What Are You Running From? David Begnaud on Truth, Trauma, and the Oprah Interview | Ep 335 with David Begnaud Founder & CEO of Do Good Crew

0:04Daniel Robbins:So David, you have this new show, The Person Who Believed in Me, which I absolutely love. Because I can think back to people in my life that if they didn't believe in me, my life would be completely different. They changed my life. So who is somebody in your life that they believed in you so much that it really changed the trajectory of who you were? my English teacher I'll take a freshman year I first encountered her in too much in class and she tried to move me around a couple of times thinking that that would solve the problem and it didn't and one day she came up to me and she said you have a really good voice you belong in speech and debate and I was like I don't know if I want to do that I was the videographer for the football and so she said why don't you try out so I kept kind of pushing it off and then finally I I was like, eh, fine.

0:59And I went to the first tournament and I won. And I won after that for my high school career. But what happened was something about her, which I felt was a very validating belief in me without saying the words, I believe in you. But I felt it in how we engaged and how she challenged me to do more and how she would support me when I won and how she would be out when she thought I was wrong. And then it was probably my junior year where she helped me into what was a confessional. I went to a Catholic high school in Louisiana, and the chapel had been turned into the speech and debate room. And the Eucharist had been removed from the chapel.

1:43But anyway, we walk into this confessional room, which was good because it was soundproofed. And so we would practice our speeches in there. And she walked in and she said, before you begin, I have a question for you. what are you running from? And I always say that what I heard in that moment was what happened to you rather than what the fuck is wrong with you. And sort of all my life, growing up gay and having Tourette's, I dealt with people in some variation of a way, say to you, dude, right? You're either a ag or a freak show. And so I then went on to build this life that I pretended was perfect.

2:30And I tried to insulate myself from that pain, but it was all just a wall that was really preventing me from having any kind of meaningful relationship with just about anyone, including my own family members. That question single handed unleashed a torrent of permission where for the first time I felt comfortable sharing and telling and being vulnerable. It wasn't that the information was new to me. It was that I had somebody who I truly felt was a nonjudgmental safe space. There are a lot of people in our lives who want to help us, but a lot of those helpful people bring a whole heap of judgment.

3:19And that is often the prison door which blocks us from encountering some real engagement with those people. This is to be for an invaluable teacher, friend, one of my best friends who I still talk to today, and she's 75 years old. One more thing before I get to the next person who believed in me. I'll never forget her saying to me, everything you've told me about your life is both valid. I don't get it because I won't pretend to get it, but I hear it. But then she said to me, you have to change your life because if you're going down these same roads that you've been going down that are connected to some kind of pain, you are not going to get anywhere that you want to go.

4:05And I think what that helped set up for me was an understanding that in order for me to achieve what I was dreaming for myself, I had to in some way process everything I was feeling so that I could not have an emotional attachment to that pain anymore. And I can talk about it with you today in a way that is both still connected to that path, still emotionally connected, but not haunted by it. but not on a diet.

4:40Daniel Robbins:How do you do that? And I mean, what an incredible story. There are things that happened in my life that I never wanted to tell anybody. But I think like, wow, you know what? If I do tell people, I think this will help them. But I have a very hard time doing that because I think it also makes me face it. Like, I just don't even want to think about it. So how did you get through that? And how do you get through it to a point where you're comfortable telling the public about it? So it's because for the longest time, it was sort of a refuge for me and then other key people, but I didn't go public about it.

5:18So that's when I was about 18 years old. I think I came out publicly when I was about just friends and family at 24. And then I think I came out publicly in, I don't know, I was in my mid thirties. How do you get to where you feel comfortable? I will tell you, and I hope this resonates with people. I came out publicly and felt okay coming out publicly after the most successful thing happened to me in my career. I had covered a hurricane in Puerto Rico and it sort of changed everything about where my career was. It kind of said it. And. And is what gave me the permission. I'll never forget. I was flying to McAllen, Texas to do a story about, you know, the U.S.

6:13government was separating families at the border. And I was going there to cover that. And it was national coming out day. And this was June.

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7:04Daniel Robbins:Find candidates who really want your job on ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash audio. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash audio. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. And I remember seeing people like coming out. And I thought, well, I'll be damned. I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, my family knows, but like, you know, and I'm sure viewers assume, but like, I ain't never said it publicly. So I'm going to say it. And I remember, I remember posting something. It was a, it was a tweet at the time.

