Being so you that no one can replicate it with One Brilliant Arc

0:00I don't know, we're live. Well, we'll give everyone a second to hop in, but I am so excited for this conversation today. We have Russell no help do with this, and I see people hopping in, so we're so, so grateful that Russell is taking the time to have this conversation with us today. I'll give a quick introduction. Russell is a prolific writer and published author. In fact, he's been a USA Today bestselling author, and he writes fantasy comics and instruction guides for writers who want to find success and joy, even in the icky side of marketing that comes with being a published author. Plus, he's just an all around delightful and generous human being, and I've been so excited and grateful for the conversations that he's been willing to have with us, and we're excited to dive into this conversation. So Russell, I'll let you take it away, tell us your short version of your story and how you got here, and also, how was your week?

1:02I know that you were speaking at a conference and give you a chance to just deeper. I wasn't speaking at it. I was just experiencing it, and it was a whole vibe. It was a whole vibe, man. Like it was so, I write a bunch of books, and I do a bunch of other stuff. Like I make terror decks and I draw comics and I write comics and I help people with marketing and I consult with tech companies, and I do a whole bunch of stuff, and in general, people have always told me that everyone has different problems. Like you can't just publishing problems over to comics and comics problems over to tech, and it's like, man, everyone's got the same like five problems, and the biggest problem is that they don't think they have the same problems as everyone. But like everyone's got like four main problems. Let's see, I don't know, I'm just gonna riff off four because that's what I remember.

2:03A discovery problems. Well, the four happy compass problems are project problems, problems that occur from, that are intrinsic to a project itself, audience problems, problems growing in audience. Notice I did not say monetizing and engaging in audience, hurtization problems and income problems. That's where all the money comes in. And mainly people don't know what problem they actually have because they often mask or more likely, they're just lying to themselves so they do not want to hear that they have a problem. They just want everything to be hunky-dory. But they sure do like complaining about it. They don't like fixing them. They sure like complaining about them. So that is, that is the top genuine human problem for all of us. And I mean, if we could just, I always say like, I will, and I will enable any dumb idea you have

3:04as long as you know how dumb it is. Yeah. I don't, like you have to look at it and be like, well, this is a dumb problem because what ends up happening if you make a dumb move, as you come back and you blame me or you blame yourself. And I'm like, I'm not to blame. Like I, like me thinking it's a good idea is probably a guarantee that it's a bad idea because like I like things that like are off-kilter. And then I say, and also it's not on you because you knew it was, like you, the only problem you had was you didn't look at this and see it's a dumb problem. So like I will not enable you to like make a dumb problem unless you know it's a dumb, it's a dumb decision. But I think that the only way we can win, everyone on this call right now can win. The only way is by defining our axes, the axis why we can win. And we're playing on someone else's axis. We're all playing on like, currently we're playing on substax axis,

4:05for instance, we're on substax right now. And like, so I just sit here and go like, that's aren't the rules. Those are the rules, substax gave you. And you agree to those rules, which obviously means that like, substax is going to win because they have told you the axis that you should play on. But like, that's not the only axis. It's not even the only axis on substax. It's just a one that gives them the most money. And that's fine. I have nothing against that. The problem is not that the platform is defining their own axes. We all should be defining our own axis and talking about what the problem is that we all believe it. And especially when it's against our own interest. That this is making me so excited because you've already like touched on all of the questions that I wanted to dig into for this call. Because we're talking about creative freedom and how important it is to find your own authentic version

5:06of creative freedom even when it comes to the business side of being a published author. So I guess we'll start with what is the happy compass and explain to us the framework that you've built to help us find our own axis. And hopefully that axis is centered on our authenticity. Sure. So the happy compass is one of the four parts of the path of enlist friction, which is basically what we, what a capitalist of my publication and my methodology is based around. It's what the book frictionless growth, the one that you get for joining capitalist for free is built around. But the happy compass is all about breaking blocks. So here's the thing we talked about blocks. I'm going to sit up for a second. Yeah. I'm going to come a little bit closer to the mic. Maybe I sound a little bit better. But the problem is that unless we know what our actual block is,

6:09we are going to think that our block is something that it's not and apply solutions to that block that do not help it and sometimes make it worse. So I will give you an example. And they pretty much, maybe not the prioritization, but they pretty much happen in order. So like of the thing that can block you the most. So the number one is the H, which is the project block, which is things intrinsic to this project. So they are things that you can change if you change this project. So like this is my terror deck. If it cannot be fixed without anyone else's interruption, but yours or your teams, then it is not a project block. So for instance, your cover might suck. Your book might stink. Your cover might be awful. Your blurb might not be great. Your, you might have a third chapter cliffhanger.

