Celebrating Good and Doing Good with Branden Harvey

[00:00:00] Sean Pritzkau: Hey everyone, this is Sean and welcome back to episode 18 of the podcast. Today I'm really excited for my conversation with Branden Harvey. Now Branden is someone that I have a lot of respect for because of his dedication to sharing and putting out good news into the world. He and his team do that through a number of ways, which we'll talk about in the podcast, but primarily through the release of a monthly print newspaper called the Goodnewspaper, filled with wonderful stories of the ways people are making a positive impact in society.

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[00:00:38] Sean Pritzkau: In today's episode, we'll talk about how Branden took his skills and passions and use them to create a career of purpose, how you and I can pivot from our natural tendency to consume in negativity towards habits that inspire good and action, and the challenges Branden found in bootstrapping a company designed for social purpose.

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[00:00:59] Sean Pritzkau: So I'm really excited for this episode, so let's jump in to my conversation with Branden Harvey.

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[00:01:20] Sean Pritzkau: Hey there and welcome to the podcast today. I'm here with Branden Harvey. Now Branden celebrates the good in the world as the founder of Good Good Good. He hosts the podcast Sounds Good. He's the managing editor of the Goodnewspaper, a printed newspaper full of good news, and has built an online community over more than 500,000 world-changers.

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[00:01:43] Sean Pritzkau: He's been written about in the New York Times the Washington Post,Men's Health, and Forbes, and today I'm excited to welcome him to the podcast. So Branden, thanks for being here –welcome. 

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[00:01:55] Branden Harvey: So happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me, Sean. Yeah. So, 

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[00:01:58] Sean Pritzkau: um, I've been super pumped. I've been following you for quite a while.

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[00:02:02] Sean Pritzkau: And it's funny. I think when I think of you, I think of like the early days of Instagram. I remember when I jumped on, I had two people who were on Instagram at that moment. And I think they just thought it was a photo editing app and they were publishing photos to Instagram that they didn't know they were publishing.

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[00:02:20] Branden Harvey: Yeah. It was just, it was just an editor that 

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[00:02:22] Sean Pritzkau: happened to post it to the internet. Yeah, exactly. And then I remember I began following not people I knew, right. Because people knew it wasn't on Instagram yet. So I started following people that were. Interesting and interested in some more things than that.

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[00:02:36] Sean Pritzkau: I was, I remember stumbling on you at some point and following you for a long time. And I mean, since then, you've been able to really build that platform from Instagram. And essentially now you've built a media company that's focused on highlighting the good in the world. Did you ever imagine that when you downloaded Instagram, that somehow you would have.

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[00:02:57] Sean Pritzkau: Where you are now. And since we having a company that's built on sharing good news and sharing good stories, I 

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[00:03:04] Branden Harvey: had no clue. Like I had no clue what I was doing then to be honest, sometimes I still feel like I have no clue what I'm doing now. And I certainly wouldn't have predicted I am where I am at that point.

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[00:03:17] Branden Harvey: But I do see a through line, which is that even in those earliest days of Instagram, my biggest passion was. The photo editing as much as I loved the filters, it was what can you do with this tool to create a little bit more good in the world? And that's perhaps been the through line. Every medium that I've gotten to play around with and of course, with what we're doing at.

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[00:03:45] Branden Harvey: Good Good Good. 

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[00:03:46] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. And I know your background is really in photography, right? Ever since I, I believe high school, right? You 

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[00:03:52] Branden Harvey: were, yeah. I started my first photography business at like 15 or 16. 

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[00:03:57] Sean Pritzkau: So tell us a little bit about that background. I mean, obviously before you really took good, good, good. And ran with this.

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[00:04:03] Sean Pritzkau: You were really. Pursuing a career in photography. Tell us a little bit how you got started and how that brought you to where you are 

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[00:04:10] Branden Harvey: now. I think I started that creative journey in the same way that I think anybody with a creative bent does, which is that I was super interested in this thing. Like I saw photography on the internet.

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[00:04:25] Branden Harvey: I wish I could create that. And then I had the privilege to have a high school that offered basically a camera that you could have for a year if you took a photography class. So I took that class and I started to try to take those photos I saw online. And then I had a great experience of having a few older mentors come along.

