How to Set Digital Boundaries and Reclaim Creativity

[Dana] (00:01)
Welcome friends. I’m Dana and this is my podcast, Phoenix in Flame. Once again, we have an amazing guest with us. I’ll have to say right from the beginning, it’s a different type of guest than we normally have and I’m very excited about that. Now, our guest today is Emanuel Rose. He is a seasoned marketing expert from the West Coast of the United States. With over three decades dedicated to pioneering marketing strategies, Emanuel has cemented his reputation as a trailblazer in the industry. He’s an author and visionary behind strategic e-marketing, which is a leading digital agency. He specializes in direct response advertising and content marketing. His mission is to empower businesses with authentic storytelling, driving them toward unparalleled success. Emanuel, welcome to Phoenix in Flame.

[Emanuel] (01:09)
Thank you so much, Dana, I appreciate it. I’ve got a lot of flame and a lot of ash to talk about today.

[Dana] (01:14)
This is good. Listeners, I was telling Emanuel before we started, I said, you know, listening to your reading your bio, it’s not the typical bio that I’m reading. But you know, what I know is that we are all humans and regardless of what someone’s bio sounds like or whatever someone’s interest is in, we’re all humans on this planet trying to walk our journey and we all face challenges. And I’m just very interested — also, Emanuel, you said that you are focused as well on the realm of mental wellbeing while in this digital era. So that is huge. And you’ve written books that I’m excited to get to. I’m just gonna take more of a back seat here and let you begin wherever is comfortable for you. And we’ll just kind of go through it together back and forth to kind of see how your journey impacted you and what helped you and what was a struggle for you and all that type of thing.

[Emanuel] (02:19)
Yeah, well, we’ll start at the beginning, right? I had working class parents and grew up in a very middle-class family where we had everything we needed, but it wasn’t always nice, right? And then going to school and hanging out with the kids who were from the other side of town that were going to Italy for Christmas vacation and things like that, right? So I kind of started with that a little bit of a confusion about not fitting in. And so I’ve always kind of been my own best counsel and my own educator, I guess we’d say. And I’m fascinated by psychology and by human beings. And I was a psychology major in…

[Dana] (03:13)
Ha ha ha!

[Emanuel] (03:16)
Good call, it’s right.

[Dana] (03:16)
That’s a good one. We’re all a little bit psycho. If we deny it, then we’re just being a liar.

[Emanuel] (03:20)
Yeah. And I think I’m as fascinated by the mystery of being alive and figuring out how to wind my way through life as I am with anything else that is in front of me. So I’ve been to therapy a number of times.

[Dana] (03:42)
Well that, you know, that is good to hear because I really — obviously I’m biased — but I don’t really see how anybody can live their best life without having that resource, having a therapist or someone like a therapist to coach, a life coach, something like that to kind of help you through the tough spots. So what were some of your tough spots, and you mentioned, you know, flame earlier, because that’s one of the reasons why I talk about

[Emanuel] (03:59)
Yep.

[Dana] (04:10)
my people ask me, how did you come up with the name Phoenix and Flame? And really, it’s kind of hard to name it exactly how I did that, but I do know that for me, the name — I’m interested in the Phoenix, you know, when we’re rising up from the ashes, that’s an amazing story to tell people, but also the flame, you know, everybody’s fire, what really burns them, what burns them to ash, is different for different people. You know, what’s something that you might find very easy to deal with, I might find very, very difficult to deal with and vice versa. So for you, as you were kind of going through your life, what were some of those moments that were a struggle for you, and what helped you? And then eventually I was really interested in knowing how you ended up, where you ended up in business.

[Emanuel] (04:47)
Sure. Yeah, well, I think that the biggest transition for me was about 24, 25. I got divorced, I moved seven times, and my father died, all in the same about 12 months, right? So when you take those stressor tests, you go, all I needed was cancer and then I would have had everything checked off the list, right?

[Dana] (05:29)
Oh my gosh.

[Emanuel] (05:31)
And so, you know, as a 25 year old, you don’t really consider that your dad’s ever gonna die, much less in that time. So, you know, that was the worst of all those things for me. And it really pushed me — the gift of that, the initiation of that, was that it pushed me into a really dark, depressed space and I was looking and reaching out and trying everything from alcohol to shamanism and everything in between. And from that, you know, the next three to five years, I took a ton of classes, read a million books, and I spent a lot of time by myself in nature, fly fishing, backpacking. And so kind of the amalgamation of those experiences then kind of set me up for this next phase of really becoming a man without my father.

