710: How Can Optimism Help You Overcome Frustration in Your Libertarian Journey?

Brian Nichols  0:06  
How should

How do libertarians deal with being a libertarian? Let's talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Wow. Hey there, folks, Brian Nichols. You're on The Brian Nichols Show, man. Thank you for joining us on of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host joining us live from our BNC Studios here in lovely Eastern Indiana. Don't let the upcoming recession put your company at risk, folks, now is the time to restart your sales and marketing strategies. Figure out your value adds all that fun stuff and more get some extra help by emailing me, Brian at Brian Nichols. consulting.com. All right, folks, how do we libertarians deal with being libertarians? I know that sounds like a silly question. But that's actually a very thoughtful question. If we go into the context of said question, which for today is that today is episode three of three of our restart as I get back into the swing of things here. As we kick things off post daddy, Brian, a post, this is forever, daddy Brian, going forward? Yes, I had the birth of my little girl here just a couple of weeks ago. So obviously getting back into the swing of things, really excited to do that, but also actually kind of goes hand in hand with some of the questions we will be addressing today, which are a wrap up of the audience questions I've been getting from you guys over the past few months, frankly. And I want to take a few episodes here to go through and actually address and answer some of those questions. So if you miss part one slash part two, I guess of those setting up questions go back to Wednesday and Monday's episodes. But to kick things off today. Yes, Brian, how do you deal with the stress and frustration that comes with being a libertarian in a world as often hostile to liberty and indifferent to liberty? Yeah, that can, in fact, be one of the hardest things to to deal with. Because at the end of the day, we understand our ideas, while they make sense. While they work. They're not mainstream, and your average person's a little weary. They're like, I don't know if I can trust this libertarian guy to go ahead and actually give me not just solutions to the problems I addressed, but actually know what those solutions will work. So they are naturally more hesitant to our ideas. But also this goes hand in hand with groupthink. And the idea of wanting to be in a team to be part of your team, it goes back to our tribal instinct of not wanting to be alone on an island, where yeah, we might be right. But do we have anybody else who's on board with us? So you see more often than not more, more people want to gravitate towards those larger groups like the GOP, like the Democratic Party or name Affiliated Organization here, because there are people there that create the sense of community and also help validate. Yeah, I'm on the right path. And frankly, libertarians, we haven't really done too good of a job at getting outside of the libertarian think tanks and libertarian group chats and actually start talking to more people to bring them into our movement. See, we spent a lot of time trying to just good idea people to death instead of realizing it's on us to bring the non libertarians to libertarianism not just for them to see it and say, yeah, it's a good idea. I'm going to hop on board. That's not how it works. That's not how sales works. That's not how marketing works. And at the end of the day, if we keep doing things the same way, we have been doing them Yeah, we're gonna get the same results. So how do I cope with the stress and frustration? Well, I do this, trying to teach libertarians how to actually go outside of our echo chambers and speak to people who while they are not our current libertarian Brethren, if you will, but there may be on board with a lot of the stuff we're talking about this haven't seen the connection from the good idea to solving the problem and actually feeling that the libertarian solution and the libertarian community are gonna be worth their time and efforts. Outside of that, I go to the gym at four 430 in the morning, I'm up and I'm at the gym, working out or doing something with regards to you know, going outside for a quick jog. I firmly believe this goes back to something we talked about last episode where you need to prioritize your physical health and your mental health for that matter, but your physical health is so important and it also helps you deal with the stresses of the world. So going into the gym, lifting weights, challenging yourself, doing cardio, whatever it may be that you need to do, to get that physical stress out of your system, but also to help empower yourself to be a better version of yourself in the future. That's what I love to do. I used to weigh 385 pounds. I saw how limited my life was when I wasn't able to live and do things the way I want Want to do it because my weight was holding me back. So being able to go out and live a truly free lifestyle, it starts in the gym for me. And it also helps deal with the stress and frustrations that we often come across and being libertarians. Also question a follow up to this, how do you maintain your optimism and motivation? Hmm, that's a good question. For the optimism part, I don't know I try to be the change I wish to see in the world, I grew up in a Christian household, I grew up with the ideas of the Golden Rule Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And