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[00:04:46] Branden Harvey: They were much further along in their photography journey, they were professional photographers. I was some punk kid hanging out on my space and flicker, and they kind of mentored me through the process of, of not only how to use your aperture, your shutter speed, your ISO, but also how to use photography as a tool to make a difference, how to treat your clients, how to manage the business side of things, how to post and select your work for the internet.

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[00:05:12] Branden Harvey: And so it was that early experience of getting to. Be an entrepreneur with an honestly, a lot of competence, because I really did feel like I was getting a masterclass from these older mentors. I had, it was that early competence that I think allowed me to start thinking outside the box on what future careers could look like.

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[00:05:30] Branden Harvey: I knew that I didn't necessarily need to follow a traditional path. And so I didn't go down a traditional path at all. I just kept on trying to do creative. I have a 

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[00:05:39] Sean Pritzkau: lot of friends that are photographers. Right. And I know that there are various avenues that people take with their photography, right.

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[00:05:44] Sean Pritzkau: Pursuing really creative work. And then there's the work that it's still creative. Right. But they tend to go into wedding, senior photography, those kinds of things. I imagine you probably did an array of these things, and I know you ultimately that took you to actually take your camera around the world.

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[00:05:58] Sean Pritzkau: How did that. 

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[00:06:00] Branden Harvey: Yeah, so kind of the biggest influence on my photography career is, is my now good friend, Karen. She was one of those mentors and she really instilled in me this idea that, you know, if you're going to have this skill set, it's important that you use it for good, because not everybody has this skill set, so not everybody can give the gift of powerful photos.

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[00:06:21] Branden Harvey: So she. Set me up with experiences, essentially volunteering for non-profits as a photographer when I was like 16 and that really stuck with me and I continued that work. And so when I moved to a bigger city, Portland, Oregon after high school, I was surrounded by more non-profits than I'd ever seen before.

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[00:06:42] Branden Harvey: I'm sure there's some stat on like Portland having an over representative number of, of non-profits. And I love that definitely an over representation of donuts, uh, and Nope, not a problem. And so I just started continuing network that she had kind of taught me to do. And because I was just really open to learning, I learned a lot about the world of.

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[00:07:08] Branden Harvey: Social impact because leaders are, then these non-profits would take me under their wings and just kind of talk me through the process of how things were working. And that really gave me an ability to really. The impact in a, in a really helpful way, there was an arrow and I'm grateful that this area is largely behind us now, but there's an era where most nonprofit photography was photographing the sadness and using photos as a guilt trip to get people to donate.

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[00:07:38] Branden Harvey: And I saw a few photographers that I admire, namely Esther havens, who. Was using photography to capture the opportunity. The change that occurs when an organization, when an activist, when, uh, when a local community works together to move the needle for good and create a solution to problems. And when you photograph that end result that deeper sense of hopefulness.

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[00:08:04] Branden Harvey: I think that it just unlocks something so much more powerful and people, and ultimately, I would say leads to more. I think there's data to support this leads to more donations for nonprofits. Anyway, you don't need to rely on that guilt. And so fortunately, getting to work with these nonprofits, I really got to see kind of the inside lens of how they're working and got to document that experience to show.

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[00:08:24] Branden Harvey: Ultimately donors and supporters and people on the ground, what the impact of an organization could be. And so that ultimately led to, I think me just building enough trust with enough nonprofits that they were like, Hey, you know, we want you to document what's happening in her row. You gone to the Philippines, all these different spots around the world.

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[00:08:45] Branden Harvey: And it was beautiful because every single place I went, I just got to meet local people in these communities who. We're seeing the problems facing the communities they served and we're choosing to be on the front lines of creating a solution. They didn't have to do that. They were sacrificing to do that, but they were committing their lives to it.

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[00:09:04] Branden Harvey: And it was really inspiring. And I just feel so privileged that I got to be there to witness that and to document those stories for an audience. 

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[00:09:13] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. There's a bunch there. I mean, I love how you said that when you really began to cultivate the. Gift and talent for photography, that there was this like responsibility that you had and people with any skill or talent, really, but especially in the visual arts, this responsibility to do it for some sort of better end and to do it responsibly and ethically, like with this photography that you're taking around the world.

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[00:09:38] Sean Pritzkau: And I love that. And I know, I mean, I think we're often stuck looking at like what's before us. And often what's in front of us is we tend to see the negative things and we tend to see, you know, the, the, the bad, and often when you go into these other countries that just don't have quite the privileges that we do, you look around and you see bad.

