Mondays are for Creators

As the rain drips off the window behind me, I am taking a moment to shout out to people who are creating and continuing to create. Each person on this list inspires me, some in ways that are overt — others are a bit more subtle.

Brook Taylor (of Tommy and Brook) I had the pleasure of working with Brook for the most of the time I was at iHeart and she has always had a passion for a lot of things but sharing awesome recipes was high on that list. Right now she has her own food blog called “Cooking with Brook” currently she is in the middle of Crocktober enjoy and get cooking.

Myron Stanley — one of my favorite creators because he works in the film and comic book universe and in my office so I get to be around his creative brain all day long. His passion for the art is contagious and I could talk to him about comics and film for hours, he has such a fantastic spirit about the art You can catch some of his characters and what they are up to at Comic Fiction and look for his next film soon (I just got to see some sizzle reel footage and it looks amazing)

Jim Olson — Jim and I have been friends for, let’s call it 37 years for easy math. In that time Jim has been a constant source of inspiration. When we were both into the art of 90’s Marvel comics, he could draw…I could hobble together something art related. When we got into music, he could play anything and I…took a minute to discover drums is where I belonged. He is the type of guy that could be either endlessly maddening to be around because of how talented he is, or a treasure of inspiration. For me, he is the latter — a brilliantly sweet friend and amazingly talented. You can see some of his work here.

If you have ever wondered how/why I started “creating” things it would be fun to say it was my parents who inspired me but honestly, it was the fault of two people. One is Mark Ferguson who was my TV teacher in high school and was such an anchor to keep me grounded in that class and understand how GREAT productions are made and what it takes to keep a team together when things go wrong. He was the absolute best thing about high school and his passion for broadcasting forged an understanding of how to use tools to create and distribute messages in order to create a change in the viewer.

And the other is Dave Reid.

Dave and I have been friends as long as Jim and I have been but it was Dave in 1992 who introduced me to the internet and what it could do. After high school I went to Hope College and Dave went to Iowa State and one of the ways we stayed in contact was using the early internet. At that point he and I were both working in college radio, I at WTHS and he worked at KURE the Iowa State station. There was this buzz in the circles we were in about this new publishing format called “a zine” or a magazine for the web. We thought that we could put one together, we would call it 181 Degrees from the Norm (a geographic spin on 120 minutes which was on MTV at the time) and we would publish reviews of shows, CDs, interviews with people like d’arcy from the Smashing Pumpkins, Warren Cuccurullo from Duran Duran, Kevin Martin from Candlebox, the guys from Living Colour, and on and on. We were two kids who didn’t ask, we just shipped and that was all him.

Currently he is the co-founder of a company called Urban Milwaukee where he once again uses his passion to ignite change in the city he loves, Milwaukee, WI. He thinks deeply about mass transit, urban growth and renewal, and how a community grows by reinvesting in itself. You know who asked him to start this company? Nobody.

Tonight go start that blog, podcast, record that song, write that letter, just start something because there isn’t a better time to do so. If Dave and I had Facebook when we started that magazine, that uphill climb might have been less of an incline. You have every tool you need to create whatever you want with absolutely zero permission needed.

GO.

Mike Posner with James Altucher

Mike Posner has always been someone I genuinely root for from the time at WSNX when we brought him in to play Party in the Park, twice. He has had a fascinating story thus far and now that he is doing his own podcast his storytelling had gotten better. 

One of the things I have always loved about Mike is that he is a note writer and he has written a few to me over the years but this one is one of my favorites because he and Big Sean had a blast that night and you can almost feel it and for me, that is something that is I cherish is the ability to be a part of something cool for other people. 

This podcast is a very insightful one that I cannot recommend enough. 

You'll Never Catch the Bunnyman

Halloween is my favorite time of year, I love the costumes, I love the books, I love the shows, I love the movies and yes, I love the candy.

So I thought with 10 days before Halloween I would give you 10 things (in no particular order) to watch to before that spooky night.

