The Profitable Creative, with Christian Brim

In this episode of Podcasting in Professional Services, John Tyreman sits down with Christian Brim, founder and CEO of The Core Group, author of Profit First for Creatives, and host of The Profitable Creative and The Chris Project podcasts.

Christian shares his journey of pivoting his 30-year-old firm to focus specifically on creative professionals and how he ended up launching his own show after guesting on other podcasts failed to spark the deep conversations he wanted to have. They explore the psychology of money in creative industries, the transformative concept of category design, the true value of business entertainment, and the haunting personal tragedy that inspired Christian's raw, unfiltered podcast on founder mental health. In this episode, you'll learn:

• How sharing ideas on money mindset led Christian to launch his own podcast
• Why creative professionals struggle with money shame and non-linear thinking
• How category design focuses on being different instead of just being better
• Why Christian is taking a podcast hiatus to retool his show's strategy
• How a client's tragedy inspired a raw podcast on founder mental health
• Why business podcasts must strive to engage and transform, not just educate

Subscribe to the Profitable Creative podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Welcome
01:15 Front Toward Microphone
02:36 Core Group Origins and Niche
05:29 Creatives and Money Mindset
08:34 Category Design Pivot
12:22 Profitable Creative Podcast Strategy
30:05 Chris Project and Closing Thoughts

This episode was produced by Red Cedar Marketing.  Need help launching and running a business podcast that actually produces results? Visit www.redcedarmarketing.com. 

Transcript

Christian Brim 0:00

you get a book out there, well, congratulations, you and 300 other thousand people put out books, that month on, on Amazon, so now what? you gotta promote it. And so we went on the, the podcast where I thought that there would be, you know, potential customers as listeners. And there was nothing wrong with the shows. but the ideas that I had in the book, the ideas around money mindset, around profit first, and, the, false paradigm that, being profitable and being creative were contradictory, those weren't, those weren't the conversations they wanted to have or, and we were having. So that's why I said, "Well, I'll just start my own show."

John Tyreman 0:47

Welcome business podcasters to another episode of Podcasting in Professional Services, the podcast for business podcasters. I'm your host, John Tyreman, founder of Redcedar, where we build media brands for experts like you. Today, my guest is Christian Brimm, founder and CEO of The Core Group and the host of the Profitable Creative and the Chris Project. Welcome to the show, Christian.

Christian Brim 1:13

Thank you for having me on, John. Pleasure to be here

John Tyreman 1:15

first, I think you were telling me before we started recording, but can you give our listeners the quick story behind the shirt you're wearing?

Christian Brim 1:23

Well, yes. it says front towards microphone. It is a Claymore, anti-personnel mine. And I was at a, a convention conference in Dallas earlier this year called Military Creator Con. And, it was the first year they'd done a standalone event, and they invited me to speak and, and I was at a workshop, and they had these shirts for free, and I'm like, "You know, that shirt is awesome. and, and I'm gonna have to have it." I have had, one person, in a crowd say, "Cool shirt." but it's a very niche thing, right? Like, I mean, you, you gotta get the context for it to make sense.

John Tyreman 2:04

Sure. And, folks that are watching this on YouTube can see the awesome shirt, but if you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts, check out the YouTube channel so you can see Christian and I have this conversation. so w- well, Christian, I think what's cool is we're both coming into this conversation already having a little bit of rapport. I was a guest on your show. I'm also a client of the Core Group. so it's cool that we have that existing rapport. We can kinda jump into this. but our listeners, they might not know of you and the Profitable Creative and the Core Group. So, well, let's, let's introduce them. So according to your LinkedIn page, you founded your firm almost 30 years ago, which is crazy. can you set the stage for our listeners? Tell us a little bit about the Core Group and the kinds of businesses that you serve.

