"Don’t think you have to do it alone. Perspective matters!"
David Anderson Tweet
David Anderson is an accomplished, lifelong entrepreneur, who is the current CEO and founder of Off Madison Ave, industry-leading behavioral marketing, and communications firm headquartered in Tempe, Arizona with national clients across industries including consumer goods, food, tourism, education, franchise businesses, healthcare, sports and wellness, and business services; Lighthouse PE, a SaaS-based software company specializing in mobile marketing tools for customer engagement and retention; a publishing company, and several real estate ventures. Dave recently founded a leadership training and executive team coaching business DWA Leadership and is currently serving as the chair of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), a 15,000+-member international professional organization that unites leaders in 62 countries.
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Table of Contents
Let’s start with a brief introduction first. Introduce yourself to our readers.
David Anderson: My bio has a long list of my professional achievements, but my professional accomplishments do not solely define me. I’ve been married for over 25 years and am a father of two. One of my biggest hobbies is playing golf, and I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the world, collecting passport stamps from over 40 countries. I attended Arizona State University, but once I graduated college and was off my parents’ payroll, I found myself working at a bar. On a whim, I moved to Washington D.C. As would underscore my life and especially my career, I met someone at a party who had political connections and I leveraged it to work in the White House. Life is about what you make of the opportunities presented to you.
Our audience is interested to know about how you got started in the first place. Did you always want to become a CEO or was it something you were led to? Our readers would love to know your story!
David Anderson: My CEO journey is something I was led into as it ran parallel to my entrepreneurial journey. For more than 25 years, I lived the entrepreneurial dream by starting several businesses. Some of those ventures were successful, and others would call them failures!!! When you’re first starting a new business, whatever it looks like (maybe you’re two people working out of your house) what does CEO mean? You hope to grow your company and can envision a future, but in those early days, it’s all about getting off the ground. Then as your company grows, you transform into the CEO role. If you are a quality leader, sometimes you realize that you aren’t the right person anymore. So, my CEO journey began with wanting my entrepreneurial idea to succeed, and as it did, I settled into the CEO role and continued to lend my expertise.
“Selfmade” is a myth. We all received help, no doubt you love to show appreciation to those who supported you when the going got tough, who has been your most important professional inspiration?
David Anderson: ‘Self-made’ is a term mentioned a lot these days, and I don’t know what it means. No one does it alone. Like Jeff Bezos said, “all overnight success takes about 10 years.” And no one is alone along that journey, no matter how long it takes. I believe that success is 100 percent tied to the team around you. This includes not just your team members in business but also your family and friends as they lend their support. I’m inspired and grateful to my partner in business, my wife and children, friends, and people around the world who have been along for the ride and showed their support throughout my journey.
It’s hard to narrow down to one person who has been the most inspirational in my professional life. I’ve taken a little bit of inspiration from many different people: this includes my dad who was a senior executive for a Fortune 25 company, current business leaders, authors, other entrepreneurs in my community, political figures, and famous leaders. I was also inspired working for two Presidents of the United States in the Executive Office of the President. Inspiration can come from anywhere and I have been open to learning from all walks of life.
How did your journey lead you to become a CEO? What difficulties did you face along the way and what did you learn from them?
David Anderson: Each person I met, each decision and chance I took, led me to become a CEO. I became a CEO because I am an entrepreneur and started my own business. I became an entrepreneur because I was fired from my previous job—something that ended up being the best thing in my life. After all, it pushed me to try new things and believe in what was possible. Being an entrepreneur not only means designing a business to encompass the things you want, but prior experience also teaches you what kind of business you don’t want to be.
I’ve achieved success and I’ve experienced failure. I’m a firm believer that you cannot be a leader if you haven’t failed at some point along the way. The number of problems in business is endless, and I’ve dealt with many difficulties along the way. Common problems in business are relying too much on the income percentage coming from one client and then unexpectedly losing them, key staff leaving—especially if they have a great relationship with one or more clients, and the involvement of families.
