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...
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’m trying something different this week. Instead of writing “What do I need to hear most right now?” I’m writing this article for 1 person in the Frolic 100. This is for Shannon. Shannon in an email to me had shared about the challenge of being on social media while creating a coaching business. This is what i was inspired to write. There’s a business metaphor that I love called “blue ocean...
Back in 2005 I retired from being a full-time DJ and rave promoter and started a new pursuit – comedy stage hypnosis. I was driven simply from having had an experience years earlier of being one of the volunteers on stage and wondering “What the hell just happened?”. As my DJ career wound down, I knew I needed to find something else. I decided to indulge in my curiosity and take...
I’ve come to the sad conclusion that there are a lot of people that will sabotage your attempts at success. I think everything I’ve ever done, or attempted to do, there was a countless amount of “helpful” advice from people telling me it wasn’t going to work. They will try to talk you out of it or tell you it can’t be done. Why? Perhaps they want to validate...
I had an interesting problem to solve this year. With my memoir Requiem for My Rave coming out, how do I promote it? I really value the peace in my life without using social media. I’ve written many times for this blog about it. If I’m going to practice what I preach, then I needed to come up with another way of promoting it. The other problem is that the community that the book is...
I’ve spoken quite a bit about sleeping on the floor of my office for 2 years at the start of my DJ career, but it wasn’t all clear sailing from then on. One of the biggest struggles of life came AFTER my DJ career had ended. In the year 2000 I got myself banned from the United States for DJing without a work visa. Getting the right paperwork proved difficult, and eventually I just...
When I have need of a contractor or subcontractor, I have learned the ultimate Litmus Test that cuts a good 90% from contention: Do they return phone calls in a timely, professional way? Simple as that. And if they fail that test, by not calling me back, they are cut from my list. Immediately. I will not chase someone to do business with them. If they can’t get back to me quickly now, how...
Every single business I’ve created was started with next to no money. There is a term called “bootstrapping” a business, which means starting or creating without external money or resources. To this day I’ve never taken money or had outside investment. We’re inundated with startup culture stories of raising money. I always scratch my head when I hear people or...
I love being in business for myself. I haven’t had a boss in over 20 years and have never applied for a job since I was 12 years old. I’ve certainly never written a resume or submitted it anywhere. I realize now, looking back at my story, that I seemed to break ever rule there was, and didn’t do anything in a conventional way. There are different ways of being successful in your...
There’s a lot of discussion lately about Social Entrepreneurship, but in the same discussions there is talk about Impact Entrepreneurs. They are similar, but there are some distinctions. For me, it boils down to something like this: A social entrepreneur might set up a soup kitchen. An impact entrepreneur creates a business that aims to solve homelessness. I’ve spent a lot of time...
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...
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately researching and being inspired by the idea of “double bottom line” businesses. “The Bottom Line” is a basic tenet of capitalism. Profit. You have to make a profit, and that is the most important part, and actually the only part that matters since you don’t have a business without it. Lately it seems this alone...
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...
I am not sure where I first heard this quote. It isn’t mine, but I absorbed it from somewhere and I think about it all the time. It’s such a simple thought, and a reminder of how stuck we can get doing the same things every day but somehow expecting that this time it will be different. I use this quote to ground myself. I’ll give an example of how I’ve used it. I’ve...
Counter to all the messaging online about easy success in whatever it is you are looking at, the reality is it doesn’t exist. Starting a business takes time, years, without exception. Every one I’ve created has taken years. Years of struggle. Years of learning. Years of figuring out what it is you don’t know, filling in those gaps, and building the business brick by brick. One...
As I work on my own personal journey of success and life satisfaction, more and more I have clarity it really is all about me, and what gives me that feeling of success and satisfaction. That I can’t compare myself with others, and shouldn’t. That I should be in a place of gratitude for what I have, and not keep chasing “more”. I’ve applied this thinking to how I...
I came across an interesting article, Boasting how many hours you work is a sign of failure, and a light bulb went off for me. Of course it is. The opposite should be true! I live the opposite and I realized I have for almost all my adult life. I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting, and realized I value my schedule above everything. Now I plan for what I want to do around the schedule...
This is a strategy I’ve created and put to use most years as the holidays approach. For a lot of small/home based businesses there is a point around the end of the year (usually starting with American Thanksgiving and ending well into January) when normal business stops operating. People want to take breaks, client prospecting slows down, marketing efforts stop, and the distractions increase like...
I recently became aware of a term called Survivorship Bias and how it specifically can be applied to entrepreneurs. Wikipedia defines it as : Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions...
I was speaking to one of my “Incubees” this week, about a win that involved putting themselves out there and attending an event and talking with people. They accomplished the goal (go to the event and talk to 2 people), but were commenting on how much energy it took to psych themselves up to go. I couldn’t help but relate my own experiences. It’s hard to put yourself out...
This is a recurring thought of mine because it is so significant. What do I have control over? If I can’t make someone do something, like hire me, or book me, what can I control? I can control the number of new people I prospect. I set goals of talking to people and having conversations. When I used to do direct mail I could control how many postcards I sent out. I would learn how many...
A good hour of any work day of mine is spent quiet, away from everything. Usually this is a walk. I do not take my phone. This time away is super productive to me. That’s why I include it as part of my “work” day. I usually don’t go out with any sort of agenda. It’s just time for myself. But inevitably as I walk and enjoy being outside, the sky, the trees, the...
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...
There’s a lot of things I’ve just done without realizing it. I’ve operated naturally on my own, but now I have a word for it since it’s something that is spoken more in today’s world: Being a Solopreneur. For the last 20+ years, I’ve operated all my businesses out of my home desk. That desk used to be in my living room, now I have a dedicated bedroom office...