Jennifer: 0:24

Welcome to another episode of Behind the Dreamers. I'm your host, jennifer Loehding, and we are talking to the achievers, the creators, the magic makers and the dreamers. These are our friends, these are your friends and they are living the extraordinary Well. I am so excited about my guest today. This is going to be so awesome, he says. Coming to business from a career in baseball, he brings an athlete's perspective on leadership and training to his informal mentoring of executives. He's distilled those hard one insights into his bestselling book, the Learn-It-All Leader Mindset Traits and Tools. So you guys are going to get to hear from him in just a few minutes. But before we do that, we have to do a quick few announcements.

Jennifer: 1:01

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Jennifer: 1:34

Want to learn more about Walt and his work? Head on over to WaltMillsProductionsnet and let your content shine. So I'm so excited we got to get our guests on. Now we got all that mouthful out, I get to get my guests on. It's going to be so much fun. So for nearly three let's see three decades Damon Limby has led LearnIt through the ever-changing L&D landscape, gaining insight into what works, how great leaders learn and why LearnIt. All companies outpace their competition. So, damon, welcome to Behind the Dreamers. I am so excited to chat with you today.

Damon: 2:06

Jennifer, thanks for having me here. I'm excited to be here.

Jennifer: 2:08

It's going to be fun. We had to add to get all that whole mouthful out in under like two minutes.

Damon: 2:13

You did it.

Jennifer: 2:15

It's a lot. The intro is always a lot, so so fun, all right. Well, let's talk about this. I know I got to chat with you on Makers Bar already, so we've gotten to kind of know each other a little bit through the podcasting platform and love what you're doing. But for our audience on this show they don't know who you are yet. So let's talk a little bit about LearnIt and give us kind of some insight on what that is and how you're helping your clients.

Damon: 2:34

Sure, so I'm Damon Lembi. I'm the CEO of LearnIt, which is a corporate training company. I live out here in the Bay Area, San Francisco, California, and LearnIt helps organizations with. We do mostly virtual training, some in person, but customers turn to us when they're looking to onboard new managers, maybe people who are going into leadership role for the first time, or they want to build a continuous, you know, a learning culture, or they have specific areas that they need improvement on, like communication or even maybe becoming more efficient with Excel. So we work with their teams and we build out training programs and we help them, you know, reach their goals and outcomes that way. We've been around for quite a while. You mentioned it. I mean close to three decades, 28 years, and it's kind of exciting. I never, never thought I would be here, but you know we've helped upscale close to 1.8 million people.

Jennifer: 3:31

At this point, Wow yeah, and leadership is so important, especially when you're you know, because a lot of times I think we talked about this before in companies like sometimes people just sort of get kind of put in that position, right, like they've never been in a space where they they've had. They've maybe had a little bit minimal leadership or maybe none at all, and now all of a sudden they're leaders and they're like okay, what do I do? Right?

Damon: 3:51

Absolutely. I mean, you could, even, you should even take it a step backwards, you know is that before you put somebody this is for a bigger organization before you put somebody in a leadership position, I think it's important to have a conversation with them to make sure if leadership is the direction that they want to go. You know I work with a lot of. You know I mentor a lot of individuals a lot of times in sales, where you're a top performer in sales and their leader calls up and says hey, you know I want to promote you into a leadership role and that's it's not. It's not for everyone all the time. You know so because, as you know, it's a different set of skills. So that's something to think about. But, yes, if you want to be in leadership and then you need to work on those skills that will help you with that transition.

Jennifer: 4:43

Yeah, now in your right, sales and leadership are very different things and just, you can be great in what you know. Great in sales doesn't equate being great in leadership. I know I've been in sales and you're right, they're not the same, so you got to be equipped for that. So, and that's great. I think what you're doing is awesome and everything's changed too much now. You know, post COVID, like everything's kind of gone to that virtual space now and it's great in some ways because I think you can work more, make great use of your time right and cover more area and be able to assess more. You know, get to reach more people that way.