[Dana] (06:36)
You said you moved seven times during that period of time. That is a lot. I mean, that will — that kind of shakes people too, because the sense of stability gets removed. That’s not even talking about, you know, your father’s death and divorce and all this kind of stuff going on. What was all of that like for you, trying to deal with, you know, your stability on multiple levels was just stripped out from underneath you. What helped you to find some sense of balance?

[Emanuel] (06:39)
Yeah. One is the network of friends and family that I have. So there was that, to be able to stay in touch with people even if they weren’t in my immediate spot. And just the comfort of being able to be by myself, right? Because when you move, obviously you lose a lot of the social network. So, that — the ability, and they call the tests I’ve taken, they call me an ambivert. You know, I’m just as comfortable being in social situations as I am being isolated by myself. So I have that luxury in a way. But being alone and being able to sort through, you know, whatever those situations were, that’s the secret for me.

[Dana] (07:49)
That’s good. I heard you mention being outside, being alone, being in nature. And I know that’s — you authored a book and we’ll get to that later so that my listeners can find that book and everything. For you, what was the difference being outside versus being inside?

[Emanuel] (08:17)
Well, being able for me to be on a river or sitting in the back country in unmanicured space is just — it’s way more vital and energizing and it feeds me, inspires me. And versus being in the man-made structures, being in town, you gotta follow all the rules, be nice to people, you gotta take a shower and wash your clothes. When you’re outside, you’re kinda in your own little bubble and you can be as eccentric as you want and there’s none of that societal pressure.

[Dana] (09:00)
That’s an excellent point. As you were talking, I was thinking about people’s expectations that we have to deal with a lot. That is a pretty big deal. And so having some space when you’re alone, then you can have your thoughts and you can have your feelings. I’ve talked to some people before that actually — it’s not particularly helpful — but they try to stay as busy and have as much stimulation going on as they can because they have feelings inside that are uncomfortable and they don’t want to face them. So as long as they can kind of keep this cacophony going on inside their head, whether they’re using people or whether they’re using activity or situations, then they are avoiding facing those uncomfortable feelings. And we all do that to a degree, but then there comes a time where if we want to heal, if we want to become stronger,

[Emanuel] (09:33)
Right. Right.

[Dana] (09:57)
at some point we have to stop and we have to face and we have to feel before we can process through that. Do you find that being in nature helped you to do that?

[Emanuel] (10:08)
Yeah, I call it being in touch with reality’s operations, right? Like the water flows downhill, gravity exists, the birds do what the birds do, and these are not constructs that are made up by humans in order to have interactions and control and do business and all the things that society provides. But it definitely — it helps to understand our time and place. And it takes some of the urgency and pressure off of solving things — for me, it’s a much bigger timeline that exists in nature than that we allow culturally.

[Dana] (10:45)
Right. I love what you’re saying, and being an entrepreneur myself and being pushed to do — a lot of us that are more type A and we’re always kind of pushing, the people that are more intelligent and get bored easily and always kind of pushed to do more and learn more, and there’s always that leveling up, leveling up, leveling up. And so when you get to be out in nature, sometimes you can just kind of let go of that for a while. Now, how did you end up in the particular type of business? Because in the corporate realm, there’s lots of different types of businesses out there, there’s all kinds of entrepreneurial opportunities and other such things. So for you, how did you end up in your particular area of expertise?

[Emanuel] (11:40)
It was just a function really of my psychology and my personality, in terms of I’ve always been drawn to problem solving and people, and so sales was a natural part of it. I mean, I started a catalog business when I was 19 and went to festivals and built a mailing list and all that stuff. And I just — I like the energy of selling things. And then I love the psychology part of marketing. And so those two things really blended together well. So I ended up in a situation where I worked for somebody and for a company, I had an agreement that if I hit certain thresholds, I would get a certain bonus. When I hit those thresholds, I got reneged on, the deal got — of course. And so I quit like two weeks later, I was out of there. And the very next job that I got came in as a change agent. And

[Dana] (12:38)
Mm-hmm.

[Emanuel] (12:50)
they told me not to do anything for 90 days and then after 90 days they fired me.

[Dana] (12:55)
Oh, okay, so you were brought in as a change agent and then told not to change anything. Okay.

[Emanuel] (13:03)
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I’m there after two pretty — these events in the same six months and I’m like, clearly I have not meant to work for anybody else, I better just figure out what to do next. And that was right when social media was really coming on. And so I said, well, I’ll give this a shot, I can stay a chapter ahead of the clients, I know that. And that’s kind of been the whole case for the last 15 years. I’m one chapter ahead because it changes so much.

