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Welcome to episode 25 of the Mindful & Driven podcast! It’s all about how to not lose sight of what really matters whilst chasing your dreams.
Episode 25’s guest is Jon Brosio. He is the founder of tribeloyal. Jon originally was a server at high-end restaurants where he serves celebrities in Los Angeles before deciding that he wants to become his own boss for his online business world. He has achieved this and much more. Jon is now an established online writer with millions of views and thousands of followers. His mission is to help other people achieve the same transformation that he achieved himself going from a job that really didn’t make him happy to something that he loves and has full control over.
I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation! I’d love it if you could subscribe, leave me a review and follow me on social channels.
- You can find all my work and socials here: http://amardeep.co
- Download my free Anti-Burnout Toolkit here: http://antiburnout.mindfuldriven.com
- United for Global Mental Health: https://unitedgmh.org/mental-health-support
- Find more about Jon: https://tribeloyal.com/
- Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonbrosio
- Follow him on Medium: https://jonbrosio.medium.com/
Topics discussed in this episode:
- How to use your inner negative voice to find motivation.
- How to lean into your self-consciousness and use it to improve your work and life.
- Why it’s important to embrace your self-consciousness.
- How to embrace self-consciousness as a creative.
- Why it’s important to keep pushing as a creative. How to find balance in your life as a creative.
- Self-consciousness and productivity.
- How to monetize your work as a creative.
Keynotes:
- Introduction (0:00)
- Working for yourself (1:12)
- Struggling with balance and making a difference through writing (5:13)
- Not looking back and creating your own path (10:54)
- The importance of outside perspective (13:08)
- Work-life balance (21:20)
- Putting in the work afterward (28:12)
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Intro Music:
“Himalayas” by Mona Wonderlick — bit.ly/youtube-monawonderlick
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free download: bit.ly/himalayas-download
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Jon: Great
philosopher of our modern day, a one Kanye West once said, ‘We’re all
self-conscious, I’m just the first to admit it.’ For him to admit in a song
that he’s also self-conscious, even though we can look at him and clearly think
like, oh, he’s got it all figured out. When you lean into that self
consciousness, and again, you put in the work, the universe wants you to win.
[00:00:29] Amardeep: Welcome
to the Mindful and Driven Podcast, where we help you to not lose sight of
what’s really important whilst chasing your dreams. Today’s guest is Jon
Brosio. He is the founder of tribeloyal. Jon originally was a server at
high-end restaurants where he serves celebrities in Los Angeles before deciding
that he wants to become his own boss for his online business world. He has
achieved this and much more. Jon is now an established online writer with
millions of views and thousands of followers.His mission is to help other
people achieve the same transformation that he achieved himself going from a
job that really didn’t make him happy to something that he loves and has full
control over. I hope you enjoy listening
to today’s episode.
[00:01:06] Welcome Jon. It’s great to have you on Mindful and Driven.
[00:01:08] Jon: Hey, good to
see you, Amar. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:10] Amardeep: So the
first thing I ask all my guests is, what are some common advice you disagree
with?
[00:01:15] Jon: So I think
that’s a pretty cool thing to talk about. I highly disagree with you need a
formal education to be successful in this world. And part of the reason I
believe that is I work for myself as an entrepreneur. I am a writer by trade.
You know, that helps my entrepreneurialism and most people, when I say that
they think, oh, you went to school for English, or you went to school for
writing or something like that. I went to school for business. I got fired from
the only job in the business realm that I had. And now I’ve been able to make
something of myself where I had to teach myself. It wasn’t something that, you
know, I was given this plan. I was given this formula or education that said,
hey, this is how you do it. It was pulling the metaphorical machete out of my
back pocket in the jungle and hacking away, making my own way. So I think
there’s too much opportunity out in this world that if you’re just courageous
enough to look for it and even more courageous enough to take a chance. There’s
so much you can do that you don’t need. Of course, unless you’re going to be a
doctor, maybe an astronaut, something like that, you probably need a formal
education, but for many things you don’t.
