314 Timothy Kimo Brien - Uncovering the Therapeutic & Healing Benefits of Podcasting & Art Therapy

[0:00:02] Harry Duran: The Tim Bryan, host of the Create Art podcast. Thank you for joining me on Podcast Junkies, Harry.

[0:00:07] Timothy Kimo Brien: It's great to be here. I love your show. And I've been a follower of yours since eight since when? About 2018. You were at yes, and and I was doing a brief talk about how to interview guests, and I used you as the example. And there you were in the audience. I said your name, you know, raised up the fist. Yeah. And I was like, okay, I finally made it in the podcast.

[0:00:44] Harry Duran: Do you remember how you found my show initially?

[0:00:48] Timothy Kimo Brien: How did I find your show? I was looking for shows about podcasting, and I had ran into Daniel J. Lewis, Dave Jackson, and yours popped up. And I saw your logo there, and I was just like, that's striking. And sure enough, there you were. And I was like, oh, wow. So I caught you, like, in that 2017 2018 time period there and been a fan ever since.

[0:01:24] Harry Duran: I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And it's important, I think, as podcasters to we sort of like live in this box where we're recording. Like, I'm in my office, you're in your office. And it's nice to have that interaction with the outside world, but sometimes it's challenging because it's remotely and so going to events like Mapcon, especially Mapcon shout out to Joe Pardo. It's a shame that's not around anymore. I don't know if he's going to bring it back. But what I love about that is the intimacy. I think it was capped at 120 people, and it was one room single track. And then we all had lunch together and it was just was it one day or two days? It was about two days, yeah. And it was great because, like you said, everyone got a chance to speak. I got to meet great folks that I wouldn't have otherwise probably met at a big conference like Podfest or podcast movement. Annette Bone comes to mind and who traveled all the way across the country from California to be there for those early ones. And so I still have a couple of my Joe Parto T shirts.

[0:02:33] Timothy Kimo Brien: Well, I'm officially working right now. Otherwise I'd have on one of his It shirts.

[0:02:39] Harry Duran: And I always called him the hardest working man in podcasting because it was so funny because he would be like McGing. He'd be videotaping. He'd be doing some socials. He'd be introducing the guest. He'd be coordinating like the next speaker. He'd be getting lunch ready. I was like, Joe, he'd have a couple of people helping him. But still, he was sort of like those buskers that can play the harmonica and the tambourine and the drum and the guitar at the same time.

[0:03:03] Timothy Kimo Brien: When you go to his Facebook page for Indie Podcon, there's a picture of him in the middle of a Map con. I don't know which one it was, but he's got his baby girl there, and she's that every time. And I'm like, Joe, you're an honorary twin dad podcaster me and bestowed that upon him.

[0:03:28] Harry Duran: Talk a little bit. Where's home for you right now, just for the benefit of the listener?

[0:03:33] Timothy Kimo Brien: Oh, sure. I'm in Fredericksburg, Virginia, which is about 40 miles south of DC. I never say how many hours it is because you never know because the traffic here is horrendous. But where I'm actually from is from Chicago. But I moved out here back in 2013 to Harry, my college sweetheart. And the rest, as we like to say, is history.

[0:04:01] Harry Duran: Yeah. And I imagine Mapcon showed up on your radar as a local conference at the time.

[0:04:06] Timothy Kimo Brien: Yeah, it did. I had been working with a good friend of mine, Kyle Bondo, and he had a local meet up here. And I saw it and I said, you know what? That can't be the guy's real name. I'm going to go and find out. That's not a real name.

[0:04:27] Harry Duran: That's funny.

[0:04:28] Timothy Kimo Brien: So I go there, and sure enough, there he is with Monsters of dirt and all of his mountain bike racing stuff. And it was an instant connection with he and I. He took me to DC Pod Fest in 2017. And I remember it to this day because two weeks previous to that, I had neck surgery. So I had my C four through C seven fused. So my voice was just like they took my vocal cords out and wrapped it around my ankle. It was horrible. And everybody was like, you're not doing voiceovers, are you? No, I'm not. But I did that. Ran into Joe there and ran into Chris. Yeah, Chris.

[0:05:19] Harry Duran: Chris.

[0:05:21] Timothy Kimo Brien: And he said Joe was like, hey, I've got this thing called Mapcon going on in a couple of months. You want to show up? Yes, absolutely. So I did that. And here's the funny thing, and this is how much I love the podcast world that we imbibe in. So I go to that podfest. Now, Chris is known by just about everybody and their brother and their aunt and their cousin.

[0:05:48] Harry Duran: Yeah.

[0:05:50] Timothy Kimo Brien: I go to Mapcon. Chris walks up to me, he goes, how's your neck? How's your voice? How's your twin girls? And I was like, how do you remember that? Unfortunately, I haven't gone to an actual in person podcast yet, but I will be doing the Podfest Global. I love that program, so I'll definitely be there for that.

