A guest speaker at a function I was attending this past year reviewed my website and told me frankly, “You’d be an incredibly fascinating dinner guest.” His comment made me feel seen and reminded me of how far I’ve come. As recently as 2019, I was a guest at a friend of my wife’s house who was celebrating receiving tenure as a college professor. The house was filled with academics. I was as quiet...
The leadership group that I’m a part of reached out to Stacey Abrams, the politician, voting rights activist, and governor candidate for the state of Georgia, about being a guest speaker. She is so singularly focused on her mission for political change in her state, she applies a simple question to everything she does: Will this get me votes? She ended up not speaking for our group. When I heard...
I have a memory from around 25 years ago, it was the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week. I was sitting on my sofa playing video games and a good friend of mine remarked “You’re successfully underemployed”. I tell people who talk to me in recent times that money didn’t make the life I live today possible. I’ve always lived with a freedom in my life to...
My road to “success” (however you want to define that) was never a straight line. There were times of tremendous struggle. It’s well documented in my DJ memoir that despite the surface successes, I never figured out the financial part during that time of my life. I slept on the floor of my office for 2 years (I realize now that qualified me as literally “homeless”), but even after things started...
Here is a capture of my Ask Me Anything I hosted on Feb 27, 2023. I really enjoy this as a format, it’s an intersection of me being helpful to others, creating my own hotseat to test myself on, me being creative in the moment in any way I wish, and there’s a “performance” aspect, of being entertaining, and lighting up an audience. Instead of spinning records, or doing a...
What’s the question that fills you with fear to even think about asking? What about my story do you find fascinating and want to know more about? What would I do if I were you? What clarity can I bring to your mission and road ahead? What one tool or strategy would I recommend that will change your business? What’s the one thing you need to hear that everyone else is afraid to tell...
Recently I received an email from an old fan. He and his wife were celebrating their 20th anniversary and listening to my DJ mixes had a lot of memories for them many years ago. He offered to pay me to make him a “cameo” type of personal video. Cameo is a website filled with celebrities that will record well-wishes for you for a fee. I’m not on Cameo, but I use Loom a lot to record videos, so I...
I’ve written so many articles over the past four years that I’ve forgotten everything I’ve written and it’s like a collection of golden nuggets sitting in a barrel. Committing myself to writing (and sharing) once per week is one of the best things I’ve done. Some weeks the words come easy. Inspiration hits, and I knock out the article without much effort. Sometimes I don’t have an easy topic to...
I could tell I’ve been feeling in the doldrums lately and decided to take action. I put out a last-second invitation to my Frolic100 list to witness me using my most powerful tool, what I call my Statement of Being. Things began to change for me the moment I committed myself to this. I now had a date on the calendar (only a few days away). I knew it was more important to me to do it, and be with...
Would you like to be part of something awesome? I’ve been struggling for a while, due to a lot of things outside my control, and I’ve felt directionless because of it. I could feel myself trying really hard to course correct, to find a new path. And then I remembered I already had the solution. I call it my Statement of Being. I haven’t read it in a while, and I can tell right away that has left...
This past week a book I was reading introduced a thought into my head that I’ve never grieved for the loss of a past life of mine. Specifically, my rave and DJ days. There’s no question that period of my life held a lot of trauma for me and took me some time to get over. That’s part of the reason it took me 14 years to complete my memoir. I always saw the completion of that book and being able to...
Many years ago, a friend once remarked to me “You’re successfully underemployed”. He was remarking on my light work schedule, during my DJ career. We’re so overwhelmed with overwork messaging. There’s that old joke that entrepreneurs “quit their 40 hour a week job so they can work 80”. Guys like Elon Musk brag about 100 hour work weeks. It’s simply never been my experience. I can perform when...
Many years ago a friend of mine shared with me a gaming acronym and metaphor; DoT – Damage over Time. In computer gaming, it refers to things that can happen to your character, like being poisoned or having a spell cast against it. In the real world, we used it to describe choices and decisions around spending money that weigh you down and can negatively impact you. DoTs in real life can apply to...
