Humanity Needs You 🫵🏾

Author

Damon Brown
December 18, 2024

In partnership with

This edition is also brought to you by Shortform and Simple.AI. Learn more at the bottom 👇🏾

Hi reader,

You can choose efficiency or you can choose humanity. Not both.

Humanity is bespoke. Custom. Slow. Messy. Personal.

Today, though, efficiency is an assumed, prioritized metric. Maximize your time. Do more with less. Outsource the humanity 🤖

2025 Prediction: A Surge of Self-Serve CTV Buyers

Roku predicts that 2025 will be a breakthrough year for self-serve CTV advertising. Roku Ads Manager makes it easy to integrate CTV into your 2025 marketing mix. Easily segment your target audience, optimize campaigns in real-time, and drive conversions with interactive ad formats and shoppable ads with a Shopify integration. Roku Ads Manager makes CTV advertising accessible and impactful for businesses of any size.

I automate my social media. I don’t care much about the humanity of it. I care about the efficiency. I care about the efficiency because it allows me to pour my humanity into the things that blossom under it.

I am very human in my coaching practice. Sometimes our sessions go over the allotted time. I will correct myself when I get more information and apologize for being wrong about a suggestion or recommended approach. I’ll reschedule if I’m under the weather, have a family scheduling conflict, or other very human reasons. 

There are wonderful side effects to humanity. Many of my coaching clients struggle with balancing their priorities - their family, their joy, their mental health - with ambitions to serve the world. When they see me reschedule, without shame, because my little one is sick or my other needs take precedence, then they give themselves permission to do the same thing, without shame, when a boundary is hit. When I prioritize my humanity, they prioritize theirs.

We juggle so much, everything can’t be humanity. And we have a life to live, so everything can’t be efficient ✅

There’s a reason 400,000 professionals read this daily.

Join The AI Report, trusted by 400,000+ professionals at Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Get daily insights, tools, and strategies to master practical AI skills that drive results.

Don’t feel like there is a right or wrong to what you make efficient and what you make human. 

The real problem happens when we don’t realize we have a choice.

When we get the categories mixed up and throw our efficiencies into our humanity basket and our humanity into our efficiency basket.

When family becomes a checklist and an inconsequential task becomes a priority.

And then time shows us where our real humanity lies - often when it is too late ⏰

One of the resources I wish I had when I started writing (cough) decades ago was the Institute for Independent Journalists. I’ve known founder Katherine Reynolds Lewis for almost as long as I’ve been freelancing and have loved her new, inclusive take on what defines good, important journalism.

And the Institute for Independent Journalists is having its 2025 live, online freelance conference on Feb. 27-28!

Here’s the breakdown: Engage in 12 information-packed, interactive sessions on pitching, harnessing artificial intelligence, funding your journalism, podcasting, boosting your income, and more. On day one, keynote speaker and author Celeste Headlee will share her experiences working in mainstream media (NPR, PBS, WNYC), as well as independently. Learn directly from editors what they want in a pitch, including from Bloomberg, the New York Times, Washington Post, Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and more. Fellowship directors will explain how to get funding for an important journalism project. The best way to weather a storm is together.

Only $59 early bird registration for 12 live, interactive sessions, delivering 15 hours of learning. Sign up now and get instant access to a bonus bundle with four recorded full-length editor panels, three recorded interviews with freelance experts and New York Times opinion editor Katie Kingsbury, a layoff recovery guide, tip sheets, freelance checklists, an income tracking worksheet and more.

And BringYourWorth.tv viewers get an exclusive discount! Register here and use the promo code DAMON to get an immediate price off the already early bird cost.

Details: 

Feb. 27-28, 2025

10 am - 7 pm ET 

Ready to avoid burnout in the New Year?

On BringYourWorth.tv Live, we’re giving 3 ways to rest without guilt, build systems to keep burnout at bay, and make sure you embrace the New Year with a clear heart.

Bring your questions, comments, and blueprints 🗺️

Wednesday, December 17th

1:11 pm PT

👉🏾 Tap in

Choose your battles, choose your focus 🧭

🎧 Hear My Cousin Luther

📰 Join Simple.AI newsletter with 200,000+ others and learn how to use AI to grow your business

As you’ve seen in recent BringYourWorth.tv episodes, my office has been stacked with books lately! Shortform is one of my favorite companions for understanding books quickly and remembering the highlights from classics I may have forgotten. The service goes well beyond summaries, giving serious breakdowns, analysis, arguments, and even overarching themes connecting a book to other pieces of literature. It also showcases material related to your favorite book, like popular podcasts, articles and more. Shortform is a great way to sample new books you’re curious about or to go deeper on ones you already know super well.

Get 20% off now.

🙋🏾 I’m Damon! (http://www.damonbrown.net) I help side hustlers, solopreneurs & others like yourself bloom. As a bestselling author, 2x startup founder & 4x TEDTalker, I co-founded the popular connection app Cuddlr and led it to acquisition within a year while being a stay at home dad with my infant son.

🫱🏼‍🫲🏿 Today, my boutique coaching business Bring Your Worth supports hundreds through one-on-one virtual and in-person support, as well as behind-the-scenes services for TED, HEROIC, and other impactful organizations. You can catch this free weekly newsletter as well as the 18,000-subscriber strong television show BringYourWorth.tv.

🚀 Think coaching could help you get to the next level? Reach out and let’s chat.

📚 You can also grab my 27th book, The Complete Bring Your Worth Collection, everywhere books are read, heard, and sold.

🔥 Want to reach wisdom-hungry solopreneurs and side hustlers? Sponsor this newsletter and/or BringYourWorth.tv. Learn more here!

📨 Feel free to forward this newsletter! Not a subscriber? Get it every Wednesday for free here.