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Play for Profit Podcast
🎙️ Play for Profit is the podcast for neurodiverse entrepreneurs, creatives, and multi-passionate misfits who are done with the hustle-and-grind blueprint. Hosted by Najela Carter, a creative business coach and school psychologist, this show helps you build a business that feels like play—without burning out or boxing yourself in. Whether you're dreaming up your next big idea or redefining success on your own terms, you'll find tools, mindset shifts, and playful strategies to profit from your passions your way.
✨ It’s time to ditch the rules, follow your curiosity, and build a business that actually feels good.
Play for Profit Podcast
Finding Joy in Chaos with Darnell Brown
Darnell Brown shares his journey as a multi-passionate growth strategist who helps creative entrepreneurs make an impact through their unique talents and message.
• Embracing multiple passions springs from curiosity and sensitivity to inspiration in everyday experiences
• Multi-passionate people filter inspiration differently than specialists but both can learn from diverse sources
• Finding joy in unexpected pivots requires recognizing that challenges are inevitable and preparing for them
• True joy comes from within rather than external validation, creating sustainable fulfillment
• Making the entrepreneurial leap often requires backing yourself into a corner to force resourcefulness
• Taking action instead of just planning requires community support and accountability
• Creativity is essentially resourcefulness—remixing what you have in unique ways
• The entrepreneurial spirit values autonomy and fulfillment over security and comfort
• Supporting fellow entrepreneurs, especially those from underrepresented groups, creates a stronger community
Visit darnellbrown.com/amplify for a free guide on "Amplify Time in Your Creative Business in Three Steps" to make better use of your creative energy.
All right, so tell me more about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I am Darnell Brown. I'm a growth strategist and designer. I work with creative and non-creative entrepreneurs to help them again, help them make an impact and serve them in that way and be a catalyst for them as they seek to attract an audience and get their message or their offer out into the world attract an audience and get their message or their offer out into the world.
Speaker 1:Okay, nice, nice and what. I looked at your website and you do so much, so what? But what would you say makes you multi-passionate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there are. It's just, I think, my fascination with the arts visual, culinary, performance, music and just this ability to create that which doesn't yet exist, and using the things around you to put something out, and making things out of nothing and using one's inherent resourcefulness in unique ways and remixing certain ingredients together to create something brand new. I've always been fascinated by that. That's one of the stories of my life. When you become multi-passionate and like a polymath and you apply all of these different disciplines from the various arts, it's just, man, there's inspiration everywhere. You could just be out to dinner looking at a menu and the color palette will hit you in a different way. You'd be like.
Speaker 2:I appreciate the work that the designers put nexus point, from which multi-passion would come from is a curiosity for, like almost everything, for that which you don't yet know, and not afraid of it, but like welcoming and welcoming to that, knowing that you're going to grow a little bit, that you're going to change, that there's interest, and even life and the mundane things that we take for granted. And when you just approach life like that and have a hypersensitivity to stuff, you're never bored. There's always something that you can just extract from all of the stuff around you that already exists.
Speaker 2:And then you can take that and be like man, I'm happy. And when you get away from I don't know the chatter and the noise of just even the online world and just nature and stuff a little bit, and just digitally detox, as they call it, and just man, this is like getting back to the basics and the essentials. This stuff is classic for a reason. It's always going to be around. It's going to outlive these trends and stuff that we're in.
Speaker 2:Let's tap into that. Let's tap into that. That's where home is and it will rarely upset you like going off to those things and checking in with what you're passionate about and assessing things from different angles.
Speaker 1:That's a good answer, and so one of the things you said was that, like, inspiration is everywhere. One of the things you said was that, like inspiration is everywhere, one of the things do you think that people who are like hyper specialized do you think they experience the same form of inspiration as those who are multi-passionate, or how would you think that inspiration looks across different people?
Speaker 2:That's a great question.
Speaker 2:I think it's the same.
Speaker 2:I think it's the same for hyper-passionate in one thing, multi-passionate in another.
Speaker 2:We just filter it out in a different way and we say either I'm going to try out all of the different types of things I don't know and am not good at and be inspired by what I'm passionate about, or I'm just going to funnel that into all in one thing and say food or culinary arts may have nothing to do with writing this song, but it's still an art form, and playing with these different ingredients for this meal is like me playing with different instruments and vocal annotations and stuff in my song, and I could learn something new from that and apply that in that way.
Speaker 2:So I would definitely say that those passions would be correlated. We just express it and articulate it in a different way and we funnel it through our skill sets if we are into that and I do often think about what I would do if I knew I had multiple lives like I would spend all of my time like in just one trade, right? You think about guys like Einstein and them who just pretty much dedicated their lives to like solving specific problems and dealing with science or creating the light bulb.
Speaker 2:I'm just like man if I was born at a different time? You know what?
Speaker 2:I wonder what I have gravitated more towards learning one thing I love the example, najla, of there's no way to even sit and listen to all of the music that has been produced over for your lifetime, like you could spend 90 years straight just sitting there listening to stuff. So it's just like knowing that you can't even consume all that exists, just from like humans time here on this earth. It's a fascinating thing. So I'm just like man. Yeah, I would spend like one life probably listening to music. I would spend one life trying to invent a time machine. I would spend one life trying to do space travel. It's like all of these different things. So I would never be. I would never be bored. I'm always fascinated with stuff. It's just all about how we choose to channel it, how we choose to put that through and be like my man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything that I inspiration everywhere, everyone that you meet knows something that you don't right, how do I take? That and apply that to my craft and get and improve at it and then bring that forward to my audience yeah, that's a good answer.
