The Unmistakable Creative Podcast
Getting Unstuck and Turning Things Around with Dave Ursillo
In 2011 Dave Ursillo published his first book Lead Without Followers. In an inspiring uphill battle, Dave has shown a tremendous amount of grit. In the last year his business has experienced a dramatic turnaround.
Here are some of the highlights from our conversation
- Lessons from the world of politics and leadership
- The role of self belief in your success
- Why a mission of service matters so much
- The subtle nuances of your language the impact your mindset
- Understanding what you think, feel and believe
- Why what you say is going to be heard
- How to push yourself to the place of true authenticity
- Why making your life about other people gives them power
- The Importance of not getting attached to your success
- Why the art matters more than the mechanics
- Why showing up everyday is just a prerequisite
- How the failure of a book changed Dave's perception of art
- Dealing with a business on the brink of failure
- How Following through on a simple idea drastically changed Dave's business
- Structuring a writer's group where the journey is the reward
- The key values that were the foundations of the Literati writer's group
- Critical Elements of Being Unapologetically You
Dave Ursillo is the founder of The Literati Writers Group, and the author or Lead without Followers. You can follow him on twitter @daveursillo.
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- Broadcast on:
- 13 Jan 2014
- Audio Format:
- other
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In this episode, my friend Dave Ursula will return to the show to share his story about grit and persistence that resulted in the turnaround of a business that was on the brink of failure. Dave, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Hey, Greenie. Thanks so much for hosting me. It's awesome to chat with you again. I mean, our paths cross enough throughout the years on and off, whether we're at a conference or just bumping into each other on the street in New York or LA, but it's really great to be back with you. And like you said, I mean, the first time we chatted on what was Blogcast FM two years ago, I mean, it feels like five years ago. I feel like another human being ago, you know, I think we talked right around when I published my first book in 2011 and just the amount of challenges, but also like just amazing moments that have come since then, they've all been really hard fought, but I'm really excited to just share as much of the story and the advice so that people don't have to go through the four to five years of struggle like I did. That's what it's all about right now. I'm just trying to help people who are passionate creatives and dreamers and visionaries who want to help people and also live their lives more aligned to their value system and really making the journey of the reward. And to be able to do that without like we said, Streety, like struggling for three, four, five years before you can support yourself or actually create impact with people. So that's what I'm here for and I'm really happy to be back. Awesome. Well, let's do this. Let's let's take a few steps back. I want to get into the really early part of your journey because I mean, obviously our show is growing a lot since you've been here. So I mean, let's really start at the very beginning and kind of how all your life, your story, your journey has led you to doing the work that you're doing today. Yeah, man. It's a great question and the short story that I usually tell people is that I come from the world of politics and public service. I was 15 years old on September 11th, 2001 and I was growing up in here in a very nice suburban area in the home state of Rhode Island and you know, I like many high school age kids at the time watched two planes flying to two buildings and thousands of people die live on TV and it was at a time when I was really starting to become politically conscious or just conscious of the world and of people. And when I watched this event, it really cemented in my brain the want to help people, the want to be a solution, like a force of love and service and good leadership to help people in a world that really appeared to need it. And I spent nine years of my life from actually probably like eight years, nine years through high school, college and beyond trying to find a career path that validated that feeling that I felt. And I tried to find a career path in politics and public service. I dabbled with the idea of going into the military as an officer in the United States Army. I thought about journalism, became editor in chief of my student newspaper, Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and I became a White House intern in 2008 under the Bush administration and ultimately started working in 2009 as a body man, which is kind of a catch-all position for a right-hand man, a personal driver, personal assistant, schedule keeper, phone call screener, driver, just like the whole nine yards for a campaigning politician in 2009. And this was a one year at a college, I had a job that by every indication was a really good job, it was a state job, which I mean my boss was a political office holder, so I kind of was dependent on him winning to maintain my job in position. But other than that, it was a state job which came with benefits, and it's a secure job for the most part. But that funny thing that we call the quarter-life crisis began to settle in when I was a year out of college, I had all this piss and vinegar in me and these dreams and really wanting to change the world and just do something with my life right now that would feel like I was doing more than just waiting to help people. And being told that I needed to wait 10 or 20 or 30 years before I could start helping people because I wasn't wealthy enough, I didn't own enough, I wasn't powerful enough. My job title wasn't good enough. And that really burned a hole in my sides, and I only lasted a few months in that job because I was riddled with depression, I was dealing with anxiety, and my body was just shutting down and I was losing faith in myself. And for someone like me, Trini, that I've never been the top of the class type of personality. I've never been top of the class type of talent, like I just don't overflow with a raw genius intelligence. I've always had to fight for just getting to the middle of the pack. I was at a place in my life where I could feel the only thing that had ever kept me going, which was my self-belief, just the raw belief that no matter what I was doing, and even though I never knew how I was going to figure it out, whether it was getting an internship at the White House, becoming editor in chief of my student newspaper, just all these little strides of success, these little moments of victories where I felt like I was making ends meet. When I felt that self-belief start to die, and I describe it like it being an acorn, just like that little acorn in the pit of my stomach where I just knew something could sprout from this place if I believed in it. When that acorn started to wither and die, I just knew I had to escape. I knew that I needed to give myself a fighting chance to do something with my life, and I knew I had writing in my back pocket, it's always been my passion. I had a dream of writing a book on leadership to inspire people to be leaders in their everyday lives. I just knew that I could do more with less than waiting 10 or 20 years fighting my way through a system, playing games in business, playing games in politics, to be validated or given permission to help people, and I just believe that I could lead without followers in my life based upon how I lived it, and a lot of dedication, and a lot of just manufacturing love and service. That's when I decided to quit my job, that was four and a half years ago, and I started to blog and started to try to figure something out. All right, so a ton of stuff here, let's do this, you've heard me say this a thousand times, let's take a few steps back, I want to get to the very beginning of this. One of the things that's interesting to me is that you kind of knew at an early age that you felt compelled or drawn to sort of this mission or message of serving other people. How it played itself out, obviously, has happened in a bunch of different ways which we'll get into, but I think that this is something that comes up over and over again. For you to realize that at a young age is actually, I think, an anomaly, and as you work with people, and as you have these people in the workshops and retreats during all of which we'll talk about, how do you uncover that with them, I mean, especially when you're older and you've gotten to this point of sort of just sleepwalking through your life? Yeah, it's a great question, Serene, because ultimately when I talk to people and I ask them questions about what they're looking for, what they want, what they need, what