#210 Ed Latimore - From Alcohol Addiction to Thriving Online Business

Ed Latimore is a former professional heavyweight boxer, competitive chess player, and veteran of the U.S. Army National Guard. He holds a B.A. in Physics from Duquesne University. Millions of people have learned from Ed’s experiences through his writing.

We go deep into society's relationship with alcohol, looking at alcohol marketing, cultural norms, and the historical threads from Prohibition that have stitched alcohol into the American social fabric. We analyse the online business space, revealing how to curate impactful content and build a network of influence, especially on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

Twitter: Ed Latimore
YouTube: EdLatimore1

My Socials:

Instagram: Darrenlee.ks
LinkedIn: Darren Lee
Twitter: Darren_ks

(00:00) Preview and Introduction
(00:52) Do The Work
(04:30) The Challenge with Following Through with Your Ideas 
(06:10) The Reality of Growing up Poor 
(10:30) The Extremes in Poverty in USA 
(13:08) The Importance of Reinventing Yourself 
(17:10) Statistics of Alcohol & Addiction 
(22:30) Does Quitting Alcohol Make You Less Interesting? 
(25:00) Rules, Laws & Crimes of Alcohol  
(31:10) How Ed Latimore Transitioned into Writing 
(33:30) How Ed Latimore Built His Audience Online 
(37:30) The Power of LinkedIn 
(43:50) Ed Latimore's New Book
(47:30) How to Improve Your Writing Skills 
(54:30) How to Become a Better Writer Now  
(01:01:11) Should Anyone Write a Book 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Because one of the things that alcohol does it absolutely murders your ability to decode body language and read people. The reality is that there's a much stronger correlation between high IQ and physical fitness than there is anything else. There's what you know, and then there's how you speak about what you know. The how is what generates the engagement. If you're only focusing on the marketing and not on the writing, you'll be popular, right, but people take your content seriously. It'll be very difficult to grow.

Speaker 2: 0:29

And these guys tell you to open a spreadsheet and create all your stories and your epiphany stories and your obstacles and your bridges and all this stuff. If you actually do it, cause and effect this will take an impact six months, 12 months, 18 months from now. Before we start this week's episode, I have one little favor to ask you. Can you please leave a five star rating below so we can help more people every single week. Thank you All. Right, dude, let's kick off. Well, I appreciate this. I know a long time coming. I appreciate this, and I want to start with a quote from yourself. Right? So forget all the hacks, just do the work. Eventually, your brain will get the message. How many years did it take you to get your brain to get the message? To do the hard work?

Speaker 1: 1:11

You know, when I think about it in terms of like, how it applied to me, I don't think I ever had a problem doing like hard work, like things that are difficult or challenging. I think that's what drew me to boxing, for example, and even what drew me to my eventual degree path as an adult, which is, you know, physics is not an easy discipline, very challenging, very difficult. Where I had, I think, challenges was whenever I'd have to like accept just the path that it would take to become better. And even there I didn't have, I don't think I had problems. I guess I guess, overall, where it comes from is I didn't have issues with the idea, but I recognize that many people have issues with the idea.

Speaker 1: 2:11

We live in a very, a very great time in that it's very easy to survive. You don't have to like you don't need to be able to hunt or grow your own food. You don't need to even have to like live in a congested city versus a suburb because of the instantaneous and ubiquitous nature of communication. It's like everywhere everyone's interconnected and then this is like, and then it's so clean and safe, like you know. Sure, there are, like your, violent incidents that occur, but that's everywhere. As a whole, the world continues to get safer and safer, so all of this has created an environment where you don't really have to do much Like and not even to be entertained.

Speaker 1: 3:08

I used to have a joke when I was younger I know it was definitely when I was single, because I didn't even think like this in the past 11 years and I used to tell my buddy I was like all you need is Netflix and some Netflix and a crib and you'll be like the man you know, you'll be able to like, have some girls or entertainment, and even if you don't want that, then you can be entertained by pornography and fast food and the Uber Eats. Like. You don't even have to go to the grocery store Like we even removed that challenge. So we've removed all of these challenges and that's not really good for, I think, developing your ability to persist through challenges, to go after what you want, anything like that.

Speaker 1: 3:57

So I think I came up with the idea, or I said that because I was just thinking about how people have trouble with this. I don't think I have trouble with it, but I'm fortunate. You know, I'm an older millennial. That means it's a coin flip. It's just the different, the generations to make a big difference. I think like I never. I never discount the role that, when I was born, has played in everything in my life for better or worse.

Speaker 2: 4:30

Man, and the thing with this is that I'm slightly younger than you. I just turned 28, right, and what I what I noticed is that I'm only 11 because you call it slightly younger.

Speaker 1: 4:39

That's funny.

Speaker 2: 4:42

There's a there's a kind of saying in the startup world, right, which is like zero to one is the hardest, and that is true. But I think one to 10 can be the hardest because you have to keep it up, you have to do the thing you said you were going to do. You have to put down Netflix, put down fucking porn, put down junk food and just repeatedly do the hard stuff continuously. So I think for a lot of people, spinning up ideas can be easy, right, you have a newsletter, it can be a community page, it can be a podcast. Going zero to one isn't your problem, but staying on that course is, and that is a conditioning for sure 100%, because I think for me it came from individual sports.

Speaker 2: 5:19

You were a boxer, I was a hundred meter sprinter, I also played rope at the time as well. But what? What I learned more from sprinting versus ropey was the fact that it's on you Like it's just on you right that if you win, congratulations. If you lose, you can't blame anyone. It's as you and eight other dudes right that are out of fucking stutter on the track, and I think that kind of set me up well for when I was older. But obviously the best place to be set up is, well, not the best place, but the one way to learn is through your upbringing, which, of course, like, had many different challenges, which is interesting, right, because now you kind of you, you almost like laugh about it, use as anecdotes, use as storytelling, which is part of your writing. But that's hugely influential to you, right, and I want to actually raise a point on that too. So I saw from one of your I didn't cut it in from your posts, your podcasts that your mom was making up to $4,000 a year. What was that experience like?

