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Episode 350: Damon Brown
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Damon Brown is the author of many books including Career Remix and Build from Now, and a content creator at youtube.com/@browndamon and career coach.
Social: @CNFPod
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introductions and Promotions
00:00:00
Speaker
Producer Kevin just walked right up beside me. I am petting her right now. Isn't that nice? Good girl, Kevin. AC and efforts. Shout out to Athletic Brewing. It's dry January. And you might want to give dry a try as they say delicious stuff. I'm a brand ambassador and I get no money.
00:00:21
Speaker
They are not an official sponsor of the show. I want to make that clear, but I love giving them a shout out because they do amazing work. This stuff is really tasty. Visit athleticbrewing.com. And if you use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you'll get a nice little discount. All I get are points towards merch and beer, but I don't get any money. So take that and give it a try.
00:00:49
Speaker
And since I have just a teensy bit more time on my hands, though I'd like to think that'll change, if you leave a review over an Apple podcast, I'll give you a complimentary edit of a piece of your writing of up to 2,000 words, once you're... I always stumble around that, once you're...
00:01:06
Speaker
Once your review post usually takes about 24 hours, send me a screenshot of the review to Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com and I'll reach back out and we'll get started. Who knows? If you like the experience, you might even want me to help you with something a bit more ambitious. You don't know what it's like to be lost, you know, in the middle of Tokyo at midnight and you just realize that the train stopped running at midnight.
00:01:33
Speaker
And no one told you that, so you have to walk. Like, you've never experienced that. Those types of gritty experiences, I think, are analogous to what you're talking about as far as being a writer, where it's like, you can't tell someone how to write a book. And you can read about Hemingway or whomever's adventures writing books. But that's way different than getting your hands in the mud.
00:02:00
Speaker
Alright, how's it going CNFers? CNFpod, the creative non-fiction podcast. A show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories.
Damon Brown on Personal Growth
00:02:10
Speaker
I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going? I like that I get to say this.
00:02:15
Speaker
We welcome back Damon Brown to the show. It's either his third or fourth rodeo. He's the author of a couple dozen books. No, really. Some traditionally published, many self-published. All good. His latest book is Career Remix, how to get the gig you want with the skills you've got.
00:02:35
Speaker
We talked about this last time he was on the show, but it being the start of the year, I wanted to bring Damon back to CNF Pod HQ to talk about goal-setting and how to think more positively about our relative career trajectories. And you know what else? Just to feel damn good about ourselves.
00:02:54
Speaker
He's got a wonderful YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at Brown Damon. Ampersand, the at sign, I think is in the URL. But you might try, youtube.com slash Brown Damon. It's called the Bring Your Worth show. Bite-sized shows for the most part. It's three a week that help you see things differently. He's right at 300 of these, which is an amazing milestone.
00:03:22
Speaker
And one last thing, don't forget to head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to sign up for my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. Lots of cool stuff, goodies, raffles, happy hours. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it. You know what? Why wait? Let's do this. Let's get right into it. Here is Damon Brown.
00:03:55
Speaker
At the end of the year, how are you processing what this year has been for you as it starts to set the table for 2023? It's interesting. I'm not very introspective this year, which is unusual for me. You know my work and all that. If I could say so, I think my work tends to be introspective. I think one of the differences with this year is that
00:04:20
Speaker
It's almost like, I can't remember if you're into cooking, but it's kind of like, okay, cool. I feel like we talked about cooking at one period of time. And it's kind of like they talk about the mise en place, right? Where they talk about how you're going to set shit up at first, which, you know, we can talk about that with 2023, that coming year. But what's
Reflections and Introspections
00:04:40
Speaker
also important, I actually learned this from my stepfather who raised me and he was a lime cook back in the day in the South.
00:04:46
Speaker
And he said, Damon, you want to clean up as you're cooking. And, you know, I'm still working on that to be honest, so sorry Kyle. But the idea of saying, you don't wait until the end of the year, you don't wait till you've cooked everything and it looks like a disaster hit it. You know, and then you go and say, okay, we're gonna eat dinner and then we're gonna spend five hours cleaning. Instead, it's like,
00:05:13
Speaker
You know, you make scrambled eggs, some eggs fill on the side, you grab the rag real quick, wipe it up. But then if you end up waiting until breakfast is done or whatever analogy you want to use, then it's going to start getting hard and it's going to be sitting on your mind. It's going to be frustrating. It's like, oh my gosh, I still need to clean all this up. You're not going to enjoy the meal as much. You won't be fully present if you do allow yourself to enjoy the meal. And that's what's really been different personally, like for me, like this year, it's just like,
00:05:41
Speaker
I'm not doing a whole lot of introspection because I feel like I was thinking about things a lot as they were happening. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I feel like it's just, the flavor of this year just feels different. I think it's also the energy of, I don't know if you're experiencing this too. This is the first year where at least we can kind of pretend that things are semi-dual. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:06:08
Speaker
You know what I mean? So it's like, yeah, I even hate to say that. I feel bad saying that. But I feel like that's kind of the prevailing energy right now, which is like, okay, well, you know, we'll get our shots. Or if we decided not to get our shots, we don't get our shots. We take whatever risks are there. And whoever's in those situations, some of it really sucks and some of it's okay. Some of us are okay. And there's kind of a, almost like a sad acceptance with this year too.
00:06:37
Speaker
where there's details that I remember from 2019 that I'm like, that's not going to happen. You know what I mean? Like, that's not, you know, I had an entrepreneur in residence over at the Toledo library.
00:06:51
Speaker
And that was all through the month of October of 2019 and I'd already moved to Las Vegas from Toledo at that time And so I was like
Sharing Knowledge and Writing
00:07:00
Speaker
planes trains and automobiles Where like that it was every Wednesday night and so I get on a plane on Tuesday morning Tuesday morning Wednesday morning depending on the session Fly all the way to Detroit Drive down to Toledo, which is about an hour and a half two hours something like that Do the event
00:07:19
Speaker
My mom lives in Michigan, so I crash with her that Wednesday night, late that Wednesday night, and I fly out that next day in the morning. And I did that three or four times throughout that month to be the EIR. And there's certain experiences, getting on a plane that often, all those little details where I'm like, that shit wouldn't happen right now. Like that wouldn't, you know what I mean? And I'm not an anxious person, but it's like, you know, having to get on a plane four times in a month,
00:07:47
Speaker
That makes me anxious. And so there's almost like, the word I'm looking for is mourning. That's the word I'm looking for. It's almost like there's a mourning happening and a sad awareness where it's like us accepting where we are and that it's also a little bit different than perhaps where we like to be. And also it might be quote unquote better than where we were. It vaguely reminds me of
00:08:15
Speaker
I lived in New Orleans in 2004 and then left for Katrina in 2005. And we talked about that I think on the last episode or a couple episodes ago when Bill From Now came out, because that's like Bill From Now, the first chapters about that. And I had a major birthday a few years ago. And so my youngest was just born. My eldest was like two or three. My wife, my parents and my closest friends, we all went down to New Orleans to celebrate.
