Tech Entrepreneurship For The Rest Of Us w/ Damon Brown

from being company generates a million dollars of revenue, she was a hundred million dollars in revenue. It turns out having co founders going through that process is helpful. The reason why people like tech founders or technical co founders because the process of going from million dollars revenue to a hundred million dollars revenue is a lot easier if you're leveraging technology. So I don't want to make this a statement on someone's business. There are tons of successfulness

is that do not leverage tech. Thats not new techo founders. It's just that there's only a small sliver of businesses that can credibly go out and raise millions of dollars where someone's willing to make the bet. So what I tell founders all the time is that there's no moral judgment. Build whatever business you want to build. But if you want to build a business that can raise millions of dollars to help, you've got to be in this small sliver.

And if you don't, don't expect to raise money. And most businesses that are successful in America never raised the dollar, so that's very possible to do so at y c our challenges is how do we figure out whether a company is in that small sliver or not day one, day two, day five, even year one. That's really really hard, um And to be honest, sometimes we get it wrong. Like we definitely have gotten it wrong. I'm well Lucas

and this is Black Tech, Green Money. I'm gonna introduce you to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas. You're black and building or simply using tech to secure your bag. This podcast this for you. Damon Brown is the best selling author, two time startup founder, and four time TED speaker. He co founded the popular Photonic connection APT Cutler and led it

to acquisition within the year. Today he helps side hustlers, solo preneurs, and other non traditional creatives and entrepreneurs find their path to success however they define it, and usually it's with a big bag of money. This conversation between Damon and I happened on the Afro Tech Live event featured on lunch table dot com. Let's dive in. We are back with another afro Tech Live um featuring us on both lunch Table and on Facebook dot com. So

appreciate everybody for checking in. You know, these are the types of conversations I love to have with entrepreneurs, founders as business people, people who play along the edges of business and technology. And today I get an opportunity to talk with a friend of mine, Damon Brown, who's an author, startup, founder, counselor advisor, you know all the things. So let me give you his bio for his website. So Damon helps

side hustler, solitpreneurs, and other non traditional creatives bloomen. We're gonna talk a lot about non traditional creators and non traditional entrepreneurs. Even he co founded the popular platonic connection app Cuddler, which you might remember from a few years ago, and so it's kind of like Tendler for cuddling maybe something like that. Yeah. Yeah, he's a the Ted speaker. So he's been on the test stage, the big stage, UM.

And he's an author of several books and by including our virtual shadow back in the day, Bring Your Worth, which I'm a big fan of, Build from Now, which actually comes out. This came out this month, right, Yeah, that came out like over the past week or so. So yes, yes, yes, so please to please to be talking to you Damon today. Thank you for joining me always good. Well, I mean, you know, we go back a little bit, and uh, I love seeing your growth too.

Let's talk about Yeah, so let's talk about it. So you know, when you think about what I think about Damon, you've you've created this persona as somebody who helps people who UM may not see themselves in the mainstream model of an entrepreneur UM find their role in entrepreneurship and business development. And so we talk a lot about scale. You know, scale is one of my favorite conversations to talk about, UM. But scaling a business isn't for everybody.

Sometimes people just want to do their thing and they don't have to. It doesn't have to be a multimillion or a multibillion dollar business. Maybe it helps pay the mortgage, maybe you know, it helps put a little bit at your food on the table. So I guess my question to you is that we're talking today about you know,

entrepreneurship for the rest of us. Um, what has to happen in our conversation about entrepreneurship and business ownership for everybody to feel included if they want to start, you know, a project and it you know, could potentially be bigger than that. Yeah, for sure. And that's exactly what I

specialized in. It's the side hutselers, the solepreneurs, people like myself. Um, I did my true startups, bootstrapped them and did them while I was the primary caretaker and still am of our first son, and he was four months old at the time when I became an entrepreneur. When you know, my first alp so quotable got popular. I did my first two ted talks the first year it was alive, I started Cuddler the second year he was alive, and we end up getting it acquired right after a second birthday.

