Ikigai Leadership

Dr. Dhru Bee welcomes Brandon Reed - animator, cartoonist, and head of Cartoon Connect - to the show to share the secrets of his success. Brandon worked incredibly hard to make animation a career he could rely on and he’s now realizing success with an Amazon Video deal. He talks about motivation and not quitting when things get rough.

Brandon dreamed of making animation his career but with working and raising two children, he had to push himself to animate between the hours of 9pm and 2am before getting up to start his day again at 6am. He credits his work ethic and support from family for keeping him going. Now as head of Cartoon Connect with an Amazon deal for one of his YouTube shows on the horizon, he is on the path to where he dreamed of being.

Dr. Dhru and Brandon talk about the fear that motivates creativity, not quitting on your ambition even though it can be incredibly unrewarding at the start, and how watching animation inspires and excites Brandon in his career. Brandon shares some of the things that inspired him as well as how he developed the shows he’s known for today. Dr. Dhru has an insightful conversation with a true creative force about the importance of mindset in entrepreneurship.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Dragon Ball Z
• My Hero Academia
• Kimi no Na wa (Your Name)
• “The Secret to Success” by Eric Thomas
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

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Contact Dhru Beeharilal | Nayan Leadership: 

• Website: NayanLeadership.com
• LinkedIn: DhruBee
• Facebook: NayanLeadership
• YouTube: DhruBee

Contact Brandon Reed | Cartoon Connect:

• Website: CartoonConnect.net
• Lil Ron Ron
• Facebook
• Instagram

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Transcript

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

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:00:27] Brandon, thank you so much for joining today. Man, I am so excited to talk to you. This is the first time we talked since VidCon actually, right?

Brandon Reed: [00:00:33] Yeah, man, I'm excited to be here. I appreciate you, you know, having me on your platform.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:00:37] Oh, absolutely. It's my pleasure, man. So, ladies and gentlemen, thanks to Brandon here for joining us. Brandon is AKA Cartoon Connect, is an animator, cartoonist and just an overall creative dude we got to meet randomly at VidCon, actually. He and his friend Kristen came over to me and Damon when we were talking, hanging out, and actually introduced themselves, which I appreciate. I'm so glad you did that, but we had a cool conversation. How was the rest of VidCon for you?

Brandon Reed: [00:01:01] Man, it was great. I feel like we learned so much just by being there. I've been an entrepreneur for like 6 or 7 years and I had never been to anything like that, and I feel like that was like the perfect space for the motivation that I needed at the moment too. So we met so many great people, learned so many cool things, and really came home with so much motivation to continue, you know, doing what we're doing.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:01:25] Absolutely, man. I love the speakers they got, too. They were pretty amazing and inspiring people just talking about their own experiences and stuff like that. And, you know, that's one reason I do the podcast. You can talk to folks like yourself who, you know, don't have the same platform as like, you know, Jesse Itzler, for example. Right? But who was your favorite speaker?

Brandon Reed: [00:01:41] My favorite speaker was Eric Thomas. Before we even went to VidCon, I listened to him almost every day. There was like a point in my life where things were like not going well. And I would listen to him every morning on the way to work. And it really, you know, changed my mindset and changed my life around. So to be able to see him in person for the first time was crazy. And it just seemed like the message that he had that day resonated with me. Like it just seemed like I was meant to be there in that moment to hear that specific message. So that was amazing.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:02:11] Yeah. You know, I've heard that a lot from people at VidCon, right? The whole idea of like, being meant to be there and, you know, being the right place at the right time. I think there's definitely something to that, especially in business and in the world we're in, right? Like the entrepreneurial world, right? There's definitely something to timing, right? To kind of like be in the right place at the right time. You go there without expecting. You don't know, at least I didn't know what to expect because I didn't go last year. Right?

Brandon Reed: [00:02:33] Yeah, because last year it was in like Minneapolis or something like that. And that's a decent ways from where I am. That's about like eight hours. So the fact - well, no, maybe it's not eight hours, I think it's Minnesota from Indiana, maybe it is. It's a decent way, but I couldn't go to that one. So the fact that the next one just happened to be in Indianapolis somewhere where I could just get up and go to, it was like, Yo, I have to go.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:03:00] Yeah, exactly. And that actually happened to be my only free weekend that entire month, which was random for me because I don't really have a lot of free time, when things get going, they get going. And it's just, it worked out really, really well. So that's really cool, man. So you actually have some really cool stuff going on, right? You got the puppet show, you got the cartoons you're working on. And for those of you who don't know, Brandon has a show coming out on Amazon soon. I don't know how much you can say about that, but I wanted to, you know, plug that a little bit for you. But before we get to that, what was your journey like as a creative person? There's a lot of folks out there who struggle and don't make it, right? So how did you get to the point where, you know, where did you start? And, you know, how did you get here?

Brandon Reed: [00:03:39] So I started off just teaching myself how to make cartoons. It took me about two years of just watching tutorials and trying to do it, but I decided to just start putting cartoons out. Like I was like, You know what? I kind of got it figured out. Let's start making stuff. So I made my first cartoon. It was terrible. I feel like it's still on YouTube now, but probably one of my way older videos. But it was so bad, but it got like 5000 views and I was like, Yo, like, that's a lot of people. Like, I don't even know 5000 people. So I'm like, I think I have something here. So I was like, Maybe it's just the idea. So I kept trying to put that same cartoon out and it was, you know, getting a decent amount of views. But then I was like, What's something that I can do to make the views go up? Like, what's something that I can grab people's attention with? So I started creating these parodies where I would take an old school cartoon, like, Hey, Arnold, remix it, make it urban, change the characters around, and change the story around. And I did that. And at that time I was like really big in being in Facebook groups. So I would post my stuff in different Facebook groups, but I found a Facebook group called Black Animators and Artists. So once I made that first parody cartoon, I posted it in that group, and that was the first time I ever went, I guess you could say viral because I had thousands of shares for the first time. I had never seen that. I've been doing art for years and never seen that many shares. So that video ended up getting 100,000 views. And once I seen that, I was like, You know what? I think this is it. So just continue to keep doing different parody videos.

Brandon Reed: [00:05:13] A little while after that, I went to the hospital because I had to get surgery on my neck and it turned into like a really bad situation. I was in an ICU unit, face mask, like couldn't talk, like it was really bad. It was a situation that I didn't think I would make it through. In that time when I couldn't talk, I had to just kind of sit there and think a lot. And I thought so much about animation and how I was just kind of doing it here and there. Like I wasn't doing it serious, and I told myself I was going to take it serious when I got, like if I got out of the hospital because I was in a situation where I didn't know if I was going to get out of there. So once I got out, I would say a month later I animated the first episode of Little Ron Ron. Overnight it did around 2.3 million views. My phone started going crazy and at that point that's when I was like, Okay, here's this chance. I either got to run with it or, you know.

Brandon Reed: [00:06:05] So we continue to do Little Ron Ron episodes every single week. Eventually, my YouTube channel grew to 100,000 subscribers while I was still working at my embroidery job. I was a graphic designer there and I was so hype about it. Like I was like, okay, I could be working on work stuff, but I have two computers here. Let me animate. So I started animating while I was at work, continued to run the numbers up. I remember hitting 500,000 subscribers at my job, and then I would say once I got around 800,000 subscribers, I quit my job and my boss was mad. I had a video of that too. I documented the whole thing, but I don't know what I did with the video, but after that I took it full time and that was in 2017, 2018, I want to say. It's been working since. I've been putting out the animations, Little Ron Ron, which is the show that we're getting ready to get on Amazon video. It's been approved to be on there, but they're still, you know, getting things uploaded. So it's not on there yet, but hopefully it should be on there pretty soon. We're in our 12th season of animation for that, which is going to be the second season on Amazon. So the first season on there is already done. So that's really kind of how I got started and now I kind of switched it over. I was like, if I can make an animation, I can make it in content creation in general. So I started the puppet show with some of my buddies, that blew up. Snoop Dogg started sharing our stuff. Different celebrities started catching on. Man, just now I just think of ideas and then I just go with them.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:07:37] I love that, man. That's, that's like, honestly, like it's a creator's dream, right? But I don't want to minimize it by calling it a dream because you worked your ass off to get here, right? That's one thing I want to make sure that all these conversations we're having with folks, one of the reasons I want to share your journey is because I want people to know it wasn't just an overnight success, right?

