Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian podcast. Featuring the Sunshine State’s brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida and its millions of weekly visitors. In this episode created by SalterMitchellPR, our executive producer, Heidi Otway, the president of SalterMitchellPR talks to Dave Krepcho, the President and CEO of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida.

Heidi Otway: So Dave, thank you so much for being a guest on our Fluent in Floridian podcast. We are thrilled to have you.

Dave Krepcho: Thank you. Great to be here.

Heidi Otway: So let’s start from the very beginning, and what brought you to Florida. I know you are a northerner and you made your way to the Sunshine State. Tell us about what brought you to Florida.

Dave Krepcho: I’ve been back and forth to Florida twice actually in my life. The short story is about, geez, 40 years ago is my wife and I were living in Toronto. And I was in the ad agency business and one of my clients was developing these Jack Nicklaus designed golf course communities and the Naples area we had the account and we did a lot of filming and everything down in the Naples area in a January one time. And I said to my wife, I said, “Boy, if we can make a living and live down here, why don’t we do that?”

Florida. And then we moved back up north, we went to Chicago where I worked for the National Office of Feeding America, a wonderful experience. And after several years of doing that, an opportunity came up in Orlando here at the food bank, and we weren’t planning on coming back. But we had friends and family down here said, “Well, let’s check it out again.” And lo and behold, I got offered the job. And that was 16 years ago. So spent just over half my lifetime in Florida.

Heidi Otway: Wow. So Dave, when you were living in the Naples area. Were you still working as an ad man?

Dave Krepcho: Oh, we weren’t living in Naples. But I was in the ad agency business then. And then when we did move down here, moved to South Florida, yeah, I was an ad man.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. So tell us about that experience. I mean, transitioning from being an ad executive to the food pantry, what are some of the campaigns you worked on, in that?

Dave Krepcho: I have gone from the dark to the light.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Dave Krepcho: I really, really value being in the ad agency business, and having an understanding of marketing and communication and building awareness and telling stories and being able to be articulate about a product or a service. And all those years I was in that business, I was looking for this ultimate client that had this true unique selling proposition, rather than just another variation of another product or service. And I worked on all kinds of great campaigns from cruise lines, the car rental companies, and resorts and real estate and restaurants, software. I mean, just lots of interesting stuff, fascinating business. But I was looking for this ultimate client all the time, and I was a volunteer board member of the food bank in Miami at that time. And I just started to get to know the food bank, and I go, “This is the ultimate client I’ve been looking for. They have this uniqueness.”

And it’s like a beautiful jewel, you look at it and go, “Wow, that’s just wonderful.” And then you turn it a little bit in your hand and you see another facet of it, and you go, “Wow, look at that piece of the food bank and what it can do.” Then you turn it again and there’s another facet. And as a board member, I started to help them raise money and awareness for the organization and Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. And-

… the director of the food bank resigned a couple of weeks after that hurricane and somebody had to go in temporarily. So I’ve been doing this work temporarily for now, 26 years. So I mean, that’s the short story, but it’s just fascinating how paths in life present themselves.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Dave Krepcho: It’s been a wonderful ride. Food banking has changed my life personally, professionally, politically, theologically. I mean all kinds of fascinating ways, and deep ways. All these years, I put a huge emphasis on communication and marketing of, hey, here’s the cause and here’s the issue that exists in our community or communities and here’s what can be done about it. And here’s the impact of those, kinds of things. So it’s the age old formula that if there’s not awareness of an issue, or a product or a service, how can people get interested or have any kind of desire and take action?

So it’s using that formula, but the biggest secret of them all, and it sounds cliched, but it’s so true, is that you hire people much smarter than you that have a specific expertise and you build that team. And in all my years of doing this I have the most powerful team, the most aligned team, and board of directors and staff. When you’ve got that going for you, that’s a lot.

Heidi Otway: So Dave, when you started at the pantry in Central Florida, was it as large as it is now?

