Ikigai Leadership Podcast: Dhru and Damon “DJ Realty Solutions” Johnson Talk About What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur

Dr. Dhru: [00:00:02] Hey, everybody. This is Dr. Dhru B, and I’m here to welcome you to my podcast, Ikigai Leadership. We’re going to be talking to leaders in all different industries from all different backgrounds and demographics from all over the world. And we’ll be discussing topics like leadership development, culture, DEI, content creation and marketing and all things business and entrepreneurship. Damon, welcome back. Thank you, everybody. How are you doing?

Damon Johnson: [00:00:31] Thank you for having me.

Dr. Dhru: [00:00:32] It’s great to have you back, man. Thank you, everybody, for joining in today to our Ikigai Leadership podcast. My name is Dr. Dhru B, and I’m here with my good friend Damon Johnson, aka DJ Realty Solutions. Welcome back, bro.

Damon Johnson: [00:00:44] Thank you for having me. I know it’s how long has it been? Has it been that long? A couple of months, maybe.

Dr. Dhru: [00:00:50] Since we saw each other? It’s been a few months, but since we talked, we talked on that book conversation. So we’ve been in touch.

Damon Johnson: [00:00:56] Yeah. We try to stay in touch. I got to do a better job. I got to do better.

Dr. Dhru: [00:01:00] Me too. I think. I think we’re both falling to the same trap, my friend.

Damon Johnson: [00:01:02] But that’s okay.

Dr. Dhru: [00:01:03] It’s all good. How has business been so far? I know you started social media stuff.

Damon Johnson: [00:01:07] I picked up a huge client last week and it was like, she’s family so… It’s been different because with their social I’m using their voice. With my other clients are kind of in my same realm of business, so I can kind of use my voice with their voice. So figuring out their voice is different. So we’re, we laugh. And she’s like, Damon, that doesn’t sound like me. I’m like, Are you sure? So yeah, we’re working those kinks out. But it’s been great. She referred another client to me and I went to meet with both of them yesterday. So I got ahead and behind at the same time. So it’s like, yay! New clients! But like, Oh, no, I’m behind on paperwork. But so yeah, it’s been interesting. It’s been busy, but good. Better busy than waiting for the phone to ring I always say.

Dr. Dhru: [00:02:05] Yeah, agreed, man, 100%. Congratulations. That’s awesome. You got a couple more clients and it’s always good to get that coming in. But you know, from social media side of things, I think people don’t realize that that little piece of things because, you know, everybody thinks, Oh, I got a Facebook account, I got an Instagram account, I can be a social media consultant. But no, I’m sorry. You really can’t. Right? I mean, I was reading this thing today, there’s a book out there called Influencer. And so, I mean, the content is good so far. It’s, I forgot who was by now, you know me. I don’t know authors as well as, you know, I can talk about the book titles or whatever but authors and content. Well, content I know, book titles I know, authors I don’t know as well. The book is geared towards women, which is fine because a lot of women are influencers. A lot of influencers are women, I should say. And she even says in the book, 95% of the influencers she hires are female. She doesn’t really hire the male influencers. But, you know, it’s the whole thing about, well, what do I need to be an actual influencer to actually be a social media consultant? And a lot of people think they just need to be attractive and then have a camera. That’s pretty much it. And it works for some people, it does, right? Because they get clients initially. What happens unfortunately, though, for you and I, people who actually know what the hell they’re doing, is that we get the clients the second level, right? We get them that.

Damon Johnson: [00:03:18] We get them after.

Dr. Dhru: [00:03:19] Right? So they’re like, Oh, social media is bullshit. Or like, I don’t, you know, I don’t believe in hiring marketing consultants because I’ve been burned too many times. Because you go with the wrong person, right? You’re going with somebody like these other people who don’t consider actual social media and marketing tactics and thoughts and strategies, and they just want to say, Hey, I’m just going to be hot and post. And they don’t realize that, Oh, no, there’s more to that. That’s actually strategy behind it. You have to actually have their voice, right? It’s authenticity, brand authenticity, creating a brand, right? All that stuff has to be considered.

Damon Johnson: [00:03:48] I remember years ago it was myself, my older sister and D-roc. We were on the phone for an hour arguing about the width of the lettering. My broker walked in like, What are y’all talking about? And it was something about the width looked wrong or something. You can overthink stuff so fast and you can… Social is weird because you can overthink it and not post it and post it and be like, crap that looks awful or ooh, it’s too spacey or whatever. Because I’ve posted for, I’ve posted for clients and I thought it looked great. But one time somebody’s head was cut off and I was like, Whoops, because there is no magic system that shows you what it’s going to look like on every page. It can show you what it’s like on some pages, but then you’ll know how the social, how the platforms go. You can think it looks one way and you look at it like, that’s not, that isn’t what you said it was going to look like. So it’s a space where you’re right, we get the leftover when they finally realize like, Oh, I haven’t made any money or I didn’t get the reach I was supposed to get. So can you fix it? I’m like… And then, I don’t know if you run into this, I’ve run into people with multiple accounts that need working on. I’m like, Why do you have so many pages? I’m like, you have four Facebooks, four Instagram. I’m like, listen, you need to reel this on in. I’m like, Oh, no. So I try to tell them, Hey, you have a lot going on and none of it is telling the right story.

