From Navy Medic to Novelist: Kristof Morrow's Journey | Kristof Morrow

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this episode of The Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim interviews author Christophe Morrow, who shares his journey from being a Navy medic to becoming a successful writer. Morrow discusses his experiences with Tourette's syndrome, the challenges he faced in the military, and how these experiences shaped his writing. He also delves into the influence of AI on the writing process and the creative decisions behind his first novel, which tackles themes of climate change and interconnectedness. In this conversation, Kristof Morrow discusses the interconnectedness of his stories, the challenges of marketing and selling books, and the impact of social media on his success. He shares insights on self-publishing versus traditional publishing, the evolving landscape of content creation, and the limitations of AI in creative work. The discussion highlights the importance of authenticity and community in the current market.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Christophe Morrow is an author and award-winning journalist.
• Tourette's syndrome can manifest in various ways, often compared to an uncontrollable sneeze.
• Morrow began writing seriously after being encouraged by the government to pursue journalism.
• His first book is part of a literary epic fantasy series called 'The Second Son.'
• Morrow's writing style is influenced by Charles Dickens, but he aims for clarity and accessibility.
• He transitioned from the Navy to writing after losing a sense of purpose.
• Morrow's experiences in the Navy contributed to his writing and personal growth.
• He won an award for a photograph taken during Hurricane Harvey while working as a journalist.
• Morrow's first novel addresses climate change through a unique monster concept.
• He employs a multi-perspective storytelling approach similar to George R.R. Martin. The interconnectedness of stories enhances their depth.
• Marketing can be enjoyable and creative.
• Going viral on social media can significantly boost book sales.
• Self-publishing offers more control and higher royalties.
• Authenticity is key in building a community around your work.
• AI-generated content often lacks the nuance of human creativity.
• The future of content creation is shifting towards independent platforms.
• Social media can be a powerful tool for authors.
• Understanding your audience is crucial for effective marketing.
• The challenges of living with Tourette's can resonate with readers.

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:02.257)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Salt Lake City, Utah. Never been there, would love to go. I hear it's beautiful. Joining me today is author Kristof Morrow. Welcome, Kristof.

Kristof Morrow (00:28.238)
Shakespeare, you're very kind to have me, Christian. Thank you.

Christian Brim (00:33.319)
Well, I'm very glad that you're here. tell us who Kristof Morrow is and what he does.

Kristof Morrow (00:42.51)
Shakespeare. I have Tourette's by the way for people that don't know. Shakespeare. I'm an author, an award winning journalist, award winning photographer. I am a disabled vet Shakespeare, a disabled veteran. That's where the Tourette's came from. Shakespeare. And I just moved back from Canada.

Christian Brim (01:02.044)
Okay.

Kristof Morrow (01:09.516)
And I love it. I love it. I love it back home in the United States. I missed it so much. I didn't realize how much I would miss it.

Christian Brim (01:09.715)
Thanks.

Christian Brim (01:15.857)
What were you doing in Canada? Were you in witness protection?

Kristof Morrow (01:19.144)
Yes. I knew I knew I liked your show. I knew I did. I liked it. Profitable creative. So yeah, I, I, I was married and exploring. was adventure. For the sake of adventure.

Christian Brim (01:38.469)
Nice. There's a lot to explore up there for sure.

Kristof Morrow (01:42.881)
my god, there it is. It's empty though.

Christian Brim (01:44.689)
Well, it's interesting. You mentioned Tourette's. have a separate podcast called The Chris Project. And I had a gentleman on there that had Tourette's. And it was interesting to me because I didn't know a lot about it. So his Tourette's presented early on in childhood.

Kristof Morrow (01:58.35)
Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (02:03.618)
Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (02:12.078)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (02:14.215)
and he described it as like, you know, when there's a fly or a bug on your skin and, you just have this feeling of like, you want to get it off of you. he, he, that's the way he described it. So how would you describe it?

Kristof Morrow (02:30.594)
Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (02:36.814)
I understand the sensation that he's trying to describe. It's a bit it's a bit like trying to Shakespeare. It feels like a sneeze. I think that most people would describe it as a sneeze because it's it's often Shakespeare. It's often sudden and unavoidable generally or only barely manageable to like to like suppress

Christian Brim (02:42.119)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (02:49.362)
Okay.

Christian Brim (03:03.57)
Right.

Kristof Morrow (03:06.19)
Shakespeare. So yeah, that's relatively close to I think I understand what he means by that.

