Discovering Authenticity: Dark Joseph Ravine's Journey from Illusion to Truth - 1

"Welcome to the Transforming Lifespan podcast, where we explore the journeys of individuals who have embraced authenticity and transformation. In this episode, marketing expert and owner of Focus Five Group, Dark Joseph Ravine, discusses his transition from a dishonest life to finding his true passion in marketing. Joseph opens up about his past struggles with seeking validation and the pivotal moment that led him to embrace authenticity. He discusses the importance of self-awareness, confronting one's darker traits, and the role of marketing in achieving viral success. Additionally, Joseph shares insights from his book, "Watch Out, It's Nolan," which encourages self-defense and resilience against bullying. Examine Dark Joseph Ravine's ideas and understand how to be your true self in a world where social media skews reality. 

Speaker 2
Really, we always start with a breathing exercise just for us to relax and be centered and grounded. So join me in taking a deep breath in through your nose. Hold that breath. Let it out.

Exhale through your mouth. Hold it. In. Hold.

Out. Hold. In. Hold.

And as you exhale, just let go of all the tensions that you have and the things that did not serve you today. Just let it go. And take a deep breath in. Hold it.

And let it go. Thank you so much for joining us for that breathing exercise. And today we have a guest. And usually I introduce our guests, but I'm going to allow our guests to introduce himself.

Dark Joseph Ravine. Welcome

Speaker 1
to

Speaker 2
the Transforming Lifespan podcast.

Speaker 1
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

Speaker 2
So who is Dark Joseph Ravine?

Speaker 1
So Dark Joseph Ravine is my stage name that I used for my online presence. My name is theoretical for fighting against dark by putting light into this world and helping people and promoting positivity and trying to do as much good for the world as possible.

Speaker 2
How, I'm hearing transformation, transformation from darkness to light.

Speaker 1
Yes.

Speaker 2
What was that moment that initiated the transformation?

Speaker 1
Me personally, I used to live a bit of a dishonest life where I would tell people, oh, I'm famous, and I'm a star, and I'm online, and this and that. And I would kind of do that as a way of trying to impress people and trying to make people think I was someone of importance, when in reality, that's not who I really was. I was only just a marketing agent. unknowingly at that time.

But after opening my marketing company, Focus 5 Group, and becoming the CEO, that's when I started to live more of an authentic life, because that's what I found was my true calling, which was marketing.

Speaker 2
Starting Focus 5 forced you to become authentic?

Speaker 1
Yes, it was.

Speaker 2
OK.

Speaker 3
So talk a little bit about your own personal transformation, because you said that you sort of were being dishonest and sort of, I guess, putting out the persona that you were already very successful, sort of faking it until you make it, as you often sometimes hear people say. Oh,

Speaker 1
yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3
And then you kind of turned around and you actually started to be doing what it was you had been pretending you were already doing. So can you kind of share that journey with our listeners?

Speaker 1
Absolutely. So I had a moment in my life where I felt like people around the world just weren't nice to me. And I thought about kind of building an online persona that I was this amazing person and that I was wonderful and that I was great. And then I would share it with people that I knew in my community and everywhere else, wherever I went and I met people.

And it seemed to have been doing me more harm than good. People would get angry at me and would complain about me. things like that and then at one point I thought that it was just jealousy but then I realized after a while that they were right about something and then after a few years I was kind of not living an honest life I kind of realized that they were right about why they had a right to complain about me and that's when I started to kind of transform and I started to be more a little on the humble side where I say I am not famous I'm not known I'm only a marketing agent that's it And

I started achieving success like that.

Speaker 2
So the reason for being inauthentic was to be famous or to be known?

Speaker 1
To be known. And also for people to treat me differently.

Speaker 2
So there was that desire for, say, validation?

Speaker 1
Yes.

Speaker 2
But then when you switch to being authentic, you begin to receive the validation and then you became famous.

Speaker 1
Yeah, I

Speaker 2
mean,

Speaker 1
I don't know if going viral on social media is really famous. In my opinion, I think celebrity and fame doesn't really have any real existence. I really think it's all honestly just marketing. Because anytime you bring yourself out to people, even if it's not for the intention of promoting or anything, I always look at that as marketing, regardless of, you know, whatever it is.

Speaker 2
So maybe because of that unique definition of marketing that you have, can you define marketing for us?

Speaker 1
Absolutely. So marketing is the practice of bringing anything that you're doing out to the public and getting more eyes on whatever it is that you're promoting. It could be, you know, let's say a business or a food blog or anything in general that you want people to know about or, you know, you get people to notice something in a sense.

Speaker 3
So say for an example, you wanted to market an amazing podcast about transforming lives, gives us some tips and ideas of how one might do some marketing to promote something like that.