Brandon Reed: [00:07:54] Oh, yeah. No, it took I would say it was two years of me doing it without even being paid a cent before it even took off. And then even once it took off, once we had the viral video, I was working like my schedule. I was a single father of two kids. I had my kids all the time, lived on my own, could barely afford my apartment. But you know what? I had to get up at six in the morning to take my kids to daycare. Then I had to go to work, come home, cook my kids dinner, and as soon as I got them laid down around 8:00, I would animate from like 9:00 until two in the morning knowing I have to get back up at six in the morning to get them to daycare. And it was a super tough journey, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I feel like that journey is what taught me how to continue to do that. Like there's times where now, you know, things start moving slow while we're waiting on Amazon. We don't have any content coming out because we're trying to, you know, get something together for the big content and, you know, things get a little rough. But I just, I know, I know that grind and I know what it took to get to where I'm at now. And I know I just tap back into that, keep creating different ideas, keep grinding the way I did, you know, when I didn't have much. I know, you know, things will come back full circle.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:09:07] Yeah, absolutely, bro. I mean, and that's the key, right? Is like that perspective, that mindset you had wasn't like, Oh, I tried it, it didn't work. So I'm giving up, right? Like, you kept going and it kept building and growing. And, you know, anybody can hit one viral video, right? That part is maybe luck, right? The fact that you capitalized on that and kept growing, kept working at it, right, like you didn't give up. You had a million excuses to give up waking up at 6 a.m., going to bed at 2 a.m. That alone is going to eliminate 80% of people right there, right?

Brandon Reed: [00:09:35] Yeah. There are so many times I wanted to give up. Like Kristin, who was with me, my sister, she's always, she can tell you I used to text her almost every week like, Man, I don't think I can keep doing this. People aren't watching the videos, like it's this, it's that. She would always tell me like, Hey, don't give up. The next video is going to be it. And it wasn't the next one and it wasn't the next one. But you know what? We would keep doing it and keep trying it. Keep trying it. And then eventually it worked. I think that's where a lot of people stop because they think after 100 videos it didn't blow up. Why am I doing this? You don't know. It might be 400 before you get to where you want to go. Everybody's journey is different. And that's another thing I try to remember too, just because I, you know, I'm saying it took me two years. It could take somebody five years. It could take somebody ten years. And me, personally, I still don't feel like I'm where I want to be yet. Like I've had the viral videos, I've had this, I've had that. But the dreams and the goals that I have are so large that I don't think I'll truly be satisfied until I have that Cartoon Connect Studios channel on TV or, you know, the animation studios like as big as Disney like, Man, the sky's the limit with it. So man, a lot of people give up too soon not knowing that their journey could take a very long time.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:10:50] Yeah, no, absolutely. And I forgot who said it now, but maybe it was Gary actually. Gary Vaynerchuk. But I mean I know someone said at some point it was like, What if you gave up the night before you were going to make it?

Brandon Reed: [00:11:00] Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:11:03] Imagine that thought, right? How much does that, like, eat at you, right? Like you gave up the night before that was supposed to happen, right? It was going to happen that next day. And you just like, Oh, I gave up, I'm done, you know?

Brandon Reed: [00:11:12] Yeah. And that's that's one of my fears. So I think that's what stops me from being like, you know what? Keep going, keep going, keep going. Because I'm like, man, what if I was supposed to wake up tomorrow and do the same exact thing? And then that was the day that it was going to happen. But the day before I was like, You know what? I'm done with this. So I like fear that. So that's another thing that keeps me going. I don't know. I couldn't live with it if I just like, if I realized that it was getting ready to be my time and I gave up before, like, I don't know.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:11:40] Yeah, no, I hear you, dude. That terrifies the hell out of me, too. But, you know, I think going to fear for a second, right? Like a motivation and what motivates us to keep going. You talked about goals and, like, the big goals you have, right? But then the fear of another motivator for you, because there's two things that motivate us, right? Desire and fear, right? You have those big goals, those desires you have. But you also have a little bit of fear, which I think is healthy. I think people tend to let fear control. If fear is the only motivator, you're not gonna be able to go where you want to go. Right? But if fear is, there's a healthy amount of fear. It's okay to have that much fear. I think that sounds like you got that balance going for you, right? Like what were some fears that you overcame along the way as you were going through your journey?

Brandon Reed: [00:12:20] I think one of the main fears was you hear a lot of people saying creators who fall off. And I think a part of that bothered me a lot because I ran up a million and plus followers so fast, I gained a following so fast, and then things happen where I had to kind of switch direction and try different things. Like when I came up with the puppet show, I was actually at a time where the animations weren't, you know, people weren't watching that as much. I mean, I still get views, you know, here and there, but people weren't watching as much as they did when I would get a million views a day. So you hear people saying, Oh, such and such fell off. And I think that was like one of my main, one of the main fears is like, man, what if I do fall off and I have to go back to working or doing something I don't want to do. But with me continuing to try new things and not giving up, you know, here and there, that's how the puppet show got started. I didn't, you know, necessarily know that it was going to blow up, but I knew I had to keep trying something different. So it's like a healthy amount of fear. I feel like daily when I get up and I get ready to work on this stuff, my mindset is, man, this goal that I have is kind of scary. But you know what? It's time to get to it, because if I don't, then you know it won't happen. So I try to keep that healthy balance of fear and being motivated by, you know, listening to different motivational speakers and stuff like that.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:13:40] No, I think that's important to note again, that fear of like falling off. I think that's a fear a lot of creators fall into. And like you said, a healthy amount of fear, like I think that's healthy because that way you keep yourself going, but you don't ever feel like you're like, oh, let me coast, right? Let me just let it go now. It's like, I think that's where the people kind of fall off, where they're like, Oh, I've made it so I'm good. Whatever I create. Like I think about folks like, like, for example, a great example of somebody who kind of had those roller coasters, Eminem, right? There was a time when he was like, on top of the world, right? And then he had made a couple albums, one of them was like kind of like a little lower and then he kind of just like coasted. Then he came back strong and was like, Yo, I realized I messed up and I wasn't really, you know, trying as hard as I could have. But now I'm back, right? I'm going to put my everything into it because he lost sight of what it was. And I think especially for creators, right? People like you and I, I mean, like, not the same level as you, obviously, but I create my own stuff, right? But it's where it's if you stop trying to get better and stop trying to build, and you're like, Oh, I'm good enough, you're going to decline eventually, right?

