00:00
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 is 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.

00:28
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 Alford.

00:51
Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the rad cast. 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, uh, I told you pre show. I, uh, 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, just been watching.

01:20
I've been creeping a little, you know, I'm not a creepster, but you know, watching, I like to handpick 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 approached me, it came from such a place of confidence. I thought this is someone I can have a good conversation with.

01:50
Um, 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, uh, 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 and I'm like, damn it, man, that's fucking good.

02:17
That's really good. I get like, it's, I like, can you ghost right for me? I think that's just the difference between a true creative and an account manager. Oh, like knife in the side. Yes. Hey, 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, I just got thrown in that box just cause I didn't have

02:45
I want an English major at Clemson. So did you go, did you go to ad school? I know I went to Clemson marketing, marketing major, just, uh, 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. Um, 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.

03:15
control his own life. And I thought, okay, if I'm gonna 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 I would write in these different classes. And I grew up in a creative household, but that's when I started realizing.

03:40
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 copywriting as a trade because in school, I just learned I loved it. Hmm. Hey, well, they say you love what you're good at sometimes, right?

04:07
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 worked for a lot of like contractors. I've done some nutrition companies. There's a lot of those out of Utah.

04:34
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 well the clients and it frustrated me so bad.

05:02
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 he 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.

05:32
Hey man, we've got similar paths, at least to the ad agency business. I'm still, I don't wanna say stuck, almost said stuck. I'm still playing the game. I know you still consult and stuff, but it's an interesting incestuous world, the ad agency business. You gotta 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...

06:01
And I didn't realize 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, what, what, huh? I didn't realize that's how I moved to New York. I started in 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 from one of the larger shops in New York. And that was when I started understanding the inner workings of how some of these shops worked.

06:30
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. It blew my mind to understand the shops work 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.

06:59
probably that Mad Men show didn't help at all. That kind of romanticized the 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, moved to 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.

07:29
You're huge on Instagram, SGRSTK. What the hell does that stand for? I mean, I was trying to do all my research. You know, like I admittedly, I spent a good couple hours on every guest, typically, you know, and, but I don't listen to 17 podcasts. I was like, it was not clear. I'm like, Sugarsteak, Sugarsteak, I don't know, Sargent, Rogers, Stalbach, I don't know.

07:56
You actually guessed it it is sugar steak. Are you fucking kidding me? I think you're 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 You know just to backtrack it might be helpful to understand a bit of my trajectory with the online presence so yeah when

08:26
When I started this SGR SDK account, it was sugar steak. 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 steak with an upside down ice cream cone on it. And just that whole opposites attract kind of thing. It 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,

08:56
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 when you could get severely, you know, backtracked over something you tweeted five years before. And so

09:24
I kept the SGR SDK handle for my screen printing business and I started it on Instagram and I started it on a couple 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. In the end, you just want something stable that looks good. And they thought the joke,

09:52
could be seen as body shaming. 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.

10:20
what I wanted to write without client feedback or without anyone else judging 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.

10:50
But then my headline work and my copy script work would help me 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 overseeing 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 us sitting down.

11:17
And he said, no, my wife and I love your Instagram. And that was the first time my worlds 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 STRSDK and the captain was a nickname my friends had given me earlier in life that I held onto as well. Um, 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.

11:48
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. In, in when I was in Salt Lake, yes, I would agree.

12:08
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, 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, uh, everything kind of changed for me and that's when 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 to me being in the industry and hearing you say this, I'm taking some borrowed interest.

12:37
from your rewards, which is your best work, which has made you Insta-famous, Twitter-famous, whatever you wanna call it, but it's obviously helped your career, helped your social media. The campaigns the clients turn down are the ones that blow up on social media. So any client out there listening, I know some of you are past, present executives, yeah, you gotta push the envelope if you wanna move the needle.

13:04
It's true. So I actually have a folder on my desktop to this day and this folder saved and it's called good fucking ideas and I 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 often when I was doing a lot of new business and I would

13:33
pull up my desktop as the pitch started and I point to 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

14:00
It's still a very solid campaign. 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. Cause then I would have called the client after me and 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.

14:28
That would have that would have been fantastic that would have been awesome. Oh Shit so fucking history man Was that book one in my in chronic log? Yeah order. Yeah But well book one was feel free to quote me in 2015. Okay fucking hit as well I've actually released fucking history three separate times. So that's what threw me off Yeah, there was the original original fucking history is 2016

14:55
I did a compendium to it in 2018 and then I did a full rewrite and combine them because a publisher bought 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 there since that's the 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.