Damon: 5:12

Absolutely. You know, both for our business, where we can get our get a little bit greater reach, but also for our clients businesses. You know, when we first went remote virtual training at the beginning of the pandemic, one of the nice things about taking classes with LearnIt was it allowed for that social connection. You know there's a lot of isolation back in the day and so this was a way for people to be able to connect and communicate and a lot of times if we do classes you know private classes for just their organization, they can have senior leaders that they've never had access to before sitting in classes with them. So it was a it was a big help and a big change. Now, since the pandemic, I would say about 15% of our business is in person. The majority is still. People have adapted which I'm grateful for to the virtual platform.

Jennifer: 6:07

Yeah, makes things a little bit easier, I'm sure in the end, so a lot easier. Yeah, awesome. I'd love to know, because I again I know you and I talked off, so I know a little bit of your back end story, but obviously you were in baseball and so you bring a lot of. You know the mindset that comes from that. So tell us a little bit about how you got into this learning like, how this came about for you, because you guys been around for a while.

Damon: 6:27

Been around for a while. So my back story is like I said. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. I put a lot of emphasis on playing sports. You know my dream was to be a professional baseball player. I was lucky.

Damon: 6:40

Out of high school I got drafted, actually by the Atlanta Braves and I had a big decision do I continue, go to the minor leagues or go to college? And I chose the college route, and a lot of it, jennifer, was because I really was at Pepperdine University and I really believed in the vision that our coach had. You know, coach Annie Lopez. You know he had the vision like we're a small division, one school, but we're going to win the World Series and here's how we're going to do it. So I got really behind that and went to Pepperdine, ended up getting hurt and left. When I ended up at Arizona State, where I played baseball and you know I was ready to move on to the next stage of my baseball career After my senior year, I didn't get drafted again. So here I was, 22 years old, and I was a little unsure what do I do next? My identity was always as a baseball player and so I wasn't really sure if my skill set was transferable in the next phase of my career. I was lucky.

Damon: 7:40

I come from a family that had a large real estate background and a lot of different businesses, and one was my dad, walt Lemby. I thought about him when you were talking about your sponsor. The photographer named Walter. I love that name. I named my kid Walt so little Wally. So anyways, I took a job as a receptionist at this company called Learnit, just because I wanted to get my feet wet in the business world.

Damon: 8:07

And over the next seven years I kind of worked my way up. I taught classes, got involved with the IT stuff and did sales. And when the CEO for Learnit at the time wasn't working out, I threw my hat in the ring and I presented the board. I said give me a shot. And I explained my experience and my dad was like all right, kid, you got it. And so it just happened to be right around the time that the dot-com was doing really well and I was easy to be a CEO then. And then all of a sudden everything just fell apart and there's just been tremendous learning lessons throughout that journey that I share. I have a book called the Learn it All Leader and I share some of the experiences, the successes and failures that I've learned through Learnit and some of the leadership lessons that I got from playing for three Hall of Fame baseball coaches, which is pretty much how I modeled my leadership style over the years.

Jennifer: 9:06

That's awesome, yeah. So, alana, I'm listening to your story too. It's what I'm taking away from.

Jennifer: 9:11

This is just the idea of it's almost like the other day I interviewed or a few weeks ago I interviewed a gal that I just released and she does sports.

Jennifer: 9:21

She has a podcast where she talks about sports and how to bring it into the conversation, but she worked as an intern on the Diamondbacks and it was to say she came in and worked as an intern and then ended up becoming, I guess, the division head of the department where they were doing all their outreach like their PR work and stuff, and so it's what it made me think of. She kind of got in there and worked her way up through this and then ended up she had a broadcasting, went into PR and now she's doing this whole podcast on talking about sports and how to make it part of your networking game and how you can open up dialogue with it. So the whole idea of just making the opportunity, putting yourself out there right for the opportunity and then taking it and working your way up to this leadership role, yeah, and for you entrepreneurs out there who are starting your own thing.

Damon: 10:10

It really helped me a lot because I was doing all the different. Even if you have a small team, if you're doing all the different facets of the work helping out with accounting, understanding, marketing then you could be more empathetic and you put yourself in those positions and you can relate to the individuals on your team on what they're going through and you can help them that way too.