7:09Like, I don't know, there's like a thousand things that like we think, oh, well, we don't have a big enough audience, but it's like it does not matter how many people you bring to this book. If you bring the right people to the, or it could be that you're targeting the book to the just the wrong people or like the book is screaming to the wrong people who don't love it. So it's all about how to make sure this project resonates the most deeply with the most humans. It is, and, and if you have one of these blocks, guess what, you fix these blocks and the rest of the thing works. Or it unveils a secondary block. But you can't know if you have, if you have other blocks until you fix your project blocks. So like this is on Substack is like, most people's substack pages stink. They're like, they're like, the lighting might be good, but they're not appealing. They don't make me want to subscribe,

8:10or they'll, and I'm very good at empathy. So I'm very good at taking other viewers perspective. When I talk to them, they're not making the, they don't, they don't make the person who, um, their ideal client is subscribed, either. Here's the easiest thing on Substack to do. Go to your page, close your eyes, take a deep breath, um, extrapolate from known data and take someone else's perspective, open your eyes, and in three seconds, tell yourself whether you would actually subscribe to your own publication or not. There's an 80% chance at least that you will say now. And if you always subscribe to your own publication, no one else will either. Okay, so that's a project block. Um, make sense? All right, make sense to me. Okay, so the next is audience blocks. So an audience block is, um, again, we are assuming that this project is right now. If this project is not, so a lot of people say, I, I, no one's buying my book, and the problem is,

9:11book, that's a project block. But people also say that, and it's like, well, you have four people on your email list, or like this email list was built for a whole mother project, or like, this isn't even your email list, or you bought this email list, or like, you're not even, you're not on a plat, you hate all the platforms that you're on, or like you, like the, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're spending, uh, you're spending energy and not getting any return. And so like, though those are problems intrinsic to the market and the market that you have, maybe you fix your project blocks, and now somebody, uh, does your audience that maybe even kind of like your old, the old stuff, the old marketing, um, uh, no longer response. You're like, well, I don't know, man, you got to find any audience. Like we got talked about this on a live earlier this week. It's like, well, the problem is your marketing is fine, but that is not the product you're making.

10:11You're not making this product. So it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter if this marketing is good because every word that comes out of your mouth is for a different avatar. And so when they get to this page, you're like, but what do I even care? Yeah. It doesn't resonate with me. Exactly. It's like, okay, well, so we got to make the right audience. So we got the right project, the right audience, and it's big enough to warrant to, to have problems. So for instance, uh, we'll talk about this in a minute, but, uh, income, like you're not making the right income might be, well, if you have a two to five percent income, uh, if you have a two to five percent conversion rate, you're making the right conversion rate. That's a good conversion rate. I don't know. Like you don't have an income problem. You have an audience problem. You just need more people to find it. Um, prioritization problems are the easiest ones to describe because everyone has them. Um, it's doing too many things, doing the wrong thing, doing things in the wrong order, um, and then income blocks. So how are income blocks different than audience blocks?

11:12Income blocks are the most boring. Two fifths. I know. Yep. Um, they are, I have to change my sales page. I have to fix my offer letter. I have to change my automation sequence. I have to, so it's all, it's really all of the things that make people want to roll their eyes, including me. I don't like doing those things, but like I have to, I have to find a, I like, I'm trying to launch a bookstore on TikTok and it's not working because TikTok is not intrinsically a monetization platform. It's intrinsically a discovery platform with a monetization engine built in. So it's like, maybe you're, maybe you're, you have a subscription and you really need to write a book or you have a book and you need to turn it into a movie or like you really love fan, weird fantasy. So you write a book and then you're like, well, that probably would work better as an RPG or something like that. Like it's, it's fixing the income problems. It's saying, oh, I have a thousand people on my, on my email list

12:14and I have the right product and only one percent are converting. Well, that's a problem. That's like an, that's an actual income problem. So how does this differ, how does the biggest problem is between audience and income blocks? Because to solve, if we think we have audience blocks but we really have income blocks, well, the way to solve an, an audience block is drop the price and be more present in the universe. And like that is how you get a bigger audience. That's how you get people to subscribe to your newsletter. If you have an, if you actually have an income block though, that's not going to help you at all. Because the way to make it, to solve an income block is usually to make something more exclusive and to make it more expensive. So like if you have an income block and you drop the price and become more present, it literally will make your problem worse. So the happy compass is about somehow finding a way to match the right, know where your problem is,

13:16actual problem is, and then apply a solution to fix it. And then you can see if there's any second or third or fourth order problems beneath it. But most, I mean, it's basically 100% of people that I consult with do not even conceptually understand what their block actually is. Yep. If I were to condense this all into like one sentence, it seems like the happy compass is really about understanding what you're trying to say through your art and then understanding who you're saying it to and how to say it in a way that resonates with them. Is that accurate? I mean, and money plus money and also burn it. So like it's hard because it's like really, it's really knowing what you want to make, how to make it resonate, where to find the people that resonate to, how to not get burned out doing this