00:08:43
Speaker
And it was kind of similar where it's just like, it's like, wow, like this, you know, this bourbon milk punch tastes amazing. And yes, let's go ahead and I gotta show you this pull boy. Wait, that pull boy place got destroyed in Katrina and hasn't been here in 10 years. That's right. You know, so there's this kind of constant reflectiveness that I feel like is happening, at least with me personally right now.
00:09:11
Speaker
So going in 2023, I mean, we can talk about goal setting and things like that in a practical way, but in an emotional way, I'm like, I feel like it's going to, I don't have that usual reflection that I have going to the new year. It's all like, no, I've actually been, I've had the mirror on and.
00:09:30
Speaker
you know, the reflective glasses on the whole time. And it's, yeah, and there's a sense of heaviness, I think I feel right now. And I'm not sure if other people are feeling that, but I'm definitely, that's definitely where I'm at. Not in a bad way, just in the really kind of bittersweet, thoughtful way. Yeah.
00:09:48
Speaker
Yeah, piggybacking on the cooking metaphor, I'm snowballing a bunch of these little casualty of words things that I write. There's micro podcasts, writing podcasts for people in a hurry. Usually these little things that are like two minutes long.
00:10:04
Speaker
And the one I just wrote about an hour ago, really, was about chefs and cookbook authors and this idea of giving away the secrets and not hoarding the information because that's what these cookbooks are. It's like the keys to some of the most famous restaurants and most famous recipes.
00:10:29
Speaker
in the world and here are these chefs who developed these recipes and they are just giving it away. Here you are, here are the ingredients, go make it. And I think there's a cool ethos there about not hoarding information, giving it away and letting people run with that information. And you bringing up the cooking metaphor just made me think of that little thing I just scribbled and I think that's probably ripe ground for you to run with there of not hoarding all the information.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. My latest book was Queer Remix, and I think we talked about it at the top of the year when it came out. But the book before that was Built From Now, and we seem to be kind of circling around the concepts in that, because with Built From Now, it was that period of time where for you to do a cookbook,
00:11:22
Speaker
you have to have your shit tight. You have to have a system in place. You have to have a way of organizing it. It can't just be in your brain. And so it's almost like a rite of passage, or not even that, because there's ego involved in that. Almost like a
Life Hacks vs. Meaningful Journeys
00:11:41
Speaker
test. And it's like, OK, this is a different level now. Now you're in a different space. Belt from now is basically my coaching method.
00:11:52
Speaker
talking about how you master these four resources, focus, agility, time and energy. And that book for me was my cookbook. But I had been a coach at that point, I think for about five years or something like that. And then informally coaching, I realized throughout my life, but like formally a coach, a business coach for those three, four, five years, it dawned on me, I'm like, oh, this is my system.
00:12:18
Speaker
And you're right, like the first instinct was like, okay, well, I need to tell other people about it. And going back to, you know, one of our mutual favorites, Seth Godin. And in other folks where it's like, you can give people the recipe, but that doesn't mean you give people the flavor of the dish. It doesn't mean that people understand what happens when things go a different direction.
00:12:46
Speaker
I have family members that are involved in organizational development and things like that. More like a mass scale, even though I'm more like one-on-one, so I'm a one-on-one coach, but folks that do, you know, coach hundreds of people at the same time in this grand thing. And one of the things they told me, and I think about it over the years, is that you can give someone all the guidebooks in the world and all that stuff, but once you're in that training seminar, once you're
00:13:15
Speaker
you know, doing the organizational summit, or you're doing a leadership summit, whatever words you want to use for that, whatever the case may be. If something goes off the rails in that moment, in that summit, what have you, that's when those instincts kick in. And so you can have all the recipes in the world. Like, Emeril Lagasse and all those folks down south can give me all their game.
00:13:44
Speaker
and I still will be able to make a crawfish at Tufe. And so I think I'm looking at what you're talking about from two different angles. The first angle is, and I just talked about this in a recent keynote, we're in such a privileged time where you and I can hang up right now and then know Judith Child's every single recipe she's done, ever. Probably some of the unpublished stuff if you look online.
00:14:14
Speaker
So we're privileged in that and we should take advantage of that as creators, as to get inspiration, just to understand people's blueprint and realize that maybe her early recipes weren't that good. Like, I think there's a beauty in that. I'm almost obsessed with that. It's like, give me the shit that's not that good. Oh, wow.
00:14:33
Speaker
Okay, so you got to where you got to in the 70s and 80s because you made shitty recipes in the 50s and 60s. Oh, okay, well then I'm just a baby then. I just need to keep going. But then the other side, which I think you and I are both in this camp because we're maturing in our careers, is to be generous in giving people that blueprint. Because not only is it helping serve people, but even
Goals, Income, and Career Paths
00:15:00
Speaker
if you give away the store,
00:15:03
Speaker
Like, other people can't do it. Like, I couldn't do a podcast like you do. Like, I couldn't. Even though we spent plenty of time together, I could say to you a friend, like, you can give me all the game in the world. I couldn't do what you do.
00:15:16
Speaker
You know, and so, and that's understanding that we hoard less information. And then also we end up, you know, contributing more to the world, because we start worrying about someone else taking our position. That's one of the reasons why I love your work, Brendan, because I know you've talked a lot over the last few years, as far as jealousy, envy, all those, I like uncomfortable emotions. So we'll talk about this. But all the, all that stuff that's uncomfortable, but there's, they're telling us something.
