If you’ve ever watched a hockey game, you know the moment the whole arena changes—when someone steps in, takes the hit, and shifts the momentum for everyone else. That role has a name: enforcer. And that’s where David Burnett’s story starts—before business, before AI, and long before he learned what it feels like to have time itself taken away.

Burnett grew up in Canada playing high-level hockey. One night, he got pulled into a fight on the ice—won it—and his coach decided that from then on, fighting would be his job. Burnett did it for a while, but the cost added up fast: broken noses, stitches, and the steady reality that this “role” wasn’t who he was built to be. So he quit. And that decision became a theme that carried into the rest of his life: when something is breaking you, you don’t keep pretending it’s fine—you change course.

That mindset mattered later, when Burnett was running a promotional products business—shirts, hats, pens, mugs, the kinds of items companies hand out at events. Then the Great Recession hit. At first, things seemed stable. But when new budgets reset, the phone didn’t just slow down. It stopped. His business went from strong revenue to nearly zero, and he found himself losing about $70,000 a month.

“The phone stopped ringing… literally stopped,” he told me.

Instead of giving up, Burnett pivoted. He learned digital marketing, built hundreds of websites, and got serious about search. Over time, he rebuilt—this time with a second engine powering the business. It wasn’t glamorous. It was the lonely kind of work most people never see. “It’s like staring into the abyss while you’re chewing glass,” he said, describing the pressure entrepreneurs carry when payroll and responsibility rest on their shoulders.

Then life hit him again—this time physically.

During a home renovation, Burnett was moving a heavy stone when a metal trolley snapped upward and struck him in the head. The next day, he couldn’t function normally. He could work for about 15 minutes, then had to sleep for 45. That pattern lasted for months, and he says he doesn’t remember much of 2019—or even the first half of 2020. After trying traditional concussion care without real improvement, he turned to a brain-based treatment that helped stabilize the disruption. It gave him something many of us assume is guaranteed: his working mind.

Here’s the lesson Burnett lives by now: business problems are real, but time is the one thing you never get a refund on. When you’ve had your days reduced to 15-minute fragments, you stop wasting the hours you get back. He now treats time like a hard currency—planned, protected, and used on purpose—because he knows it can vanish overnight.

Today, Burnett works in a world that’s changing fast: helping businesses get discovered online as AI becomes a bigger part of how people search and choose.

The full conversation with Dave Burnett is available on The Tony DUrso Show including audio, video, and the complete interview transcript.

(Originally published in the Del Norte Triplicate.)