14:17and also make a sustainable income. So somehow that was one sentence. Well, I mean, for all of us here, I think all of us authors and writers, you know, we started out in the arts because our creative brains were really excited about doing things our own way and not following some of these boring rules of marketing. And then we realized that if we want to become a published author that's successful, we have to understand this world of business. It's kind of like we didn't sign up for it, but it comes with the part of being a published author. And I will say for anyone who's in this call listening, Russell is giving us a crash course on marketing. So if you have any questions, please drop them in the chat and we'll get him to help us answer them. Here's another thing, like I love you. I don't mean this in any disrespect, but I think that's kind of bullshit because like any form of art has structural issues.

15:18So like if you want to work with watercolor, guess what? There's a, you have to do the things that make watercolor like work or work against those things. And the same thing is with writing. Like you can't write without letters, words, symbols, and numbers. Like you just like writing is exchanging what's in our head for like symbols on a page. Or in, and so a Frank Gary has a great master class where he says 85% of what I do is the same as everyone else. I have the same loss of gravity, of construction, of shipping, of logistics, all of those other things. It's in the 15% that I, that I, that I have freedom. And I think that that is the same thing with any fight. You pick your bounds. If you pick watercolor to be your medium, you are, you decide to work in the bounds of you like,

16:19you don't, you don't, you don't complain that it doesn't work like acrylic. Or at least you do, even if you do your life, okay. But I know why this is going to do that. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like if you're going to, if you're going to use wood blocks to burn stuff, like guess what, you're going to have to burn stuff on wood blocks. I don't know what to tell you. Like you picked the medium. Right, that's actually, I really appreciate that you brought this up because this is another question I had was do you think that there are rules to the process of platform building and building a successful business? Or do you think that we have to make up our own rules? Yes, yes, the answer is yes. Like there are rules, but the way that you are going to succeed is usually to break the rule and do something that has asymmetric risk and gets asymmetric gain. The problem is that we say, okay, so at some point in my early of my career, I started saying,

17:21that's dumb, or like that's obviously not true a lot. Like people would say readers don't read cross genre and I was like, it's stupid and they were like, no, that's what Amazon says and I'm like, okay, but like have you ever met a human being that like didn't read cross genre or consume things in multiple genres? Like I've never met somebody who was like, even if they were like, I only read romance. Be like, okay, what does that even mean? Or like what do you watch on TV? Oh, murder shows, what podcast will you listen to? It's just like nobody actually does that. But like if you don't understand the rules, then like you can't know that they're dumb and what we have is a lot of people who are trying to break the rules, but they have no idea what the rules are and we think that it's easier to go our own way,

18:24but it is so much harder to break the rules because it means you have to understand, it's absurdism. Like absurdism, surrealism, all of those isms that are like not realistic are so much harder because it means I know everything I'm supposed to do and I am very intentionally going this other way to show you a different way to view the world. And if you don't get every piece of that right, then your thing is not going to land. I was literally talking to this with my wife. I was like, I don't think this person no understands what absurdism is because like absurdism is about, is a commentary on. Surrealism is a commentary on. Dadaism is a commentary on. Existentialism is a commentary on reality. They're all intrinsically understand

19:26what you believe reality is and are saying either, what if that wasn't true or isn't that stupid or like isn't that hilarious or like isn't that like, like you think it works this way, but like what about this thing? But like if you don't understand that people actually are taught to believe this thing and you don't know that this thing is actually true and you don't understand how to bridge the gap between the two things, it will never work. Yeah, yeah, one of the rules that we've been conditioned to believe as creatives is the myth of the starving artist. We've been told that if you want to be an artist, then you're never gonna make money. And do you feel like, especially with the economy that we have nowadays, do you feel like it is possible for anyone to be able to make a career out of writing or the arts? Is it Charlie, Charlie Diamato, whatever her name is, makes like a million dollars doing TikTok dances. So like, do I think, I mean,

20:27I see multiple people on this call right now that like make money, make enough money to live or survive or thrive, I do. I don't know, like if one person can do it or if anyone can do it, like, but that doesn't mean everyone can do it, it means anyone can do it. But like, it's probably not gonna look the same as you think it will. The question that I think you're really asking is, is it possible to take the thing in my head in the exact way that I want to do it and make it a career? And the truth of that one is like, probably not, I'm sorry. I love you, I love all of you on this call. But like, just like when you write a book or you write a project or you do anything, it doesn't figure out the same at the end. Like life is about taking what you want, taking what shows up and learn to live the thing that shows up and love it anyway and like mold it into the thing you want. And do I think that process is a lot, is possible? Yeah, I think it's real possible.

