Whiskey, Yoga, and Creativity: David Richards on Finding Purpose

Create Art Podcast Interview David Richards hello friends, this is Timothy Keemo Bryan, your head instigator for Create Art Podcast where I bring my over 30 years of experience in the world of art and education to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. So for this episode, I have another wonderful interview brought to you by the fine folks at PodPage, where I do have an affiliate link there.And I got to interview a guy that, oh my gosh, he and I had so many things in common, you won't even believe it.His name is David Richards and he's a former Marine Corps officer with 15 years of service as a corporate leader in customer experience at Cisco, and a sought after executive coach specializing in executive presence and transformational leadership.His work has guided senior leaders at some of the world's largest financial and IT companies, including Fidelity, Microsoft and Cisco, helping them elevate their leadership and communication impact at the highest levels. But his mission extends far beyond the boardroom.As a number one international bestselling author, he helps people awaken their divine identity and step fully into their faith driven purpose.With a unique blend of biblical wisdom, neuroscience and practical leadership strategies, David is here to challenge the way we think about success, faith and personal transformation.Now, you may be thinking to yourself, well, why do I need to know, you know, all this leadership stuff, all this, you know, personal transformation and faith and about success? Well, we dive into a lot of different topics here. A lot of mindfulness and leadership.And I take the approach of the Taoists that if you can lead yourself, then you can lead others. So I am going to step back from the microphone here and let that interview roll. I know you are going to enjoy it because I got a lot out of.

All right, everyone, thank you for joining me here on Create Art Podcast. I have the privilege. Oh my God. I'm excited to talk to this guy. His name is David Richards and he's here with me tonight.David, how's it going tonight?

Tim, it's fantastic. I'm so grateful to be here. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm excited to speak with you.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm just going to go right into this because that's just, you know, kind of like how, how I like to do it.Your work spans multiple disciplines. Writing, leadership, and mindfulness. How did these different aspects of your life influence each other creatively?

Wow, you are jumping right into it. I always wanted to be a writer, so I grew up on comic books, I grew up on Star wars, and my creative juices that was my strong muscle in school.I was in theater. I excelled in English. I had something published when I was in high school, and I thought that was kind of going to be it.And I grew up in the military. My dad was in the Marines. And that's a very different way to grow up. You don't necessarily.And certainly back in the Stone age, in the 70s and 80s, you didn't have the same feeder pipelines into academia or pursuits. You didn't have, like, you know, I wasn't taking an English proliferation course to somehow guide me into being a journalist or being a writer.So I decided to join the Marines out of college. And doing that, I kind of said, okay, well, I'm going to step away from writing. That's just a childhood dream. And now it's time to adult for real.And as we were talking before we started, spent some time in Somalia in combat there with the Marines, traveled the world, experienced what it was like to be a Marine. The writing thing never completely went away. So in 2000, I started.I was taking a psychology class at George Mason University while I was stationed at Quantico, Virginia. And I just. I got inspired to start writing poetry.And writing poetry in the Marine Corps is a weird thing because Marines do not necessarily understand how another Marine could write poetry. And it never really took off.But as I went a few more years into 2003, 2004, I was taking some courses, and I kind of started to realize I am following my dad's blueprint for life, and I don't want to do that. I like. Because he did 31 years on active duty, then he did about 10 years in corporate. And I said, I just don't want to do that.And so I decided to get out. And it wasn't part of my plan, but the weekend I got out, I took my first yoga class.And I don't know that I could have told you what yoga was or what a studio was. I just saw a Sports Illustrated article about NFL players using yoga to strengthen their core.And I thought, well, as a Marine, I could use some core strengthening, and if football players can do it, I can do it. So I took my first class and wasn't really impressed. I took my second class a few days later. It was a different style.And I'm like 30 minutes into class just drenched in sweat. And at the end of class, you just lie down in what they call savasana, or corpse pose.And it was so wild because there was a moment of stillness in that. And I realized I want more. I've been looking for that for a long time. Like I was. We lived for three years in Japan.Growing up as a kid and being exposed to Eastern culture and Eastern philosophy at such a young age had a huge impact on me. So I started trying to meditate when I was probably 13 or 14, even though I didn't necessarily know what it was.And when I had that moment of stillness, I became hooked. And so nine months later, I became a yoga instructor. I took my military training and leadership into corporate America.I went to work for Cisco Systems, the IT giant. And those things just kind of all wound together.And part of it was me decoupling from the military and figuring out what it meant to be a civilian or a veteran in the civilian world. Another part of it was understanding the philosophy behind yoga, which was very different from Western Judeo Christian upbringing.And I also had the revelation that after 36 years of being in and around the military, I wasn't going to be moving every two or three years anymore. Like, my life could suddenly become something it had never been. And I could stay in one place.And that was an invitation to realize I can start writing again. Like, I could. I could write my book like I could write a book.And so without going too much further before you can ask another question, that was kind of the journey that those things started to come together. And for me, yoga was huge because it kind of put me in touch with my deeper self, if you will. And then that became a pathway towards writing.

