Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - "The Captain" Kyle Creek - Reading Through the Reflections of Reality

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Welcome back to another episode of The Radcast hosted by Ryan Alford! This weeks guest is none other than "The Captain" Kyle Creek! Kyle is the author of F*cking History, Speech Therapy, and Feel Free to Quote Me!In this episode Ryan and Kyle discuss the ad agency business, and the highs and lows of breaking into the industry. Be sure to follow The Captain on Twitter and Instagram @sgrstk, and check out his website www.kylecreek.com.If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, let us know by visiting our website www.theradcast.com. Check out www.theradicalformula.com. Like, Share and Subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/RadicalHomeofTheRadcast or leave us a review on Apple Podcast. Be sure to keep up with all that’s radical from @ryanalford @radicalresults @the.rad.cast @nick_weaver If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When I started social media and really utilizing it, I didn't want people to know who I was because I didn't want my professional career to see something I wrote on Twitter and hold it against me because this was like the early days of cancel culture. So I actually have a folder on my desktop to this day and this folder save and it's called Good Fucking Ideas. And I probably, I haven't looked lately, but I've been saving ideas there since maybe 2015. and I would take my A content that I knew was too good for a client or too funny, and I would tweet it instead. And that's how my following started.

You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. I'm Ryan Offord, your host. We're instigating today, my friends. Getting creative.

We're talking books. We're talking social media. We're talking to Kyle Creek, the captain. What's up, man? Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be here. Hey, you know, I told you pre-show. I know you've been around.

You've got good social following, but you just kind of hit my radar in the last six or seven months. Just been watching. Been creeping a little. You know, I'm not a creepster, but, you know, watching, I like to handpick my guess. And I'm like, this guy's super intelligent, a great writer. He's been in the ad game.

There's a lot of connection here. And I was just like, fuck it. I'm going to go, Captain. I got a fairly popular show. Let's do this. You're like, fuck, yeah. And I was like, that's what I'm talking about. I mean, just the way you approached me, it came from such a place of confidence. I thought this is someone I can have a good conversation with

because you do get shows that reach out to you. And it comes from like a little bit of a timid voice. And the way you just came direct strike with it, I thought, all right, this is my kind of person. Hey, I love it. So we're on the same mental plane here, at least on some level. I wish, I want, I am trying to get, I consider myself witty and a little edgy, but then I read your shit. I'm like, damn it, man, that's fucking good.

That's really good. Like, it's, I like, can you ghost fright for me? I think that's just the difference between a true creative and an account manager. Oh, like knife on the side. Yes. Hey, that's what happens to the best of us. I can't help what, you know, sometimes you get put in boxes when you come out of school. You know, I just got thrown in that box just because I didn't have, I went an English major at Clemson.

So did you go to Ad School? I know. I went to Clemson marketing major. Just get old marketing BS. So, I mean, what's interesting for me is I actually didn't go to school for marketing or advertising or any of that or English. I went to school for business administration because I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. My dad was an illustrator, kind of worked for himself. And I saw the way he was able to control his own life.

And I thought, okay, if I'm going to go to school, maybe I'll get a business administration degree so I can understand various angles of business. I'll understand accounting. I'll take some economics. I'll take some marketing. And then while I was in school, I kept getting A's on all of my papers I would write in these different classes. And I grew up in a creative household, but that's when I started realizing maybe there's something to this. And I started really enjoying writing papers in school. And on the side, I was trying to work for like a local newspaper writing, you know, reviews of bands that came to town.

And this was in Salt Lake City, Utah. and I just fell into copywriting as a trade because in school I just learned I loved it. Hey, well, they say you love what you're good at sometimes, right? I mean, that's everybody's hope. The hope is that you love what you're good at. I mean, you can love a lot of things that you suck at and they can still be enjoyable, but you can't make a living at them. And I do feel very fortunate, especially when I finally broke through into advertising,

it actually was pretty hard for me because in Salt Lake City, fairly conservative. I'd worked for a lot of like contractors. I'd done some nutrition companies. There's a lot of those out of Utah. And I would try to get to advertising companies because I knew that's where I could be really creative. And I interviewed at probably every shop in Salt Lake. And I had one tell me verbatim that your portfolio is really good. We like your style.

