189. Work in Progress: Growing a LinkedIn Personal Brand & Newsletter On Top of a Well-Balanced Life (Nicholas Braman)

How does a corporate professional leverage LinkedIn and a newsletter to set themselves up for more career opportunities?

That is what Nicholas Braman explores with us on Episode 189 of The Thought Leader Club Podcast as part of the “Work in Progress” series.

In This Episode:

Topics we touch on include:

What it looks like to build a presence on LinkedIn and write a weekly LinkedIn newsletter for reasons NOT related to growing a business
Building thought leadership on LinkedIn
Being consistent on LinkedIn while maintaining a well-balanced life outside of work

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Any Player

How Nicholas is growing a LinkedIn personal brand and newsletter on top of a well-balanced life

Prefer to listen to this episode on YouTube?

Cheryl:

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Thought Leader Club Podcast.

Today, we are going to talk to Nicholas Braman, who is, in my eyes, known for his LinkedIn newsletter The Weekend Wind Down, among other things as well.

I’m really, really looking forward to this conversation, because although a lot of the conversations on this show have been focused around folks who are using social media and personal branding for their business, I really think that Nicholas is going to bring a different perspective to this show.

He’s going to be talking about building a personal brand and online presence through LinkedIn for reasons outside of building a business and specifically for career. I think that this is going to be an angle that is relevant to a lot of listeners. I’m super excited to dive into Nicholas’s experiences.

Now, this episode is part of a series on this show called Work In Progress, which is where we will deep dive into how our guests have built thought leadership and a substantial and compelling body of work, while being someone who is continuously working on themselves, growing and doing other things, and therefore is a work in progress.

Without further ado, to get the conversation going, let’s have Nicholas introduce himself.

Nicholas, who are you and what do you do?

Nicholas:

First of all, Cheryl, thank you very much for having me. I’m excited to be here today.

A little bit about myself. I’m originally from Seattle, but I’ve been living and working in Asia for a total of about 15 years, the last 10 here in Singapore. So it’s definitely “home” now.

I’m a marketer by trade. I’ve been focusing on the B2B tech space for the last eight years or so, and currently I lead a marketing team that is covering the APAC in Japan regions for my company, Kyriba, which is a FinTech solution provider based in the US.

Other than that, you know, I spend a lot of time with my daughter. I have some hobbies. I do Jiu-Jitsu, and, like everybody else, enjoy traveling and reading and cooking and eating and that kind of stuff.

Cheryl:

Fantastic.

I think there’s a lot of different things that we’re going to dive into in this conversation, because you’re such a multi-faceted person, and it feels like, from the outside looking in, you have such a well rounded life. That’s definitely one thing I would love to talk more about later on in this conversation.

One thing that prompted me to reach out to you, Nicholas, and really wanted to interview you for this podcast in this series, is because I know on top of your career, you’re also building a LinkedIn newsletter, and overall building a personal brand on LinkedIn.

To get the conversation going, what is this newsletter about? Why are you being active on LinkedIn?

Nicholas:

Sure! So I’ve been on and off active on LinkedIn for probably about eight or so years, at some points, more active than others and but I’ve built, you know, I would say a strong network. I have a lot of connections, both virtually that people that I haven’t met in person, but a lot of now at this point in my career, ex-colleagues, business partners and that sort of thing.

I’ve had my own website for a few years. I do some blog posts and that sort of thing. But the newsletter really came about because I wanted to find a way to keep myself active on LinkedIn, but I didn’t want to commit to having to write blog posts every week or even every month.

I wanted some way that was a little bit lighter, more flexible, and gave me the ability to focus on different topics. And it’s kind of an experiment to start.

I think I’m 30 issues in now. I try to post once a week. I think I missed one week when I was traveling.

But the idea actually came from one of my favorite podcasters and authors and celebrities in general, Tim Ferriss. I’ve been subscribed to his Five Bullet Friday newsletter for many years. And you know, he does a lot of quotes. He does gadgets that he likes. He does interesting articles that he’s reading, and he usually just does one or two sentences for each bullet. He doesn’t really provide a lot of his own thoughts or opinions on each thing. It’s usually pretty brief.