Christian Brim 2:49

I, I started out long ago, in the accounting, services business as a franchise, in 1997. And, always have worked with small businesses, helping them with, you know, compliance-related accounting things, taxes, payroll, bookkeeping, those kind of things. About three years ago We decided that we wanted to, really pick a target market. And, we decided on creative professionals as, as our target. And we, we did that with this very high-level MBA analysis of asking the question of: Who are our clients that we most like to work with, and see the most value in what we do? That was, that was our deep MBA-type analysis. And, what kept rising to the top were these creative professionals. And so we said, "Okay, we'll do that." y- you know, there's-- I'm not gonna lie, there's been a couple of times over the last three years that I'm like: Why did I do that? I should've gone with plumbers. but the I... What, why I did it, and, you know, I think, I think over the last three years I've, I've come to realize that I had this resonance with, with creative professionals, you know, people that were passionate about what they did and wanted to make a business out of it. It wasn't just about paying the bills. you know, every business has to do that if they're gonna survive. But creative professionals had this, this spark that, that I really identified with. and so, we, we work with creative professionals. We're, we're in the middle of doing a huge pivot, on what we do for our, our clients. and I can talk about that if you wanna talk about it, but I'll, I'll finish the story by saying, th- two years ago, I published a book, "Profit First for Creatives," a derivative of Mike Michalowicz's book. And I went on podcast. I, I'm not a podcast listener, I'm still not. and I went on these as a guest to promote the book, and I, I, after about a half dozen of them, I'm like: I'm not having the conversation I want around this. And so I said to myself, "I'll start a podcast." And, did that, having no idea what I was doing. And I'd still argue two years later, I'm not sure that I still know what I'm doing. but that's how I got here

John Tyreman 5:29

Okay. So, let's compare-- First of all, I wanna compare and cr- contrast creatives to plumbers. So what, what's, what's frustrating about creatives that you think plumbers would be a little bit easier?

Christian Brim 5:39

Well, I'll be honest with you. the reality is the vast majority of owner-operated businesses, creative or not creative, ha- ha- struggle with numbers, right? The, the, it's, it's, it's a necessary evil. it's something that you've got to have done, but it's not something you embrace. And for 29 years now, I've, I've always known and really been on a mission to take business owners beyond that level of, it's just to make sure your taxes are done and you're not in trouble, and you're not paying too much in tax. You know, that, that, that whole paradigm to how do you use that information to inform your business decisions? I, I knew that was what really was missing from all business owners, and it still is missing, d- frankly. but the difference with the creative business owner is a lot of them come to the business with some additional baggage around, money, and it usually shows up in, in a couple of different ways. The first is there, there's oftentimes shame, which is weird, shame around money because, they've been told, "Well, why don't you get a real job? What you do is not real work." Right? Like, that, that, that whole, you know, creative work is not real work. there's, there's this second nuance that, you know, it's not universal, but creative business owners tend to think less linearly. They, they, their, their, their brains don't gravitate towards spreadsheets and numbers the way, say, accountants or engineers do. and so there's this shame struggle around, like, "I should know this better. I should be able to, to know more and do better with my numbers, but I, I just can't seem to figure it out." and, and then there's this third element where it's like some of, some creatives think that profit somehow, the money somehow taints the creativity. like that if I do something for money, that somehow makes it less creative. so there, there's, there's some, some nuances in the creative professional's mindset that make it a, a distinct problem.

John Tyreman 8:11

Interesting. Interesting. And so, yeah, and so that's where I can see how some education around value pricing and understanding the value of that creative work and the reframe that needs to happen. Because, you know, cr- creative, the creative process comes naturally to creative people, right? And there are others who are willing to pay for that. all right. I want to explore what is the, the pivot? You, you hinted at that. So what's the pivot that you're in the middle of doing right now?