Speaker 1: 6:13

Well, growing up poor sucks man, it's not 4,000 a year.

Speaker 2: 6:18

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:20

It was between like four and seven, which even then was not a lot of money. I mean it's, and by then I mean in the late eighties, early nineties. So you know you're just for inflation. It's probably somewhere in the range of 12 to 13,000, maybe not even that high, that like, but as far as, as far as childhood goes, it's.

Speaker 1: 6:48

It's an interesting environment that is. That is, public housing, because public housing is, is kind of the last battalion. You know where you go before you're homeless, and a lot of people start there, a lot of people stay there. Subsidized housing by itself isn't a bad thing, but the people and the environment that it brings into it it comes with a lot of, a lot of bad, a lot of rough issues, a lot of crime, a lot of what we'll just call it general ignorance. And and you know, when you grow up in that environment, well, first of all, wherever you grow up, that's where you are going to get the most influence in your life and it's down. I mean, like nature is really funny that way the two things that make the biggest difference in our, our outcomes in life, our, what we grew up and our parents, are completely out of our control. So you know, with that said, I remember, I just I don't have like a lot of happy memories or anything like that from childhood. I don't have many memories like I know.

Speaker 1: 8:09

Obviously I lived from, you know, 80 to 14, but but not to 14, where I still, where I go to a school and a completely different neighborhood, do I enjoy memories where I like started to like my childhood and, and you know, made friends and felt safe, but that was getting out of that place I was in and then that was like through no assistance from my mom, I had to figure out where I was going to go to high school. And that was the big difference because and this might seem like a random thing, like out of out of lines, let me like make sure I clarify this idea. So when in our city and I and I think most places in the in the US or wherever you know, your, your schools are determined by where you live, like obviously you can like pay to go to a school somewhere else, but if you're just going to rely on the public school system, then you are designated by some. That meant that for elementary and middle school, when I did, when I, you know, went with the feeder zones for my neighborhood. I was with a bunch of other people from my neighborhood, other poor surrounding neighborhoods, and they brought within their own habits and issues.

Speaker 1: 9:26

So it was a crazy place. It was a really rough. You know. We're just not an enjoyable time for me. I look back on that and you know, fortunately at this point in my life I mean it's like one of my 39. So it's like over, it's over 15, over 20 years ago. Right, it's hard, it's over 25. Now, at this point that's crazy. It's a prison sentence for murder. It's how I like to look at it. I love these murder podcasts and shows I listen to a lot. So I just think about how long that time goes and most of the issues and habits that I developed in that environment I've overcome through my own work. But you're still your base level of thinking, where you come from. That was built there. I don't know if that's ever able to be completely removed or whatever or modified.

Speaker 2: 10:29

The difference with America, I find, compared to definitely Europe for sure is that there's a lot more extremes in a society. So I spent a lot of time in America at the end of last year recording and what I found is that there's two ends of the spectrum. My opinion is kind of split. One is very, very difficult to get out of that poverty. If you're in that poverty, it's a vicious cycle, so on and so forth. Similarly with the food the food is really bad for you. There's a lot of really bad choices.

Speaker 2: 11:01

But at the other end of the spectrum there's loads of opportunity. If you can get one leg up on the ladder, you can get into either a good school but that's probably out of the day at this age or you could just get in and start working with entrepreneurs, start working your way up, get a good opportunities and then you could be someone like yourself, right, like fully independent, break away from that system, be someone's healthy, fit, happy and so on. But it's like in between you have everybody else but you just have such a wide variety on either side. That's kind of you don't really experience that anywhere else.

Speaker 1: 11:33

That's. You know, that's a really good point. I lived in and lived in Portugal for a few not many, not even a year, probably like six months and the biggest difference that I can remember, at least in this regard, is that there didn't seem to be like a concept of of like wealthy and poor neighborhoods in the city, like not out of the suburbs, that shit there were. There were some places out there and it was like it's like the inverse of the United States, where the inner city is supposed to be rough and the suburbs are nice. Europe is kind of different. But I remember thinking as we move through different cities that you know, it's all kind of like, like there's less. Like you said, the average might be about the same but there's less variance. And in America, even if it's the same average, you're right it's like because the poor really poor and the rich are really rich. In that disparity.

Speaker 2: 12:45

I like that man, that one. It's variance, that's a great way to put it, a great way to put them on. It's just the gap in between, right, which, you know, it's the opportunity in America, though, right, I know this, we're going on a bit of a tangent, but that's like the opportunity that they push for you to to go and play, and that's the game that asks you to go play, right, it's like if you go and do the right thing, you're going to have space. So what I liked about you, what I've observed about you, which I think is very cool, right, is that, like you had the handbrake turn into boxing and then you went into physics and then you went into your writing from there, what's kind of gave you that kind of belief to be able to kind of reinvent yourself.

Speaker 1: 13:24

You know, I don't know I can, I'll rather I know that it's like not a great answer, but here's what I'll say. Boxing is like the first difficult thing I did in my life and I did it. I didn't start until I was an adult, and so what that does is is, you know, when you start as a kid, you you just like that's what you know, that's like fun time that you know you don't have many responsibilities, you can really dig into it and and love it. And that's why, like, talent kind of emerges when I think a lot of talent emerges from childhood and why a lot of people can only go far but they start something as kids. When you start something as an adult, you're you're juggling versus the stresses of survival, which is something you don't really have to think about.

Speaker 1: 14:24

As a kid, like I got to make sure I pay my rent because I got a, and then instead of and I have to make a choice at the end of the work day, do I go party or I'm rewind or do I go straight to the gym, right, and so all that I, and then seeing what that paid off for me, how that turned out for me, that it gives you a faith? I wouldn't. I mean belief. I guess belief, faith, they're kind of interchangeable, but it gave me the biggest belief for myself that I said okay, all I got to do is make the right decisions and I can do the things along the way. So that's the process of right decisions, and then follow the process along the way I do. Though if I do all that, then things are going to turn out okay. And they're going to turn out okay and pretty much wherever I want them to turn out okay.