But I really like that format, where it was quick, it was to the point again, it wasn’t something that needed to be heavily researched or put a lot of time and effort into it. It was flexible based on what was going on in his life at the time.

So I kind of copied that and made my own version, but I try to have a mix of topics, and a lot of it centered around, because it is published on LinkedIn, around work, around marketing. But I also interject some personal things, some regional news.

My previous company was an AI company, so I still follow AI quite closely. Sometimes there’s some stuff about that in there. I’m a big podcast fan. I always do a lot of podcasts, so I share when I hear a really good episode and that sort of thing.

Cheryl:

Okay, wonderful, wonderful. So I think the natural question that’s coming up for I’m sure listeners as well, but me in particular, is, okay, so Nicholas, you have a full time job, you have a young child, you have family, I’m sure there’s others and you have many hobbies. There’s a lot of things going on in your life. How do you even make time to write this newsletter?

Nicholas:

Yeah, well, that actually comes into part of the schedule. So I set it to be published on Sunday evenings. So I did that for a couple of reasons.

First of all, timing wise, it is a convenient time for me to do it. I have all weekend to do it if I want to. Usually it ends up happening when I start on Sunday morning and finish in the afternoon. But I’m able to because I don’t have work commitments and things I need to do at that time.

The second reason which you may find interesting is that I actually because, a lot of my connections on LinkedIn are my boss and my boss’s bosses and people from my company, I actually didn’t want to publish it during business hours and have people question, if I’m spending my working time doing this side gig, side project kind of thing.

I’ve heard on Sundays like, okay, there’s no conflict of interest, there’s nothing. And you know, that was one small thought in my mind when I set the schedule.

But I usually go through spurts when I read a lot of blog posts, and I feel like blog posts, at least in my mind, and it may not be accurate to what my audience or people who are reading it feel, but my writing in the blog post it needs to have something very unique in depth.

It’s not a personal blog, what I’m sharing, but with my newsletter, I’m able to plug in some maybe personal things, not business related, not marketing related, alongside that, that core of LinkedIn-appropriate content that, as you said, I really appreciate that you mentioned that from your view, it seems like I have a well rounded life.

I think that’s personally very important to me, and something that I’ve actually, I think you mentioned that in one of our conversations earlier, and it reminded me when I was a kid, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the term of “renaissance man”, but I remember when I was probably in my early teens or mid teens, learning about that phrase and thinking, Oh, that’s something that kind of aspire to have.

It’s not smooth, but the point, but different areas, and not just like, you know, known for one thing so, and it’s not something I don’t think I’ve consciously done. It’s probably part of my personality. But it’s nice to hear that it’s come through with something I share.

Building thought leadership on LinkedIn

Cheryl:

I want to know why specifically you choose to build something on LinkedIn? Why specifically did you choose LinkedIn? Why a newsletter? Why are you building because essentially, the way I see it is that your newsletter really is encapsulating, to a certain extent, it is encapsulating your thought leadership, your ideas, your viewpoints on certain subject matters, not just one subject matter, but a few of them, or more.

Why? Because you could have chosen, let’s say, Instagram. I don’t know. But why did you choose this medium, this platform to build your personal brand, your thought leadership, so on and so forth.

Nicholas:

As a full time employee, a corporate employee, and with no plans and immediate future to be an entrepreneur or a solopreneur or do my own thing. So first of all, I want to keep my professional and personal life somewhat separate.

So Instagram is definitely, I keep my private profile, I really only add people that I know in real life. A lot of it is friends back home that I don’t see very often, and that’s the only way we talk. Or people that have moved to other places. But also for, I guess, future proofing is the closest phrase I can think of, like specifically publishing on LinkedIn.

You know, even posting stuff beyond just reposting my company’s updates, which a lot of people, is what they use LinkedIn for. It’s like building out a very long and consistent resume that lives online.

And, you know, I can’t ever say for sure, or no one’s told me specifically that, oh, I checked your LinkedIn, and that’s why I want to do business with you, or why I thought, let’s hire this person, or anything. But I think in this day and age, it definitely happens for almost everybody.