I guess I kind of I take that a step further it is to be the change you wish to see in the world to be what you want to see the world become. Same idea. You want to treat others the way you want to be treated, you want to be treated fairly, you want to be treated kindly, you want to be treated as a person who has concerns, thoughts, values, ideas, the same thing is true. And we're talking about how do we change the conversation, as a society, if we lead with negativity, the negativity will surround us, it's so easy to point at stuff and say, that's bad, that's wrong, we did this the incorrect way, versus saying, you know, hey, let's build something positive, let's stay more in the realm of building something different and better, versus just pointing our fingers and saying this was wrong. And also, to the motivation standpoint, seeing the success that we're having across the board. Now it is, you know, the eating an elephant, one bite at a time approach. But that's how it works. Revolutions don't happen overnight. They take time, I mean, not talking necessarily a bloody civil war or revolution, but rather, the actual change that requires, it takes time for people to kind of re re reprogram their minds, if you will, to go from what was the traditional status quo, to a new solution, a new way of doing things we talked about, in the world of sales, the biggest competitor we had is not your actual competition, but rather the not doing anything, not making the change embracing the status quo. If we do not go out of our way to help disrupt that status quo, then we're not going to have any success and moving forward. So actually getting people to start questioning that status quo, embracing a different way of doing things. And actually seeing people do that. That's something that keeps me motivated. And we've been seeing over the past few years, especially as we've been talking more about how do we sell our ideas here in The Brian Nichols Show? How do we sell liberty to folks outside of our traditional libertarian echo chambers? That's That's what keeps me motivated to see we are making some headway. So that would be the answer to that question, Brian, what are some of the common mistakes and pitfalls that libertarians make when communicating with others? And how can they avoid these issues, improve their skills and strategies, stop good ideas and people to death, and stop leading with what you think they should be concerned about. I see this way too often. And, man, I've had many a candidate here on my show who run with the big L next to their name. Now, for those of you who listen to the show, you've you've watched me interview quite literally hundreds of people at this point. I'm a very fair interviewer, I

do not try to to really poke the bear too much and run episodes where I disagree with someone from a strategic standpoint. But rather, I'm trying to find ways that we can maybe refrain just in the conversation the way that they're approaching certain situations. But I'll tell you, there have been candidates who they're running for, you know, local mayor, for example, and they're talking about like impacting the the federal war over in Ukraine or the national war in Ukraine, or, you know, talking about our involvement in the Middle East, or just turret stuff that doesn't really impact their role that they're running for, like, what are we doing? Why are we spending our time addressing things that are completely out the purview of what it is that you should be focusing on the local candidate, if you're not addressing the actual issues that your constituency needs addressed? Somebody else will. And that's where we really dropped the ball is that we focus number one way too much on trying to get people to care about the things that we care about. But then we try to good idea them to death, we throw this libertarian book at them, or this economics book at them and say, read this, and you will understand why libertarianism is the best. Great, that's that's just like if I was in a sales, a sales cycle, and I was working in like a detailed, you know, say cybersecurity solution. And I'm talking to an IT director, I'm like, Here, read this 14 Page case study. And that'll answer every question that you might have. No, no. Okay, number one, he's probably got like three other competitors he's talking to, and they're probably doing things in a different way, from a value standpoint versus just trying to good idea or feature and benefit him to death. And that's what we've done way too often is that we think just because we are right in our ideas, and our ideas make sense from a logical and reasoning standpoint, that everybody else would just jump on board but that's not how it works, and go back to when you became a libertarian, how did you become a libertarian? Did you become a libertarian? When somebody tossed that book at you from Murray Rothbard? And said, Read this? Or was there something that happened some specific trigger event that got you thinking about things in a different way? I'm gonna guess it's probably the latter. And if that's the case, you have now an opportunity to be that trigger event that spark that's going to get somebody else to think about things in a different way as well. But it doesn't start with good idea. And on the death, it doesn't start with trying to feature and benefit than the death, and certainly does not begin with you leading it with some particular issue. That is a hot