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[00:09:59] Sean Pritzkau: So it's easy. I imagine to photograph bad, but you essentially looked for the good and you found the good in these photographs. It seems like that even maybe unlocked something in you where you're not just in another country, but even when you come home, you're not just looking for the bad light. You're looking for the good, tell us a bit about, I know you were a lot of your work surrounds about highlighting the good, even though our tendency is to pull towards what is bad and what's next.

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[00:10:23] Branden Harvey: Yeah, the personal say, I think, I don't think that other countries have inherently more things that look bad or feel bad in the United States. I just think that we are a little bit used to the bad things that happen in our own country. And so we maybe don't notice it, but you know, there, the reality is still there that I genuinely believe that there is so much good, that goes under appreciated and under noticed and under celebrated.

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[00:10:47] Branden Harvey: And it takes a lot of intentionality to. Do the inverse of that, our brains literally have this internal negativity bias. That means that bad news sticks to our brains and good news just slides right off of it. And it's why when you get 10 positive comments on an Instagram, but one person who kind of. It says something shady and your DMS.

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[00:11:11] Branden Harvey: What do you think about all day long? It's not those 10 people or the a hundred people who hit the like button, if that one negative comment and the same goes with the news, the same goes with your day-to-day life. The same goes with what you see in the world. And so it takes some intentionality to overcome that.

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[00:11:27] Branden Harvey: And, and I'm grateful that, you know, I got to. You know, non-profits who believed in that idea of documenting the good in it. You know, it took some extra intentionality for sure. And it was also an important part of my journey to start doing that in my own life, just with my outlook on the world. And, and ultimately that is what became my mission to help other people do that as well.

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[00:11:51] Sean Pritzkau: So knowing a bit of, you know, your story and background, you began to take that mission that you've discovered and using your own. Personal platform that you've been on the build your own relationships, and you really started to highlight the good in the world. And that really resonated with people. At some point, it sounds like you began to see there might be potential into really investing a lot more time into this and building essentially now as a company.

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[00:12:19] Sean Pritzkau: And who knows if you would have thought it was a company at that point, but you began to build Good Good Good and sharing stories through. Good. Good. Good. At what point did you kind of begin to really lean in that direction and cultivate a lot more intentionality behind that? 

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[00:12:34] Branden Harvey: I think what it was was I was really passionate about this idea of celebrating the good in the world and then ultimately not just helping people see that good and feel better about what's going on in the world, but that, by seeing that, because I know that this was true for me, that by seeing the good in the world.

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[00:12:51] Branden Harvey: We would all recognize that change is possible that better as possible, that even in heartbreaking circumstances, there are people working to create the solutions and that when those people do that work, like change happens and that if we could support that work and join in that work more and more and more what happen.

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[00:13:14] Branden Harvey: So the goal was always help people celebrate the good and then become the good. I just started kind of practicing that in my own life and kind of sharing about that in my own life, on my personal platforms, you know, under my name. And then I started to realize like, I am very interested in this. I really care about this, but somebody who doesn't like me, who doesn't want to follow some like punk kid with weird hair on the internet should have access to these stories.

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[00:13:41] Branden Harvey: And there's so much more than what I am getting to experience with just the limited. Opportunities. I have to meet people. What if this could be bigger than just me? And so that was really the moment that Good Good Good. Started. Whether it, you know, had the official name or not, it was once it started to not be about me.

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[00:14:01] Branden Harvey: I think it just became a little bit more of a, of a. An institution that people could like rely on and count on and less about like, Hey, I know this guy who shares interesting stuff. It's like, oh, this is an organization. Good, good, good. That I can rely on to feel more hopeful and to do more good. 

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[00:14:22] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. So I imagine as you began to take steps in that direction, you're beginning to see growth, right?

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[00:14:28] Sean Pritzkau: You're seeing more people that you don't know their name. They're not just falling on Instagram, but now they're following. Well, I understand that was a first the newsletter, right? People were, you were writing the people online, sharing these stories, sharing this good. And it has kind of a trajectory after that.

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[00:14:44] Sean Pritzkau: Right? So for those of us listening, who don't have the background of kind of the trajectory of how the Goodnewspaper began, could you share a bit about that story and how this newsletter ultimately became something tangible? I personally get in my inbox. 