Christian Brim (03:15.281)
Yeah. And he, he, he said that, you know, he tried medication, and did not think that helped. and, essentially he said he kind of grew out of it, which I guess some people do if they have they have it at an early age, but he said the sensation is still not gone. It's just more manageable. it's, so tell us a little bit about the books that you write.

Kristof Morrow (03:20.972)
Mm. Mm-mm.

Kristof Morrow (03:29.4)
Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (03:36.344)
to.

Kristof Morrow (03:44.686)
Well, Shakespeare, it started out as a necessity and unfortunate, well, a fortunate now necessity. But it was unfortunate time because I Shakespeare given my condition and, and, and how it manifests the government was trying to find me work that I could do in British Columbia. And they, they,

Christian Brim (04:07.603)
Okay.

Kristof Morrow (04:12.482)
They eventually called me October 16th, 2021. And they said, we can't find you anything because you Shakespeare, because of the way your condition manifests, like you hurt yourself a lot and you break things. Like I've cracked my desk all the way through. Yeah. I've given myself black eyes, busted lips, busted nose. You know, it's, it's really extraordinarily painful.

Christian Brim (04:30.088)
Holy cow.

Kristof Morrow (04:42.286)
to have a broken a knuckle. Yeah, so I can't.

Christian Brim (04:43.079)
I can imagine.

Kristof Morrow (04:51.502)
Shakespeare. I'm trying so hard not to curse. Shakespeare.

Christian Brim (04:55.281)
No, that's fine. I curse all the time. As a matter of fact, jokingly, what I don't know jokingly, I we have some dear friends that we've been friends with for decades. And when their kids were young, they asked them, said, Does Mr. Brim have Tourette's? And I'm like, No, I, I just say random shit. So

Kristof Morrow (05:19.886)
Fair enough. Shakespeare. Well, they called me and they told me that they couldn't find me work. so they said, you, you, you know, you, won awards for journalism and stuff. So maybe you should go back to writing doing that. And I did, I won awards for short fiction as well in poetry at two different colleges I went to. And I, so about 10 minutes after I hung up with them, I started writing my first book.

You know, which is called the, the Shakespeare, the series is called the second son and it's volumes one, two, and then, which is one book and then volume three is a separate book and I'm writing volume four right now. yes. Yeah. And it's a, it's work of a literary epic fantasy and yeah.

Christian Brim (06:05.223)
Now these are novels. Okay.

Christian Brim (06:12.443)
Okay, good.

Kristof Morrow (06:15.31)
I found out that they actually use my first book to teach Dickens, Victorian literature classes. Yeah. Which is consistent with my history with Dickens. When I discovered him, I discovered him. Right. He found me. Right. I realized that his music, the music of his work made sense to me.

Christian Brim (06:23.111)
Interesting.

Christian Brim (06:34.301)
He found you.

Kristof Morrow (06:45.394)
I adapted his style into my own and his, he's a really large influence for me. So when I found that out, someone just wrote, wrote to me on Instagram and said, yeah, my, my intro to Victorian literature professor recommends your book. For when we got to Dickens and I was like, that's it. I cried for hours. Charles Dickens.

Christian Brim (07:02.299)
Now you're talking about Charles Dickens, right? Okay, so are you as verbose in your writing as Charles? Because I remember reading him when I was a kid and I was like, God, this is boring. I mean, can you get to the point? Yeah.

Kristof Morrow (07:08.526)
No.

Kristof Morrow (07:17.198)
No, it's not, it's not quite, I, I try to tow the line a little bit more, you know, cause I'm from the South. I'm from the deep South and storytelling is, is a, is a way of life down there. It's a, it's a, it's just what we, this is what we do. Um, and so I took, take the philosophy of trying to simplify things for the audience to, you know, uh, because it's just the way it is. That's the we tell stories.

with Charles Dickens. it's a really, I think it's a really interesting synthesis.

Christian Brim (07:49.383)
Yeah. Yes, an abbreviated Charles. All right. Okay, so I've got a couple of questions framing this. So let's back up. You grew up in the deep south. Whereabouts? When you say deep south, I think Alabama or Mississippi.

Kristof Morrow (07:54.413)
Yeah.

Kristof Morrow (08:02.414)
yeah. In Texas.

It's Texas, yeah. Where are you from?

Christian Brim (08:08.699)
No, that's not the deep south. on. I'm from Oklahoma. Texas is a whole nother country. Well, it is the south. I'll agree with that, but the deep south, I don't know.

Kristof Morrow (08:14.636)
No, Texas is the South, man. Texas is the South. We have...

