Order of Man - KYLE "THE CAPTAIN" CREEK ｜ Become the Captain of Your Life

00:00:00.000 Guys, this one is like a conversation with an old friend, Kyle, the Captain Creek, and I initially

00:00:05.960 connected only several months ago, but we picked up this conversation like we've been friends for

00:00:10.740 decades. And I think you're going to feel the same way. Kyle offers so much practical wisdom

00:00:15.500 and is extremely relatable as he is unpacking all of the same issues that you and I are as fathers

00:00:23.180 and men in general. Today, we talk about his newest book, Speech Therapy, 52 Pick-Me-Ups

00:00:29.020 to get you through many of life's what the F's. We also talk about what it takes to be a successful

00:00:36.280 writer and marketer, the difference between awareness and obsessiveness, how to deal with

00:00:42.000 daily criticism, why people suck at delivery and how to deal with that, cancel culture, grace,

00:00:48.560 and so much more. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears,

00:00:53.620 and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time,

00:00:58.520 every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is

00:01:05.140 your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all

00:01:10.820 is said and done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is

00:01:16.140 Ryan Michler. I'm the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. Welcome here and

00:01:21.060 welcome back. If you're new to the podcast, we are having conversations with incredible men. I've got

00:01:27.180 Kyle, the Captain Creek on today. And trust me, you're going to want to hit that little subscribe

00:01:33.000 button because we've got some powerful, powerful podcast guests coming up in the very near future

00:01:40.000 within the next couple of weeks. And last week we had Rob O'Neill and Dakota Meyer on. So make sure

00:01:45.920 you go back and listen to that one as well. So my goal is to help you become a better man

00:01:51.020 and myself as well. I'm not the epitome of masculinity, but I am trying, I am attempting

00:01:56.100 to get better and improve my own life. And hopefully between me and my guests, we can share

00:02:00.500 some things with you that will help you improve yours. I'm getting to get into the conversation

00:02:05.920 in just a minute, but along the same lines of the conversation, Kyle was gracious enough to give me

00:02:11.320 about 10 copies of his newest books, speech therapy. So guys, we're really trying to hit those

00:02:17.020 reviews on Spotify and also on Apple podcasts. So if you want a chance to win one of his newest books,

00:02:26.860 speech therapy, then leave a rating and review on either Apple podcasts or Spotify, and then take

00:02:34.220 a screenshot of that review and email brandy at order of man.com with that screenshot. And we'll draw

00:02:41.360 a winner on Friday. So again, Apple podcasts or Spotify, take a screenshot of that review that you

00:02:49.300 leave the rating and review, and then email that rating and review to brandy, B-R-A-N-D-Y

00:02:54.400 at order of man.com. And you will be entered in for the drawing of one of these 10 copies of

00:02:59.860 speech therapy that I have to give to you. All right. Now, with that said, let me introduce you

00:03:05.500 to the author of that book. His name is Kyle Creek. And as I said earlier, you may know him simply as

00:03:11.340 the captain, his messages on Twitter and Instagram have been viewed and shared hundreds of millions

00:03:17.620 of times, maybe more. And I think that's because he's such a relatable man. And he admittedly is

00:03:24.380 working through many of the same issues and struggles that we are as men. He's the author of

00:03:28.700 this latest book, speech therapy, which I just shared with you and several other titles,

00:03:32.180 but he's a writer, he's a creator. And despite his incredibly tremendous success with all of this

00:03:39.940 and his own message and helping other powerful people and companies along the way, he has managed

00:03:44.380 to keep a sense of humility. We all strive to have enjoy this one guys. Kyle, what's up, man? Thanks

00:03:51.660 for joining me on the order of men podcast today. Hey Ryan. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. I've been

00:03:56.100 looking forward to this conversation. I've been following you for, I don't know, who knows two,

00:04:01.220 two, three years. Who knows? I imagine I found you very similarly to the way that most people find

00:04:06.380 you, which is some incredible quote. And you're like, hell yeah, that guy just articulated what

00:04:11.820 I've been thinking about for the past, you know, two or three years. I'm happy to hear that. I mean,

00:04:16.380 it sounds like you've been around for a while. Yeah, I think I'm probably most known for those

00:04:20.340 quotes that float around. A lot of people have probably seen my face, but don't really know that

00:04:24.340 I'm an actual person behind it. I have people often act surprised when they see a photo of me.

00:04:28.680 Uh, if I do post one on Instagram, Facebook, and they'll kind of respond with, Oh damn,

00:04:33.080 you're, you're actually a real guy. Like, yeah, I am a dude. Like I'm a guy behind all these quotes.

00:04:37.020 I'm not some, you know, group of writers throwing this stuff together, which another thing people

00:04:42.080 tend to reach out to me about is wanting to either work for me or they're curious what writing team I

00:04:46.720 use, but really it's just all me. I've been a one man show since about 2013, 14 is when I kind of

00:04:52.460 started getting a little notoriety online. And other than that, I've never worked with anyone other than

00:04:56.400 myself. Yeah. I think people, so to give you a perception on what I saw when I first followed

00:05:03.080 you, I just assumed it was, it was some anonymous sort of meme account or something, you know, like

00:05:10.340 I appreciate everything you wrote. I'm like, Oh yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree

00:05:14.700 with that. And I saw everything, but I'm like, Oh, well, I don't know. I kind of have a hard time

00:05:18.800 sometimes with these anonymous posts and these anonymous accounts because I just don't know what to

00:05:24.200 believe. I'm like, okay, does this guy really believe what he's saying? Or is this some, you

00:05:28.520 know, 20 year old high school woman or a college woman who doesn't really believe it, but is making

00:05:35.580 a parody account like that? That's, what's kind of hard. Sometimes you don't know who you're actually

00:05:38.780 dealing with. I think that's a fair assumption to make. And when, I don't know if you're around

00:05:44.080 before about 2019 is when I switched over and started using my real name to coincide along with

00:05:49.800 the captain. I think when I was just using the captain, it was very much more portrayed as

00:05:55.320 something that could potentially be one of those accounts, but really it's always been me the whole

00:05:59.140 premise. Well, the whole reason I had to use the captain was early on in my career. I was worried

00:06:04.200 that something online was going to coincide with the, you know, and conflict with my professional

00:06:08.880 career. So I was a writer for advertising agencies at the time. I was pretty stoked to be making good

00:06:14.860 money as a writer and I was afraid of fucking that up. So I use the captain to kind of say what I want

00:06:19.620 and hopefully have some, you know, a little bit of a veil between my, my private life and first

00:06:24.060 professional life. Uh, but yeah, 2019, I kind of started sensing that too online. And then I went

00:06:29.700 through a little bit of a breakthrough and that's when I came back as Kyle Creek, also known as the

00:06:34.080 captain for everyone that knew me ahead of time. And I've seen nothing but stronger support since I put my

00:06:40.460 face really behind what I've been doing. And like you said, I think it helps my work resonate as more

00:06:47.080 authentic, which is what it always has been. And what I always, you know, plan for it to be.

00:06:52.660 Yeah. And I, I, it's weird because we live in such a digital world anymore and it's only going to be

00:06:58.100 more so as we have virtual reality and all that stuff coming online.

00:07:03.220 The metaverse is going to get fucking weird. That's going to get weird.

00:07:07.520 It's weird. You know, it's hard though, because I look at it and I have had some

00:07:12.900 conversations actually with mutual friends. So Andy Priscilla, I know is a mutual friend of ours.

00:07:17.660 And he's, he's a great dude. He's one of the best. Like I don't, obviously you got the MF CEO,

00:07:25.560 real AF, you know, I don't want to say persona cause it really is him, but I just wish everybody

00:07:31.180 who listens to his podcast could actually meet him in person because he's one of the most realist

00:07:36.800 people, um, down to earth people that I know. And I've had the opportunity to talk with him,

00:07:42.440 but anyways, we, we were, we were talking the other day and I had posted something about,

00:07:48.680 you know, the metaverse and he's like, bro, that's like pure evil. He, he despises it.

00:07:53.340 And I'm like, I don't know. Like I get what you're saying,

00:07:55.980 but it's just technology. It's amoral. It could go good or bad. And we could use it for good,

00:08:01.220 or we can use it for bad. And I imagine we'll use it for both. Unfortunately.

00:08:05.120 Absolutely. I'd agree with you. I think you probably have the right, uh, the right mindset

00:08:10.000 to approach it that way. It's going to happen no matter what. And I'm 50, 50. I'm just like I'm

00:08:14.100 50, 50 on social media. Um, there's days when I find social media incredibly negative and draining

00:08:21.300 to my energy and I want nothing to fucking do with it. And there's days where having the influence I

00:08:26.220 have and being able to connect with people the way I can on social media is incredibly thrilling.

00:08:30.580 And it's something that actually motivates me to continue doing what I'm doing and speaking out

00:08:34.960 and writing relatable, you know, quotes that obviously you resonated with enough to first

00:08:39.960 start following me. So I think the metaverse is going to be the same way. It's going to go

00:08:43.300 good or bad. And like you said, yeah, it's going to be a bit of both. Um, I'm probably going to try

00:08:49.500 and stay away from it as much as possible because knowing myself personally, that's not something

00:08:55.460 that's good for my creativity or not. So that's really going to fuel me as a person. And I kind

00:09:00.080 of feel like everyone else needs to have that awareness as well. When you approach something

00:09:03.440 that monumental, you need to remain cognizant of what it's going to do to you to be enveloped in

00:09:09.760 something like that for hours at a time. I mean, that can really drag your life down if you're not

00:09:15.560 aware of what it's doing. And so me personally, I'm going to do what I feel is best. And for me,

00:09:19.780 I'll dabble in it a bit, but I'm not at all going to try and get really involved or entrenched in it.

00:09:26.920 I think that's, I think that's well said. I don't know if you feel like this, but I certainly do is

00:09:31.640 I have a very obsessive personality. So, um, I don't, I don't drink, but it, when I was people

00:09:40.260 say, Oh, have a drink. I'm like, bro, I don't have a drink. Like I have all the drinks. That's just

00:09:46.820 not what I do. I laugh at that. Cause it reminds me of myself. I used to always tell people I'm

00:09:51.220 zero or a hundred. Um, I'm not going to spend $20 to have two beers and a buzz. Like if I'm going to

00:09:56.120 drink, I'm going to go all out. And so I'm kind of, I still drink. Um, I haven't drank in a long

00:10:01.560 time. Uh, I actually am on phase two of Andy's live hard program. So I've been sober for like a,

00:10:08.280 I'm like 125 days into this, no alcohol, no processed food kind of stuff. But, uh, I'm not,

00:10:14.800 I'm not completely anti-drinking, but same thing. I'll never go back to drinking the way I used to

00:10:18.560 drink mainly because I don't have that off switch. Like when I do get buzzed, I want to keep chasing

00:10:24.580 that. And that's like, you know, uh, that's the issue alcoholics have. I mean, you're just chasing

00:10:29.040 the high of that initial intoxication. And that's why you just have to keep pounding it on.

