The Mostly Real Estate Podcast, with Declan Spring

From Cookies To Coaching: Mapping Passion To Purpose, With Joy - #70 Jerry Beckerman

• Declan Spring

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What if joy at work is less about perks and more about practice? I sit down with Berkeley entrepreneur and mentor Jerry Beckerman to trace a path from a bustling Telegraph Avenue cookie shop to Passion Spark, his Socratic-based program that helps people connect what they love to how they earn. We talk about the discipline of imagination, the real meaning of risk across body, feelings, and spirit, and simple ways to turn rote tasks into play so the work sustains you instead of draining you.

Jerry opens the hood on building a customer-first experience starting with imagination, and then scaling production with intention. He shares how a single editorial mention doubled sales overnight, why word of mouth outperforms ad spend. We dig into the hard part too: when excitement fades and routine creeps in. Jerry’s antidote is to choose play on purpose, set personal metrics, and measure success by alignment rather than assets.

We get practical about careers and midlife pivots. Jerry lays out four “realities” for mapping passion to income: direct entry, delayed payoff, part-time bridge, and lower materialism. We explore trusting your gut like an expert, then verifying with research, so you get the best of intuition and evidence. Goal-free evaluation helps avoid tunnel vision, and the Socratic method builds ownership in teams by asking better questions instead of prescribing answers. We close on civility: how micro-choices like a smile or hello shift culture, and how Jerry’s Kindness and Civility Polls use introspection to raise productivity and reduce burnout.

If this conversation sparks something, share it with a friend who needs a nudge toward “enough,” rate the show, and hit follow so you never miss an episode. And if Jerry’s work resonates, reach out, your next step might be one question away.

Jerry Beckerman is the President and Founder of Passion Spark.

To contact Jerry Beckerman please email him at jerry@opine.net

To learn more about Civility Poll and Passion Spark please click here.

Declan Spring is a licensed CA REALTOR® DRE#01398898

Declan:

This is Declan Spring and welcome to the Mostly Real Estate Podcast. Happy New Year. 2026 is upon us. Oh my goodness. Here we go. Ready to embark on another year-long journey through all kinds of waters. They'll be calm at times. They'll be very choppy at times. When the water's calm, uh have a good look around, see if you can help anybody out. Because when your water gets choppy, you might just need their help. So let's be good to each other, let's be kind, and let's try and practice love. I want to dedicate this podcast to Jerry Fagley. I want to remember here a mentor of mine, Jerry Fagley, who sadly I learned passed away on January 7th. So Jerry Fagley was my first East Bay real estate broker. I held my license with Jerry in Point Richmond, where he and his wife Jan Fagley had their office, Fagley Realtors. Jerry and Jan were very, very well known around Point Richmond for decades, and they were very, very good to me. Jerry was a born salesman, the best salesman I've ever met. That man knew how to smile, no doubt about it. I've never known a better salesman, to be honest. And I have learned uh, or I did learn a lot from Jerry, and he was kind enough to help me out financially as well to some degree when I first went professional and got into the business when the recession hit in 2008. So I needed his help and he he gave it to me uh with a smile. He did everything with a smile. He introduced me to Brian Bafini and the Baffini Coaching Company and covered the cost of coaching for me for the first several months, which was a total game changer in my business and in my life. Uh I left Jerry's office in 2010 when I joined a bigger brokerage, Red Oak Realty. Um, and I, you know, I tried to stay in touch with Jerry and Jan over the years. Jerry lost his wife several years ago, and I I really don't think he ever recovered from that. Um anyway, the last conversation I had with Jerry was just last week. He was recovering from a bad fall, but he was being discharged from rehab, and um things looked to be going a little better. So, anyway, I was very surprised and very sad to learn yesterday that he passed away. And my heart goes out to his son, um Chad Fagley. So thank you, Jerry, for all of your support over the years, and may you rest in peace. So, for the first podcast of the year, actually, it's kind of fitting that my guest is another elder of mine, somebody whom I admire for their wisdom and ability to dispatch some notes of guidance from a season in life that I'll get to in the future. And very coincidentally, today's guest is also named Jerry, this time Jerry Beckerman. So, with that, uh, I'll bring you the conversation with Jerry Beckerman. I did want to mention that Jerry and I chatted at his home in the Berkeley Hills, which is a perfectly lovely place to set up the mics. There's a little bit of a um an echo in the room. There was some distance between my mic and Jerry's. And uh, so if you if you uh hear a little bit of an echo, I hope it's not distracting, uh, but there's really not much I could do about that. It's just a symptom or a consequence of of the room that we were in when we made the recording. Here's my conversation with Jerry Beckerman. Well, I'm here with Jerry Beckerman, my good friend Jerry Beckerman, whom I met through um a referral group that we were both involved with, or a networking group, right? And Jerry Beckerman's became one of my favorite people fairly quickly. So Jerry's an entrepreneur. So Jerry's been involved in uh a lot of different types of businesses that he's uh founded himself or you know, been variously involved with over the years. But Jerry's Jerry's my senior, and I'm Jerry, I'm the kind of person who looks up to my seniors. I'm like, they've lived a good life. What can I understand from this person that will benefit me and honor them for having gained some wisdom and passed it along? So nice. This is why I call the podcast the mostly real estate podcast. See, it leaves room for conversations that aren't specifically with realtors or about real estate. So welcome, Jerry Beckerman to the Mostly Real Estate Podcast.

Jerry:

Thanks so much, Declan. It's a it's a real pleasure to be here with you.

Declan:

And and thanks for inviting me up to your home here, because I I love your house here in the Berkeley Hills, gorgeous. And it's I've got a great view today.

Jerry:

Clean air, it's it's excellent.