That's amazing. That is. Oh, my gosh. That's amazing because I recently, in the past year, year and a half, hooked up with a guy by the name of Yogi Brian.And guy curses like a sailor, but that's what got me into meditation. He also does yog.

Okay.

And I haven't.Haven't crossed that threshold yet, but talking with you now and getting to see you, I'm like, maybe it's time for me to go ahead and cross over to that threshold and make that happen for myself. One thing that you were saying earlier, and it's a thread I want to pull on, is you were talking a little bit about Star Wars.

Yeah.

Got to ask you, what's your favorite Star wars character?

Oh, man, it's gotta be Darth Vader.

Okay. All right.

Hands down. Hands down.So when we moved to okinawa, Japan, in 1979, and we lived there for three years, and there was one American television channel, it was called the Far East Network, so it was broadcast by Aphes, or the Whatever the military version of networking was.And so after school, and we sometimes, my best friend and I, Jason, we would watch Japanese cartoons because they had, like, Gundam, if you know what that is. And, like. And we couldn't obviously understand the language, but the art, the cartooning was awesome.So coming home after school, we had the opportunity to either watch General Hospital, and we did.I know all about Luke and Laura and the Quartermains and that whole universe, or my friend Jason had the Star wars on Betamax, this is before vhs, and beat out Betamax. And so one summer, we watched Star Wars 45 times until we knew the entire script. And so we would act out different parts.So I was Darth Vader and Han Solo, and Jason was Luke and Obi Wan.And I don't know what that says about my personality that he chose the light guys and I chose the scoundrel and the Sith Lord, but that's just kind of the way it was. And so we would just sit and watch the movie and then we'd act the whole thing out.We tried to get his sister, who I think was six, to be Princess Leia. She wasn't really having it, but. But yeah. So Star Wars, Darth Vader all the way.

Excellent. Excellent. Why that. That's. That's five stars in. In my book right there. I mean, I'm a huge, huge Darth Vader fan. Huge Darth Vader fan.Something else I wanted to bring up with you is this. This whole mindfulness type thing. How do you. Or how has mindfulness changed the way that you approach creativity? Because, you know, when we're.When we're meditating, or at least when I'm meditating, it gets me into a zone, but not always into a creative zone, but it gets my mind right. And that's how I approach it. But how do you approach it?

So for me, mindfulness became a really interesting journey in that. So I told you, I got out in 2006, and I started to realize I could write.So I first need to get my legs under me in terms of corporate situate house relationship. And. But around 2009, 2010, I started realizing, well, let me try to really write. Let me, like, let me write my.I wanted to be Stephen King, like his work always. I just was enthralled by his creativity and the depth and texture of his characters, and I just couldn't make it work. I'd write like 110.I'd have a great idea, and part of it was born around. Okay, now that I'm in a place for an extended period of time.I can get to know the place and I can get to develop a sense of a place without having this clock inside my head that says, I've got two years left at this duty station and then I'm going somewhere else. So I'd get a good idea based on, you know, I'd see a tree at a park. I'm like, oh, I could make a story about this tree with an evil spirit in it.And I read about 100 pages every time. And then the. It would just. The story would kind of peter out, the characters would get flimsy. The inspiration and motivation I had was lost.And I didn't have a writing practice outside of this. I was just, I was working. And then in my spare time I started trying to write.And I feel like, because writing is such a foundational thing that we learn at a very early age and anyone can pick up a pen and write sentences on a piece of paper, you think, well, it's just, it's natural. Like I could just do this. And that was kind of the frame that I tried to write from. So I didn't have.I wasn't writing every day, I wasn't journaling, I wasn't building out that architecture. Even though in college one of my professors said, writers write at the same time. As I kind of deepened into yoga.And that was a transition too, because coming out of the military, I'd been in combat arms. The Marines are nothing if not full of bravado and intense in terms of their esprit de corps.And in yoga, I'd go to weekend retreats and, you know, men would be coming up to hug me and I was just like, this is what civilians do. This is so weird. Like, it was just this weird thing. And after a while I started hearing the same thing from different instructors.And they would say, you're not your mind, you're not your body, you're the awareness behind those things. And those are just vessels and vehicles to experience the three dimensional world.And that was curious to me because it wasn't like, again, that's just not a western idea. It certainly wasn't at that time. So I tried to kind of bring those things into my writing. And it really was born out of yoga.I'd go into yoga classes and I'd say, your life is a movie and you're the director and where you put your attention is the camera and the meaning you give something becomes the genre. So you could be filming a comedy, you could be Filming a romance, you could be filming a tragedy, but it's completely up to you.Or I'd say your life is, you know, your awareness is a lighthouse, and your life is an ocean. And where you place that lighthouse is what you get out of life.And I got into quantum physics because of yoga, because this idea of impermanence or intransience or this something other than physical reality as a basis for orientation of identity was just phenomenal to me. And I didn't understand it at first, and I just kept reading it.And then after 11 years of trying to write horror stories, I read Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich over the holidays, December 2016 and into January 2017. And in the first part of that book, he says, what is the purpose of your life? And Tim, I was blown away. That question just knocked me over.Like, my life has a purpose. There's a compass that I can orient to internally. And in that moment, someone had given me.For Christmas that year, someone had given me a whiskey and yoga T shirt because I liked scotch at the time. And I was a yoga instructor. And I said, I'm going to write a book called Whiskey and Yoga about helping people find their purpose in life.And this ties into the mindfulness piece, because after 11 years of trying to write horror stories and realizing, okay, that's not it, now I'm going to write a book about helping people. The first kind of revelation that came from that was, oh, my gosh, I have to share my life with people.And I hadn't had what I consider married and divorced twice. Just a lot of kind of punts into the bleachers, if you will. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, now that's what I'm going to do.I'm going to share my mess and try to turn it into a message. And the first kind of challenge that I had, the conviction that this is it. This is the book that I'm going to actually finish.And the first kind of piece of mindfulness that really came into being for me was, how do I tie whiskey and yoga together? Because besides just an ironic T shirt, if I'm going to call the book that, there has to be something there.And I thought, well, you know, they both tell the story of spirits. For whiskey, it's the spirit, it ages in a cask. And for yoga, it's the spirit inside of us. I said, that's pretty good.And that kind of then led into writing the book and realizing, okay, let me turn my mess into a message. Let me share My story in a meaningful way.And from that, my second book was born, which was called the Lighthouse Keeper, which was about mind mastery. It was really a deeper dive into. Now that I got the monkey off my back and finally finished publishing and published a book.Now let me really step into what it means to be a writer. And that changed. My approach to writing changed dramatically.I wasn't still journaling at the time, but what happened when I started writing the Lighthouse Keeper was I did tons of research on lighthouses. I got really immersed in the subject so that I could write from a place of authenticity.