Speaker 1:Curious, building off of that, why do you think our society like values? I think in recent years, like you think of a guy like elon musk, who has his finger in a lot of different pies, so to speak. In general, I don't at least this is my experience that people don't seem to value multi-passionate people unless they've made money from their passions or they hyper-focused on one thing and that gave them the money to focus on other things. What makes you think if this has been your experience or if you've seen something different, what makes you think that why our society doesn't value multi-passionate people as highly as somebody who's specialized?
Speaker 2:just be just like the nature of what is attention grabbing and what a person can like process in terms of one's greatness or prowl with, and so it's hard. It's probably hard to deal with brilliant people who are talented at everything that they touch and stuff, versus even maybe a Simone Biles who we usually know for Olympics, just as an example, but she might be brilliant at all other types of things and stuff as well too, and it's just that's what we see, that's what is advertised to us usually, and so we gravitate towards that, but it doesn't mean that she isn't a polymath herself. I think that it is.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's more so just about what we choose to highlight those of us who are multi-disciplined, multi-passionate and at least really the reasons I do it.
Speaker 2:It really isn't for the attention or anything or the respect and stuff of my peers, but just more so of the ghost of my own past, me competing with myself in the things that I believe, in my own abilities and the version of myself that I have in my own head, and so the attention and the like, going from anonymous to being well-known, that's just part of the game, but you don't really wake up and just be like I'm going to perform, unless that's exactly what you do, unless you only you work those four years to get in the Olympics and perform before an audience, unless that is what you specifically do.
Speaker 2:But otherwise it's just. I think it's just attention and what we choose to present of ourselves out there, more so than us not getting recognition for it or us not being as valued as you mentioned in society as others. But I'm good with that, yeah, I'm good with that. I think that if we can still show up and do our thing and do it to the best of our ability, whatever that may be, that is its own reward and any external validation that comes by osmosis of that is just a cherry on top.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good answer. So on your profile you said that you find joy in unplanned pivots. Can you elaborate on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I had hosted a block party summit Was that last month or the month before that? On this very topic, about finding joy in those unplanned pivots, which is this idea of flowing with the yin and yang, the version of you that is proactive about your life, that is making things happen, that is trying to influence and get out of whatever situation that you're in, versus, like all of the things that are outside of your control, this dance of when life happens to you. Mike Tyson said everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. That's a great metaphor for life. Like you don't care about any of your plans, we know with 100% certainty you and me, majla, are going to go through multiple life happens moments throughout the courses of our lives, things that we can't control.
Speaker 2:we ain't asked for no rhyme or reason, it's just going to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so with that, if that's an expectation, if that's as certain as death and taxes are, we got to learn how to move with that and be like where do we find the joy? Because I'm not going to sit here and wallow in pity about stuff that I know is going to happen, I just don't know when. Look to me, to support them, to bring calm in their chaos, and for me to still find joy in that and be my best self. So it's this pursuit of that joy that is part of the puzzle, it's part of the Rubik's Cube, and the joy in and of itself is to be like that, saying that you may have heard, najla.
Speaker 2:The reward is in the journey, not just the destination. So it's in the hard work, it's in putting in the hard yards, it's in showing up when you don't want to or when you don't feel like it and saying no. If the metaphor is, I'm supposed to go jogging every day this week, it's not only when your partner is with you and you got your tools put in and the birds are chirping and the sun is out that you supposed to do that, because that's easy. Everybody would do it if the conditions were perfect. Right, the hard part, najla, is saying that when I turned off that alarm and I don't feel like it's raining outside and it's cold, that is the actual trigger. Like that is the trigger that's supposed to get you out, so we'd have to flip that switch in our mind and say that's not a deterrent. That's the trigger. That's saying that the fact that you don't want to do it is exactly why, and when you should be doing it, that's when it hits the most.
Speaker 2:That's when you show up as your best self is to say man, there is joy in doing this. When I run in the rain and when I know it's cold outside, I come back feeling like I'm invincible for the rest of the day because I already did the hardest thing. And that's just a metaphor. Sometimes that is my literal life. But that's also a good metaphor for what I mean by finding that joy and just being like hold up.
Speaker 2:There was a version of me that didn't find joy in these pivots and I don't want to be that person. I don't like that feeling.
Speaker 2:I don't like feeling unfulfilled and groggy and then I gotta show up in front of people and be something I'm not really. So it's no, you're going to feel 10 times the person that you were. If you do something where you don't feel like it really, you're going to feel better by doing it anyway. You only regret, proverb, the metaphorical workout that you don't do. It was just like there's nothing wrong with you battling against just even your own demons of getting out of your comfort zone. Since we always talk about it all the time, we know that growth happens on the other side of the comfort zone anyway. So if you're a person, like I am, that cares about growth, you cannot get growth without resistance, right? You?
Speaker 1:can't.
Speaker 2:It's impossible. You can't do it in the comfort zone. So, unless you want to stay stagnant and comfortable and life going to happen to you anyway, it's going to knock you off course. So what you're going to do? Sit there a while and be like I was comfortable all the way until this car accident happened, and now I don't know how to handle it.
Speaker 2:And now I don't know how to handle it. If you were prepping for that whole time, then when life happens, you just dang. All I had to do was remember my training, Because I've been training for this all year long. I trained so that when the life thing did happen, I was already prepared for it. Right, I stay ready, so that I don't have to get ready.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that's good. So there's two things. So how would you define joy? Is that's good so?
