"The Captain" Kyle Creek - Reading Through the Reflections of Reality

 When I started social media and really utilizing it, I didn't want people to know who I was
 because I didn't want my professional career to see something I wrote on Twitter
 and hold it against me because this was like the early days of cancel culture.
 So I actually have a folder on my desktop to this day and this folder's saved and it's called
 good fucking ideas and I probably I haven't looked lately but I've been saving ideas there since
 maybe 2015 and I would take my A content that I knew was too good for a client or too funny
 and I would tweet it instead and that's how my following started.
 You're listening to the radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan
 Alfred. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the radcast. I'm Ryan
 offered your host. We're instigating today, my friends. Getting creative. We're talking books.
 We're talking social media. We're talking to Kyle Creek. The captain. What's up, man?
 Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be here. Hey, you know, I told you pre-show. I know
 you've been around. You've got good social following but you just kind of hit my radar in the last
 six or seven months. I've just been watching, been creeping a little, you know, I'm out of creeps
 through but you know, watching, I like to hand pick my guests and I'm like, this guy's super intelligent,
 a great writer. He's been in the ad game. There's a lot of connection here and I was just like,
 fuck it. I'm going to go captain. I got a fairly popular show. Let's do this. You're like, fuck
 yeah. And I was like, that's what I'm talking about. I mean, just the way you approach me,
 it came from such a place of confidence. I thought this is someone I can have a good conversation
 with because you do get, you know, shows that reach out to you and it comes from like a little
 bit of a timid voice. And the way you just came direct strike with it, I thought, all right,
 this is my kind of person. Hey, I love it. So we're all we're on the same mental plane here,
 at least on some level. I wish I want, I am trying to get, I consider myself witty and a little
 edgy, but then I read your shit. I'm like, damn it, man. That's fucking good. That's really good.
 I get like kids. I like, can you go strike for me? I think that's just the difference between a true
 creative and an account manager. Oh, like Nike on the side. Yes. Hey, it's what happens to
 the best of us. I can't help, but you know, sometimes you get put in boxes when you come out of
 school, you know, it's got thrown in that box is because I didn't have, I went in English major
 at Clemson. So did you go, did you go to ad school? I know, I went to Clemson marketing, marketing
 major, just get old marketing BS. So I mean, what's interesting for me is I actually didn't go to
 school for marketing or advertising or any of that or English. I went to school for business
 administration because I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. My dad was an illustrator,
 kind of worked for himself. And I saw the way he was able to control his own life. And I thought,
 okay, if I'm going to go to school, maybe I'll get a business administration degree so I can
 understand various angles of business. I'll understand accounting. I'll take some economics.
 I'll take some marketing. And then while I was in school, I kept getting A's on all of my papers
 on right in these different classes. And I grew up in a creative household, but that's when I started
 realizing, maybe there's something to this. And I started really enjoying writing papers in school.
 And on the side, I was trying to work for like a local newspaper writing, you know, reviews of
 bands that came to town. And this was in Salt Lake City, Utah. And I just fell into copy writing
 as a trade because in school, I just learned I loved it.
 Hey, well, they say you love what you're good at sometimes, right?
 I mean, that's everybody's hope. The hope is that you love what you're good at. I mean,
 you can love a lot of things that you suck at and they can still be enjoyable, but you can't make
 a living at them. And I do feel very fortunate, especially when I finally broke through into
 advertising. It actually was pretty hard for me because in Salt Lake City, fairly conservative.
 I'd work for a lot of like contractors. I've done some nutrition companies. There's a lot of
 those out of Utah. And I would try to get to advertising companies because I knew that's where
 I could be really creative. And I interviewed at probably every shop in Salt Lake and I had one
 tell me verbatim that your portfolio is really good. We like your style. We like the way you write,
 but we can't hire you because you have finger tattoos. And you're not going to present, you're
 not going to present well the clients. And it frustrated me so bad. I reached out to one last
 agency. And when I wrote a cover letter, I told the creative director that I was applying to,
 I said, listen, I've been trying to get a job everywhere in this valley. If you don't hire me,
 I'm going to say fuck it. And I'm never going to try to work for advertising again. And he loved
 that and invited me out to a bar that night and we hit it off. And that was who gave me my first
 shot in advertising. And I started as a junior copywriter. And a few years later, I was a CD
 living in New York City running a small shop there. Hey, man, we've got similar paths,
 at least to the ad agency business. I'm still, I don't want to say stuck. I almost said stuck.
 I'm still playing the game. I know you're still consulting stuff, but it's an interesting,
 incestuous world, the ad agency business. You know, you got to have experience to get into it.