[00:02:25] Amardeep: Yeah, I
completely agree and I’ve got a similar background to you. So I started at
economics in university, then I went into tech consulting for seven years,
which doesn’t really have anything to do with my degree. And then now writing
is a big thing too, and it’s the exact same thing. Like I have no formal
education or even real experience in writing. So my economics degree was mainly
maths be honest, and when I was working the tech world, I wrote the odd blog
for my company, maybe five and seven years, but it wasn’t where I built up the
skills that I needed to be a writer or a storyteller. And that’s where I think
sometimes people don’t think about experience in the right way because writing,
working in business, it’s about how you look at the world. It’s not just about
experience in that particular area. So I’ve talked to so many people over the
years, I’ve traveled, I’ve done different things, and so have you. That gives you
a unique perspective and that’s your experience, and that’s what makes you
interesting, and it’s what helps you succeed. So the former education can help
in some aspects, but in the writing world, as some people have got the basics
down and you can use different software to help you, that’s more than enough.
Like you don’t need to know, I don’t know the difference between proposition
and preposition and all that kind of stuff. I have no idea. So, but that hasn’t
stopped me and hasn’t stopped people from enjoying our writing.
[00:03:50] Jon: Well, I
know. And I’d be curious to hear, I guess, your viewpoint. Whenever I write
something, whether it’s for my audience or for a client, when I’m doing ghost
work or freelance work, there’s this voice in the back of my head that like
tries to trick me into saying like, this isn’t good. You should give up. You
should pack it all in and go get something that’s more comfortable. Until the
client or the audience reads it and goes, oh, this is awesome. Like, thanks for
sharing it or thanks for providing this, you know, piece of work. And it’s
like, okay, I just needed that reminder. Like, and I don’t think it’s just
unique to writers. I think creatives, engineers, probably programmer anything
that you’re creating something, like there is that level of doubt that’s going
to be there. But until you, again, I’ve used this word already a few times, but
like have the courage to do the work and present it. Like the universe wants
you to do well. And maybe I’m like just an overfilling optimist look, but the
universe wants you to do well, but you have to put in the work to provide to
the universe.
[00:04:48] Amardeep: I think
a lot of people struggle to do something which they’re really passionate about,
because that little voice in your head, like you said. And because we’re
sometimes our own worst critic and with writing and with whatever I’ve done,
dancing, anything in the creative space, often I’m, I view it in a much worse
way than other people do. And so I completely understand the way you look at
that. You weren’t always in writing, you weren’t always an entrepreneur, right?
So can you tell me a bit about an earlier time when you struggled with balance
and what kind of made you go into the world that we’re in now?
[00:05:17] Jon: So, what
kind of got me into the world that I am in today was a time that I really
struggled with balance. I was working in fine dining in LA as a server, and I
was smoking cigarettes, which I don’t do anymore. And I was, you know, I’ll
have an occasional glass of wine now, but I was drinking kind of heavily. And I
was just working in a job that I knew I wasn’t, it wasn’t fulfilling me. My
personal life, I was taking on behaviors and doing things that weren’t
fulfilling to me. And I was trying to balance everything. And through my own, I
won’t even call it serendipity, it ended up being positive, but the place I was
working at burned down and everything was taken away from me and I had to kind
of start from square one, I was 20, I was in my mid twenties, 25. I had to go
on unemployment because my job literally burned to the ground. And I never
thought growing up that I would be someone who went on unemployment. Like that
was a kind of a stab at my pride. And I had to like reevaluate everything in my
life. And so I chose to just start writing to make sense of it. It was really
like journalistic writing, but I made it public and that kind of led me to the
life that I’m living now. Just one kind of opportunity opened, another opened
just through consistency of work. So the way that I was able to like, find the
balance, was it’s strange because I felt like spiritually, everything was like
shattered. Like I was making a living for myself, but I knew I wasn’t happy. I
knew I was actually like miserable. Like the friends I had around me, you know,
you’re the average of the five people in your life. Like my average was low.
And I needed this, like kind of shake of like, Hey, you’re doing something that
you hate and things aren’t working out, and that was taken away from you. Like
life can take away things that are miserable. So at least try something that
you enjoy and I’ve always enjoyed creativity and writing. And so that helped me
kind of see how to get back to finding balance um, was taking a chance on something
that I enjoy. When everything else was taken away, so.
