Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - When Opportunity Meets Preparation with Drew Plotkin

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Throughout our lives, all of us will be presented with opportunities that could be completely life-changing. While some people may find themselves in these situations more often than others, the people that repeatedly win are the ones that are prepared when an opportunity shows up in their lives. Being prepared means having the mindset to do what is required to move forward, and knowing that above all else, integrity and doing the thing matters. The people that win are the ones that want to do right by others, constantly provide value, and put honesty and integrity above monetary gain. Drew Plotkin is an example of what it looks like to do just that, and pay attention to the clues that success leaves behind. Drew Plotkin is an Emmy-nominated journalist, TV news producer, and Founder of Derm Dude, a balls, beard, and tattoo product line with natural and powerful ingredients. Drew found himself in a bizarre series of life-altering events leads that led to him working on mega-commercial brands with huge success and over 1 billion dollars in worldwide revenue. Drew has created and directed award-winning TV broadcast commercials that have included major celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Serena Williams, Cindy Crawford, Ellen Pompeo, Dwayne Wade, Kristin Davis, Jane Seymour, Paris Hilton, Drew Brees, and more. Drew’s life story is a rollercoaster ride in which he developed his own techniques and tools for continuously navigating life’s never-ending trails of valleys and peaks and learning to survive and thrive. In this episode, Drew shares the story of how he landed on death row twice, survived a dangerous mission to Ethiopia to save babies, and what he learned along the way. He talks about his new book, “Under My Skin”, and a little bit about the lessons and stories that can be found inside. Key highlights: Why Drew chooses to live life unfiltered Drew’s story of landing on death row twice Too many people are falling for get-rich-quick schemes Success happens with opportunity meets preparation Why Drew wrote his newest book: “Under My Skin” Drew’s story of going to Ethiopia to negotiate to save babies that were believed to be cursed Why he started his Derm Dude line and what the products do for men You can’t put a price tag on doing the right thing and having integrity Connect with Drew Plotkin: Instagram: @chiefdudeofficer LinkedIn:Drew Plotkin Derm Dude Website: dermdude.com Get Drew’s new book: Under My Skin Connect with Shawn French: Instagram: @theshawnfrench Website: theshawnfrench.com Facebook group: The Determined Society Twitter: @theshawnmfrench YouTube: The Shawn French --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/shawn-french/message Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at good to know facts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit good to know facts.org. Too many people now are falling for get rich quick schemes, make a million dollars in 90 days, all this other bullshit, when really success leaves clues and it's do the damn work. You know, a friend of mine has a saying, and success happens when opportunity meets preparation.

Absolutely. And every person, I believe this, and I say this all time, is going to have opportunities that present themselves. Some will have more luck than others, but I've never met someone who hasn't had their share of opportunities. The difference is the people that win and repeatedly win and find a way to succeed. are the ones who are prepared when that opportunity comes up, whatever it is. What is up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the podcast of Determined Society. I'm your host, Sean French.

And before I get to introducing today's amazing guests, I want to remind you guys, if you get anything out of the show, please follow the show, subscribe to it, share it to your socials, and leave a review. I want to hear what you guys have to say about it. We don't have any annoying commercials bleeding your ears throughout my episodes. I just bring you amazing guests with amazing stories. And today, this gentleman is no different. He is an Emmy Award-winning producer and founder of LaunchD-R-TV agency

where he's created and directed award-winning TV broadcast commercials for multiple celebrities like J-Lo, Paris Hilton, and a bunch of other amazing people, even athletes like Serena Williams. So without further ado, I want to introduce this amazing gentleman, Drew Plotkin, to the show. Welcome, Drew. Sean, what's happening, brother? I appreciate you having me. Oh, dude, absolutely.

How could I not? You have an amazing story. You have a great energy. And, dude, you fit the bill for a homeboy that's going to be on my show. That's for damn sure. I love it. I love it, man. This is great.

Let's rock and roll. I'm excited to do this with you. Absolutely. So for those that are listening to my show and may not know who you are, just give them a little bit of a background. Man, that's a tough one. You hit, but how do I? I like your intro, man.

You hit the interesting stuff. I mean, most of it. But, uh, right. Yeah. You know, uh, well, I mean, one of the things that I'm super excited about is I have a book right now that is just coming out and I know we're going to hit it here called Under My Skin. And for better or for worse, that kind of takes people through my entire background from growing up as a kid in New Jersey and, uh, some very unusual life events along the way, all the way out with a couple of pit stops along the way, Reno, Nevada, Arizona, uh, and then ultimately on to California, a la-la land where somehow ended up, as you mentioned, being a director in

Los Angeles, owning an agency, and, you know, a lot of times looking around being like, how to hell did I get here for sure? But along the way was, you know, a lot of things that will probably make people laugh and certainly some things that may bring some tears. It's, you know, a roller coaster of a book, but it's 100% true. I get into some really strange things And the reason I wrote the book was because for quite a few years, a lot of people who knew me were like, man, too many weird things happen to you. You end up in too many strange, unusual, bizarre situations, none of which seem connected and they're just, you know, from here to hear. And the book goes into and we'll touch with them on this episode with you and your peeps out there. And then ultimately, obviously, one of the most exciting things leading up to launching Dermdude, which is our men's grooming brand and been.

And unbelievably blessed with how that's been going in a short window of time. I give a lot of credit to my six-year-old twins for teaching me how to use TikTok. I had no idea. And shortly after that little lesson, one of my very first TikTok videos doing a little 30-second spiel to a friend who happened to be sitting right there, I didn't even realize we were filming. And he asked me about our products, and I explained why I started Durham Dude in about 30 seconds. And someone videotaped it and put it on our TikTok. And now it has over five million views, just that one little.

video and since our TikTok has gone crazy, so thank you to my six-year-old twins and daddy will never tell you to get off social media. So it's been that type of a crazy ride, brother. So anywhere you want to begin, it's your show, man. I'm here. Well, first of all, I'd like to say, I'd like to speak to your six-year-old twins because I'm on TikTok and my videos suck. You know, I'm great on Instagram.