1. Lore (Amazon Prime)
2. Get Out
3. It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown
4. Night of the Living Dead
5. The Babadook
6. IT (2017)
7. Stranger Things 2
8. Nosferato ( I LOVE this film…for being nearly 100 years old it is creepy as hell)
9. Ringu
10. Raw or The Descent ( you can pick )

I could do a list of 100 things for you to catch but these are some rock soild picks to get you started. If you have soemthing you would add or subtract I would love to hear about it.

Have a great Halloween.

Act Accordingly

I was talking to a friend last night who said, “it seems like you are having a rough year. Good news is…” I stopped him there. Sure this certainly has not been my favorite year personally or professionally as the trials have been tougher than most.

But I said, a bit more pragmatically, as you get older this is just what life is like. As you age you lose more people you love deeply, you get more scars, as you get more responsibility or success the work gets harder, the ask gets bigger, the expectations follow and when you fall down — and you will, it is a farther fall than when you are 20.

But then you get back up.

Imagine how you might change the way you lived your life if you got up each day and said this is the only day like today I get. This is part of a single lap, this is a page in my story, but I won’t get to see the finish. You may feel it morbid but I tend to think that if I get up every day and put weight into the seconds, the minutes, and hours of the day I can put more meaning in.

This isn’t about getting more out, it is about putting more back in. Spending more time with your kids, your wife, your friends. NOT doing things out of obligation, canceling anything you don’t want to do, socially speaking, because none of us have that kind of time to waste. Not one of us has that kind of time.

Think about someone you admire, someone you REALLY look up to.

Why? Why do you admire them?

Second question, have you seen them sulking around complaining about how life isn’t fair, or that they didn’t get a __________________ (insert want), or they wish they could _________________ (insert action)? Or do you admire their courage, their ability to take risks, their attitude towards challenges and friction, their superhuman ability to get more done in a day than you ever seem to?

My guess is that it might be the latter.

And the reason that they can seemingly get all of that done is because they understand what is at stake. They understand that time is a commodity not to be wasted for any reason. Time is a commodity that never gives a return, it ticks down until your account runs out and each one of our accounts has an unknown balance in them.

Sure it would be easier if you knew you would live to 53, 73. 89, or 106…but you don’t. So you have to attack the day like it owes you something and go make a mark because if you got to the end of this piece, you have something to contribute.

You get one lap, act accordingly.

Wedding Day, Every Day...

Today is a big day, my wife’s company is putting on their biggest event of the year; All That Glows. For the past couple years, she has worked at the Bengtson Center I have had the pleasure watching her do what she does best, experiential marketing.

Anything you have watched me pull off in the physical or experiential space is due to watching her work. She has a knack for knowing what people want to see in a physical space, understanding how many people can walk through a space with it feeling busy but not feeling tight or “crowded,” and most importantly she can nail surprise and delight.

Every person that gets to go tonight will leave loving the event, having a better connection to the brand, and moving them through to conversion. This is what brands want to do, this is what brands aim to do, this is what brands rarely get to do. Tonight, my wife will get to do it all again and she will make it look effortless – which is an absolute lie.

It is a lie because nobody does it alone, or at least not for long. You simply cannot scale in this new marketing world by yourself because it only takes one thing to go wrong and the process breaks. My wife has spent her career building relationships and networking so that she can create events like this as if it took an hour, but it took a lifetime. It takes a lifetime of coffee meetings, dinner conversations, networking events, chance meetings, or shared daycare to create a community that can create magic.

This is what she excels at, creating magic from community and tonight is another example of that. Event management is one of the hardest tentacles of the marketing universe because of the number of variables one must balance to make the day seem like nothing went wrong when likely everything went wrong because it often does. Honestly, it is one of the top reasons I left radio because I simply could not do another concert. The stress of pulling it off with the appearance of being effortless along with the little to no payoff for the bottom line of the station, growth of the brand, or increase to my own bottom line seemed like insanity to me.

This is why I have the utmost respect for anyone who chooses to do events for a living and much more respect for people like my wife who can pull it off by being kind, selfless, and generous during the entire process.  

I am excited to see what tonight holds because for as close as I am to this project, I have no idea what she and her team has in store – which is a wonderful place to be.