21:27I mean, in order to make $100,000, you need what? $100,000 people to give you $100. That's probably tough. You need 300 people, 350 people to give you $300. That's more doable. You need like 100 people to give you $1,000. Well like, I don't know, you need four people to give you $25,000. Like, I don't know, are there four companies in the world that I think you could make $25,000 as a copyrighter for? Do I think there's like 1,000 people who want your work? Yeah, but the problem is not finding the 1,000 people. It's that the minute those 1,000 people find those 1,000 people, you need to find more because those people burn off. They don't follow you. Even if they love you, they don't follow you. When was the last time you bought a book from your favorite author? No, I'll ask you a question. Oh, for me? Well, I will say, one of my favorite authors now is one of the authors that we work with. Her name is Jessica Anne and I just bought the book that she just released.

22:30So that was about a month or two ago. Okay, once the last time you bought a book from the author who meant the most from you in childhood. That's a good one. Probably the last time they published it, which most authors stop publishing books after a certain amount of time. So that means they're dead. Yeah, right. So like you probably, everyone who's listening now, probably as a favorite author that you resonate with a lot. And probably have not bought a book from them, their last book. You may have missed like 10 of their releases. Probably have and best have got 10 books from them in the last decade. So like just because you love something, just because it meant something to you, just because like it means it doesn't mean that it's gonna be monetizable over time. Like very few people follow you and buy from you for the long haul.

23:31So many people, I'm like, wow, I forgot your book. Wow, you have 10 books. And then that's how I spend the next month of my life. So like I think that we envision this whole thing wrong because I don't, I think what matters is I think what matters is so we are sitting here saying, I want to make money with books. So we try and buttress our time. We have job here and we try and replace that with books. But then what happens is in 10 years, guess what, you're not gonna like books as much as we do. You're not gonna only want to write books. You want it good? I don't want no like on a fish shop in Borneo or something. I don't know what you're gonna want to do, but like you're not gonna necessarily want to do books. So if you don't yoke yourself into being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, you take out this buttress and just buttress it for space, you're going to have a bad time

24:32because almost everyone that I know changes somewhat in five years, changes the genre that they want to write, changes something, changes that they want to be known as something that they're no longer known for. Like everyone wants to change their thing. And if you're stuck, making anything, then it's a job and it's a worse job than having a job because it doesn't have benefits. This is so very true. We had somewhat Jesse Pogue, I want to say hi. It's good to hear from you again. He asked a question, a big picture. His stub stack is just me thinking on the screen, but I recently started a serial. My goal is to serialize first and later to publish it. So I'm using sub-stack as an exposure to my work since I'm starting from the ground from ground zero. Am I thinking about this correctly? I'm going to tell you a story that I swear to God I'll answer this question. Okay, so I was at this conference and I was sitting across from some very busy guy

25:33who did some busy thing. I don't remember something about like deliverability or sends or making clicks do money. I don't know, but I was in the whole ghetto that I get into. Like I'm a whole thing. I'm a whole thing. I'm a whole, I'm tall. I like very colorful shirts on. I'm a whole, I'm a whole last mood. And he's just like, man, I wish I could like be more like you and I'm like, oh, I can't do this because I fear that people aren't going to like me. And I'm like, well, I'm sorry, buddy, I hate to tell you this, but like people don't like you already. Like, and so this is relevant because I said, look, if you are happy with how things are amazing, I love that for you. But like, it seems like you're not happy. And thus, I will say something needs to change. So to Jesse, I would say, what do you actually want though?

26:34Because like short, that's fine. I mean, that's certain. I mean, I don't know. That's, it sounds pretty good. I mean, I don't know. That's certainly a way to do something. But like, what do you want? What do you want to, do you want to serialize a book? Like, do you want, are you in a monetization era or are you in a growth era? So here's the thing. Now that I have happiness, everything's something like all crunchy up in the clouds. But I'm like, it's actually built on a hugely solid foundation of all of this methodology, because it has to, because I go to space. And I take you to space, and just like we said before, I have to be able to grand you back in here. So if you want to serialize a story, and then I'm going to assume that you want exposure, to which I would say, where else are you serializing it? What else are you doing? How are you getting people in? How are you thinking about getting people in? How are you finding other places to cross promote with?

