Latest / The Scene Projects / Bryan White on storytelling, global connections, and personal growth through podcasting

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Bryan White on storytelling, global connections, and personal growth through podcasting · The Scene Projects

• 0:02
  Welcome into a very exciting episode of the scene.
• 0:04
  I am your host, Bubba Starks.
• 0:06
  And with me today is Brian White from the Thriving Chronicles podcast.
• 0:10
  Welcome to the show, Brian.
• 0:12
  Oh, it's a pleasure to be here.
• 0:13
  Thank you so much.
• 0:14
  Well, we, haven't really communicated a whole lot.
• 0:17
  We just met, you know, in a Facebook group that we're a part of.
• 0:20
  So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your
• 0:24
  show?
• 0:25
  Okay.
• 0:25
  Good morning.
• 0:26
  Well, thank you for having me here first.
• 0:28
  My name is Brian White.
• 0:29
  I am the host of the Thriving Chronicles podcast.
• 0:32
  The podcast that I host is all about transforming people's lives from merely
• 0:38
  surviving to absolute thriving.
• 0:40
  We dig into stories from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all spectrums of people
• 0:46
  overcoming, adapting, and conquering, and basically transitioning their lives from season
• 0:52
  to season to season and taking the lessons they've learned and upgrading their lives, turn
• 0:59
  their lives into places of thriving, places of wildest dreams.
• 1:04
  We the whole goal of what we do is to take stories that are turned into conversations,
• 1:11
  that are turned into tools, actions, and powerful forms for other people to resonate
• 1:18
  with and transform their lives because there's going to be somebody out there who resonates or
• 1:24
  connects with one of my stories, one of my guest stories that has walked through a similar
• 1:29
  season and wants to know how to take their life to a different level, wants to know how to get
• 1:36
  out of the mess or who wants to have that bit of uplift and needs to understand that it's
• 1:44
  okay to be where you are, but there's so much more to life.
• 1:49
  That's just incredible, Brian.
• 1:52
  In the same vein, we have a program on our network called the get better together project.
• 1:59
  And with the same mission statement, you you copied and or I copy and pasted yours probably.
• 2:05
  I realized early on as I started this, it was mostly just to do music interviews.
• 2:10
  I'm a songwriter myself.
• 2:12
  I live in the middle of South Dakota, and we don't have a lot of press out here.
• 2:17
  So it just started as me talking to my friends.
• 2:19
  But in that in those conversations, right, even on a simple kinda not superficial, but a very,
• 2:25
  you know, top level, It was like, man, we're really making this is more than just you
• 2:30
  introducing yourself and trying to gain fans.
• 2:33
  We were really sharing our stories and exactly what you just said.
• 2:37
  The stories turned into conversations, and then the conversations became more and more powerful
• 2:43
  and then kinda let us down where I stopped calling myself a a you know, I'm I'm not no
• 2:50
  longer a a songwriter, but I'm definitely a podcaster now and whatever that means.
• 2:55
  Right?
• 2:56
  I feel this is so important in the world and so life changing for the whole planet.
• 3:04
  Right?
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  It's incredibly life changing, and it allows us to be able to connect with people across the
• 3:10
  world.
• 3:11
  I've now connected with people on the other side of the world, Australia, Germany.
• 3:17
  Then I've connected with people who were as close as just down the road from me.
• 3:21
  That was actually a really bizarre one.
• 3:24
  No idea, but it's incredible who we can connect with.
• 3:27
  And from, like I said, down the road to across the world.
• 3:33
  Well, and the way that I've kind of explained it more recently because the, you know, the
• 3:38
  intuition it has come to me is that this this is how God or creator or source is speaking.
• 3:46
  Right?
• 3:47
  Like, this is the the consciousness.
• 3:50
  Right?
• 3:50
  This is how it is embodying itself as in these conversations and in these, you know, these
• 3:55
  podcasts.
• 3:56
  And that's why having 4,000,000 of them, it doesn't matter.