Dr. Dhru: [00:05:45] I think the two are related, right? That whole having five or six pages or whatever, and then combined with the idea of you don’t know how things are going to look until you post it sometimes, that’s getting better and it’s gotten a lot better than it used to be, right? I mean, you think about even five years ago, right? Posting and content creation and whatnot was for like the elites, right? You know what I mean? Like, because you had to know how the heck you were doing. Like, take this set up right here, right now, you and I have right now, right? Streamyard. Streamyard was not always as easy.

Damon Johnson: [00:06:14] No. It was awful. It was awful to use.

Dr. Dhru: [00:06:17] When it first came out, it was like, what? You gotta do this? And you basically you have to be a programmer and have the API yourself.

Damon Johnson: [00:06:23] I looked at it years ago and I was like, Oh, I don’t have time for that.

Dr. Dhru: [00:06:27] No, absolutely not. I was like, What in the hell? And when I first saw like, you know, the Gary Vee’s guy, Dustin, he did a video during 2020 about how the setup for, I think it was Streamyard at the time, and it was, I was just like, This is so complicated. I don’t even want to bother with this. And I was like, just no.

Damon Johnson: [00:06:44] That’s why I got from D-Rock. I was like, Bro, I said, Oh, I’m not a techie. I know just enough to get things set up. If it’s like less than ten steps, you got me, but more than ten steps, I’m like, Oh, oh, no. Same thing with Zoom. I go in with Zoom sometimes and I’m like, Listen, I’m here just for this meeting, all this other stuff. I don’t have time for that, in a good way. I’m like, I’m sure it’s fantastic and I’m underutilizing it, but it becomes a time thing. If things are cumbersome, I need to have systems that I can use in my car, as I’m walking, wherever. So easy is always best for me and my clients.

Dr. Dhru: [00:07:26] Yeah. That’s the whole thing, it’s gotten so much easier, right? It’s not to the point where it’s like super, super easy, but it’s easier than it used to be in terms of how to use things and whatnot. And the barrier to entry is much, much lower than it used to be. And I think, you know, back in the day you used to have to have separate Facebook accounts for different things you wanted to do, right? Like you used to have your personal which is like just, you know, I had my personal and then I had my business version of me out there, you know, that I want to segregate from my personal side because I don’t want, you know, people, my personal stuff coming into like my business stuff or whatever. And now you can separate all that, right? You can separate all that stuff on one account. And again, you couldn’t do that back in the day. So I think that’s why people don’t understand, Oh, I need to have a separate page for my business page. I said, No, you can just have a page for your business. You don’t have to have a whole other personality for your business. Right?

Damon Johnson: [00:08:09] What the platforms, they’re listening to us a little bit where we’re like, Hey, we like you, but we aren’t all programmers. Like, Hey, um, I need this just to work.

Dr. Dhru: [00:08:21] Yeah, I need to get your thoughts on this. And this is, this is a serious situation here. Meta Business Suite.

Damon Johnson: [00:08:27] Well, what if I told you I went to the Meta school where they were here. I’m certified in it, if that, I don’t know. I like it. I think it could grow pages and businesses to the moon. I don’t know if I would pay for it. Like the way that they showed us how to set up when we’re selling things, from ebooks to lotions to whatever, that was absolutely fantastic. To me, that was the best part of the whole program. It just really depends on what you or the client is trying to do, because like I tell my clients a lot, a lot of them want to do, you know, the paid ads, whatever, or whatever. I’m like, But you don’t even respond to your comments. So I’m like, You got five comments from three days ago and you haven’t even liked it, said anything. But what they’re doing is set up really well. It’s very easy. It’s ease of entry, ease of everything. I need to look, revisit the price points because then it becomes a game of am I running it or is it running itself?

Dr. Dhru: [00:09:48] I think we’re talking about different parts of the system because the part I’m talking about is the totally free part. That’s just the business pages that combines Instagram and Facebook’s old interface, because I think, I like Facebook’s old interface a lot. I mean, I think it was simple. It was easy to use. When they combined with Instagram, maybe they fixed it since they had this experience, but permissions were all messed up, where to find stuff was messed up, like different settings and different campaigns and whatnot. And this is all the free version. It’s not the paid version and maybe the paid version is easier. Maybe that’s the incentive to buy the paid version. Is it? Maybe it makes more sense, but I don’t know.