00:10:34.940 And so same with you. And I'm sure where you're going with, it was, you know, along the metaverse

00:10:38.900 of getting too addicted to something like that. And that is also why, why I tend to stay out of stuff like

00:10:44.480 that. I know I can get really obsessed really easily. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a blessing and a

00:10:50.280 curse just like anything. Right. Cause people will say things like, Oh, you know, with what we've done

00:10:55.240 with the podcast over the past seven years, Oh, you're lucky. You're incredible. This is this and

00:10:58.480 that it's like, well, I mean, really? Yeah, maybe. Okay. Maybe we've done a pretty good job and I'm not

00:11:05.080 going to discount what we've done, but also I've just been fortunate enough to direct that energy

00:11:12.220 towards something that is productive as opposed to something that is destructive for me, which is

00:11:17.900 what I did in my youth. Which that's an opportunity everyone has. And again, I think it kind of comes

00:11:24.700 back to what I was talking about with awareness. If you know that you obsessive or something like

00:11:30.560 that, you were aware enough to get in front of it and be like, okay, I'm going to put my obsessive

00:11:34.720 energy into something that I can build rather than just something that's a distraction. And I have a lot

00:11:39.220 of buddies that have a lot of promise that I think are very talented. And I try and push them in

00:11:43.820 different directions and they'll get obsessed over stuff that just does nothing but drain their

00:11:48.900 time. And it's like, man, you're, you're 37, you're 38. You obviously have a great attention to

00:11:54.640 detail. If you spun that into something else, who knows where you could be right now? Um, and I think

00:12:00.100 that's something that Andy has done really well, not to kiss his ass too much on this podcast. I mean,

00:12:04.320 it's not his podcast, it's yours, but Andy's, you don't have to kiss my ass either though, bro.

00:12:09.880 I wasn't planning on it, but he's done a great job. He's done a great job in focusing his energy

00:12:16.580 because he very much is that high strung individual similar to ourselves. I believe I've actually never

00:12:21.000 met Andy in person. We've just formed a really good online relationship. Um, I, I found it. So what

00:12:26.380 happened is very similar to how you kind of discovered me. I had a friend who was obsessed with

00:12:30.360 his podcast and it was probably 2015. She would play it for me when I was visiting her in Vegas,

00:12:35.980 we'd be driving around her car, listening to it. She's like, you got to listen to this guy.

00:12:38.900 I'd really like it. And then when 2020 hit, I saw that he had reshared something of mine

00:12:43.720 and I, I would, I just went to thank him for sharing it. And I went, Oh shit, this is that guy

00:12:48.600 that my friends have been obsessed with for years. So then I kind of reached out to him. We started

00:12:53.440 forming a bond and then we've been talking a lot ever since. Um, but yeah, that's, that's one of those

00:12:58.580 things where I go back to saying social media can be good and bad. I mean, without social media,

00:13:02.600 I never would have formed that connection with Andy and it's been a very positive friendship and

00:13:07.000 it's pushed me to do a lot of new things and try new things in my life. Um, so I don't even know

00:13:11.520 where we were in this conversation. I get up on tangents very easily. Uh, it's, it's not an interview.

00:13:17.980 Look, I, I, I shifted years ago from saying, Hey, I'm going to have this very focused interview.

00:13:23.120 I would ask you 10 questions and you're going to answer those 10 questions, you know, in order to,

00:13:28.200 let's just have a conversation because I mean, we look, I have, and conversations go all over

00:13:34.040 the place, right? Like who knows where they go and why they go in the directions they do. But,

00:13:38.040 um, one, one thing I wanted to say is I actually wanted to commend you for making that shift from

00:13:42.760 being somewhat anonymous because you're working with an ad agency or, or something the way I

00:13:47.340 understood it, uh, into, into taking ownership of that. Like I've actually been openly critical

00:13:53.180 about anonymous accounts. And when you talk about, Hey, I was working with a, like, I,

00:13:58.840 I totally understand that. And it's a huge frustration of mine that there's companies that

00:14:05.820 watch and, and they will fire you and they will can you and even docks and destroy your life.

00:14:14.480 If you say something that isn't in alignment with theirs, that's a very, very frustrating point.

00:14:19.480 I wish it weren't like that, but it is. So like, did you, so you left that ad agency or the,

00:14:24.980 or the company you were working with or? So here's what happened to give you a quick

00:14:28.700 little breakdown. So when I first started in advertising before that, as a writer, I'd worked

00:14:35.720 as, um, I was writing a music column for a local paper. I was writing a lot of blogs and I wasn't

00:14:41.280 making shit for money. I'll still live in a music column. Explain. I don't, I don't know what that

00:14:45.660 is. Like, like a music review column, like a call. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So I was reviewing like

00:14:51.140 local bands or bands that came and played and toured through Salt Lake city, Utah, where I was

00:14:54.800 living at the time. I wrote a local column every week, kind of reviewing what show I've been to that

00:14:59.160 week. So I wasn't making dick for money and I was trying to get all these jobs. I'd interviewed at

00:15:04.740 almost every advertising agency in Utah, because I knew that was a place where I would get paid well to

00:15:09.980 write. And I could be really, I could be really creative. And I interviewed with probably every

00:15:15.740 agency in the Salt Lake Valley. And I was told to my face by one of them, listen, your portfolio is

00:15:20.080 great. Your writing skills are top notch, but we can't hire you because you have your fingers tattooed.

00:15:25.220 And I was just thinking, yeah, they told me I wouldn't present well to clients. And I'm here thinking,

00:15:30.180 man, I'm fucked. Like, I don't know how I'm going to make money as a writer. And I interviewed with one

00:15:35.080 last agency and the creative director, he's actually a really good friend of mine. Now I consider him

00:15:39.900 my mentor. I've talked to him daily. We always share like brutal nature videos with each other

00:15:44.320 and stuff like that, that we have in common. But he interviewed me at a bar. And I said to him

00:15:49.260 point blank, I said, listen, I've interviewed every agency. If you don't hire me, I'm just going to say,

00:15:53.480 fuck this shit. And I'm going to stop trying to work in advertising and find a different avenue to

00:15:57.240 get paid to write. And he loved that about me. So he hired me, gave me a chance. And I was writing a

00:16:03.360 lot of TV scripts from the get go. And in my scripts, I was writing like life observations and stuff that I

00:16:09.380 thought would make them memorable. And a lot of times clients would reject those ideas. It was

00:16:14.700 jokes they weren't willing to make. And so I started tweeting those jokes on the side. I was

00:16:19.540 like, these are, these are too good to let them die. So I started tweeting my observations and I

00:16:24.440 went by the name of the captain in doing that. And eventually that stuff started getting really

00:16:29.160 popular. So then I would take all my a content, my really good observations and tweet them and give

00:16:33.700 my clients like my B and C content. Cause I knew they weren't going to appreciate the good stuff

00:16:37.700 anyway. And I did, I did that for, I did that for a couple of years. And then it got to the point

00:16:43.080 where I was in a boardroom one time in New York city. I actually moved to New York for three years

00:16:47.260 and I was a partner at an advertising agency there. I was the lead creative director and I was bringing

00:16:51.320 on new accounts. And I was in a boardroom one time and this guy kind of nudged me and he said,

00:16:56.600 Hey, my wife and I love your Instagram. And this was like an asset manager for like JP Morgan,

00:17:02.080 I believe a big bank. And I was like, Oh shit. And then it got to the point where I started

00:17:05.940 getting work because of my Instagram following. Um, but at that point I still had built this

00:17:11.700 shell around myself where I was super paranoid of being exposed online. So even then I was afraid

00:17:18.300 to like, I didn't like people knowing who I was. I didn't like people knowing my real name. Um,

00:17:23.180 but everything I did, I believe that I was very honest and truthful in my work, but I just,

00:17:26.920 I couldn't get over this hump of people knowing me, but it wasn't until 2019. I'd left the advertising

00:17:32.340 world because I was kind of burnt out and I was pursuing some book opportunities. I had a literary

00:17:36.200 agent then, and I had my first book deal. And so I left advertising altogether. I haven't worked for

00:17:41.180 an agency for about four years now. And I went through this real depressive period where I moved

00:17:47.820 from New York city to LA. Um, I wanted to be closer to my girlfriend at the time, but I also wanted to

00:17:52.520 pursue some TV writing opportunities and nothing was panning out the way I'd hoped. I went to LA

00:17:57.100 thinking I was just going to shit on LA because I had that New York mentality where I'd crushed it

00:18:01.940 in New York. I mean, I, I made it to the top of my game very quickly in that city. And I thought I

00:18:06.140 was going to go to LA and just mow over people. And it didn't pan out that way. And I got really

00:18:11.220 depressed, really dark spot, felt like I fucked up. And I started just dwelling on everything negative

00:18:15.900 in my life. And I was just, I was drinking every day, going out, doing the nightlife thing in LA kind

00:18:20.700 trying to justify it as like networking and stuff. And I broke, I broke down. I had to take 30 days

00:18:26.480 off social media. I deleted all the apps to my phone. I told my followers, listen, like I am going

00:18:30.960 through a dark space. I can't be around this anymore. Like I'm really struggling. My girlfriend

00:18:36.720 and I separated, I moved back to Utah, stayed with some friends and I was suicidal. Like I was having

00:18:44.380 like really dark thoughts. Oh yeah. I was really deep in my, in my, uh, in my, my self pity largely

00:18:50.960 because as a writer, I'm very good at, uh, overanalyzing situations. It's kind of what I do.

00:18:57.200 I mean, my, my job is to ruminate on things. So I did it really just too deeply with my own life.

00:19:06.340 And I drove myself into a hole. And so as I was pulling out of that, I was, when I kind of made

00:19:12.140 the decision, like, listen, if I'm going to get out of this and feel good about what I'm doing,

00:19:16.440 I need to feel good about myself. And so I need to come forward on this large platform as myself.

00:19:22.980 I need to embrace myself. I need to be okay with people knowing not only my name, but I need people

00:19:28.800 to know what I'm going through, like my past, like the shit I deal with. And so when I came back to

00:19:34.800 social media after that break is when I made the decision to be very open about everything. And now

00:19:39.780 there's basically nothing that's off limits for me to talk to. I'll talk about the most depressing dark

00:19:45.400 moments. I'll talk about my good times. I'll share everything in between. And it's not only made

00:19:50.160 me a better writer because I have that basically, you know, the ammunition to draw from a really

00:19:58.140 relatable stuff that's happened, but it's maybe just a lot happier as a person. And it's allowed

00:20:04.300 me to have that awareness to separate my time between digital and real life. And, um, I don't know

00:20:10.700 that any of that would have happened had I not been one, like you said, to step forward and stop

00:20:16.360 being this, uh, kind of ghost online. Um, when you start to get positive feedback from people for being

00:20:24.780 yourself, there's probably no better motivator or there's no better way to overcome a downfall in your

00:20:33.920 mental health than people accepting you for who you are. Um, when I started writing about my struggles

00:20:39.820 and people would write me and say, Oh man, I looked up to you. I thought you were someone that had the

00:20:44.400 life. And here I was thinking this person was about to talk shit to me. And in the second half of the

00:20:48.580 comment was, but seeing what you went through, man, I appreciate you so much more. I feel that way

00:20:53.720 all this, all the time myself. And I had people write out to me and tell me they started therapy

00:20:59.120 groups because of what I said. I had a woman reach out to me and tell me her husband who is suffering

00:21:03.100 with severe PTSD, uh, formed a group of him and his friends who would get together and talk

00:21:07.980 because of what I was writing online. I had people write me and tell me they chose not to take their

00:21:12.560 life because I came forward about being that way. And in the span of a month, I had thousands of

00:21:18.260 interactions online with people who are positively helped by me being willing to be forthright about

00:21:24.300 what I was dealing with. That did more for me than any level of meditation or any therapy or any

00:21:31.360 reading could have ever done for me. That was what allowed me to really embrace this next path in

00:21:37.840 my work as a writer. And just as a partner, my girlfriend and I ended up getting back together.