• 4:00
  We could have 4,000,000,000 and would would it only cover half of the population or less of
• 4:05
  the planet.
• 4:06
  And we all have a story to share, and each story exactly like you just said is going to
• 4:12
  change someone's life.
• 4:13
  It's not, you know, not every story is relatable to each person, but it is relatable
• 4:20
  to one person out there.
• 4:22
  And if that's the good that comes out of it, that's enough.
• 4:25
  Then I've done my job.
• 4:27
  If I've been able to inspire, uplift, or help someone connect through a story we've shared,
• 4:33
  through a piece of education we've shared, or through just something that we've brought to
• 4:39
  our audience, then that's the whole purpose of what I've done.
• 4:42
  And at first, it really actually from the beginning, it started out as me wanting to
• 4:46
  share my story and just connect with people.
• 4:49
  I had a real passion for people and being curious and wanting to hear other people's
• 4:54
  stories.
• 4:55
  And it's exploded into this community of people who want more from life, know that there's
• 5:01
  more, want to take their story and use it for a purpose to help people change their lives and
• 5:08
  connect that it's okay that we've gone through these things and life is going to happen.
• 5:14
  There's no if, ands, or buts.
• 5:16
  Stuff's gonna happen to you.
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  But it's how you walk through it, how you use it, and always recognize we can do more.
• 5:26
  We're meant for more.
• 5:28
  There's so much more out there.
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  Just simply incredible that, you know, two two men, you know, two humans like us that didn't
• 5:37
  know each other before three days ago, are are walking that same path, right, with the same
• 5:44
  understanding as well.
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  It's not just kind of I don't know.
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  I take it from, like, Rogan and those guys, they're just getting stoned in the basement and
• 5:54
  using this new tool.
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  And through the last ten years of all of us consuming these things and, you know, how it
• 6:01
  spread from his friends or from him to his friends, and now it just keeps spreading that
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  we're starting to realize exactly what you and I have that this is actually how we change
• 6:13
  individual lives because people just wanna be heard or feel like they're heard or feel like
• 6:18
  they're not alone.
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  And you do that by relating and by relationship, And I don't know that there's a
• 6:26
  better way to do that than this form of media.
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  It's just it's incredible.
• 6:34
  Well, this form of media allows you to reach such a large span of people in such a large way
• 6:40
  across so many different platforms.
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  You're no longer just confined to what used to just be the TV or the radio.
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  You're now being able to spread a podcast that can go from thousands of platforms to the TV,
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  to the radio, to reaching such a broad spectrum of people across the world from all walks of
• 7:03
  life, every language, every background, every area.
• 7:07
  And And not just in the present moment, Brian, but also that it's there.
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  It we're building an archive of these stories, right, that are going on the Internet and will
• 7:18
  never, you know, hopefully never go away.
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  You know, where it's not like anybody's on the backside of the Internet just erasing
• 7:24
  everything.
• 7:25
  Right?
• 7:26
  Like, all this stuff is going out there, and and and future humans will have access to this
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  as well.
• 7:33
  You know, these seeds that we're planting even today in this conversation will have
• 7:37
  reverberations for centuries possibly into the future.
• 7:42
  That's an incredibly powerful thing to to come at it with that awareness instead of just, you
• 7:48
  know, having a silly podcast where you and your friends chitchat about superficial nonsense.
• 7:54
  Absolutely.
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  Just on a comical side too.
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  I think me and you can probably relate to this.
• 7:58
  You know?
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  If we we kinda sometimes wish there was somebody going in the background or racing
• 8:02
  stuff.
• 8:03
  Because if we went back to our very first episodes, now that we've been doing this, I've
• 8:07
  gone through some of my first episodes and gone, oh, boy.
• 8:10
  I have sure learned a lot.
• 8:13
  But that that's part of the process too.
• 8:15
  Right?
• 8:15
  Is that people can go back and watch you grow and watch your guests grow, and and that's the
• 8:22
  amazing thing.
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  I mean, I had no I didn't have this podcast.
• 8:26
  I we haven't even been around for a year.
