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Episode 242: 'How Are You Going to Change the World?' asks Damon Brown
183 Plays4 years ago
Damon Brown (@browndamon) returns to talk about his new book Build From Now: Know Your Power, Know Your Abundance and Nourish the World.
Social media: @CNFPod
Show notes and newsletter at brendanomeara.com
This show is brought to you by Vol. III of Casualty of Words, a writing podcast for people in a hurry.
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsorship
00:00:01
Speaker
Today's podcast is brought to you by Casualty of Words, a writing podcast for people in a hurry. That's you. One reviewer called it the multivitamin of podcasts. It's a daily show with episodes less than three minutes long. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's like,
Impracticality of Planning Passion
00:00:21
Speaker
how can you plan passion? It's like, it's like planning, planning to have good sex. It's like, you can't really do that.
00:00:35
Speaker
Salacious.
Art of Storytelling with Damon Brown
00:00:39
Speaker
Okay, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft telling true stories. This is my Arlo Guthrie impersonation. Damon Brown.
00:00:53
Speaker
returns strikes back to talk about his twenty something book like twenty five or twenty seven yeah I know it's called build from now how to know your power see your abundant what how to know your power see your abundance and nourish the world it's published by the bring your worth imprint we'll get to that in a moment
00:01:22
Speaker
And be sure you're subscribed to this humble little podcast wherever you listen. If you have a kind review and snap a screenshot of that sucka and send it to me, I'll coach up a piece of your writing of up to 2,000 words. Once we get 110 reviews, we're done.
00:01:40
Speaker
Good? Good. Used to do this a lot, and I just feel like pulling it out again. We're at 102 ratings and reviews, but this deal is for written reviews. I already know what's there. So whenever you write a review on Apple Podcasts and it publishes, snap a screenshot, and we'll get to talking. Email the show, creativenonfictionpodcast, at gmail.com, com, com, com.
Audio Magazine Submission Deadline
00:02:09
Speaker
Deadline for issue two of the audio magazine is around the corner. It's like six weeks away, man. March 21st. I'd hate to cancel the audio magazine because I didn't get enough submissions. That'd be embarrassing. There's money in it for you too. Straight from my wallet to your swear jar.
Support on Patreon for Exclusive Perks
00:02:29
Speaker
If you want to support this enterprise and get exclusive access to the audio magazine and transcripts to podcasts and more,
00:02:36
Speaker
head over to patreon dot com slash cnf pod and you'll get some really sweet goodies i mean it man this is like the big candy bar of trick-or-treating check it out and uh... keep the conversation going on social media wouldn't ya it's like i have cotton balls in my in my mouth and i'm sorry this is a professional enterprise and i'm doing nothing
00:03:05
Speaker
to live up to this said professionalism. I'm sorry. Well, all we can do is improve. All we can do is try, we're hitting, we might just be hitting rock bottom in real time right now.
Evolution and Techniques of 'Build From Now'
00:03:26
Speaker
So Damon is here and we had a fun little chat about his new book, how it evolved, where he's at, how you can apply his techniques to improve your work. It's great stuff.
00:03:36
Speaker
And what kind of friend would I be if I delayed any longer? So here's me and Damon Brown at Brown Damon on Twitter.
00:03:55
Speaker
You felt almost that a certain honeymoon energy to it that you hadn't felt in a lot of your other books. Like there was it was charged with something you hadn't felt in a while. So maybe you can explain that and why this book really it gave you that that juice. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad I'm glad we're on that kind of conversation because I can't have that conversation with everyone because not everyone's a creator.
From Journalist to Entrepreneur
00:04:19
Speaker
So I appreciate you bringing it up and noticing the nuance. So this was a little bit different where
00:04:25
Speaker
My, Build From Now is my 25th book, but it's my seventh book in the last four and a half years of a particular series and a theme. And the first one was The Bite Says Entrepreneur that came out August of 2016, I believe, shortly after my second son was born. And it was really about me shifting from being a journalist to becoming an entrepreneur at the exact same time that my first son was born and leading those two startups. The second one became Cuddler.
00:04:55
Speaker
bootstrapping those, getting a lot of popularity with it, and then selling the app around the time of my eldest son's second birthday. So from when he was four months old to just after his second birthday, I was an
Success of Self-published Series
00:05:08
Speaker
entrepreneur. I did two, maybe three TED Talks in a period of time. It was insanely productive. So I came up with this idea of the Bites as an entrepreneur where
00:05:15
Speaker
I'm African-American. I'm happily married. I'm not an Ivy League dropout. In fact, I have two degrees, including a master's, so I finished school. And I spent time in Silicon Valley. I don't pattern match. I'm not a cultural fit to them.
00:05:32
Speaker
And so I would be ignored, but here I am on the cover of The Wall Street Journal. And then a few months later, my app's getting acquired while I'm happily married, you know, literally have a home with a white picket fence at that time down in San Diego. So why doesn't it fit into that? So that became The Bites as Entrepreneur. It was my first major self-published book because the traditional publishers, they weren't feeling it.
00:05:53
Speaker
And they didn't believe that there was a movement of non-traditional entrepreneurs, people who didn't fit the thing I just talked about. And it became a bestseller. And so that became a series. And so it turned into a trilogy. And all of them sold solid, but particularly the first one really took off and it got into keynotes and all that other stuff. And then as we talked about in the previous podcast, like I said about a year ago, people were coming up to me after my keynotes or talking to me and saying,
00:06:21
Speaker
Okay, I got your book and the Bites and Entrepreneurs is really about service, how you can be more productive, how you can do better time management. Each chapter is like two pages long. It's built for someone who was in a position I was in where I was running my startup from 3.15 a.m. to 6 a.m. and then my son would wake up and then I have my son all day until my wife came home from our traditional job at 6 p.m.
00:06:44
Speaker
it was built for people like me where it's like, I don't have time to, you know, listen to a five hour podcast or I don't have time to, uh, to read a 500 page book. So people would grab it. They'd like the book and then they'd say, all right, I got your book, but how do I know when it's time for me to start? And as we talked about the previous podcast, I'm originally from New Jersey. So of course I have my South Jersey face on and I'm like, you fool, you could have started already. What do you mean?
00:07:11
Speaker
But they are almost like waiting for a blessing. It's like, oh, OK, Damon's done this before, so I'm going to get approval from him.
Themes of 'Bring Your Worth'
00:07:21
Speaker
But I was really a masquerade for their own insecurities.
00:07:24
Speaker
And they were waiting for that degree. They're waiting for that money to come in. They're waiting for their kids to grow up. I mean, we could go through the litany of excuses. You know what I'm talking about where we don't get started. So that's really where that follow-up came out, which was bring your worth.
00:07:42
Speaker
And the theme of that was really three different things, three different tenets. Number one, everything is a partnership. So, you know, negotiate your discussions as such, because if you're partnering with someone, they need you as much as you need them financially and otherwise. Number two, don't wait for permission, which is what I just got into. Number three, everything that you do and everyone on earth has a legacy. And so create with that those three
Toledo Library Residency & Community Work
00:08:07
Speaker
things in mind.
