[00:00:02] Speaker A: Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given it hard, now get it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Elizabeth Gearhart I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I have my own startups and podcasts.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Welcome to Passage to Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship where we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities who tell their stories about their businesses and their solutions. Brian Seth Hurst is a well regarded international entertainment professional and prominent figure in the world of media. He also has held industry leadership positions at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Producers Guild of America and the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Brian is also co author with the late Olivia Newton John of the best selling children's book A Pigtail. Today Brian is here to talk about his books whole and also the whole companion workbook which is just recently released. These books are about going from a life in the past to a life in the future. I think is a quick way to summarize that. So welcome to the show. Tell us about the whole and what it's all about.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: The origin of it was that I had a television show in development with Buena Murray Productions, reality television. It was called Determination. And what had happened was I lived on the Illinois, Iowa border, so I would go to the rallies for President during Obama's run and I would notice that the media was not talking about what they were talking about and what I was seeing. And I felt like it was time to have somebody disintermediate the media. So we thought that we would recruit millennials at the time to be direct on the ground reporters. Well, the show crashed and burned during that first election. Then it crashed and burned again the second time when it crashed and burned the second. And I'm telling you, this was something I had put my whole heart and soul into, Blood on the field, as they say. And I was sitting in an airport, I got the news actually by email and I was sitting in the airport and I was going, what do I do now? And I have always been a spiritual guy. I've always been intuitive. I've used my intuition my entire life. And I literally heard give us 30, 30 days. And at the end of 30 days you will have a book. And the name of the book is Whole. And I did that and I finished it in 30 days. I had what I call an accountability buddy. Very important if you're setting goals to have someone that you can answer to and share with. And it was a series of essays about life, whether it was money, whether it was about personal transformation, mostly about beliefs and how our beliefs serve to create the reality we live in and that the one power we have is to change our mind and to change our mindset. And I knew that that was not new information. But even though it's not new information, the way it's delivered depending upon people's personalities and books, that's why certain people attract certain books to them and they come into their lives because it's in a language that they understand.
Then did a revision of the book, by the way, just before the book was published, my 20 year relationship came to an end. My mother passed away, everything crashed and burned. And so a friend of mine said to me, you know what? This book wasn't written from you, it was written for you.
And I had friends quoting me my own book when I was going through stuff. You ought to read chapter nine. And then I did a revision and a friend of mine in PR said, you know, I can't market a book that's over a decade. You should do a workbook. And there are these prompts. When you're an entrepreneur or you're about to create something, I think the universe sends you prompts and a bell goes off whether you follow them or not. That's up to you. I knew that was a prompt. I said, okay, great, that's a great idea. So we took each chapter. I asked for 50 volunteers from my coaching business to do the exercises with me in the book. They are deep exercises of self discovery. I consulted with therapists to make sure I wasn't sending anybody over the edge. And that book took a lot longer. And we had an audio book that I had done and we waited to release that. The audiobook was a poll. The books work in conjunction with each other, but the whole companion workbook works as a standalone. And to be honest, I did all of the exercises in the book as well so that I could make sure. And that was a process for me. Now I have people that have bought the book that said, okay, well, I'm going to do this book once a year. I'm going to do it at the start of the year. And so I know my purpose, my purpose right on my whiteboard there is to connect and engage authentically and inspire. And that's my job, is to serve. And I believe that if I serve, I will be served, that if I contribute, that the contribution will Come back to me. And I hope that whole makes the difference in people's lives that I think it can make and that the volunteers have told me it has made that in some cases it was life changing.
[00:05:08] Speaker C: Well, that was what I was going to ask you about. So do you have a community built around this somewhere where everybody can talk to each other and talk to you?
[00:05:14] Speaker A: You know, if you aren't the 10th talk about prompts from the universe, you aren't the 10th person to mention that. And it's like, okay, you know how when you're expanding your business and you have to prioritize and you have to think this is one of those moments. So. Thanks, Elizabeth. There is a community, I think what was so interesting, you know, I just. Our community of Sierra Madre, we're at the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains and we were evacuated. And to be honest, the fire was stopped within a thousand feet of our home. So we were very, very fortun the outpouring of support through Facebook. I'm talking about hundreds of people responding because I was providing updates to be helpful and also to make sure that people knew where they could help us.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: I think that people need that right now.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: They're.