 I don't even know how the hell I got in. Like, I mean, I went out of Clemson. I think my ex-girlfriend
 worked at an ad agency in South Carolina and she like got me the job. And I'm like, and I don't
 know how lucky I was. And everybody's like, you got a job at an ad agency. You don't have experience.
 You didn't even do an internship. I'm like, what? I didn't realize that's why I moved to New York.
 I started Salt Lake. I went to Vegas for about 11 months. Then went to New York. And we were
 talking about before this. I hired a copywriter for one of the largest shops in New York. And that was
 when I started understanding the inner workings of how some of these shops worked and the internships.
 And you have to go to ad school and you got to work for a couple of years at this level. And you
 can't be a executive or a high level creative director unless you're over a certain age. And
 it blew my mind to understand the shops worked that way. And it not only made me very grateful
 to be at a smaller boutique shop, but it kind of killed a lot of my passion for advertising. And
 like the idea I had of moving to New York and working on Madison Avenue. And probably that
 madman show didn't help at all. That kind of romanticized idea of advertising when I realized
 how these big shops operated was kind of dead to me. And so I saw an opportunity to focus more
 on myself. And that's when I quit my full-time ad job, Moot LA, which didn't really pan out as
 expected. But that's when I started focusing heavily on books and writing for myself and pursuing
 what I really wanted to do with my writing talent. So I know, you know, you're huge on Instagram,
 S-G-R-S-T-K. What the hell does that stand for? I mean, I was trying to do all my research.
 I admittedly, I spent a good couple hours on every guest, typically, you know. But I don't
 listen to 17 podcasts. I was like, it was not clear. I'm like sugar-stake. Sugar-stake.
 I don't know. Sergeant, Staubach. I don't know. You actually guessed it. It is sugar-stake.
 Are you fucking kidding me? I think it's the first person that's ever guessed it. And usually,
 I don't answer that question. So listening to 17 podcasts wouldn't have helped you.
 I can't believe you got it, but
 so I think just a backtrack, it might be helpful to understand a bit of my trajectory with the
 online presence. So when I started this S-G-R-S-T-K account, it was sugar-stake. And at the time,
 it was a screen printing business. I was running my senior year in college. I was screen printing
 T-shirts that had graphics of like a stake with an upside down ice cream cone on it. And just
 that whole opposite to track kind of thing was my first, I'd say, real foray as like a creative
 director. And it was fun. It was something I enjoyed doing. I had a decent online presence. And
 when I got into my first advertising job, I was so stoked to finally be getting paid decent
 money as a writer that I was paranoid I'd fuck it up. And so when I started social media and
 really utilizing it, I didn't want people to know who I was because I didn't want my professional
 career to see something I wrote on Twitter and hold it against me because this was like the
 early days of cancel culture where you could get severely, you know, backtracked over something
 you tweeted five years before. And so I kept the SGR SDK handle from my screen printing business.
 And I started it on Instagram and I started on a couple of other platforms. And when I was writing
 scripts for clients, I remember I had a furniture client, for example, I wrote a script comparing
 dating like looking for a coffee table. You don't want something like too big or too small, you
 know, in the end, you just want something stable that looks good. And they thought the joke
 could be seen as body shaming and they thought the joke could be seen a little too offensive for
 TV. And so I took it and I thought this is too good of an analogy and I tweeted it. And I started
 doing that with more and more of my script content to where my Twitter started picking up followers.
 And I would take my A content that I knew was too good for a client or too funny. And I would
 tweet it instead. And that's how my following started. It started as my outlet to write what I
 wanted to write without client feedback or without anyone else, you know, judging my my copy. And so
 that's where I really, I'd say there was probably my greatest teaching moment of harnessing small bits
 of copy because that was when you had 140 characters on Twitter. And to be able to set up a joke and
 execute in like a witty or unique way in that small character frame helped me a ton in my
 advertising work with writing headlines. But then my my headline work and my copy script work
 would help you with my Twitter. So they kind of fed each other. And then it was probably to the point
 where I mean, it was 2018 maybe I had a fairly large following then. I was at a meeting at a
 Ritz Carlton property that I was overseen as a creative director. And one of the asset managers
 leaned over to me and said, I'm a big fan of your work. And I thought he was just talking about my
 ad portfolio, what he'd seen me do in the pitch prior to a sitting down. And he said, no, like my wife
 and I love your Instagram. And that was the first time my world's had collided. And up till then,
 I didn't have my real name on social media. No one knew me as Kyle Creek. I was just as to your
 SDK. And the captain was a nickname. My friends had given me earlier in life that I held onto it as well.