00:08:08
Speaker
I have to give that context because when we came all the way to build from now, I was percolating on this around the time I became an entrepreneur in residence over at the Toledo library. It's one of the biggest, strongest libraries in the country. I was very proud to partner with them and I did a lot of work with the local community there. I was living in Toledo at the time and I recently moved to Las Vegas when I became EIR and I would fly back and forth luckily a few months before COVID hit.
00:08:38
Speaker
And I was working with the different clients. I was coaching folks and all that. And I realized that there was a framework that needed to be had about the resources that we have. And people, again, were saying, well, I don't know how I'm supposed to start. When can I start? I don't have this. I don't have that. It was one interaction in particular where I connected with someone and
00:09:03
Speaker
You know, we happened to hit it off. It was at a conference. We happened to hit it off. And I was like, well, what are you into? You know, because I'm a coach. So of course I'm asking, what are you into? And they were like, they're like, well, I want to get this thing off the ground. And they already had a big buzz around it. And they said, but I need money.
00:09:19
Speaker
So of course, that's a switch for me where I'm like, OK, all right, well, people don't just need money. You need money for food or clothes or, you know, health insurance or, you know, it's a resource to get you other things. You don't just need money. Right. And so I was like, I was like, so what do you need the money for? Why need the money to to launch this thing?
00:09:39
Speaker
And I'm like, well, that's cool. But OK, let's say I give you $100,000 or $1 million. It's like, so then what are you going to do? And they said, well, then I would hire a web designer. And I was like, well, so you don't need money. You need a web designer. And then we broke it down. And it's like, so you can barter for that. Or you can give them a piece of your company, et cetera, et cetera. And they just made this face like I was actually giving them solutions. And then they just smiled at me. And then we both understood that they didn't really want to go there.
00:10:07
Speaker
What I really want to do with Build from now is get into the resources, get into the muck of it and say, what are the resources that every single living being has? And I'm getting to the point now where I've coached hundreds of people, connected with thousands of people, creatives, and other people in entrepreneurship communities, and I'm seeing the pattern. And there's four different resources.
Introduction to FATES Concept
00:10:28
Speaker
There's focus, there's agility, there's time, and there's energy. So there's focus, agility, time, and energy. I call them the fates, so it's just easier to remember.
00:10:37
Speaker
And depending on where you are in your life, you absolutely have all of them. But the challenge is that one or two of them will actually be higher and one or two of them might be lower. And we tend to get mixed up because we'll be pointing at the one that we don't have much of and worrying about that and not recognizing that we have the one that we have the most of.
00:10:58
Speaker
Like I'll give myself as an example, um, you might be able to hear them, but I have two little kids. I'm the primary caretaker. They're four and seven. We're sheltering in place. We're approaching a year of it. It is an intense period of time. I don't have a whole lot of energy because I'm approaching middle age. I got two very active kids on the primary caretaker. I have them 24 seven blessings to my wife, but she has a traditional job. So she's gone most of the day. So this is on me, the virtual schooling and the whole thing.
00:11:27
Speaker
And so I don't have a whole lot of energy, which is the E part of fate. I don't have a whole lot of time because, again, I just launched a book. My book is like 35,000 words. I have my own publishing imprint now, so I'm self-publishing it. I do not have a PR manager or anything like that, so I'm handling all this stuff on my own. And I get the two little kits. And I sell my journalism, and I sell my coaching practice, and I still do my consulting as far as internal coaching for different companies.
00:11:57
Speaker
And so it's like, I don't have a whole lot of time, but I am ridiculously focused. Like me and you talking, there's no one else existing in the world. And so that's my strength. And I have this quiz at buildfromnowquiz.com and it's free for everybody. Everybody can take it. It takes three or four seconds to take it or three or four minutes. It's really quick. And I'll tell you what your main resource is. Oh, hold on a second. Sure, sure.
00:12:26
Speaker
I know, honey. I'm actually on my interview though, baby. This isn't the time to settle in the office. Okay, that's wonderful. I think it's my new books. Can you close the book? Can you close the door, honey? I have a bunch of new books because it just launched.
00:12:45
Speaker
Feel free to keep it in, whatever you want to do. This is the life. I was just talking to somebody else and I can do things in five to 10 minute intervals, including showering, going to the bathroom, whatever, and then one of them will go and look for me. It's kind of the process. But you can go take the quiz at buildfromnowquiz.com.
00:13:06
Speaker
And I designed it so that it's a free, like, service or quiz for everybody to just take, even if they don't buy the book, and it's like three or four questions, it's multiple choice, and then it will tell you whether your main strength is focus, agility, time, or energy.
Leveraging Strengths and Resources
00:13:21
Speaker
I know mine is focused, and I write about that in the book, and I share quite a few personal examples with it, as well as examples from
00:13:29
Speaker
you know, major icons like Alex Haley, like Toni Morrison, like Ava DuVernay, who's my favorite director. A lot of folks like that. So you have real life examples. And even from comedians like Chris Rock and other folks, where I'm taking these pop cultural ideas, but also taking these personal ideas and merging them together. What I was really trying to do with Build From Now is
00:13:54
Speaker
combine the two energies of the two previous books. Because The Bites as an Entrepreneur was really, in the journalism world, and that's where I have my two degrees, and I've been a journalist for Ink Magazine and Playboy, a lot of folks, before I became an entrepreneur and a coach. In the journalism world, we would call that service.
00:14:14
Speaker
So it's like 10 ways to be more thoughtful, um, eight ways to make more time in your day, et cetera, et cetera. That's called service. Um, I think it's one of the reasons why the Bison entrepreneur did so well, where it's like, Oh, okay. Someone can pick it up. It's like, I want to be more productive today. Let me read these two or three chapters or two or three pages. And it works out really well. Bring Your Worth was kind of like, I don't know. It's kind of like, um, I've been into music lately. I'm always into music.
00:14:43
Speaker
It was kind of like Joni Mitchell doing Blue in the early 70s, which is one of my favorite albums of all time. And then she does Court and Spark, which didn't do as well, but that was the direction that she was supposed to go.
00:14:56
Speaker
And then she did another one that was like experimental jazz probably around the time I was born in the mid seventies. And I tried listening to other day. I'm like, wow, this is different. And so that was bring your worth where it was such a different tenor where I was like, I need to give you all some motivation. I can give you tips and tricks all day. You guys already got that. Again, it was a best seller. A lot of people have it that are into me. Wonderful. That's not going to get you off your ass. That's not going to get you going.
00:15:21
Speaker
That's not going to move the needle. That's not going to get you passionate about an impact in the culture. You finding ways to be more productive isn't going to get you there. But you tapping into that energy, as Seth Godin talks about with the practice, as what's his name? Stephen Pressfield talks about with the war of art. It's more of that energy. What exactly are you doing? What's your main purpose? And why are you trying to get there?