15:23
Give me some, let's give the audience a little taste of your writing. Obviously they're gonna go follow Sugar Steak. Now that I've got the secrets out, I'm sorry, man. That was a pure guess, but here's what I'm gonna say. I'm gonna go on a little bit of a tangent. Living in New York, STK Steak, you know, Steakhouse. So I had that all together. I'm like, this guy is part of New York, STK. I had Steak. Sugar was a little bit of a guess completely, but nonetheless, everybody's gonna go follow it.

15:51
But talk to me about the books. What's 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 gonna write a quoted day book, but it's gonna be really...

16:19
vulgar jokes and just a cop, you know, all my most ridiculous tweets that also might have some pretty solid insight to them, just going to combine into a book. And so I put it together fairly quickly. I had one of my art directors at my agency at 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 that was

16:48
I was like, holy shit, maybe I have something here. And so the next year with fucking history, 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 in my own words and interject a lot of jokes and humor.

17:17
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 me. That's the one that 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...

17:42
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.

18:11
in 2017 when I first moved to New York, someone had set me up a meeting with a literary agent based on 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.

18:35
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...

19:02
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 pep talk to get you through this scenario What would I tell you? And it wasn't until last year after I had my son That I was able to put the book together because I approached the idea if my son was dealing with this

19:28
how would I give them advice? And it gave me a personal connection to it that allowed me to write it really quickly and 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 picked up that book, I read the chapter about it and it really turned my day around. And it's cool to win ad awards and it's cool to get stuff like that, but there's nothing that will make me feel more

19:58
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,

20:21
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 did you, number one, let me ask this two parts while you're kind of digesting that and 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,

20:51
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. Um, I 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.

21:21
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 harsher tone is probably what you're getting at because especially my older work.

21:47
I had a harsh tone because at 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 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.

22:16
and I felt very censored and I felt like I had a very constricted view of the world because everything was viewed for 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.

22:45
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 my early teenage years, probably 16, 17, I was out of it completely. I wanted nothing to fucking do with it.

23:13
And I rebelled 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 a rebellious energy. 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.

23:43
I wanted people to feel like there was 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.

24:11
the way I viewed the world. Cause I tried to see new opportunity and everything. Cause I felt like I hadn't had that growing up. Yeah. I mean, and you gave up on having six wives at a time. I mean, geez, you ha 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.

24:37
The funny thing about that that's actually it's it's funny because it's actually not what Mormons believe It's uh, it's like a unique sect of Mormon called fundamental LDS that believes that but Mormons like the actual Mormon Church You think about it doesn't believe in that but Didn't have multiple was he did at the time but then now well now they've changed their doctrine like every religion does to try and be more modern but

25:01
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 wives, 40 kids kind of thing. That was just a Utah thing. Yeah. And some kind of camp down the road that was getting broke up by the FBI soon. Um, well, the real problem, the real problem with them 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.

25:30
and they'll go bid on construction contracts and they'll underbid all the contractors because they don't pay their kids to work. And so they'll get contracts to, 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 very biblical, you know. Yeah, I have.

25:58
Organized religion and me will never see eye to eye. I understand some people, it helps them go through life and I think everyone kinda needs something to believe in and if that's yours, I get it. But like you're saying, for me, I feel organized religion is largely predatory and it's just something I can't ever support. Yeah, but I'm gonna back up, man. I had to throw my bad Mormon shit in there, but in all seriousness, like,

26:27
We need more voices like yours, like number one that are raw and real, 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. When in reality, 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 that's what's been enlightening for me about your writing.

26:53
And now here and you talk, I kind of understand where that perspective come from and it's just, I don't know. It's a refreshing. I appreciate that. Cause that really has been an intentional choice of mine. Um, especially going into 2020. Um, I talked about this with 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

27:21
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,

27:43
I'm gonna write about this and I'm gonna write against all of this shit because it's just so wrong. So I'm gonna 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? Like why haven't you chosen the side?

28:13
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, then you must be for it. And if you're not absolutely for something, then you must be against it. There's no middle ground. And that is not true with any.

28:43
part of life. All of life, like you said, is gray. 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

29:10
There's a lot of ground in between that needs to be discussed. And unfortunately, social media doesn't allow for that discussion. And it's, 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? Um, but then at the same time,

29:38
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 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.

30:07
Especially when I consider my son. If I think if I were to die, you know, in the next year or two, if some, 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 work out 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 an inspiration to me because.

30:37
I'll admit it, like I get to 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 to alienate. Like I try to, I think if someone asked me what my message is, it's positivity. You know, like,

31:06
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 or 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 from a politics standpoint. And

31:35
You know, it's just because I fucking think everything's great. Like, 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 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.

32:02
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 have at times thought wow I need to just like write a joke or something to lighten this this air on this page right now but

32:21
There is a time for positivity and there's a time for just 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.

32:49
and especially what happened the past couple 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 deceit.

