It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

David Eisen, VP and Editor-in-Chief, HOTELS Magazine, Interviewed by Rachel Humphrey

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David shares his strategies for effective panel moderating, how he uses LinkedIn to share his take on industry news, and what he's curious about right now. He discusses overcoming self doubt and developing new skills. He talks about why reading is important and his thoughts on formal education versus hands on experience to begin a career in hospitality.

Rachel Humphrey:

I am Rachel Humphrey with It's Personal Stories, a hospitality podcast, and I am excited to be joined on the show today by a longtime friend of mine, David Eisen, the VP and Editor in Chief of Hotels Magazine. David, welcome to the program.

David Eisen:

Rachel, it's so great to be with you this morning. When you first asked me to do this, I said to myself, why would she want me on her show? So I really do appreciate you inviting me to talk to you this morning.

Rachel Humphrey:

In the next 30 minutes, we're going to be able to share with everybody why I wanted you to be on the show and they're going to get to see and hear some great advice. Um, I will tell you, I get very excited anytime I interview journalists because you have interviewed me a lot. And so now to turn those tables and for me to have an opportunity to put you in the hot seat, I'm not going to lie is a little bit of, um, evil fun for me. So cool. Jump right in and get started. Anyone who listens to the show regularly knows that one of the things I love about the industry is how really different everybody's paths to leadership can be. Yet you can chart your own path and all end up at the top of an incredible industry. So tell us a little bit about you and if there were any pivotal moments you think that really shaped where you ended up today.

David Eisen:

Yeah, well, thank you again for allowing me to share some of that. Even though I have a youthful glow about me, I'm, I'm getting older now. So it's like, I have to look back on everything. That's where I started and where I am now, my journey. I would say I'll, I'll make it as like as brief as I can. I grew up in the DC area. Uh, my father, um, was a lawyer, an attorney DC government bubbly work for the FC. And basically when I grew up, um, my, my, my kind of idea for, for a career was, Oh, I'm going to be what my dad was. Yeah. I'm going to be a lawyer, right? You look at your, your father and say, I'm going to, I want to aspire to be what he's doing, but I really didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do. Obviously, when I was, I was younger and I went to, I went ended up going to, uh, to college in Ohio, which was great to get out of like, just the, the, the East Coast mentality of things. I went to a school called Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, which I, yeah. Wish I just adored, loved going to school there and met, you meet some people. It's a very kind of interesting because I grew up in a very kind of diverse background in terms of where I went to school, which was great. And when you go to a school in Ohio, it's a lot of people who look like you, but at the same time, it was such a great kind of there. And when I was there, I was a political science major. I was like, okay, that seems like a, a, one of those majors that you doesn't really mean much, but it could be the path to going to law school after that, which was in the back of my mind when I was there. There probably should have gone to class a lot more. And I think I scheduled to 8 a. m. classes, which is never a good thing when you're in college as anyone could probably attest to. And basically, so I went to school there, graduated, went back to the D. C. area. Maryland is where I grew up. And I was like, Oh, what am I going to do now? Cause I really didn't know. And this is one of my actual lessons to any of those young people living out there, always good to get it maybe right out of college, get an internship, do something like that, where you can really jump into something, but we'd have to worry so much about financial. Success right then, but it's really good. I think it's just a tangent is really look at internships and into things that you really might want to do. So, basically, what happened with me was like, I did everything else. I think that I grew up with. I moved to New York City with no money, no place to live kind of thing. I was sleeping on a buddy of mine's bed in the East village of New York back in the early. This is like 2000 when in the East village. I don't know about the East village. It's really. and affluent, but back then, not so much. So it was a, an interesting time to be there. And I was basically still not exactly knew what I wanted to do, but again, I was like, Oh, maybe law school. And I was like 20 at the time. So I ended up working at a very prestigious law firm called Curbath, Swain Moore. I was a paralegal. And when you're like 20 years old, I was a paralegal at one of these blue chip kind of law firms, which Curbath was at the time, or still is. You make like really good money doing basically slave work, meaning like you're like making copies or Doing just drudgery work for lawyers, right? But at that time it was cool because you had money in your pocket to spend. And when you're a 20 year old and 20 something in New York, it's fantastic. So I did that for a few years, but I was starting to think really, what do I want to do with my life? And I think by working at a law firm, I realized I don't want to be a lawyer. It really wasn't what I think I wanted to do at the time, but I always loved writing. I just, I think I, it was more so writing, but also just, I love to read. I love to be, I think I was definitely more. Artistic than I was maybe artistic more over like arithmetic or whether the left side, right side of the brain, that wasn't really my thing. I wasn't someone who was, I was, I lean more towards going to see movies and things like that. I wasn't really in a finance or anything like that. So that's where I was. And I was lucky enough. I got a job in 2000, I guess it was right after 9, 11, somewhere around that. I got a job at the Associated Press working on the sports desk, which for me, and that's another hobby of mine. I love sports. Right? So, like, I was working at the Associated Press on the sports desk, basically as a low level, like, copy editor, working with the writers there. And this was, like, back, again, this was, like, around when the internet was flourishing, but it wasn't, like, we would, like, guys would be, the AP writers would be writing about games. At on the fields or at the stadiums, and then they have to like phone in kind of things. It wasn't like they were still using like fax machines or whatever it was. So basically I was doing that for, for a while working in social press, but that ended. I'm trying to be as quickly as possible here, get up to speed now. And then, so I was working in social press. I knew I loved writing, but there was, it was, the job was very finite. There was, it ended and I got a job working at a company that, that you and I both know called Questex Media. Yeah. That runs conferences, but they also have publications as well. I got a job at travel agent magazine, writing about the cruise industry, which I knew nothing about. And I was going on cruises with like carnival and Royal Caribbean cruises, by the way, are not my cup of tea. Never. I was writing about something, which I was like, it was like, Oh, you put me on a cruise ship. And I'm like, I want to get off as soon as I step on. But so I did that for a while and I just stayed there for a while. It evolved and in, uh, um, getting away from cruises and writing about the hotel industry. And it just clicked for me because I loved. I always loved hotels. Who doesn't love hotels from the travel of them? I always was weird. Like I always remember taking family trips and I would be like The greatest thing about thought about hotels is that you get unlimited number of towels You just keep asking for towels and they bring them to didn't matter. You could use a topper more towels I could just keep getting as many towels. I want I just remember hotel