Damon Johnson: [00:10:20] For my real estate stuff, it used to be super easy to do the ads through the business manager, through your Facebook business account, just to set the ads up and get them going. Well, when Meta/Facebook went to Congress and they were like, No, no, no, no, no. They made it so hard for us to even run an ad that, you used to could just put a video in of your newest listing, do an ad form to collect people’s information, segment it a little bit, set your amount and be done with it. It’s gotten so difficult to even run it now to get it set up where I really don’t even bother with it. I’ll do a boost every now and again, but it’s like the setup of it for business, to have your businesses in there is fine. When you start running ads and you know the going back and forth between the pages, like I have a client, when you try to connect a business page to your personal page from Facebook to Instagram, sometimes the post transfers over, sometimes it does not. People don’t know whether they have a business Instagram or a personal Instagram. I have a client who has a huge Instagram following, but the music doesn’t always transfer over, right? They have the 10,000 plus on the one page, but they don’t have it on the other page. So it’s very hard to remember as a person who’s doing the posting where they have the most followers that yada, yada, yada, yada. It’s a lot and I wish that they would before, like you said, before, they would have combined the two platforms, they would have got some of those kinks out for lack of a better term.

Dr. Dhru: [00:12:08] Yeah, I think that’s what it was. It’s just when they combined everything, they were too quick to do it. They didn’t do it properly though, like in terms of thinking it all the way through from a user perspective, like how is this going to come across and make sense to a user, someone who has even one business, much less multiple businesses? Right? And if you’re talking about from a social media manager point of view, if you’re managing multiple different accounts, switching between those accounts is a bitch, right? And being able to do that and keep track of what’s what and where it is because I was, I mean, we both have agencies, right? We’re trying to do this for our clients and we were trying to find something with one client and it kept taking us to the other page and the other client’s page. And I’m like, Dude, this is not what we’re trying to go Like, you’re going to post on the wrong account, you know what I mean?

Damon Johnson: [00:12:52] It’s, and then sometimes you have a client with multiple Facebook pages and you trying to get into the one, it takes you to the other page. And I’m like, No, I’m not posting on that page of theirs, but it’s just this, it’s a thing. And then I don’t know if you’ve posted for people on LinkedIn, it’ll let you in most of the times, but every now and again it’ll ask you for a password. Every now and again. I’m like, I know their passwords, but I’m like, I don’t feel like, I don’t want to look this up. I’m like, it’s, I get what they’re doing with privacy and whatever, but sometimes it gets to be a headache where you’re just like, Listen, this isn’t the page I want it. You have to, like you said, make sure you’re on the right… I’ve posted to the wrong page before. Yes, I have.

Dr. Dhru: [00:13:37] We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there, dude.

Damon Johnson: [00:13:41] Like, sorry. It just happens. It happens. And then I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, if you post, let’s say you’re posting to their Facebook and their Instagram page, same message. The text gets squished when you go. You have to go back in and be like space, space, space. Backspace, backspace, backspace. I’m like, You can’t just set it and forget it. That’s why people are like, Well, do you use a content planner and I go, No, not, I thought I have, but no, not now because you can put it in there, but you still don’t know what it’s going to look like.

Dr. Dhru: [00:14:20] The content planners. I mean, they’re great in theory, right? You got Lately, which is probably the best one in the market at the moment. And then you have things like Hootsuite and what else? What else is out there. You don’t know what you’re going to get on the other side of that. If it’s just an API conversation, well, that’s a computer checking it for spell check. It’s not checking it to make sure it looks right.

Damon Johnson: [00:14:39] Yeah, if they can develop one, that is a reasonable price that is specific to each platform. If they develop one just for Facebook and Instagram, I would be ecstatic. I could handle the other pages. Great, because most of my clients only really want me to do Facebook, Insta and LinkedIn for them. If I could get a content planner that did Facebook and Insta the right way for like 20-30 bucks a month, great. I don’t want to up my price just to do the content planner to then only have to go back in and triple-check to know what they’ve done, so. But speaking of that, have you ran into this where sometimes Facebook will let you schedule and then sometimes it won’t?

Dr. Dhru: [00:15:25] Yes. Yeah. It’s like, oh, it just feels like it sometimes. It’s like, oh, yeah, you know.

Damon Johnson: [00:15:29] I thought it was just me going crazy. I went to do a post for myself and it was like, Well, do you want to schedule this for now or later? I was like, Oh, why don’t you do this all the time? It just, it’s willy-nilly how it comes up. It’s just, you know, like whatever.

Dr. Dhru: [00:15:43] I think what’s happening there is it’s, because a lot of platforms will do this, it’s a beta test without being a beta test. Right. So they’re testing different features in different markets to see what happens and see how it’s used. And then they’ll take it away. They won’t even, it’s like a soft launch, right? So they’ll see how much people use it, how they use it, if it works properly, that kind of thing. And then they’ll take it away until while they make corrections to it and fix it or whatever. And then they’ll make a big announcement later on when whenever they do, like the next round of release notes or whatever, they’ll be like, Yeah.

Damon Johnson: [00:16:12] I would love something like that. If it just does what it’s supposed to do. It’s not crazy expensive. I’m fine with it. But right now I’m like, No, this isn’t it.