Speaker 1: 15:26

And I think the hardest thing for people in this regard I mean I make it sound simple, but it is but there's one skill that makes a big difference in that stability to look at the future and then really treat it as a real thing. What I've learned is that people are absolutely off what this thing called the future. They don't. They don't consider how their actions are going to create another reaction, which might create another reaction. Planning is very hard. Imagining that things are going to go wrong, that's very difficult for people. So, as all of this, I think I naturally, for whatever reason, excel at, and that's helped me make smart moves and stick with something. It's hard to stick with something when you're expecting quick results, but when you know it, it'll take two, three, five years. All right, then you're right. You just got to put one foot in front of the other and I'll get through this.

Speaker 2: 16:31

Yeah, man, you just you stick to the process and that's why boxing or sport is a great way to give you that understanding. It's like you can only fight, let's say, three times in a year, just hypothetically. Therefore, I know that to get to a pro stage in nine fights, it's three years. It's very logical and, to be honest, man, business is exact same, like I would literally say that it is in stages, like there's different stages in your business and how you grow up and how you evolve as a person. But most people don't understand that, right, they don't think about it. Now, there's lots of different kind of like ways to take that in terms of, like, how you were, how boxing for you was a first vehicle, and I think this is interesting, right? Is that?

Speaker 2: 17:11

I think, for a lot of people, you know you struggle with alcohol and you, you know you had a lot. Well, a lot of people struggle with alcohol for different reasons, right? But when you find that vehicle, it's almost like you commit to something and then it's like all the other things subside. So let me give you an example. I create a lot of content there on alcohol and a lot of Irish people comment on it and say, oh well, what the fuck would I do if I gave up alcohol? But my take on this is like, is like you don't. You don't sit there and stare at the fucking wall on a Saturday night. You replace it. You either, you know, you go out with your friends, you play, you might play some sport or golf or some shit, but you replace it with something you enjoy. But for you would you have said that boxing was the first vehicle you had to troll yourself into, even though you were struggling with alcohol at the same.

Speaker 1: 17:58

Yeah, all right, and it's not even a question. I I wish that I had started fighting early, but I mean, who knows how things would have gone to? Every day you happen. So, yeah, everything happened the way it was supposed to happen, I think, and I'm really into just just extremely grateful that it did. But it was such a life changing experience for me.

Speaker 2: 18:31

So let's get into the alcohol part of stuff from your research in it and I don't know if you've done a couple of talks, is there any like statistics, you see, of people, of what you found from alcohol, people struggling with it and whatnot?

Speaker 2: 18:46

And on any particular topic or part of it, like the relapse rate or recovery or what makes someone more likely like A combination like anything that you found in your own research, even at the people that struggle with the percentage of people maybe that struggle with alcohol or people that relapse from it. So here's okay, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:06

So here's some interesting things I've found just in my own. Digging around is, and some of it directly relates to me Some of it I just find fascinating, but probably for the wrong reasons. So if you look at, kind of like, what the signs are of someone who is an alcoholic either or someone who can't control, like you know, they need to drink, otherwise they start going through issues, you know, get the shakes, whatever, so they need to drink. Or when they do drink they like Ben's drink repeatedly. And what I've found is that most people are many people, I would say, at least in the United States. I can't speak for Europe. I know that Europe has a very different relationship with alcohol and I can see that in the laws and the way it's sold and consumed.

Speaker 1: 20:10

But in the United States I find that many people who think that they're just normal drinkers are actually drinking at the alcoholic level. And and you know one could ask what does that mean? That the criteria is too sensitive, and I don't think it is because they like, if anything. You know, I looked at some stuff.

Speaker 1: 20:33

I was just talking to a guy about how they define Ben's drinking because he made a post about having a bottle of wine with your girl and talking, and or someone said that and he responded you know we should just call that Ben's drinking back in the day and my first response was a bottle of wine in a night is Ben's drinking? Oh yeah, like, like that's how, how normalized it is. That me is someone who is 10 years, so we're had that reaction number like wow. So I think many people are heavier or more dependent on alcohol than they know it. And even if it's not physiological, it's certainly psychological and that the number one worry that everyone has about drinking is like what am I going to do when I stop drinking? And I'm like, well, you'll, you'll go like I get the question.

Speaker 1: 21:22

So I'm never I'm never a dick about my answer, but but really, like you know, you would socialize and learn to interact and talk to people without the without. That is the background, but it's become so ingrained in our society that we don't even think about it, you know.

Speaker 2: 21:41

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Speaker 2: 22:11

It's also turned into an aspect to whereby you know we go back to like the weakening of like general, like society, right, and this is more of a crutch, and I remember when I was younger, so I actually you know you mentioned about Ireland or the Europe being different. Maybe central Europe is much more like they may have a better rules, but definitely UK and Ireland drink like fucking crazy, right, and people drink like at night, occasionally, continuously, and so on. So when they're younger and they're going out, I found it's quite interesting as a fact that it is a crutch. So whether you're out trying to date and get chicks, you have the, you have like a beer in your hand, like I was number one fucking corporate person for this right, I'd have like a beer, cigarette and it's almost like if you removed one of those variables you'd feel awkward.

Speaker 2: 22:59

And I heard Pierce. I heard Pierce Morgan say to Chris Williams and recently he was like oh, but like you know, people are more interesting when you drink beer. And he's like, and Chris said no, I would say the opposite, people are more interesting when they don't drink beer. But people pretend that they're interesting when they drink beer, right? Or drink alcohol. So it's almost like, and it's interesting because, like, if you were to redo the entire process, would you have alcohol in society? No, right, because of all the impact that it's had, negatively and positively. But I think one of the reasons why it's still there is because it's so much fucking money in it.

