The Pathless Path with Paul Millerd

This episode is with Sky King, the founder of Modern Stoa, a podcast advertising company for podcasters.  His path is fascinating - he grew up in Hawaii, rarely wore shoes, was heavily influenced by Asian culture, had a father who was retired, and somehow ended up in a massive corporation right after college.  In 2016. he became fascinated by how the media was shaping the 2016 US election and decided it was time to act.  From a cold email to Ryan Holiday to helping build Aubrey Marcus' podcast, Sky was on his way.  His long-term vision is to build an alternative to traditional advertising in audio.

We talk about this and a lot more including:

• Why he quit a good job to work at a smoothie bar
• How a cold email to Ryan Holiday changed his life
• Growing up in Hawaii
• Serendipitous events that lend to him moving to Austin
• The future of Audio

Links Mentions

• Modern Stoa
• Sky's Podcast (Paid) or RMRK.app
• The Gray Lady Winked
• The Brass Check
• @consumersky (twitter)

CrowdHealth: You ditched the traditional path… why haven’t you ditched your traditional health insurance Experience the freedom and affordability of cash payments and community-funded healthcare with CrowdHealth. Use promo code “Boundless” during sign-up for a special discounted subscription offer. Sign Up Here

Timestamps

• 1:41: Intro to Sky and where his name came from
• 5:03: Sky's influences growing up
• 11:34 Why he went to the corporate world
• 17:12 Cold emailing Ryan Holiday & vision for 
• 19:47 Sky's "quake moment"
• 25:15 Moving to Austin and working for Aubrey Marcus
• 30:44 Sky's desire to help people 
• 32:55 Growing up in Hawaii
• 36:10 Going to China at 10
• 39:30 Everything anywhere all at once reflections
• 44:40 The "true default path"
• 47:30 Hiring someone & responsibility
• 48:30 "what are you uniquely positioned to do?"
• 49:20 Advertising Subsidy & Media incentives
• 57:20 Meme farming & future of audio
• 1:01:30 Bucky Fuller & specialization

📕Buy Paul’s Book (Published Jan 2020): The Pathless Path 

📲Connect + Follow Paul

• Twitter: @p_millerd 
• Paul’s Newsletter: Subscribe to Boundless 
• Paul’s YouTube: Subscribe 

🙏Further Ways To Support The Podcast:

• Become a sponsor of the Podcast / Newsletter
• Want to upgrade your Zoom studio? Check out Kevin Shen’s Dream Studio Course
• Want to launch a course? Podia or Teachable are both great
• Web Hosting: Skystra Fast WordPress Hosting
• Host your own community" Circle 14-day free trial

Being an undeclared major till his senior year of college, Lawrence didn’t really know what he wanted to do. After looking up which jobs make the most money, he decided to declare as an economics major, leading him to explore Investment Banking. While he didn’t end up working in investment banking, he was still pulled by the power of prestige, something he says “is a drug, and is most potent” when you are young and looking at schools. Over a number of years and experiments with music and creating and writing, he slowly started to figure out a better path forward for him. After leaving the corporate world for a second time, Lawrence finally found a calling - writing on his blog: More To That where he uses visual storytelling to express his ideas of pursuing alternative paths, sharing ideas, and creating online. 

Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include: 

How To Find Lawrence:

CrowdHealth: You ditched the traditional path… why haven’t you ditched your traditional health insurance Experience the freedom and affordability of cash payments and community-funded healthcare with CrowdHealth. Use promo code “Boundless” during sign-up for a special discounted subscription offer. Sign Up Here 

Audio Timestamps 

Buy Paul’s Book (Published Jan 2020): The Pathless Path 

Connect + Follow Paul 

Further Ways To Support The Podcast: I support the following services and recommend and/or use all of the following 

I offer a short little update on the next steps for the podcast and include a live Q&A I did on youtube last week.