[0:06:16] Harry Duran: Yeah. I think this sounds interesting because you mentioned Chris, you mentioned Joe, and there's something about something in your DNA that you need in order to put an event together. It's a special skill set. It's not for the faint of heart. And kudos to Chris for making his way through COVID like it was, which is like, the worst possible event you can have as an event organizer. Like, I mean, tons of people went out of business, and he was able to pivot and keep it alive. And the podcast movement guys same as well. So it's always fun. And they all have their different flavor now. Like, I've been to so many different ones now. And I think they all have their own character. I still think there's space for the smaller ones, sort of like the Map con vibes. It's interesting to see. And that's Jennifer that runs the DC podcast, I think, as well. Does she still running that, or is that on Paul as well?

[0:07:08] Timothy Kimo Brien: I believe it's on hiatus for right now. I know that they were going to do she podcast in DC. I don't know if they already did it or if that's coming up. But yeah, podcast right now that's on hiatus. And I'm hoping it comes back soon because that's a good one, too. For me, it's like the intermediary between Mapcon and podcast. A couple of tracks going on the last few years, and it was still very intimate. But you got everything you needed as a podcast. You had your community there. You had your hallway conversations, which were fantastic. And I just really enjoyed it. So I know Jennifer listens, start it back.

[0:07:59] Harry Duran: And if she's not listening to this specific episode, we'll tag her when we promote it and be like, hey, at minute eight, listen out for your name. I haven't been doing as much of a good job. But just from a marketing perspective, I would always keep track of when we mentioned other podcasters because I know they're active on social. So I'd be like, hey, Jennifer, you might want to listen to minute eight of this interview with Tim because you're mentioned and that gets her excited to go get one free down. You get another download as a result of that. As podcasters, you have to do all the little things right because there's no silver bullet. So I'm wondering if we could rewind the clock back a bit and talk about your podcasting journey and how you entered this world. And what was the first start look like?

[0:08:44] Timothy Kimo Brien: Well, I'm going to take you back even a little bit farther than when podcasting started. Okay? So in the late 90s, there was this movie called Pump Up the Volume. It had Christian Slater in it. He was playing radio, pirate radio is what he was doing. And I was thinking about that. I was like, wow, that's pretty cool because I moved so many times around the country. So my friends were spread all over the world. And I was like, man, if I could do that, that'd be great. And I'm not Christian Slater. I don't have his looks. But I have a better taste in music, I think, anyhow.

[0:09:28] Harry Duran: And you can't do a great Jack Nicholson impersonation. Like, you can.

[0:09:34] Timothy Kimo Brien: Not might even cry. So I see that movie and then about 2005, I get hooked up with this podcast. It was a poetry podcast, and it was on Blog Talk Radio. You can call in, read your poems, get it critiqued right there. And they asked me to be part of their collection. They were doing a print collection. I was like, yeah, sure, what the heck? Why not? And then I was like, well, this seemed pretty easy, so I think I'll give it a try.

[0:10:06] Harry Duran: Yeah.

[0:10:07] Timothy Kimo Brien: And I did that for ten years, from 2006 to 2016, horribly. I don't have recordings of it.

[0:10:19] Harry Duran: Oh, man.

[0:10:20] Timothy Kimo Brien: No, you don't want I hear that's.

[0:10:22] Harry Duran: A common issue with a lot of the folks who are on block talk radio just getting some of their past audio.

[0:10:29] Timothy Kimo Brien: Well, I actually got it, but then my hard drive decided to take a dump, and my external hard drives took a dump and like, okay, well, it's the universe telling me, yeah, no, nobody needs to hear this ever again.

[0:10:46] Harry Duran: But quality wasn't that good from what I've heard. Also, it was horrible.

[0:10:51] Timothy Kimo Brien: Well, you're doing phone, and at the time, cordless phone. I didn't even have a cell phone. Oh, man, you know how that goes. So the quality was bad, the content was horrible, and I wasn't taking it seriously. So fast forward to 2016, and I'm there with Kyle and taking the class and learning how to be serious about it, how to take it seriously.

[0:11:25] Harry Duran: If you think about the conversation with Kyle and this idea of taking it more seriously, what were some of the key points of that conversation that stood out for you in terms of what you felt you needed to change?

[0:11:37] Timothy Kimo Brien: Well, I needed to have my Why is the first thing, why am I doing this podcast? And I'm a quote unquote hobbyist podcaster, but in my day job, I get paid to do podcasting. But that was the first question he asked me. He's like, Why are you doing this? And it wasn't an accusatory. He was curious. Why are you doing this? At the time, I was working for the army, and we had an art therapy thing going on for soldiers getting out of the army. And a lot of those guys and gals, they would do this art therapy. They paint a picture, draw, do a drawing, and go, hey, Tim, we know you're the artsy fartsy guy. How does this look? I'm like it. Looks fantastic. Why aren't you up in a gallery? And they're like, Nah, I don't understand all that artsy fartsy crap.

[0:12:37] Timothy Kimo Brien: And that's when I found my why. That took about a year or so. We had a name change for it too, because it used to be Kdoi podcasting, which nobody knows what Kdoi means.

[0:12:54] Harry Duran: Sounds like a registration.

[0:12:56] Timothy Kimo Brien: Exactly. But it stands for Chemo's Den of Iniquity, which I thought was, oh, that's very cute and happy, and I get the joke, but my listeners had no idea what the heck it meant. And I was on podcast rodeo with Dave Jackson, and I submitted my show to him. I'm like, yeah, let Dave tear me a new one. Let's go. And he's like, what is Kdoi sounds like going on here? And I was crestfallen at that. I was like, oh my God, you called my baby ugly. And then I changed the name to create Art Podcast. Just to keep it simple. You don't know what Kdy means, but when I say Create Art Podcast, three guesses what, we talk about art.

