Kyle Knowles – learnings from the first 11 episodes

Recorded in the Pink Conference room at Kiln Park City

Kyle Knowles on LinkedIn

Kyle Knowles on Twitter

Book Recommendations: What It Is by Lynda Barry; The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch; The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues by Patrick Lencioni; and The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman

This episode features Kyle Knowles, the Maker Manager Money Podcast host, reflecting on his experiences and learnings from conducting ten episodes. The podcast is dedicated to entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, founders, business owners, and business partnerships, aiming to inspire current and future entrepreneurs.

Knowles emphasizes that entrepreneurship is a grind and requires a strong belief in oneself and one’s ideas. He also highlights the importance of taking vacations, which he learned from his guest Benoy Tamang. According to Knowles, stepping away from work allows for clarity of thought and the generation of new ideas.

Knowles shares insights from his various guests. He talks about his guest Kurt Black, who stressed the importance of sticking to a solid plan and focusing on doing one thing really well. He also mentions Guy Seidel, who taught him that entrepreneurship doesn’t always have to be about money. From April Frampton, he learned about the importance of guerilla marketing tactics and ensuring that clients are cared for.

One of his guests, Abir Mourabet, a female tour guide from Morocco, taught him about the grit it takes to run a business, especially in a male-dominated society. Another guest, Sierra McCleve, emphasized the importance of self-belief, understanding one’s core values and strengths, and the mantra of leaving people better than they were before.

Knowles also shares his experiences with podcasting, including the need to sound-check people’s clothing and the importance of being forgiving of oneself when mistakes are made. He uses Calendly to schedule his podcasts and has a specific folder structure to improve his workflow.

In conclusion, Knowles expresses his love for making content and the joy he derives from discovering new music to set the mood for his podcast clips. He identifies himself as a maker and encourages others with a similar inclination to embrace their passion for creating.