Video link: https://youtu.be/CGbw7Q8hoys

Tim Malnick has always lived between the two worlds of business and creative/activist circles.  In his twenties, he stumbled into a creative group of young people, of which “none of them following the obvious path.”  This gave him a lot of confidence that different kinds of paths were possible and enabled him to offer a diversity of perspectives that he was able to bring to many different environments.

One of the things he spends a lot of time on now is helping people transcend their relationship with money.  He runs The Money Workshop with people helping them explore the scripts people have with money and realized that people have one of two orientations towards the world:

#1 The Money Path: “One day when I sorted this out I’ll get to do what I want”

#2 The Life Path: “Do what you love and the more you follow it you will have your needs met with and without money”

Which one are you?

Learn More About Tim’s work here 👉 Different Space - Transformational learning & development by Tim Malnick

New to Reimagine Work?  Learn more about Paul here

JUST LAUNCHED: 📕The Pathless Path

Paul Canetti is a professor at Columbia Business School and sits on the Strategic Advisory Board of Riverside Acceleration Capital. We explore his initial passion for music growing up, how he became an accidental founder, and how he's exploring his relationship with work after exiting his startup.  

He also hosts Tech News for MBAs

----

New to Reimagine Work?  Learn more about Paul here

JUST LAUNCHED: 📕The Pathless Path

I talked with writer and writing coach Sasha Chapin about the role of writing in our lives, how we think about writing, and how he specifically helped with my process in the book.

Check out Sasha here: Sasha Chapin (imsashachapin.com)

& Buy Paul's Book https://think-boundless.com/the-pathless-path/

Join Khe's Supercharge Your Productivity course: https://10k.radreads.co/join-syp11/yzrsv (affiliate)

Get access to Khe's $10k training which will help you wander towards the pathless path: https://radreads.co/millerd

From a live event where Paul & Khe talk about their shared journeys of self-employment, creating online & more

Just launched my book, The Pathless Path! 

Purchase the book here.

This is the introduction of the book.

I'll be releasing some clips of me reading the book and will eventually publish an audio book.

Kris Abdelmessih has one of the most unique perspectives on life and works I've stumbled across in the past few years.  He uses his experience as a trader to look at decision-making and work investments through the lens of options, pricing, and other financial models.  I enjoy his perspective because unlike other financial types, he seems to have a proper appreciation of non-work / non-productive time.

We explore his recent break from trading, his creative journey writing on the internet, and finding his people, and he challenges me to think differently about how I'm spending my time with my work.

The conversation dramatically shifted how I'm thinking about the possibilities of my path.  If you are on a self-employed path, this is a must-listen:

• For Kris' newsletter: Party at the Moontower - (moontowermeta.com)

------------

SUPPORT BOUNDLESS

Subscribe to the weekly Boundless newsletter to stay up to date on new episodes and join the conversation.

🆕 I launched Freelance Consulting Skills Course.  You can find out more and sign up here.

If you'd like to support the podcast, consider using my affiliate links

• Podia - 14-day free trial
• Teachable - 14-day free trial
• Wealthfront - $5k managed for free
• ConvertKit - First 1k subscribers for free
• Charles Schwaab No International ATM Fees

Howard Gray is the founder of Wavetable, a studio that helps brands and companies come together to develop fan-based experiences to help teams teach and share ideas.

The two things that drive him are to "create space for people to do the work they want to do" and to help people "make sense of the world and overcome the tension of putting things out in the world"

We dive into his idea of the formless path, why the creator economy is in danger of being hijacked, how he sees himself as a guide rather than as a creator, and why fatherhood is helping him "sharpen" his focus.

Links Mentioned

SUPPORT BOUNDLESS

Subscribe to the weekly Boundless newsletter to stay up to date on new episodes and join the conversation.

🆕 I launched Freelance Consulting Skills Course.  You can find out more and sign up here.

If you'd like to support the podcast, consider using my affiliate links