Rachel Humphrey:

owners everywhere cringing right now at david's reservations

David Eisen:

Give me the best Turkish talk. But anyway, I just, I, I took to the hotel industry. I love the industry. I love the people, but I also love to write. So it was a great melding of two passions of mine, hotels and writing. And I've just 20 years later, I moved up the ranks from being an associate editor and then managing editor and then editor in chief of a couple of magazines. I worked for a hotel management magazine, the great people over there. And now I'm with hotels magazine, which has been around. It's a very venerable publication. It's been around since the 19. 1960s when I wasn't alive. So I'm not that old, but yeah. And I, it's such a great history is that you get to meet fabulous people and you get to write about it. So that's not so bad. That's a, that's a long I'm 48 now. So I tried to give you a good kind of sweeping arc of. 48

Rachel Humphrey:

years in a couple of minutes.

David Eisen:

I think

Rachel Humphrey:

there's some really interesting lessons in there. Certainly picking up and moving to a different city and picking up a different career and then figuring out your way. It actually brings up something that I want to pivot on completely instead of segueing in because a lot of the journalists that I talked to when they started, there wasn't a lot of video production. There wasn't a lot of online presence for journalists. And yet, um, if I'm sharing now, one of the reasons that I wanted to ask you to join me today is you and I, when we met many years ago, was in a journalist capacity, but you also were doing and are doing a lot of moderating. I had the ability to source and select moderators for a variety of different. Stages big and small and your comfort level in topic in industry leaders that you're comfortable moderating in really any environment was very different from others. It wasn't about you. It's about the content. It was about the preparation. And as I have. I've evolved my own moderating talents over the years. I've thought back a lot to the lessons that I've learned from you. Talk about public speaking as a journalist. Are you comfortable with it? Are there tricks that you use every time? Do you prepare differently depending on what type of opportunity it is?