00:21:42.660 We have a kid now and I really would attribute it all to just embracing who I was.

00:21:50.580 How did you deal with, well, I'm going to make some assumptions here. And so just correct me if

00:21:55.500 I'm wrong, but when, when you're this ghost, that's the word you used. When, when you're this ghost,

00:22:00.860 you know, people are going to mock and criticize and some people are going to be sad or whatever,

00:22:04.720 but like you can hide behind that veil a little bit, I imagine. And then when you come out and

00:22:09.440 say, no, this is who I really am. I think there's a level of humanity that people appreciate. They're

00:22:13.760 like, oh yeah, that guy wanted to kill himself. I've been there too. And so like, I see him in

00:22:19.560 a different light, but then there's also a bunch of trolls and cretins who come out and, you know,

00:22:24.620 continue to mock. And now it becomes personal as opposed to being able to be behind that veil

00:22:29.880 a little bit. Like, how do you deal with some of that negativity?

00:22:34.720 It's a good point you make. Cause when you are portraying a character and people talk shit on

00:22:40.160 that character, it's very easy to be like, yeah, that's that character. I hate that guy too.

00:22:44.220 It's like, fuck him. That guy sucks. Like it's very easy to talk shit on that person yourself.

00:22:48.780 It's like, oh, that's the fake me. I hate the fake me too. So I totally get where you're coming

00:22:53.960 from there. Personally, for me, I think being a writer helped me deal with criticism more because

00:23:00.920 I've dealt with criticism my entire career. Writing is very subjective. And early on,

00:23:08.500 when I decided I wanted to make a living writing, I had to learn to take feedback. I had to learn to

00:23:13.620 take criticism. And I had to understand that sometimes that criticism was wrong, especially

00:23:18.260 in the advertising world. People would make suggestions that I innately knew was the wrong

00:23:23.560 way to approach a campaign or the wrong way to approach a project. And I had to have that trust

00:23:29.040 in my gut to tell them, no, this is going to work. And here's why it's going to work.

00:23:36.480 That allowed me to understand that a lot of people's opinions don't carry the weight that

00:23:43.960 we give them validity to. So I would think my career helped me with personal attacks and mainly

00:23:53.360 online. I'd already done pretty, I developed pretty thick skin just with the style I write

00:23:59.180 in any way. A lot of the stuff I say is very controversial. And so even before all this,

00:24:04.340 I was pretty akin to having people talk shit and get mad and unfollow me and say stuff that

00:24:10.340 was trying. I was used to that at this point. And so I think when it came to people, and I

00:24:16.080 didn't get many, I didn't get much of that, by the way. I didn't get much people talking

00:24:19.840 flack when I came forward about stuff. The kind of stuff that people get upset with now

00:24:25.260 is obviously when I post something controversial or I get a lot of, oh, you're just a hipster

00:24:30.940 with a beard. And I'll look at the guy's profile. I'll look at the guy's profile and be like,

00:24:35.180 okay, this guy's girlfriend probably has my book. She probably laughs at it at night and

00:24:39.440 it drives him nuts. And I was going to come here and talk shit to me. So I've just done really

00:24:44.820 good at understanding that I don't need to listen to that stuff. But for other people,

00:24:49.440 I know that it's incredibly difficult. And it comes back to what I was saying about working

00:24:54.640 in advertising. When you ask people for an opinion, or when you give people a platform

00:24:59.600 for an opinion, they're going to give you one whether they have a good one or not, because

00:25:03.680 they almost feel like if they don't, they're stupid. A lot of people, if you ask someone a

00:25:08.340 question, say in a focus group, for example, I despise focus groups for this reason. When you

00:25:13.620 get a group of people together to focus group a product, and you ask for their opinions on the

00:25:18.360 product, they're going to make up opinions they otherwise would not have had, because they feel

00:25:23.160 like their job is to have an opinion. Right. And to be contrarian about it, even.

00:25:28.660 Exactly. They feel like that's their role. And I feel like a lot of people feel that way on social

00:25:34.000 media. When you share something personal, people feel like, okay, it's my job to now share something

00:25:40.660 personal back. And maybe that's going to be a personal attack, or maybe that's going to be

00:25:44.220 a personal agreement. People just feel the need to share stuff they otherwise would never think about.

00:25:49.680 And it's important to pay attention to that with anything you're doing online.

00:25:55.600 Well, one thing I've seen a lot of people do is they want to appear smart.

00:26:00.040 So, I'll use like a word. And they're like, actually, I don't like that word. I choose this

00:26:08.620 word because... And then they go on to explain the exact same thing I literally just said.

00:26:13.700 But they want to be so contrarian to sound... I don't know if it's to sound smart, or to validate

00:26:19.920 who they are, or to appease somebody. I haven't quite figured that out. But it's always really

00:26:27.460 fascinating when somebody gets tripped up over little minute details, when they could see the

00:26:34.660 bigger picture that I'm trying to present or portray to people.

00:26:38.400 I think there's a bit of both there. I think it's them wanting to sound smart and also validate

00:26:42.080 themselves. You see this happen a lot with comedy online. When people tell a joke, someone will

00:26:46.980 always try and... They'll literally retell the same fucking joke in the comments.

00:26:51.380 Right.

00:26:52.440 They'll try and explain the joke to the joke writer and be like, oh, here's why you're

00:26:57.220 a joke. And you look at it and go, no shit. I know that. That's why I wrote it the way

00:27:01.340 I wrote it.

00:27:01.360 Right. That's why I wrote the joke.

00:27:02.800 And that happens. That happens often with my work. Well, people will basically parrot

00:27:07.480 my work back to me in different words because I intentionally leave stuff open for interpretation

00:27:14.080 because I believe it's the best way for writing to be digested by an audience is to leave things

00:27:19.460 open for interpretation. It's not my job to explain everything. It's my job to start that

00:27:24.340 thought. And people will parrot back the same thing to me. And I just want to be like, good job.

00:27:31.940 You understood what I wrote. And it happens so often. It's wild. And I do think a lot of that

00:27:38.600 is people wanting to sound smart. People wanting to be heard. And if you're willing to have a bit of

00:27:45.640 empathy towards those people, you can probably understand someone that comes from maybe childhood

00:27:51.000 neglect. Maybe they had a parent who didn't listen to them. Maybe they were, you know, a middle child

00:27:56.280 and they felt like the older brother and the younger sister got all the attention. And so they feel the

00:28:00.880 need to do that because it's a childhood wound they have not worked through. And that's one of the

00:28:07.080 things that I've become very aware of in my life the past year, especially as I was preparing to

00:28:13.800 become a father and being a father now is I've been trying to unwind and unpack any childhood

00:28:19.560 wounds I have that I wasn't aware of because I don't want to pass it on to him or I want to try

00:28:25.060 and prevent the same thing. I had fantastic parents. I used to always joke whenever my parents, whenever

00:28:30.940 my friends complained about their parents, I used to joke and say like, my parents would never do that.

00:28:35.140 My parents loved me. And they did, but there's still a lot of things they did wrong.

00:28:40.240 Uh, when, by the time my dad was my age, he had all three of us. My older brother was probably

00:28:44.940 nine or 10 at the time. And they're trying to figure out life just like we're trying to figure

00:28:48.780 out life. And so despite my parents always have my best intentions in mind, there's a lot of stuff

00:28:54.860 that I am coming to realize I didn't know I had. Um, partly because I grew up in the Mormon church

00:29:02.660 and I, I learned to suppress a lot of emotion very early on in my life because I didn't feel like I

00:29:12.100 could talk about something personal because the answer was almost always something religious. And

00:29:17.520 that's not what I needed. I needed to be heard by another human without a religious connotation. So

00:29:23.960 every time I was dealing with something, it was either you need to read this passage or you need to go

00:29:28.660 talk to one of your leaders and it taught, it taught me to suppress a lot of stuff. And as I,

00:29:37.180 as I, you know, work with stuff now, especially my relationship, like the relationship has brought

00:29:41.120 out a lot of things in me that I didn't even know I fucking had. And we all have that. Whether your

00:29:47.800 childhood was perfect or whether your childhood was wrought with a, an alcoholic father and parents

00:29:53.260 who fought all the time, there is so much learned trauma that we carry into adulthood. And I think

00:29:59.840 you see a lot of that expressed online and going back to where we started this with people that feel

00:30:04.480 the need to share or comment on everything. I truthfully believe it's 90% of those people

00:30:09.820 probably have some issues with feeling neglected and not feeling heard. And that's why they do that.

00:30:14.940 That's, that's really interesting. I look, I mean, I appreciate that you're saying that,

00:30:20.040 like, I've really tried to grasp this idea, whether it's true or not, but I think it'll help

00:30:26.140 me and the people I'm trying to serve is that, you know, most people, I don't think most people are

00:30:31.100 malicious. I think some are for sure, but I don't think most people are. And I try to chalk it up to

00:30:36.680 just poor delivery, right? Like there's something actually going on and they just are delivering it

00:30:42.540 poorly. And I say that because I know I do it, you know, and there's another phenomenon I've seen is,

00:30:46.880 is what I call like the, the, the Jordan Peterson phenomenon where people just make like these really

00:30:53.800 big, long scientific words. And I'm like, I don't, I don't understand any, any of what you just,

00:31:01.220 like, I literally don't understand what you're saying, but they just regurgitate it, you know,

00:31:05.860 to sound smart. But again, I think it comes back to that, that poor delivery when there's actually

00:31:11.000 something at the root of it that needs to be addressed. So I could really appreciate you

00:31:15.920 saying that. Uh, that Jordan Peterson phenomenon has been going on way before him.

00:31:21.320 Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah. That's a good point. Fair enough.