Speaker 1: 23:31

Same, as cigarettes. So much money. And not only is there so much money, yeah, and you're right about the, the. I don't know how we define that part of Europe. The British Isles, I guess, are Great Britain, that whole area. Yeah, that's a very different relationship with then. Then, where I spend most of my time in Southern Europe and I guess France, which is like dependent on the part of Europe. You're in our France, you're in the southern or our northern, but that money is. It's not just the money, all right, that's a big, big part of it.

Speaker 1: 24:13

But remember, in this country we had one of the greatest natural experiments ever launched, when we decided we would make alcohol constitutionally illegal. You couldn't have it, we. It means outlawed and it took. It took, but I remember it's the 18th and the 21st Amendment, but I know it wasn't three years, but that's how much of an impact we did. It skyrocketed crime, it corrupted the police forces of the country, the law enforcement forces. Because if people, if people can't buy it, that gene is out the back Once, once you, once you took it out, we can't put it back in. And in this country where, where we sprinkle capitalism on everything and we actually don't sprinkle it, we try and drown our food and it always have an analogy about how capitalism was like salt and we we drown our food in that. So it only makes sense that they would figure out how to to maximize the dollar out of alcohol, which means that, which means an incredible marketing campaign for a marketing campaign so good that we don't even question certain rights of passage, like how 21 year olds think they have to go to a bar and have their first drink and black out or something. This is absolutely mad when you think about it, but that's where we're at and that's what I find interesting. Another thing I find interesting this one doesn't relate to me, thank goodness is is when you look at the crimes and I cringe these numbers myself and I think, yes, they still on my website. I may have taken it down, but we look at sexual assault on the women between the eights of 18 and 24. If you remove the presence of alcohol, like if that was the one thing that they would change about the situation if you remove the presence of alcohol, you would. You would eliminate 95% of those assaults and I thought that was insane when I was I was, you know seeing what numbers took me. I was just making a point.

Speaker 1: 26:43

I thought I would include this chapter in my book, but it was, it was not. It didn't really fit. This was myself one of my self published books, sober letters to my drunken self, just giving people emotional tools for sobriety, and and I went, I was putting this chapter together and I was like, all right, this doesn't really fit but it's interesting. So I just kept the chapter and because of the research I dug up from the chapter and and more or less, if you get rid of and in other words, what I'm saying is the those, those issues are those assaults were reported in the presence of alcohol, Whether it was someone you know, one person was intoxicated or both people were intoxicated. And if you remove that, then what you end up with is Like most of these assaults don't happen in particular and not in that age range, because one of the things that alcohol does and it it's a double-edged, like my double-edged sword it it has two Deleterious effects on this particular issue.

Speaker 1: 27:59

It's effect one is that it absolutely murders your ability to decode Body language and read people. You just can't do it the one, the drunk, who get the harder it is to read people. And Then, on the other end of it, the drunk or woman gets, when it's easier for her to get drunk, by the way, the the more, the less aware she is of how her body language is presenting and, and the first thing that comes to mind when I say it like that is oh, you know, she, she led me on. But no, it's the other way too, which is like she might think she's making it very clear that she's not interested and it's there, and then it absolutely murders impulse control and and makes you think good ideas or makes you think bad ideas are good ones. And whenever I bring this point up to people, you know, one of the big counter is oh, you know, if you were drinking and you thought about the idea, then you wanted to do that when you were sober. You know, you're just a pearl. We should make sure these guys don't think that way. That's the, that's the counter To which I always say you know, there's a lot of people in jail right now for vehicular homicide.

Speaker 1: 29:17

They weren't thinking about killing somebody when they when they were sober. It was when they were under the influence of alcohol that they took one bad decision. They compounded into another one that led to the death of someone. That's how that works and people think it's an easy way out to be like, okay, we're gonna just focus on the behavior and say, you know, because, right, there was not every move, because most guys I'm gonna say most I don't, I don't know what, whether I'd say most many, whatever there are several men who drink and don't have this issue or have any of this thing come up. But when it does happen, we should. We should ask ourselves what role would it alcohol play? Could we have you mitigate it there? Because, look, we know it does like, we know it causes so many other problems and first to try and ignore that one is is Incredibly dangerous.

Speaker 2: 30:15

And when we and I say try to ignore Actively what they're, what they're trying to do on campuses, it's not like, well, it's trying to justify it, right, it's trying to justify their own, their own actions, because and not to say that they don't crazy shit but it's a fact that they're part of that activity and as a result, then, well, it's a fine, it's okay, this was a cause and effect of some other reason and it's just. It's just full circle. It just goes full circle under the day. But I think for a lot of people, like there is like that like moderation stage, like I know, whatever I post shit.

Speaker 2: 30:48

One guy in particular, he was like oh, you know, it's okay to have like a glass of whiskey a month, and I was like, yeah, but most people don't fucking drink whiskey for the taste. I mean, most people drink it for what it does to them, right? I definitely know people that are my age don't drink it for the taste anyway, or just maybe when you're older, that's what you want to do, but not when you're younger, right? That's where I kind of that's gonna kind of viewed as shit. Man, how did you? How did you transition from physics into writing?

Speaker 1: 31:15

No transition, man, you know here's a little crazy staff for you. The overall highest score on the GRE is, on average, received by physics students, and the GRE, the graduate record exam, has a count quantitative aspect, math, and then the writing aspect, and so to score high you have to score how. Both physics demands that you're an excellent communicator of. At least the odd is within physics. Like the odd, like there's this myth that like People who are into like the hard braniacs sciences aren't good At communication and that's just code kind of. Like the way people try to make it seem like anyone who's in shape is dumb and when the reality is that like when the reality is that like there's a much stronger correlation between high Q and physical fitness, then there is like anything else but To to speak about these topics in a manner toward not just Like let's forget about talking to people who aren't Studying.

Speaker 1: 32:33

You have to be able to communicate with your peers and be precise, like if I said to you you know, speed up or slow down. Actually, I'll give you another example. It's this really funny. I used to have a teacher just kill me when I would say I'm gonna turn up the volume To hear better. It's like you know, turn up the volume, you increase the sound like, and that's a really precise but it's, you know, one of those things you'll think of all when someone talks about.