33:18
being ran through the media that I felt it was my responsibility as someone who has worked on the inner 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 are going to agree with it but that doesn't mean you're a bad person I think the majority of people are afraid of being labeled as a bad person most people in life.

33:46
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 their core of their spirit, where no one really wants to be that. And

34:12
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 living a double life, or we're faking who we are in terms of belief, or faking who we are in terms of who we align with. And when you try to live a facade for so long, it just...

34:40
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. Yep. I think you're right. I think mine is more like, uh, I think I swallow the negative and just like it is not to be fake, but it's like, I just.

35:09
Sometimes I go through my feed and I'm like, damn, I almost just wanna be a, I don't wanna be a fake light, you know what I mean? But I do wanna be a light, you know what I mean? And so I have struggled with finding the side of not being fake, but I'm generally positive. I just find, I say this and I say it because I've watched a person that, I don't,

35:37
I can, I think I've been depressed like one month in my entire life. Like, like I really believe that. Like, I don't know why it's not because I'm not 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 live that way, you know? Yeah. And you have, you have the right mindset and I don't know if you've read the book man's search for meaning by Victor Frankel.

36:06
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 psychiatry 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 than unpacking their past or-

36:34
helping people deal with a trauma in their past. If you can help them find a purpose for the future, and for example, someone in a concentration camp, if they can have a reason to wanna 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 or when 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.

37:03
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 as 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.

37:28
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 Dear Captain. It was essentially like Dear Abby 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.

37:55
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...

38:25
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 coming 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 up and stopped doing stuff like that. I canceled my newsletter, I haven't done it since. And...

38:54
It seems to me like you have that same thing when you talk about the negativity online. Sometimes 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, No, that's why I bet it's inspirational to me. Cause 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. This not because I'm not afraid to be me. Like,

39:24
Anybody that gets on 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 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 feel like it'd just be like

39:49
You know, like a vest that I put on to lose some weight and run around the gym in, but yet I can't get it off of me. Yeah. It's like a weighted vest that comes with a chain and a lock instead of Velcro. Exactly. I could take that vest off of the gym, but I, cause it would probably stick with me mentally too. That's probably like, I think that's why I don't engage in it as much or start the fires because it's like, I know that, uh, you know, I'm fucking edgy enough or like, it would bother me.

40:18
You have to do what's called the post and ghost where you just post and then you don't read the comments Oh, oh, it's hard. I do that more and more and more late and I can feed Well, especially from you from your angle too because working in a digital agency Like everything's kind of feedback and metric driven. And so you want to see what people are saying? um 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

40:48
It's not conducive 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 too, 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.

41:18
In the moment, I'm genuinely pretty beaten up, but then I start to get excited because I'm like, oh shit, some good content is going to come from this. I'm 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 I have.

41:44
Kyle, as we're closing down here, and time's important, I wanna be sensitive to that, but tell me this. So, we're marketing a business podcast. I wanna give some tips here and maybe get on the sandbox. 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, like.

42:10
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 thrown around quite often. Um, so do you get it? I mean, it's you. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't rub. It doesn't rub me the wrong way because I come from the ad world. I understand what's, I understand what's meant by it. Yeah. Um, for me having.

42:40
an outlet that allows me to be myself has been more important to my creativity than 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.

43:06
There'll be a band who comes out with an album, they 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 the record label forces them to come up with a different kind of album. They'll get radio play. And I can say this because I worked 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.

43:34
they're beholden to as far as what they have to create or what they can do with their artistic 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. All of my books are fairly different. There's different...

43:58
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 way I wanna create. Yeah, all right. From a guy that didn't wanna admit he's got a personal brand to the personal brand does help. So if you're listening, it does matter. So, and. It does, it does.

44:26
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?

44:50
I don't know. I don't know if you can afford me. Oh, come on, man. I'm kidding. That'd be awesome. It sounds like you got some good shit. I'd be down. Hey, the bigger question is if I write up any ghost writing, like if I've got ideas for books, you know, a lot of good stories, but I might need a, 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.

45:16
Before the right person, depending on what you want to do with that, I would be definitely open to ghost writing because I do think there's a lot of people with 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, author, writer, Kyle Creek working. Everybody keep up with you, brother. I think we've talked about it, but, uh, SGR STK.

45:45
You nailed it. That's the, that's the place to get ahold of me. And I still can't believe you guessed it, but I'm proud you did. First for everything. I've got, Hey, we can't, 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's really pleasure to have you on the show, man. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Hey guys, you know, to find us the rad cast.

46:14
Search for sgrstk. It'll bring up all the highlight clips from today's episode along with the full episode with the captain You know where to find me. I'm at Ryan Alford on all the platforms including TikTok where I'm blowing up Go find me over there. We'll see you next time. Alright, guys