Emmanuel Eleyae: I’ll be your host, Emmanuel Eleyae, CEO and founder of Eleyae Systems where we build systems that build brands online and help e-commerce entrepreneurs go from 10k a month to 100k a month to a million dollars a month in revenue without wasting a fortune on ad spend or working themselves to death to do it so that they can finally pay themselves what they deserve out of their business. We do this because we have built our own e-commerce brands, we’ve done over 50 million dollars in revenue for our own brands and our clients' brands in our agency and we’re just getting started. These systems that we teach, they work, they are effective, they’re repeatable, they’re scalable. They’ve worked for our businesses, they’ve worked for our clients' businesses and they’ll work for your businesses too. Welcome to Eleyae Systems podcast Journey To An 8 Figure E-Commerce Business. In this episode I’ll be interviewing Keith Hayden who I believe can best be described as a modern day renaissance man. I mean, this guy can do it all. He writes novels, he produces music, he plays multiple instruments, speaks multiple languages, teaches school in Japan, is building a community of veteran creatives and on and on and on. His creativity seems to have no bounds, and that’s what excited me the most when I got the opportunity to speak to him. Keith is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and that really struck me because as creative as he is right now, that creativity was in him even while he was in the military, a place that is not known for being creative, a place that is known for being literally the exact opposite of creative where conformity is in service of the mission and is paramount. I mean this is an environment where being creative is literally a life or death situation often, right, where the consequences if people don’t follow orders can be devastating. Where if you’re out there trying to express yourself creatively and make your own decisions that are counter to the mission people could get hurt. And we talked a lot about that in this episode. Pay particular attention to how he was able to maintain his creativity and that spark of creativity even while in uniform in the military, right. Something as simple as a journal was what he was able to use to maintain that creativity for thirteen years while he was inside of the Air Force, right. Fascinating, I found that fascinating and it's a lesson that we can all take with us how to, just keeping a diary can help you keep that creativity alive. You also get a lot out of hearing his description of how he handles imposter syndrome, right, as much as i've just described to you the novels he’s written, the music he’s produced, the instruments, all these things he still does not feel that he is creative or a creator. So you'll hear how he’s handling imposter syndrome and giving himself permission to be creative no matter if he has a certification, a badge, or a rank, or what anyone else thinks. These are lessons we can all use as we’re building our business on this journey towards an eight figure a year e-commerce company. I know you're gonna get a lot out of this conversation that I'm having with Keith Hayden and without further ado, here’s Keith Hayden.
Emmanuel: Yeah. I'm always fascinated by people who don't take the beaten path, cuz I mean there's very, especially in the military, there's very prescribed career paths.
Keith Hayden: Definitely.
Emmanuel: Literally for 20 years you can chart out every single move. But I'm always fascinated with people who are like, yeah, nope. I'm not doing that. Hacking my way through the wilderness. Right. That whole two roads diverged in the woods, you know? Instead of the beaten path, you're hacking your way through. You get to see views that other people don't get to see. So I'm always curious, what's it been like coming outta the academy and then now ending up where you are? What's the journey been like?
Keith: Man, it's, and I feel like you know most of the story, mine's just a different version. But it's definitely been, this was totally unexpected. If you would ask people when I was cadet and my family back in the day, like if I would be like doing this stuff that I'm doing. They would've been like, you're outta your mind. Because I was like the most, like straight and narrow kid. I was the one, I did JROTC in high school. I was actually Army JROTC by the way. So my mom worked at Fort Sam Houston, like my entire childhood in San Antonio. That's where I grew up. So I was already, I had set myself on this path and then other people had set me on this path too. And so when I got into the academy, I mean, I loved my time at the academy and I was, it was, it was incredible. And then my career in the Air Force was awesome. But yeah, when I hit that kind of inflection point, you know when, you know how it feels like when you're done. You know, when, and, and, and it's different for everybody. It just, it's like a day where it happens where you're like, okay, I'm ready to get out. I'm ready to be done. And I hit that point and when I got out, I was kind of in this dark forest. You talk, I like how you talk about like, you know, hacking your way through the jungle because you know how it is. Like you get so much, especially when you're a grad. You get so much of your identity from the military and from your job and from your AFSC or MOS for y'all. And I definitely was like, I didn't realize that all that stuff was super important to me. But then when I got out and I didn't have it anymore, I was like, oh, who am I now? Like, what am I about? You know, I went from Captain Special Agent to Mr.
Emmanuel: Yeah haha, so big transition man. Oh man. That's people calling you sir, people looking up to you just cuz of what you have on your chest and on your cover.
Keith: Yeah, every, all of it. The whole thing.
Emmanuel: It's all gone.
Keith: And then all of a sudden it was all gone and then I went down this freelancing route. I was like, everybody would ask me, you know, when I was getting out, what are you trying to do? And I was trying to be a Spanish court interpreter. And people would be like, good luck with that. You know, they'd be supportive, but then they would like, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. You know, so when I went and did that, I taught myself Spanish to fluency. I didn't become a court interpreter. And then after like two years in, ironically, because of all, I saw the writing on the wall back in, this was 2017, 2018, of all the technology and all the AI and all that stuff. This was 2018 and I was like there's not gonna be a need for as many interpreters or things like that, you know, translators. And now look at us, you know, like five years later. Certainly, you know, I don't know how the interpreting field is now, but I mean, imagine there's way less, you just don't need as many anymore with all of the AI stuff. So I pivoted. I went to go get my teaching certification cuz I had done some tutoring at my high school after I got out and I liked it. I liked being with the kids, I liked mentoring and them, you know, seeing me and I, I just like teaching. So I went back and got my teaching credential and I got my credential. It got kind of, got cut off during Covid a little bit, but then they in, over in California, they grandfathered us in. So that was good. But then we moved here to Japan and then all of a sudden teaching credentials no good, because it's in the states. So when we got over here two years ago, it was like, okay, what you gonna do now? And I had been already like posting some stuff online. Actually my first time doing stuff online was posting like blog articles. I was writing for medium.com. I don't know if you know Medium.