00:15:48
Speaker
Who are you trying to impact? Who are you trying to serve? That doesn't really address as much in the Bites as Entrepreneur. And build from now, it is both. And I think that's between that and the timing of it coming out during the pandemic just hit differently. And what I mean by that is that with build from now, it's split into two parts. The first half is called an outside job.
00:16:13
Speaker
and has to do with the systems, the challenges that we have that are out of our control. The things that aren't necessarily out of our control per se, always, but those things that were established often before we got here. So the systemic issues, the challenges as far as class, race, culture, gender, et cetera. And that's something that I didn't really address in the first books. The second half of the book is called An Inside Job.
00:16:41
Speaker
where it's like, okay, now you have your focus, your jelly, your time, and your energy. Again, we all have those, but we all have a particular strength that we have of that moment.
00:16:51
Speaker
I already know that my focus is changing right now. And now I'm not as focused as I was, say, last year because I just wrote this major book. I just went through a year in quarantine, etc. with the kids. It's like my focus is getting mushy, but I'm getting a lot more agile. And so the book is really meant to be a companion to say, no matter what systems are going on,
00:17:14
Speaker
No matter what challenges are happening in your life that are frankly out of your control or were established before you got here and therefore you can't change them yet, use this framework, the focus, agility, the time, or the energy. Find out what your main strength is. Lean into that. Don't worry about doing all-nighters when you don't have much energy. Don't spend forever working on a project when you don't have much time.
00:17:37
Speaker
Don't keep adapting to things when you're not very agile. And don't expect yourself to be hyper, hyper intense when you're not very focused. Instead, lean into those qualities that are most important to you.
Critique of Self-Fixing Narrative
00:17:47
Speaker
And that was really kind of a bone that I have to pick with some of the other books who, from people that I really respect, are doing amazing work. But the challenge with their work is that it's like the subtext of saying, you need to be fixed. You need to be different.
00:18:05
Speaker
You need to go from a different place. Actually, can you hold on one second? I think there's something going on. Yeah, sure. Sorry, Brendan. Hold on one second. I think this would be the time in a podcast where Mark Marin would just come in and fill in the dead space just for the hell of it. And while the other person goes away, goes to the bathroom, does anything, and he just fills in the air. Odds are I'm going to edit this out, but maybe I won't.
00:18:36
Speaker
I love hearing Damon talk. He's just so smart and insightful, and it's like right now you're kind of getting a keynote straight to your brain. He's just such a good talker, and he's really smart, and he's got so much experience. And he's a really insightful, bite-sized kind of writer. A lot of his writing is very easy to digest. It's very quick, and it's actionable in a way that's not overwhelming.
00:19:08
Speaker
and he's back. You could cut that part out, but if you want to keep it, that's fine too. I try to keep it as real as possible. Sure. It's funny, nine out of 10 times I do, but I did a thing that Mark Marin occasionally does where if the guest has to go off mic for something, he'll just kind of just talk into the mic about what's going on in his head.
00:19:34
Speaker
And I just talked for a minute about just what makes your work so good. So I don't know, I might just leave that in. You're too kind, please.
00:19:43
Speaker
You know, that's what's nice is that when you're yourself, you don't have to put up anything or cut anything out. So it's like everyone who's into my work knows that it's tough with two little kids during quarantine. So I'm happy to have that be part of the realness here. Exactly. I think it's very relatable. Yeah. But just to finish my point, because you kind of hit a nerve for me, so I'm kind of going. But to finish my point, it ends up being
00:20:13
Speaker
we often feel like we need to be fixed. And there's, I know some marketing, you know, from, you know, Steph Godin and other folks, like I understand some of the psychology of it, and that works really well. You are broken, you know, so buy this book for, you know, $24.95 and I will fix you. You know, you don't feel adequate, but read this book and suddenly you'll feel adequate. And I don't want to contribute to that noise.
00:20:43
Speaker
And I think we have enough issues. And again, some people that I respect, you know, have that market locked down. And that's cool. That's their direction. My direction, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You actually have all the resources you need. Again, that's why it's called build from now, how to know your power, see your abundance, nourish the world. Like there's no, you're broken in there.
00:21:05
Speaker
There's no, you know, you're a lazy MF. You need to do better. Yeah, you know, exactly. Because there are myriad ways for us to hide. We don't have the perfect website. We haven't locked down the domain. The social media handles are taken. And should this book have a companion podcast? Should I be thinking about the book that's going to spin off this podcast once it gets a million downloads? There are any number of ways to keep us from taking that step when all you really need to do
00:21:35
Speaker
Is like you say just build from build from now take that first step and then see where you go learn when you make that first mistake actually invite the mistake because at that point you know there's going to be an inflection point of growth that you would have never encountered had you not started and just taking that first step and built from what you have.
00:21:57
Speaker
Absolutely. In fact, I have a real life example. I'm going through this right now. I just launched a YouTube channel at youtube.com slash Brown Damon. And right now I'm calling it the Bring Your Words show because I can't think of anything else. I just did a book launch. My creativity is down right now. But I love connecting with folks in different ways because I wasn't able to do a traditional book tour with this.
00:22:22
Speaker
And so I wanted to find different ways to connect with people. So up until recently, it was every day, and now I've sold it down to Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 1130 a.m. Pacific time, so our time on the West Coast. And it's a live episode every Wednesday, and it's a recorded 10-minute episode every Monday and Friday. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
00:22:45
Speaker
And it's great. It's a lot of fun. And I've already done, I was doing it daily since November, shortly after Thanksgiving, I started doing it daily. And the rigor.
00:22:59
Speaker
and the intensity and learning how to edit. And I don't have a crew. Just like my coaching practice, just like my book. Like I don't have a crew. I don't have an editor. I don't have an agent. I don't have a social media coordinator that's pushing it out. I'm learning from YouTube videos as I'm doing YouTube. And I look back at my videos from earlier and I start cringing. But that's what you're supposed to do.
00:23:22
Speaker
Right? I forget where I learned this lesson. It might have been in grad school. It might have been from, you know, one of the mutual mentors that we have, one of their books. But they said, you know, if you're not looking at your old creations and cringing, then you're not doing something right.
00:23:39
Speaker
And right, you got to evolve. And it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be better or closer, closer to your truth.
Emotional Journey & Systemic Issues
00:23:48
Speaker
And to circle all the way back, that's why I built from now, like, you know, I cried a few times while I wrote it, particularly when I finished it and I knew it was finished.
00:23:57
Speaker
You know, I don't know if you have that feeling, but you put in that last word and you're like, okay, that's it. Like there's nothing, literally nothing more to say. And there's usually that moment. And yeah, with this one, like I cried. I was like, wow, because there's a level of, how can I put it?
00:24:17
Speaker
What I did not address, and I own this, I don't think I was mature enough as a writer, as a coach, as an entrepreneur, as a speaker. I don't think I was quite mature enough with the Bytes as entrepreneur, and even with Bring Your Worth to really discuss the systemic things that were going on.
