Getting Work To Work

In the 10 years I've been producing Getting Work To Work, I've had the privilege to talk to and learn from business owners in unexpected industries and niches, but today is a first: business insights from the world of premium chicken coops. Matt DuBoise is on a mission to build the world's best chicken coops alongside his family, employees, and customers at Carolina Coops. In this conversation, he shares what it takes to build a business and the best product possible, while also becoming the best leader for his team. Matt also touches on how competition drives excellence, what entrepreneurs need today in order to build a business of the future, why dreaming harder than you're working is the secret to success, how entrepreneurship has affected his body, mind, and spirit, his creative process and how he works with his team, and the impact fun has on both a team and the end product. Matt is energetic, passionate, and full of wisdom we desperately need in an age of cheap and quick advice.

It's 3:00 in the afternoon and I just finished the second leg of my journey to Tredegar, Wales. Initially, the plan was that after the plane and train, a taxi would take me to my hotel. But things were changing fast, so I sat down on a bench and waited to hear from my travel companions. A random stranger sat next to me, and for over an hour, we talked about politics, geography, and classic rock. Leading up to the trip, anxiety kept me up at night. I feared situations like this. But the deeper I got into the trip, the freer I felt. We eventually got to the hotel after planes, trains, automobiles, and a brief tour of an ironworks museum. It was a memorable trip, for a lot of reasons, but don't worry, I'm not going to bust out the slide projector and share everything. However, I do want to share seven lessons I learned traveling way beyond my comfort zone.

It's that time of the year when gough, a blind filmmaker from Australia, rolls out a new project at BeernutsProductions.com and shows up on Getting Work To Work to tell me all about it. With linens and orchids in hand, he makes his 28th appearance on the show to talk about Alien Invasion, an audio piece that showcases an alien's perspective of humans, panda bears, horses, whales, and hyenas, not to mention the absolute absurdity of Earth. We talk about our favorite alien-themed shows, why he normally doesn't have bloopers, why the best comedy is rooted in truth, celebrating 20 years of Beernuts Productions and what he's most proud of, and as always, a glimpse into how he comes up with joke after joke, project after project.

What does art restoration have in common with the search for meaning, traumatic memories, and writing? Today's guest is Julie Esther Fisher, a fiction writer and poet, and she answers that question through telling stories about her creative journey through writing poetry, short stories, and now a novel. Her latest book, A Pearl is Just an Accident, is a novel-in-stories that, as described on her website, centers on "Eliza James, a paintings conservator whose work restoring damaged art mirrors her search for meaning within the fractures of her own past." In our conversation, Julie connects her curiosity to her childhood and learning to see both for survival and sustenance. She shares her fascination with what lies beneath the surface, the importance and reverence of silence, nature as a refuge, becoming an art restoration apprentice, looking for clues in her work that tell her what it wants to be, the two jobs of writing—explorer and critic—and why they should be separate, how lived experience fuels art, and why the novel-in-stories structure mirrors the way traumatic memory works. No matter what types of creativity you wield, Julie's wisdom in this episode will speak to you and help you find what you need.

Where do ideas come from? When do you know an idea is worth bringing to life? What if you aren't qualified? How do you keep going in the face of endless rejection? These are but a handful of questions at the heart of my conversation with inventor, businessman, and founder of Leatherman, Tim Leatherman. His latest project, The Leatherman Book: Stories, Lessons, and Advice from the Inventor of America's Original Multi-Tool, just hit the shelves and it's honestly one of the best business books I've ever read. It's got practical advice that actually helps, stories from Tim's perspective as well as his customers, and that extra bit of encouragement that entrepreneurs need when they set out to bring their ideas to life. In our conversation, Tim also shares insights into writing the book, wisdom he has earned from his own entrepreneurial journey, what we often forget to do when setting goals, and the value of a positive attitude and a sense of humor.