Emmanuel: Yep, absolutely.
Keith: Yeah. So that's where I started. I would just post some like little writing and here and there. But then in like 2018, I started blogging. So over the years I was like collecting all these different little skills and they seemed like completely unrelated and I didn't know like where it was gonna end up or anything like that. But then after I had so many together and after I wrote my first novel, um, I was like, okay, I'm ready to like advertise this. So then that's where the marketing piece came in. And last year was big on social media. For me it was huge, like learning how to actually use social media as the tool that you know and I, and I've noticed you've been doing that as well, like I remember seeing some of your TikToks and,
Emmanuel: I'm trying.
Keith: It fun, you know? And that's what it is. And that's one of the things I like about social media that's also very frustrating about it, is that it's a giant experiment. You know, like every time you're throwing stuff out there and somebody I, I look up to equated it to like pulling a lever on a slot machine. You just never know who's seeing your stuff on the other end and how they may receive it, how it might change their life, how they may change your life as a result. So you just get better at like, defining and refining your message, how you tell your story, how you pitch your products, and a lot of times it's not even pitching anymore. It's like, it's just like, I'm doing this thing and I'm presenting it. I've seen you doing, I've seen you doing similar things, so yeah. that's pretty much been me,
Emmanuel: I’ve always been fascinated by, oh, sorry. Continue, please.
Keith: Oh, oh, go ahead. Well, that's what I was gonna say. That's, that's pretty much me. I mean,
Emmanuel: I was just gonna interject on that point and cuz I want you to continue. But I love that idea of, of describing social media that way. It's a lot like how I heard, I tried improv for a, for a hot second, that was hard. But the way to describe, it's like play, you're reminding yourself, it's like grownups playing. That's how I feel social media is, right? You get to get out of your head. So much of the day is spent on an agenda. In fact, I have my calendar up right here. I have my emails over there. I have my notifications on this screen. It's so planned and structured and rigid. It's like when you flip on that camera, especially for the TikTok style, and I'm, I'm, people have their feelings about TikTok. I don't care so much about that. What I like is what they presented us with the opportunity to just literally let it out. Just whatever's on your mind. Unstructured, unfiltered, for 15 seconds, just play for a second. Have fun. Be yourself and you get to see what comes out. I had an art teacher, uh, cuz I've been going on this creative path that I've been documenting and she said the most profound thing to me as structured as I am, she said, look, when I start to paint, I don't usually know what I'm gonna paint. I just start with the canvas and I let it tell me what to, what to paint.
Keith: There it is.
Emmanuel: I was like, hold on. Wait, what did you just say? What? You mean that gorgeous painting you have on the wall that you created, you didn't know you were gonna make that. She's like, no, I just, the paints, the way the brush felt, the way it moved. And there's something so incredibly liberating about that, right. About being able to just let go in a safe way, right. Just let go. Not be so structured, not be so forceful. So yeah I love what you're saying about social media and I wish more people knew that.
Keith: Yeah, and I think a lot of people see. I feel like there's two sides to social media. You know, it's like the side, it's the consumer side where everybody's, it’s the entry point for pretty much everybody. When you get, first discover a new platform like TikTok or Twitter or whatever it is, you are on this side to where you're being fed stuff. And I'm kind of going through this right now again, because I actually started a Twitter account in Japanese. I'm learning Japanese. I'm like really trying to get really strong at it now since we're here and I started a Japanese Twitter account, so I had to start over. So my algorithm's all crazy. Like people are, it's just offering me stuff that I, I'm not interested in because it doesn't know, because it does, I don't, it doesn't have enough information about me like talking to a Japanese audience. And so I think that's what happens, especially now that they're all algorithm, heavily algorithm driven now that you have to get through that phase of, okay, it's, it's learning about you. And most people never get past that phase. They, they just, you know, they're like, uh, showing me stuff. And some people it, it goes two paths, right? Some people really like what it's showing them and other people hate what they're showing them. You know, it riles 'em up. They, they're getting all these notifications, it's all the stuff they don't care about or, you know, it's emotionally charged every time. So they're like, oh, social media is terrible. And I feel like that was where I was at back in 2020 when Covid broke out. Covid breaks out and then of course you have the doom scrolling and you know, everybody's looking at what the next update is gonna be. It's all scary times and all this stuff. And I just made a decision. I remember, like a month into it, I was like, you know what, yo, I'm tired of just being on this thing and not, it's just draining me. I'm gonna use the time, I'm gonna use it for something different. So that was the beginning of the mental shift. And then last year, it took a couple of years for me to go through this, I'm summarizing very heavily, but it, it takes a while to get through this mentality to get to the next level to where, okay, this is a weapon now. I need to sharpen it. I can sharpen it and yeah, it's algorithm driven, whatever, but there's a way to play the game to where you can actually benefit instead of just posting stuff and getting riled up and people, you know, listening on these inflammatory conversations about, you know, cuz I've, I've heard whispers about stuff that's going on with TikTok or anything like that, like potential regulation. Honestly, I don't know anything about it. It's just probably cuz I'm over here in Japan, so I don't really know what's going on. But, um, the point is like, this is, it's, if you look at it as kind of, for what it is, it's a piece of software. It's a very powerful piece of software, but that anybody can use to do something, to tell a story, advance a message, sell a product, whatever. I think if you think about it that way, then it shifts, it begins to shift how you approach it.
Emmanuel: I agree.
Keith: It becomes different. Yeah.
Emmanuel: And I, I agree with that. Now I want to ask you, uh, how you use that, what idea of It's a weapon. Weapon, yeah, how, how do you sharpen your weapon and then how do you deploy it?