00:24:36
Speaker
And I'm not sure if I wasn't ready to talk about it or I felt like my audience wasn't ready. But I mean, you're familiar with Build From Now. So it's like the first chapter is just like, OK, this is the world that we live in right now. And I get into Hurricane Katrina, which I'm one of the survivors of it. And I get into oppression and other challenging stuff. And it's a really heavy chapter. But I really felt like I needed to do a service to the people who are trying to change the world.
00:25:04
Speaker
Because if you have the Bites as entrepreneur, you have the tactics, as people like to say on podcasts. So it's like, you have the tactics. Cool. You got the tactics. Cool, cool, cool. All right. You got tactics. All right. That doesn't give you anything if you don't have direction. All right. Well, you got to bring your worth. Oh, you bring your worth? OK. I'm passionate about this is what I care about. But what I never really addressed, at least not directly, is the fight that you're going to have once you bring it. You try to change the world.
00:25:30
Speaker
Like, you know, it's like I remember old physics teacher. I'll never forget this because it's like in high school or middle school. Old physics teacher said that that boxing, he was he was determined to be a boxer and he would practice in a gym day after day after day. And he was like, I have the stamina for it. I'm going to be the next heavyweight or whatever middleweight champion or whatever. And then he went into the ring.
00:25:57
Speaker
And number one, he got hit, which is famous, famous things about that from Casa Tomato. Like you have a plan until until you get hit for the first time. But then the other part of it is that he would swing and he would miss. And the missing of it, he didn't realize how much energy it took to recover from missing someone.
00:26:20
Speaker
because he was used to hitting punching bags and those bags that are hanging from the ceiling. You tell him not a boxer, but the bags that are hanging from the ceiling and the large ones that are body shaped are usually someone's holding on the other side. I know you're a sports guy, so you know those details. And you're used to hitting that and getting that impact and getting that fulfillment.
00:26:40
Speaker
Built from now is basically saying, you're going to be swinging, and there might be people or systems that intentionally will make you miss. So you have to be ready for that. And so you're getting in the ring now, as Brene Brown would say, you're getting into the arena. This is getting you ready for the arena. And 2020, and it came out in January 28, 2021, I felt like it was the perfect time. I'm very proud of the timing of it.
00:27:07
Speaker
Cause it's like after the election, it's the new year, vaccines starting to roll out. We're talking about herd immunity or whatever, whatever theory you want to, you know, the theory of the week that we're talking about right now. And suddenly we're realizing that the systematic things that have come up pretty soon, we're going to have to deal with them and the world's not going to be on hold anymore. So as the world starts to speed up again,
00:27:33
Speaker
I can, there's so many colorful words I can use right now. I'm trying to, I'm trying to keep it PG 13. What in the hell are you going to do about it? Like, what are you going to do? Where do you go from here? How do you build from now? If you don't know where your strengths are, how are you going to change the world? If you don't know the systems that are actually conspiring against you, not even necessarily people, but systems that were here well before you and I were here are conspiring against you. If you don't recognize that,
00:28:03
Speaker
then how are you going to make an impact? I felt like a piece of the story was missing. And as you can tell, I can talk about it all day because it was, it's such a passionate book where all the pieces it feels like are in there. You got the framework, you have the tactical, you know, the tactics as people say, and you also have the passion and tapping into whatever those strengths are that you have. It starts with a quiz. The quiz is in the book as well, but it's at billfromnowquiz.com and take the quiz, figure out what you got and then
00:28:33
Speaker
Figure out how you want to impact the world. That's it. Yeah. Yeah.
Reflection on Social Issues
00:28:37
Speaker
And in the book, it struck me that it was, and as you're alluding to, very charged by the current moment. In a way, I think that maybe your previous books aren't and that that's good. I think that's as you were saying, it's speaking to your maturity as a writer and a man.
00:28:53
Speaker
And specifically as an African-American man in this country and the reckoning we're undergoing, you write this great line that you write about their soul being trapped eternally in a hashtag. There's Ava DuVernay's wonderful quote that you cite that, my truth is I don't want to chair at the table. I want the table rebuilt.
00:29:16
Speaker
And that is really informing this entire book. And I love how you brought in the current moment from your worldview and your point of view. And really, that's what we're plugged into so much in the undercurrent of this entire thing that you've built. Thank you. Yeah, that was an intention. And the energy of the movement and the moment really carried me
00:29:47
Speaker
And I, again, I had the book idea a year and a half ago, um, back when I was doing the entrepreneur residence in fall of 2019.
00:29:57
Speaker
And I wrote it, if you're familiar with my TED talks, I'm really into index cards. So I wrote down the idea on it. Cocktail napkins. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, right? Your memory is better than mine. The cocktail napkin. And saying, OK, we have these four resources. And I played around with the resources a little bit, but not that much. It pretty much came out fully formed like Athena. It just popped in my head one day, and it's like, wait a second. There's a pattern here.
00:30:23
Speaker
Um, and again, that goes back to the Seth Godin idea of the practice where at that point I coach probably a couple hundred people. And then when you do that, I didn't have to think about a framework. It just popped up and it's like, Oh yeah, everybody's dealing with this. And this person has this resource and this person has this resource, but they're looking at this other resources, which is why they're struggling and I can help them bridge that gap. But I had the book idea a while ago and I wrote on my index card and I just put it away and
00:30:53
Speaker
It was funny where it was probably about nine months ago. I can't believe that was just nine months ago, nine, 10 months ago, um, early summer. And someone I really respect who was also in my space shot me a random text and they were like, Hey, how you doing? I know you're working on something. You need to put it out. They don't know me like that.
00:31:23
Speaker
Like, you know, it's not like, you know, our mutual friend, Jeanette Hurt, who also serves as the editor for Build From Now. It's like I talk with her like every other day. You know, it's like she's my writing co-pilot, you know. So I'm adding her stuff. She's adding my stuff. Like, but this other person, our relationship isn't like that. So they don't know that much. But they knew that something was there just under the surface from reading my ink column, from whatever.
00:31:53
Speaker
And I took that as a sign where I'm like, okay. All right, I know it's like, it was like May or something. I was like, I know it's May. I know it's like, you know, Mad Max Fury Road over at the local supermarket. You know, I know my kids, because we wrap up school early here in Las Vegas because it's so hot.
00:32:15
Speaker
So it was like mid-May, and it's like, I know my kids are about to get out of school, which means I'll have them the entire day, as opposed to having at least a virtual learning during the day. And it's like, I know all this stuff, but it's time. And as soon as I accepted that, I started writing. And I started writing, and I started writing. And I ended up writing the skeleton of the book within a very short period of time, within two weeks or something.
00:32:45
Speaker
Later on that summer, I got a random message from Ted asking if I want to do a virtual TED Talk. And they were like, is there anything you want to talk about? And I'm like, well, sure. How do you build power from where you are? And so it was for TEDx Toledo. Again, I have some roots there because we just moved from there a couple of years ago. And it came out around my birthday in September. And I was so proud of the TED Talk. It's my best TED Talk I've ever done. And there's a certain passion.