27:36What are the activities that bring you the largest return of energy investment? And like, I mean, you're thinking about it, but like, I mean, that's like a first step thought. I mean, I want to serialize my book on Substack. I mean, sure, that is something you can do. And then publish it, that's also something you can do. But I also talked to someone earlier today who's like, I spent two years and had a hundred subscribers. And then when I think and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You spent two years on this platform and don't have a hundred subscribers yet. Like this, the only thing this platform does well is organic growth. If you're not getting organic growth, what are you doing here? Like, why are you here? Like, you're not getting subscribers. You're just burning energy. And the thing is that everything is energy. So like, you are dumping in energy and you're dumping in more energy than you're getting back at the beginning, but like, you have to have a mechanism

28:37to change that around otherwise you're going to burn out. So like, when the energy transfer is positive in your favor, you grow. When it's negative, you burn out. So like, how are you making this energetic transfer happen? We're going really crunchy now. Well, I've got something even better. You coined a term called chaosing around, which resonated with me and with a lot of creatives that I know because I think the creative brain is uniquely wired to like you said earlier, want to do a bunch of different things at different times. So do you feel like this tendency, this ability to chaos around, is a strength when it comes to marketing or more of a weakness? Again, these are all very dependent questions. So I would say there are people that my wife tends to more order. She has a hard time with chaos. And so even a little bit of chaos is like, enjoy for her. Meanwhile, I live in chaos. And so like, I feel like I need to be structured

29:40to order. That's why all of my things are structured in frameworks and other kinds of things. So I would say, what is the container for your money? How are you chaosing? So if you're chaos around, and you chaos beyond the bounds of your money, well, that's a problem. But if you create something that is a container that's big enough to fit all of your chaos, it's not bad. I talked to her. It's not bad. I talked to an artist down at this conference and she was doing music and fashion and photography and woodwork, all this other stuff. And her significant human was like, yeah, you know, you should put more order on things

30:40and she was like, I need to put more order on things. I was like, I don't know, dude. I'm listening to the words that are cut. I'm listening to the energy coming out of it. And it doesn't, that doesn't sound like you're going to do it, nor are you going to enjoy it, or is it going to leave the best work? It was like, oh, maybe I should align my inspiration up with my menstrual cycle. And I was like, can you do that, though? She's like, I don't know. And I was like, yeah. So like, let's just take into account that like this, this significant human was right when you think of optimization. Sure, like that would be great in a world where like that kind of human can do that. But that kind of human can't do that. So like, what if we just like, or did things less optimize? And we just said, okay, well, I'm not going to make the maximum amount of money, but I'm going to have the maximum amount of fun. What does that mean? Or like, I'm going to have the maximum amount of creativity. What does that mean? It means, well, like, you're going to do a lot of different things, right? So we need to figure out like, what is a container that is broad enough

31:42to fit all of those things. And that, and that those things are so unique to you, that like, no one else could possibly do them. So that when someone says, oh, I don't know if I like this new track that you talk. But like, I don't know, man, I love your music. And like, I'm just going to do the only one who makes your music. I can't like go and low-fi some other stuff. Like, it just looks something about the way you resonate that like works for me. So I'm just going to tough it out. And like, that's what a lot of people in my audience, I know do. They're like, I don't think no one else thinks like me. And if you want my kind of, there are people that like do very, like, center-meaning, center-writing. And like, they're very good at hitting the market and like, sometimes even like making it sound like them. But like, there is nobody talking about capitalism.

32:43Like, but me. Like, there's nobody that's like talking about it in this way. That's both crunchy and structured. And so like, if you want that, you got to come along. And if you don't like part of it, fucking leave. I don't care. Go somewhere else. But you can. You can go somewhere else because like, I have it. So I use the silo. A lot of people silo these things and like, these different publications or these different platforms or these different things. And nothing's growing because like, they're not, they like make an album. And then like two years later, they're like, oh, yeah, I did have an album, huh? So like, really, it's about if you want to be a chaos in human, what is the container that we're going? That is big enough. Not that's going to take you in. Just like the universe is a container. The earth is a container. This house is a container. Like, all the things are containers. Our bodies are containers. But they're containers for a whole universe living inside of us.

33:44So like, how do we make something that's broad enough to just like, be you? And how do we make you plant? And then when you say, I am here. Instead of saying, I am here. You take a big flag and you go, I'm here with your whole chest. And we don't want to say with our whole chest. So like, it's scary. It's scary to be yourself. Sure. But like, in order to be caught in the chaos, like, you have to, like, there are some rules. So it's like, if you were an order person, I would say a whole different thing to you. And like, I don't know. This says there's 34 people here. There might be three for all I know. And they're like, I can't believe that this is so chaotic. But like, I just don't care. Because like, I am sick of living the other ways. Like, you know what you're getting. You've got a capitalist.