That's awesome. That is. You're. You're already two books ahead of me. I haven't finished my first. I've got five novels just waiting to get finished.So anytime I talk to somebody that's got a novel already out or has a book already out there, I'm just like, oh, I'm going to cross that finish line. I'm going to do it.

Well, absolutely you will.

Absolutely.Something I want to ask you about is that being in the Marines, were there any lessons that you learned in the Marines that influence your writing practice or your artistic practice? Anything? Because I think we've all heard, you know, writing is. Is disciplined.And when I think of Marine, I think of somebody that's very disciplined. When I think Air Force guy, I think of me. So it's not disciplined.

Yeah, I think it was just. So when I started writing poetry again, I had just become a company commander at Quantico, and I. I was.The psychology class I was taking was a master's level program, and there just been the woman in this class who told a really beautiful story, and it inspired me to write, start writing poetry. And it was awesome because I was just like. And I mean, I was. It was just effusive.Like, I would be at Jiffy Lube getting the oil changed in my car and have an idea for a poem and grab the newspaper and just start writing in the margins, like, oh, my God.And it was cool because it was this spark that I had denied for, at that point, 12 years or so, because I felt like, well, that's not what Marines do. What changed or what I incorporated. I think the lessons I incorporated was it's about resourcefulness.And after 11 years of trying and failing to finish a horror manuscript, suddenly switching GE and writing a personal development book was a huge shift, and it got the job done. So I feel like one of the. I was blessed to take two master's programs while I was in the Marines.And one of those was actually focused on becoming a master at planning campaigns, like a master in the art of war. So we spent an unbelievable year going to battlefields in different countries, learning from Supreme Court justices, PhDs.We studied Clausewitz, we studied all these things. And I feel like I didn't really do it for. I mean, whiskey and yoga was just such a. Can I get this monkey off my back?Instead of focusing on, can I write a book that's going to help people? It was more about, can I finish a manuscript?When I did, and the monkey got off my back, and the book did really reasonably well, I know it helped people. Then it was kind of like, wow. But also at the same time, someone's like, well, how are you going to help people?And I thought, well, that's a good question. I don't really know. I haven't thought about that. So I started writing the Lighthouse Keeper.And in that, I feel like that's where my discipline kicked in, because it was like, to make this authentic, even though I didn't spend time in lighthouses, I researched how they were built. I researched kind of just what it. I got a sense of what it would feel like to live in one, because that's what the main character is going to do.And I would say that the disciplined approach to writing really didn't come into being until the pandemic. So the Lighthouse Keeper came out in March of 2020, at the end of the month, a few weeks after the world had shut down.I'd already had an idea for my third book, and then I spent two years journaling, trying to figure out what that book was going to be about during the pandemic. And that was, for me, where the discipline came in.I say discipline in terms of I was committed to the writing process through journaling because there's something visceral about writing pen on paper that you don't get when you write on a computer. It's just. It's organic.And I realized through that process that part of why I had stopped writing or discouraged myself from writing was because I'm a lefty, and I always smudge when I write, and my penmanship has always looked like chicken scratch. And so I kind of told myself, well, I'm not going to do that.I realize that is the core of what it means to be a writer is to be able to put your thoughts down coherently and have what's up here come down in a reasonable form onto the page. So at the same time, there was the discipline of. I journaled daily 2020 and 2021. But there was also the freedom, the creativity in that.I had journals, you know, especially because we're all working from home at that point. I had journals in my office, I had journal. I had a journal on the kitchen counter, I had a journal in the bedroom.And anytime I had an idea while I was working on this next book, I would sit, I write it down and it was just like. And it was. There's, you know, I think there's a science, there's a structure to writing, obviously, but there's also the artistic piece. And that's.Can be chaotic. And so it's. How do you bridge those two?And that's really the journey of being a writer, is how do you take the chaos of an idea and bring structure into it so you can bring it to life and share it with other people? And that to me is the blending.So I think that probably the discipline was just persistency and persistent and learning what it means to become a writer. And I mean, I journaled between 2020 and the end of 2021.I probably journaled a thousand pages of content just trying to figure out how I was going to tell this next story and trying to figure out what the title was. Because for me, the title is the first outline, the book's first outline. So once I have the title, then I have an idea of what it's going to be.

