I woke up, around 2am, and felt difficulty breathing. I could feel a tightness in my chest. I took in a deep breath – good, I still could, and let it out. For some reason, I was having an anxiety attack in the middle of the night. It woke me up. Years ago I used to think these symptoms were a heart attack. Because it never was, I learned it wasn’t, and no matter how bad I felt, it would pass. I...
Do you have an insidious voice that lives rent free in your head always telling you nothing you do is enough, nothing you have is enough, and you’re never enough? I do. Today I decided to write to an earlier version of me, from seven years ago. A letter I have all the authority in the world to write, because I know the truth, having lived it. The letter is below: Dear 2018 Chris from 2025...
World events and news can be difficult to ignore. However, I have a strict rule at our dinner table that we don’t let the latest crazy tweet or story suck up all the oxygen. That means we need other things to talk about. For the last few months, my family and I have been adapting a practice of each of us sharing something we’re grateful for from that day. The smaller the better. When I introduced...
I find almost everyone using AI is playing the wrong game with it. They’re trying to figure out how to have AI let them do “more”. More productivity, more revenue, more output, more, more, more. This is the same trap humanity has been caught in for decades, if not centuries. AI is just the latest tech tool that is facilitating “more”. For most people, if they were...
As I write this I’m suffering from my second covid infection in less than two months. It was just over 6 weeks ago I wrote that life can be random and unfair sometimes. My wife wasn’t even fully recovered from the previous one and is also infected again. This just sucks. In this moment though I’m grateful for a spontaneous lunch I took with my wife exactly a week ago. I was...
This past Monday I debuted a new topic by Zoom; A Rave Legends Guide to How to Be More Human in an AI World. The entire project went from a spark of an idea to delivered presentation at light speed, which is a telling factor. I was curious so I looked up the original message from my friend Rita that created the cascade. It was dated January 24th. However, more important than the link was her...
Just over a week ago I challenged myself to come up with a topic that could put me on any stage in the world as an AI Expert. Leaning hard into my strengths, story, and interests, I came up with this title: A Rave Legends Guide to How to Be More Human in an AI World The thing is, I felt very confident in summarizing a bunch of thoughts, philosophies, best practices I have and present on this...
My friend Rita sent me a video on the topic of AI from this past week’s World Economic Forum, with a message “Chris, I never send you videos to watch, but you should watch this one.” She was right, she doesn’t send me videos, so I took her note seriously and watched it. But before I shared my thoughts with her, I wanted to know why she wanted me to watch it. “Everything they were talking about...
First, an admission of failure. “The Big Drive 2025” for me is a complete bust. Making money for the sake of making money simply isn’t motivating me. There was value for me in analyzing my past processes, and writing them up in a series of articles for others, but returning to that specific playbook is not working. Because I’m not the same person. There’s an old quote that I feel is relevant in...
You know what’s wild? I’ve written 344 articles on this website, but the hardest thing to write has always been my About page. Seven years ago, I was a wounded man entering middle age who felt like the world’s biggest fake. My website sat there with a blank About page – a digital monument to my shame. I couldn’t tell you who I was because I didn’t know. For...
If I’m truly honest and open, I have an admission to make: I’m sitting here at my desk, trying to write about failure, and realizing I’m failing at failing. Not the kind of failure I promised when I declared this my Year of Failure. More like the embarrassing kind where I’m staring at my screen thinking “what the hell am I doing?” Last night I couldn’t sleep...
I decided to start with an easy failure. Almost two years ago I was talking with a colleague and she suggested I get onto a TEDx stage, and I immediately responded with “No, it has to be TED. THE TED.” That thought lit me up. That was more my style – jump straight to the end. The idea went away until recently when we spoke again, and I found myself feeling the same way. Once I declared that...
It wasn’t exactly the best Christmas for me this week. My oldest kid tested positive for covid on Christmas eve, and my wife tested positive on Christmas morning. The last time my wife had covid, they got so sick with erratic heart beats we had to call an ambulance and have them taken to the hospital. My wife left the hospital in a wheelchair and had to use it for several months. A...
As part of putting myself out there more I was a recent guest on a LinkedIn Live with my good friend Rita around my experience of turning self-doubt into a superpower. We had a lively discussion touching on how to turn unconventional paths into extraordinary success, how authenticity can benefit both personal and professional relationships, and the power of hope in overcoming challenges. Check it...
Last week, I was a guest speaker for a room full of cancer researchers and doctors at Queen’s University, in Canada. I was invited to come talk about impossible goals, and share the framework I’ve designed around it to help people create their own (which will be featured in an upcoming book of mine). To introduce myself I told them a story of who I am and where I’ve come from. I turned my...
One of my takeaways from the past US election is that if people are worried about money there is no space to dream. Who knows how much that affected the actual election, but it’s a truth I’ve lived with. If people are worried about the very basics in their lives, what room is there for anything else? There’s been multiple times in my life where I’ve struggled financially...
Once upon a time I had a LinkedIn profile. It wasn’t great. I was ashamed of myself and my story when I had created it. I downplayed all of my accomplishments, in a weak attempt at trying to appear more “corporate”. My imposter syndrome at the time also had its hands around me like a choke hold, and I didn’t even list my webinar company, StealthSeminar, by name. I listed myself as some sort of...
I never know when or how my next story will show up. This past Monday I was driving my sixteen-year-old to school. It was an unusually bright and sunny warm October morning. My son sat quietly, looking out the window. Later that same day I was planning to return to one of my old activities, playing with the Toronto Pinball League. I haven’t played regularly since before COVID and I’ve...
The webinar business I co-founded over 14 years ago just completed due diligence and closed its sale to a $100 million private equity fund that specializes in SaaS (Software as a Service), and now that particular part of my life is done. Even though I exited an active role with the company several years ago, I still retained 50% ownership and monthly dividends from that. It feels good to have...
During the peak of my DJ career, back in the year 2000, I was banned from entering the US after being caught entering to work as a DJ without having the required paperwork (Longtime followers of mine are very familiar with this story, and I wrote about it extensively in my memoir). I spent many years regretting my actions that led to that. This ultimately led to my eventual retirement from DJing...
I just turned 50 years old. A huge milestone. I have a lot to be thankful for, and I am. A birthday tradition I started on my 40th birthday, and I returned to this year, is to tell my story to my children. I plan to update it and read it to them every 10 years. So at our dinner table last night, after dinner, I pulled out my story and read it to my children and wife. I wish my own father had done...
I love “boredom”. I love playing with what are seen as negative words, and twisting them on their ear. Boredom to me is creating space for inspiration and creativity. If I fill my days with busywork, I remove the possibility of those “eureka” moments. Some of my most profitable and successful innovations were made walking to the store in my neighbourhood and simply walking without distracting...
A good friend of mine, Shermain Melton, asked me a simple question last week: What do you stand for? What comes up for you when you think it? To take a stand means to believe in something. To defend something. To fight for something. Taking a stand means it’s worthy of you getting up in the morning and working towards it. It means you care enough about it that you want others to have...
(The following is an excerpt from my memoir, Requiem for My Rave. I’ve been asking myself lately what lessons I can share from this time in my life with audiences today.) It was March 2000. Robin, my girlfriend at the time and I were in the middle of making dinner. It was a night no different than any other. Robin was cutting some tomatoes, and I was working the stove with tilapia. It sizzled in...
It’s the end of summer, and both my kids are home from school wrapping up their summer vacation. My oldest is now in college, and this could be the last “lazy” summer I ever have with her in hanging out in the house. I’ve been kicking around ideas for new articles, and had some things I was excited to share, but then I realized “It’ll wait”. I’m...