Keith: Yeah, I like that. So basically I, I've been fortunate to run into several, just people who are just super effective Twitter users. And the way I use it, and maybe this doesn't work for other people but it works for me, is this concept of, that I learned last year in a course, of selling your sawdust. Basically, as you're creating stuff, you probably get where I'm going. But it's probably good for people listening to this because this was a mind blowing concept for me, because that was one of the hardest things probably it's like, I want to create stuff on social media. I wanna use it, but how do I integrate this in? This feels so hard to actually make it like practical to actually do it. So now basically whenever I work on something, or not whenever, most times when I work on something, I will post like, here's just an update of what I did in an interesting way, right. Like not really, and this is where kind of there's some artistry there and there's some creativity and it's personality driven too. It just depends on how, if you're listening to this and you, you know, you have, how could I do that? You're gonna do it in your own style. And that's what goes back to the play that we've been talking about, that we mentioned before. But yeah, I just kind of post these updates in an interesting way and I do it regularly. And then another thing of categorizing what you are posting, that's another way I sharpen it. Like I make it continuous, right. So I have these threads, these learning threads, where if I'm learning music or I'm learning about coding or whatever, it's a continuous running thread. And that was another big unlock for me, too. Instead of like posting, and this, and this is specific to Twitter, there's other platforms, ways you can use other platforms. Every platform kind of has its own little gimmick or mechanic, but for Twitter, you can thread things together. So instead of just posting like, here's another one, and then Tuesday I post something, Friday I post something. No. If Tuesday and Friday are related, go back and find that Tuesday Tweet and then link it together. And then now you have a running list so when anybody finds that topic on your account, they're gonna find all of this. You're basically creating a digital resume for everything that you are doing. And that, and that's one way that I'm using it like to, to very powerful effect. Because every time I post something about learning Japanese, it's just a running list. I started it back in October of 2022 and it's now January, so it's been three months of me just occasionally, and it, it's not every day, but whenever I do, it's like, wow, you know, we can see like my Japanese, I can see my Japanese getting better, other people can see my Japanese getting better. It's the same with any other thing. So that's one way I do it. Um, that's just one strategy. There's other strategies I could talk about too, but like how to engage with people and actually like be a person on social media. I, I think that some things that people forget, like, they get caught up in the followers and the numbers and the views and the impressions and all this stuff, and, and, okay. That stuff is, it, it, it is mildly important, but I think people forget there's actually people using these accounts, everything kind of becomes a number. And I think that's to our detriment because then you are, you start focusing on those figures and you're not focusing on, okay, there's actual people there. If you actually, like, one thing I started doing was when I like something, I ask myself, why did I like this? And if I can't, like think of a, like, pretty immediate reason why I like it, I unlike it and if I do like it, I leave a comment and I think I, I started this last year and it's, it's such a simple thing, but if you equate social media to like in-person, in-person interactions, right, you wouldn't say, Hey, I like your yellow shirt Emmanuel. That's a nice yellow shirt.
Emmanuel: Thank you.
Keith: And it, yeah, it is nice. And you wouldn't, you wouldn't just like that, like, like it's so weird, right. It's a very weird concept that is very new to the internet, but in real life it don't work without like some context or some type of smile or some reinforcing action to tell the person that, oh, okay, they really like the shirt because it's a nice shirt. I picked it out. I feel good in it.
Emmanuel: It looks good on you.
Keith: It looks good on you. Like it's no context. And I think the likes and stuff, like it's, it's a good, it's a mildly good feedback mechanism, but it's not very effective. And I think if you just focus on likes, you can't transition to the other side of using social media as a tool that it can be used as.
Emmanuel: Right, it's almost like people focus more on the media part of social media versus the social part of social media.
Keith: I love that.
Emmanuel: You know, the numbers and the likes and the views. It's a social platform. Engage.
Keith: It is. Exactly.
Emmanuel: Treat people how you wanna be treated. I'll tell you, I love that idea of selling your sawdust. Both of these ideas fit to the same idea, is vulnerability. I feel like that's kind of what TikTok and that short form content is created and UGC, user generated content is we, we're just tired of the polished Instagram world, right, where you're showing a fake life. You see these people, you know, renting out, uh, a private plane to sit on it for a day, to take a whole bunch of photos to show that they're living that lifestyle, it's not true. And I'll tell you what my, one of the reasons why I resonated so much with your, the sawdust idea, which, uh, was a phenomenal, um, uh, message, which I'd heard, I'm gonna butcher it, obviously, but it was a story of like, you know, people chopping down trees or doing woodworking and they'd have these piles of sawdust and then the sawdust was just sitting there, you know, getting in the way. And they started to find people who needed the sawdust. So their waste product that they couldn't throw away and or were just going to throw away became a product in and of itself. So the idea of documenting the journey, the raw uncut unfiltered, uh, material that would be a blooper reel in the past, or, or casted aside on the cutting report is actually beneficial. It could be a product on social media. I love that idea. And this is what happened with me, I did a challenge last year in May when I launched my TikTok, I said, look, I'm going to dedicate myself to social media. I'm gonna try this out, see if I can do it three posts every day for 30 days. My sister challenged me and it was like, how hard can it be? It's 15 seconds. Two weeks later, I burnt out. I was done.
Keith: Three posts a day, man, you ambitious. Ambitious.
Emmanuel: And it was, I didn't realize it at the time. I was naive, I'm this hard charging go-getter. Like ah, three posts, 15 seconds, these kids are doing it, man. Kids. I'm a polished professional. I got gray hair. I done earned these gray hairs, right? Like I can do this, but I burnt out. And I was talking to my coach about it and I said, look, I can't do this anymore, man. I'm tired, like I'm just sick of waking up every day trying to come up with something interesting to say, cuz A, what was I doing? I was trying to make something interesting. I'm trying to make something that makes me look like an authority figure that,
Keith: Oh, mistake number one.
Emmanuel: Exactly. And that's the whole point. So this idea of sell your sawdust, she said, she gave me the best advice I could have gotten, which is share that. And I would tell you, I turned on the camera right after that call and I said, look, I quit. I'm an entrepreneur who wants to quit? I don't, it is by far the best performing posts I have done to date.
Keith: That's amazing.
