Dave Lukas is an entrepreneur, father, and fitness enthusiast. His successful business, Grasp Technologies got off the ground with what Dave calls, our rag-tag crew of misfits. Dave realized that we all have an inner misfit, an inner genius, maybe even a hidden genius that is in every single leader, employee, and even you. If only you can unpack that inner Misfit. Around 4 years ago, Dave and his wife traveled to China to meet and bring home their daughter, Hannah Jade. In his own words; it was a surreal and humbling experience. Around the same time, Dave decided to start his own Inner Misfit Podcast, where he would not only interview outstanding individuals with hidden misfit genius, he would also publish episodes where he would directly speak to his daughter, offering advice and wisdom she and others could refer to at any time. Now Dave enjoys life as a grateful, caring father as well as a successful entrepreneur and podcaster.

Contact Info

• Website: www.MisfitEntrepreneur.com
• Social Media: Dave M Lukas or Dave Lukas or Misfit Entrepreneur
• Podcast: Misfit Entrepreneur

Most Influential Person

• T. Harv Eker (Author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind)

Effect on Emotions

• Mindfulness has affected my emotions in that, I've learned to control my emotions a lot better.
• When I was younger I used to be very quick-tempered and very quick to react to things. Later I would know that it wasn't the right reaction.
• So learning to control in the moment (and some of that is your conditioning too), but learned to control in the moment and stop yourself, I have a process I call, “Stop, Ask, Choose”. Stop yourself, ask yourself how you want to respond in that situation, and then choose the right path forward.
• I've conditioned myself to do that in a split second over the years for decisions, so it's made a big difference.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Every morning I have an exercise that I call “My Daily Prime”. It takes about ten minutes. I make sure nothing's on, it's dark, I'm by myself, nobody's usually up.
• So I take the time to center myself, breathing, three or four minutes. Just to breathe in deep and get calm and clear in my head.
• Then I write the three things I'm grateful for on that day and sometimes they're very deep, and sometimes it's about the beautiful morning, whatever comes to me.
• From there I write down my “Three To Thrive”. Those are my three things that are the most important I can do for the day.
• For instance for today it was this interview. I wanted to make the most out of it for you and for your audience and to be present.
• Then I end it with some deep breaths and visioning for the day, what I'm going to accomplish and then I get started.

Suggested Resources

• Book: An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth by Colonel Chris Hatfield
• Book: Wild At Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul by John Eldredge
• App: I use Pen and Paper as my process for planning.

Bullying Story

• Bullying is an interesting thing. It's hard to answer that question now because of what I've learned over the years. It's like anything; you choose whether something affects you or not.
• This is from a mental standpoint; from a physical standpoint it is a completely different thing. If somebody's punching you in the face every day, that's a different thing.
• The key is to understand that you're only affected by the things you let yourself be affected by. You have that control. The minute you seed that control to someone, a bully, anyone, then you lose your power and you give it up.
• It's naturally yours, for you as an individual.
• With that being said, I do have an interesting story.
• Early on, when I was in Kindergarten or first grade, in my neighborhood there was another boy who was bigger than me. His older brother rode the bus every day.
• When we got off the bus, his brother would make us fight. The interesting thing was, that myself and the other boy had been friends because we went to the same pre-school together.
• Everyday he would make us fight and we would go round and round in circles and it was kind of the older brother who was the bully on both of us, making us fight. We did that for some time.
• We were actually best friends. He was the best man at my wedding.
• From a mindfulness standpoint, if we had both banded together and stood up to the brother and had the wherewithall and the mindfulness, the emotional intelligence to say, ‘we're going to choose not to do this and you can't make us'.
• There was really nothing he could have done. That would have ended it pretty fast and he wouldn't have done that any more.
• That's an example of what I could have done if I had had that emotional intelligence or awareness and being conscious in that way to make a difference. You can use that across any situation as you get older. It happens in business a lot too.
• People try to throw their weight around. We deal with some of the largest corporations in the world and when it comes to negotiating things, they're a big company. So this is how it's going to be.
• It takes a lot of courage to say, that is not how we work, so that's not how it will be or we're not going to do business together. I think people respect that, if it's done tactfully and done in the right way.