00:33:15
Speaker
And frankly, a certain amount of anger and restlessness, impatience. Impatience will be the word. It's not even anger. So I'm not really angry. It's more like impatience. It's like, OK, enough of accepting that these systems are right or correct or accepting that these systems are going to correct themselves on their own. They're not. Yeah. Right. You can get me on a rant on that, but you see where I'm going. Yeah. Yeah. And so that came out.
00:33:45
Speaker
as soon as that came out and with the impact of it and me writing again, the treatise, essentially it's a treatise of the, of the book, but writing it and doing it in like a 13 minute Ted talk, it changed the whole tenor of the book. And I pretty much scrapped what I had before and then wrote it all over again. And that's the book that, that, that you, you read, you know, with again, that intense opening,
00:34:11
Speaker
as far as we talked about Hurricane Katrina and my experiences with it and how it reflected systemic issues well beyond just there being geographical defect and how that related to the issues that came up in 2020 that we're still dealing with now. All that wasn't there. And so that's something that I learned a lot with is that's why there's so much passion and intensity in it is that I really allowed the words to carry me.
Influence of External Prompts & Events
00:34:36
Speaker
Um, a second part of it, which gets more into the inside baseball slash business of it is that I wasn't planning on writing a book. And so I had the ultimate bites as entrepreneur. And then I had a bring your worth and they both did what they were supposed to do. And I had no book on my agenda. I had my idea as far as with the framework, but I didn't know if that was going to be a book or if that was going to be a course or something. I didn't know. And so when it came to me.
00:35:04
Speaker
from the prompting from my colleague, as well as me getting asked to do this TED Talk, when it came to me, it came in like a rush. And it really came fully formed. And the rest of it, for that period of time, up until the launch in January, sending it to the printer and all that stuff, the rest of that was just refinement. But the bones were there.
00:35:27
Speaker
And so I'm really in the space and I think a lot of us should be in the space as much as possible is to let the work inform us versus trying to force the work. Is that that period of times where I tried to force the work and I'm like, okay, we want to write this and I want to have an impact. I want to have passion. It's like, how can you plan passion? It's like, it's like planning, planning to have good sex. It's like, you can't really do that.
00:35:54
Speaker
Right? Like you have to be in that moment. And then when you're in that moment, then you're going to accuse and then you realize where you're at and then you realize where they're at. And then suddenly these details come together and it might turn out okay. Or it might be the best thing ever.
00:36:12
Speaker
But you're trusting that process as opposed to forcing it. I'm not really big on the muses and so forth, even though I'm a big Elizabeth Gilbert big magic fan. I'm not really in that camp. I'm more in the Steven Pressfield camp where it's like you sit in your seat and then the stuff comes together from the rigor, from the work.
00:36:30
Speaker
And so it was interesting. And sometimes the bolt of lightning that is something that is truly the muse can strike you, but you do have to be in the seat. You have to be standing on the lightning rod in order for it to have a chance to hit you. Exactly, Brendan, exactly. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And standing in that space. And what's ideally what I would like for people to do is to realize that they do have the resources that they have.
00:37:01
Speaker
they do other resources that they need to recognize what their best resource is, not to feel shame or guilt, because they don't have this other resource that someone else has as far as the comparison game. And lastly, to realize that they can build from now. Like they can get started right now. It could be baby steps, which goes back to the theme when the bite says entrepreneur, but you can get started right now. And I'm hoping
00:37:26
Speaker
that in some subliminal way or some deeper level, double entendre, if you will, that I can be a proof of concept. So it's like being able to juggle the boys, being able to still have my coaching practice, still do my keynotes and the TED Talks and all that, have all this stuff going on in the year.
00:37:48
Speaker
Not to mention the trauma and other things, being a person of color and leading a family of color, but also being able to do this book. And writing the book didn't stress me out. That's why I can feel a joy coming out of me. It was such a joy to write it. It was emotional. It was fun. It was intense. There was stuff that came up that I haven't thought about literally in decades. And I'm like, oh my god, I have more to reveal.
00:38:17
Speaker
And it would just end up being this grand exploration. I think it also helped because this is my seventh book in this, in this series, if you want to call it that, is that as one of my mentors said, I have to get to the point where I trust my audience. And so if I'm going to have really uncomfortable conversations, I'm going to trust my audience enough that they're not going to get up and walk away. They're not going to hang up the phone.
00:38:43
Speaker
And that's insecurity of mind actually talk about and built from now. Probably why I make a living as a communicator. But that's insecurity of mind. And I'm like, well, I can't bring that insecurity to this. It's like, I'm going to trust where if I'm going to do a handful of curse words, if I'm going to talk about uncomfortable things, if I'm going to talk about racism and other things, then if they put the book back down, then maybe they're not really my audience. I know with Bring Your Worth,
00:39:13
Speaker
I had a wonderful experience recently where, um, someone came to me and wanted to reconnect and they got built from bring your worth, which came out two years ago this week, actually. So it came out February of 2019. They didn't even listen to it. I think they got the audio book. They didn't even listen to it till like a year ago. And it spoke to them exactly to where they were at that moment.
00:39:41
Speaker
And like I said, bring your worth was not a best seller. The sales were way more modest, but ended up hitting people when they're supposed to hit it. And the thing, and the thing with build from now is that if that gives them the opportunity to get it.
00:39:56
Speaker
And it might be a year from now, two years from now, but I think the main thing is, I guess that's the biggest thing that I've learned on this journey is that your timing might be perfect. It just might not be someone's time to read it. You know what I mean? So bring your worth was my truth in February, 2019. Does it ring as true now? No, not to me, but it was a Polaroid of exactly where I was at at that moment and exactly what I thought, how I could serve my community.
00:40:28
Speaker
And then people are just getting into it now. My job isn't to go with the current. My job is to follow that instinct, do the work, right? As far as serving, that's the day-to-day stuff, the Steven Pressfield stuff, and then to create. And then if people ended up discovering my book or needing my book five years into the future, then great. I did my job.
00:40:52
Speaker
What I don't want, at least with my type of work I'm trying to do, this isn't the case for everybody, but the work that I'm trying to do, I don't want someone to buy my book or to get my book, and I feel like it's a step back, or it's stuff that they already know. I want to be kind of like the person in the Amazon that's 100 feet ahead, and it's like, okay, you might not see this yet, but come January 28th,
00:41:22
Speaker
the presidential election, however it turns out, because I didn't know that at the time, however it turns out, it's going to be a different vibe. And then based on scientific research, there's going to be vaccines and other things that are happening. That's going to be a different vibe. And guess what? The travel world is going to start booming because people are going to start feeling restless. I can already see Airbnb doing their IPO, which they end up doing a few weeks ago. So it's like, so I'm going to write a book that's going to prepare you for the world tomorrow.
