Damns Given with Nick Richtsmeier
(formerly Working/Broken)
Brains On. Hearts Open. Forward Motion... for the Post-Digital World.
The world has gotten very good at telling us what’s broken. Platforms. Politics. Power. Business. Culture. Every feed reminds us we’re smaller than we thought, and that the real decisions are being made somewhere else.
When that message sinks in deeply enough, disengagement, even nihilism start become the default position. Businesses holding out for "someday." Ideas in limbo. Fear run amok. Our ability to make the world a long lost fantasy. We become spectators in a life we’re supposed to be living.
Damns Given is a show for those who refuse to surrender their agency.
Hosted by strategist and author Nick Richtsmeier, Damns Given is a forum for
Nick and his guests fight back against the "it-is-what-it-is-isms" of our day and the abandonment of agency that the algorithmic systems have demanded of us, calling us forward into a post-digital world where we are free again to ask betting questions of:
- How the internet has trained us to think algorithm-first and self-second
- Why our attention is our most powerful (and misdirected) asset
- What happens when leaders disconnect from real human scale
- How to build a meaningful life and business without waiting for permission
- The small decisions and risks that actually move the world forward
The premise is simple:
We already know what’s broken.
Now we ask:
How do we show up anyway?
No doomscrolling disguised as insight. No performing for the feed. Just honest conversations with thinkers, builders, and leaders who are navigating this moment with clarity — and giving a damn about the future they’re helping shape.
Because the game isn’t over. And the people who still care will decide what happens next.
You can find additional resources at DamnsGiven.com.
Damns Given with Nick Richtsmeier
Be Worth Talking To: How to Ask Better Questions in an Attention-Starved World
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Ep 2.04
Curiosity Isn't a Personality Trait. It's a Practice... and once you learn it, all doors are open to you.
Welcome to our new short episode format... where Nick focuses on a single question that arose with a client or within the Trust-Made Guild (www.trustmadegrowth.com)
After his interview on Damns Given, Jacob Warwick, one of the most direct voices in professional coaching, wrote a post called "What Nick Richtsmeier Made Me Say Aloud." Nick unpacks what that means, why good questions aren't about journalism or gotcha moments, and why the stock cocktail-party answers we all carry around are adjacent to the truth but not actually it.
He then goes somewhere bigger: curiosity isn't a magical gift some people have. It's what happens when you're internally still enough to notice what you actually want to ask next. He walks through Notice Meetings, Yes Momentum, and why the internet is fundamentally a NO-based system,
One genuine question can do what no algorithm ever will.
Get all of Nick's content at damnsgiven.com
Join the community at TrustMadeGrowth.com
Work with Nick at CultureCraft.com
Trust-Made Growth®
Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com
Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com
Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.