Brandon Reed: [00:14:44] Yeah. And I think that's where it happens, I think it's when you lose sight of what's going on too, because I think when the cartoons started slowing down, I think I had this whole thing where it's like, Oh, I'm Cartoon Connect. People are watching this, millions of views like it's going good. And then I got to the point where I'm like, okay, I can, you know, work on some other stuff or I can chill and I can do this. Um, and I realized once you start getting that feeling of, um, before I was doing it for fun, I was having fun with it. I was upgrading things, I was doing this, I was doing that. Then it got to a point where I was just doing it because that was my job. I think that's when, you know, it took a turn because I got too comfortable. That's what I'm starting to realize. And this space, you can't really get comfortable, especially if you have big goals that you want to go for, you have to continue to keep grinding the same way you did when you got started. Because if not, that's when things start to slow down.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:15:39] Yeah, Complacency is the killer of all business, man. I'm telling you, like when people, when companies even you know, you look at some of these companies, airlines are a great example, right? Like they just stop. They don't care. Like, oh, yeah, we'll get clients no matter what. So we're not customers. We're not going to, we don't care about innovating, we don't care about delivering good service. You know, just screw you. You know, you got fly somewhere so we're always gonna do it, you know? That's when you tend to alienate your audience, right? And people don't follow you as much. But as you were talking, I'm thinking about, like, when you're sitting there creating, right? What gets your creative juices flowing? Like, what are you, some people have like a routine they'd get to before they start drawing or writing or whatever. Do you have something like that or is it just kind of you just kind of sit down and just kind of do it?

Brandon Reed: [00:16:20] I don't think I have anything specifically like that, but I do have certain things that I do to kind of get me pumped up and get me going. Um, one of the first things I listen to a lot of motivational speakers, like that's probably what I start my day off with as soon as I get up, get myself together. As I'm getting dressed, I'm putting something motivational on. That kind of helps me out. Another thing, just spending time with my family and hanging out with my kids, I start realizing, you know, how much they motivate me. And then I think another thing that really does it is movies, animated movies, me and my kids and my wife, we go see everything because just even if it's something I don't really want to see, I'm paying attention to the animation. Like the new Across the Spider-verse movie that just came out, I love those movies and the animation is like top tier. So we go and see a lot of stuff like that. So as soon as we got done watching that, I'm like, Yeah, it's time to animate.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:17:12] I love that. Yeah, that stuff is definitely inspiring man, because I love, I haven't seen the second one yet, but the first one was awesome. It was amazing. It was better than I thought it was going to be.

Brandon Reed: [00:17:20] Yeah. The second one is just as good, like the animation is even better. Like they come with so many different styles. There's so many little things here and there that you like, you'll see the first time you see it. Then the second time you see it, you're like, Oh, I didn't even notice that. But that's just, you know, the animator in me pointing out everything.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:17:38] You know, that's important, though, right? That's the stuff that gets us excited, right? Like the little things, the little like, touches you don't notice. Like, my fiance makes fun of me because I love little stuff, right? I love, like little touches, whether it's movies, TV or whatever it's like, just like products, services, whatever. Right? Like little things get me excited sometimes. I love watching animated shows or whatever and like, because I'm a big anime guy, right? So I love anime. And watching stuff and I'm like, Oh, that's really cool how they just made that effect happen or whatever. And it's like, and she's like, Why do you get excited about this shit? I'm like, because it's really cool. Like, it's like, you know, it's difficult to do.

Brandon Reed: [00:18:09] I break it down because I'm like, do you know how long it took them to do that small part? Like from the sketching to the in-between shots to make it look fast or like, it's crazy how like the process that it takes to make that stuff. So when I see something like just mind-blowing, it could be the smallest thing, I'm like, Yo, I'm like that. I get hype about stuff like that.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:18:31] Yeah, absolutely. Like, I don't know if you watch, do you watch anime at all?

Brandon Reed: [00:18:34] Yeah, there's still a bunch of them I haven't got a chance to watch. I've been watching Dragon Ball Z since a kid. I've seen a little bit of Demon Slayer. I've seen a little bit of My Hero Academia. Not enough to be able to tell you everything that's going on, but I've definitely, you know, put it on while I'm animating. But Dragon Ball Z, I've seen a lot of. Like, I watched that. That was the first anime I've ever started watching.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:18:57] I love Dragon Ball Z back in the day, man, I haven't watched the new one, The Dragon Ball Super. I haven't watched it.

Brandon Reed: [00:19:02] I haven't watched that one yet either. I really, I'm honestly tonight I think when I'm animating I might put the movie on that came out. I think it was like last year, because I still haven't seen that.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:19:12] But the new Broly movie, right? I think that's what?

Brandon Reed: [00:19:14] I seen that one. But there's one more after that. Maybe it wasn't last year. I think that was like maybe like 4 or 5 months ago it came out.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:19:23] I haven't followed the new stuff, New Dragon Ball Z at all, actually.

Brandon Reed: [00:19:26] I need to check that out because I feel bad. I'm like, I've been watching this since, like, I'm telling you, like a kid. Like I remember walking home from first grade watching Dragon Ball Z, so I'm like, Man, I'm slacking. I got to get back on it.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:19:38] I watched it back in high school. I loved that show. But one thing that annoyed the hell out of me was when Goku was on that damn bridge for like 35 episodes.

Brandon Reed: [00:19:45] Yeah, yeah, they definitely dragged that out. I was like, all right. It's like you knew what was going to happen every episode, you're like, He's still here.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:19:54] Yeah, he's still on the damn bridge in the clouds. He's on, he's ten episodes and still he's still there. It just feels like, it's like, I'm like, Come on, man. But the reason I ask about anime, though, is because, have you seen Your Name? Kimi No Na Wa? The movie? Okay, check that anime. I think you would appreciate the hell out of that. So Makoto Shinkai is I think he was the one who made it. Those movies are phenomenal, right? Because the realism is unbelievable. It's an anime movie, but like you look at that, look at the animation and the art and the art quality, it looks like a photo of Japan or like actually like the train stations and whatever. And the way they move, the animation itself looks so realistic. It's unbelievable. And so I was watching it and I was talking about to my fiance. I was like, Oh, this part, you got to watch this part. It's really cool because there's actually a part where they, just for that one part, to capture the dance, it's like a dance in the scene and it's like a traditional Japanese dance. This girl, they did a motion capture just for this dance to get it exactly right because it's so like specific in the movements and whatever. And you can tell, you know, I mean, you can tell because you're an animator, but, you know, how you can tell those moments where they like changed the way that's animated, like the frame rate or whatever changes a little bit, and you can see like something changed. That's the one of those scenes where it happens and it's like, Oh shit, that's freaking cool. And yeah, I love it.

Brandon Reed: [00:21:09] Yeah I gotta check that out. I've been noticing like some, even with like the new Dragon Ball Z movie, just from the previews and stuff I've seen, I love how it goes from like a 2D animated like anime to where they have this new stuff where it goes from like a 2D scene and then it looks 3D for a minute and then it goes back to 2D like that. I get so hyped from seeing stuff like that.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:21:29] Oh yeah, no, it's super cool. And then also in that same movie I told you about, they actually did, and I know they actually animated this because I was reading about it, they actually animated a 360 camera pan around the character, which you know how hard that is to do, right? Like it was continuous. And it was, it's beautiful, though. I think you you'd love it if you watched it. Check it out.

Brandon Reed: [00:21:49] When you get a chance could you possibly send me, like a link to like the... Yeah I gotta check that out.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:21:53] Absolutely. I think you'd love it, man. I geek out on that kind of stuff. Cause I used to draw as a kid, and I still draw sometimes, but mostly now it's, I did some graphic design and whatever. Now I mostly just write. And then I do some, like, design stuff. Just like to kind of picture my characters in my head or what are they going to look like, that kind of stuff. But I don't do like any deep stuff, like actual animation or that kind of thing. But I just, I appreciate it because I love it and I grew up with it.

Brandon Reed: [00:22:17] That's something I need on when I'm doing my animation sessions because I get super motivated about stuff like that.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:22:24] Oh yeah, dude. And then there's a lot of like interviews with him where he talks about his process and stuff like that, and it's just really, it's really cool. He's one of the, that's the kind of creative mind that I like aspire to be one day where like you can, one on the one side you have this creative vision of what you want to create, right? But then you also have the facilities and the resources to bring it to fruition. That's the second part, right?