We like the way you write. But we can't hire you because. you have finger tattoos and you're not going to present you're not going to present well the clients and it frustrated me so bad I reached out to one last

agency and when I wrote a cover letter I told the creative director that I was applying to I said listen I've been trying to get a job everywhere in this valley if you don't hire me I'm going to say fuck it and I'm never going to try to work for advertising again and he loved that and he invited me out to a bar that night and we hit it off

and that was who gave me my first shot in advertising. And I started as a junior copywriter. And a few years later, I was a CD living in New York City running a small shop there. Hey, man. We've got similar paths, at least to the ad agency business. I'm still, I don't say stuck. I almost said stuck. I'm still playing the game.

I know you still consult and stuff. But it's an interesting, incestuous world, the ad agency business. you know you got to have experience to get into it i don't even know how the hell i got in like i mean out of climpson i think my ex-girlfriend worked at an ad agency in south carolina and she like got me the job and i'm like and i don't realize how lucky i was and everybody's like you got a job at an ad agency you don't have experience you didn't even do an internship i'm like what what what i didn't realize i didn't realize that's why i moved to new york um i started salt lake I went to Vegas for about 11 months, then went to New York.

And we were talking about before this, I hired a copywriter from one of the largest shops in New York. And that was when I started understanding the inner workings of how some of these shops worked and the internships. And you have to go to ad school and you got to work for a couple of years at this level. And you can't be an executive or a high-level creative director unless you're over a certain age. And it blew my mind to understand the shops worked that way. and it not only made me very grateful to be at a smaller boutique shop, but it kind of killed a lot of my passion for advertising. And like the idea I had of moving to New York and working on Madison Avenue

and probably that Madman show didn't help at all. That kind of romanticized idea of advertising when I realized how these big shops operated was kind of dead to me. And so I saw an opportunity to focus more in myself. and that's when I quit my full-time ad job, moved to L.A., which didn't really pan out as expected, but that's when I started focusing heavily on books and writing for myself and pursuing what I really wanted to do with my writing talent. So I know, you know, you're huge on Instagram, S-G-R-S-T-K.

What the hell does that stand for? I mean, I was trying to do all my research. You know, like I admittedly, I spend a good couple hours on every guest typically, you know, and but I don't listen to 17 podcasts. I was like, it was not clear. I'm like sugar steak, sugar steak, uh, I don't know,

Sergeant Rogers, Staubach, I don't know. You actually guessed it. It is sugar steak. Are you fucking kidding me? I think of the first person that's ever guessed it. And usually I don't answer that question.

So listening to 17 podcasts wouldn't have helped you. I can't leave it. I like me, you got it, So I think, you know, just to backtrack, it might be helpful to understand a bit of my trajectory with the online presence. So when I started this SGR SDK account, it was sugar steak. And at the time, it was a screen printing business. I was running my senior year in college.

I was screen printing T-shirts that had graphics of like a steak with an upside-down ice cream cone on it. And just that whole opposite to track kind of thing. It was my first, I'd say real foray as like a creative director. And it was fun. It was something I enjoyed doing. I had a decent online presence. And when I got into my first advertising job, I was so stoked to finally be getting paid decent money as a writer that I was paranoid. I'd fuck it up.

And so when I started social media and really utilizing it, I didn't want people to know who I was because I didn't want my professional career. to see something I wrote on Twitter and hold it against me because this was like the early days of cancel culture when you could get severely, you know, backtracked over something you tweeted five years before. And so I kept the SGR SDK handle from my screen printing business. And I started it on Instagram and I started it on a couple of other platforms. And when I was writing scripts for clients, I remember I had a furniture client, for example, I wrote a script comparing dating, like looking for a couple of things. coffee table. You don't want something like too big or too small. You know, in the end, you just

want something stable that looks good. And they thought the joke could be seen as body shaming. And they thought the joke could be seen a little too offensive for TV. And so I took it and I thought, this is too good of an analogy. And I tweeted it. And I started doing that with more and more of my script content to where my Twitter started picking up followers. And I would take my A content that I knew was too good for a client or too funny, and I would tweet it instead. And that's how my following started. It started as my outlet to write what I wanted to write without client feedback or without anyone else, you know, judging my, my copy.