Dr. Dhru: [00:16:24] Yeah, I mean, that’s just one of those software development things that they’re probably working on, trying to make sure that it works and stuff with the right markets, but…

Damon Johnson: [00:16:31] They’ll get it right eventually.

Dr. Dhru: [00:16:32] Yeah. I mean, it’s, as long as they don’t keep twisting it the wrong way. I mean, I think right now, you know, what’s going on with Twitter / X / whatever the hell it’s supposed to be called now. I mean, that’s a whole mess. I mean, I think, so okay. Well, I’m curious what your thought is on that. What’s your thought on the whole Elon and X / Twitter fiasco going on right now?

Damon Johnson: [00:16:52] Oh, it’s the conversation we were on with Ben. Twitter. I love it. I should say hate it at the same time. I love it for the sense of community that we have within our group. If I haven’t talked to you in two days, I know you’re going, I know I can get you right on Twitter. That piece I love about it. The piece that I don’t love about it is that it’s a lot of racists on there who don’t get checked. And I’m like, I’m not going to be the voice for black America, but, you know what I mean? I’m just not, I don’t have that energy anymore. And I’m just like. I shouldn’t say it lets things slip through the cracks. It’s become acceptable. To lead with race on there and not have anything happen and then if we say something we’re seen as crybabies, you’re too soft or, you know, the small, don’t try that in the small-town thing. I looked and I was looking on people’s pages like, are y’all serious right now?

Dr. Dhru: [00:17:58] With Twitter specifically, it has become that kind of I mean, look, there’s a place for free speech, right? There’s an argument to be made there. Fine, right? I totally agree people should have the ability to say whatever the hell they want to say. Fine. Right. Free speech. However, there has, like with anything, there’s got to be a free, there’s got to be a line where it’s like, okay, free speech, but not hate speech, right? Like we can’t get into the world of hate speech. And again, even that world, though, I think part of the problem with this is also created by, because you have people on the right and the left fighting all the time. Right? But people on the right who are arguing for free speech are also, they’re making that argument because people on the left are trying to curtail free speech so much, right? I find myself fighting my place further and further into the middle of this conversation at this point. Because I’m, I used to think I was left, right? I used to think I was I was a fully like liberal person. And now some people out there make me feel like, dude, I feel like a Republican half the time. You know what I mean? Like, it’s crazy, but it’s just like the things that you’re not allowed to say, which are just like, That’s not hate speech, though. Just because you’re interpreting it as hate speech doesn’t mean it’s hate speech. However, there are things out there that actually are hate speech and are being treated with the same kid gloves as other things over here that are not the same. Right?

Damon Johnson: [00:19:13] Right. Sometimes when I hear stuff, I’m like, Okay. And then sometimes when I hear stuff, I’m like, okay, now, you know, like you aren’t a teenager or whatever, you know, you were trying to be funny and not funny, you know what I mean? It’s like, come on now. Like, you know what you’re doing. And I think with Twitter, it just is like a free for all. And my mom used to always say about things like that, something has to happen for something to happen. And like, with the school shootings and whatever, when somebody’s famous child or somebody super rich person gets shot, God forbid, that’s when you’re going to see real change when the right person gets bullied or, you know, pushed too far that’s when something, you know, will happen. The way that people talk, and I mean, I’ve blocked some friends and I’m like, uh, it’s me. I’m like, they have the right to say what they want to say. I have the right not to listen to it. So. Same thing with Twitter. I’m like, to me, it could have been a star. To me. It had all the makings of being one of the best platforms. I knew when they were like, Oh, you got to pay for that blue check.

Damon Johnson: [00:20:38] And you can only have so many views and so many… I’m like, You got so much other stuff to worry about besides, you know, the paying for it. And I would rather pay for a better version of it than what I’m getting now. And oh, Trip and I had this conversation. I want to open my Twitter back up, but I can’t because I’m going to get so much crap. You know what I mean? Not crap towards me, but like right now I got it programmed to like NFTs, real estate, social media, VeeFriends. I got mine cocooned where I’m like protected, because when I opened it up and I looked at other people’s stuff, I’m like, Oh, this is giving me a headache. So somebody else asked me about Twitter and I was like, Oh, I don’t go to that side of Twitter.

Dr. Dhru: [00:21:32] The dark side of Twitter.

Damon Johnson: [00:21:34] Yeah, I don’t go to the dark side of Twitter. Um, and when it becomes too much, I know that I’ll be leaving. I can, if it continues the way that it’s going, I just won’t be there.

Dr. Dhru: [00:21:45] Yeah, no, I agree. I think for me right now, the way I use it is I need to be more intentional about separating, segregating my pieces of like, making my lists, so to speak. Right? Because I never actually, I never really used lists since the beginning of Twitter, I used it very closely at the beginning and then that was about it. But I need to get back to that in terms of like curating who I talk to and who is on the different list, because you get these promoted ads that are just ridiculous. Like, I can’t tell you where I’ve gotten all these ridiculous like, Trump ads and what else? And I’m like, Dude, I could not have any interest in this at all, but I use it primarily for crypto, for VeeFriends stuff. Right? And then, like you said, talk to some people that I haven’t talked to in a long time, you know what I mean?