00:31:24.080 Yeah. The using the big words for the sake of using big words probably goes back to the invention

00:31:28.220 of language. Um, I know exactly, I know, I know exactly what you're talking about though. And he's a

00:31:32.680 good example to use for that because he does take fairly simplistic concepts and makes them

00:31:37.640 incredibly deep, which a lot of the time he's right on. But I think a lot of people pick up on

00:31:44.440 that and they want to communicate with his level of intellect. That guy's brilliant. Whether you like

00:31:51.820 that guy or not, that guy's the emperor with no clothes is what it is. It's like, I'm like, I don't,

00:31:57.300 I'm too dumb. Like, I don't get it. I don't know. Like, can you say that again, slower with different

00:32:02.780 words? So I can, like, I can, but nobody wants to say that. Right. So this, this is one thing I

00:32:08.660 learned in my advertising career too. Um, the best way to get across the message is the way that's

00:32:15.300 going to be most understood. And so when I write, people oftentimes ask me like, Oh, why do you use

00:32:20.960 the F word? Or why do you use, why don't I don't use a lot of big words, especially on Twitter

00:32:24.900 for the fact of keeping a message simple. So it's understandable. I could very easily write with a

00:32:31.620 bunch of long, I can pull out a source and I could make these, you know, tweets of mine seem like

00:32:37.920 you're reading fucking Latin and it's not worth doing because people can understand that it's not

00:32:44.300 my way to communicate. And I think exactly what you're saying is correct in the sense that

00:32:50.040 it's poor delivery on people's part, but also it's good. They're trying to sound smart. They're

00:32:55.760 trying to sound superior and they hope that someone like you will say that so they can

00:33:02.160 then come back with, Oh, well maybe you should look up the word. Right. You're too dumb to

00:33:06.540 understand. Oh yeah. And mock, right. It's, it's like, they're almost trying to set themselves

00:33:10.760 up for a layup kind of comeback when it happens. Um, but yeah, just to go back to Jordan Pearson

00:33:17.380 real quick though. I mean, whether you agree with that guy or not, I know a lot of people don't like

00:33:20.720 him. That guy's very well read. I have a hard time listening. I have a hard time listening to a

00:33:25.900 lot of his discussions, but some of the stuff he says, I'm like, God damn, like that is,

00:33:30.420 that's fucking good. Agreed. Agreed. Like I, so, you know, one of the things I do with work is like,

00:33:37.700 you know, I got to take the good with the bad. Right. And I got to look with, look at people,

00:33:41.160 whether it's you or Jordan Peterson or Jocko. That's just life in general. It's life.

00:33:44.760 Yeah. And, and, but I, but I think people have a hard time with this and realizing like I had

00:33:49.220 somebody, I think I quoted somebody yesterday or, or, or referenced some of their work or whatever.

00:33:55.280 And he's like, well, you know, that guy dot, dot, dot, dot, dot said, well, yeah. Okay. But I'm not

00:34:00.060 taught. I'm not advocating for that. What I'm saying is that the point he made here was really,

00:34:05.700 really good. Just like me, you know, look, I mess up. I stick my foot in my mouth more,

00:34:10.980 more than I'd like to admit, but you know, occasionally I'm, I might get a base hit.

00:34:15.920 Occasionally I might get the grand slam or whatever, but like we can isolate those things

00:34:20.380 and see that, you know, yes, we're not always right a hundred percent of the time, but sometimes

00:34:25.540 people are right. And then we take that and we extrapolate what we need and we leave the rest.

00:34:30.760 This is one of the issues you see a lot in society is this in a, well, there's, there's also

00:34:35.280 people that over isolate in the sense of, you know, if you want to talk about cancer culture,

00:34:39.500 they'll take one very small fraction of what you did and they'll ignore 99% of your life.

00:34:44.640 Yeah.

00:34:44.900 Try to make you that 1%, whether it was a mistake, whether it was something you said that maybe you

00:34:49.920 communicated poorly, or maybe you truly believe it. They'll take that 1% and try and crucify you,

00:34:56.340 you know, forgetting about the 99%. And then you see the opposite, which is what you're talking about,

00:35:03.140 where you take 1% that's really good, but then people want to focus on the 99 that's bad and be like,

00:35:08.740 his 1% can't be correct because everything else he's done is garbage. It's that fine line of

00:35:15.020 balance that like, listen, we're very complex creatures. Humans are very complex. There's

00:35:22.700 this whole movement right now. And it's a movement that's been going on for a while of, you know,

00:35:27.300 we're basically just apes. We're basically just apes. And while I can appreciate that kind of

00:35:33.700 rudimentary view of life being very carnal, because it is, we are so much more complex than

00:35:40.080 apes. And when you, when you involve emotions and when you involve, you know, spirituality or

00:35:47.080 different belief systems, or just the complexities of like our governmental structures, we are so much

00:35:52.440 more complex than apes. And so people like to distill life down to that level and they'll do the same

00:35:59.020 thing with a message and they forget there's so much nuance to humans in general. And that's one

00:36:06.560 thing that I've gotten a lot better at is just having that empathy. And I wrote this not too long

00:36:12.420 ago where I, as I've gotten older, I've, I have much more patience for people just trying to figure

00:36:19.420 shit out. And I have a hell of a lot less patience for people who are trying to be like everyone else.

00:36:25.360 The older I get, I like seeing people confused. I like seeing people struggling. I like seeing people

00:36:31.940 trying to figure themselves out. What I hate seeing is people you can tell are obviously just assimilating

00:36:37.960 right into what's popular, what's trendy, and they lose their identity for the sake of being accepted by

00:36:45.840 a group. And with having that kind of empathy for people struggling, like when people do have negative

00:36:52.500 comments on one of my posts, or if I read a, you know, a post I don't agree with, it rarely shakes

00:36:58.480 me like it used to. Cause like we talked about earlier, I try and unpack it for them almost in

00:37:03.820 my head. And I go, why would this person be responding this way? Okay. If I had their upbringing,

00:37:09.160 maybe I'd probably have that same out, you know, outlook on life. I'd probably be just as,

00:37:13.520 I'd probably be just as big of an asshole if I had that happen to me.

00:37:16.980 Or not more, right? Yeah. And so that, that understanding alone has made life so much

00:37:23.420 fucking easier for me. Like even like my friends or people that are close to me do something that

00:37:28.420 might hurt me temporarily. I remind myself of their past, their relationships, what they've done,

00:37:34.720 what they've known, uh, what they haven't seen that I've seen in life. And it just allows me to

00:37:40.740 have so much better interaction with humans around me. Yeah. I think that takes a level

00:37:47.220 of maturity, you know, and I, and I've seen it in myself, you know, I wish I could say that it was

00:37:51.600 very deliberate and intentional, but I think it just comes from having some experiences and then

00:37:56.600 getting kicked in the balls myself quite a bit and hoping that people would have some,

00:38:01.540 some level of empathy or understanding, or just some grace maybe is the right way to say it for

00:38:07.300 the missteps that I've taken in my own life and trying to afford those, those, uh, that grace to

00:38:13.240 the, the people that, you know, I'd normally be critical of. Yeah. I mean, I think grace is a

00:38:20.000 great word for it. And I think now more than ever, that's what society honestly needs is just that

00:38:26.040 understanding of, I mean, I was listening to something, a conversation earlier where people

00:38:30.900 are talking about not to get all political with it, but whether you stand for a totalian government

00:38:39.820 or whether you're against it, you have to have an understanding of how people get to where they

00:38:47.360 are in life. And I mean, there's people who are supporting like these mandates and this stuff that I

00:38:52.820 strongly disagree with, but I have friends who have chosen to kind of fall in line and it hasn't made

00:39:00.740 me cut them off as a friend. It's made me think to myself, wow, what were they exposed to? Or how are

00:39:09.480 they living? Oh, okay. Well, I could see why losing their job would really spiral their life downward.

00:39:15.340 So I see they were, you know, they were put in a hard place and I've tried my best just to be

00:39:19.620 understanding of why what's happening is happening. Even though I strongly disagree with it, I think

00:39:25.200 there's so much fucking corruption going on. Just being able to have that grace for my friends or

00:39:32.520 my family, you know, because my brother's a doctor and my brother has seen eye to eye on a lot of things

00:39:37.720 in life. But when it came down to, you know, the first round of vaccines and everyone was getting

00:39:43.320 them, my brother was, you know, talking about all the science behind it in my gut. I'm like, you know

00:39:48.200 what? I'm not going to do it. I don't feel like I, I don't feel like I need it. I'm healthy. I know

00:39:53.920 I'm going to be able to get through it. I'm going to keep living my lifestyle I'm living. And as time

00:39:59.200 has progressed, it's turned out that I looks like I was right and it wasn't something that was

00:40:06.560 necessary, but I haven't ever gone back to my brother and said, told you so. And my brother has

00:40:10.900 never come back to me and said anything about it either. We never made it an issue between us.

00:40:15.440 We just respected our independence and our autonomy. Again, understanding that we all make

00:40:20.260 different choices. I know my brother was sharing information with me because he generally cared

00:40:25.160 about me and he wanted me to be healthy. And at the same time, and at the same time, it's like,

00:40:31.020 listen, you're my brother. You're my older brother. You probably feel this need to look after me because

00:40:34.780 I'm your younger brother, but you have to respect the fact that I'm going to make my own choice. And he

00:40:38.460 did. And you've seen families torn apart by this stuff. And it honestly like breaks my heart to think

00:40:44.400 your family could be ripped apart by something like that. And it comes down to just not giving

00:40:51.300 each other that grace or that space, or just holding space for people to understand why they're

00:40:56.840 making the decisions they're making. Man, I got to hit the pause button really, really quickly.

00:41:02.080 And we'll get right back to it. I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. The good news is

00:41:07.320 that the iron council, our exclusive brotherhood is opening very, very soon. The bad news is that I made

00:41:13.340 the decision to delay the registration until about March 15th, because I want to make sure everything

00:41:18.320 is just right when you join us. So if you want to be one of the first men to be notified, when we do

00:41:23.300 open it up, head to order of man.com slash iron council and get signed up. When you do join us

00:41:29.900 later this month, you're going to unlock access to 1100 other powerful men, all on their own self

00:41:35.720 development journey, who are willing to hold you accountable to doing some powerful things in 2022.

00:41:41.440 You'll get the accountability of you. You've always wanted and needed. You'll develop brotherhood

00:41:47.300 and camaraderie with a thousand other men. And you'll also unlock all of those features and benefits

00:41:52.100 that we've been honing and refining and building and creating for the last six years to help you

00:41:57.080 as a man make the most out of your life. So if you want to get signed up, you want to be notified

00:42:02.860 when we open enrollment later this month, March 15th, head to order of man.com slash iron council.

00:42:09.500 Again, that's order of man.com slash iron council. You can do that right after the podcast. For now,

00:42:14.840 we'll get back to it with Kyle.

00:42:17.660 One of the things that I've really been working on the past couple of years is,

00:42:21.720 and this goes back to what I was saying earlier about the 10 questions I'm not going to ask you,

00:42:25.820 you know, like the 10 pre-scripted questions that I'm not going to get into with you

00:42:29.860 because I don't have them. And, and what I've done is tried to pivot from,

00:42:34.460 you know, crafting and curating this perfect conversation that will appeal to everybody.