Speaker 2:there's two things, so how would you define joy?
Speaker 1:Is it like a physical thing for you? Is it a spiritual thing, Is it? How do you define that for yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, joy is elation, it is every part of you, harmoniously in a place of just complete symphony and everything is in tandem and everything is just right. And it's different for all of us. Najla, right, we can't. It's so subjective, it's so personal, it's so intimate. But I like what you said.
Speaker 2:It's not just the physical, it's also what's in your soul, like you feel it in your soul and in your bones, and everything about you is expansive and you just feel lit up and people will see that on you. They will notice that something is different about your energy and the way that you're showing up in the world. Your posture is different. You're dancing to a different beat, completely. You're just not dancing to anyone else's tune. You're dancing to your own music, that music that you can turn on anytime that you want to, and ain't nothing going to turn you down. You can turn on that joy anytime that you don't have it, because it isn't dependent on external factors. So the whole point is that's what true joy is, and it needs to be sustainable. It needs to come from abundance, not from lack.
Speaker 2:It needs to come from being authentic, from being open, transparent with people, from not stabbing people in the back, from not over-exaggerating yourself, over-exerting, from being like fully you, like the all of you, and being good with that, and never being in a position where a person compromises you or compromises your integrity and tries to bring you down because you already know that they fronten on you and you're not, and there's so much joy that it just combats any of that. That's what, like, the ultimate joy and stuff is, and I would love to live in that and I think some of it is probably meditation and Buddhist principles, probably too right. This idea of joy to me, najla, is hyper self-awareness, hyper self-validation, right. So not out here seeking external validation all of the time and saying I need that person's permission or I need this person to give me a job before I feel like I'm worthy.
Speaker 2:We got to be worthy in and of ourselves. We got to love ourselves first. We got to show up enthusiastic. We got to know that we the stuff before we get other people to believe that and fill it in our bones and know that it's true. That's what joy is to me. That's what joy is, and it's from the inside, man, it's not from the outside, because when it's from the outside, nigel, it can be taken from you, because the person could flip on you and be like I'm going to stop giving that person that elation that they're feeling Right, and you don't want to be addicted to that drug of everybody else and attention, blah, blah, blah Nah man.
Speaker 2:Who are you when the lights are off, when it's just you and your own thoughts, and you look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the night and do you like that person that you see? Do you love them with every fiber of your being?
Speaker 1:When fiber of your being, when you do, that's where joy is. Yeah, wow, that's powerful. Yeah, and as you were speaking, I was thinking in the online business space. I don't know if you experience this, but I know you get sucked into those disingenuous marketing practice. There's something you said my little sorry, my ipad pen broke so I was trying to take notes as you were talking but you said something about being like transparent and be not overexerting yourself, and I know there's been one thing that's been like you over deliver, like for client. I remember when I was doing my online, the first online business, I got sucked into one of those bro marketing things. It was like, oh yeah, I'm going to make all this money overnight, and it was. They're like you have to over under. I don't even remember the quote Cause I just threw it out of my head Cause it makes no sense.
Speaker 2:Under promise over deliver. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:And how do you feel about that? Like that statement, I think a lot of entrepreneurs jump out of corporate or whatever their jobs and end up getting in prison in their own business following some of these tactics. So what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, I do the phrase under promise over deliver. I was thinking about that, but not in the bro marketing sense, and I think there's a version of that phrase that is very useful in the sense. Najla of you know the inverse of that, which is over-promising and under-delivering. So you'd rather have a person have lower expectations on you and then you exceed them, than for the inverse to be true for me to be a blowfish, in other words. Right All of this pump and energy, but I ain't really got no substance to me yeah for you'd rather it be the opposite.
Speaker 2:So that was like the first thing that I just wanted to like clarify that yeah, and maybe that, I think, is yeah, sorry, it's probably the other one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's probably the other one that that may have come from the blow marketing part. But yeah, like, totally like under promise, over deliver, in the sense of your standards that you set for yourself and the fact that you want to surprise and delight people beyond what you have told them that you're going to give them, because you're expecting X Y, z and you give them X, y, c, a, b, c, c, five. Like that's a good thing, that's a good look, no-transcript. Going back to what we have said a little bit early in this conversation, if you can be genuine and earnest and treat people like people and bring your humanity and your empathy to your offers and your work and your brand, then like that's the best of what marketing can be like. To market Sometimes can feel like it is counterintuitive to all of those things where you have to be something that you're not. We have to make false promises, we have to kind of get people to buy into something and kind of trick them into doing stuff you don't want to be that person.
Speaker 2:And if you do want to be that person, it's not going to last. That's not a sustainable way to live. And you're constantly having to look over your shoulders because you know you're selling dreams and stuff. That's not a good look and bring all of me into my work and thrive with it and sell things right, Because you need to make money, not only survive, but to thrive, and to do that without losing myself without losing my soul.
Speaker 2:That's the hard, not the hard part, but that is the thing about this. That is worth pursuing, yes, and if we lose our weight on the track to that outcome, then we need to get around some of the right people and stuff again to really check us right and assess and be like nah, like you had good intentions but you veered off the path like for sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you can't be treating people like numbers or just being I need to do a million dollars a month and stuff like that for the sake of just just wanting to hit that number just arbitrary. Almost I need to do a million dollars a month and stuff like that for the sake of just wanting to hit that number Just arbitrary almost.