34:44So like, when, at this point now, when someone books me on a show, I'm like, all right, you've known me for more than three days. My stuff is broadly available. So like, you have to know what you're getting. And then sometimes when people do it to like, oh my God, I'm like, well, you didn't read the welcome package, did you? Like, you didn't get bought in. So I don't know who to tell you. Like, if you get rust, if you want rust, you get rustled. If you don't want rustled, don't book rustled. That's fine. But like, I bring something to a specific group of people that they enjoy. And so whether any of the 35 people that are here right now are enjoying it, suffering through it, or like, maybe he has a point, but man, his voice is really annoying. Well, like, if you're that third place, I usually write things. I don't talk a lot. There you go. You've got another avenue there. I think that this is kind of getting into something that we talk about a lot at 1 billion arc, which is authenticity being the key to a successful

35:47and a joyful author career. And I know that it's kind of become like this buzzword lately and people have kind of like forgotten what it means. But to you, what does authenticity mean as far as what you write and then how you sell it? Can I sell this for the next 10 years or then hating my life? Hmm. So here's the problem with most authors that you probably work with early career, right? Yep. They do not have any comprehension of how long 10 years is. Like, your books are things you have to talk about for 10 years. Yeah. Your brand is something you have to live with every day of your life for 10 years. And now do you want to make that book? I don't know. Like, maybe you do, maybe you don't. But like, things are really quick and things are really long. So like, for me to be authentic.

36:47Like, hey, I have to like it. And be, I have to get a positive feedback loop from it. And see, like, I have to be able to do it with very little effort. You know what I mean? Like, it's like things that are effort that are authentic flow out of us. And they flow out of us so much that even when we try to contain it, it's painful to contain it. Yes. So the things that are painful to contain now that said, there's a lot of views you probably shouldn't express. There's a lot of things you shouldn't, like you shouldn't necessarily say, but I don't even say on calls like this. Like, I keep, I try to keep my political opinions not to when I'm on other people's podcasts and when I'm on my own only because that's not what they're paying for. That's not what they're like bringing me on for unless they are in which case then I'm thrilled to talk about it.

37:48But like authenticity is about, I guess, okay, so we have this approved vendor program for a capitalist. And my pitch is like, I'm not going to do anything different. I'm going to talk about you the exact same way as I talk about you now. The question is, do you want me in your corner or do you want me on your team? Because like, when I'm on your team, I like, I like, I behind the scenes, I take interest in you, not just, and so authenticity is like, what, if you have to think about whether it's authentic or not, it probably isn't. Like, okay, so there's a lot of things that I do and many of my friends would be like, there's Russell back on his bullshit again. And so it's like, like, your authenticity is like you being back on your bullshit. Like, you know what your bullshit is and you're like, okay, but like, how do I make this broadly palatable and not embarrassing to me?

38:51Because like, I am not embarrassed by this. There are certain times that I am very embarrassed by things in my past. But it's like, how do I take all of those things that people love about me and use it as a sale, not an anchor? Yeah. It's kind of like what you were describing where it's hard to plant your own flag and say it with your chest. It's hard to break the rules because that requires, instead of just taking the path that someone else has forged, even though it might be a horrible path to walk, you have to go and push back your own path, and you have to know it. Oh, doing a kill? Yes. Such a quick walk. Sorry. Yeah. So, yeah, recommendation for anyone listening. But yeah, like, being able to push back your own path, you have to know where you're going and you have to know what you're bringing there. You have to know who you are and be able to say it with your whole chest.

39:52And I think that when we talk about authenticity, it applies to writing because like Russell said, you have to be able to market what you wrote for 10 years. And in order to do that, you have to have a strong why, behind why you're writing it and what you're saying. And that kind of goes along with the age in the happy compass, which is hard. There has to be a heart behind what you're writing. But I want to say, because it looks like Jesse has something else to say, which I didn't read, but I want to just say like, saying it with your whole chest isn't saying it like me. Like, we have two very different humans on this call right now. And like I would say they're both very authentic to their way. They both like one brilliant arc is a very you like project. Like capitalist is a very me project. But like you are much more soft spoken than I am. You're much more erudite than I am. Like you're much more contemplated than I am. Like my wife is very like analytical and like reflective. And like I am much more gregarious.

