Positioning, Storytelling and Epitaphs for building a networ and career One of the inevitable obligations for celebrities launching a new film, book, or live tour is the press junket. The press junket ranges from long-form podcast interviews, to chat show appearances, or answering a few quickfire questions over email. A…
When is it hard to do, or easy to finish?
This can often be the case for freelancers doing work for a client. Hard to do as it’s not always aligned with our vision, our identity. We have to work to find the balance; fulfilling client requirements while injecting our own skills, style, and approach. The good news is this…
5 common myths about coaching
During my journey into coaching, first as a client and then as a coach, I’ve spent quite a bit of time navigating a landscape that can feel a little confusing. As coaching is still a relatively nascent area (particularly in certain countries, cultures and industries), a lot of people aren’t…
Workshop Slide Deck (guided): Lifecycles in products, companies, and careers
Introduction This is a workshop session I designed and facilitated in Summer 2018 (annotated and abbreviated version, with some classroom exercises and notes included for other educators to reference). Here’s the Slideshare version, although this annotated one is far better of course 😉 I created this as part of the growth…
On the guestlist: Making season 1 of the Tickets podcast
A few weeks ago I received an email from someone telling me they’d just finished the whole season of the Tickets podcast. There’s a mix of gratitude, pride, and slight trepidation in knowing someone has invested their time into something you’ve designed and created. In this case, it involved 10+…
Tickets Podcast: SXSW’s Todd Hansen on live event programming and spotting talent & trends
Listen now:Apple Podcasts | Castbox | Overcast | Spotify | Stitcher | Acast | Google Play In the Spring of 1987, a group of music fans and journalists organized a small live event in Austin, Texas. They were pleasantly surprised by its success – around 700 people showed up. That first edition of South by SouthWest has become a 10 day conference…
My Podcast Gear: recording, editing, and publishing
I’ve learned a lot from creating a podcast series: from asking good questions and improving my spoken delivery; to sales, marketing, and audio engineering. As much as podcasts are a hot trend right now and plenty of people are jumping on podcasting in part because of that, I do genuinely…
Why Penn & Teller ignored the audience
One of Penn Jillette’s least favourite terms in show business is ’this works’. It’s easy to let the audience (whether fans, critics, or business people) decide what works, and effectively write your act. This can be counter to the work of a creator. When Bruce Springsteen wrote Born to Run…
Navigating Uncertainty: Climbing the Ladder, Going out to Sea
When we are learning something new there are usually some guardrails in place. We’re learning how to DJ in the safety of our bedroom, not headlining Barclays Center. We’re committing our code into a test environment, not straight into the App Store. Our Spanish conversation practice is with a peer…
Location Arbitrage
Go back 15 years or so and this was only a serious day to day consideration if you were an international trader looking to take advantage of fluctuations in currencies and demand for particular goods. For the rest of us, it may have come up as something to think about…