00:15:46
Speaker
And it's like, no, actually, as you grow through those emotions, you're like, wait a second. Even if I give someone the so-called secret sauce, they're not going to be me. And so the reverse is true, too. So it's like, there's nothing that someone else can give me that can make me exactly like them.
00:16:05
Speaker
But then the reverse is true too. No one can steal what I have. They can follow the exact same blueprint and it's going to come out as a cronut instead of a donut. Like it's just going to be different, but that's because of my special journey.
00:16:18
Speaker
You can also give people all the information in the world, too. And this is sometimes my problem with books on writing, which I love as a means of continuing education. But sometimes reading a lot of books on writing, sometimes you forget to actually do any writing.
00:16:35
Speaker
And reading those books, it feels like writing. And I imagine reading cookbooks, sometimes it might feel like cooking, but you're not actually cooking or you're not actually writing. So eventually you have to get uncomfortable and actually take some of those insights and actually take your lumps and get into the arena and do the work yourself and realize the growth you need to do or the things you need to get over.
00:17:01
Speaker
But nothing can replicate actually doing the thing no matter how much information you dump into your brain. Eventually you do have to get onto the field.
00:17:14
Speaker
It reminds me of a conversation that, ongoing conversation that I've been having with my eldest. Again, he's nine. And he loves books. He's reading at a relatively high level. And that's not meant, like from an ego standpoint, it's just the boy's like obsessed with books. So of course, this gets me like excited. I'm like, oh yes, please keep reading, keep reading. And we had this, oh, had to be early summertime, I would say a handful of months ago.
00:17:45
Speaker
He's like, he had said something about, about Japan, particularly Tokyo. And he was telling me about Japan and whatever he said wasn't, wasn't correct. It was like, I was like, actually, that's not how Tokyo or whatever operates. And he's like, no, that's how it is.
00:18:04
Speaker
And I was like, sweetheart, I've been to Tokyo twice. I learned Japanese back in the day. Like, you haven't been to Japan before, have you? He's like, well, no. And I'm like, okay, so why do you believe this is true? And he was like, well, this, well, you know, this is what I heard. And I was like, well, where did you hear? And of course we go through the, my background is journalism. So we go through like, we peel the onion. And then at the end of the day, it was like, oh no, this is something that I write in a book.
00:18:33
Speaker
And I'm like, you know what? I was like, this isn't even me trying to be right or anything like that. It's just, if someone has experienced something and actually done the work, you default to whatever their perspective is. That's just how it works. I've never had a child come out of my body.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah. So even though like I'm super connected to the kids, I'm a very active father. There's experiences that mommy had that I will never understand. And so she's talking about pregnancy. I'd be like, Oh, okay. I guess that's how it works. Yeah.
00:19:12
Speaker
And I know with your work again, like you talk about getting people into the arena. And I think that's, you're talking about a very good point where that's, it's double-edged sword. That's the danger is that for my kids, like if I want to understand Shibuya and Kyoto and all these different places in Tokyo and the other city, Kyoto and all that stuff, like I had to like save up money, get my ass on a plane.
00:19:41
Speaker
do some rudimentary Japanese and stumble across everything, including eating some food that if I knew what it was, I never would ate. But that was required of, I would say, our generation. And now that's not as required.
00:19:56
Speaker
So now you have like bloggers and food videos and all this stuff.
Social Media vs. Personal Platforms
00:20:00
Speaker
And it's like, oh my gosh, I know Tokyo. And it's like, no, you don't know what it smells like. You don't know what it's like to be lost, you know, in the middle of Tokyo at midnight. And you just realize that the train stopped running at midnight.
00:20:14
Speaker
And no one told you that, so you have to walk. Like, you've never experienced that. Those types of gritty experiences, I think, are analogous to what you're talking about as far as being a writer, where it's like you can't tell someone how to write a book. And you can read about Hemingway or whomever's adventure is writing books. But that's way different than getting your hands in the mud.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think that also is the problem with – see, I love advice and I hate advice. Not that anyone asks me for advice ever. I know I've asked advice of people who I admire. And I've come to realize that the only person you can really interrogate for advice is a past version of yourself.
00:20:58
Speaker
Because at least that person has a similar path in the world, is your lived experience. Because someone, I don't know, Patrick Ryden Keefe couldn't give me the keys to the palace. It just wouldn't work. There are certain steps along the way, doors that were opened, various privileges along the way. I'm not saying he had that, I'm just generally speaking.
00:21:24
Speaker
That that his experience might it wouldn't overlay on mine if I tried to repeat it And it's like you kind of just have to stumble your way through as frustrating as that is I've really like come to realize this very sort of late in life here but I think that's I think the best way through it is just to kind of muddle your way through it and if and I
00:21:44
Speaker
I don't know what the universal truths are to trying to make a go of it as a creative person, but it seems to me that you just have to keep trying new things in this. Eventually, I don't know, your own taste and your own talent kind of bubbles to the surface. It's kind of tricky with, but a lot of people, they want that advice to be like, what can you tell me to life hack my way to where I want to go? Oh, that word. I hate it.
00:22:12
Speaker
I don't know if it's a single word or two words. No, not like if you want to, if you want to, um, I'm really into hip hop. And one of the terms we always use is a microwave artist, you know, where you just go ahead and you, I mean, you know, you, you understand the punk aesthetic and all that where it's just.
00:22:35
Speaker
OK, we got a microwave artist. OK, they got the right look. They got the right feel. They appealed to this demographic. OK, hit the popcorn button, and then they'll come out fully formed like Athena. And that's what it reminds me of. And I'm thankful that I
00:22:53
Speaker
A lot of people that I've been coaching, and again, with the recent keynotes I've been doing, I've been talking to a lot of folks who feel like that they've aged themselves out of the market. Like they're too old to do a particular thing, or, oh, this thing is for people in their 20s, so I can't get on TikTok or whatever the message is that they seem to be the story they were playing in their mind. And that's one of the things that I shared with them. It's actually quite the opposite.
00:23:24
Speaker
that journey, that being lost, that allowing yourself to bump around and have the scrapes and the bruises, that's actually the process. And so if you end up trying to do the hack, it's not going to be as formed, if formed at all. And I feel like the closer you get to these so-called life hacks to getting to the front row quicker,
00:23:52
Speaker
the more easier it is for you to be replaced. That, I think, for people who are trying to take the sloppy route or the quick route, no judgment against you. You do what you gotta do to feed your family, feed yourself. If you need that, you know, your name in the spotlight, you know, as long as you're not hurting other people, do what you need to do. That's fine. Zero judgment from me. But when you take that route, sooner or later, that paranoia is going to set in.