40:56The question is, okay, so as a career, where, where does someone book you? Like, like you are in, if you want to do this kind of work, like if you're on a panel, there's usually like a plethora of humans on the panel. And like, what is, where are you booked? Like if it's there like, quite no. Grant's not strong enough. And he's not strong enough. Like people know if you want business stuff for creatives, like I am that guy. If you want it to be pretty crunchy, I am that guy. If you want me to go in detail on like projects and like being like going your own way and casing around, I'm your guy. If you want me to talk about how to run a publishing company, you would never book me for that thing. Even though I have run a publishing company, like I'm not going to give you a point by point of what,

41:58like it means to run a publishing company, my friend Joe Bebel is. Maybe you will. I don't know, but like the question is really like, where are you a positive benefit to the ecology of your ecosystem? And where, what part do you play? And we always say we want to not play a part, but like, dude, playing in a part is great. It's like we all play parts. You play a part in your home life. You play a part in your, like it's not playing a, it's not acting as a part. It's saying like, you know, like you got a bunch of bacteria inside of you. They're all playing a part, man, but they're all playing their own part. They're all dancing to their own tune. Yes. Yep. That's the key is making sure that you're doing something with purpose, and you're doing it in your own way. No. What Jesse said, he was talking about, he said something that was really, really awesome. I'm at the point where I'm willing to embrace the chaos. I've played it safe for so long.

42:59I think playing it safe is where a lot of us get stuck because we start believing those lies that people tell us who we should be, and then we don't ever get to the point of we're being who we want to be. Yeah, but here's the thing. Okay. So let's go back to like, the absurdism versus realism. As we say, embrace yourself, but like then there's no plan. Embrace the chaos is required. Embracing the chaos requires considerably more thought at the forefront because you are going to be in a tornado. So you have to know very well your touch points. Embracing the first half of this is writing as a hard thing to get into. I want to publish books ultimately. Money is of interest, but I long since came to think that I have stories inside me that I just wanted to give to what regardless of whether a pays or not. So this is the problem

44:01with whether a pays or not is you need to get a mechanism for an audience to find you. And that mechanism in capitalism is money or time. Like so, that is why we have the return of energy investment architecture at half of the list because it's what activities can I do that get the biggest return on, that give me the biggest return of effort. And then I can take that excess energy to accumulate time, that I can be a time affluent. Then I can reinvest that to be like time rich. Then I can reinvest that to be time wealthy. And then I can do whatever I want because I want to do this thing. So like let's just take Jessie's thing as they said it. You want to have a career in published books. Money is of interest. Okay. Well, I mean, I can tell you don't want

45:01to make a bunch of money because you're trying to do books. Like that's a given. Books are a terrible business model. No one should do them. But you can't do anything. That's a good way. That's a good way. Or you have a really good way. That's a good way. Right, exactly. So like I would say, the best way to do, to continue to have the ability to do books is to keep writing the same series or keep doing the same thing over the long haul because then you can keep coming back to that same dig and dunk. You can keep coming back to the same idea, the same universe over and over and over and over and over again. And it grows and amplifies over time. It's really hard to do at the beginning though because you're probably not that great writer. And you don't have any audience. So you don't know what they actually want. So you got to get some stuff out there that people want. And you got to get a lot of testing, which is why most people start

46:01with short stories. Because short stories, you can test a bunch of them in a very little amount of time. And you can say, oh, these ones sold the publications. This style really resonates with like this group of people or that group of people. So serializing a whole story if that is what your goal is. I would say, well, short stories are just a lot easier to do. They're just like a lot easier to get interest in. Like you could go to a bunch of publications. You can submit to a lot of magazines. Like you can do anthologies. You can make your own anthology. Just like a whole lot more stuff to do. If you have a lot more time to like figure out where your chaos is. So those are the two sides of the coin, right? It's like, well, what is the best thing for me to tell Jesse? Is it to serialize that story? Is it to make a hundred short stories? Is it to get rejected a hundred times next this year

47:02or a thousand times this year? Because that would like build up something. But if you get rejected a hundred times means you probably got like approved a couple times. I don't know. Because I don't know what the activities that you do that would lead to the best energy return. And I don't know where your joy lies. If your joy lies in finishing things telling a really long story is not a good idea. If your joy lies in going really deep and comprehensive and writing ridiculous chapters on like the economic outcome of some crazy city that you built made. Like, yeah, okay. Made for a long story. But like, it takes, this is why I don't think

48:02coaching will ever go away. Because like, I could salt with a lot of people. Even though I like have a community and like in two hours. So if anyone wants like to go really deep on this, I have a break through session later today for people in our $300 a year here. And like, you just can get access to that and come in and like, do those things. I'm just going to say that it's happiness.com forward slash subscribe. It'd be great to have you. We do it twice a month. But like, you really need to know what you want. And you can only know what you want if you know what you really want. But only know if you really, really want if you're able to be true to yourself. And look in the mirror and say, am I in a growth era or in a monetization era? Do I really want to make this book? Will I be able to talk about it? Or like you, I think is so beautiful that you're like, this is where I'm getting joy now. This is what I'm doing now.