Jennifer: 10:31

Yeah, I agree with you. What was maybe some of the challenges that? Maybe you can think back in the beginning, when you were working up to this, getting to the CEO position, like what were maybe some of the challenges you had to overcome.

Damon: 10:44

Well, for me, really, one of the first challenges was this was a family business, right, and at the time there's only 15 people working there, but I wanted to prove that I belonged, not that I was just my dad put me in a position. I had to prove that I could roll up my sleeves and contribute. That was a challenge. And then, as time went on, as in any small business, the regular challenges how do you compete with the bigger players, how do you make sure you can cover payroll so there's a lot of challenges that come along the ways, and I think what I've been able to do to the best of my ability is learn from the mistakes you make early on and try not to duplicate those mistakes. Try new things, but also, jennifer, try to surround yourself with great talent.

Damon: 11:42

I'm really fortunate, and the thing that I care most about learn it are the people I've worked with over the years, and as a small organization in the Bay Area, it was really hard to compete with Salesforce, google, facebook for talent, and so I would typically find people who were less experienced but had a lot of potential, bring them on board, knowing that I can only keep them for maybe a couple of years, but it was like a training ground for them, given the opportunity and the tools to try things out, learn, get experience whether it's in sales or marketing or anything and then kind of let them go on their way. So those are some of the challenges that I've experienced, especially trying to capture talent and retain talent at the beginning.

Jennifer: 12:29

Well, and one of the things for our audience it's listening to this. I talked to Damon on Makerspart, so one of the things I took away from that interview was really the talk that we had about putting people in the right places and the culture, which is funny because I talked about core values, because I believe strongly that core values are probably one of the most important parts of a company. Like, if you don't know your core values, how do you run an effective company? But you said something too. I think finding the right people and I think that it gets back to you can teach somebody a skill, but you can't create the culture unless they're part of that culture. They have to be in alignment with those values to create the right culture that you want in your organization and then you can teach them the skills that they need if they're open and willing to learn right.

Damon: 13:12

Absolutely, and it's interesting that you say that because I was thinking about that when you're going through your introduction. Yeah, I always recommend to the clients we work with and ourself is to live by your core values. And the core values shouldn't just be something you stick on the wall and nobody remembers right? So when we're looking to interview people or hire people, a lot of times I believe we can teach you the skills. We could teach you how to make better prospecting calls or teach classes or whatever your role is. But what you can teach is some of those values right, is somebody a lifelong learner? Will they embrace change? Are they going to be stuck in their status quo? Will somebody take accountability? Will you rally around your team? All those things. And we really look at that. We look at that first and if people fit the type of culture that we have, then we could bring them in and help them, up-level them on the skills. I don't know if we talked about this last time, but one of the secrets I don't have any secret sauces, but how we have been able to build great teams over the years are just referral channels. I think everybody a lot of clients, but mostly our employees they know what it's like to work at Learnit and they know the type of environment and culture we have and so when they come across somebody that they think it's a good fit, they'll send them our way and that really helps. I think that that's a great way to build your team is through your network of people who have come through your organization and then from there, what we did talk about is trying to figure out what people's strengths are and then pivot and focus them in their strengths.

Damon: 15:03

I've got a great story in my book about this gentleman named Joseph Patti. He was referred to us by our old HR manager. When I mean old, I mean she didn't work there anymore, she worked there previously and she's like I got this guy, he'd be fantastic. You got to interview him. He came in perfect fit, culture wise.

Damon: 15:22

We started off in sales. He really struggled but instead of just saying hey, this part weighs him, and I sat down and said where do you think you can contribute to at Learnit? That would be really helpful? And he said I studied, I was an actor prior to coming here and I also really enjoy computers and five plus years and Joe's been one of our top performing Microsoft Office instructors pretty much of all time, but as a leader, it's important to listen and get curious and when you have somebody who you think is a good fit for your team, when possible find a position that makes sense for them. And I just think it's easier that than trying to focus on weaknesses, which are sometimes really hard to. It's like pushing a rock up the hill sometimes trying to improve weaknesses.

