That’s been the reaction to most of my life.
High school dropout. World-famous DJ. Got banned from the US. Went bankrupt. Built a multi-million dollar tech company. Hypnotized 5000+ people on stage. Wrote 4 books. Took on climate change because why the hell not.
Now? I’m chasing serendipity instead of goals. Waiting to be in the room when something impossible becomes inevitable.
350+ articles and 7 years of figuring this out in public are here if you want them. So is my story.
At the start of last year I came up with an experiment – every day I would take a moment in the morning to add to a list of gratitude. You can read my previous blog entries about this here and here. To recap; Every morning I would open a Word document where I had a numbered list. I’d then take a moment and add to it. At least 1 thing, but as many as I felt in that moment. I usually...
I recently attended a 4-day workshop in my home city of Toronto. I decided to full immerse myself into the experience by treating it sort of like a “staycation” by booking a hotel walking distance from the venue. This meant after each day I would not go home. I would not visit my family and switch to being a family man. I would stay immersed in my experience, allowing myself time for...
I’ve come to embrace the idea of living with paradoxes. Two completely competing thoughts or ideas or states of being, that both can be true even if they counter each other. The most recent example was with my son’s performance in high school. His grades leave something to be desired. I want to really push him to get those grades up, at the same time I acknowledge that the life...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
I’ve done a lot of stuff, and gone about them in my own unorthodox ways, and this certainly includes my education. I never had any college or university education, but now I look back at how much my education never stopped, no matter whether I was in school or not. In high school I lost interest being there. Not sure why exactly, but at some point I did the least possible to scrape by. I...
Facebook has been receiving a lot of bad press lately, and for good reason. Since the start I had seen Facebook as a tool for bad, and people now are starting to realize it isn’t some benign free service that someone created just for you. There’s a reason there’s a saying “If the product is free, you are the product”. I always resisted Facebook. In the beginning I...
There is always emergencies. You might as well plan for them. Going into debt or having a credit card handy “for emergencies” is not prudent planning. There are simple emergencies like car trouble or replacing your broken computer (that you need to work), and then there are the really big ones like job loss. I like the Dave Ramsey philosophy of first getting a $1000 emergency fund...
I’m always on the hunt for new experiences. Some people like to travel, I like to create and experience new things closer to home. My latest experience was a float tank. The isolation tanks that are filled with a high ratio of salt water that is warm and you float inside it, like laying in the void. Robin has brought it up for over 10 years now. There is definitely more float centres...
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...
It’s really tough to not get caught in negative thinking traps. The overwhelming news, the shared outrage on social media, it can be a lot to overcome. I just read this enlightening article about the negative biases we live with every day. One piece of advice stood out to me: Regularly ask yourself, “How could I be wrong?” as a challenge question. It’s so easy to go the...
I’ve written before about how much I enjoy being unplugged and away from things. Here is another one. Most days, weather permitting, I go for a 5km walk. It takes about an hour. I have a route worked out through my neighborhood. I do it because it feels good to be outside, out in the fresh air, good to be moving. It’s exercise, but that isn’t exactly why I do it. It’s more...
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...