Banks almost always want personal guarantees when you are beginning a new entrepreneurial journey, so families inadvertently are tied into it. The most important thing business crises teach me is to stay calm (I learned that at the White House). Trust the team around you and be ready to pivot and change with whatever could happen. Some issues taught me to balance my business with a range of clients, work collaboratively as a team on projects and always embrace the support of my family.
Tell us about your company. What does your business do and what are your responsibilities as a CEO?
David Anderson: Off Madison Ave is a Tempe-based, award-winning marketing and communications firm that was started over 20 years ago with a focus on integrated services through a proven behavior-design-based approach. This allows Off Madison Ave to provide compelling solutions engineered to influence how people interact and engage with brands. What does this mean? There is a science behind connecting your target audiences’ desires and motivations to impact their behavior. Once you change their behavior, you can unlock your brand’s potential. Off Madison Ave optimizes the motivations that affect desire, the ability to make a change, and pushes the prompts that propel action to achieve successful outcomes.
My role as CEO provides oversight of the organization and direction with strategy. However, within that title (and just as important) are my roles as chief mentor, motivator, and supporter. I wrote a book, Leader Is Not a Title, that demonstrates this point. Leaders at all levels need something practical that works with their team. They are essentially the head coach, and that means making sure you have a high-performing team that thinks through the issues, not just focusing on the solution.
What does CEO stand for? Beyond the dictionary definition, how would you define it?
David Anderson: The definition of CEO is acknowledged as “the head of an organization or company.” But just because you’re the head of a company doesn’t mean you’re a leader. History is littered with the names of leaders who took down their empires, organizations, companies, and more. So merely having the CEO title doesn’t mean anything.
Leadership requires being more than just the boss. You have to build the right mix of people together for the best results, because people, not titles, will motivate themselves and others to achieve success. And it doesn’t mean avoiding conflict either; When handled correctly, conflict can produce great outcomes. The best CEO will understand these approaches when working with their team and applying practices in a work environment.
When you first became a CEO, how was it different from what you expected? What surprised you?
David Anderson: Many of the lessons I apply now in my role as CEO come from my days of working with two United States Presidents in the White House. Ever notice how news may leak while there’s still no official statement from the President? The messaging is important, but human nature leads people to interpret things differently and that often plays a role in how things are communicated and needs to be crafted carefully. Initially, few expect a CEO to deal with the nuances and different interpretations when one thing is said. However, when you’re the CEO, you have to be overly conscious of what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to. Life is 10 percent of what you say, and 90 percent how you say it.
There are many schools of thought as to what a CEO’s core roles and responsibilities are. Based on your experience, what are the main things a CEO should focus on? Explain and please share examples or stories to illustrate your vision.
David Anderson: All CEOs will agree that achieving business goals is the overall objective, but how you do that is directly attributed to your role as a leader. The old days of the “do as I say” role of CEO is over and today CEOs need to be more directly involved with their teams. There are many different processes of how a company operates but with the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) everyone is working together toward the same goals, and we are never finished. We are always learning, always growing, always helping each other. With EOS, we think through issues before they become problems. Our team is a cohesive unit, dedicated to achieving goals together and it has helped Off Madison Ave become a more focused, functional, and healthy team. CEOs that focus on being a part of their team instead of above it will help make challenges more manageable, avoid burnout, and build a strong organizational culture.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
David Anderson: We are living in unprecedented times. No one saw the COVID-19 pandemic coming, but we’ve weathered unforeseen challenges before with 9/11 and the economic crash of 2008. The COVID-19 pandemic changed how everyone did business, and for Off Madison Ave, it demanded that we reimagine everything, think more long-term, and manage expectations that things will be normal soon. We learned a lot from our clients as they were weathering the same challenges, and our team demonstrated our adaptability and the entrepreneurial spirit to change.
Although we had to quickly adjust to challenges, there have been many positives as well. COVID made the future come faster. What used to be considered impossible like entire companies working from home, became a reality and the productivity generated showed that it worked. Businesses showed that the model can change and demonstrated how we can be more globally connected.