Jennifer: 16:18

Yeah. So in all of that, what I'm hearing is we're gonna go for let's make sure they're a good fit, let's get make sure they're on board with our values and our culture, and then we can try to. Let's hone in on those strengths and figure out where to place them, in that order is what I'm hearing you say.

Damon: 16:33

Absolutely, especially if you're a small business. If you're a small business and you're bringing people on relatively early in your organization, it's important that they're a fit.

Jennifer: 16:45

Yeah, I agree with you on that too, and I think because I, while you're going through all this in my mind, I'm like it's like the person you have in the office that like you're trying to give them some help on how can we help? You know you'd be better at whatever, like it's kind of like what I used to say in the network space you can teach someone a script, but if their attitude sucks on the phone, it doesn't matter what the script sounds like, because it's never gonna come across appropriately right, and if you know how to do this, you probably aren't even gonna need a script, right? So it really is. It has to be about. They have to be. The values have to align, because if they're growth oriented, then you're gonna be able to adapt and give them ideas and be able to put them in places where they can continue to grow. And if they're not, you're not gonna get anywhere. They're gonna it's gonna get shut down.

Damon: 17:25

So Very simple, regardless of how much experience they have, and especially if they work at some Fortune 100 company and they come in like they got it all figured out. Let me just give you a little tip.

Damon: 17:35

It's probably not gonna work out in your organization if you're growth oriented you know, it's kind of a you know, learn, it been around 28 years, but we try to have a little bit of a startup vibe right. We always wanna continue to iterate and grow and try things differently and if you don't have the mindset to do that, then you just not gonna be a good fit.

Ad: 17:53

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Jennifer: 18:54

Ready to shine brighter than light. Well, and I think that's what I was impressed when we talked the last time. These are a lot of the takeaways I take on. It's interesting because here there's a company I don't know if I shared this with you VerySpace. They do the standing desk. You know the stand-up desk.

Jennifer: 19:07

I visited their office. I know somebody that worked there, so I went there and I walked into the organization. It's a pretty big place and they take over 1-4, and they don't really have offices. They have these, their construction there's like these I don't know what you call them, like these plastic things or whatever. So what I'm saying is they're all in these little groups, community like group, and they don't all work on the same days. They do this, some work some day, some show up this day. But when I walked in I will tell you this when I walked in there, I could tell immediately, when I walked in there, I could just feel the vibe, like I'm like these people like it here. I could just feel that energy when I came in there and I was like this would be a cool place to work. If you're looking for a place to work.

Jennifer: 19:46

Well, what's interesting is I put up a poll, I think the guy that I was there taking a picture. We put a post on LinkedIn and so the CEO of the company and I are following each other on LinkedIn and so every day I see his post and every day he's like praising his people. He's doing all these things and I'm like, okay, I get it. I can see why this guy is a visionary and he's looking at this organization as the whole team. Right, it's the whole. How do we collectively move everybody and make sure everybody's feeling good and being or not I don't say feeling good, but being effective at what they're doing and a place where they feel good?

Damon: 20:20

Yeah, you should have him on your show, if you haven't already.

Jennifer: 20:23

I know I haven't gotten him on yet. I do need to get him on there. He's a great guy. But it just makes me think of that on all these things you're talking about, because I think, culture is important.

Damon: 20:31

Totally. There's two things I heard out of that. I do say so. I've always told people over the years If you're coming into the office and you're like, oh man, this is miserable, I don't want to be here, or, turning on these days to turn on your remote camera, I don't want to be here, either go to your manager or go to me and let's talk about it. Let's see if there's something we can do to. You know, pivot, put you in a new role, or I Look at it as that. Your organization, you're a team more than a family. So there, you know, loyalty is important, of course and for, but that doesn't mean you're stuck here for your whole career. You know there's, there's certain times where, hey, you know, maybe it's time to move on, and if and if you're not excited about what you're doing, then maybe it's time to move on. Now.