And so that's where I really, I'd say there was probably my greatest teaching moment of harnessing small bits of copy, because that was when you had 140 characters on Twitter. and to be able to set up a joke and execute in like a witty or a unique way in that small character frame helped me a ton in my advertising work with writing headlines but then my headline work and my copy script work would help me with my Twitter so they kind of fed each other and then it was probably to the point where I mean it was 2018 maybe I had a fairly large following then I was at a meeting at a ritz carlton property that I was overseen as a creative director and one of the asset managers leaned over to me and said, I'm a big fan of your work.

And I thought he was just talking about my ad portfolio, what he'd seen me do in the pitch prior to us sitting down. And he said, no, like, my wife and I love your Instagram. And that was the first time my worlds had collided. And up until then, I didn't have my real name on social media. No one knew me as Kyle Creek. I was just STR SDK. And the captain was a nickname.

My friends had given me earlier in life that I held on to as well. So I'm surprised you guessed that. And it's probably a longer backstory than you were looking for. But I think it's helpful to know that's where my career kind of came together, but also later in life, kind of separated. A lot to unpack. But you know the one, the key thing that's my takeaway there, Kyle, is you didn't have the right account guys selling your ideas.

So that's the number one. In, when I was in Salt Lake, yes, I would agree. It's like we talked about. It was probably their largest account, and they were very afraid of losing the account. And so whatever the client said went. Yeah. And as a creative, that's very frustrating. But later in life, once I became an ACD and a CD and I was allowed to sell my own ideas, everything kind of changed me.

And that's when I could do some really fun campaigns and work that I was proud of. But isn't it funny, though, it should be rewarding. And it's rewarding for me being in the industry and hearing you say this, I'm taking some borrowed interest from your rewards, which is your best work, which has made you InstaFamous, Twitter famous, whatever you want to call it, but it's obviously helped your career, helped your social media. The campaigns, the clients turn down are the ones that blow up on social media. So any client out there listening, I know some of you are past, present executives, you know, yeah, you got to push the envelope if you want to move the needle.

It's true. So I actually have a folder on my desktop to this day, and this folder's save, and it's called Good Fucking Ideas. And I probably, I haven't looked lately, but I've been saving ideas there since maybe 2015. And every new laptop I get, I transfer the folder over. And so there's maybe a thousand pieces of copy or scripts or different campaign ideas in there. And I used to pitch clients often when I was doing a lot of new business. and I would pull up my desktop as the pitch started, and I'd point to that folder.

And I'd say, see this folder called Good Fucking Ideas? If you don't like what I'm about to present to you, I'm going to put it in this folder, and I'm going to sell it to one of your competitors next year. And I started leading my pitches that way, and it helped me get a lot of ideas across, because they realized I would do that. And I still, every now and then when I'm consulting,

I go back and I find stuff that I wrote in 2016 that I can update, and it's still a very solid campaign. it would work correctly. And so it's a folder I've had exactly for the reason you're saying whenever I tried to push the envelope for a client and they didn't want to. I just believed in it enough to know that someday it would work. And I've just been saving them and collecting. See, you needed Robin because then I would have called the client after me. You saw that folder on Kyle's desk.

If you don't buy this campaign, I'm going to call Pepsi. And I'm going to fucking give them those ideas. That would have been fantastic. That would have been awesome. Oh shit So fucking history, man Was that book one? Am I in chronological order?

Yeah, well book one was feel free to quote me in 2015 Okay So I've actually released fucking history three separate times So that's what threw me off Yeah, there was the original Original fucking history is 2016 I did a compendium to it in 2018 And then I did a full rewrite and combined them

because a publisher bought the books from me. And that was the one I released in 2020. Nice. Talk to me about, feel free to quote me. We'll start there since that's the first one. I know anybody listening. I'm talking to Kyle Creek,

the captain. Go look on Amazon, find these books we're about to talk about. So feel free to quote me, fucking history and the latest speech therapy. Give me some, let's give the audience a little taste of your writing. Obviously, they're going to go follow Sugar Steak.

Now the secret's out I'm sorry, man That was a pure guess But here's what I'm going to say I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent You know living in New York STK steak

You know steakhouse So I had that all together I'm like this guy's It's part from New York STK I had steak Sugar was a little bit of guess Completely but Nonetheless

Everybody's going to go follow it But talk to me about the books What's Writing style Inspirations You know So feel pretty cool me started at a suggestion of a friend of mine. It basically was a combination of all my tweets that

I'd written for the two years prior that kind of got fairly popular. And I was more or less wanting to mock those quote-a-day books that were popular at the time. And I was like, I'm going to write a quote-a-day book, but it's going to be really vulgar jokes and just all my most ridiculous tweets that also might have some pretty solid insight to them. I'm just going combine into a book. And so I put it together fairly quickly. I had one of my art directors at my agency at the time laid out for me. And I self-published it.

