I'm a Socially Anxious Introvert Who Oddly Tells All as a Writer

Start Here to Learn What Honestly Human Is All About

Hi, I’m Rick

I’m a socially anxious introvert who now makes his living as an author, professional speaker, and the founder of an online writing community.

I played Santa Claus at a local mall when I was 15 years old, fell off a 12 foot unicycle in China, got chased out of Australia by jealous local street performers, performed for Bill Gates and the Prime Minister of Canada, toured 70 cities with the Broadway musical Barnum, lived on an ashram, hand washed 5,000 dishes in one night, did a standing backflip at age 50, raised 3 kids, and lost ten-thousand dollars speculating on an oil well.

In Honestly Human I share all of these stories and many more about my oddities, neuroses, eccentricities, a lifetime of traveling, performing and speaking, 30 years of parenting and relationship, inner fears, outer flaws, multiple failures and occasional successes.

My writing community Write Hearted is my primary focus these days, although public speaking continues to keep me on the road collecting adventures.

• Free subscribers get a weekly story from me.

• Paid subscribers get the satisfaction of supporting authentic AI free storytelling and human expression.

• And founding members get an opportunity to learn more about how to find, remember, and share their own life stories, participate in my writing community and learn to use their own life experiences to connect more deeply with other humans—personally and professionally.

I’ve been a professional presenter, writer, and communicator for 45 years and I’m astounded by how many doors have opened, resources have flowed, friendships and business relationships I’ve gained—just from being willing to share my ideas and stories in public.

You probably don’t know too many people who have made a good living without being on anyone else’s payroll for 40 years. That accomplishment is a testimony to the power of storytelling.

Entering the world of storytelling isn’t really hard.

• Share your stories.

• Reflect on their meaning and value.

• Show interest in the stories of others.

In addition to writing hundreds of essays, publishing 5 books, and presenting live to more than 1 million people, I’ve left over 6,000 comments on the work of other authors in the last two years on Substack. It’s where I discovered my joy for supporting other writers and storytellers. Honestly Human is the evolution of my passion for conversations that matter, and my natural affinity for supporting creators, leaders, change-makers, and artists.

In my experience, anyone who is willing to be authentically human is in the best position to inspire, educate, and serve others.

Real human stories are the shortest distance between you and anyone you’d like to connect with.

I can give a taste of what those kinds of stories look like, and for those who want to go deeper, how to share those stories yourself.

Just be real. Just be you.

Ironically, that takes practice.

Honestly Human is a reader-supported publication. To access additional coaching & benefits for speaking and storytelling consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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MEMBER BENEFITS

Free Subscribers

Weekly stories from my own life adventures, fumbles, embarrassing thoughts, hard-won insights, worst and best moments, and colorful history.

Paid Subscribers

• Support me along the way to reaching my goal of recording and sharing 500 personal life stories.

• Help me prove that AI is no match for human expression and sharing that comes from lived experience.

• I’ll share the story prompts I use to find my own stories so you can harvest your own tales from the richness of your past.

Founding Member Subscribers

You’ll get guest access to my Write Hearted online community for connection and conversation with like humans who want to learn to share their own life stories.

This includes access to:

• The Life Story Challenge, a 3 week sprint where you’ll find and create a library of your most compelling life stories

• A full year of weekly Story Gym sessions where you’ll get guidance for how to best share your stories with others.

• A lifetime account with the All My Stories app to organize a chronological inventory of your life history. This is incredibly useful for writers, speakers, memoirists, teachers, and coaches.

• And guest access to my Write Hearted community, which includes participation in 2 weekly community led Writing Gyms, and 1 monthly Substack strategy session if you’d like help and support for publishing on Substack.

• In Write Hearted you’ll also get access to the community publication space to get a distribution boost for your own writing, access to the community chat space where you can meet other story-loving authors, and all paid only posts.