[00:07:27] Amardeep: I
remember from previous conversations we’ve had that what you did before you
working in this high end restaurant, it was in Hollywood, right? So you had all
of these different people from crazy backgrounds that you’d mixed with, and
that was in an education itself, right? So even though you might have hated
that job, you still learned feelings there and it still helped you with your
storytelling and some of the ideas you’ve had, because I know I’ve read some of
your stories in the past where you’ve talked about some of the experiences
you’ve had, and they were fascinating. Like it was so interesting to see that
side of the world that you got to experience.
[00:07:59] Jon: Yeah. Well,
thank you for saying what you said about my, some of my stuff. My work, it is,
I think an education that’s kind of hard to put into words of, like, for one, I
grew up in middle class in the Chicago suburbs, like, and I was very blessed to
have a lot in my life and like cleaning toilets after really rich people get
really drunk on expensive wine and make a mess in the bathroom and cleaning up
after them it’s like it teaches you humility and meeting someone who like came
from nothing has built a life for themselves. Where money isn’t even a
conversation anymore that these, some of these people that you meet and like
Hollywood and you can pick their brain and say like, oh, I strive to be that
someday. And then on the flip side, there’s these people that have everything
in the world and they treat you like garbage, because you’re less than them.
You’re a server in a restaurant and they identify you with the title that you
currently occupy. Those lessons, I think again, like they’re outside of formal
education, but they have led to success in my personal life. I could speak for
me. Like they have led to a viewpoint, an experience that I think translates to
the work that I produce. And I don’t know if I would be where I am again,
without those like trials and tribulations in humility, or just seeing what’s
possible in another individual and the work they put in and spending two hours
kind of orchestrating their dining experience and getting to know them, so.
[00:09:27] Amardeep: Yeah.
How long has it been now? So writing in the creative world for you?
[00:09:32] Jon: So I’ve been
writing since, like consistently, since 2017. So we’re going on five years and
actually I made nothing probably the first year and a half. It was just like,
okay, let’s just keep exploring. Like, my life is really different right now. I
monetized in 2018, I side hustled for a few years still. I was working in
different restaurants, because it’s really easy, especially if you’re familiar
with food and wine and just hospitality. It’s easy to find a restaurant or a
restaurant job, especially in LA. And then I went full time almost two years
ago and haven’t looked back, like it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever
done, but it’s also one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done to be able
to be in control of your own financial destiny, to some degree, to do the work
that’s fulfilling and meaningful for you and have the freedom. I I’m sure you
can relate to that, so.
[00:10:27] Amardeep: What
was the trigger that made you leave the restaurant industry and go full time
into what you were doing? Did you have a sense of struggle there to give that
up and to fully back yourself? Or were you just ready?
[00:10:40] Jon: I was
getting into my late twenties. I’m 30 years old and it was, do I want to be
doing this for the rest of my life? Like if anyone listening has worked in, it
doesn’t even need to be restaurants, but like the service industry it’s, you
get home at sometimes two o’clock in the morning, depending on what your roles
and responsibilities are and your knees are killing you. and it was like at a
certain point, like, I can’t look back, you know, I can’t keep doing this.
because I knew I didn’t want to own my own restaurant. I have so much respect
for the people that do, but now it’s still kind of weird, but I love having a
Saturday off because when you work in restaurants, like for I’ve been working
in, or I was working in restaurants for so many years, you don’t have those
days off. And I want a family one day and I want to like, it’s very Norman
Rockwell, but I want to like throw a baseball around with my son. And like, if
I’m working all day Saturday at a restaurant, like you can’t do that. And so it
was looking forward in my life of like, who do I want to be? What do I want to
have and do these things line up? And they didn’t. And it was like, okay, well,
we’re going to put a lot of responsibility in making this business work,
because it gives me that freedom and let’s not look back. And so far I haven’t.