Dave Krepcho: No. We started as a food bank, back in 1982, I’ve been here 16 years. But it started that first year, they distributed just over a half a million pounds of food for the year to a few dozen partner feeding programs, and I think they had three or four employees. Fast forward to today, we have 120 employees. Last year we distributed enough food for 68 million meals. It’s just changed dramatically in terms of growth for sure, [and] the nature of how we’re accomplishing that work has changed dramatically too. And then of course, since mid March and COVID really having an impact, that has just been, again, another step up to look at your business model, and “how does that have to be changed?” And “how do you adapt?” So I’m a person who gets bored very easily. And I have never had a boring moment the past 26 years. Among all of the challenges that do exist, there’s just I have found that just incredible opportunity exists at the same time. I don’t know how that happens, but it’s been true through my experience.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. So how did you work your way to where you are now with the pantry’s growth? Was it your vision, did you cast this vision? Did you have a strategic plan? How did you get from where you are doing a half million to being able to make 68 million meals in that [crosstalk 00:08:16].

Dave Krepcho: I learned a lot from mistakes. You learn twice as much from mistakes than you do from success, if you don’t make that mistake again.

Heidi Otway: Right, exactly.

Dave Krepcho: It’s really a combination of things. If we’re here in Central Florida the past 16 years, what really helped there was having a background of running another food bank that was sizable, and building it. And then working at the National Office of Feeding America, and being able to work with 200 members across the United States and different markets and who’s doing what, and how are they doing it? Why are they doing it? I have this incredible network of like-minded souls over the years across the country. And you can learn so much from that perspective.

Another thing that happened was being a board member and continuing to be a board member of different boards, having that perspective, being on the National Board of Feeding America and very involved at that level. It gave me an opportunity to really be exposed to what’s going on around the country, for better or worse. And to learn from that and then to come to Central Florida, and coming into a very financially solid organization at that point. That had a great reputation and no big problems. I almost didn’t take the job.

Heidi Otway: Why?

Dave Krepcho: Because I thought I could only screw it up.

But I stepped into the position and I just shared with that search committee at that point that “what you’re doing is great work, and if you want to continue doing it at this level, I respect that, but I’m not your guy.” I said, “I believe there is just incredible potential and a future vision of the organization,” and then started to articulate that. And then I started building that team, when I first came in. I think what really helped, and there’s really a silver lining to some of these storm clouds, so I had begun during Hurricane Andrew. I mentioned that. So I come here at 2004 in August, and four hurricanes hit Central Florida.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Dave Krepcho: About 30 days after I was here. And I had this 30-day plan. And I made it a point to go out and meet face-to-face every one of our major financial donors, food donors, board members, and the staff. And that hurricane hit. I remember way, way back three powerful words from a meditation that I had done one morning, and it was “crisis reveals character.” Now not only is it going to reveal mine, but it really revealed the character of the team that I had just joined, and the community that I had just joined. And there’s something about disasters, where you either see the best in people or the worst in people. There’s not a lot of middle ground. And fortunately, most of it, we see the best in people.

But it really gave me a unique opportunity at that beginning point. So I feel fortunate. And then my method, on an ongoing basis is to build a vision. And that is aspirational in nature. But, I believe that if you do not have a vision, what do they say? “The people perish.” Not to be that dramatic, but if you don’t have a vision, how can you get people excited about achieving greater things and that there is this end destination that we can move towards? And then engaging them in all kinds of ways of how to make that vision come alive. We’re very vision oriented, very specific mission statement. But we are very, very strategic in our approach. And that’s one of the parts of our success as an organization is you got to do that intense day-to-day work. It’s absolutely essential. But you must look ahead. And nobody has a crystal ball on exactly what’s in the future. Some talk about how strategic we are. And I am chuckling as I say this. So we took a year last year to do a strategic plan to look out to the year 2030.

Heidi Otway: Oh, wow.

Dave Krepcho: It took a year to quarter.

Heidi Otway: I’m sure.