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[00:15:01] Branden Harvey: Yeah. Great question. So ultimately my goal was to celebrate good and share.

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[00:15:07] Branden Harvey: Good, but I didn't have a huge budget. So I signed up for a free MailChimp account and I started sharing these good news stories via an email newsletter at first. And it grew really bad. And not because I was doing like marketing or anything, but just because people were like, oh my gosh, I needed this.

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[00:15:23] Branden Harvey: I'm going to tell a friend, cause I know that they also need this. We've always described it as probably the best email that you get all week because oftentimes our inboxes are not built with good things. So it's, it's a little bit easy. It's cheating, but it is true. And as that was growing quickly realized, oh, this is something that people are interested in.

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[00:15:41] Branden Harvey: And at the same time, it was realizing that there are a lot of obstacles. To overcome. One of those is that internal negativity bias where it's a lot easier to go and scroll the bad news on the internet then to intentionally seek out the good, another thing was I didn't really have that much money photographing for non profits.

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[00:16:02] Branden Harvey: At least in my situation didn't make me rich by any means. So I didn't have a lot of expendable income. And then the last thing. It's challenging to create something new that grabs people's attention, especially with an internal negativity bias online with no budget. And so it began the effort of, okay, how do we overcome these obstacles and the big idea, the big idea.

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[00:16:29] Branden Harvey: Okay. So there's all these media companies out there who are like competing in the digital era. Now they're all, you know, starting websites. They are moving from, if there were a magazine or a newspaper, they're moving from print to online and they are trying to move into this new wild, wild west of digital media.

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[00:16:47] Branden Harvey: And they have way more money than me. So what if we do the opposite? What if we create a physical newspaper build with good news? Call it the Goodnewspaper. And see if that helps overcome some of those obstacles, because one there'll be fewer people competing for that space because print media was, was closing up shop and left and right.

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[00:17:07] Branden Harvey: Yeah. Number two, when you see that and you're a millennial and you're like, oh my gosh, I haven't seen a print newspaper in a long time, or I've never bought one before or, wow. That's a surprisingly beautiful print newspaper. Like it stops you in your tracks, which helps you overcome that internal negativity bias because you have to notice this thing.

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[00:17:26] Branden Harvey: It kind of is solving all these problems at once, but it's still a gamble. So we decided to launch this on Kickstarter, knowing that if it doesn't reach its full funding, at least we're not out any money. And on the day that we launched the Kickstarter, I remember nervously pressing the publish button, assuming that this was going to fall apart.

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[00:17:46] Branden Harvey: And I was going to be very embarrassed to be publicly launching something that bales, because that's what it always feels like when you launch something. Within, I think it was 56 hours. We were fully funded. And then within 30 days we had more than doubled our initial campaign goal. And that was what confirmed it for me that even though good news is up against a lot on a neurological standpoint, on a financial standpoint, on a cultural standpoint, there is a beautiful group of people in the world.

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[00:18:17] Branden Harvey: Even if they're the minority of people, there's this beautiful group of people in the world who really care about celebrating good news and becoming good news. And maybe we had a role to play in supporting those people. Yeah. 

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[00:18:29] Sean Pritzkau: I love it. I think a couple things just to recap there, just for us listening, because there's a lot of people who have ideas and there's some mental barriers to getting started.

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[00:18:39] Sean Pritzkau: And one, I think it's important to highlight that you got started with a free tool on the internet called. That's very approachable for a lot of people, right? 

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[00:18:48] Branden Harvey: Yeah. Oh yeah. I was at total dummy. I had no idea what I was doing and I figured it out. And so everybody else, kid. 

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[00:18:54] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. And then like second, I think people who look at maybe these campaigns on internet, like the Kickstarter and they look back and they say, oh, well, that person surely knew what they were doing and knew that they were going to get 45 that day.

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[00:19:07] Sean Pritzkau: And I think it's important to hear that like hesitation and that fear of pushing the button, assuming. That's across the board. We all feel that no matter how confident we are, you take that kind of leap and you, you go for it and see the results and kind of follow it through one of the things that I think that's super interesting to me too, with the newspaper.

