Understanding Behavioral Types: The Key to Better Communication and Connection with Dr. Robert Rhom
Discover how to get in tune with the behaviors around you and unlock impactful ways of connecting on a deeper level. By understanding each individual's unique character traits, your team will collaborate more effectively while simultaneously creating an atmosphere based on appreciation. Ultimately, this path can lead to increased revenue via better sales presentations tailored for each client - making everyone feel happier and connected both inside & outside the workplace. Tune into today’s episode for a deep dive into strategies that will help you polish your communication and get closer to people on both professional and personal levels.
In This Episode, You Will Learn About:
How a person does what they do
Adapting your communication style to different behaviors
The art of connecting with people
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About our guest:
Dr. Robert A. Rohm is a world-class communicator, keynote speaker, DISC training expert who entertains and enlightens audiences with his keen insight into relationships and personal development. His message applies well for business and personal use. As a best selling author, Dr Rohm has written or co-written over twenty books
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Perception on Different Personalities
In 1985, which seems like a long time ago, I was in graduate school and I had children, family and everything. My oldest daughter, Rachel, was 12 going on 13. I had been a school teacher, I'd been a school principal, I had been a youth director. I'd worked with a lot of young people and I could kind of see when someone was kind of getting off track or off course, and my oldest daughter was just so difficult. I loved her. I mean, I love all, I have four daughters and she's, her name's Rachel. And, but boy, she was just difficult. She was so hard and I didn't know why, the other three, the mother, three daughters were easy, but she was difficult.
A friend of mine was passing through town. I was living in Dallas, Texas at the time, and after dinner we were sitting on the back porch and he called me off guard. He said, “What's wrong with you?” And I said, “Well, what do you mean?” He said, “Well, you're just not yourself. I know you, you're usually lighthearted and fun and happy and upbeat. You didn't say two words during dinner. What? You looked like you're depressed. What's wrong?” I said, “It's Rachel.” He said, “what has she done?” I said, “I don't know.” You know, I tell people, have you ever had a problem? But you didn't know what your problem was? Boy, that's your big problem. And he said, “Well, what has she done?” And I said, “You know what? It's hard to describe. She's not rebellious. She's not mean.” And I remember saying these words, she's just difficult. He looked at me and he said, have you ever given her a personality profile assessment? He said that so fast. I didn't even know what he said. I said, “A what?” He said,”A personality profile assessment.”
There's an old Chinese proverb that says, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And boy, I was ready and there was the teacher on my back porch, and he said, have you ever given her personality profile assessment? I said, “I don't know what that is.” He said, “There are assessments that you can give to people to understand their personality, how they're wired, what motivates them, what are their needs, and drive.” I'd never heard of that here. I was working on a PhD, and I had never even heard of that. He said,”Most of the time they're really popular in business, but they're starting to spread to other areas, family, schools, churches, businesses, et cetera.”
Listen, I'd have tried anything. If he had said, I have a bottle of snake oil, I'd have said I'd buy it. So Rachel, we already finished dinner. She's next door playing basketball, and we called, I called her home. She came over and my friend gave her this assessment. She went back to play, which took about 15 minutes. He scored it and he said, “Wow, she's a real high D.” I had never heard that before. I thought, what does that mean? He said, “D, you know, dogmatic, domineering, driving, demanding, determined, decisive, dictatorial, a doer. He started explaining my daughter to me. I had spent 12 years with her. He spent 12 minutes with her. He understood her better than I did for two hours. He coached me on how to understand how to talk to my daughter and how to work with, with her differently. Everything started changing. So that's a little bit of the background of how it, I woke up because I had a real deep desire. I mean, I love my girls. I have four daughters and I wanna be a good dad. I want them to grow up to be healthy and have a great life. And fortunately that has turned out to be the case, but it all started with Rachel in 1985 and to this day I tell people, Rachel, my oldest daughter, is the most important person who's ever been in my life because she drove me into the area of teaching and training people this very information that I did not know.
What a beautiful story of understanding how when we take the time to understand the personalities of the people that are in our lives, whether it's in our personal or professional life, how it can help us connect on a deeper level and build a beautiful relationship.