TikTok owns me and I'm trying to find that Da Vinci Code to break. So they want to send some suggestions my way. Please have them do that. You know what, man, let me make the suggestion because here's what happened. We'd had a couple of people in-house. And, again, we were a marketing agency, but we'd never done TikTok for other people, didn't know it. And we had a couple of smart people who were not necessarily TikTok experts, but marketing people. And, you know, the first handful of video, some of them might even still be on the page if I didn't find them to take down.

I mean, they would come back, oh, this person made that crazy weird sound and stood on one foot and it's trending. go do that and let's film that. And stupidly enough, I even let myself, you know, be talked into it a couple of times. And I was resistant and like, this just isn't me. And I would say TikTok's not for me if that's what it is because I didn't even know any better. And then really, after we kind of went through that phase and I just stopped doing it all together, I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. Literally it was my twins basically showing how simple it was to actually make something, record something,

upload something, post it. And that's when I was like, I don't really like need a team of social media experts or college degrees or whatever. And ultimately, I have a young lady, my nickname her youngster, because she's like, I think early 20 something and has green hair. So I call her youngster as kind of her office name who does a lot of my social media. And she posted the video and the thing were like, you know, one million overnight, two million like the next day. And then like three million after a week. And then, you know, like I said, now that one video, I was like five, almost five and a half million. And it's me sitting here talking for 30 seconds. And all of our videos that have done well, frankly, for us on TikTok, at least, or when I'm just being me,

you know, talking, you know, there's a video on me talking about what I do for my beard. Right. And, you know, struggles I had. And I think the other day that one had two and a half million views. And, you know, so it's kind of like, and when someone tries to script you, or at least for me, it like, it just doesn't want. work. I mean, I'm not, I'm not very scriptable. I'm not very good at following direction. What can I say, man? I'm 50. It hasn't worked this far. You know, it's funny. You mentioned that, right? Because when I create my content and, you know, when I do my podcast, I'm very unscripted. I'm unfiltered. You know, if I'm feeling a curse word, I'm going to say it. And if I'm feeling like this certain

energy that I'm going to put on camera, I'm going to put it on there. You know, and when I, when I record my reels, you know, I just met with a videographer the other day for the first time to do my reels. Like I normally do them with my iPhone and just put them out there, right? Just feel a thought and I roll with it. No script. And I met with him and he's like, hey, so do you want to look over your notes first? Like, can you see it? Can I see your notes? Like, what are we doing? I'm like, the fuck are you talking about, man? Like, this is, this is, this is things. I'm like, I'm not, I'm authentic. You know, I'm going to, I'm going to feel something in my heart, right? And it's, and I'm going to feel it, not just emotionally, I'm going to feel it physically. And you hit record. Right. And a lot of people don't

get that. Yeah. You know. You know, I spent, you know, a lot of years we talked about as a director in Los Angeles and worked with a lot of, you know, extremely, you know, high-end actors, actresses, you know, people who had won big awards in the movie and film and TV industry. And, you know, my, I never went to film school, so I wasn't, quote, unquote, classically trained in that sense. I think it was helpful because it made me much more organic. It made me more of a storyteller director than a technical director. And separately, what I have found myself. in people I've worked with and directed, and also even films that I gravitate to watching,

is when actors are far more organic, and there are certain actors that you will all the time hear about that, you know, are ad-libbing or going off script and, you know, certain methodology versus there are other people that you'll work with. And, you know, if it's not scripted to the letter, you know, down to like, you know, punctuation as that where to put the flexion, you know, then it throws them.

So it's really up. to each individual, but I have always been drawn towards the organic, the unrehearsed, not the unprepared. There's a big difference between unprepared and rehearsed. But, and you have to be inquisitive and you have to have passion and desire with anything you do. But for me, I'm the same way as you. I could not sit here and read a prompter and I had a read prompter.

It's just anything that I've ever done reading prompter. I say, don't use that. It doesn't feel, oh, no, hit all the key selling points. I'm like, I don't really care. It's not just what you say. It's how you say it. It doesn't feel real. It's not how I would talk to someone and say, you know, I'm a guy with a bird tattooed

on my middle finger just if people missed the first point when I put this finger up. I want to make sure they also see the bird. You know, I like to be, you know, pretty clear about what I'm trying to say. You know, it's a really good point because, you know, we've all worked with people that, you know, if you're making videos or, you know, ads or whatever it is that you're doing, make sure you hit these selling points. I'm like, nah, man, these people are going to be buying me. Not the selling points.

If you have to have a selling point, then you're not, you know, we're not hitting what we need to do here. Okay. And, but no, I love it, man. I love how unfiltered you are. And you look at you, you're a big dude, you know, all tatted up. But, you know, I did my research on you, obviously. And you are one compassionate dude. You know, you are a very soft spoken and real and an amazing individual that has been through some shit.

Right. Well, we all have, but yeah, you know. Yeah. You know, one thing that really interested me when I looked into you a little bit was, you know, landing on death row twice. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about that? Because I'm selfishly wanting to know what the hell that means. Yeah, you know, a little spoiler alert. It comes up in the book, but in the book it's also a bit of a, you kind of find out the humorous way about it. So it's true. I have actually been on death row twice, once in Florida and once in the state of Nevada. having said that now at the age of 50 and as you said all tatted up and a big beard and six four, two hundred and you know, 40, 45 pounds, people look at me when I say,

so I was on death row and they, you know, and then I say, and I go as a journalist doing interviews with people who were. And I never intended it to like be this, you know, humorous delivery thing. But, but the way it would come up like the very first, So the truth, first of all, when I was 16, believe it or not, I was in high school. And I was part of the creative program that was intended to let, you know, more creative thinkers and learners have opportunities to kind of structure your own curriculum for outside projects. And, you know, the teacher's like, what do you want to do?