Brandon Reed: [00:22:47] That's like what, with Cartoon Connect Studios that's what I want to be able to have one day. Like, I can sit here and think of something and then animate it myself, but that's going to take me two, three weeks, maybe a month, maybe two months. I wish I could have that space to where I'm like, okay, this is my idea. Here, I'll give you the sketch real quick. Like, let's make this happen. Like with a team of people, like that's my end goal. Like, I really want to have a studio like that. We can keep creating content and just create all of these crazy ideas that I come up with.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:23:17] Hey man, it's not that far away. I mean, you got the Amazon deal, that's step one. That's huge, bro. So.

Brandon Reed: [00:23:21] Yeah, yeah, that's, that's such a blessing because just coming from doing this on YouTube to being able to get that approval and be like, Hey, Amazon video, your show is able to watch here to be able to go on a platform that people, like millions of people use daily. Like YouTube, don't get me wrong, millions of people watch YouTube, but the stuff like you can watch just content on YouTube. When you get to Amazon video, it's like I feel like it's still content, but it just, it gives a whole different like feeling to it. So it's, man, it's such a blessing to be able to have that opportunity from coming from just animating stuff on YouTube.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:23:57] Absolutely, man. I can only imagine. Actually, that's a good question. I'm curious about, now that you mentioned that, it's like how is the process different, working, doing it for Amazon versus doing it for YouTube? Like, was there a difference in your process or was it like, did they require anything on the Amazon side that you can talk about? Obviously, confidentiality.

Brandon Reed: [00:24:11] It was a little bit different because this first season that we have on Amazon actually came from YouTube. We started off with two-minute episodes and then we would kind of upgrade here and there. But once we got to the point where it felt like the YouTube views were kind of like stagnant, we were like, You know what? Maybe it's time to take that next step, so let's make longer videos. So we started doing ten-minute videos. So then once we got to the idea to get it on streaming platforms, we were like, Well, what if we take two of our ten-minute videos, which would give us around 20, 22 minutes? Let's turn these into full episodes and let's submit it to these streaming services and, you know, see how it goes. And luckily we signed a partnership with Malaco Records. So this is a record label that deals with like big-name artists. It's a gospel label, but they work with different artists to clear the music. So Kanye West had to go through this record label to clear songs on the Graduation album and Trippie Redd and like different artists. So they have a lot of connections. So I think it was perfect timing for us to start working with them. And then they helped us, you know, submit it to Amazon. Yeah. So it's basically just the YouTube season. But this new season that we're working on is exclusively for those streaming services. I think we will have it on, you know, YouTube when we get a chance, but I think we're animating it specifically for that. I think the toughest part is sitting down and animating a 20 minute episode before putting it out. That's tough. We, the ten-minute episodes we could do, you know, in like two weeks and be like, okay, cool. But these 22-minute episodes are kicking my butt.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:25:46] I don't think people realize how much goes into actually animating all that stuff together. And then, like, when you put it all together.

Brandon Reed: [00:25:51] Yeah. And then I don't think people understand too, that animation is tough because it's so hard to just sit down. Like, say, I'm having a bad day. Say I have like a family emergency or something happens. Honestly, I'm still required to sit down and animate. And it's so hard to do that when your mind's not there. So I have to explain that to people sometimes, too. Every morning I have to do that motivational, you know, regiment to try to get my mind moving in that direction. Because if I wake up and I'm just not feeling good, it's so hard to sit down at that computer and draw for hours.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:26:26] I can't imagine. I mean, we talked about mindset earlier. I mean, that definitely affects your mindset and especially as a creative person and I keep saying this, but it is different, right? When you're a creative person, what you're feeling goes into your art.

Brandon Reed: [00:26:38] Yeah. And if you're feeling good, you can tell the difference in when you're feeling good and when you're motivated. Product is going to be way better.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:26:45] Yeah. I mean, because it's all somatic, right? Like if you're, if you're thinking about something that's negative, people actually study this, it comes across in your handwriting, right? If you're in a good mood or a bad mood. Right. And the same thing is true with drawing, like your strokes are going to be different The way you round things out is going to be different, right? Like it changes ever so slightly.

Brandon Reed: [00:27:04] Like the way the characters move will be different. Like I can tell certain scenes where I, you know, wasn't really feeling it or certain scenes where I was in a good mood because it's like, Oh shoot, look at that detail. Like I probably, you know, was feeling it when I did that.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:27:19] Because it gets you excited, right? You're like, oh, that was great. I felt good about that one, you know, like I was really in a good mood when I wrote this one scene. Right? And I think back to my novel and I'm like I can remember, when I read through it again, I was like, Oh, yeah, this part, I wasn't really feeling great in this part. Yeah, like, you know, I'm not gonna tell anybody what that part was because I don't want them, you know? But yeah, it's just one of those things, man. Like, again, it's almost like a transparency thing with creative, right? Because it's like you can see in the art how this person's feeling and it's really cool. At the same time, it does put a lot more pressure on the creators, right? So.

Brandon Reed: [00:27:52] Yeah, it does because there's times where I need to have scenes done and I'm like, Man, I just, I was not feeling it. So then I'm animating it last minute and it might not be, you know, as, well to other people it's still great because, you know, I make great work, but to me, I'm like, Man, what if I would have, you know, added a little bit different, you know what I'm saying, movement here or there. You know, other people don't really notice it all the time. But sometimes for me, I'm like, Man, I wish I was, you know, my mindset was a little better when I did that part.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:28:22] Yeah, because your standards for yourself are going to be higher than other people's standards for you, right? Like, Oh, this is amazing. This is great. And you're like, Yeah, no, I could have done better than that, you know, you know in the back of your head, like, I could have done it. Or sometimes you're also just being ultra critical of yourself just because that's who we are sometimes, right? So. So as you're thinking about this, I mean, you talked about Dragon Ball Z and a couple of things as you were a kid, like growing up, what were some inspirations like for your art? For your art style and the way you draw? And if you have any like that you can think of, right? What made you want to start drawing?

Brandon Reed: [00:28:49] And this probably sounds so crazy. One of the first things that really inspired me was the Captain Underpants book series. As a kid, I used to read those and the two main characters, they had their own comic book company called Treehouse Comics, and they used to just hang out and draw comics all day long. And that's what I really wanted to do at first, was draw comics. But it was just something about reading them like basically creating their own thing, like from nothing, like they just had notebook paper and they were creating comics, taking them to school, selling them. That motivated me. And I would go to school like even in my earlier days before I started creating content, I used to go to school and then woodshop. I used to make these, like wooden necklaces like, and design them there. And I would sell them at school for like $5, like I'd always been selling art. But it's just, it was something about that book that just kind of made me realize, like - and of course it's just a children's book, but they made it seem like it was like so easy to just come up with an idea, create it and put it out there. So even to this day, like my son loves, like the Captain Underpants book series. Dog Man. And I even looked through those books because I'm like, this is what really got me started in like drawing. And of course, you know, I do things different now, but that was like where it all started.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:30:08] Yeah, no, I love that. I love that so much because I have a similar story about selling stuff in school, selling art, except I got in trouble.

Brandon Reed: [00:30:15] So I got in trouble towards the end because I would make like these necklaces and somebody got carried away. They paid me like 15 bucks for a wooden necklace like this big. And then that's when the security was like, Yeah, no, we're not doing that anymore.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:30:31] Yeah, I used to draw my own characters and stuff, like at school, right? And I used to draw, like, mixed, like, Mortal Kombat characters and like, you know, whatever. But I also have my original characters I used to draw, and I'd sell them at school because people were like, Oh, I love that. How much? How much is that drawing? I'm like, I don't know, $0.50, you know? It was like, all right, cool. And can you color it for me? Like, I can color it for you, it's another $0.50, like a dollar. So I was like, okay, this is a market here, right? So I started selling black and white drawings for $0.50 and colored ones for a dollar. And then I started having, like my friends, I was like, okay, at drama and I had them color it. So like, I'll give you.