they desire, whether it's creatively in a book, there's usually like that one project or that one nugget, that one belief, that one line, that one idea that we always go back to, and sometimes to go back to the acorn idea, that thing is an acorn and it gets, you know, topsoil gets thrown on it and leaves fall on it, and these are just the layers of our life that as we go on, all these different things get in the way. And I think that by unearthing, describing to unearth whatever that acorn is through the course of conversation, and for me writing is a really powerful method, a very personal, powerful method, that I encourage people to engage in, to dig deep into their core and to dig deep into their soul, and it's usually through the course of conversation, as I was saying, me questioning, because it always takes those questions, those questions that were asked and they just profoundly stump us, to ask them what it is they're really looking for, or what it is that they're afraid they don't already know about themselves, or about what they want. Yeah, I think that, you know, what's interesting is I think that often when we start with those questions, we want these sort of immediate answers, and I think that we, rather than looking for answers, I think really what we have to do is we have to treat these questions as sort of an inquiry and a journey into who we are, because it's like, hey, here's an opportunity to get to know yourself, and it's terrifying because often what you'll uncover can be very uncomfortable. Yeah, and you know what it is, Trini, is that, like I said in the course of conversation or in the course of writing, but I mean, when I'm working with somebody and I'm talking to them, in the course of a conversation, you start to use certain words, and you start to say things in a certain way. You start telling a story, just kind of like I told this long-winded story to kick off our conversation, and you start noticing patterns of word usages, and you start noticing those little tiny disclaimers that people will place around their ideas, or what their passion is, and they'll say, you know, I'm just an aspiring writer instead of saying, I love to write, and through the course of conversation, you can really start to dissect exactly where somebody's mindset is, where their own self-belief rests and where they're challenged, and you can start to hear, actually, through the course of their word usages, their sentences, their paragraphs, the values that they hold dear about what they want most, and not even what they want most, that's the wrong thing to say, but how they want what they want. And the core beliefs, the values that we strive to live by every day that really define our overarching experience in life. You know, I don't just want to write a book and for it to be a bestseller, Shimi, I want to write a book my way, and I want that bestseller someday to read in a way that feels a certain way to somebody. It can't just be, it's not just about those details, about the outcomes, the end goals. I really, as an artist, I want it to feel a certain way, I want my own experience to feel a certain way, and so these are the things that really come out when we're talking to one another, in the course of conversation, we dig deep enough, I start to notice those trends, those habits, those patterns, and it really starts to, if you can just reflect them back, that's really my job. I just reflect back what you're telling me. I reflect back the things that you automatically say, that you automatically think, and just shedding a little bit of light, a little awareness on those words and those values really start to help somebody realize what that acorn is that's lying underneath that debris. Yeah, I know this is brilliant, and I'll throw in one tactical thing for those of you guys. You may think, okay, this all sounds really sort of new-agey and psychobabble, but we'll give you a tactic that you can use. Danielle LaPorte talks about this in the Firestarter sessions. Go out and have somebody interview you, and you'll be kind of blown away about what you uncover. Part of why I'll often go back and listen to conversations where I've been interviewed is I uncover a lot of threads for content, for newsletters, I mean a lot of sort of my core values I've realized have been articulated, and the thing if we take that for granted, because it's so second nature to us to tell our story, it's like, oh, okay, well, whatever, there's nothing in that. But when you sit down and you tell your story, and again, really, I think that if you sit down and write out what your story is, a lot of the language that Dave is talking about will become very apparent, and often what you don't realize is that language creates a context and maybe your language is creating a very limiting context, and once you start to let go of that, a lot of things will start to open up. Absolutely, Srini, and then another practical thing when I talk about, I mean, the literal process of writing for me has always been that kind of first step of understanding what I actually think, feel, and believe, which seems obvious enough, but I mean the first time I actually realized that, that what I was writing on paper was what I was choosing to believe, and thus, that the story that I told about myself in my head or I told to someone like Srini Rao is a matter of choice, that I was really kind of shaping in a very, very, very real, tangible, practical way, there's no psycho-babble about it. I was literally shaping what the reality was that I was living, and it's a type of thing where if you apply it to something like we used to talk about about brand, like creating your first blog, platform, or your brand, the words you use to describe yourself is going to attract certain people or dissuade certain people from paying attention or getting on board, so it's really that simple, that the words that you use really matter because we're not living in bubbles, we're living amongst other human beings, and what they hear us say and how they, you know, how they hear us tell our stories about what we want or what we need, whether it's a huge dream, a lifelong dream, writing a book, a best-seller, or just saying like I need to go to the supermarket for X, Y, and Z, it's not what you say, that matters, it's what people hear. I love that, I think that's brilliant. Well, let's do this, let's search gears a little bit, and let's talk about sort of your experience as both as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper and as a White House intern, because I think that, you know, there's a sense of public service that I'm finding as a theme throughout everything you do, and I want to talk about that and how it's applied to everything that you do now, but I'm really curious, kind of, about lessons learned from working with somebody in politics and working as the editor-in-chief of a newspaper that have sort of influenced and shaped everything that you do today, like what are the things that are sort of timeless lessons that you've brought forward with you? Yeah, those are great questions, Shrini, and I, it's honest to God, I don't think I've been asked them, maybe ever, or if, just, it has been such a long time that it's a really, it's a really interesting topic to open up. I mean, for being an editor-in-chief of a student newspaper, I was a co-editor-in-chief with a friend of mine, her name is Mia Martinez, and she's a lawyer now, and that's a, that's a interesting coincidence, because Mia and I were actually the subject of, we were named in a federal lawsuit against our college, we were, we were co-defendants in a discrimination case that was levied against our alma mater back in, about probably 2007, and the case was ultimately dismissed, it was baseless, but what happened, and this is probably the biggest lesson that I've learned, is Mia interviewed an employee of our college at the time, to ask him about this program that was run, it was kind of basically build as an affirmative action sort of an organization, and it was meant to help acclimate students of color, because my school was predominantly kind of like a white Catholic school, and that was the image of it, so it dissuaded, so the school thought, students of color from applying and wanting to become members of the college, so this program was established to kind of help acclimate students of color, and Mia was Hispanic and she was, it was invited to become a part of the program, long story short, she wrote an article about this program, and the, the man that she interviewed threatened to sue her for libel, because he didn't like the way that he was portrayed in the article, which was a piece of reporting, a year goes by, nothing happens, the man's contract is not renewed by the school, and he believes that he was quote unquote fired, even though it was an expired contract, and he believes that he was fired because he was a man of color, so he went to a lawyer and filed this