“I’ve never seen someone so happy writing a $250,000 cheque for their taxes before”, said my accountant. The thing was – I was happy. I was happy I had the money, I was happy to put my tax bill behind me, no need for deferments or other tax planning trickery. Many years ago I avoided my taxes. I was late filing them, and my avoidance was so bad I didn’t file for years and went through a personal...
I’ve been getting better lately at recognizing some of the dark voices in my head. Recently, Robin and I were having a deep conversation, but Robin didn’t want to continue it. I felt Robin “pulling away from me” simply because Robin didn’t want to have a conversation with me at that very moment. I experienced this as a threat of withdrawal of love. And I realized in that moment, this...
From my perspective and my own life’s experiences, there is only one thing that separates those that achieve great things from those that don’t; those that achieve take action, and the ones that don’t only dream. My own life forever changed because of an action I took when I was only 12 years old. I walked into a business and asked for a job. When they declined, I didn’t take no for an answer and...
I’ve been on a “news diet” for several years now. This practice has come to mind again with all the turmoil and world events, which can seem quite overwhelming. We used to live in a world where news was delivered by newspaper once a day, and nightly TV news. Then in the 1980s that changed to 24 hour news channels (that needed content to fill). That expanded, and expanded again...
There’s a quote on my wall. It’s unattributed and I don’t know the origin. When I Google it, nothing much comes up. I don’t even remember where I got it from, but it made enough of an impact I wrote it down and put it on my wall. It says: Give people what they need, not what you want them to have. There’s so many times in my life, every day, that I want so much for people. And the cold reality is...
I’ve been getting more and more clear about what my investing strategy is. For the most part, if we talk about “Heart vs Mind” decisions, I go with my heart. Even if someone could make mathematical arguments about how some things can generate more money, that doesn’t move me. Here’s a breakdown of ways I invest my money. In myself. Between psychotherapy, couples therapy, deep...
This past week I participated in an exercise, and was asked to come up with a 6 word mission. This is what immediately came out of me: Share my story, change the world. I was struck by how true that simple statement is for me. How I’ve been living in to it. You are a part of it. Every week I share my story. I do it because for too long I ran from telling my own story. It took me 14 years to...
Here is a capture of the Ask Me Anything I hosted on January 3, 2022. It was an experiment of me testing myself, showing up in a different way, sharing my wisdom in whatever way it was called upon, and kicking my year off in a strong way. Topics included Blue Ocean Strategy and using “pain” in your marketing, amongst anything and everything else that came up. I was very...
A mentor I worked with many years ago had an antidote to the inertia a lot of self-employed people feel coming out of the holidays. It’s not hard to let the holiday slowdown continue for weeks into the new year, or even months. He came up with a concept called The Big Drive, which was a challenge to kick off the new year with a huge amount of momentum. He would compare it with a skier going to...
I was asking myself what’s a way I can support the Frolic 100 get 2022 started in a big way and I have decided to host a Zoom where you can “Ask Me Anything”. Would you like help creating your most profitable year ever? I will help you with mindset. I will help with tools and strategy. Would you like for me to tell you whether I think something is a good idea or not? I will tell you whether I...
Every time I think about how I chose to release my most recent book, of not needing to do anything more with it, of trusting that it is now out in the world doing its work, the word that comes to mind is “liberated”. By changing the rules of how a book is released, and what my expectations are, I liberated myself from all sorts of pressures of what I’m “supposed” to or “should” be doing now...
I was chatting with a reader of my recent book (Unorthodox Success, Secret Shame) and they shared something with me. “Reading about you wrestling with your shame made me reflect on where I had shame in my own life. I realized I’ve been too ashamed to admit I’ve been in an abusive relationship. I was too ashamed to admit it to anyone, including myself. Once I realized that, I left my boyfriend.”...