Dave Krepcho: And we got it down on paper, we got the community engaged, everybody engaged. And then we did the first year operational plan to really kick this off. My board approved it at the end of February this year.

Heidi Otway: Oh, wow.

Dave Krepcho: So COVID hits in March and it’s like, “what strategic plan?”

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Dave Krepcho: So you don’t know. In all of the planning we did, and the planning scenarios of what might happen and all that, never was COVID-

Heidi Otway: Pandemic in there.

Dave Krepcho: [crosstalk 00:14:10].

Heidi Otway: Oh, my God.

Dave Krepcho: So, we’ve been so wrapped up in COVID, but I’m glad we have that plan in place. So, it’s still very solid. But I am tweaking it as a result of COVID for very good reasons. So we’re very strategic. We really believe and practice our vision as an organization. And literally it is “to inspire and engage the community to end hunger.” We cannot do it on our own. So as we’re making decisions and thinking about priorities, we have to go back to that vision and say does it deliver on that vision? How does this inspire others? How does it engage the community? And the community, you break it down into financial donors, volunteers, food donors, advocates and on and on and on. But that’s like the North Star. It’s just not on a piece of paper, to say, “Oh, we’ve got a plan. And here’s a vision and a mission,” we make it real.

The other thing, and this is a long rambling answer to your question of, how did we get here, how did all that growth happen? I’m a big, big believer in culture. And I believe you have to have culture right as your foundation. On top of that culture, you build the team and the people. And then that translates into how you provide your service and how you treat your so-called customers or beneficiaries, and how do you treat people that are supporting you. And about four or five years ago, we did some really interesting culture work at the food bank. I wish I had time on the podcast to talk about it, but we had every one of the employees involved in creating the culture statement for our food bank. Wow. What a great process, what discoveries we made. We have a culture statement for the food bank, and we constantly are bringing facets of that up and reminding ourselves of, “Hey, this is what we stand for. And this is what we believe.” Because what culture is, I mean, it’s basically, “how do we behave around here?”

We have a lot of people coming in to the food bank, and they were voluntarily giving us praise that, “Hey, when I come in here, I just love the vibe, everybody seems happy, they know what they’re doing.” And after a while, I took it back to my team, and I said, “This is what we’re all hearing, we must have something special here.” And it’s like, well, how do we identify exactly what is that? How do we articulate that? How do we promote it? How do we preserve it, use it as a recruitment tool and on and on? And I got it, we went through the process and figured some stuff out with some professional help along the way. And everybody’s biased towards their own organization or company or whatever. And there’s so many of them, but I think that’s a big part of our secret sauce here.

Heidi Otway: I want to know what the cultural statement is, and I’m sure our listeners do as well.

Dave Krepcho: I bet you do. So it’s multifaceted. Okay? But let me give you the key points of it. Okay? So it’s about seven statements, one liners. Okay?

Dave Krepcho: So the first one is, “we take pride in Second Harvest Food Bank and being part of a team.” On face value it can sound cliched, but we talked about “where does that pride come from? Where does it come from day-by-day? What does team really make?” And on and on. We treat each other as family. And I swear if you walk through this facility without me, and you challenged that statement, it would be incredibly supportive. We respect each other and listen to all perspectives. I think respect is one of our key values here as well.

I think you always have to look at different perspectives. I’m a big believer in what I call the third way. And often, society is so polarized nowadays. Whether it’s politically, theologically, I mean, in all kinds of ways. And it’s human nature, I think. But, if you’re, and it might be a group discussing something or you have two points of view, it can create an opposing kind of deal. I’d rather use it as a construct of bridge building point of view, where there’s very valid points made on each side. Maybe there’s a third way. And there’s some cases where you just got to make a quick decision and bang, it’s going. So I won’t talk anymore about that.

Heidi Otway: But I love that though, “the third way.” I love that.