discrimination lawsuit against the college, and named all these people, and Mia and I, as editors and chief of the student newspaper, were co-defendants, so let me tell you, when you get a letter from a federal bureau naming you in a lawsuit, mentioning racial discrimination, it is not a great day, especially when you tell your father, who is a lawyer, that this is happening, it was a really terrible sort of an experience, but I think it, I think that, in terms of, you know, public service and being in a place of responsibility, really forced me, who is only 20, 21 years old at the time, to understand the gravity of what it means to be in a position of power, but more so what it means to be in a position where everything you say and everything that you don't say can be used against you, just as much as it is used to praise you or hold you up, and that was a really, I mean, that's a type of thing where I wanted to scream, I wanted to take that newspaper and write every article about this guy and just trash him, of course it would be counterproductive, it would be morally wrong, but it was a type of thing where I had to sit and know that I was being sued for something I didn't do wrong, and just bite it, just take it. Interesting. So one question comes from that because, you know, we're talking about being in a position of power, and in many ways, all of us are in a position of power, a position in which we can share our opinions and our voices because of the canvases that we're operating with, me in the form of podcasting, you in the form of books and blogs and writing, and what I'm curious about is maintaining the balance between that and being opinionated and authentic. So the balance between being responsible with the power that you have and being authentic essentially? Yeah. I mean, you could take this whole responsibility thing and you can say, you know what, the thing, the question where I'm trying to go with this is that that can become paralyzing and cause you to be really safe, and I can tell you, I did that for a very long time. There are always these things you're afraid to talk about, and I can tell you the moment I started talking about the things I thought would be the end of me, those are the things that changed everything. Right. Yeah. And I think it's a great point for you, and it's the type of thing where I felt in light of that moment and being in the field of politics and being a White House intern, and this was when I was a White House intern, I mean, it was before Twitter. It was before Facebook was as big as it is. So I feel really lucky that I didn't ever have to put myself in a position where I was compromising my image or an image that reflected a politician or a state or federal office that I was a part of. So I was lucky in that regard. But I think that at the end of the day, you really have to be true to yourself in saying what you believe, but you have to always be cognizant of the fact that what you say is going to be heard. And in today's modern age, what it's heard doesn't just disappear. You know, the things that we were ultimately quote unquote sued for were kind of just like academic bullshit, and it's this part of the stuff that goes on in big business. But this, I mean, the things that you talk about now, if you talk about today on the blog, on a TEDx stage, in a book, you always have to be cognizant of the fact that what you say is going to be heard. It's going to be remembered. It's going to be reprinted. It's going to be saved by the animals of history and by the internet. For me, to be honest with you, Shrinni, I never think about that story unless somebody asked me about it. It's never stopped me from saying something that I believe in, because ultimately what I believe in saying and preaching and sharing and teaching and leading doesn't have to do with other people, like individuals and their actions. And I really think that that is a reflection of what I believe, like I strive to lead by example. I strive to use myself as an example, not being that I'm any better than anybody else, but I'm just constantly trying to push myself to that place where I can say this is the experience I've had. This is how I fail. This is how I fucked up. This is how I fell down on my face. This is how I struggle to make money for three years as a self-employed entrepreneur. This is how my first book, I never liked it. And I knew that critics who shit on it were right, but I couldn't say that out loud. It's constantly what I strive to do for myself, and this is the advice that I would give to somebody who's listening, is don't make the life you're trying to live about anybody else, and you don't give them your power. If you can, and it sounds like it's dangerously egocentric to say something like that, but in truth is the life that you're striving to lead, if you're trying to better yourself, you're trying to make a business for yourself, you're trying to help people, it's about the effect, the positive effects, that loving effect, and in crafting the legacy of love that lasts far beyond the reach of anything that you can see. But if you pick enemies and you pick villains and you make it about them, almost like politicians do, where they don't campaign about themselves, they campaign about how terrible the other person is, they're giving every ounce of their power away because they're making it about something that they're not. And that's the situation that I had to experience in college as editor-in-chief was we chose to mention somebody by name and we shouldn't have even done it, because that gave him the power to sue us for libel, and it was thrown out, but we still gave him that opportunity. Love it. Okay, so a lot of good stuff here. So let's do this. I want to start getting into sort of the piece of where the journey starts in terms of the entrepreneurship piece and deciding to quit your job, but rather than sort of recognizing that moment of knowing, "Hey, it's time to make a change," because I think we've really belabored that point quite a bit in many episodes, I don't want to spend too much time on that. Yeah, I agree. I'm a bit more interested in sort of this whole idea of knowing that, "Hey, I'm going to lead without followers." I mean, I think that that takes a leap of faith and sort of a radical mindset shift to say, "You know what, I'm so worthy that I can go and I can lead without followers. Like, how do you get yourself there?" And then we're going to talk about the part that I really want to get into, which is kind of the four-year journey of struggle and then turning it around. Yeah, absolutely, man. That's the stuff I really love to talk about too, so I'll keep it short and sweet, but the lead without followers concept, like I said, I believed in my heart of hearts that I could do something small, profoundly small, unnoticed, no fanfare, not multi-millions of dollars, not the next Facebook, not the next Malcolm Gladwell. I believe I could do something within myself that was enough, and it starts as small as a smile on the street to a stranger. That was like the one thing that I always knew that I could give to somebody, even if I didn't smile back, and I would call that leadership, because the effect of what that ounce of giving can do could change somebody's life. And just the ability to change somebody's life, just the ability, it's just the opportunity to be grateful to share love and positivity with people was enough for me to say, "I know I can do something small," and the philosophy that I began to share in my first book, which we talked about two years ago, was not so much to lead in spite of people. It actually wasn't that at all. It wasn't leading in spite of people, or leading in spite of making enough money to support yourself, or leading in spite of attention, in spite of the stage. It was just making sure that you're personally focused on the intangibles that go into your actions and your efforts and your dreams, and those intangibles are selflessness and humility and goodness, that you're not going to get corrupted, not allow yourself to get corrupted by vast amounts of wealth and the allure of being just famous and everybody knowing you and being a celebrity. Because we think, Trini, as you and I both know, we think that the more popular we become, the more readers we have, the more subscribers we have, that everything will become easier then. That's what we tell ourselves when we're on the outside of looking in, and we'll look to someone like my friend Danielle LaPorte, and we'll say, "Damn, Danielle's got it all figured out. If I could just be in her position, everything would be easier," and I swear to God if you ask Danielle, I'm sure she would say, "It gets more complicated the longer you go." And the difficult part is that when you get into a place where you have followers and fans and tons of money coming in, all those things can really change how you begin behaving and all those intangibles that I talked about begin