The Importance of Choosing the Right Idea | Todd Henry

Bravery is always about the other. Bravery is always about a cause. It's about a vision. It's about something bigger that you're trying to pursue, not in order to fuel your own life, not in order to serve yourself, but in order to serve others in some way, whether that's through, you know, building something that serves other people or, you know, engaging in some act of service that's going to ultimately improve other people's lives. It doesn't mean you can't make a lot of money along the way because, you know, we talked about in our interview for the podcast, you know, profit, you know, fuels purpose. You have to have profit in order to be able to have any kind of purpose. But at the end of the day, you know, there has to be something other than profit that you're pursuing.

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Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the internet where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I'm your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, author extraordinaire Todd Henry. Welcome, Todd.

Hey, it's good to be here.

Thank you very much for sharing your time. I'm very excited to interview you and talk about all things creative business.

Yeah, well, you're the man to talk to. That's what I've heard. You're the one to talk to about that.

Yeah, I want to dive in. You had decided to self-publish your most recent book, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Do you mind sharing why you came to that decision to self-publish and what was different for you?

Well, there, there were a lot of things that were different. I'll, I'll go into the, the, my reasoning, the mindset behind it first. So it, it wasn't for a lack of offers. We had a couple of publishers who were interested. In publishing the book. But the problem for me was the timeline for publishing. As you know well, typically it's about a year and a half to 2 years from the time you sign the contract to the time the book comes out. Publishers have this pesky little interest in having books be 200+ pages that are, you know, or almost 300 pages that are hardcover that they can sell for $30, which I understand because they're putting a lot into it. They want to make sure that they can sell it for a high volume or high dollar amount. And I didn't want this book to be that. I wanted it to be short, easy to read, short chapters, very punchy. It was a very missional book for me. I'd been working on it for a number of years behind the scenes, and I wanted to make sure that the book was very punchy. I didn't make it anything. I didn't put filler in. It wasn't, you know, I didn't try to pack it full of like stories that were kind of related to the main point, but you could kind of see that I've I was really just kind of filling pages. So that was a big part of it was just I wanted more control over the size and the distribution of the book. The other thing is, and it's interesting, I have an event I'm speaking at this month where I'm including copies of this book with my speaking fee now. I can't really do that with my books that were published through Penguin Random House because whatever you're going to pay on Amazon, that's what I'm going to pay as well in order to get copies of the books. It just becomes it's not very cost-effective to do that. And so I wanted to get the message out into the world in as frictionless a way as possible. So that was the mindset that went into it. What was different, I mean, I had to figure out how to be a publisher. That was certainly very interesting, although I will say that it is so remarkably easy now to self-publish. Much more so than I even anticipated. It's, it's really easy to do it. There's so many tools available, um, there's so many great freelancers out there who can help you along the, along the, the journey. So that was, that was kind of the, I guess, maybe what some of what I learned along the way is just that, you know, when you are an author, it's really nice to be able to kind of take your hands off the wheel and let editors and designers and other people and distributors kind of take control of the project from time to time and you could have it off your plate. That was sort of always my thing when writing my first 5 books. It was always like— or 6 books, I should say my first 6 books. I do my part and then, okay, it's off my plate. Now it's your responsibility for a while. Okay. Oh, it came back to me. Okay, now I have to work on it some more. Okay, now it's off my plate. Now it's your responsibility for a while. There's none of that when you're the self-publisher. It's like it's always on your plate. Everything is on your plate all the time. And so that was the one mindset set shift. I will say though, it is nice to be able to distribute it however I want, to have complete access to the material. The content has been a really freeing thing because it really, for me, this is a missional book more than it was something that I was hoping would find broad distribution. It was really something I just wanted to be able to get into people's hands very quickly because I feel like it's a timely message.

So do you think, and you may not have had enough time to realize this, but was it more profitable to do it self-publishing than to with a publisher?

