My first ever social media “client” in high school was a hedge fund manager who loved a motivational speaker named Jim Rohn.
One of our strategies to get more initial traction on the page was repurposing clips from Jim Rohn’s seminars hoping that we’d get a viral clip or 2.
For a few months I spent most of my time going through 480p videos on YouTube listening to this eccentric man named Jim Rohn speak in riddles and metaphors.
I went through so much footage that I accidentally burned his teachings into my brain.
One clip in particular came to mind recently, and its a metaphor about the preacher and the cowboy
The gist of it is that a preacher puts up his tent expecting a large crowd to present to.
His only attendee is a singular cowboy.
When the preacher asks him if the show should go on, the cowboy responds with: “if I went out to feed my cattle and only one showed up, I’d at least feed it!”
Even though I did not have deep personal experience with the teaching at the time, this line always resonated with me.
But recently I was reminded of it in a way I could not ignore.
In August 2025 I was invited to speak in my friend Ben Bader’s program Artisan Lab to talk about content, personal branding, YouTube, the works.
I was so excited to have the opportunity to teach alongside someone I admired in the space since I started my journey in 2022.
(For those of you who don’t know Ben Bader, he was an incredible storyteller, prolific writer, and above all a kind human being. He is sadly no longer with us but you can still tune in to all the content he left behind.)
I passionately shared as much as I could for the time that we had, not paying any mind to the fact that it was a small(er) turnout for that given day.
If anything I was just happy to be able to have more time to respond to the individual questions from the audience.
What I did not know at the time was that one of the people in the audience was Briar Cochran (aka everyone’s creator director, content scientist, content daddy… etc).
I also did not know it at the time that Briar was one of, if not the only person in that group who was running a content-centric business.
Running a dedicated “content agency” was less popular at the time compared to to everyone in the group doing general marketing/sales for business owners.
I just so happened to be someone who was doing what he wanted to do.
He asked some great questions and we stayed in touch after that call.
Flash forward to "present day” (a short while ago) and I’m going through a difficult period in my life.
Briar shoots me a message asking if I’d like to do a guest call in his group program to talk about all things YouTube.
Something compelled me to say yes.
The next day we catch up over the phone and Briar shares with me how listening to me on that guest call gave him the confidence to stick with the content agency, ultimately changing the trajectory of his life.
After hearing that, there was no way I COULDN’T speak to his group.
The group call takes place on a Saturday and as expected for a weekend, attendance is on the lower end.
(It had also been a while since I did any guest calls like this and I was slightly concerned about being rusty)
Nonetheless, I chose to focus on my energy on sharing as much as I could and answering every question to the best of my ability.
I shared my email on the call for anyone who had further questions.
I didn’t see anything in my inbox night so I wrote off the possibility of anyone reaching out.
The following day I received a beautiful email from someone named Dylan in the group expressing his appreciation for my time.
Dylan first mentioned in his email that he got into the info space from none other than Ben Bader.
Secondly, he says that I reminded him of Ben (NOT KNOWING AT ALL that’s how Briar and I first connected, nor that I previously did a guest call in Ben’s group because it took place before he joined the program)
This made my eyes kind of watery for a couple reasons:
1) I had helped not just one, but two people in the way I was once helped by simply being myself
2) I came to the starling realization how selfish I was being by letting my fear of creating, writing, and speaking online dictate my life, and subsequently all of the people who would never experience that flicker of inspiration because of words left unsaid
So I find myself here writing this email.
I don’t have any expectations around what this list should be, what kind of business utility it has, or how many people resonate with my message.
But I think I will be able to sleep soundly knowing that at least one person is able to derive some kind of enthusiasm for life, business, or content because of the ideas I share.
- Presley
P.S. I also got a YouTube short of that clip from Goodwill Hunting before writing this (the one where Ben Affleck rips Matt Damon a new one for pissing away his potential)