Damon Johnson: [00:22:27] Because it is very current. The news, the artists, its very on trend as far as the good stuff, it’s better than the news because it’s right on it. It’s very quick hitters, it’s, that’s what I love about it, that it’s very like you said it’s very on trend and what you want to use it for is right there, you don’t have to do much digging.

Dr. Dhru: [00:22:57] But that whole limitation thing that didn’t make any sense, like you exceeded your quota for the day, like dude, and the whole bullshit Elon explanation like, oh well, I’m gonna make people go back to their families like, no you’re not, dude. You’re just. You’re just trying to make money off making people pay for shit. That’s all you’re trying to do. Honestly.

Damon Johnson: [00:23:14] There was no way I was paying for that piece of it. I was like, Nope, no, no thank you.

Dr. Dhru: [00:23:19] I do pay. I pay for the blue check mark, I’ll be honest, it’s just because I want to, I don’t want to be limited to who can see my posts, right? Because I like, I want to get my work out there. I’m trying to, still trying to grow my channel, still trying to grow stuff in general, right? But I don’t know how long I’m actually going to do it for because I’m not sure if it’s making a difference.

Damon Johnson: [00:23:35] How much is it per month?

Dr. Dhru: [00:23:36] I think it’s $12.99. Okay. It’s not horrible. I mean, it’s not like ridiculous. If it was more than that, I don’t think I would do it, honestly.

Damon Johnson: [00:23:44] Can you tell the difference that… Does it give you like a report of how many people have seen it or?

Dr. Dhru: [00:23:49] It shows you in analytics. I’m not sure if you can see analytics without having the blue checkmark, but it shows me analytics of…

Damon Johnson: [00:23:54] Well you used to see it. I don’t know how to even check them forever.

Dr. Dhru: [00:23:57] Yeah, I haven’t seen it in a while. So I looked at it. I look at it now, I guess I can see it now. I can see how many people see my post. How many people, you know, like that kind of thing. Like how many new people engaged about that post versus people who follow me, that kind of thing. You can see stuff like that, I believe, from like an analytics, like metrics point of view. But like, I know that the argument was, I don’t know if this is actually true, maybe it’s not true and maybe I should just cancel my blue check and see what happens, but that your post would be limited to just people who follow you if you don’t have blue check. Or people who reshare it, they have to reshare it in order for other people to see it. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

Damon Johnson: [00:24:28] But see what’s so funny, which is weird because I can get more response on Twitter than Facebook.

Dr. Dhru: [00:24:35] Response like in terms of people seeing your post.

Damon Johnson: [00:24:37] Like in terms of retweets, comments or whatever. I can post a video on Twitter and get 400 views, same video on Facebook, it’ll take me three days to get 400 views. So for me, I was like, Do I need this check? Like I tell, none of my clients have asked for it. They’ve only really been asking about Instagram and Facebook because it’s more local, localized business for them. They don’t have a state, a national, they don’t have a national business or companies or anything like that. So I always tell people, I built a lot of my DJ Realty brand on Twitter. I said, some of my best friends have come from Twitter, which is like we said, which is a shame because I love my Twitter people. It’s really, I don’t know if, I tell people if Twitter was local for me, I’d be a multi-millionaire. So like.

Speaker3: [00:25:37] It’s just, it’s a very interesting place. I think, business wise I get the move. Brand building wise, I’m like, I don’t know what that X is about. I’m just like.

Dr. Dhru: [00:25:54] I don’t know why the X rename. Like, I don’t get that.

Damon Johnson: [00:25:57] Twitter to me was running itself. You didn’t need to, it didn’t need a rebrand. I’ve never heard anybody say, Oh, I’m going to jump on X right quick. I haven’t heard that.

Dr. Dhru: [00:26:11] I don’t think we’re ever going to hear that, honestly. Everyone still calls it Twitter.

Damon Johnson: [00:26:15] When that X pops up on my phone that I got an alert, I’m looking like, who is it? Like, what porn company is this? I’m like, Yeah, still look exactly like, who is this?

Dr. Dhru: [00:26:25] I’m like, wait, is this like X video or something? Like, what the heck is going on? Why is this on my phone? You know?

Damon Johnson: [00:26:30] Yeah, I still look like, what do you mean? Who is X? So, yeah.

Dr. Dhru: [00:26:36] One of those undeserved rebrands things that you know, again, I don’t know what Elon’s doing. I mean, he’s a very smart guy. He’s got to know. He’s got to know. To some extent, honestly, I feel like he’s just kind of fucking around.

Damon Johnson: [00:26:50] Right, because he was like Space X and this X and that X and this is going to sound terrible, I wish he would just run the company and we wouldn’t know who he was, really.

Dr. Dhru: [00:27:01] Yeah, kind of yeah.