I have five year old twins, and the most common question that I get asked is, Well, are they different or are they similar? And I always respond by saying, “They couldn't be more different.” They're two different kids that just happen to be bored at the same time, and I know that we're gonna go into this a little bit deeper when understanding the different personalities, but I have one personality, one of my boys, loves to be on stage. He's like the center of attention. He loves attention. He's very fueling, and oftentimes he'll say, mommy, I'm gonna go behind the curtain and you are going to announce me and say, “Introducing 1, 2, 3 Jameson.” And he'll come out and he'll start pretending to line dance. And then I have my other son who is very analytical, very much so detailed. He asks questions. He'll sit there and lay on the floor, and he'll watch the wheels turn on a Lego car, and he'll analyze it and he'll build. They couldn't be different. I know that there's obviously an approach to parenting, in how we wanna have consistency and fairness. But at the same time, it's also flexing for each individual child. And that same applies in business as well.
Identifying Different Personality Types
Will you share with us, you know, I've talked a little bit about the styles of personality, and I know just based off of what I've shared, you could probably identify which personality type that each of them are, but we share with us the different personality types.
You've just summarized so many great points, one of which is I have personally worked with over a hundred sets of twins, a hundred and so far, I have not found one set of twins to have the same personality style it is across the board, which leads me to believe that personality is inborn. I mean, they're your children and they're twins, and of course they came from the same gene pool, and yet they're totally different.
Your personality is just what I would call a God-given gift to help you function in life. Some people are more outgoing, others, the more reserved one's, not right or wrong or good or bad.The other thing I wanna really emphasize, we are not talking about labeling people. We're not talking about pigeonholing people, categorizing people or putting people in a box. What we're trying to do is focus on understanding people. See, the most foolish thing you could ever do at try would be to try to raise both of those boys the same way, because they're different. Your outgoing child is the one you want to put in the spotlight and let him sparkle and shine.The reserved one, it would be cruel, it would be harsh to try to make him be in the spotlight, to be like his brother when he's more reserved, he's more analytical. He wants to think things through. One wants to talk things out, the other one wants to think things through.
So you see, you have to parent children and, if you're married, we've said opposites attract, unfortunately opposites attack. And we have to help people to understand that you married someone very different than you. Don't beat that up. Don't destroy it. Learn how to tap into it.
Earlier I said my oldest daughter, she's the one who led me inadvertently to my life career. I've traveled all over the world. I've spoken on six continents. I've been everywhere except Antarctica. I don't know if what I teach works in Antarctica, but it works everywhere else. The beautiful thing about it is that what you're trying to, is understand how to connect with someone better.
And again, to answer your question there really there's just two things people always say, “Well, how am I supposed to know what someone else's personality is?” Well, it first of all, It takes a little bit of effort. It takes a little bit of time. So in our training we teach people, here's the grid. The first place you look is: are they more outgoing or are they more reserved? We call that your pace or your motor, your one of your son's motors sounds like this “run, run.” That's the way he's. Your other son's motor sounds like this, “Hmm,” It's a lot more steady. By the way, you also mentioned something and, I wanna kind of go out on a limb, but I believe, I mean, I'm 73 years old, I have five college degrees. I've been around the world many, many times. I do not think it's possible to treat everyone fair. I think, as a matter of fact, I'll go so far as to say the most unfair thing a person could ever do is to treat everyone the same way. See one of your children I would treat with, Hey, come here. How are you doing? It's good to see you. Let me see you do that little line dance again. You like to do the other one? I would say hello. It's so good to see you. I would tone it down and I would try to feel out as I interacted with him and spoke softly to him. What's going on in your world these days? Do you have anything? You mentioned a car, maybe Legos or something like that. Do you have anything like that you could show me? Because I want to connect with them differently in order to have a good relationship and it worked. I mean, listen, by understanding some people are more outgoing. Here's what you need to know.
Cut to the chase, get to the bottom line.
Quit circling and land.
If they're more reserved, slow down.
Ask, is this a good time for us to visit? Would you like me to make an appointment? Would I come back later? You see, you don't wanna surprise them. You wanna slow it down.
So that's the first and then the second one, and there are only two. That's the beautiful thing about this. The first one's your pace, outgoing, reserved. The second one is your priority. Are they more task oriented or are they more people oriented? We also call this your compass. A compass points you in the right direction, helps you to find your path. Someone who's more people oriented likes to laugh, talk and interact to build relationships.
Someone who's more task oriented is focused on details, data, analysis. I say, you know, I try to keep the cookies on the bottom shelf for everybody, that's just my style. The right side of life is what we call the relationship side. The left side of life is what we call the task side. In this model that we teach, someone was talking to me the other day and they said something, I mean, I would've paid money for this. They said, so what you're saying is the right side, the people side is where we connect, but the left side, the task side is where we correct and I thought, what? That's so good. You see, we have to make corrections. Okay, I need to do this better. I need to start earlier.