Declan:

Yeah, it's really lovely. Let's tell people a little bit about uh you know your history in in business specifically. And of course, because we're in the East Bay, I know you've moved around a few locations, but because we're in the East Bay, let's talk about the cookie business in Berkeley. Maybe that's where we start. But uh let's let's tell people about your life, Jerry, and then let's let's try and help anyone listening understand how to take the pressure off themselves, how to do all of this and maintain joy in doing it. Joy. Okay? Yes. It's what we're looking for.

Speaker 2:

So I'd be happy to tell you about uh the cookies and milk store and what we did with that.

Declan:

Let's do that and let me just do this as well for the benefit of the guests. I have a little uh bio here, and let me go through it and and make corrections wherever you need to, but I'm gonna read this because I think it's useful.

Jerry:

Okay.

Declan:

Berkeley-based entrepreneur and mentor, Jerry Beckerman, is the president and founder of Passion Spark, which is a Socratic-based retreat program designed to help people identify what they love and map it to a fulfilling career. Nice. Right, okay, good.

Jerry:

I like that map it too. That's uh that's nicely nicely put together, right? You say match, but map it too. I might have to use that language.

Declan:

Oh, great, okay. This is this is how the world goes around. We help each other. A UC Berkeley psychology graduate in 1975, is that right? Correct. Okay, Jerry has spent decades at the intersection of entrepreneurship, product development, research, and mission-driven work. I love that segue to mission-driven work. That's kind of really, really cool. So we'll dive into that because I I feel like that's related to joy. He began his career by launching Cookies and Milk in 1976, described as the nation's second chopped chocolate chip cookie store. However, his store offered 12 varieties of chocolate chip cookies. And then you you moved into new product development roles and independent ventures, including work with uh Lowry's Foods and the creation of Nutcracker's Snack Cracker. In 2003, he founded the nonprofit Segway Career Mentors, which reports delivering 90,000 plus student career exposures. And Passion Spark continues that mission through retreat workshops serving students, mid-career uh professionals, and more. That's the general outline there.

Jerry:

So uh Passion Spark serves students in high school and college and those in mid-career.

Declan:

Yeah. And it's and it's a wonderful thing. And the the the name speaks Passion Sparks. You know, it's just lovely. You're you're very good with words. And uh so I'm sure that I was noticing your vanity plate on your car as I came in. It says opine. Correct. And I love chatting with you, so here we go.

Jerry:

Well, opine, you know, if you take it in the imperative, uh-huh, it's it's a message to whoever reads it, to opine. Uh-huh. If you have an idea, if you have an opinion, share it with the world. Express it. So much of our world has unfolded because people hold these ideas to themselves, especially about loving one another and being equitable to each other.

Declan:

Yeah, nicely put. Let's go back to 1976 and talk about cookies and milk, which was your first probably I I you were I don't know what you were doing as a kid and teenager. Probably you had your hand in several you know, money-making ventures, but cookies and milk in 76, that was that was your your big liftoff, right?

Jerry:

It it was, although uh earlier when I was eight, my uh liftoff to my life in entrepreneurship was this simple thing. If you know what a slot car is, yeah, they're little things and they uh you can build your own. And in those days, they sold for about three dollars retail. Yeah. And um, you know, you'd race them around tracks with you press a button, and yeah. So I I happened to be near a toy factory, uh-huh. And just like a bakery has day-old baked goods, yeah, this toy factory had a little shop. I'm talking about a giant bakery has, you know, a a little shop where they sell some of their day-old stuff. Well, this toy manufacturer had that for its products. Now, they were all good, however, the uh they might have not passed their QC, their quality control. So there might be a scratch, or in the case of these slot cars, a brush was bent. But here's the thing I walk into the store and there's a giant box, maybe a yard cube, right, and filled with these slot cars. They're not on their pretty uh uh plastic uh card that the retailers sell, they're just loose.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

Now these $3 retail cars are being sold for five cents. Now, even a kid knows that's a deal. So uh I took all the money I had, yeah, which was a dollar twenty, yeah, and bought twenty-two of these cars, yeah, and then went around to slot car places when I'd be racing my own cars. Yeah, they'd often have a little soldering room where you could repair your car for if you had built your own car.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And I would mention it to people, giving them the extremely low price of 50 cents for this three-dollar car.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And uh sold all but a couple of them, which I still have with just for memory's sake.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And that taste of tenfold profit I I've never met since.

Declan:

Right. That was a good one. That was a good. So that was your real heyday as an entrepreneur.

Jerry:

That was my taste of it, right? I had more candy and donuts than I knew what to do with.

Declan:

So I hear, you know, I hear these stories frequently from entrepreneurs, not just in real estate, but in in many fields, like this thing that they did as a kid, for example, the um the newspaper delivery thing is a classic story that I'll often hear. You know, just people just aggressively expanding their territory on their bike and work, you know, working super hard towards a goal. Nice. I'll hear that often. Here's something I want you to hold in mind because a lot of people listening to this show are realtors, right? And and it's my claim that many, many realtors are not innately entrepreneurial. And it's it's a skill they need almost to learn, right? So they don't have the benefit of that. Guess what I did as an eight-year-old kid? So um they're coming often out of W-2, you know, employee work, right? Where they're given a task, and so they're extremely good, they're task-oriented, they're they're working hard in transaction, but the entrepreneurial side of generating business sometimes doesn't just come naturally. So keep that in mind because we want to it oftentimes it's the hardest part for realtors because it didn't bring them joy as a kid, they never had that experience, that moment of I can do this. Yeah, it comes from me. And so so generating business becomes a chore, and it can it just is hard. So let's just keep that in mind. Okay, but uh, so so that was your taste.

Jerry:

That was my taste. Yeah, the cookie store just knocked it home. That was my biggest financial success. Yeah. Uh and the the idea, I want to come back to this about uh making it m possibly more interesting because our um for realtors, yeah uh it's all imagination.

Declan:

Okay.