Damon Johnson: [00:27:03] Or like Zuckerberg, he doesn’t, even though I heard, you know, all the stories, the movies, I don’t know that man personally. I have no opinion of him personally. I know what he gets on Facebook, Meta, Instagram, WhatsApp, he’s talking about use this feature, use that feature. We’re developing this, we’re doing that. Whereas with Twitter / X, they’ve never been like, Oh, we’re going to help y’all, you know, do this or we’re going to help you guys learn how to, I’ve never learned anything from them. It’s always been from other users. I’ve never had a sense that Twitter had any admins or any, you know what I mean? It’s like….

Dr. Dhru: [00:27:53] Yeah, people behind the scenes, like it’s just like…

Damon Johnson: [00:27:56] You open the door and the kids go in the classroom and you just, don’t kill each other. And there you go. Whereas with Facebook / Meta I think that’s what they have over everyone. Same thing with LinkedIn. Linkedin, I’ve never had any direction about, Hey, I’m the president of LinkedIn. This is how you use LinkedIn. There’s never been, it’s been social media experts and, you know, whoever telling us how to use it, but never any concrete, Hey, this is from us.

Dr. Dhru: [00:28:31] Yeah. And I think part of it’s also there’s a brand difference, like, you know, Facebook, Zuckerberg’s the face of Facebook. Right. He’s the face behind the Facebook, whatever you want to call it. I think the Meta rename is stupid, too, by the way. I think that’s a horrible name to name it.

Damon Johnson: [00:28:45] I was like, What? What?

Dr. Dhru: [00:28:51] So we’re going to the metaverse. So we’re going to call it Meta now. Like, no, because this is not the metaverse yet.

Damon Johnson: [00:28:57] It was okay with just being Facebook because nobody says metaverse. I know when I’m giving a talk or something, somebody they say, Oh, it’s called Meta now. And I say, Who’s saying that?

Dr. Dhru: [00:29:11] Dude, the only people I know who call it Meta are people who work at Meta. And even they are like, Yeah, it’s Facebook.

Damon Johnson: [00:29:16] I said, nobody that I know. Gary doesn’t even say Meta. He’ll say Facebook. Nobody says Meta. So, no.

Dr. Dhru: [00:29:26] No. No one. I know a couple of people who work at Facebook, they’re the only ones who ever refer to it as Meta. And that’s probably cuz they do it professionally, but again, even they’re like, Yeah, it’s just Facebook, you know, whatever. They don’t really care. It’s okay because it doesn’t really matter.

Damon Johnson: [00:29:39] I’m like, It doesn’t, nobody. Nobody calls it that. So it’s all good.

Dr. Dhru: [00:29:45] Oh, man. Well, one thing I want to talk to you about quickly. VeeCon. So, we’re what, a couple of months out from VeeCon, it just, you know, wrapped up. It was a whirlwind of a couple days. And also it was also apparently a rainstorm of a couple days, too. That was, that was crazy. So what was your biggest takeaway you’re still working with right now, you know, a couple months later?

Damon Johnson: [00:30:06] Oh, goodness. Oh, timing and shooting my shot. The timing of it, not… pretty much not getting in my own way and just constantly, but constantly pushing myself at the same time. Just actually doing it. Getting organized with my time. It’s just there’s so much to work on. But for me, the timing piece was like, Don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it. Just, you know, just put it out there. If you want somebody on your show, just ask them. The worst they can tell you is no or not right now or whatever. There’s a guy, a local guy here who’s famous. He’s an athlete here. We know each other, but not like hang out, but we know each other enough to see each other like once or so a month, the same circle. And I’ve asked him a few times to be on the show, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m just like, forget it. I was like, I’m just because I felt like I was wasting my time and his time at this point, I’m like, you know, I want you on the show. It’s like, But I was like, with timing and easy could I have somebody else on that would be easy and that would appreciate the time of being on the show? You know what I mean? It’s like, I think with a lot of times we chase after people who don’t want to get caught or they want you to keep chasing them. I’m just like, whatever. If you’re going to do the show, do the show. If you’re not going to do the show, don’t do this. It’s like, you know what I mean? Because at this point, this podcast is going to go viral and here you are on CNN. You know what I mean? So you just never know when people ask you to be on their show or whatever. I literally be like, I always say yes. I do. I’m like, Yep, yep, I can do it. Just let me know when I can do it. Um, with VeeCon, I think, oh God, I don’t know. There’s so much, there was so much going on, but in a good way. I still wish they didn’t have the classes overlapping so much.

Dr. Dhru: [00:32:25] Yeah, the different tracks. Yeah. Because there were some good tracks. I mean, you almost have to do that though, right? .

Damon Johnson: [00:32:32] You almost have to because there’s no way. There’s no way to get everybody on with who DJ wants to see at, you know what I mean, at nine, ten, eleven, twelve, one o’clock lunch, come back, go home. It’s impossible to do. I don’t know. It just was like, you got to pick your battles. You got to pick who you really want to see, what message you really think you can get out. Because I really had no plans on staying for the Under Armor guy.