Christian Brim 8:43

Well, so we, set this up at this Military Creator Con. there was a workshop, a day-long workshop with two individuals, Christopher Lockhead and Mike Damphousse. I had never heard of either one of the individuals, but they are older than I am and, multi, published authors. Chris has got 15 books. I don't know how many Mike has. and I'm like, "How have I never heard of these guys?" And they volunteered to come to this event because it was associated with the military. Mike's a veteran, Chris is not, but just because they were passionate about the veteran community. And they did this workshop on category design, which is what both of them do. And it, it really crystallized some things that had been running around in my brain for a couple of years, and they gave me words to, to, to describe my feelings. and essentially category design is creating a business that is different, not just better. And the, the-- you see this all the time, but the category design is about creating a new solution. So the examples that he used, there were several in tech, so you can, you can think Uber, you can think Airbnb, but it applies to any, any business model. one example he used was, Gojo, the liquid soap. didn't understand that is a three-generation business that was started by a husband and wife, Flo and Jim, I think. I don't know, Flojo. Gojo. Not Gojo. Gloria and, anyway, Gojo. The... Yes, I'm saying the correct words. Anyway, Gojo, the wife was, worked in a factory, and she would go to clean up at the end of the day, and all there was was this nasty bar of soap. And so, she invented with her husband liquid, liquid soap. It wasn't the same thing as, like you've got on your bathroom counter now. It was an industrial application, right? And, this, this business has thrived on creating something new. I mean, soap isn't new, but what they do is solve the problem of cl- clean hands. And what that meant three generations on, where the grandmother, the, the granddaughter, is running the business now, they created Hand sanitizer. They own Purell. I had no idea that they own Purell, right? But it was all around obsessing over solving this problem of clean hands, right? As opposed to saying, "I'm gonna make a better soap." So that's, that's the paradigm that I left there with, and so it's, it's, We've been f- leadership team for the last two months has really been dialing in on what is missing from the marketplace, what i- what is not being solved that still needs to be solved. and it's, I, I'm, I'm not ready to share what we've come up with, but we've got the problem. we've just started working on the solution, and I'm very excited for it to launch later this year

John Tyreman 12:09

Will you be making an announcement on the Profitable Creative podcast?

Christian Brim 12:13

Oh, absolutely. Yes.

John Tyreman 12:14

I guess listeners will have to tune in, especially the creative professionals that are listening. So, that, that's totally, totally cool. Love the teaser. so we, we've been talking, Christian, for, you know, 12 minutes now. We haven't really dived into your podcast. I'd love to shift gears a little bit. You mentioned three years ago you went through a repositioning, and I'm, I'm, I'm going out on a limb here. Is that when you've decided to-- That's when you decided to focus on creative professionals? So that happened around the time that you launched the podcast. That was 2024.

Christian Brim 12:48

it was a year before.

John Tyreman 12:50

Okay.

Christian Brim 12:50

Yeah, So so the, the first year was really just kind of to feel out what was going on and, and then the team came up with this idea of, "Well, why don't we write a book?" And I'm like, "Well, okay, let's do that." And never had written a book, and that was a, an entirely, novel, painful process.

John Tyreman 13:11

Nice pun

Christian Brim 13:12

got the book out there, and then of course, you know, you get a book out there, well, congratulations, you and 300 other thousand people put out books, that month on, on Amazon, so now what? it was you gotta promote it. And so we went on the, the podcast where I thought that there would be, you know, potential customers as listeners. And there was nothing wrong with the shows. It wa- But, but the ideas that I had in the book, the ideas around money mindset, around profit first, and, and the, false paradigm that, that being profitable and being creative were contradictory, th- those weren't, those weren't the conversations they wanted to have or, and we were having. So that's why I said, "Well, I'll just start my own show."

John Tyreman 14:05

And so you decided to have those conversations and you launched The Profitable Creative in 2024 out of that. It looked like early on you were publishing about weekly, and then you made the decision to publish more frequently than once a week. And by looking back, it looks like it was like a Tuesday, Thursday cadence. What, what went into that decision?

Christian Brim 14:31

I, you know, I wish to say that, well, I would like to say that that was, you know, like really smart, and there was a lot of thought put into that. It was, it was, it was simply, you know, talking to other podcasters is like, well, you know, the more you, more you put out, the more downloads you're gonna get. And so it was just a more frequency equals more downloads. That was, that was it. And I'll, I'll go ahead and say we're, we're on a hiatus. We, we haven't recorded in a week. We're, we're, we're taking a hiatus, for the summer. We're not pushing-- We've got several episodes in the can, but we're not putting anything out. We're, we're doing that intentionally, to see what difference it makes. Because that was the other thing is we built this thing without any real strategy behind it, and it's, we th- we think it has an impact, but we're not real sure what that impact is. The direct attribution is not a lot, so we're kind of doing this experiment. But while we're doing the experiment of not putting out more content, we're also re-envisioning what the podcast should be like, all right, what, what is the strategy behind this? are we having the right types of guests, producing the right kind of content, having the right kind of conversations, to, to support Core from a marketing standpoint? I, I don't, I don't think there's been anything wrong. I think I've had some very brilliant guests and very brilliant episodes, with what we've done, but it wasn't overly intentional. It just was, yeah, kind of an afterthought