Brandon Reed: [00:31:03] So, hey, it was moving. You had the whole production going.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:31:07] Dude. It was fun. It was actually really cool. We did it for like three months and then the guidance counselor found out and she was like, Hey, I need to talk to you. I'm like, What's up? She's like, You can't sell stuff on school property. And I'm like, Oh, I thought that was fine. Okay, cool. No worries. So I started selling them on the busses, school busses. And then she's like, Yeah, that's still school property, you can't do that. I'm like, God damn it, killing my entrepreneurial spirit.

Brandon Reed: [00:31:28] You know, it's really crazy that, well, it's not crazy because I get what they're saying, but in school, like, that stuff isn't, it isn't allowed. And you would think like, you know, drawings, you know, it's harmless. But yeah, they're kind of strict about that. I know a lot of people who would sell like candy in school, but it's crazy because I started out like I did drawings. I did the wooden things. I used to make music and sell my CDs at school. Like even after getting in trouble, I would keep going. But eventually it came to a stop.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:31:59] Yeah. I mean, at a certain point they scare you into stopping, right? But to your point, I wish they did teach more of that. Like in terms of like how do you run a business, right? How do you actually start something if you don't want to work for somebody else? How do, there's another path? I remember like Career Day when I was in like fourth grade, there was a guy, one of the parents came in and they were like, Yeah, he's an entrepreneur. And I'm like, What's an entrepreneur? That sounds kind of cool, you know, and not just because it's French. It sounds kind of cool just because of the idea of it, right? It's like not working for anybody else, like you're your own boss. You can do that? Right? Because I never thought about my parents.

Brandon Reed: [00:32:31] And they don't tell you you can do that in school, like either. They gear you up to feel like you have to go to college and have like a specific like thing. So when I went to college for graphic design, it was because I didn't know you could just be an artist like an entrepreneur. I didn't like, I had to learn about business after videos went viral and stuff like that. So I feel like it would be cool if they kind of talked about, you know, kind of taught that stuff in school or kind of like helped you gear up to kind of do that if that's something that you wanted to do. I feel like that's the only thing. Well, not the only thing, but I feel like that's something that that school is missing. Because when I left high school, I thought I had to be a graphic design artist. I didn't know there was any other type of, you know, art jobs or different ways that I could make money doing that. I thought I had to go for that specific thing.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:33:20] Yeah, no, I think part of it is also just like, if people found that out, then, you know, they wouldn't work for somebody else, right? They would just do their own thing.

Brandon Reed: [00:33:26] Yeah, that is true. And you know, what's with like Covid, how Covid happened, and then a lot of these jobs don't have workers. A lot of it came from people spending that time in Covid realizing that there's so many different things they could do, like from home or with their own talents that I feel like Covid really kind of changed the game with that.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:33:48] It was a self-awareness year, right? Everybody kind of was forced whether they wanted to or not, they were forced to be more self-aware about, okay, how am I spending my time? Who am I spending my time with? Is this how I want to live my life? And, you know, the answer to that question was very uncomfortable for a lot of people. But on the flip side, right, like I think the other part of it, which is kind of the double-edged sword of this whole thing, right, which is like not everybody's cut out to be a business owner, right? Like to our earlier conversation, you didn't give up. You were working your ass off, like, constantly for years to make this a success. And not everybody has that tenacity. Not everybody else is able to jump in and say, like, I'm going to keep pushing at this and work for something, right? Because they don't ever take the time to do that. There's a lot of entitlement and whatever right now in the world. And people feel like they deserve something without having to work for it.

Brandon Reed: [00:34:33] It's crazy because honestly, even to this day, like I have a business, but I'm not the like the greatest, I don't know everything about business. Like, I feel like a lot of what kind of keeps my business afloat is the fact that I'm so, like, consistent to keep doing it. Like, even when things are going bad, I'm like, okay, let me figure the next thing out. Let me keep going. I heard a quote where it's like, I think it was from Eric Thomas too, he was like, You might be smarter, you might be better, but you won't outwork me. That's kind of what I go by too, because business, man, kind of scares me. I'm like, but I do it. But I think it's my work ethic that kind of keeps me going because there's a lot of things that I don't know, you know, here and there. And I'm figuring it out as I go, but definitely won't outwork me. Like that's something I'm going to get up and keep doing, like regardless.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:35:24] And that's really the differentiating factor, right? Is that you're really willing to work for it, work harder than the next person. And again, that's going to be what takes people to the next level, right? Not that not like the idea of like, oh, I got a great idea. There's a trillion great ideas. Right? But it's are you willing to put the effort and work in to make that a reality. And you did, which is amazing.

Brandon Reed: [00:35:44] Hey, thank you.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:35:45] Absolutely, man. I'm gonna close with the last question for you. And this is something I ask everybody, like I told you earlier, right? Who has been the biggest inspiration to you as a person, or a book or movie, TV show, whatever. What comes to mind when you think of the biggest inspiration in your life to you being where you are right now?

Brandon Reed: [00:36:01] A couple of different things. If I pick a person, I would say it is my cousin. My cousin Quentin. From when I was little, he always kind of like showed me the right way to do things. Like even with, you know, coming from where we came from, I seen him go through a lot of things and continue to keep pushing, no matter, you know, what was going on. And we came from the same environment. So to see him do that, it really stuck with me. And that's like one of the people I look up to. Movies, when it comes to animation, Into the Spider-verse, Across the Spider-verse, the animation is amazing. That's something that I look up to, movie-wise. Books. There's a book that I read from Eric Thomas, one of his first books, I think it's called The Secret to Success. That book really resonated with me a lot.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:36:48] That's awesome, man. I appreciate the time today, dude. Anything else you want to leave folks with? Messages, thoughts, feedback, anything that you want people to know if they're on the journey you're on.

Brandon Reed: [00:36:57] To just keep pushing. It gets hard. It's not easy. This journey of being an entrepreneur, being a content creator has been a roller coaster. But you know what? I wouldn't trade it for anything else. And even when things are going well, like today kind of started off rocky with some YouTube stuff that I was working on. But you know what? I'm like, it gets better. I've been through this before. Stuff has happened here and there and just keep pushing and keep working. So definitely don't give up on your dreams because like we said earlier, tomorrow could have been that day. You know, that it goes for you. And I got a lot of stuff coming. I'm working on that season of Lil Ron Ron, hopefully should be on Amazon video very soon. More puppet show videos. The group Cottonmouth Little Kids be like videos. People love it. I got personal cartoons that I'm working on. I also make the Rugs. It's just so much stuff that I'm working on, if you check my Instagram out, you'll see I'm always posting something different.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:37:53] Awesome brother. Absolutely. I'm a put everything down below. All Brandon's contact information will be in the description below his Instagram, his YouTube and hopefully soon links to Amazon Prime Video series that he's doing right now for them. So, Brandon, thank you again so much, man. It's been really a pleasure talking to you today. Thank you for taking the time out of your day. I know you're busy as hell, so I really appreciate it. And yeah, everybody reached out to Brandon. You got any questions about this kind of stuff? You want to reach out and, you know, support him? Awesome, dude, as you can tell. And thanks a lot again, man.

Brandon Reed: [00:38:21] Hey, thank you. I appreciate you having me.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:38:23] Absolutely, man. Take care. Talk to you soon.

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

Welcome to the first episode of Ikigai Leadership with host Dr. Dhru Beeharilal, or Dr. Dhru Bee. Ikigai Leadership will focus on different leadership development concepts and interviews with leaders in business and entrepreneurship. This first episode focuses on DEI and the importance of representation in entertainment media. Dr. Dhru does a deep dive into the Disney Plus show American Born Chinese, exploring how it handles diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Dr. Dhru Bee offers coaching in DEI as one aspect of his overall business. He shares how too many times companies contact him about DEI coaching and simply want to do lip service to having put in effort. DEI needs to have consistent support throughout the year, it can’t just be virtue signalling, otherwise it minimizes everyone in minority groups. 

