Story & Lesson Highlights with Brian Belefant

Brian Belefant shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Brian, really appreciate you sharing your stories and insights with us. The world would have so much more understanding and empathy if we all were a bit more open about our stories and how they have helped shaped our journey and worldview. Let’s jump in with a fun one: Would YOU hire you? Why or why not?
Hell, no, I wouldn’t hire me. I’m a pain in the ass, easily frustrated by technology, and not as smart as I think I am. Besides, I already have a me. What I need is people who aren’t me.

I mean, there are things about me that I want in every single person I hire: Integrity, commitment, belief in our mission, the understanding that there’s a lot more to life than working, and… what’s the opposite of arrogance? But I want people who do stuff I can’t do, think in ways I can’t think.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I started out in advertising back when getting someone to “like” your brand was table stakes. We aimed to create messages that convinced, compelled, and engendered trust.

My angle on that was to make ads and commercials that were conspiratorial, audacious, and subversive, and sometimes––a lot of times––I managed to succeed.

That success was heady. I was changing people’s minds. And ad agencies were willing to throw a lot of money at me, sometimes, just to keep me from being hired to work on messaging for their clients’ competitors.

My problem was that I started to develop a conscience. It became harder and harder to work for clients I didn’t believe in, and I believed in fewer and fewer clients. I found myself turning down more and more work. That gave me a lot of free time to devote to personal projects, most of which turned out to be me trying to undo some of the mess I’d helped create.

If you go to my website, you’ll see some of the ad work I’m most proud of, but the caveat here is that it’s the solution to the marketing problem I’m proud of. Some of the stuff I did kind of makes me ashamed, the way I contributed to our culture of consumption and waste.

And that’s why what you’ll also see on my website is a lot of my personal work––photography and writing. Work that allows me to draw attention to the insanity, corruption, waste, and greed we’ve come to accept as normal.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
These moments happen a lot. Every few years my entire worldview is shaken. This happens so much that it’s hard for me to use the words “never” and “always” and if you want to call me out of this, yes, I used the words “never” and “always” more than five times already in this interview.

Anyway.

Most recently was less than a month ago.

Backstory: My father was a difficult man. He was cold and non-communicative. I hugged him exactly twice in my life and both times were when he was over 90 and knew he was dying and both times were awkward for both of us. The last time, he told me he loved me and I didn’t know what to do with that. I’d never heard him utter those words, to me or anyone else.

After he died, I took care of my mother. She passed away about two years ago.

Last month, my brother and sister came to town so we could go through the last of our mom’s things. Buried in a forgotten box, we came across letters my father had written to her before they were married, when he was working in Morocco and she was working in Germany. Some of them were three or four pages long. They were sweet, loving, charming, and chatty. He told her how much he loved her, how much he missed her.

Some people discover heinous secrets about their parents; I discovered the opposite.

What’s clear is that he changed. He changed because something––and looking back, I have a sense of what it might have been––something broke the man. He changed so early in my life that I have no recollection of him being the person he revealed himself to be in those letters, the person my mother fell in love with.

What’s important about this discovery, at least as far as this question is concerned, is that it makes me realize just how difficult life can be. We’re all subjected to incredible stressors, and sometimes they’re so overwhelming that they can change how we’re wired, who we are.

I used to resent my dad for being so fucking aloof, but now that I’ve read those letters I feel sorry for the man. I can’t imagine that he ever wanted to become the person he became. None of us want to become that. We want to love and be loved back. We want to do the right thing––however we define right––and we want the way we show up to take us and the world closer to an outcome we believe is better.

I have my own set of beliefs and I’m doing my best to navigate a society that often doesn’t share my values. It’s easy to get hateful about this. To vilify people who take positions I believe are unjustified.

Thanks to having read the letters my father wrote to my mother, I have a different perspective. Yeah, I still think people who don’t see things my way are idiots. But now I imagine them as idiots who didn’t choose to be idiots. They’re idiots who life got the better of, who circumstances made callous, hateful, and aggrieved.

What do I do with that? I don’t know yet. But I’ll be damned if it’s going to make me cold and non-communicative.

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
This is kind of funny to think about, but no. I mean, I’ve had entire careers evaporate from under me in a matter of days. I put everything into a company I started––time, money, and effort––only to have the entire landscape change, making the industry I was hoping to revolutionize obsolete.

Every time, it’s been devastating, but every time, I’ve managed to reinvent.

Not always successfully, mind you, but it’s never been in my nature to throw up my hands. What I do is go back to my core strengths––creativity, audacity, dogged determination––and make some shit.

A lot of that shit is stuff nobody will ever even know about, so maybe I’m just giving up in a different way, but that’s not the way I see it. The way I see it, life isn’t about accomplishing. Life is about living. No matter how circumstances conspire to take away everything I’ve built and everything I used to build it, so far it hasn’t been able to take away so much that I can’t afford a safe place to sleep, a decent meal, and a pen and a piece of paper. Really, that’s all I need to live.

Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What’s a belief you used to hold tightly but now think was naive or wrong?
Work is crucial
I’m saying this as someone who can’t not be busy. I always––always––have at least three huge projects going. I work my ass off at work. And I’m crappy at taking vacations––so crappy that when I actually go on a non-work-related trip, I can’t help but give myself an assignment to “justify” the trip. Sometimes that means designing, testing, and assembling one of my liquid camera filters so I can wake up early to take photographs while I’m wherever. Other times I’ll research a location for a novel I’m writing. Most recently, when I went to Puerto Rico, I signed up for an intensive immersion Spanish course.
As much as this setting I have has helped me succeed at a bunch of things, I’ve come to realize that I’m like the poster child for a flawed belief system.
We live in a society that socializes us to define ourselves by our work. And that sucks.
I’m not saying that what you do isn’t important. But we can and should consider that there are other, more appropriate metrics.
How do I know this? I know this because of the way I evaluate the people in my life. Ask me to describe anybody I care about and the first thing out of my mouth is never “She’s the vice president for community relations” or “He’s an accountant.” What you’ll get instead is “She’s the kindest person I’ve ever met” or “He makes me laugh to the point of tears.”
Try it yourself. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
See? And when you flip it around, and ask yourself what words the people who care most about you would use to describe you, would they start with your job title? Your willingness to stay late and come in on weekends? Or would they talk about who you fundamentally are?
What do you say we all start evaluating ourselves the way we evaluate others?

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
The importance of luck.

So many factors have to align for any kind of success, but when it comes people almost always attribute it to talent and skill and determination. Yeah, those things are important, but they’re no guarantee. I’ve crossed paths with tons of talented, skilled, determined people who just couldn’t catch a break.

Luck goes way beyond picking the right lottery numbers: it’s who you know, the family you’re born into, how attractive people find you, whatever’s going on in the gestalt that makes the thing you’re doing resonate, timing… So many things that are out of your control that make every difference.

As for me, yeah, I work hard. I’m good at what I do. I have a certain talent. But goddamn! I’m lucky as crap!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://belefant.com
• Instagram: @OldCarsOfPortland, @FlowersOfPortland
• Twitter: @BrianBelefant (but don’t bother––I have little use for what it’s become)
• Facebook: @thebrianbelefant
• Yelp: Nope.
• Other: Medium (occasionally) = medium.com/@zrkwcsrvq
  Substack (occasionally = brianbelefant.substack.com