And, you know, someone was like, I want to learn, you know, Mandarin Chinese. And the person's like, I want to learn a fourth instrument, you know. And each person had their thing. One person was like inventing some type of a cooking device that they were going to get patent. And each, you know, but there was, there were no rules, no boundaries. And I was like, I want to go interview a juvenile on death row. And everyone's like, you know, why did we let the weird guy in? You know, like, looking back now, like anyone in high school was probably like,

I knew that dude was going to end up looking all tat it up and, you know, selling all products on a brand called Dermdude. And, you know, but for me, the simple part was I had recently read an article in some magazine at the time and was reading about that the United States, you know, was one of the few countries, I think along with Syria and Iran, that still executed minors, meaning if you committed a certain crime, usually a murder, a capital crime, while you were under the age of 18, you're a minor in the U.S., you could be convicted and then held until you were no longer a minor. You could be whatever 20, by the time your appeals were done, you know, 25 years go by.

But the point is you commit the act when you're a minor and you could still be executed for it. And it just, as a 16-year-old, you know, almost 17, you know, it was one of those things where it wasn't about being soft on crime or thinking that these people should have been nominated to be the next Pope. I didn't feel that. But something didn't seem very just because at the same point, you had a lot of issues that I was found interesting at the time of, you know, the way the capital punishment was. I had a sense of fairness across the board and irony and making sure or feeling wanting to see everybody treated fair. And something about this topic specifically felt very unfair when, you know, in my next period of class would be, you know, science or biology and would be learning how, you know, the human brain doesn't even, you know, fully mature until you're 2021 and fully understand things like sense of consequence and whatever. And again, I'm not at all, this wasn't a soft on crime, give them a free pass and say, go outside and don't do this again. That's not my point. But there seemed to be a lot of things that just, you know, didn't feel right, um, that I'm not. Um, that I'm not. Um, that I'm not. Um, that I'm not. Um, um, that I'm not. Um, um, um, um, that I'm. Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um I would read more and more about, you know. And again, these were never kids in Beverly Hills that might have done something horrific,

but whose parents had quite a bit of money to hire the appropriate law firms. I mean, these were individuals, boys and girls, young men and young women from the worst, worst scenarios who, for the most part, had been horrible victims of abuse themselves, you know, very horrible upbringings, no legal backing whatsoever other than public defenders that would fall asleep. So it was kind of one of those ones of like, that's pretty unfair, no matter how you slice it. And it just pulled to me. And it took like the entire class year, but there was no email, no Instagram, you know, none of no, no, no cell phones. And I just by hand started writing letters

and mailing them to like any, every prison, every death row inmate in the country that was under the age or it was considered a minor at the time of their crime. And eventually I got a response from one of them in Florida. I was in high school in New Jersey and they said they would do an interview. And myself and my high school teacher, I don't remember if we drove or if we flew, believe it or not, down to Florida, and we went to Stark Prison, which is outside of Tallahassee, and he went to death row, which was the same exact death row where infamous serial killer Ted Bundy had been held and executed. And I was 16, barely 17, and you could see in the photos, happy to send them to you.

I mean, I had my New Jersey mullet. I had my really bad acne that, you know, even side pictures and from behind, you could see the pimples coming out of the sides of my face and my mullet from behind because the pictures were intended to be of the death row inmate that I was interviewing. And then you see me and a kid who I think he was, you know, at the time like around 19 or 20. But again, he had committed his crime when he was 17 and had been on death row since then awaiting execution. And there was no glass between us, just me sitting here, this kid a couple of feet away just with his hands cuff, nothing else. And the two of us in a room with the door closed and the camera rolling. And so that was,

you know, pretty damn fascinating for myself. And I never knew. why I did it. I didn't have some weird fetish or fascination or desire to be in prison. In fact, most of my life, I've tried very hard to avoid being a resident of such a place. How haven't we all? Not surprisingly. I ended up going to college and getting a degree in broadcast journalism. So I did love storytelling. And that was a big part of that. And I used to have a TV show in my high school. We had a local cable access channel. So I loved that. I didn't know how it would translate into a career. I picked TV news. That was the closest thing I knew. Again, there was no internet. And then when I was in Reno, Nevada, as a semi-grown-up, after college, working as a

TV news producer, there was another individual who was on death row and he was a minor at the time. And a friend of mine, who was also a reporter at the station where I was a news producer, went and met with him and did an interview with him. And he ended up, that individual ended up being executed. The first individual was not his sentence. The guy interviewed in Florida, his sentence was converted to life in prison, and he still is in prison to this day. And this individual in Nevada was executed. And my friend, who was the reporter, actually ended up being one of the witnesses for that execution. And he told me about that afterwards what that was like to see that. And again, it wasn't like a bizarre fascination. It was, it had to do with

a sense of justice and irony and really facts, you know, not a matter of like there's such divisiveness in our country right now, which I prefer to tune out altogether because I'm arguing and screaming and yelling. But I'll listen to anyone on any side. I don't consider myself on any side. I consider myself on the side of truth and facts and common sense. But as someone said to me many years ago, if common sense were so common, wouldn't everybody have it?

You know, so it'd be a lot more common. Yeah, exactly. No, that's a good story, man. Those were my two runs on death row, but where it became this funny anecdote, unintentionally so, because you move on in life and you forget about these things. And you're like, you don't walk up to a party and be like, hi, I'm Drew, I'm 30. I was on death row twice. I mean, first of all, that's not a way to meet girls in L.A.