Speaker 1
Well, I'm glad you're bringing that up because hopefully right after the podcast, I'm going to promote you guys. It comes free from our agency. We like to give free marketing from our agency. So what I would do is we would hopefully get the podcast into groups as well as having ads like ads and connections and networks of people to view the particular video.

And then hopefully it would get a lot of views and people seeing you and noticing you. And, you know, hopefully like that, that's how eventually you start to get discovered and noticed. And then if you do this over and over, I mean, it's social media. Marketing is not a one time thing.

It's a commitment. You have to have multiple posts that actually keep getting views and views and views. And then eventually you start to get recommended and discovered further by, you know, people in general. And so that's what I learned in marketing.

Speaker 2
Okay, thank you. Now, when you completed the form, you said the message that you want to leave with our listeners and viewers is how to find your true self as a person. And I am intrigued by that.

Speaker 1
Yes.

Speaker 2
For many reasons. So I want us to go there. You said we should find our true selves.

Speaker 1
Yes.

Speaker 2
But many philosophers, many psychologists argue that true self is an illusion and identity is fluid. How does Joseph define the true self?

Speaker 1
So from my experience, I believe that your true self is doing what you love to do and representing yourself in a way that is authentic, that defines what you love to do. You know, just like when I mentioned about marketing being my true calling, instead of telling people, you know, oh, I'm famous and this and that, what I would do is I would say to them, I am a marketing expert. This is what I did for myself. And this is what I did for my social media as well.

And I can do the same thing for you. if you are interested. So I put myself as living proof that I'm able to do something, therefore living more of a truthful life and telling people the truth in the sense that there's living proof that I can do something because I have experience doing it for myself. So I think that as long as you can show people that you can do something yourself and that you represent everything you do, putting yourself as the example, I feel like that's a way you can live the truth and show the world who you really are.

Speaker 2
I love that because I have this personal philosophy that I say, I can't lead you where I have not walked.

Speaker 1
Absolutely, I love that too.

Speaker 2
Yeah, so you're leading people where you walked. Exactly. But in this world of social media where Authenticity is oftentimes absent,

Speaker 1
right? Just for the

Speaker 2
likes, I'm sorry, just for the likes and other things. Now, how do you think embracing your authenticity is necessary or let me flip it around. Todd just jumped into my head.

Speaker 1
How do

Speaker 2
you think embracing your darkness is necessary to find your authenticity?

Speaker 1
way of doing that is you have to look into yourself and think, is there anything I'm doing that's not right? Is there anything I'm doing that's hurting other people? Am I making other people suffering by doing the things that I'm doing? And so I always like to look into myself and see where I'm going wrong and how I can fix that.

And when you look into yourself and you see where you're going wrong, then you can get rid of that wrongfulness from your life. And then you can start putting more ways of going into the right direction, which is what I did with my marketing.

Speaker 2
Do you think a person can truly know themselves, find themselves, discover who they are? without confronting their worst traits.

Speaker 1
I actually think that a lot of people struggle with finding who they are based on the philosopher you said earlier about we don't know who we really are and We don't know our true selves very much. And you're right about that in a lot of senses, because there are a lot of people on social media who live a dishonest life, who pretend to be rich when they're not actually, who pretend to be friends with celebrities when they're not, who look like they're this kind of person when they're not actually. And there are a lot of liars.

I'm sorry to be honest with you. And those people never get ahead, though. You know, if you're a truthful person and you live the truth, then you get ahead.

Speaker 2
Wow.

Speaker 3
I wanted to take a moment and ask you a little bit about your book, because I know you wrote a book called Watch Out, It's Nolan, a courageous tale about a boy who overcame his bullies by being fearless and standing up for himself. And

Speaker 2
can

Speaker 3
you talk, because obviously there's a transformation and there's a story there. So can you please kind of share some of that journey with us?

Speaker 1
Yes, absolutely. So when I was a child, I was bullied a lot. in an environment that was very racist and I didn't have the power to stick up for myself. And so I wrote that book as a way of encouraging parents who have children to teach their kids self-defense, and to stand up for themselves, and not let people and bullies step all over them, and to know that your self-worth is more important than you know.

And I always feel like it's the parents' and the adults' responsibility to teach the younger generation how to be powerful people, and to rise above negativity as much as possible.

Speaker 3
What are some of the key points within that book and maybe some of the things you might want to highlight or something for somebody who maybe is going through bullying to help them transform from that negative to something positive?

Speaker 1
My way of understanding that personally, like if I was in that position, I wouldn't have the power to stand up for myself because I'm not that powerful. I would just get out of the situation and go to another school if I was being bullied by the school and the classmates. But one thing I would say definitely is that every child deserves a supporter and someone who's there to help them because I didn't have anyone there to help me. I was very misunderstood when I was a child.