[00:12:00] Amardeep: Hi
everyone. I hope you’re enjoying the episode so far. I want to take a quick
break to ask you to check in with yourself. There’s many people struggling with
balance and it’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s tips that my guests might
share can hopefully help you along the way, but if you already feel overwhelmed
or burnt out, it’s probably best that you ask somebody for help too. For some,
this might be a friend or family member, while others might feel like they have
nobody they can talk to. If you’re one of these people, check out the link in
the show notes, it’s for United for Global Mental Health. They’ve got health
plans all across the world, with people willing to listen on the other side.
It’s important to let somebody know how you’re feeling. Now, back to the show.
[00:12:36] From what I understand, it’s going really well for you now
and it’s, we’re both doing the same thing, right? Where our writing was maybe
our route out of the world that we were in, but now we’re opening up to other
opportunities. And for somebody listening today, it’s you don’t necessarily
know what the opportunities are going to be that will make you get up in the
morning, right? Where I never thought I’d have a podcast. This didn’t, I never
thought I was the kind of guy to do this. But now I love it. And I get to speak
to people like Jon and the guests that come on. So you can create the path as
you go along as you have as well. And what’s happening with you now? So you
you’ve been full time for a couple of years, and I know you’ve got digital
products and other things going on. Do you find you have the right balance now?
Or are you still struggling a little bit?
[00:13:21] Jon: No. So there
is, and I think struggle is part of being human, but one of the biggest struggles
I’m dealing with now, and I know you can relate to this is having built
something that, I mean, building a business is like raising a child. I’m not an
actual parent, so maybe I’m little bit speaking out of turn, but it like, this
is my baby and it’s hard for me to relinquish some control in certain aspects
of growing my business. Like I’m looking to hire or contract work out, but I’m
coming to a place and the balance I’m trying to find is I have to be okay with
this individual that I package everything that’s in my mind and deliver to may
not be on their best day, what I can produce on an average day. And you have to
be okay with that. And so I’m turning to people like you, I’m turning to other
people in my network to help me and coach me. And I think that’s a very
important part of growth in any aspect of life that I was very reluctant to in
the beginning of this world that I’m living in now is being receptive to
coaching, but it’s finding out what works with other people in my network of
again, maybe hiring employees or contracting work, virtual assistant because I
know the direction I want to go and to have the trust in another individual
will help me get there. it terrifies me in giving up that control and I’m
trying to find balance there for sure.
[00:14:48] Amardeep: Yeah.
Because as you know, I’ve just hired a virtual assistant recently. And she’s
going to be listening to this podcast, obviously. So hi, so what’s great about
it is that for me, it came as a recommendation from another creator because I
had the same problem as you, right. It’s difficult to give up that control
because you have things that the way you like to do them. And a lot of the time
we think we do it in such a correct way, but having somebody else look at it,
they can come with new ideas that we didn’t think of because they are your
audience. And sometimes your audience can come up with better ideas. And how
they need to be served than you can. So that that’s one aspect aspect of the
way I think about it is, but I think other people involved, it helps me
understand how a potential listener could react to a potential audience member,
whoever they are. So the nature of what we do is we need customers. We need
people to react what we are doing, and it can’t be that we like it. It’s gotta
be that other people like it too. So I don’t know If that thought helps you.
[00:15:42] Jon: Well, yeah.
And it’s a balance and because we do work that at times is very solitary. You
know, and it’s very deep work oriented, very conscious. You have to tap into
flow perhaps a lot and silence out all outside distraction. And sometimes that
can, or at least I’ll speak through my own experience. For me, it takes me into
places where it’s hard to ask for help because I’m so solitary at times. It’s
hard to maybe connect and collaborate because I’m like, no, no, no, this is,
this is the path I’m narrowed in on right now. And I know where I’m going and
bringing someone else on board or having to teach someone else how I think
could open up a whole new avenue. And it’s somewhere I think to what you said,
like in this creative world, you didn’t realize you were going to be a
podcaster, you know, and create that maybe a number of years ago. And now you
did, and you don’t know what this person’s going to help bring out of your
blind spot, but it’s really cool to see you, someone I look up to you know,
almost in real time going through and I can’t wait to see what happens.
[00:16:45] Amardeep: It’s
one other thing I’m looking at as well in terms of that is trying to reduce the
amount of work that I have because, like I said, it’s very conscious thinking.