It depends on how you define profitable. From a purely— from a, a book publishing standpoint, you know, I mean, traditionally over the course of many years, I mean, I've gotten used to sort of collecting advances from publishers and then writing books and then selling the books and then earning out those advances and then getting royalty checks once I earn out the advances, right? So it's a little more risky up front from the standpoint that like nobody was writing me a big check to publish a book. There is some of that, and publishers have ways of making money maybe that I don't have access to, you know, to making money off of books. But from the standpoint of me being able to go out and find speaking events around this book and packaging the book as part of that value, I'm 100% certain that I've booked many more speaking events as a result of having self-published this book and being able to sort of include this with the package and sort of make it more of a, a missional sort of targeted thing. And so I'm not just thinking about making money from the book itself as much as I am seeing the book as kind of the, the leading edge of a much more expansive business model around this idea of instilling brave habits in your life. Um, I would say I'm getting more— there was more immediacy to the interest. Most of my books I've published in the past, it's taken 6 8 months before I started getting a lot of speaking inquiries around the book. It takes time for people to read it and process it and all of that. This was much more immediate, I would say, from that standpoint.

If you were to— when you write another book, will you self-publish or no?

My inclination right now is yes, but it kind of depends strategically on the nature of the book. Like I mentioned, this one was a very missional book. I wanted it to be 150 pages, paperback, easy to produce, easy to hand out. If it's going to be something that I think would have more reach with a traditional publishing platform, I might go back to a traditional publishing imprint at some point if the book would be served by that or the message would be served by that or if there isn't a kind of immediacy to the message. So I guess that's my way of saying it kind of depends on the nature of the book, right? And my goals for the book. Anything that's like a big think piece kind of book, I think is really well served by a traditional publishing imprint, right? Because also in many of those cases, you need the refining infrastructure of an editorial team. I mean, like, I'll give you an example, "Herding Tigers," my leadership book that came out in 2018, worked with some phenomenal editors at Portfolio at Penguin Random House. And there were entire sections of the book that were completely redefined by that editorial input. We cut an entire chapter out of the book because it just didn't fit. I don't think I would've had those instincts, nor do I think that anybody I would've necessarily hired as a freelancer would've had the instincts to make that book into what it became because it was a big, complex, thought-laden kind of book. Whereas this was much more sort of simple, direct, focused. I had a couple things I wanted to say. Yeah, so I think it just depends on the nature of the book. I think I would encourage people listening, if you think you want to put something into the world and the big barrier that you're continuously running up against is, "Well, no publisher will agree to publish my book," I mean, by all means, pursue self-publishing because it's so easy and it's so easy to find distribution now. Just make sure that you put the time and the energy and the effort into it to make it Good. That's the one thing I would say. I had the benefit of having traditionally published 6 books before doing this, so I sort of had that long history of understanding the business, understanding the industry, understanding how to write a book. Just make sure that you're working with people to help you if you've not done it before.

You keep using the word missional. What does that mean to you? Define that.

It means my response to something that I'm seeing in the world. What's being called out of me at a particular point in time. And so I would say over the past probably 8 to 10 years, I've seen some disturbing patterns culturally in organizations that I work with, just in culture in general and interactions I have with people. I've seen people retreating from what I would consider to be brave behavior, people behaving in cowardly ways. It's disturbing to me because we're almost normalizing it. Some of it has been exacerbated by cultural social media use where we can make our opinions known from afar. We can lob witty insults at people over social media from behind our anonymous screen names or whatever. Those are cowardly acts. I mean, they are. Getting face-to-face with someone, building a relationship with them, coming to understand them even if we disagree, being able to find common ground, you know, discover what we have in common beyond what we might disagree on. Those are acts of bravery. And so I think in many ways what I wanted people to come away with and what I felt missionally called to was to reintroduce this conversation about what bravery really is versus bravado, which is not the same thing, and to encourage people very practically to make bravery a habit in their life. You know, to have brave conversations, to ask brave questions, to introduce brave ideas, to build brave relationships with others. I feel like that is the bridge to get us where we need to go culturally. And really, I think it's the bridge to get any business where they need to go. I mean, anybody who wants to do anything meaningful in this world, it's going to require a series of brave actions. All of the easy stuff has been done, right? I'm sorry. I know there are a lot of people out there who want to sell you, you know, some program that says, Hey, take these 5 easy steps and you'll be making, you know, 7 figures a year doing your thing. I'm going to— a little secret— it doesn't work. It's not going to work for you. It's going to make them rich. They're going to make 7 figures.

You're not a Grant Cardone fan. Is that what I'm getting?