to shift. And sometimes you start from a place of wanting to be a selfless leader who helps people and you want to put out amazing products that really changes people's lives. And suddenly it becomes about that next book, the next product you put out there, how you're going to make twice as much money as the first one. And those are the subtle little things that if you don't stay focused on your priorities, it's not to say that money's bad or followers are bad, because it's not about that. But you really need to stay focused on the intentional actions, the intentional emotion that's going into what you're striving to do. I love this, you're getting some of my favorite hot buttons. I love that you brought up this idea of intangibles and character change and all of that, because you're right. If I went into my next book trying to replicate what happened with my most recent one, I'd be doomed from the start. I mean, there's the likelihood of that happening again. I can honestly tell you it's probably not that high, and I have to be okay with that and I am. I've come to terms with the fact that that probably won't happen maybe again for another five or six years. Maybe it won't happen again for the rest of my life. Right. And that's the type of things for me where you have to say, I know that the effects of this, of this next book is totally outside of my control, because it depends on the one who's listening to us talk right now and others just like him or her. It's totally outside of our control. So what can I go back to? Like what are my, like we talked about before, what are my values? What is the effect that I'm striving to create in that one single soul that might haven't, you know, maybe it will have an effect on two souls instead of one, but maybe it'll just be that one. And that's where you really need to focus on. And what I notice oftentimes with a lot of people, I mean, this all goes back to the politics days is that you, I believe that 99% of people get into politics and public service have the best intentions. And I believe that they were a lot like me where I just wanted to do good and help people and be a positive force of change in the world. And then you start making compromises because sometimes it's necessary to play the game, because sometimes you need to get that position, that higher over your competitor if you're really going to get to that place. And you can make excuses until you're blue in the face, but it's, it's just about, I think, you know, how much compromising are you willing to stomach. But yeah, for us being creatives now, it really goes back to, you have to go back to the absolute core of why you do what you do and what you're hoping to create in that human being. Well, I think this makes sort of a perfect setup to talk about where we left off last time we had you here, which was your first book. And you know, it's interesting to hear you talk about this process and then, you know, even tell me earlier on in our conversation that admitting to yourself that, because I remember part of what impressed me about the last, your, your first book wasn't necessarily the content, but you had the mechanics nailed down and it's amazing that you could nail the mechanics of a self published launch perfectly because I remember when you showed me the book. Yeah. And I thought, wow, you've printed this beautifully. You've done all these things. And then to admit to yourself that, hey, the critics are right, my best work, but more importantly that you may have compromised in this process. And I'm curious, you know, kind of talking to me about that, because I know this book didn't really live up to the hope that you had had for it. Yes, really. And so my first book was called Lead Without Followers. It came out in September of 2011 and I wrote it in 84 days and I wrote it because I believed that the idea was ready. Well, I believed that the idea was ready enough to be heard. And I was being encouraged, you know, my blog, I was, I've been writing a blog for two years of the time at daversello.com, and this was like the overarching thesis, the theory, my belief, my philosophy was Lead Without Followers. And I had this idea for a book for so long, for years before, and was just being encouraged by people just just write it, just write it, just write it, just do it. So I said, okay, I'm going to do it. And I put the highest of expectations that any human being could ever possibly think of on that book project, because it's all, I mean, going back to that idea of self-belief, there's probably a very fine line between self-belief and just, you know, delusion, exactly the word I was going to use, yeah, delusion. And, you know, I had really high hopes for myself and I believed in myself and I was hoping that showing up once in my first book would be enough to give me the rewards I was hoping for. And what I learned from this book process, this is like the number one lesson that I learned, it's what I've told you about before, Srini, when we've been hanging out, is that showing up is required, but it doesn't promise you a damn thing. Showing up is just fundamental, showing up every day and doing the work, showing up every day and pumping out your books, your blog posts, your artwork, your podcasts out into the world, whatever it is that you create is just a prerequisite and nobody is going to reward you for just showing up because just showing up is a battle with self-belief. And what I didn't know at the time, I said that I had self-belief, but what I didn't know at the time, Srini, was that my first book project in that 84-day writing marathon and publishing it and then after publishing it, watching the fallout and getting, you know, making some money, getting some praise, getting some talk, like, you know, some speaking gigs, but also getting criticism and emails from people that I thought were friends, basically shitting all over me saying that your book isn't good, you need to rewrite it in a really malicious, unnecessary way. And the shitty Amazon reviews versus the nice Amazon reviews, and on and on it goes, it's just that was the self-belief battle. That was me actually having to choose myself and actually say, you know, maybe my book wasn't meant to be, like, giving me the keys to my kingdom, it was just my first audacious act of self-belief and what I thought had been a life of self-belief, but that's something that you learn when you first put that one truly, deeply meaningful idea that we call that the baby, you know, as my baby, you put it out into the world, and you realize how vulnerable you are and how it's, you just, you feel so out of control, but the good side of that is, Srini, that my first book totally changed me as a human being, it totally changed me as an artist, because not only did I feel like I was truly an artist, but the reason I felt that in the first place is because when I published that first book and I put it out there and I dealt with all that shit I just told you about, I suddenly felt totally connected to every other creative, every other writer, every other speaker, every other artists, every other human being, it was ever done anything that mattered to them and struggled. I felt bound by every artist, I suddenly looked at paintings on the street being sold by a vendor, books on the bookshelf, blog posts that people were putting out, I looked at, I just, I couldn't look at it all the same way, because no longer was I judging that work through the lens of my opinions, because I ran the gamut as the author of experiencing what it was like for people to use their own opinions as, using me as a whipping board for their opinions, and anonymous strangers feeling like they were entitled to, you'd just be fucking brutal, just lambast a stranger through a computer screen because they didn't like the book, like, okay, you don't have to like the book, I don't like that painting on your wall, but I'm not going to tear you down for it or the artist who did it. 