David Eisen:

I know that's a lot

Rachel Humphrey:

all at once, but

David Eisen:

interesting. So preparation is key when you're doing public speaking, moderating, whatever it may be. I would say preparation is key. And then when it's time to do it, throw it out the window, forget about it. What I mean by this is that we go to a lot of, there's a conference circuit and I'm lucky enough that I get invited to do a lot of kind of moderating sessions. And typically it's always the PR people you work with that are that have these clients and they want to make them as prepared as possible. Which in a way is good, but I always like speaking to people who will get off the talking points. You know what I mean? A lot of the time you go to, you sit on and you watch panels and it can be a little bit robotic going through the motions. It's always great when you people let down their guards and maybe say something not untoward, but something that is a little bit a take that might not be just that kind of the norm. So basically what I like to do when I, For public speaking, if I'm moderating a panel, my big thing is obviously preparation, I always devise questions beforehand. I have meetings like a meeting with the other panelists and I send out the questions beforehand. But then when I'm actually doing it, I try to be very like, you want to make it as organic as possible when you're speaking to people. You don't want to make it like just a normal kind of rote Q and A where it's ask a question, get an answer. You want to really maybe ask a pointed question and then not just say, go to the next one or say, how about you, but really got to break it all down. But like I said before, it really, it needs to be, you need to be prepared, but you also have to improvise and be a little bit off the cuff with things. I think that's what gets, because when you have to remember that you have an audience watching you, you're not the audience, you have an audience there. And the worst thing you can do is when you look out over, especially two minutes out, I always look out into the audience to see if people, if there is a sea of people, hopefully there's only, there's more than five people watching or there, if they're on their phones and you've lost them, but if you can see people that have a rapt attention, right. And they're actually engaged and they want to hear what you're talking about, what you're asking, what the panelists are responding to, then you've won. But you really want to, I think in public speaking is you want to really connect. With the, your, whoever you're speaking to from a Q and A perspective, right? But then that allows you to connect to the audience. And I think the best way to do that is to really, to be frank, be off the cuff, obviously be prepared to ask questions, but you really want to find those moments. You got to look for those moments. And they're just like moments where you can like tap into something for me. I'm, I have a very, my friends of mine or people at colleagues, I have a dry sense of humor, maybe a little bit too dry for some people, But I try to make I try to do when I'm speaking, I look for the points of laughter, something funny. I think it keeps the audience engaged. And that's really what I do for when I'm doing public speaking is you want to be prepared, but you want to you don't want to make it look like you're too prepared.

Rachel Humphrey:

It's interesting because some people I think would think of. A lot of preparation and then off the cuff as complete opposites, but they're actually not. The preparation is what gives you the comfort level to go naturally where the conversation goes. There is a flip side of public speaking, and this is one I've been dying to ask you. You are known for, especially on LinkedIn. Speaking your mind, whether it's the dry sense of humor, whether it's a response to something often, it's very short, very pointed.

David Eisen:

And

Rachel Humphrey:

I think from where I sit, that it takes a lot of confidence in an industry, while very big in some ways, also very small to actually speak your mind and knowing that it may not be popular. It may in other ways, get a laugh, but talk to me a little bit about, what is it about you that you say, you know what? I know where I am in this industry, and I've got enough confidence just to put whatever happens to be on my mind in that moment out into the air.

David Eisen:

Yeah, maybe I shouldn't do that as much as I do, but I haven't gotten anything. Nothing bad has happened to me so far from doing it. Yeah. So I use LinkedIn a lot and that's like the one platform I use for work. I feel like it's like you have LinkedIn for work. You have. Instagram to follow the brands that you love and you have maybe Twitter just to see what crazy thing Elon Musk, or, you know, Donald Trump might, might've said, or something like that. No politics. I know on this show. Yeah. Listen, I, the problem with a lot of people, not the problem, but a lot of stuff you read is just mechanical out there. People take, people might write something. It's very heartfelt, but I think I like to read the stuff where it is a little bit. Provocative, maybe I'm not being like provocative. You're saying something that's really far out there, but the hotel industry, it always, it gets back to this whole point where I, as a writer and as a journalist, a lot of the work we do, we work with public relations companies and they're very important to the cold kind of ecosystem and they have their clients, which might be Marriott or Hilton or whatever it is, or a hotel owner or that, and that much, and they, and it's very vanilla and what I try to be is like, You know what? Baskin Robbins has what? 32 flavors. I don't know. So I, when I put, I try to put takes out there that are like a little bit, again, not to use the word provocative, but something about someone's going to read and be like, Either totally agree with it or totally not agree with it, but at least it's something different. No, it could be something about the brands. Everyone. I don't know. I'm trying to think of a good kind of example. Everyone talks about, Oh, there's too many brands out there or whatever it is, or something like, like that. And you say, I think I wrote something actually a big deal. There's too many brands out there or something like that. But I said something effective. You ever looked like Procter and Gamble. There's 30, 000. Laundry detergents they have no one's complaining about it, but you pick and choose. Usually I try to use linked in a story that I wrote or someone on my staff has written and posted up there, but give it some kind of intro that that gives it a little bit of a kind of flavor for that. So I just think. Confidence and speaking your mind, I think, is what people want. I don't think people are out there necessarily, especially, I guess it would be interesting because I'm not, and I don't mean to be tangential with this, but it's a lot of people look at journalism nowadays, the media in general, and well beyond the B2B hotel world, but what is the role of a journalist? Are they just there to report the news? Yeah, I guess so. In our industry where it's very granular about what we do, people can get their hotel news press releases from Reuters or the AP or something like that. One of the things I'm not calling anyone out, but I do read other, obviously other people's work sometimes online, otherwise other B2B trade. And some of them are just, it's just a regurgitation of the facts, right? A regurgitated press release or. You talked, you have a conversation with a CEO or whoever it is, and it's the one line and then a long quote, one line, a long quote. I think it's, I, for me, if I'm going to do this and make it a career, you have to have a little bit of intellectual curiosity, or you sometimes you need to have a take. And maybe it's not, it's your take and could be wrong. It could be right. That's subjective, but I think it's important as a, for me, at least from the editorial perspective is to speak my mind. Ha. Habit. Habit stance on something and not push. Yeah.