Kyle Knowles:
Hello there. Welcome to the Maker Manager Money Podcast, a podcast about entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, founders, business owners, and business partnerships from startups to stay ups, to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going and future entrepreneurs to just start. It’s really a celebration of makers and managers out there making money. My name is Kyle Knowles and I’m trying to make some cool content at Kiln, that’s K-I-L-N, and I’m recording a special episode today of learnings, the things that I’ve learned from doing 10 podcasts. I’m here at Kiln today to meet my 11th guest, Sierra McCleve. But I thought I would do kind of a two part series here and just talk through some of the things I’ve learned after doing 10 podcasts. And then I’ll come back on after the episode with Sierra, see if there’s some questions that she might have that would be worthwhile answering since she’s a fellow podcaster.
And so I spent some time, I’ve been back for about a week, but I spent two weeks in Spain and Morocco, just picked up my youngest son who was over in Spain doing a study abroad. And it was interesting to get away. And one of the things that I learned from Benoy Tamang, who was guest number two, what he tries to get some of these CEO founder types to do in these high pressure, high stakes tech startups is he tries to get them to the point where they can take a vacation. And I could really see why that’s important. One of the things I learned in Spain and Morocco just getting away for two weeks from my corporate job, was that I was able to see things clearly. And again, it took almost a week before you sort of jettison all the things that you left behind at your job. And I can only imagine it’s 10 times, I don’t know if it’s worse, but compounded 10 times by founders and people running companies.
But being able to get away and having a team behind there that you’ve trained and can do the things that need to be done while you’re away. I mean, I think it’s very important. But for me, it took about a week to kind of jettison those thoughts and worries. And so it’s really into the second week where your mind can be open to new ideas and work on those things that are kind of in a blender while you’re working day to day, each work week. So going on vacation was one of the things that I’ve learned from this podcast, and also just going on vacation. That is important to do. But I listed some other things as I started going through each of the podcasts that I did, things that I learned from each of the guests.
And one common theme was being an entrepreneur is a grind. It’s not one of those things where you can say, “Well, I’m working really hard at a corporate job, and so I’m going to be an entrepreneur so I can control the number of hours I work.” In fact, many entrepreneurs as I talk to them, talk about what a grind it is and how hard it was to get the business off the ground. And so if you think you’re going to leave corporate and start your own business and work less hours, think again because my belief is that you would work even more hours than you’re doing at your corporate gig.
Another thing that I learned is that being an entrepreneur requires belief. And I’ve thought this all along, that the number one skill that all of these folks, even from Donald Trump to other business owners, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, you name it, Warren Buffett. They all have sometimes even an irrational belief in themselves and their ideas, but that’s kind of necessary. The belief in one’s self is necessary for you to launch your own business.
Another thing that I’ve learned is being an entrepreneur doesn’t require a degree. In fact, a degree might hold you back from being an entrepreneur. If you think about all the entrepreneurs out there from Steve Jobs to Bill Gates to Elon Musk, many of them do not have an MBA, for example. I believe that Jeff Bezos did do graduate school, but I don’t think it was in business. But anyway, not that they weren’t smart because obviously everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to Bill Gates, they did get into Harvard. And so it wasn’t that they weren’t smart at all, but a lot of it is people just willing to work and take the risk and take chances to go do something. And they’ve got a lot of belief in themselves in order to do that.
And one more thing that I wanted to mention that I’ve learned from doing this podcast is being an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone. Now, I’m the host of this podcast, and I’m not an entrepreneur. I work in the corporate world. And I think it was solidified to me on this trip because I’ve been saying this to a lot of people, that I think the new American dream is not to buy a home, and that’s what it used to be. But I think it’s to start a business for a lot of people. Starting a business, not working for the man, getting out there and being able to call your own shots, develop your own culture, these kinds of things. It’s a big fantasy for a lot of people.
And I think it was a fantasy for me for many, many years during my corporate life, and especially if you’re a little bit, I don’t know, not happy with your boss or the situation you’re in, or think you could make more money, or think you have better ideas than your bosses, those kinds of things. I think a lot of people have that fantasy to go out there and start their own business.