Speaker 1: 33:03

You know Speed versus velocity, with two different things, with two different I'll give you variations to the average person, the same thing. But if I say one, I'm I'm speaking about one thing. If I say another thing, I'm speaking about something else. Another one that's often used Entretangibly is accelerating and speed. I mean, you have to know how to be precise with your words and then say as much as you can with as few as words as possible, but not miss out on the details. So, as all of this is writing training, you know I can look at my writing before school and after school and I can see a quantum leap in ability.

Speaker 2: 33:46

So you're continuously learning to improve your writing, bringing this into your work. So how did you go about building like the building the audience you have and building the email list that you have, because you know you have like a very I Don't know it's. It's interesting to observe like you've different products in the back end and you're growing really consistently across it, but it looks like that you have like that really nailed down framework in the back. It looks very familiar to me to, like you know, matt Gray, dan Coe, decoder Robertson, and it kind of has that kind of look and feel. So how did you think about like building your audience and kind of advice for people to build their audience?

Speaker 1: 34:23

I Just spoke about what I knew. You know I Don't. I don't do anything else really but that, and, and you know, the like-minded people find you now there. There's what you know and then there's how you speak about what you know. The how is what generates the engagement big time, but the the what I mean, there's just so many. It's just different topics, different ideas. What do I know? What am I trying to learn? What am I trying to accomplish? What am I doing? What are my insights?

Speaker 1: 35:03

And there's a certain level of relatability and admirable Admireability and you just continue to put it out there when it comes to audience building With people. For forget is that most people aren't going to talk about what they do. That's just, you know. We think everyone wants to talk about themselves, and maybe they do, but they're not gonna do it in a way that benefits someone else. When you're gonna do that, when you can create content that people want to Consume for whatever reason, whether they're entertained, educated, inspired, right, it's very easy, it's really easy to say this fun and it's useful, and it's a different way to For a person to make a living.

Speaker 2: 35:53

So let's, let's talk to you that. So your first principle approach to this is Identifying what you know, identifying how you can read that message, but how it can help someone in their scenario. So, if we were talking alcohol, for example, you're taking your personal experiences, you're relaying that and you're relating to someone who's on the pursuit of giving up alcohol.

Speaker 1: 36:14

Yeah. So there's yeah, I mean there's lots of content on my side about. Well, there was, and then, and then Google decided that People who Know right about this stuff shouldn't rank as highly if they're not Official. So I just I thought why is that? It's just an SEO thing. For a while I was focused on SEO big time and now it's like Not my focus because there's just so many other ways to to grow an audience.

Speaker 2: 36:48

To grow naturally to Twitter. Right, that's where you're making a focus.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Well linked them. Right now is where the main focus is, and Well, but, but any written platform like I, like I take my written content on LinkedIn and Twitter, posting on Facebook sub stack. What's the other one that I'm? You know Instagram, you know you. Instagram is an amazing place for written content, one of the one of the Underrated gems. Like people just don't Really get how useful Instagram is for For written content. You.

Speaker 2: 37:25

Man, that's very interesting because I saw the transition from like all the Twitter bros coming into LinkedIn, because I had actually started out in LinkedIn beforehand and, like a lot of people like you know, I mentioned Dakota, who I know well. He was like what the fuck? Like 1% of the people on the platform posts on LinkedIn, compared to Twitter, is like you know 80% or some shit. So when you can write and write clearly and come to, to come to LinkedIn, you can just kill it because it is filled with like platitudes, bullshit, like virtue signaling, stuff. Right, but forget about that, forget about that people. If you just focus on the content and just focus on helping people, it's the latest, like one of the strongest platforms in the world to grow and it's been like that for years, man, it actually hasn't changed. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:05

It's been like that for like 2019.

Speaker 2: 38:07

It's like people just didn't. People were like, oh, it's for jobs, oh it's for like virtue signaling, oh it's for like walk shit. And then I'd say, about 18 months ago people were like, all right, we're going to use it. And then they went over and now it's growing really, really quickly as a result.

Speaker 1: 38:22

Yeah, it's a great. The caliber of user may or may not be higher on average, but one thing that LinkedIn does extremely well is is sort of sort of gang traction. And LinkedIn you need to be verifiable in other by the people like your connections, your, your resume, post it, whatever right. All of that stuff like seems extraneous. But what it does is that it removes it. It automatically removes low value people, and when I say low value, I don't mean like they don't make money or anything like that. Far from it.

Speaker 1: 39:17

There's a particular class of individual who comes on social media and does nothing but fuck things up. All they do is you know, they're just trolls. Very hard to like you. You reduce the likelihood of crossing paths with that personality when you make a requisite for being on the platform some type of in-person connection, because there's a level of accountability that comes with it. Sure, I've encountered some anonymous or not accounts on LinkedIn, but they don't. They don't go far whatsoever. They no one takes them serious. Then they look at you like what? What are you? Why are you here? Like it just feels out of place. It feels very in place on Twitter and, to a lesser extent, instagram as well.

Speaker 1: 40:08

Linkedin is different to to do well on LinkedIn or not even to do well to even be recognized Cause I was just looking at me like oh, this is a weird thing, and just block it Like it's just cause it doesn't fit in LinkedIn. You can't come and then and then all and then, on top of that, here's another great thing that LinkedIn has. If, if you're not even remotely serious about about social media, the, the barrier to signing up is not much higher. But there's stuff, more steps you have to do to set up a profile. If, if you were just coming to make an alert or account or something, you're probably not going to do it. So what?

Speaker 1: 40:47

What LinkedIn has done is, as long as it stays this way, I hope they don't make changes. I hope I hope over the leadership is they, they recognize the thing that makes LinkedIn great and they don't change anything because there are more people coming over. But, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I love this. I just really like it there. Man, it's just a different caliber. Everyone's like title and name. You can look them up, and when you look one, when your face is out there and when you said and what you say can be tied back to where you work and do business. Yeah, you know, you tend to not be an asshole Like it's just, it's just, I think I think that's much better and I think that's much more um, I just think it's much more uh, much more wholesome.