00:24:23
Speaker
because it's not a matter of just earning it as in you're supposed to have a hard path. I don't believe in that. Some people have a easier path. That's okay. My point is that you spend time working on your craft and building up that audience, building up that voice. I think I shared with you in the previous podcast, like for like a year, I sounded like Hunter S. Thompson, you know? And then it was around grad school. So quite a long time ago.
00:24:52
Speaker
And then suddenly I was like, wait, what am I doing? And Hunter was still alive. So again, this is a while ago. And I really admired him as a writer. I'm like, but this isn't, I'm not Hunter. Our lives couldn't be more different. You know what I mean? In many, many different ways. And suddenly I'm like, but what I can take from him, rest in peace, is this little element right here. I come from traditional journalism, two degrees in journalism, master's in magazine publishing. So very traditional journalism.
00:25:21
Speaker
when I discovered Hunter's stuff again in grad school, I was like, oh shit, I can go off the rails? Wait, and he came back? Oh my God, I can do that? It doesn't have to be an inverted pyramid. I could just throw in this other stuff and tell this other tale and then bring the audience right back. Oh my God, I can go off the beaten path. And this is called journalism? Oh shit.
00:25:48
Speaker
Like, but that's what I learned from being lost in that way. That took time. Again, it was several months, if not a year of, at least in retrospect, I was writing a lot of heart, hot garbage. I was trying to. Yeah, I would say you can relate. I'm talking about no offense to you, but that's like, that's our journey. And that's what we're supposed to do, you know? And so it's like, but, but allowing ourselves to go on that journey.
00:26:14
Speaker
I was thinking about this a lot lately. He got me, ironically, an introspective moment, even though I haven't been very introspective this year. But I was thinking about that where so many people in my life and broader, as in like, you know, just people on the street, whatever, everyone seems to be in a hurry. And I'm not. And that's probably the biggest energy of this year going into next year.
00:26:41
Speaker
is it kind of dawned on me. We just did a recent road trip to see my in-laws as I just talked about. And on the road trip, it dawned on me as far as what I was feeling at this moment. And it was, what would I do if I wasn't worried about time?
00:27:02
Speaker
And I don't mean like, you know, and we've talked about death and other things on your podcast. So that's not like I think I have, you know, infinite time like Thanos or something, but more like, what if I wasn't in a rush? So I have my show, The Bring Your Worst Show that I do at youtube.com slash Brown Damon. I'm approaching 300 episodes. Congrats, man. And it's just me showing up. Thank you. Me showing up three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
00:27:31
Speaker
That's, it was two years a week ago. So it's just keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up. I'm realizing that there's so many things that personally, I can't speak for anybody else. Some people feel like that they need to push really hard and be on edge to get themselves motivated. I'm a fairly naturally motivated person. So my challenge traditionally has been, this doesn't need to be done right now.
00:28:02
Speaker
Slow down. And then focus on being present for each episode. Focus on talking to Brendan. Focus on being with my kids. Focus on having awkward time with the families. And then doing the episodes, being fully present doing the episodes. Not in a yoga or in a meditation type of state, but more like literally, okay, you have enough time to do this.
00:28:31
Speaker
I know there's been so many studies and so many discussions, I'm sure there's lots of books too, about how when people are in a rush, they generally get less done than people who are not in a rush. And there's many reasons for that. One of the reasons is that you're less likely to burn out on whatever you're doing if you take your time. Number two, you actually see the crooks and the valleys and the
00:28:57
Speaker
the turns, the nuances, if you slow down a little bit. So there's certain things with my channel that, with my show that I'm updating right now, that if I wasn't slowing down this year, I would have just kept making episodes. And I was like, no, actually, that element right there doesn't make any sense. We're going to change that. And it's like, oh, it's been there all along. Like I can't, I'm approaching 300 episodes. And it's like episode 250. I'm like, wait a second.
00:29:26
Speaker
Why am I doing that? That doesn't make any sense. But I slowed down enough this year to be like, oh, yeah. Why don't I just change it? And look, I'm not going 200 miles per hour, so I can actually change it without getting into a crash. Isn't that nice?
00:29:42
Speaker
Something you said a moment ago about some of your clients feeling like they might be too old for a pivot. I even feel that sometimes with where I've gone, I sometimes feel like I missed the
Book Recommendation and Closing Reflections
00:30:00
Speaker
train. I feel like I got to the platform and it took off. As a result, I flounder on the platform like, oh my God, where'd it go?
00:30:10
Speaker
Elegant, am I too late? It says there are so many other people who by now have been anthologized in these great collections and it puts them on a certain trajectory that I find appealing. They have more books, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:30:24
Speaker
I imagine you run into a lot of your clients, too, who might feel like they've aged out or maybe the train has also passed them by. So what do you tell those people? Maybe the train hasn't passed you by. You just have to find your own way through it and that you do have time. Yeah, I appreciate the honesty there.
00:30:47
Speaker
I'm in my 40s and I just started a YouTube show. So yeah, I understand. It's like, well, I should have started this shit like two decades ago. What am I doing? So I get it. I get it on some level. I think the number one thing, and I hinted at this earlier, but I appreciate you circling back because I didn't quite nail it, is that
00:31:10
Speaker
All those experiences that have gotten us, I can say, here thus far at the level of richness that the younger folks don't have. Back to the food analogy, it's like a gumbo. You can make a gumbo in a half an hour, but you don't want to. Ideally, you want them boiling overnight. That takes time to get the richness and the flavor of it.
00:31:38
Speaker
And so it's not even like a feel good thing or a treatise where it's like, oh, age is wisdom. I mean, literally, as you mentioned, literally time in the arena. And certain things, going back to the time thing, certain things only develop with time. You can't become a better writer by going really fast. You just can't.
00:32:01
Speaker
You have to, you have to fuck around a little bit for lack of a better term. Like you have to, there's like, there's really no way. You know, sports extremely well. So I don't know baseball, but imagine be a baseball player. You can't just go on the major leagues and learn for all the big guys and gals. It's like, no, like you have to, you know, play, play catch. And then you have to do these other things. Like, like there's a certain seasoning to use the analogy in both ways. There's a certain seasoning that happens in all these cases.
