Dave

Dec 31 2025

Just How Vulnerable?

Is 2026 going to be The Year of Vulnerability? If so, we probably need to set some ground rules.

When someone is “in the soup,” they are in trouble. Trouble of some sort, trouble that may or may not be with a capital “T;” You may or may not want or need to know exactly what they’re going through, but you do need to at least be aware that they…are going through it.

The idiom goes way back to earlier times — I saw it mentioned as I rewatch the show Deadwood — and I have heard it quite a few times this year, in a variety of instances. In each case, I didn’t ask for details, just knew that I needed to show a little compassion.

So, if you are currently “In The Soup,” I see you.

Levels of Vulnerability

Let’s talk, first, about the job search world. No industry seems to be immune to cutbacks, layoffs, job losses; the rise of not just “AI” but the “AI is gonna take your job” phrase adds nothing but anxiety. There’s a real chance that you know a few people “In The Soup.”

If you spend any time at all on LinkedIn — oh, I’m there A LOT — you’ll see one debate among job searchers, hiring managers, and everyone in between: do you use the dreaded “Green Circle?”

You can use a Green Circle to telegraph to the world that you are “Open to Work.” To some, it’s important: You have a lot to offer an employer, and they need to know that you can help fill a need of theirs.

To others, it’s too vulnerable by half.

Here Again, Your Mileage May Vary

Advice for the jobless — or ANYONE going through any significant life change — is everywhere. Apply to all the jobs! Only apply to those that are a really good fit! Only apply if you have someone on the inside! And so on, and so forth.

The challenge for YOU, Dear Reader: understand just how vulnerable you want to be. Can you deal with all of the advice? Do you want help from well-meaning strangers?

Maybe Quiet Confidence Is ‘The Way’

Here’s the thing: EVERYONE is in some sort of soup. Is it lower-case “soup” or “THE SOUP ” in ALL CAPS AND BOLD ITALICS?

We’re all human, we can’t avoid the realities of life; challenges will always find us. Some people may get more than they can apparently handle, some may seem to skate by. But everyone is dealing with some sort of soup.

The Crisis Communicator in All of Us

I worked at a place a decade or so ago where we dealt with our share of crises; most of them were out of the public eye. (Part of my job was to KEEP THEM OUT OF THE PUBLIC EYE.) On my last day, as I left for greener pastures, one of my colleagues said “wow, you always seemed cool under pressure when everything was out of control.” (Yes, that old saw about men receiving compliments so infrequently that they remember them always…it’s true.)

But I also had to do the “chameleon” thing while there: couldn’t tell everyone everything that was going on, lest it jeopardize my long-term prospects.

Vulnerability could lead to victimhood if you take it too far. You could get taken advantage of. And so on.

Advice, Then, For 2026

I write this post having just celebrated a birthday. (Yes, I realize I don’t look THAT old. Thank you.) I’ve dealt with my share of soup — my favorite story is how, a few years ago, I had “16-and-a-half inches of my colon removed” and how I asked to have the piece of colon freeze-dried so I can wear it around my neck as a symbol of my vanquished opponent; that request was denied — and anyone who has spouses or kids or pets knows that various soups, stews, and chowders surround you 24/7.

You may have had more of your colon removed, or may have had a worse problem befall you.

OR you may have had a really crappy job loss and it may have been way too long since you’ve had a job that matched your skills and abilities.

And you can tease this out in any other aspect of life: We’re all In The Soup.

Share as you see fit. Or don’t share at all. Quietly ping a friend and let them know they are on your mind. Hop on a call with an old friend; or, even better, do the IRL thing as often as you can.

Make it a wonderful 2026.

Dec 30 2025

The Best Long-Form Videos of 2025

As I plan for 2026, one of the things I want to do is conduct more long-form interviews on YouTube.

As a result, I’ve spent much of the year — and especially the last three months — watching a ton of long-form interviews. I’ve got a few favorite interviewers: folks who put together a combination of interview subjects and their own ability to ask questions (and to let the guests talk).