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[00:19:28] Sean Pritzkau: Is that like, I keep the newspaper. I don't know how many emails I've kept. Right. It almost feels like, like, I, I have this terrible habit. I don't throw away like movie tickets or like concert ticket stubs. The problem is they don't collect them anywhere. They just kinda like are hovering everywhere. But I feel terrible about throwing them out, but like, you don't throw away the newspaper either.

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[00:19:48] Sean Pritzkau: It's something that I want to like hold around and keep, or there's beautiful artwork in there too. So like, I wanna like gift it to people or like put it on the wall. So. To be 

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[00:19:56] Branden Harvey: honest, that's really intentional because we know that we don't want somebody to, I mean, it's super okay if you do this, but like our ideal goal, isn't it.

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[00:20:05] Branden Harvey: Somebody just sits down, reads the whole paper and gets rid of it. It's not a download of information. The goal is that you would have a little bit of good news in your. Anytime that you need it and it's accessible to you. So we designed the front cover to be gorgeous so that you want to like, leave it on your coffee tables for when friends come over and your friends would pick it up.

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[00:20:26] Branden Harvey: We want it to be beautiful so that you can Instagram it and. When you share it online, you share good news with your community. We put a, a centerfold poster with this gorgeous art. We have a different guest illustrator for every issue so that you can hang it up on your wall and continually be reminded.

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[00:20:42] Branden Harvey: And there's some people who are framing it, putting it on their walls. There's teachers who have a dozen of them across their classrooms. There's people who have it as their decorations in their home. Like it's really, really cool. But the goal is just that, because. We are up against so much bad news all the time.

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[00:21:00] Branden Harvey: If you can have that little reminder of good in your life, scattered around your house, kind of like your ticket stubs, then you're going to bump into them all the time and you're going to. Continually remind yourself that there is good in the world and I can be a part of it. 

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[00:21:16] Sean Pritzkau: Absolutely, absolutely love it.

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[00:21:18] Sean Pritzkau: So now you're at this point where you've successfully crowdfunded a campaign to produce a newspaper in a world where people are moving to like visit. All right. I've gotten to this point. And I imagine having that fully funded campaign was definitely encouraging, but what were some of the challenges that you began to see as you really began to build?

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[00:21:38] Sean Pritzkau: Infrastructure around this platform that you're building. You know, now it's not just a MailChimp newsletter that you can publish when you walk up and now you have a vendor, you know, to print these newspapers, you have probably a team that's being to build around you or some of that really challenges.

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[00:21:52] Branden Harvey: Yeah, I'll say that in terms of like creating a physical newspaper, I did not know what I was doing at the beginning of all. There's no like ebook, you can download that explains how to print a newspaper in 2021. There's no YouTube video tutorials. I just had to do cold calls to like 75 year old men who had been working in the newspaper industry for decades and try to explain.

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[00:22:19] Branden Harvey: Like what Kickstarter was. And unfortunately, eventually that worked. We had to learn this thing from scratch. And I think a lot of people who are trying to do something new that nobody else is doing experienced that same thing of saying, okay, I can figure out this thing. I can figure out this thing. And then I'm going to scotch tape those two things together to make it work.

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[00:22:37] Branden Harvey: So we learned so much through that process. And then the shipping to journalistic side of things, all of that was a learning process. But that was the moment too. When I got to start hiring people like the week that Kickstarter finished, I was like, all right, I'm going to hire my first employee. And then we brought on a designer to bring the newspaper to life, a journalist, to run all the words through.

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[00:23:01] Branden Harvey: And we, we started to build this thing. And in the beginning, I really didn't think of it as a company still. Like, I, I guess we registered a company for like, you know, to make sure everything was above board below. I just thought this was a project. This was just a thing that I was doing because I thought it would help people.

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[00:23:18] Branden Harvey: And it was like organized chaos. You know, w we were mostly fueled by just the excitement of getting to create this thing for a community that we knew would appreciate it, but we were just learning new things every single day. 

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[00:23:33] Sean Pritzkau: I love it. One of the things that I think is really exciting too, is as you begin to bring on people on board to create this thing that you do.

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[00:23:42] Sean Pritzkau: It's opening up these opportunities for people with their own skills and talents and, and things that they want to use for good and have a responsibility for using for goods and how you have designers, maybe not designing for the agency that they worked at, but now they're designing this newspaper that is unlike anything they've ever designed before and it's sharing good news and good stories.