Kristof Morrow (08:23.778)
Yeah, because, and the only reason, well, there's a lot of reasons why I would argue for that, but it would get weirdly political. And anyway, so, yeah. So, but it's, it's, it's a very, it's, it is a very curious place because I've lived all over. I've lived in Louisiana. I've, I've been to, I lived in Florida when I was stationed there. you know, I still feel like I live in South Carolina now, which is apparently the deep South.

Christian Brim (08:51.813)
Okay. No, no, no, no, I don't. I mean, you might throw Georgia in there, but to me it's, the Gulf States. but I guess, guess Texas. Okay. So you, you grew up, where in Texas did you live?

Kristof Morrow (08:55.126)
It's not? You don't think so?

Kristof Morrow (09:04.374)
I live like 90 miles from the border of Georgia.

Kristof Morrow (09:10.318)
Around Houston area.

Christian Brim (09:13.789)
Well, my wife's from Houston. So you went into the military after high school? No, you said you went to college.

Kristof Morrow (09:15.826)
cool.

Kristof Morrow (09:22.252)
Mm-hmm.

No, I went to college after the Navy.

Christian Brim (09:28.699)
Okay, so you were in the Navy. What did you do in the Navy?

Kristof Morrow (09:33.634)
I was a corpsman, was a Navy medic. Yeah.

Christian Brim (09:36.445)
Nice. Nice. Okay, so how long were you in the Navy?

Kristof Morrow (09:41.582)
about a year and a half before I developed turrets.

Christian Brim (09:44.531)
And you believe that your work caused the Tourette. So what specifically caused that from being a corpsman?

Kristof Morrow (10:03.47)
Well, it's actually a number of things First of all, like you work in a play that you work in healthcare. You're working in a hospital setting There's a lot of pressure for you to perform like to the tee you have to do everything Absolutely correctly You have to there's a lot of extra stuff that you do in the military that most people don't know about like you don't just go to your job You have to go to you have to go to PT. You have duty when and

Christian Brim (10:26.333)
Right.

Kristof Morrow (10:31.902)
And whatever other obligations they come up with, happened quite a bit. I stopped Shakespeare. stopped sleeping though for a long time because I was afraid of not showing up to work on time. And so yeah, that's, that's, that's actually how it manifested. think just generally, I also lost a shipmate, and that really messed me up for awhile.

Christian Brim (10:40.7)
Christian Brim (10:45.234)
Wow.

Christian Brim (11:01.905)
Were you deployed at the time? Okay.

Kristof Morrow (11:04.65)
No, no, was, I, he, Shakespeare, he, he completed suicide.

Yeah. This was a guy I was friends with and worked with every day. And, you know, yeah.

Christian Brim (11:14.931)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (11:21.021)
That's awful.

Christian Brim (11:24.848)
so you get disability, you, you're discharged. What was next?

Kristof Morrow (11:30.616)
Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (11:36.274)
to make something of myself, think, you know, I, I had, I had a lost purpose. had surrendered purpose being in, going from being in the Navy. cause I, I felt like I had, a reason, for, being, and, but then whenever I was out of the military, it was like, well, I need to invent another purpose. And I had been, I had been writing in the Navy a little bit.

And I enjoyed.

wasting taxpayer dollars, printing my stories and giving them to people.

Christian Brim (12:13.309)
Thank you. I appreciate it.

I'm writing my estimated tax payment to the feds this week, so I appreciate it.

Kristof Morrow (12:22.574)
Oh no, sorry about that. Well, Shakespeare, Shakespeare. No, I just, I printed out, would write these different stories and just for fun and give them out to people and expect them to read. Which is so naive of me now, now that I've written a few books, it's absurd. But.

Christian Brim (12:25.075)
Ha

Kristof Morrow (12:53.248)
Yeah, I needed to invent a new purpose. And so I went to school to be an EMT and also try to go to school, I think for English a little bit. It's funny because I failed my first semester of college English, but that same semester that I failed, I won their annual creative writing contest. So yeah, that makes sense.

Christian Brim (13:18.643)
That sounds about right. Yeah.

Kristof Morrow (13:22.958)
Shakespeare. Yeah. So I went to the I went to college and

try to get something of an education.

Christian Brim (13:34.215)
So you finished school and you, well, were you an EMT at some point?