Damon: 21:17

The other thing that you mentioned, which I think is really important and I learned this from my baseball coaches and other people Is it, when you have success, celebrate your teams wins, give them the wins. You know, just like that CEO you mentioned, it sound like he's posting things about hey, my team did this, my team did that. You know, I've had great coaches. I've had bad coaches. One of bad coaches that comes to mind. Whatever we are successful, he would take all the credit. You know it was his pitching moves, it was just his strategy. But when things fell apart, you blame it on the team and this guy missed a ground ball. Damon struck out with two guys on whatever it is right, and so those are some experiences that I learned.

Damon: 21:58

Managing leading is when we have success. I want to give it to my team, I want to celebrate their wins, I want to be great gracious and gratitude for them. But if things don't go well, as a leader, you take. You own it. You take it. You know it's your responsibilities. Hey, you know what? I'll take the blame for this. Let's figure it out, let's move on. I think it goes a long way with building the type of culture that that gentleman you were speaking about and hopefully Learn it will always continue to have here.

Jennifer: 22:28

Yeah, that's, that's good advice and, yes, I agree with you on all of that, and there's nothing even Like exciting about a leader that does that. It takes all the credit, because you most of us know that when you're giving credit to your team, they know what, how your team got it like. They didn't get it on their own anyways, because this is a whole team collective effort and you have to have leadership involved. But it when you're I will say those are for me, or which week leaders like it, when they have to do that, take the credit for everything you know.

Damon: 22:52

So, and when you give, when you give credit to your team, they're gonna be out there looking for other ways to make your organization better. They're gonna be coming to you with ideas, they're gonna be giving you feedback. But if you're not, if you're just gonna put yourself in front, then they're gonna be like, well, why am I wasting my time? You know I'll come here, I'll get my paycheck and I'll and I'll move on.

Jennifer: 23:14

Yeah, then you get the quiet quitting right and that's where you and that's what you end up with. So this is all good, damon, I love it. So out of all of this what's been going on you know, the whole thing with learning made the basebook, or what do you feel like has been the biggest takeaway for you, like what's what's been the learn moment here? I'm sure there's several well, I would.

Damon: 23:32

I would say One big one and it's kind of like this theme of my book is, you know, I Say great leaders aren't born, they're not made, they're in the making. You know, and I and it's like I didn't get an Ivy League degree, I didn't, you know, I never thought I'd end up in the position I'm in. But the biggest takeaway for me is that, just like the entrepreneurs, your listeners out there, you can do this. If I can do this, you can do this. You know, and it's through Trials and tribulations, trying things out, making mistakes, not taking yourself too serious, having a great team, you being resilient, I think so that's really I, that's really to me. If I, if I had a find a roll it into one main takeaway. That that's, that's what, what it is really.

Jennifer: 24:18

Yeah, yeah. And it also like having a great team, right like picket, surrounding yourself with good People that are, yeah, in alignment with what you're doing, and I mean there's nothing like being in the crowd with people that are. It's not that you don't want to take, you learn from every. I feel like you learn from everybody that comes into your space, but you don't necessarily want to take the advice from everybody that comes in your space. So be maybe discerning about where you take information.

Damon: 24:44

Right like pick should pick a choose the advice of I think you want to surround yourself with a great team and you want to be aligned on your culture and your values, but you want to have diverse perspectives. You know different ways to look at things and that took me a while, you know. I mean early on in my career. Yeah, I wanted everybody confirmation bias. I wanted everybody to just agree what I had to say. But over the last 10, 15 years I've learned to become more curious and better at listening and it gives people the opportunity to challenge and maybe you know some of my choices are decisions aren't the best way to go about it and if you have people who think differently and want to try different things, then you know you could. You could evolve a lot more that in that way.

Jennifer: 25:28

Yeah, I agree with you on that, I agree, all right, one other question I want to ask you before I ask you some fun ones. I'd love to know how you define and you can do this both for learning and yourself, because I'd love to hear your perspective on both but how you define success for the two.

Damon: 25:43

How I define success for learn, it is that we are having an impact on our customers and our employees. You know, to me you know it may be sounds a little cheesy, but it's really like our vision. My mission or vision here for us is to build better leaders of the future, you know, and that we're that we're helping do that through upskilling people with what we do. And success is also that we create a that's from the customer side the only employee side that we create a psychologically safe, fun environment that's collaborative with teamwork. You know, and it's really I couldn't be doing this, jennifer, after 28 years, if I didn't feel like we had a great team and I enjoyed coming to it all the time.