I mean, when I moved out to Hollywood. Not the right ones. No, I was the guy who, like, if I, you know, had a bruise or something, you know, what do you do? Oh, I'm a stuntman, you know, don't I look like Tom Cruise? Yeah. You come up with better lines than I was on death row. That's not exactly a way to meet, meet women.

which was my main purpose moving out to Hollywood all those years ago as a young idiot. But where I started to realize that there was this funny misconception, and I think it coincided with the evolution of more tattoos and, you know, growing a beard. And, you know, I always worked out, but working out more as I got older, trying to fight time and age. And the first time I was at a dinner with someone who works with me, incredible person, big part of building the stuff that we do here and a part of Durham dude. And she and I were at a dinner in, I think it was Florida somewhere with someone else who's a

pretty interesting guy we're doing some business with. And he was describing all the things that he had done. Like he had been a professional touring musician. He had been a MMA fighter. And I was a businessman. All these interesting things. And the person I'm with, crowded restaurant, it was like a nobu restaurant. We're walking to our table super loud.

And, you know, the guy's mind moves a million miles. Miles a minute kind of like mine. And the person on Wood turns him goes, wow, you're a really fascinating individual. You've done a lot of interesting things. You know, Drusman had a kind of interesting life, you know. He was actually on death row twice. And before she could say a word, he stops and he goes, oh, yeah, well, hey, whatever you did, you're out now. It happens. People make mistakes. Let's eat. And all through dinner, like, he's just talking and going on. She's like, I think, and I'm like that I was a resident. And she was like, yeah.

And it happened again and again. I was on a podcast like a year ago with a clinical psychologist. And she was talking about some work she did, you know, with inmates in prisons. And I was like, you know, I was on death row. And literally, you see my thing go and I'm about to say to interview. And she goes, what did you do? And I go as a journalist. And you see her eyes like looking me up and down.

And that's what we realized, you know, so it's not to BS people, but it ended up. So that's a spoiler alert for people who do read the book. I really love it. I want to get to your book, but I want to highlight something because I feel like this, because I know this is exactly what my show is about. And people that tune in on a weekly basis find these little nuggets within conversations, and they take them and they run with them in their life. You had mentioned to your teacher that you wanted to go visit, you know, or interview

teenagers or underage individuals on death row. And there wasn't social media back then. There wasn't really the internet. There wasn't really anything. And you hand wrote letters to inmates that were on death row, underage throughout the whole country. So I want to highlight that because that is like being about what you say you want to do. It's taking real action and not being afraid of the work. And too many people now are falling for get rich quick schemes, you know, make a million dollars in 90 days, all this other bullshit when really success leaves clues and it's do the damn work. You know, a friend of mine has a saying, and I don't know if he made it up himself, or maybe it's a saying from someone famous that he just barred and repeated.

So it's not my creation, but he's done very well for himself. And he has this mindset, which is success happens when opportunity meets preparation. Absolutely. And that equals success. And I believe it because every person, I believe this, and I say this all time, is going to have opportunities that present themselves. Some will have more luck than others. Some will be in the right place.

You can call it karma. You can call it God's sense of humor. Whatever it is. There's no doubt that the world doesn't balance things in a 50-50 even split every time. It's not supposed to be that way. But I've never met someone who hasn't had their share of opportunities. The difference is the people that win and repeatedly win and find a way to succeed are the ones who are prepared when that opportunity comes up, whatever it is. and they're not always looking at, well, if I do this today, what do I get in return today?

You know, it's nice when that happens, but a lot of the biggest decisions and things you will do in life, certainly for me, are things that did not have a payoff the day I did them, the week I did them, not even the month I did them. I mean, for God's sake, this book was supposed to take three months to write, and it took closer to 13 months. And as I was mentioning to you before we went on, I just got back yesterday. I was on NBC Live in Miami on Tuesday. I was on NBC in Tampa on Wednesday talking about the book. You know, tons of national podcasts, more TV appearances coming up.

And, you know, when I started writing this book, you know, it was a bunch of scrambled thoughts in my head. And there was no concept whatsoever of how it would, was there a benefit? The benefit was not monetary. The benefit was not PR or being able to talk to great podcast hosts like yourself. That was not even on the radar. It was so far different, the motivation and Genesis behind writing this book. And over 13 months, man, that was a lot of Saturday, Sundays, early mornings, late at nights,

middle of the days, pushing off other deadlines and things. And there were times where I even got frustrated with myself and would say to people around me, damn, did I do that thing I do again? where I don't just commit, I overcommit, and I put myself into things that. But every time I do that, as long as I finish what I start, and as long as I give it, not 100%, but a thousand percent, I know that sounds like, you know, rah, ra, BS, but it's the truth. And it's especially at those moments when you feel like saying, screw this, I don't need to do this. My life's good.

I've got a nice house. My kids are doing, you know, you're okay, you're taking care. And you say, why would I do this? Why don't I just go to a movie or sleep or play with my kids? kids more or go fishing and cowboy and say because I got to do this I started it there's a reason I started it and it's those things in specific that you stick with and finish that for me have always had the biggest positive impact like a death row interview you know there were certainly a lot of things that would have been a lot more fun than hand writing out all of those letters yeah that best

better part of my junior year of high school but it's it's incredible man I just want to I just want to acknowledge you for that because, you know, the reality is you've created a life that you could have just said, you know what, I'm going to go watch a movie with my kids. I'm not going to do this. I don't need to. I probably overcommitted. But that's just, that's your subconscious trying to kick in and say, hey, don't do this. The reality is you weren't doing it for the monetary gain. You weren't doing it to be on podcasts or anything like that. The real, the real gain out of it is for mankind, right? It's providing something bigger out there for someone to pick up and read because I would imagine there's a ton of things in there that people are going to read and really be able

to apply to themselves and it could change their life. You know, I like the way you said that that I did it for mankind. It would be a little disingenuous or probably narcissistic if I, if I said that. I like to think that I'm trying to help leave the world a better place and I found it. Some days I do a better job than others. But I really wrote this in many ways for me, the truth. I mean, it was very therapeutic. It was necessary. There's a lot of things. I mean, there's a lot of humorous moments in there because in many ways my life has been a comedy, a comedy of wonderful things, funny, unique experience, a comedy of errors. So I'm self-deprecating. I'm more than willing to laugh at myself. But I often say if I didn't laugh at myself, I'd end up