Kristof Morrow (13:42.542)
Yeah, for a while, very briefly. um, whenever I applied for a company, they moved me into, um, I was doing like medical, medical alarms stuff. And then they moved me to be a video analyst for their, uh, for their like security, something or that. I was working for like the largest private, uh, ambulance company, I think in the U S which is the Canadian ambulance. Yeah. And,

It was an interesting job. You know, Ty Burrell from modern family. He plays it down. I saved his house from getting robbed once because we did, we, yeah, we provide security for them. They, for they did. And, there was somebody running around in the backyard in the middle of the night, trying to get through the window or something. And I called the, I had the cops and I got to talk to him on the phone. was really cool.

Christian Brim (14:17.041)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Brim (14:21.651)
Get out of here.

Christian Brim (14:36.947)
That's a good bar story right there.

Kristof Morrow (14:38.974)
Yeah, it is. great.

Christian Brim (14:40.819)
So at what point did you decide to do writing full time? And what was the thought process or the motivation there?

Kristof Morrow (14:53.036)
Hmm. Well, I think I didn't, like I maybe mentioned earlier, I didn't, I really didn't have a choice. There was no, there was, I wanted to, go into, I'd always wanted to go into writing. think, I think, sorry, I guess that's what you meant. I wanted to go into writing for a long time. but it didn't seem practical in any sense, you know,

Christian Brim (15:21.221)
Yeah.

Kristof Morrow (15:22.592)
especially, especially now with AI and everything, it's, it's, it's really difficult to compete with stuff that can be generated just, you know, and amuse people. But it didn't seem practical at the time. And until I became a journalist, that's when it started to

I realized that maybe I could do something with it. And, that was when I was 27. I got work as a journalist.

Christian Brim (15:59.773)
How long did you work for as a journalist?

Kristof Morrow (16:02.454)
About a year, honestly, it was about a year. It wasn't very long. I moved to Canada.

Christian Brim (16:07.752)
Right?

Kristof Morrow (16:09.49)
And that was whenever my journalism career ended, but I still won an award to them.

Christian Brim (16:15.027)
What kind of things did you write about?

Kristof Morrow (16:20.302)
I did, covered, I covered sports first, which is really funny because I don't watch sports. I love playing sports. I love playing sports, played football, played basketball, played baseball, you know, but I couldn't, I can't, I just don't care to watch them. and so was quite funny whenever they were, they were like, well, we will start you out in sports. And, and so I did.

Christian Brim (16:31.249)
Right?

Kristof Morrow (16:49.87)
and it was, it was, it was, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was pretty fun. But then, they moved. I, my editor knew that I wanted to move into news. and that covers everything from like local elections to trials, to, council meetings, any kind of anything remotely political, was covered, you know,

whether or not it was divisive at all. Didn't, yeah, it's that sort of thing. you know, like other events that kind of like we had a hurricane Harvey come through. And so we, covered that and that's what I an award for was a photograph I took during that.

Christian Brim (17:22.011)
Right.

Christian Brim (17:37.905)
Nice. So do you dabble in photography as well? No?

Kristof Morrow (17:41.502)
No, that's a funny thing. think I have the instincts for it. But I've met so many people that are better than me, that are far better photographers and they're just as amateur as I am. So...

Uh, yeah, I don't, I don't really mess around with photography at all. I just, I just know how to frame photos, guess. Yeah. Instinctively.

Christian Brim (18:11.667)
Yeah. Okay. So, so moving into novels and you mentioned AI. How did you decide what you were going to write your first novel about? Was there a story that was just there that that had been there a while that you wanted to write a tell or

Kristof Morrow (18:38.425)
I had something of a villain that I realized that I could adapt to the climate of issues that we deal with now. More specifically, like climate change and things like that. There's a sort of monster in my book.

It's more so plural, actually. It's a swarm kind of thing. and they, and they burn everything in their path. it's, it's a, and it's creates this extraordinary amount of ash and, and problems. I had that villain, I had that monster invented for a different story that I had written only a page of. And I adapted, I adapted it to when I realized that I could broaden its purpose.

And so I did that. and I, I wrote the first, I wrote the first chapter thinking it was going to be just a short story. and I was going to kill off someone that was really, that you would get to know and love. And then I realized I was like, you know what? I'm going to write this. I wrote, I wrote it, I finished it and I said, okay. I, I left it without being resolved.

And then I said, okay, I'm going to write a second short story, completely different, different area, different characters, everything. And so I did the first three chapters of my book are three different parts of the world. Three with different characters with, with dozens of characters across three different parts of the world. And, and you under, you learn how they're connected as the story goes on. and so that's what I, and that's what I did. I, I just started writing three different stories and then

Like sort of like a very similar to George R.R. Martin's strategy, which he did with Game of Thrones.