Speaker 2:Do you really need that? Do you need these material things to feel better about yourself? Some of the women will probably call that LDE, right? So the opposite of BD, because you're trying to compensate for something that you ain't got, and stuff, if you're confident in your abilities and you are earnest about them, because you recognize that you always got something to learn, you will never have it all figured out and you that is a sustainable place to come from and you recognize you don't need all of that stuff to be to feel full and complete, that you could just be good yeah, what you got, yeah, yeah I.
Speaker 1:I thank you for clarifying that, because I think maybe people say that and then the inverse is true I don't know if you've ever.
Speaker 1:They promise all these things and oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna mess up the quote again, but I'm gonna, under promise and over deliver. You go in that program and then it's okay. Okay, what is this? Like you said, you were going to do X, y and Z, but I think, like you said, if you come from a place of like genuineness and vulnerability, then you don't need to make that promise, because that's just what your value is.
Speaker 2:It's where the values already is and they can already tell you. You can already tell that's a person that you would want to work with, because they're giving you the time of day, nadja, and they're not making you feel like you're a number or just a box that they got to tick Right, and so I don't want to feel played like that man.
Speaker 2:I personally don't want to feel like that and I don't want to be like sold to in that way. Right, you got X amount of time with a person and you recognize that their only job, only reason that they're talking to you is they're trying to convert you, they're trying to get you from, they're trying to just sell you on something and it might not even be what you need. They know it ain't what you need, but they don't care. They're going to sell it to you anyway because you're a number to them. You don't mean much and I'm just like I'm not even going to give that the respect of a response. Right, you're just in the ignore list already.
Speaker 1:I'm not even going to dignify that with a response right, yeah yeah, I think buyers are getting savvy now because we have been birthed so many times by that. Whatever, messing it up for the good people people that are- messing it up for the genuine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're messing it up for the genuine people. Yeah, because that mess it up for the genuine people. Yeah, they're messing it up for the genuine people yeah. Because back in the early days when I was freelance designing, I would always get people that came to me after the last designer did them bad and stuff did them poorly so even though they found me, even though they found me and I'm not even bidding for the job, they're still reluctant to hire me to the first place.
Speaker 2:So I'm just like how is it supposed to work? You found me, you want to hire me to do something for you, but you don't have the budget and you're reluctant to doing it because your last person burned you. Yet you're still trying to get into this relationship.
Speaker 1:It's like completely backwards.
Speaker 2:I didn't seek them out. They came to me, but you also not sold at the same time. This ain't going to work. This is not going to work. That's like you're trying to be in a relationship with somebody but you're going out on this date. You're just like, yeah, man, my partner's cheated on me, did me wrong and everything, and I don't know if this is going to work out. I'm trying it and stuff anyway, but the person saying all of that is the one that's swiping right and all of that, and you're like why did you even waste my?
Speaker 2:time. How's this supposed to work? How's this supposed to work really? Right like a completely passive aggressive thing when you think about it definitely.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, yeah. So going back to that pivot, what was the pivot that you had to make and work through?
Speaker 2:make pivots all the time. It's never just one thing, yeah, but my biggest one not my biggest one, but probably the most transitional one was when I had left my one and only job as a graphic designer, my traditional job as a graphic designer. That I was at for four years and I had ascended to the highest possible position in there and couldn't go any further and I knew I wanted something more than the confines of what that environment had provided. And I was. I remember putting out my resume this was back in 08, putting out my resume a couple of times and I'm just like why ain't nobody getting back to me? They're not even trying to interview me, not really also realizing that the recession was happening at the same time.
Speaker 2:But I think this was even slightly before that. I was like, man, I'm tripping, maybe they're not seeing value in me. And I did that for a couple of weeks and woke up one day with an epiphany just as clear as day. It was just like maybe because it's now time for me to bet on myself and be a freelancer, because I'm not going to sit up here and doing the same thing over and expecting a different result, because that's the definition of what Nadja Insanity. So why am I sitting here? And I'm definitely not going to get on welfare or nothing like that. I'm young and I'm talented. I know I got options. So that was never an option for me either.
Speaker 2:So I took plan C, which was just okay, let me just do this. I put in my two week notice, had nothing else lined up, didn't put in any more applications and I never looked back. So that was 16 years ago. That was a big pivot, and it was a pivot also filled with hubris, because I was young, had pride and I was just like. I made it this far. I can't go back and stuff now. So not only am I going to quit this job with nothing lined up and no lines of credit, no savings, but I'm also going to buy a house and buy a car. So then I'm really backing myself into a corner because I can't go back and stuff Right. So in hindsight, yeah, like you I can't go back and stuff Right.
Speaker 2:So in hindsight, yeah, like you, you're young and stupid and stuff Really and not didn't have it all together and it's just, man, that all could have felt miserably for me, right. But I had grit, I had hustle, I showed up, I got me some business cards printed, I was hitting up business parks and stuff. Them called me back and it was just like one little project and stuff here and there that started to snowball and stuff A logo project here, a vector project there. I took those small jobs and I removed that veneer of hubris. I'm going to have to take even the jobs that I didn't think I would, that I'm bigger than, and just to get a name for yourself and get that rep and get those testimonials and get some skin in the game and some history behind you and portfolio.
Speaker 2:So that was a huge pivot. Yeah, yeah, again, there was a lot of. It was like stupidity, but also like hustle at the same time, and just a willingness to put in those hard yards, man.
Speaker 1:And just be like how do I?