Emmanuel: Since, and I've done a lot of posts since, right, but it gave me freedom. Just be yourself, man. I told 'em I quit. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm struggling. It's hard. And I ended it by saying, I don't even know if I'm gonna be here tomorrow. We'll see. I give up. And I came back to it. There was so much encouragement and I learned another lesson about social media, this might be one of your tips is you can reply to a comment with a video on these short form platforms. So I got comments from people that were very encouraging and it didn't feel right to just say thanks for their encouragement. There were people that were like, keep your head up, you can do this, you got this. Get to your point about being human, it didn't feel right to just say thanks, thumbs up emoji, heart emoji. That didn't feel right. So what I did is every single person that replied to me as a comment, I replied with a video thanking them. And that all of a sudden then, then you look and you're like, wait a second. Now my content, I just made 15 videos per platform on Instagram, on TikTok, and that's what I've done since. I'll do a week or two blitz of one a day posts, and then people will comment, and then I'll reply with a video comment, and now I've got two or three more videos. So, I mean, there were so many things that came out of that, but back to your idea of sell the sawdust, it's a powerful idea. You know, add that to your other strategy of, uh, create running lists of categories and topics so people can see the progress. It's almost like a playlist on YouTube. You have a playlist for Japanese, for Spanish. Like these little things are what really, especially what we're trying to do with ROI creatives is try to figure out what is the 80/20 of content creation. Like, it doesn't have to be hard. So many people are scared to start, to jump in to make content. So that brings me to a big question why I wanted to reach out to you specifically is you're a creative person, right. Do you, do you identify as that?
Keith: Yeah, I do.
Emmanuel: The reason I say is cuz it's such a juxtaposition with Naval Academy grad, right. You're not, we're not known for writing novels, you know, and I'm an, uh, West Pointer. I went the exact opposite route, right? So we're very hard charging, analytical, engineering, you know, types. But yet here we are years later tapping into this creativity, like how did you come to grips with that and was it always there for you or is it new? So all of that.
Keith: Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm an Air Force grad. I gotta,
Emmanuel: Sorry, sorry. Air Force.
Keith: Make sure for, for the record that people know. Like I, I rep Air Force, uh, I rep the, the silver and blue and I actually did do a semester exchange at the Naval Academy though when I was a Cadet.
Emmanuel: Oh, so you were wrong on both counts. Go Army.
Keith: I know I messed up twice, man.
Emmanuel: Strike two.
Keith: I'm just, I'm just happy to be talking to you. I'm like, man, this Army, Air Force, we, we shouldn't be getting along.
Emmanuel: You know, right, right. All these zoomies, zoomies. What'd y'all call 'em, West Pointers?
Keith: Uh, what did we call them?
Emmanuel: Because the Navy folks were squid. Wait, y'all didn't even think of them? Is that what you're saying? The naval guys were squids.
Keith: What did we, I don't think we had a name for y'all.
Emmanuel: Oh man. That breaks my heart.
Keith: Actually, our big rivalry when I was a cadet was mostly Navy, like Army, we had our rivalry too, Air Force, Army, but I mean I just remember like the Navy, when it was Navy, Air Force game, it was like, oh man, here we go again.
Emmanuel: Man that hurts even worse. You know, people always say, what's the opposite of love? It's not hatred, it's indifference. It hurt my heart, man. Just didn’t even think of y'all.
Keith: We didn’t think of y'all, man. It's a cold world, man.
Emmanuel: It's cold, brother. Hurt my heart.
Keith: But yeah, back to your question about creativity, um, it's always, it's always been there, man. When I was a kid, my brothers, I had two brothers and we, we loved Lego man, so we made this like entire Lego town, like the town. I remember we had two like twin beds where my brothers and I used to sleep, and then when we got older, they got another bed. And so we used like this entire bed frame as a Lego town. It was all the base plates and then we built buildings on top. And I remember like when I was 11 or 12, we made like a home movie or something about it. And we, we had the characters and stuff and we, and we even did some stop motion things, um, and so things like that, when I was a kid, it was always kind of there. And so to your point about like being military and stuff cuz this was something, I think this is one of the reasons why we connected is cuz you saw I was, I kind of had this thing going last year. I was calling it the military creative where I was basically trying to get more of us vets and grads and people that are just like typically not associated with creativity to doing more of the stuff that we are doing and tapping into that. And I still kind of maintain a spirit of the spirit of that and something else that I do, but bottom line is it didn't really work. Like I didn't really find the audience at the time for it. But yeah, we're definitely not known for creativity. And I know when I was active duty, uh, I almost lost mine because, you know, you're active duty, you're being told when, where, how. Here's your job, here's where you work, here's your coworkers. And there's not a lot of wiggle room for your own thoughts, let alone your own like doing stuff like this. So what I did was I kept a journal. I started a journal when I was a cadet, and I, I wrote in it and for 13 years, and I didn't write in it daily, but I wrote in it regularly enough to where I kept that creative spirit. And it wasn't just like, I did this today, I went here, there, eventually it became like a writing practice platform. And so I would write stories, I would write poetry, I would try and imagine life from the perspective of different people. I would talk about the places that I was traveling to, and I was traveling all over the training that I went to, and so it kind of became the story in itself. And so that one thread, I actually just wrote about this a couple days ago. That thread of creativity really kept it alive for me. I felt like I was like blowing on the inverse of a flame that was going out, like if I stopped like it was gonna, but something told me like, this is important just to do this little silly act for, you know, even if it's just five minutes and I wasn't doing it every day mind you, but it was just something to keep that act of creativity going. And so to your question, like yeah, it's kind of always been there and I just never. Because it wasn't my job, because it wasn't my identity because, you know, I went to the academy and all that stuff. It, it wasn't like, I didn't consider myself an artist, like it was like a couple of months ago that somebody said, you're an artist, because they heard some of my music for my podcast. And I was like, it kind of took me a second to let it sink in. Like, you know what? I am an artist. Because I never thought about myself and like, I was like art, artist people, they think a certain way, they talk, you know, they're all, whatever, you know, you know, like I, I don't know. There's this, I have this, I had this, uh, image of what an artist was, and it wasn't me because, you know, I was the straight laced military kid, you know, I was the military guy. But definitely with the music that I've done with my podcast, I do voice acting, I run this entire podcast myself. I've written it, of course, um, I edit it, I do everything. And yeah, there's an artistry there, there I'm making creative decisions daily and I love that. And I love that my creativity has taken so many different forms. Um, so many more than I ever thought it would, and I just keep pushing it. I just keep pushing like, what new technology can I try? What new platform can I try, for myself too, I mean just like, what can I learn? What can I read that I can integrate into my stories, into my writing, into my whatever? And, and everything kind of becomes a remix of itself. Um, so that's me, man. Like it's kind of always been there.