crying. So sometimes in life, those are your choices. There's a lot of very deep, serious things in this book. I mean, I talk about losing someone very close to me to suicide. I talk about that three of my four children experienced very near life deaths shortly after birth. A lot of things, and there is no funny side to those things. And I get very real about that in this book. And I think that's probably why I waited until age 50 to write this. And, you know, people told me, years, people who knew me, close to me, you got to write a book. There's just too many strange like, you know, a couple of years ago, me and a dear friend, it's a chapter in this book. We were on the border up in the tribal region of Omo Valley in Ethiopia. We were on the border of Kenya, Sudan,

and Ethiopia negotiating with tribal villagers carrying AK-47s and machetes, and they have a belief in this village, which is still common in a handful of Ethiopian tribal villages, not mainstream, not the main parts of the country, but in the remote tribal villages, where they practice something called Mingi, which means they kill, they murder their own babies if they believe they're cursed at death. Wow. There's a whole chapter in this book about that. And, you know, basically if the baby's teeth grow in from the wrong direction versus if they

believe it should come from the top or the bottom, I forget which, but if it comes in the wrong direction, now any dentist will tell you, and as we know, whether their teeth come in, yours may have come from the top. Mine may have come from the bottom. Neither one of our parents, thankfully, were going to bury us in a ditch, throw us in the river, or coat us with honey and leave us for the wild animals to kill. But that is what happens in this village, in a couple of villages like that in these far remote areas. And we'd heard about this. We were both adoptive parents from Ethiopia. We had some connections to villages, and we had connected with an amazing human being, Lali Labuko, a guy who's done TED Talks, and he's a true hero. And he rest

and negotiates for these children. And sometimes he is successful, sometimes not. But to this day, he raises 60 plus of these children that he has rescued in an orphanage outside the village in town. And he raises these children as his own and tries to save more and more. And so we connected with him. And I joke, but my buddy, Moody Alexander, is an amazing human in Texas and runs a charity called Ethiopia Smiles. I joke and say a lot of guys do a guy's trip to Vegas or maybe, you know, Daytona. And I'm like, man, you and I did a guy's trip to one of the most dangerous parts of the world with, you know, two, you know, white dudes, including one heavily tattooed, driving out to the middle of nowhere, surrounded by people who have rarely seen anyone remotely like us as very nat geo, national geographic, you know, and I mean, it wasn't like you just hop on a plane and get there. You know, you land in the capital. You take another. plane to the southern part of the country. Then you take a bus on a long, bumpy road. Then you take another car to the outskirts village. And then your final step is going on like an off road vehicle

with a guide. And you get to parts like on the way up. I talk about it in the book where we got to a river and the guide through the translators like he's trying to figure if we can get across the river or not. You know, because the water is running. So then he's basically through the translator says, hey, if we get stuck, everyone has to get out and push or we could, you know, and that is what happened. Like we got stuck and everyone gets out and pushes the vehicle across the riverbed and we get to the other side. And it dawned on me because we're in the middle of nowhere now heading further into nowhere. And I talk about this in the book because it's real. And I said to our translator, I go, wait a minute, I just had a thought.

What happens if it rains like while we're up there? What happens if the water gets higher? Like any bridges, any roads back? And guys like, no, this is the only way back. And I'm like, so what happens if the river? He goes, well, it'll be fine in English. The translator, he goes, because no matter what, even. if it comes up in a month or so, the water goes back down and we can pass. And I'm like,

I mean, my buddy, look at each other. Like, so we're in the middle of nowhere. No, no cell phone's going to work. Nobody, I mean, people knew that we were in that region, but it's, it's the mountains. There's no roads. We didn't even know as we're going further towards the village, you know, we had found out like the day before two Cuban doctors were in Kenya treating people who were wounded and Sudanese rebels killed them, literally, right where we were, because they were having tribal wars with Kenya, Sudanese rebels, and they didn't like doctors helping their enemy. So, you know, because Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and as you're going up, you don't know where the border is.

I mean, there's no signs. There's no street names. I mean, there's nothing. You know, there's a reason Bono wrote that song where the streets have no names. That was about Ethiopia when he was there during the famine. And now the capital in a lot of areas do have signs and street signs, but not in these remote villages, you don't see anything but dirt and dust. So you don't know, like, have we drifted over into Kenya, Sudan? What if we didn't? And they can't, you know, so as soon as they said to

us that a couple of doctors had gotten killed, well, my buddy was a dentist. And I just kept calling, hey, doctor, Dr. Moody, I think we're almost there. I make sure everyone knew that my buddy was a doctor, man. You know, hey, man, you know, look at me. I ain't no doctor. I'm up in no value. I can't heal anyone. He was like, he's like, shut up. You know, we're, that's the type of thing you do with your best friend, you know, you're joking. And we did. So we finally get to the village. And he definitely got me back, you know, is that Texas humor. But, and any, and we get there. And I'm again, it's, the women are all, you know, breastfeeding and tribal gear and different things. And little babies clinging. And, you know, you see a lot of despair and sickness and, and, and, you know,

lack of health and obviously sanitation. But this is the way they've been living for forever. And, The men, anyone who's like above the age of a young boy, I mean, every one of them has, you know, a rifle, an AK. And these are not like new, fresh, cleaned out weapons. Nobody's been through gun safety school. At one point, you know, a couple of dudes would fire their AKs into the air, which, you know, you have to change your underwear after that. Yeah. That sounds very. No, we would say, why was he doing, you know?