00:32:31
Speaker
So I'd say that's number one is a level of depth and of richness that you and I have met someone who wrote their first novel and got a seven figure. They're probably doing eight figure at this point, eight figure book deal. They don't have the richness that you and I have.
00:32:51
Speaker
And so what you're talking about, I recognize that from me a few years ago. So I get it. I get what you're feeling and what you're saying. And that's the thing. Some of those folks are microwave folks back to the previous term, and they're gone now. So I'd say that'd be the number two thing is, why are you really in the game?
00:33:13
Speaker
Are you in the game to have that fame and notoriety? Are you in the game to get some nice money? Are you in the game to make an impact in the culture? Are you in the game because you want to become a better writer and you want to appreciate that journey? Why are you in the game? For the first few years I was in the game, I, if you asked me at the time, I'd say, absolutely. I love seeing my name in lights and seeing my byline, as we call it in journalism. Like that was fantastic.
00:33:43
Speaker
And then a couple books in, I was like, wait, that's not the thing. That's not, no, actually I want to amplify other people's voices. So I ended up doing a lot of co-authorships. So I started doing that. And I was like, no, that's actually not it either. It's actually to change the culture.
00:34:00
Speaker
And that was, has been the terror that I've been on recently. So I'd say that self honesty helps too, as far as why are you in the game? If you're in the game for that fame, again, that was my first few years in the game. So zero judgment from me at all. Like I, at that period of time, I love seeing my name in lights. So nothing wrong with that. But that is wholly dependent on a fickle publishing community and a more fickle audience.
00:34:30
Speaker
And so if your main goal is fame, there's a lot of shit there that is not under your control. And so you're giving up your power for this one or these one or two things that you want. If you're gonna give up your power, then acknowledge that, accept it, live with it. Be like, this is where I'm at right now. I'm on the casting couch.
00:34:57
Speaker
I need to be, I need to get picked. And that's solely cool. Again, I liked being picked when I was younger. It was cool. I'm kept once or twice, but solely fine. But if you go after other things, other things are actually more in your control. And I think that's where I think, at least the folks that I work with, we work on that part. Cause it's like, what is the part that you can control?
00:35:23
Speaker
And if it's stuff that you want that's not in your control, then maybe you could feed yourself in other ways until hopefully you get picked.
00:35:31
Speaker
And as you've worked with and continue to work with clients and non-traditional entrepreneurs, and you get to this idea of goal setting and we're coming up on a new year, by the time this comes out it will be 2023. So when it comes to goal setting, what are some things that, some mistakes people make when they start to set their goals and their intentions? My big thing?
00:36:00
Speaker
is set no more than three goals. I think three might be a little bit luxurious. I'm even making a funny face when I say three. Maybe three's too much. I'm from South Jersey, so we're not very, aside from playing poker, we don't hide our feelings too much on our face. So that's carried on on all my travels. But anyway, so I would say two. Let's just say two. So two goals.
00:36:31
Speaker
I have two goals going into this upcoming year. Number one is to continue to build the Bring Your Words show. They get my show at youtube.com slash Brown Damon. I've been working on it, like I said, for two years. And I'm just getting to the point where it's starting to bend a little bit. But I'll come back to that because that's important as far as goal setting. And then my second goal
00:36:58
Speaker
is to have more of my money come from passive income. Passive income is actually tied to the Bring Your Worship. And so they're tied together. And so leading into 2023, again, this is back to the time thing where I'm not in a rush, where I'm like, all right, well, I know what I'm gonna focus on. So the next 365 days of the year, all right.
00:37:21
Speaker
All right, is it going towards that? Okay, well then maybe we need to have a different conversation about it. But if it's going towards those two goals, then absolutely I'm down. Let's go. And so not only if you have crisp, clean goals, not only does it make it easier so you're not going in 20 directions, but also makes it easier to say no to the shit that doesn't matter.
00:37:46
Speaker
And I mean, you and I have talked over the years, you know, me personally, like I love saying no, closing the door. Cause if you close the door to certain things and, um, that power and that focus goes to the stuff that you really care about. So I'd say that's number one, like just, just pick one or two goals. That's it. Um, I'd say number two is to realize that.
00:38:12
Speaker
You might not reach your goals, but you want to find out how you're going to change and stretch by going after them. It was Jim Rohn, a motivational speaker from back in the day. I love his work. Sometimes I wish I was born a generation earlier, so I could have seen him speak, but he passed away probably about 15, 20 years ago before I was even into entrepreneurship.
00:38:37
Speaker
But that's one of the things that he said. He said a lot of his focus was on money. So I'm going to paraphrase, but he's basically saying, um, if you want to become a millionaire, you don't become a millionaire to become a millionaire. You become a millionaire so that you can become your best self. So essentially if you have this drive and this goal, how is that going to transform you?
00:39:02
Speaker
I'm really into passive income. I love being able to spend time with my kids, spend time with you, spend time with my partner, my wife, take naps. I'm a big avid napper and all those things. I love to be able to have this space in my career so that I'm not training time for money. So I don't work for an hour and then get an hour's pay. I was like, oh, there's another way I can do this? Passive income is that for me.
00:39:28
Speaker
And so, in me building passive income streams over the past, it's been about six years, I got serious about it, that's transformed the way I've done my books. For instance, I haven't gone after the traditional publishing deals, I've self-published. And with me self-publishing, I'm getting five to 10 times what I would get with traditional publishing per book sold. That's passive income.
00:39:52
Speaker
So that goal that I set back when my wife and I had our second child, and he's about turned seven, that goal that I set back then is affecting my total career now. So again, that idea as far as you might not reach that goal that moment in that year, but it'll help you evolve. I'd say the third thing,
00:40:15
Speaker
And I'm experiencing this with my YouTube show. And I've experienced this with startups too. And this is the first time I've actually talked about this theory. I'm sure it'll be developed in the future. I feel like there's a cycle to everything and when things blow up. For the three biggest successes I've had in my career, it's been within a two-year period.
00:40:37
Speaker
So it's me grinding in silence, having a sparkle or a spark of an idea say, I'm going to go ahead and work on this. I think the direction of things are going, but you know, people are literally laughing at me, which was the case with cuddler, my, my startup app that connected people for hugs. Like people are like, what are you talking about? Whatever. And then there's something in that 20 month to 24 month period, suddenly it clicks.