If you have a modern, forward thinking and looking type of company and team, of course, they’re going to check your LinkedIn when you talk to them. It’s not only for the external visibility, but also for my own.

As a marketer, we often find that people are not very good at marketing themselves. They’re good at marketing for their job and for their company, but marketing for yourself still seems like maybe a little bit too cheesy, or a little bit too full of yourself kind of thing makes people uncomfortable.

Even you know, writing resumes, talking about your achievements and accomplishments, can be uncomfortable for some people. Again, I’m not trying to position myself as the expert marketer out there. There’s tons of people, millions of people who have more experience than me, people on my own team, or everywhere else in the world.

It’s more about expressing myself and sharing who I am, and I think that can come through as authentic. And if people know who I am, they feel closer to me.

I think if people happen to cross my profile, and they’re digging in and read an issue or two of the newsletter, or read some of my blog posts, they get a much better picture of who I am, rather than just a list of job titles and where I went to school.

Cheryl:

I think that what you just shared will really land for the listeners who are currently also and I know that there’s listeners right now who are in a corporate role, and they don’t have a business, and it’s not really on their agenda to start one either. I know there’s several of you. I’ve spoken to some of you listening to this, so I know this episode is very relevant to you all.

What you shared is likely going to be very reassuring to those who are listening to this specific podcast, because from my conversations with the listeners, who are not entrepreneurs, they’re not starting businesses, they’re in a job. But they want to build something online, whether it’s a newsletter or a podcast or a blog, the reason why they tell me it’s important to them is, I think number one for them.

They want to continue showcasing that they have depth and substance amidst the job market. They really want to show that to future employers.

Also, for some of them, they also share that creative expression is, to a certain extent, a consideration for them as well.

So I think that what you shared is really going to be encouraging for them to at least take the first step and start that thing they want to do.

Another point that really stood out to me was where you mentioned, I’m not trying to position myself as an expert, but rather just really showcasing that. You know, I do have substance to add to my field and to my employers and so on so forth.

What I want to segue into next is the idea of thought leadership.

Nicholas, what is your definition of thought leadership?

Nicholas:

Going back to what we were just saying about I should, am not, wouldn’t want to, and couldn’t position myself as one of the top marketing or B2B marketing or tech marketing people in the world.

But it really relates back to, I told you one of my hobbies is Jiu Jitsu.

I do relate a lot of things in life back to Jiu-Jitsu. I’ve been doing it for about five years now, five days a week. And the special thing about Jiu-Jitsu, compared to some of the other martial arts or combat sports, is that you can spar at full speed 100% without worrying about injuring the other person.

We spar almost every time we train, basically every time we train. So you’re tested, every single day you’re tested, and your skill level and your athleticism and everything that’s tested whenever you train. And you know exactly where you fit, who’s better than you, who’s worse than you, because you roll with them every day, and you have that experience.

There’s no bluffing. There’s no making yourself out better than you actually are in Jiu-Jitsu, because you will be instantly called out, and it will be demonstrated on you that you’re not as good as you think you are, as you say you are.

But the other part about that is, there’s always somebody better than you, no matter how good you are, and there’s always people that are worse than you.

But the reality is, maybe a better way to put it is there’s always people that you can learn from and there’s always people that can learn from you, even if it’s your second day of training.

I’ve taken that mindset into thought leadership, where what I have to share, there will be millions of people who already know it, who are more experienced, maybe have deeper thoughts about it and longer experience with it than I do.

But there’s also millions of people who know less about it than I do. I am not a top expert, but I do have things worth sharing that other people will find valuable.

To put it simply, thought leadership is when you’re able to share something that provides value to others.

Cheryl:

To your point about how, even if you don’t feel like the top expert, there is still some value you can contribute to your field.

To that point in particular, I feel like some of the listeners right now will hear that sentence and like, it kind of clicks for them. They’re like, “Yeah, okay, intellectually, that makes sense, like I can still add value, even if I’m not the expert with years and years of experience, all these accolades, okay.”

But they still feel some friction towards even saying anything at all. So I think it’ll be really helpful to hear directly from you what you would say to someone who does desire to build an online presence, to post something on LinkedIn, who does want to contribute to their field and industry, and also to be seen for those contributions.