Dr. Dhru’s review of American Born Chinese aligns with the tenets of DEI that he opened with. He explores every aspect of the show: casting and characterizations, acting quality, the subtleties of modern racism, diversity in the portrayals, and the monologe from actor Ke Huy Quan that resonated deeply with him. Through the show Dr. Dhru talks about what it means to see yourself represented in media in a positive and varied light, and how DEI directly impacts how minority groups can see themselves moving through the world.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• American Born Chinese
• Short Circuit
• Ke Huy Quan

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Contact Dhru Beeharilal | Nayan Leadership: 

• Website: NayanLeadership.com
• LinkedIn: DhruBee
• Facebook: NayanLeadership
• YouTube: DhruBee

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Transcript

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

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:00:02] Hey everybody. Welcome to our first episode of Ikigai Leadership, my new podcast. Thank you guys for joining us so much. Well, joining me, at least in this situation. My name is Dr. Dhru Beeharilal and I go by Dr. Dhru Bee, makes it a little easier on everybody. This podcast is going to be a pretty fun endeavor, I think, at least for me. Hopefully it's fun for you as well. Our first episode to kick this off, we're talking about a lot of leadership development concepts, business, marketing, branding, all these different things within leadership development, within coaching. There's going to be the concepts of DEI - diversity, equity, inclusion - and I know a lot of folks hear those words and immediately have a cringe reaction, a visceral reaction to those words. A big reason for that is because most companies and I will say most as in like 95% of companies out there, 95% of people out there in those companies, are implementing DEI wrong. They're doing DEI wrong. How do you do DEI wrong? Do you do DEI wrong by focusing on optics and having optics be your primary thing that you focus on and that you promote? I can't tell you the number of times I have companies folks reaching out to me because of the work I do. Asking me to do the work for them.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:01:43] I'll give you an example of how that sounds. Ring, ring. Just the phone, obviously. And then phones are actually ringing like that anymore. Anyway. Phone rings. I answer the phone. Hey, we saw that you do some DEI work and we wanted to do some for our organization. We have some culture concerns, we want to really address those and we want you to do the work for us. Can you put together a proposal of what you want to do? Let's say we talk for another 20 or 30 minutes about what the actual needs are there, and then I ask them what they have in mind. The inevitable answer that I get most times, unfortunately, Yeah, that's too much in terms of what we want to do, we don't really want to do a whole training or any kind of coaching or anything like that, anything significant. We really just want to do a couple of brown bags. Can we do maybe like a series of 2 or 3 brown bags? No, no, I cannot. If your budget and if your intention is only to do 2 or 3 brown bags, I would take that money and instead of doing DEI work, just throw a pizza party, it's going to have the exact same effect, if not more frankly, than me coming in, talking at people about DEI. Brown bags do not work unless there's already interest, a deep interest of some sort, in the content, topic area, or whatever you're talking about.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:02:59] Now, do people have that interest? Some, yes, absolutely. But again, because of the way things are happening and the way things have unfolded since 2020, and honestly before that, but 2020 was really, with the George Floyd murder and everything like that that happened that whole summer, all the riots, all the everything that happened, that was really what kind of awakened a lot of people to the need for doing DEI work. And it is still a need. It is a real thing and it's still a need. And there are a lot of folks out there who don't believe that because of the way that it's been marketed, the way that people focus on it, and the way that people have chosen to implement it, that is incorrect. And that is really annoying because it kills the thing that actually is needed very badly in the community for many, many reasons. We don't have time to go into all of them here. But that's one of the realities is that because these companies have changed their focus to be let's spend money on this just to say we're spending money on it, it's virtue signalling on a company level and you see it happening all over the place with all the pride stuff right? I mean, there's all these memes about about companies turning gay in Pride month because that's really what happens, right? They act like they've been with them all the time, but then the rest of the year they completely ignore these groups, right? Whether it's Asian Heritage Month, whether it's Black History Month, it's Pride Month, Women's Awareness Month, these groups are invisible to these companies all year round, except for that month because they want to get the publicity and the clout from saying, Oh my God, look at all these, look at all this money we're investing. Look at all this energy we're investing into these wonderful groups that need to be supported. And yes, they do need to be supported, but they need to be supported consistently. When you turn DEI into a checkbox and you turn culture consulting into a checkbox, you're minimizing and taking away all the value that those concepts, that those approaches bring to the table. And in the process of doing that, you're also minimizing everyone else, everyone in those groups, right? And you're taking away their value and you're insulting their intelligence as well, by the way, which is I think is probably one of the bigger deals. Because let's take away the consulting, all that additional stuff there. Right. Let's imagine that doesn't exist. Let's imagine nothing. No solutions exist for this kind of problem. If people just had a basic level of respect for other people and other groups that are not their own, there wouldn't be a need for DEI consulting.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:05:22] That brings me to my topic today, after five minutes of talking about this. It's not just DEI as a whole, it's actually, like I said, this is a cinema coach episode. And so we're talking about American Born Chinese. It is a series that just came out a little while back and it is really good, actually. I was skeptical because of the fantastical nature of part of it. It's an interesting balance you have to strike when you have a, let's call it mythological world, and then you're taking that mythological world and combining it with the real world that we live in on a day-to-day basis. It's very rare that a movie or TV show or someone like that can actually make that work properly because like I said, it's a very delicate balance. Sometimes, especially Disney, they tend to go a little too far on the fantastical side of things, right? And a couple episodes kind of go in that direction and it's a little bit kind of a deviation from what you feel like. But, I would say the first episode hits you and hits you hard. And I wasn't skeptical per se, but I was like, okay, I was cautious. I wanted to approach this and see what it's like and see if I'm going to like it because maybe I won't like it. There are some things where they are too heavy-handed with it and it's too much. It's not realistic, right? It's so blatantly obvious and so like in-your-face that it's like, okay, yeah, this is an exaggeration of what people actually experience. But no, this show actually tackles it very, very well, very accurately, very realistically.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:06:48] The main character, Jin, the actor Ben Wang, honestly, it was really well done. The character was played perfectly, I think, actually - so I'm looking at IMDb - it says Wang, but I wonder if I want to say his name is Wong in the show because I feel like the dad corrected the principal about that in the show. Anyway, that all being said, it's a great show. I mean, Ben Wang plays that character so well. You feel for this kid. You're watching him exist in this world, and they did a really good job of stepping out of the typical portrayal of an Asian kid growing up in this world. He's actually not just a nerd, right? He plays soccer and he's pretty good. He's also trying to get away from the nerd world, like they talk about the, first episode he talks about, his parents ask him about his friend Anuj, who's an Indian kid, soccer and the Indian kid and the Asian kid hang out, right? The Chinese kid and the Indian kid. Soccer. That happens because it happens in life. But his parents ask him, How's Anuj doing? How's he doing? And he's like, Oh, well, we haven't really talked since last summer. And he doesn't really kind of go into detail about that. And then you see on the first day of school, he's coming back and Anuj is there and just walks off kind of, you know, brushes him off. And my initial reaction to that was, Oh, great, they're making another Indian kid look like a douche bag, because that's kind of what's been happening in the last few years, that they've shifted from making other bullies be, you know, white or black or whatever. And now the bullies are all Indian somehow, because somehow, at some point, Indians became cool. I missed that memo. That still hasn't happened in the mainstream. So I think everyone missed that memo except for Hollywood. Just FYI, might want to circulate that one. I don't think that anyone else got that memo. But yeah, Indian kids are apparently doing the bullying now, but that's what I thought this was going. And, side note, there are going to be spoilers here. I forgot to mention. The spoiler-free version is it's a great show, which I've given you already, but now we're getting to spoilers, sort of.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:08:43] It turns out that the people, the new kids that Jin's hanging out with, the soccer kids who he wants to be friends with and wants to be cool with, the cooler kids, I should say, one of the kids - they didn't go into detail of what happened - but he made fun of Anuj and really teased him over the summer. And Jin didn't defend him because Jin wanted to be friends with these guys. And so Anuj took that personally, understandably so. His best friend of however many years is not defending him, not standing up for him and kind of like tossed him to the side. So that, I thought, was a really cool nuance to the character, not just to Jin, but to that relationship and to the entire show. It's not in your face. It's not like a, you know, whatever, like pounding you in your face, like this is discrimination over and over again, right? It's subtle. Every single experience of discrimination on the show, almost every single experience is subtle. It's one of those things where it could be explained away, right? It could be like, Oh, well, maybe that's discrimination, maybe it's not. Is it a hate crime? Is it not? You know, like it doesn't rise to the level of that. Maybe. We're not sure. And that's how it happens in real life. It's always this ambiguous situation. It's like, well, it could have gone either way.