Dr. Dhru: [00:33:04] Oh, yeah? Yeah. Kevin Plank. Yeah.

Damon Johnson: [00:33:07] I know who he is, kind of. I was like, Yeah, I end up loving his message like, Oh, this is fantastic. Like, okay, here we go. Like, sometimes you sit in those and you just never know. It’s like, oh, all right. So they’re saying we should know early where it’s going to be at. Come on, Detroit. I don’t know if it’s going to be close. Far? I don’t know. It’s just, I’m not going to Florida. Let’s get that right out there right now. I am not. I am not getting trapped in ‘We don’t like brown people land’, so I’m just not. I’m like.

Dr. Dhru: [00:33:48] I mean, depends on what part of Florida. I mean, Miami is not too, too bad, you know, but yeah, pretty much anywhere else in the state. Yeah.

Damon Johnson: [00:33:54] Yeah. I’m like. I’m like, um. Yeah. So.

Dr. Dhru: [00:34:00] I don’t think it’s gonna be in Florida. I mean, he’s been pretty solidly in the Midwest mostly.

Damon Johnson: [00:34:07] MidWest/East. Yeah, I’m thinking he wraps it up in, New York is so hard to have something at.

Dr. Dhru: [00:34:12] It’s not going to be New York. There’s no way it’s going to be in New York.

Damon Johnson: [00:34:14] Yeah, New York is too hard and too expensive. What would you, Jet Stadium? It’s like MetLife Stadium. It’s like, what would you?

Dr. Dhru: [00:34:22] It’s not even in New York, that’s in New Jersey.

Damon Johnson: [00:34:24] It’s like, where would you have us at that we could all get, we could never make the time if something started at nine, we have to leave your hotel at seven.

Dr. Dhru: [00:34:33] Trying to unless it was like, what do you call it that? That place, where they have New York Comic Con, Javits Center. The Javits Center would be big enough. But I don’t think, it’s expensive.

Damon Johnson: [00:34:44] It’s expensive. Like, where would we all stay? We could not pull it off for a couple hundred bucks. We just could not.

Dr. Dhru: [00:34:50] It’s like $600 a night for a hotel in New York. It’s not going to happen.

Damon Johnson: [00:34:52] You sleeping in… am I sleeping in your bed? You’re sleeping in my bed? Yeah, it’s me, you and four other people in two twin beds. Like, all right, scoot over.

Dr. Dhru: [00:35:01] Right. I think Detroit is definitely a possibility. I think because, I think even Chicago might be good. I think I really think Midwest.

Damon Johnson: [00:35:08] I was thinking he was going to pick Chicago. And here’s why I thought Chicago, when he went for that-

Dr. Dhru: [00:35:13] –car convention.

Damon Johnson: [00:35:15] He went for the car convention. And then when I saw him there for the VeeFriends toy launch at that Macy’s. I was like, Why is he in? The Macy’s is huge in Chicago, I get it. But I always overthink everything. I was like, they scoping out cities. I said, They’re scoping out cities without telling us they’re scoping out. I was like, Why is he here in the middle of October? I’m like, Mhm. Here we are. I’m like, Yeah, it’s either Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland. Um. Hell even DC, but DC is busy too. It’s like.

Dr. Dhru: [00:35:54] DC’s expensive. It’s busy.

Damon Johnson: [00:35:54] DC is expensive.

Dr. Dhru: [00:35:56] I don’t know if it’s going to be. I mean, I wouldn’t mind it, but I don’t think it would be like, Hey, I don’t think it’ll be DC. I think it’s going to be somewhere in Midwest. And you know, to your point, I think, you know, it was one of those things where it’s hard to see everybody you want to see there, right? Yeah. Almost. Honestly, I because I didn’t know who Andrew Schulz, I knew of him, but I didn’t know he was as funny as he actually is. Because I watched some of his comedy since then and he’s actually pretty funny. I actually, looking back, I wish I’d gone to that night. The performance of Andrew Schulz that night of VeeCon. I remember we got dinner. We all.

Damon Johnson: [00:36:28] Yeah, I was like…

Dr. Dhru: [00:36:29] We were tired. I mean, we were exhausted, dude. I mean, you know, it was a long day.

Damon Johnson: [00:36:33] I’m a grandpa at night. I’m like, What?

Dr. Dhru: [00:36:37] I’m generally not, But that was an exhausting couple days. So it was just like, yeah.

Damon Johnson: [00:36:43] It got to the point where I was like, You know how you use all your energy for the day? I was like, Because you want to be on, you want to be nice, you want to not miss anything. You know, you could look the wrong way and miss people. You’re like, wait a minute, who is that? So you kind of want to be on. And when it was over, I was like, We got to go back and do what? Like, wait a minute. So my goal, my goal for the next one is to at least go out once while we’re there. At least to go to one of the nighttime things.

Dr. Dhru: [00:37:17] I’m going to try to go to actually all of them if I can, because I do think it’s worth it to try. I mean, especially the last one, right? I don’t know.