But they just feel like, “Maybe next year, maybe when I get that promotion, maybe blah, blah, blah, blah.”

What would you say to someone like that who’s in that situation?

Nicholas:

First of all, everybody has a unique viewpoint and experience, and that can be valuable to others, even if you’re talking about similar topics as other people, or you’re saying something that somebody’s already said.

If we have 6000 years, however many thousand years of human history, I think most ideas have already been thought of before. You’re hardly ever saying anything brand new, right?

But it’s because you’re coming from yourself and your history and your experience that is unique.

Going back to Jiu-Jitsu again, we only take an arm bar, for example, a Jiu-Jitsu move. I’ve had classes that have taught the arm bar several hundred times at this point, it’s a very common move.

But even at this point, sometimes there’s just something in the way that the coach phrases something, or maybe I’m just paying attention at the right moment, something clicks with you quite often.

Or even black belts who’ve been training for 10 or 20 years will tell you that this happens. It’s just sometimes there’s something that clicks and you go, “Oh, I never thought about it that way before, or oh, that really helps me” and it just fits.

Even if it’s not groundbreaking, something cutting edge that nobody’s ever heard before, there’s still value in sharing your thoughts and your opinions. And especially again, when you do it in an authentic way, like I would never write a blog post and say “This is the best B2B LinkedIn strategy, so you should read this article.”

First of all, I’m going to run out of content really quickly. Second of all, it’s not authentic, it’s not true, but if I can share insights I’ve had or lessons that I’ve learned again, many other people probably have learned those lessons before. But it’s me sharing how I learned it and what the result was, and what it means to me that it’s unique. Nobody’s going to replicate that if you stay true to yourself and you give your authentic voice.

And that comes through the article again, it doesn’t sound like ChatGPT. It’s not generic. If you try to be in marketing, it’s a principle, right?

If you try to talk to everybody, you end up with fluff that doesn’t resonate with anybody. And I think it’s the same thing when you’re doing things for your thought leadership from a personal level.

You shouldn’t try to sound like the smartest, you shouldn’t be talking about things that are not. You should be talking about things that are personal to you and authentic to you. And when you do that, even if you’re talking about something that people have heard before, it’s going to come through in a genuine way. And it might click with some people.

Cheryl:

What you said earlier about Jiu-Jitsu, when I asked you, what is your definition of thought leadership, and you explain your viewpoints through the lens of Jiu-Jitsu, I think was exactly exemplifying what you just said about being authentic and sharing it from your point of view, and even if it’s not groundbreaking, can you share it through your lens?

Because when you share that example or your interpretation or definition of thought leadership through the lens of Jiu-Jitsu, I was like, “I have never heard anyone say it like that, and that.” You can bet that I’m going to clip out from these videos and repurpose into a short form video.

Also to riff off your points about how you would not recommend people to fluff up their feathers right when they’re building something on LinkedIn or online, what are other things, let’s say on LinkedIn, like kinds of content, best practices? What are things that you’ve seen on LinkedIn that kind of annoy you a little bit? Curious to hear it.

Nicholas:

Let’s start with a warning story, not something that annoys me, necessarily, but going back to your question originally about why I chose a newsletter and not another format, and why on LinkedIn.

I’ve seen and followed quite a few people. I follow marketing influencers. First of all, I’ve seen people disappear. I think they burn themselves out. They post every day or every other day for a few months, and then all of a sudden, they’re gone from my feed.

I think it’s that internalized pressure of, “Oh, I have to be the smartest. I have to be saying something profound, something super insightful every day.” and when I can’t think of anything to say, then maybe I freeze a bit, right? I don’t know what to do. So I end up not doing anything.

For one thing, I think again, not forcing yourself, or thinking that you have to be like, saying the most profound, amazing thing every time you post is, is a good place to start.

I think everybody on LinkedIn gets pitched to all the time, gets people trying to sell you stuff, people trying to get you to hire them. Obviously, they are not good things.

But it’s just like when we start a marketing campaign. You first have to think about what your objective is and then you can go back and design your plan from that.