00:41:51
Speaker
I know you're stuck in quarantine. You might be stuck with your kids and all the drama. You might even be dealing with death and challenges, which is what I dealt with last year as well. So you might be dealing with personal loss. I get it. Work through that trauma. But as soon as you lift your head up, my book's going to be waiting for you. And it's like, now you can run with it. Go. Here are your tools. Let's go. Let's change what caused last year.
00:42:17
Speaker
I love this something you said that was kind of like challenging your audience and sometimes by challenging them, you might lose some of them. And that's okay. And I know me, I'm a big metal guy, big Metallica guy. And after their first four records, which were very heavy, prog, thrashy, right out of 80s metal and really kind of an iconic sort of four records.
00:42:48
Speaker
They pivot. They go to the Black Album, shorter songs, better production, still heavy but not thrashy. And they were willing to kill themselves artistically to hit another level and to jump the chasm, as Seth Godin would say. And they did. They did jump the chasm and they conquered the world, but they weren't
00:43:11
Speaker
I wouldn't call them necessarily heavy metal anymore after they made that record. But that was a creative impulse and an urge that they followed and a strategic one at that. So my point being and what I want to ask you is just how can someone maybe get comfortable
00:43:29
Speaker
in that discomfort when they might say, you know what, in order to grow, I really actually have to burn down my current audience or kill a version of my artistic self in order to live. I'm a Metallica fan too.
00:43:47
Speaker
You have, like I said, the Black album, but then 10 years later, you know, it's a great album. I bought it. I was in high school when it came out and I'm, I love to enter a Sandman and nothing else matters. Like it was, but it was a very polished effort. You're absolutely right. But then 10 years later you have S&M, right? And it's just like, whoa, wait, they're with a symphony now? What's going on? And they're just going in different directions. And I think you have such a, that's such an important question.
00:44:13
Speaker
When I do my coaching, we talk about this and that's literally my whole career. To paraphrase Chase Jarvis, doing that as a muscle, it's a skill, it's a learned act. It's not innate. You don't want to kill your darlings. As I said in Silicon Valley, you don't want to cannibalize your own work.
00:44:40
Speaker
I'd say there's two perspectives of it, and one of them might be helpful to someone who's listening. The first perspective or reasoning behind it is that you don't want to become stagnant for your audience. And that's what I was kind of getting at before, which is probably what prompted your question, is that, like, I'm a coach.
00:45:01
Speaker
And my specialty, I don't think I mentioned it, but my specialties are non-traditional entrepreneurs. So people who are side hustlers, people who are solopreneurs, particularly people who are underfunded, overlooked, people who haven't been represented, as Ava DuVernay says, represented at the table. And so I look at it as a mission. Like I'm one of them who made it. Again, I was on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. We had a quarter million users. We were bootstrapping, you know,
00:45:32
Speaker
I'm a black co-founder with a kid at home, like I'm a rarity, or at least I believed I was, until I started reaching out to other people and helping them. And I realized that I wasn't a rarity at all. So if I'm going to keep writing the same book over again, that could help line my pockets, but that's not going to serve my audience. And so that audience, frankly, is going to start to go away.
00:45:56
Speaker
And then it's not going to fulfill my own service. One of the things I talk about and built from now is creating your own metrics. And so the metrics for me aren't based on bestseller status. I've been a bestseller a couple of times with some traditionally published books. Like I said, the Bites as an entrepreneur was a bestseller.
00:46:16
Speaker
I'm not living in a mansion. It didn't change my life. It was nice. It was cool. It makes it a little bit easier to get book deals and get attention of people who do keynotes. But so I know that metric isn't it? Do you understand? That's the nice part about it. You're like, when I become a bestseller, then this. It's like, no, same insecurities. I still don't think anyone's listening. OK. You're right. It's like, OK. I got a little bit more mortgage money this month, but that's about it.
00:46:44
Speaker
right? You know, maybe we'll go out to eat this week. You know, especially as artists, it's like, you know, as you know, we're all pretty, pretty humble on the financial side. So it's like, so once, so I'm kind of coming back from the mountaintop and saying, Okay, if you think these metrics are going to change your life, they're not. So it all comes back to doing the work to against, you know, quote, quote, golden there, like, you know, it comes back to doing the work. So number one,
00:47:10
Speaker
If you're coming from a place of service, which is what I'm committed to doing, then you gotta be there for the people that you're serving. If you keep repeating the same, if you wanna do the music metaphor, if you keep repeating the same album over and over again, you're not going to challenge them, you're not going to help them grow. So that's one metric. A more capitalistic, and I don't mean that in a bad way, because I consider myself a capitalist as well,
00:47:37
Speaker
A more capitalistic viewpoint of it is that if you don't serve them, then someone else will.
00:47:42
Speaker
And so if I kept doing The Bites as Entrepreneur for kids, The Bites as Entrepreneur for grandparents, The Bites as Entrepreneur for Jewish Hasidic people, you know, if I kept going down that rabbit hole and doing so many different versions of The Bites as Entrepreneur, that would have been awesome for me to have maybe the next chicken soup for the soul. But there was like a moment where I was like, no, that's not what my audience needs. They're literally coming up to me after keynotes and saying, this book is brilliant. This isn't enough.
00:48:11
Speaker
That's what they were telling me. It's like, this book is brilliant. I bought it. I paid to come to your keynote ever. This isn't enough.
00:48:20
Speaker
And so what I do, you're getting like free market research right from the person or the people that you want to serve. And you're like, Oh, you just came up to me and telling me more of what you want. You're probably representative of a hundred more people, just you. If I just answer that question, you know, I am writing directly to the people I want to help.
00:48:42
Speaker
That's a beautiful thing and kind of like you, which congratulations on, on working on, on your, your company. This is built from now is officially the first book on my input imprint called bring your worth. And so this one, I have been self publishing for a little while, you know, doing my thing and doing it in an ad hoc way.
00:49:05
Speaker
Built from now, it's like, no, I actually have an imprint. Inside baseball, it's like, I bought the ISBNs. I have this framework. If you look at the Library of Congress, it's from Bring Your Worth Publishing. And the nice thing about that, with the independent route,
00:49:22
Speaker
And some folks get this with traditional publishing, of course, and we can have a whole different podcast on that. But with the independent publishing, one of the reasons why it works so well for me is because I know who my audience is, I know how to reach them, and luckily they're comfortable enough with me where they'll tell me the truth.
00:49:45
Speaker
And there are some folks that didn't like Bring Your Worth. It was hard to hear. I'm like, oh my God, I bled into this book. It's my truth. And you didn't like it? But they told me the truth. And come to find out, for some of those folks, they were served elsewhere because they didn't like the direction I was going. And they might pick up Bill from now. I'm thinking of a few right now. They might pick up Bill from now and be like, oh, OK, I get it.
00:50:12
Speaker
Or it might be like some of the folks that ran into me recently that just now are really getting to bring your worth, even though it came out two years ago. So really focusing on the long game and we can have a whole discussion about that, but I love focusing on the long game and not, not being in a rush. And one of the nice things is that I don't need like built from now to be a best seller, getting in on the best seller list, particularly for some of the media stuff that I'm doing, you know, that'd be awesome. Of course. Yes.