 So I'm surprised you guessed that. And it's probably a longer backstory than you were looking for.
 But I think it's helpful to know that's where my career kind of came together, but also later in
 life kind of separated a lot to unpack. But you know, the one the key thing that's my takeaway
 there, Kyle, is you didn't have the right account guys selling your ideas. So that's the number one.
 And when I was in Salt Lake, yes, I would agree. It's like we talked about it was probably
 their largest account. And they were very afraid of losing the account. And so whatever the client
 said went. Yeah. And as a creative that's very frustrating. But later in life, once I became an
 ACD and a CD and I was allowed to sell my own ideas, everything kind of changed me. And that's
 why I could do some really fun campaigns and work that I was proud of. But isn't it funny, though?
 It should be rewarding. And it's rewarding for me being in the industry and hearing you say this,
 I'm taking some borrowed interest from your rewards, which is your best work, which has made you
 insta famous, Twitter famous, whatever you want to call it. But it's obviously helped your career,
 helped your social media. The campaigns, the clients turned down to the ones that blow up on
 social media. So any client out there listening, I know some of you are past present executives,
 you know, yeah, you got to push the envelope if you want to move the needle.
 It's true. So I actually have a folder on my desktop to this day and this folder's saved and
 it's called good fucking ideas. And I probably, I haven't looked lately, but I've been saving ideas
 there since maybe 2015. And every new laptop I get, I transfer the folder over. And so there's maybe
 a thousand pieces of copy or scripts or different campaign ideas in there. And I used to pitch
 clients off them and I was doing a lot of new business. And I would pull up my desktop as the
 pitch started and I pointed that folder. And I'd say see this folder called good fucking ideas.
 If you don't like what I'm about to present to you, I'm going to put it in this folder and I'm
 going to sell it to one of your competitors next year. And I started leading my pitches that way.
 And it helped me get a lot of views across because they realized I would do that. And I still,
 every now and then when I'm consulting, I go back and I find stuff that I wrote in 2016 that I can
 update and it's still a very solid campaign. And it would work correctly. And so it's a folder
 I've had exactly for the reason you're saying, whenever I tried to push the envelope for a client
 and they didn't want to, I just believed in it enough to know that someday it would, it would work.
 And I've just been saving them and collecting. See, you needed Robin because then I would have
 called the client after me, you saw that folder on Kyle's desk. If you don't buy this campaign,
 I'm going to call Pepsi. And I'm going to fucking give them those ideas.
 That would have, that would have been fantastic. That would have been awesome.
 Oh, shit. So, uh, fucking history, man. Uh, was that book one? Am I, am I in chronicle?
 Yeah. Yeah. Well, book one was feel free to quote me in 2015. Okay.
 Okay. So I've actually released fucking history three separate times. So that's what three
 off. Oh, yeah. There was the original original fucking history is 2016. I did a compendium to it
 in 2018. And then I did a full rewrite and combined them because of publisher bought the,
 the books from me. And that was the one I released in 2020. Nice. Talk to me about, uh,
 feel free to quote me. We'll start theirs instead of first one. Uh, I know anybody listening.
 I'm talking to Kyle Creek, the captain. Good look on Amazon. Find these books we're about to
 talk about. So, uh, feel free to quote me. Fucking history and the latest speech therapy.
 Give me some, uh, let's, let's give the audience a little taste of your writing.
 Obviously, they're going to go follow sugar steak. I know that I've got the secrets out. I'm sorry,
 man. That was a pure guess. But, you know, here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to go on a
 little bit of a tangent. It's, you know, living in New York, STK steak, you know, steakhouse.
 So I had that all together. I'm like, this guy is apart from New York, STK. I had steak.
 Sure was a little bit of a guess completely, but, uh, nonetheless, uh, everybody's going to go
 follow it. Uh, talk, but talk to me about the books. What's, uh, writing style inspirations, you
 know, so feel free to quote me started at a suggestion of a friend of mine. It basically was a
 combination of all my tweets that I'd written for the two years prior that kind of got fairly
 popular. And I was more or less wanting to mock those quoted day books that were popular at
 the time. And I was like, I'm going to write a quoted day book, but it's going to be really
 vulgar jokes and just a cop, you know, all my most ridiculous tweets that also might have
 some pretty solid insight to them. It's going to combine into a book. And so I put it together
 fairly quickly. I had one of my art directors that made me see the time laid out for me.