Jerry:

Everything is our imagination. If we will allow it, yeah, if we will you know, some say get quiet, but just go inside and ask yourself the question or what you might do with a home or or or like that. Because you'd be surprised that the imagination comes up. And I as you know, I I've started to write a book and uh one thing led to another, and I uh uh as I look back on all my ventures, this issue of risk is a key idea. And uh the more I thought about it, yeah, the notion of risk is present in just about every decision we make.

Declan:

Right.

Jerry:

If and those decisions are where we spend our time. Those decisions are our actions in the world.

Declan:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Those decisions are our participation in adventures and actions, and that's where the joy comes.

Declan:

Okay, I like this.

Jerry:

And so the the the more I brought this up, there's this, you know, in in the amygdala is where the a fight or flight mechanism that protects us comes in, a fight or flight. So the net is a lot of our decisions about risk and what we're gonna do with our day or our moment or our a venture are are based on this unconscious fight or flight mechanism that doesn't really give us as much chance to ask ourselves, oh really, to myself, oh really, Jerry? That is that we don't often have a chance to really explore what's the risk here. And when we do take that time and we uh uh overlay reality, yeah, then that's where we can decide not just unconsciously, but fully conscious what to do with our lives, what to do with our day, yeah. Um which is you know a nice bite size of life.

Declan:

Yeah, I love this. Let me ask you a question about this. Um I I know that people, one of the problems with with people, me, everybody, is that we tend to interpret from here, from ourselves, right? And so we hear a word like risk. So I just wanted to I just want to talk about the word risk in the sense that you're implying rather than how somebody else might interpret what we're hearing. What do you mean by risk in this circumstance?

Jerry:

Well, risk is our assessment that is a partner to our imagination.

Declan:

Okay.

Jerry:

And we assess will this harm me physically, like in the fight or flight. But the fight or flight, things harm us psychologically, what we want might want to say. And so we uh uh step back into our diplomacy, yeah. Right? We c uh i uh only with our closest friends perhaps can we be uh completely honest. We don't want to hurt feelings. Yeah, it's not that we we can't say the core truth, but if we care about others, we care about their feelings. Yeah so feelings, yeah, you can hurt feelings, that's a risk.

Declan:

Right.

Jerry:

That falls under this category. And spirit, yeah, when we consider a decision, right, consider it, not let it happen unconsciously. When we consider a decision, it can uh have a negative consequence to our spirit. And so all of this is up, right? And so the one of the ideas of this book uh relates to the importance of play and how play generates joy.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And uh I give an example. I don't want to go too far afield.

Declan:

No, this is all really useful. I this is the part of this is why I love podcasting, because we're getting into things that matter, in my opinion.

Jerry:

Oh, thank you. So I I was digging a hole uh in my yard to plant a uh uh an olive tree.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And the soil is hard, it's full of roots, uh and uh it's clay. So the question comes up. Sometimes I'll ask myself the question. Yeah, sometimes uh Marilyn will say, Are you having fun? Marilyn's my wife. Yeah, it's such a gift to be asked that question, whether you ask it yourself or not. So digging a hole, and it's useful to have a shovel, all that. And um when I ask myself the question, can digging this hole be fun? Right, can it be play? And what's amazing is our mind is in charge of whether we make it play, uh-huh. Or we make it a task along the way to achieving our goal. Yeah, some things are harder to do than others. Yeah, I mean, uh digging a hole, I mean, it might be a little easier, even though it's you know, effort, a lot of effort and get around. Sometimes I take a saw out to cut a root so I can get the hole right where I want it. Right. But that's that's the idea. We have the power in our minds to make play out of a task many more times than we do.

Declan:

So let me know if this resonates. There's a guy I like, and I'm sure a lot of people in real estate will know his name, Jim Roan. He he was a motivational speaker. A lot of his philosophy centered around this one idea that he tried to teach, which was work harder on yourself than you do on your business, you'll make a fortune. Right, so this idea of The task is the same, right? You're digging a hole for your olive tree. So there's the task. How you color you know the experience of that task, that's where you have to do some digging on yourself first, right? So the hole gets dug the hole gets dug internally first. The reflection, I mean, the going in.

Jerry:

Yeah, I hear where you're going and that work on yourself. I I'm all for. Yeah. I tend to use the word practice. Yeah. Because when we practice things, we get closer to uh the the outcome we really want over and over again. Just practice a thing.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And here the practice, it's not to ha necessarily dig so deep into yourself because sometimes it's just a snap. Uh-huh. If you choose it, it's all about choosing our perceptions within reality, of course. Yeah. And staying on that that choosing, it can be that simple.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

It just the question was the gift. Is that fun? I go, oh yeah. I have a choice right here.

Declan:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

I can see this as fun and enjoy it as fun.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

Back to the or not, maybe just to unfold about the uh cookie store. I'm back to imagination, right? Yeah. So we imagined, you know, you see when people go to an ice cream store, they get an ice cream cone and they walk down the street and lick it and so on.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

Well, we imagined our little white bakery bags.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And people, because you could get a few varieties in your quarter pound or half pound, whatever you bought. And we imagined people walking down the street, dipping into this bag and taking and eating. When I saw people walking out of our store doing exactly that, it was a yes. Yeah, yes. And to uh one of the fun things we imagined how you get people into the store at first. We're right up above Telegraph Avenue. In those days, it was teeming with people. Yeah. Not quite like Fifth Avenue in New York, but really very, very busy.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And so we one of our coworkers stood on the corner and had these little coupons that we called a cookie coupon.

Declan:

There you go.

Jerry:

And you could take it into the store and get a free cookie. All right. And some people were satisfied with that. Others, uh, fortunately, wanted to get more cookies. Yeah. And you'd come up to the front window, yeah, and you could see 12 trays, big cookie trays, uh, bakery trays of the 12 varieties of cookies, and then come into the store and look at the menu and choose them. Um so that was uh that was joy. And seeing it actually happen, see people coming in and sort of the dream becomes reality.