Now, what I learned after doing these podcasts and actually going on vacation was that … I actually bought this book in Morocco in the Tangier Airport. There was a book called What They Don’t Teach You in Harvard Business School. And I forget the name of the person who started, I’ll include a link to it and I’ll add it to the show notes for this podcast and also to the books page on mmmpod.net. But the last chapter of the book, he talks about, and he actually says, “99% of people should not go into business for themselves. They should work for someone else.” But he also talked about how it is, and this kind of crystallized this idea that I’ve been having and saying to people, he said that it is, “One of the new American dreams is to start your own business” because you see people do it and make a lot of money and buy yachts and things like that.
But my personal belief is that there are many entrepreneurs out there that are small to medium business owners, and they are the lifeblood of the economy. And I’ve interviewed 10 of them so far, and I’ll interview today, my guest, Sierra McCleve will be my 11th guest. And I think it’s going to be that way. I mean, I’ve got a lineup of guests. They’re not buying yachts at this point. Maybe some of them will in the future, but they are making a living and they are running their businesses.
So another thing I learned, it’s not for everyone, and there was some caution in some of the episodes as you listen to them. There was some caution about going into business for yourself and how hard it is, and you hear the ups and downs. I remember Jason Steed talking about his partnership that blew up, and that sounds bad, blew up. But a partnership that dissolved, he picked up the pieces and through sheer grit, continued on and started his next business. And 20 years later, he’s got 20 employees and doing really well at Target Media.
So if I start to go through and think about each of the guests, I think I can remember them off the top of my head. So I’m just winging this, waiting for Sierra to arrive. But the first guest, Ken Allred, who was a senior vice president for BTX, he and his partner Mark sold off their ownership to a new company that came in and bought them out. They are still helping and mentoring right now, but Ken was so gracious to be the first guest and the guinea pig of this little experiment, this project. And the biggest thing I learned from Ken is the building relationships of trust, that it takes because when you’re running your own business, it’s rare. I mean, you have to work with other people. It’s rare that you could run your own business and not have to interface with anyone.
I mean, I don’t even know of one right now. I can’t think of any business where you don’t have to interface with people because you’re going to have clients, you’re going to have customers and you’re going to have to interface with them. And I see one of the skill sets of a lot of the guests that I’ve had is that of sales and salesmanship and being able to sell their company, talk about their company, talk to people. And Ken really drove that point home when he talked about building these relationships of trust. And he wants his customers to trust him, and he wants to go above and beyond and to fix things if there’s mistakes, and to have those kind of long-term relationships and long-term customers.
Guest number two, Benoy Tamang, I talked about him a little bit earlier where when we were talking about … I can’t remember now. I’m going to have to go back. I’m going to edit this out maybe or I’ll just leave it in. But for Benoy, I think the biggest takeaway for me was his talk about unconscious incompetence and how that can just nuke anyone. So you can have all the skills in the world. You can be gregarious, you can be well liked, but if you have some unconscious incompetencies, you can just destroy. And he has a formula. If you listen to his episode and he’s coming out with a book that will talk about it and it will be available free to download from his website, techceocoach.com. He talks about this formula that he has, that he’s worked with people.
And the other thing I learned from Benoy is a lot of times entrepreneurs have parents, a mom or dad or a grandpa who are entrepreneurs. And we found that out with my last guest, which is going to be a Abir, Abir Mourabet from Morocco. She was the tour guide, but her grandpa was in tourism, and that’s how she got the idea that she could do that too. And I think it’s a lot easier if your mom or your dad is an entrepreneur for you to be an entrepreneur because you’ve seen them do it, you’ve gain confidence from seeing them do it.
Guest number three was of course, Bill Gephardt. I learned a lot from Bill and he’s been a great one to bounce ideas off of. And he’s been very gracious with his time and was willing to go on this fledgling podcast with me. But this whole idea, and again, this inspired me and I hope some of these episodes and some of the things these entrepreneurs say inspire you as well. But because I’m getting a lot of satisfaction and inspiration from talking to these movers and shakers and people who are willing to take a risk and start a business and end up making money and providing jobs to people and keeping the economy going, and Bill Gephardt, the inspiration for me is that he retired from the corporate world, and I’m not that far out from retiring from the corporate world myself. And he retired. And yet after a couple of weeks of golfing every day, he tells the story about how golfing wasn’t fun anymore. It’s not a hobby when you can do it all the time, in other words.
And so he started Gephardt Approved and then Gephardt Daily, that’s one business that’s vetting businesses and putting his stamp of approval on them. And also Gephardt Daily, which is keeping or trying to, striving to keep local news alive. And he started those businesses in his 60s. So he retired a little bit early, I think maybe 60, around 60, 62, and then came out of retirement to start 2 businesses. So there was a lot to learn from his episode.