Dave Krepcho: And it really reduces anxiety and stress. So we trust each other. I mean, if you don’t have trust, forget it. I got your back no matter what it is. We value transparency. People I think, for the most part are afraid of transparency, I think it’s another human nature kind of deal. But, I truly believe that if you can become comfortable in your own skin, and be more transparent in why you do things, say things whatever. And if you can build that safety within the team, that people could feel safe, and be trustworthy, and they could transfer that into being more transparent. And I tell you in life in general, I don’t care in any situation, I think the more transparency, the more positive any kind of outcome is going to be. I’m sure there is probably exceptions to that, but that’s transparency. Here’s one that’s really in our DNA, “we innovate today to create our tomorrow.”

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Dave Krepcho: So we really love innovation here. And that spirit has really made us grow in amazing ways. We proactively embrace the concept of growth for all. And this goes beyond just internally, all 550 different partner feeding programs that we provide food to. How does it translate into that, and how we work with them? And then the final thing is, “we honor our commitments.” And that goes back to the trust thing. And the more you honor those, the trust builds bigger and bigger. And I hear it from community leaders and key financial donors that the food bank has a reputation of honoring commitments and executing grants the way they should be executed. So we’ve built up that reputation and we work really, really hard at doing that. Sometimes we sweat bullets over it. But in the long run, it pays off. So I’ll get off my culture soapbox, but-

Heidi Otway: Oh, no, that was amazing.

Dave Krepcho: … it’s very rich.

Heidi Otway: It is rich. And for all of our listeners who are running companies and organizations, you just shared some amazing nuggets that I know will help them do what they’re doing. Dave, are you called on to mentor other pantries that are trying to get to where you are in their own communities, respectively?

Dave Krepcho: Yeah, other food banks, right.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Dave Krepcho: And let me talk about the difference between a food bank and a food pantry because people use them interchangeably. Think of a food bank as a, in for-profit terms is the wholesale level of things. All right? And then think of a food pantry as the retail-

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Dave Krepcho: … part of it. So food banks are bringing in massive quantities of food for the whole community. And then are distributing those to the food pantries that then in turn give the food to the individuals in need. Other food banks from around the country do visit us. When we created our new facility here that we’ve been in for six years already, it still seems brand new. But I called it “Food Banking 2.0.” That the way we designed the space for volunteers and the public part of it, the way we designed it operationally for efficiency, and how we branded it, the kinds of space that allowed us to launch new and innovative programs, and social entrepreneurial programs. So yes, stream of food banks from around the country coming in and say… Some have come in with their boards of directors and said, “Can we spend a day with you?” Or, “Why did you do this? How did you do it? What would you do differently?”

And I consider it paying it forward. Because those years that I was working nationally and being able to see what was going on around the country, I benefited from so much of other’s knowledge that wow, let’s share this with others and people could take away what they like and put their own spin on it. So yeah, it’s a point of pride too that, “Hey, this is what we did.”

I took a group of food banks through with their board members about, I don’t know, two three years ago. And they were some of the most cutting edge progressive food banks in the country and pretty sophisticated people and they had seen other food banks and they boarded up, seen other food banks, but we hosted them for two days here and as the host food bank, you give a tour. So I thought, “oh geez, another cooler, here’s a cooler, here’s a freezer”, that kind of stuff. So I said, “I’m going to take you on a failure tour.” And like, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Yeah, you’ve seen food banks, and you’re going to see this one. But I do really believe that we don’t,” this goes back to transparency, “we as peers, even don’t share the failures or the missteps. And we all do it.”

So I had five different points on the tour in different departments and I had my leadership team responsible for that area to share a failure, what we learned from it, how we think it may have happened, and what are we doing differently about it. And I got to tell you, at the end of the tour, a couple of them came up to me, “That was the most awesome experience we’ve ever had. It’s so refreshing.”

Heidi Otway: I love that. I love that. Well, I run a food pantry here in Tallahassee and have been doing it for, I’m going on 11 years now. It is my passion project. So I really understand the breadth of what it takes for you all to run a bank. So for our listeners who don’t run food pantries in their community, can you just share a little bit about the key things that you all do to collect the food, that are then distributed through us, the pantry?