So I feel like as long as every child has a cheerleader and a supporter to help them, then they might be able to get that positive encouragement to rise above the negativity, you know?

Speaker 2
Thank you for sharing that because I have a question. Do you think it's because of not having the validation and the support as a child, you sought it in the way that you did before your transformation?

Speaker 1
Oh, 100%. I'm glad you're bringing that up because, you know, so many people seek validation and seek approval from people and things like that in hopes that they can become better because of people. But at the end of the day, you know, the way I look at it is that, you know, you don't necessarily always need approval from people. I mean, you definitely need one or two people to help you.

in the life, and I definitely encourage the parents to always be the cheerleader of their children, because they're the ones supporting them, so they should be their cheerleader as well. We definitely need that one loyal person, but you don't need everybody's validation. If I have one loyal supporter in my life, that's more than enough for me. But sometimes people seek validation from everybody, and you're not going to get validation from everybody, and you're not going to please everybody either.

So, you know, you just got to, you know, have that one amazing person and just keep rising above all this as much as you can. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3
Yeah, you know, you bring up a really, really good point, which is, you know, as children, everybody wants to sort of, you know, fit in and be part of the crowd and be in the in group or what have you. And you're so right in that, you know, people need whether it's a parent, or a family friend or an aunt or an uncle, but everybody needs to have someone in their corner. And what happens, right, is if people don't have somebody who's good in their corner, then that's when they get swallowed up and connected into gangs and things because they want to feel like they, you know, have some people who are part of their team. So as you say, it's like looking and seeking and trying to find, you know, one or two good people.

You don't need hundreds, you just need Yes,

Speaker 1
only a couple. That's all it takes.

Speaker 3
And to look inside yourself, to give yourself your own strength when you're still trying to find that person if they haven't found it yet. 100%.

Speaker 1
Only takes one or two good people. Doesn't take a million.

Speaker 3
Are there any, I noticed you have lots and lots of followers on your various social media and everything, which is amazing. Is that something that you sort of are actively pursuing all the time? Is that something that just because you created the odd viral video

Speaker 1
or something? Yes, that's what my marketing business is all about, to help people become like me on social media. You know, all the followers and things that I deal with are all from my marketing. It's all from me, you know, promoting myself and using marketing tactics and secrets that I know that deals with helping people to go viral.

I use for myself, like I would use for my clients. So, you know, if anybody's interested in being an influencer, I'm the person to contact.

Speaker 2
And where can they contact you? Let's switch that in right there.

Speaker 1
They can email my agency at focus5group at gmail.com if they are interested in going viral. And, you know, we do work on custom packages. So it's not like we sell specific services. The client has to talk to me and tell me what specifically they are looking for.

And then from what they're looking for, then we can work on a package and everything. Because we try to work within our clients' budgets and as well as our clients' needs. Because for us, it's more about them being happy. It's not about us or anything like that.

Our job is to try to use our marketing to change our clients' lives for the better.

Speaker 2
And let's say someone is listening to this podcast or viewing this podcast and they're like, oh, I want to get some marketing out there. Would they get a discount from Focus 5?

Speaker 1
Yeah, of course. So they would contact us. They would tell us the specifics of their project and what they're looking for. And then I would talk with my team about the things I can offer them and do for them.

And then they can agree if they want to proceed or not. We also give free samples to all the people who are interested in getting to know our services. We provide multiple different services and we're always happy to help people. Of course, you know, it does depend what they want to promote.

We're not going to promote negativity or bad things. Whatever we promote, it has to be positive and good and has to align with our morals. Because when we promote something bad, then it just looks bad on us. So we are a little exclusive in that area.

And you have to be when you're a marketing agent. You don't want to set yourself up for struggle or looking bad or anything like that.

Speaker 2
I like to do rapid fire questions at the end of some podcasts. So I am going to ask you, is viral growth luck or skill?

Speaker 1
I'm glad you're bringing that up. Actually, it's false. There's no luck in viral. The only luck in viral is that your post gets recommended to more people, which is not in my control.

That's in the algorithm, social media algorithms control. If your post gets recommended, then you hit the jackpot. That's where you got lucky, but, but the skill, that's all done via marketing. Nothing can make that happen, but marketing.

When you see all the viral videos and views and everything, it's all from marketing.

Speaker 2
What's your three second script?

Speaker 1
My three second script? be true to yourself. I can only say one thing, be true to who you are.

Speaker 2
Thank you so much. Thank you for taking us, taking a deep dive with us into the mind of dark Joseph Ravine. Joseph, thank you for pushing us to question what it means to be our true selves and for giving us a deeper insight into marketing. And I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

Thank

Speaker 1
you, you as well. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.