If you’re going to a creative industry, people might look and say, oh, you only
work X amount of hours per week. And it’s one of the traps because in those
hours each week, you have to think so hard and it’s exhausting. It would be
draining. If you’re working in a job and it’s, you have to follow the.
Instructions that your boss gives you, it might be a lot of hours, but it might
not be as mentally draining as doing your own creative work can be. And it’s
something which I’m trying to now watch out for is how can I reduce the
cognitive load I have by having less small tasks, I need to do less decisions I
need to make through this creating the systems, because the more I can reduce
that, it frees up my mental space to then do the stuff that’s more high value
and driven and makes a difference. So that’s one way I’m looking at it as well.
And I think it eludes to what you’re saying there is how do we reduce our hours
of what we already have enough so that we have the free energy and time to be
able to take those next steps and to grow as well, because. It’s hard to grow.
We’re so busy doing the things that we’ve already done.
[00:17:54] Jon: Absolutely.
I mean, you always want to move the needle, right? Like that’s kind of the aim,
I think for any entrepreneurial or business endeavor is to keep moving forward
and to keep growing. But when you’re also wearing the administration hat, you
become the bottleneck and you see where you can easily slash tasks, but again
it’s like, am I okay with giving up that control? Am I okay with it maybe not
looking exactly the way I imagine it? Even if it can look better from that
other individual or team or,
[00:18:22] Amardeep: yeah, I
think bottleneck is a good word. I do think I am the bottleneck a lot at the
moment for myself. And if I can set up those systems properly, it reduces the
need for me to do it because some things can’t get done unless I do it. But
then I have other things to do as well. And it’s a problem I’m struggling with
too. Right now, I’m going through the same thing. I’ve been, it’s been four
months for me, and it’s been great being my own boss, but then I’m also now
learning more and more about the downsides of that. And how do I continue doing
the bits I love, but not holding myself back. And I’d be really interested to
see what happens with you in the future as well in terms of how you do this,
because I don’t think there’s one right way of doing it, but it’s one of these
entrepreneurial struggles, which so many of us deal with. But sometimes people
don’t get to see until they do it themselves, because I’m sure somebody
listening that right now might be like, I’m going to quit my job and do my own
thing and I’ll hire somebody, but it’s so different when it’s your baby and you
want to let it go. It’s that emotional side of things. it’s irrational. It’s
irrational, right? But it’s hard to let go. It’s hard to be, yes, you can do
this. Even though logically, you know, you need to let go.
[00:19:26] Jon: Yeah. And
you know that like, if you can educate or translate processes to another human
and humans are so remarkable, like it should be an easy thing. Like it’ll open
up so many more doors, but that, to me, like in this like entre entrepreneurial
game, like that actually lights a fire under me of, people talk a lot about
life as a simulation. Like, I feel like entrepreneurialism is a simulation of
like I’m leveling up almost on a daily, like at a daily rate of figuring out new
things that I’m capable of or new opportunities that exist in the world. And
it’s like, if I just keep following that, listening to my gut, asking for help
when I need it, surrounding myself with an amazing community, like I’ll be
level a thousand before, too long, you know? And then I’ll look back and just
be like, dang, that was an amazing ride. And it already has been, you know. And
I’m not willing to that up anytime soon, even with the struggles and the times
where things are hard and you’re uncertain. It’s such a gift to be in a
situation, I think that we’re both in.
[00:20:32] Amardeep: You
alluded to this earlier. So you mentioned about the dream is to be able to play
baseball with your son on a Saturday. What’s the lifestyle you are working
towards? What’s, to you, the ideal work life balance?
[00:20:43] Jon: Yeah, I
think that’s an amazing question. So we kind of talked about it a little bit
where it’s, I’m focusing on bigger things, because right now I wear two hats
and it’s slowly becoming like more percentage on my day as the administrative
work, but it’s where I’m in like full destiny of moving the needle, of focusing
on bigger creative things. Like, you know, when I focus on the writing aspect,
it brings me joy. When I focus on working right now in digital advertising and
that’s a puzzle under itself and that like the pursuit of solving that puzzle
brings me joy, and I have aspirations to do a podcast as well in the future.