So Lyn Christian, episode number four, I learned a lot from Lyn. Lyn recommended so many books that are on the books page of mmmpod.net, and there were so many lessons to learn. But the biggest lesson for me was that if you are your true authentic self, you too can be a badass like Lyn. So Lyn’s book is called Soul Salt: Your Personal Field Guide to Confidence, Purpose and Fulfillment. It’s an excellent book. It helped me to hone in on what my three core values are, and I will just reveal those to you right now. It’s easy for me to remember because there are three Cs, but it’s creativity, clarity, and maybe not so surprisingly for those who know me, comedy. Highly recommend it. You can buy it on Amazon.
Episode number five, Terry Allen. So much to learn from him. He recently retired and turned his manufacturing mascot costume company over to his children. But the thing that I learned most from Terry was this fact that he was a maker, he was an artist, and when he went into business for himself, he had to change eventually and become a manager. So this transition from maker to manager in order to scale, in order to make more money, in order to hire designers and other people to do the things that he could do, he joked that they could do them better. But part of me doubts that because he is an artist.
And the other thing I learned from him as I go through these other podcast guests is that many entrepreneurs, I would say half of the entrepreneurs I interviewed are musicians as well. Maybe a third of them are in bands at this and actually perform monthly or have performances and have gigs during the year. Specifically, I’ll call out Benoy Tamang, Jason Steed and Benjamin Moffatt and Guy Seidel as well, musicians currently gigging and putting on performances.
Okay, so number six, Benjamin Moffitt. I really loved interviewing Ben. I’ve known him for over a decade. He’s such a great guy, and he was so fun to talk to. I love the title of his podcast, Bringing Dude and Dad Energy to his company and band. And he definitely shined a light on a few things for me as I talked to him. And the biggest thing for me is that that journey that he was willing his whole life to be his true, authentic self. And he brings that to his band. He brings that to his company that he co-founded with Ian and Corey, I hope to get them on the podcast. I know Ian’s scheduled up, and I hope Corey will schedule up soon.
But one of the things he said that he knows what he’s good at and he knows what Corey and Ian are good at, and he is the one who sends client customer emails. And he shared that on the podcast that Ian and Corey have never had to send customer email. Now they’re makers, they’re designers, videographers, producers, and they make things, they make videos basically. And so he’s allowed them to do that and focus on that while he takes care of the businessy aspects of things, including client communications. So I thought that was just really wise of him to do that, to look at his strengths, look at their strengths, and really hone in and focus.
Episode number seven was Jason Steed, and again, musician, designer, entrepreneurial survivor. And I talked about him earlier having a partnership that went south and through those ashes, the phoenix rose. And he’s done such a great job with Target Media and grown that. And the thing that I learned from Jason too is that he outlined three motivations that entrepreneurs that he had to go into business for himself. And I just love those three because one of them, he wanted to be able to go to matinees during the day once in a while, and then he wanted to send personal emails, kind of have that personal space. And if it was his own company, he felt like he could do that. And then to get rich, which I’m glad he said that because I think that’s okay. That’s okay to have that goal as an entrepreneur. And I’m glad that he outlined those motivators for himself. And I think it’s just fine and it was so fun to talk to him.
Number eight, Guy Seidel.
Oh, back to Jason just real quickly. It was so great to connect with him. And one of the things that I’m learning from doing this podcast is that doing a podcast is a great way to reconnect with your network and to grow your network. Meeting people for the first time, including Sierra today here at Kiln on a Sunday in Park City. And it’s just been fantastic reconnecting with people from my network because having worked in a corporate job for 15 years for the same company, I joke that half of my network is people who work at Merit and the other half are people trying to sell me something. Well, it’s not exactly broken down that way, but I would say only 20% maybe of my network are people I’ve worked with before and people I have definitely had relationship, some kind of relationship with secondhand or firsthand.
And so to go through that, see who’s an entrepreneur, see who’s running a business, and then to be able to sit down, start sitting down with them, it’s just been so fun and so inspiring. And with Jason, it was something like I’ve been following his career for the past 20 years. I met him once in person, kind of knew what he was doing and somehow got on his email list. And one of the cool things that he does, it’s very unique, but he sends an email to me and I assume others on my half birthday, which I don’t know if you celebrate your half birthday. But I actually celebrate my half birthday, not with a cake or anything, but it definitely is a marker on the calendar, and it’s a moment in time that I look at. So I just really appreciate that innovation that he brought to sort of email and keep keeping in touch with people. So for the past 20 years, I’ve been getting one of those emails every of my half birthday.