The left side's all about tasks and making. When you fly, the pilots make mid-course corrections the whole trip. Why? There might be bad weather, there might be wind, there might be other planes. There might be some unusual circumstances. You gotta make corrections in a marriage. You gotta make corrections in a business, you gotta make corrections. But if you don't understand, that's just half of it. The other half of the equation is I'm working with a person, therefore I have to connect. And I connect by saying thank you, I really appreciate that. Think about a pilot on the plane. “Ladies and gentlemen, we're so glad you're with us today. We've been told there's a little rough air ahead. We're gonna ask you if you would buckle up your seatbelts. We're gonna go up maybe another thousand feet to see if we can pass it”. He's making corrections, but he's keeping the connection by not scaring everyone on the plane. By telling us what's going on. I'm telling you, this is powerful stuff. It really, really is.
I agree with you a hundred percent because when I was leading a team, taking the time to understand each individual person on my team and how you can understand their personality type and use it as a strength in their different roles.
So I had one person who was more of the steadiness. They liked to bring everybody together. They were the cheerleader. So her title among the team was, the hype cheerleader. So when it came to planning region meetings, when it came to planning events within our team, she took the lead on creating the theme, making it fun, bringing everybody together. She took the time to ensure that everyone felt appreciated, valued, recognized, she was very caring. And then I had somebody else on my team, very analytical, very detailed, very focused on tasks, and her strength was analyzing Excel spreadsheets, analyzing her territory and her business, and identifying the areas of opportunity to grow her business. And then she would teach that back to our team. And then there was another person on my team who loved, who thrived on training and development and teaching. And so she loved to be on stage and would captivate a room and teach them how to grow their business. Because a lot of the organization that I worked for talked a lot about marketing and business development.
Understanding each person on my team and their personality style not only helped with applying their strengths and the different roles that they were in, the different projects that they took lead on, it helped with the communication amongst me and the individual, our team, as well as the connection. And taking that a step further and understanding their personality, and what are the different ways that they feel valued in ensuring that I was communicating it in that way. Whether it was a gift, whether it was words of affirmation, or whether it was recognizing them. You talk about maybe that introvert or that extrovert. I knew if somebody with words of affirmation and they were more of an extrovert, I might send an email to the entire team recognizing. But somebody that was a little bit more, as an introvert, I might send them in an individual email and recognize them. So I see so much value in understanding the personality types through communication.
Four R’s in Understanding People
What you're just talking about, and I wanna be very kind and gracious, but there's not, there are very few people who will take the time to understand what you're talking about right now. Because most of us, we're busy. We have a lot of things to do, and our attitude is, we don't say it, but we look at people and we think, why can't you be normal like me? Or, if you could be more like me, you'd be a lot better off. Or I've heard this, you know, if I could just make you to be more like me, you'd be a lot happier. And the truth of the matter is that may sound good, but it doesn't work.
What I've discovered, and I just give a few little tidbits here. I call these my four Rs.
The dominant type, the strong-willed, dogmatic dominator, like my oldest daughter, Rachel, their need is results. They're always thinking, how does this work? What's the bottom line? Where's the beef? Show me the bacon. That's just the way they're wired. They're results oriented, and if you're not focused on results with them, well, you're not interested. You're of no use to them. You will not connect with them. They have the need to have results. And if you are saying, listen, if I'm working with a results oriented person and I say, “You know, we just need to get the bottom line and make this happen.” Internally, they think I like this guy because I'm now connecting with them on their needs.
The inspiring type, the one who's more like you and maybe a lot like me, their need is recognition. When you say something like, to your child, it sounds like you're one of your sons is an I type personality, well give him recognition. “Oh, man, that was so great. I loved what you did. You did a great job on that. Gimme five. Let's go. Let's get in the car and go to the Dairy Queen. We're gonna celebrate tonight.” That's what they need recognition. But again, that's only one of the personalities. One needs results, one need recognition.
Tird, the supportive type they need relationship. They need, “Thank you so much. I am so proud of you. Come here. Let me give you a hug. Oh my goodness. I appreciate you so much. You are so thoughtful.” You see that connection, that makes them feel good. It gives them the sensation that they're valued, that they're appreciated. Why? Because you're touching the spot inside of them that has a need. And when you say “Thank you, you are a special person in my life.” And I am so grateful my wife has this.