Damon: 26:30

Success for me is you know, I talked about this beforehand, before we got on I've got two kids. I got a great wife, two kids, a six year old and a two year old. To me, I just want to be able to be the best dad possible, you know, and a good role model, for I lost my dad in 2010 to cancer, but he was a great role model, great idol for me. My mom's awesome she's still alive, but I just want to be that for my kids. You know, and to me, if I'm able to be a great role model and lead by example, then that's success personally.

Jennifer: 27:01

I like it. That's my favorite question, I feel like we all, we all kind of say the same thing. Yes, you did Good job OK.

Jennifer: 27:07

I feel like we all kind of sort of say the same thing but we use just a little bit different words on it. You know what I mean it's really about. I always feel like it's like being able to. It's either like make a difference and what. You kind of said that with your clients, right, and I like that. You said psychologically safe. I'm like that is so good. I have never had anybody say that, but that is so important. Psychologically safe, right, it means you foster difference, you allow people to communicate, say I love it, yeah.

Damon: 27:31

Because I want what I mean. Why do you mean by? That is like I want people to be able to contribute, to come with ideas, and not just Bash them away Like oh, that's dumb.

Ad: 27:40

Safe, you know.

Damon: 27:40

Yeah, yeah, feel safe to you know, very quick story we I was recording something. I have this great little media team, because you know, which has done a great job. We have over 600,000 YouTube followers. One day we're recording something and it was me, I was one that was being interviewed or whatever, and it just didn't record right. And you the a gentleman on my team who's head of the media team called me up and he took ownership of it, you know, and he said I messed up, this is on me, we're going to fix this to make it better. He felt comfortable enough to do that, which I thought was really cool, when he could have just blamed it on the technology or something else, right? So that's what I mean by psychologically safe. Did I, did you know, and then just blast them?

Jennifer: 28:25

Yeah, beat him to the ground. Yeah, well, there's not that that happened where I video recorded. I had to go back to somebody and say we messed it up. You know like we screwed up, we're going to try to fix it. You know what could happen. You know, yeah, and you don't want to go do that, and somebody's like oh my gosh, what did you do Right?

Ad: 28:39

We don't want that. I love it.

Jennifer: 28:41

I love it. But I love what you also said about the family to being, you know, a leader for your boy, your children and all of that. They're boys, right, you have two boys.

Damon: 28:48

Lucy and I have Lucy, who Lucy and I went to see the Lion King's weekend, which was awesome, and I have Walter named after my dad, who's two.

Jennifer: 28:57

I got the Walter. I may have missed. You may have said Lucy. I may have missed that.

Jennifer: 28:59

I did I apologize and my brain is like I'm listening to you all and I'm like I'm having to pull it all in there. So good stuff. But I love what you said about that too, because I do think that is important. I do think that comes down to leadership as well, because, totally Coming from my background, we always said everything is caught more than taught. So like they pick up on everything that you do good and bad, right and then they replay it to you when they get to be teenagers and adults, they let you know everything.

Damon: 29:24

Well, you know I mean Lucy's six, and sometimes maybe I use a little profanity what she's showing, but she catches it every time too, they do and she's very quick to let my wife know daddy said a bad word, you know so.

Jennifer: 29:38

Yeah, yep, they get it, they get it.

Damon: 29:41

So put stuff Like little parents yes, they are.

Jennifer: 29:44

Well, this has been fun. I want to ask you a couple of fun questions because I love this part. I think this is the part where we get to sort of show more authenticity, which Not that we're not doing that through this whole show. I always say this is real talk, and we talk about the good, the bad of you know, being in leadership positions and you know it's obviously more good than bad, but we know there's stuff that goes with it. So, but I do want to ask you some fun questions because I think this is my probably my most favorite part.

Jennifer: 30:07

So I would love to know, aside from your book like yours, because I know you've I'm looking at all your books back there, maybe one or two books that may, I would say, have had a profound effect on you.