You know, to work on that creative project, the idea of that brings me joy. But
to also have time where, hey, I don’t need to tell anyone, me and my girl are
going to go to Japan for two months, we’re going to start up north and work our
way down on the train, have every single piece of sushi that the island has to
offer us, and that to me is so much a dream, but also so attainable in today’s
world filled with opportunity, especially in the digital landscape. If you can,
again, reduce your own bottleneck and make sure that your business is still
growing and impact a community impact, if you have employees. And I think it’s
all possible.
[00:22:01] Amardeep: I
really like that point as well, because, so I’ve mentioned this before my
little sister at a company, they have something called duvet days, which is
where, you can wake up in the morning, have no reason whatsoever, call in, say
I’m taking a duvet day. You don’t need to be sick. You don’t need a doctor’s
note and you get two or three of these a year. And that’s why I want to be able
do in my business. I want to be able to say one day, I wake up, I don’t feel in
the mood, I want to go out and do something else. I’m not going to do any work.
And I’m not at that point yet because there’s too many bottlenecks I’m part of.
But that to me is the dream. Like you said, where I can just make these snap
decisions, and I have people who work for me or have systems in place that
that’s okay. I don’t need to overly plan every single time I want to take time
off, and I think it kind of relates to your point about Japan. If you can do
that where you can say, okay, I’m going to go to Japan. Last minute decision
and I’m confident that everything’s going to be okay. That’s such a nice
position to be in.
[00:23:02] Jon: Wait. So
you’re telling me you’ve been doing this almost six months and you haven’t
taken a day off?
[00:23:06] Amardeep: No,
I’ve taken days off, but I need to plan in advance. I can’t just decide in the
morning, I’m not going to go to work or I’m not, I’m not going to do anything
today.
[00:23:14] Jon: Got it.
[00:23:15] Amardeep: I have
to kind of think in advance, like, oh, let me make sure I get stuff done so
that tomorrow I don’t have any worries?
[00:23:20] Jon: Yeah.
[00:23:20] Amardeep: I can’t
just decide on that day. Oh yes. Screw it. I’m not doing anything.
[00:23:24] Jon: Oh yeah. I
think that would eat away at me for days afterwards knowing like the things
that started to unravel as I just, you know, took the day off. Yeah. you have
to plan. Okay. I gotta work extra hard so that stuff’s still going to happen
tomorrow.
[00:23:42] Amardeep: So this
summer I haven’t really experienced it yet. I haven’t taken a long period of
time off. Have you been doing that during, you’re are full-time so you’ve been
full-time for over two years, you said, have you had an extended break yet?
[00:23:53] Jon: By extended,
it would be perhaps I did like a week last year and that’s really like the
extent of it, but I’m still working the whole time. Don’t get me wrong. Like I
did a road trip last year and like, while, when we got to the destination,
there was still being done. Because I just, it’s like, it’s weird when you,
when you work for yourself, because you know, like no one eats, unless you show
up and do the work, and I don’t have certain things in place where I know it’s
getting done or created or shipped or sent. So yeah, I was on vacation, meaning
I was somewhere else, and I was enjoying myself, but there was still work
getting done. I couldn’t get away from it.
[00:24:35] Amardeep: How
many hours at the moment do you think you work a week?
[00:24:38] Jon: I mean, it’s
really hard. I was thinking what you said earlier about like, you know, I only
work X amount of hours a day, but I feel like that’s only you measuring actual
output. because there are these like cerebral things that go into it, whether
it’s planning, forecasting, things like that, that I don’t necessarily count as
like hours worked. Though, if someone else were maybe to look from the inside
out there, like, no, no, no, put in probably every day, six to eight hours of
like conscious work, knowing, like the way I see it, and it generally comes out
to that timeframe, is there’s three, like demons that face us every single day.
Those demons can be health oriented. They can be work oriented. That’s a lot of
my life right now is their work oriented. And it’s like, if you can slay or at
least, acknowledge and approach and battle plan against those three demons,
then the day is worth your while. Then the day has been a success. And in my
world they generally take up a lot of conscious effort. That’s like deep work
minded things, site building, advertising right now is a big part of my life.