So I have a level of sympathy and empathy as well as perspective for the non traditional entrepreneur. And so it's someone who's trying to make an impact but might be overlooked, might not have those resources, might be as I say now, I love this term over a mentored but underfunded. So it's a lot of people that are giving them game advice, whether or not actually giving them the resources they need to thrive. That's what Built from

Now comes from. Like it's it's the new book is really talking about how to know your power, see your abundance, and nurse the world. That's the subtitle. I'm talking about the four resources that we all have focus, agility, time, and energy. I call them the fates. All of us have that as long as we're breathing. And so what I'm trying to do is create a framework to say

you can create with whatever you've got. Um. One of the conversations I've been having with a lot of my coaching clients is that they're not sure how to proceed without a particular resource. So it's like, how do I build this product, this physical product without money because I need VCA capital for that. So but the vcs are talking to me right now, how do I do that

and they feel stuck. One of the things that I that I talked about in the book and talk about in general with my community is that you can create that community before you actually start the product. In fact, you should. So that's something that's really simple if you I'm forgetting the name of the app. There's a major app right now that connects people to barbershops, and they just got a really nice, nice round over the past month of Squire thank you. I was forgetting have it,

so props to them. I'm sure they were hanging out in the barbershops just like you probably were. And I was back when they were kids and all that. Aniberry from the East coast of back in Jersey, I remember those neighbor barbershops. They probably did that before they got funding, right, so they already were building that community. So that's the argument we built from now is you can create with whatever resources you've got. And luckily I have coached hundreds

of entrepreneurs. At this point, I'm starting to go worldwide with it, and there's people in Africa, there's people in Germany, there's people all over the place who have different sets of resources and they're all able to go up in a certain way. You just seem to be realistic about what you got how long it's gonna take, you know.

So you you started off the whole conversation talking about, you know, becoming an entrepreneur, like, are do people come entrepreneurs or are they born entrepreneurs and then find their way to starting a business. Oh, you're you're asking dangerous questions, sir. I think entrepreneurs are created. Um. I talked about that you're familiar with with Bring your Worth that was the predecessor to Built From Now that came out two years ago.

I talked about my ancestry and that, um, you know, the Kendrick and Lamar idea of things being in your DNA. So I actually come from a long line of entrepreneurs. I have three families that I come from a step family too, all three branches. I didn't realize that until I was much older, because I thought it was a one of one. I was like, Oh man, I'm gonna be creating and stuff. I'm gonna break generational curses. I'm gonna do this startup, that start up, I'll be staying

home that blah. And I'm like, oh wait, like like two three generations, you know, going back to my history in New Orleans and an history over and other parts of the South, I'm like, oh, yeah, my my great grandfather was doing that. And so I think as as I'm a parent of two, and so as a parent, I think you kind of get into that mindset. It's a little bit easier to see where you're creating that water.

You're creating that water that the fish doesn't realize they're in, right to kind of flip that old saying where fish doesn't know it's in water, And so you're creating that framework. What I'm trying to do with Bill from now and the conversation is just like where having now is to have you understand your framework. And so I don't think

it's a matter of entrepreneurs being born per se. I think I happen to be born into a framework where people doing side husholds people being entrepreneurs before you know, I'm not a spring chicken. So back when my families were doing it and I was a kid, people didn't use the word entrepreneur. So that's why I like, I have kind of this this complicated feeling when it says, you know, entrepreneur was born or are they created? Where

it's like, well, you're either entrepreneur or you're not. You know, it's kind of like being African American or not. It's either you're doing and have a certain mindset or you don't. And there are a lot of people who are leading startups who might not have entrepreneurial mindset. They might be like, I want to keep the status quo, like I don't

have to name names, it's just stories. And a lot of other cases, those startups or those those independent organizations end up going down because they're trying to protect the status quo versus progress things to where the world needs to be. And you might have somebody, including some of my relatives, that might be working at McDonald's and they got the whole shift happen because they're looking at things in an innovative way. And so I don't think it's

about the identity of being entrepreneur, born or created. I think it's more like having that mindset. And that's why I'm like, that's why I get hyped when I talk about this, where I'm like, okay, we can we can change mindset. You know what I mean. You don't have people into a rich family or have a family of entrepreneurs.