Dave Krepcho: We’re collecting all that surplus food that’s perfectly edible, but it’s unmarketable for some reason. So we’ll collect it from farmers in Florida, from food manufacturers outside of the state of Florida, to food distributors, food wholesalers, grocery retailers, to the USDA commodities, were receiving food to even purchasing some of the food that we provide. So there’s a variety of these sources that we have relationships with, that we collect this food from. And then we have these large distribution centers, where we can bring that product in, and then have it, our inventory accessible to all of our feeding partners. Okay? They then come in on an appointment basis and draw the food and we help them load their vehicles and they take it back and feed the individuals in their communities or neighborhoods.

So that’s about for us, and it varies by food bank, for us that’s about 60% of our annual distribution is done through those feeding partners. The majority. The remainder amount is that we have built created programs where we’re getting food out to the community in additional ways without duplicating the work of our partners. Just complementing the work of our partners. And some of that is direct service to individuals. I’ll just give you one example, and I call it “Virtual Food.” The single biggest source of food in the charitable system is food stamps, or it’s now called SNAP. Okay?

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Dave Krepcho: And we discovered years ago that tens of millions of dollars in Central Florida was not being accessed by people that qualify for it. But long, long, long story short, we created a very innovative program. We work in tandem with the state government who we have a contract with and we have a mobile outreach team that goes out to our partner feeding programs, libraries, neighborhood centers and sits down with people one-on-one with a laptop and helps them fill out the application. Because you can only do it electronically now. And a lot of people don’t have broadband access, they don’t have computers, there’s going to be language issues and on and on. So anyway, we’re able to track the benefits that the people are receiving, or if they’re rejected, what’s the reason and we can help a lot of those people overcome that. That’s direct one-on-one service. We’ve been doing that for 12 years now. We have documented and generated just over $100 million worth of SNAP benefits in Central Florida.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Dave Krepcho: That’s our tax money.

Heidi Otway: That’s amazing.

Dave Krepcho: And it was not being utilized. And that’s money you can’t go raise, you don’t have to go raise.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Dave Krepcho: So that’s one of several examples of this one-on-one service that we can do to help complement our partners, and it’s just a wonderful example of a public-private partnership. I think a lot more of that’s got to be done.

Heidi Otway: You also have a program where you’re helping folks become gainfully employed.

Dave Krepcho: Yeah. About six years ago, in our strategic plan, we said, “We’re going to do two kinds of work.” For years, we’ve been feeding this line of people, the kids, senior citizens, the working underemployed.” And you need to do that day by day for a variety of reasons. And we said, “Hunger is just a symptom of deeper root causes. Do we have a role in going further upstream to those root causes? And what does that look like?” So again, I’ll condense it very briefly. We said, “There is work. We can do feeding the line of people and we can shorten the line of people who need food.” So there’s several root causes. I could give a whole lecture on that. But in our current strategic plan, there’s four of them. There’s more than four, but we’re focusing on four: health, education, jobs or income, and affordable housing.

So what’s a food bank have to do with those? So let me take up housing real quickly. We’re not going to be a residential real estate developer, or a landlord. Okay? But there are others that are in that space, that “how can we come alongside them with our resources and relationships and add to that?” And we’re having conversations, and there’s opportunity in that. On the educational side of things, we’re involved at every level of the educational system in providing food and nutrition in one way or another. But the other educational piece, and this goes back to the one-on-one help of people, is our culinary training and job placement program.

So we’ve been doing that for six years, five, six years, and we bring economically hard pressed people into the program. A third of them are homeless, coming into the program, and no cost to them, 16 week curriculum on culinary training, five days a week, two professional training chefs, training them on every facet of culinary. And then there’s a parallel track during that time of life skill training. And this is the key, “how do you do a household budget? How do you do your first resume? What’s a job interview going to look like? And what are the questions that you’re going to need to answer? How do you behave and operate within a team effort in a busy dynamic kitchen?” You’re not on your own. And on and on and on. That is really vital to the program. So as they go through this, and at graduation, we find them jobs. We’ve graduated just over 300. We have 100% job placement rate.