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[00:24:01] Sean Pritzkau: So cool. And I imagine it was somewhat fulfilling to work with some of these creative people. 

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[00:24:07] Branden Harvey: I everyday just pinch myself thinking about the caliber of talented people that I get to work with. And reality is we'll never have the budget to pay, you know, what a startup pays, but I do hope that. I'll speak for myself and say, my experience is that it's such fulfilling work, that I am so thrilled to get to do it.

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[00:24:29] Branden Harvey: And it feels like a privilege to get to do it in my hope is to create a work environment that does the same for our team, that it feels like the most gratifying work of their lives. And also that people get to bring their expertise and their passions and their interests to the table. Because I think that's one of the most fun things is, you know, I've got things that I'm really passionate about and I like.

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[00:24:49] Branden Harvey: Introduce those to the team and say, what if we, what if we share about this? What if we share about that? But the team gets to do that too, and say, I really care about, about sports. Like I'm really passionate about sports. Can we do a sports edition of the newspaper? I'm really passionate about body image work and work within the fight against Abeles and other things.

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[00:25:09] Branden Harvey: Can we do the body edition of the newspaper? And there's so many. Examples of things where it's like by bringing in other perspectives, by bringing in other people's passions and talents, like they're bringing this to the table. And we also get to do that with the help of our community too, all day long members of our community, people who subscribe to the paper, we'll send in ideas and concepts on things that they would love to see us cover and take those ideas super seriously.

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[00:25:34] Branden Harvey: And we get to integrate them all the time. And it's so exciting. Yeah. So that's, 

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[00:25:38] Sean Pritzkau: I think probably the beautiful thing. You started this thing really as one guy with a camera and an Instagram account. And now as you begin to bring on team members, other people on board wonders, you know, the perspective shift that changes.

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[00:25:55] Sean Pritzkau: It's not just a unified perspective of Branden Harvey, right? But now it's Branden and friends with diverse backgrounds and cultures and things and identities. And, but I imagine there's also the challenge of. When it was a one person thing, you could function in the way that Branden wanted to. And now that you have other people on board, now you have to function as a cooperative entity, right?

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[00:26:18] Sean Pritzkau: Like as this team of people building this newspaper. So do you want to share with us about how did you begin to structure your team and how did you begin to organize your work together? Because a lot of people listening, I imagine. Are people who have a very similar story where it was them. And now people are beginning to come on board in it.

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[00:26:38] Sean Pritzkau: There's a little bit of 

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[00:26:38] Branden Harvey: uncomfort there. You know, I'll speak for myself and say, I really can't think of any downsides to having more people on the team. Like the day that I hired my first employee, I just felt so like gratified in this experience. It's not just me anymore. It's a communal effort. And it, it actually just took a lot of pressure off and it felt more energizing and exciting for me.

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[00:27:02] Branden Harvey: Of course, you know, it's, it just takes a little bit more time to communicate with people and to navigate a few like multiple ideas and perspectives. But like, I think it makes everything better at the end of the day. I can't think of a single instance where. I wished that I didn't have that, even if it's just a little bit slower or a little bit more hard, it's always worthwhile.

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[00:27:23] Branden Harvey: And so I really loved the experience of getting to work with our team. And I think we've just structured it. I think we're small enough that we've structured it in a pretty. Democratic way where everybody has a lot of say, everybody has a lot of autonomy and freedom to get things done, however they want.

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[00:27:39] Branden Harvey: And we just work together to figure out, you know, what are the timelines that we think are attainable for the goals that we have and how do we support each other in those processes? And it's really fun. And honestly, I think that the big thing is I came in thinking that I would have to be a boss. And a very traditional way.

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[00:27:58] Branden Harvey: Like I would need to read a bunch of books on how to be a traditional manager or things like that. And the further I get into running this company, the more I realized that I would love to subvert what a traditional company looks like. I would love to really. Rethink what is necessary and what isn't necessary for a company, and really just make sure that the wellbeing of our team is above all else.

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[00:28:23] Branden Harvey: The mission is next under that. And then we'll figure out the finances as, you know, one of those bottom level things, because ultimately I find that when we can focus on creating a good working experience and when we can focus on. Supporting our audience and supporting our mission. Everything else kind of falls into place.

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[00:28:48] Branden Harvey: At least that's been my experience so far. Yeah. 