7:44And I remember writing it. And I remember hitting send right before we dropped into the clouds below 10 ,000 feet. You know how on an airplane, when you go below 10 ,000 feet, you lose reception and internet reception. And I remember pausing before I hit the button and thinking to myself, well, there you know going back, buddy, you were either in or you are really out because you can't fix this. And so I hit the button up below the clouds and there was no more in connection. and I got onto the ground and there was just a tsunami of reaction. But to answer your question, it came one of the biggest successful, meaningful moments of my career.

8:32That means and that tells me that on the backs of some of life's moments and opportunities can often come a revisiting, a reconsideration to reveal something we otherwise would not be ready to reveal. And as I think back and I tell you about it now, it sort of gives me respect for life's successes because life's successes can be used to bring back into the fold things that we haven't yet been willing to say, but because we just went through such a successful moment, we're now willing to say something and say, well, if people loved me here, then they're not going to abandon me if I, if I reveal this.

9:22I mean, that was really my thinking. I don't mean to oversimplify, but that is when I felt comfortable enough to say it publicly.

9:30Daniel Robbins:I mean, what a powerful statement that you were willing to put something out there in the moment that you knew that you could not take it back. And then you would also not right away see the response. So there is no going back. I like that you put it out there. It's almost like shutting something off and saying, you know what, I did it. I did it. There's nothing. I can't reverse it. It's done. But I'm sure you felt great. It feels good to get something out there. I imagine whatever that is in your life, like to be who you want to be and that the world knows who you are. When you go back and you cover things like the hurricane and disasters, I always wanted to know from somebody who's in the news like that, and I believe you were at CBS News at the time, how does that impact you, seeing these disasters?

10:26Daniel Robbins:How does that impact your resiliency? For a long time, I was, for the longest time, able to criminalize it, right? So I could go into a disaster zone and I could go to a volcano, an earthquake, a tornado where absolute happiness almost had been wreaked on people. And then I could go to a staff dinner afterwards and be completely untoward, take call, crime scene and be absolutely completely fine. Because I think there is a degree of professionalism that is required of the moment. But I know myself well enough to realize that there is a humanness which is inescapable. and I always bump up against that humanness and I think what has eventually given me move away from that disaster was that in this one it's it's it's not that I could it it's that I didn't want anything from it what do I mean by that business it a job, nor is it appropriate to affect change in a story and to help make someone's life better.

11:49If you do it as a result of the story, that's wonderful, but it's not our judgment to do so. And so that continued to become a growing rub for me. I didn't just want to, you know, knock on the door of a mother whose kid had had their heads, had their head blown off at school and, you know, go with every mother who's because it felt empty. And I wanted to give her, but I would have to sort of leave that traditional journalism behind. So that's what I ended up doing. Puerto Rico to the hurricane in 2017, Hurricane Maria. There were people who at times would say, hey, do you think what you're doing in Puerto Rico is advocacy journalism?

12:40And I would think long and hard about it. I remember answering the question one way, one day by saying, I will never apologize to human. And thinking about, to give you a story, is the multiple times and examples where I would be on the scene, on the ground in Puerto Rico, and someone would come up and they'd say, you know, the children's hospital is about to run out of diesel and we only have an hour of fuel left. And I would take to social media and I would report it. But in a way, I would also ask for help and call different people and see how we could get them fuel. Well, that's not necessarily a journalist job, right?

13:21Report. Yes. But like the persistent calling and checking it, Maybe not. I don't know. But I did it. And I apologize for none of it. But as the Do Good crew, that's when I'm going to cross that journalism line. And I have such great reverence for journalism that I want to do it appropriately with permission. And back from my lead national correspondent role, I became a contributor. And that's what allowed me to start the Do Good Crew.

13:55Daniel Robbins:We're at a very fascinating place when it comes to news and media. You have on one side deep fakes, lack of trust. We don't even know what's real, what's not real. and then you also have on the other side is there's there's so much blurred between the lines of like what is news what's who it used to be like a media station gave the news now it could just be somebody on youtube taking the news how do you see more positivity coming out because i feel like there's a lot of negativity i feel like a lot of people create news to generate views and many times that's attached to something negative emotions.

14:38Daniel Robbins:How are you seeing the ability to more positive emotions? Well, I see it in a somewhat special way that I think other people don't get to encounter because I literally went and built an around what I do at sea to what my heart was looking for, right? So I lived in this hate-filled disaster where the algorithm amplified rage for close to a decade. And then I said to use that same algorithm, but to amplify different things that would make people cry, feel what they want to share, but would be based around something that the premise of which was a reminder of our shared humanity or our better angels or of everyday people doing extraordinary things.