Speaker 2: 41:39

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Speaker 2: 41:56

Vox creates, manages and grows your podcast for you, on your behalf. If you've not been getting leads, not been growing consistently, you haven't found your tribe and you don't know what to do, vox is the answer. Don't just take our word for it. In the past couple of years, we've managed over 35 podcasts. We've also been able to generate over 55 million views with 500 episodes produced, and not only that, generating over $1 million for our clients in products, services and sponsorships. So if you want to learn more about how you can build a great podcast and have a fully managed for you, schedule a call with me at Vox and we will help you achieve your podcast goals. Yeah, man, that's the one issue I kind of had with. Twitter is just like you know, anyone can say anything because they can put a fucking photo. Fight club, they can make sure.

Speaker 1: 42:44

And they can get away with it.

Speaker 2: 42:47

But then there's that side of it, right and I don't know. It's like oh, like fucking free speech, like do whatever, you want, whatever, but like you're still, you're still dressed up as a fight club character. And then there's the other side of it. Then we're like people are just blatantly making up numbers, like there's there's no other ways about it. Like people are like oh, like my business is, I've generated. I generated like $50 million for my client last quarter.

Speaker 1: 43:08

And it's like. It's like. This is like are you, how are we going to verify this? You know, and I look, I don't even care about verifying your numbers, like or whatever, but the fact it's, it's, it's a selection pressure, that's all. It is a great selection pressure. And then, okay, my face and my, my, my background, like, is here, like one of the coolest things is that LinkedIn recommendation thing, like, like that, just that, it's great. It's great. You know, someone else has to fill it out. It's a cool time.

Speaker 2: 43:50

Man tell me about, about the book.

Speaker 1: 43:52

So the book is called hard lessons from the hurt business, business lessons on the business, not business. Boxing lessons, risk relationships and reality. And what I tried to do in the book is look at the through lines of the lessons I learned from from boxing, from going back to school, from getting sober, from growing up in public housing, and, and there are. There's a specific lesson from each point and and I draw on my experiences and research to make the point, to make the lesson the value of the lesson.

Speaker 2: 44:36

Fuck man, that's really what was the catalyst for that Cause? You've covered this stuff in other areas and other products you have.

Speaker 1: 44:42

Well, I always well, okay, so I like writing period. I think that's that's incredibly obvious to anyone who follows me for more than a day all the platform, the writing platforms and stuff like that. But then there's the business aspect and it's like what are we going to? You know, how do we continue to move, how do we continue to grow, how do we get more fans? And a book was the next natural step. And then I said, all right, what can I create a book around?

Speaker 1: 45:19

And now one of the things I picked up real early about about this whole book thing because a lot of my platform was built from the first, the first self-published book I had, and I've learned, if you, you know, obviously there's like the general idea you want the book to be about and you don't want to discard that. But if you start with a cool title and mind and then you come back and go, how can I support and cattle hey, you'll support this title of content I think you're going to go a lot farther in terms of marketing than if you come up with a book and then try to create a title around it and I know the copywriting bros do this a lot that they'll, they'll write the copy and then kind of present it as this the product you should design, and I think that makes a lot of sense, certainly as a writer at least, anyhow. So so that's where this came from, that's how this has been, where this book came from.

Speaker 2: 46:22

And man, that's. That's the exact process where YouTube too, like you reverse engineer for my title and you can also do the thumbnail beforehand. A lot of my best episodes were reverse engineered that way, and then you create the episode and it's so cool, like to think this way because it's it's it's attention centric.

Speaker 1: 46:38

Oh yes, you know, make sure you got substance when they they read or click through, but you got to be able to grab them first. Nobody gave like like one of the most sobering things for me in this writing game and I never came into it when any preconceived notions. But this is still sobering, is that? It that that like no one gives a damn how good of a writer you are, like like your skill doesn't matter? Not only does it not matter, but if you're not careful, you'll mess around and get the wrong idea of what a skilled writer is and you'll pursue that and wonder why you you know you haven't gained any type of fan base or following, because I don't care what anyone says. If you don't, if you're not writing to build fans, followers, readers, go write a journal, like go write a diary. The fact that you're putting it out there means you want people to see it. So let's maximize that. Let's play to that Like the skills are going to develop. They're two, in fact, they are two different skill sets, and if you only focus on the writing and if you only focus on the marketing and not on the writing. You'll be popular, right, but you know, when people take your content seriously, it'll be very difficult to grow, because you know, if our market is shit card to you constantly and everyone who gets it is like man, this car is terrible, and I'm not mentioning my marketing it won't be trusted. Okay, so you need to write these skills. But on the other end of it, if you have the absolute best and we'll even say car and that price, conscious to everyone, can afford, but no one ever knows about it, no one ever hears about it, no one talks about it, it's just flaws on the radar and because they don't market and it's not a name, then it won't sell either. And maybe I use the cars was the wrong item, because there are cars that don't advertise, but everyone knows what a label is.

Speaker 1: 48:47

So the idea should, like, still be clear, which is you need to be a good marketer and a good writer, and that means learning to think like a market. You already think like a writer, okay, because by virtue of writing, but then all of these things, they have to come together. I just love it too. I don't even remember how I got on this, the topic of marketing. That's how passionate I got about this thing Right. It just came back to me. If you're not writing to to build followers, if you're not writing to build a fans and a readership, then then you should be honest with yourself and go keep a private journal or substack something. But if you're honest with yourself, you're writing because you want to be read. That's like like that's why we write most of the time. I'm not talking about your private journal. Yeah, outside of the private journal, anything put out that are you written, anything put out that written is to be read. That's that's what we do. So then you should learn how to make sure you maximize that part of of the system.

Speaker 2: 50:03

And how do you learn that? Oh, you get better at writing.