Emmanuel: That's powerful. What do you do with that now, with that, like, what would you even say that is? Is it a newfound confidence? Is it a new sense of identity? Is it always like, has it opened a new road? Because even as I hear you describing how you, you, it's almost like you, that person said that. But then you still kind of pulled back into a more cerebral, less feeling, right? Like it's still, like, it's still kind of blocked off, you know? So are you fully, how are you embracing it and moving forward in that? Are you going all in?
Keith: Yeah, I'm pretty much, I'm pretty much all in mentally. I'm not all in like time wise, just cuz practically I, I can't be like, I, I do and I like teaching, you know, I teach part-time at a high school near where I live, so I like that. You know, it's not really about the money cuz you know, the money's not that great, but I don't really care. I like being around the kids. I like teaching. But I'm all in as far as like mentally now, like, and because you're right, there definitely was some pushback at the beginning that were just like, that's, I didn't go to, we call it tech school. Like get your job training. I didn't go to tech school for being a creator. I didn't go to tech school for podcasting, and I still kind of have that voice in the back of my mind saying, you're not qualified to do this. And you, and you know why, you know, because that's the academy and the military. That's what it, it trains you to like wait until you're told, until you're qualified. Until somebody says, okay, here's your special badge or your rank, or your position or whatever for you to do this job. And then you start doing it, doing, flipping, inverting that, that mentality is really hard when that's all you've known your entire life, and that was me. And so every day I have to flip the script and say, okay, I'm, I am qualified because I'm doing it. That's the only qualification you need is to do it. And the more you do it, the more qualified you become. And I struggled with this with music. I started writing music, I wrote my first song nearly just about two years ago, which is under two years ago, and I'd never written a song. I never really played an instrument growing up. I played trumpet like in eighth grade but piano, guitar, never touched those things. And now I can play both with some competence and I've composed over 40 songs for my podcast. But I still wouldn't call myself a musician. Like a couple, this was a couple months ago. It took me, uh, just that mentality, right. It was that I had, you know what we were talking about, I wasn't trained for this. I don't know if my music's any good. I don't know if I'm doing it right or whatever. You know, I've studied some music theory and I know how to play a little bit and I know how to work my way around a DAW, a digital audio workstation, but I'm like I don't know if I'm the right guy, if I'm the real McCoy, but that doesn't matter. It, it, all that matters is that you're doing it. It's like we're in this time where you give yourself the qualifications, like that running list that I talked about on Twitter and stuff with these different categories and stuff I'm learning. That's just a tangible, kind of, just a visual for me and for other people. It's the resume, it's the paper. But the actual experience comes from the doing, and that's what I love about this, is that you can do it in so many different ways and you can integrate different pieces and it's not a tech school to where it's like, here's the curriculum and we're gonna go from A to to E, then after so many weeks, you graduate and you can do all these things. I can give myself capabilities in whatever I want. I get to pick and choose what type of music I write, what type of stories I write, what type of newsletters, what type of social media content I put out. I choose everything, and I like that. I love that. Some people don't.
Emmanuel: Amazing. You motivate me, brother. I'll tell you what. So do you feel comfortable even now saying it? Are you an artist?
Keith: Yeah, I'm a hundred percent an artist man.
Emmanuel: Are you a musician?
Keith: I'm a musician. If you listen to my podcast, you will see, like, I mean, it's almost, and I, it's hard because I can't listen to it as like someone who doesn't create it. But I don't know how other people perceive it, but, because it does change a lot, but it evolves. Like if you listen from the beginning when it was just supposed to be an audiobook to like now to where it's like a full fledged audio drama, sound effects, sound, sound design, music, just the kind of creative decisions that go into every episode, you'll be like, I think maybe that's what might be impressing people about it is that one, it's just mostly a one man show, but also there is some creativity, there is artistry in it. Yeah man, I definitely am calling myself an artist.
Emmanuel: That's awesome. That's awesome. I, I tell you, I listened to your short story, I'm on episode one. I haven't got to the podcast yet, but it's fascinating to me. I was blown away that you made that and I did not know you also have a podcast. I did not know you're also a multilingual. I did not know that you create music. I did not know all these things and yet here you are still wondering, you know, there's some doubt in there. Am I an artist? Am I a musician? Like it's powerful because I started this whole journey, uh, after I went to that death cafe to, to become more creative, right. And so the first thought that hit me as soon as I decided that's what I want to do and tap into that, I felt that same feeling you have. And so, you know, I love the definition you gave. Just the doing is the only qualification you need to call yourself an artist. This is, it's a whole different world. It's not like where we came in the military where someone else has to bequeath you with the status of artist, musician, right. No, you pick up the camera, you're a cameraman. You pick up the paint brush, you're a painter. Like just go do and see what happens after that so, fascinating.