Rachel Humphrey:

No, I was just gonna say, sorry to interrupt. I, I like what you're saying too about getting other people to think and so when you say something that, I know you used the word provocative. Yeah. Then I sit and think, huh, that's an interesting take. And it actually prompts me to be more curious or to think do, is that something I wish I had said out loud that you do? And so I think that it's not just. in your confidence, but the impact it has on those of us who are reading it.

David Eisen:

I will say this. There's been many occasions that I've written something on LinkedIn and I've written it and I'm about to hit post and I just delete it because I'm saying, it really isn't really worth it. Do you want to piss this person off? And you really want to, sometimes I hold back. I'm not like, but yeah, I think it's nice when you can say something that's just a little bit poignant or different than just, you know, What's out there?

Rachel Humphrey:

I like that. You mentioned a minute ago being on the conference circuit, which a lot of our listeners are and certainly a lot of the industry. Do you have any tricks of the trade for being on the road as often as you are other than unlimited towels?

David Eisen:

Yeah. Oh, the towel thing is important. So I'll tell you something interesting that your listeners might want to know. So even though I get this all the time, people always come up to me and say, Oh, what's your favorite hotel or this or that or loyalty program? So here's not a secret, but so I write about hotels for a living, the industry, and I try to tell people, everyone thinks I write about, Oh, what's your favorite? Again, I'm reviewing hotels. No, that's not what we do. That's not what I do. I write about more about brand development or investment or whatever it is. I don't travel that much. I know it's crazy, right? Most of the stuff I do is conference travel. A lot of that. There's the big four or five conferences of the year that, that about. So like when I travel, it's like almost, it's not like I'm this kind of corporate traveler person who, who logs like 150, 000 miles a year. In fact, I think I was gold on American and I lost that. Which is really sad now. Cause now I have to like board with everybody else zone five. Now, what is that? Although I will say this, I, and someone can correct me. Here's another take zones matter. Nothing either. You get caught. I've never been caught. If I'm zone four and I go in with zone two or three, I've never been caught, but that's, you know, hopefully no one from TSA is watching this right now. So I don't have too many like tricks of the trade when I travel, I'll tell you this, I have my own kind of. When I go to a new city or city, I always try to, right when I get there, I always do the thing where I unpack all my clothes. I'm like that person who always gets an implant and then I always take a walk or I find there's certain kind of things that I like, and I always look ahead when I get to it before I get to a city. But what do I want to do when I get there? It's always good. Even when you're there for work to take some time for yourself and explore. Right. Just walk to certain areas that might appeal to you, things like that. I think it's very important when you're on the road, it's self-fulfillment and to get out there, but no real tricks to the trade. I don't really have that. I bring, I'm very easy. Do you know what I mean? I listen to a pod, I listen to a podcast on the flight or whatever it is. Oh, I have been doing this. I cook. I always, I never, I try not to buy food at the, at the airport. I, I always make my. Like a sandwich and bring it with me. That's my big thing.

Rachel Humphrey:

All right. You heard it here. That's the breaking news.

David Eisen:

Exactly. Yeah. That's yeah.