I'm not going to— I don't want to use names, but I will say, like, listen, it's not— there's no easy way to getting there. It is a series of brave steps in the face of uncertainty. Allows us to accomplish anything meaningful in this world, which means we have to train ourselves to act bravely in the face of uncertainty. Now, there are people who will act in a way that exhibits what I call bravado, which is bluster. It's brashness. It's posturing. But that in some ways is kind of a form of cowardice because you're just often masking insecurity. Bravery is always about the other. Bravery is always about a cause. It's about a vision. It's about something bigger that you're trying to pursue, not in order to fuel your own life, not in order to serve yourself, but in order to serve others in some way, whether that's through building something that serves other people or engaging in some act of service that's going to ultimately improve other people's lives. It doesn't mean you can't make a lot of money along the way because we talked about in our interview for the podcast, profit fuels purpose. You have to have profit in order to be able to have any kind of purpose. But at the end of the day, there has to be something other than profit that you're pursuing in order to act bravely.

Yes. You said focusing on others has to be— I had a thought run through my head. It's not a secular thought. It is a spiritual thought, but I'll share it with you and we'll see where it goes. A pastor said that a religious spirit is one where you use God's word for your purposes instead of for God's purposes. But it kind of rings true to me that what's the commonality there is yourself, right? If you are acting on behalf of yourself, it's hard to be brave. When, when you act on behalf of someone else, that is about being brave. Would you agree with that?

I would, yeah. I, I mean, I am of the opinion that the fundamental nature of the universe, the fundamental imprint, the DNA of the universe is self-emptying. It's, it's, um, um, that's the nature of love, right, is self-emptying. It's, it's laying down yourself on behalf of others. And that's what we find that beautiful, you know, when you, when you watch stories. Like, how often do you watch a movie where the hero, you know, there's this big climactic scene, there's a big battle, and the hero turns around and runs away, and everybody's like, "Yeah, hey, good job, way to save yourself." No, no, we don't. No, we don't write songs about cowards. We don't write, you know, I mean, "Coward of the County" being the exception, Kenny Rogers, thank you. But there's something that we find beautiful about people who are willing to spend themselves on behalf of others, on behalf of a cause, on behalf of something that matters deeply. I think we should pay attention to that. Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, to build something or to succeed in some way, it has to cost you everything. And you have— no, that's not what I'm saying. But, but there, you have to ask yourself, what is the optimistic vision that I'm pursuing? What is my vision of a better future? How do I see things being better in the future? And that, and that's the first thing that tends to be present when brave action occurs, is that optimistic vision versus a pessimistic vision of the future where it doesn't matter You know, there's no better possible future available, right? So I have an optimistic vision of the future. The second thing that has to be present is a sense of agency. I believe that not only is there a better possible future, but I can do something to help bring that about versus a sense of powerlessness. Because if I feel powerless to bring it about, I'm, I'm not gonna take brave act. Why would I take brave action? It's futile anyway. Why would I do that? You know, I can see the better possible future, but I'm just a victim here. I'm just drifting to and fro with, with the current. So we have to claim that sense of agency, right? That sense of belief that there's a better possible future and that I have the capacity to help bring it about. That's when brave action is likely to occur. Doesn't mean it will occur, but when you think back on brave decisions in your life, things that you've done, I think back to starting my business, right? Like I started my business because I believe that there were other creative pros out there and creative leaders, um, in the mid-2000s who were struggling with the create-on-demand world. They were struggling with staying healthy in the midst of this pressure to create all the time, to come up with solutions, to solve problems. As a creative director, I was struggling with keeping my team focused. I'm like, yeah, I'll bet there are other people out there struggling with this. I should put in the hundreds upon hundreds of hours to start building something, even though I'm not being compensated for it, but I'm just gonna put in the time and the energy and the effort. Not because I'm trying to make myself rich, but because I think there are people out there who could really use this. Now, in the process of that, I built a pretty cool company, a pretty cool career. That's great. I love that. But the vision I was pursuing was, how can I help these other people? And what agency do I have to help bring it about? Well, I've developed a certain set of skills, to quote Liam Neeson, right? I've developed a certain set of skills I think I could apply in the service of those people. And so I think those are the two things we have to ask ourselves is, what is my vision and what agency do I have to help bring it about?

Yeah. And I feel like a lot of what you experience in the United States anyway is a lot of— I don't want to call it propaganda, but let's just say that there's a lot of reporting of information that almost implies that, you know, you don't have any agency. Like, it's the problems are too big to fix that, you know, what are you going to do that could possibly make any difference? And I think that, yeah, can I bring peace to the Middle East? No, I can't personally, not in the situation I'm in. But can I bring peace to my community, my household, my family? And I think that I don't want to say it's by design, but that just seems like the society we live in where it's easy to become very nihilist, like, you know, it just, what difference does it make? And I see this In my kids' generation, you know, people in their 20s, it's just like, it's this a lot of throw your hands up in the air, what can I do? Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that Full Commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now.