Have you ever read a non-fiction book and wondered, "Why haven't I learned about this before?" Molly Guptill Manning's new book, A Librarian's War: The Man Who Fought World War II with Books and Brought the Joy of Reading to Millions, had me saying that from page one as I learned about Ray Trautman, Chief Army Librarian in World War II, and how he brought books to millions of soldiers in the war. It's the power of books that this conversation is all about. Books not only have a net positive effect on our lives, but a literate and well-read society is essential for the survival of democracy. Molly and I also talk about where her love for reading and history come from, how curiosity, trust, and patience help her to discover overlooked history and unknown stories to write about, why history is relevant to today, why our mind diet is just as important as what we eat, and the value of a good education.

Every episode, I end with the same phrase, "Until next time, may creativity and curiosity fuel your life." Lately, I haven't felt curious and the tank certainly feels empty. So, what's the point of saying that phrase when curiosity seems to have left the building and all that's left is a rut-filled routine? Well, like any affirmation, repeating it helps keep the truth in the forefront of the mind: curiosity is the most valuable action you can take every single day. Asking someone how they're doing, going to the library and checking out a book, staring at the leaves falling to the ground, smelling the heavenly scent of cinnamon rolls baking in the oven, sitting back and hearing the sounds that make up your favorite album, it doesn't take much to break free from obligation and enter into a state of levity and exhalation. That lightness you feel, like you are floating through the sky filled with wonder and delight, that's the value of curiosity and we all need it. Oh, and in case you were wondering what the second most valuable action you need to do every day is, it's stretching and anyone over 40 knows what I'm talking about.

Recently, I called the non-emergency line for my county's sheriff department and guess who picked up on the second ring? That's right, our good friend, the cheerful AI assistant. There might have been a generic name like Claire assigned to the bot—sorry to all the Claires out there, trust me, it doesn't get more generic than Chris—but it took me a minute to realize I needed to say something to move the prompt forward. This interaction, among others, got me thinking about our societal dependence on artificial intelligence. There's a lot of talk about opting out, but when it's already infiltrated into our daily lives, is that even possible? There are endless questions—many of which I hope people in positions of power are asking beyond merely acquiring power and profit—but today, I want to explore a troublesome component of AI that I just now started to experience: micromanagement by AI. It's subtle, and you might not even realize it's happening to you, but it is.

For the past ten years, a common theme on this podcast is learning. Whether we are learning something new or diving deeper into our craft, the ability to experiment and evolve our abilities lead to new ideas and expertise. This sounds like a great way to bring a sense of purpose to our lives, but a sobering question keeps me up at night: what if our society no longer values new ideas and expertise? What if original thought and mastery is no longer valued, or even possible, because as a society we can't focus longer than a second, addicted to dopamine and existential whiplash? What will become of us when what takes us months can be done by technology in minutes? Think for a moment what we learn in the months, or even years, working on a project. We try something and fail, over and over, until it clicks. Then we repeat the process until finally the project is done. Yes, it satisfies some business objective, but more importantly, our expertise grows. The sobering reality is that we don't learn in minutes, we learn in months. We learn through failure. So, in a world that worships tools that enable supersonic productivity, the question we must wrestle with is this: How will we learn?

When was the last time you listened to the small voice of intuition? You know the one, the voice that gets you a little excited when considering something new. As creatives, we often find ourselves ignoring it for a variety of reasons. We shove it aside in favor of certainty. We faithfully follow our routines until they become ruts. We chase trends instead of original ideas. Before we know it, intuition and knowing has disappeared. This line of thought is a taste of today's conversation with h.h. rune, a multi-dimensional author, artist, and dancing TikToker. We also explore asking for what you need, accepting what you don't know, how her studies show up in her work, the forgotten history that finds a way into her stories, why books are the subversive platform of the future, the challenge of building an audience who engage with our work, the creative nuggets that stay with her over time, and the limiting nature of categorization. If you are an independent producer in any artistic medium, you're going to get a lot out of today's episode.