00:50:42
Speaker
But I mean, is that going to be the metric? No, because I'm trying to serve people over the long haul. And there's like, yeah, all my books from the past four and a half years, they're steady sellers. And some of them were not best sellers at all, but people are still buying them because they know what I say in there is true. And it comes from a place of truth that they're starting to understand now or that resonates with them now. I'm not worrying about it resonating with them four years ago when the book came out.
00:51:11
Speaker
It's like, no, you can buy it now and it could sit on your shelf and then it comes out and grabs you. Or you hear about my latest book and you realize that you have my other book in the proverbial shopping cart for like three years. It's like maybe I should buy his old book. And then it resonates with you. I mean, I think as an avid reader and as a bookworm, I'm also looking at it as a fan. And something happens when you're a fan and you're a creator.
00:51:40
Speaker
and having that 360 view. And I want people to, just like I grab, what's it called, Ego is Enemy, or I grab The War of Art, or I grab Pema Children's Book, Becoming Comfortable with Uncertainty. I can name those books, and they've been with me forever. And I just pull them out, and they're there. And that's what I'm trying to do with Build From Now,
00:52:09
Speaker
particularly with the resources of the focus, agility, the time and energy, the fates. What I'm trying to do is create enough substance where your resource might be different post pandemic. So you might be very agile right now, which is the A in fate. And then post pandemic, maybe you have a ton of energy. So maybe you're E and there's an entire section for you. And so I want it to really be a perennial thing where it's just, it's there.
00:52:39
Speaker
One of the biggest challenges that I have as a coach is that there's only so many people I can help. There's a really good book from a colleague who later on became a friend, name is Paul Jarvis, and he did a book called The Company of One. And it's about making, make your company small or keeping it small on purpose. And he has some great insights in there. And I interviewed him for my income about a year or two ago. And again, we became friends, so I love his work and his aesthetic.
00:53:09
Speaker
But that's part of it where it's like, if I'm a one-on-one coach and I like this intimacy, even that's why I'm talking so much. Like I love having this one-on-one conversation. If that's what I want, but then I want to impact say a hundred people or a thousand people, even if I met with people every single day virtually 365 days in a year, I wouldn't connect with everybody. And so what I've been trying to do, I think with the books is take some of the energy from the coaching and have it there on the shelf.
00:53:37
Speaker
because I can't meet everybody. And frankly, I can't help everybody. But if I'm able to infuse it into my work, hence the YouTube channel, the youtube.com slash Brown Damon, like that's one of the reasons why I'm doing the regular YouTube channel. It's like 10 minutes of me coaching. You know, it's a certain subject and it's very focused, but it's 10 minutes of me. So trying to find ways to impact the world and nourish the world, knowing that there's only just one of me. And I think that would be,
00:54:07
Speaker
probably one other thing that I would share is that realize that your book is a way to impact multiple people. So rushing to get it out, it having to be the best seller the first it happened to be a best seller the first week, etc. Like those things are not those things are not necessary.
Writing for Long-term Impact
00:54:25
Speaker
What's necessary is creating something that's going to stand the test of time. And if you do that, then that success will come however it's supposed to come.
00:54:35
Speaker
But it depends on where your metrics are. If your metric is the best seller, then maybe what I'm saying is irrelevant. But if your metric is making an impact, which I've done enough books and I've been in this long enough where I've had people come to me sometimes with tears in their eyes about something that I said. And you start to see that there's a bigger game here. There's a bigger idea. And that helps. For me, that helps me put butt in seat.
00:54:59
Speaker
do my best work and focus on what I'm supposed to be doing versus worrying about metrics that frankly to me don't really matter. There's oftentimes our identities can be very tied to what we do, what we have done, what we went to school for, and it can be hard to break free of that identity if you're just so tethered to that thing that you've done.
00:55:26
Speaker
And I wonder in your experience, in your multiple hats you have worn and still wear, what do you tell people who have trouble breaking free of an identity or an identity that they have had in the past? Say they were a journalist and they want to be an entrepreneur, but they just can't
00:55:47
Speaker
embody that. And so what might you say to those person whose big struggle to build from now is an identity that is anchoring them to something that is keeping them from growing? There's two things that keep in mind. The first thing is that your
00:56:06
Speaker
Medium isn't necessarily your message to flip the classic saying. And so what that means is that I see this a lot with people, like I'm just old enough where I came up in the newspaper industry back in Chicago after grad school.
00:56:24
Speaker
And so newspaper industry was still thriving at the time. And there was so, or we thought it was thriving and then it died really after that, but whole nother story. But there's so many folks who, you know, me being involved, as you know, with the writing programs and the journalism conferences, and I've been on boards and stuff like that. And there's so many people who are fixed and saying, I'm a newspaper person.
00:56:51
Speaker
as opposed to saying, I tell stories. Those are two very different things. And that's the reason why, you know, again, I'm trying to be proof of concept here, not on purpose, but I do recognize it where me starting my YouTube channel, I've never had a YouTube channel. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but I'm learning really quickly. It's a lot of fun. It's allowing me to connect with people. Some of them are live. So I'm getting comments from people that I haven't talked to in like years and I'm connecting with them. And you know,
00:57:21
Speaker
I haven't used my passport in a year and a half, two years. But it's allowing me to connect with all these different people. Am I a YouTuber? Am I a live streamer? Am I a Twitch gamer? No, not at all. But it has to do with the skill set, what I call the toolbox in them, built from now, has to do with the toolbox that was built. So I have two degrees in journalism. I have a master's in magazine publishing. I have a master's in magazine publishing.
00:57:49
Speaker
Like, when's the last time you bought a magazine? Like, so as soon as I got my grad degree, you know, I might as well have been prehistoric. But I was able to take that toolbox, all those things that I learned in this grad program and apply it to becoming an entrepreneur, apply it to being on stage and capturing audience at TED, applying it to even my coaching practice and now YouTubing.
00:58:14
Speaker
And so, number one, looking at the toolbox and skill set you have versus your identity being tied to a certain medium. So, I think that's one. The second part of it, and I got into this before, is figuring out why you're doing it. What are you trying to do? Well, let's use the newspaper analogy. Okay, you're a newspaper man or woman or whatever. You're a newspaper reporter. You're an old dog, as we used to say. So, you're an old dog with a newspaper. Cool.
00:58:41
Speaker
Are you just you just wet it to a newspaper? Well, I'm trying to serve the community or I want to write about people who are underserved or I want to write about criminal activity or I want to write and I like the deadline aspect of it. So I want to write things really quickly and get in time and I get an adrenaline rush from it. All those things I just had said have nothing to do with the newspaper. They have to do with why you do it.
00:59:07
Speaker
My thing, which I established back with The Bites as Entrepreneur, is that the belief you have to sacrifice everything to make your entrepreneurial mark is a myth.