[0:13:45] Harry Duran: I ran a little test on Twitter a couple of days ago because I asked people to say, drop in just the name of your show and I'll do my best guess to let you know what the show is about. And it's funny because I meant to do an initial honest critique of it, but after about a couple of days, I saw that James Kridland had posted Pod News. Pod News. And I was like, well, obviously everyone knows what that show is about. But I said pod News daily updates about the business of Lagoons. But basically it's interesting because someone had Reimagining Hustle. And I was like thinking about what life was like in the disco days of New York City. And I know that that's not what their show is about, but the point is, when people see the name, they're scrolling through either on Apple podcast or someone has mentioned the name, have you checked out my show? And they're making a value judgment, like it or not, within that 1st 30 seconds, if you have to make them work harder to actually think about what the show is about and just seeing the name or the show and then cover art may help later, but the name is like the first thing you lead with. And when I did my second show, Vertical Farming podcast, I literally said nobody knows me in this industry. No one's going to be searching for Agtech. Smart news with Harry. No one knows who I am. So I got the domain vertical farming podcast. And if you Google those three words now, it's the first thing that shows up in Google.

[0:15:18] Harry Duran: And that was intentional. And now people tell me all the time I was searching for a show on Vertical Farming, I found yours. That was intentional. It's working. And so kind of just circling back to your point. And a lot of times as creators, we try to be creative and witty with our names. And to your point, no one's searching for those phrases. And I think think about the phrases that people are looking for when it comes to their pain point and what they need help with. So I think that's helpful.

[0:15:47] Timothy Kimo Brien: Yeah, absolutely. There's a podcast that I'm working on in development right now with my day job and it's called CBP Talks. And it's all about CBP and our policies and important things that we're doing to reach out to the public. But before I came in, they had some weird stuff going on I was like, Guys, it's the Kiss theory. Keep it simple, stupid. I was kind of shocked that they were going off on wild tangents, because the top guy there, he's former Air Force, and I'm former Air Force. Like, dude, come on. We learned better in basic training. Keep it simple.

[0:16:34] Harry Duran: But even CBP, what does that acronym stand for?

[0:16:37] Timothy Kimo Brien: That's custom and border protection. Okay, right. So probably people closer to the southern border or the northern border would have more encounters, had more knowledge of it, versus people sitting there in Kansas or.

[0:16:58] Harry Duran: Minneapolis, but also just a lot of things. And this might be helpful for what you're working on, because the title is in a very SEO friendly field, calling it CBD podcast. Custom Border Patrol stories leverage the fact that you have Custom Border and Patrol in the title because those are phrases that people would be searching for. So you could refer to it as the CBP. But if you can put it in there, if the purpose is to get more folks looking into it, because not only is Apple and Spot, people are searching for topics on Spotify now, just what to listen to. So I think anything that helps them find it is going to be helpful.

[0:17:40] Timothy Kimo Brien: Well, I'm trying to turn what I like to call this aircraft carrier that we have for the federal government with Qtips. So we're changing the culture, but we will change it, and we will knock it out of the ballpark for sure.

[0:17:58] Harry Duran: Okay, so back to your podcast journey where'd we leave off.

[0:18:04] Timothy Kimo Brien: We were in 20, way back in 2016, hooked up with Kyle, and then after that, I just started getting really serious about what I was doing. I got a good microphone. I got the ATR 2100. I started communicating with other people in the pod space, in the pod sphere, facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff, and just kind of taking everybody's knowledge and absorbing it and then treating it like a buffet. Take what you want, leave the rest. And I was attending conferences, and then, of course, we had the wonderful pandemic hit us that we're still kind of going through. But that's kind of when the pandemic hit, that's kind of where things really started to ramp up because there wasn't much else to do. I'm at home with my wife and my kids. Twenty four, seven. I like podcasting, so really focused on that and met a lot of good other independent podcasters. And basically, I kind of want to save all my recordings now for my girls when they get older and I'm no longer here, because now they're going to have a decade of audio that they can listen to at any time after I'm gone. So for me, it's a longevity thing as well.

[0:19:45] Harry Duran: Yeah, I think a lot of people forget the fact that it's an archival quality to podcasting. I'm working on a show for a father and son the father is a professor in Hawaii. It's called Island Idols. Again, the name is not my favorite, but he's a professor of literature in Hawaii. He's well versed. And so they cover just some books that they've both read together and they kind of dissect the book. But quite honestly, what it's really about is father and son moments. And they've done three seasons now, they're doing now a new season. And again, that's going to be a memory that he's going to have. And he's talked about how this is important for him as an opportunity to connect with his father and have that conversation on the record and forever memorialize. And there's more and more people that are doing that. And when you think about how tradition and stories are passed down orally in indigenous cultures, it's a really important thing to think about just how we share stories. I think about stories that I've asked my parents about their parents, and they're just told to me. And I've captured a couple on a recording, not in a podcast format, but something that I think would be helpful and I think showing people that that's possible. You don't have to have a podcast that's meant to be like number one in itunes if it just has value for you.