Heidi Otway: Wow. That’s amazing.

Dave Krepcho: And they’re averaging starting $12 plus an hour and getting promotions. Some are operating their own catering companies.

Heidi Otway: That is amazing.

Dave Krepcho: Some are sous chefs now, it’s literally a life changing experience. Many of them have families, so they can be a great role model. I don’t know who has a tougher work ethic than a chef. You’re on your feet all day, there’s fire, there’s knives and sharp things everywhere. Pressure to perform. But oh, my goodness, it’s just… So it’s worked so well, we want to double the size of the program. Our employers love our students and their mindsets. They graduate with no college debt, and they want more of our students. And there’s more people who want to get into the program, so we’re doing collaborative ventures with Valencia on culinary training because they do it as well but we can work together on that. And it worked so well, we said, “What else do we do around here?” And it’s like, “Hello, we run 100,000 square foot distribution center,” state of the art.

So same exact model; bring people in, those folks are taught forklift certification, inventory control, materials handling. All that stuff with the life skills, then we place them into distribution center jobs-

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Dave Krepcho: … that are here. Those are a couple of examples that one-on-one impact where we can be complimentary. But I’ll tell you, it’s just so fulfilling the kind of opportunity and work that we’re able to do.

Heidi Otway: What an amazing, amazing thing that you’re doing in Central Florida. And for our listeners there, I’m sure that they’re probably getting goosebumps in and all of the work that you’re doing to really work to end hunger and then also empower people to do better in their lives as best as they can. So for that, I want to thank you.

Dave Krepcho: No, you’re you’re welcome. And that comes from an incredible team.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, yeah. I would love to spend another 10 minutes asking you more questions, but unfortunately I have a small window to work in. So as we close the interview, I just want to ask you a couple of questions just about your life in Florida and what you’ve experienced a little bit more. So my first question is, who is a Florida leader that you admire? It could be someone from any different industry or field, from the past or someone who is still active in their work.

Dave Krepcho: Someone’s still active, and in my position I get an opportunity to meet phenomenal people. Oh my goodness. Incredible leaders, near and afar. And Floridian and in Central Florida, people will really know this name, but it’s Dr. Joel Hunter, or Pastor Joe Hunter as well. My wife and I attended his church. And Joe left the pulpit, about four years ago. I mean, he’s a author, he’s asked to speak around the world. And he left the pulpit and he started an organization called the Community Resource Center, where it works one-on-one with people in need. I mean, what courage that that took, and what commitment that’s taken, and what he and his small, mighty team are accomplishing is phenomenal.

But I respect him because he really is one… I go back to transparency. And when he preached or when he talked, it was more of a conversation. And he was very transparent about how he felt about things much more than a lot of public figures. He showed that vulnerability, even in his own personal family life and events. I think one of his greatest strengths was his real bridge builder. Here he was a pastor of a mega church of 12,000 congregants. It was an Ecumenical Christian church. But back when Barack Obama was running for president, okay? And there was the Democratic National Convention out in Denver, Barack Obama asked him to give the opening prayer. That’s the kind of crowd, but he’ll get down and dirty with any of us.

So he did that and he did it in a beautiful way without alienating people and took a huge hit from a lot of his congregation, and a certain segment of the church. Because “how could you?” And I don’t want to get into a theological and political story, but he stood up for what he really believed and he survived and thrived through it all. But he is a powerful faith leader of every faith that exists and continues to bring those faith leaders together. Because churches and mosques and temples, all of us working together, there’s a commonality in helping the less fortunate and he was a storyteller too, when he would want to illustrate a key theological principle that he would tell a story first, and then lead into that. So he’s just multi, multi gifted. But when you’re with him, you know you’re the only one with him. That kind of connection. So that’s pretty cool.