00:42:41.180 And instead just being curious about what makes people tick. Like, why do you write the way that

00:42:47.780 you do? What experiences have you had? You know, one of the questions I want to ask actually is how has

00:42:53.580 having your child who, what is he, is he a year or a year and a half? Some eight months, eight months,

00:43:00.880 eight months. Okay. Is like, how has that changed you? Because I'm genuinely curious about these

00:43:06.580 things, not trying to craft and curate this perfect narrative that everybody can agree with or, or,

00:43:13.100 or be entertained by. Yeah. The issue with trying to curate anything is when it falls off of the

00:43:20.440 outline plan, you start to get frustrated. And I've noticed this when I've done speaking engagements,

00:43:25.980 I've never rehearsed a live speech I've given. And I don't do that. I don't do that because

00:43:32.260 if I get off topic, I start to beat myself up and that'll fuck up the second half of my speech. And so

00:43:39.240 I basically go in there with ideas of what I want to talk about. And at that point, I just let it flow.

00:43:43.840 And I've always found it works best for me. And for what we're doing today, I think it works best

00:43:48.580 for a podcast conversation as well, because say you answered me question three and we went off on

00:43:54.940 a tangent for 45 minutes and you never got to question eight. And that was the one you really

00:43:59.040 wanted to get to. You're going to start thinking in your head about question eight, instead of what

00:44:03.020 I'm saying to you, still answering question three. And I would have cut off question three,

00:44:07.440 your answer to question three. It kind of fucks up the whole thing. When you try and curate something,

00:44:12.940 when you try again, humans are complex. If you try and, you know, hold something too tightly,

00:44:18.340 it's going to get weird. But I will answer your question about having a son because

00:44:22.500 having a son has completely changed my outlook on life. And when my girlfriend got pregnant,

00:44:31.540 I was not in a space to be a dad. And it's not something that I've shied away from. I felt a lot

00:44:40.060 of guilt. And for a couple weeks to a month, I was a shitty partner. I was a very hard person to be

00:44:46.940 around. I started drinking again. What was your guilt for?

00:44:50.480 Because I didn't want to have the kid. So you felt bad that you didn't want to have your child.

00:44:56.300 Yeah. I felt guilty that I wasn't ready to be a dad. And I just wasn't ready for it. I felt I was

00:45:02.240 too young. I was super paranoid about how it was going to affect my life. And I just had this reverb

00:45:08.280 chamber of shitty feedback from other people in my life. And I started drinking again. I was really

00:45:16.400 absentee when it came to my relationship and my friendships. I wasn't talking to my family. I just

00:45:20.800 was for a month. I was a really, really bad place. And it wasn't until I had a conversation with a

00:45:26.900 buddy of mine who has five kids now, where he told me, he said, all the fears you're having.

00:45:33.120 He's like, I had those. And I will tell you right now, I would not be where I am today had I not had

00:45:39.260 my kids. And he told me, I am more productive. I am a better businessman. I am much happier. And my

00:45:48.460 buddy does very well. He has two private jets. Like this is someone who is doing good, doing well for

00:45:53.320 himself. And he told me, he's like, Kyle, it sounds cliche to say it. But if I had to choose between a

00:46:00.040 trailer park and my five boys, or my two jets and out my kids, he's like, I would pick the trailers

00:46:06.040 park in a heartbeat. And I thanked him for that. Because every other conversation I've had with

00:46:13.380 friends in my life, because most of my friends have made the decision, they're not going to have kids.

00:46:18.940 I'm pretty much the first real, in my real tight friend group, I'm the first one to become a dad.

00:46:26.520 Like, and so all my buddies are telling me like, Oh, shit, what are you gonna do? Oh, man, like,

00:46:32.460 they're almost like, give me like condolences. And I wasn't in the headspace to, to flip the script

00:46:38.300 on it. I was taking it as such. And it wasn't until this conversation with this other friend of mine who

00:46:44.180 was in town for the weekend, I just was lucky enough to see him that I started really thinking

00:46:49.080 about all the pauses that were going to come from it. And it was literally overnight, I woke up and I was

00:46:56.160 like, this is gonna be fucking awesome. I'm gonna have so much to draw from as a writer. But I'm

00:47:04.220 also going to have just so much more in my life to experience. And I started thinking about how cool

00:47:10.020 it's going to be to go back to my favorite cities, but go with him and watch him experience it for the

00:47:15.880 first time. And I started thinking about everything I enjoy and teaching him how to fish and taking him

00:47:21.780 into the mountains where I grew up. And it just completely changed my perspective. And I can

00:47:28.860 honestly say without a doubt. And it is one of those things that sounds cliche, having a son is the best

00:47:34.840 thing that ever happened to me, both personally and professionally. I have this profound desire to

00:47:44.880 leave behind a legacy more so than I ever had before, which has made me

00:47:51.780 much more analytical in my business side. I still do a lot of contract work for like clients

00:47:57.380 and advertising agencies come to me and they'll hire me for contracts. I'm very selective with my

00:48:01.740 work. I have a lot of long term thinking. And I don't feel as rushed. I don't have like this

00:48:08.840 constant just pecking in my brain where it used to be if like I had an email in my inbox, especially if

00:48:14.740 it was like a business email, I felt like I had to answer it immediately. And it would sit there and eat at

00:48:18.640 me until I did. And now I'm just like, yeah, I'll get around to it. I got other things to do. It's

00:48:23.220 mellowed me out so much. And I had a buddy that was visiting me here. I just moved to South Miami a

00:48:29.280 couple months ago. I had a buddy that was visiting me. And he was thinking of moving out here. And he's

00:48:34.220 been single for about seven or eight years and has no kids doesn't even have a dog. And we were talking

00:48:39.740 and he was talking about like, you know, anxieties and stuff like that. And I told him, I said, listen,

00:48:44.540 man, you need at least a dog. You need something to come into your life. And you need something to fuck it

00:48:51.120 up. You need you are you are so OCD. And he's he's another guy that's done very well for himself. Very

00:48:58.280 successful businessman. I said, you are so OCD. You are causing yourself this stress. You are causing

00:49:03.860 yourself this anxiety. You are making yourself unhappy because you're trying to control too much. You need a dog.

00:49:09.120 You posted something about that. It was just the other day. You said something I'm paraphrasing,

00:49:14.580 obviously, because I'm not as talented of a writer as you. But you said something like you need

00:49:19.760 somebody to have like meaning in your life. And that person's going to like mess up.

00:49:23.760 They're going to be a pain in the ass. It's going to be a pain in the ass. That's what you said.

00:49:26.400 That's right. Yeah, exactly what I said. And then I and I clarified what I meant by pain in the ass.

00:49:30.960 Like, I'm not saying it should be a pain in the ass where it's something that is completely makes your

00:49:35.260 life a living hell. But it is something that should force you to grow. It's something that

00:49:39.220 should teach you patience. It's something that should teach you that not every day is going to

00:49:42.500 go exactly how you've architected, you know, you've architected it to be. And that's what

00:49:47.660 having a son's done for me. I mean, I was getting ready to go on a plane one time on a business trip

00:49:52.120 and no lie five minutes before I was out the door, he peed on me. So I ran upstairs, changed my shirt.

00:49:57.940 I came back down. I already had my luggage by the door. My Uber was outside. I changed my shirt. I came back

00:50:02.440 down. I picked him up and he peed on me again. Oh, twice in like five minutes. I changed my outfit.

00:50:08.580 And if that had happened to me, like, if it had been three years ago, and say I spilled the drink

00:50:14.720 on myself, I would have been fucking pissed, pissed. But here it is like a kid actually pissing on me.

00:50:20.740 And I didn't care. I was like, Okay, this is this is just life. And I ran back upstairs and changed my

00:50:26.620 shirt. It didn't bother me. But the way he's mellowed me out has allowed me to be much more

00:50:32.280 creative because I can really sit with myself now and think over concepts. And I'm working on another

00:50:38.960 book now, actually, where my next book is going to be all the ways that becoming a parent has changed

00:50:47.240 my life and made me a better person. And so like my first my first major book was, you know, like 111

00:50:55.740 history lessons and how those lessons can apply to your life. My recent book speech therapy was,

00:51:00.500 you know, 52 different things that happened to you that can kind of set you off or derail

00:51:05.380 your mental, you know, your mentality for the day. And so this next book is going to be,

00:51:09.460 you know, 52, probably 52 ways I'll probably do about a similar size book that I have become

00:51:15.540 a better person by becoming a dad. And it'll be written, obviously, the very same way I've already

00:51:21.720 started it. And I've set the goal that I have to finish it by his one year birthday. So the book I

00:51:27.940 want, I want to, I'm big on writing in the moment. And I'm big on being very authentic with my work.

00:51:35.560 And I want to be able to say I wrote that book in his first year of life. So everything I learned was

00:51:40.520 what I learned in just the first year. I don't want to sit and, you know, take five years to write

00:51:46.600 it. I'm sure I'll learn plenty more. And I'll just write another book. But I want this first book to be

00:51:50.600 done in a year. Just every little thing from being peed on before going to the airport, or just

00:51:58.360 watching his eyes light up when he laughs for the first time, and how that has deeply changed the

00:52:02.960 way I interact in a different scenario. And so, you know, my son peeing on me, if I am at a bar with a

00:52:11.140 buddy six months from now, and he spills a drink on me, I guarantee you, it is not going to bother me.

00:52:15.900 This, it's going to be like, dude, this is no big deal. This isn't even human excrement. It's a

00:52:19.900 beer. It's not a big deal. And it's, it's, I can tell you, man, like having a kid has been

00:52:28.440 fucking awesome. And I can't imagine my life without him. It's, it's wild how quickly they

00:52:34.900 assimilate into your life. Yeah, I was, I really liked the post that you made the other day about,

00:52:41.740 I think you guys, you and your boy were at, at a bar maybe, or, or, or somewhere, you know,

00:52:46.740 and you're like, yeah, obviously you can't drink now, but like when he's older, I'm going to come

00:52:52.780 back and have a drink with him here. And I was like, man, it'd be so awesome. Just go, I'm going

00:52:57.100 to sit at that exact, I want to sit at that exact table with him. I want to show him that photo and

00:53:01.960 we'll try and recreate it. Maybe, maybe he'll hold me up this time. Maybe he'll just grow up to be like,

00:53:05.960 super. I mean, I'm six, six, so maybe he'll grow up to be like a monster. Maybe he'll be like seven

00:53:12.560 foot tall. Yeah. And he'll be able to hold me up, but that kind of stuff gets me excited. That kind

00:53:18.720 of stuff excites me more than a lot of other things. Like what used to excite me was, oh,

00:53:25.020 I'm meeting all my buddies in Vegas for the weekend. This is going to be fucking dope. I'm actually going

00:53:29.460 to Vegas in two weeks for work, but I'm going with my girlfriend and my son and we're staying in a

00:53:34.620 non-casino hotel and we're just going to hang out by the pool whenever I'm not in meetings.