[0:21:12] Harry Duran: And to your point, creating this history that's going to be valuable for your daughters to go back and listen to.

[0:21:19] Timothy Kimo Brien: Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, my parents have passed, but I remember some of the stories that they told me and just recently I did some genealogy work, found out that half the stories weren't even true. So I was like, oh, wait a minute, I'm not related to this person. I'm related to this person. Or we've been in Vermont and then we went to Maine, and we originally come from Canada and then France. It's been interesting. It's been an interesting journey that I've just undertaken. But for my girls, I don't want to leave anything to chance for them to wander about. I want them to know, this is what your papa was doing during the pandemic. This is what he was doing after the pandemic. This is what he's doing when he goes into his man cave. Sometimes you hear him laugh or shout or whatnot. So this is what your dad likes to do.

[0:22:20] Harry Duran: What prompted you to join the air Force?

[0:22:24] Timothy Kimo Brien: Well, I grew up in a town called Rockford, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. And I knew at that point in my life I didn't have a whole lot of direction and didn't have greatest relationship with parents. Who does at 18? I don't know.

[0:22:42] Harry Duran: Yeah.

[0:22:43] Timothy Kimo Brien: And so I was like, well, I'm going to get out of Dodge and I'm going to go join the air force. The reason I joined the air Force is because we have a saying in there, we don't invade unless you have cable and air conditioning.

[0:22:59] Harry Duran: Okay.

[0:23:01] Timothy Kimo Brien: But yeah, I joined up there and this chicago boy went down to Texas, and that was a culture shift like you would not believe.

[0:23:11] Harry Duran: People talked slowly, slow living there.

[0:23:16] Timothy Kimo Brien: Oh, my God. And I'm not a drinker, but if you go over to somebody's house and they offer you a beer, you drink the beer. Don't say no, thanks. I don't drink. You drink that beer.

[0:23:29] Harry Duran: Yeah. I'm always interested in experiences when there's a little bit of a culture shock. What was it besides the pace of how life was there? What else was a shock for you when you got to Texas?

[0:23:46] Timothy Kimo Brien: Well, the shock of going into the military is one shock right there. Now having a guy about five foot seven, five foot eight with 2% body fat telling me things about my mama that I didn't know. But that shock in Texas, I'd liken it to going to a whole other country. Nothing against Texas. I love people from Texas. Some of my dearest friends I met while I was in the Air Force, they were civilians, and we're friends to this day, and that was back in 91, 92.

[0:24:26] Harry Duran: Okay.

[0:24:28] Timothy Kimo Brien: But, yeah, Texas is a whole other state of mind, and I enjoyed the friendliness and the openness that I got from the people that were from there, even to this day. There's Larry Roberts, who's in the podcast space, who's a Texas guy, and I've chitchatted with him back and forth. Haven't met him in person, but I can tell you right now, he's a decent guy. He's a really decent guy, and I'll chitchat with him any day of the week. Yeah, Texas a little bit weird. The one story I have about Texas is rattlesnake roundup. I was messed up. So a bunch of buddies and I, we go off base in this little town called Sweetwater, and they're like, yeah, we're going to take you to the Rattlesnake Roundup. I'm like, okay. They take clubs and beat rattlesnakes.

[0:25:29] Harry Duran: Oh, my God.

[0:25:33] Timothy Kimo Brien: Yeah.

[0:25:34] Harry Duran: Wow. Definitely. Yeah. Things are a bit different in Texas. The the time that I felt let the most in this country was when I went to New Orleans. And that was just like, well, I'm almost like in a different country because the culture, the way of living, the style of living, even the language, the customs, it was really fun because you can tell there's a vibe there that's laid back, and they don't take themselves too seriously. They love just, like, enjoying life. And it's really helpful to see that that something like that is accessible and opens your eyes to just different ways of living.

[0:26:10] Timothy Kimo Brien: Isn't that great? I mean, why can't we all live that way? I'm a Midwestern kid, okay? And it's all work, work, work. Go to the grocery store, don't talk to me. But, like, your experience in New Orleans, my experience in Texas, my experience here in Virginia, because it's a Southern United States thing from what I've experienced. Anyways, with that openness, that welcomeness to let people in. So it's much appreciated.

[0:26:44] Harry Duran: You also write a little bit about your experience at the Espresso Europa in Texas and how that sort of opened up some of the creative channels for you as well. So can you talk a little bit about that?

[0:26:55] Timothy Kimo Brien: Oh, absolutely. Espresso Europa, it was a coffee shop in all it is the epitome of a coffee shop. I have not found a coffee shop like this in my 50 years on this earth. Well, it was in Abilene, Texas, and it's just this amalgamation of artists that got together. And we had poetry readings, we had drag shows, we had our in resident painter who he had gone to Abilene mistakenly to Abilene, Texas, instead of Abilene, Kansas. And he was like, Well, I'm here.

[0:27:39] Harry Duran: That's funny.

[0:27:42] Timothy Kimo Brien: But yeah, that was a really pivotal point in my life because in the Air Force, everything was very regimented. If you're not 15 minutes early, you're 20 minutes late. And I could let my artistic freak flag fly with them and oh, my God, did I? And it felt like home there. And I've only had that feeling three times in my life. Espresso Europa, when I went to Paris and the house I'm in right now.