You don't need to have that to get into that mindset, you know, because I think we've you know, maybe some of us have disparaged the phrase lifestyle entrepreneurship because you know, you're going there, right because because in our intech if you're not shooting for the moon to build the next Google, Like, what are you doing? You're you you're doing an acute lifestyle business. What do you say to that? I think it really depends on who who you are and what

you want. Um. There are people that are on the cover of I've Become with INC magazine. Um, so you can check out Damon Brown dot net. And then you know the INC magazines that ink Damon Brown dot com. So I don't mind putting them into the mix with this. Where you have the cover of INC magazine, you cover

the Fortune or whatever whatever is hot right now. Even the websites and they'll put someone on there where they'll say they got a huge investment, but that investment is good on paper, and that investment needs to come back to those vcs and often to be considered a success. Ten x so versus like you know, built from now like this is my imprint. I own the ESPN s, you know, it's it's being printed through my apprentice, you know.

And so the they call a cottage industries, the cottage industry that I created, where like the last seven books I've done the last four years, like so On pays for it, most of its comments back to my family. So it might not be on the scale or say a Penguin, no shots at Penguin, like I've done books with them, but not it might not be on the scalual Penguin or Random House. But I'm building my own little fifedom, if you're gonna call it that, And so

both of them are equal. There's nothing good or bad about it. And it was interesting when I worked on Cuddler, we had bootstrapped it. We got to a quarter million users, and that was big for what we're trying to do. But if we got a ton of investment and we hit a quarter million users, that might be considered a failure. And so I think it really depends on the metrics you use on the outside and also the metrics you

use for the inside. For me, I'm building my own imprint and got now it's eight books under my Imprint because I left the traditional New York publishing industry. Shots at them. I still work with them, but that's not that wasn't the place for me. So you don't have to shoot for the moon because it really depends on where the moon is. I guess I'll put it like that, you know, So you just you open this this can of worms that ownership, like you can own your stuff.

And I remember, you know, because I grew up wanting to be in the music business, and you know, so the tip of the pinnacle was getting a record deal in those days. And now it's like, you don't need a record like for what other than you gratification maybe, but you have all the tools that they have. So when you look at authors, you know who like yourself, people who are wanting to own their stuff, own their businesses.

Don't want to get venture capital because we still talk to a lot of people who have no need or desire to go get venture capital in this ecosystem, how do they also, at the same time, um build something that's sustainable but also don't get discouraged because may happen more slowly. Mm hmm. That's a million dollar question. And and every tool that I provide um from I have a YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Brown Damon just started that up, so I have almost daily shows

that I do on there. It's kind of like one on one coaching um to the in column, to the new book, even conversation with you. It's literally trying to answer that question, you know, and if we want to unpack it a little bit. If you feel as though this is where you're supposed to be, then you don't have to worry about the timeline, you know, like like that ownership is there, you know, no one can take

that from you. And I think the closer you get to that unique vision that's yours, the more you secure you feel in that. So, for instance, with me saying I want to help no traditional entrepreneurs, people are side house sold as people are selopreneurs, I'm going to help them on every single platform possible. Now that we're sheltering in place, I'm gonna start off this YouTube channel like I'm gonna give them as much game as possible. No

one can take that away from me. So whether Bill from Now came out you know, a couple of weeks ago like it did with its big launch, or if it came out three years from now. It doesn't matter. And so the more secure you are in what you're nourishing the world with, the less you're worried about the timeline. Like I'm not worried about what anybody else is doing. I want to support other people, and I'll watch other people,

and I know exactly who's in my space. As far as with business, I can tell you exactly the business competitors are. Some of them are my friends. I'm proud to call my friends. Our books came out the same time. But I'm not worried about you know, his or her um you know market cap or his or her um hits or her space is that he she was taken in the market, Like, I'm not worried about that because I know what my identity is. And as soon as you get into that, then you start worry about how

long it takes. Like I'm not worried about that. I got um um Bring Your Worth, which you mentioned earlier, that came out exactly two years ago. It was actually a slow sell are compared to my previous book, The Ultimate Bites an Entrepreneur, That one was the best seller off the bat. Bring Your Worth was a slow seller, and then people are coming back. Now literally two years later, I just got a phone call from somebody. They're like, I just picked this up and I need some more

of that game, you know. And it was humbling because it's like literally two years later, that's a long time. You put a book out and it's like no one was talking about it, and suddenly people it's popping, like eighteen nineteen, twenty months later. That's not to be a flex or anything. It's just if you have that mindset, you're not worried about that. Someone I was coaching recently, I was I was sharing with them that their job isn't to convince people to get on the journey right away.