Christian Brim (20:42.343)
Yeah. Yeah. It almost sounds like a,

an anthology, you're writing all of it.

Kristof Morrow (20:52.792)
Yeah, yeah, and the stories are connected and they actually, they're actually very, much so interconnected. And yeah, that's alluded to within the books, within the stories themselves. like, you know.

Christian Brim (21:09.469)
So let's talk about the business of writing. What challenges have you run into making money at this gig?

Kristof Morrow (21:22.671)
Hmm. Well, um, the main thing is that, uh, marketing is a lot more fun than I thought it would be. You know, I like to make, uh, I enjoy making the ads and making videos. went from Shakespeare last year. had 50 followers. Or the actually now it's the year before last in 2023 in July of 2023. I had about 50 followers. I was talking about Tourette's.

Christian Brim (21:42.738)
Right?

Kristof Morrow (21:51.554)
I didn't talk about my work at all. And this is sort of by design. Actually. I went viral on tick tock and, and I was kind of on purpose. Okay. So the way I did it, was for the first three weeks of my book, excuse me, of my account being open on tick tock, I discussed nothing about my books. All I did was talk about Tourette's and Mike's

Christian Brim (22:03.251)
Okay.

Christian Brim (22:18.803)
So the books had already been published.

Kristof Morrow (22:21.164)
You the book, the first book had been published. Yeah. And so my first book had been published tonight, but I didn't talk about it at all. I talked about my, my experience with Tourette's and living with that. And, I had about 50 followers. Well, I made a, I made a video showing gratitude for hat, for someone buying two people buying my book. And I made a video about that. And as a consequence of that video.

A bunch of more people had bought my book and got me down to like number two 47 on Amazon's, epic fantasy category. And so I made a video about that and that video went viral and, what I, but what I had done was also, I made the digital version, free for that week for like five days. And so it, it,

gave me a tremendous boost in the in the Amazon rankings. And

So there was kind of, it was a little bit coordinated, you know, the video along with, making it, free. then, I sold hundreds of, physical copies and, overnight. And, so far, I think I've sold like 2,400 copies, which is a modest number. but when you're doing all the marketing yourself, and you're completely amateur to it.

I've talked to other published writers and they say that that's very good.

Christian Brim (24:06.087)
Well, I can tell you, you know, we, we sold 9,000, a thousand copies in nine months. which, know, I've been told is, is good. It probably wasn't my, it was towards the lower end of my expectation, but it's to your point, the marketing of the book.

Kristof Morrow (24:30.232)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (24:36.651)
is really where it's at. Like it doesn't it doesn't really matter if the books good and I know we we writers don't want to hear that. But you know, that that's the truth is it is all in the marketing. What what do you think? What do you think resonated with your listeners that that made made the video go viral in the book sales go up?

Kristof Morrow (24:40.61)
Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (24:50.498)
Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (25:08.012)
I think it was a confluence of factors. I think, if I'm using that word correctly, there's a number. Yeah. So the fact that I had so few followers actually was advantageous. You know, they saw that as that legitimizing my, you know, my, gratitude in a sense. and also, the fact that, you know, I, I do, I did make the video in earnest. I was very.

Christian Brim (25:13.371)
That sounds like it.

Christian Brim (25:20.243)
Okay.

Kristof Morrow (25:37.646)
grateful and very excited and I still am every time I every time I sell a book doesn't matter if it's one copy or 100 I have the same response you know to this day I still you know I still text my friends like I sold the book I sold the book yeah that's great it's great you know just anyway yeah so but

Yeah, so it was it was also the fact that

I had discussed Tourette's, think was a large part of it too, was that I had a, I had a legitimate sort of grievance towards my reality. You know, that I had to deal with that really shapes and undermines my ability to live a life that is fulfilling and

Christian Brim (26:26.045)
Right?

Kristof Morrow (26:39.694)
attractive, you know, in a sense to people, it's because it's it's Shakespeare, it's difficult to live with Tourette's. It's really difficult. I think

Christian Brim (26:52.147)
Yeah, I mean, I would imagine it makes most social encounters awkward, especially when people are not, I don't say mature enough to, to handle it. But I mean, you know, I mean, if I'm being honest, that that same type of social awkwardness

Kristof Morrow (26:59.937)
Yeah.

Kristof Morrow (27:05.934)
you

Christian Brim (27:18.183)
shows up for a lot of disabilities. mean, you know, people in wheelchairs or things like that. And people just get weird around it. they don't, from my perspective and my experience, it's, for some reason, they focus on the difference rather than the person, right? And they just can't get over the difference.

