When All or Nothing Doesn't Work 🤷🏾‍♂️

Author

Damon Brown
January 22, 2025

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

Hi reader,

I was talking to a friend and realized there was a moment when the immersive, 100+ hour sandbox video games like Grand Theft Auto stopped being my entertainment, the the dust began to fall atop the super-long cultural history books on my shelf, and TV show marathons became almost non-existent.

After a moment, I almost gave myself a face palm. It was when I became a father. Obviously 🤦🏾‍♂️

I would never trade my sons even for Grand Theft Auto VI (the white whale of the gaming industry), but every adult - including you - likely had a moment when time limited your depth of experience.

Not time as far as age, but time as far as how many hours you have in the day.

To you, adulting may mean more hour at the job to pay bills, using your days to improve your lifestyle, or spending years making sure your dependents get to the next stage.

No wonder we can often struggle to make new friends as adults, keep ourselves as interesting within our relationships, or get out of ruts as we get older. Having an interesting life is much easier when having an interesting life is all you have to worry about.

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That’s one of the trade-offs I would not accept when my beautiful son came just over a decade ago: I wasn’t going to give up an interesting life. And if I wasn’t going to show him, and, later, his little brother what an interesting life could be, then who would?

It isn’t a coincidence that the 400 BringYourWorth.tv episodes, dozen independently-published books, 4 experiences with TED, two bootstrapped startups, and a partridge in a pear tree all arrived after fatherhood. As I share in The Bite-Sized Entrepreneur, even though I had less time than ever, I also had more motivation than ever. Now they had a blueprint on how they can be a loving leader of their family and make an impact on the world. It is up to them what parts of it they follow. My only job is to make sure they have one.

And so many of y’all that I coach play on this knife’s edge between being grounded and stretching for the stars. That’s what we do when we invest in ourselves while pouring into our babies. That’s how we find the strength to do that 9-to-5 and still show up for ourselves in that side hustle. That’s when we grow our branches while we stretch our roots.

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🙋🏾 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.

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