00:53:38.880 And I'm more excited to sit at the pool with my son than I ever was to go to Vegas and run around

00:53:45.400 with my friends for three days and lose all our money gambling and going to strip clubs. Like

00:53:50.280 that was awesome at the time, but nothing about that excites me anymore. Nothing about that

00:53:55.860 sounds better to me than just hanging by the pool and watching my son splash in the water.

00:54:00.260 I look, I've, I've got four kids and I know exactly what you're saying is like, man, it's so

00:54:06.520 cool. And it's always funny. You know, you have a plan. My wife actually, as, as of right now,

00:54:11.740 we're recording this. My wife is out of town. She's with a girlfriend in Texas. They're having

00:54:15.660 a good time. So I've got the four kids. I can hear them downstairs laughing. And I can also hear

00:54:21.380 some of them yelling, not so bad that I know something's wrong, but I can hear them and they're

00:54:26.420 working things out. And to me, it's like, I just hear him saying, Oh yeah, you have a plan. Oh,

00:54:32.640 that's cute. Cool. Good idea. Good luck with that plan that you've got going on. Oh, you need to have

00:54:37.740 a conversation on a podcast for your business today. Cute. Yeah. We'll see what we can do to

00:54:42.260 wreck that. And I've never been more fulfilled and satisfied to have my plans completely destroyed

00:54:48.020 than by those four kids. See, that's exactly what I was saying to my buddy. Like you need at least a

00:54:52.780 dog. Like you at least need a dog. If you're not, I'm not saying you need to have a kid. Cause you

00:54:57.160 got to have a stable relationship, figure that shit out first, but you need to have a dog. Um,

00:55:02.500 it's incredible how your plans being broken can make your life so much better. Um, I never planned

00:55:12.540 to live in Florida. I never in my life. I was going to live in Florida. I was one of those people that

00:55:15.660 used to talk shit on Florida every day and opportunity I got. And that's pre COVID though. I bet.

00:55:21.460 Yeah. But even then, like, even like when I first started coming to Florida, it was probably

00:55:26.080 like 2015. I came to St. Augustine for the first time and I was blown away at how cool

00:55:31.900 St. Augustine was. And then I came back another time and I went to Jacksonville for work.

00:55:37.920 And I I've been to Miami a few times, but the Miami I went to was like the downtown or the

00:55:42.180 South beach, Miami. But I'm now where I live. I'm about 30 minutes South of the city. I'm 40

00:55:48.120 minutes the other way to the Everglades. And my backyard is full of iguanas and peacocks.

00:55:53.420 And the neighborhood is just full of these Oak trees with Spanish moss hanging off them.

00:55:59.260 And it's just the coolest vibe. And it's so quiet out on this side of town. And I love it out here.

00:56:05.080 I feel like my energy is lighter here. I feel less pressure to try and climb like any kind of status

00:56:13.620 ladder versus, you know, what I felt when I was living in Manhattan in the middle of New York

00:56:18.180 and I was living in Los Angeles. You kind of feel this need to you feel this need to reach like a

00:56:22.600 certain echelon. And Miami is full of wealth. Everywhere you look out here, there's a Rolls Royce

00:56:28.360 or Lamborghini. But just something about living out here. I don't feel any of that pressure at all in

00:56:33.200 my career anymore. Like I really just want to I want to just get a boat and I want to get some spear

00:56:37.460 guns. And I just want to hang out my boat and shoot fish all day. Like that's like my goal,

00:56:41.700 ideal life. And I remember being in New York, like you just feel like you always have to be

00:56:46.440 jumping through hoops. You always have to be doing something to make more money. And there's

00:56:51.000 that New York hustle mentality, which is great. But I don't think people in New York realize how

00:56:55.600 much of a prison it actually is until you get out into the world and realize you're not supposed to

00:57:02.200 operate at that level 16 hours a fucking day for every day of your life just so you can afford your

00:57:08.000 apartment. That's not how life's meant to be lived. It's just not.

00:57:12.260 So I love that my plans got fucked up. I love that I found myself here in Florida.

00:57:17.100 I do still crave that mountain life. And I hope to in a couple years have a cabin somewhere that I can

00:57:21.940 escape to and, you know, get that little fix and be able to have some horses and stuff. But

00:57:26.280 for right now, I like living somewhere I never planned to live. And I like having

00:57:32.300 this lifestyle that I never really planned to have. I honestly thought I was going to

00:57:36.840 be single most of my life. And if I did have a kid, I thought I'd be one of those guys that has

00:57:40.860 them when, you know, you're in your fifties and you feel like you've accomplished your

00:57:43.640 life and now you're going to have a kid. But I love, I love the way life has kind of

00:57:48.300 just, you know, knocked me down and built me back up in a way I wasn't expecting.

00:57:52.920 Yeah. I think our paths are very much similar. I, my wife and I and our four kids move from

00:57:57.680 Southern Utah to Maine, which is where we are now. Very rural Maine.

00:58:01.200 Oh, where, where did, uh, where'd you live in Utah?

00:58:04.360 We lived in hurricane. I know you said you're from, from Utah. I'm LDS too. So what you were

00:58:09.100 saying about the LDS culture, I did, I was baptized when I was 16. So what you were saying,

00:58:14.040 I totally understand. Fortunately for me, I came, I didn't grow up in that culture. I was introduced

00:58:21.100 to that culture. And so when you talk about how challenging it was being Mormon, I can completely

00:58:28.120 respect that and understand exactly where you're coming from. Although I had a slightly different

00:58:32.280 experience. Yeah. I think, I mean, I know Mormons that have had horrendous experiences because

00:58:37.560 they've been raised like so, so strict. Like they don't, they don't know the world. And then I know

00:58:43.480 people where you meet them and you would never in a million years guess they were raised Mormon and

00:58:49.040 they still are Mormon. And you're like, wait, what? How's this? Yeah. But yeah, I actually went to

00:58:55.260 a Dixie state for a couple of years. I played football. Oh, so did I. That's crazy. What year

00:58:59.660 were you there? Oh, fuck man. 2004, 2006. Okay. I was there in two, 2000, half, probably a quarter

00:59:08.940 of 2000. I said, I'm out of here. And that's it, man. So, so that's kind of what happened to me.

00:59:14.420 I never liked sports. I was just, I was kind of thrust into it because I'm a big dude. I was six,

00:59:20.700 six, but I was 15. You got to play basketball, right? I didn't like basketball. I wanted to

00:59:25.660 play football because I wanted to actually hit something. And I hated football though. I didn't

00:59:31.080 like it. I didn't even play my senior year. I didn't play my senior year. I ended up getting a

00:59:34.640 scholar, a college scholarship. And I was like, okay. Oh really? Yeah. And it drove a bunch of

00:59:40.400 people crazy. Like, how does that even possible? You didn't even play your senior year. So I got a,

00:59:44.580 I got a scholarship. I went down and I dislocated my knee about two weeks into camp. And I was like,

00:59:52.420 you know, it's a lot cooler. Yeah. Okay. And I never, I wasn't even, I wasn't even bummed out by

00:59:57.640 it. I was like, okay, cool. Whatever. Like I really did not have passion for the game and I don't have

01:00:01.820 passion for sports today. And so after dislocating my knee, I figured it was a lot more enjoyable to

01:00:09.380 take Percocet than it was to go to practice. And I just stopped going to the field at all. I just

01:00:15.280 started taking pills and drinking and doing the Dixie life. And yeah, that's right. I ended up

01:00:21.240 quitting the team. I just walked in one day and put my pads on the coach's desk. And I was like,

01:00:24.900 this is not for me. And I fucked off for like a year, year and a half. And I had buddies that were

01:00:31.600 getting really bad. Like I had buddies that progressed from Percocet and stuff into heroin. I actually had

01:00:36.100 one of my really good room, one of my really good friends and my roommate overdosed and died in a

01:00:41.320 park. He was at a, he was at a party. He overdosed at this party and the people there didn't know what

01:00:48.380 to do with them. So they went and dropped him off in a park on a jogging trail, thinking that a jogger

01:00:53.560 would find him in the morning and they found him and he was dead. And just the fact that he,

01:00:59.540 he died alone like that, like really was really hard. I'd already left St. George by the time this

01:01:07.540 happened to him, because I saw how, how the spiral was going down in our lives. And so I went, I moved

01:01:13.880 back home. I got my shit together and I went to college and I kind of started fresh all over again.

01:01:18.180 And that's when I got serious about pursuing writing as a career, because I knew that sports

01:01:22.780 weren't my passion. What I really was passionate about was writing. And so being able to write kind of

01:01:27.860 pulled me out of anything distracting like that. And I never got back into an issue with painkillers

01:01:36.300 or anything like that again, because I had a new thing. Like you said, I turned my energy into

01:01:41.060 something else. I had a new thing I was passionate and obsessive about, and I was able to get through

01:01:44.920 school really quickly and get my shit together. But it's interesting. You came from Southern Utah too,

01:01:49.440 because there's so much of that down there because there's not a lot. I don't know if it's changed,

01:01:54.920 but I mean, when I was down there, all there really was in St. George was the college and maybe

01:02:00.400 like an Applebee's and a Chili's and one other restaurant. There was nothing.

01:02:04.480 I know this life, brother. They've turned it into a university now. I think they're trying to

01:02:10.600 tighten that up a little bit. But yeah, man, I grew up in Southern Utah when I was in high school.

01:02:15.020 We'd go down there on spring break and it was the spring break place. Like that's where you go.

01:02:18.920 You go to St. George. But yeah, I think they've tried to change that around a little bit.

01:02:23.360 I did have a question about something with regards to what you post online. I see a lot of

01:02:28.200 pictures of you and your boy. Obviously, I see your quotes and your writing. You don't post a lot

01:02:34.020 about your girlfriend. I actually, with all due respect, thought maybe you were single. Is that by

01:02:39.560 design? Tell me a little bit about that. It was initially by design. It's probably something that

01:02:46.500 I need to get better at. And a lot of it came from me just not wanting people to interfere

01:02:55.080 with the relationship because I didn't want people to start DMing her random shit or I didn't want

01:03:03.180 people to start following her. And so it was like the last thing in my life that I felt like

01:03:08.540 I hadn't sacrificed to society because I've given a lot of myself in my writing. It's actually very

01:03:17.080 hard to write a lot of the stuff I write. And a lot of the stuff I write, I am on the fence about

01:03:22.920 putting out there because it's pretty revealing and I take a lot of risks with my work. And it was

01:03:28.540 the one thing in my life that I was like, I can't have this become something else that I start to worry

01:03:33.740 about. And it's something that I have made the decision to start being more open about.