Oh, absolutely. I'm there with you 100%.Because anytime I'm writing a poem or even the three novels that I have that I haven't completed, or the five I have so many I haven't completed, I have to start with the title. And I always go back to the title and is it. Is the story relating to the title somehow? And that's kind of my North Star with my writing.So that is awesome.

Absolutely. And I went through, I mean, in writing my third book, I probably went through 200 titles. And it was sometimes one would. I get it.Oh my God, this is it. Yes. And then like six hours later, like, no, that's not it. And. But it's wild too, because you realize that's the process. That is part of the process.And I'm a huge fan of Dr. Jordan Peterson, if you know his work. And he was actually here in Durham, North Carolina last week.So I went with a friend of mine and in his latest book, which came out last November, he talks about you kind of have to let some ideas die. And that's what the Journey of a Good title is. Like you have to. It's Edison inventing the light bulb.He went through 7,000 different substances trying to figure out what was going to be the substance before he settled on bamboo that created the first light bulb. But you have to go down that process. There's the discipline to that too, is let me honor this title and see if it sticks.And if it only lasts a couple hours, okay, no loss. If it lasts a couple weeks, that's painful because it's like, I've gone down, I've invested in this, I'm taking my journey down this path.And you realize it's a rabbit hole. This isn't the rabble hole. I gotta go all the way back to the start and start over again. And there can be a frustration from that.But that's also, I mean, that's the process, that's the growth of it. And that in and of itself is part of the journey to discovering and really making anything worthwhile.If it were easy, the journey isn't as rewarding as when you have to. Like, if you told me I was going to spend two years just trying to come up with a title for a book, I wouldn't have written the book. No way.But that's how it happens.

Awesome. I'd like to shift a little bit here and talk about leadership and creativity because you specialize in both of those here.Now, for the outside person, they may think, you know, what do they have to do with each other, but how do you bring leadership and creativity together and, you know, and in the coaching that you do, how do you, how do you merge those two together to, you know, produce an even better leader?

What a great question. It's. It's a combination of science and art. Right. And it's, I think oftentimes the science piece is often very mechanical. Right.It's management and the Marine Corps. We used to say you manage processes and you lead people.And especially whether it's first time managers, I've got some clients that are first time managers or it's vice presidents or senior directors looking to become vice presidents. They all kind of are challenged by the same inherent reality, and that is that the mechanics of management are easy to figure out.You know, I have performance metrics that I am bound to and I have to make sure our team meets those. I have performance reviews, I do. I have just these weekly gates or monthly gates or quarterly gates that I have to go through.And that's a very easy process because it's structured.

Right.

The leadership piece is a little more ambiguous because, and I'll give you a great example.I have a first time manager who I've been working with for a few weeks and we did our first call and she said, you know, I'm trying to figure things out and I've want to work with a team and I've got some people who I really feel like aren't doing great. And I said, well, that's an opportunity you can give them, you know, talk with them repeatedly.And if it persists, then you get to a point where you say, you know, I'm working with you and if it doesn't work out, we're going to have to start documenting your performance. And we met for our second call and she said, well, I told that documenting the performance thing to your, to the whole team.I was like, okay, that's not necessarily what we talked about. But now you've set up this confrontational, adversarial relationship between the team and so now you get to figure out how to diffuse that.The creative part of leadership is it's psychology, right? It's reading your team, it's having a feel. It's not the mechanics of management.It is how do I inspire people, how do I connect with someone who doesn't believe in themselves, or how do I connect with someone who feels like the world's against them or whatever the case may be, but how do I authentically communicate with someone to lift them up to appreciate their distinct strengths and values and perspective of the world and then channel that energy towards the team's ultimate outcome or vision of what we're trying to accomplish? And that is much more a creative element and creative aspect than the structure of management.