So at this point, for myself, as I shared, I’m kind of trying to build up my body of work as the phrase that you always say, build a profile, build a network, build connections. So working backwards from that, what did I decide to do? I decided to do the newsletter.

Some of the things that annoy me, people basically selling too much stuff. You’re trying to sell something and I think that’s the advantage I have as a corporate employee, not a solopreneur or entrepreneur.

I literally don’t have anything to sell except for myself, maybe if I’m ever looking for a new role. But we always tell people, even if we are in corporate marketing, you don’t want to sell it first. You want to build value with the prospect, with your audience, and then eventually, the time comes, they’re supposed to come to you and say, “Oh, you obviously know what you’re talking about. You’ve built some trust with me. You’ve built some value with me. So now I’m interested to see what you’re selling.”

As a marketer, the biggest pet peeve is people trying to sell too early. As a user, as a person, trying to sell stuff is annoying.

But to put it in a simple way, if people are posting for other people, instead of posting for themselves, usually it will come through quite clearly and you can kind of suss it out and it’s not going to resonate with you as much. You can have a little bit of a bad feeling or a bad taste in the back of your mouth from it.

Cheryl:

Earlier you mentioned how you’ve seen instances of folks who were active online but then they likely burned out, etc. What have been challenges you face while building an online presence while being active on LinkedIn. What challenges have you encountered so far?

Nicholas:

It’s similar to the challenges that anybody has when they’re trying to create content, either not being sure of yourself, being worried about putting something out, not having any ideas, writer’s block kind of thing. Then, of course, the time management and figuring out how and when to sit down and do things.

That’s probably the biggest challenge.

Like I said before, I’ve gone through spurts of creating a lot of articles and not creating articles. I do like this new LinkedIn functionality of the newsletter format, rather than just publishing articles where it used to be.

I’ve thought about trying to start a side hustle for a long time, and at least that if I’m going to do it, I don’t want it to be the same thing that I do for work, even though objectively it makes sense because that’s what your expertise is.

But I don’t want to be doing another four hours a night of the same thing that I’ve been doing eight hours all day, which is one of the reasons I haven’t ever started a side hustle yet.

But again this newsletter way of doing things is allowing me to bring in other topics. It sounds maybe a little bit “woo woo”, but it’s even making me be a little bit more present and mindful in my life. Because it makes me think things through more than just maybe going through the emotions of doing things.

Cheryl:

Oh, interesting. I’m gonna segue into exactly what you shared, being more present, mindful.

When it comes to, going back to the phrase we used earlier, like a well balanced, well rounded life and having a family of your own especially, one thing I’m really curious…

Because for me for example, I don’t have any dependents except my three cats right now.

I’m genuinely curious to know, with so many different things in your life, what are your stress levels on a weekly basis? Let’s start there. What are Nicholas’ stress levels on a weekly or daily basis?

Nicholas:

Not that bad. It’s personality, but it’s also having that balance already, it’s kind of a self fulfilling prophecy, if you are able to have balance, you have family time, you have hobbies, you have activities, you have work.

First of all, the things outside of work, I try not to do in certain cases where it doesn’t work. Where we have challenges that we have to go through that are stressful, but like in a good week or on a good day when things are flowing smoothly, whether I’m going to the gym, whether I’m taking my daughter out for a walk to the playground or taking her to the pool, whether running errands, doing all that sort of thing, when the balance is already there in the first place, none of those things, like work or job, are adding to the stress. They’re taking away the stress.

It’s hard to get there if you’re not, the challenging part is to get to that point where you do have that balance, but once it’s there, one of the things I wrote about in my newsletter, I think it was this week, was that I’ve actually been out from the gym for almost a month.

I was traveling, and then I got injured on my first day back. In the past, that used to stress me out a lot because I’m missing out on training time. I’m becoming unfit. I’m so frustrated that I’m not able to go to the gym, that I’m injured or sick or anything.

This time it was really noticeable for myself that I didn’t feel that stress at all. I was not happy that I was injured. I didn’t feel good. But it’s like, “Okay, this, this happened, and now there’s going to be a few weeks of downtime. Well I’ll let it heal up.”