That's not their job. Their job is to do the work with bring your worth, which is why I bring it up, bring your worth, you know. Thankfully, you know, I had a lot of support where I did the work that I was supposed to do, and it's like, whether best seller or not, this is the book of this time and that time for somebody like the person who just called me the other day, that time I be two thousand twenty one after a pandemic, but I wrote that joined two thousand and eighteen. It came out

to the two last nineteen. They are ready for it. And so once you start to establish a catalog, then that conversation is already established, and as Seth Golden says, that begins to create trust. If you create trust, then no, no time or nothing can violate that. And in fact, that's I think it's the opposite. Where now that I've been talking about these discussions, and you and I have talked about this off camera, I've been talking about these things for like five years, six years, seven years, I

saw my startup. So there's a level of trust and community there that other people can't preach. That's what you need to do. But that takes time, so time not looking at as I have to rush to get it out because competitors by the black, it's like, no, create your community and then over time you'll get them. As I talked about Bill from now, you almost get like a dividend from it. You almost get a um uh

interest over time. You know, it's like compound interests. But it's see your creator world, you know, and you do that, the time becomes your friend doesn't come by me. I'm not worried about time, you know. So um shout to everybody watching on Facebook and on lunch table. If you do have questions, we have producers monitoring those chats, so feel free to drop your questions and the comments and I will do my best to get to them in

the time that we have left. I want to pull up, um one of your old your old giddies UM oh by side on hand that happened that. It was like, that's like pulling out you know, Kendrick and mar section eighty. It's like, whoa, I got the I got the new version. Here's this version is clean back when Yes, I have that one too. You got the old version though. That was my first major best seller on my MPR. Thank

you so yeah. So. So I want to pull up to jog your memory, and I want to have you speak to a couple of these things because when I think about lifestyle entrepreneurs specifically, and then we're talking about entrepreneurship for the re of us. So this is for those people who maybe feeling like they're inadequate because they're not trying to do the next school, but maybe they're trying to do their boutique or they're trying to do

their you know, their lifestyle company. Um, they don't always have the like the infrastructure and the demands put on them by external forces, or they have to find it from within to be um to come and show up all the time. Right. So, and there's a chapter called lies We Tell And these are a lot a lot of the myths, um, that we might tell ourselves. Um, when we're starting a business. I'm gonna just give you a couple of the ones, the headers that you wrote

in here, and I wanted to have you speak to it. Um. One of them is I'll start this project or slash this business when I have more bandwidth. Man, we hear that all the time. I know you hear it too. I'm gonna go ahead and get started on this when when I get my money. Right, that's a that's a common one. Um, I'm gonna start on this when my kids graduate. I'm gonna start on this when I get situated my main job. Um, it's not going to get

easier tomorrow. Again, I became an entrepreneur at the same time. You know, my son had just turned four months old when I became an entrepreneur. So so I can speak from experience, but also from coaching and connecting with other people where it's just like it literally doesn't get easier. And there's so many people that I've talked with who had that same dream, that same idea that they had

when we connected like ten years ago. Almost spends the teener minde where it's just like you know, and not shaming them, but more like that that that potential wasn't realized, you know, because they're waiting for this perfect moment. I talked to him now and they're still waiting for this perfect moment um. That's why Built from Now it's called Bill from Now. I really struggle with the title. That's why it's called Bill from Now, where it's like work

with what you've got. And there's so many business books that come out now that say that you're broken, or you need to fix this, or you need to un after yourself, try not to curse, you know, all these different things, right, and somebody are by my colleagues, so it's no shade towards them. But the but the resumption, the baseline is saying you need to be better than

what you are now, you need to be fixed. I'm very much the opposite approach where I'm like, no, your problem is your framework, and so you actually have a lot of resources, you're just not valuing them again, you know, understanding your abundance, I say and build from now, building on that, and so we keep on delaying until we get more resources. Well I'm trying to do a build from now and saying no, you've got enough, get started. Yeah, all right, I think I'm gonna do two or three more.