Declan:

Like that's what I saw in my mind. There it is on the streets happening.

Jerry:

Yes, and one little side point about what I learned was surprisingly from business, and this is probably a duh to most everyone who's in business, but that is the Daily Cal wrote an article about us. That's the school newspaper for UC Berkeley. Yeah, because we were just a block from Cal. And uh the day after they wrote that article, yeah, our sales nearly doubled. Doubled, can you imagine? Okay, and and that's and it stayed there.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

So the point is editorial articles, people saying things, the word of mouth category, all of that is so much more powerful than paid advertising.

Declan:

Right, right. That's that's duly noted, actually, hot on the heels of the last podcast I had with a local realtor here, um, Jeff Lifton. He just talked about part of what he and his wife Megan Miko do is they have contacts within the news media locally. And they're they're often looking to have to represent themselves through news stories about real estate.

Jerry:

Okay.

Declan:

In Berkeley specifically, right? Because it's better than direct advertising. It is, you know what I mean? So this. Right, right. And so he works very hard toward that. So I hear what you're saying there as well. That's very important. So so there's all this excitement. Let me ask you a question about this. There's all this excitement, and you manifest your your dream. You've had the vision, the bag, the people, the cookies, and there it is. And so there, and there's tremendous excitement in the growth of the business and and all of that. Now, what about what about at a period of time when you sort of hit a certain cruising altitude with the business, and then it can shift, it can drift, I would say. It can drift or shift or shift into a grind. So, and and that's that's problematic. I w why do where does excitement get lost?

Jerry:

Well, I think I mean you hit on it, but you know I I I think a lot of it it goes back to that choice we make about what to do with our day. What do we want? Right. Well, we we eventually uh and and tell me if this isn't interesting, but I we loved it. We decided, okay, we've got this retail store. Do we want to open more retail stores? Yeah, or do we want to um open a big factory and package it and sell it all around the bay? Well, we chose we we dabbled in doing it at second store in San Francisco and so on, but we also opened uh a factory here in Berkeley, yeah. Uh near Aquatic Park on Dwight. Okay. We had a 2,000-foot cookie bakery. Wow. But here's what we had. We had an 80-quart Hobart mixer. And it was made, it was such a big thing. It needed a hydraulic lift that was built into it to lift that up. So we'd mix that. And then it seems kind of odd, maybe, but I love these details of laying out the steps of where that would go. So from the cookie, from the the uh mixer, it went into a cookie dropper, yeah, which kind of pushed down the dough, yeah, and then uh a wire would come and cut it off. Yeah, uh the holes, the an exact size or close to that we needed because of the package weight, yeah, uh, would fall onto uh those big bake uh cookie sheets on a conveyor belt that would slide at a pace, you know, calibrate it, and the cookie dropper, I mean, it would just be all automatic. And then we take those um sheets and they would go on our cookie racks that were uh 20 sheets per rack. We had two of those, so we had 40 racks. But here's a part that I loved our uh rack of now. Who can love a rack, cookie rack, right? But that cookie rack docked with our oven. Yeah, slide it up and it held tight, and then one push, 10 trays went into the convection oven top, one push at the bottom, and then for the second bank of two trays, yeah, push in, and so we could bake like 40 trays in a few minutes in the convection oven and pull them out and it went through packaging. I won't go through all that detail. Yeah, but uh except at the end, then a package. We took all our cartons and put them in a case, a dozen, right? And that went through a little window from the very clean side immaculate out to the front where our our distributors would pick up the cookies.

Declan:

And you know, I can't I I gotta tell people because they can't see you, but you're smiling. So what what I'm enjoying about this is that the joy you had then and there is here now. Yeah. Like this is this is when we time travel, in my opinion. You can time travel and bring joy through memory. It can exist right here, right now, even though it was then. But that's a trick of the mind that it was then. It's here.

Jerry:

It's us, yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, one thing that could have been, it was a giant challenge. We get everything immaculate, new floors, everything, you know, health code, the the state has health codes and so on. Sure. I also and and the city has health codes.

Declan:

Yeah oh a lot.

Jerry:

So for for bake for food. So the city uh inspector, I think it was maybe someone who headed the department, or maybe it wasn't the head, because the story involves the mayor of Berkeley. Okay, let's do it. He comes in, the the the um inspector, and he says, Oh yeah, this is good. Everything was good except our ceilings were 15 feet up, which was great because that kept, you know, nothing could really go up into the ceiling and create any infestation. But this inspector said, Oh no, flour if it could go up into that. Well, flour is is not um in its dry state for except for seconds while it's going into the uh the the mixer, right, and then it's all wet and it's like cookie dough.

Declan:

Right.

Jerry:

So that was not a real thing. Plus the state, yeah, uh, the state health code said we were fine.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

The Berkeley guy said we had to drop a false ceiling under 2,000 square foot of space. It wasn't that we were argumentative, although we could be. I mean, come on. That's a huge expense. We didn't have uh that budget for that, right, nor the time we needed to go because we had to um we had debt, and you know, you had to start producing. So I I didn't know what to do, and I thought I gotta go to the mayor in Berkeley and talk to him and say, This is wrong. The state already says we're cool. Can you help? And he l he really listened to me. I mean, this is in '76. Uh uh, I'm sorry, I don't remember the mayor's name then. Right. He listened to me and and he said, just a minute. And he called in the man who heads up the health department in inspections. Uh-huh. Okay. And he said, uh I'm truncating it, okay? He said, This is the kind of business we want in Berkeley. The state says it's good. This is this. Now, can you take another look at this, or however he said it diplomatically, right? Uh in respect to his co-workers.

Declan:

Yes.

Jerry:

And uh we were done. And we got our health improval uh approvals and we were off and running.

