The Gently Mad

So much great stuff in this episode. I first heard about Christa because of he latest album which covers songs from Nirvana, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins and U2. All favorite bands from over the last 20 years of my life.

I'd been listening to the album on repeat when I decided to reach out to her and see if she'd be interested in coming on the show. I'm so glad she said yes. Like my conversation with Donald Miller, we talked about the art itself, but so much more than just that.

Christa is a deep thinker and I loved talking with her about art and artifice, business, the idea of the "tortured artist", and many so much more.

Every artist in an entrepreneur and I loved getting Christa's take on these topics.

As always, I had a great time talking to Christa. Enjoy the show!

@ChristaWells
ChristaWellsMusic.com
Christa on iTunes
Christa on Rdio

Damn him and his productivity! Just kidding. I enjoyed getting to know him and talk about what it's like to run a website full-time at that age. As well as his plans for getting published and retiring by the time he's 40.

As always, I had a great time talking to Thomas. Enjoy the show!

@TomFrankly
CollegeInfoGeek.com

“Why do I keep doing this?”, I thought. I would like to think I’ve matured in 15 years, but I’ve been repeating the same all-nighter-before-a-deadline pattern since college.

It worked fine then when the stakes weren’t as high. But now I have a family to support and bills to pay and every time I pull an all-nighter to meet a deadline, it wreaks havoc on my schedule, not to mention my health (it takes a lot longer to recover at 35 than it did at 20).

Sure, it’s my first product and I vastly underestimated how much time it would take to make, but you would think I would have learned this lesson by now.

I’ve plowed through half-a-dozen different careers since I was 20, but this whole deadline thing is the common element that connects them all together.

Procrastination is something I’ve never been able to shake. But this time, as I look back over the last 90 days, I see a lot of things I wish I had done differently and hope I can do differently the next time.

Here are 10 of them:

What? Surely you mean spend more time planning, Adam. Nope. Planning, for me, is the thing I do to convince myself I’m not procrastinating, that I’m actually getting shit done. I’m great at planning and organizing. But if I’m honest, I only do that to avoid actually doing the Work. It’s a form of Resistance, as Steven Pressfield would say. It masquerades as progress, but in reality it’s just another thing that keeps me from doing the real work. Which brings me to number 2.

I look at all the hours I’ve spent during the last 90 days. If I had just forced myself to do the real work of creating every day, I would have been finished way ahead of deadline. Instead, I let myself get sidetracked and distracted by all the urgent things that pop up, instead of doing the important things.

Freedom can be a double-edged sword. I like not having a set schedule, but if the Work is going to get done, it must be scheduled and given priority.

Every time I sat down to focus, something would happen. My server would go down. A client would email with an urgent need. I would get stuck on a call. I’d have a fight with my wife. And before I knew it, the whole day was gone.

The truth is, I let this happen. Looking back, there were so many things that seemed huge and loud (and out of my control) at the time, but could have waited until the Work was done.

Urgent things tended to overrun my schedule because my schedule wasn’t small enough. I gave myself way too much room to “be comfortable”. It’s not enough to say, “Tuesday I will get the Work done.” It will never happen. Because at 3p.m. my mind will tell me there’s still more “Tuesday” left.

My schedule needs to be as close to hourly as it can be. It would have been much harder to wrangle out of “Tuesday from 8a.m. - 10a.m.”.

This sounds like a preference, right? It’s not, if you want to get the Work done. My irregular sleeping patterns were a huge part of why I couldn’t make or stick to a tighter schedule. If I’m going to create from 8a.m. - 10 a.m. or whatever the schedule is, the non-working parts of my life have to be scheduled as well.

I know all this scheduling sounds depressing. We became entrepreneurs because we wanted freedom from the 9-5, right? That’s what I told myself for five years. And I’m still exactly where I started. That’s depressing.

The first time I talked to Jason about being on the show was more than a year ago. But we finally made it happen and he has quite a story.

There was a lot we didn’t have time to get to, but I really enjoyed what we did discuss.

Jason has been with Envy Labs since nearly the beginning. He helped build the company’s product, Code School, which they recently sold for $36 million.

I was interested to know what it was like moving into the role of CEO, how he handles the pressure and, honestly, if he really enjoys it. And Jason didn’t disappoint.

As always, I had a great time talking to Jason. Enjoy the show!