And it sold so well that that month of release, I made more than I would have made my salary at my job. And that was with minimal kind of promotion. And I was like, holy shit, maybe I have something here. And so the next year with fucking history, fucking history was kind of just a, a compilation of an ongoing Instagram series I used to post on Sundays. I called it Sunday School. And I would just share a really random historical fact or a story about someone in history who had done something ridiculous or motivating.

And I would rewrite it in my own words and interject a lot of jokes and humor to make it entertaining but also memorable. And so fucking history I combined into that. I had the same art director helped me illustrate it. And that's the book that really took off me. That's the one that got the attention of publishers. That's the one that started getting TV producers reaching out to me, wanting to turn into show.

And that was when I started taking my writing career more seriously to my ad career. And my personal writing became much more important to me. It was not only paying my bills, but it was enjoyable. I could write what I want. I could interject as much humor or insight or just random, ridiculous bullshit that I would never get away with on a script. I could write into a book. And so that book probably is the most pivotal in my career. And then speech therapy, the one I most recently did, was it was a book that I wanted to write in 2017.

When I first moved to New York, someone had set me up a meeting with a literary agent based on, you know, fucking history selling so well as a self-published book. And that literary agent told me the idea for speech therapy wouldn't sell. And I kind of believed him at the time. And I thought, okay, this book probably won't sell. It might be an idea that I just think is too cool. And it's not really something for the masses. And so I shelved it.

And then I started trying to write it again in 2019. I tried to write again in early 2020 because I still thought the idea was cool. And the idea was to take a bunch of random scenarios in our life that we all deal with, whether it's being laid off, being broken up with, you know, your pet dying, something as stupid as losing your keys or spilling, you know, coffee on your favorite. t-shirt, the kind of shit that can mentally derail us and seriously affect the rest of our day or the rest of our week or even like months of our life if we allow it to. And so I wanted to write this book and it's called speech therapy that's meant to be, if you came to me as a friend and you asked for a little pep talk to get you through this scenario, what would I tell you?

And it wasn't until last year after I had my son that I was able to put the book together because I approached the idea if my son was dealing with this, how would I give them advice? And it gave me a personal connection to it that allowed me to write it really quickly and feel really confident about it. And that's the book that just came out. And it seems to be doing exactly what I hoped it would. I get messages daily of people saying, you know, I was going through this.

I picked up that book. I read the chapter about it and it really turned my day around. And it's cool to win ad awards. and it's cool to get stuff like that, but there's nothing that will make me feel more fulfilled as a writer than hearing that I pulled someone out of a dark spot or I helped them laugh when there was nothing else in their life to laugh about. And as much as I enjoy advertising,

there's still nothing that I enjoy more than being able to write in a way that truly connects with people. I love it, man. And, like, how would you classify your, writing style. Like, I know, you know, like, we say instigator and we say, you know, antagonist and things like that. And like, that comes to mind.

But like, how did you, number one, let me ask us two parts while you're kind of digesting that, and that you know what's coming. But what, what inspired, where does your, your point of view come from? Like, you know, the captain, you know, that instigates, that writes this way, has a certain style that came from somewhere. It's all his own, which is, I'm sure you're an original, and you are. But it's like, but something built your perception, your take on the world, your way of thinking. I would think there's been molding along the way. It's mostly my internal dialogue. I've talked about this many times before, but a lot of

my tweets, especially the ones that talk about, you know, how they deal with a scenario, are advice to myself or they are written based off something that I directly went through and I just find a way to make it feel pertinent for more than just me. And so sometimes it is me just off the cuff tweeting something that I'm currently going through trying to make it funny. And then other times it's me reflecting on moments of my life. But I'd say the harsher tone is probably what you're getting at because especially my older work, I had a harsh tone because at the time that's how I talked to myself. And I've softened as I've become a dad and I've softened as I've become older because I realized that that actually was starting to do more harm for me than good. But I think the way

I was raised a lot of my view of the world because I was raised in Utah. I was raised LDS. I was a Mormon. And growing up, I felt very suppressed and I felt very censored and I felt like I had a very constricted view of the world because everything was viewed for this lens of the religion. And if I was going through something as a teenager that all teenagers go through and I wanted advice from my parents or advice from, you know, one of my leaders, I would always receive the answer in the form of you should go look this up in the scriptures or you should pray about it. And it drove me crazy because what I wanted at that time was to have a human talk to me as another human. And it made me feel very misunderstood and it made me feel alone.