You know, I gotta tell you a quick story. I hurt my wife in the morning, when I hear her moving around, I'll say, and she's this supportive type I'll say, “Do I hear the pitter patter of the feet I love?” She just laughs and giggles. She loves that. Okay, so I do this so many times. The other morning I heard her and I thought, you know, every day I say the same thing. She's probably sick of it by now. She's probably just so over my good morning and does that “do I hear the pitter patter of the feet I love?” So I said, “Hey, how are you doing? How'd you sleep last night?” She said, “Hey, where's the pitter patter of the feet I love?” I thought I said, “I say that every morning.” She said, “keep it up.” And you know what, that's because it touched a need and the need's always there.
And then the fourth type, the cautious type that sounds like you, one of your sons may be that way because they're very analytical and they're very detail oriented, what wants to proofread Xerox copies kind of thing, the cautious type. They have a strong, strong need. The “r” word, to be right. They don't like making mistakes. If you say the worst thing you could say to them, that was wrong. You don't know what you're doing that crushes them. It'd be better to say, “Okay, let's take a look at this to see how we could work on this to get it right.” I so appreciate you wanting to do this correctly. I really value the detail and the thought you put into it.
Listen, everybody who's listening to this today, probably members Jim Collins' book from a few years ago, Good to Great. I can sum up the whole book for you in just one thought. He said, get the right people on the bus and get the people on the bus in the right seats on the bus. Now that's a great concept to which my response would be, do you know how to do that? See, it's a true concept. I worked with Arizona Diamondbacks for five years and helped them win the World Series. They gave me a World Series ring that I still wear today. We got the right people on the team and then the right team, people on the team, in the right positions, and then taught them how to understand each other's personality. One of my favorite quarterbacks in the NFL was Dan Marino with the Miami Dolphins. Just a great quarterback. But if you had put him at Linebacker, on the defensive team, he would've been cut. They wouldn't even have kept him on the team. Why? That's not what he was good at. They let him sparkle and shine because he was a quarterback, put him on the offense and he set NFL records.
Again, it's not trying to find the perfect person, but find a person who has certain gifts, talents, and abilities, and then let them run with them. Let them sparkle and shine in an area that they're good at. See, I mentioned earlier, the cautious type. They really, really, really want to be right. There is nothing inside of me that has to be right. I study, I teach, I train. If I make a mistake, I say, “Sorry, let, let me, let me fix that.” But it's not, I'm not gonna leave, lose two seconds of sleep. Boy, a sea type doesn't think that way at all.
I coach one of the largest. Cybersecurity companies in the world. They oversee cybersecurity for the United States government. I mean, this is a big deal. And the top 17 people, 16 of them, are strong task-oriented, ex-military personnel. I've been working with them for o for over two years. You know what, the biggest thing I had to teach them to do was to get along with each. They're all ready to go to the mat and fight over anything and everything. What I told them? You're killing prophets. You want results and you want to be right. May I tell you something? You need to learn how to build relationships because customers like to do business with people they like. Someone jokingly said the three secrets, this is so good. The three secrets to success in business. Number one, your customer must like you. Number two, you need to be good at what you do. And number three, your customer must like you. I love saying that.
The Key to Building Better Relationships with People
Because it is very true, especially in sales. I spent my career in sales and it was very important that the customer likes you and how you earn their trust. They see value in working with you. It is very much so about the customer, not so much about you. And what I heard you talk about was two specific topics. One of them is ensuring that the right people are in the right role.
So I think of my spouse and I, my husband is a VP of operations for an organization. He loves logistics. He loves analyzing what's working, what's not working within a business. He will go into the details. He's a very conscientious type of personality. And then you've got me who. A speaker who does speaking in training and development programs for organizations, we couldn't be on the more opposite scale of personalities. Even when we're communicating, I know that any time that I'm giving him information, I've gotta go into great detail. I also anticipate that he's always gonna ask me three questions in various ways, and I get frustrated cause I'm like, I'm also a dominant as my secondary and so I always wanna get to the point, what are the results? Ask me the question first, then go into the details later. And so I think about when it comes, when I was a hiring manager, I would look at each of the roles within the organization and ensuring that the right people are in the right role because so often if somebody is not performing well, we just say they're not a good employee, but that couldn't be further the from the truth. Maybe they're just not in the right role where they get to thrive.