So, while I plot my own next steps, allow me to share some of the best videos I’ve watched during 2025. (And there are two bonuses at the end: a couple good interviews that I conducted.) Here goes:

Triggernometry Interviews Richard Miniter

I’ve gone from “hey these guys are pretty good” to “OMG, ANOTHER VIDEO? I HAVE TO STOP EVERYTHING AND WATCH.” Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin know what they’re doing when they interview someone. So I have three of their chats on this list…

This first one was actually crazy memorable for me; I was shocked that a couple British folks wanted to talk with Richard about America.

The interview is a discussion of how America became…America. Big fun.

It’s great, I’ve watched it at least twice all the way through.

Triggernometry Interviews Jonathan Wilson

The subject, “The Real History of Football.” This is fun and *weird*, IMHO. As opposed to a discussion of American Football, this analysis of how football became “FOOTBALL” is really something.

It also just dropped within the past couple days, proving that sometimes they have a “run, don’t walk” subject. A propos as we enter a World Cup year.

Triggernometry Interviews Dr. Peter Attia

Dr. Peter Attia’s “Outlive” sits on my nightstand. It’s because of his work that I’ve tried to incorporate a combination of exercise, diet, and genetic predispositions — I just learned I’m A LOT MORE Italian than I had originally been told; I grew up being told I’m 0% Italian, so 20% is quite a lot more — to my own health journey.

I’m also now closer to 60 than I am to 50; so I’m hopeful that I can lean more on the part of the family that lived into its 80s (Mom just turned 80) than on the part of the family where the men die in their 60s (Grandpa was 61, Dad lived to 65). This is going to take a combination of…exercise — which Dr. Attia champions throughout his work — and diet; perhaps a few other medications can help me to ward off bad health.

Jordan Peterson Interviews Scott Adams

This becomes even better under the sober light of day: Jordan and Scott have both had some significant health challenges this year, so it is even more illuminating.

Chris Williamson Interviews Peter Zeihan

With the title of “The New World Order Is Here,” we get to listen to Peter Zeihan as he waxes poetic about the state of the world.

It’s all about demographics: and China’s demographics — and those of Russia and South Korea, too — are not good.

Chris Williamson Interviews Dave Ramsey

Big fans of both. But it’s real cool to watch a long-form interviewer (Chris) talk to someone who is used to five-to-ten-minute calls (Dave) over and over.

Dave Van de Walle (that’s me!) Interviews Stephen Barrigar

I interviewed Stephen three times in 2025, but this one was my favorite; partly because of the wide-eyed innocence we both had. Neither of us could have predicted how much impact the Trump tariffs would have had on Canadian politics — Stephen went so far as to say that Pierre Poilievre would be the next prime minister, and I didn’t dispute that assertion — but here we are.

Worth a watch to see just how wrong we both were.

Dave Van de Walle Interviews Jennifer Brown

Jennifer is a fun interview; the fact that she’s in Minnesota and, as I write this, news of possible widespread Somali fraud is making the rounds makes it all the more interesting and timely.

Also, the low number of views is a testament to me as a marketer, not her as an interview subject. SO WATCH, WILL YA???

See you in 2026. (And don’t forget to Like and Subscribe over at The Vandy Program.)

Dec 29 2025

Systems Over Goals; And New Year’s Resolutions

I’ve followed the work of Scott Adams for years. Decades, actually; as I just found this calendar in a box of stuff I’ve kept.

Flipping through it is actually quite illuminating, as 2000 marked the start of a six-year run at a large insurance brokerage (and human capital consultant) that you’ve heard of. And it’s inside the calendar that I’m finding a ton of evidence to one of Scott’s key messages: “Systems Over Goals.”

Creating the System

My time at Aon started in the human capital consulting arm, then known as Aon Consulting. For a young-ish guy like me, it was a tremendous opportunity: I had the chance to build a system that could best be described as “Marketing Communications.” It was also a system that had somewhat stagnated under my predecessor, and it needed a combination of a clear mandate and some good old fashioned hard work.

And, looking back at my calendar — which looked less like a journal and more like a combination of Post-It notes and birthday reminders and appointments and out-of-town trip summaries — I can see just how effective our “system” was.