And you're like, oh, because they're celebrating the death of a friend, you know, like, how long do they do that for? And he's like, what do you mean how long? I'm like, how many hours? I can't ask him. I'm like, why. He's like, they don't have a sense of time. They don't understand hours and like they know turns of like moons and harvests and rainy season. And it's a different. So we get up there and I talk about this in the book. Now my buddy, Dr. Moody had had about enough of me telling the world that he was the doctor just in case there was any, you know, snipers looking out to decide who they were going to take out. And we get up there. And there's one dude in particular who it wasn't tattoos, per se, but he was like the village chief warrior, you know, the head of their security. And he had all brandings, like scar brandings intentionally done that looked like with a knife and intentionally scarring and all over his chest and his arms and, you know, we took pictures and stuff. So that was his version of tattooing. And we asked what those were for. And the

translator said, oh, those are his markings each time he has killed for the village, defended the village or killed for the village against other villages, other intrude, whatever it was, so that those scars are a badge of honor, which are kind of like their tattoos. So, of course, at that point, my friend Moody tells the translator, well, my friend Drew has tattoos. He's a big warrior in the U.S. He wants to challenge the head of the tribe in combat. That's safe.

And the dude's like starting to try. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not doing that. Not here for that. And the dude's sitting there. I'm like, you know, so I give him credit. And I talk about that in the book. He definitely got me back for the whole doctor thing.

So I let the doctor thing go after that. Yeah, that's amazing, man. I mean, listen, for those of you listen into this episode now, if that is any indication of what is in this book, you know, I'm sure there's a ton of other stories. And, you know, we've got a little bit of time left. We've got about 15 minutes left. We're going to get into some more stuff because I want you guys to understand

that this is going to be an entertaining book. It's a great story. And, you know, he's going to go into how you can purchase this book and where to find them a little bit later, right when we're closing the show out. but this sounds like a real gem, man. So let me ask you a question. What did you learn most about yourself while writing this book?

That is a fascinating, not a fascinating. That is a phenomenal question. And I will say this, and hopefully I can come up with a succinct answer if it feels real. I laughed my ass off at times during the book, and that was the benefit of it taking 13 months and having to put it down and step back from it and go back. And I did that when I would read it fresh after letting it sit for, be it several days or several weeks, because at a point, it no longer felt like me. If I wrote it and typed it, it felt like I just typed that and what have you. I was trying to remember it factually. When I would put it down and go back and read it, I mean, I found myself laughing out loud like,

oh, these idiots, like, who were, oh, shit, that was me. You know, and that was kind of cool. And then, you know, I absolutely got very teary-eyed at several parts of it. That really surprised me in a big way because certain things, when I reread with a little distance in space in the book, which again was about my life in certain times. you know, I got probably more emotional to some degree reading about it again from a distant place, almost as a reader, then I may have at the time the events actually happened. And, you know, it's why I described the book as it wasn't intended to be therapy, but it really was. And I think

the best decision I made with the book and why, you know, I set the outset, it's supposed to take three months. It took 13 months. And nobody could understand that everyone was pressing me, you know, hey, we can tie it into the Dermdude release because ultimately that is where my journey led to was the launch of the Dermdude brand and not to give away the ending, but I just did. There's still a lot of stuff worth reading about.

So buy the damn book, y'all. Yeah, buy the damn book, man, and some ball spray too, please. Hey, that's a good one. My wife, white, thank you for that one. Hey, buddy, great smelling balls are a win-win. Just let me tell you that right there. 50% of the people who buy our ball care products

are women buying it for their dude. And every now and then, we'll get like a product returned or someone will call up and say, hey, man, there was fraud on my credit card. I didn't order this. We're like, sir,

sir, your wife did. We have her email right here saying, I'm getting this for my husband. It's so funny, man. I'm not out myself because we'll be laying around sometimes. Like,

and you know, guys, they go and they scratch their balls. You know, that's just what they do. You know, and we'll be laying in bed, watch TV.

And she goes, do you scratch your balls? I'm like, what are you talking about? She goes, it smells like balls in here. I'm like, no, it doesn't. It doesn't.

She goes, go wash your hands. Let me tell you something, man. About being, I'll talk about the authenticity and being raw honest in the book in a second. Go back to it. But when I talk about the products and one of the reasons for real, why I think most of the marketing that we just do is me talking and putting up short videos and demonstrating the products and talking about them is I use every one of them. I'm the guinea pig for every one of them. It says on our website, we have a body wash or three and one body wash that is really good scented. I mean, a bunch of different scents.

We have morning, Woodsey, Sandal Woody. We try to make everything funny, but the products. Morning. Yeah, I've been in skincare 15, 20 years. I've worked with the best formulators and doctors. So this wasn't like an afterthought. I mean, the biggest shock people have is how incredible these formulaism products are. I mean, we have literally well above a 99% satisfaction, happy, you know, five-star reviews.

They're legit. You read them and you're like, oh, man, this is amazing. I love hearing this. But I say on our website, it says by our next to our body wash, it says life is full of assholes, don't smell like one. You know, there's no rule. Nobody can tell me how to market it. You know, I spent 15, 20 years being told in Hollywood what you can and can't do. Now, granted, that was for women's skin care line and, you know, women 60 who want to fight wrinkles and all these other things.

And I get that in 50. This is a guy's line. But it's the truth. And, you know, we have a ball cream. This is the one that went viral on TikTok. it's here somewhere. And we named it. It's a chafing cream. It's a cooling cream. It's anti-fungal. So it's everything a guy wants to prevent itchy balls. And it makes your sack smell great. And we named it Happy Sack Nutlove. And, you know, the amount of people who just say, I love that name. And then

they're like, and it really works. We have a NASCAR driver, Spencer Boyd. And it's on our Instagram. His truck, the Dermdood truck, he got an accent, blew up, went into flames. You can see this on the internet on NASCAR.com. You can see it on our side. social media. And you see the Dermdue truck up in flames. Spencer's getting pulled out of the truck before the flames engulf him. And he shoots me a text. I'm like, buddy, buddy. And he grabbed his phone. He writes back, he goes, thanks to the Lord, I was using my Derm Dude, Happy Sack Nut Love to keep my balls cool. The freaking truck was on fire. Oh, God. Our Christmas line, we have pumpkin pie coming out. We have candy cane. We have, you know,

all these holiday scents for your sack. We call them Sack sense so you can really deck the balls. We have our maze balls spray. And the truth is, this is what I say. You know what? I sweat. I'm a human being. I'm a dude. You know,

I develop these products because I need them. I use them. And I tell this story and people are like, don't you think it's embarrassing? The story I tell, but, you know, month or two ago, we have like 35 skews now.