So Sierra just texted. I’m going to stop this for now, but I’m going to pick it up right after she leaves after I do this podcast to finish up this special episode of Learnings from the Maker Manager Money Podcast.
All right, we’re back. I just finished a podcast with Sierra McCleve. It was awesome. It was everything I expected and more. I did get a couple questions for her specifically about podcasting since she’s a fellow podcaster. And one of her questions for me was the number one tip to improve workflow on post-production that you do on the front end. And I think for me, it’s back to this folder structure when you’re making content and having that kind of folder structure where I throw everything in before I make the content. And so it simply is a folder that is the podcast, usually the name of the guest. And then in that folder, I put multiple folders. One of them is graphics, a graphics folder. One of them is footage folder, one of them is audio folder, one of them is a folder for exports for future exports. And let’s see, is there anything else? One of them could be music, but a lot of times I just put music tracks in the audio folder and I’m trying to think if there’s any other. I think that’s it.
So you have your audio folder, you have your footage, which is your video files, and then you have your graphics folder, and then you have your exports folder, and you can do a music folder for that background music if you want. But like I said, I usually just put it in audio file.
The other question that Sierra had that she thought would be good to talk about is what system is what system do I use and is set up for me so that I can be consistent in, I can’t remember if it was the number of podcasts that I’ve done in a short amount of time, but just to be consistent and continue doing podcasts? And for me, my answer to her and my answer for this special learnings episode of a podcast is Calendly, surprisingly. Set up Calendly early on, I think it cost me about $16 a month, 16. That’s 1-6. And basically it allows me to talk to someone about being on the podcast, text them a link and shows them times where I’m available. And right now it’s Saturday mornings, Sunday mornings, and Wednesday evenings is what I have. And you can set up what times you’re available, and then if I’m going on vacation or days off or whatever, you can go and adjust and say basically when you’re unavailable so that someone can’t schedule during times that you don’t want them to schedule.
So you basically put your optimal times for when you want to do the podcasts. And it also allows you to put locations in there. So I’ve got actually four locations in there right now. I’ve got Zoom, I’ve got Kiln in Lehigh, Kiln in Salt Lake City, and Kiln in Park City set up in there with their addresses so people can select where they want to have their podcast recorded as well, and then go to the calendar. And everyone’s probably used Calendly before to schedule time with, whether it’s your hairstylist or someone like that. But anyway, Calendly has been worth every penny, and it’s a lot of fun when you talk to someone, give them the Calendly link, and then they schedule it up and you get a notification that they’ve scheduled. So that’s pretty cool.
So I wanted to go back just quickly. I can’t wait to talk about what I learned from Sierra. There’s so much to learn there and it’s a great episode. I’m really looking forward to publishing it. And she just has so much wealth of experience and knowledge about running business. And so let me just … I’ll get there in just a second. But I finished up with talking about Jason Steed and things I learned from him.
Guy Seidel, just the biggest takeaway from Guy, as the title of the podcast says, entertaining guitarist, comedian and entrepreneur, he’s so wise for his age. And he’s so much smarter than he claims to be. He’s self-deprecating a lot. And in fact, he recently shared a post with a link to the podcast that he was on to the episode that he was on Maker Manager Money. And he basically said if you want to take a listen to this, listen to it. But he talked about being a resource kid or whatever. But he’s a super smart guy, very wise for his age.
And the biggest thing I learned from him is you can be an entrepreneur and it doesn’t have to be about the money. And he talked about how he pays all his bills with his Marcus and Guy shows, his corporate gigs, being the comedy duo of Marcus and Guy, and playing the guitar there. And then his other business that he owns, Easy Flow. He does as much or as little as he wants. He’s not trying to get it franchised and make a ton of money, and he did have someone working for him for a while, but he just does it himself so he can put in 20 hours a week or whatever he wants to. And then he has that sort of flex time to be able to pursue other activities as he sees fit. So it’s not always about the money for entrepreneurs. And that’s what I learned from Guy.
April Frampton, episode number nine. Again, I went to high school with April, and she’s just done some amazing things, kind of pivoting from the theater world and acting and basically starring in her own live streams. She has one that she does for fun on Wednesday nights, and then she does these live events and she’s connecting business together. So all of her guerilla marketing tactics, there was so much to learn from her being a business to business influencer, a B2B influencer and a guerilla marketer, and really just how hard she works and how she focuses on making sure that her clients are taken care of.