00:41:05
Speaker
and everybody that needs to get it gets it. And suddenly it starts going up. My fortunate thing with this cycle, you know, again, it's occurred three times in my life. The fortunate thing with this cycle is that I have to believe in whatever I'm doing. Because two years is not a short period of time. And so when I started the YouTube channel, we were deep into, it was December 21st of 2020.
00:41:36
Speaker
We're deep into lockdowns. I'm homeschooling my kids. There was no vaccinations in sight yet. Like it was just a dark time. And here it is two years later and people are ready for whatever I've been talking about on the show. And so I'd say that would be the third thing is whatever your goal is, try not to make it dependent.
00:42:01
Speaker
on other people and or try not to make it dependent on it being done complete in a bow within this year. And so it's a matter of saying, what direction do I want to go in? How do I want to evolve my career? Not where do I want to be on February 1st of this next year? Because that's, at least for me, I tend to be an extremist. And so that's why I think about this stuff so much because I need to show myself out.
00:42:31
Speaker
And if I let myself go completely off the rails, then I'd be trying to have this massive TV show and make a ridiculous amount of money in passive income in 2023. And I'm like, that's not gonna get me there. Because if I had that attitude when I started the show in 2020, or if I had that attitude when I started going after passive income, oh my God, that was 2016, then I wouldn't have made it here.
00:43:00
Speaker
And so stretching that timeline a little bit, I think does wonders. And that's what's been in my mind lately. And so I think it's like having those couple of goals, making them reachable enough.
00:43:13
Speaker
Focusing more on the transformation that happens with those goals and realizing that those goals might spill into that next year or maybe a couple of years after. But if you're focused on the transformation and in serving the people that you want to serve, then that shouldn't matter to you.
00:43:32
Speaker
Our mutual idol in Seth Godin, a long time ago, he specifically, I think, stopped trying to grow his email base for his blog. He's just like, I don't care about it. It's got its audience. All I'm going to do is try to serve that audience as best as possible.
00:43:53
Speaker
And the irony is it probably grew even more because those people started sharing and so forth. And it grew hand to hand. And so I just want to use that ethos in asking you in terms of the growth of your show. I mean there are any number of strategies I imagine where you can try to actually grow the number or try to deepen the taproot.
00:44:17
Speaker
So for you, what are some things that you're trying to do to grow the show, but also maybe not grow it as big as it can be, but make it narrower so that maybe you're just serving the audience and that'll kind of grow from there. Yeah, and Seth is an excellent example of that. So one of the things that I've been doing is actually making shorter episodes.
00:44:42
Speaker
And as other people can probably tell from listening to the podcast, you know, I can talk particularly when, you know, talk with someone like yourself who I really respect, you know, so I love going on tangents and having sidebars and sidebars. And I realized, I'm like, well, that's, that can be a show. You know what I mean? There's very popular podcasters that do that for a living that make a lot more than you and I do. So not shading them.
00:45:10
Speaker
But is that serving my audience? I'll give you a super, super short example.
00:45:16
Speaker
My audience is a non-traditional entrepreneur. People are side hustlers, people are solopreneurs, people who are like myself have dependents, so it could be little kids, it could be a partner or someone else who has physical or emotional challenges and they need your help all the time, it could be your older relatives and you're holding it down, or you could be working 20 different jobs trying to make ends meet and we're gonna have a cup of coffee or something stronger and you're gonna chill out with me.
00:45:41
Speaker
and I'm gonna help give you gain based on my journey, because I can relate to a lot of it, about how you can get to the next level. That's my show, right? Okay, so is this person gonna have time to listen to me for 30 minutes? No, probably not. And I go back to, I'm the primary caregiver, so when our eldest was two and our youngest son was just born, remember having a baby and having an old toddler.
00:46:12
Speaker
And it's like, did I have time to sit there and watch a 30 minute YouTube show? No, no, I didn't. And so instead I started doing a few different things. I started the longer shows. I ended up saving that for more of the live shows. I have a live show every Wednesday, save that for live shows. And that's what people can do. Comments and all that similar to like the happy hours that you do friend. So is that kind of vibe, but the Monday and Friday shows are recorded shows. And most of the shows now are four minutes.
00:46:40
Speaker
some are two minutes, some are 10 minutes. And it's not me purposely saying, I'm not going to talk as much because that could never happen. But me saying, this is the main point I want to give to the audience. And so instead of me having a 20 minute episode, 30 minute episode, where I'm talking about all the elements of passive income, how about I have a three minute episode where I talk about what passive income is?
00:47:08
Speaker
instead of, you know, I'm a big Renee Brown fan. So instead of me having a 30 minute episode where I talk about why Renee Brown's work is revolutionary, instead I'll say, what is emotional intelligence? And then we'll talk about that for two minutes. And so that's a really simple example of saying, who am I serving? How can I take care of them? Now, the other side of this,
00:47:33
Speaker
which you know, the business part is also my jam too. The other side of this is that technically I'm getting paid less because the longer the episode is on YouTube or on similar platforms, the more commercials and other things can be used against it.
00:47:52
Speaker
And so it's a conscious choice of saying, no, I could have a 20 minute episode, but instead I'm going to make it two minutes. Cause that will still get my point across and I'll actually serve my audience more, even though I'm leaving some money on the table. But those are those decisions kind of like I was talking about as far as, as what, what platform, what train you feel like you might've been missing. It's like, well, it depends on if you want to go to Arkansas or if you're going to want to go to Oklahoma, you know, and
00:48:22
Speaker
I'm fine with leaving that money on the table if that helps my audience, the people I serve, get to where they want to go. And then ironically, as you talked about with Seth Godin, that probably, and I think the numbers are starting to show that it actually might be, it actually might make the show more popular because I'm actually serving them. So by me leaving money on the table and saying, no, the best way to serve the audience is this way.
00:48:50
Speaker
Ironically, that might end up putting more money on the table for everybody. And growing the show and finding audience and platform often includes, but not necessarily, but often does, or people feel like maybe they feel like they can't possibly get attention without it is the social media problem.