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[00:28:50] Sean Pritzkau: Yeah. I really, really loved the approach. And you know, I'm of the opinion that right now, like 2021, it really, there hasn't been a better time to start something and now you can start something. And not play by the same rules as people were playing in the nineties or in 2000 twenties.

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[00:29:08] Sean Pritzkau: Right? Like you can run this thing, how you feel, obviously within the structures that be right, but you really have the autonomy in decisions to make, you know, for example, your company equitable for all, or yo no u can make your company less hierarchial and, uh, you know, more democratic, like you said, I think it's really, really cool opportunity.

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[00:29:29] Sean Pritzkau: So as people are listening to this. And the may have the idea, or they may have that thing that they've been working on sort of as a passion project, never imagined it was going to be a company or something beyond them. Right. What would you say to those people today who may have been that like yourself with your photography and storytelling, and beginning to turn this into something, what would you say to people who are.

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[00:29:55] Sean Pritzkau: They have the idea and they are looking to potentially start a company that has purpose and they want to get started today. What would you, what 

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[00:30:02] Branden Harvey: would you share? You know, I think there's probably a lot of different approaches to things, but I can speak from my experience, which is that you don't have to start the whole thing at once.

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[00:30:11] Branden Harvey: Like you really can just start with, for me, it really was just starting with sharing Instagram posts that were a little bit different than what I'd been sharing before. And then it became getting that free MailChimp account and then it became getting the opportunity to start a podcast. Sounds Good. And then ultimately that was when we decided to take that leap to start a Goodnewspaper, but just on Kickstarter, like all of those things were pretty low stakes and they built up to one another.

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[00:30:39] Branden Harvey: And it wasn't till after the Kickstarter that we hired people. And it wasn't until after a successful year, actually two years that we decided to increase the number of issues and it wasn't until three or four years later that we even built a real website. And so like, you don't have to start the whole thing at once.

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[00:30:56] Branden Harvey: In fact, I would guess that almost nobody ever does and those that do. Don't feel super relatable, you know, like it's probably people with a whole bunch of venture capital money who in it may or may not be successful. But if it's coming from a place of passion, like just take one step towards serving this mission that you feel called to.

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[00:31:20] Branden Harvey: And then if that works, do it again. And if it doesn't try something else. And the other thing that I'll say too, is. I really don't think that people are paying that much attention to you. Like I say, this is the nicest way, but like, there was a day where my newsletter went from being called the Branden Harvey email party.

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[00:31:38] Branden Harvey: Cause that's what we were selling called it. So it'd be called a good newsletter and yeah, sure. Like some people noticed, but like a lot of people probably didn't even notice and they just kept on being glad that it was there. So if you decide to pivot, if you decide to try something new or if you fail at something, we failed at a lot of things.

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[00:31:56] Branden Harvey: I don't even remember, and audiences need to remember because we just kept on moving and did other things that didn't fail. If you just keep on moving, like the reality is it's, it's not embarrassing. And it's, it's all about just doing the thing because. Doing the thing is what is what matters. I don't know.

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[00:32:12] Branden Harvey: And it feels like the critic who counts concept of like the only person you should really like take advice from is other people who are doing a thing, because it takes a lot of guts. It takes a lot of work to do the thing. 

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[00:32:26] Sean Pritzkau: I have a mentor that says this phrase, that success is sequential, not simultaneous.

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[00:32:31] Sean Pritzkau: And I think that stuck with me. It's so important to us to take that next step. And if it's not the right next step, Take another one. Like, and I think that's really, really important because I think some of us can get held up from doing, creating really, really important work, but then we get overwhelmed and instead of taking one step, we don't take any 

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[00:32:52] Branden Harvey: steps and it really is about the continued efforts of just continuing to do things.

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[00:32:58] Branden Harvey: When I worked for myself, just doing photography. I always had the opportunity to do a new thing, to pivot to that, to shoot this instead to have this new client or that new client. And I was never really committed to something. And when I started good at good and decided I'm going to send this newsletter every week, I'm going to do this Instagram post every other day.

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[00:33:17] Branden Harvey: I'm going to do this podcast every week. I'm going to make a newspaper every month that. Slow consistency mattered more than anything else. It took a year probably after we started for people to like have us pop up in their head when they thought about good news, because you just have to build that trust over a long time.