Keith: Exactly. Exactly. And if anybody's listening to this, I don't know like, um, the type of people that listen to your show or things like that, but I feel like anybody can hear this and take the message away of just start doing it. You know, like, I think one of the biggest things I struggled with was when, when I was starting, was that I felt like I needed to have a whole solution, like, it was, it started with my website. It was like, well, the website doesn't have this, this X, Y, Z, you know, it's like, no. Is the website operational? Can people see it? Can you see it? Does it have all the stuff that you want on there? Even if it's just bare bones, even if it's just contact information and one thing that you made, whatever you're making, writing, drawing, whatever you're doing, then it's done and you will iterate. If you know, as long as you keep going back to it, it's gonna get better if you keep doing it. And that's why I like this concept that I heard about last year of do 100 things. So it basically just goes like this, it's basically like, whatever you wanna do, do it 100 times and see how it changes. It's highly unlikely that if you do something 100 times and you like, count and you legit do it a hundred times, that you're gonna be terrible at it after a hundred times. It's just unlikely, you're, you're gonna have things that are, that are bad. You're gonna have a lot of things that are bad, but you're gonna also have a few flashes of brilliance if you keep doing it. Like, and if you of course, want to do it, you're not, this is assuming, hopefully you're not being forced to do this, but if it's voluntary and you're interested in whatever it is you wanna do a hundred things of, then just do it. It's not do, and I love it because you know, as a teacher it's not do a hundred good things. It's not do a hundred A plus worthy things. And I think that's, we all come up in some type of education system to where that is the metric. And as a teacher, this is just super close to me as, as far as like creating and all this stuff, but it's true. You're not trying to get evaluated. It's more of you're trying to just do the rep. That's what matters more. It's not really, at the end of the day, is it C work or A work or B work? No, it's just did you do it? Did you complete it? And then how did it feel at the end? Do you feel like, okay, it was a total pain in the ass or, and you would never wanna do it again? Then don't do it anymore. Or did you love it and did you go through this evolution and be like, that was a lot of fun creating all of that stuff? Okay, now do it a hundred more times and you'll get even better. And the, you know it, the more you do it, it becomes this reinforcement flywheel to where it's like you, it gets easier to do. It gets more fun to do, and your quality is going to rise as well. But you just have to do it a lot.
Emmanuel: Which reinforces doing it more and doing it more because you see it getting better.
Keith: Exactly. And the flywheel just keep spinning. But I feel like that's where people stop is they make one video and they're like, ugh, I got like 10, 10 impressions, 10 views or whatever. And it's like, okay, make another video. Ugh, I got no likes. Or I got like somebody saying, get a better mic, camera sucks or something. You know, some people trash and you, you get these, these, these comments and stuff. Everybody gets them, but they don't hold on. And then after the third video, they quit. They're like, this doesn't work, social media sucks, it’s trash. But you have to keep showing up cause I honestly, I did a similar thing with TikTok last year. I, I didn't go as hard as you, I didn't do three a day like, man, that's, three a day is, is tough. But I was trying to do it, like, I was trying to connect it to my reading. So basically I tried to like focus mine on like, cuz I like to read. So I was basically like, okay, I'm gonna like, try and summarize chapters, basically like reaction videos to these chapters. And it was pretty good, it started out pretty good and I actually started getting some traction on TikTok, but the problem is I just don't, I read very differently, like sometimes I'm reading in Japanese, sometimes I'm not even reading fiction to where it, it's very good for like TikTok material. It's like nonfiction to where it's like really hard to make it into a good video. So I stopped. I mean, yeah, I, I think just trying to frame it in some type of way, that was another strategy that I was trying to use, but point is like I didn't do it enough to see like the benefits. Like I saw some of your TikToks, like you, you went in like with yours. Like I was like, man, this guy, he's got TikTok.
Emmanuel: Yeah I was doing it all. I was shaking my booty. I was dancing for the camera. Yeah. I was twerking for dollars. I was doing it all.
Keith: I just remember this one, I have this image of you in my head. You were doing some type of face to where it was like with the camera or something I can't,
Emmanuel: Oh, was it the one where I was dancing? It was like a bubble. Like a not a bubble. It's like a slow motion, weird trailing head thing. Yeah. I had fun with that one.
Keith: I mean, I just love that we're two vets talking like this. Cuz honestly it's really hard. Like most of the, I don't know about your network, but most of the people in my immediate network, it's just really hard to get to that to where it's fun to where it's like, yeah, like you think I could do this every day if it felt like a nine to five, if it felt like a job. Like to where, I mean, I'm not saying like it's all fun all the time. There's definitely aspects of it that are not fun, but, I don't think you can do something every day when you don't bring some type of lightness to it. When you don't bring some type of play to it, it's really hard, even like a regular job. It, it's just tough when it's like, oh, I have to do this to pay the bills, or I have to do this to, you know, satisfy somebody else's agenda for my life or whatever. Or because my parents told me so, or because my family needs this or whatever. And I'm not saying those are illegitimate reasons, but if that's the only reason that's in your, your view, then it's gonna be a rough time. But with the creativity, you, you can always make it like, I'm just gonna make a funny TikTok video and see what happens. And then it just so might happen that you’re, you are just being yourself results in massive in, in massive payoff, massive benefit. And I had this last month, I had a video that was supposed to be a training for chatGPT, maybe you saw this and it went viral. It went like mini viral, right. Not like millions of views, but for me it, it, it hit like 30K views over a month. My YouTube channel exploded from, it was a dead channel at the beginning of December. 11 subs to over 400 subs in one month.
Emmanuel: That's huge.
Keith: That's insane for a channel that was essentially dead, it had like 10 videos on it. This was my, um, HAC Studios, Hayden Academy Collective Studios YouTube channel, and this was just supposed to be training. It was me teaching about chatGPT, which was brand new at the time, and I had used it and I had just kind of come up with some ways that I was using it to enhance my workflow and I shared that with, it was just supposed to be a training with some disc, friends on Discord, and it was, that's when I recorded it. And the quality is terrible, like it looks so, it's like one of my worst videos. It wasn't planned or anything, and this is by far the most popular piece of content I've ever created. Like the most, like immediately popular. And so I guess the moral of the story, the moral of the story is like what you were saying earlier, it comes down to being yourself. And I know that's, it's kind of a platitude can be kind of cliche because some people are like, well, you don't wanna see the real me. You know, like, and yeah, there's true, there's definitely a way you present yourself, right. And I think, I think some people are, are more conducive to that than others, and especially us as grads. I think we are just, we're used to, I like to say, one of the biggest lessons that I learned from the academy is how to bullshit my way through anything. I feel like every grad from every academy has this in them. Like, it's like, okay, cadet you to seven responses go, uh, you know, like you just come up with something and they're like, maybe they get off your back, maybe they don't. But you have to do this so many times throughout your cadet career and then throughout your active duty career that it just kind of becomes ingrained. At least that's the way it is for me.