Absolutely. And I've always felt that there's a difference between being a leader and being a manager.You know, like you were saying, you're managing process, you're leading people. And in order to lead people, those people have to be, for lack of a better word, because I hate the word inspiration or inspired.But they have to be inspired to follow where you're going to lead them to read a book a long time ago. I've got a master's in theater education. So when you said theater, I'm like, oh my gosh, I, I owe this guy some child support or something.We're like brothers from a different mother or something. But back, back when I was getting my master's degree, I read a book called the Art of Direction and oh, I forget the guy's name that wrote it.But the big thing that I got out of it Was in order to direct actors, you know, you're, you're going to think that you're going to help them, think that they're directing themselves, that this is coming from them. They'll, they'll be better buy in from and outward like that. So whenever you say leadership, I'm like, okay, this guy gets it. This guy gets well.

And that's such a, and that's a, that is such a critical point to hit on, right? It's one thing. That's what I tell my clients. I said, I'm not going to give you the answer. I'm going to ask you the question.So you come up with the answer. Because if I empower you, and I think I understand what you're saying, with inspire, it's more influence.But if I empower you or I show you, well, how do you think you could have done this better and you come up with a solution, then you own that.And it's not ownership, just from accountability standpoint that if you get it wrong, I get to hold you accountable and punish you in some punitive way. It's you, you figured it out. You have this perspective of something that either didn't work out or you need to improve on.And if I can make you own the solution for that, you're seeing it from your perspective. If I tell you this is what I need you to do, you might do it because of the. I mean, and that's what I think you hit on another great point.And that's in the military. That's very easy to do. I got this stuff on my collar. You get this done, end of story.Doesn't work in civilian life, doesn't work in corporate America, and you don't want it to. You really want to say, well, how do you think you could have done this differently? What do you see that didn't go the way it was supposed to?And when they figure it out, they get the solution, and that's leadership. So I love how you said that.

Well, yeah, and it turns the light bulb on form too, you know, because there's going to be a time that, you know, that, you know, your, your, your client or whatever is going to be off in the real world or, you know, whatever.And, you know, it just the minutes that we've been talking, I get this feeling that, you know, you're the type of person that you want that light bulb to turn on for them so that way they can go out and do it themselves instead of holding their hands. That's something in the soon to be veteran population that I noticed when I worked at Fort Belvoir as a transition coordinator.Is that, is that learned helplessness? You know, if I write your resume for you, okay, great, I'll get you a federal job.But what about what happens five years from now when you're looking to get another job? You don't know how to write a resume and you can't call up, you know, you can't call up Tim because Tim's off doing something else.

Right?

So, yeah, awesome.

Love that.

Awesome, man. I need, I need to write a book.

Got them. You're just there waiting for you.

They are. Well, I've got four self published books of poetry out there, so I do have that underneath my belt. So I just got to get the novels done now.You know, we, we've talked, you know, some leadership here, we've talked your mindfulness and all that. But let's talk about, in today's fast paced world, why do we need art? Why do we need creativity?And can that, you know, can that art, can that creativity help us and help us grow ourselves and heal ourselves?