• 8:28
  Right?
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  I I started it, like, back in, you know, last April of twenty twenty four and was just kinda
• 8:34
  doing it to get my feet under it.
• 8:36
  It it became apparent right away that it was important.
• 8:39
  It was important to me, and it was important to my few artist friends that just wanna be
• 8:43
  famous.
• 8:44
  Right?
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  They just want somebody else talking about them.
• 8:46
  Not that they have to be Luke Combs or something like that, but, that they just wanted
• 8:51
  someone else talking about their art.
• 8:54
  So that's where the passion really came inside of me.
• 8:56
  And then as you keep kinda pulling on that thread, it's like, oh, this is part of
• 9:02
  something much larger than I could have ever fathomed.
• 9:06
  Brian, why don't we why don't we talk a little bit about your personal story and the podcast
• 9:11
  and, you know, how long have you been doing the podcast now?
• 9:15
  So it's very exciting that my podcast has only been alive for less than ninety days.
• 9:21
  We released our first episode October 27.
• 9:24
  You just started?
• 9:25
  We just started and it's exploding.
• 9:28
  So it was a case of, and it still makes me laugh when I sit back at this.
• 9:33
  The podcast had been an idea, a structure in my mind and a setup for a very long time.
• 9:39
  I had kind of done the background research.
• 9:41
  I kind of built the plan.
• 9:42
  I've had all these layouts, but I had something holding me back.
• 9:46
  I just hadn't pulled the trigger on it yet.
• 9:49
  And finally, one day, I'm sitting down with a buddy of mine who also has a podcast, and he
• 9:53
  looked at me and went, Brian, why haven't you done it?
• 9:58
  And it was something about those words.
• 10:00
  Why haven't you just done it?
• 10:02
  They kinda hit me like a ton of bricks, and I went, well, I don't know.
• 10:07
  I guess I should.
• 10:08
  And something just maybe it was the timing, the universe, whatever it was, and it clicked.
• 10:13
  And the next day, I went, we're doing this.
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  We're putting it together.
• 10:16
  We're putting all these notes and scribbles and ideas into action and away we go.
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  So it came to life.
• 10:25
  And it really comes from my background.
• 10:30
  Like I said, they're a little bit of one side is the being curious being curious of people's
• 10:35
  stories, passions, and wanting to connect with other people, wanting to bring a bit of a light
• 10:43
  to the world through stories and communication.
• 10:46
  The other side came from my background of struggling with mental health and learning
• 10:53
  things the hard way.
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  I've always been one of those people that kinda learn things the hard way, unfortunately.
• 10:58
  And there I went through a period of time where I woke up and I looked in the mirror, and I had
• 11:05
  no idea who was looking back.
• 11:08
  If anything, I really did not like the person looking back.
• 11:12
  And it was in that moment that I realized something had to change.
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  I needed to know who was I was looking at.
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  I needed to know who the person in the mirror was.
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  What did I want?
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  What did I feel?
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  What did I stand for?
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  What were my morals?
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  What were my values?
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  What was everything?
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  Who was this person?
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  And and how do I like the person I'm seeing?
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  So that sent me on a mission of years of deep diving into growth mindsets and personal
• 11:43
  development and learning about myself and learning about the world, learning about
• 11:47
  people, growing a heart of curiosity, a heart of passion to the man I've become today.
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  I can honestly tell you that if I went back and looked at myself those years down the the road
• 12:00
  to that person that was looking in the mirror, my life is a complete one eighty, completely
• 12:06
  different.
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  The man that was there to the man that is today, two totally different people with two
• 12:12
  totally different lives.
• 12:14
  Well, yeah.
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  Like, another planet.
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  Right?
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  A different timeline or however you wanna to I mean, I've experienced that just in the last,
• 12:21
  you know, twelve to six months.
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  And so, yeah, I I I feel you.
• 12:26
  Yeah.
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  It really was a transformation, and it took years, years and years of being willing to grow
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  and learn, have mentors become curious.
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  And now I wanna take everything I've been able to learn and everything I still learn.