Rachel Humphrey:

David, I want to ask you, you said in the start of this interview that you were surprised when I asked you to join us. And I think I, I might get the quote wrong, but I think when I reached out to you, you said that you were flabbergasted that I had asked and in part, because, and I know you and I have talked about this before, there's a way of looking at. Brand CEOs and other industry leaders and questioning. Am I in that same caliber as you go through the industry and you've been around, like you said, a long time and you have a lot of credibility and a lot of very influential colleagues and friends. How do you overcome that self doubt when I first reach out and you're like, am I the right person? Or what would you advise other people maybe that are hesitant to take steps in their career journey because they are experiencing some sort of imposter syndrome, self doubt, whatever you would classify it as.

David Eisen:

No, I think my self doubt it's interesting because I work, when I tell people I work in the hospitality industry, It's not really the truth, right? I work in, it's, it's, I always say to people I work in, here's the thing, Rachel, people ask me what I do and I literally don't have the 30 second elevators. I can't be like, I'm a, I'm a banker or I'm a, I'm like, I write about the hotel industry, but I'm also the editor in chief of a media company. I'm also a VP. You're like, I just don't even know really what to say to them. But to your point, it's, it's not so much like self doubt. I think I know that I'm a good. I've always thought I was a, I've never stopped learning, but a good writer, but when we go to these events and we meet with the people in the hotel industry, like, what part of the, what part of that whole kind of ecosystem are we like, what role do we play? Do we play if any, I think a lot of people, obviously, we chronicle the hotel industry of what I do. So I, the good thing is I, the more and more I've done this, I've 2 decades plus in right now. I don't get any kind of nervousness when I'm speaking to a, an executive. So I'll give you. I'll give you, this is a good example. I was at a Hilton event and one of the great guys in our industry is Chris Nassetta, the CEO of Hilton. And I walked, I was getting off the elevator at, we were on a press trip and he was there in the lobby area. And I walked up to him and I was like, Oh, there's, and you get, when you see people like this in our industry, CEOs, you're like, you get a little bit of anxiety. But I see other people when I'm saying is don't be afraid just to go up to people and start talking to them and don't talk to them as if you're just, you want to just house business or very, just the very perfunctory, but I had a conversation with Chris and we talked for, and it was the greatest conversation I've ever had with the CEO. We didn't talk about, it was like, I thought it sounded, it felt like 30 minutes, but it was probably like two or five minutes, but they're all, they have these CEOs, they never stop. And they have handlers, people that like move them around. I don't have a handler. I do my own thing for five minutes or whatever it was the hour I was speaking to Chris and said, we didn't talk about hotels at all. We just, we shot the shot the S with about golf. And I was like, we just talking about golf for a good five minutes. And it was a great, and it was such a good conversation. Cause I think. It's good when people get to know you beyond just the work thing, the kind of transactional thing and have a real conversation. So it's not so much, it's, I never, it's not so much imposter syndrome. I think it's, yeah, I think when you first start out, there's a nervousness to it all. When you go to conferences and when you have one on one conversations with, with people you think that are, That are well above you. Like when you first start out, if you're an associate editor and they'll plop you down with the CEO, it might happen. You know what I mean? You're asking questions and that person is probably, it's probably thinking the same thing. They're probably trying to overcome their own self that too, to say, or am I going to say the right thing or whatever it is, but I think it's just to be, be in the moment and just empower yourself to, to talk to someone just to talk to someone normally, like you would a friend, I think is very important.

Rachel Humphrey:

And that's such great advice for building relationships and it'll really be authentic, genuine stuff because you buy that you want to be a little bit memorable. And then your connection is a real connection. It's not a transactional connection. Yeah,

David Eisen:

exactly. They're going to remember that and be like, oh, I'll talk to talk to him. I got to write. I remember that. There's no better thing when, and by the way, and I'll let everyone know. So I don't anger anyone at, at a conference. I'm horrible with I'm good with faces names. Sometimes I'm just terrible with both, but it's great when you, when someone, when you have that recognition and you get to a point where you just, it comes more and more. more comfortable. So it's just about, I think it's about repetition and things like that.

Rachel Humphrey:

That's great advice. All right. We are going to run short on time. So I'm going to rapid fire a couple of questions that I want to ask you before we wrap up today. You mentioned curiosity earlier, and we could talk all day about the driving of curiosity as part of leadership. Tell me super fast. One thing you're curious about today.