Yeah, and it's unfortunate. I have two older boys, one of whom is a senior and is about to graduate, the other one who is a sophomore in college. And yeah, I mean, I do definitely see it in my conversations with them. We were all home together for the summer, right? And it does feel feel like the problems are so big. And especially, you know, we grow numb to— we think that because things were a certain way for us at a certain age, that things are the way that they were for us, right? Like, I don't know, I was— I'm a member of Gen X. I graduated college in 1995. That was a pretty great time to graduate from college. It was a pretty great time to be entering the workforce, right? Like, I could actually just kind of kick around a little bit, play music for a couple years, see if I could build a career there. Oh, it didn't work out. Okay, I'm going to go try something else. There was a lot of opportunity during that era, and things are different today, right? Kids are facing different kinds of uncertainties and different kinds of financial pressure. And so we have to take that into account and recognize that our job— I mean, our job is to sort of walk alongside people and help them understand, okay, well, what does brave action look like for you? If you're trying to accomplish something in your life, if you have an ultimate vision, what is the strategic way for you to pursue that? Because bravery isn't always about brash action. It's not always about like, well, go do the thing. Just go. Don't think about it. Just go do it. No, that's foolishness. That's in some cases, that is foolhardy behavior. Brave action is calculated. It understands the risk. It's strategic. You know, it understands when to act and when to wait. Because sometimes you don't have that sense of agency. You don't have yet that vision of a better possible future. And the most brave thing that you can do when everybody else is rushing past you into a trend is to say, no, I'm gonna plant my feet here and just wait because I don't yet know if that's the right action for me. And so, you know, I think that especially for people, I mean, I'm going through this with my sons, we have to contextualize what bravery looks like cuz it's not always, It's not always obvious.

That's right. I'm going to pivot here for a second. What impact do you see as a creator, as a writer of technology? Did you use AI in writing The Brave Habit in any way?

I did not use it in writing The Brave Habit. I used it in some editorial revisions. I asked it to look for redundant words. I asked it to tighten up a couple of sentences. But no, there was no AI used in writing it. I did use it to help generate some marketing materials for it. You know, hey, here's the manuscript, you know, come up with a handful of ways to market this, right? What would you do to market this? But I did not use it to write it. And that actually, that's kind of a line that I've drawn for myself that I'm not comfortable crossing.

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It's one of two things. It's, it's either written by AI. I can immediately tell it's either written by AI or someone that just can't write at all. I guess it could be either one, but I'm wondering, short term, 3 to 5 years, what, what impact is it going to have in your space? How do you see it changing?

And by my space, are you talking about book writing? Is that primarily what you're thinking?

Book writing or creative endeavors in general?