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  I will be a learner to the day I die.
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  I believe truly when you believe you you know it all and that you decide to stop learning is
• 12:54
  your greatest mistake in life.
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  So the greatest tool and power we have is to stay open and learn our entire lives.
• 13:03
  I will never know everything.
• 13:05
  I will never have all the answers.
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  But what I do hope is that the small things that I think I know and the small things that
• 13:14
  I'm confident in and what I have experienced through my life might be able to help somebody
• 13:19
  else take their life from maybe they're having that day to day where they wake up and they
• 13:26
  look in the mirror and go, who the hell is this guy?
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  I have had those moments.
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  A little bit about me, Brian, ten years ago, I was well, not quite yet, but, nine and a half
• 13:40
  years ago.
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  I was in, I was in Mexico on the run from felonies that were eventually going to land me
• 13:46
  in prison.
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  I was I was a different timeline.
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  I was a different man.
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  And it was a long time.
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  I mean, I had to walk those nine years to get to last year where I finally, you know, woke up
• 14:00
  after I got out of prison.
• 14:01
  I learned how to weld in there and I, you know, changed my life, right?
• 14:04
  I came out and I wasn't the drug addict anymore that I used to be and I went to work that
• 14:09
  regular job and and working in a factory, but that wasn't me either.
• 14:13
  Right?
• 14:13
  I I, you know, during that course, I started drinking again and, you know, feeding those
• 14:18
  addictions.
• 14:19
  I was two hundred and forty pounds, and I was just like, who are you?
• 14:25
  And what is this life like?
• 14:27
  This isn't tenable.
• 14:28
  This isn't tenable for another how could you do this for another two years, much less another
• 14:33
  twenty or thirty or forty?
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  Like, it just doesn't it's not computing.
• 14:38
  And, I had to make a choice.
• 14:40
  Right?
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  And, honestly, last February, I I thought I was quitting my job to be a rock star, Brian.
• 14:46
  I thought the music career was the thing that was taking off.
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  I was on the local news.
• 14:51
  I was gaining a little more local celebrity.
• 14:53
  The band was booking some more gigs and things, and then this happened.
• 14:58
  More more specifically, this happened.
• 15:01
  A a friend of mine who I went on his podcast and, just as a guest to talk about my new song
• 15:08
  and different things, he gave me this Zoom p four, and now I could record all of these
• 15:14
  brilliant conversations that I'm having with all of these amazing people that I know.
• 15:19
  And it really just it started to snowball.
• 15:22
  And now that snowball is the size of a small planet.
• 15:25
  Right?
• 15:26
  And you're like, what?
• 15:27
  I don't even know what I'm doing.
• 15:29
  How could I be here?
• 15:31
  Go ahead, Brian.
• 15:31
  Why don't you share a little bit of your personal story, kinda where you're from?
• 15:35
  And my heater just kicked out of my garage, so I'm gonna dip and turn it off so we don't hear
• 15:38
  the audio.
• 15:40
  Sounds good.
• 15:41
  So for everybody out there, my name is Brian Way.
• 15:42
  I'm from Alberta, Canada, and I am 35 years old.
• 15:47
  I am a father of three beautiful daughters.
• 15:50
  I have my wife.
• 15:52
  I've got two fur babies, one very large one, one small, annoying little thing.
• 15:57
  And my day job, I work in the agricultural development sector.
• 16:01
  I work for a feed manufacturer who we are revolutionizing the feed industry and how
• 16:08
  things are done there.
• 16:09
  It's some really exciting stuff that has me really stoked about even my own day job.
• 16:13
  But other than that, I I'm just a lifelong learner who has a passion to connect with
• 16:21
  people, to change people's lives, and see where life takes me.
• 16:26
  I'm on this journey of life, and I'm excited.
• 16:32
  I have no other way to explain this to people, but and I shared a post about it at the
• 16:38
  beginning of the year here that I'm just I think it's a weird word to say, but fired up.
• 16:44
  I'm a person on fire right now.