There were so many other things going on in my life, work life and personal life. It’s been long enough that I’ve been training Jiu-Jitsu, going to the gym, doing weight lifting, and combat sports that I know that I’m going to go back to. It’s not that it’s going to go missing as a part of my life.

I’m able to say that it’s part of my life and it’s a part of who I am. So the stress or the worries, the unhappiness about missing out or not being able to do that part of my life for a period of time wasn’t there.

Being consistent on LinkedIn while maintaining a well-balanced life outside of work

Cheryl:

So interesting because I know a lot of people who I’ve spoken to they’ve shared with me when there is something that they have been working on building consistency for whether it’s posting weekly on LinkedIn or going exercising or whatever it is they’ve been working consistent but when life happens and they break their streak for whatever reason.

But for some people it really weighs heavily on them. They feel very discouraged.

But it sounds like for you, you have a lightness. Like a very light, I mean sure you might be annoyed, you might be disappointed. But for all it feels quite light. You’re not really letting it get you down.

One thing I would love to know is, how are you so chill about these things? Do you have certain routines or practices that you do or is it more like your natural temperament? How are you so chill?

Nicholas:

Well my wife, first of all, probably wouldn’t say that. I’m not as chill as you think I am.

But no, I’m definitely really chill. I think part of it is definitely temperament and personality.

Again, you know, going back to what you just mentioned, about people feeling if they break their streak, they mess up or they have lost out on an opportunity or something like that. Again, I think that’s just time and experience.

Like I said, I’ve been doing Jiu-Jitsu for five years. That’s five days a week, thousands and thousands of times I’ve trained Jiu-Jitsu. When it gets to that level, probably like yourself for podcasting or for posting on social media, if you miss out on something doesn’t go exactly the way you hoped it would.

Or maybe you post it the wrong time, ideally you should post between 9am and 11am, but you forgot about it and it goes out at 12, it probably rolls off your back quite easily compared to somebody who’s on their first or second episode of a podcast, right?

Because you have all that experience and you know that it’s not going to affect things in the long run. You’re already going to be consistent and even if there was one episode that gets less reviews than a lot of other episodes, it’s not the end of the world.

Cheryl:

I really love the point about how if you have been committed to practicing in consistency and practicing certain skill sets and putting into reps, eventually, yes, life will happen.

But you have that skill set, that consistent muscle in you, and it’s not a big deal if you have to take a break for whatever reason, and that’s also why it’s important to start now. Start practicing those reps like now, so if anything happens, you’re good like you’re going to be chill about it.

I think now as we’re near the end of the conversation, to quickly summarize my favorite takeaways from the conversation so far, I think number one is the Jiu-Jitsu reference that you made earlier on earlier on in the conversation about how you will basically be humble, right?

When it comes to that leadership, be humble. Know where you stand, know what you can actually contribute and don’t try to fluff up your feathers. Be authentic, be honest and share sincerely and honestly. So that’s one of my interpretations of what you shared.

The other thing I really love that you have shared with us so far is just your general approach / temperament / philosophy when it comes to things not going your way. If things happen, things happen, keep moving forward. That’s another thing that I really took away from the conversation so far.

Also number three, I think would be really relevant to our audience is future proof your career or business, depending on what you’re doing. If you have the capacity and interests, feel free to leverage resources and platforms like LinkedIn to start building a body of work, build a presence there, set yourself up for whatever opportunities might come your way, or whatever changes may happen moving forward now.

So Nicholas, as we start to wrap up for today, I would love to know what you are working on moving forward. I know there’s a lot of things going on in your life, but what are you working on and what’s going on these days for you?

Nicholas:

Yeah, nothing too new on the horizon, being consistent again with what I’m doing, and continuing to be doing everything that I’m doing better. Spending more time with my daughter, as much time as I can with my daughter.

I’m still fairly new at my job, so I’m building my team up and we are nearing the end of the year, so there’s always a lot of work to do.

Then, again, there’s always plenty of things to get better and do better at, but no big projects or anything like that. I do enjoy this format of podcasts and public speaking is something that I’ve been doing a bit more of, and probably would like to continue that.