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That's why I didn't say a word. I think you have brought up some very critical points and I love that you brought up that anybody who's created anything goes through this. And I can tell you, you mentioned the shitty Amazon reviews and strangers who vilify you. It doesn't matter whether your book sells 10 copies or thousands, you're going to get those people. I have one star reviews and I'm like, most of them are personal attacks on you. But that's the thing. But I think to me, the thing that really sort of stands out is this idea of empathy and not viewing other people's creations through the lens of your own opinions, that's profound. That is truly profound and thought-provoking. There's really no tactic there, but it's just, I think that that to me really in my mind is going to push people's buttons a lot and really get them to open up in. And I think you're going to show us a side of ourselves that a lot of us are scared. And I love how you called it this first audacious act of self-belief. And those acts really, honestly, every one of them is so critical to your growth. Each thing, you guys are listening to this in 2014, 2013 was a series of those. And constantly wondering, even with enough self-belief to put it out there, but constantly thinking, "Holy crap, people might not like this," or, "Nobody's going to come to the party that I'm throwing." Yeah, absolutely. And here's the funny part, I'm going to pop quiz you real quick, okay? So what was the name of my second book? See, I don't even know. So you go. Exactly, but it's good. It's good. Good. Because what happened after my first book, in the fallout of dealing with this, and I traveled around the country, and I was doing speaking gigs and stuff, in spite of it not being my best work, and how could it be, think about the finger paintings and the drawings you did as a kid that were of your parents, I call them refrigerator monsters. And you drew these pictures of your parents, and there was an arm coming out of someone's eye socket, and the head is half the size of the page, and they got little twig legs, and they're just monstrous, but you hung those on the refrigerator, and your parents were like, "Good job," and you were proud of them, because it was the best you could do. I mean, where else, where the hell somebody who is just not an abundance of intelligence, I'm not a genius, I've had no real worldly experience at the time when I first wrote this book, where the hell else could I have gone, but to make that book my first refrigerator monster and make it that audacious act of self-belief, but here's the point I was going to make, Srini, which is my second book was written in the fallout of my first book. Just about nobody knows about it, like if I'm being interviewed, unless they look it up, because it's called "God Whisperers on the Wind," it's a collection of 81 spiritual poems, I published it in August 2012, and I did it, you know, you mentioned that process, that self-publishing launch process, and getting all the mechanics of it right, I did the exact opposite, where I didn't tell anybody, I just kind of put it out there, it didn't get a landslide of attention, but the attention that it did get from readers, they loved it. It still sells, I still make money from it, I probably have had more readers from "God Whisperers on the Wind" than I ever had from "Lead Without Followers." It's being sold at my local yoga studio, amongst others that I know of, it's red at the end of yoga classes, across the nation, not a whole lot, but enough to be able to say that, and it's funny, because I am so proud of that book, I would love to have gone through this major, actually I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have, I didn't want to go through that process again, I didn't want to build expectations and promote and market, I just wanted to write a book that were these really spiritual, liberally styled, kind of like, just like out there in the ethos, sorts of poems, very reminiscent of if you've read any of Hafez, the Daniel Ladinsky translations, I really was inspired by that sort of styling and the word usage, and making poems that made people feel good about God in a very a religious, nonpartisan sort of way, just by feeling connected to another human being. And it's funny, because the process was so different, and I'm so proud of that book, and I'm still so proud of it, and that was the second one, and you know, it's just funny, because for me, there's never been any other way to figure out what I want more of than to like fail and fuck up and realize what I don't want, and now I have that second book and that first book to kind of compare and contrast how I work and create and live my life. Yeah, I mean, this is exactly why I wanted to have you here, because our stories around publishing are so parallel, I mean, we did the first blog to book deal book, and I did exactly what, you know what we're saying, is the mechanics, all of that, and then the small army strategy came out, and I didn't make this huge fanfare about it, I just told 25 or so people, I said, "Hey, I have this book, do you want a review copy," and I was like, "That's it, I'm done," and then I sent my, you know, I was like, "I wrote this book for my people, that's it," and I think the other sort of critical part that you brought up, to me, what it sounds like is that you enjoyed doing the second book so much more, like you actually took that joy in creating it, whereas the first one sounds like largely was to serve your ego and to have all these accolades, and it's something that I feel that I've experienced personally to him, and would you say that's accurate? Yeah, and it's accurate and it's ironic because the book was called "Lead Without Followers," and it was about leading without followers, and now, and then I had to, I kind of had to eat my own philosophy, and that's where I kind of, I let go of a lot, and started to actually live the philosophy and explore what it meant without having to talk about it in a book form, but yeah, you're absolutely right. So I think this makes a perfect setup, let's do this, let's start talking about how things start to turn around, because one of the things that I have witnessed with you over the last year, because I always keep an eye on people who've been previous guests on the show, and I also keep an eye on potential guests for the show, and this is a big part of the reason why I wanted you to come back, was that I just started to notice that suddenly you were shipping more, things were turning around, you were building all these things, and it was like, this is not the day for sale I knew two years ago, something has clearly changed. So talk to me one about sort of, you know, I mean, you're in this sort of painful process where a book has failed, you know, you have a follow-up book, and it's still not, you know, to the best of my knowledge, like it wasn't thriving, right, you're still kind of, I remember when Lidarati came out, that was the first sort of sign I saw that, wait a minute, this thing looks like it's about to turn around, so walking through the turnaround process. Yeah, you're absolutely right, Stree, so I mean, the second book, I published it when I was living in New York City, this is in the, I was living there in 2012, so this is the summer of 2012, I put the book out there quietly, it was kind of just like, like you said, really wanting to enjoy the process of writing, or really wanting to enjoy the process of creating something, being proud of it, sharing with people, and watching them feel what I wanted them to feel, or what I hope that they might feel, because Lord knows a book about spiritual poetry isn't for everybody, but that was a really rewarding process, and I think that that instance of me writing in a new voice, I mean, that summer, living in New York City, my business was legitimately failing, I was running out of money, I had $2,000 in rents that I could not afford by any stretch of the imagination, and all the ideas I had for business, my, I had coaching clients, and it was just all going in the shitter, very eloquent poetic way to say it, but, you know, the book, I felt like I gave me permission again to do something that wasn't leadership oriented, because for a long time I would still be in my head against the wall with trying to do something leadership, personal leadership related, so it's the summer, and I realized that I need to go back to my roots as a writer, this is why I quit my job, I was dying to be a writer, to write and to help people communicate better, and to use written word, and even spoken word, to get more connected with your true self, your truth, and also to be more understood by others around you, more understood by the world, so I was talking to my friend, a mutual friend of ours, her name is Jenny Blake, she is formerly of Life After College, that's her old blog, which she still of course writes for, and now she's at jennyblake.me, and she's an amazing human being, former guest on this show, yoga teacher, and she's just been, she's been a blogger on our level streaming, right, where we just kind of been on the journey together, and Jenny and I were walking through the streets of Manhattan, and I said Jenny, I am failing as a writer, because I'm not writing, and I'm failing as an entrepreneur, because I'm not making any money, so basically I'm a big failure right now, what advice do you have for me, and she said, well listen Dave, if you want to be writing more, you need to start just doing it, but what if you give yourself a reason to have to write more? What if you start just like a small writer's group of like a Facebook group, 20 people paying 20 bucks a month, and boom, there's some cash in your pocket you have on hand, every month it's guaranteed, it's low cost, it's like no cost, and it's just money in your pocket every day, and I was like Jenny, you are so damn