00:49:10
Speaker
and that is obviously been on people's mind with Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter a lot of people are jumping ship and so I know I know for you you you've like given up a lot on social media and it hasn't
00:49:25
Speaker
We could have a whole part two to this episode. I know, I know, I know exactly. So maybe just a little, maybe just a little nugget on social media and maybe our false dependency or the feeling that we have to depend on it. And then maybe another time in a couple months we can just have a whole social media blowout. Let's say, Brenda, you know me well, you talk about that all day.
00:49:51
Speaker
But absolutely, I agree with the direction that you're going, and I think that is the issue. The funny thing is that that's been an issue for years. I've written books on social media, so I'm probably a little bit more sensitive to that than, say, the average creator, right? Because I've been kind of studying these areas for probably a decade or two. The challenge is that it's a bi-level challenge. The first one is that,
00:50:20
Speaker
the algorithm capital T capital A can change in any time. And so as we're recording this, you know, Elon or Zuck or whomever can be like, you know what, I don't want to go in that direction anymore. And so you're, so if that's your dependence, your dependence on
00:50:41
Speaker
those social media platforms, as far as you connecting to your audience, that could be turned off like a light switch. You can be shut off like a, you know, like if you didn't pay your electric bill and they don't owe you anything. You might invest in money. You definitely invest in time. We all have. They don't owe you anything at all. That's their platform. That's like me saying, you know what? Yeah. Yeah. It's time for everybody to go. The party's over. I'm going to go to bed. You got to get out of my house.
00:51:12
Speaker
Now my wife and I own this house. So it's like you getting mad at me cause I'll kick you out of my house. I'm like, well, you know, I kind of pay the mortgage. So you got to go. That's their house. You are hanging out with them. You're renting worse. You're renting for free. And so you really don't have any agency. So that's one. The second part of it is that for you to have a reliable business and that's big part of my coaching bread and I,
00:51:40
Speaker
you and I have talked about this, where it's not just a matter of having a writing business. If you're an author and you're selling your books to the public, you have a writing business, right? If you're doing that, you can't just worry about the writing
00:52:00
Speaker
the business of writing, I guess you'll put it like that, where it's the details and the grammar and the cadence and all those things that we love to talk about, but you also have to talk about the writing business. And those are two separate things. And so if you are working your ass off, and some of my books took five, six years, so I get it, you're working your ass off to get this thing out, and you're dependent on someone else's house to promote it,
00:52:31
Speaker
and they might not seem that stable, that doesn't sound like a good bet to me. And instead, what you can do is connect with the people, again, back to Seth, the minimal viable audience, the people who really, to take an East Coast for a second, the people who really fuck with your work, those people.
00:52:51
Speaker
those people, the people that made, you know, the Bites as an Entrepreneur, Bestseller, a handful of years ago, they really fucked with my work. Like, I didn't know they were there, but they were there. And I was like, Oh, okay. But that was over years of building up that audience and connecting with them and not being overly dependent. I have a weekly newsletter and I joined Damon.me. It's free.
00:53:13
Speaker
5.55 a.m. every Wednesday. I send a newsletter, connect with y'all. Obviously, I got my show. That's one of the reasons why I created it. The Bring Your Wear show at youtube.com slash Brown Damon. Those things, aside from me having my own TV network, that's about as intimate as I can get.
00:53:31
Speaker
Those things are developed for a reason. If Elon or Zuck or, I forget the gentleman who's in charge of Snapchat, whomever, whomever, whomever has a bad hair day and is like, nah, nah, we're gonna turn Damon's stuff off. It doesn't matter, because it can't.
00:53:51
Speaker
And as writers, as creatives, some of the stuff I write, like my first major book was called Porn and Pong, how Grand Theft Auto Tomb Raider and other sexy games changed our culture. My agent at the time said it was a subset of a subset. Basically meaning this shit is not gonna sell.
00:54:12
Speaker
So if you're coming in the game with that, that's the one I spent five years on. So if you're coming in the game like that, you better not be independent on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. I don't care how many people who frankly are my peers in some cases are saying you need to be on social media. You need to leverage this, leverage that. I mess with social media, but my leverage is my newsletter. My leverage is my show where I come into your home three times a week.
00:54:39
Speaker
That's where I'm showing up. I'm not showing up on a billionaires platform. I have no interest in that. And if you have, again, these niche materials or these things that might not necessarily be the next Harry Potter,
00:54:53
Speaker
You have something that's very focused and very nuanced and something that might be so abstract and weird that people might not get it at first. That's about half the books I've written. Then you absolutely need to own your own platform. You have to. You have to. Not only because of that, because of the whims of a very rich person, but also because it's easy for you to get lost in the sauce.
00:55:22
Speaker
with these other more high profile and more accessible acts that are competing for that same space. So do you want to fight them for that little piece of pie so you can get maybe one other book sale? Or did you want to take your time, take the long way up the mountain, build your audience, and rock with people that really rock with you? The reason why I'm able to have an independent imprint and make a living at it is because I'm able to connect directly with the people who I serve.
00:55:51
Speaker
I don't have a third party. I don't have a intermediary. I'm not competing with the rallies and the damn Browns and all these other folks. We're not even in the same pot.
00:56:02
Speaker
And so I don't have to worry about them, which circles all the way back to the beginning. Like, that's why I don't worry about competition. It's like, I'm already building my own ecosystem. And you don't have to be as ambitious or as dramatic as I'm making it. I'm an ambitious person, so it might sound really big, but it really just starts with connecting with the people who say, I like your work. I want to hear more from you. That's literally all I'm saying. If people are saying that, that doesn't mean they want to follow you on Twitter.
00:56:32
Speaker
It doesn't mean they want to connect with you on Facebook. It doesn't mean they want to see your profile linked in. What it means is that they want more of you. So how are you going to provide more of you? And more importantly, business-wise, when that next book comes out, how are you going to let them know that it's happening and that there's great ways that they can support you? And social media, it's getting worse and worse. Social media, I am convinced, is not the way to do that.
00:57:01
Speaker
I always like to end these conversations with asking for a recommendation of some kind for the listener, and that can be anything from a brand of coffee you're excited about or a pencil or even a book or a movie, it doesn't matter. So I'd extend that to you, Damon, if there's anything off the top of your head that you're excited about that you'd want to share with the listeners, what that might be. Yeah, totally. If you hear all this noise, it's because I'm shuffling around the books that I have on my desk.