John Tyreman 16:18

one thread that's emerging for me in my conversations with podcasters is, podcasting can be as much of a sales investment as a marketing investment. And what I mean by that, it's, it really is a vehicle to take relationships to the next level. So going from a LinkedIn connection to a podcast guest to a collaborator to a client, right? You know, that's a thread, you know, that's a common path that I've seen across my client portfolios and the business podcasters that I've talked to. so you mentioned that the attribution wasn't a lot, but has the podcast netted new business for you?

Christian Brim 16:59

Absolutely. Absolutely. I, I think, we, I, you were a guest after you became a client, but I think y- you're an example of how it could work that way. I, I will tell you, I was a guest on a show very early on, two years ago, when I was promoting the book, and, I, come to find out, and he was very upfront about this, which was very odd to me, and I can't even remember the podcaster or the podcast name. But essentially, he used the podcast as a sales tool. Like, he only had people on his show that he wanted as customers.

John Tyreman 17:42

Sure

Christian Brim 17:42

And that kind of turned me off 'cause like, I'm like, "That's not, that's not the vibe I'm going for," right? but I don't, I don't think that you should throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think, I think conceptually there's a place for it

John Tyreman 17:59

Yeah, totally. And I, I think that like you think, if you think through the different personas, for lack of a better term, you know, prospective clients, people that represent your ideal client absolutely should be a persona that you pursue as a guest. But I think referral sources, other people that have expertise that is valuable to your target audience, so thinking of things from like a tangential point of view. I think for, for accounting firms, it's also like bringing in people from your team onto the show can be a great, not only to showcase like the expertise internally to prospective clients, but I've also found, and this was kind of unintentional, when I was a, a, a host of a podcast at a digital marketing agency in the early 2020s, I would interview internal subject matters within the agency on, you know, technical topics like SEO and paid media and analytics. And, it turns out that those conversations had an impact on our recruiting pipeline.

Christian Brim 19:04

Absolutely

John Tyreman 19:05

senior level candidates who reached out and said, "Hey, I listened to your podcast and sounds like you got some really smart people on the team. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to reach out and have a conversation."

Christian Brim 19:16

Yes.

John Tyreman 19:17

so what, what are the different kinds of guests that you've had on, and how do you approach the types of guests that you bring on your show?

Christian Brim 19:25

Well, you know, at first it was, you know, we signed up for Podmatch, and it was really people pitching us, right? a- at the very outset I was, you know, like whoever I could get on the show. I, I had my daughter, she's a figurative oil painter, and, I had her on the show, which was, it was a humorous episode, to be honest with you. I did have a couple of team members from Core on there, and interviewed them. But as I, as I got into it, I started to, actively reach out on LinkedIn, people that I thought were interesting in the space. Now, not to say that wasn't like they, they could or couldn't be clients. That wasn't, that wasn't the, metric I used. It was like d- do I find them interesting? Do I think that they would have an interesting perspective? And, you know, because I wasn't really dialed in from, from the beginning, I had a whole... I mean, I'd had, I had everybody from authors to, people that worked in, out-of-home media, which I didn't even know what out-of-home media was, but, you know, essentially billboards and those kind of things, you know, all over the place. And I think w- when we reconvene, I think we're going to be even more targeted in, in the guests. and we might have to dial back the frequency to once a week if, you know, to keep the quality where I want, and, and not focus on just n- the numbers. You know, that, that's, that's a vanity metric. It's like looking at, you know, website views. It's, it's not, it's, it, it's not, it's not necessarily important. It could be, but it's not necessarily important.

John Tyreman 21:12

Yeah, there's a lot of factors and qualifying criteria that would make podcast downloads and views important in that context. So, what has been-- You know, I, I-- Podcasting is awesome. This show is all about podcasting, but sometimes it can be a little frustrating, and sometimes it can be aggravating. So I'd love to hear from your perspective, what's the worst part about podcasting?