Sure. So I subscribe to the Kevin Kelly, um, mindset surrounding AI. Um, Kevin said we can't think of these as replacements for the human brain. We have to think of them as alien brains. These are alien brains that think differently than we do, that can do things that we're not capable of doing because our minds don't work that way. And we need to see them more as companion brains than as replacement brains. And so the way that I've been using AI is not in the creating part of it, but in the let's get some more stimulus into my process part of it. So asking questions like, if you were me and you were trying to solve this problem, what kinds of questions would you be asking? What kinds of resources would you be using? What are some examples of people who have done this or this or this, and how did they do it? And what are some questions that they asked, right? Those are the kinds of ways that I'm using AI that I find much more meaningful and valuable than saying, write a 500-word essay on, you know, whatever. I see it more as sort of a way to access things deep in the recesses of my own creative neurostructure that may not be apparent to me on the surface. But then once they're pulled out of me— this is why we created so many tools over the years to help people randomize their creative process. It's because you don't realize what is in your mind until something sparks a reaction, and you're like, oh, I forgot about that. Oh yeah, I was at that game where this thing happened, and oh my gosh, that's a great story. Like you, you completely forget about those things until it's pulled out of you. And so that's, I think that we're gonna see, we're gonna see a lot of really horrible applications of AI where people are just using it to replace their own effort, you know, lazy uses of AI. But I think we're gonna see a lot of brilliant uses of AI where people use it for inspiration, for sparking connections and insights in new and profound ways that they never would've achieved. So it's gonna be that beautiful combination of human ingenuity and creativity and taste and intuition combined with the deep and broad stimulus that is available via these AI tools. I just, I had a really good conversation for our podcast with Andy Crouch actually about this whole idea of the difference between tools and devices. And how we can see AI as either a tool or a device. And the difference is a tool, it enhances your capacity as a human being. A tool is something like, for example, think about like a nail gun, right? Like there are people who know how to use hammers, you know, God bless those people, and they could go up on a roof and they could, you know, re-roof a house in a couple hours. And for those who aren't really great with a hammer, there's this thing called a nail gun. You can go up and pretty much anybody can use a nail gun because it doesn't require any skill. You just point it and shoot,, right? But it, but it's a, it's a tool that enhances your capabilities. And then you have devices, and devices are intended not to enhance but to replace. So we have a lot of our human capacities, our, for example, our ability to navigate, have been completely replaced by devices. You know, like there was a time, you remember this, I remember it, like you had to literally get out a paper map or an atlas if you wanted to go someplace. You had to follow the road and okay, now we're looking for I-70. 17 or whatever, like you had to literally understand how to navigate. Sometimes you would literally look around to find your direction. Like, oh, the sun's over there. It must mean we're going west or whatever. Devices replace human capacities. And the way Andy put it was like, you no longer have to suddenly becomes you no longer can. And so my belief is that AI is a wonderful tool. Tool to use to enhance your capacity. And I think it's a dangerous tool. It's dangerous when it's used as a device to replace your capacity because at the end of the day, I believe great creative work is defined by human intuition and taste. And, you know, that's something I think AI will not be able to replace.

I really like that analogy between a tool and a device. And I, I, I think that rings true. I think long before LLM showed up, I was doing a deep dive into AI and it was more around neural nets and numbers and data. And the thing that still happens and I think is still a great application is that it is a tool that allows you to analyze data that you couldn't do yourself. It's kind of like the computer itself being able to compute things faster than you can, right? And so it's useful in that way. But I'm not an AI expert to know what the, the distinction between a neural net and a large language model are. But it seemed like 2 years ago when ChatGPT showed up, it was— there was a lot of hype around it, and I think people 2 years on are realizing that, yeah, that's a neat tool, but we're not 100% sure how to use it. And that's the other thing is that any technology is limited by the human element, right? It's only as good as the human user, and it takes time for the human user to understand it, understand the technology, and to utilize it. So there's always that governor of the human element.

From a generative standpoint, for sure, I completely agree with you. I think where we're going to see the biggest immediate application of AI that's going to transform our lives is going to be under the hood of the devices that we use. It's going to be the things where things just pop up in places that we didn't expect them, or our devices just intuit what we're doing and where we're going and what we need, and it just becomes a part of our everyday experience. We don't even think about it, but it's AI under the hood, right? To your point though, those sort of specific application-oriented use cases, I think that's going to take some time because it's just like, you know, it's just like when, you know, uh, automobiles came on the scene. It's like not everybody had one, not everybody knew how to drive, you know. It took a while for the— for it to become something that was ubiquitous. And I think it's going to be kind of the same way with some of the generative AI tools that we have at our disposal. Like, I don't know, it kind of seems easier just to do it the way I've been doing it for 30 years, or I'm going to get on the horse, ride the town kind of thing.

So that's exactly right. All right, I'm going to pivot one more time. Tell me about what you learned about money growing up.