15:31And so I went and literally set up what I wanted to see. I built it, but I built it with the permission after I had earned the capital, after I had done the work in order to say, I ain't doing that anymore. And when I started in CBS news, they didn't give a shit about my opinions, nor were they really relevant. Like you just go where they want you and do, and you're lucky to have a contract. But about eight or nine years, it was like, well, I ain't doing that anymore. And you can either love me enough to let me do what I want to do, or you would love me enough to let me go. To their credit and to the absolute credit of the person who was in charge at the time, she said, well, what you want to do is noble.

16:20And I saluted done it before we've never allowed someone to do what you're asking us so we'll we'll do it as a as an experiment and we'll see how it works and we're two and a half years into that experiment and what happens is not only is it working but the world around me the ecosystem is rapidly evolving into what two years ago was an almost absurd for me i mean it's it seems like if you don't evolve

16:50Daniel Robbins:just in general, like in business, and it never ends well for companies. So as such an old industry, the fact that they were allowing you to do this, I mean, that says a lot, not just about your success, but you're proving out a model that I think hopefully will then resonate among other companies, media outlets, stations, because I'm like you, I like to bring positivity to the world. And I hope that, you know, together we can all uplift it where it's point that they see so much value in it that I think hopefully this rage bait will maybe lessen. But who knows, right? You have obviously the art of storytelling.

17:32Daniel Robbins:I think a lot of companies now, the art of storytelling can be the most important thing for their success. Yeah. So how can a company create a storyline? How can they tell a story better online? Because I think every company now is trying to figure this out. It's kind of playing into every company now. I have to be good at storytelling or I have to be good at media. I'm seeing a lot of companies moving into the media space, but I don't know. There's an art to the interview. There's an art to the journalist. I think there's a lot of art around this that a lot of people don't understand. I think what we're moving into is a world in which there is a higher value put on trust than perhaps ever before.

18:19And so where I now flip through my social media and I see a video, I now assume it's AI. It may not even be AI, but I just make the assumption that it is and I roll off of it. That is detrimental to everything that is going on. It's detrimental to companies. It's detrimental to just human beings and society supporting each other. So one of the things that as we built this company, I realized was we asked my agency, CAA, Creative Artists Agency, to do a deep dive intelligence on me. And one of the things it came away with was a trust rating of 93 % compared to my peers. And my peers being everything, everyone from Oprah to Reese Witherspoon to Jay Shetty, people in the space that I met.

19:14And when I first saw that, I thought it was nice, but I kind of rolled off. And suddenly the people who were advisors and building around me were like, no, no, no, no, this is a major, major thing because the universe in which we're moving into is going to prioritize that perhaps more than anything. And so I think to bring it back to your, anytime you can tell a story, it is going to be more interesting than any commercial that promotes a product, right? So for example, if you're selling soup, what's more fascinating to viewers than reviews about how good your soup are is the story of the founder who was working two jobs as a single mom, raising three kids, cooking the soup from home before somebody believed in her enough to give her a kitchen that led to a grocery store picking it up that led to her now being found in stores around America.

20:17Now I just made that up, but that's the story that will go viral, not the reviews about how good the soup is. So yes, storytelling at its core is something I would advise everyone to do. I make it sound so simple, but I will tell you, I continue to be almost gobsmacked as to how uncomfortable people are with telling their own story. I just assume because I work in the space that it's one of the easiest things you could do. It costs nothing. You just sit there and you tell your story. And I realize it's a billion dollar business because most people either don't want to tell it, don't want to tell all of it, don't want to tell the best parts of it, aren't good at telling it.

21:06It's incredible. And so I think there will always be work for people like you and I to help other people tell their stories. But I think as the AI slop continues to take over what we're doing. Those most vulnerable conversations like we're having today are the ones that are going to rise to the top. They simply will.

21:26Daniel Robbins:Do you think people are afraid of being judged? And maybe part of the story is like, the more I say, the more room I have for judgment. People are afraid of being judged. But I think more important than that, people are afraid of not being liked. So what is challenge yourself to care more about being respected to me alike investment, a cost very little and is a fair fan. Someone who will buy a ticket and someone who will write a review that is not an emoji, but our sentences. And I don't think that translates to, oh, yeah, David, you're 43 years old. And that's why you think that way now. Sure, we all fundamentally want to be liked, but I tell people all the time, you respecting me is more meaningful to me than you liking me.