• 16:48
  Things are happening from the podcast to my personal life to the world around us.
• 16:53
  Let's all just be a little more excited and increase our frequency and see where life takes
• 16:59
  us.
• 17:00
  That's so incredible.
• 17:02
  So I was gonna complain about the cold, but since you're in Alberta, I think I'll say that.
• 17:10
  I live, I'm from South Dakota.
• 17:12
  We're, out here in farm country, agriculture based.
• 17:15
  My father-in-law farms about a thousand acres out here, corn and soybeans mostly, but the
• 17:21
  hemp industry is growing down here in South Dakota, mostly because of the hemp industry in
• 17:27
  Canada.
• 17:28
  That's where a lot of our people down here, were working with people.
• 17:31
  I I'm pretty sure in Alberta, that they were getting their seed from.
• 17:35
  You guys are just north of us.
• 17:36
  I gotta go through the state of North Dakota, but but up and through there.
• 17:39
  So a lot of similarities in our, you know, surroundings.
• 17:43
  And for me is, you know, I'm I'm ninety minutes from a major met not even a major metro area.
• 17:48
  Sioux Falls is still rather small in the, you know, on the scale of things a couple hundred
• 17:53
  thousand people is all.
• 17:56
  This is the only option I have to communicate with like minded individuals.
• 18:01
  Right?
• 18:02
  Like, I know everyone in my town, you know, and not that they don't that I don't like them and
• 18:07
  love them and and want to communicate with them.
• 18:10
  There's something much larger out there.
• 18:12
  There's 8,000,000,000 other people on this planet that I that I could be gaining knowledge
• 18:17
  from, like you yourself.
• 18:19
  And then, you know, sharing a little bit of me with you, it it's already changed both of our
• 18:25
  lives in the twenty minutes we've been talking.
• 18:28
  And then when we turn that into now we get to share this with other people out there, it's
• 18:34
  just I'm blown away.
• 18:35
  Like you said, on fire, fired up.
• 18:37
  Yeah, buddy.
• 18:38
  Every day.
• 18:38
  That's That's what gets me out of bed at 5AM, and I'm in the process of writing a book right
• 18:43
  now, Brian.
• 18:44
  And it is all about getting people off of the sidelines and getting behind a microphone and
• 18:50
  building that confidence.
• 18:51
  But the first two parts of the book are literally, who are you?
• 18:55
  Who are you inside?
• 18:56
  Before you start thinking that you can get behind a microphone and telling other people
• 19:01
  who they are or what you think or what your truth is, you need to go inside and you need to
• 19:06
  figure out who that is inside of you.
• 19:08
  Now for me, two years in prison will do that to a man.
• 19:12
  Right?
• 19:12
  You'll you'll start to examine your life and the choices that you've made.
• 19:16
  And then to continue to you know, for me, it's kinda been like, okay.
• 19:20
  Well, you got out of prison and off parole, and I reverted.
• 19:23
  Right?
• 19:23
  I kinda slid back into that person that I was, and it took that awareness again to go, hey,
• 19:28
  buddy.
• 19:29
  You've been down that road.
• 19:31
  Time to check it.
• 19:33
  Time to come out.
• 19:33
  And now what my podcast and I have, like, four four podcasts.
• 19:38
  Right?
• 19:38
  It quickly became, like, my brain goes too many directions for fans of one show to follow, but
• 19:46
  that this is my accountability.
• 19:48
  Right?
• 19:48
  This is being this forward facing, and I've been a musician my whole life, so I've always
• 19:53
  been on stage.
• 19:55
  But once you step off that stage, you can go back to be whoever the hell you were before.
• 20:00
  Right?
• 20:01
  So what the podcasting has brought me is that not just two other people, but a personal
• 20:08
  accountability.
• 20:09
  The fact that everyone and especially, you have kids, my kids.
• 20:14
  I'm leaving a legacy for my children to go back, and I can't have these conversations
• 20:20
  necessarily with my children as they're eight, nine, 12 years old.