Explaining Myself Further

One of the challenges of Systems Thinking vs. Goals Thinking is figuring out why you are building the system in the first place. I mean, it sounds counter-intuitive: you need to know the direction you’re headed and you have to have a general idea of what you’re trying to achieve. BUT…

To use our example, we were trying, as my then-boss was saying, to be “on the shelf of the mind” when companies — specifically, their HR leaders — were looking for an employee benefits consultant. (Back then, pre-ACA, “health and welfare” consulting was our bread-and-butter, with 401(k) consulting and pension actuarial work coming in second; HR outsourcing, a distant third, would take up a large portion of future revenues as the organization’s priorities shifted.)

To do this, we could have come up with any number of goals, but those would have had to change a couple times, at least, while we built the system.

In this case, the system needed to include a few things:

An understanding of the issues that drive buyer behavior
A sense of who in our company could speak to these issues; i.e. “thought leaders”
A full mapping of the products and services that we had in the pipeline that could help clients and prospects
And a cadence of messages — news releases, product brochures, speaking opportunities — airdropped throughout the calendar year.

We Did Pretty Well

I looked back at another Post-It that tells me that our little team actually produced 15 news releases that year; it was a variety that zig-zagged between product announcements and thought leadership pieces tied to a key piece of research that we conducted.

The news releases weren’t all, of course; and none of this was done in a vacuum. The company had a research arm in Ann Arbor, Michigan — the long-since shuttered “Loyalty Institute” — and their research was centered around what kept employees committed to their employer and what employee benefits and HR practices were (and weren’t) drivers of workforce commitment.

So we had research reports to share, and we had brochures that told our prospects how we could help them.

And we also had a bit of a chip on our shoulder; as an underdog, we were acting like a challenger brand. We were fifth- or sixth-largest in the market at the time.

Systems Are Better Than New Year’s Resolutions

There’s a point to this post: I didn’t see any New Year’s Resolutions — I normally don’t do them — and I didn’t see any goals, either.

I did see, however, the beginnings of a System.

The System for you and me today will of course be WAY DIFFERENT than the System I helped to build in 2000. So much has changed no matter the industry.

But my advice for you is to build that System for 2026:

What PROCESSES are you good at creating, or following?
What SKILLS can you use in order to build…A team? A business? An audience?
What TALENTS do you need a little help with?
What are the MARKETS where you can best find success?

You might find that you have a combination of ideas and you may be able to create a System that can set you up for success.

Go get ’em!

Dec 28 2025

What Is ‘Price’s Law’?

This post originally appeared on Dave’s Substack in March 2024. It has been lightly edited and updated.

If you’ve been anywhere around business or business books or hustle culture or anything related to GSD (“Getting Stuff Done”) at work, you’ve heard of the Pareto Principle.

The 80/20 Rule.

80 percent of [THING] will come from 20 percent of [GROUP]. Simple, really: if you sell something, 80 percent of sales will come from 20 percent of your customers. If you take a category — like, for instance, music — you’ll find that 20 percent of the artists produce 80 percent of the songs that actually get listened to.

For a while, this was canon in business and you couldn’t go into a work meeting without trying to use that to sound smart. “Boss, why don’t we fire 80 percent of our clients so we can just sell to the 20 percent that we spend all our time with?”

This ignores…well…EVERYTHING about whatever business you’re in, but points scored for simplification!

Introducing Price’s Law

THE ECONOMY is in weird shape; Note that your job might be at risk if you aren’t deemed to be productive. However you slice that at work — look busy! be at your desk! — at some point you’re gonna start looking around and asking the question: Am I Getting Stuff Done?

Price’s Law is “stupid simple:”

The square root of the number of people in any enterprise will produce 50% of the results.

The credit goes to Derek J. de Solla Price for coming up with this scientific analysis.

Let’s apply this to your (hypothetical) team at work and figure out what that means for you:

If it’s a small team, it of course makes sense: in a team of 4, the square root of 4 — which is 2 — will do half the work. (I was told there would be no math.)

But in a bigger team Price’s law starts to have…bigger impact.

Raising Your Hand At Work

In a (hypothetical) team of 50, let’s call the square root 7. 7 People are getting stuff done, the other 43 are working at roughly 50% capacity. In a sales-driven organization, that doesn’t bode well for the other 43.

Now start to look around: are you one of the 7?

Probably pretty easy to answer that question in a lot of organizations. You have a little success on a project and then you have another project assigned to you. You open the door to sell something to a company and all of a sudden that company asks you to help them solve a different problem. You write a piece for the company blog and it clicks and then management realizes you should do more blog writing.