button issue for you. But it's not a hot button issue for them. Third question, Brian, how do you balance your time and energy between your podcast and your other personal and professional commitments? How do you manage the workflow and productivity? Well, for balancing the time and energy, complete transparency, and you know, completely behind the scenes here, I'll tell you, I was having trouble there, I was getting exhausted. And that's why we've done a big change here at the show. No longer are we doing five days a week, we're doing three days a week in the show. Also, I have a little girl now in my family. So that's obviously number one priority for me. But going across the board, I think it's important for us to not just for me, but just across the board and liberty movement to prioritize what is important to you in your life. But also, when I'm talking about how do I go through and balance out the energy in time, a lot of it was going through and making the time saying, I know this has to be done? And how do I go ahead and accomplish that, but specifically talking about what is my goal? What is my mission here, not just for the show. But beyond beyond that, who am I as Brian Nichols trying to create not just a change in the greater liberty movement, but also a change in my community in a change for my family, all this stuff, it all goes towards we talked about earlier with a good performer, I say former are now past friend, Gary Collins, great, great individual, I have so many great episodes with him, please go back and listen to some of them. But he had a great conversation with me about the three legged stool and trying to balance your physical, your mental, but also your sense of purpose and your physical health, mental health and sense of purpose, your three legged stool, and when one of those legs is out of balance, then all of a sudden your entire life is out of balance. So how do we balance things in our life, so they make more sense. And specifically making sure you you carve out the time for those specific areas. Now going into the balance between personal and professional? Yeah, it, it was a matter of making the time but also making sacrifices, right. And I'm at the point now where I think we've done, you've 700 Plus episodes of the show. There's oodles of information and context that you guys can go back through and listen to. But now we're taking a little different approach. We're still bringing on folks to talk about why our ideas make sense, but more so than from a solution standpoint, just as we have been, but now really taking the hard nosed approach to building up a network of good people doing good things, and really raising up those different solutions and those different approaches. So with that, you know, that's, I guess I hope that answers the question for, you know, balancing the time and energy, it is a constant challenge and something I always had to think about. But, you know, I hope that gives some context and then managing the workflow and productivity, big fan of checklists, I go through I mean, literally, I have a checklist right here for my to do's kind of right there. And it's important for us to say important for us, if you're trying to get things done, to prioritize what is the most important thing that has to be done, and only you can do, and there's other things that frankly, can be done by other people or your it's not what you're good at outsource, don't don't spend time trying to become good at something that you're not good at, if it's not a value add for you, and what you bring to the table. So I would say across the board, that's how I manage my workflow and predict productivity. Question four, what are some of the trends and opportunities that you see for the liberty movement in the near future? How can libertarians take advantage of them and overcome the challenges and threats that they face? Oh, so some trends and opportunities? I think across the board, we're seeing right now that more people are starting to question the traditional status quo. Whether that's overtly saying I don't like the Red Team Blue team dynamic or saying something isn't working anymore, or if it was working. I don't know if it is anymore, or frankly, it wasn't working at all. And I'm just not aware of it. Right. And to that the curiosity but also the questioning that people are having right now because they're seeing real time systems and stuff. structured environments break down before their eyes and a lot of this really kind of hit the the accelerator with COVID right COVID opened up everything has showed everything behind the scenes of how corrupt how dirty our systems currently are and how really they'll do anything to create a traditional narrative to push down our throats. So more people are saying Hold up, something's wrong, whether it's the way public officials approach public health, whether it's The way our schools went through and trying to, quote unquote, educate our kids, talking about government arbitrarily shutting down people's businesses based on who was and was not considered essential. And then, of course, the biggest one across the board, which is government trying to force people to get a jab in their arms or to go to work to provide for their families. That was like the ultimate red flag. And a lot of folks woke up because of that. And fast forward to where we are today, in 2023, that hasn't gone away, there is still that questioning, there's still the opportunity for us to reach