[Dana] (13:39)
Well, if you can stay a chapter ahead, you’re — that’s your gold, I mean, that’s all you need, you just need to be one chapter. I mean, and really you have such excellent points because social media — I cannot overestimate the importance of social media on — and we’re talking about both from a business standpoint, from people trying to get their

[Emanuel] (13:44)
Hahahaha

[Dana] (14:07)
product, get the resources known. You know, back in the day, I’m aging myself some, but back in the day, you had to pay for a marketing agency that would either put a commercial on TV or they would put a commercial on the radio, and that kind of thing. Now it’s up to us, and I see that as pro and con. I mean, as an individual, we all have the

[Emanuel] (14:25)
Still, right. Yeah.

[Dana] (14:37)
access now, but at the same time, the onus, the burden is on people like me and other people that have not been trained in that area to be able to get that information out there. And we’re not even talking yet about the personal, the social side of social media and how that can impact us. There’s a lot of people out there that are emotionally struggling. And I’ve done a

[Emanuel] (14:58)
Right.

[Dana] (15:06)
TV spots and podcasts, you know, before on how we get impacted by people that are using social media as a weapon. They are weaponizing it and they’re putting mistruths out there and they’re being very manipulative and causing a lot of pain. So what is your experience, what is the wisdom that you have gleaned in terms of mental health in this digital

[Emanuel] (15:16)
Sure.

[Dana] (15:37)
era? What is it that you have learned?

[Emanuel] (15:41)
Well, I’ve learned that we have to use digital in all of its aspects as a tool and accept it as a tool, not as a lifestyle. And so that’s where, you know, my history of being very connected outside has saved me, because my job is to be connected all the time, right, to be one chapter ahead, you gotta pay attention to trends and all this, the drive of it. But as a human being, I have to understand that the brain chemistry changes every minute I spend, every drop of dopamine that goes in my brain makes me more and more dependent on my Instagram feed. And so I’ve got to understand that that is a tool and I have to manage that tool just like any tool.

[Dana] (16:36)
And we do become so dependent on it. How many times do you pull up to a stoplight, and you know where I’m going with this, and there’s the car in front of you and you see them, you can see them in their side mirror, you can see their head go down and you know exactly what they’re doing, they’re looking at their phone, because there’s something so incredibly important that they can’t sit literally for

[Emanuel] (16:47)
Yeah. Alright. Yeah.

[Dana] (17:06)
30 seconds at a stoplight and just sit and look around, or look at the stoplight or listen to the music or whatever the podcast they’re listening to. Give them 30 seconds of open time and they’re reaching for the phone. And so it’s learning how to balance that. And what has been your experience with those types of situations?

[Emanuel] (17:21)
Absolutely. Well, I’m very rigid about that, and having a time every day in between appointments where I leave the phone on the charge and I go outside and I sit on my rock, and I’m fortunate enough that I have a little slew behind my house, it’s got ducks and it’s got geese and there’s fish in there, so I have that to look at while I’m sitting on my rock and throwing the ball for the dog. But I schedule that in on purpose. And then every month I’m committed to being outside and off the phone one week a month, so that my brain has a chance to detoxify and I can reset back into being a human being, not into a thumb-clicking thing.

[Dana] (18:17)
Wow, a whole week, you do this for an entire week out of every month. That is very impressive. I mean, it shouldn’t be impressive, but it is, because of what we’re like as humans, we’ve just become addicted to — we can’t sit, we can’t just be still with our own thoughts and feelings, we have to constantly be connected in that way. So what do you find as the

[Emanuel] (18:21)
Yeah.

[Dana] (18:46)
the pros and cons of the people that you’ve talked to from the business side of things, but also people that you’ve interacted with personally, in your experience and your expertise in marketing, in the digital era, and looking at it from the mental health side of things, what do you see as the pros and cons?

[Emanuel] (19:09)
The pros and cons of digital.

[Dana] (19:12)
Yes, and I gave you kind of a larger question, you can break it down however you need to, because we’re looking at the corporate side, which there’s a lot going on there, pros and cons, and then there’s also the personal, but they overlap, because even in corporations, these are people working there, and these people have private lives. And so, because I’ve worked some with corporation situations and stuff, and

[Emanuel] (19:21)
Yeah. Alright.

[Dana] (19:40)
helping people to kind of understand that we weave back and forth, even though we’re a business person, even though we might be an entrepreneur, even though we might be in charge, we might be CEO, CFO, whatever, we might have 10 or 15 direct reports under us, we still are a person that at the end of that day, we’re gonna leave there and go into another situation, a personal situation that is gonna impact us.

[Emanuel] (20:04)
Sure.

[Dana] (20:08)
And how we manage that is going to end up impacting how successful we are at work. And so it kind of weaves back and forth. I’m just kind of wondering, in your particular wisdom and experience, what have you seen?