Speaker 2:I gotta make this work. And for a minute there and I was like I had to get me a. I had to give me a part-time job too. That wasn't in the design field, just to make ends meet. Here's what I did do. How about this? Najla?
Speaker 2:That boss knew that I was overqualified for that job. He and I both knew that I was just taking this job until my design business kicked off, and he was cool with that. Matter of fact, he respected it. Nice Cause ain't nobody ever come with him like that. And again, like he was real. He already knew that this wasn't where I was going to end up, but this was like fast and easy money being a delivery driver for a fast food restaurant okay, for a fast food chain. And so I was just like this is easy cash. Every single day I'm coming like with literal cash in my pocket, plus I got this check coming. I did that for a couple months while getting my my freelance design business off the ground back in that point in time and then eventually I made enough, quit the other job and kept moving forward.
Speaker 1:So that's just like one of many pivots. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing how when you buy like we bought a house and we went through it and it was like the main like sometimes you're amazed how resourceful you can get when your back is against the wall. I'm not trying to lose this house. I put too much money down. I signed too many signatures to lose what I have, so now I got to go out there and make the money. We got to figure it out somehow.
Speaker 2:And that's what creativity is to me. I've been talking with this in our community, inside Forge, about this. We just had this conversation today where I prompted them, najla, about what does creativity mean to you? Because I defined it as something that's accessible to us all. It's so accessible because it is what you just hit on which I use it as a nazla for resourcefulness. What do you do with what? With who you know, what you have access to and what your skill? That and remixing them in a unique way. Yes, to make something out of nothing. Because, like you said, I worked too hard to come this far. I had to sign all of this stuff. I got this house, mom and them proud. Everybody like I can't go back and stuff.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know, at the time in your early 20s, you're just like I'm just happy to have a house and stuff in the first place. I can't, my pride won't let me like, fail at this. I got to make this work, like. I can't go back, go back and, like you said, it's amazing what you do when your back is cornered, even when you are the one who backed yourself into that corner, completely because you got too much pride. You didn't listen to nobody.
Speaker 2:You know that the financial advisors told you that you need to have three to six months of runway before you even buy that house in the first place. I ignored all of that.
Speaker 1:And I was just like, oh exactly, it would be that low. They know they were wrong.
Speaker 2:They were so right. They kept telling me. They said, Darnell, live below your means. Oh too young to understand, understand what that means.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a lesson I'm still learning I honestly would be like I'd rather just make more money than cut, get back on the things I want. Yeah, let's see, there was something. I think you said that like how do you talk yourself into doing the things that you don't want to do?
Speaker 2:yeah, because I talk myself into them. If I'm, if I get real nausea and I recognize that is this something that is bigger than me? Because if it is, then I already know what I need to do. Yeah, I need to get out of analysis paralysis mode. I need to get out of my perfectionist tendencies and just realize that you got to show up and experiment. Man. Experiment is probably the greatest teacher next to failure and next to traveling. Yeah, in terms of smarts that you can failure and next to traveling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in terms of smarts, that you can't get in no school, right, I said, if it's bigger than me, I got to get out there and show up, because the more that I sit here and wonder about this, I'm doing someone out there a disservice who is probably picking an inferior service or product or consultant or something because, they don't know that I exist because I'm over here tripping off of vanity metric probably.
Speaker 2:So start off with my internal validation barometer.
Speaker 2:And I say, even though this is bigger than me, how do I make the success small, achievable, that is, to what I would personally feel is a good standard for me, that would make me feel better about myself, that is me knowing that I'm better than I was yesterday.
Speaker 2:I define that and then I get to the money, as I say, and I say can I hit this first barometer, this internal success barometer, and only then will I move on to the external factors, where I go to that next step. But most of the time Nigla's bigger than me anyway, and so that automatically gets me out of my own head about it all and just to show up and stuff. And now that I have created this community, big C community of people who depend, not even depend, who look forward to this type of energy that I'm bringing to the proceedings, I got all of this like implicit accountability to say if I'm not going to do it for myself, I'm going to do it for them at least yeah this is a paid community that they're showing up to be a part of right, that they're both making me better.
Speaker 2:They're making each other better and I'm also making them better in different ways, like we're all capitalized Right, so it's so much bigger than me.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I'm flipping over probably real small stuff. Right, you know, if I'm getting into how I look or something like that, or I got a pimple or something on my face and I don't want to show up, or like I am today still recovering from being, from having the common cold and stuff.
Speaker 2:It's just it's just man. But going back to what I said earlier, remember your training, darnell. I was already training for this by waking up at 4 am in the morning for the last five years so that when the times get difficult like I got a cold or something, I ain't feeling my best self, stop tripping, wallowing that for five or ten minutes, give it and then move on, because I done already trained for this. I know better, right, I know better what I'm tripping off of. I did this every day in a row consecutively when the times was good, so that when the times do get bad, I can step up and people I'm talking to them today and this week they don't even notice I got a cold.
Speaker 2:Really, they don't even know I wouldn't have no that's how, that's how turnt up you are, because you already and again. That's just that in practice. It just goes to show you, man, as they say, there's not even practice makes perfect, but it's just, if you can do it and you repeat it, you make it a habit. You automatically it doesn't get what they say. You automatically it doesn't get what they say. What's that phrase? It doesn't get any easier, you just get better at it. And that's how it is. It's just like you're training. You're training every day. How do you train? Put yourself through challenges, through resistance?