That is a really good question. So I'll give you a little backstory. My family, my, my origins are in Kentucky. Generations back. My family came up what's called the Hillbilly Highway, Route 23, up to Central Ohio, settled in Pickaway County, and basically became dirt farmers from what I understand. So this is like my great-great-grandpa. And, you know, basically they were laborers, not a lot of education in our family. My grandfather then moved to Fayette County, Ohio. He became a self-taught electrician in a factory. And at one point, my grandfather, when my father was young, my grandfather decided he was going to start a business. The business did not do well. I think there was some financial chicanery that happened with one of the partners, and my grandfather ended up losing a lot, you know, basically went back to working at the factory. So my dad was the first in my family to go to college. My dad graduates, uh, gets a teaching degree, graduates, becomes a high school teacher. And my dad is thinking about starting a business. And he goes to my grandpa and he says, Dad, his dad, I think I'm going to start this business. And my grandpa said, are you sure that you want to give up that steady paycheck? I mean, that steady paycheck comes every 2 weeks, you know, and my dad at that point had done part-time in this business. He had made in 2 months what he normally made made in a year as a teacher. So he already had proven like it works, right? So he was thinking about leaving and going and doing this full time. And my grandpa was like, are you sure that you want to do this? You know, you get that steady paycheck coming every 2 weeks. That mindset was so ingrained in my grandfather because of his one-time experience, right? And my dad said, yeah, I think I'm going to do it. I think I'm going to do it. And so he, my dad did, he left, he started a business. Because my dad broke that cycle, I think it showed me that it, it's possible. It's possible to, to not just, you know, graduate from college and chain yourself to something and then sort of ride out that career. So I think my mindset around money growing up was one of possibility. I think I was very blessed to not have a mindset that was limited by Money is very scarce. It's very hard to get. Once you have it, you don't wanna lose it. It's better to have that little bit of security than it is to chase after, uh, possibilities. So I'm grateful because I do think that often there are these kind of generational mindsets that get passed down from, from one generation to the next. And I think my dad really broke that cycle by being willing to take that risk and start the, start the business when he did. Um, so all I've ever known growing up from the time I was like 5 years old, um, was, I don't know, Dad's got his own business and he seems to do pretty well. And my mom had a couple businesses as well. They started a couple businesses together that did pretty well. And that's like all I ever knew was like, oh yeah, you, you know, you, you go and you start businesses. That's what you do. And that's how you, that's how you make a living. So I'm really grateful for them for modeling that path because even, and you know this, you know, when you're when you're an entrepreneur, no matter how well things have gone, every year you get to January and you're like, I don't know, maybe this is the year it all falls apart, right? Like there's always that thing. There's nothing keeping it going other than just like, I just hope it keeps going. But I'm able to withstand that and endure that because of this mindset that my father had growing up. So money was never a thing of scarcity for me. And even like, it's funny because my wife and I do have some different mindsets, you know, when it comes to like some— we had different experiences, right, growing up. And it is funny because we frequently have those conversations. Like, we frequently have to talk to one another about like, okay, I think, you know, like maybe I'm being a little bit too frivolous here because I'm like, ah, money, we'll just go make more money, right? And sometimes I'm like, oh, I think actually no, maybe we need to be a little bit more frivolous here in terms of how we think of it. So it's interesting how that partnership has played out over time, but I'm grateful that my father broke that cycle that I think was probably in my family for a very long time prior to him.

That's interesting. My great-grandparents during the Depression— or was it the start of the business before? They had a general store, grocery store. Because they extended credit, they went under with the Depression. But it is interesting, my grandfather then did take a job out of high school, worked for Halliburton. He was a roughneck in the oil field, which is shitty work if you've never done it or seen it done. It's not just hard work, it's in the elements. But he started a business. And so I think whether the business is a success or a failure, it can be an inspiration of what's possible. And I used to look at some of my colleagues in EO, Entrepreneurs Organization, and the financial success that they had had and comparing myself like, "Oh gosh, I have not done nearly as well as they have." But I kind of flipped the switch script on that and instead of it being envy, It was what's possible. And I think having people that can get you out of your own mindset and your own self-limiting beliefs of what's possible just by examples of doing it themselves— and not that you have to replicate their success to be successful yourself, but it does keep you from falling into that trap of self-limiting beliefs of what's possible because I think at the end end of the day, the, the powerful thing about entrepreneurs and creatives specifically is that it is a world of possibilities. Um, and as I, as I wrote in my book, I think the, the world needs more of those people that aren't looking to just accept the status quo, but looking to, to your point, act bravely and make a better vision for the world, and, and act bravely in taking agency and actually going doing those things.

For sure. And, and often the rationale that we use for not creating the impact is money. It's, it's the security piece of it, which is always funny to me because I've had a number of friends who have lost their very secure jobs where they were very senior people at, you know. So like the security thing is always a funny argument for me. I get it, I understand it. I think it's more of a predictability uncertainty thing. I think it's the You know, in some ways it's like, it's— there are some people who want to go out and create worlds, and there are people who like are more comfortable just living in the worlds other people have created. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. I think it's a wonderful thing. Like, I, I, as a matter of fact, I encourage a lot of— like, for a lot of people, I'm like, listen, best thing you can do is just go get it. Just go get a job somewhere, right? Get— go get a job doing something, doing work that you enjoy, that's meaningful to you. That's a wonderful thing. Not everybody should go start a business, right? By any means. If somebody feels compelled to do that, somebody feels compelled to start a business or to create some kind of value, and the argument they're using is, well, but the insecurity, to me, that always rings hollow just because that's not my experience in the marketplace, right?