We can do them sort of rapid fires, so we can get through these because they're really good. All right. The next one is I'll stay up all night skip today's meals, because that's how you crush it. Man. I used to live in Silicon Valley and it's a lot of brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters, like I spelsed to brothers and sisters in general that we're just you know, in their early twenties burnout and on. The hot thing at the time was Mountain Dew and I'm a Red

Bulls and Evocula. So I'm giving my age now. So it's like the lay Odds and it was high life. Steve Drives was still alive, like the whole thing, like the old thing. You know, you go to the party, see Steve drives there, that kind of thing. So it was that lifestyle and then they'd be burned out in like a month, like Crispy, like never hear from them again. I'm not trying to do that and left. I didn't

do that with Cuddler, though I had my moments. Real is tough, and so you want to create something again that's sustainable if you're in a rush. If your step was worthwhile, you don't need to be in a rush. And there's a few different things where you might have to get in before competitors. But even if competitors get in, they might be you might be able to refine it, put your spin on it. That's better. And so again no focus on the Russian just like be consistent with

my YouTube channel. I discovered this straight up where it's just like I was doing the daily YouTube for like two months, already got like sixty episodes up there, and then a couple of weeks ago, I was like, wait a second, let me calm down. So now it's up being every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, much easier pace. The world is starting to open back up, so I'm starting to get called up to do different things later on in the year or next year. It's like, I want

to ask something that's sustainable. How do I keep showing up for my audience forever? As Jay Z said in that interview with The New York Times, forever, that's what I want. You can't do forever and burn yourself out. All right, two more. We can do this quick because we are starting to get some questions coming in. Um, I will work. I'm gonna I'll give you this acronym for the audience in a second, but it'll make sense

in a minute. The next one is I'll work with this Peter client one last time, and Peter stands for paining ass. I'll work with this paying as client one more time. I fired clients before, so I'm looking for you to give us some enlightenment here. Yeah, I fire them all the time, and you have to figure out what your main way you're serving. Is one of the reason why I slow down on the YouTube channel and other things is that you some times have to give

space for whatever you're gonna build next. Because if your schedule is like this, you've got a million things going on, You've got a lot of PETA clients, and you're just trying to pay the bills. There's gonna be a gap where you're gonna cut off those clients and it's gonna be rough. But if you don't have that gap, then there's no room for serious clients to come in. That's the best way I can describe it. I've gone through that many many times in a couple of decades being independent,

and you gotta make that choice, all right. Next, the last one is out of this series, is I need to quit my job, in my relationships, etcetera, so I can truly dedicate myself to my big idea. That's what that's what hows that admit I thought I had to give everything up in order to go do this thing. Man, No, well, that that is the well we believe that you said earlier, Like we believe that that's that's the bill of goods we've been sold. It's like, oh, yeah, you have to

give up everything. Yeah, if you got to give up everything, then you'll be able to you know, sell your components coming to whoever and then go buy island off that let's out Pacific like and then you can rest. And it's like, but that's such a point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent chance of that, and so they're selling you on that, and then you might end up selling your soul for that. And I don't mean anything dramatic, just like you're gonna grind yourself to

a halt that doesn't make any sense. Like I'm in my forties. I plan on being in this game until until the you know, the wheels follows right to the cascade, drafts whatever. So I have no interest in burning out. I got another forty years in me. So it's like, I'm not trying to kill myself for the next book or the next pap. I'm not trying to do that. You get that mentality, you think forty fifty years, then you'll make other decisions about how you spend your time,

you know. And there's a question that came in from Facebook says I'm interested in writing a series of books. How can I get started or just pointed in the best direction. I guess start with one book. Maybe that could say yeah, to get to to flavor in here, but yeah, just start with a sentence, UM, do a medium piece, um with UM. I'm not gonna have you pick up my old Ashley version of the book. The whole tremate bit says Entrepreneur, like the original one that