 And I self published it and it sold so well that that month of release I made more than I would
 have made my salary at my job. And that was with minimal kind of promotion. And I was, I was like,
 holy shit, maybe I have something here. And so the next year with fucking history, um,
 fucking history was kind of just a compilation of an ongoing Instagram series I used to post
 on Sundays. I called it Sunday school. And I would just share a really random historical fact or
 a story about someone in history who had done something ridiculous or motivating. And I would
 rewrite it my own words and, you know, interject a lot of jokes and humor to make it entertaining,
 but also memorable. And so fucking history I combined into that. I had the same art director
 help me illustrate it. And that's the book that really took off of me. That's the one they got
 the attention of publishers. That's the one that started getting TV producers reaching out to
 me wanting to turn into show. And that was when I started taking my writing career more seriously
 than my ad career. And my personal writing became much more important to me. It was not only paying
 my bills, but it was enjoyable. I could write what I want. I could interject as much humor or insight
 or just random ridiculous bullshit that I would never get away with on a script. I could write
 into a book. And so that book probably is the most pivotal in my career. And then
 speech therapy, the one I most recently did was it was a book that I wanted to write in 2017.
 When I first moved to New York, someone had set me up a meeting with a literary agent based on,
 you know, fucking history selling so well as a self published book. And that literary agent told me
 the idea for speech therapy wouldn't sell. And I kind of believed him at the time. And I thought,
 okay, this book probably won't sell. It might be an idea that I just think is too cool. And
 it's not really something for the masses. And so I shelved it. And then I started trying to write
 it again in 2019. I tried to write again in early 2020 because I still thought the idea was cool.
 And the idea was to take a bunch of random scenarios in our life that we all deal with, whether
 it's being laid off, being broken up with, you know, your pet dying, something as stupid as losing
 your keys or spilling, you know, coffee on your favorite t-shirt, the kind of shit that can
 mentally derail us and seriously affect the rest of our day or the rest of our week or even like
 months of our life if we allow it to. And so I wanted to write this book and it's called Speech
 Therapy that's meant to be, if you came to me as a friend and you asked for a little pet talk to
 get you through the scenario, what would I tell you? And it wasn't until last year after I'd had my
 son that I was able to put the book together because I approached the idea. My son was dealing with
 this. How would I give him advice? And it gave me a personal connection to it that allowed me to
 write it really quickly. You feel really confident about it. And that's the book that just came out.
 And it seems to be doing exactly what I hoped it would. I get messages daily of people saying,
 you know, I was going through this. I've picked up that book. I read the chapter about it and it
 really turned my thing around. And it's cool to win out awards and it's cool to get stuff like that
 but there's nothing that will make me feel more fulfilled as a writer than hearing that I pulled
 someone out of a dark spot or I helped them laugh when there was nothing else in their life to laugh
 about. And as much as I enjoy advertising, there's still nothing that I enjoy more than being able
 to write in a way that truly connects with people. I love it, man. And like,
 how would you classify your writing style? Like, I know, you know, like, we say instigator and we say,
 you know, antagonist and things like that. And like, that comes to mind. But like, how do you?
 Number one, let me ask us two parts why you're kind of digesting that. You know what's coming. But
 what inspired? Where does your point of view come from? Like, you know, the captain, you know,
 that instigates that writes this way has a certain style that came from somewhere. It's all his own,
 which is, I'm sure you're an original and you are. But it's like, but something built your
 perception, your take on the world, your way of thinking, I would think there's been molding
 along the way. It's mostly my internal dialogue. I've talked about this many times before,
 but a lot of my tweets, especially the ones that talk about, you know, how they deal with the
 scenario are advice to myself or they are written based off something that I directly went through.
 And I just find a way to make it feel pertinent for more than just me. And so sometimes it is
 me just off the cuff tweeting something that I'm currently going through, trying to make it
 funny. And then other times it's me reflecting on moments of my life. But I'd say the harsh
 or tone is probably what you're getting at because especially my older work, I had a harsh tone
 because of the time that's how I talked to myself. And I've softened as I've become a dad,
 and I've softened as I've become older because I realized that actually was starting to do more
 harm for me than good. But I think the way I was raised helped shape a lot of my view of the
 world because I was raised in Utah, I was raised in LDS, I was a Mormon. And growing up, I felt
 very suppressed and I felt very censored and I felt like I had a very constricted view of the
 world because everything was viewed with this lens of the religion. And if I was going through
 something as a teenager that all teenagers go through and I wanted advice from my parents or advice
 from one of my leaders, I would always receive the answer in the form of, you should go look
 this up in the scriptures or you should pray about it. And it drove me crazy because what I wanted
 at that time was to have a human talk to me as another human. And it made me feel very misunderstood
 and it made me feel alone. And as I got older, I pushed back hard on organized religion and I
 stepped away from it completely. And you know, my early teenage years, probably 16, 17, I was out
 of it completely. I wanted nothing to fucking do with it. And I rebuilt very hard against it. And so
 for many years, my primary fuel in life was trying to prove to my family I didn't need their
 religion to be successful. I didn't need their religion to be happy. And so that would probably be
 where some of my harshness came from because it came from over a belly of synergy. And the other
 side of that is I wanted other people to not feel alone because I had felt that way for so long.