Art is so vital in today's world and in some ways it's really beautiful. I remember before the pandemic, I was guilty of doom scrolling.In fact, my third book was going to kind of be about who we are is more important than what we do. And yet what we do is always shaping who we are. And part of it was born.I would go to like Starbucks or I'd go to Chipotle and stand in line and everybody in line had their phone and was looking down at their phone and I was just like, this is so amazing.And in some ways it is amazing because you see, you know, we, since we both were in Somalia at the same time, I'm guessing we might be close to similar in age. And we grew up when there were three or four television channels and that was the world. That was your snapshot into the world. That or the newspaper.And so you had a very distinct view of what the world was because you only had abc, CBS or NBC or PBS if you want to watch Bob Ross paint trees or the newspaper. But it was very, I mean those were very limited prisms of information and that was your view into a greater world.And now I think I heard a couple years ago there are 3,000 news outlets. And I mean there are, you know, millions of YouTube stations.There are, you know, Taylor Swift has 220 million people following her on Instagram, the Rock. Dwayne Johnson has a billion people and the world is so much bigger. So you see the diversity. I mean, and you see great art.I mean, you see great artistry on Instagram. I see it all the time. And yet the challenge is we live in an attention economy where everyone wants your attention. Everyone is trying to.And how does that happen? Outrage. We get the. You must Five things. You must see breaking news or this tweet. It's all outrage because that's how people.Because people realize you only have a limited amount of attention. And now there are literally potentially billions of resources trying and vying for that attention.When you pull back from that and you realize why the beauty of where we are is, there is greater individuation.The ability to harness the individual talent and individual identity of human being is greater, I think, now than it's ever been because of our shared connectivity across the planet. The trick is you don't want to get sucked into that. Like, you don't want to be pulled into it.You want to contribute to it and do so in a meaningful way. And I think that there are.I mean, I talked about this earlier today with one of my clients that you can go on and see videos of people doing things that have 100,000 followers or likes, and you realize they shot this video just for the purpose of getting likes, not because it adds value to someone's life. So in some ways, when you extract, it's like pulling yourself out of the Matrix, like you're Keanu Reeves neo in the 1999 movie.And you realize it is so beautiful how diverse life is. How do I create from that place what is unique about me that I can share and do so in a way that contributes to other people?And the challenge in today's society that really fosters a deeper sense of calling on the inner creativity. You know, the inner artist within each of us is.I think I saw something now that, you know, there are more books than there are readers in some cases. Like, everybody. Like, I've written books. Oh, yeah. Not in the New York Times yet. Not yet, but that's. That's the ambition. But it calls.It calls on you to really dig inside yourself and say, what is the core of my creative being and how do I harness that? Not just for the purpose of getting likes or followers, but to create my lifestyle, to create my economy. And because that's.There's a great book that came out in, I want to say, 1999 or maybe 2000, it was called the Sovereign Individual. And it was the idea that as the Internet proliferates the nation state is going to decline. And the authors.This started happening with the fall of the Soviet Union and all this other stuff. But it was the idea that you're going to have sovereign individuals.Well, Taylor Swift, 200 trillion million followers, the Rock, 1 billion people on the planet following a single human being. And the ability to do that, to consciously say we're going to follow this individual, that is a power.And it's in some sense a power that we all have. Dwayne Johnson created the rock. I mean, he became this identity through wrestling, through all this other. Taylor Swift created this Persona.We all have that ability inside of us. The act of writing a book is an act of creation. And it's not just an act of creation of the book.It's the journey of who you get to become to write that book. Because that in and of itself is a journey. Every self help book is designed, the first person helps is the person writing it.When Stephen King published Pet Sematary, he was so afraid to publish it because it was terrifying. And he wasn't going to until his wife and the publicist said, you have to do this. And it's probably one of his best books.So today it's so incumbent upon us to appreciate the incredible diversity and the access we have to the world's diversity. And seeing all the different talents out there we need to reflect back on that is really a calling for us to dig deep within us.Not just so we're doing something for the significance or the visibility of it, but for creating something of meaning and a value. And the deeper we dig inside of us to produce that, the greater the products can become.

Absolutely. And we're giving a gift to the world.Anytime we create something like that, that's a gift that did not exist in the world before you gave, gave birth to it, created and brought it into the world. That's.

And I'll give you a great example. One of my favorite bands is the progressive metal band Tool. Yeah, and their last.So they produced an album in 2019, but before that it was 2006, I think was their last album. And I remember it was like one of the things I would check on, at least I felt like a weekly, certainly a monthly basis.When is the next Tool album coming out?

For sure.

When's the next Tool album coming out? Oh my God, so frustrating. And then finally in 2019, the ice started to break and you're like, oh my gosh, they're actually gonna release new music.And it was wild because their music is based On Sacred Geometry. It's very structured and the album was awesome. But it was 13 years of building that and working on it.And so you realize, you know, there are people who produce albums every year and get those out. And if it's quality, that's great. The 13 years that it took for them to write that album is part of the album. Like, to me, that.And that's what I mean. It's still my favorite music to listen to them from.

For sure. For sure. I just. On my nightstand right now, I'm reading a. A book.It's like a 350 page essay on John Coltrane and Miles Davis in the beginning of, of free jazz. And I'm just, I'm a huge John Coltrane fan, one of the biggest on the east coast here.And I was reading through it and the last couple of years of his life, he was cranking out albums left and right. And at the time, people, you know, didn't quite understand it.

They.

They didn't quite get it. Still today, some people don't get it. They just think of him as the Love supreme guy.And I'm like, right, all this other stuff though, last two or three years of his life, that'll blow your mind.

Yeah.

And just to have that kind of creativity. But it took him 40 years to get to where he could crank it out that fast. And he had to be around the right people to do it too.

Sometimes the story of what makes the finished product is so much. It adds so much to the result. Right?It's, I mean, and to me, that is, that's like, I probably could have published something earlier if I hadn't been like, if I hadn't had the life I had. Oh, I could have been a writer. I could have been in Hollywood. Like, that was my dream to write in Hollywood.For me, like, whiskey and yoga was appropriate in terms of a breakthrough to fulfilling a dream that I'd had my entire life. I mean, it was certainly indicative of where I was in my life. The fact that I was practicing a spiritual art and enjoyed a nice glass of Scotch.And yet each book since then has been a progression. And that's, I mean, that to me is the juice, like, taking on, you know, what's my next Moby Dick?Like, what's the next great thing that's going to challenge me? And that in and of itself makes it worthwhile. And as an artist, as any creative resource, you want to grow and expand.Like, I mean, another great example, and I love their music, but Motley Crue I grew up on Motley Cruelty, and every Motley Crue album sounds like Motley Crue, except one. They had one point. They got rid of their. They got rid of Vince Neil's, the singer, and they brought someone else in.And the album was completely different. Like, it was. I mean, it was. There was texture and substance to it because it was a complete departure from girls, drugs and rock and roll. It was.But no one liked it because it didn't sound like Motley Crue. And so they got rid of that guy and they brought Vince Neil back and they did another Motley Crue album.And that's all well and good, and yet there's not necessarily growth in it. It's just like, let's kind of. There is some, but it's not the same as let's take 13 years to write an album and every song is in, like, seven time.And there's. You can hear the structure and organism that goes into it. And that's part of the. I mean, that's part of the growth, too. So. Yeah, I appreciate that.Now you've got me off to start looking at jazz.