Kristof Morrow (27:20.876)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah

Kristof Morrow (27:39.788)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, I think I also think like you said a moment ago, it has everything to do with him feeling just really awkward about the situation. They really don't know. Because I try to give people a lot of grace when it comes to that sort of thing. they don't mean it maliciously. They just really do not know what's expected of them. Which is just to

Christian Brim (28:05.117)
Right.

Christian Brim (28:11.431)
Right, fair.

Kristof Morrow (28:16.426)
acknowledge my needs in terms of conversation. Like, so if I'm having a tick, you know, like, some things funny. It's funny. Cause, one of my favorite shows is Dr. Who. And there's a character that has a stutter. my goodness gracious. Well, Donna Noble, if you've seen the show, of course, for people that have seen it, Donna Noble, she is talking to a guy with a stutter and the guys

Christian Brim (28:31.197)
I love Doctor Who.

Kristof Morrow (28:43.928)
trying to get something out and she goes, you can't talk. You know, that didn't, that doesn't age well because when you think about it, you know, it's just, it's one of those things that I realized that I was like, Ooh, that's not good. That's not good to, you know, to point it out and to make fun of them and sort of thing. so in that sense, it's, it's quite,

Yeah. Antiquated in the way that it treats people with a stutter. And I, and I'm one of those people at Shakespeare. have a something of a stutter whenever I have, for example, if I have, if, if I'm expected to talk like at a, at a drive-through or on the phone, you know, they're saying, you know, how could it help you? I'm like, I have talk right now. And that's when it happens. I think, I think that 80 % of the time now, most people are very accommodating.

Christian Brim (29:38.311)
Does does stress trigger the Tourette's? Okay, so like the expectation that I've got kind of like with a stutter like, you know, shit, I've got to talk that just ramps up the anxiety and kind of a self fulfilling thing.

Kristof Morrow (29:43.049)
Mm-hmm. cat.

Kristof Morrow (29:51.597)
Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (29:55.862)
Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah. but most people, like, like you said a moment ago, or just very awkward about it. And, they don't, they don't mean it. They don't, they just really don't know what to do. I dated a girl that was in a wheelchair and she, she, like you said, also they don't know, they don't know how to behave. They just lose all, you know, their, their, their social skills. It's really quite funny.

Christian Brim (30:28.061)
want to I want to pivot back to the book business for a second you self published

Kristof Morrow (30:34.094)
I did. And I, I do, I had a reason for that. I, there was, wasn't because I couldn't get traditionally published, which I, and I sort of resent the notion that that's superior in the first place for a lot of reasons. because, first of all, you get far fewer royalties with traditional publishing.

Christian Brim (30:58.097)
Right.

Kristof Morrow (31:00.658)
they expect you to do most of the marketing yourself these days anyway. they can help. They, they generally, what they do is for some reason it's legitimizing, which I understand to an extent why it's legitimizing because you have an editor, I guess, generally you have your, you have, if you don't already pay your own editor. and, so distribution is a, is a large part of what their function is these days.

Christian Brim (31:29.896)
Right.

Kristof Morrow (31:31.026)
But whenever I, for me, whenever I, I thought about all of the great artists that have come out of like self publishing platforms like YouTube and Spotify and, and, different like music making programs. And I realized that, it didn't, it didn't matter that they were self publishing. Justin Bieber, for example, I know that a lot of people,

have mixed feelings about him for some reason. He was a kid when he went viral and famous and became super, you know, well known all around the world. He started on YouTube, you know, and there's so there's so many celebrities now. Joji, another one who is an incredible gifted, very, very brilliant musician.

was making really silly parody videos and ridiculous videos on YouTube. someone just told him, know, in the comment section, one time he made a song for a video as a joke, but the song was actually quite good apparently. And the guy was, the guy said, you know, your music, I think you could actually do something with that. And he's now he's like, for me, especially one of my favorite. So I realized that it didn't.

matter. I didn't and I learned that Charles Dickens, it was rejected like 63 times from publishers really, he was actually ridiculed for his work for a Christmas Carol, which is without a doubt now considered one of the most beloved Christmas stories of all time. And he was he was he was laughed at.

Christian Brim (33:11.559)
Wow.

Kristof Morrow (33:26.798)
for the way that that story resolved and...