Christian Brim 21:38

Well, I, I, I think I'd say w- the worst/most unpredictable is you'd never know... Well, the way I do it, I don't necessarily know what the episode's gonna be like, in the sense that I don't have a script of questions. it is very... the way I describe it is I have a conversation until I find something interesting, and then I pull on it. and it, you know, you just never know what you're gonna get. I've had some really low-quality episodes, some that I didn't even publish, like, this isn't even worth putting out, right? but surprisingly, you know, I never got to the point where I felt like I needed to do pre-screening calls, or, or something like that to make sure that I got good guests on. I had one author that came on the, the program and, and if I had d- That was the other thing, I didn't do a lot of research on my guests before they showed up. And I had an author on there, and as he's responding to some questions early on, he keeps saying Shakespeare. And I'm like, like, "What is going on?" And then, I, I realize, and he, he tells me, he, he, he says like, "I'm, I'm sorry, I have Tourette's." And I'm like, "Oh, okay. That explains the random Shakespeare," right? And I'm like, "Let's, let's go di- let's dive into that." And so he, he told me all about that experience, about Tourette's. To be honest with you, I didn't know a lot about it. and it was a fascinating interview. It really had nothing to do with him being an author. and, and so like it's not necessarily a bad thing that I didn't prep. you know, I... Hopefully I wouldn't have excluded him from the show because of that. but it was, it was a complete surprise.

John Tyreman 23:32

You know, and, and I think what that does is that story really showcases, the personality aspect of podcasting. Your personality is more of a conversationalist, like you mentioned, and then you find something to really dig into. Whereas there are other, you know, some of my clients, and there's, there's a lot of different podcasters out there, they, they need to be more structured with their questions. and then everything in between.

Christian Brim 23:58

Yeah

John Tyreman 23:59

I, I just find that so, so fascinating. And, and I-- Just a quick go on a soapbox real quick. I, I think that podcasting i- and the personality behind it is going to become more and more important as AI continues to evolve, as we see, you know, we question what we see on the internet, right? And these, this is a very human conversational type of forum where we can kinda showcase our human qualities. What do you think about all that?

Christian Brim 24:32

Well, I think that's a brilliant observation. I, I, I think there is 100% a trust gap, in general, and I think it's gonna get worse. I think that if you're just doing a podcast to come to some predetermined content, like I'm gonna have a, a client on and I'm gonna ask him, like, "How did court change your life?" You know, like, that, that is too easy to reproduce, right? W- from a technology standpoint. and it's gonna ring hollow, you know, e- even if it isn't AI generated. It's gonna f- you know, feel, you know, feel scripted, right? I, I, I don't know that it has to be as completely, maniacal as, as mine, where it, there's zero structure. you know, I'd, I'd like to have a little more intent behind what I'm doing as opposed to it just be... You know, to be honest with you, over the last couple of years, the Profitable Creative and the Chris Project have been kind of a creative outlet for me. So it's, it's kind of been a hobby. I love talking to people. I love hearing their stories. very rarely do I talk to somebody that I don't find something interesting that I can dig deeper. Like, you know, and I learn things, right? so I don't wanna lose that aspect of it because that's what gives me fuel. you know, if, if it's just a grind of, "Oh, God, I gotta go do another recording," then that's, you're gonna show up with the wrong energy. but at the same time, does it have to be a free-for-all? No

John Tyreman 26:06

there is a little bit of structure to what you're talking about though. maybe there's a little bit more of a container that you need to create around it, less, less so than like specific structure 'cause, you know, different people, and again, that goes back to the personality of the host and what kind of environment did they thrive in, where if you put too much structure on someone who does like to have more freeform conversations, that can limit the, like the personality factor of the content, right?

Christian Brim 26:34

Absolutely.

John Tyreman 26:35

and

Christian Brim 26:36

But I think I, I mean, I, I, in just thinking this through, I think it, it really is more being about more structured with who I have on the show. that, that, that I think is, is probably the, the, the first thing that we will do is be more systemic and have more, not rigid, but, you know, more guidelines of like who are we trying to get on the show

John Tyreman 27:00

So do you foresee "The Profitable Creative" being solely that interview-based show, or do you con- are you considering varying up episode types, like having more monologues or bringing on a recurring co-host, for example?

