If you hit up Brian Thompson’s profile page on Linkedin you’ll be smacked across the face with keywords like creative coach, music marketer, podcaster, blogger, speaker, consultant, and guy behind The DIY Daily Newsletter & Podcast. While Brian Thompson may seem at first glance to be the swiss army knife of ‘Do-it-Yourself’, he is, more importantly, an individual that makes Vancouver, in all its raininess, a little brighter.
“If I were to really spend a few minutes looking at a calendar, I could tell you almost exactly when I made a conscious decision to start posting positivity.”
“It was shortly after I broke up with my girlfriend,” Thompson says as he shifts in his chair and leans in to tell his tale. “When you go through a breakup, everyone’s in a downer…right? Relationship of four years ended and I was bummed out. So I went to twitter, as I do everyday, and I started looking at my feed and all that I saw was negative bullshit.”
Thompson goes on, “people being passive aggressive to other people – people just talking shit – people slamming each other – people being racist – people being homophobic – people making jokes that weren’t funny at the expense of others – people talking behind other people’s backs.”
“I was just like ‘wow’, this is making me feel even worse,” he continues…“but it was my natural instinct to almost want to post some passive aggressive stuff – even just vent.”
“Living alone and working alone, I don’t have people to gripe with at the water cooler. I realized a lot of people are in my exact situation.”
And so there are…
In 2011, The DIY Daily was born – a newsletter with a supplemental podcast that Thompson writes, records, and distributes everyday of the week that reaches thousands of subscribers and has received approximately 200,000 ‘listens’ since its inception. His mission is “to inspire, educate and motivate anyone who’s following their passions in a creative and entrepreneurial endeavour.”
Yet Thompson’s roots don’t trace back to motivational speaking or broadcasting for that matter. They began ‘back in the day’ when record stores were still king. In fact, Thompson began his business career managing the purchasing department of 22 stores for A&B Sound. From there Thompson found himself working as a band manager for what became a hugely successful touring rock group known as Art of Dying.
Today, his list of accomplishments continues to expand in myriad ways. In November for example, Thompson decided to challenge himself once again by joining NaNoWrimo, a novel writing initiative that dares professional and amateur writers from around the world to write a 50,000 word novel in only one month.
Thompson explains the concept to me, as I had not had the pleasure of learning about this project before.
“No one’s judging you but yourself,” he says. “The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month – and the only way to [do this] is to write 1677 words a day.”
While Thompson fell short at just 38,000 words, it just goes to show you that whatever you put your mind to, you can accomplish.
“I’m gonna publish it this year,” he says to me as I congratulate him on his perseverance. “Hopefully before the summer,” he adds.
Thompson continued to tell me about the role he plays as a Director at Music BC, a non-profit society that helps to promote and develop the local music community; his speaking engagements at the Peak Performance Project Bootcamp, the Voice of the Cellar Contest, and Songwriters Association Events which are held across Canada. Finally, and as if he wasn’t involved in enough things around BC, Thompson stated that he would be teaching a music business course at Langara in April of this year.
With that in mind, if you think you’ve got too much on your plate, just give Brian Thompson a ring or listen to his daily podcast. If he doesn’t manage to inspire you with the stories he shares; the thought of his work ethic and resolve should more than do it for you.
You can check out more about Brian Thompson at www.thornybleeder.com | @thornybleeder
