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.
I’ve had an idea for this book with me for some time. For years now I’ve been bookmarking and collecting stories of entrepreneurs who are innovating on climate change and creating a difference in the world today. I am SICK TO DEATH of the overwhelm. I HATE that children, including my own, are so inundated with apocalyptic messaging, they’ve absorbed that it’s inevitable. I...
A truth I’ve been discovering about the super-rich and powerful is that they are no smarter than any of us. When Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted fraudster of Theranos, was able to get hundreds of millions of dollars from super-powerful people, I realized she only accomplished this simply because she got into the same room as them. They were blinded by a fraudster like what can happen to anyone...
I’ve realized lately I had been clinging to a story that my best chapters are behind me. Some of the “Greatest Hits” playing in my head are: I’ll never have success again like I’ve had. I’ll never be on a big stage again conducting the energy of thousands of people. I’ll never make the money I’ve made so easily again. I’ll never create a business as successful again as the ones in my past. That...
It’s hard to fathom, but I’m marking the 5 year anniversary of a pivotal point in my life. In October 2017, I reached out to my business partner and co-founder, Geoff, and made a very difficult phone call. I had been avoiding him for years, for reasons unknown to me at the time. I didn’t know what to do about any of this, but I knew that continued avoidance was not the answer. I invited him to...
When the concept of an “Impossible Dream” was first introduced to me, it was my understanding that it be literally impossible. There’s no way to create 17 steps from here to there. It then becomes a place to come from, instead of a goal to get to. Who would I need to be, to be a person capable of this thing? And simply come from that place? One of my favorite exercises when talking...
This past week I received this private message from someone new to me. Upon receiving it, I realized this was the first time ever I had received a compliment directly for my work on the company I co-founded over 12 years ago, that has been used by tens of millions of people. I had made it impossible before that. This made me profoundly sad for the person I was for an entire decade. Initially, I...
I just watched the second of 2 documentaries about the disaster that was Woodstock ’99 (Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage on HBO and Trainwreck on Netflix. I thought the Netflix one was the better of the 2). It’s given me a lot to think and reflect on. For me it is a strong cautionary tale of what can happen when you think what the world needs is yesterday’s solution from yesterday’s people...
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...
If I’m honest with myself, I can see that much of the fear that holds me back today is not my fear of failing at something, but what would happen if it was successful. These are some of the voices currently in my head: I don’t want to create a formal program or offering because people might sign up for it and I’d be committed to running it.The more attention I bring to myself, the more people...
Chris is an electrifying storyteller that shares stories that impact the audience. What changes for you as you listen to his story?
“I just want to leave”, I managed to say, instead of agreeing to the sworn testimony the customs official wanted to collect from me. Later, he would ask me to sign something, and I refused. I couldn’t believe I was doing that. I was having an out of body experience as I did. Part of me was praising myself “Look at you! Look at you standing up for yourself!” It’s difficult to stand up to authority...
This week I attempted to enter the United States after being banned from entering 22 years ago (I wrote about it more in this previous post and even more exhaustively in my memoir). I didn’t succeed. They turned me back after detaining me for 3 hours. It was the scariest thing I’ve done in a long time, and it pretty much went how I worst feared it. It was a long shot that they’d let me in. I...
Robin and I are celebrating 25 years together this year (20 of those married). We often joke that we should write a relationship book, and I do think that will be a future book of mine. The early days of our relationship was documented in my memoir, and it was definitely a trial by fire. As young people with no support around them, we had to wrestle with Robin’s mental health crisis and...
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...
One thing that has become crystal clear to me is from my years of working through my imposter crisis is that I have an incredible understanding of “How” I best do things. I learned this because to overcome my crisis I had to switch from feeling like a fake to owning my successes. I learned how to identify my retroactively provable truths, some of which is documented in what I call my “Statement...
For the first time since I started my blog, in January 2018, I didn’t write a weekly article last week. That’s over 4 years and over 200 articles, week in and week out, not to mention publishing 2 autobiographical books. As I was thinking about what I might want to write about last week, I was inspired with the thought that the most difficult thing for me to do would be to not write and take a...
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 been dealing with a lot behind the scenes. One of the things I’m learning about myself is my natural habit of soldiering on in the face of huge adversity and not revealing to anyone else what is going on. I tend not to talk about the tough times in my life until they are in my past, and then they become stories I share. My challenge now is to share what I’m going through and allow myself to...
I’ve come to understand I’m a life-long learner, even though I don’t have a piece of paper with my name on it. One of the ways I enjoy learning is books. I’m particularly drawn to books that are not on the best sellers lists. Here are some of the books I’ve read recently and what some of my takeaways were. Ask Iwata : Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s Legendary CEO Iwata was CEO of...
“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...
This week’s article has taken more effort than usual. I’ve started and stopped over a half a dozen attempts. Maybe I’ll come back to them when my inspiration is better. I scrolled through the last year of daily journaling looking for inspiration and topics that I’ve not already written about. I could feel the pressure I was putting on myself to get it done. And yet, nothing was happening. The...