Writing email marketing. They take a lot of work, but it’s generally like three
huge tasks and everything else. Maybe the other half of the day is the
administrative stuff that I’m looking to slay as well.
[00:25:50] Amardeep: So do
you have three different demons every day, do you think? Or is it health, work
and,
[00:25:54] Jon: Oh, no. Most
of it’s like three work demons. My health, like before this podcast, it’s in
the morning for me. Like I went for a three mile run. That’s been pretty
automatic in my life. Like health being proactive with my health has been
pretty automatic for many years now. So I don’t consider that like a demon, but
for another individual it easily could be. For me, it’s like the three demons I
try to have it be work oriented. Like it’ll be write a thousand word article and
pitch it to a publication in one day. Not pitch it, I mean I edit it the next
day, once I’ve had a time to step away from it. But most of mine are like work
related or it’s get the entire framework right now, like with digital
advertising, let’s get the entire audience framework, set up, get my five ad
creatives, get all the different copies, and start the testing phase over seven
days, you know, that that’s like a big demon in my world. So today is the day
where I analyze the testing, so it’s an exciting day.
[00:26:47] Amardeep: Oh,
hopefully it goes well.
[00:26:49] Jon: Yeah.
Hopefully.
[00:26:49] Amardeep: What’s
one mindset shift, you think that people listening today could make, that would
make a positive difference to their lives?
[00:26:55] Jon: When I was
in college, I remember like just laughing with my friends and then it stuck
with me ever since. I made a joke, and I was probably, had probably had maybe
like a little whiskey in me and I’m like entertaining, like a small audience of
my friends and stuff, and I was like the great philosopher of our modern day, a
one Kanye west once said, ‘We’re all self conscious. I’m just the first to
admit it.’ And like people get like laughed, because I was of course, like
painting this picture. People thought maybe I was going to actually do a
philosopher. But I think that that idea has held with me now for more than a
decade in the sense that this guy who say what you want about him, like people
say he’s crazy, he’s mentally unstable, for him to admit in a song that he’s
also self conscious, even though we can look at him and clearly think like, oh,
he’s got it all figured out, really hit me, like what we were talking earlier
is I still get anxiety when I create something, whether it’s for an audience or
a client in thinking that the work is sub satisfactory until I get positive
comments or a positive email back, or the client’s like, this is exactly what
we were looking for. And I think when you lean into that self consciousness,
and again, you put in the work that’s, in my opinion, the most important part
is it’s not just recognizing it, but it’s actually following through with you
or personal commitments and doing the work. The universe wants you to win. And
we’re all self-conscious. We all think that what piece of art or creativity
that we put in front of the world is going to be just criticized, unbelievably,
but most human beings, we all want the same thing. We all want to be happy. We
want to do work that fulfills us. We want to build community. And I think, the
way the world, especially like our space, is constructed now is like, there’s
just too much opportunity that it’s not even a competition with other creators
or writers, or it’s just a competition with yourself. Are you going to do the
work that you promised yourself when you woke up this morning? And if the
answer is yes, and you can show that work. Again, I hate belaboring the point,
but the universe wants you to win. So lean into the self consciousness.
[00:29:10] Amardeep: Yeah. I
think that’s a really good point about doing the work as well, because it’s not
just with professional things as well. Being self aware, people think that’s
the end and it’s not, you can acknowledge you have problems, but just knowing
you have the problem, doesn’t fix it. So that is the point about, work out what
your struggles are, work out, what’s going on, but you also need to try and
figure out what steps you can take to make a change to that. So I think
sometimes people say, oh, you can admit you’ve got a problem. Great. And
congratulations. But then if you still live with that problem and don’t do
anything about it. You’re still having the same problem just because, you know,
you’ve got it. Doesn’t make it any better. And that’s what you said about
putting in the work afterwards. That’s what really makes a difference. So it’s
a two step process.
[00:29:55] Jon: Yeah. I’m no
expert and I’ve never been an AA, but of course it’s like very famous that they
say the first step of admitting or that knowing you have a problem is admitting
it, what they don’t ever say is like, well, what are the 11 steps after that?