[0:28:19] Harry Duran: And you discovered the surrealist movement you mentioned when you were there as well.

[0:28:23] Timothy Kimo Brien: Yeah, absolutely. It's all my fault. The surrealist movement? No, I'm kidding.

[0:28:28] Harry Duran: You were introduced to it.

[0:28:31] Timothy Kimo Brien: Yeah. I had never been exposed to that, anything like that. I come from a blue collar family, so art was the last thing on our minds. And I remember the shop owner, Gary we called him the Purple Pope of whatever. And he was kind of our guru for surrealism. So I read Andre Brien and a bunch of the other surrealists and I'm like, this makes sense to me. This is an interesting way of looking at the world. And a lot of people misuse the whole surreal thing like the word surrealism or that's surreal when they see something just that's weird. But when you really get into surrealism, you're looking at bringing that dream like state, that dream, the stuff that happens in your mind, in your dreams and bringing it out into the, quote, unquote, real world. It's interesting to study that. So I highly recommend everybody find out the real definition of surrealism.

[0:29:47] Harry Duran: Yeah. One of my favorite classes in college was Arts and Ideas. I was interested in architecture at the time and I didn't get into the architecture school, but I'm always fascinated by design. And at one point I was, like, collecting fonts and this is going back to my Windows days. And so I've always appreciated the aesthetics of design and art and so Arts and Ideas was a great way for me to be introduced. And I do credit it for to your point, opening my mind to the world of all these different artists. Obviously, the Rembrandts and the DA Vinci's of the world and the stuff that they created, and then also understanding these different movements, like surrealism. And I'm a huge fan of Dali, Salvador Dali, and I've been to the museum in Florida, and every time there's any of his works on display at a museum, I always try to make it there because there's something about his work, specifically surrealism, that is that dreamy, subconscious level of things that are happening. Like, if you stare at a dolly, we have one hanging up in our kitchen. Actually, it's a reprint. And if you look at it, the more you stare at it, the more you see things that are what's happening. And I remember reading about it, and if you dig into the specifics, you're like, wow. You're wondering what's going on in their minds at the time that they're painting it. And their ability to recreate that subconscious thoughts expressed on the canvas is really fascinating. So he's definitely one of my favorite artists.

[0:31:14] Harry Duran: So that's why it caught my attention.

[0:31:16] Timothy Kimo Brien: Absolutely. The painter that we had at Espresso Europa, he would do portraits. He did one of Jimi Hendrix and Frederick Nietzsche, which I bought, and unfortunately, I don't have anymore. But he also did one. He sold it to me dirt cheap. He was like, Dude, this one is cursed. Okay. Yeah. So I'm buying this painting off of him, and it looks like just kind of a wooded path, not in the middle of the night, but kind of towards evening. But you look at it and you stare at it for a while, and then you see these ants crawling all over everything. And then you see these skulls, and then you see other things. Oh, this is first. Okay, I got to hide this.

[0:32:07] Harry Duran: Yeah. The fact that it operates at many levels is really interesting because I imagine this latent interest in the creative arts and poetry. And you said you didn't experience it a lot growing up. Is it really just when you went to went to college, when that was, like, awakened what had been lying dormant inside of you?

[0:32:29] Timothy Kimo Brien: Well, I was going to use the Air Force, which a lot of people do. A lot of people in the military use it for their education benefits. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to do my four and get out and go after my degree. I did theater and orchestra in high school. I was kind of the black sheep of the family. Did that. Things exploded while I was in the Air force, of all places in Abilene, Texas. Who would have thought that? And then I got to college down at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and that's where I got my first theater degree at. I got my bachelor's in theater there, specializing in lighting design. And then I went on to get my master's in Virginia, commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. That's where I met my wife. And being in that academic setting. It was interesting because it has a lot to do with podcasting. You're forced to especially with community theater, you're forced to do things with less resources.

[0:33:50] Timothy Kimo Brien: You have to do everything pretty much. You got to do everything yourself, and so you have to be able to make sure you got backups for everything and all that stuff. So that's kind of where this artistic streak in me comes from. And like I said, blue collar background. We didn't really look at the arts that much. It was really looked down upon, but I knew that it was just something inside of me that it had to come out. There was no other way. I'm not being dramatic here. I probably wouldn't be alive if it hadn't come out. And every day I'm grateful that it did. That's pretty much where my impetus for creativity comes from.

[0:34:40] Harry Duran: Well, it's interesting when you start to hear the stories and how you're working with veterans, and obviously some of it related to PTSD stuff and how Art is able to kind of help them work through some of that. So have you thought about how maybe I don't want to make it as grandiose as your mission in life, but because you have that experience growing up in the Midwest, because you've had the military experience, because you've got this passion for the arts. Do you feel like now, the sort of like Venn diagram of all the different ways and all your different interests helping you to bring this forward in a way that's helpful for people who may have been where you're at, maybe a generational thing. But how? You can demonstrate to them and show them the power of the arts from a healing perspective. Have you seen that now over the years, become more of your role in what you're doing?

