I keep doing things I’m not supposed to do. Then they work. Then I do bigger things I’m not supposed to do.
High school dropout turned world-famous DJ. Got banned from the US, went bankrupt, then built a multi-million dollar tech company. Hypnotized 5000+ people on stage just to see if I could. Now I’m going after climate change because… why the hell not?
Here’s the thing: I document everything. Every experiment. Every failure. Every holy shit moment. Not to teach you – because I’ve learned something strange: When people witness me doing the impossible, they start doing impossible things too.
This website is my laboratory. These stories are my evidence. And the Frolic 100 are my witnesses – not just watching me, but having their own realities rewired by what becomes possible when someone goes first.
The question isn’t if you want to see what happens next. The question is: What will happen to YOU when you do?
While my story reads pretty good, and I’ve had a lot of success in my life, the reality is every accomplishment took a lot of time and hard work. “The reality is great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress. Don’t think people want to hear about the last two.” – Elon Musk I could write a similarly sized bio of all the hardship and stress I’ve gone through. In fact, I have...
I’ve written a lot about my news diet, and the steps I take to stay focused and away from distractions. Especially when those distractions are for things beyond my control and just make me sad or depressed. This past week my wife, Robin, brought up some news item that was making her upset. She had avoided reading about it, but the headline and photos were all over her friends feeds as...
This blog is a place I’m going to share things that have worked for me. I doubt I’m going to offer anything new that someone hasn’t said before, but I am going to suggest that I am living proof that they work. So if you have a goal to model successful behavior from proven successful people, I humbly offer this. Have a Plan I credit goal setting with a huge part of my success...
If you were to ask me “If you could go back in time, and give your younger self advice on what they should do differently, what would you tell them?” My answer would be: Considering I LOVE my life now at age 44, I would have to say I’d change NOTHING. Where I am today is the result of my journey that I started at the beginning with. That includes all the mistakes I made and any crappy...
I lived without a cell phone for a long time. I refused to get one. People used to ask me how I lived. Well, I lived just fine actually. I’d even go on cross country tours, driving, with just a $5 pre-paid phone card that I could use from a gas station or a motel room. This is how people managed for many decades. I valued my free time. Allowing myself to think and ponder. Many of my...
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...
I don’t think there’s anyone out there who wouldn’t agree we are in an information overload. Not only are we bombarded, but we’re manipulated by different services to be addicted to getting it. It didn’t use to be this way and we all lived happy informed lives before. I already greatly cut down on my information intake because I don’t use social media, so...
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...
Recently, I’ve had a lot of people comment to me about how much better they feel after speaking with me. It’s because I’ve been sharing examples, real things, that entrepreneurs are doing out there that can have a global impact. I don’t share candy bars of feel good words, but actual evidential proof. Here’s a few more that have caught my attention recently...
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 know this is totally contrary our world these days but I love being bored. And by “being bored” I mean not constantly distracting myself with electronic devices. Giving myself this boredom allows my mind to conjure and create. New ideas, solutions to problems I’m wrestling with, and general pondering. It allows my mind to form new connections and great things can come of that...
My story involves multiple resets. I’ve left something I had been successful at and started from scratch at something else. While that is true, I also realize “not really”. Everything I’ve done, I always start with all the skills and experiences I had accrued up to that point. I like to visualize myself with a tool belt. I keep adding new tools to it. I’ve learned to...
This topic is a little different than I normally blog about, but I thought I’d write about it. File this under “parental life hacks”. I have 2 kids, aged 11 and 14. Like everyone their age, they love their electronics. As a parent this can be a hard place to find balance because the electronics are so good at what they do (occupy the young person, relieve the burden from a...
I was at a recent event, and there was a very nice person seated next to me. We made small talk, and at some point I shared: “I don’t use social media. At all.” This left her aghast, she wanted to know why. I led with my introductory opener, “If you aren’t paying for a service, YOU are the product. It’s like The Matrix and people don’t even realize it...
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...
At the start of this year I wrote about a year-long project I was doing, called My Year of Gratitude. Every day I take a moment and add to a list things I’m grateful for. 5 months later, I just crossed item number 300 on my list. This is the 130th day of the year, so that is an average of 2.3 items per day. The list right now, as I scroll through its many pages is already awesome...
This past week I accompanied my wife to a friend’s house for a party. The friend is a college professor who was celebrating getting tenure at their college. Their house was filled with people I don’t know, and almost everyone there was an academic. Talk about being out of my element. Listening to conversations about university, PHD dissertations, academic fraud, and other topics I...
I use Firefox as my primary desktop browser. I like it because it isn’t owned by a mega-corporation. It’s independent. Whenever I can support the little guy against the giants, I will. Some of the plug-ins I use with it to keep my time efficient are: Ad-Block Plus – this is a very popular ad blocker. I don’t even see Youtube ads. Leechblock NG – This will restrict...
In the past, every time I’ve taken on a new project or started something new I get lots of advice from people about what I should be doing, what they think about it or what I should be doing instead. Most of the time that advice is well meaning but completely worthless. Why? Because people talk out of their asses about things they don’t know about. That advice can come from family or...
So much about what is going on with climate change and politics seems (and is) so out of my control. Then I woke up one morning asking myself… what is under my control? I live in Canada. We have one of the highest standards of living in the world. We are also a small population. Aliens could come and remove the entire Canadian population and that wouldn’t affect carbon levels on Earth...
As I continue to work on “what’s next?” for me, one of the things I keep coming back to is how I can help others. If you’re reading this, you’re here possibly out of curiosity about me from my DJ past, but also you might be here because of what I’ve been writing about my entrepreneur journey. I use this blog to share things that have worked for me, with the...
It’s generally accepted that we need to eat healthy foods to keep our bodies in good working order. Are we putting the same effort into what we consume with our minds? It seems we are in an information overload, and I have to ask, to what end? I’m not speaking of educating yourself with specific knowledge you are seeking, but the overwhelming bombardment of breaking news, and the...
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...