Speaker 2:in a controlled environment. Right, when you're in an environment that isn't controlled, you can reflect on your training and recognize that, oh, I got the discipline, I've earned it, I've went through it, I know better. I'm just defaulting to a normal state. I got to use my intentionality and recognize that it's bigger than me to shift things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, that's good, yeah, and that lends itself to the next question, which I think you already touched on how to take action versus just doing the ideas, because the ideas are fun, the planning like ooh, I can imagine what things are gonna be like, but to sit down and actually do the work you already touched on it about this is bigger than you or me. Or think of all the impact that you're going to make by doing these small little actions here and there and, like you said, just breaking it down and, yeah, you're breaking it down and you got to look.
Speaker 2:You got to look to the stories of those who have who, those who have had it harder than you, who have made it beyond what you would even see as humanly possible, because they're examples in history. So that's like another big thing for me that I tap into a lot. Najla is like the stories of those who are less fortunate, right. So I be thinking about even my life senses growing up from very humble means and growing up in low-class neighborhoods and stuff coming up out of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That even that in America like, is still better than some people in third-world countries just from a societal standpoint. Just like growing up in conditions no comparison Right and they went on to do amazing things Right. Might have became astronauts or something like that.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Whatever it may be, they've achieved their dreams. That's just from a societal standpoint. That's before we even get into. Oh, if I might have a peer, I might run into somebody that went through some real hardcore stuff growing up, such as things done to them their bodies were violated by family members, type of stuff. Right, right, what I'm tripping off of. What am I complaining about, when already and the thing is, it's not even because I don't want to get you, it's not about the whole comparison trap either. I'm saying my story is better than theirs for the sake of doing that.
Speaker 2:But if we can't help ourselves but look at, oh, the grass must be greater, or how am I in relation to nodular? And if we can't help ourselves but do that, then why are we not comparing ourselves to those who have had it worse? And why do we only look at those who are beyond us and we sitting up as we say, comparing our chapter threes to another person's chapter 47, and it's just like they did a whole that's. You're not even in the same chapter right now, and so, if you compare any, I'm always like I love seeing stories that make you make me tear up, man, make me tear up, make me feel something in my soul to be like.
Speaker 2:This is a single mom doing this who is missing both of her limbs. She got a daughter to take care of and you see her preparing her meals for her. I look at stuff like that and I'm just like Darnell you have absolutely nothing to complain. None of your problems will ever be, will ever relate. They can't relate, they can't correlate. They're not even in the same like wavelength Right.
Speaker 2:That person has found contentness and they found purpose in still living and still getting up there and showing up every day, and somebody ran around and recorded this story and put this up for all of us to see. They didn't mind sharing their story. But I'm tripping over how I look in the morning. Right, it's just I'm gonna look at those stories. So when I do that, it's nothing from. It's like I already. Oh yeah, I'm turd. I'm turd like we are and, if anything, I'm coming from a place nausea of.
Speaker 2:Actually, I'm empowered, bold and better than I thought I was. I'm. I got more of an advantage than I thought I did. I had great people around me. I got great people in my orbit. I got people who want me to win. I should really be going in, yeah, in. Whatever I do, I can't be tripping. So it's stuff like that that already be getting me to change my mindset, nigel, combined with the fact that, like I said, my orbit is strong now and since I've been so intentional about my connections for these past two years, the people that are in them ride or die. Level day one's level. Like what you need. I got you level.
Speaker 1:You got something that's coming out.
Speaker 2:we all on it, let's support it. And I'm just like man. I got lifelong friends who ain't even on it like this. And this is what I was able to attract just by placing my order with the universe Right and then be going out there and getting it and making connections, being curious with people. Yes, Genuinely curious with them. And they see how I show up and we, just we make this thing rock. We recognize that, hey, let's cross, pollinate man.
Speaker 1:We can help each other in so many different ways and in unique ways.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's actions over ideas, man, it's just not. If you're afraid to try it, if you're tripping like not only would I share my stories to help you out, but also we will do it together and stuff I will help you in real time, Do it Like let's just let's not even think about it too hard, because we've seen mediocre ideas that became successes.
Speaker 2:So, it doesn't matter to me if your idea is great or bad. Let's put some energy behind that. Let's test it for ourselves, look at what the results tell us and then we already know what it is. We can move on and keep going, but we can't sit in a theory stage all day. We have to put energy behind stuff, and I think what the missing piece was just that a lot of us don't feel comfortable doing that when it's just us, so we need community.
Speaker 2:I feel like to even feel like you know what. I'm not alone on this journey. I got people that love and support me. And also they're going to hold me accountable, so I can't talk myself out of this no more, because I didn't hold them in.
Speaker 2:I don't want to let Najla down, because that's going to make me feel worse than letting myself down. I've spoken into an existence. I know she's going to check in with me on Friday. I better have a good answer for her because I do not want her hitting me up and putting mad emojis and cussing me out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And I think it's so interesting that, like we connected over this because I was talking to my mom yesterday and about, oh, jumping into entrepreneurship and people of a certain age really risk averse, so she's and I was like mom did? You told me to believe in God, believe in the universe, so don't you think that he's got me. In a worst case scenario, I go back and get a job, but she's like that's a different story. But trust, like you said, trusting in the universe, that the worst thing that could happen is that you just go back to a job and that's not the end of the world, like you said you'd like to get stuck in paralysis of what's the best idea and what's this and this, and then at some point you're just like I got to do something.
Speaker 1:I just can't sit here and all these ideas, because how am I going to make an impact if the ideas are just sitting in my iPad or sitting on my notebook and not making it out to the world?