those people who are saying this doesn't make sense. And I am actively questioning our status quo, talked about this last time, right? The status quo, that is who we're trying to upset, it's not a competition of a competitor. It's not, you know, different feature or service from that competitor, it is not doing anything, it's sticking with where you are currently, and just saying, Yeah, this is good enough, there are more people right now who are in that window of change, or at least trying to enter into that window of change. And it's for us to now go ahead and talk to them. Now, one of the biggest threats that we face in that environment is that there are also people be beyond the liberty movement, who see this as an opportunity as well. And they're gonna go out of their way to try and recruit people towards their values towards their solutions. And yeah, that's gonna be scary as well, because some of those people are gonna be hyper left, and they're gonna be able to enter in with emotional appeals, and get people who are currently questioning things to agree with them, we have to meet them in that playing field and that Battlefield, and just do better at it. And frankly, if we're not entering into those conversations, if we can, you know, if we're arrogant enough to say, our ideas are so good, that we don't need to invest in going out and trying to sell our ideas to people, then we will lose, and that will happen. So that's definitely gonna be one of the biggest threats we experienced. And to overcome that, how do we do it? We sell liberty by meeting people where they're at, on the issues they care about our final question for today. How do you cultivate a loyal and engaged audience for your podcast? How do you interact with your listeners, and provide value to them? Great question. And I'm glad this isn't the last question because this actually goes right into what we've really done here at the show over the past couple of weeks, month or so and really has been behind the scenes for the past six months or so as we got ready to make this transition is number one, I am a firm believer, again, good people bring out the good and people. So starting a starting off here this past week, we started our Facebook group, where if you want to join the Facebook group, become one of the members of that group who are good people trying to share what you're bringing to the table in a networking environment, but also to promote those ideas that I think has been huge dollar 99 a month. I mean, goodness gracious, less than a cup of coffee from your favorite cafe. And that has been very important. I see in terms of establishing more of a community relationship. But also in terms of being consistent right on the episodes. I

mean, last week is my first true week off of no shows at all, in like, three years, something like that. So for me, it's been consistency, but also constantly bringing you guys value. I don't want it to be a situation where you are like, Okay, this gas again, like I heard, I've heard this before, I want you to constantly be hearing new new ways of doing things, different approaches, that we'll be successful again, both in the world of politics, but also in the world of culture, how do we change people's minds beyond just the good ideas, and it goes through what we've been bringing from solutions and different guests we have in the show. And frankly being there to engage with the audience, whether it's you know, on social media, whether it's through your email, whatever it may be constantly being there to have that dialogue, but also to build those relationships going to different events, meeting you face to face. I'm all about that. So that's what I've been doing for the audience and then going forward, you know what we're gonna be doing also in the Patreon a lot more long form content with our guests, we're having a show behind the scenes, some sneak peeks and also giving you longer form episodes. So I hope you know as you guys go through, you're getting value from that as well. So again, email me, Brian at Brian Nichols show.com Let me know and let me ask you what can I do better here at the show? What would you like to see the program do differently? How would you get more value from the program? I want to hear it email me Brian at Brian Nichols show.com or message me at B Nichols liberty, Twitter or Facebook either one works but please just go ahead and let me know and if you're joining us here on the video version of the show, drop it down below in the comments YouTube rumble Odyssey or sovereign I want to go ahead and hear your thoughts so with that being said if you are watching us here on the video version of the show please do me a favor hit that subscribe button and little notification bell so you'll miss a single time we go live which speaks to by the way next week we are kicking things back off with our guests here on the program so make sure you hit that subscribe button so you're not missing a single time we go live but with that being said it's all I have for you. Thank you for returning to the audience here this past week. I know I missed you guys but definitely was a good reason for not having the show with the birth of my Little girl here so otherwise thank you for just being the best darn audience we have here in the greater liberty movement and with that being said Brian Nichols signing off you're on The Brian Nichols Show we'll see you tomorrow

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