Mike Hilson has been playing at my bar for years and years. Usually it's with the duo Mike & Jay, but occasionally it's been with the Austin Buescher Band, or a solo show. We talk about how he makes his way through the gig economy. It's a fun conversation with a music performance in the middle.

Thanks to The White Wall Sessions for becoming a new sponsor!

So when you produce a podcast, you get two frequently asked questions.... #1, can you help me produce my podcast? And #2, what podcasts do you listen to.

On today's bonus episode, I thought we'd address #2. I listen to podcasts from about 6am - 3pm and 9pm - 11pm every day! Here are some of my favorites. Mentioned are:

The Lanyard

Nathan Johnson grew up on a dairy farm in Crofton, Nebraska. He wanted to be in political science. His "master's degree" in it didn't come from a formal program (he tried that), but rather through years of observing as a journalist and then running for city commission. He is now serving his second term as mayor of Yankton. 

We spent a lot of time talking about how to make rural America's towns great and what it takes to attract and keep young people.

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Carla White grew up on the farm near Salem, SD. Somehow she found herself working with the Pentagon, Microsoft, NASA, and more. But when things weren't going well for her, she started a new daily habit. That habit became an iPhone app at a time when very few people knew how to make an app. It changed her personal life and her career.

John Meyer and I go back a long way. As you'll hear in this interview, we first met via Twitter probably in 2009. There weren't many of us using Twitter at that time, especially in South Dakota. Over the years I've watched John create great businesses and a ton of "side hustles." He has always been a source of inspiration for me; I love anyone trying to create community and business -- I really love it when they are doing it at or near the place they grew up in.

In this interview we talk about the many businesses / projects John worked on, about getting better every day, and about how to hire and keep talent.

Larry Ness was working at a bank in Mitchell, South Dakota when he saw a print ad looking for a president of a struggling bank in Yankton. He put his name in the hat and the rest is history, as they say. But that struggling bank (the oldest in Dakota Territory) had one location and $40 million in assets; today that bank has 19 locations and $1.7 billion in assets. A lot of that can be traced to the actions of Larry. We talk about how he did it and how to build successful communities.

Larry is, no doubt, one of my business idols and I was really excited to sit down and chat with him.

1 Million Cups is a weekly meeting for where entrepreneurs tell their stories and talk about the businesses they are building. So when I was asked to present about The Lanyard podcast, I thought it would be more fun to just broadcast a live show to the audience. I brought in my friend Matt Fockler, an amazing singer songwriter from Montrose, South Dakota.

Matt graced us with performances of four of his original songs:

- Do You Dream

Recorded at Discovery Church in Yankton.

I was so excited to sit down and talk with Sarah Werner. She has the Write Now podcast and the audio drama Girl in Space. She's definitely one of the early pioneers of podcasting and probably the most successful podcaster in the area. You may have read her articles on Forbes. You may know her from technology conferences. It was a fun conversation about writing, reading, and podcasting.

Will Bushee is a lot of things. He's a tech guy who has worked in data mining, he's helped startups, and he's held countless coding camps for kids. He's working to bring coding to girls and minorities. He's a hacker who has rewired Alexa to say some interesting things. He gets more done than most and we talked about the education, mentorship, and decisions that have made it all possible.

It's a fun discussion with a lot of business lessons.