that Will showed earlier. It started with a series of of columns and a inc magazine to get an ink dame around dot com like you can see, like probably like the fourth of the of the chapters in there actually were inspired by the columns. My columns are short, so I was doing three D word columns while I would take care of my two year old and his little brother at came. So I'm doing these little columns

while I'm doing double baby duty. And then that grew into a mighty yoke and suddenly that became the beginning of my publishing game print. So I wouldn't think about the series. You can map it out. That's cool, like the bit says Entrepreneur in the series. My new one built from now is technically the follow up to Bring Your Earth. So that's kind of a series. So it's okay to have that big picture. But you gotta start with first sentence. Let's start with the first sentence. Rest figure, Yeah,

there's another one. I'm looking on lunch table. Um. Somebody asked Malik asks, how would you go about and mismatch and idea versus skill? Is it better to have to get started on your idea faster if you have the funds um learn to skill yourself, or a combination of the two idea versus skill UM I would put the meritenti idea yeah, because I'm as you can tell on an octopus. So my background is journalism and then I do public speaking and I've on coaching practice, I have

on book and print. So I like getting involved and having my hand in different pots for We can get into that, but many different reasons for that. But first I had to learn the ropes, so that might be a good example. When I did my first built from now it is my twenty book. My first ten books were with traditional publishers in New York, so it wasn't like I started printing book especially back in the day. It wasn't like I was printing books. But first I

wrote my book proposal. Then I found an agent. Then that agent I didn't work out, so I let go of that agent. I got another agent, and then each person I'm talking with I'm getting game from. So the fact that I'm able to have a publishing imprint now comes from me getting my idea and learned from all these different people. If I was waiting until I had the skill set to do all this different stuff. Then my books would't have came out. I'd still be waiting.

So I'd say the idea will be paramount. You can figure out the skills later. So I could not end this conversation. We do have a couple of minutes left, UM without talking about the impacts COVID has on UM, the opportunity to start your old thing. A lot of people were pushed out of their positions last year. People who were making really really good money, UM, had the

secure jobs and found out they were not so secure. UM. How do you what would you say to follow who need to get shaken to see, okay, what this moment is opportunity wise, this is something that won't be here five years from now. Correct? Correct? I think that's the case for a lot of things. And you know, I mean we can talk about this for like another hour. Yea.

The biggest insight I've learned over the last year or two and trying to share with my people that I support, is that you have to own the land versus being a renter. So that doesn't mean to start your own business. That means if Facebook, no disrespect to them, but it's Facebook or whomever wherever you're starting to plant your seeds decides to kick you off the platform or change your algorithm. You're not gonna lose everything. That tech metaphor fits a

lot of people who have lost your jobs too. I know people who I care about who had a side hustle in the back of their mind and they're like, that's not gonna make enough money, and I got my main job. Suddenly that main job is gone. And then, as we say in Silicon Valid, you have to spin up. They have to spin up this thing. They're trying to hustle and make it work, but they didn't build their

community yet. You said. It circles back to being into our conversation, building your community before you have to Right, there's um Um. I think of like um Russ. I think of a few other folks who have had conversations about about the music industry, and they'll say, my company, my business is recession proof, and that means that they you know, and you know a music business way more than I do. People people are used to get that money on the road and suddenly they're like, okay, I

have to be at home. But if you own your catalog. If you're connected with your fans directly, you're not waiting for universe or whomever's to give you a cosign to give you more money or whatever. Because you're not on the road, then you're able to control that path. That's not saying that you have to quit your job or that if you get laid off, that you know everything's fine. It's saying always have these multiple streams going, not just in case, but because that's the way to go, because

you're actually able to own that. My newsletteralists and joined Damon dot me. I own that, and so when I had my new book coming out, they got the pre orders. They were going, we have our conversations that can be can be taken away by a pandemic or whatever, and so finding ways to create your own community independent of some third parties, including your day job. If you do that, then I think that creates true security, even though that might take a little bit more time than you're used to.

You know, all right, So we have two more questions I'll get to and then we gotta close because I want to give you an opportunity to talk about where they can get the book and all that kind of stuff. So two more. I'm gonna give you both of these and you can take them however you want. One thing came from Facebook says, what would be a good way to get into coaching? They want to start coaching? How

to get in? The other one came from lunch table is how do you manage being a parent slash entrepreneurs. I'm gonna give you both those. That's the biggest comption of the second one. Let's say you know what the deal out. I'll do the second one first. Um, you don't manage, you go up the flow and so my kids could come in here and scream about something in the middle of our conversation. You have to adapt to that. I talked about that and um and built from now.