[00:06:02] Speaker C: They're yearning for that sense of community and connection right now. That's kind of where everything is going. So people are having Facebook groups and they're doing podcasts where all their podcast subscribers get together and they can talk to each other. And I think it's the shared experience. And if somebody goes through your book and they find out something profound about themselves, they want to tell somebody else who understands. Right.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: It's so insightful. When we did the. The focus groups, the volunteers, it was over a summer of, of weekends, and they were in groups of between five and seven people. And so they were all sharing what their experience was because I was trying to get feedback and they were all telling their stories and someone would say, you know, I had the same experience. Or someone would say, boy, that's really useful. So, yes, I believe you're right on. For me, it's like there is an investment of time and energy that you are going to put into something. And I have to make that evaluation. And at the same time, to be completely honest. And you can go to briansethurst.com for this. After the pandemic, I decided to return to my first love, which was performing. Because I had left the theater and performing behind, I ended up doing. Talk about having a great team behind you. My musical director, Michael Orlin, my director Lee Martino, I ended up doing a one man show which premiered in Palm Springs. And now I continue to do it. It brings me so much joy. So it's like, how do I balance these two things? Which is here I am a writer that wants to contribute and make the world a better place, and here I am a performer that also wants to tell stories and connect with people. It's a scripted and musical adventure. I used to be a songwriter and other people sung my songs and I didn't, so I did that. But it's that balance. And I think sometimes if I didn't meditate, I think I would have spun off the planet years ago. So I think meditation and journaling, which is actually part of the workbook, those things are really important to gauge where you are. And the one thing that I have had to learn to do in business and in my personal life is not compare myself to others. Very, very dangerous. It's just not good for one's well being. But if that person inspires me, I always say, I'm not going to compare, I'm going to be inspired. What am I inspired by with that person that I was busy comparing myself to or that business that I was busy comparing myself to?
[00:08:23] Speaker B: So, Brian, I want to ask you, I want to go back to the subject of transformation because I think it's an interesting subject. And it seems to me like there's different ways that our life can be transformed. Sometimes through living experience, sometimes it's transformed through working with a book. And it usually means that like the light kind of goes on, right? Something happens and all of a sudden you feel differently or you feel a past experience has been resolved that was painful. Maybe you can talk a little bit about transformation and the different ways it can occur. How much of it is good?
[00:09:03] Speaker A: I think it's all good. I think it's hard work. I can only speak from my personal experience. You know, I was a childhood sexual abuse survivor. That trauma kind of defined my life for many years. About not trusting people, about being hurt, about trying to placate things, and then going to work to discover what beliefs had come out of that experience and then saying, okay, I can change those. One lesson I have learned, and this is not a negative thing, is that going back to what Ryan said, it's not a sprint. You never arrive. You learn, you grow. This. I'm speaking from my own experience. I've learned, I've grown. There's a lot of celebration in that. And then you look up and you go, oh my God, there's another mountain to climb. How am I going to do that? Well, I have a lot of skills from climbing previous mountains. Let me call upon those skills now. So transformation is sometimes there is an instantaneous aha moment, but you can't, at least in my experience, sometimes you can't make that a rule for life. It's an aha moment, but you gotta come back in the present. I, I, I say, you know, if I'm obsessed with the past, I'm busy looking over my shoulder and I can't see what's ahead of me. If I'm obsessed with the future, I'm looking so far ahead I'm likely to bump into something or trip over what's ahead of me. So getting back to the present, that's where the point of transformation and the point of power exists. To me, it's in the present and it's fear that exists in the past. Oh my God. I'm afraid that'll happen again, or I haven't resolved that, or, you know, how do I fix that or way in the future, which is, oh my gosh, what's going to happen? And to come back into the present, to have gratitude for what I have at the moment, especially this week, given the fires, to have that gratitude and to be able to center. I mean, to me, that's the point of both books and the audiobook is how to get to that place. And you know what? You might occupy it for a minute before you're knocked off your feet. You know, when we were kids, I'm the oldest one here, but we had these things. Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. They were these little toys. And I sometimes say, my affirmation is, I'm a Weeble, but I'm not falling down. And if I do fall down, I'm going to accept help to get back up.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: How do you feel when you're in the present? What's that like for you?
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Peaceful. Really peaceful. It's like I was a prisoner of to do lists.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Guilty.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And that, that can be. I thank my mother for that. She was an amazing television producer. She was actually the first woman producer in Philadelphia. So I was a prisoner of that. And to give myself a break and to say, you know what? I don't have to be accomplishing something all the time. I can take a break. It's kind of what Ryan talked about. It's like, you've got to be centered on your well being. You come first. There's a reason everybody says this. Put your own oxygen mask on first on the plane or you won't be able to help anybody else. So being present is about self care for me. It's about self compassion. It's about validating feelings, whether I'm upset about something. Okay, let me see where those feelings are in my body because the feelings are working to get me to be present.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: And I want to say to that I love that. Don't be going 100 miles an hour all the time because Richard is much more like that than I am. But I find that when I slow down and take a break, that's when my creativity kicks in. That's when my brain takes all these different pieces and puts them together and comes up with a new idea. And you have to be present to do that. You can't be worrying about, well, will anybody like this? Or what happened in the past. So I think that's really good advice from you.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Yeah, secret here. You know how when you go to work, you take the same route, you come back the same way. Now I work at home, but when I go out to either the gym or something, I always take a different route and I always take a different route back because it forces me to be present and it forces me to look around and to see things. It also was very lucky because I knew all the side streets in terms of the fire of where I could go. But to be present is to kind of upset your routine. It's important, I think, to have a routine, but it's important to vary that routine so that you can be present. So I agree with you. Slow down, look around. You never know where help is going to come from. If you're focused, if you're laser focused with blinders on, there could be help to the right or the left that you might not even see. But if you slow down and you like take the blinders off for a minute, you go, oh, maybe I need to make a right turn. Right now I'm feeling I need to make a right turn. Let me trust that gut instinct. Oh, look, there's someone there to help me.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: I have been trying to sort of transform myself and get to a point where I'm maybe more in the moment and more appreciative of the world around me and not just so focused on the practice. In order to survive in the legal business though, you've got to be on it and you have to keep up. But if you're not, then if you're.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Not in spiritual shape, you might not be able to keep up and not to just like shamelessly self promoting. Here. But actually the Workbook will help you do that.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: We're looking forward to it. I mean, I think that could be a great tool. Is it available now?