 And I wanted people to feel understood. I wanted people to feel like there is others out there
 like them. And so that's where I'd say that mold of the two came together to where I had that
 rebellious energy, but also I wanted to genuinely help people not feel the way I did. And it
 definitely shaped my worldview because because I felt so constrained by religion, I opened myself
 up to a lot of things earlier to try and make up for lost time. And it affected the way I viewed the
 world because I tried to see new opportunity and everything because I felt like I hadn't had
 that growing up. Yeah, I mean, and you gave up on having six wives at the time. I mean,
 geez, it's hard to give that up, isn't it? No, not at all. I mean, one relationship is enough
 personal work for me. I had to dig on the, you know, the only good, only bad Mormon joke I have,
 I guess. The funny thing about that that's actually, it's funny because it's actually not what
 Mormons believe. It's, it's like a unique sect of Mormon called fundamental LDS that believes that,
 but Mormons, like the actual Mormon church, we think about it doesn't believe in that,
 but he didn't have most of us. He did at the time, but now, well, now they've changed their
 doctrine like every religion does to try and be more modern, but there's like this far fringe,
 there's a fringe group that still does that. And I saw them often in Utah. I mean, if you
 went to a Costco on a Saturday, there were polygamous families there, five, wife, 40 kids kind of thing.
 That was just a Utah thing. Yeah. And so I'm going to camp down the road that was getting broke up
 by the fifth, be asking. Well, the real problem, the real problem with him is the child labor because
 what they'll do in Utah, for example, is they'll take all their teenage boys and they'll have like
 15 of them and they'll go bid on construction contracts and they'll under bid all the contractors
 because they don't pay their kids to work. And so they'll get, they'll get contracts to, you know,
 do a lot of commercial work by employing their kids. That's the big frustration with them in that
 state. That's the frustration I have with religion in general. That, you know, like, it's like,
 that's okay. You know, like, that's, that's, that's very biblical, you know. Yeah, I,
 I have organized religion and me will never see eye to eye. I understand some people, it helps
 them go through life. And I think everyone kind of needs something to believe in. And if that's yours,
 I get it. But like you're saying, for, for me, I feel organized religion is largely predatory.
 And it's just something I can't, I can't ever support. Yeah, but I'm going to back up, man. I
 had to throw my bad Mormon shit in there. But in all seriousness, like, we need more voices,
 like yours, like number one that are all unreal, but like that aren't afraid to call out, like,
 both sides, like, it's like we've become so everything's like A or B, black or white, whatever,
 win and reality. Every, it's really a lot more gray, you know, and it's like, we've gotten scared
 to play in the middle or whatever. And it, and that's what's been enlightening for me about your
 writing. And now here in you talk, I kind of understand where that perspective comes from. And it's
 just, I don't know, it's refreshing. I appreciate that because that really has been an intentional
 choice of mine, especially going into 2020. I talked about this on a podcast at one point.
 As a writer, I understand the power of the word. I understand what you can do with a well-crafted
 argument. And I remember in early 2020, seeing the kind of fear mongering that other writers were
 doing. And some of them were peers of mine, some of them were people I knew in New York that worked
 for some of these papers. And it frustrated me to see them using their skill in a way to incite
 fear and division. And I told my girlfriend, I said, I'm going to write about this and I'm going
 to write against all this shit because it's just so wrong. So I'm going to counteract what they're
 doing with my own voice, which is larger on social media. And I've received a lot of criticism for
 it. Because one week, people will think I'm very conservative. And the next week, they'll think
 I'm very liberal. And like it just flip flops. Who's upset with me from week to week? And I had someone
 actually write me and say, why aren't you choosing sides? Why haven't you chosen the side? And I wrote
 them back and said, I have chosen the side. I chose the side of people. I'm on the side of people.