David Eisen:

AI in our industry, I still really don't understand the implications of it, but I know they're out there and it's and I'll be real quick. Brian Chesky. I was at an event, a skip event and he from Airbnb, a CEO. He said that is going to be more have more of an impact on the world than the industrial evolution.

Rachel Humphrey:

Big statement, what's 1 thing you're curious about outside of the hospitality industry.

David Eisen:

If the Baltimore Orioles, which is my baseball team, we're going to, we're going to sign a good starting pitcher in the off season. That's all it

Rachel Humphrey:

had to be sports related. Okay. When you pivoted from paralegal want to be lawyer to journalism, or as you became flew through the ranks, you certainly came across a skill. Maybe that you didn't realize would be so important. What was it?

David Eisen:

Oh, a skill. That's that that's tough. I just, I think it, again, when you're back to being in our industry, you have to talk to a lot of people. Okay. So you got to get out of your shell and you have to be comfortable just speaking your mind and speaking to people, asking questions, being direct. Don't be sheepish. That's the biggest thing. Don't be aloof. The big, the biggest thing I see with when I see other journalists or writers, when they're in a room, circulate, go up to people, enjoy it when you speak to them. So be confidence. Maybe I didn't always have it and maybe I still don't have it out, but I, I think you have to develop that skill and be, just be confident.

Rachel Humphrey:

I love that. And then one, my favorite question of all time. What do you tell 20 year old David graduating from Miami of Ohio who thinks he may or may not want to follow in his dad's footsteps. What do you tell him either about how things worked out or something you wish you knew then that you know today?

David Eisen:

I could fill up another 30 minute podcast with all the regrets in my life. I don't, that's for the book, the great American novel that I'm going to write one day. Let's see. That's a tough one, Rachel. Is this the last question? I'm going to, I'm going to screw this one up because I don't have a good answer for you. Oh,

Rachel Humphrey:

I'm going to give you one last question.

David Eisen:

What's my advice? Just always try to keep learning. That's a bad answer. See, I'm being truthful. For my profession, one of your advice is always, never stop learning. Always reading is so important. Read everything you can get your, you get your hands on. When I was younger, I didn't read as much as I do now. I'm like, I try to be a voracious reader of everything. But don't just read, not read. Read everything you can read fiction, read nonfiction, read the newspaper, whether it's on a tablet or in your hand, um,

Rachel Humphrey:

hotels, magazine,

David Eisen:

read hotels, magazine. Yeah, you plugged me. I didn't education. Matt. I'll be real quick with this 1 education matters. Okay. 1 of the big I'm not going to call mistakes was like, I know that we're at the we're at the end of all this education matters, but there is a huge cost sometimes to you have to look at the value versus whether to do it versus the kind of the value the ROI. I would say this if you want, and this is not me as a writer, but in the going back to law school, if you want to be a lawyer, you got to get a law degree. If you want to be a doctor, you got to get a medical degree. You don't necessarily need a degree to be Krista Seta or the late great Arnie Sorensen or Eric Danziger. These CEOs, you can, what you need to do if you want to work in the hotel industry, depending on whatever it is, go work at a hotel first and foremost. And that goes back to the internship. If you're like, I have the, I want to be in hospitality, but I want to be a general manager one day, or I want to be the CDO, uh, chief development officer at Wyndham, go work at a hotel. You don't always need to go to school for it. But make sure you get that kind of like that that practical introduction to it all.

Rachel Humphrey:

I actually share that advice a lot as someone who went to law school and had a lot of college and law school debt, having paid for both of them myself. I think about the eyes on it all the time.

David Eisen:

I went listen, I went to, I got my master's degree in hospitality. Education is always great. There's no substitute for learning, but sometimes what you have to when you're young, look for mentors and ask people what they think. Don't always go at all on your own, but you have to look at kind of the, the time and the value of money and all the, all that stuff, right? So much

Rachel Humphrey:

David, as I expected, we are short on time. We are actually over time, but I appreciate so much you're joining us and sharing your journey to leadership. Some of the insights you've learned along the way, look forward to hearing many more of them over time, but really appreciate your joining me today.

David Eisen:

Thank you, Rachel. It's been great.

Rachel Humphrey:

And for those listening at home, we hope you'll head over to its personal stories dot com and hear from not only David again, but nearly 200 industry leaders who've shared their journeys and their insights as well. We appreciate you joining us and hope you have a great day.