This is a video capture from my book launch for my memoir, Requiem for My Rave. It’s available now through Amazon. More details click here.
Requiem for My Rave book reading
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Learning just enough to solve the problem I’m facing
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I used to be ashamed of my lack of official education. I don’t have a single piece of paper with my name on it. I lost interest in high school and never even finished. Now, after all these years, I realize I’m a life-long learner. I found my own way to learn. Being part of a class curriculum isn’t part of that. Being an entrepreneur means I don’t have to prove myself to...
Death, Disorder and a DJ
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The Toronto Star did a feature on my past as a rave pioneer and my new memoir REQUIEM FOR MY RAVE. What is an interesting addendum to this story and relevant to my blog here is that a company then contacted me out of the blue and offered to mount it for me. I admire their “blue ocean” strategy of contacting people who appear in newspapers. This company is based in the US, so I assume...
Requiem For My Rave
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My memoirs of my rave years has just been released, titled Requiem For My Rave. A requiem is an act of remembrance. The second part of the title refers to “my” rave. This thing that I created and suffered in service for. I started writing the book at the conclusion of my rave company, Hullabaloo, in 2005. I finished the first draft in 2009. I then hit “save” and ten years...
I suffered for years
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One of my biggest regrets is how many years I suffered needlessly because I didn’t value my own work. Here are some pics from 20 years ago, February 1999. Me DJing in front a literal sea of people at the International Centre just outside of Toronto. People paid and traveled to come to see me. I had sold hundreds of thousands of CDs at this time, and my rave company, Hullabaloo, was at its...
Entrepreneurs can change the world
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I came across this great article and video about how Entrepreneurs are helping shape the Flint, Michigan despite all the scandals and bad news coming from there. “Starting a business in an impoverished city in the midst of a public health crisis sounds counterintuitive at best. But Flint’s new founders have their reasons. Rents are low. Competition is scarce. And most important: The city...
My reinvention story
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I came across a quote this week referring to the end of the “one act life”. How everyone should expect and embrace doing different things over their lifetimes. The era of a job or career for life is behind almost all of us. As entrepreneurs, we have such flexibility with this. I pondered all of my own acts so far: ACT 1 – My early adulthood saw me take the next step from the job...
It took me 19 years
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Previously, I’ve written about a new business taking 3 years. I think that’s a good number. There’s a lot you don’t know at the start that you will learn over 3 years. I try to get people to focus on a 3 to 5 year journey, since that’s far more realistic than overnight success, or a direct arrow up. As I reflect when writing on this blog, I can put a date of when...
The borrower is slave to the lender
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I like this proverb quite a bit. I don’t think people realize the situation they are in when they owe money. You have this thing hanging over you and everything you do. A pet elephant that needs to be fed. I have made a decision to live debt free. Not only do I not carry credit card debt (paid off every month), I aggressively paid off my house. All large purchases are saved for in advance...
Social media detox
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I’ve been watching the ongoing discussion of social media with great interest. It’s been an interesting decade since Facebook took over. I was an online pioneer, but the one place I never transitioned to were the big social media platforms. I resisted at first because I could see how much time people spent on them. This was apparent right away. I made a conscious decision that my time...
Work/Life Balance
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I read a lot of articles these days about maintaining a Work/Life Balance. It’s good that people realize the importance of having a healthy life outside of their work. I’m not sure when it started to be looked at as more important, but it’s something I’ve always lived. A friend of mine used to joke that I was “successfully underemployed” because my work week...
I’m not self-made
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I came across a quote this week from Arnold Schwarzenegger about how he is NOT a self-made man, despite often being described as that. Everyone needs help and gets help to be a success. People like to say they are self-made, but leave out parts of their story. Usually those parts are not insignificant. I like to think of myself as bullshit free, and I like to think of myself as self-made because...
Gratitude for when dreams don’t come true
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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson posted this recently, talking about how a dream of his was crushed but only now many years later does he see what opportunities opened up because of it. I really related to this because I have a similar story. I file this one under “Hard lessons learned”. Back in 2000 I was in the peak of my DJ career. I was performing around the world...
The metaphor of my current life
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Recently, a visual metaphor appeared to me. I saw myself paddling a canoe down a river. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about “what’s next?”. The canoe metaphor gave me permission to just enjoy the journey, that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be, and there is no rush. As I pondered this metaphor some more, I also realized I can’t see far ahead...
Breaking the rules
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In a lot of ways, creating a business is much like being an artist. There is no one way to create art, and certainly no one way to create a business. You can even fail at it, junk it, try again. Develop your craft and get better each time. For me personally, I’ve always followed my own path for how I wanted to do it. Most of the time I made it up as I went along. Sometimes it worked...
Trying to help others by being honest is difficult
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I feel like I’m in a unique situation. I write to share my experiences and lessons learned, but am doing so from a position of success. So much success, that I’m not looking to sell anything. So that allows me to be honest, and tell things like how they are/were. At the same time, these true stories I feel run so counter to the “instant success formulas” being peddled...
Sometimes I feel like I don’t know anything
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I still wrestle with feeling like I don’t know anything. I think it will always be with me. Like, my biggest financial success was creating some technology, yet put me in a room with a bunch of tech people as they throw terms around I don’t know and I feel like a moron. Part of it is because I went about it in a very unique way. I remember watching a food documentary, watching these...
The common trait amongst successful entrepreneurs
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There’s a simple trait I’ve seen amongst successful entrepreneurs, and it seems to separate those that achieve from those that just dream: Taking Action. From first hand experience and observation, those simple 2 words seems to make the difference. Taking Action means just do it, just go for it, just start it. Whatever your business is, do it. It does not mean “find more busy...
Embracing my Unorthodox Path
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For a long time I struggled with acknowledging that I was having success in my life, but the way I achieved it, in a completely unorthodox fashion, always left me feeling like I faked my way to it. I recently came up with the correct word to describe myself and how I did this: Audacious. When I look up the definition of that word I get: Showing a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks. When...
How a Happy Hardcore Radio Show Turned into a Billion Dollar Business
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This was originally posted at my DJ site, anabolic-frolic.com. StealthSeminar, a webinar software company I co-founded in 2010, just celebrated its users generating over 1 billion dollars (USD) using the platform. What’s more amazing is that the software that I created and has been used by over 20 million people owes its existence to my DJ past, and specifically technology I created to host the...
Burning years away when I was younger
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Young entrepreneurs have an advantage you lose later in life – time. I can clearly remember being around 20 years old, and making a decision to pursue my music passion, knowing I could spend a couple of years on it and see where it goes. I ended up sleeping on the floor of my small office for 2 years, poor, trying to make something happen. A lifetime later, I simply couldn’t make that...