Emmanuel: Yeah. It is ingrained. It's the idea of figure it out, adapt and overcome, command, presence, you know, just look like you know what you're doing. Walk tall, sit up straight. Like just appear to know what you're talking about.
Keith: Exactly. And I feel like that got me so far. That is like, man.
Emmanuel: It's a blessing and curses to your point, right, cuz you're right in, in my network it's being creative and being playful and being, you know, joking around and allowing yourself to come through. It's not something that's valued and where we come from, you think about it, you can't do that. It's actually detrimental to the mission to be an individual, right? Like, you know Blue Falcons, right? Like these guys that are out there doing their own thing. Maverick's wild it throws things off. So it actually, it hurts, you know, part of being a good soldier, being a good airman, I'm sure, and, and being you know, in the military is, is falling in line, right. You know, falling in, we all bleed army green kind of a thing. And I find that now, even though we're not underneath that, a lot of the, the clients that I have that are former military cadets, uh, former academy especially, that is the hardest thing I have to do when we get 'em in front of the camera is loosen up because it's immediately they lock up, right. They lock, like I'm sitting here joking, they're telling me jokes, I'm telling them jokes, all right, we're rolling, and bang, they lock up. We are therefore we are because we're, and it's like, that's what we just know. And it's like, no, bring that guy I was just talk. That's because what, and what I have to explain to them over the course of a day of shooting is, which usually unlocks them, especially the business folks, um, on camera is people buy from people. At the end of the day, we buy from, you need to connect. It's what you said about social media, so, the social part of social media. Be human. That's what sells. And so literally, my job is not to be a producer, director, cameraman, or anything when I'm in front of those folks, is to just help them let themselves go. Help them get outside of these walls or barriers of protection that they've had either it's protection or protect themselves from letting people see who they really are or that they are afraid or that they are scared and to let all that fear the judgment and more importantly, the playfulness back out. One of the little tricks that I use is, uh, if, uh, and now it won't be as hidden if any of my, my clients ever see this, but, I always do, uh, I always have them do some TikTok-y type stuff, you know, the stupid little pointing or the, this stupid stuff or, you know, make ah, faces, right? We just do that to warm up. But then we use that in the final drafts and they always wanted, they, they'll approve, I approve this one that, you know, the corporate stuff, I approve that one. I don't approve this one. I don't approve that one. They don't approve any of the TikTok stuff, but I'll bring their family in or their coworkers in, and I'll show them while the person's watching. And what inevitably happens is they get to witness how people fall asleep watching the corporate-y stuff. But people lean in, smile, engage when the TikTok-y stuff comes out and they get to see other people, see them be human, and that opens the doors. The very next day they come to the set, they're all right, turn on the camera. I wanna try it this way, and I wanna try it that way. And all of a sudden, all the things that I was asking for yesterday that seemed ridiculous, I refuse, you're trying to make me look like an idiot, Emmanuel, who already, I've been cussed out, man. I have been cussed out by people. Like, I'm not doing that. Why the hell would you even ask me to do something so foolish and so stupid? I'm a professional. I've done this. Okay, okay. But the next day here they are cuz they get it now, right. Because at the end of the day, whether you like TikTok or not, or short form video, or even social media, humans have not changed in millennia. We connect with each other and I don't wanna see soldier person, I don't want to see formal corporate person, I want to see you. I wanna see who you really are and the sooner you can let that come through, the sooner my defenses go down and I'm willing to hear, okay, so what are you selling? So what do you guys do?
Keith: Exactly, what do you got?
Emmanuel: Yeah, what do you got? Yeah. Okay. I trust you now.
Keith: Yeah. It's building that trust through vulnerability. And I, I've seen this, everything you said, I've seen it in my own career, I've seen it as a teacher, I've seen it as a creator, I've seen it when I was in the military. Like when you let that, that professionalism not be the leading thing, right. You still want to be professional. You still want to be, you know, do your job, but at the same time, when you be who you are, like you have to let some of that leak through. And I feel like it's become a lot more acceptable nowadays to let more of it leak through. Like I think of like being in the classroom. I was just in the classroom yesterday at the school and the students nowadays, they expect a level of openness and vulnerability cuz they, they, they've just grown up the access, right. It's, it's not like when you and I were coming up to where the teacher was like kind of a, it was a one way type of thing. The teacher told you, you did it. And if they wanted to share stuff about themselves, some did, most didn't. I feel like now with the way the internet is and the way these kids can just, they can just go to TikTok, they can go to Instagram and see how people are living. They can see like every aspect outside of the professional sphere. They just have more of an expectation to have access to that. They don't need to know everything, but they just, in their mind, they're like, if somebody's not giving that to them, they're automatically like, uh, this is kind of weird because,
Emmanuel: There's a distance.
Keith: There's a distance between us, and they're not alone in that. I'm using the kids as reference, but I feel like people in general have now come to expect a more openness, like the whole corporate sitting behind the camera, straight lace, locked up, reading a teleprompter that, yeah, I'd argue that doesn't really resonate with most people. It just doesn't. And that's not how people discover stuff now, that people, you know, people may throw shade on TikTok or, or Instagram or whatever, but that's how people discover stuff now. They discover everything through their feed. They see what their friends are reading or watching or consuming, and they want to do it too. They want to go eat there, they want to go see the movie, they want to go to the place. That's the way it is now, and if you are trying to sell something, whether it's a message or products, and they scroll past your stuff and you're sitting there locked up and being this kind of robot, right, then they're probably gonna scroll right past you.
Emmanuel: Not probably, they will. Yeah. We've, we've done AB testing, we've spent millions of dollars on ads where we'll do the polished one, the, because the brand demands it, and then we'll do ours. That's just them talking on a Zoom call like this that we put out there. And every single time the branded one works and the, the confirmation is simply, it is obvious on social media that it's an ad because nobody's friend is gonna go do a $30,000 video shoot to put something on Facebook. So it's clear it's an ad so they just swipe right by, swipe.