Damon: 30:19

So so yeah, a couple. My favorite book of all time, I think, was a book called Losing my Virginity by Richard Branson. Sir Richard Branson, you know I'm a big fan of all his work. I love his book, his Stories and His Style. More recently, the two books that I've been recommending the most to people are Range by David Epstein.

Damon: 30:47

I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's about being more of a generalist than a specialist. You know it's trying new things. A lot of people come to me all the time like I want my kid to be a major league baseball player. He's playing baseball 24 seven. I recommend that book because I really believe that you should. You know you should have a broad perspective of things. And then the other book that I've for anybody who's in sales of any type of sales I really like this book out there called Jolt Effect by Matt Dixon. He's a gentleman who was one of the co-authors of the Challenger sales and Joltifex is very interesting and it's about really understanding how to anticipate objections that customers would have and that 55% of the time when you lose a deal, you lose it to no decisions instead of a competitor. So it's a really fascinating book. So those are my three. Richard Branson, any of his stuff Range. David Epstein and Matt Dixon's book on Joltifex.

Jennifer: 31:48

It's good, I did not know about those. But you know, I always like this question because you can get a whole book list. If you just get to the end of my podcast and get that, you can get an entire book list.

Damon: 31:56

And that's a new bookshelf I have back here.

Jennifer: 32:00

I see all that. Yes, I see it back. It's not gonna be done yet, yeah, that's awesome. All right, I would love to know, since you played baseball, which favorite baseball team.

Damon: 32:07

Oh, just a local team, san Francisco Giants. You know the funny thing is about it is like sure, I like baseball, but I don't even fall in as much as I used to. That was a different part of my life, you know. I still know more than most people. But of course, San Francisco Giants Gotcha.

Jennifer: 32:23

Gotcha. Well, I'm not a big, you know it's funny. I live in Dallas, I'm from Houston. I'm not a big sports fan at all and you know, in Dallas everybody's about the Cowboys. It's like big time here, Okay. So here's funny because I grew up in Houston, I moved in Dallas in 2004. So you know, in the rock or, excuse me the Astros and the Rangers went to play, I was cheering on the Astros and I'm still a rocket span, and so yeah.

Damon: 32:47

I like it. I like the old school Rockets when they had a Kimmel Lodge. I want to imply Drexler and those guys, yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry, no, I was. When I was in Texas recently. I wanted to go to a Texas Rangers baseball playoff game. I just barely missed it. Bruce Bochi was their manager. He won a bunch of World Series with the Giants great leader and sure enough I didn't get to go again. But sure enough the Rangers won the World Series this year.

Jennifer: 33:17

Yep, yep. So I was going to tell you a funny story about the Rockets. So when, back when, like early you know, 90s, when they went to the playoff and they were all in there, well, towards the end, almost about, I think I want to say like 98, 99, I was a Robics instructor and so I taught at a facility out there I can't remember the name, it was like Westside Tennis Club or something, but it was owned by Mattress Mack gallery furniture in Houston and his wife. Well, the Rockets used to train there with Rudy T and the back, and also the women's team was there, the comments, and so I used to see them come in there all the time. When I'd go in there and I'd have all these little, you know, like it was very small Robics class, I'd have these little old ladies come in there that I teach, but I'd always see them in there. So, anyways, but yes, I like.

Damon: 33:58

Who's your favorite? Rocket back from the day Ralph Samson.

Jennifer: 34:05

No, I actually liked I burned Maxwell because he was kind of robbery, because they were kind of, but there was a lot of them. That that's about. That probably was the time that I knew the most players on that team was around that press, he pulled out.

Damon: 34:19

Pulled out those two, not the large one, the easy one, so we're not going to point or one of the.

Jennifer: 34:24

it was one of the playoff. I don't know if it was a night, I think it was a 94. I can't remember. It was one of the playoffs at the end and yeah. Anyways, I don't watch much sports. That's the only time I think I ever paid attention to it. So now if I just go, it's because we got tickets to go somewhere and I'm going to go watch a game and I have to be there to watch it in person.