Again, no formal plan or pressure or anything. It’s just something that I myself would like to continue doing.

Cheryl:

You know what, I’m gonna put you on the spot here. If you could speak into existence, let’s just say a speaking opportunity, or podcast interview opportunity that you would love to make happen.

What would you like? What are you looking for if listeners happen to know connections? What will be a great fit? What would you love to make happen? Let’s speak it into existence right now.

Nicholas:

Well, just because I think it’s the most fun one, I would love to sit down and have a conversation with Tim Ferriss. He always has such interesting, intelligent people on his podcast, and he’s such a good interviewer, and the way he asks questions. I think it’d be fascinating.

I’d probably rather be the one interviewing him than him interviewing me, but that would definitely be something on the bucket list.

Cheryl:

Well, we have this in recording. It will be out in the public at some point soon. So who knows if this clip will reach him?

Nicholas, any final thoughts or takeaways you want to share for the audience? Just any last words.

Nicholas:

Yeah, I think just one point, going back to the Jiu-Jitsu metaphor, and what you took away from what I think one of the keys is not only to not pretend to be something that you’re not, or to be better than you actually are.

But also that you do have something to offer, no matter your experience level or no matter how capable you feel. Because that’s the other part about Jiu-Jitsu is you feel like trash every day. It’s literally a fight. You’re literally getting in a fight with people every day, right? People are lying on top of you, twisting your body into positions that they’re not supposed to be, and you’re getting beat up.

There’s never a training session from 95-98% of the practitioners where you “Win”. We don’t talk about winning and losing in the training and gym context, but you don’t win anything. Actually, you won’t improve if you win every time, right? Because you need that pressure. You need to be the one who’s worse to actually learn and make progress.

Even if you feel like you are not doing well, or you’re not the best one in your gym, or not the best of your group of friends, you still have lessons and value to offer to other people who have been doing even less time than you.

Even if someone possesses greater overall experience and skill than you in a particular technique, you may still have valuable insights to offer. This could occur if your focus has been on a specific aspect or nuance of the technique that they haven’t encountered. By sharing your unique perspective on this particular area, you can contribute valuable knowledge to someone who may be more experienced overall.

So I would say, definitely be humble and don’t try to puff yourself up, but also realize that everybody with their own experience and perspective has value and can teach other people things that even if they feel they might not be able to.

Cheryl:

Fabulous nuggets to end all this conversation, this is part of the growth. If you feel trash, yeah, that is part of the growth. Expect it. You’re gonna feel trash many, many times. In whatever you’re working on. It’s normal. Keep moving forward. Fabulous.

Okay, Nicholas, where can people find you after this episode?

Nicholas:

LinkedIn is probably the best place. Just my full name, Nicholas Braman. My website is the same. And I think surely you can, you can put a link to the newsletter

Cheryl:

For sure.

Nicholas:

Post it out so it’ll be great.

Cheryl:

Perfect. People, everything will be in the links, wherever you find the links, it will be there. Awesome.

All right. Nicholas, thank you so, so, so, so much for being on this episode and to everyone else, thank you, as usual, for tuning into the podcast. I’ll see you all in the next one. Bye everyone!

Nicholas:

Bye! Thanks for having me.

Listen to the Episode

About Nicholas

I’m Nicholas Braman, a Korean-American who grew up in Seattle and has lived in Asia for a total of almost 15 years. With over 8 years of experience in the B2B tech space, I currently serve as the Marketing Director for APAC and Japan at Kyriba. My role revolves around driving demand and revenue growth across the region, building innovative campaigns, and working hand-in-hand with our sales team. I’m passionate about using data to optimize our marketing strategies and outcomes and am always looking for new ways to push the boundaries in marketing.

Outside of work, I try to spend as much time with my wife and two-year-old daughter as possible. I’m a devoted Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, which I enjoy for the great exercise, social community, and intense challenges of “human chess”. When I’m not on the mats, I’m often in the kitchenexperimenting with different cuisines, out traveling or hiking, or spending time at home reading and writing.

Connect with Nicholas:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasbraman/

Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-weekend-wind-down-7180124794724519936/