And as I got older, I pushed back hard on organized religion and I stepped away from it completely. And, you know, my early teenage years, probably 16, 17. I was out of it completely. I wanted nothing to fucking do with it. And I rebuilt very hard against it. And so for many years, my primary fuel in life was trying to prove to my family, I didn't need their religion to be successful. I didn't need their religion to be happy. And so that would probably be where some of my harshness came from because it came from a rebellious energy.

And the other side of that is I wanted other people to not feel alone because I had felt that way for so long. And I wanted people to feel understood. I wanted people to feel like there was others out there like that. And so that's where I'd say that mold of the two came together to where I had that rebellious energy, but also I wanted to genuinely help people not feel the way I did. And it definitely shaped my worldview because because I felt so constrained by religion, I opened myself up to a lot of things earlier to try and make up for lost time. And it affected the way I viewed the world because I tried to see new operatives. opportunity and everything because I felt like I hadn't had that growing up. Yeah. I mean, and you gave up on having six wives at a time. I mean, geez, it's hard to give

that up, isn't it? No, not at all. I mean, one relationship is enough personal work for me. I had to dig on the, you know, the only good, only bad Mormon joke I have, I guess. The funny thing about that, that's actually, it's funny because it's actually not what Mormons believe. it's like a unique sect of Mormon called Fundamental LDS that believes that. But Mormons, like the actual Mormon church, when you think about it, doesn't believe in that. John Smith didn't have multiple wives? He did at the time, but now, well, now they've changed their doctrine like every religion does to try and be more modern. But there's like this far fringe.

There's a fringe group that still does that. And I saw them often in Utah. I mean, if you went to a Costco on a Saturday, there were polygamous families there, five wives, four, kids kind of thing. That was just a Utah thing. Yeah. And some kind of camp down the road that was getting broke up by the FBI soon. Well, the real problem with them is the child labor, because what they'll do in Utah, for example, is they'll take all their teenage boys, and they'll have 15 of them, and they'll go bid on construction contracts, and they'll underbid all the contractors because they don't pay their kids to work. And so they'll get contracts to, you know, do a lot of

commercial work by employing their kids. That's the big frustration with them in that state. That's the frustration I have with religion in general. It's like, you know, like, it's like, that's okay. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, uh, that's, uh, I, I, I have organized religion and me will never see eye to eye. Um, I understand some people. It helps them go through life. And I think everyone kind of needs something to believe in. And if that's yours, I get it. Um, But like you're saying, for me, I feel organized religion is largely predatory. And it's just something I can't, I can't ever support.

Yeah. But I'm going to back up, man. I had to throw my bad Mormon shit in there. But in all seriousness, like, we need more voices like yours, like, number one, that are raw and real, but like that aren't afraid to call out, like, both sides. Like, it's like we've become so everything's like, A, or. be black or white whatever when in reality every it's really a lot more gray you know and it's like we've gotten scared to play in the middle or whatever and it and that's what's been enlightening for me about your writing and now hearing you talk i kind of understand where that perspective come from

and it's just i don't know it's uh refreshing i appreciate that because that really has been an intentional choice of mine um especially going into 2020 um i talk about this on a podcast at one point. As a writer, I understand the power of the word. I understand what you can do with a well-crafted argument. And I remember in early 2020 seeing the kind of fear-mongering that other writers were doing. And some of them were peers of mine. Some of them were people I knew in New York that worked for some of these papers. And it frustrated me to see them using their skill in a way to incite fear and division. And I told my girlfriend, I said, I'm going to write about this and I'm going to write

against all of this shit because it's just so wrong. So I'm going to counteract what they're doing with my own voice, which is larger on social media. And I've received a lot of criticism for it because one week, people will think I'm very conservative. And the next week, they'll think I'm very liberal. and like it just flip-flops who's upset with me from week to week. And I had someone actually write me and say,

why aren't you choosing sides? Like, why haven't you chosen the side? And I wrote them back and said, I have chosen the side. I chose the side of people. I'm on the side of people. I'm on the side of individuals. I'm on the side of all of us. This whole divisive politics stuff is shit.