 I'm on the side of individuals. I'm on the side of all of us. This whole divisive politics
 stuff is shit. And like you're saying, they've made it out to be if you're not fervently against
 something that you must be for it. And if you're not absolutely for something that you must be
 against it, there's no middle ground. And that is not true with any part of life. All of life,
 like you said, is great. Black and white is so rare. And having that mindset on everything from
 you know, whether or not you should put a vaccine in your body or whether or not you should
 have a child like these, those are very complex topics that can't be explained in a black or white
 demeanor. There's a there's a lot of grounding between that needs to be discussed. And unfortunately,
 social media doesn't allow for that discussion. And it's been at times, it's been very disheartening
 to see some of my work taken out of context, not the way I intended it to be. And it makes you feel
 like, did I fuck up? Did I not explain this well enough? But at the same time, whenever that happens,
 I see it as an example to other people that listen, you can speak up and you can receive criticism
 and your life can go on. And so that's why I continue just to keep putting out my opinions and continuing
 continuing to call things the way I see them because I want to be an example of what is possible
 when you're willing to speak your mind, but also admit when you're wrong, but also have some
 compassion, also have some grace for other people, especially when I consider my son,
 if I think if I were to die in the next year or two of something happened, he could look back on
 a lot of what I've written. And he could probably gain a pretty good idea of who I am as an individual.
 And that motivates me to want to put workout just in case something happens. Like, oh, at least,
 at least he'll have something to look back on and be able to kind of figure out who his dad was.
 Yeah, that's really cool. And I'll say this, man, I mean, you're inspiration me because
 I'll admit it. Like, I get the hide behind the mic a bit with my guests. I have awesome guests,
 and I'm here to let them tell their story. And we do have a second episode that's a little more,
 you know, irreverent business news and stuff, but I've kind of shy away from like taking
 hard stances, you know, not because I'm, I really give a shit, but it's more because I don't want
 alienate like I try to, I think if someone asked me what my message is, it's positivity. You know,
 like, I just want to be positive. And like, I don't feel like I can be positive when people are
 going to take something I say and put me in one box of the other, you know what I mean? And so
 I take inspiration from guys like you that are clearly like in one sentence, like, oh, yeah,
 he must be conservative. Oh, no, he must be liberal. Like, I appreciate that because my mind works
 much in the same way. I consider myself very middle of the road for a politics standpoint. And
 you know, it's just because I'm fucking think everything's great. I mean, I believe in this
 on one hand and believe that on the other. And I'm like, it's, it usually puts me in the middle,
 but it's hard to voice that in a way without being polarizing, you know?
 I think the majority of people would describe themselves the way you that you describe yourself.
 Most people would say they're in the middle. And as far as the positivity aspect, there is
 times when I felt damn like my page is getting really negative because for like the past week,
 all I've talked about is very heavy shit. Right. And I haven't times thought, wow,
 I need to just like write a joke or something to lighten this, this air on this page right now,
 but there is a time for positivity and there's a time for this practical, you know, practicality
 and realism. And I've made the decision, as I just kind of talked about, that I'm always going to
 try and be as most, the most authentic version of myself. And there are times when I'm not positive.
 There are times when I'm thinking about something so deeply that I do feel very negative about it.
 And especially what happened the past couple of years, there's a lot of people deep in the hole.
 There's a lot of people dealing with shit that wasn't fun or lighthearted. And I wanted to
 help them feel understood by addressing it and by talking about the things I was talking about. And
 also from the advertising side of things, I know the way that advertising works and there was just
 so much blatant bullshit and so much misconception and there was so much to see being ran through
 the media that I felt it was my responsibility as someone who has worked on the inner workings of
 that to call it out and to let people know that, you know, you can still have a free thought,
 you can still be an individual, you can still voice your opinion. And some people aren't going
 to agree with you, but that doesn't need you're a bad person. I think the majority of people are
 afraid of being labeled as a bad person. Most people in life want the same thing. They want to be happy,
 they want to contribute, they want to be someone that is seen as positive and fun to be around.
 And when you feel like an online mob is labeling you as someone that's, you know, a baby killer or
 a grandma murderer or you're just a bad selfish person like that hits people's egos and it also
 hits their core of their spirit where no one really wants to be that. And that's the fear mongering
 the kind of stuff that I talked about earlier that caused a lot of people to censor themselves.
 And I just talked about this yesterday on Instagram probably the leading cause of depression in my
 opinion is faking who we are. Either we're, either we're living a double life or we're faking who we
 are in terms of belief, we're faking who we are in terms of who we align with. And when you try to
 live a facade for so long, it just, it will mentally deteriorate you. And I had that situation
 happen to me in 2019. And I know what it's like to try and live a fake life. And a lot of people
 were kind of forced to do that or at least they felt forced to do that. And there's going to be
 a long curve of mental health pulling out of this. Yeah, I think you're right. I think mine is more
 like I, I think I swallow the negative and just like it's not to be fake, but it's like I just,
 sometimes I go through my feet and I'm like, damn, it's like I almost like just want to be a,
 I don't want to be a fake light, you know what I mean? I do want to be a light, you know what I mean?