Speaker 2:1,000%. You got to, as I like to say, man I tell people this a bunch of times like you wouldn't ever have tried everything that you could have to attain the success that you see Never. It's impossible. There's an infinite amount of choices, infinite amount of bubbles in terms of people, like bubbles that could collide, of people that you could rub shoulders up against, who could be outside of your network, and just one. All it takes is one person to believe in you, who has the resources that you need, for instance, and believes in you being what everybody else is. Those are the greatest stories, Najla, that we hear about people that got signed in record labels.
Speaker 2:Like most of the stories about the record labels are like one in a million Right. We were getting found by us on YouTube.
Speaker 1:One in a million.
Speaker 2:Being found by Lil Wayne One in a million. So it's just, you're never going to have tried anything. So, even if entrepreneurship is a path, yes, you could for sure go back to traditional employment. But even if you decide to do that, a, it's still a choice and B you still haven't tried everything else to be successful in entrepreneurship. You never will. I will give you 30 more ideas that you probably didn't think of, right, right Before you back up out of that. And, like you said, there's no shame in going back or at least doing that part-time just to again get you some steady income.
Speaker 1:Recalibrate.
Speaker 2:You're able to invest, recalibrate, give you the time to invest in your ideas so that then you can be a little bit more strategic. You can say, oh boom, my household expenses are $2,500 a month. If I can cover this with a part-time job, working 20 hours a month, I'm at 20 hours a week. I got 23 hours in there that I could be used to watching binging Netflix, hanging out with my friends, or I could be out here trying to get this money. In terms of what I'm truly passionate about, what am I?
Speaker 2:willing to sacrifice. We already know that sacrifice is the price of admission for entrepreneurship. Right, it's the price of admission, Like you're going to have to work 80 hour weeks sometimes. You're going to have to work nights and weekends. You're going to have to be on oodles and noodles or what they call them here ramen noodles, that's what they call it. I think it's Chicago. You're going to have to be on those for some nights and stuff, man, while you're trying to make this stuff work. When I talk with my entrepreneur friends who went through that, it's just like one of the reasons that we kept going Najla real quick was that life was still more appealing to us than answering to a person yes, With two weeks of vacation, employees that we don't like, work that we don't like doing, and probably around bosses that we're a lot smarter than yes, thank you. Work that we don't like doing, and probably around bosses that we're a lot smarter than yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:If we work in 80 hours a week and I'm, I'm, I got a, you got beach chairs, it's furniture you might not know how you're going to pay your mortgage. Right now you would. That is still less painful than going back to a job like that. Yeah, that was it that was it for that, was it for us. I don't mean it, sorry.
Speaker 1:Well, but we'll just slap the E label on this.
Speaker 2:It's like when you sit there and think about it you're just like dang out of everything. At least I get to make my own choices.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:No matter what I went through today on a Tuesday, when I wake up on Wednesday, the world is back my oyster again. Right, I can turn rotation Right Back into rotation. I got a fresh start. I don't know what's going to happen. It could happen in a good way. Life could happen in a good way to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, per se, what is it? Luck is opportunity meets preparation. Yes, and that's so true. It's like all of the discipline and grind that you've set up, and then it's just like the right person. The right person the right circumstance and you're in the right room at that right time.
Speaker 1:Right Nelly.
Speaker 2:Nelly, you are.
Speaker 1:Will Smith during his.
Speaker 2:Fresh Prince audition with Quincy Jones and them. When he wanted to back out and Quincy pulled him aside and was like dude, this is your time. You are never going to have these people in this room again. It's NBC who wants to launch this and you got to sell them on why you should be the lead of this show type Right.
Speaker 2:And that was luck and becoming an icon that was opportunity and preparation and becoming an icon, a once in a million chance. Yes and again, jones had to pull him aside and tell him you ain't going to get this, no more.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You can think about it if you want to and rehearse and come back into it, but don't find somebody else. They A and B, these same decision makers are not all going to be in the same room ever again, like where everybody all got the same Right. It's serendipitous sometimes that you got to be prepared for that, and so I'm just like, yeah, man, every day is a new chance. I look at the sky, I look at the sun, I look to those signs that it's a new day. Anything could happen, yeah, good or bad. Am I willing to go and seize that, or am I going to sit here and continue to let life happen to me and be like my whole? Like that? I am not better than my circumstances that I can't get out of my you think, as if that is productive to my mindset right that's just the way things is.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna take that. I'm just 80 years. Oh yeah, I'm just gonna take it and just be a gentle person and right taxes and yep, get my check, and just.
Speaker 1:It's just like nah man yeah, go through life too much about working lives.
Speaker 2:We spend too much of our lives in working mode to be doing something that you ain't happy and lit up about, right? Not saying that you can't get that at traditional employment, but that's what I'm just saying. That is like entrepreneurial spirits that we just employment, but that's what I'm just saying. Entrepreneurial spirits, we're just built different, we're wired different.
Speaker 1:We're just wired differently.
Speaker 2:We don't think like everybody else. We don't find fulfillment by the same stuff. That steady paycheck may look good to you but, as we call that, that's what we call the golden handcuffs. You can be paid a lot but hate the work and it's like like why you constantly got to give one up for the other. No, I love what I love doing and I want to be paid handsomely for. Why can't I thrive and find joy in what I work? We know that it exists, it's out there, it's attainable.