And like you're saying, they've made it out to be if you're not, fervently against something, then you must be for it. And if you're not absolutely for something, and you must be against it, there's no middle ground. And that is not true with any part of life. All of life, like you said, is gray. Black and white is so rare. And having that mindset on everything from, you know, whether or not you should put a vaccine in your body or whether or not you should have a child like these those are very complex topics that can't be explained in a black or white demeanor there's a there's a lot of ground in between that needs to be discussed and unfortunately

social media doesn't allow for that discussion and it's it's been at times it's been very disheartening to see some of my work taken out of context not the way I intended it to be and it makes you feel like did I fuck up? Did I not explain this well enough? But then at the same time, whenever that happens, I see it as an example to other people that listen, you can speak up and you can receive criticism and your life can go on. And so that's why I continue just to keep putting out my opinions and continuing to call things the way I see them because I want to be an example of what is possible when you're willing to speak your mind, but also admit when you're wrong, but also have some compassion, also have some grace for other people, especially

when I consider my son, I think if I were to die, you know, in the next year or two, if something happened, he could look back on a lot of what I've written, and he could probably gain a pretty good idea of who I am as an individual. And that motivates me to want to put work out just in case something happens. Like, oh, at least he'll have something to look back on and be able to kind of figure out who his dad was. Yeah, that's really cool. And I'll say this, man.

I mean, you're an inspiration to me because I'll admit it. Like, I get to hide behind the mic a bit with my guests. I have awesome guests. And I'm here to let them tell their story. And we do have a second episode that's a little more, you know, irreverent business news and stuff but i've kind of shy away from like taking hard stances you know not because i'm i really give a ship but it's more because i don't want to alienate like i i try to i think if someone asked me what my message is it's positivity you know like i just want to be positive and like

i don't feel like i can be positive when people are going to take something i say and put me in one box of the other you know what i mean and so i i take inspiration from guys like you that are clearly like in one sentence like oh yeah he must be conservative oh no he must be liberal like i appreciate that because my mind works much in the same way i consider myself very middle of the road from a politics standpoint and you know it's just because i'm fucking think everything's great like i mean i believe in this on one hand and believe that on the other and i'm like it's it usually puts me in the middle but it's it's hard to voice that in a way without being polarizing you know I think the majority of people would describe themselves the way you describe yourself.

Most people would say they're in the middle. And as far as the positivity aspect, there is times when I felt damn. Like my page is getting really negative because for like the past week, all I've talked about is very heavy shit. Right. And I have at times thought, wow, I need to just like write a joke or something to lighten this air on this page right now. But there's a time for positivity and there's a time for just practical, you know, practicality and realism. And I've made the decision, as I just kind of talked about, that I'm always going to try and be the most, the most authentic version of myself. And there are times when I'm not positive.

There are times when I'm thinking about something so deeply that I do feel very negative about it. and especially what happened the past couple years, there's a lot of people deep in the hole. There's a lot of people dealing with shit that wasn't fun or lighthearted. And I wanted to help them feel understood by addressing it and by talking about the things I was talking about.

And also, from the advertising side of things, I know the way that advertising works, and there was just so much blatant bullshit and so much misconception, and there was so much deceit being ran through the media that I felt it was my responsibility as someone who has worked on the inner workings of that to call it out and to let people know that, you know, you can still have a free thought, you can still be an individual, you can still voice your opinion, and some people

aren't going to agree with it, but that doesn't mean you're a bad person. I think the majority of people are afraid of being labeled as a bad person. Most people in life want the same thing. They want to be happy, they want to contribute, they want to be someone that is seen as positive and fun to be around. And when you feel like an online mob is labeling you as someone that's, you know, a baby killer or a grandma murderer or you're just a bad, selfish person, like that hits people's egos. And it also hits their core of their spirit where no one really wants to be that. And that's the fear mongering and the kind of stuff that I talked about earlier that caused a lot of people to censor themselves. And I just talked about this yesterday on Instagram.

Probably the leading cause of depression, in my opinion, is faking who we are. Either we're living a double life or we're faking who we are in terms of belief. We're faking who we are in terms of who we align with. And when you try to live a facade for so long, it will mentally deteriorate you. And I had that situation happen to me in 2019. and I know what it's like to try and live a fake life. And a lot of people were kind of forced to do that, or at least they felt forced to do that.