Damon: 34:39

So I don't watch as much sports Now. I see mostly Paw Patrol or Frozen or you know stuff like that the days. Paw Patrol, that's great I get a chance to catch the Forty Niner's game. I try, but a lot of Paw Patrol, a lot of Frozen.

Jennifer: 34:54

Okay, I'd love to know. Guilty pleasure food, what's like the one thing.

Damon: 34:58

Yeah, well, I mean unfortunately probably too many, but I have to go with one. I'd probably say Pop Tarts.

Ad: 35:04

Pop Tarts.

Jennifer: 35:05

I haven't had that one yet.

Damon: 35:07

How do you not love Pop Tarts?

Jennifer: 35:08

I'm like a sad old love of them. I just don't eat them very often. But my dad loves Pop Tarts. I probably eat them a lot.

Damon: 35:14

No, I don't eat them often, but typically if somebody wants to, you know, kind of tease me or something like my sisters for my birthday will get me like a present, but also like a thing of Pop Tarts you know, you know that I can't really, you know, stay away from if they're around, but I try to keep them not around.

Jennifer: 35:33

Okay, so now I'm going to end with this. Is there anyone flavor that's better than the other in the Pop Tarts?

Damon: 35:39

Oh gosh, I don't know.

Jennifer: 35:40

You know whatever, no, I think you're all good, you just dig in like s'mores, like whatever.

Damon: 35:44

whatever you know, I, you know, whatever I don't know. But okay.

Jennifer: 35:49

well, I must say this if I'm getting a very guilty pleasure, you know that is a guilty pleasure, but if I'm going to eat Pop Tarts, I want the icing on.

Damon: 35:56

I want the icing on, but that part's a given.

Jennifer: 35:58

Yeah, I mean yeah.

Damon: 35:59

I like. I like that yeah.

Jennifer: 36:01

Not going to be like. Not going to be like I'm going to eat the Pop Tarts but we're not going to have the icing. We're going to be. We're going to save a few calories and not have the icing on the Pop Tarts.

Damon: 36:07

You know I did. We're probably talking about Pop Tarts too much, but I'm also fine not toasting them either.

Jennifer: 36:14

Hey, I told you this is the most important part of the conversation, the most important part of the podcast. I will leave it with this about the Pop Tarts. So I actually looked one time to see if there was much difference in the calories between icing and no icing. It's not a whole lot, just so you know.

Damon: 36:28

How about? What's the difference between a Pop Tart and, like, a Celery Stick? Is there a difference? That's probably quite a difference.

Jennifer: 36:34

Otherwise, unless you start, doing Celery Stick with, you know, dressing and everything. This is so fun.

Ad: 36:39

Hey, damon this is very great.

Jennifer: 36:40

I've enjoyed chatting with you and I would say that this, in part, is always fun. But they get to hear it like they know. You love Pop Tarts. Now, but to our audience. Somebody wants to get in touch with you. Maybe they want to learn a little bit more about LearnIt. Maybe they want to pick the book up. Whatever, where do we want to send them?

Damon: 36:54

So the easiest probably best is connect with me on LinkedIn at Damon Lembe, and our company website is LearnItcom L-A-R-N-I-Tcom. If you happen to see a class on there that you like, you can DM me on LinkedIn and I'll give you a code to a free class Anything from emotional intelligence to Excel. And then, finally, my book, the Learn it All Leader, is on Amazon, barnes, noble or anywhere that you get books.

Jennifer: 37:26

Very good, awesome. Well, thank you for jumping on here and doing this next interview like doing another one with me and sharing all your good stuff and your wisdom and all that great stuff. I appreciate your time. It's been fun Well thanks for having me.

Damon: 37:37

I really enjoyed it.

Jennifer: 37:39

Awesome, awesome. If you want to stay up to our audience. Of course, if you enjoy our show, head on over to Apple. You can give us a review over there. Hit the subscribe button on the YouTube so we can keep sharing all these fun stories. And with that, I do want to save what I always say in order to live the extraordinary, I'm going to start. Every start begins with a decision. You guys, take care, be safe, be kind to one another. We will see you next time.