Damon Johnson: [00:37:24] We went to, I’m we’re going, I’m like, you go like, Damon wake up.

Dr. Dhru: [00:37:30] I’ll be like, Yo, wake the fuck up. Let’s go, let’s go.

Damon Johnson: [00:37:33] I wake up like, where are we at? Like we’re here, you asleep like what?

Dr. Dhru: [00:37:38] Oh, man. Well, as I’m wrapping up here, just got to, you know, I want to thank you again for being on the show. But what’s a message that you want to leave folks with from any point of view, from a personal perspective, from another point of perspective, you know, whatever business perspective, whatever you want to leave folks with.

Damon Johnson: [00:37:53] Just be as nice as you can be to people. You just never, I know this, you’ve heard, everybody’s heard this before, You never know what somebody’s going through. You never know what that person behind you in line is going through, what that person behind the counter is going through. Um, if we could all just be… And I don’t mean you have to be a doormat, but, you know, you just give a smile or a wave or a nod because we, in this economy, we’re all one invoice away from disaster.

Dr. Dhru: [00:38:27] Yeah. That’s very true.

Damon Johnson: [00:38:27] Did you pay your bill? Please let that check come through today. It’s like. So you just never know. And I try to I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I try, when I don’t have something nice to say, just to be quiet. I’m like, just be quiet. Or I just wait till my small circle is just like, Can you believe what that flippity flap said to me earlier? But yeah, I just try to, you know, treat people like I want to be treated, whether it’s I go up for a big company pitch or a small business pitch or a mom and pop shop, I try to, I treat all my presentations, you know, the same. You know, tell them what I can do, what I specialize in. I had a meeting the other day with a small shop, and he was like, he was meeting with other people. And I was like, Great, please do that because I don’t want you to just settle on me. I don’t want you just to get me and be like, I should have talked to Dr. Dhru, too. You should. I tell people you should because you just never know. So he was like, Really? I was like, Yeah, I’m not, I don’t have any competition. We all do the same and different things at the same time. So yeah, I just try to treat people normal and easy and. I want, when you meet me, to be like, I really liked him. Or he just, I liked him or he just wasn’t for me.

Dr. Dhru: [00:39:57] Oh, I mean 100%. I mean I totally agree with that, man. I mean, there’s a client actually that I’m going to, I’m introducing to another coach because I want him to meet multiple people and make a right choice. Like, fit is everything with coaching, right? Same thing with social media. Right? You got to have people who have the same, not the same, but who understand your voice, understand who you are, understand your brand. Right? And are able to recreate that as much as they can. Right? So if they don’t align with it the way you want them to, you shouldn’t be stuck with that person.

Damon Johnson: [00:40:24] You should not because you’ll, you won’t like it. You’ll be like, How can I get out of this contract? I’ll get me out of here. Don’t use Damon. Don’t use Dr. Dhru. And none of us want that. So, yeah, I try to be as nice and a truth teller as I can be, like, I’ve had clients that have asked for stuff. I’m like, Oh, I don’t have the capability to do that. This one guy wanted a national campaign. I was like, Oh, you need a publicist. You need a publicist in a bigger shot than I have. You need at least $10,000 at least to pull any of this off.

Dr. Dhru: [00:40:58] Some of the bigger publicity companies are probably looking for more of a minimum of 50 K.

Damon Johnson: [00:41:02] Yeah, I was like, good luck. I just was like, he wanted a national campaign and I was like. On social or on the networks?

Dr. Dhru: [00:41:14] Yeah that’s that’s a… Socials, yeah, absolutely. We can do that easily. Right?

Damon Johnson: [00:41:18] Yeah, I said social, yeah.

Dr. Dhru: [00:41:19] But networks, that’s publicity. That’s a publicist.

Damon Johnson: [00:41:21] He wanted to be on the TV screens and I’m not mad. Empty your wallet and knock yourself out.

Dr. Dhru: [00:41:28] Well, Damon, appreciate it, man. Thanks so much for being on the show and I really appreciate your time. And always messages are always great, on point. Everyone, thanks a lot for tuning in to this. And you know, Damon Johnson, if you guys are in the Detroit area looking for a house or mortgage or want some support with social media, DJ Realty / Damon Inc, those are the place to go check it out. So Damon, thanks again. Appreciate it, brother. We’ll catch up again soon.

Damon Johnson: [00:41:50] I appreciate you, brother. Thank you so much, everybody. Appreciate it.

Dr. Dhru: [00:41:52] All right. Take care, guys. Hit like, subscribe, share with somebody who might find it helpful. Take care.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:41:57] Thank you all so much for listening to the Ikigai Leadership podcast today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a five-star review with comments to let me know what you thought. It really helps me keep on delivering valuable and relevant content to you all, and if you want to connect with me directly, please feel free to do so on my socials. That’s at @DhruBee on Twitter, at @DhruvaBee on Instagram and LinkedIn, it’s linkedin.com/in/dhrubee. Thank you all so much. Take care. Stay safe. Talk to you soon.