So if I use every one of our products, tattoo, beard, and balls, it could take me a little time to get out of the door. And some days I'm in a rush. So my girlfriend was over one night after work and I had in showered since that morning.

and we were having a little happy time. And all of a sudden, she looks at me and she stops, she goes, did you put on your derm dude down there today? And I go, oh, baby, honey, I don't remember this morning. You know, I was, I was, and she goes, and she points to the bathroom. And I like, what? She goes, put it on. I go, but she goes, you own the brand.

She goes, you have no excuse. Go. And I'm like a little kid and I walk into the bathroom. Stom. I'm like, fine. And I tell people that. And I'm like, you know, it's freaking biology. You know, in my beard, I never used to be able, first of all, I couldn't grow a beard.

That's one of the reasons I started the beard line. I had patchy, just a horrible, scratchy, itchy flaky beard. There's pictures of that on our website. I could never wear black because I would have like beard drift and beard flakes all over. So we developed our beard line. And tattoos, you know, was, look, I'm a tattoo collector, you know, and I'm very specific about the artists I work with. I've invested probably about 140, 150 grand in tattoos at this point all over my body,

working with a lot of amazing artists. And I want to take care of them. And I could not find a tattoo line of products that was developed by real tattoo people, real tattoo collectors, not marketing people and someone with an MBA. And someone who goes, oh, look, statistically, the tattoo market is on the rise. Let's sell to those silly people who cover themselves with tattoos. And we'll get some catchy phrases in there. We'll hire an actor who has tattoos.

Great. Keep doing that. You know, I think people are, I think people are a lot smarter than that. And I think, you know, Dermdude is proof of that. And that's what I love about that it just worked out that we don't have a pitch. Our pitch is me speaking to truth to people that I was in skincare for close to 20 years, developing and working on brands that many people have heard of and their wives have bought from. We sold over a billion dollars in products for other people's.

brands and then, you know, decided to develop Dermdude for me, a 50-year-old dude with tattoos, a beard. And last time I checked, a pair of balls still intact. And I wanted to make it as legit. And I didn't want anyone telling us what to do, what not to do. You know, we trust our formulators, we test our products. We work with the best labs imaginable. We spare no expense. We don't do any of the games of fairy dusting, light amounts of ingredients just to say they're in there. We use the best ingredients that we research. I test every, it doesn't matter. A product can be approved, tested, and good to go on every level. When I use it, if I don't love it and think it's a 10 out we don't sell it. We don't put it out. We have one product in particular where we have about

$35,000 a brand new inventory and we will dump that. We're looking at maybe donating it. It came out the wrong way where it works great, but from a functional point of view, it's great. It's great from a the texture, the feel, the look. It's not a 10 out of 10. It's probably a 7 out of 10. By the time all was said and done, we missed the final check on our end to really, you know, make sure. And I just said, I'm not, I'd rather eat it. And as a startup, we don't have 35 grand to throw away, but I don't want someone to come in and try something and have an okay experience. You know, I want to keep getting the letters and emails I get every day from people who say, you know, holy blank, you know, this ball wash, I'm not itching anymore. You know, my wife loves it. You know, we're,

my girlfriend comes over more. My girlfriend stays over more. My beard's not itching anymore and flaking. I can wear a black shirt again or I was able to grow a beard finally. My tattoos are healing well. My tattoos look new again. And that, that stuff, man, that floats me, man. I'm like floating off the ground reading that stuff every day. That's interesting. And I love it. And before we land the plane, I want to really talk about that because there's a word that I want the audience to really just grab onto when they're listening to that story. It's called integrity. Right. So like you said, you don't have the $35,000 as a startup just to throw away and start all over.

But the reality is, is you have a brand and you have a product. And if it doesn't, if it's not in alignment with what your brand is, you can't put it out. That's right. You know, what would you say to somebody out there right now that may be listening that is struggling with that right now? You know, doing the right thing, and I thought of this myself, and it's ironic that even though I'm 50 and have been in business for myself all these years, when you own every aspect on it, every decision every day is coming in your pocket or going out of your pocket, no matter what, even when my agency that I owned employed 45 people and we were doing, you know, tens of millions of, of dollars a year in gross revenues, the decisions that I make now each and every day have so much more impact and meaning. And that's when you sit there and say to yourself, you know, the difference between right and wrong does not know the dollar value. And if you're going to put a dollar

value on right and wrong meaning, okay, I would do it the right way. Oh, but it's going to cost too much. So that's going to, you know, it's just not practical. I would have loved to have done right thing, but, and that's what I really try to do and hold myself and the brand accountable to, and that example of the, of the inventory that we won't use. And it's, you know, I said to myself, well, if it was 500 bucks, it had been a no-brainer decision. It was 35 grand that we'd spent that, you know, and arguably, we certainly can sell it. I mean, a specific example, so it's not, you know, mythical, is that a specific cream-based sunscreen that we had ordered, and And I had this idea that I wanted it to be the ultimate, ultimate blocking thing for tattoos,

snowboarder, surfers. And the very final batch that we ended up approving and we made some, you know, clerical mistakes, had too much zinc. And very protective. I still use it myself because I want such coverage. But it doesn't really rub in as clearly as it should. It takes a little longer. It takes a little more time.