22:25If you like me, great. If you don't like me, that's okay. Do you respect what I do? And when I make the decisions about what I do do and what I don't do, it is based on nothing to be respected for what I do. I won't be liked.

22:41Daniel Robbins:I like that. I think one of the most destructive components of social media is the fact that you can like something or dislike something. I think if that had never been a thing, we might be better off as a society because you are totally right. I think it's like going back to our childhood. It doesn't matter how successful you are. Everybody's afraid of being liked. I want to go to your show, The Person Who Believed In Me again. Your first guest was Oprah. I mean, who hasn't heard of Oprah? The first guest to be Oprah is insane to me. That's incredible. That says a lot about you, obviously. How did that relationship start?

23:24It started because she saw the work and respected it. So I should back up and it changed my life. It was my therapy. It was my church. It's where I first discovered self-help and the self-help authors at the time and thought leaders. and there is no bigger north for me than her and so I knew what I wanted and I wanted it for in the first to be the first guest but I had been working at CBS for several years and Gail King her best people would always say to me well just ask Gail just ask Gail and And in me, based on my background and how sort of traumatic it was, I'll never based my ask of people on whether they liked me.

24:16I always based it on what? Whether they respected me. And so I go into situations that don't like me, but I hope I can do the work with respect and maybe the like. and so Oprah had seen my work over many years and had become a fan and we had become friends and I was having dinner two of us and I wanted to ask her but I had delayed it I had delayed it for a long time and we were there we were there at the table and she was was telling her about the do good crew podcast. And she said something about, uh, Oh, you know, have you done any interviews? And I said, well, yes, we interviewed Barry Diller.

25:04And she said, Oh, you had Barry. Yes. Yes. And the moment felt right. And it was like in between a bite and she put her fork down. And I said, you know, cause you don't want to seem like you're begging, but you don't want to seem like you'd be too, too cool for school. And I said, and I'd love to have you on. And she goes, of course I'll do your podcast. And that's literally how it happened. And so, you know, After the dinner, I got in my car and I drove from Montecito back to LA and I called my team and I told them. And of course, they were screaming and I was screaming and blah, blah, blah. But they say you don't want to meet your heroes because they live up to what you built them to be in your mind.

25:40I agree with that. Oprah has lived up to be what I have built her to be in my mind in many ways and then some. And so it was incredible. But when you watch the interview that I did with Oprah, what I'm proud of is that it seems like we are friends in a living room talking about things that you assume you've heard just about everything Oprah has to say. I feel like I've heard everything from her, but this entire hour was brand new to me. And it was brand new to her. In fact, when her team told my team who she picked as a person who believed in her, they said to my team, we aren't, if we misheard Ms.

26:27Winfrey, because she mentioned someone that we've never heard her talk about in 30 years. So surely either we made a mistake. We heard incorrectly. And so they're like, where are you going back and check? And they came back to my team and they were like, no, that's it. And we had a surprise for her in the beginning. It was the best. It couldn't have gone any better. and I'll never.

26:47Daniel Robbins:That's incredible. Thinking back to your 18-year-old self, if you told your 18-year-old self in that moment, what would be the feelings? What are the emotions that are going through? Like when you, not just this Oprah moment, but when you look at the people you've talked to, the life experience you've had, the success, what's going through your mind? What's going through my mind is everything I dreamed. Get ready for this. everything I dreamed has happened, but it has happened bigger than I dreamed it would be. What that does is give me a great respect for what we mean when we say manifest your dreams.

27:33I am doing exactly what I dreamed I would be able to do. You know, I would say to that kid who felt alone and felt like he was his own best advocate, that you have done incredibly well. And you in ways now are in some ways going back to where it all began. When I started in television at the age of 18, the first reporting I did was not disaster reporting. It was public service feature storytelling about everyday people who had done something extraordinary. And now I built a business around doing the same damn thing. So that's what I would tell that 18 year old kid giving back. I would also tell him, I'm very proud of you for giving back in the way that you do.

28:26I go back a lot. I talk about where I came from. I'm very proud of where I came from. I don't run from that because, and I go back to the storytelling question you asked earlier, The best stories are the stories that don't just talk about your pretty perfect portion. The best stories include the tough parts, the rough parts, and the painful parts. If you want to leave that out of the story, don't even start telling the damn story to begin with. Nobody's going to care and it's not going to resonate with anyone. The reason celebrities are now laying in beds on pillows, half drooling, talking to you on a social media video is because they see the metrics of how that does better.