00:59:19
Speaker
So you don't have to sacrifice everything to make your creative mark. You don't have to sacrifice everything to get that book out. You don't have to sacrifice everything to get that play out or that novel out or whatever. You don't have to sacrifice everything. Number one, I'm proof of concept of that. So I'm not just talking the talk and walking the walk. But also, I've gotten access as a journalist, as a TED speaker, to all these great minds. And so I'm bringing all this insight to you and saying, OK, you don't have to sacrifice everything.
00:59:47
Speaker
It doesn't matter if I'm doing a book, if I'm having a podcast with you, if I'm having a drink with somebody at the next conference, hopefully in the near future, if I'm doing a keynote, if I'm on my YouTube channel, it's all that same message. Literally, you can go through the 100,000s of words that I've published over the last three, four, five years and listen to all the podcasts and all that. It's all going back to that same 13 word or so message. That's it.
01:00:16
Speaker
So it doesn't matter what platform I'm at. It doesn't matter. YouTube could go away tomorrow and they'll pop up on TikTok. Like it doesn't matter. And once you get agnostic like that and stop wetting yourself again to the medium and focusing more on the message, then it's, I can't tell you how freeing it is.
01:00:33
Speaker
And if you go to youtube.com slash Brown Damon, I actually have a couple keynotes that I did for the American Society of Journalists and Authors and also for the Society of Professional Journalists. And there's one keynote in particular where I talk about how to survive after journalism. And I talk about this. It was back in 2015. And I talk about the exact same thing you're talking about where it had to be a death of self. But it was a death of self as far as me saying, I am a journalist and my ego being behind that.
01:01:03
Speaker
I have a master's from at that time, the number one journal school in the country. And I am a journalist and I've written for Playboy and New York post, blah, blah, blah. All that ego stuff had to go away. And it's like, no, no. The belief you have to sacrifice everything to make your entrepreneurial mark is a myth. It's a lie. My main thing is showing people how it's a myth, how it's a lie. And as I help them get empowered, power themselves, then they're going to change the world. So it doesn't matter if I'm a journalist or not.
01:01:31
Speaker
The people that hire me as a coach don't care about my grad degree. Ink Magazine doesn't care that I have a grad degree. It's like, no, it's like they know that I'm trying to make an impact and I have the skill set to do it. And so I think number one is not identifying with the medium by identifying with the message you want to give. And number two, understanding that your skill set is transferable. Again, if I focus on just having a master's in magazine publishing, I'd be in a lot of trouble right now.
01:01:59
Speaker
But I was able to have an expansive career because I focus on the skill sets that came from going to Northwestern versus me having this badge of honor and me having to justify the lot of money that I paid for that grad degree by staying just a journalist. There's a lot of ego involved in it. And I think you were hinting at it earlier. I think the ego just needs to be burned off. And the faster you do that,
01:02:24
Speaker
the more you'll get some type of freedom. And I think you'll be able to hit that true artistic, what's the word I'm looking for? Not peak, but your true capacity. I think a lot of us are tied into the ego and having to be a certain way. Just one more example of that with me being a bestselling author. Last couple of books I've done and we're not best sellers.
01:02:50
Speaker
And so if I was ego invested in being a bestselling author and I felt like I needed to defend that moniker, then built from now, it probably wouldn't exist. Cause that first chapter, you know, I had some early readers where they were like, they're like, you're going to start with this. They're like, they're like, that's some, that's some heavy stuff. I won't even get into the colorful language they use. And I was like, well, this is where, this is where, this is where I need to serve.
01:03:20
Speaker
This is what people need to hear. And this is part of my coaching practice. So, you know, buckle up. This is a new book. This is where you're all going to be going. If you're not there already, you'll be thankful for this book later on. And that has nothing to do with ego. That has nothing to do with bestseller status. That has to do with serving the community and using the toolbox that I got. And I think if you start from there, then you literally can't go wrong.
01:03:54
Speaker
Thank you, listeners. CNFs. Thanks to Mr. Damon Brown. I'll never forget meeting Damon and Jeanette Hurt, his great friend and editor at a bar in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on the eve of Hippo Camp 2019. We were drinking biz.
01:04:15
Speaker
Talking about writing books and writing and books and Seth Godin and Podcasting and living life man. We were living life
01:04:29
Speaker
Great talk. Go check out his new book and his older books. They might be hitting you right where you need to be hit at a certain time. That's the great thing about books. You can throw them up on the shelf. You know what? They'll talk to you. They will, they will choose to be read. Do you think you're out there picking a book and reading a book? No, that book is picking you. Trust me. It's weird.
01:04:54
Speaker
BrendanOmero.com, hey hey, is where you'll find those show notes and sign up for my monthly newsletter. There, you'll get book recommendations, win book raffles, get linked up to cool articles I come across and get an exclusive invite to the CNF in happy hour.
01:05:10
Speaker
you just missed happy hour number four I know you missed it because very few showed up we had Paul the sickie as the special guest and I felt sort of bad for him I really did it was just me and I'm not exactly the best of company and thankfully good old Damon showed up that was awesome
01:05:29
Speaker
And so it was just the three of us for 45 minutes and I hope Paul had an okay time hanging out. He didn't reply to my email saying how sorry it was that nobody showed up. So I'm led to believe he hates me and will never come on the show again. It's only logical.
01:05:46
Speaker
It's like anything in this world. If I did a better job, then more people would have showed. If I made a better show, more would join our CNF and gang. If I wrote better pitches, they wouldn't be met with stone-cold silence. If I had better self-talk, I wouldn't be such a fucking loser. Thankfully, nobody listens this far in the podcast, right? Anyone? I can never tell.
01:06:11
Speaker
But rest assured, knowing that things are okay, I stopped taking the Adderall several weeks ago, and I'm sleeping much, much better. I'm meditating and doing all, doing many analog things early in the day, between 5 and 6 a.m., and late at night, typically between 8 and 9, as we try to land that plane, man. Journal at night, journal in the morning, clear the deck, set the bowling pins, lock it in,
01:06:40
Speaker
getting in the pocket like Tom Brady, trying to win Super Bowl number seven, and he did it. Rooting for that man, my former New England Patriot.
01:06:52
Speaker
I'm ready to submit the memoir to an agent, and my best friend, Kim Cross, is putting me in touch with someone to elevate my query from the depths of the slush to the upper crust. So I better not blow it. I had Kim read the query because when someone is gonna vouch for you, it reflects on them too, you know? I was like, you're gonna wanna read this because I don't wanna drag your beautiful name through the mud.
01:07:18
Speaker
She's not a baseball person, and she dug the quarry and said she'd read it. She could just be saying that, but maybe she isn't. Maybe she will want to read it, and if she does, I might be in business, CNFers. And if you sign up for patreon.com slash CNFpod, I'll be sure to send you a copy when it's all said and done. If it ever is said, and if it ever is done, it's the least I can do.
01:08:10
Speaker
So do me this one more solid, will ya? Stay cool, CNFers. Stay cool forever.