The Pathless Path with Paul Millerd

Andy Sparks founded a company called Holloway, which is trying to solve the problem of sharing knowledge online.  He shared how his startup is trying to combine beauty, writing & deep knowledge to complex topics like Venture Capital and Hiring.  

We talk about his journey, how he started writing, the professor that changed his life in college and how his father has influenced his approach to work & life.  He also shares how he thinks about "a lake" as a metaphor for life and how he stays in touch with friends in a vulnerable way.

We talk about:

Learn more about Holloway here or subscribe to Good Work

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" coworking at its best isn’t an occupancy based business at all. If the only time your members can get value from their membership is when they’re in the room, you’re limiting the potential of your community "

Alex Hillman runs one of the longest running co-working spaces in the world - Indy Hall - in Philadelphia.  He thinks the word "coworking" has lost some of its meaning and that many companies are running "spreadsheet businesses" rather than cultivating community.

"That level of dependence on a single employer is brittle at best and dangerous at worst. And that single source of 50,000 jobs being Amazon, who is notoriously one of the most ruthless businesses in the world, is the WORST worst way to generate those jobs. "

We also dive into Alex's working model of a new project, the 10k independents project.  Hear about why he thinks self-sufficient independents are better than Amazon (I tend to agree)

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Years ago, Ben wrote that his personal mission statement was “to help people reach their full potential” and our conversation touches on this theme in many different ways.  Ben is a former car rental pro turned consultant turned HR executive.  His work in HR landed him on the cover of Human Resource Executive but instead of staying on the path to CEO he decided to carve his own path.

Our conversation touches on a number of issues including coaching, entrepreneurship, how his relationship with work has evolves, management versus leadership and what he wants written on his tombstone.  Some other topics we touch on:

Links Mentioned:

Boundless: 

John Zeratsky was a designer in the tech industry has worked with hundreds of startups in his time at Google Ventures.  He’s also obsessed with redesigning time and thinking about what matters in life.  Earlier this year he just got back from 18 months living on his boat "Pineapple" with his wife sailing around Central America, which he wrote about in an article titled “What quitting my job to sail around central america taught me about fulfillment.” 

In this conversation we talk about:

Links Mentioned:

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Hannah Wei has been living as a digital nomad for the last four years traveling across the US, Canada and Southeast Asia.  When she is not working as a product consultant, she trains in Muay Thai, photographs people, and collaborates on local initiatives.  

In our conversation we touch on many things, including:

Follow Hannah

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I talked to Alastair Humphreys after he had returned the previous night from a micro-adventure.  It wasn't a four year biking trip or a challenging long walk across the desert (he's done that though!), but instead a short overnight camping trip with himself to re-connect with nature and his adventurous spirit.  He helps others think about how they can design similar micro-adventures to find joy in the "5 to 9" rather than doing everything in service of the 9 to 5.

Links Mentioned:

Want to support the podcast?  Offer a one-time or recurring donation on Boundless. 

After attending a few corporate recruiting sessions, he didn't take for granted that his path was to enter the corporate world.  Twenty years later, he is still carving his own path and has recently returned from Koh Lanta, where he lived with his three children in Thailand for the last six months. 

We Talked About

Links Mentioned:

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Heather McGowan is the most thoughtful writer and speaker I follow on the future of work. She is able to connect the dots between work, culture, society and identity in a way that has captured the attention of many individuals, companies and universities around the world. 

Heather’s career is also a perfect example of the type of path and work that was not possible in the past.  Reflecting on her path she admits “this field just sort of emerged.”  As her career has shifted more towards speaking, she has been able to design her life around learning.  Through her talks, she is able to get feedback and combined with her own curiosity, it helps her focus on what to learn next.  

In the working world, she focuses on how we can think about learning and work in a more holistic way and traces many challenges back to education.  She cites research from Gallup showing that: “while 74% of surveyed fifth-graders are engaged with school, just 32% of surveyed 11th-graders are engaged.”  Perhaps some of that disengagement is because people aren’t too excited about their job prospects.  She worries that organizations in the short-term are still too focused on productivity, which depersonalizes the experience of work.  As work increasingly becomes specialized - she calls it “atomization” - she fears that we will increasingly only focused on “explicit knowledge” instead of the deeper tacit knowledge that makes us special. 

Find out more about Heather's work here or follow her on Linkedin.

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Boundless

Rich fell in love with coding as a child but lost that passion when coding just turned into a job in the late 1990s.  As he looked around and saw everyone overwhelmed in his industry, he decided to take a different path.  He co-founded of Menlo Innovations in 2001 with a personal mission to end human suffering in the workplace.  He is also the author of two books Joy, Inc. and Chief Joy Officer. 

Hear about his company has achieved gender diversity in the workforce, introduced pay transparency, embraces pair-working methods across all functions and other transformative principles.

Links/Books Mentioned

Boundless (Learn More Here)

Jerel calls himself one of the original "job-hoppers."  While he never found a great fit in the corporate world, in the 1980s, he was inspired by Steven Covey to develop a "personal mission statement."  He used this to shape his decisions in life.

In the early 2000's he decided to shake it up and headed to China for what turned into a 14 year journey of learning and adventure.

To learn more about Jerel click here.

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