Speaker 2:People have done it after that, people have done it, so I know it exists and if they haven't, damn it I'll be the first one to. And I bet you I attract that. I bet you I would track this course I will set an example for others on the road up, because they need an example. So if it hasn't been done, that's even more of a reason for me to do it Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, our time is coming to an end. Was there any questions that I, you wanted me to ask, that I didn't ask you?
Speaker 2:You asked great questions. I appreciate your openness. I felt that you yeah, you just did a really good job. Thank you for reading the notes that I put on your sign-up form and for asking the questions that you did. I like unique questions. I don't like small talk and stuff, but let's talk about real stuff. Let's talk about real stuff. This is a hard life. It's not easy, especially in those beginning days, and I definitely if you're a person of color and stuff too trying to do this man.
Speaker 1:Come on, man, In America you already know what it is. Yeah, we might have to have you on again. That's a whole another podcast. But yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:That's a whole another thing. And even though, again, I felt anomalous with the people that have been in my orbit, who are multi-ethnic as it gets, they don't? They only just see me, man? They genuinely do. They only see me. They do not see my color first. Yeah, and I'm just like I'm already empowered by who I am.
Speaker 1:I love who I am, and yeah, people, I love this, I love this.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't trade it for the world wouldn't trade it, for the world would never change it. And I'm just like for people to accept me and for something that I have going on about my energy or my aura, about people, that's just not a barrier for them at all. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to be the glue between these people Right. At the same time, nigel, I'm just like, yeah, I recognize that there might be a whole host of things going on that I don't know about, what people say or think about me, that I don't see Right A and B. Even if it wasn't personally me, I know that my people on the whole, that that is not.
Speaker 2:It's not a just, it's not a just society. So if you are trying to make it a man, person of color and entrepreneurship at the same time, this is not easy. So we need our peers, we need people to open, to help open the doors for us, to give us the insights that they have earned, to make that road easier, man, for other people, because you would wish that you had that and why would you hoard that anyway? Why would you?
Speaker 1:be, selfish.
Speaker 2:Why would you be stingy like that? It's already hard for them, so help that person out, love them that. It's already hard for them, so help that person out, love them. Share what you have gained. Don't hoard that, and I don't like when people do that, so I'm just like, yeah, when you put the offer out and I saw that, I was like, yeah, man, they won, it don't matter, let's do this like I'm already in yeah, I need to know much about you, just the fact that a person that you can help, or that you can get your message out there or help who the listeners or viewers are and stuff.
Speaker 2:Let's do this. We need to be having these conversations so I'm grateful to you yeah, well, thank you for giving for opening up the platform yeah because we need to be having these conversations yeah, I appreciate that the more that this gets out, the more we we shift the paradigm right. They know how, they know what we really think and feel about entrepreneurship and about the road, and it's not going to change until we till we make it happen.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you. I saw on your website that you said you are mcu fan. Yeah, yeah. So have you watched deadpool and wolverine yet twice?
Speaker 2:oh my god oh, sorry about the, who would actually like those balloons, because you know how deadpool is oh man he would have liked those balloons that just came out of video. But anyway, I didn't say a piece like two times yeah, I've seen it two times already, so then I'll tell you what I think about it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, I saw it opening day I. We haven't seen a second time yet. But and the next question I wanted to be was it was hilarious opening scene. Oh, oh my gosh, no spoilers, no spoilers, hopefully by the time, but, oh my gosh, I was like I don't know how to feel about this right now, but I can't stop laughing.
Speaker 2:I was sitting here thinking I was like James Mangold, the director of Logan. I said, man, he must be livid, he must be livid.
Speaker 1:Oh man, logan was a good movie too, though. It was a good movie too, though, and then it was well okay if you're like MCU have you seen X-Men 97?
Speaker 2:then I have. I've seen all of X-Men 97, okay man, oh my gosh, I was like I'm waiting for the second season. I was like y'all better bring it. Oh yeah, man, that was a classic growing up.
Speaker 1:I remember watching that in Chi-Town yeah like when I was in the early what, nine, ten years old, or something like that you already know that what it is, I know, and then you hear that little and it is yes, yes, okay, as you bring it back, do you have a freebie that you want to share with our audience?
Speaker 2:or yeah, my newest one is called Amplify Time and your Creative Business in Three. Steps and you can pick that up at darnellbrowncom. Slash amplify.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so that is, if you're struggling with finding time in your business to do the things that matter like this is a good playbook for you. It's free. You can grab that right off that landing page Again. That's darnellbrowncom slash Amplify and that's called Amplify Time and your Creative Business Three steps where I break down these three frameworks of how to still work with your existing 24 hours in a day, which we all have equally, and we'll turn that into something different, so that you are you're working with time in a different way and being able to access and harness your really creative time to be used in unique ways to further grow your impact and your bottom line. So I'd love for people to go ahead and check that out.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll definitely put a link in the show notes. I've always wanted to say that yeah, like and subscribe Give me a five-star rating. But thank you so much for your time and I hope to connect with you some more and I'll let you know when this goes live. I'll probably jump it up. We had such a good conversation. I'll probably jump it up the line.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I'll send you an email and let you know.
Speaker 1:Okay, sounds good, najla. Anything else that you need from me? No, I think everything's good.
Speaker 2:I think we had a really good conversation, so yeah, yeah, same here, same here, all right, well, yeah, I will keep an eye out for that, and otherwise I see you Was that momentum?
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:I'm in so many different groups.
Speaker 1:I think that was where we had connected otherwise I'll see you in there then okay, see you around, alright, bye have a great day you too. Thank you bye.