• 20:24
  But as they grow into adulthood, that they're going to be able to go back and to know exactly
• 20:30
  the man that their father was and is.
• 20:33
  And that to me is probably the most important thing that keeps me going right now.
• 20:39
  Let's not get me started on the rampage, I'll call it, of leading by example and my theories
• 20:47
  of stepping up as fathers.
• 20:49
  There's a whole episode right there about my beliefs around fatherhood and being the leaders
• 20:55
  of the family.
• 20:56
  I wrote an article a little while ago called I called it the, becoming the CEO of your own
• 21:00
  life, And it was really all about showing up, leading, setting yourself by example, and
• 21:10
  transforming your life into an aspect of powerful standards, values, and treating it
• 21:18
  like a business almost, like you were the CEO of your own life.
• 21:23
  And as you were saying, it's funny how a lot of us podcasters, we go from getting on here and
• 21:28
  talking to writing books.
• 21:29
  I have a book in progress myself that I'm trying to get finished, but I kinda laugh a lot
• 21:33
  of us podcast because I know a handful of us now that we get talking about podcasts and all
• 21:38
  of a sudden it comes up.
• 21:39
  And from podcasting, we go into and I started writing a book about whatever it is we're
• 21:44
  doing.
• 21:45
  So I love the aspect aspect of the creativity outlet this this gives us as well.
• 21:51
  Well and that's why I kinda you know, not to get overly religious or theological about
• 21:56
  things, but this is coming from somewhere.
• 21:59
  This is an expression of of that center of the universe, of source, of of God, of whatever
• 22:06
  word you wanna use to describe it, I feel it.
• 22:10
  When I wake up every day, that's that fire inside, right, that is driving me forward.
• 22:16
  And it's, at this point, it's my duty to express that in the ways that it wants to be
• 22:22
  expressed, whether that is the spoken word like we do here, whether it's a song.
• 22:27
  Right?
• 22:27
  I have always been expressing that, and it's always been a part of me.
• 22:31
  I thought it was me.
• 22:32
  Right?
• 22:33
  It turns out it's something much, much bigger.
• 22:36
  And then sometimes it it it gives you that those words need to be written, and they need
• 22:40
  to be shared in all of these forms.
• 22:42
  And, yeah, it's it's just part of the process almost.
• 22:46
  Right?
• 22:46
  Where, yeah, you when you start when you start becoming a broadcast antenna for that, like,
• 22:55
  you're not just receiving you're not just receiving the information anymore, but you're
• 22:59
  able to now express that, it changes who you are.
• 23:03
  And it and it changes kind of on its own scale.
• 23:06
  I don't know that every podcaster will write a book someday, but there's definitely some of us
• 23:11
  that are called to it.
• 23:13
  And I it's like a thread on a sweater.
• 23:15
  Right?
• 23:15
  You just keep pulling it like the old Weezer song.
• 23:20
  You just keep going.
• 23:22
  Yeah.
• 23:23
  Incredible, Brian.
• 23:24
  Well, I have a feeling that we are going to be doing a lot of work together in the future, so
• 23:29
  I don't wanna take up too much more of your time today.
• 23:32
  I do wanna give you a chance to go ahead and plug all of your stuff and tell people where
• 23:36
  they can find you.
• 23:38
  Awesome.
• 23:38
  Well, if everybody wants to take a moment and they wanna dive into the Thriving Chronicles
• 23:42
  podcast, our community Facebook page is a great place to start.
• 23:46
  From there, it's all across all major streaming platforms, Spotify, Apple, Google Play, all the
• 23:51
  different streaming options out there, YouTube, our Instagram page, our TikTok page, content,
• 23:59
  videos, everything gets spread across basically everywhere that if you look up the Thriving
• 24:04
  Chronicles podcast, you'll find us.
• 24:06
  Incredible, Brian.
• 24:07
  Well, thank you so much for being a part of the scene.
• 24:11
  Well, thank you so much for having me here, and I'm excited for us to collaborate some more and
• 24:15
  see what roads it takes us down.