brilliant, thank you, I'm going to run with this idea. About a month later, I emerged from the bowels of my New York City apartment with what I called the literati writers group, and instead of it being $20 a month, it was started as small as $50, but for a quarter for three months, and I wanted it to be an online writers group that would function as a support system for a writer somewhere in the world who not only wanted to write more and keep themselves accountable, but connect with other writers like them, and listen to interviews with other authors, but specifically wanted to structure their creative journey around the journey being the reward, and that is so remarkably strange and foreign and different in idea for writers groups, which are most for the most part, very much competitive, full of explicitly built in critiquing and reviews that can be just outright malicious for no reason, like we're talking about with these Amazon reviews, and this belief that, this sort of cultural belief that a lot of artists maintain, that you need to be suffering and struggling and told that you suck and be ashamed of what you want in order to be a quote unquote artist, and I said fuck that, that's ridiculous. I want to make a writer's group that's about lifting people up, because I know for me that written word has been my saving grace. It saved me from depression, I've been able to build what was at the time a floundering failing business from it, but I was able to do something with my life thanks to my ability to write and understand myself and communicate clearly with people, and over a year later, that writer's group, the membership price has quadrupled. We've had more than 80 plus writers from over seven countries come and go. We have like between 40 and 50 members at any given time, we've interviewed dozens of amazing authors, it's just been an absolutely enlightening experience, we published our first book, a collaborative book in the summer of 2013 that Mars Dorian, the German designer, did the cover for us, Serena, I know he did your book cover as well, and is doing some branding for the new podcast redesign, so that book was number two in creativity on Amazon and number three in creativity and genius, when it launched it's called Before You Quit Writing Read This, so it's been life changing for me. It's been reaffirming, but it's taken me as an artist, it can be as an entrepreneur to a level that I was dying to get to for so long, and it's funny because sometimes it's the ideas that a friend like Jenny Blake will feed you, that you run with that save you. It's something that's never planned, it's just a shot in the dark, and by the grace of the universe, I was able to pick myself up. Okay I love this, there's a lot of stuff here that's really eye-opening to me, one is that I think it's worth sort of just mentioning grit in this entire process because you could have stopped before you had that day to walk with Jenny Blake, and that idea would have never showed up, and Jonathan Fields and I talked about this, he said it's the willingness to stay in something so far past when the average person would quit, and that's something that I think I really appreciate about your story through, this is just an absolute display of grit in this. But I love that you sort of looked at this and said, you know, instead of a writer's group where there's an outcome, I'm going to create a writer's group that is all about the journey becoming the reward, and so what I'm curious about is one, really, getting people to buy into this vision, bringing them along for this journey, you know, let's talk about the tactical sort of approach to building the literati, I mean you kind of gave us a high level stuff, but let's get into the nitty gritty of it because I think that's what people are going to want to hear is like, you know, people sitting, because plenty of people are sitting on ideas that are small, and I want to talk about how you go from small to what it is today. Yeah, absolutely. Great, great question, and so I mean all the things I've learned, geez where do I begin, but here's, here are the key values that I knew that I wanted to build into the literati writer's group, I didn't really know how I would build them in, but I knew that I needed them to be part, because it's a part of my core philosophy as a writer, as an entrepreneur, as a human being, my beliefs and leadership we've talked about, I believe that freedom and choice needed to be an integral part of this writer's group, so that meant, even though we, I think streaming you can agree with me on this, in terms of selling something, we naturally assign a much higher perceived dollar value to being told what to do than being told that we can do it, and by that I mean it's much easier to sell a digital course that has steps, worksheets, intangible outcomes, it's all about those tangible outcomes, right? And that's just, that's one formula for doing something, it's not the end all be all, but what I realized is in the course of, because I dabbled for a while with having like homework and assignments in the group, and what I realized was after a few months of experimenting with that, because we naturally do, we just think that being told what to do by a figure of authority must be worth more money, because otherwise if they're not telling us what to do, then how do I figure out what I'm doing? And what I realized in my writers, in the literary writers, this was like January, February of last year, that they all felt, they all started to privately express to me a deep anxiety, that they weren't doing enough, that they were failing, that they weren't accomplishing the goals, that they were failing me as their leader, because they weren't doing enough, and I blew up that whole structure of giving them weekly do this in the Facebook group of, we have writing prompts that are delivered by email every week, and that would contain like an assignment, and what it was creating the reverse effect that I wanted, which was for writing and creativity and artistry to be a freeing force that made someone feel like they were alive, like they were themselves, and instead, these homework assignments, these exercises were making people feel incompetent, unworthy, ashamed, and anxious, because they weren't doing enough, and Lord knows, we give ourselves so much to do, we put such a burden of pressure on ourselves to constantly create like factory lines and be pumping out things like we're machines, and that's one example of, this was not creating freedom, I had to blow that up, so now the literary writers, we talk about the journey being the reward, it's a never-ending thing, it's an ongoing year-round writers group where we have a private Facebook group for discussion, it's where everybody gets one another, we have weekly emails that I send personally to the entire group, I call it a writing prompt, it's sort of like it's a cue, it's a one-liner, they're all grouped by theme, and it's something that can just remind you to write on your own, or inspire you to think through a subject, but it's a subject that's about writing or creativity that can easily relate to life, so you don't actually have to open up your notebook, your moleskin, a blog post, and perform or do anything to satiate me as the leader, I just want you to remember that you can choose to write, or you can choose to not write, and you're choosing, and that's the beautiful part, and that's ultimately what this group is about, is I'm trying to teach people to choose, to choose to make sound decisions that you are not regretting, that you're being proud of, because they reflect what you want, what you need, and what you desire. And ultimately, Srini, I think that's why I teach what I teach about writing creativities, because they're so powerfully, these themes are so powerful in acting back to us more of ourselves, and choice, free choice and freedom, I think are all really important aspects of being more you, and just in living your life according to what you want, need and desire. You know, I love this, I think it's so different than the answer I was expecting, because it wasn't sort of a step-by-step, here's how I did it, but it kind of is more centered around a lot of what you've talked about throughout our conversation, which is around sort of, you know, the values. I think one of the things that I'm very curious about, you know, it's interesting, you went from sort of the tangible outcome of worksheets and all this thing, I mean, the fact that one you had the awareness to recognize that, hey, this is actually making people feel like crap, and it's like, hey, I'm paying somebody to make me feel guilty, and stripping that. So, I think that there's two questions that come for me from that. One is, how can people recognize what people need from them in their own work, how do you figure that out? I mean, like, what were the threads that kind of made, you know, revealed that to you, and if other people