The Daily - Day 2 - June 19, 2019 - 38

How I Got Here
B R E N D A N

L E O N A R D

Brendan Leonard became a
blogging superstar by "failing
up"-going on adventures and
writing about them on Semi Rad.

If at first you don't succeed, just keep writing,
doodling, filming, biking, running, climbing, and
traveling until you do. By Brendan Leonard
THE SUMMER AFTER I FINISHED UP SCHOOL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF

Montana, I had a master's degree in journalism, $54,000 in student
debt, and zero luck convincing newspapers to hire me. I wanted to be a
writer, but there wasn't exactly a position titled "Adventure Writer" on
monster.com. So, I walked into an REI store and filled out an application.
I doubt many J-school graduates in the summer of 2004 were excited
about hourly retail jobs, but I didn't care. I was happy to have a job, even
if it was for ten bucks an hour. One thing I'd learned in Montana was that

/ SUMMER MARKET 2019

a few thousand page views per
month to a million-plus a year. I
got a sponsor, and other websites
and magazines became interested
in publishing my work-some humor, some levity, some stuff about
shared outdoor experiences. After
making the decision to self-publish, I finally started making a living as a full-time adventure writer.
It only took eight years of trying
and "failing up."
I haven't had a job title since
2012, but I've made short films,
took up doodling on an iPad as a
way to draw jokes instead of writing them, done dozens of speaking gigs-I call them "stand-up
motivational comedy"-and
written a bunch of books, a few of
which I self-published and others
put out by traditional publishing
houses. This summer's Outdoor
Retailer show will be my 15th,
and at this point it feels way more
like a family reunion than a business function.
Every once in a while, someone
asks me for advice about getting
started as a writer or a filmmaker,
and I tell them what I wish I had
told myself in my first years out of
college: Whatever it is, just start
doing it. You'll suck at it for a while,
but eventually, if you don't quit,
you'll get better at it. And don't
be afraid to work. I still have my
old REI nametag sitting on my
desk just in case this writing thing
doesn't pan out.

"ALL THAT TIME I WAS FAILING TO GET
PUBLISHED, I HAD BEEN SUCCEEDING AT
SPENDING TIME OUTSIDE, ROCK CLIMBING,
BACKPACKING, MOUNTAINEERING,
BIKE TOURING, AND CRISS-CROSSING
THE WEST IN AN OLD SUBARU."

CO U R T E SY B R E N DA N L E O N A R D

Write On

I wanted to spend as much time
on the trails as possible.
While selling backpacks, maps,
and climbing gear at REI, I
finally landed a journalism job at
a suburban weekly paper that nobody read. I kept the REI gig on
the side because I loved talking
to customers-not about gear, but
about the places they were going
with it. The Grand Canyon, the
Sierras, the San Juans. Places I'd
never been to but kept adding to
my mental tick list.
In my first year of freelancing,
I got one story published in Idaho
Magazine. The next year, one
more. Total earnings those first
two years: $75. Outside magazine wasn't exactly pounding on
my door. For seven years, I kept
pitching publications and websites, making some progress but
mostly getting rejected. I decided
to start a website called "SemiRad," with the tagline, "The Relentless Pursuit of the Everyman's
(and Everywoman's) Adventure."
I wrote goofy stuff, talking about
all the strange things we do for
fun (and "fun") in the outdoors.
All that time I was failing to get
published, I had been succeeding
at spending time outside, rock
climbing, backpacking, mountaineering, bike touring, and
criss-crossing the West in an old
Subaru. Those experiences gave
me ideas I could write about.
The site traffic slowly grew from

http://www.monster.com

The Daily - Day 2 - June 19, 2019

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