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yes, you can get it. It's really interesting because there were so many obstacles. Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite authors in his book. The obstacle is the way there were so many obstacles to publication. It was amazing. And I just kept having to reapply myself, had to step back and take a breath. So if you go to Amazon.com and you search Brian Seth Hurst, everything will come up. But the title and the COVID had to be different on Amazon.com because they didn't want consumers to be confused. And so there were a lot of changes and approvals that I had. And you don't get to talk to anyone on the phone. It's all by email. So you can get that there. You can also get it at lulu.com, where it is called the Whole Companion Workbook. And whole is available there too. And if you just don't want to go through all that, you can just go to wholelifebook.com and click on Buy the Books and it will take you where you need to go. I'm so very grateful. I just want to say this to Andrea Ryder, who was the typesetter of the book who just never failed. I mean, talk about having a great team around you. We constantly had to make changes. And also Elisa Klinger, who had actually volunteered to be the editor. She was part of the focus groups and volunteered to be the editor, which is what she does because she loved the material, material so much. And she, she did an amazing job. So going back to the original question, having that great team around you and being able to rely on them and knowing that they're going to take care of what needs to be taken care of is amazing. And I think that the book talks about these things as well. Both books, the workbook allows you to really, it's interactive. You get to do the exercises and they're real world exercises that you take into the world something as simple as learning the name of your waiter or waitress, the person that's serving you. That humanizes the relationship and allows you to be in relationship with that person and to make their day better or maybe they make your day simple things that can change your life.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: That sounds great. We have to take a commercial break. Brian. We'll be right back. You are listening to Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt. Our special guest, Brian Seth Hurst, who has a lot of interesting insights. But we'll be back with more of Brian and the rest of the show right after this commercial break.
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[00:18:46] Speaker A: Now back to passage to profit. Once again, Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: Our special special guest, Brian Seth Hurst. And you spell his last name, H U R S T. Brian has written a book which has a workbook called Hole W H O L E and a lot of people are seeing amazing benefits from it. We just want to continue the conversation with Brian. How did earlier events in your life help you formulate this book?
[00:19:12] Speaker A: You know When I was a kid, I was very intuitive. I can remember saying to my mother when we were driving home, when we turn this corner, there's going to be a father and son. I was like seven, father and son playing catch. And we turned the corner and sure, that's not what we saw. And then unfortunately, unfortunately, I dreamt the death of both my mother's brothers exactly as it happened. And so I thought I must have caused that. So I completely shut down. Then all of a sudden it started to come back. In my late 20s, which I talk about in the introduction to Hole. And I was in a piano bar in New York and this gentleman was sitting next to me and I said. And we started talking and I said, do you have a French last name? He said, yes, it's Archambeau. And then I was hearing 311-33-3113 in my head. And I said, Is your birthday January 3rd? And he said, no, it's March 1st. And I was like, well, this is really weird. And then there was this intuitive in town named Linda Waldron. And I was in the entertainment community and everybody was to her to get readings. I walked in the door and she was wearing a muumu. She'd come from Hawaii and she had a little flower in her hair and she called herself the Butterfly Fairy. And of course I'm thinking, this is nuts. And one day she said, look, I'm supposed to go to this party and do readings and I don't feel well. Will you go and do them for me? And I said, I don't know how to do that stuff. And she said, oh, it's easy. Just close your eyes and say what you see. So I went to this party and I had this little sign that said readings. And it was at 8:00 I went, and at quarter to 11, it was supposed to end in 15 minutes before this woman came up and she sat down and I just closed my eyes and said what I saw. And I opened my eyes and she was this New Yorker, she was about five feet and she went. Garyls Garrels Darrells. You have to talk to this guy. You have to talk. That's how the whole thing started.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Brian Seth Hurst. Brian, tell us again how people can find you find your book and more about you.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: I think whole life book.com is where you can find out about the books that you can go to Amazon, you can go to Lulu, but they're available everywhere, I think. Pretty hard to get a workbook out there, though. It's a whole different format. But just go to wholelifebook.com and if you want to know more about my life, you can go to briansethurst.com you can get on a mailing list there. You can help build community at Elizabeth's suggestion and we'll see where that goes. But yeah, wholelifebook.com and briansethurst.com and so honored to have had this discussion with you.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team, our producer Noah Fleishman and our program coordinator, Alicia Morrissey, and our studio assistant, Marissa Kat Bussari. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcast. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark, and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