How would you define success? Does it mean generating a certain amount of wealth, gaining a certain level of popularity, or helping a certain number of people?
David Anderson: Success is such an arbitrary term. A million dollars to one person would mean insurmountable stability, whereas it can be a mere pocket change to another. I would define success as the ability to make a difference – is that a difference in your family? In your team? in the community? How can you help the world? It’s more about your impact rather than dollars and cents. Also, how you define your happiness is how you define success. People gain satisfaction from working, some get it from time spent with their family or exploring a new country. We all get satisfaction and happiness from different things and there’s no wrong answer.
Some leadership skills are innate while others can be learned. What leadership skills do you possess innately and what skills have you cultivated over the years as a CEO?
David Anderson: I disagree that leadership is innate because I believe that anyone willing to learn and grow can become a great CEO. Some people are probably better suited to lead organizations, but everyone has the opportunity to be a leader. Innately, I have the drive to be an entrepreneur, but as a leader, I had to learn a lot of skills. I come from the era of the “top-down” mentality and the emotional component in business is something I have had to learn. Again, learning that life is 10 percent of what you say and 90 percent of how you say it, helped me evolve as a better leader and CEO.
How did your role as a CEO help your business overcome challenges caused by the pandemic? Explain with practical examples.
David Anderson: Experience comes into play when dealing with the challenges presented by the pandemic. Through the years of dealing with crises, you can choose to look at them as negative or learn from them. With COVID-19, we are not the only company having to roll with the punches. The best thing I could do for my team was show leadership, keep steadfast and be willing to accept failure. Knowing that I’ve made bad decisions in the past, accepting responsibility, and being willing to adapt and change (rather than double down on them) has proved valuable in the pandemic. Everything is a learning experience and people are so afraid to fail, but failure is just another chance at getting it right.
Do you have any advice for aspiring CEOs and future leaders? What advice would you give a CEO that is just starting on their journey?
David Anderson: My best advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and future CEOs is don’t think you have to do it alone. Perspective matters! When you hear from other CEOs that they have endured similar obstacles, you can learn potential solutions through a collaborative approach.
There are resources available to you! Join an organization where you have an opportunity to be with like-minded leaders and learn through their experiences and history. I currently serve as chair of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), a 15,000-member international professional organization that is the world’s only peer-to-peer network exclusively for entrepreneurs. The organization helps members achieve their full potential through international networking connections, shared business experiences, and collaborative learning. I often feel that EO is one of the best-kept secrets in the entrepreneur community, and I want to make sure other leaders know about the support available to them. So, find your tribe, a fellow entrepreneur or CEO. It doesn’t have to be a lonely journey.
Thank you for sharing some of your knowledge with our readers! They would also like to know, what is one skill that you’ve always wanted to acquire but never really could?
David Anderson: I’ve always aspired to be a good scratch golfer; however, I am a long way from that! Professionally, there are so many things I want to learn and grow my skills. I want to be a better listener and my goal is to listen to people—talk less, hear what they are saying, and seek to understand. I have a heartfelt desire to help others be better leaders and to also be better (and hopefully happier) people.
Before we finish things off, we have one final question for you. If you wrote a book about your life today, what would the title be?
David Anderson: I have already written a book about leadership based on my experiences and knowledge, so thankfully I already have that one out of the way! If I were to write another book, it would be called, “If I Only Knew Then What I Know Now!” I wish I could share the entrepreneurial wisdom I have now with my younger self, and in turn, what I would tell young entrepreneurs starting their path. That wisdom includes knowing that you don’t have to be right all the time, you’re not on this journey alone (and you don’t have to be), it’s ok to fail because having a failure does not mean YOU are a failure, and that being an entrepreneur is a 360-degree journey: business, self, family, and community. You don’t have to sacrifice one for the other long-term.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank David Anderson for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with David Anderson or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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