Christian Brim 27:16

think that's a, those are both brilliant suggestions. I, I did, I think I've done one solo episode on The Profitable Creative, and it actually is one of the most popular. but for me, it had no, I, I, it wasn't really interesting. Like, I, I went, I went on there and I, I talked about S corps, and, and I, I, you know, I've intentionally steered away in the content around, you know, technical stuff, right? Like, we don't talk about what's deductible for a creative business and what's the latest tax strategy. Never did that. But I did that one episode, and I just, I, I didn't script it. I freeformed it, and I was just basically, you know, it, it, it'd be like if you came to me and said, "Hey, I'm thinking about, being an S corp," and then I just kind of unloaded you, on you my, my experience with it. That was really what the episode was. But it, it, you know, to your point, it, it's probably something I need to do more, and not necessarily just me, but it could be other team members

John Tyreman 28:21

Yeah, I mean, I, that's one thing that I've n- n- kind of noticed is like Podcasters sometimes can get into a rut with thinking that there's only one path that they can go down, and they've structured their show in this way, and that's all it can be. But really, like, you're in control. you know, you're not beholden to anything, right? As a... You know, you can release a monologue episode. You could have, you know, a past guest back on to have a continuation of a conversation. and so, like, it's cool to see, podcasters that I talk with that, light bulb moment go off. They're like, "Oh, yeah," like, "maybe I should try that."

Christian Brim 29:02

as you're saying this, I'm, I'm thinking like, I used to listen to a lot of radio, right? And, and usually it was talk radio and it was, you know, a lot of sports talk where, you know, you get these idiots call in and, you know, give their opinions, right? but, but, but even like you, when you, when you just kind of o- open the box and say, you know, you're producing entertainment at, at, at its, at its, at its core, right? And so like going back and looking at, you know, the Orson Welles and, you know, the, the, the, The Day the Earth Stood Still, right? Like old radio, old TV, Carol Burnett Show, Dave Chappelle show. You know, like y- what is possible? Like it doesn't, it doesn't have to be just what I've, I've landed on

John Tyreman 29:52

Yeah. Oh man, I, I had something there. it'll come

Christian Brim 29:55

Dave Chappelle? It was the funniest show ever put onto TV,

John Tyreman 29:59

I completely agree with that 100%. He is just, he's a master comedian. But, um, Christian, what, what I'd love to do is you mentioned "The Chris Show," and I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about that. So that was a, a passion project for you. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Christian Brim 30:17

I started the podcast at the same time 'cause I was like, "Well, if I'm gonna do one, I might as well do two." but it strictly was to scratch my own itch in that I had this client story that had haunted me, and the word haunted is, is real. Like, it, it haunted me for over a decade. And I was like, I was telling some of my entrepreneurial colleagues about it, and they were like, "You totally need to do this show." And I'm like, "Oh, is anybody gonna

John Tyreman 30:48

the story?