[Emanuel] (20:22)
I see that we’re gripped with productivity and we’re gripped with always being connected. And it’s kind of like giving an alcoholic alcohol 17 hours a day, right? We have these kinds of zombies, we’ve created these cultural zombies. And it’s not just corporate, it’s also small business owners, also the teenagers, right? I mean, it really is our entire culture right now. And it’s really hard to break that cycle, like any addiction. Even to have a conversation with somebody to say, you know, five minutes in the morning, to sit as soon as you wake up and just sit there and pray, meditate, think about your family, do anything, but immediately get on your phone, and then do that once in the middle of the day and then do it at night before you go to bed, right — just that simple practice is virtually impossible for most people, until there’s some kind of an event, you know, where they have a psychotic break, they have a health event, somebody in their family is having problems, until there’s something that really can jar them and shock them into a bigger initiation, they’re incapable of making that change because of the powerful addiction that happens from the brain chemistry changes.

[Dana] (21:49)
Mm-hmm. Well, and like you said earlier, the digital era, you know, it brings it to our fingertips, we can’t ever escape it. You know, kind of like way, way back in the day, you would leave it at work and you would go home, but now there is no separation. It’s just the laptop, the iPad, the Chromebook, the phone.

[Emanuel] (22:05)
Right.

[Dana] (22:17)
We always have access to our email, we have access, we’re getting communication through texting, we’re checking the inbox, it never seems to empty out. And I’ve said a lot about boundaries, that’s a big passion of mine. I’m wondering for you, from your experience and what you have dealt with and the people that you’ve worked with and your personal experience,

[Emanuel] (22:27)
Ha ha ha. Sure.

[Dana] (22:42)
how are you able to — because that’s what you’re describing, you’re describing setting a boundary, you know, that one week off that you take every month, and that time that you go in the morning, once in the middle of the day, once at the end of the day, to just take a few moments and mindful thought and prayer and meditative time or whatever, you’re setting boundaries for yourself. What do you think would be helpful to the people that you have talked to in the past, the ones that are really having trouble turning it off because of the digital access, what recommendations would you have to them?

[Emanuel] (23:19)
Yeah, a couple of practices, and I think the simplest one is to schedule it, because all of us — like you’re saying, all type A’s — schedule things constantly. So that’s the first thing that you do, is you schedule them, you block that time out, and you have to accept the fact that you’re going to be better for doing nothing in five minutes and 15 minutes, whatever that time is, than if you answer six more emails, right? So you gotta schedule it, that’s the first thing. The second thing is to look for the interstitial times. Like if you’re going to the grocery store, you can leave your phone in the car and just go in the grocery store and be a human being and stand in line and look around and make fun of the people in your mind in front of you or wearing the socks and sandals, or, you know, whatever, the bad tattoos, you know, like just get back into being present in that moment in these interstitial times. But the scheduling and then the scheduled times with your family, with your friends, when you make the bet that the first person that touches the phone has got to pay the bill or has got to put in $20 in the swear jar, those sorts of things. So you start to build a little bit of culture around and accepting that you’re not all going to be sitting at the table looking down and being thumbs.

[Dana] (24:33)
What? That is awesome. I really like that a lot. Those are some excellent practical tips. What do you have in terms of — do you have any thoughts or opinions about the social side of things, where people are being victimized by people that are weaponizing social media and that? Any thoughts there?

[Emanuel] (25:07)
I mean, it’s a tough one. I think it’s different for us being grown people than it is for the kids, you know. But it’s still bullying, we’ve all grown up — I grew up getting bullied, you probably got bullied by the girls in your school. You know, we’ve all taken that kind of abuse from people, and we have to understand — A, that it’s — yeah, you’re going to go through that process, yeah it hurts, but there’s nothing that anybody can say to you that is true, right? And so there’s a certain amount of grounding around it that we — and growing and accepting that as an initiation, like everything else, that says, well, I’m getting feedback, is it — who’s the speaker, number one, what’s their intent, are they helping me or hurting me? They’re hurting me, well then the speaker is an abuser, I can’t give it any validity, right? That’s what a grown person does. And we have to coach our kids on how to do that also.

[Dana] (26:17)
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Just understanding, we can’t change someone else’s opinion or the reason why they’re behaving badly, you know, their motivation for saying what they’re saying or presenting these half truths and trying to weaponize social media, that’s all about them. And so understanding that’s what I call — that’s in their yard, you know, that’s not — that’s not my problem, it feels like my problem, and we can make it our problem if we allow their stuff to get into our yard, and then we’re very upset about it. But people are going to say what they’re going to say, they’re going to think what they’re going to think, they’re going to do what they’re going to do, we can’t control any of that. We can do what you said and decide that we’re not going to allow that to continue to affect us in our mind. I wanted to make sure that we had time because I was very interested in these books that you have authored on nature and well-being. So there’s, I believe, there’s three of them. Won’t you take some time and educate my listeners about these wonderful books.