Declan:

That that's great, that's great. It hasn't gotten easier since 76 with the city, let me tell you.

Jerry:

So I can imagine.

Declan:

And I don't know how accessible the mayor is anymore. So, what what did enthusiasm feel like in your twenties and what did you misunderstand about it then?

Jerry:

I I had a professor at Cal, Charles Garfield. Okay. Uh he invited us to call him Charlie. You get that idea of who he is, but he was he was an immense figure and so accomplished. He was an expert in death and dying. Okay. He and one day he brought in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross to talk to our class. And she wrote a book on death and dying. And Professor Garfield encouraged us to hold our mortality with us in every moment. Because back to that earlier question about is it work or a task or can it be fun and play? Just like death, if we have it on our shoulder, not to be fearful about it, but to remember our moments are limited.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And to enjoy our days, to have enthusiasm for what comes by us.

Declan:

Yeah. I I personally find that to be a valuable instruction. And I appreciate when I'm reminded of it, which is several times a day. I need to remind myself, you know, because you know, your internal dialogue, however that appears for most people, for me, you know, it's just a fairly straightforward, you know, voice my head. Man, it can hijack my day sometimes. I have to put it in its place. So, where did you come from? Who the heck do you think you are hijacking this beautiful day? And and it it comes from that, you know, that question of um and fear, all of that kind of thing. Yeah, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, I mean, she she came up with the stages of grief. That was her contribution. Yes. And it's it's an enduring contribution. Among many. Yeah, it's an enduring contribution.

Jerry:

Yes.

Declan:

You know, amazing people.

Jerry:

Yes, an amazing spirit. Yeah.

Declan:

And and I'm fascinated that you got to meet her and hear her speak. If we're looking back on the enthusiasm we had in our 20s, it's it's it's difficult to uh measure it accurately from this distance.

Jerry:

It it it could be, yeah, but I I really want it because you know, I I'm just into my 70s. Yeah, it's available to us right now. It it's not just on the youth. Yeah, but I I I did want to add something. I was so naive. I mean, I thought I knew it, just like I I many of us do at that age or even now, we think we know. Right. I mean, that's that's one of the hallmarks of Socrates. Uh to own that you don't know is perhaps the wisest thing, rather than proving to yourself or others that you know. And but to the point I was making about being naive, I trusted too much in my twenties.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And my enthusiasm, and yet even as those words come out of my mouth, and I learned to pull in my horns and not trust so easily or so quickly, I I just have to say no. That's not the way to live a life.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

Be uh increase your mindfulness, increase your ability to discern or do the research. But trusting is a beautiful place to be. You don't want to have to looking over your shoulder at everything someone else says. Yeah. And and is this the veracity, is this true or is it not?

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

So so that's one of those double-edged swords in life.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

Be aware of what's truth and what's not, to the best that you can.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

But don't let it cripple you to where you become so untrusting that it it makes the joy difficult to experience in life.

Declan:

Right. It's a terrible limitation. It's a real handicap, actually. Yeah. And trusting. Are you uh are you a trust your gut kind of person? I you know, some people are big on uh well, let me give that some context. Um I I'm I speak about this from the Mike Malcolm Gladwell approach. You've read Blink?

Jerry:

Oh, I've read all of him.

Declan:

Right, where he talks about some, let's say a professional.

Jerry:

Yes.

Declan:

A professional who is uh advanced and has an awful lot of stored knowledge and accumulated knowledge, right? Yes. That they've worked hard, they've studied, they've done, they've got experience. So they have this within them. I think the classic example in the book in Blink was uh that a um uh a piece of uh uh art was found in an archaeological dig. I think it was a statue, and it was carbon dated to a specific time, I don't know, two thousand, I I can't I can't remember. So the science said this is this old. And the experts who were allowed to see this piece of art to a person all said, mm-mm, something's wrong. Within a and that's why it's called blink, right? Just they just knew, and then they were asked to articulate, well, what is it? I don't know. It's just not it's not what the science is telling us it is.

Jerry:

Yes.

Declan:

And the science won, science prevailed, and this you know, piece of you know, art.

Jerry:

Carbon dated.

Declan:

Yeah, right. So this was put on display, and I know it was a number of years later it was discovered that where the problem was, and it wasn't real, it was a fraud, and da-da-da. And and you know, the the the art communities art historians is like, yeah, you know, just blink, like you just knew. So when I say as a professional in particular, trust your gut, it's often because you even have to disregard your own head noise. Yes, right? Because that voice in your head couldn't cause doubt. But sometimes as professionals, this but this is the beauty of learning from your twenties. The journey begins. Right. Right? You you begin to understand your own how to trust yourself, I guess.

Jerry:

And unfortunately, you what you experience in your gut can be just a start. Yeah. In business, you rarely have to make a decision like that. Yeah, you can research it, you can go further. So if a suspicion comes to your gut, yeah, follow it up. The the information can be there. Yeah, and I don't know if it was in Gladwell's book. It might have been. Um, they talk about in World War II, yeah. This is in in England, and they had a uh an observation tower. I won't get this perfect, but and they watched the planes coming in, and they didn't know whether they were returning to uh that they were friendly planes returning, yeah, or they could be bombs of German planes or whatever. Yeah. And uh so you you'd learn how to tell. And and the way you'd learn is to be with an expert, yeah, but the expert could not tell you what to look for. Yes, the expert would be with you and guide you as you. You both looked, yes, and you you would eventually be able to say yes or no about the plane being friendly or faux.

Declan:

Yeah, I love that.

Jerry:

But it was you couldn't they couldn't point to anything.

Declan:

Yes. Along with that, there was another one. We must have read the same. I don't know if this was Malcolm. Did you read this? But there was the chicken sorting as well. Example. There are people who to have to sort chickens uh, you know, based on gender, right? And they have to do it super fast.