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:09:50] Is it because he's Asian or is it because he's not? Is it because he's, you know, he's a nerd or whatever, but he's not a nerd in the show. He's nervous. He's kind of insecure sometimes and doesn't really know how to talk to girls and all the typical tropes. But he's not a traditional nerd because he actually makes it onto the soccer team, which is pretty cool, right? As a Chinese kid, that's a big deal. As an Asian kid who's smart and who knows what he's doing and excels in school, they don't really talk about that too much. But you're assuming he does because he's Asian. Again, stereotypes, right? But the way he acts and the way his interactions with his mom, the mom and dad - Chin Han plays his dad and I don't know who Yann Yann Yeo is, but she is amazing as his mom - and Chin Han, I have not seen Chin Han in this kind of role before. You know you've seen him in The Dark Knight, played kind of the evil mastermind behind-the-scenes kind of guy. You seen him in Mortal Kombat playing Shang Tsung, but he plays the dad character so well. I mean, I'm sitting here, I'm not a father, obviously, yet, but I'm empathizing with this father character because he's trying to keep his head down and do his work. And that's frankly what my dad told me to do, you know? And I could see my dad in this guy because, you know, he's not fighting for promotions. He's not speaking up at work. He's not trying to build relationships with people at work. He's like, just keep my head down. My work will speak for itself. And that is such an Asian Indian concept, right? That's something we've been taught our entire lives. Just keep your head down, do your work, your work will speak for itself. And then now you have social media and you have marketing and you have all these things that are almost bad words in our culture, right? This idea of promoting yourself, talking about yourself in a positive light, right? Self-deprecating humor, I feel like we create self-deprecating humor. We being like the Asians and South Asians because of our need for some kind of deflection when someone gives us a compliment. Because we don't know how to take those, we're not brought up getting compliments. Our parents saying, We're proud of you? Unheard of. Right? It's a huge deal. I remember my dad told my brother he's proud of him one time and my brother started tearing up because he'd never heard that before in his entire life. And that was like two years ago. My brother is like 47. Yeah, that's how things go. I'm still waiting to hear from them, by the way, from my dad. I haven't gotten that yet.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:12:03] Uh, I digress. Those characters are played so, so well, and the acting is actually on point, you know, for a Disney Plus show, my standards are pretty low for Disney Plus shows, to be honest with you. Mandalorian was good, season one. Season two was, you know, eh, Boba Fett. The acting was good across the board, I would say. But the show writing and whatnot was questionable at best. Miss Marvel, let's not even go there. I can do a whole nother episode about that show because that really frustrated me. But this show was actually, I think they knocked out of the park in terms of acting and casting and writing. Daniel Wu plays the Monkey King really, really well. The makeup, I will say I didn't love the makeup. That's one thing I think that they could have done a better job with, the makeup, with the characters, specifically around the Monkey King realm and stuff like that. They could have done a much better job with the makeup. But that's a small, small issue in the whole thing as a whole because the issues it tackles, the way it tackles them, the acting is great, the writing is great, the characters are believable. I don't know if folks have seen other portrayals of the Monkey King and, you know, the way that he is as a character. But this was a much different Monkey King than I've seen in other series, other seasons and other movies. This Monkey King was a father, right? He is a father. And his son, also played by Jimmy Liu, don't know who he is, haven't seen him before. He plays the character very well as well because he plays a Chinese character, Chinese boy in an American school, and his interactions with other students and everything. Again, it's very realistic. It's very much like how would a foreign exchange student coming into an American school act and be treated. And the first episode, there's a scene where the principal comes in and is like, Oh Jin, I want to introduce you to our new foreign exchange student. He's going to be shadowing you because you're both Chinese and Jin's like, I don't really speak Chinese, like, okay. And she never asked him if he speaks Chinese. She never, it was just an assumption. And again, it was knocked out of the park the way that those three people and the principal - whoever played the principal, I don't know her name - but she played that character really well, too, because that is how it comes across. It's well-intentioned, we understand that. But the question becomes intention versus impact, right? That's a whole nother debate we can get into. But intentions have to matter.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:14:26] I'm not one of those bandwagon folks who say intentions don't matter at all, because impact is extremely, extremely important. It's a scale. It's a nuance, right? Intentions matter as long as you're making an effort to get better, to improve. If you just rely on your intentions being good and never try to get better, never try to improve, never try to learn more about other cultures, about how to do things better, about doing things differently, your intentions no longer matter. But if you're still trying to get better and better and better and you make a mistake and your intention is to continue to learn, well, then that's when it does matter. But it never, never negates impact. It can offset, but it never negates it. Right? Impact is always going to be a consideration. And the way Jin feels in that scene, a lot of minority students can kind of empathize with Jin's feelings in that moment. It's like, Why me? You know, why am I being singled out? And now even more attention is being drawn to me and not the good kind of attention. It's really cool, that first episode, like I said, it's a longer episode. It's about 40, I think 45 minutes, versus the other ones are around 30 minutes. It really does set the show up for success and it makes you want to watch more. I really appreciate the way that they put this show together.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:15:33] And Daniel Wu really, like I said, as a Monkey King, did a great job. He's been very active in activism for stopping Asian hate and things like that, those different causes. And, you know, he actually didn't really talk a lot about that in this show, who did talk a lot about that indirectly was one of my personal heroes, Ke Huy Quan. This guy, I love this guy so much. Honestly, I seriously, one day I want to meet him. I really would just love to love to meet him. I've been following that guy since I first saw him as a kid in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Short Round was one of my favorite characters growing up. And then Data in Goonies, obviously. Growing up as an Indian kid in PG County here, you don't see a lot of Indian kids in cinema growing up, right? And he talks about this and he has a really, really amazing monologue in, I think it's episode seven or episode eight, I think it's episode seven. And that's actually what got me to watch the show, honestly. Before I saw that monologue, the show was like, Okay, well, yeah, we'll see. I'll get to it eventually. But when I watched that monologue, he talks about a lot of things frankly. He talks about his experience. And I think, I'm not sure if that was ad-libbed or not because it mirrors his real-life experience. And that's, I think that's also why it hit me in the feels, because it really is how he felt in that moment. He's talked about that in interviews in the past about how he felt invisible, how he felt like, you know, after his breakout roles in Goonies and Indiana Jones, the roles just didn't come in anymore, right? He kept being asked to be a nerd or a neighbor or some insignificant character. He does this monologue where he talks about he hopes that there's some kid out there watching this and realizing that they don't have to be a punchline. And I'll be honest, I teared up when I heard that because that's all that Asian characters had been growing up. Right? Nerds. Punchlines. Neighbors. The goofy person. Maybe the ninja once in a while. Right? The martial artist. But that wasn't even, that wasn't Indians. That was always East Asians, right? Indians, South Asians, Pakistanis, we were always, always the convenience store owners, the gas station owners, all, every single one of them had an accent. The most prominent example is obviously Apu. Easiest one. But second is actually Ben Jabituya. I dOneon't know if anyone knows that guy, but he's not actually a real person, obviously, that's the name of the character in Short Circuit. And that was Short Circuit One and Two, and that was an older movie in the 80s, dating myself a little bit, but obviously, you know, is what it is. That guy wasn't even played by an actual Indian guy. He was played by a white guy. And I didn't know that until maybe like ten years later. I mean, again, I'm watching this as a kid, right? But he had an accent and he was playing this guy. And I'm like, oh, he's an Indian guy. I say, I saw an Indian guy in a movie. I'm like, Oh, that's super, super cool. I remember thinking that myself. And then it didn't even occur to me that this guy was a nerd and whatever, it was just that's how Indian people are. That's how we're supposed to be.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:18:38] Our place in society is being the smart, nerdy person who gets tied up and thrown in a freezer. Right? That happens in part two, by the way, in case you're wondering. That was our place in society as far as I was concerned. That was reinforced every single day when I went to school because I was a nerd. I, my dad, I told you my parents were very much of the mindset of just keep your head down and do the work. Keep doing the work, keep doing the work. Don't worry about the kids bullying you, starting fights with you, you know, throwing your books on the floor or like tearing up your homework or, you know, calling you names and whatever and picking on you. Don't worry about that. Don't get into fights. Obviously I did not listen to any of that and got into a lot of fights in elementary school. But that was the advice I was getting. I didn't get any real good advice about it. And then teachers obviously thought I was a problem because I was the one getting picked on all the time in different scenarios. I would always, I would be the common denominator, right? So I wasn't getting any help from anyone. My thought was I'm also the only Indian kid in class until another Indian kid comes in and they're like, Oh, you guys should be friends. We actually ended up hating each other to start, right? But we ended up becoming friends later on. But it's just one of those things where until you see yourself represented somewhere else and I know this may sound trite to some people or may sound like you're just parroting stuff out, but it's really true. Until you see yourself represented, you ask someone who their heroes are, and who do you look up to? Who do you want to be when you grow up? And you're going to look at what you see out there. You're going to look at where the possibilities are. Right? I never saw myself as a president of the United States or that kind of stuff, or I definitely didn't see myself as an NBA player or NFL, right?

