He Invents. He Ships. He Sings.

David Ask has lived several lives at once—and somehow they all rhyme. He’s a Nashville inventor who, with his brother-in-law, built the world’s first thermostat guard, StatGuard Plus, now carried in more than 3,700 Home Depot and Lowe’s stores—and he’ll be the first to tell you the road there was anything but glamorous. He’s also a singer who has performed the National Anthem more times than he can count, sang backup for Andrea Bocelli, and opened a legislative session on the floor of the Tennessee House.

But the thread David keeps pulling on now isn’t invention or music—it’s identity. Through the True North Resiliency Program and his forthcoming book, Guardians of Grit, he makes a case that we’ve got the order backward: we chase what we do before we ever settle who we are. He draws a hard line between grit and just grinding harder, and for fathers, he boils connection down to three words—Notice, Name, Nurture—anchored by the idea that our deepest longing is to be fully known and loved.

It’s a conversation about building things, losing your footing in your 40s, and being introduced to yourself—held together by the Disraeli line David lives by. Stick around for Two Truths & A Lie, where one of David’s wilder claims turns out to have a twist.