Well, I've got all the vinyl right here, so, you know, I'll drive down to Durham. I'll bring it with me. I'll bring my, you know, my turntable. We'll get you all hooked up.

I love it. I love it.

Well, you said something here that, you know, is making me scratch my beard and go, okay, so what is the next Moby Dick for you?Or is there something that you haven't tried yet that you're, like, you know, chomping at the bit to try this, you know, new technique, this new thing of yoga. Or maybe I'm going to try a new genre in writing. Or maybe you're just going to start, you know, blowing a saxophone and knocking us all off.

About two weeks ago, actually, about six weeks ago, someone reached out to me and said, hey, I represent this gentleman. I won't name his name, but he's a Hollywood screenwriter, and he came across your book, the Lighthouse Keeper.And this isn't an offer for work or anything, but he wanted to talk to you about your book. So we met two weeks ago, and this guy's been in Hollywood for 35 or 40 years, and he's, you know, he just started.He said, have you ever thought about turning this into a screenplay? And I said, yeah, I did.I actually envisioned it as a trilogy, like I kind of had, because the book ends not with a cliffhanger, but it ends with unfinished business. And then the pandemic happened and I went in a completely different life path. And so I said, yeah, I mean, I can see that.He says, well, you know, you've already got a great log line. I think I saw it on the sample that you provided on Amazon, said something to the effect that a truth once spoken, can't be unheard.And he said, I can see that on a movie poster. That's pretty cool. I'm like, okay, this is cool.And I'd done prior to the pandemic, I think 16, 17 and 2018, I entered the New York City Screenplay Writers Contest. So they had a contest every year and they'd give you. You went through, I think, three or four rounds.And the first round would be, you have a week to write a 15 page screenplay. Here's the genre, here's the scene, here's your main character. Go. And I think every year I advanced through the first round.I think two years I advanced through the second round once I made it to the finals. And I think the final is you have 24 hours to write three pages, same thing genre, and it's got to be a complete scene kind of thing.So I was kind of like, okay, I could see this. So I'm still working on. So I've got another book coming out here in May and I've committed to. I want to write a screenplay.I want to turn the Lighthouse Keeper into a screenplay because I'm familiar with the structure of a screenplay and the idea of taking this book in particular because it kind of was my shift into. I mean, it's a fiction book, but it's still got a message and theme to it.And it was cool to write really creatively as opposed to Whiskey and Yoga, which was me just trying to make stories out of my life to help people. So my plan is to write at least a preliminary draft of a screenplay within the next three weeks.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited. And this, I mean, this and this, this gentleman was really nice. He said, I can help you with it.You know, if you want to get to the point where you want me to promote it to producers, that's, you know, that's a monetary. You're going to hire to do that.I said, okay, well, let's let me write something first and see if I'm thinking it'll be worthy in Hollywood and then we'll go from there.

That's all, folks. You heard it from, from, From David's Lips to God's Ear. We're gonna get a movie gone. You know, There it is.

The Lighthouse Keeper, coming soon to a streaming service near you.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, my last question for you here, because this has been an absolute joy. Like I said, I.I think brothers from a different mother here, it sounds like it.

Think we've got some common ground.

For sure, dude, I'm telling you. But how do you want to have your work remembered in the creative community? Because, you know, there's.There's going to be a day where Tim's not here, where David's not here anymore. How do you want to be. How do you want your work to be remembered?

You want to pour yourself.

You want.

You want to breathe life into your work. And I think that's my own journey as a writer was a reflection of that. Right. Like whiskey and yoga was helpful. It wasn't to me. It's not a great.It's not a great book. Although that's the book most people want to pick up because it's whiskey and Jorgen. Yeah, Whiskey. Who doesn't like whiskey and yogurt?But it's an easy read, and the takeaways are very simple. The Lighthouse Keeper, you have to dig a little bit. And then my third book, you know, I put.Without going into too much detail on it, I put Thor into the Bible story. Post, kind of post, you know, modern society. But I found a cool connection with one of the Thor movies where there's a reference to King David.I'm like, oh, okay, let me do this. But you realize to become. To become an artist is to devote yourself to your work in any.In any capacity, whether it's musician, whether it's singer, whether it's painter, whatever. And. And you realize when you do that, that ideally it's going to have value and meaning, you know, that that lasts or stands the test of time.