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[00:33:37] Branden Harvey: And if we had just done it once and then tried it again later, like that trust wouldn't have been built in that mental acknowledgement wouldn't happen. And so really just. The act of continually trying things is what's going to help people recognize you for what you're doing and want to join in and support it.

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[00:33:56] Sean Pritzkau: I love it. Branden. I wanted the first time I want to thank you just for the work that you do, because there's a lot of people out there that are doing good work and there are people that are sharing good news and sharing good stories. Those stories are out. But since you began your platform, you're one of the ones that have stuck out to me.

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[00:34:14] Sean Pritzkau: When I think of good news, I think of a Goodnewspaper. And especially over these past two years, where there has been tension across our world, there has been some things that are kind of waking up to the public conscious of things that we need to be talking about. The Goodnewspaper, the Instagram account, the things that you and your team are working on has really brought hope to me.

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[00:34:34] Sean Pritzkau: So I want to personally. Thank you. But then thanks for being on the podcast. I know that what you're sharing here is super valuable to everyone listening today. And I hope it inspires someone to go out there and take a, a step towards doing something good in the world. And I hope there's stories that, you know, people can point back to maybe this episode and said, that's actually what inspired me, awakened something in me to go out and do the thing that I know I need to do.

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[00:34:58] Sean Pritzkau: But as we wrap up, is there anything else that you want to share today? People want to find you find a Goodnewspaper, whether they, where do they find 

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[00:35:06] Branden Harvey: you? Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. And before I share, you know, how people can find us and get connected with us. I just want to say that I feel so grateful that I get to be a good, good, good.

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[00:35:18] Branden Harvey: Because I get to celebrate the stories that people doing good and help those stories, reach more people and help those people get connected with the people who are doing. Yeah. So it's really, you know, the listeners to this show who are thinking about doing good things. Like I cannot wait to tell your story one day.

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[00:35:35] Branden Harvey: Like I cannot wait to elevate what you're doing, because it's the people on the ground who are creating things that solve problems and help people that are the real people. Like worth celebrating. And I just get to build something that helps people do that and to support a community who needs that. And so I feel very grateful to be this, this middleman, like supporting all parties.

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[00:35:59] Branden Harvey: And so thank you. Everybody who's doing that. And for folks who want to get connected with that, who are thinking, oh my gosh, I, I need some good news in my life and maybe I need some, some help getting involved in the issues that I care about. We just launched a brand new website. It's goodgoodgood.co.

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[00:36:18] Branden Harvey: And. Oh, my goodness. I am so excited that it exists. We get to publish all of this good news content. That to me, it feels so much different than anything else out there. Our goal is truly to leave people feeling more hopeful and better equipped to do good. And you can visit us at dot co and you can sign up for our good newsletter, which is much better designed now than it used to be back when.

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[00:36:44] Branden Harvey: And that's on our website as well. And that'll get you good news sent straight to your inbox every week, which is, you know, still a delight. Yeah. 

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[00:36:52] Sean Pritzkau: Awesome. Well, I'll include everything that you just mentioned and anything that you've talked about in the episode in the show notes. So if listeners want to go in and take a look at the gorgeous new website, definitely do that.

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[00:37:04] Sean Pritzkau: If they want to follow you on social media, definitely jump on to do that and connect with Branden. Good. Good, good. And the Goodnewspaper, but again, Branden, thank you so much. This was really, really fun to talk to you today. I'm excited for everyone to listen to this and thank you so much. Appreciate this.

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[00:37:19] Branden Harvey: Thank you so much.

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[00:37:35] Sean Pritzkau: What the tree it was to speak with Branden Harvey. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. And if you're interested in the work that Branden does, you can first jump right into the show notes and subscribe to Sounds Good, which is the podcast that Branden hosts. And then you'll also find all the links to the Goodnewspaper and the website that has all the stories and the kind of things that you'll come to expect from.

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[00:37:59] Sean Pritzkau: Good Good Good And if this is your first time listening, I invite you to go ahead and click subscribe every single week. We put out episodes with the goal to empower you with the tools, skills, and community. You need to go out and make an impact. And if you haven't been listening and you haven't left a review, It would mean the world to me, if you would jump into apple podcast and iTunes and leave a short review and let us know what you think of the podcast, but thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week. .

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