[0:35:37] Timothy Kimo Brien: Yeah, absolutely. When I changed the name of the podcast to create Art podcast and really found that why that we were talking about earlier used to help out these soon to be, soon to be veterans at the time, with all the experiences that I had, I could talk the talk with them. And that's an important thing with veterans, is that if you can talk the talk and walk the walk, then you get buy in automatically. Kyle Bondo and I one of the reasons we hit it off so well, he's a Navy veteran. I'm an Air Force veteran. I think that weekend or something like that, navy was playing Air Force and football, and of course we beat them. Of course we beat them. Exactly. But it's that camaraderie that we have, because unlike a lot of jobs in the civilian world, your life does depend on the guy or the gal that's next to you. You are putting your life in their hands, so you have to develop some trust. And if they're not the same skin color, if they're not the same sexual orientation or whatnot, doesn't matter that's your life, and you need to trust that person. So all those experiences got me to be where I am at today. And I think by using those experiences and showing people, hey, art isn't artsy fartsy. It's okay not to be okay. It's okay to ask for help.

[0:37:29] Timothy Kimo Brien: It's okay to do art therapy, to work out this stuff, because I've done art therapy too, and it's helped me out a ton. So that's kind of my mission in life, so to speak. That's one of my many missions in life. My podcast.

[0:37:49] Harry Duran: You know, it's interesting, Tim, is that you talk about the term artsy fartsy and the spiritual world. People call it woo, right? So it's interesting because there's, like, these labels that people use wherever they're coming from. You don't know what people's lives and their history have been and how they grew up. So maybe they had to be part of the cool kids, and so they couldn't be associated with things like that, like art or spirituality. But it's almost like a defense mechanism to kind of put it in this box, to say, like, oh, kind of like not denigrating it a bit, but to some extent maybe saying, oh, it's a fun little thing that you do that's a little weird and strange and just to kind of put it in that label. So I think, for me, I've been making a conscious effort to just like when people say woo woo, or not use that space, it's something that, for some reason, it just generates a feeling inside of me because it's like, hey, you're probably saying that because you're uncomfortable with the term. I love it. I'm calling it spiritual, and that's what I am. And I interchange all the different words for whatever you want to call universe, spirit, god, creator, whatever fits and whatever you feel comfortable with. So I think talking about it more and giving it actual credence in terms of that this is a valuable tool in your world, this idea of creating art and the therapeutic benefits of art and then the ability for art to express what you have trouble expressing in any other medium. Like, for example, there's a notebook. I have some here. About one time, I was kind of just feeling stressed out, and I just started doing line drawings in my book, and I would basically be creating, like, a maze drawing. It would look like a maze if you looked at it, but it was just me just kind of like, getting energy out of my I was just kind of, like, stressed.

[0:39:40] Harry Duran: I'm like, OCD, sometimes I'm thinking of so many things, and it was just helpful. And some people like to write. My girlfriend is a great artist. She paints a little bit. She plays guitar, plays play the trumpet. So I think during the pandemic, she bought some paint and some board, cardboard board, whatever it was. And I painted a couple of things. I'll grab one here. Since we're on video, you'll be the only one to see it, but I'll show it to you. I apologize ahead of time to the listener, because this is purely a visual medium. But basically, I've created that.

[0:40:20] Timothy Kimo Brien: Oh, dude, that is nice. That is nice, man.

[0:40:24] Harry Duran: Yeah, but it didn't start. I think I started as this little circle here, and then I was thinking about the sun, but when all is said and done, I was like, oh, it's not bad. But that's the thing about art, and I think it's something that you probably speak to and talk to with first timers is like, there's no wrong way. Because I remember sitting at the table and there's something freeing about no rules in art. Like, can I mix this color with this color? Yes. Can I add some water here? Yes. Can I draw a line here? Can I cross it out and paint on top of it? Yes. There's no wrong answer, and it seemed very obvious at the time, but when you're doing it, there is that therapeutic aspect of, like, there's no way you can get it wrong. And I don't know if that's something that comes across when you start working with folks in this space as well.

[0:41:14] Timothy Kimo Brien: Oh, yeah. You have to. One of my taglines is taming that inner critic. The inner critic is a good thing.

[0:41:23] Harry Duran: It's a good thing.

[0:41:25] Timothy Kimo Brien: But when it takes over, when it stops you cold, when it won't let you even start a project, that's when there's a problem. I have an inner critic. My inner critic is loud. He is very loud. And on occasion, I have to take him out back in the woodshed and we have a conversation. But I think we have been oh, gosh, I'm going to get philosophical here.

[0:41:57] Harry Duran: Please do.

[0:42:01] Timothy Kimo Brien: I think we've been indoctrinated trained through school, through media. That everything. This is beauty, and this is not beauty. And some of the things that aren't beautiful aren't conventionally beautiful. I absolutely love Mark Rothko paintings. Washes of color. We have one down in Richmond, Virginia, which is about an hour south of me. And the first time I saw my first Rothco, I go up there and I got it. I understood what was going on. My wife looked at it and she was like, okay, well, nice paint. Watch for me. I'm just holding back tears going, no, I get it, I get it. But our society, for some reason, doesn't want to let what's not conventionally beautiful out there. They want to shame that if you don't get it right the first time, you're a failure. I failed for ten years in podcast, but yet here I am today talking with you.