[Emanuel] (27:21)
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I have a couple. Some children’s books, one of them is called The Secret of the Grouse, and the secret of the grouse is that they are still, and that’s how they solve crisis in nature. And it is kind of the precursor for getting kids to be able to sit still and start the values clarification process. Couple of chapter books about tracking and about contributing to stream cleanups and taking active roles in solving problems and noticing problems and solving problems. And then for the adults, I wrote a book called Nature Bound, which is 50 activities to do with your kids outside, as part of the screen antidote, and then The Seven Principles of the Magic Rock, which is about how I structure my time in order to maximize my solitude time in nature to be both fulfilling as a human, but also hyperproductive and creative in the professional and private life.

[Dana] (28:36)
That is — and you’ve accomplished so much, I mean, in your space, you are quite a successful individual. And so people can look to you and think, well, if Emanuel did these things, then these must work well. And here you are in marketing, and that is your — the digital information is your field. And so, and you’ve had to set these boundaries, so to say, and develop these steps. I just love the way that you’re framing it in terms of accessing your creativity, that we really, we have so much within us, so much potential, but we seem to let it get crowded out by all the noise and by everybody else’s stuff.

[Emanuel] (29:23)
Right? Yeah, culture’s told us we’re production units and we’re consumers, right? And that’s not all we are. That is a portion of what we are. The creativity of doing macramé, of painting, of telling stories, of being family history and whatever those things are that energize us and that we get excited about, we spend our own personal money on to do — we have to have the energy. And that energy has to come from a little bit of time disconnected from the rest of the noise of culture.

[Dana] (30:00)
I love that. I love that. And it kind of reminds me of what we were saying earlier about kind of weaving back and forth between your private life and your work life. Because I think what I’m hearing you say, and correct me if I’m wrong, but what I think I’m hearing you say is that if we’re able to allow for more space in our private life for creativity and for that, you know, doing these different interesting things that feed us, that feed our soul, that open our minds up to different activities and different possibilities, then we in turn will take that wonderful feeling of being energized by this and that will in turn spill over into our work life as well. So we will be better employees because we have created that space in our private life as well. It folds back and forth. Is that what I hear you say?

[Emanuel] (30:55)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s what I’ve experienced and, you know, very simple practices to make it happen, just to schedule a few minutes every day to get started. And then the more that you can put time limits on the work that you do, the faster you can do the work. That’s a principle also. So if you have two hours to do something, you’ll take the full two hours. If you have 15 minutes, you’ll probably get the same work done in 15 minutes. So, you know, it just depends on what the focus is. And living to be a full contributing human being versus just a production unit, I think is a much, much bigger, more beautiful experience as a human.

[Dana] (31:26)
That’s it. Absolutely, we don’t want just being an automaton, we don’t want to be one of those. We’re not robots, we have so much more to offer and that will be so helpful both at home and at work. So, Emanuel, I have the website, EmanualRose.com. Is that where you want my listeners to go when they’re wanting to find out about your fabulous books and your

[Emanuel] (31:45)
Alright.

[Dana] (32:07)
very simple practical tips on how to allow space to be more creative and that kind of thing, is that where you want them to go?

[Emanuel] (32:14)
That’s a great spot. EmanualRose.com, yep. And love to be connected there and answer any questions or help out however I can.

[Dana] (32:22)
Awesome. Well, unfortunately our time is up for today, but I thank you so much for spending your precious time and energy and your sharing your wisdom with myself and with my listeners today. Thank you, Emanuel, so much.

[Emanuel] (32:37)
Thank you, Dana, I really enjoyed it.

[Dana] (32:40)
Listeners, I’ll tell you something, I’m certain that you have heard something today that you’re thinking, oh my gosh, Emanuel is so successful and he’s got all these wonderful, simple, practical tips on how to do that, how to get in touch with your creative side, how to set boundaries so you can access all parts of who you are and bring that into fruition. You know, you might be thinking, I have a best friend or I have a relative or a coworker that could really, really benefit from this. Take the link from this podcast and copy and paste it in text, copy and paste it in email, put it on your favorite social media platforms. Let’s grow our Phoenix and Flame community so that we can reach out and show each other that we are not alone. We are together in this. I thank you for spending your time with us today. I hope the rest of your day goes great. I’m Dana on Phoenix and Flame.