Because those are probably equally as important and yeah, like. I was in this
world where I was unhealthy, doing things that I shouldn’t have been doing,
working at a place that was bringing me misery, and it was like, I could easily
just go home, tell my roommate, hey, I’m not satisfied with my life. And he’s
such a great friend that he would be like, okay, do something about it. because
it just admitting it’s not enough, like I think people do that all the time and
then they wonder, well, why am I still here? It’s because like you need to show
up. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Stephen Pressfield, but he’s a writer. His
like most famous work is the war of art. He was a truck driver. He ended up
like being a lumberjack in like Oregon. He was living in like a shack that
didn’t even have heating. And he says like every human being, while it might
look different, for each human being, every human being is like, met with
resistance every day. And resistance is, oh, I’ll get to it tomorrow. Or it’s
not that important to call that person back or whatever it looks like, and as
long as you can, again, like confront the resistance, but more importantly, do
something about it and overcome it, things will start to take shape. I didn’t
realize that I would have an email list of multiple thousands of individuals
and have a following of almost 20,000 people on Medium and all of these things
when I just told myself, hey, for 30 days, I’m going to write the world showed
me opportunities as a result of putting in the work. But I didn’t really have a
plan or now I have plans because I can see things more clearly, but when you’re
at a starting point, just show up. It’s the most important thing you can do.
[00:31:46] Amardeep:
Sometimes people lose themselves in the massive dreams whereas you said, you
just start at 30 days. So you liked writing, you knew you’re unhappy, so why
not try something that makes you happy for 30 days. And I think that some
people listening right now could try it. It doesn’t have to be writing. Maybe
you enjoy painting. Why not do some painting every evening for the next 30
days. What’s stopping you. You can spend 10 minutes on it. If you can find
something like that in your life, who knows where it’s going to take you,
right? Like we didn’t realize by writing a little bit that we’d then quit our
jobs and go full time and do all this other stuff. But it just taking those
first steps and putting in the work afterwards. So you do a bit, you learn a
bit, you do some more. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you, Jon, where can the
listeners hear more from you?
[00:32:33] Jon: You can go
to my website, tribe, tribeloyal.com. Anything I have a lot of free resources
things that can get you started. If you want to enter this world, that me and
Amar in, I’ve recently started producing on bitclout, Jon_Brosio on bitclout
and you can follow me on Instagram too, jonBrosio one word. I don’t spell my
name with an H though. So it’s J O N Brosio B R O S I O. I’m not too active,
but if you want to see what I do in my personal life, you can catch me out
there too.
[00:33:05] Amardeep: And the
final thing to finish up on is, what’s one small thing that’s brought you joy
recently?
[00:33:10] Jon: It was the
end of July of this year, into early August. I’ve lived on my own, what I mean
by that is like away from my family. I live in Los Angeles and I grew up in the
Chicagoland area. But before I lived in LA, I lived in Boston and I’ve lived
away from my family for quite some time now being on my own and in July and
August, I had the opportunity because I had to straddle a wedding for a close
friend, my parents renewed their vows, and my mom’s 60th birthday, I had an
opportunity to spend two weeks living with them. It was just the three of us
and their dog, Jay, but It was the most amount of time I’ve had being like
cooking with my parents and being really close to my parents for an extended
period of time, even though it was only two weeks, first time in almost a
decade. That meant a lot to me, and it brought me a lot of joy and to see, you
know, after 10 years I see them on holidays and random trips, you know, to be a
part of their life again was really awesome and something I won’t forget
anytime soon, for sure.
[00:34:18] Amardeep: If
you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, I’d love it If you could leave me a five
star review, it really helps get the message out further. Wherever you’re
listening, it would be awesome If you could subscribe and share in your social
media channels. If you want to see more of my work and advice, you can find all
of the links in the show notes.
Thank
you again for listening and I hope you have a lovely day.
Amar is a coach, podcast host and writer. He helps ambitious people to grow without burning out. His articles have been read millions of times and he’s interviewed founders of companies such as Netflix and Twitter.
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