00:57:30
Speaker
There's a great book called The Disordered Cosmos, A Journey into Dark Matter, Space Time, and Dreams Deferred. It's by Chanda Prescott Weinstein. And I had heard her, they finally started doing the in-person TEDs again. And so I got a chance to hear her speak and then actually get the book from her and get it signed and all that was super cool.
00:57:54
Speaker
We actually have a common love for James Baldwin, which was nice to discover as she's doing the book signing. I have a picture of James Baldwin behind me since y'all can't see. But the basic idea is that she's an astrophysicist and she's African-American and she's queer. And it wasn't until I learned about her work and I've been following her
00:58:20
Speaker
I'd rather be on the social media platforms, but also following her work for several years. And I knew that her book was coming. But until I discovered her work, it never really crossed my mind where it's like, it's, of course, it was an ongoing joke. Particularly if you're a my generation, you know, if you're approaching middle age, it was an ongoing joke. I think it was started from Saturday Night Live.
00:58:42
Speaker
it's like there are no black people in the future so if there's a sci-fi movie then the black person is always the first person to get killed and so if you look at like the 70s and the 80s movies it's actually true which is it's maybe even more funny and so we have this certain conditioning as far as saying where do African Americans or even more broader people of color where do we fit into the sci-fi realm and
00:59:06
Speaker
We think of, you know, Einstein and even like Elon Musk recently and so forth, where we think about these scientific, so-called scientific geniuses, but then you don't see people of color in that discussion, aside from Neil Tyson. She flips that on their head and she's like, well, actually,
00:59:26
Speaker
from some of the work of Octavia Butler to other types of groundbreaking things, we've actually been foundational as far as understanding space and time. It's just we haven't necessarily been giving credit for it. And so her book gets into that, as well as her role, again, as a female queer African-American astrophysicist.
00:59:50
Speaker
And I know very little about astrophysicism, as well as aphorism. But astrophysicism, that is not part of my background. But the way it's written is it's done extraordinarily well. And I would highly recommend the book. Fantastic. I am definitely going to try to get a copy of that and have her on the show because it sounds fascinating.
01:00:10
Speaker
Yeah, she's a badass and doesn't pull any punches. So I think it'll be a really good episode. Fantastic. Well, Damon, as always, what a pleasure to just get to talk to you and hear you think. I love it. So thanks for covering up the time to do this, man. And Happy New Year. Hey, thanks, Brendan. Always, always. Happy New Year.
01:00:34
Speaker
All right, thank you for listening, CNFers. Happy New Year. Here we are. 2023, thanks to Damon for making the time to come back on the show. We first met at Hippocamp 2019 and had a great time, developed a nice friendship over the years. At Hippocamp 2021, when pandemic things were still really squirrely, you know, vaccines were just rolling out,
01:01:02
Speaker
We saw each other again, but it was a bit weird. I think everyone felt it was weird being in groups again. We should still be weary. You know, this pandemic thing's not past tense, but it was especially weary at that time. It was just kind of, it was bizarre. It felt very weird.
01:01:20
Speaker
actually even today like if i'm in a group of any kind it does feel like should this be happening and i still don't know doesn't keep me from being groups but at the same time like this is weird uh... for demons talk i was uh... at the hipo camp twenty one
01:01:38
Speaker
I was in the audience and it was just great. He's a great public speaker. I was in there. I'm folding a bunch of zines while I was listening to him. I rationalized it.
01:01:54
Speaker
My brain that i was like i'm just like you know someone crocheting or knitting during a talk you know mindless activity but still engaged but i always felt really bad because of the optics if you're someone's out there talking you see someone who's just doing something else and doesn't look like it's almost like someone playing on their phone even though i was just folding paper
01:02:18
Speaker
I always felt really bad because I felt like I was really, in that moment of being really selfish, not only just a shitty audience member, but a shitty friend, folding my zines instead of 100% locking in. I've always felt really shitty about that. Sorry, Damon. Having a good 2023 so far? I know it's only been like six days. Oh, happy Insurrection Day. You still feeling good? Everybody okay?
01:02:45
Speaker
that happy insurrection day is a joke alright yeah I'd like to think the anyone listening this far knows that that's a joke but I just want to be 100% clear book proposal is I think it's going to be going out there man like out there
01:03:01
Speaker
I have to massage just a couple things into it. But I think by next week, I think it's gonna be in the hands of actual editors with actual budgets and maybe there'll be a bidding war and then maybe I'll get one of those publishers marketplace blurbs and post it on Twitter. Like everybody else has this big flex. Like it's the manspritiest tweet there is. I'm just gonna step through and take up this space with my publishing announcement, man.
01:03:31
Speaker
When I walk myself back from that, I realize, like, who wouldn't be excited? I know any time I see that, like, my jealousy and, like, those hackles go up, I'm like, ah, great. Look at you preening like a peacock. But who wouldn't be excited? It's what we strive for. People get excited. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to share that?
01:03:52
Speaker
I don't think it's so much a flex as it is. Like, oh my god, I'm excited. I want to tell people. But of course, when you do it on social media, it always feels performative. Everything's so airbrushed. But you want that jolt in a few red hearts. But like the booze that burns off in the pan, that flame is quick-lived and you gotta lock in and do the work. Concentrate those flavors, man. I love a good food metaphor. Anyway,
01:04:20
Speaker
Who knows what's gonna happen. Can't back. You can't, you can't, you just can't bet on anything. No sense in getting hopes up. I don't mean that in a pessimistic way. It's like you just gotta be realistic. I mean like, I know it's the worst getting your hopes up. Like I'm prone to getting my hopes up, believe it or not. And god damn, every time it's like Lucy's ripping the fucking football away.
01:04:45
Speaker
Sometimes you allow yourself to dream or hope and even visualize it happening. And you're like, yeah, I can see it. It's like, wow, wouldn't that be great? And then when it doesn't happen or manifest, you're not so much sad as you are, like almost at a loss. It truly feels like you had it and then it was truly, it was taken away from you, even though you never had it. It's a weird feeling. Like you feel almost empty, like ravaged.
01:05:15
Speaker
It's a peculiar, empty, sad feeling. Hey, listen, I hope your year is off to a good start. I hope you're locking in, because I'm locking in and seeing efforts. And if you can do, interview C.