Jerry:

Right.

Declan:

And they don't know how they're doing it. And so to learn how to do this, you have to sit with a chicken sorter for a lot of hours and just kind of watch what they're doing. Because it's it again, it can't be explained. There's no specific thing to look for. Even the chicken sorters, like, I don't know. It just happens.

Jerry:

So it gets more confounded with a little science. I want to share a quick story. It's uh about spoon bending.

Declan:

Okay.

Jerry:

All right. This is this is crazy. So uh a friend of mine from a uh uh sort of a club I was a member of.

Declan:

So spoon bending was uh a thing that was very specific to the late 80s kind of era. There was Uri Geller.

Jerry:

Well, Uri Geller, they they said you he would put you could put a spoon on his hand and make it bend. Right. But um so there was a lot of skepticism about that. I was one of them. Yeah. And then this friend of mine put together this gathering. There were about 40 of us in a hotel room in West LA. And um, I brought my daughter, who was seven.

Speaker:

Okay.

Jerry:

Because I would just it was a joy to bring her different experiences. So we were all sitting around, you had to bring your own spoons and forks to bend. And there was a big pile on the floor, too, if you needed it. But they wanted to make sure you didn't think those that pile was a trick pile or something. Right. And that we were instructed what to do. Like you know, the the bowl of a spoon is is this really the strongest part structurally. Yeah, you can't couldn't bend that with just your your your net your weight, your uh force, right, your muscles. Right. So we're sitting there quietly, silently, and rubbing that center spar apart with your finger, right, your thumb, it depending how you're holding it, and you're saying in your mind, quietly, silently, slowly, bend.

Speaker:

Right.

Jerry:

Bend. Bend. And you're saying this, and it's supposed to work.

Speaker:

Right.

Jerry:

And then, you know, it gets supposed to get soft enough so you can now bend it with your hand, your hands, not with force, right? But it's just all of a sudden, some of the people around the room are going, oh my god, I got it, it's bending. And and I'm going, damn it, because I believe in this as possible, but my spoon isn't bending yet. Then my seven-year-old daughter is doing it, and she's bending her spoon and another one, and then the tines of forks are so soft that you can twirl them.

Declan:

Wow.

Jerry:

And I'd never believe it, except I was there with them doing it.

Declan:

That's so funny.

Jerry:

And and my spoon, uh, Ben, too, eventually. And and the man who instructed us told us this.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And this is back to the science question.

Declan:

Uh-huh.

Jerry:

He said, What you're actually doing is mind over matter. Uh-huh. You are actually causing the molecules in the metal to speed up.

Declan:

Uh-huh.

Jerry:

And speed up enough, and you could feel it, they got warm.

Declan:

Uh-huh.

Jerry:

Uh, not hot, but it got warm. And that's what's happening. So that then I guess if the molecules are going faster, it uh that softens the material and you can bend it. I don't know how to use that in life, right? Except the knowing that it's possible. The knowing that our minds are more powerful than we've even begun to harness.

Declan:

So I'm trying to think of like how do we practically apply what you're saying there.

Jerry:

It's that magic word we hear in so many contexts. Yeah. Choice. Choice. If you don't choose, it's on you. You're responsible.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

If you say, Well, I didn't have a choice, you do have a choice. If you've been in a a career for decades, yeah, and you've got a mortgage and you've got a family, and you feel you're you're stuck in that, which you still have a choice. And it might not mean that you quit instantly and and and leave your family without the income they need.

Declan:

Right.

Jerry:

But you can find a way. Right. Maybe you're gonna have to work harder in that interim to create something separate and develop it until you can um leave the the firm where you've you've become stagnant, right? Uh you've become burnt out.

Declan:

Right.

Jerry:

I mean, that's a that's a key thing. Even Gallup, Gallup poll, Gallup surveys, they have measured that 70% of the workforce is dissatisfied. Right. That's why that that was our simulation to do, or one of them, to create uh passion spark so that people can first identify their passion, then match it to a career so they can um earn a good living in doing what's fulfilling. It doesn't mean instantly, we've even got a page on our site which talks about realities, right? People say, oh no, that's not real. Well, we've identified four possible realities. One is, right, you're you you graduate from high school or college, yeah, and you've you've set the stage with internships or whatever, you're working and you've got a job, and you step right out into doing what you love and earn a good income. That's one of four. The other is you you find what you love and you step out into a career. Uh it doesn't earn you uh a good income, sufficient income yet, but you can see down the line you'll get there, right? Okay, where you stay at this firm or other firms and you you have the patience to do it. The the third of the four is as we see often associated with actors and actresses, artists, and so on.

Declan:

Right.

Jerry:

You take a part-time job. Right. You weigh tables, yeah, you do something else to earn the income while you're doing your passion to uh one day be able to make that transition.

Declan:

Yes.

Jerry:

And and the fourth way, which is no one's favorite really, right, but it's to lower the amount of money you need to survive, live an estate lifestyle so that you don't need as much money. And you still can pursue your passion.

Speaker:

Right, right.

Jerry:

And then there's other ways that beyond these four, but those are the four core ways.

Declan:

See, that last one, it's it goes contrary to a lot of what we're taught, because we're constantly taught expansion, even of ourselves, our personal, and our sense of our own success, expansion, expansion, expansion. Better, bigger, better, bigger. So, this idea that with the correct vision, you can turn things around and recognize what success means to you, and then you know, build the necessary budget for that. But if if you're working in concert with your vision and the reality of your budget with wisdom, you can have an extremely fulfilling life, but at the same time not be going with the culture, you know, a societal norm of expansion, expansion, expansion. Right. It's not a material, it's the pursuit of the happiness there is not it's not fundamentally, you know, dollar-oriented.

Jerry:

In fact, we label that one the lower materialism.

Declan:

Uh-huh. Okay.