Yeah.

You know, and that's like Nietzsche, the. The philosopher.Nietzsche wasn't really regarded well in his time, and now he's recognized as one of the profound European philosophers of the 18th or 19th century. Excuse me. So really, when.To answer that question, I really think it's about when people read my work and they can realize, my gosh, this came from someone's mind. Like, this product is something that someone created. And really, when you look at all the stories, whether it's.I'm wearing an Avengers T shirt because I'm a huge fan of Marvel, but those movies are products from someone's mind. Those. Moby Dick is a product from Herman Melville, Pet Sematary, is a product from Stephen King. That is something.And that's the beauty of writing or music or anything is it perpetuates like it perpetuates. It just, it persists. Once it's out there, it's out there.I've come to realize that the more you put yourself into your passion, the more people are going to see that, even if it's not immediately, you know, even if I'm not like a New York Times bestseller overnight or anything, whatever. But when you realize that's what the calling is, it's not about feeding people popcorn entertainment.I mean, there's certainly genres and people that do that and write book after book after book, and they're all bestsellers. And that's great for me. It's about how, how deep can I go within myself to produce something that is valuable and meaningful to the world.And that's, and that's really. You see that through the progression of my books.

That's awesome to hear. That's awesome. Here. David, it's been a pleasure having you on here. Thank you so very much for joining me here on Creator podcast.I'm going to do my usual get out of jail free card here. Is there a question that you wanted me to ask or something that you wanted me to talk about that we didn't talk about?

No. Tim, first, thank you so much for having me on. It's been a real pleasure and honor to speak with you.I will be looking for the first child support payment check since we both have a history at Fort Belvoir and Somalia and Darth Vader.

And Darth Vader. And theater and poetry.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. There's so much. No, I don't think there is.I loved the range of your questions and like I said, it's just been honor to speak with you and share my message with your audience.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, that's the interview with David Richards. He's got a couple of books that are out there. He's got one that's on its way that should hit us by the time.Well, a little bit after this episode airs. But definitely check out his website and check out what he can do for you in leadership strategies that are going to work for yourself.And definitely check out his book, Whiskey and Yoga. That one is next on my Amazon buy list for sure. Now, you're probably wondering, hey, Tim, how do you get these wonderful guests?Well, I use a service called Pod Match and I have my affiliate link in the show Note there for you. But PodMatch connects podcasters and guests together and it's a great service.So if you are, you know, needing to be on podcasts to spread your message out, definitely check it out for yourself. If you're a podcaster and you need great guests, definitely check it out.I do receive a small Commission for using PodMatch, but I want to tell you I always have the option of airing these episodes or not. And I'm only going to bring you the best of these interviews. So definitely check out PodMatch for yourself.If you need to have your what you're doing spread across the world. If you have something to share with other people, definitely check out PodMatch. Now, this is messages just for my podcast list.My podcast folks that the hosts that listen to this show, I use a service called Podcast Beacon.What that is, it's a little wearable and they have a ton of other devices that they're starting up like little key fobs and whatnot and even business cards where you don't have to have a regular business card and, you know, hope it doesn't get lost.You can pull out your wearable, your little key fob, your business card and have people put their phone over it and it'll take them right to your website, give them. Check them out over at Podcast Beacon. And again, my affiliate link is in the show notes there for you. It's the best way to share your podcast.Now, on the personal side here, I run another podcast called Find a Podcast about. And that's great if you want to find new and different podcasts because there's millions of them out there.So why not get a recommendation from somebody you trust? You can go to findapodcastabout XYZ and see all the episodes that I've done there, all the podcasts that I recommend there.I'm helping you outsmart the algorithm and find your next binge worthy podcast. And that podcast find a podcast about. And this one is all part of the TKB Podcast Studio.That's my personal business where I help folks lead through the noise with quiet professionalism by helping them start up their own podcast. Check it out@tkbpodcaststudio.com and let me help you get your message out. All right, that's all I have for you here today.I know I had a great time talking with David on this episode and all his links are in the show notes. So go take a look and see what he's doing over in his neck of the woods.He's doing some wonderful things and he's just a great guy to sit and talk with. I really enjoyed my time with him.So thank you David for sharing your generosity with us, your knowledge and just thank you for being an all around awesome guy to talk to.So if you want to be on this show you can email me timothyreateartpodcast.com love to spread the word about what's happening in your neck of the woods. And you know, that way you can help out everybody else that listens to this show. That's what I'm looking to do here.All right, I'm looking at that clock on the wall. It's time for me to get on with my day. I know you need to get on with your day. So go out there and tame that inner critic.Create more than you consume. Go buy a book on whiskey and yoga for the love of God and go out there and create art for somebody you love. Yourself. I'll talk with you next time.