Speaker 1: 50:07

Well, getting better at writing is is is a matter of getting your writing in a place where it gets feedback. I do not believe in just writing every day, getting back. None could let them work. Like if I went to the pocket light, like only writers. Writers are such an interesting bunch. Only writers will say some delusional shit like write every day, you'll get better. Like no, like I can go to boxing gym every day. I'm not going to suddenly turn in a Floyd Mayweather. No, if I had Floyd Mayweather's coach, all right, that's a. I got a much greater chance.

Speaker 1: 50:43

What do I say to this about writing? You got to have a writing coach, someone who pushed back against you. Get some feedback. This is another reason why you should be publishing in public, because at worst case scenario, you know you get some trolls and they attack you right in you. You sharpen it up. But either way, if you don't have feedback, it can improve.

Speaker 1: 51:05

Whether you have an editor, someone who reads over to catch different typos, and then you come back in a read and go, oh, that sucks, all right, that's like the first way to get better at writing. The second way to get better at writing is you want to read other people's stuff and that's been edited Like, like, so published and he typically anything that's made it to like publishing by a big house that's been professionally edited and there's a lot to say about like. People like to shit on the traditional book publishing by process. I again consider that a form of cope, because if I'm looking on a book that's been professionally published, that means they put money behind it. Once you understand the business structure, it's basically venture capital. They want this thing to succeed so they have created the best, most polished product they could. So if you look through that writing, you're going to see polish and how would you look? And you should aim to emulate that in your own writing to lessen the gap between your first draft and the final draft and improve the quality. So those two things right there reading professionally edited work and getting feedback on your work.

Speaker 1: 52:25

As far as the marketing side goes, pretty much the same idea, maybe with some slight twists and copyouts. The marketing you know I learned copywriting because and when I say learn copyrighted, I don't mean again, don't just go out there writing copy and just hope it's going to sell some. No, I studied some masters man, study some books. We learn and then learn human psychology as well, because you got to understand how people react to stuff. If you like like, for example, if you don't understand cognitive bias and the bias in this particular instance will use this loss of version bias. If you don't understand how that plays into getting people to pay attention to things, then you're not only will you suffer, for you'll likely be taking advantage of it or, let be taken advantage of, buy it in when you read like headlines.

Speaker 1: 53:35

And loss of version bias is the idea that, like we experience, we feel a loss greater than a gain of equal amount, even though it should be the same. You know, losing five dollars hurts a hell of a lot more than making five dollars. It hurts a lot. You know that and that's significant. That means we pay more attention to to negativity. We pay more attention to things that can hurt us. This is why the news is the news. If you look at the way headlines are structured, you pick some up. If you're not one for formal study and you like to absorb by osmosis, that's a great way to study how to make titles. Look at the headline titles of the most viewed news stories, the most clickbait baby. The goal is to create clickbait, but the goal is to understand why this is getting so much engagement, which is what you're trying to achieve. You're writing more engagement.

Speaker 2: 54:47

Man, that's so fucking valuable. And, what's interesting, there is one of the podcasts to be a run on. Our company is an investing podcast and I'll always benchmark off like CNBC, cnn, like all these big dogs, because they just write so much device of content. And it's not for you to write the device of content, it's to see why that works and why it doesn't work.

Speaker 2: 55:09

And I think the beautiful way that that I see this and play at a lot of times is that when you read and you read like like a cash for tithing, for instance, cash for tithing, the great book on this it's like you read and then implement, but you need to have the implementation.

Speaker 2: 55:23

So if you have a Twitter account, you can. You can implement as you do it, like I reread expert secrets and I literally had it open. I had it open while I was typing and I was like this is so fucking valuable as a result, because when these guys tell you to open a spreadsheet and create all your stories and your epiphany stories and your obstacles and your bridges and all this stuff, if you actually do it again, cause and effect, this will take an impact six months, 12 months, 18 months from now and you will have like an exponential takeoff. But I just think that, like most people aren't willing to implement the work, they'll read the book but then it goes fuck the book to the site and then blame the book in six months. How do you tighten that feedback loop?

Speaker 1: 56:13

I don't know if there's a way to. I don't think there's any trick here to tighten it. You just you do it, you do it and you have faith that you're doing the right thing, because the things that are going to pay off the most for you they're not going to have a quick, quick feedback, and I think that's by design, because you want to weed out people looking for an easy way. You want to weed out people who who are going to, who don't really have what it takes and to just stand around because they get. They got some quick pay off, they got, they got some out of it fast. This like like general fitness, for example. This is why I never thought about this. This comes in the view of my head so. So general fitness is relatively easy and quick to attain and that's a good thing, because you know all you got to do is get up off the couch for four weeks and a workout, watch what you eat and you you cut your risk of all cosmotility in half If you're like your typical sedentary Westerner. But here's the kicker about this If you come into it looking for an instant result, it's like you come out like I worked out three days. If you make it that long and I'm still like I still can't, I still got a gut and I'm like, well, it's not supposed to take that long, but this is a thing that's going to make a huge difference in your life, like, like a massive difference, and it takes long. It's about adopting and this is what I'll say. It's about adopting a kind of lifelong added, you know, pursuit attitude towards these things. Yeah, if I go, alright, man fitness, like that's what it is, it's lifelong. For me, it's not less diet or and then chill. No, no, it's lifelong, which means creating habits to support and sustain the goal.

Speaker 1: 58:34

Writing back to the idea made I did lifelong pursuit to improve, improve, improve, improve. So my, my past time is, you know, like to read. I got a fiction book right here. I got the ballad of songbirds and snakes, that the new hunger games installment, but. But I also have right next to it, how to, how to lie with statistics. I was looking through that. The kids are this and these are on my desk because there's a book, some reading, but there's a whole bookshelf behind me and make reading part of my daily activity, and I'm always going to make writing part of my daily activity.