Christian Brim 30:49

Okay, so the story is I had a client m- decades ago. he was in his mid-50s. He had a successful manufacturing business, and he got to the point where he was burnt out. That's not the way he defined it, but he ha- had come to the conclusion that he needed to hire a president to run his company so that he could literally go back to the lab. He was a self-taught te- chemist, and he wanted to go back and tinker in the lab. And he invited me to this interview with a president candidate a- at lunch, and this president candidate, who I had never met, s- tells, regales us with the stories of marital infidelity with strippers. And which I'm like, "Hmm, that seems like an odd thing to lead with, but okay." we, we left w- we, we left the lunch and Chris, it's The Chris Project, it's named after him, he, he called me and he said, "Well, what do you think?" And I said, "Well, I think if he cheats on his spouse, he'll cheat on you. Don't hire him." And, Chris went ahead and hired him. And fast-forward a year, and the president gets arrested for, attempting to bribe a contract officer, and he said it was all Chris's idea. And Chris ends up with a three-year hitch in federal penitentiary, and a few weeks before he was scheduled to be released, he took his own life It w- no, it was an awful story. It was absolutely awful, and I'm having to deal with the grieving widow who, who has no idea about the business, and like, it was just, it was awful. And I was replaying in my mind, did I, did I not say something I should have said? Is there something I could have done? And I never talked to him after he went to prison. and so I'm not sure where his head was, but with, with the, the lens of time, I could see that he was burnt out. And like, he's, he went down this road of making bad decisions, not because he was a bad person, because, but because he was just by himself and he wasn't having these conversations with anybody. And so that was what the Chris Project was about, was about entrepreneurs having those conversations that they don't wanna have around mindset and mental health and, and those kind of things. And I didn't know if anybody was listening to it u- until, one of my friends from college who I had not talked to in probably 20 years, he reached out to me and he said, "You know this episode about that guy?" And, I'm like, "Yeah." Not, th- this episode was this, guy that was an, a, a, a raging alcoholic. I mean, I could not believe the amount of alcohol he consumed. and I, he said, "That guy's story was my story." And I'm like, "Really?" And so we had a 45-minute conversation. I, again, I hadn't talked to him in a long time. And I got off that call and I'm like, okay, I, it, it did what I wanted it to do. I, he may be the only one that listened to it and it impacted, but you know, I think there are more obviously. But that's why I did it, and that's why I still do it

John Tyreman 34:12

Even if, yeah, I mean, you, it helped one pers- if it helped one person, it'll likely help more, and so that's validation right there. I do remember what I was thinking, earlier, and it was, entertainment value and the, the point that you brought up ab- around that. And, you know, stories like the one you just shared, it's, it's captivating and not entertaining in the sense that, you know, I'll get my popcorn and sit back, but it's entertaining and it's engaging, and the fact that, wow, this is, you know, this is real stuff that could really happen. and then I s- I, I got a comment on LinkedIn the other day, "People don't listen to business podcasts to be en- entertained." A- and I could just call bullshit on that. I mean, yeah. I mean, people listen to podcasts to be entertained. Business conversations can be entertaining,

Christian Brim 35:05

You want me to show up and read an accounting textbook? I mean, like, what, what do you, what do you mean? I mean

John Tyreman 35:11

So, so I th- I think like whether you're talking about, you know, creative entrepreneurs and how they handle money, or whether you're talking about the mindset of an entrepreneur and mental health of, of business owners and entrepreneurs and business people, you know, I think that it can and should be entertaining. Otherwise, you know, why is anyone gonna show up and listen?

Christian Brim 35:31

Well, yes. And to your point, entertainment is not always, you know, comfortable, right? It's not, I mean, you know, th- nobody went to Schindler's List and thought, "Oh, I'm, I'm happy." but they, they absolutely were entertained. Yes. They were engaged, they were moved, they were transformed. And, and that's, I think, a broader term to define entertainment. Entertainment is not just distraction

John Tyreman 35:55

Exactly. Exactly. so I, I'm glad that that came back to me, and I'm glad that we could kind of bring that, bring that back. Christian, I just wanna thank you so much for being an amazing guest, for sharing your experience hosting The Profitable Creative, hosting The Chris Show. If folks that are listening, definitely subscribe to both of those podcasts. check out Core Group. Connect with Christian on LinkedIn. Christian, is there anything that we didn't touch on today that you think it would be worth our listeners, hearing?

Christian Brim 36:24

doing a podcast for your business absolutely is a great strategy. I, you have to be patient with it, and you have to, I, I think to your point, you know, think outside the box and, and tinker with it. but I f- I find it very compelling. I find it very fulfilling. and, and I, I think hopefully after we retool, more productive

John Tyreman 36:50

Excellent. Well, you're, you're nearly 200 episodes in. It sounds like it's been working for you, and so I'm excited to see what that retool looks like at the other end of this year after you take a little bit of break over the summer.

Christian Brim 37:02

Yes

John Tyreman 37:03

Well, Christian, thank you so much for, for your time and for being a guest. And again, if folks that are listening, connect with Christian on LinkedIn and check out The Profitable Creative wherever you get your podcasts.

Christian Brim 37:14

Thanks, John