And there's going to be a long curve of mental health pulling out of this. Yep. I think you're right. I think mine is more like I think I swallow the negative and just like it. It's not to be fake, but it's like I just, I sometimes I go through my feet and I'm like, damn, I almost like just want to be a, I don't want to be a, fake light you know what I mean

but I do want to be a light you know what I mean and so like I have struggled with finding the side of not being fake but you know but I just I'm generally positive like I just find I say this and I say it

because I've I've watched a person I don't I can I think I've been depressed like one month in my entire life like like I really believe that like and I don't know why it's not because I'm not human or something, but I haven't struggled with that because I just forward. I'm just like, you know, nothing, looking behind, all it does is give you a pain in the neck.

And like, I just live that way, you know? Yeah, you have the right mindset. And I don't know if you've read the book, Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel. But he was a concentration camp victim. And he actually was a psychiatrist before getting put into a concentration camp. And so when he was there, he viewed everything from a psychiatry lens. He wanted to analyze why certain things were happening. And he came to the conclusion.

He actually pioneered a whole different style of psychotherapy where helping people find purpose and future focus is more important than unpacking their past or helping people deal with a trauma in their past. If you can help them find a purpose for the future and, you know, for example, someone in a concentration camp, if they can have a reason to want to live or a reason to think they need to survive another day, their chances of getting out of there are dramatically higher. And he talks about watching specifically around Christmas and around people's birthdays is when a lot of people would die because they'd lose hope on that day because they would in their mind think it's another Christmas or another birthday. And he would watch a man go from being upright and talking to dead within 24 hours.

And you have that, it sounds like, where you have that purpose and that future focus. where I have that most of the time, but also as a writer, I think it's a double-edged sword because a lot of my work comes from ruminating on things. A lot of my work comes from, I like to look back, I like to analyze, I like to think of how things came to be in order to give myself something to write about and also in order to help with my perspective.

And in 2019, leading up to that, I had been running an advice column called Dear Captain. It was essentially like Dear Abby for a new age. And I've been running it for about three years. And the mental toll that took on me because people would write me in some very heavy, depressing stuff. And I felt the need to try and help everyone. I felt the need to respond to every email. I didn't feel like I could leave someone hanging when they genuinely reached out for help.

And that combined with me leaving my advertising career and kind of feeling lost for a bit, just completely broke me down. I felt like I was trying to fill from an empty cup. I didn't have anything to really keep me focused. And that was my first real depressive episode. And probably the greatest lesson I learned from that is not only having a boundary. It's why I no longer really interact with trolls on my pages. I used to love interacting with trolls.

I used to love come back with witty comments and ripping people apart. And then I realized that negativity would just carry me into the day. And if I did that before going to lunch, I'd have a miserable lunch. And I'd feel the need to check my phone to see how did this troll respond to me. So I put a boundary up to stop doing stuff like that. I mean, I canceled my newsletter. I haven't done it since. And it seems to me like you have that same thing when you talk about the negativity online.

Sometimes you have to have a boundary. It's okay to not feel like you have to speak out. I mean, not everyone's purpose in life is to speak out about everything. I just kind of feel like it's mine. and at times no that's why I've been it's inspirational to me because I feel like I need to do I'm never going to go as far

but I think we all need to do a little more and a little more just not because I'm not afraid to be me like anybody that gets on my podcast anyone that comes in my building anyone that deals with me I think they know I'm a fucking real person like you know but

the social side which is you know it's just I don't know I just don't have time to put on, you described it perfectly. The cloak or the jacket of, like, the negative weight. Like, I feel like it would just be like, you know, like a vest that I put on to lose some weight and run around the gym in, but yet I can't get it off of me. Yeah, it's like a weighted vest that comes to a chain and a lock instead of Velcro.

Exactly. I could take that vest off of the gym, but I, because it would probably stick with me mentally, too. It does. I think I think that's why I don't engage in it. as much or start the fires because it's like i know that i you know i'm fucking edgy enough or like so it would bother me you have to do what's called the post and ghost where you just post and then you don't read the comments oh it's hard i do that more and more and more lately and i can feed well especially from you from your angle too because you're working in a digital agency like

everything's kind of feedback and metric driven and so you want to see what people are saying um i had to white myself of that desire pretty early on because I can get I can get into the muck in my comments and the next thing I know I'm in a black lagoon of just bullshit and it's not conducive to my day. It's not conducive to what I want to do with my life. But I do agree if everyone spoke up a little more and had the confidence to and that's what I kind of hope my stuff does. I hope it inspires you and others to try that because when we do that, we're going to realize that most of us aren't alone that there are other people like us. We are understood.