As far as adapting to different things, we can talk about that after the questions. Um, but yeah, usually adapt to it. There's no there's no golden key. I talked about that a lot in the ultimate bites as the entrepreneurs, So you might want to grab that one. That's one over here. So I talked a lot about parenting and going what I went through with Cuddler and what's so quoted my previous happened. But I don't think there's a golden key to that um. As far as getting into coaching,

coaching actually chose me, like which sounds weird. I think I massacred some type of jay Z line um, but coaching actually chose me. And so I was actually doing keynotes after again the Ultimate Bites of Entrepreneur came out became a bestseller, I started doing, like I said, keynotes, did ted talks and all that stuff, and people will come up afterwards and ask, hey, can I grab you a cup of coffee? And I'm like why, I don't understand.

And it took me like five six times for that to happen, where I'm like, oh wait, the game I gave on the stage and the game I've given this book that's not for them. And that's how became a coach. And so it's a very organic process. Everything that I've created it's been based on being pulled in that direction. I've learned to not force things, and so I didn't say I was going to be a coach. It's like, no, I created stuff and people wanted me to coach, and

I think that's a really subtle difference. So not trying to scourge you from that. Just figure out what signals are saying that you should be a coach now. Based on those, the net determined your direction. You might not want to be a coach right now. You might be better off doing UM online online teaching platforms like I want to Teachable. That might be better for you. It might be doing a YouTube channel like I had. So

coaching isn't a narrow thing. You figure out how you want to serve people and then they tell you how they how you can serve them the best. Hopefully that makes sense. So UM build from Now? Where can I get it? Yeah? Get it directly from me at Damon Brown dot net. I'll say you love that. You said get it directly from me? Like I love that because I mean the I guess coming directly to you. Yeah,

I am the manager. That's right for people that get get the meme, you'll be laughing right now, but yeah, Damon Brown dot net and you get it from there. I'm also wearing the build from Now t shirt and so I got some merch over there too, So come through for that UM, and you get any of my books Built from now. UM. The predecessor which which WILL has been a big supporter of Bring Your Worth and then the best seller y'all made, uh what y'all made

a best seller also in Bite Sized Entrepreneur UM. So you come through to there, I learned about me, learned about coaching and all that stuff. UM. Something for free that I want to get to everybody is at built from now quiz dot com. It's built from now quiz dot com. It's a free quiz where you can learn what your biggest strength is, again based on the icons

that are I built from now UM. So you can learn about that, and then you can learn more about my coaching practice and how how I can pass along some game to you over my YouTube channel. And that's how YouTube dot com slash Brown Damon. UM. It's probably the best things. If you want the audiobook and other stuff, you can get it on your favorite platform. Yeah. We're your most active Twitter, Instagram, how people people with Yeah, so on all the major platforms, I'm Brown Damon and

social media. It's Twitter and Instagram. I'm on them there every single day. Particularly on Instagram. I'll do clips of my keynotes and all that stuff, and even have segments from my my original YouTube channel. UM and of course joined Damon dot me because I can't be doing you a sermon about but oh in the land. That's my platform. I do a new side of that comes out every

Wednesday at five am. But doing that for years. I love the discipline of it um and being able to give you some insight and kind of help you on your journey. So built from now. Quiz dot com be a good place to start, as well as at Damon Brown dot net to learn more about me and get a copy of the book, and then go to my YouTube channel on YouTube dot com slash Brown Damon and I'm dropping gems at this point every Monday, Wednesday and

Friday at eleven thirty Pacific standards time. Black Tech Green Money is a production of Black of the Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network and i Heeart Media. Was produced by Morgan Davon and me Will Lucas, with additional production support by Love Beach and raveneer Board. Special thank you to Michael Davis and the car Savon Jan you know like the Wine. Yes that's his real name. Learn more about my guests and other tech disruptors and

innovatives at afro tech dot com. Go get your money, Peace and love