01:03:41.600 Part of it was because, and to be honest, we were not in a good place in our relationship when we

01:03:47.320 first found out she was pregnant. Like we actually kind of thought maybe we were going to go our own

01:03:51.680 ways. So there was a time when it was very, it was very much just like, what direction is this

01:04:00.500 going to fall? And so I obviously wasn't something that I wanted to put about, you know, talk about

01:04:06.220 online a lot of the time because I wasn't sure what's going to happen with it. So, but now we're

01:04:12.180 in a much better place. We've worked through a lot of our stuff. And this is kind of what I said when

01:04:15.540 that, in that pain in the ass post that I wrote, um, talking about how we've helped each other grow

01:04:21.040 and discover these things that we didn't realize we had. I wrote that post, what was that three days

01:04:26.900 ago? It's very much still real. Like we very much are still working through some of that stuff and

01:04:32.740 we're still trying to figure out how to help each other heal and to grow together. And so it's

01:04:40.880 something that I've held back on online because I'm just, I haven't been in the most sure-footed

01:04:47.960 position with it, but I feel like we're gonna, we're gonna succeed now. And it is something that I will

01:04:53.340 definitely start to share more as, you know, the future unfolds.

01:04:58.680 Yeah. I mean, I was just curious because, you know, I, I, I post a lot about being a father and I,

01:05:04.020 and I, and I share stuff about my kids. Um, and I share stuff about my wife and I'm like, man,

01:05:09.700 what's the balance here? Because I know what people say to me, you know, I, I know about the,

01:05:15.520 the DMs that I get and the bull crap I got to deal with. I'm like, why would I expose my wife and

01:05:20.360 children to that? You know? Yeah. I mean, I go ahead. Oh, I was going to say like, I've shown

01:05:26.600 her some of the DMs I get and I was like, look at these, some people on here are genuinely fucking

01:05:31.800 crazy. Like they're genuinely fucking nuts. I had people mail stuff to my parents' house and I don't

01:05:37.800 know how they, I don't know how they even found out where my parents lived or who they were. And so

01:05:42.900 stuff like that's happened to me, which has made me be pretty protective. Um, and yeah, it is. It's a,

01:05:50.800 it's a balance. And I kind of wish I was, I was in a place where I had a big estate with gates and

01:05:56.920 guards and several large dogs, because I'd probably feel, I'd probably feel a lot more comfortable about

01:06:02.020 people knowing my business, but I'm still just a regular dude. I mean, I don't walk around with like

01:06:06.800 a bodyguard security or anything. And so some of the stuff I do very much is just to be protective.

01:06:12.420 And I know it can come across as hurtful, particularly to my girlfriend. There's times

01:06:17.200 where she has felt like she's been put in the shadow and it's not something I've done to intent.

01:06:22.220 I have not done that to intentionally hurt her or hide her. It's something I still need to work

01:06:28.680 through as far as just being vulnerable and being able to, like I said, feel like I can sacrifice that

01:06:36.380 thing to society and know that we're strong enough to overcome anything that's going to come our way

01:06:41.380 by that happening. But I also think that's, I won't say exclusively, but I think predominantly

01:06:47.780 a masculine characteristic, you know, you got people that in your life that you love.

01:06:52.940 And I think generally we as men are more aware of our role to protect the things that we value and

01:07:01.660 the things that we love, including the people in our lives. And that is our role, frankly.

01:07:06.580 Well, and exactly. I mean, and I had seen, so up until 2019, I had seen how much social media had

01:07:13.760 personally affected my life. And for a lot of times it made my life more difficult. My life became

01:07:20.840 harder because of the way I got enveloped in social media. And I had told myself, if I ever get in a

01:07:27.320 relationship, I'm not going to let social media make it harder. And I don't think I'm in a place now

01:07:33.880 where that would happen. So I do feel like we're in a, we have a stable foundation enough that I can't

01:07:38.540 be more forthright with that. But for example, when I was single, I used to post where I was when I was

01:07:45.920 fucking there. Like I would be at a bar and I would post, I'm at this bar. I don't post where the fuck I

01:07:51.720 until I've, I've 10 miles away at this point. You're gone. Right. I'll share, um, you know,

01:07:59.380 like a bar, but after I leave, I'll make sure like I'm out of there. I used to not do that.

01:08:04.860 It's little things like that, that I do now, because I usually have my boy and my girlfriend

01:08:10.320 with me. And I just, I don't know what's going to happen. And for the most part, it'd probably be a

01:08:17.080 really good meeting. Some people would show up and want to meet me and it'd be very nice and cordial,

01:08:20.440 but you don't know. There's that one time it could be something very fucked up. And then you're going

01:08:25.520 to feel responsible for that happening because I don't know who follows me online. I don't know who

01:08:30.660 is creeping for whatever sinister reason. Um, I'm not saying I'm someone that's worth stalking or

01:08:36.680 someone that has like a hit man out on me, but you don't fucking know these days. And the fact that

01:08:43.240 I've had things arrive at my parents' house, I feel the need to be cautious about stuff.

01:08:47.820 What do you, so what do you do? Uh, you alluded to you leaving the, the ad agency in that sort of

01:08:54.280 world. Uh, one of the questions I get a lot is, you know, like, what's your real job? That's a

01:09:00.360 question I get. I'm like, well, like, this is my real job. Like I interview incredible people.

01:09:05.740 We do events. Like we have things. Okay. I make money, of course, because I got to put food on the

01:09:09.500 table. Uh, and I imagine you do as well. People are looking at, it's like, well, you know,

01:09:12.800 I wish I could just write quotes on Instagram and Twitter all day long. Um, what do you do

01:09:18.180 to generate revenue for yourself and your family? Aside from my books? Um, I do write full-time.

01:09:24.200 I am a full-time writer, but I write my own books. And then I also, at any given time,

01:09:29.600 I usually have two or three contracts, whether it's, um, I write and direct quite a few commercials

01:09:34.840 for TV. I do a lot of work. I do a lot of work with the hospitality space. I'm actually flying

01:09:40.220 out to Vegas in a couple of weeks because I work with quite a few of the casinos out there,

01:09:44.560 um, with their TV, with their TV campaigns. When you see like those really fun campaigns

01:09:49.600 that people party and jumping in and out of pools and stuff, I've actually written and directed.

01:09:52.940 That's you. All right, cool. Got it. Um, uh, I still do advertising, but what I, I don't do

01:09:58.260 average. I won't, I don't do pharmaceuticals. Um, I have like a real hard line of not doing that

01:10:03.260 kind of advertising. I don't like to do a lot of principled approach for you.

01:10:06.620 The pharmaceutical stuff. I have no, I have no desire. I have no desire to do

01:10:11.040 products that actually, you know, fuck with people's health or change the way they really

01:10:16.760 feel about themselves. I mean, the kind of advertising I like to do is I do a lot of

01:10:21.480 branding. I do a lot of hospitality and I do a lot of like travel related stuff because I enjoy doing

01:10:26.480 it. And I feel good about what I'm putting out there. I don't feel like I'm putting out shit.

01:10:29.640 That's going to make your 17 year old daughter have a complex about the way she looks, you know?

01:10:34.940 Right. I, I, that's not like that. That's, that's not the kind of shit I want to do. I don't want to

01:10:39.980 be doing stuff that makes people question their self-worth. Um, so I do do a lot of that, but then

01:10:45.440 I also recently have gotten a couple authors to ghost, write some books for, I can't say names,

01:10:51.760 but some fairly successful business executives. Um, recently I've had a couple of meetings about

01:10:57.160 ghostwriting, a few titles for them. So I am a writer full time. I'd say probably 50% of my

01:11:03.900 revenue comes from my own books and the other 50 comes from contract work, whether it's branding,

01:11:08.520 advertising, TV, kind of stuff like that. How have you got better at writing? Because so,

01:11:14.260 so I look at, I look at some of the things that you write and post and share. And I'm like,

01:11:19.020 man, like, that's a good point. I've, it isn't necessarily new information, but the way that you

01:11:25.620 frame it, I'm like, that really resonates. And obviously clearly it does with tens, if not hundreds

01:11:31.480 of thousands of other people, how do you get to that point where you take a concept that everybody's

01:11:36.280 probably somewhat familiar with and paint it or tell a story or craft it in a way that really lands

01:11:42.400 with people? Hmm. I think it'd probably be a case by case basis and how I arrive at that. But for

01:11:49.680 the most part, I'm very trusting of my own gut instinct when it comes to my work. And I understand

01:11:58.160 that the way I see things is not the way other people see things. And so when I observe something

01:12:05.240 that I think is interesting, even though I think, okay, a lot of people probably observe this,

01:12:09.220 I trust myself to think the way I'm observing this is probably unique. How can I put this into words

01:12:14.680 based on my background, what it's making me reflect on? And I just kind of find a way to explain it in

01:12:21.640 the way that I feel is most authentically me. And that's one of the things that I've been really

01:12:27.260 consistent with is my work. I've said this before, a lot of my tweets or a lot of my writing is

01:12:34.540 spoken to myself in that moment. And so a lot of my advice when it comes to mental health and

01:12:43.320 approaching life and dating advice when I was dating a lot was advice I was giving myself,

01:12:48.200 I was basically taking my internal dialogue and tweeting it. And even the stuff that was talking

01:12:55.040 shit, that was usually me talking shit to myself. And so a lot of my work is still that. It's me

01:13:00.740 taking my internal dialogue and just expressing it. And like you said, I don't talk to myself in big,

01:13:06.980 lengthy, hard to comprehend words. I talk to myself in stuff that I can understand. And so I write that

01:13:12.280 same way intentionally. I don't feel the need to muddy up a message with intellect that doesn't

01:13:18.600 need to be there. And that's why other people probably find it relatable, not probably, that's

01:13:24.480 why they find it relatable. But that's also why I think people go, oh, I've had that thought before.

01:13:29.700 Because when we talk to ourselves, that's how we talk to ourselves is very straightforward. And so

01:13:34.580 that's how I try and write. And so it probably doesn't answer your question, because I don't really

01:13:38.600 have a method to how I write to it other than the fact that I really just have almost a blind faith

01:13:43.380 in my ability to observe things. Yeah. I mean, I can appreciate that. I guess when I write something

01:13:49.680 and look, I always try to write something, I think you'd agree, that I try to write in a way that will

01:13:56.660 resonate with the people that I'm trying to serve. You know, that's my objective. Because that's my

01:14:02.500 goal. Like I want to serve people. But I tend to word vomit because I'm a pretty intuitive guy. So I'm

01:14:07.340 like, okay, well, like, here's what I'm thinking, go. And I'd be really curious about you. Is it just,

01:14:12.820 hey, these are my thoughts? Or do you spend a lot of time thinking about, okay, well,

01:14:16.700 like, how do I want to say this right? And what do I want people to experience or to feel when they

01:14:22.600 read these words? Like how much thought goes into it there? Quite a bit. That's where my professional

01:14:27.120 side of my writing career comes into effect. In advertising, I learned how to write very short. I mean,

01:14:33.080 for example, if you're writing a copy for a billboard, you don't have a lot of room for words.

01:14:38.620 And so my professional career taught me to write very succinctly. And it also taught me to choose

01:14:44.340 the most appropriate word to get the emotion that you want out of that headline. And so

01:14:50.060 my professional career definitely kind of oversees my just initial, as you said, word vomit.

01:14:59.280 I'll puke all over, and then my professional career will come in and kind of mop it up.

01:15:04.460 Interesting.

