Marketing specialist, entrepreneur, and father of six building a life around healthcare, wellness, and youth sports.
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David Fish grew up in Michigan, in a house where sports were always on and family came first. He learned early that showing up mattered more than talent, a lesson from his father that stuck with him for good. That mix, sports and family, ended up shaping most of what came next.
After college, Fish moved into marketing, eventually working as a consultant and CEO for healthcare and wellness companies. He built a career on helping organizations communicate clearly about complicated things, health and care among them. It’s steady, unglamorous work, and he seems to prefer it that way.
Fish settled in Laguna Niguel, California, where he now raises six kids. He coaches football and baseball, helps organize local tennis programs, and treats Sunday church as non-negotiable family time. Anyone who has tried to get one kid to practice on time knows the math gets harder with six. Fish does it anyway, season after season.
He calls himself a humanitarian, though he would probably wave that off if you said it to his face. What he means, most likely, is that he tries to leave people better than he found them, whether that’s a client, a kid on his team, or a stranger at church. It’s a modest ambition, stated plainly, and it seems to be the one that matters most to him.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
My days start early because with six kids, there’s no other option. I try to get an hour of quiet work in before the house wakes up, usually reviewing whatever healthcare or wellness project needs attention that day. After that, it’s a mix of calls, practice schedules, and whatever fire needs putting out. I make it productive by deciding the night before what the two or three things are that actually matter. Everything else can wait.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I talk them through with people before I write anything down. If an idea can survive a conversation with someone who has no reason to be polite about it, like one of my kids or a coach I work with, it’s probably worth building. I’m not someone who sits alone and drafts a plan. I test it out loud first.
What’s one trend that excites you?
I like seeing wellness companies pay more attention to how people actually live, not just what a chart says they should do. It matches how I coach kids too. You meet people where they are.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
I keep a short list, on paper, of what needs to happen that day. Nothing fancy. If it’s not on the list, it competes for attention it hasn’t earned.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Say yes to coaching earlier. I waited longer than I needed to before getting involved with my kids’ teams, and it turned out to be some of the most useful time I’ve spent, both as a parent and as someone who manages people.
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?
I think talent gets too much credit in youth sports and in business. I’d rather work with someone who shows up consistently than someone who’s naturally gifted but unreliable. Most people disagree until they’ve managed a team or coached a season.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Go to church, or find some version of a weekly reset with people you trust. It’s not about the sermon. It’s about the pause.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
I go to practice. Coaching forces you to be present because a dozen kids are waiting on you. It resets everything else.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
Treating consulting relationships like coaching relationships. I ask healthcare and wellness clients what their real goal is, not just what the project brief says, the same way I’d ask a kid why they want to play a sport before I hand them a position.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
Early on, I took on a consulting project without fully understanding the client’s internal politics. It fell apart faster than it should have. I overcame it by getting much more disciplined about asking questions upfront instead of assuming alignment existed. Now I don’t start work until I understand who actually makes the decisions.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
A scheduling service built specifically for families managing multiple kids across multiple sports. Anyone with more than three kids in activities will tell you the software out there doesn’t really solve it.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
A shared family calendar. It sounds basic, but with six kids in different sports and practices, it’s the one tool that keeps the whole operation from colliding into itself.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
I lean toward sports biographies, mostly coaching memoirs. They tend to be honest about the grind in a way business books usually aren’t.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
I watched a documentary series about youth athletics with my kids. It was a good reminder that most of what matters in sports happens off the scoreboard.
Key learnings
- Consistency and reliability often matter more in leadership and coaching than raw talent.
- Weekly rituals, whether spiritual or otherwise, can offer a useful reset from daily overload.
- Testing ideas through conversation before formal planning can surface flaws early.
- Understanding decision-making structures before starting a project can prevent costly missteps.
- Simple, shared tools often outperform complex systems for managing competing family or team schedules.