Jerry:

Because you you choose to have less material things. Yeah. Um, and and in a way, if you can imagine, it still is an expansion. Yes. It's an expansion of what you want to do. Expansion of your love to do something. You're orchestrating your life to where you don't need to eat such good foods, man. Healthy maybe, right, but you don't need to go out as often. You don't you can be live a more Spartan existence if you're being fulfilled by following your passion.

Declan:

See, this is the thing. It's it's a paradigm shift in terms of metrics. The metrics are not what kind of car you're driving, what kind of house you live in, the metrics not what's in your bank account necessarily, because there's enough in your bank account. Right. Because you figured out that's enough. Right. The metrics are more subtle. Yeah. They're increased happiness, fulfillment, and joy. Joy. I love this. Of course it's joy. Yeah. You wouldn't be doing it unless you chose it. You know, creating your own metrics is a big aspect, in my opinion, and comes up on this podcast, it's a big uh it's a big aspect of feeling successful or feeling achievement and satisfaction, is owning your own metrics. Because we go out into the world every day as realtors, and you know, you've got to measure your success against some kind of a metric. And but it but it shouldn't be what society tells you it should be. Exactly. That's an that's an erroneous and naive, that would be naive.

Jerry:

Right, but we grow up, right? We're trained from the earliest days in school.

Declan:

Yeah. I like the word enough sometimes.

Jerry:

I like enough. There's a Hebrew term that I love in that too, which is dieenu, uh sufficiency, and there's different ways to uh tie it, but there's even a song on one of the holidays that goes off on a very sweet melody, dieenu.

Declan:

I love it.

Jerry:

But that's that's what it means. It would have been sufficient.

Declan:

Oh, I like that. You have to we have to train ourselves, and of course, I'm not forgetting an earlier part of our conversation around imagination and play, where it's critical to imagine and play and feel inside, where are the metric, because you know, how do you measure success for me? It starts with imagination and play. I guess. Did you ever did you ever do um you know vision boarding or goal setting? Were these were these, you know, they've become, you know, they've become, you know, I think Oprah really got the vision board on the map for, you know, for for most Americans and that kind of thing. But prior to her, you know, bringing it up on her show, did you do vision boarding? How did you understand, acknowledge, recognize your vision, and you know, allow it to set a course?

Jerry:

You know, I I didn't do vision boards. Uh-huh. If I had an idea, that was the vision that I was able to sustain. Okay. Not not because I'm in uh any more than anyone else, but the vision was uh pulled me forward. It reminds me of another professor I had at Cal, uh, Michael Scriven, and he had developed something called goal-free evaluation, G-O-A-L-Free evaluation. And his concept was, and he did this for the US education system and uh others, he said when you create a list of what the goals are you want in a thing, and you can go through and now about check off this one, this one, this one. You often miss things that are present, but they're not on your list.

Declan:

Yes.

Jerry:

So goal free uh uh uh uh involved going into a situation without a checklist. Uh-huh. And it uh it was much more difficult in some ways because you were called on to be extremely mindful, right, to see everything, right, to see every outcome, everything. If uh you went into a classroom to notice where the children were smiling most about which activity.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And what could you um find cause that that uh brought them their enthusiasm, brought them motivated them? Right. If they're smiling, that's an outcome. But I I don't know that there's you know, on a checklist you see uh uh uh uh how what percent of the kids are smiling. Yeah you know, and I'm just making that up on the fly. Sure. But that's that's the idea to notice all outcomes, right? As many as you can, you never can notice all. And that does take enormous presence. Uh to live in the moment is uh very challenging, and that's another one of those things with practice. Yeah, if you practice it's beyond meditation, yeah. Uh, although that's a great example of the moment. I give you an example of a of a gotha I wrote. I think I've shared it with you before.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

Um it's only it's nine words. Uh it's called each, and each of these words in this gotha are huge words if you allow yourself to go into it. And yet the whole thing is about love uh if you see it. So it's each moment comes once to love. If we will. That if we will, it's so key, it's our choice.

Declan:

Yeah. I love that. I just want to let that sit in the air for a second, as long as you can in a podcast. People can re-listen to it if they want. I want to ask you about Socratic questioning for people who aren't familiar with it, because I know that you're a believer in the Socratic method, or at least it comes up, especially when I read about passion sparks.

Jerry:

Sure.

Declan:

Um so can we just walk people fairly gently through what Socratic questioning is and uh how you find it applicable to the life of an entrepreneur?

Jerry:

Socrates was uh brilliant about his questions, and each situation was different. So he didn't give you advice of his wisdom of what he knew. Okay, his wisdom was in uh paying attention to your situation or what you've said and seeing what's a question within that, okay, within your situation, that you would benefit from answering. And when you answer it, yeah, when you go inside yourself, because into your own natural knowing inside yourself, you own it. You own the answer. It's it's very powerful. And it's, you know, uh of course it's not just one question, but it it it's a great way to parent, okay, I believe. Okay. In in uh when you're dealing with your your children and you're wanting them to become self-sufficient psychologically as well as economically by asking them questions.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

Uh it's it it it causes engagement and that might lead to another layer and another question.

Declan:

Right, right.

Jerry:

It's not about knowing the answer, right? It's about asking the question of yourself. You can you do it with yourself too. Passion Spark has three core goals. Yeah. The first is connect with your passion. Is and through the Socratic method? Yes, we take them through and asking themselves. Yeah. Uh and we ask them. Yeah. And we do go-arounds.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

That we it's it's short. There's only not short, it's it's small, just groups of six people.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

So you get to know each other.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And and you you care about the outcome. So people share uh do in a go-around, and you take some notes for yourself or for what they've said, and after that, you um you have an additional minute or two to go back through what you just wrote and highlight what you'd be willing to share.

Declan:

Right.

Jerry:

So that evokes uh questions and and your responses from all the different all the different participants there in your cohort.