@jasonvanlue
jasonvanlue.com

As an interviewer myself, I count myself as one of Andrew Warner's many fans. It was great to sit down with him and ditch all the facades of business and tactics and get right down to personal struggles we both face.

Andrew "created Mixergy to help ambitious people who love business as much as I do learn from a mix of experienced mentors. I do that through interviews where founders tell their stories and courses where they teach a solution to issues that can cripple founders."

As always, I had a great time talking to Andrew. Enjoy the show!

@andrewwarner
Mixergy.com

If you don't know Myke, he's the British guy you keep hearing on podcasts. He has been talking in to a microphone since 2010 and lives just outside of London, England with his sticker-covered MacBook Pro.

Enjoy part 2 of my conversation with Myke Hurley!

@iMyke
Relay.FM

We talked about Myke's dream of being a full-time podcaster, the multi-year journey to get there and the new challenges he faces now that he is there.

If you don't know Myke, he's the British guy you keep hearing on podcasts. He has been talking in to a microphone since 2010 and lives just outside of London, England with his sticker-covered MacBook Pro.

Myke is an inspiration to keep at it no matter how difficult.

This is the first TGM two-parter. Yes, I'll be back on Friday with the second half of our conversation.

As always, I had a great time talking to Myke. Enjoy the show!

@iMyke
Relay.FM

We talked about the illusiveness of success and the exhaustion of always trying to attain it, as well as what happens when we finally let go and just be who we are.

For Josh, it comes down to being willing to ask for help and "humiliate" oneself.

I can't even describe how great this conversation was (all due to Josh). Whether you're struggling or not, this one is worth your time.

Josh has been a public speaker since he was 17. He toured with Bill Cosby when he was still a kid, used to be on MTV’s Total Request Live, and just recently had his own TV show with Oprah’s executive producer.

He now runs a seven-figure business as a “youths” speaker and founder of Youth Speaker University.

Here are some of my favorite bits from the show:

"One thing I’ve done that I really think has made a difference, it isn’t sexy, it’s not the answer that people would like, it’s just I’m willing to be self aware enough to where I’m great and where I’m terrible. And I don’t wallow in it. That means I can go and get a little bit better at that."

"Here’s what it comes down to to me: timely selfishness. To me selfishness is something that has negative connotation, but if you’re gonna be selfish, you need to be selfish at the start of the road, not once you’re down the road. From the get go, be very clear on who you are, who you’re not, what you bring to the table, what you don’t bring to the table, so that people can choose you and know what they’re getting into and be clear about that."

“The issue is never, 'can I trust myself when I’m thinking clearly?', when I’m at 80 percent, it’s those 10 or 20 percent days. I cannot count on myself on those days."

"All inspiration is temporary courage. So when I feel that, I try to, as best I can, push myself as far down the road as I can, because I know come the next day or next week or whenever, it’s going to eventually fade."

"If you think you can do this marathon, whatever that marathon means to you, either a) overnight or b) by yourself, you are without question (and this is not an insult to your talent, to your intelligence, to your perseverance) you are inevitably setting yourself up for failure."

“What I wish I could have figured out sooner was just to humiliate yourself in front of a handful of people and you won’t look like an idiot in front of the bigger group of people. You’ll be ready, you’ll have a healthier perspective, you’ll have the right heart and intention, but also the strategy and steps in place so that your pure, good idea actually has a shot of living and moving forward."

"Often times the very things that have helped us survive the difficulties in our life, later become a hindrance. Because my stubbornness, my relentlessness, my thick skin, my unattachment to anybody and anything and any outcome, is the very reason I survived the foster care system. But then later, when the game is no longer survival, but improvement and progress, that became my greatest hindrance."

As always, I had a great time talking to Josh. Enjoy the show!

My wife joined me on the show for the first time. As usual, her perception is painfully accurate and and advice, spot on. I enjoyed having her on the show with me.

The thing that inspired me to reach out to Matt was a blog post he wrote about how much he hates all the bullsh*t buzzwords and egotistical fakery that seems to fill our industry. Sound familiar?

Matt is the creator of SwimUniversity.com and a number of popular and funny rap videos. His new project is all about coffee.

We hit it off right away and this was a really fun conversation. As much as it pains me to say it, there were a lot of takeaways as well, for those of who listen for that sort of thing. ;)

As always, I had a great time talking to Matt. Enjoy the show!

@mattgiovanisci
MattGiovanisci.com
RoastyCoffee.com
SwimUniversity.com