 And so like I have struggled with finding the side of not being fake, but, you know, but I just,
 I'm generally positive. Like I just find, I, I, I, I say this and I say it because I've,
 I've watched a person and I don't, like, I can, I think that I've been depressed like one
 month in my entire life. Like, like, I really believe that. Like, and I don't know why it's not because
 I'm not a human or something, but I haven't struggled with that because like I just forward.
 Like I'm just like, you know, nothing looking behind all it does is give you a pain in the neck.
 And like, I think that way, you know? Yeah, you have, you have the right mindset. And I don't know
 if you've read the book, Man Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, but he was a concentration camp
 victim and he actually was a psychiatrist before getting put into a concentration camp. And so when
 he was there, he viewed everything from a psychiatrist lens. He wanted to analyze why certain things
 were happening. And he came to the conclusion, he actually pioneered a whole different style of
 psychotherapy where helping people find purpose and future focus is more important that unpacking
 their past or helping people deal with a trauma in their past. If you can help them find a purpose
 for the future. And, you know, for example, someone in a concentration camp, if they can have a
 reason to want to live or a reason to think they need to survive another day, their chances of
 getting out of there are dramatically higher. And he talks about watching specifically around
 Christmas and around people's birthdays. I want a lot of people would die because they'd lose hope
 on that day because they would in their mind think it's another Christmas or another birthday.
 And he would watch a man go from being upright and talking to dead within 24 hours.
 And you have that, it sounds like where you have that purpose and that future focus, where I have
 that most of the time, but also has a writer, I think it's a double edged sword because a lot of my
 work comes from ruminating on things. A lot of my work comes from I like to look back, I like to
 analyze, I like to think of how things came to be in order to give myself something to write about
 and also in order to help with my perspective. And in 2019 leading up to that, I had been running
 an advice column called deer captain. It was essentially like deer avi for a new age. And I've
 been running it for about three years. And the mental toll that took on me because people would
 write me in some very heavy depressing stuff. And I felt the need to try and help everyone.
 I felt the need to respond to every email. I didn't feel like I could leave someone hanging
 when they genuinely reached out for help. And that combined with me leaving my advertising career
 and kind of feeling lost for a bit just completely broke me down. I felt like I was trying to
 fill from an empty cup. I didn't have anything to really keep me focused. And that was my first real
 depressive episode. And probably the greatest lesson I learned from that is not only having a
 boundary. It's why I no longer really interact with trolls on my pages. I used to love interacting
 with trolls. I used to love come back with witty comments and ripping people apart. And then I
 realized that negativity would just carry me into the day. And if I did that before going to lunch,
 I'd have a miserable lunch. And I'd feel the need to check my phone to see how did this troll
 respond to me. So I put a boundary stop doing stuff like that. I canceled my newsletter. I haven't
 done it since. And it seems to me like you have that same thing when you talk about the negativity
 on line. So as you have to have a boundary, it's okay to not feel like you have to speak out. I mean,
 not everyone, not everyone's purpose in life is to speak out about everything. I just kind of feel
 like it's mine. And at times. And that's why I bet it's inspirational to me because I feel like I need
 to do. I'm never going to go as far, but I think we all need to do a little more and a little more.
 Not because I'm not afraid to be me. Like anyone that gets to my podcast, anyone that comes
 in my building, anyone that deals with me, I think they know I'm a fucking real person. Like,
 you know, but the social side, which is, you know, it's just, I don't know. I just don't have time
 to put on you. You described it perfectly. The cloak or the jacket of like the negative weight.
 Like I think it'd just be like, you know, like a vest that I put on to lose some weight and run
 around the gym and but yet I can't get it off of me. It's like a weighted vest that comes with
 the chain and a lock instead of Velcro. Exactly. I could take that vest off of the gym, but I
 I, because it would probably stick with me mentally too. That's I think I think that's why I don't
 engage in it as much or start the fires because it's like I know that, you know, I'm fucking
 edgy enough or like it would bother me. You have to do what's called the post and ghost where
 you just post and then you don't read the comments. Oh, it's hard. I do that more and more and more
 lately. I didn't even feed. Well, especially from you, from your angle too, because you're working
 in a digital agency, like everything's kind of feedback and metric driven. And so you want to see
 what people are saying. I had to wipe myself of that desire pretty early on because I can get,
 I can get into the muck in my comments. The next thing I know I'm in a black lagoon of just
 bullshit and it's not conducive to to my day. It's not conducive to what I want to do with my life.