Heidi Otway: Oh, that is cool. We may need to see if we can get him to be on our Fluent in Floridian [crosstalk 00:39:50].

Dave Krepcho: Oh, my. He would be incredible.

Heidi Otway: I would love to make that happen. So our next question is, what is your favorite Florida location to visit?

Dave Krepcho: That was a really tough one. I would say, Palm Coast. That’s on the East Coast of Florida, if there are people who don’t know. It’s between Daytona and Jacksonville. And when you get off I-95 and you head east, all the way to the ocean, it’s this beautiful drive 99% of it, it’s not over commercialized and it’s a shock. It’s just beautiful. And then when you get to the end, there’s a resort called Hammock Beach Resort and oh, right on the ocean. And you stay in a room and you open the windows right on the beach and you open the windows at night. You can hear those waves crashing and Rachel walks on the beach and all kinds of activity. I’d say that has to be one of the best.

Heidi Otway: That sounds amazing. And right now we’re in the coronavirus and I’ve been confined to my house.

Dave Krepcho: Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Heidi Otway: Do you have a favorite sports team in Florida?

Dave Krepcho: Any Little League team my grandsons are playing on. Beyond that, locally here in Central Florida, University of Central Florida football is quite a phenomenon. And brings a lot of excitement to our area. So pretty proud of that local team.

Heidi Otway: Do you know if they’re having a season this year. I know a lot of schools across the state are canceling their football season.

Dave Krepcho: Yeah. I don’t know the official word yet but, it’s tentative.

Heidi Otway: And then my last question is, you are a very, very busy man. But I’m hopeful that you’ll have an answer for me, what book have you read recently? Or you may have one that you recommend to our listeners?

Dave Krepcho: I do a lot of reading. I love it. There’s just so much out there. And over the years, it’s hard to pick one. But, one that really stands out and that I’ve purchased for some of my close friends as gifts and all that kind of thing. It’s been around for a while. It’s called The Art of the Possibility. It’s written by a married couple, Rosamund Zander and Benjamin Zander. She’s a landscape artist, he is a orchestra conductor.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Dave Krepcho: And they wrote this book on The Art of Possibility. It is phenomenal. It goes through different practices for creativity, personally and professionally. A strong theme through the book. And there’s different chapters and different facets and a lot of little stories. He says “life is composed as a story. It’s all invented.” And with that much more is possible than what people think. So let that simmer a bit. But there’s these uplifting stories of people and he gives us… One example is the story of Rule Number 6. Okay?

As he’s having a serious conversation with somebody on his team, in walks this very upset person, very super emotional, they’re going on and on. And he just looks at them and says, “Remember rule number six.” And the person pauses, and immediately starts to calm down and exits. True story. It sounds like a leading up to a joke. Then the same thing occurs with another individual that works for him that interrupts his meeting and he goes, “Remember rule number six.” The person comes down, walks away. So the guy that was talking to him said, “That is amazing.” He said, “What’s rule number six?” And he said, “Don’t take yourself so damn seriously.” He goes, “What are the other five rules?” He goes, “There aren’t any.” I love it.

Heidi Otway: I’m going to use that. I’m going to use that. I’ll be using it, I’m getting the book today, I’m going to go to my local bookstore and I’m going to pick up that book.

Dave Krepcho: Excellent. I read it about 10 times.

Heidi Otway: Dave, thank you so much. This was one of the funniest, most enlightening, most empowering, most inspirational interviews I’ve done.

Dave Krepcho: Thank you.

Heidi Otway: I’ve learned so much. Me being a leader here in our company, and in this community. I’ve gotten some really good nuggets. So, I know you’ve inspired me and I’m very confident that you’ve inspired our listeners. So thank you, so much for being a guest.

Dave Krepcho: Oh, man, you’re welcome. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchellPR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchellPR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communications, social media, advocacy and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchellPR at saltermitchellpr.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.