That is so true. I've got a friend, her name is Cynthia, she's a trainer, and Cynthia was telling me, she said, my husband and I went to see the movie, the Titanic. And you know, that was 15, 20 years ago. And she said after the movie, my husband started asking me questions, and he was just very analytical and started asking questions and she said, I started laughing. And he said, what's so funny? And she said, well, first of all, I didn't know there was gonna be a quiz about the movie afterwards, or I would've studied more carefully. And she said, look, the movie was about a big ship. It went out, it hit an iceberg and sunk, that's what I saw. That's the way she's wired. That's what the movie was about. And a lot of people died, unfortunately. Her husband wanted to know when did it happen? Was there anything, why did other ships not come soon enough? Wasn't someone, could they find out? Was there not a way they could have warned him? I mean, he was all into details, data and information. You know what? See, a couple who understands that, would say, the wife would say to her analytical husband, “You know, that's really, really thoughtful. I guess we can look some of that up. She would enter his world and he could say to her, “Wow, that's really funny that you just saw the big picture, and it is really true. You just summed the whole movie up in one, one thought.” See, that's where we value each other. And the truth of the matter is the more we understand each, the more we can help each other.
But let me say this real quickly too, and I feel real compelled to say this. For people out there, I hope they're enjoying this. I hope they're getting a lot out of this. But here's what I wanna say, it takes a little bit of time and effort and energy to learn this. I mean, you can learn how to fly, but it takes a little bit of time and effort and energy. You don't just read a book and hop in a jet and fly it, you can learn how to do open heart surgery.You can learn to be a dentist. You can learn how to use a computer. The vice president of my company can take a computer apart and put it back together. I can't even find screws on the computer. I mean, he knows how to do this stuff. Okay.
The thing that's interesting, if you are willing to spend a little bit of time studying, getting some reading, book training, and learning this, it will make all the difference. Like I said before, I'm so blessed. I have spoken to millions and millions of people. People have asked me, why have we never heard of you? Well, I just got a few clients and they keep me so busy. The beautiful thing is, you've already touched on it. If people like you, they'll do business with you. I wanna say this humbly, but gratefully, I have more business than I can keep up. That's why we've trained over 2000 people using our training materials so they can use them in their businesses and companies. Because I don't have time to do this for everybody in the world, but it is without a doubt the most important information. And I love it because it's simple enough to understand and practical enough to apply. I hope your audience today, and I also know you are poised to become one of our consultants as well, and we're looking forward to having you on board. You are going to be great because you love people.
I have seen firsthand the benefits of taking the time to understand personalities and training and development, and it's what led me into the role that I'm at now in what I do, because I have taken trainings on personality insights, insight color, Myers Briggs, crucial conversations. I've been very blessed to be exposed to a lot of training and development over the years, and I know firsthand what's led to my success in leading a team to number one in the nation when I was in sales. And I also see, when I'm doing training and development for organizations and leading leadership programs, the first thing that I do is we implement these personality assessments and we talk about communication. And it's great to hear that they'll come back for a next training session and they'll say, “Gosh, Danielle, that was so valuable. I can see how I'm able to communicate and flex my style of communication to support the different members on my team. And I've noticed that it's helped with team building and collaboration and communication and connection. So I've been able to see firsthand. The results of where this can be, this training can be beneficial.
Well, you're exactly right. I had one of my consultants sent me an email the other day and he said, “I'm getting ready to do a training.” He said, “do you have a simple explanation of what we're trying to do in training? Just the big idea. What's the big idea?” He's been through our training, he's consultant. He was just a little nervous. He said, “Could you just give it to me in a capsule illustration or story. And I said “Yes, Chris, I certainly can.” And I sent him an email. I said, suppose and this is a oversimplification, but suppose I could speak fluent English and fluent Spanish. Suppose I was fluent in both languages. And I walk up to you in the grocery store and I say, excuse me, where, where's the ketchup? And you look at me, you're working in the grocery store, you're stocking items, and you say, “No, abla Ingles,’ and I know that that means I don't speak English” And I say, “Oh, La Siento Muto, which is, I'm sorry.” And I say, “Que Pasa, what's happening?” And I switch languages and start speaking their language because, they don't speak my language. Now, that's an oversimplification, but in some regards it's not. And here's why, if I'm speaking to a D, I need to switch my language to, “Get to the bottom line, Pal. I got stuff to do.” If I'm talking to an I, I need to, “Hey, good to see you. Where'd you get that shirt? That is the coolest shirt.” If I'm talking to an S, “Thank you so much. I hear the pitter pattern of the feet. I love to my wife.” And then if I'm speaking to a C,you know,”You said some things that are really important. If we could go over those and I have a couple of questions. I just wanna make sure I understood what you're talking about.” See what I'm doing? I'm not trying, people say, “Oh, that sounds like you're trying to manipulate.” No, no, no. Manipulate means I'm trying to trick you into doing something that will hurt. I'm trying to adjust me so I can do something that will help you. That's not manipulation. You know what that's called? Understanding.