[0:43:22] Timothy Kimo Brien: Ten years of failure. Yay. Cool. I had fun. I had fun failing.

[0:43:27] Harry Duran: It's also stigmatizing what people would consider failure, and they're just experiences, especially as an entrepreneur. Since I was starting my company in 2015, so many ups and downs. Thousands of dollars lost on silly ideas and things that I thought would be helpful for growing my business or starting something before I started the agency. Bunch of the equivalent of MLM stuff online. Just like all just weird stuff that you try and you fall down in your face and in the first couple of times. It's painful and it's embarrassing, but it's essentially this idea of just failing forward. I've heard it described as you just get up, you dust yourself off, and you have to set resiliency. And I'm sure in the military, they teach you this real quick because you can't wallow in self pity. You have to keep moving forward. It's this forward momentum. I think that where you start to learn, that didn't work. That didn't work. Okay. You're reiterating. Reiterating and trying something new to get to the point where you're starting to have success.

[0:44:28] Timothy Kimo Brien: Yeah, absolutely. It's all about that moving forward. If it's moving forward one inch a day, that's one inch, and that's enough. Some days, that's good enough. If you can move 10 miles a day, fantastic, go ahead and do it. But if you got that one inch, your goal.

[0:44:45] Harry Duran: Yeah, I talk about this idea of taking imperfect action or 1% improvement every day.

[0:44:50] Timothy Kimo Brien: I've been watching your 1% improvement, and that has influenced me and how I look at my podcast numbers. We all look at our download numbers. Hi, my name is Tim. I'm a podcast. I look at download numbers, but I'm looking at the monthly, the three months, the yearly. Am I doing better than I was in that last time period? Do I have 10 million downloads? No, but I'm doing better than I did last year at the same time, so I'm happy with that. And I know that my message is getting out there through the podcast because people keep on finding me. And that's one thing that I love hearing, is hearing stories about how people find your podcast.

[0:45:49] Harry Duran: That is yes, that's gold.

[0:45:51] Timothy Kimo Brien: Yeah. Well, I mean, think about it. We're doing something that most people have no idea how to do at work. Nobody knows what an RSS feed is. Nobody but me. I'm the podcast guy at work. So it's like, I have that little inside information and it's fantastic. But yeah.

[0:46:19] Harry Duran: So a couple of questions as we wrap up, and if you're a regular listener, you might know what's coming.

[0:46:25] Timothy Kimo Brien: I never know.

[0:46:26] Harry Duran: What's something you've changed your mind about recently?

[0:46:31] Timothy Kimo Brien: Two things. Two things? One is entrepreneurship. So for the longest time, I would sit through these conferences, and when the whole monetization thing came up, I rolled my eyes. I'm like, Just doing this for fun. I don't need money off of this. But I am of an age, and I'm looking at retiring at some point. My wife is laughing at me because she knows I won't. But eventually I want to move into a consulting space with the federal government and get their podcast ship shape and being effective because we need to know what our government is doing and we need to be able to hold them accountable. And we need to be able to see the stuff that they're experiencing on the back end so that way we can support our government better. The other thing is, I've been doing this jumpstart creativity cards. It's 50 cards. It gives you inspiration on creativity, different topics. And the card that popped up this week was mercy. And I was like, I need to show a little bit more mercy towards myself.

[0:47:53] Timothy Kimo Brien: I can show mercy towards other people. I can be empathetic with other people, but I need to be more empathetic with myself and more in tune with myself. It goes back for me, for the whole Midwest and the blue collar thing. Work, work, work. I can knock out a lot of stuff, but you know what? I need to take some time out for me. That way I can give more time to my wife and my kids, because that's what it's all about.

[0:48:22] Harry Duran: What's something you've done or one thing you've done recently to give yourself some more grace?

[0:48:29] Timothy Kimo Brien: Let's see here. Napping.

[0:48:36] Harry Duran: That's a great one.

[0:48:37] Timothy Kimo Brien: It is. And it's tough to do. It is tough to do because I work from home. I have a beautiful couch right next to me here off camera, but that's what I do. I'll be about two or 03:00 in the afternoon, and I'm like, I'm just going to take a half hour nap. I'll throw on jazz in the background here on my turntable, and I'll just go ahead and enjoy that 1530 minutes and not think about podcast, not think about work, not think about wife and the kids. Just sit back, relax, and just be. And that's something that I've done.

[0:49:16] Harry Duran: That's something that's a challenge for me as well. This idea of just being it's always like a go go mentality, especially when you have an overactive mind, and especially as an entrepreneur. And then I have a marketing mind, so I'm just always thinking of ideas. And that's how I came up with the idea for the Vertical Farming podcast. But then there's also, like, I could do this and this and this. And I think to your point, it's helpful for me. It's meditation. It's been helpful in the morning to just carve out some time. I'm not always consistent with it, but I definitely know that something like intentions, affirmations and some meditation, the Binaural naps have been helpful too. You can do 20 minutes. There's a lot of good apps, there's a lot of YouTube videos. And my girlfriend gifted me the noise canceling Bose headphones recently, which is a godsend because you put those on, shuts out the world, even if it's for 20 minutes, and you put it on a timer. There's a nice app called Endo, E-N-D-E-L. It creates music and based on the mood of it, factors in your location, the weather and kind of where you are in the day. And it says, oh, this sounds like it's focus mode and stuff like that.