No, I mean, there's insecurity everywhere, right? And to me personally, The difference is the agency piece. Like, what, what, what can I control? You know, there's a lot of stuff I can't control. And being an employee, you, you don't really have any control. You, you, your, your, uh, security is completely dependent upon other people's actions and decisions. At least I, I feel like if as an entrepreneur I have more control over some things that affect the outcome. I don't have control over all of them for sure. What would you say is most proud accomplishment you have, business or personal, so far?

I mean, it's going to sound completely cliché, but I think the fact that our— so far, because we can still completely screw them up, but so far our kids are launching into the world, I think, in a really healthy, productive way. Because you never know as parents, like you can do all the things you think you should do and do everything right, and sometimes things just work out differently than you, than you hope. And so I'm, I'm really grateful that our, our kids have, at least so far, uh, you know, are, are on a really good trajectory. I think that's definitely my most proud accomplishment. From, from a business perspective, I think it's really just been probably just the, the I've continued to build a body of work over the course of many years that I've not stopped, that I've just continued to put work into the world. Been podcasting since 2005. I've written 7 books in the last, I guess, 13 years now, published 7 books in the last 13 years, 6 of them with traditional publishers, one of them on my own. But I have people that I know who wrote the book 10 years ago and they're still sort of kicking around their idea for their second book. And it's fine. Not everybody has that much work inside of them. That's— there's nothing wrong with that. But I think for me, it's like, I, I've— I'm probably most proud of the fact that I've just continued to push and continue to, to produce over time. Cause I feel like, I do feel like, you know, compelled in some way by, by something that I'm chasing after versus just doing it for the sake of trying to hold it together. But I really feel like I'm chasing after something, which is hard because not everything gets received in the same way. I mean, I've, I've had the chance to speak on stages in front of tens of thousands of people, and I've also had work that I've produced that wasn't received the way I would hope it would. So, it's like you just—

But that's where the bravery comes in, right?

That's where the bravery comes in. You just got to keep pushing forward one step in front of the other.

I ascribe to Jordan Peterson's definition of a successful parent is that you want to be around your adult children and they want to be around you. And I think that's beautiful that I have felt like that has been my highest and best use so far in life is raising my children. What's next for Todd Henry?

Well, we're building out— I have two business partners. We're building out some pretty fun things for 2025. Brand new ways of getting some of this work out into the world. So we've reinvented a lot of my speaking. We've built out what we're calling the Marvel Universe of Todd Henry. After 7 books, we finally sort of put it all into a system that we're going to be launching in 2025. So I'm really excited about that. I'm working on another book, which I'm not ready to talk about yet, but it's going to be essentially about how do you choose the right idea when you have a bunch of ideas? How do you choose the right one to work on? So it's really kind of— it's going to be a book about intuition in a way. So I'm really excited about that. And yeah, just continuing to push and build and work and hopefully get this message about being brave out into the world in whatever way I can.

So how do we find a copy of The Brave Habit? What's the easiest way?

You can find it anywhere books are sold. So, you know, do Amazon, Barnes Noble, IndieBound, you know, wherever you buy your books. It's on Audible. It's on— if you do Scribd or Scribed or however you say it, it's on, you know, or Everend, I think they are now. Uh, most— I think most public libraries have it, so you can, you can get it pretty much anywhere that you get your books. And, uh, also we talk about it quite a bit on the, uh, the Daily Creative Podcast, which is the podcast— formerly The Accidental Creative, but the podcast since 2005 that has basically been a weekly labor of love since 2005 for me. So you can also check out a lot of messages about the Brave Habit there.

And of course, toddhenry.com. I'm assuming we can connect there.

Toddhenry.com is the best place to find my books, my speaking, all the other things that I do, including the podcasts.

Yeah. Todd, I very much appreciate your time. It's been a fascinating interview. For my listeners, if you liked what you heard today, please leave us a rating. If you have any show suggestions or guest suggestions, drop them in the comments. Love to hear from you. Until later. Ta-ta for now.

And that's a wrap for today's episode of The Profitable Creative. Until next time, you money lovers. And don't forget, Profit First for Creatives is live via Amazon. Link below.