are looking at that, how can they do that within their own work to create an experience that people just can't help, you know, help but love, right? You know, what I call an unmistakable or unforgettable experience. Yeah, absolutely streaming. Great question. So, remember at the top of our conversation, we talked about, we talked about listening to people's words, and through the words that they use, you can really sense how they're, you can sense their values, and you can sense how their values within the scope of the conversation are being met or not being met. And through emails from literati writers, personal conversations, I mean, I personally work with everyone of the literati writers, and I have a welcoming call with them for about 30 minutes to an hour when I come into the group, and I ask them, tell me your story, and I listen to their story from top to bottom, and then I say, okay, well, they tell me your relationship with writing. Tell me what I can do for you within the scope of writing and your story. What do you need right now? And it's not always about, hey, I'm going to write a book, you know, it's like, it spans. It's sometimes it's, you know, a newly single mother of three kids who doesn't know why she wants to explore writing, but she knows, she feels in her gut that writing gives her some capability of finding and understanding what her natural voice is as a human being in her life. She's listening to the words, you know, it's all slowly reveal the picture of what it is that what the core values are, that what, how should I say this, basically, it showed me why people joined the group when they didn't know why they were joining the group. And it was these underwriting, but very real values about feeling freedom, being wholly totally unapologetically yourself, really owning your desires and your dreams, never needing to apologize for what you believe, never breaking somebody else down because that they think differently than you, totally just being a source that uplifts, that leads by example, that leads without followers in your everyday life and making the journey of the reward. And it's funny because, like, what does that actually mean? And it's, we talked about this training before we started, that's, when you're talking about the journey being the reward, it means it's never ending. And it means you almost, in spite of all your dreams and goals that are in the future and everything that's happened in the past, you really need to get clear on what you're feeling and experiencing, wanting and needing right now. That's why I practice yoga, is because I can't stand it 99% of the time, but it always is showing, it's always showing me what I'm feeling, what I need and like, you know, this part of my body just feels terrible, I'm weak today, why do I have a raging headache, it's just, it's constantly showing me, and I don't always complain like that all the time, but it just happens that that's some of the things you think about when you're, you know, on the yoga mat and in these awkward positions and about to fall on your face. And writing is really similar in that regard because you have to choose to write and when you choose, you're revealing something about yourself and you have to be honest with yourself and it's just, it's such a reflective process that reveals to you more of what's going on within you right now. And I believe, Srini, in the ends that joy and love can only happen in this present moment. That's where you have to start, it's the only place where you can actually cultivate love, we share love, give love. You can only experience happiness in bursts in little moments, but the overarching feeling that I experience joy in my life, from my work, from my play, from just being me, just from being alive, it can only be felt and experienced in this moment. And so becoming abundantly aware of where you are in your head, in your heart, and in the world is just about everything. For me, writing is just one small, itty-bitty, creative form of sensing that. For other people, maybe singing or painting or dancing, it might be travel, you know, globe trotting. It might be just being in love, having, you know, being in a relationship, having a family, taking care of kids, being in nature, there's so many different things, but I think that all of them, all these different, call it a hobby, passion, past time, vocation, mission, they are all meant to show us more of what is going on right in this present moment right now. And that's why I write, but I think when you can help people feel more of what's going on in this moment, through the work that you do, you're giving them a profound gift because our minds just want to go everywhere else. Our minds want to go everywhere else, we want to constantly live in the future, we want to be in the past, being the moment is so damn difficult. But if you can give them an ounce of awareness, truth, just where they can realize what's going on within them, what they're thinking and feeling, just reflect that back to them. That was open, and that's where I think this writers group has really shown me in a really small way, but it's really revealed to me a lot about myself and people more broadly through business and artistry. Awesome. I love it. I'm not even going to touch it. So one other final question around this, I mean, obviously you've taken all of this and now you've expanded it into your first live event, something that I said our journeys really do parallel to each other. So talk to me about that and then we'll start closing things up. Absolutely. So, you know, I told you that my goal over 2014 is I'm actually looking to expand the literati writers to about between 100 and 150 members where I want to put a hard cap and the writers group will be basically by invitation only when we reach that stage. But from this group, you know, I've had a lot of people that have been asking me, can we do retreat, can we do an event where we, and I've gone to New York City and I've pulled people together, you know, like about 10, 5, 10 literati writers and we've gone to book launch events, you know, we've gotten together out in Portland over the summer for different conferences and stuff. So we've gotten together, but I really wanted to explicitly cultivate an event for the literati writers, but our friends who also aren't members and just really vibe on this wavelength. I created a retreat which is happening January 17th to 19th in West Greenwich Rhode Island and people are terrified when I mention January in southern New England, like it's Siberia and at a Gulag, but I promise you, it's not going to be, like you'll find your way home after, you're not going to disappear, but the retreat is called Weekend in the Woods. And it's a writing and yoga retreat, Alexandra Franzen, who's a friend, she's an extraordinary really talented communicator, writer, author, sells or leads sold out workshops across the United States and Canada. She is just an amazing, amazingly gifted communicator and somehow I managed to convince her to come to spend the weekend with us and to lead a workshop of her own. So the whole weekend is about using, basically it's about writing and doing yoga and being together and eating good food and just giving yourself the space to be you and against the beautiful scenic wintery backdrop, kind of like Henry David Thoreau at Walden, which is only 50, 60 miles away from Rhode Island here. 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We take the 100 biggest sports debates and answer them, settle them once and for all. Meanwhile, Humbow, what's your favorite part of the book? 100 sneaky Humbow trivia questions. All that and a whole lot more. It's called Got Your Answers. It's available anywhere you get your books right now. Absolutely brilliant. I love how you've taken all of these elements and brought them together to just keep playing a bigger game. So I guess that that'll be sort of my final question before my closing question is one of the things that Greg Hartle and I talked about this on Bloodcast FM Backstage. We just keep leveling up. You go from a book to the next thing to the next thing. I went from a book to a conference and then each thing just is a bigger risk with a potentially bigger award. But also the failure is much bigger if you screw up, it's way more public. If the instigator launched after seven months of talking about it didn't have a soul that signed up, that would feel pretty humiliating. I think we both have wrestled with those demons and what I'm curious about is finding it within yourself, each little, you start with small acts of audacious self-belief and then you start taking bigger ones. What I'm curious about is how people get to the bigger ones in your opinion. I think we talked about how it's incremental, right? And I remember launching my first, like, my e-book, they're like a collaborated e-book. I just, I think you really, it's in that regard, I think, I don't think you can