Declan:

Yeah. Oh, I love this. You know, to me, I could map this onto real estate team building. It would be a nice retreat for a half day to follow some version of this within a group. I know for you for you with Passion Sparks, it was about the individual walking away and you know, feeling, but I could see it working for in a group setting for a team.

Jerry:

The teamwork is critical. Yeah, I love that.

Declan:

It can be, yeah. I love that. So like I'm gonna take that from this conversation, quite literally bring it to my team. So you've helped.

Jerry:

Great. Well, there's a there's a point that this is a another venture I I'm involved with, but I won't, there's not a lot of time, and that's about civility.

Declan:

Right. So let's finish on civility, because civility points to so many other things like giving and love and all of this other stuff that we've talked about. So so yeah, so I really appreciate chatting with you today. And uh, and I do want to end this on something that's a highlight for you right now. Let's talk about civility and what you're doing in your own way to try and encourage greater civility in subtle ways.

Jerry:

Thank you. Thank you. Um, you know, when I'm walking on a path, I I try and get a couple miles in every day. Um and I cross paths with someone, I I find it difficult to not smile or toss a quick wave, or just say hello. Yeah. And this Brings me back to the precursor of civility poll. Civility poll, yeah. And that was um how uh actually how I earned my final three units to get my degree at Cal. And I pursued kindness poll. All right. Kindness poll. And kindness poll was a survey of like a dozen questions. Yes. And your answer to the question wasn't the data it produced, it was that you couldn't answer a question without introspecting.

Declan:

Okay.

Jerry:

Asking yourself that question before answering. So I did this study on kindness poll at a college. Yeah. Had 225 people take it, and uh my sponsored by a a professor, and from her class, I gave a little presentation or a QA after I got in all the numbers. And I'll never forget this. This one student, and it was that question when you pass a fellow student on campus, yeah, how likely are you to smile, wave, or say hello? So he raised his hand and he said, I ask myself that question, and I just don't do it that often. But it's been rolling around in the back of my mind, and now it's actually changed my behavior.

Declan:

Right.

Jerry:

That question has changed my behavior, right? And I uh I'm much more likely to smile, wave, or say hello.

Declan:

Right.

Jerry:

Uh and that was kindness pull to increase kindness with people. Yeah. And civility pull has similar questions but related to the workplace. Okay. So that um when you take civility pull and you ask yourself those questions, it's you're not going to change your behavior for all of them, but you might on one or two, or maybe half of them.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

And the net impact is that it's going to increase civil behavior in the workplace. Right. And that's huge. I mean, there are studies about civility and its costs. One that got my attention from uh in uh in North Carolina, uh, Chapel Hill. Yeah. This woman studied the professor uh and found that lack of civility reduces productivity over 50%. She meant she's measured it because people they have that manager in their mind and it's just bugs them and it lives inside them. Yeah. 12% quit to avoid the incivility, to avoid the bully. Yeah. Right? Um, and there are a number of other uh measured factors of how civility costs an organization so much. So and it's so inexpensive. Yeah. We we could work with a company to help distribute the civility poll through their own email system on their own, not giving us names or anything. Yeah. And they could give this to all their employees and just increase civility at that workplace.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jerry:

Just incrementally, and maybe even lead to more involved work to increase civility.

Declan:

Well, well, I just I just love this because it really is it's the culmination of ideas you've had your whole life, and it gets to the very heart of this conversation about what is it that can make every day better? And these these these choices, these choices that sometimes require you got a little kick in the pants from somebody in the form of a civility poll. So if if people were interested in reaching out to you, let's and and maybe perhaps had an interest in the civility poll and getting their hands on it with your guidance. Sure. How can people find you?

Jerry:

Uh you could send me an email. Okay. Uh and mention it, maybe even put it in the subject line. Okay. Uh you could send it to Jerry at opine.net. O-p-in-e.net.

Declan:

I will make sure that's in the show notes. And then are there any other links to any other adventures or projects that you want me to put in the show notes? Well, Passion Spark, of course. I'll put Passion Spark in there for sure. So there'll be a web, the web page for that will be in the show notes. People can get into that. And um and is there anything else you wanted to finish up with?

Jerry:

Well, you know, uh, I think I mentioned I'm writing this book. Yeah. And uh I would welcome uh literary agents uh to contact me or publishers to contact me, uh-huh. Or if you're not an agent but you know one, yeah, and you could introduce me to them, I'd love to have conversations uh so that we can this book is shares a lot of these ideas about you know finding more joy in life.

Declan:

Okay, so so if you've enjoyed this conversation with Jerry, with thank you, Jerry Beckerman. It's been a pleasure to chat with you on the podcast. Thank you. Lots to take away from this conversation. And if you've enjoyed listening to this conversation um and it's giving you a sense of what Jerry's upcoming book is about, uh please do reach out to him if you think you can be helpful in that project. So thank you very much. Thank you. Really loved it. Thanks, Declan. All right, I always close out the show with the credits. Uh, but I do want to mention, hey, thank you everybody for liking, um, subscribing to the show and for sharing it and for leaving a review, even. That stuff is incredible. You know, I just got some stats at the end of the year for the podcast. Apparently uh we're being listened to in over a thousand cities and over eighty countries, which is kind of staggering, thousands and thousands and thousands of downloads. I'm very grateful for my audience. Thank you for listening. Uh, the episode was edited by me with original music by Chuck Lindo and graphics by Lisa Maser. The podcast is brought to you by the Home Factor Realtors, thehomefactor.com. Catch up on the latest news from the East Bay market in their weekly substack published almost every Sunday. Go to thehomefactor.com to subscribe. If you'd like to reach out to me, and please do, with suggestions for the show or any feedback, please text me at 415 446 8591. That's 415 446 8591. Catch you on the next podcast, everybody.