Christian Brim (33:31.677)
Yeah, you're steering into a topic that's actually kind of, dear to my heart. have a colleague that, has created a company called cuvis and, it's essentially a platform for, musical artists, but it could be used by any content creator where, you basically have a customized app that your,

Kristof Morrow (33:32.344)
you

Kristof Morrow (33:54.456)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (34:01.683)
followers can subscribe to you can have free content, whatever, but his, his desire was to take it off of the major platforms, right? And, and so you're not beholden to YouTube. And you control the whole interaction with your, your fans. And you have complete control, you know, they take a small royalty.

Kristof Morrow (34:19.182)
Hmm.

Kristof Morrow (34:25.73)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (34:31.635)
off the top of sales through the platform, but it's nothing like YouTube or any of that because, know, we had Peter Thune on here who's an old movie producer. I mean, record producer. And he was talking about that as well. And he's actually helping Cody with this.

Kristof Morrow (34:33.93)
No. Fair.

Kristof Morrow (34:39.374)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (35:01.789)
Cuvis because it it's the publishers, the, the, the record labels, you know, whatever they controlled the technology in the past and they controlled the distribution. But now, technology is changing that so that, you know, you you're not, it is that way now.

Kristof Morrow (35:16.386)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (35:25.388)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (35:30.215)
But I don't think it's going to be in the future. Where people can put out their own work and benefit from it without like, like you're you and I are beholden to Amazon, right? I mean, we we pay ridiculous royalties to them. That they only earn because they have the distribution. Right? But if if they if

Kristof Morrow (35:33.347)
Mm-mm.

Kristof Morrow (35:50.157)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (36:00.345)
If we as creators can get traction with the community through other means, other marketing, we don't really need them.

Kristof Morrow (36:08.462)
Mm-hmm.

Kristof Morrow (36:13.62)
No, And Shakespeare, I, I especially know that after I started getting a lot of followers, I have about, I have pretty close to 9,000. Which is, I know is a modest figure compared to many, but I know this as a, I've seen a lot of, a lot of, yeah, and a lot of writers I know that I'm, that I've befriended.

Christian Brim (36:26.323)
impressive.

Christian Brim (36:31.397)
Well, in 18 months, that's nothing to sneeze at.

Kristof Morrow (36:42.954)
over these past couple of years. You know, they don't have even remotely close to that, you know, and I know that there's another, like there's a number of factors that contribute to that. But I'd like to, I'd like to believe the quality of my work has something to do with it.

Christian Brim (37:07.187)
Well, right. So to go back to what you said at the beginning with AI, like you can create a book using AI however you want. mean, it, you know, either writing the whole thing or assisting you or whatever and get it, you know, to, to publish within a week. Like, you know, get, get the, get the type setting and

Kristof Morrow (37:18.848)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (37:36.729)
and get it in the format and get it uploaded. And if you can market it correctly, you can sell it. Now, whether it's like I said, whether the contents any good is, is, you know, who knows? Probably not. Right. But, but if, if you had to go out and earn your credibility, like you did,

Kristof Morrow (37:54.986)
Almost immaterial. Yeah.

Kristof Morrow (38:06.978)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (38:07.379)
like I'm doing, you're, you can't get away with just putting shit out there. And that's what I'm saying is, is that I, I think that it's kind of, it's kind of going to come back and bite them with the technology because yes, they control the distribution now, but now with the additional technology of, and this is the same thing with content on the web, like Google and all these other things.

Kristof Morrow (38:14.648)
Mm-mm.

Christian Brim (38:34.707)
There's just this explosion of crap out there that no one wants. And authenticity, building that community is going to become key. Because it's the currency. It really is.

Kristof Morrow (38:48.162)
the currency.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, I agree completely. Uh, I don't, I, I really have for, for a number of reasons. I feel like, uh, AI generated content is going to be, is under it undermines itself. Um, there's the first of all, like, uh, I I've learned that there's some kind of, uh, the, the, the fact that, that it learns using like mining content all over the internet, it's, it's actually learning from itself.

Christian Brim (39:23.313)
Yeah, yes, yes. I don't remember what they call that, but there's some term. My son and I were talking about that. Like it just it just goes into a loop because it's just feeding itself.

Kristof Morrow (39:23.692)
Like AI models are learning from themselves. And so they're, ended up. Yeah. Yeah, there is.

Kristof Morrow (39:34.9)
Mm-hmm. It, yeah, it's feeding itself. Yeah. But it's, it's, it's feeding itself its own shit. And so like, it's going to be, it's going to like come out and just going to be more shit. And it's, it's, and it's not going to be right. it's, generating mistakes that it doesn't realize our mistakes. And then it's going to consume that content thinking this is the right way to do things. And yeah. And so it's a, it's a, it's yeah, it's feeding itself. So it, and

Christian Brim (39:41.821)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (39:52.231)
Right.

