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?
We’re surrounded by overwhelming marketing messages online from gurus all promising to teach you their easy paths to success. Now, here I am undertaking a very real challenge of creating and releasing a book in 60 days. I have no doubts I will be successful. The thing is, yes this is a very real challenge, and yes it is going from idea to publishing within 60 days, AND there’s no way I’d ever...
This past week I was inspired to complete my next book. There’s a feeling I get sometimes, of “Fait Accompli”, and knowing that something will happen with complete confidence. I sensed it, and decided to take it on fully. I’ve had some clarity recently on who it is I want to help. In the end, it’s always a version of me. I’m the greatest expert on myself. I...
Pinball has been a hobby of mine for almost 10 years. “A world under glass” is often how each game is described. There’s something really engaging about watching all the physical interactions of the ball, as it moves around the playfield, up ramps and down again, getting rocked around by pop bumpers, the lights flashing in your face, the “clackity clack” noise of all the solenoids firing. The...
Despite my best efforts, I still fall into comparing myself with others and then feeling less than. It happened this past week. I was doing a bit of research on podcasts I might want to guest on. I did some searches around the idea of life after you leave your business. I found some, and then I started seeing the little bios of the successful “exits” of the guests. Here’s the thing – I’ve...
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...
My wife, Robin, and I have been doing weekly couples therapy for the past year. We started just before the covid lockdowns hit in March 2019 and we still see our therapist together on Zoom every week. Our goal was after over 20 years together, we both aspired to grow our relationship to a place we don’t even know exists. It will only be knowable when looking back. I want to look back 5 years from...
At the depths of my crisis, my acute imposter syndrome, my overwhelming anxiety, it got to the point where I felt you could hold a gun to my head and order me to do the work I needed to do, and it still wouldn’t get done. You would have to kill me and I would accept my death. The fact that I was making millions of dollars during this same time period compounded everything to me. I couldn’t...
There’s a feeling I trigger often in people. Maybe you’ve experienced it yourself. When you’ve been in the audience for one of my events, one of my Zooms, read one of my articles, or watched a video of mine. I didn’t even realize I was doing it, until very recently. It was instinctive in me, I make myself feel good when I do it, without realizing it. My superpower is: I elicit awe in people. I do...
I used to carry so much shame about my failures. I never spoke them. I hid them from the world. I projected my strengths and hid my weaknesses. I only spoke about my victories. Yes, that sort of works, and it will impress some types of people, but at some point it just wasn’t working for me anymore. It fed my imposter syndrome. My list of failures I carried like the chains the character Marley...
I was sharing with someone this week some advice. If I had to share only one thing, it would be these 3 words: “What scares me?” That prompt is responsible for so many of the big stories in my life. I did the scary thing, and something incredible happened. And here’s the actual scary truth of it: Once done, that thing ended up being no big deal. It’s amazing how big a...
I can’t remember when I first had the idea for my memoir, Requiem for my Rave. I realized at some point I had such a unique story and so much mayhem, it could fill a book. I think it was only as my DJ career was winding down did I realize I had an “ending” now and could start thinking about the book. In 2005 I spoke publicly about it for the first time, of my intention to write it. I started the...
Every time I get caught in a thinking trap about what I’m thinking I “should” be doing or am supposed to be doing, it’s because I’ve fallen into comparing myself with other people. I’ve never sold a company. I don’t know how to “exit”. Everything I’ve ever done in the past I ran until I was complete and I moved on and did something else. I abdicated instead of delegated and reduced my role...
At the worst of the depths of my imposter syndrome I felt like Bernie Madoff. I had fooled the world, or at least that is what I thought. It was only a few years ago, as I looked for things to do with myself, I didn’t even feel qualified to judge a high school business competition. Seeing those teenagers in their suits and ties, future MBA students, and here I was, the high school drop out...
I recently was watching the movie Kill Bill on Netflix. I saw it when it was new and was enjoying revisiting it. There was a scene that jumped out at me with new gravitas. It was a scene between “Bill” (played by David Carradine) and “The Bride” (played by Uma Thurman). This is a transcript of the monologue from that scene. Bill As you know, l’m quite keen on comic books...
I’m really practiced at gratitude. It’s with me all the time. I took an entire year to practice gratitude and that lesson has stayed with me in an automatic way. These past couple of weeks there’s been a lot of articles and discussions marking the anniversary of when everything changed from covid. My local newspaper had a headline that I found particularly striking:...
After writing for my blog for over 3 years and 170 articles, I have come to some truths about myself. I value peace and freedom in my life above everything.I’m in a privileged place where I don’t have to do anything (I recently started thinking of myself as “retired”).I live a decelerated life.I like using technology, but try to avoid being used by it. That means I don’t use any social media...
By 2012 my life was on a trajectory I hadn’t experienced before. Real financial stability. I had huge monthly dividends arriving, had moved out of my apartment, had a bank account flush with cash and for the first time in my life nothing to worry about. There was one fly in the ointment though – my brain was so conditioned to worry, to my precarious life, to living on the edge, that...
“I’ll work for free” was how I got my first job. At age 12 I walked into a newly opened computer and video game store and somehow had the courage to ask for a job. When I was turned down, working for free was my solution. They accepted. I worked for free for the next several months, then below minimum wage (because I wasn’t even at legal working age). I was paid $3.00 an hour, when minimum wage...
There are 92 people on the email list for this blog. Of that, approximately 35% open each email. That gives me a weekly readership of 32 people. By any standard metric that seems tiny. Email lists are generally measured in thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions. Followers on social media sites are measured the same way. 32 people reading what I have to say barely...
During the years I felt like an imposter, I was under tremendous fear of my ideas being ripped off. I would go through such lengths to hide and obfuscate my innovations. At the time I believed it was the only thing I had. That if someone copied it, I was useless/worthless/replaceable. Recently I watched someone share in public their business building strategy. I know this person, have spoken to...
Some time ago a coach I knew shared a story with me about the year he spent volunteering in a homeless shelter. One day this homeless man came in, with absolutely no possessions except 3 plastic bags. He had been robbed at a park, all his meager possessions were stolen. His one remaining possession was an old cell phone. The robbers had taken it, it dropped on the ground and the battery fell off...
I was recently watching The Chef Show on Netflix. It’s hosted by Jon Favreau (Movie director of Iron Man, Lion King, The Jungle Book, actor). He was visiting Wolfgang Puck’s steakhouse in Las Vegas, and was grilling steaks in front of Wolfgang. He then handed one of them off to Wolfgang to inspect. Wolfgang cut it open, saw the perfect medium rare, and then they had this exchange: Wolfgang: Jon...
Disclosure: Today’s article came about from asking myself these 2 writing prompts: 1) What do I need to hear most right now? 2) What scares me? And then I was inspired to write about my Impossible Dream. I did a quick search of my blog and I see it’s never been written about before. So something in me has held back sharing it openly. I’ve written in the past how a favorite...
“Woah… I stopped hearing anything you said after that first sentence”, said my friend on Zoom. I was sharing the outline of what might be my next book, about my crippling Imposter Syndrome and how I learned to get over it and love myself. “Which one? That you can’t feel like a fake unless you’ve done something?” “Yes. Holy crap, my life just shifted. You know those moments of insight when they...
I have decided 2021 will be the greatest year of my life. How that will be exactly, I don’t know. It will be incredible because I will make it incredible. I will control the things I have control over, and like the AA prayer, accept the things that I don’t and the wisdom to know the difference. I will live aligned with myself and who I am. I will create from that place. I will do things that...