When Your Energy Has Nowhere to Go ✋🏾

Author

Damon Brown
December 24, 2025

This edition is brought to you by the upcoming Institute for Independent Journalists Conference March 5 - 6. Learn more below 👇🏾

Hi reader,

What I love/hate about this time of year

Is how we don’t have anything to get intense about.

We can want to launch a new collaboration

Spin up some business

Create waves

But our collaborators are slow to respond, if at all

Business doesn’t want to be spun

Waves are cresting and crashing.

Everybody is off

(literally and figuratively).

So all the usual kinetic, nervous, inertia-driven energy

All the doing for the sake of feeling like we’re doing something

Has to be alchemized

Into structure, into form, into planning

Into substance over style.

Because we can’t take action now.

Can’t rush into the next thing.

We have to wait.

And in this drip

We can plan rather than do

So when we can finally take action

When the ice thaws

We may have something that lasts more than a season 💧

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 2026 live, online freelance conference on March 5 - 6!

Early bird registration is now open! This live online conference hosted on SoundPath is designed to grow your freelance journalism career, with sessions focused on funding your reporting through fellowships, building a paying audience through newsletters or social media, and the IIJ’s first-ever Pitch Fest! Get your next great story in front of editors for live feedback! Register before December 31 for just $49 and gain immediate access to a bonus bundle of resources, including guides for pitching more than 20 media outlets!

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: 

March 5 - 6, 2025

🙋🏾 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.

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