yeah, well, I think you’ve done a wonderful job. I think, in particular, what a lot of people would say. And just in conversations with a lot of my peers, when your name comes up, there’s always a warmth to it, because what you’ve done such a wonderful job of is representing a lot of those values that we stand for as a company. And we’ve made a tremendous impact on gosh, probably 50 to 100,000 young people, which is really incredible. What would you say you hope the point is that they remember the principle that they remember most?

Dan Moore
I would say that one thing is to develop a strong set of values. And to live those values focused on making the world a little bit better than then you found it, that it’s pretty easy to be an accumulator. It’s pretty easy to be a taker, especially if you have a lot of talent and you’re persuasive. But can a person be an accumulator, and then a giver at the same time, making the world a better place, not just financially, but in terms of impact. That’s always what I would encourage people to do. Probably a second lesson is don’t neglect the acres of diamonds that are around you. You may be familiar with that story. For those listeners that don’t know that that’s told by Russell Conwell, who was the founder of Temple University that a very poor hardscrabble farmer in South Africa was finally fed up with farming, and he said, I want to find riches, this is never going to work for me. So he sold his farm and went on questing for diamonds, and ended up panelists and passed away totally broke, whoever it bought his farm was one day working down by the stream and noticed something shiny in the water and pulled it out. And it was an immense, uncut, almost perfectly developed diamond. And that led to finding other diamonds and how the diamonds and other diamonds it became one of the most prosperous, successful diamond mines in the entire world. And so the person that gave it up literally gave him acres of diamonds that were in his backyard in pursuit of something somewhere else. And I’ve always felt like if we can concentrate on what we have at hand, if a couple of things are in place, if the opportunity is a fair one, if it’s honest, if it’s decent, if it’s fair, to the people we’re surrounded with have good values, then why look elsewhere? Let’s develop the acres of diamonds that are right here with us. Those would be a couple of lessons have the right values, and don’t spend all your time diverting attention and diffusing your energies. Look around, or the acres of diamonds around you right now. Can you bloom where you’re planted? That’s a big one.

Adam Outland
Yeah, that cliche of the pasture is always greener on the other side is kind of a similar story, right?

Dan Moore
That just reminded me one of my dad’s favorite quotes, he had a sign in his office walls. It says the grass is brown on both sides of the fence.

Adam Outland
Well, you know, just a quick transition from this; with you as the host of The Action Catalyst, you’ve learned a lot from having interviews with other people. And I’m curious, in all the interviews that you’ve had since taking on the host role in 2018, what’s one that really stands out to you as most memorable or something that you gained as an insight?

Dan Moore
Well, there’s been a number of specific insights. But if you don’t mind, I’m gonna try to generalize it a little bit. Sure. I developed over time as Cisco using basically the same five questions in my interviews. And one of the questions is, what do you do when you hit a brick wall? And the other one is, what do you do and if you have some of these cars, so completely discouraged, they don’t know where to turn. And it’s amazing how similar the responses were. Almost everybody, when they hit a brick wall, said, Well, the first thing you got to do is realize you’ve hit a brick wall, just acknowledge it. But don’t make it a big thing. Just say, Okay, so I’m temporarily have a setback, this isn’t going the way I wanted it to. But it doesn’t mean it can’t eventually in a different way. And to be creative, step back, breathe, and think and go at it again. Because nobody ever says when you hit a brick wall, give up. Never had a single guest say that. Every one of them said it’s normal part, if you weren’t experiencing those, then you wouldn’t be doing anything remarkable. So that was immensely encouraging, that whenever we hit this unexpected stuff, giving up is the only option that makes no sense at all, keeping on does if we think use our brains. Yeah, the huge inspiration that I remember getting was with the question, what would you say to a person that is so discouraged? And they look at the hand they’ve been dealt? They don’t have any face cards, let alone any aces? What would you say to that person. And it’s amazing how many of them said I would encourage them to dig into their life and find one or two things, they feel great about themselves. And then second, lean into people around them that can remind them of their capabilities. And third, do something, do something successful. It doesn’t matter how big it is just do one thing successful, feel better about yourself and get into motion? Matt Ross often says motivation is a myth. Momentum is what makes the difference. And so when people have lost their momentum, getting started again, can take a lot of effort. But when they do that, and just take that next positive step, great things, in fact, can occur.

Adam Outland
Really well said and I know we’re almost on time, but I did want to ask you, I guess one last thing, which is you also have the question of asking about pivot points. But I’m kind of curious if you’ve had to isolate maybe one major pivot point in your professional career, a challenging moment, a pivot point that you’ve encountered that that made all the difference? What do you think it would be?

Dan Moore
There have been a number of madams From really early on, realizing the impact that a sales manager can have on a young person in the sales managers have an awesome responsibility to be the right kind of leader. Really, really important. So that’s that’s a principle there. When I was asked to become a district sales manager, and I didn’t think I was qualified or capable of doing it, the sales director nodded and said, Yeah, you can do this, you can do this, we’ll help you get through it. He also said, it’s important to make a long term commitment. Because somewhere along the line, you’re going to have a really tough year. And if you’re not committed, you’re going to want to leave. And I said, Well, I’m never going to have a tough year, that the very next year, I had my worst year ever. So his wisdom came through. Then when he became president of the company in 1980. He asked me if I would join him as sort of a head of projects didn’t really have a title that made any sense. I was called manager marketing development, I still don’t know what that even means. And he just said, I think you can do this.

Adam Outland
That’s a beautiful one, as a tenured and seasoned and assaulted beard, individual that you are today, what advice might you give to a 20 year 21 year old and more, if you sat down with him knowing everything that you know about your life and all the wisdom that you have now, what would be one, one little bit of advice, you might share your your 21 year old self?

Dan Moore
I would say put the correct kind of emotional blinders on. So that we stay focused on what’s ahead and not get too distracted by naysayers not get too distracted by alternative ways of doing things, because there’s always going to be a million alternatives. And I see so many people fritter away their energy pursuing all those instead of concentrating on the one right in front of them. Stay the course stay focused, again, if the people you work with are honest, if the mission is noble, if it’s pure, if it has value to the world, those are not easy things to find. In fact, my successor, Dave causer, used to say, you know, there must be a million ways to make a million dollars, but I only know of a couple of them. And they usually involve building value within the company you’re in. And so that’s what I’m focused on. So there’s there’s a lot to that just everybody’s chasing the next shiny thing. Instead of saying, wait a minute, what can I create out of what I have right here?

Adam Outland
Yeah, acres of diamonds. Way to circle back to that point. Well, Dan, it’s been a pleasure. You’ve made an incredible impact. Appreciate your time as the Action Catalyst host and appreciate you giving me massive giant shoes to try and fill with my small feet.

Dan Moore
Adam, you’re very kind. It’s fun to have a role reversal in this process. I appreciate it. I’ll have PTSD after this thinking about what I should have said.