Speaker 1: 59:16

And then it's to the point now where, like, that's just how it is and I'm like, oh man, I got to, got to force myself to go write some. Like no, I'm a create, be creating either way. Very rarely do I go a day where I write but and? And then my, we draw that parallel fitness, especially like being a being a father and our new father. Like I don't have time to get to the gym all the time, but I do have my workout, the little little variable resistance bands right here to hit sets. In between, I always take the kid for a walk or always watch what I eat. Like there are all these things that go together so that, like, while I can't like live the life of a pro athlete anymore, I don't have to let my health and fitness go to shit Because I built in these systems to support me. Saying what, writing, say what, anything that I think is worth doing.

Speaker 2: 1:00:09

And man, that's the saw a bloom like 30 for 30 approach, like 30 minutes a day, 30 days. You build a habit and at the end of it, like you don't recognize is the habit, right? You just, you just keep on going. And what's interesting here is like when you don't do the thing, you then feel weird. Right, if I don't go to the gym, I feel weird, like I have a day off tomorrow. My coach is like I need two days off a week generally. That's what he wants to do, and I fucking hate it. I usually end up walking five miles on the beach the day that.

Speaker 1: 1:00:38

I'm off, which is great. Like active recovery, that's excellent.

Speaker 2: 1:00:42

Yeah, but for me it's like it feels weird, right, because I'm used to getting up doing deep work session, head to the gym, coming back having some food, so it's almost breaking the pattern. Right Before we wrap up, I would actually I want to love to ask you like do you recommend writing a book?

Speaker 1: 1:01:03

Man, this is a great question because I was just having a discussion on LinkedIn with somebody about this. Here is, right now, this point in my career what I know, what I would recommend about, uh, towards writing a book If you want to build credibility and audience in one of the fastest ways. Part like fastest vehicles possible and you have. I won't say nothing else because you still need something to write the book about. Write a book, self publish it, make it a damn good piece of self published content, which means go out, get the editor, um, cover, design, all that. I'd recommend writing a book because there is I can't think of anything easier that produces a faster audience growth result. Now, what that said, uh, when I say faster building audiences never an overnight thing. You got to have good content, things to say, um, because what a book does is a book makes someone that's got a good title and um and like, there's like stuff in it, there's like the authors, at least remotely interesting. Then it can get you a lot of interviews on podcasts and I let me tell you my, my, that was like the thing that really leveraged my growth is people found not caring what other people like as a superpower and I was getting. I had four while I was a non dated podcast gas request and each time one drop it just went higher and better, higher and better. Uh, as a result, I mean I punched way above my way from my audience level. I mean, I was on on the knowledge project with Shane Parrish. I was on a modern wisdom with Chris Williams uh, the Jordan Harbinger show, art of Manliness, skinny confidential. These are like I mean, these are podcasts with millions of of you and it really helped build me up. Scott Adams had me on a few times, uh, his coffee show, all because of a self published book. And here's the kicker that audience made big houses in the publishing world go oh okay, this guy can sell books and he writes already and he's got this interesting story we can work with. Let's do something here. And so now I'm writing a book for a, for a house. Now I don't.

Speaker 1: 1:03:53

I have no idea what life will look like in five years as a result of this book being published. I know a little life look like five years after the self published book, because five years after not caring with, look like five years after not caring with other people. Think, as a sewer power was 2022. And I know what my life was like then. It was great, and most of it is a shoot off of the stuff I did with that self published book. It opened a lot of opportunities. It's all about opening opportunity. If you want to, if you want to like, if you don't have, you're like. Here's the thing this, this is such an interesting topic, so I'm jumping all over the places of my mind.

Speaker 1: 1:04:34

Charles, to figure out building an audience, you need to have, like, something unique and interesting. There are there, there are like, and the more unique and interesting you are, the easier it is right. So some guys you know have have. That's one of the reasons why I like. I like Dan Coe, because I can't really tell what that guy is about. Like I was to dive into his backstory, but but he really he really beat the system into the dirt with the way he's. He's a girl in his following and it's it's really impressive. I say that it is being really impressed, but it's saying, from what it sounds like to watch his content, is that he I think he hasn't talked about it, but he's he's got something that really trained him in the, in the art of thinking. I love it. Maybe he's just writing.

Speaker 1: 1:05:33

But on the main idea here, if you don't have something unique about you that you can build around, a book is really going to help. If you're a good writer, you can like position that. Or rather, man I, I want to keep editing myself. You guess you should write a book. That's the answer. I think everyone should write a book. That's just to sum that up. Your expectations of it should be directly reflected in what you could do if you had not wrote a book. There you go. There's a great way to sum everything up.

Speaker 2: 1:06:18

I think a good way to look at it is that, like when you've done a thing and you have experts experience, when you have experience and you could be perceived as an expert or you want to be perceived as an expert, a book is a good play. But if you're going from zero, I would actually suggest a podcast, because a podcast can give you the audience, it can give you the reach, it can give you the, it can give you the learning lessons to go and be the person that you actually want to be and the education, which is basically what I did. I started on 24. I was literally new, nothing, and I just slowly, slowly built up 200 and 210 episodes in to the point that I was able to build, to the point I was able to build a business because of what I've learned from my podcast and then be able to like share those lessons with people to get to the point where, by now, that pulls in people.

Speaker 2: 1:07:06

As a result, do you get me? Just because it's just like seeing the journey and seeing the progress. So it's almost like a. It's like another way to do it, from a different lens, because, like everyone's telling you to like post on LinkedIn right, but, like the reason I asked you, that is because your perspective on it is like it's a different angle, and I think a podcast is a different angle too, and I started wanting so much people to crush it right and people like you come to it. So, yeah, man, I want to say a big thank you when you release the podcast, when you release the second book, let's do the second episode in person. We'll do it in America.

Speaker 1: 1:07:35

Oh yeah, that'll be fun, man, I'm all for it.

Speaker 2: 1:07:39

I'd love that man. We love doing in person. I've seen a few of the ones you've done in person.

Speaker 1: 1:07:43

I've never been in Bali, so we'll see.

Speaker 2: 1:07:48

If you want to come for a bit of a trip, you can make the most of them. But yeah, man, I want to say big thank you, really appreciate it no problem, man, I really appreciate you.