[0:50:23] Harry Duran: And so it's nice background music because it's no vocals, but this sort of, like, gets you in the if you need to do like, deep work, you know, it's it's a nice background music. So Endel is an app that I highly recommend and you can do timers of stuff. Say, I want to take a power nap and it'll play a different kind of music that's attuned to some sort of circadian rhythm stuff that it's interesting. So there's some science behind it as well. So if you need to get into certain moods, you can pick the mood. Like, there's even a workout one if you want to play background music while you work out. So a big fan of that, and I appreciate you sharing that. What's the most misunderstood thing about you.

[0:51:04] Timothy Kimo Brien: That I have it all figured out. I'm just being a twin dad, being a husband, being a podcast, doing the art that I do, working my job that I work. None of this was in my ten year plan. I didn't have a ten year plan. I don't have it all figured out. But I've been around the block a bunch of times, though. I've seen a lot and I've done a lot. And so a lot of people think, oh yeah, no, you got it figured out. You're good to go. They come to advice and I'm like, I think do this. That's what the universe is telling me to tell you, do this and come back to me in six months and see what happens.

[0:51:58] Harry Duran: I think what's most important there Tim, and what I've found recently, and it's probably something a bit to what you're alluding to. In terms of my online journey, I didn't know anything about digital marketing in 2014 or 15 when I started podcast junkies, I was just like, winging it. But I had some experience in creating music digitally because I was DJing, and so I kind of pieced all that stuff together, but then I realized I had to immerse myself in the world of digital marketing. So I had a coach and then had to learn entrepreneurship and then so focused on growing that, that I was having this presence of who I wanted the world to see me as. And I think working with some new coaches over the past year and a half, and one of the questions they ask you is, what are you best in the world at? And that's an interesting thought experiment, because some people might look at it from an egotistical lens and saying like, how dare you say that? But almost owning all the different parts, there's only one Tim Brien. When you think about all the aspects, Air Force, the poetry, the interest in surrealism, how you're helping veterans, the podcasting experience, everything you just described, and probably stuff we haven't even touched upon. There's only one you. And so I think sharing that story, sharing and then sharing the vulnerability of the mistakes you've made, and I think that's where I'm seeing the most interest. Because when I write my newsletters every Saturday, and I publish them every Saturday, sometimes they're just like, here's a tip on podcasting or something about meditation. But sometimes they're just like something personal that happened. Like, our family dog died a couple of days ago, weeks ago. Now it's actually been a month as of yesterday, it's been a while, but I talked about that, how hard that hit and how I'm still processing it. And you never know what you share from your personal journey that's going to resonate with folks.

[0:53:44] Harry Duran: So I've been really encouraging everyone I come across, just like, share everything, share the good, share the bad, share the tough, share the challenging, because there's someone out there, and I talk about this from a podcast perspective as sharing your voice, but sharing your stories is so important. So I appreciate you talking about that, doing more than that, helping people, encouraging people to do that as well with your shows and with your journey. So it's really needed, I think, in our current times.

[0:54:09] Timothy Kimo Brien: Amen to that.

[0:54:11] Harry Duran: So I appreciate you reconnecting. I'm glad. It's nice to kind of maintain that initial relationship and an ongoing digital relationship, for lack of a better term. But I think it's so challenging in this day and age because you meet people through all walks of life. I'm so grateful to podcasting for opening so many doors for me. So I'm grateful we had this opportunity to come here and for you to share your story, because it's so interesting, all the different interests that you have. And I think it's encouraging for folks to hear that there is no one path and you don't have to let all your other passions go on the wayside. Bring them into what you're currently doing, because I think that's the beauty of what you do and how you're letting people let their own freak flag fly and that it's a good thing.

[0:54:56] Timothy Kimo Brien: Absolutely. No, I'm just glad I had this time to reconnect with you as well. The first time that I met you, I was a little bit starstruck and I was a little bit standoffish, but now I'm just like, if I see you at a conference, watch out, you're getting a big bear hug. Comfortable with that?

[0:55:18] Harry Duran: Yeah, it's okay. I'm a hugger too, so that's cool. All right, so lots of things we talked about, but where's the best place for us to send folks to connect with you, to learn about what you're working on?

[0:55:28] Timothy Kimo Brien: Sure. Well, the website Createartpodcast.com, I was happy to get that URL. I don't know how I did, but maybe I should play the lottery and you can always email me at timothy@createartpodcast.com and you can get connected with all the other podcast that I'm involved with and everything that I'm doing.

[0:55:55] Harry Duran: And I know you shared all those sites and the socials with us in the onboarding form as well. So everything you've provided, anything else you think might be helpful, let me know and we'll put it in the show notes.

[0:56:05] Timothy Kimo Brien: Okay.

[0:56:06] Harry Duran: So if you're following along at home, you don't feel the need to take notes. Everything will be in the show notes. So, Tim, thank you so much for sharing your journey. It's really exciting to see what's been happening in your life since we first connected and how things are continuing to open up for you. So I appreciate you sharing your personal journey, which I think is going to be helpful for our listeners.

[0:56:25] Timothy Kimo Brien: Awesome. Well, thank you, Harry. Thank you so very much.