01:15:05.140 So I actually, I've told people this many times, I think working in advertising made me a better

01:15:11.300 writer personally, because it forced me to learn to write in such tight constraints at times. And

01:15:18.060 I tell a lot of writers, a lot of people ask me for advice on how to get started in writing.

01:15:21.980 And I actually suggest a lot of them, they should go work for an advertising agency.

01:15:25.180 Um, it's a beast that everyone loves to hate, but advertising is here to stay.

01:15:30.520 And it is a career that will really give you thick skin, because there's a lot of criticism

01:15:35.580 involved in that industry. And it's a career that'll teach you how to operate at a very high level,

01:15:42.320 when it comes to taking your creativity, but putting it into something actionable. And I think

01:15:48.500 that's where a lot of creatives struggle is they have all this creativity, but they don't have the

01:15:53.920 business acumen, or they don't have the professional advice to take that creativity and turn into

01:16:01.680 something that people can resonate with. And that's what advertising did for me, um, very early

01:16:07.520 on in my career. And even though I essentially kind of left it behind, I do it here and there.

01:16:11.760 I still, to this day, almost crave sometimes. I was like, ah, I wish I was in an office today,

01:16:18.420 just working on some really stressful campaign, because I know if I was doing that, I would have

01:16:24.740 a spark of something else in the process. A lot of times I would like, for a couple of years,

01:16:30.480 I was writing a newsletter called Dear Captain. It was very similar to Dear Abby. A lot of people

01:16:34.760 would write into me with personal questions and I'd answer back, you know, three or four paragraphs.

01:16:39.240 And it was a newsletter I sent out once a week, once a week to a subscriber base.

01:16:42.220 I would typically write that newsletter in my office while I was working. Um, because I'd be in

01:16:48.940 this, I'd get this momentum going to where I'd go from meeting to meeting to meeting. And I didn't

01:16:54.300 want my momentum to stop. And I would immediately just take the momentum and jump into writing a

01:16:59.340 completely different form and style, uh, in my newsletter, because that momentum would always

01:17:05.260 carry over. And it's something I've been very cognizant of as a creator is when I have momentum,

01:17:11.280 I don't let it stop. Um, if I'm tired, if it's getting late, if I feel that momentum,

01:17:18.060 I'll keep going because you don't know when you're going to have it at that level again.

01:17:22.060 Yeah, that's good. I, I, I really value the ad world. Like I enjoy whether it's watching a

01:17:28.880 commercial or driving down the road and seeing a good billboard. I'm like, damn, that's really good.

01:17:33.440 Um, or, or just marketing in general. I appreciate that. And that's part of the reason

01:17:37.480 why I appreciate what you're doing. And then I know we were poking at Jordan Peterson a

01:17:41.140 little bit, but like, he knows what he's doing. There's no doubt about it. Or even characters

01:17:45.260 like, um, and I know, is it, is it the characters, maybe some to some degree, but writers like, uh,

01:17:51.740 Ron Swanson, I'm like, all right. Like, and I don't, and I don't think it's disingenuous,

01:17:56.020 you know, like, I don't think what you're doing or what Peterson or what, uh, a writer who might be

01:18:00.640 writing for parks and rec is doing is disingenuous. I think it's putting your best foot forward.

01:18:05.520 And I'm always really curious and interested in how I do that in a meaningful, authentic,

01:18:12.100 significant way. I don't think there's anything disingenuous about promoting what you have created.

01:18:17.500 I think that's another thing where people feel like it's almost selling out. So you have people

01:18:21.320 that create very good things, but they're afraid to promote their own product, meaning yourself,

01:18:27.820 essentially in that, in that regard. Um, it's something that I had to, because I initially started

01:18:34.840 my online presence as a way to express myself outside of my advertising career. Cause like I

01:18:41.120 said, I was tweeting stuff that I couldn't use in my daily work. I had a very hard line for a while,

01:18:46.300 but where I felt comfortable promoting myself as, you know, like when I released a book, for example,

01:18:51.440 I would typically post about my book release like twice. And then I would sit back and be like,

01:18:56.280 all right, well, I can't promote it anymore. Cause now I just look like some guy hawking his goods.

01:19:00.540 And as I've talked with more writers and other writers that I respect, you have to get over

01:19:07.460 this hump of feeling like that's disingenuous because that's how you have, that's how you make

01:19:14.980 a living. If you don't promote what you create, you can't make a living creating and you need

01:19:21.460 money to continue doing what you love. And so I've kind of got to the point where it's,

01:19:27.540 if I really enjoy writing a book, guess what? If that book makes me money, I have the time now

01:19:33.440 to write another book as opposed to having to fill my days with contract work to try and pay my rent

01:19:39.120 each month. And so it's a decision I've made where I'm going to take everything I know about

01:19:44.320 marketing. I'm going to try and use it in creative fun ways that are going to help me continue doing

01:19:49.720 what I love. And that's what you see all these people doing. And I don't think there's anything

01:19:53.640 disingenuous about that. It's odd how it only tends to really apply to writers. You don't see

01:19:58.400 it happen much when it comes to like musicians. And or an athlete. Yeah, this is this is where I

01:20:04.420 have a lot of respect for guys in hip hop and rap. Guys in hip hop and rap don't give a fuck.

01:20:10.520 They will promote themselves like there's no tomorrow. And they will overshare every fucking

01:20:18.300 thing when a new album comes out. And guess what? Those albums go wild. And people love them for it.

01:20:24.260 And that's why they get this insane celebrity status rather quickly. And I think there's something

01:20:32.240 to be taken from that as a creator, looking at what hip hop artists and rappers aren't afraid to do.

01:20:40.120 No one takes that as disingenuous. They just think, oh, damn, this guy's hustling.

01:20:44.260 It's a hustle. He's hustling. And so that's kind of where I've started to look at it where I don't

01:20:51.680 feel as bad about it anymore, because this is what I want to do for a living. I truly want to write

01:20:57.780 books. If I could never do advertising again, I'd be happy. If I could write one book a year and

01:21:04.060 sustain my lifestyle and my family and be able to take care of everyone, that would be my preferred

01:21:08.860 goal. And to get to that goal, I have to promote what I'm doing.

01:21:14.060 Well, Kyle, know that you have an open invitation anytime you write a book or anytime in between to

01:21:20.060 join us, man, because I love having conversations like this. And I had zero note. Well, okay, that's

01:21:26.880 not true. I had three things written down that I wanted to address with you today. And then I just

01:21:31.320 filled up a bunch of notes with things that you've been saying. So, man, this conversation was

01:21:38.560 so powerful. Did we address the three things? I don't know. What did we talk? I don't know. Who

01:21:44.840 knows? Yeah. I mean, I wrote down mostly some things with the book. You know, I think we kind

01:21:49.920 of we covered it. So speech therapy, go pick up a copy, guys. But yeah, we hit on these things and

01:21:55.740 so much more, obviously. Yeah, I would love to talk again. And whereabouts in Maine are you?

01:22:01.440 I'm about an hour and a half north of Portland in a place called Farmington.

01:22:04.920 I love Portland, Maine. I actually had a publisher there for a bit. I did a calendar,

01:22:11.660 like a daily quarter day ripoff calendar. And my publisher is Portland, Maine. Portland,

01:22:16.400 Maine is fantastic. I actually want to take my girlfriend and son up to Portland and Bangor.

01:22:22.600 I like Maine a lot. It's beautiful up there. If you end up coming up, man, just hit me up. Let me

01:22:28.800 know. Shoot me a text, shoot me a message. And we'll have you guys at our place and show you a good

01:22:32.700 time here and you can come between Bangor and Portland. That'd be great.

01:22:36.520 My hope, like we just said, if I could promote my books well enough, I would like to buy an RV and

01:22:42.220 I'd like to spend a good solid year on the road, especially during Ethan's like formative younger

01:22:46.780 years of his life. Yeah.

01:22:48.860 And I'm definitely just cruise off to the Northeast and everywhere.

01:22:52.560 Right on, brother. You got an open invitation here. So let me know when that happens.

01:22:55.240 Thank you.

01:22:56.540 All right, man. Well, tell the guys where to connect with you, how to learn more about what you're

01:22:59.980 doing. Pick up a copy of the book, Speech Therapy. You got the hardcover. Is it available

01:23:04.400 now?

01:23:05.520 Yeah, it's on Amazon.

01:23:07.140 Right on. Where else should the guys go?

01:23:09.620 If anyone wants to follow me, they can just search SGRSTK on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram,

01:23:15.320 or if you just type in the cap and it should come up. Chances are they've seen my face float

01:23:20.000 around on a tweet or two over the years. Other than that, if you go to Amazon, you can search

01:23:24.100 Speech Therapy or search Fucking History. Those are probably my two bigger titles, but I also have

01:23:29.360 five other books available there as well. We'll connect everything up, man. Thanks for

01:23:33.800 joining me. Thanks for imparting. Sometimes I feel guilty a little bit because I'm like,

01:23:38.440 man, I was the biggest recipient of this. I'm asking questions that are going to help me

01:23:42.000 personally, but I know if it's serving me, it's serving other guys. So I appreciate you,

01:23:45.840 brother.

01:23:46.460 This is a fantastic conversation. I'd love to come on again.

01:23:49.280 Thanks, man.

01:23:51.400 All right, you guys. There you go. My conversation with the one and only Kyle,

01:23:55.640 the captain Creek. I hope you enjoyed it. I think you probably saw a lot in Kyle,

01:24:00.960 what I saw, and that's this level of desire to grow and get better and the humility that comes

01:24:07.960 with it. And obviously a very relatable person, because I think there's, if you listen to the

01:24:12.500 entire thing and you're listening now, there's probably some things that he said that you're

01:24:17.360 dealing with or experiencing yourself. So it's good to know that we're all in this fight together.

01:24:21.500 Connect with him on Instagram and Twitter. That's where he's most active. Connect with me

01:24:26.160 on Instagram and Twitter, and also Facebook. That's where I'm most active. And let us know

01:24:30.900 what you thought about the show. Take a screenshot right now, share it with people, a brother,

01:24:35.600 a friend, a colleague, a coworker, your father who needs to hear this message, share it on the

01:24:40.020 Instagram, share it on Twitter, and let people know what you're listening to. Because if you have

01:24:45.000 information to share that will help other people, then we have a responsibility to share that.

01:24:48.360 And then also I'm giving away, as I said earlier, 10 of these copies of speech therapy, his latest

01:24:54.780 book. So if you want to be entered for one of these 10 giveaways, these 10 books, then all you have to

01:25:01.280 do is leave an Apple podcast rating review or a Spotify podcast rating review, take a screenshot of

01:25:09.440 the rating review and email that to brandy, B-R-A-N-D-Y at orderofman.com. And we'll do that giveaway on

01:25:16.820 Friday. All right, guys, we'll be back tomorrow for our Ask Me Anything. Until then, go out there,

01:25:22.640 take action, and become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man

01:25:27.440 podcast. If you're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be,

01:25:32.200 we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - March 08, 2022

KYLE "THE CAPTAIN" CREEK ｜ Become the Captain of Your Life

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