 But I do agree if everyone spoke up a little more and had the confidence to and that's what I kind
 of hope my stuff does. I hope it inspires you and others to try that because when we do that,
 we're going to realize that most of us aren't alone that there are other people like us. We are
 understood. And that's why I have this view of when I go through something heavy or I go through
 something hard. In a moment, I'm genuinely pretty beaten up, but then I start to get excited
 because I'm like, oh, shit, some good content's going to come from this. I'm going to, I'm going to,
 I am going to write some real masterful epiphany I'm going to receive from this moment right now.
 And so I start to get excited about going through the hard time. Once I'm out of it, once I see
 there's an insight, I start to look back on it with almost like excitement that it happened.
 Kyle, as we're closing down here and Tom's important, I want to be sensitive to that. But
 tell me this. So we're marketing a business podcast. I want to give some, some tips here and maybe
 get on the sandbox. How would, how would you classify what has been the power of building your
 personal brand on social media in alignment with your business goals and things like that? Like,
 you strike me as someone that might roll their eyes at the, at the notion of personal branding.
 However, it's quite clear that you have one and that it's done you well.
 I've heard the personal brand term throw around quite often. Um, so do you get, I mean,
 it's you. It doesn't, it doesn't rub, it doesn't rub me the wrong way because I come from the
 ad world and understand what's, I understand what's meant by it. Um, for me, having an outlet that
 allows me to be myself has been more important to my creativity and anything I've ever done.
 The worst thing any creative wants to encounter is boundaries or feeling like you're chained into
 a box or feeling like you can't grow and evolve as your life grows and evolves. And I think you see
 this happen quite often with, you know, music artists or bands. Um, there'll be a band who comes out
 with an album that get a lot of fans and their next album comes out and it's a different style of
 music. Now other fans hate it and they're like, oh, you guys have sold out, you guys suck. And then
 their recalable forces then to come out with a different kind of album that'll get radio play.
 And I can say this because I work as a tour manager for a summer with some metal bands and I've
 watched this happen with friends of mine. They lose their love for music because they have other
 people they're beholden to as far as what they have to create or what they can do with their
 artistic, you know, outlook on life and having my own presence online and support from my readership
 and fans and followers and friends of mine allows me to whenever I feel like my life is going down
 a different path, I can explore that path, you know, all of my books are fairly different. There's
 different time periods. If you look on my Twitter where I'm talking about very different things
 because I try to live in the moment and also write in the moment. And if I didn't have my own
 personal brand, as you say, I don't think I'd have that freedom to create the one the way I want to
 create. Yeah. All right. From a guy that didn't want to admit he's got a personal brand to
 the personal brand does help. So if you're listening, it does matter. So it does. It allows you to
 be an individual, it allows you freedom and it allows you to be selective with what you get involved
 in. I mean, like you said, I still do advertising here and there. It's on a consulting basis and I
 take maybe half a dozen contracts a year and there are projects that I want to be involved in.
 All right. Well, then I'm going to put you on the short list of contractors here at Radical. How
 about that? I don't know. I don't know if you can afford me. Oh, come on, man. I'm kidding. That'd
 be awesome. I think you got some good shit. I'd be down. Hey, the bigger question is if I write
 any ghost writing, like if I've got ideas for books, you know, like a lot of good stories,
 but I might need to, would you ever ghost write for me? I would ghost write for the right person.
 I've been asked it often and I've never once agreed to it. Before the right person, depending on
 what you want to do with it, I would be definitely open to ghost writing because I do think there's
 a lot of people valuable things to say and they just don't know how to say it. And I think my role
 as a writer is also to help people tell their stories as well as my own.
 I love it, man. Fucking history. Feel free to quote me. Speech therapy. All the writer,
 Kyle Creek, working everybody keep up with you, brother. I think we've talked about it, but
 SGR STK. You nailed it. That's the place to get a hold of me. And I still can't believe you
 guessed it, but I'm proud you did. Hey, first for everything. I got, hey, we're not the rad cast
 for nothing, you know? SGR STK. Go follow this guy. It'll enlighten you. It will inspire you.
 It might instigate you, but you know what? We all need to meet in the middle somewhere.
 Kyle is really pleasure to have you on the show, man. Really appreciate it.
 Thanks for having me. Hey guys, you know, to find us the radcast.com search for SGR STK.
 It'll bring up all the highlight clips from today's episode along with a full episode with the
 Captain. You know, to find me, I'm at Ryan Alfred on all the platforms, including TikTok,
 where I'm blowing up. To find me over there. We'll see you next time radcast.