Christian Brim (39:56.987)
It's valid. Right.

Christian Brim (40:03.443)
Well, that's okay. Sam, Sam Altman, I don't know if you read yesterday, came out and said that 2025 was going to be the year that they achieve general artificial intelligence were, and I'm like, okay, dude, I don't know what crack you're smoking, but it, you know, the idea that the, that, that artificial intelligence is going to have, uh, this, um,

Kristof Morrow (40:04.27)
.

Christian Brim (40:32.339)
what's the word I'm looking for? Critical mass where it now has general intelligence and pass the two board Turing test. You know, like, there's no way there's absolutely that's just bullshit to sell stock. I don't believe it.

Kristof Morrow (40:51.458)
No, I don't Shakespeare. have no idea. Honestly, it makes, it makes mistakes, pretty consistently. And I know this because, you know, if you talk to it, and you talk to it about, like, if you talk to him, for example, about your own work, or about any, like anything you've written, it will misquote you. You know, like it, like pretty dramatically. I, that's not something I wrote. I recognize it right away.

Christian Brim (41:19.281)
Not what I said. Yeah.

Kristof Morrow (41:21.686)
And it can't, yeah, it just can't, it can't, it is more limited than people realize.

Christian Brim (41:28.025)
so I created a online course for profit first for creatives for our clients. And I thought that would be a great use case for artificial intelligence for an LLM. So I uploaded the book and I said only using the book, only using the content of the book, write me a course outline based on the book.

Kristof Morrow (41:35.587)
Mm.

Kristof Morrow (41:42.776)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (41:58.033)
Right? And it got the first section right, but as it iterated through the chapters, it just got worse and worse. And so then I broke it out and I was like, okay, only create a course outline on chapter one, you know, and tried to piece it out. I kept iterating, trying to get the prompt the way I wanted to. And then I finally gave up and I'm like, it's quicker for me to do the course.

Kristof Morrow (42:22.926)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (42:27.243)
To me, it's like, I just want this information in a different format. I don't want you to think anything. I don't want you to create anything. I just want you to take this and put it into a different format, but it couldn't do it. Now, I'll admit that maybe it's my lack of understanding of the LLM and I couldn't prompt it correctly, but for AI to be effective, it needs to not have to be prompted.

Kristof Morrow (42:37.784)
Mm-mm.

Christian Brim (42:56.691)
too much. you know, an average person should be able to say, you know, this is what I want and get a fairly predictable outcome.

Kristof Morrow (42:57.795)
Yeah.

Kristof Morrow (43:06.55)
And honestly, it's just, in my view, which I think I would consider myself an expert in what I do. and I think many people would, actually, and, it's often wrong about stylistic things. And even for example, like, there was one time it questioned a certain word that I used in a poem that I wrote. And, I said, and it said, these are the other words that you could use.

And I told it why it was wrong. And the robot was, call it the robot and the robot was like, you know what? You're right. Yeah. That makes sense. That why it wouldn't work. Why those, why the words that I suggested don't work in the ones that you chose makes sense. You know, it's just, it's just simply wrong. And you have to, you have to be able to recognize that. That's the thing you have to be able to, to make that discernment. then,

Christian Brim (43:53.873)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Brim (43:59.571)
100%.

Kristof Morrow (44:05.262)
Yeah, it often can't and people are relying on its expertise.

Christian Brim (44:12.467)
Yeah, go to chat GPT for your tax advice. That's what I suggest. Kristoff, how do people find your book, The Second Son? How do, okay, how do we find it?

Kristof Morrow (44:12.718)
Hmm.

Kristof Morrow (44:19.312)
my god.

Kristof Morrow (44:25.214)
Mm Like a sun in the sky. Yeah.

It Shakespeare it's on Amazon and of course, and it's also, you can find it via, my website, which is Kristof Morrow.com.

Christian Brim (44:42.023)
Perfect. We'll put that in the show notes. I personally am going to go buy the copy. I'm going on a business trip and that genre is I almost exclusively read three categories. I read sci-fi first, fantasy second, crime drama. So I will pick it up for my upcoming trip and I'll have something.

Kristof Morrow (44:47.967)
wow.

Kristof Morrow (45:03.854)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (45:11.741)
read. Listeners, if you like what you hear, please rate the show, share the show, subscribe to the show. If you don't like what you hear, shoot us a message, tell us what you'd like to hear and I'll get rid of Kristoff and replace him. Until then, ta ta for now.