This one that we're not selling to get it out. And I felt that the average consumer wouldn't want that. Instead, we have an invisible sunscreen that you spray on. It soaks in instantly. You never see any white. And it still protects and you don't have to rub in the white stuff. So this was just far too much effort and time to absorb. But so what I ended up doing was I've been donating it to a doctor I know very well who treats skin cancer patients.

And he's been giving it away free to some of his skin cancer patients. That's awesome. Who may be a little light on money and he'll just hand it out as an office. Because it's frankly, with the extra zin. think it's actually better for sun protection, but most people simply do not want to have a sheen of white that is hard to rub in, especially if you have tattoos, you want to protect them, but you still want to show them off. Exactly. But again, at the time, and we're not making any money on that. We're obviously giving it away. But my point is that, you know, it still didn't

take long to decide that this just is, I'm not going to sell something and disclaim it and say, oh, well, here's why it doesn't rub in well, but try this other product next time. It's just, you know. Yeah, I know that's awesome. Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I can't stand. The average person does not want to sit there for minutes rubbing shit in. Like it's, you know, get it and go. So now I appreciate that.

I want to ask you a couple more questions. And they're very important ones. You know, where can the audience find this book and how quickly can they find the book? I love it. I love it. So if you look over my shoulder, you see on the wall, it says, I'm going to lean this way, D-E-R-M-D-U-D-E. D-E-R-M-D-U-D-E.

Derm is in Skin Dude, as in Dudes like me and you. If you go to Dermdud.com, right now that is the best place because we literally got our very first batch of actual books just the other day. Like I think yesterday, I got back from Florida and there was a stack here. We've sent out a bunch today. I've been signing the first copies. We still have a small amount left, but we have another shipment coming in next week. Our official launch launch is November 8th. And then it will be available on Amazon as well as our website.

And it will be paperback, hard copy, and e-book. But right now there's a pre-release, and it is on dermdude.com. And for tattoo people, even though the book's a lot more than about tattoos, the first people who actually order on dermdude.com, the book Under My Skin, we're also including our free tattoo aftercare, which is called Nuclear Bomb, B-A-L-M. So, again, we try to have some fun with our names. I love it, dude. That's it, dude.

Under my skin, dermdude.com, man, rock and roll. Well, I'm going to have to be going to your site for other shit, too. So, I mean, I'm going to hit you up for sure. But I think the most important question for me before we in the interview is, you know, how can I best support you, man? That's another great question, man. I'm loving you, Sean. You're a good dude, man.

Let's do this every day. Hey, bro. Let's go. You know, just having the opportunity today to chat with you, watching you play with your cute kids. I love it. I've got four of them in itself. For sure, man. This is Mia.

Hi, Mia. How are you? Say hi to Drew. This is the first podcast ever. One of my children has made an appearance. This podcast is going to be your daddy's biggest because his cute kids are on the show now. And people are going to know that your dad has a good heart and he's patient because of the way he's acting right now. and he's not pushing you guys out and he just loves having you around,

this is going to be his best episode because people are seeing a type of daddy and man that he is. I appreciate that, man. And you know what? This has been a pleasure for me. But you still got to answer the question. I want to be able to support you, man. So, you know, keep shouting out the book.

You know, I'm excited for you to read it end to end. Shout out the book. Shout out dermdudad.com. And again, when people go to our website, dermdudadcom, it's not just a big, you know, try to sell you a bunch of stuff. I mean, we have our blog called The Man Cave and, you know, it's a lot of information. I share with people what I know after 20 years in the skincare industry and, and being a dude at the age of 50, you know, my skin changes, you know, my beard hairs change, my body changes. It's true, you know. Yeah. So I love sharing information and I love having

fun and making people laugh. And I also love being able to help inform and provide a good, a good product for people that's fair for their hard-earned money. Brother, I love that absolutely. And what I can guarantee you is I will read it from cover to cover. And I will continue to share it out on a normal basis, not just once. But as I go through things that I find really impact me, I will post it on my social media and tell all my friends about it in my community because, you know, at the end of the day, our job in this space is to help good people.

And, you know, I'd love to help you out and get the message. out as best as I can. And, you know, what we'll also have to do, man, once this podcast goes live, we'll have to do a live on IG, right? So that way we can promote it even more and continue that and keep that going. I would love to do that, man. I am ready to rock and roll and God bless to all the people down there in Fort Myers right by you that are recovering or trying to recover and rebuild. And when you talk about resilience, man, you know, God bless and prayers for those folks right down by you in Fort Myers right now. I appreciate that. that it hits home. You know, it's emotional. You know, Southwest Florida is strong, right?

They, they, people here have proven to be next level resilient. I cannot even believe how strong these bastards are. It's, it's unbelievable. So we appreciate you and, you know, receive your love and prayers. And I'll tell you what, man, this has been an amazing show. And I cannot wait to do more stuff with you. I feel, I feel like there's going to be more for, for you and I. and I'm looking forward to that. So with that being said, guys, listen, go to dermdude.com. If you're a guy, get some ball care because your balls stink. All right, that's the end of story.

Trust me, I didn't think mine did. And my wife tells me all the time, it smells like balls in here. So take care of your nads. Go to dermdude.com. Hook yourself up. And then get the early release of his book and shout them out. Really dig into it. Hear his story.

support this good dude along the way and support this damn episode share it to your shows we want to hear how you hear about it and just holding the book up right now i mean i'm practically naked on the front and back minus a little blurring so you know i put myself out there people you look really jacked on that cover too i might add well you know a little bit of yoga a little bit of boxing and a little bit of uh you know cutting back on the tequila before the photo shoot damn right bro well listen man it's been a pleasure um hang out here after we're done and uh you And so happy to meet you and have you on my show. And you're a good dude, man.

We appreciate you. Right on. Great stuff, Sean. Thanks for having me. All right. Take care. Peace out. Bye-bye.