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:20:22] When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archeologist. Paleontologist, sorry, and then archeologist later, but kind of both. But that's because I loved dinosaurs. But then when I really thought about it, what I wanted to do, I didn't have anyone, any heroes to look up to growing up. Indian people, right? That guy that I thought was actually really cool, again, I was a nerd, so I thought that being a nerd was cool, Ben Jabituya was a white guy in a movie playing an Indian guy with brown face and everything. Darkened his hair, all that stuff. He was a robotics guy. Super, super cool. I would love to design robots, right? But then I realized he wasn't really Indian, and I was like, Well, what does that even mean now? Right? And then Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A lot of Indian people in that movie. None of them were cool. You've got Amrish Puri, who is a Hindi actor, famous, playing essentially like a voodoo priest that also, you know, that kills people and sacrifices them to Kali, who actually is a Hindu goddess but not that extreme and crazy. Those were our options growing up. And then Apu, convenience store owner. My parents weren't business owners. They weren't, they didn't start a business. They didn't have a convenience store or a gas station and that stuff. They worked full-time for other people. Right? And they dealt with a crap ton of discrimination and not the subtle stuff that we're seeing in this show or in reality nowadays. I'm talking directly. People were telling them, actively saying to them, you foreigners always want something handed to you. You're not going to get this job because you're a foreigner. I'm going to give it to that person over there because they're American. They deserve it. You came from your country to take our jobs. These are actual statements that were made to my parents directly, not in private rooms that they overheard. This is like I'm talking to you directly. I'm telling you, you're taking our jobs. I'm not going to let it happen, even though you deserve this promotion, you're not getting it. Tough. Deal with it. And what did my parents do? Kept their heads down and did their work just like Chinhan, Jin's father in the show. So it really hits home.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:22:24] But back to Ke Huy Quan in the show, he plays an actor who played this character in the 80s. This, like, you know, comic relief character on a show, on a TV show back in the 80s. And he didn't get a whole lot of work after that. And so, again, it's kind of like, almost like a parallel, it is a parallel for his real life. He didn't get any acting gigs after that, right? He kept getting typecast as nerds or neighbors or ninjas or whatever the situation might be. And they do like a reunion show, and they interview him and ask him questions, and he really just nails it with that monologue. But it's just, it's such a powerful statement that unless you take a second to actually listen to it and understand it, it can very easily go over people's heads. And this is not people crying wolf. It's not people, you know, finding stuff where it isn't there. In the show Jin actually does the opposite. There are activists in his school, like students who are like, really active and like, Hey, hey, let's get justice for this situation that happened. And there are a lot of situations that happen in the show, you know, that are pretty messed up, to Jin. But he just wants to be a regular kid and his way of dealing with it is sweeping it under the rug and saying, Oh, no, everything's fine. Everything's fine. Right? The kids in the show, there's no like, evil kid on the show, which I also appreciated because there's not, it's very rare that there are kids out there who just like evil, right? There are kids out there who just, they're being dicks not because they want to be dicks, but they're being dicks because they think it's fun or funny or whatever, and they think it can advance their social status, right? If they make fun of another kid, then that puts them above that kid.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:24:06] I'm not saying it's right, but it's the way people reason, right? Social status and whatnot. And so that's what happens in the show. And Jin's response is, let's minimize. I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to do anything crazy. I just want to just be a kid and play soccer and be successful and be happy. And that hits home. It really does, for a lot of people. So if you haven't watched the show yet, I would highly, highly recommend you check it out. I hope this review was helpful for you guys. And like I said, there's a lot of amazing themes in this show that are really well tackled, but one of them is definitely that as theater, as entertainment evolves, we have to hold companies and industries and studios accountable. Because at the end of the day, portrayal matters. And I'm not saying there's not going to be a nerdy kid, Indian kid or nerdy Asian kid out there. What I am saying, though, is that there's got to be more than that, right?

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:25:06] Another quick line from that show is when Ke Huy Quan is talking about his experience, he talks about wanting to be the hero and the interviewer is like, oh, Batman didn't call? And it's kind of a dick response, right? But then Quan, without missing a beat, responds really, really beautifully. And he's like, not a superhero. I just want to be the guy who has a journey. I want to be the guy who stands up for what he believes in. That's a hero too. That's real. That's very, very real. And if you think about it from that perspective, you think about it from that point of view where these Asian characters, they're not saying - Asian, South Asian, whatever marginalized demographics are out there - they're not asking to be a superhero or to race swap or gender swap a superhero or a beloved character. That's an easy cop-out win, right? Frankly, it's just divisive and it's stupid. And it makes no sense, to be honest with you. We're just asking to have a character arc, to make sense, to stand up for what we believe in, to be not a pushover character, to not just be comic relief, right? That can be very, very powerful.

Dr. Dhru Bee: [00:26:16] So with that, I will end today. But thank you guys so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did hit the like button, hit the comment, let me know what you think and tune in next week. We'll have an interview and we'll talk more about leadership, business, marketing, all those things and more. This has been the Ikigai Leadership podcast. Thank you guys so much. Take care. Stay safe.

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

Dhru Beeharilal explores the leadership journeys of leaders from all different backgrounds, industries, and walks of life, discussing the barriers they broke through, the challenges they overcame, and the influences and inspirations they encountered along the way.

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