Keith: They swipe. Yeah.
Emmanuel: All that money wasted when all you had to do is pick up your phone with your hand, hit record, and for 30 seconds, say, here's me, this is what I do, this is where we do it, I can't wait to see you, goodbye. Bang. That's gonna work better every single time. I love it. I feel like we could talk for hours and I hope we get to do this again. I really do. My big question now is how can I support you? And if anybody else happens to listen to this, how can they support you too?
Keith: My website, keithhayden.net, that's kind of the gateway to all of my stuff. I have a lot going on, but the main thing right now is the podcast. It's called Cereus Limnic that is C E R E U S and Limnic L I M N I C. I always have to spell it just cause it, it does sound a little weird. It's a sci-fi podcast, totally self-produced. It's on wherever you get your podcasts so whatever platform you listen to, it's on there. I've also started to put some of the episodes on YouTube as well and add some visuals there. For support try out the podcast. Listen, if you are into basically like sci-fi, fantasy, Chinese dramas, Japanese anime, American war culture, you know, our military culture's in there, of course, you might dig it. You might like it.
Emmanuel: I've listened to the first one and I'm, I'm gonna binge the rest. It is fascinating to me how you blend so many different things. Like you said, your, your experience is not just, you know, I grew up in a small town and I, I've stayed there the whole time. Like, you, it is so broad and you bring that all into a futuristic sci-fi novel. How? Like it is, it is riveting. Yeah. I've gotta give you kudos, man.
Keith: Thank you. Thank you. I, I really appreciate that. The story was kind of brewing for a while, and I'm glad it came out earlier in that it just, I want people to enjoy it and I, I wanted to make something, you know, I'm a teacher at my, at the end of the day, so I wanted to make something that made people think at the end of the day and had fun.
Emmanuel: And then what about getting the community together? I love this idea. I, I looked for it. I couldn't really find it. I've heard a little bit. There's some Hollywood types that they're, you know, mil vets in Hollywood. I think there's a group that'll try and plug into, but I liked what, what resonated with me about you is you tried to get a group together. What needs to, to happen to resonate that? Are you, are you done looking or is it something maybe we can work together on and put out?
Keith: Oh, I'd absolutely love to talk to you about, because it sounds like you, you've actually got like a good amount of resources to actually make it happen. I mean, because I'm a one-man show, like I'm a one-man show substitute teacher doing all this stuff, and occasionally I get some, some, uh, help from my wife, my lovely wife. Yeah, so I don't have like those resources. But yeah, I'm very much still looking man. Like, just recently I've started something I call The City and it's basically, it's not just vets, but it's basically creators just supporting other creators through just companionship, just being there. Cuz I mean, it's, as you know, it could be a lonely road. Not everybody's doing this and if they are doing it, some are doing it casually and they're not doing it to the same extent. So I am very much interested in finding other vets and US government, like people who are not native creators and helping them find their creative instinct. Like you and I have, I mean, because I just feel like at the end of the day, it's so freeing. It's so, there's so much, even if you're not trying to start a business, even if you're not interested in like selling products or selling the stuff you make, you just wanna make it for yourself. Man, I, I dig those people just as much because it's valuable at the end of the day, it's so just to have one more person who is like, I have a reason to get up because I'm gonna make something that is mine today. And in this world where it feels like less and less, what we have is truly ours, algorithms and platforms and things like that. When you make something, it's yours. There's no doubt that it came from you, even if it's bad, even if it's not like A tier stuff, a lot of it won't be. I know a lot of mine isn't, but it's still valuable if not only for yourself. So I, yeah, I'd love to continue looking for people, man.
Emmanuel: Powerful words, man. And you said it was the, The City where, where can I find that? Or what is it?
Keith: Um, so right now The City is basically just, it's like one blog post on my substack.
Emmanuel: Okay,
Keith: I'm basically like, I'm building a city, so if you go to my substack, it's called Pyramid of Ideas.
Emmanuel: I love it.
Keith: Um, you'll, you'll find the article where I'm talking about, Hey, I'm trying to build a city, and then there's a link to my newsletter, The Creative Futurist where the creative futurism is kind of my personal philosophy of how I put all of my stuff under one umbrella but the newsletter is kind of the, the vehicle where I talk about creativity and basically trying to create a, this is the field manual. The Army field manual, the Air Force instruction for creativity, basically. That's, I'm, I've never said it that way, but it's basically what it is. It's basically like if you pick this up, you and read it and absorb it and do it, you will be a more creative person. That's what The Creative Futurist Newsletter is.
Emmanuel: That's exactly what I'm gonna go pick up cuz I'm, I'm on this path and you have shortcutted my process, my friend. You are the guide and I know you're gonna help so many people, like you are so prolific. I don't even know you realize how many different things, I lost track, I've been taking notes. I lost track of how much, musician, artists, it's almost like it's, it's, it was pent up so long now it’s bursting. It was screaming. You can't keep that down. You know, now you're writing, you got this email list, you've got the Pyramid of Ideas, you've got The City, keithhayden.net, the podcast that you've got, you got it all. And I'm, I'm happy to see it. You fire me up. You motivate me and I can't wait to do this again, my friend. I'm glad.
Keith: I appreciate it, man. Anytime.
Emmanuel: Let's connect and let's do it, let's bring everybody together.
Keith: For sure.
Emmanuel: Well, thanks brother.
Keith: Yeah, no problem.
Emmanuel: That’s it for another episode of the Eleyae Systems Journey To An 8 Figure E-Commerce Business podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode please leave us a review. It costs you nothing and gives me and the folks who worked hard to produce this episode great feedback on how this content helped you. And that’s why we do this, to make sure that you get to that eight figure business even faster than we did. So tell us how we’re doing and please please please leave us a review. And, if you know of another e-commerce entrepreneur who could benefit from hearing this content, please share it with them, they’ll thank you for it. I’m your host Emmanuel Eleyae and we’ll see you in the next episode.