I'll go so far as to say this too, and because I'm married and my mother was a woman. My wife's a woman. I have four daughters. My dog's a female. I pretty much understand women. Here's something that I've developed over the years, and I'm gonna throw this out and see what you think. If a man says to a woman, if a man says to his wife, if a husband says to his wife, “Sweetheart, I really love you.” That's good, that's good, but that could mean a lot of different things. That could mean, will you fix me some dinner? That could mean, will you rub my back? I don't know where I really love you is leading. Okay? However, if a man says, “Sweetheart, I really understand you, now, and I want to tell you how I understand you. And here's how I understand you. Like if we're role-playing here. If I were married to you, I would say, Danielle, let me explain to you how I understand you. You are happy, you're fun, you're lighthearted, really love people. You don't like conflict, you like results and want us to all get along and I so value what you bring into our relationship. I really understand you. I've said to this in training programs, “Guys, if you say to your woman, I understand you, and then you proceed to tell her how you understand her and you get it right, here's what she's gonna think. He loves me.” Isn't that amazing? That is so powerful and I just, you know, I could do coaching with guys all day long. Learn your woman's personality so you can adapt to connect with her because she will believe you love her if you understand her. I think I'll understanding, and it's in business too, and if I'm working with you and I understand you and we connect as far as getting a job done, we're gonna enjoy what I read where over 50% of people in the workforce don't like the people they're working with, and they don't even like their job. That's another whole topic that we could cover another time about how to find the job you really, really love. How to get your dream job. I've been doing this over 30 years and can help a person find, what are you good at? What are you wired for?
I do think there's a lot of value when I'm working with clients on finding their dream job. Again, we go into a personality assessment and the more that you understand, Yourself. It helps gain clarity on the type of roles that you want to apply to, the type of roles that you're gonna thrive in, the ways that you can utilize your strengths to be a high performer and be engaged within the role that you're in. I just see so much value and in business and in your personal life when you take the time to understand not only your personality, but the personality of the people around you. It creates a level of connection. Deeper than you could ever imagine.
You know, you're so right. All my life growing up. Quick story. I wanted to be a dentist. My hero in my small town of Griffin, Georgia was Dr. Henry Gold. He was a dentist, he was my dentist. He was married to a beautiful woman, had three kids, had a swimming pool in his backyard, had a 1956 White Thunderbird with a tire on the back. He had zoysia grass in his yard, zoysia grass is like walking on carpet. I just wanted to be Dr. Gold, and I'll never forget after I graduated from high school, I went to talk to him and I said, “How do you become a dentist?” He looked at me, he said, “Robert, you don't wanna do this.” I don't even know how he knew this. He looked at me, he said, “This isn't cut out for you. You're smart enough to do it, but you'll be trapped in this office all day long doing the same thing day in and day out. You're a runner and a gunner. You're a wheeler and a dealer.” He knew my personality, but he had been my dentist all my life. He said, “You're fun and happy. Go into business with your dad.” My dad was a furniture dealer. He said, “Y'all will travel all over the world. You'll make a fortune. Don't get yourself trapped where you have to do the same thing every day. That's not you.” Well, first of all, it broke my heart. But second of all, I literally thank God for Dr. Henry Gold because thanks to him, I think I'm doing what I was wired to do. I could have been a dentist. And you know what's funny? A few years ago I was the keynote speaker at the AAO, the American Association of Orthodontist. I told them that story and I said, would y'all raise your hand if you had let me be an honorary dentist? Just for today, and they all raised their hand and clapped. So I feel like I got to be a dentist anyway, at least for one day. And back when I was a school principal for eight years, I did pull a lot of teeth. Most of them were first graders or kindergartners. Their teeth were falling out anyway, so I have that in my resume that I'm a fake dentist, but I only pulled teeth that were already falling out for little kids. Life is great. We can enjoy what we're doing. We can connect with people. We can be happily married. We can be happy in our vocation. We can be great parents, we can be different makers if we'll take the time to learn personality information.