skip ahead. I think you really need to be tempered in the pace and tempered in your expectations for the pace of your strides and, you know, talking about the journey being the reward, that old adage, I'm going to keep drilling it into your head. I mean, the most you can do right now is take one step. The most you can do tomorrow is you're going to take another step and, you know, just having all these flashes of memories of all the different things that I've done that terrified shit out of me. And doing this retreat, I'm super excited for it. It's really small. It's only going to be about 10 or 15 people, but it's still outside of my comfort zone. It's not even my zone of genius, like event planning and working with, you know, retreat contracts and all these different things. It's terrifying me. I've stayed up at night a few times within the last few weeks, just thinking about it. You really need to start from exactly where you are. There's nowhere else to begin and you need to consistently make those little steps and take those little victories and stride. And I think you'll be ready when you're ready and you'll know when you're ready. And if you're not ready, then you're going to have your first book show you that. Your first book is just the first book, and not your key to, you know, the TEDx stage. It's just those all those little strides and it'll keep you in check if, you know, things go awry, if you fail or your expectations, you know, you don't meet expectations that you had. I just think that people, I think that cash flow and I think that how it feels to you deep down will all be those kind of indicating factors that, alright, maybe I wasn't ready for this, but it's no reason to not try. You just need to constantly listen to those factors and give it your best from exactly where you are. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of this comes down to patience and we're really not patient is what I've learned. But I think you and I have been on quite a roller coaster ride together. So I'm going to close with my final question, Dave, which you probably heard me ask a lot of people. You know, we're both of us are in an interesting vantage point where we've been around this world for four years and you've mentioned a lot of people, people like Alex Franz and people like Jenny Blake, you know, many of who started even some after us, like people who have started after us who have been far more successful. And one of the things that always comes up for me is this constant dichotomy of sort of the people who have everything they want, right, like they're thriving. And then the people who, you know, kind of honestly, in a lot of ways felt like we did throughout this, this sort of, hey, you know, I'm not where this X person is at. And what I'm curious is, you know, having made such a, you know, drastic turnaround, what do you think it is that separates the people who get to where they want from the ones who don't? It's a great question. And I wish I knew the answer because I would take so many shortcuts to get where I want to go. I think, you know, my honest opinion is, I just think that some people just, maybe they're faster learners than I am. Maybe, I mean, I know people are much smarter than I am. I think some of the people I've mentioned in the course of our call today are just so intuitive, cunningly brilliant, not in like a villainous sort of way being cunningly brilliant, just being really perceptive and adaptive and responsive. I think we all deal with uncertainty and the unknown to various degrees. I know for me, I talked about being an artist and feeling that sense of empathy and connection to people. I'm a deeply empathetic person and I think that that's a gift for me as a writer and a storyteller, but sometimes it drags me down and sometimes it's something that I need to keep in check when I'm working with business. I'm making that major leap and I just feel so damn like on the edge of just collapsing into myself because I'm just so terrified of what I don't know and how I want to figure it out and just knowing that those moments are always going to be there. But you know, I don't really know. All I know, Shrini, is that this experience is my own and I'm finally in a place where I feel like I'm genuinely owning it and I've owned it every step of the way, but I've owned it in major failures and like I said, the fuck-ups and falling down. And I think I've just been willing to fail and fuck up and fall down and that's helped me get where I'm going. For me, the best way, the only way I've really known how to learn is by trying and either just figuring it out as I go. And sometimes that's a very slow methodical process, but I think that the position that I'm in today and it sounds like the position that you're in today as well, I really want to help people get where I can see them going or where they want to be going without needing to go through the years of suffering and struggle. Those years are always going to be there. There's never going to get to a point where you have quote-unquote made it. And like you said, throughout this call, Shrini, I'm going to hang up this phone and go back to doing my work and nothing's going to promise that tomorrow it'll all work out. But I just got to keep going. I got to keep taking those baby steps and I got to keep remembering that the journey ultimately is the reward. There's no just land that I'm going to find. That's going to give me everything that I think will make it easy or just luxurious. Because that's the life that I've ultimately chosen for myself. It's leading without followers that whole philosophy is just doing, just going, just keep going. As long as I'm just keeping on, keeping on, as the saying goes, then I got to chalk that up to a success. No matter what anybody else is doing around me, I wish them all the best. They can buy the drinks if they're rolling in the money. But other than that, I just got to keep doing what feels right by me and helping people achieve that same effect. Awesome. Well Dave, I think that makes just a beautiful way to sum up our conversation. I just want to say I can't thank you enough for coming back to our show for a second time and sharing some of your insights with my listeners. It's been really exciting to watch this whole turnaround happen for you. Thanks, man. It's been an absolute honor. It's my pleasure. I'll be back anytime you need me, anytime you want me, anytime you want to just take the leash off and let me talk endlessly because I have that ability. But I'm here for you. I'm here for you, the listener and I would encourage everybody if you want to drop me a line, David, DavidSullough.com is the best way to email me. My inbox is almost always empty. Knock on wood. I don't know where all the emails come from that everybody gets drowned by. But happy to talk with you. Check out the Littorati Writers to be welcome in addition to our community at Littoratiwriters.com. And other than that, onward and upward from here. All right. And for those of you guys listening, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we'd be really grateful for an iTunes review if you haven't left one and we will close the show with that. Thanks for listening in on another candid conversation at the unmistakable creative. Embrace your inner misfit, express your creative voice. And remember, the goal isn't to live forever, but to create something that will. Let's talk about something that's not always top of mind, but still really important. Life insurance. Why? 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In 2011 Dave Ursillo published his first book Lead Without Followers. In an inspiring uphill battle, Dave has shown a tremendous amount of grit. In the last year his business has experienced a dramatic turnaround.
Here are some of the highlights from our conversation
- Lessons from the world of politics and leadership
- The role of self belief in your success
- Why a mission of service matters so much
- The subtle nuances of your language the impact your mindset
- Understanding what you think, feel and believe
- Why what you say is going to be heard
- How to push yourself to the place of true authenticity
- Why making your life about other people gives them power
- The Importance of not getting attached to your success
- Why the art matters more than the mechanics
- Why showing up everyday is just a prerequisite
- How the failure of a book changed Dave's perception of art
- Dealing with a business on the brink of failure
- How Following through on a simple idea drastically changed Dave's business
- Structuring a writer's group where the journey is the reward
- The key values that were the foundations of the Literati writer's group
- Critical Elements of Being Unapologetically You
Dave Ursillo is the founder of The Literati Writers Group, and the author or Lead without Followers. You can follow him on twitter @daveursillo.
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