49:02You didn't say this is where I get joy. You said, this is where I'm getting joy now. And the ability to say, to not just say, I know what joy is. I know what returns joy to me. But also that this might change tomorrow by saying, now, it's beautiful. And we should have more of that. Yes, for sure. Thank you so much for so graciously sharing, Jesse, about your situation giving us a specific case study to talk about with some of Russell's frameworks here. Samantha Garcia also said, what would you do or how would you write a book of real-life story that you lived so crazy that no one would believe it to be true? I don't know, man. I wrote a book called, I read a book called, and then I thought I was a fish, which was about a guy who had a psych, a LSD psychotic break. And I believe that. I just read, I was telling you, before we got on this call,

50:02I write a book about the case for heaven. And as he's reading it, he's doing all of this quantum physics, noetic stuff. And I was like, bro, you should just look at the noetics since the two men. So I have a very high bar for so crazy no one will believe it to be true. What I would say is, where are the people that are ready to believe it to be true? Because people will believe, people in-hapitalists, people in-hapitalists believe some pretty crazy stuff. Like, the present can affect the past. Like, that, like, nothing is good or bad until you look at it, that, like, things can exist in multiple states at once. Like, that, like, we don't control the outcomes only the inputs. Like, these are things that, like, things that just randomly say to somebody. And like, when you, when you're around the right group of people, you're just like, well, obviously. So I would say, like, who doesn't think it's crazy?

51:02All right. One. And then I would say, if you're still like, no, I want to write it for the mass public, I would say, then you have to follow the rules of something, really closely. I actually think a really great example of this is Dam Brown's new book, because Dam Brown wrote a book about noetics, which is how I know about noetics. He wrote a book about noetics. After writing a book about the Da Vinci code and a bunch of just bonkers stuff, but he followed the rules of Thriller. And he made it so easily consumable, that like, the only thing that was crazy about his book was this noetics stuff. But he force fed you very slowly over the course of an entire story and woven into this really competent Thriller. So I would say, like, you're going to have to take a big area of thing

52:02and then make it real easy to consume and then slowly drip one concept at a time. I learned this during the God's verse Chronicles, which is a book about death, the universe, what happens after you die and like gods and how all gods can exist in one universe without it being like them stepping on each other. So it's a very, very in-depth book. But I started releasing book five and then realized it's so crazy that I had to write four books before it to just like explain, to get people to the point that they could even comprehend the crazy. And then I wrote books like these Dragon Books, which are in that universe, these like standalones that are in that universe and my other big series, Dipsy and Spindle saga, is in a thread of that universe. All of these things much easier to consume than my weird book, weird series, book five to 12 about like what,

53:06where and when happens after you die and like what is our place in the world. So if you have a real crazy life story, you can either find the groups of people who already believe that, find the people who are close to believing it, like or you can make a whole different book that's like a very basic book, that like force feeds these concepts over time. But I mean, I don't know, man, I literally run a community called Hapitalist. It's about like chaosing your way to success and like optimizing for joy and that like you don't have to be serious to be serious about your business. Like these are concepts that are like very esoteric. And so I tend to think, and yet I somehow make a living, I still get booked on things,

54:07I don't understand how I get booked on stuff, more now that I say crazy, or the more crazy stuff I say, the more stuff I get booked on. So yeah, I don't, I tend to think that people will believe it to be true, but you should put it in a framework that is easy to understand and consume. Yes, this was going to be my answer, was who are you trying to convince, which is what you said, like speak to the people who are already close to believing or are believing, and then also learn storytelling, because storytelling is that universal language, that is the framework that can make your crazy truth believable to someone else. So yeah. Well, I want to wrap it up and not take too much of your time, Russell, but thank you so so much for your generosity in answering all of our questions and letting us pick your brain on all these things, really appreciate the time that you've spent and all of the work that you do to help us to learn how to find more joy

55:09in the careers that we've chosen. I want to say to anyone listening, I'll give, actually Russell, you give a chance to plug yourself, let people know where they can follow you, get your books, read your stories, and also learn more about what it means to be a capitalist. Sure. So I mean, the easiest ways to go to HappyTalist.com, we have all of our books behind the paywall, but you get our book Frictionless Growth, which has the majority of this framework just for subscribing. We do calls twice a month and a whole bunch of other cool stuff for paid members, and we have one later today. So you should join our unicorn tier at HappyTalist.com forward slash subscribe. You definitely should. You will get some real quality frameworks and advice. And also, if you need help getting your story written, before you can start following Russell's marvelous advice on how to build your author business, check out One Brilliant Arc because we offer story coaching and editing services

56:10to help you speak that language of storytelling, and we're all about getting stories that matter out into the world and amplifying your authentic voice so that you can then best employ Russell's frameworks. So thank you again so much for the time that you've spent with us. Thank you for everyone who listened, and we will see you next time. You