You are pretty obviously one of the 7.

Making Sure Your Department Is Productive, Too

Your job as “one of the 7” is pretty important when management starts to look to…well, how do we say this…cut the dead weight. These are sometimes the “get me the low performers” discussions, but they, too, are sometimes the “which departments can we do without?” discussions.

Yeah, that’s right. If marketing isn’t producing, marketing can easily be cut. Well, let me edit that: If marketing isn’t seen to be producing, marketing can easily be cut.

Your goal, then, as one of the 7 is to make sure that your department works on — and ONLY on — high-impact projects. If 20 of the other 43 are assigned to the Penske File and all they’re doing is moving the contents to an accordion-style file folder, that’s a low-impact project. If the other 23 are working on monthly TPS reports that don’t go anywhere, that’s a low-impact project.

Your Book of Business

It’s an insurance industry thing: the Book of Business. Or your portfolio. You should have a sense at all times of what that means for your personal situation: what are the clients you’re bringing in and/or responsible for? What are the projects that you are working on and how are they tied to the business and its bottom line?

What is your department doing on those days when they’re not planning or navel-gazing or working on Penske Files and TPS reports?

Your Book of Business should actually be yours. You should be able to discern where you have the most impact, and, if they show you the door, you should be able to say “hey, I was one of the 7 and here’s how.”

Or you should be able to say “here’s what the other 43 were working on, it added no value, I helped with the things over here that did add value, and I’m indispensable.”

You can thank Mr. Price.

Dec 26 2025

The Best Musical Performances from The Late Show with David Letterman

We’re talking music on the blog today. Give this Gen-Xer a chance to get nostalgic for a bit, please.

There is no question in my mind that David Letterman was loads better than his competition at getting the best musical guests on his show. No question. Most of this was because of Paul Shaffer, the music director, bandleader, and man with his finger on the pulse of the musical zeitgeist.

In honor of Boxing Day, I thought I’d share some of my favorite musical guest moments from the show’s 23-year history.

This post has nothing to do with Boxing Day. But I’m posting some videos anyway.

Pearl Jam, “Hail, Hail” (1996)

Dave chose to do a show “Sponsor Free.” Though, if memory serves, there were still sponsored segments somewhere within the show, while it didn’t break for commercial. How they sold that to the affiliates? I don’t know.

Bloc Party, “Banquet” (2004)

Something about the way this one gets rolling. I’m a big fan of drums — so, too, was Dave; see below — and Matt Tong is on fire at the start of this song.

Phoenix, “1901” (2009)

French band Phoenix has been rather successful in the Indie and Alternative space during its career — they pretty much held a concert at the Closing Ceremony for the Paris Olympics — and they made their US network television debut in 2009 on the show.

Come for the all-time-banger. Stay for the mic drop.

Mark Ronson + The Business Intl., “Bang Bang Bang” (2010)

Any musical project that involves Q-Tip gets my attention.

The National, “Afraid of Everyone” (2010)

I gotta admit, this might be my all-time favorite Letterman performance. Maybe it’s the song itself — chilling, haunting; stunning baritone from Matt Berninger — maybe it’s Dave’s reaction at the end.

The fact that this song served as my eldest’s introduction to The National makes me happy.

Special shout out to “The Audio Perv,” who had a knack for uploading these recording in as high quality as you’d find anywhere…long before the shows themselves understood the power of YouTube.

Neil Peart, “Drum Solo” (2011)

Only Dave could have “Drum Solo Week” and pull it off.

And only Neil Peart could perform the finale of Drum Solo Week. (RIP Neil.)

Future Islands, “Seasons (Waiting For You)” (2014)

And then there’s a performance that the show’s team thought was one of its most memorable.

Most of the viewers were likely left with a big dose of… What. Was. That?

If this served as your introduction to Future Islands, you were darn fortunate. Lead singer Samuel Herring knows what he’s doing in front of an audience.

Folks, thanks for helping me keep my content streak going. This is DAY 26. It’s been a December to Remember.

Be sure to check out my Substack and sign up for The Saturday List while you’re here; that’s where I’ll see ya tomorrow.