And that's why I have this view of when I go through something heavy or I go through something hard, in the moment, I'm generally pretty beaten up. But then I start to get excited because I'm like, oh, shit, some good content's going to come from this. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to write some real masterful epiphany I'm going to receive from this moment right now. And so I start to get excited about going through the hard,

time. Once I'm out of it, once I see there's an insight, I start to look back on it with almost like excitement that happened. Kyle, as we're closing down here, and time's important. I want to be sensitive to that. But tell me this. So we're marketing and business podcast. I want to give some tips here and maybe get on the sandbox. How would you classify what has been the power of building your personal brand on social media in alignment with your business? business goals and things like that. Like, like, you strike me as someone that might roll their eyes at the, at the notion of personal branding.

However, it's quite clear that you have one and that it's done you well. I've heard the personal brand term throwing around quite often. So do you get it? I mean, it's you. It doesn't, it doesn't rub me the wrong way because I come from the ad world. I understand what's meant. I understand what's meant by it. Yeah.

For me, having an outlet that allows me to be myself has been more important to my creativity and anything I've ever done. The worst thing any creative wants to encounter is boundaries or feeling like you're chained into a box or feeling like you can't grow and evolve as your life grows and evolves. And I think you see this happen quite often with, you know, music artists or bands. There'll be a band who comes out with an album. They get a lot of fans. And their next album comes out and it's a different style of music.

Now other fans hate it and they're like, oh, you guys have sold out. You guys suck. And then the record label forces them to come out with a different kind of album. They'll get radio play. And I can say this because I worked as a tour manager for a summer with some metal bands. And I've watched this happen with friends of mine. They lose their love for music because they have other people they're beholden to as far as what they have to create

or what they can do with their artistic, you know, outlook on life. And having my own presence online and support from my readership and fans and followers and friends of mine allows me to, whenever I feel like my life is going down a different path, I can explore that path. You know, all of my books are fairly different.

There's different time periods, if you look on my Twitter, where I'm talking about very different things because I try to live in the moment and also right in the moment. And if I didn't have my own personal brand, as you say, I don't think I'd have that freedom to create the way I want to create. Yeah. All right.

From a guy that he's got a personal brand to the personal brand does help. So if you're listening, it does matter. It does. It allows you to be an individual. It allows you freedom and it allows you to be selective with what you get involved in. I mean, like you said, I still do advertising here and there. It's on a consulting basis, and I take maybe half a dozen contracts a year. And there are projects that I want to be involved in.

All right. Well, then I'm going to put you on the short list of contractors here at Radical. How about that? I don't know. I don't know if you can afford me. Oh, come on, man. I'm kidding. That'd be awesome.

It sounds like you got some good shit. I'd be down. Hey, the bigger question is, if I write up, any goes, I've got ideas for books. You might, you know, a lot of good stories, but I might need to, would you ever ghost write for me? I would ghost write for the right person. I've been asked it often and I've never once agreed to it. For the right person, depending on what you want to do with that, I would be definitely open to ghostwriting because I do think there's a lot of people of valuable things to say and they just don't know how to say it.

and I think my role as a writer is also to help people tell their stories as well as my own. I love it, man. Fucking history. Feel free to quote me. Speech, speech therapy, author, writer,

Kyle Creek, where can everybody keep up with you, brother? I think we've talked about it, but SGR, STK. You nailed it. That's the place to get a hold of me.

And I still can't believe you guessed it, but I'm proud you did. Hey, first for everything. I got, hey, we're not the radcast for nothing, you know.

SGR. STK, go follow this guy. It'll enlighten you. It will inspire you. It might instigate you, but you know what? We all need to meet in the middle somewhere. Kyle, it's a really a pleasure to have you on the show, man. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. Hey, guys, you know where to find us, the radcast.com. Search for SGR. STK. It'll bring up all the highlight clips from today's episode along with the full episode with the captain. You know where to find me at Ryan Alford on all the platforms, including TikTok where I'm blowing up.

They'll find me over there. We'll see you next time. We're at gas.