And finally, not finally, but episode 11, and again, one of the things I’ve learned from doing this podcast is I’m never going to say the episode number on the podcast. You’ll see it in the graphic, but you won’t see it. I won’t say it anymore, but basically episode 10 is going to be this episode. But I thought I would get it done before episode 11 or before I did an episode in Spain, not in Spain, but in Morocco on vacation a couple of weeks ago. I sat down with Abir Mourabet from Abby Travel, and my wife had found her on TripAdvisor. And Abir is living in Morocco, which is very Muslim and male dominated, but she’s one of the few certified female tour guides and runs her own company to do tour guides for large and small groups.
But she put together a four day, three night kind of tour for us, and she was our tour guide. So she put together our tour of Morocco, three different cities. So we started off in Tetouan where she’s from, and then we did one day there, we did one day in Chefchaouen, and then our last day was in Tangier where she lives right now. But anyway, the thing I learned from her is just the grit it takes to run a business. And I believe Abir maybe more than any of my guests faces a lot more challenges. And we saw on the tour men interrupting her, and she said that her male tour guides do not get interrupted like that. And so she’s out there really pushing, and her wish for Moroccan women is to be strong, to focus on their degree, to focus on their career before getting into marriage and those kinds of things.
And so really that independent thought, independent thinking, doing what they want to do and not what society wants them to do. So there was a lot to learn from Abir, and it was great to spend three days with her as she showed us around three different cities in Morocco.
And I guess I can talk about Sierra even though maybe, I don’t know if I’m going to publish this podcast before or after Sierra’s, but I just finished with Sierra McCleve as a guest, and so officially it’ll be the 11th guest that I’ve had on the podcast in a relatively short time of 3 months. And Sierra, there was so much to learn there. But I think again, just hearing her talk about belief in herself and her core values, figuring out what her core values are, understanding the strengths, her strengths, so that with her business partner, she can outline and give the vision of what she’s going to do, what her business partner’s going to do, and then really just her deep desire as a business owner first of Dottie’s Kolaches, and then of Thirst Drinks. As a business owner, what their mantra was was to leave them better. And this extended not only to the customer, but also to the employee. As a manager, leave your team better than they were before. And this was a daily kind of reminder.
And she would sit down with her teams, kind of explain this mindset of leave them better. I just thought that was a great way to establish a vision for your company, especially in food and beverage, in a place like Dottie’s Kolaches and Thirst Drinks, to have that idea, that whole idea of made with love and help each other out as employees and really help the customer out. And her story of someone coming in just having a terrible day, but then a kolache or a drink and the way that they were treated turning that day around. So basically turning the frown into a smile and having customers comment on that and appreciate that, and understanding when employees are maybe on their way out or employees are having a bad day because you can tell by the way they are …
She told the story of a baker that she knew was on their way out because the quality of the food started to suffer. And she said that there is an art to that, to understanding if this is just a one-day thing or if this is a long-term thing. But I just love the concept of leave them better when it comes to employees and when it comes to customers, that’s something that was a big takeaway for me in the podcast with Sierra McCleve.
So there are a couple of other things I just wanted to mention about doing a podcast now that I’ve actually recorded 11 and I’ve published 9. Two more will be published in the next couple of weeks, plus this one, so three more will be published. So in 90 days, talking with 11 different entrepreneurs and making content and doing a podcast.
First of all, one of the things I would share is that I didn’t know that you needed to sound check people’s clothing because, I’m sorry. But during one of the podcasts, someone was wearing some kind of nylon jacket and you can go back and figure out who this is, but they were very animated with their hands, and so there was a lot of swishing of their clothing. So I didn’t know before that I needed to be conscious of what people are wearing and how that can affect. And sometimes I’ve noticed you can warn people of, “Oh, there’s something under the table. If you hit it, then it will make noise or whatever.” But hopefully everyone can forgive me because I do have a fan going in this one, and hopefully we can kill that in post-production. But sometimes there’s just noises and I think when you start a project like this, you want everything to be perfect because that’s what you’ve seen on TV. You’ve heard professional podcasts that actually like a Joe Rogan podcast where they actually have an engineer there the whole time taking care of that.
So when you’re doing it on your own, you’ve got to be a little bit forgiving of yourself because it is hard to be the host and do all the audio video at the same time. In fact, during Benjamin Moffat’s podcast, I remember recording the first five minutes thinking that I was recording the first five minutes, but I had actually accidentally turned the recorder off, and so we had to start over. So just being forgiving of yourself, and hopefully the guests that you have on will forgive you too because you’re trying to figure this out as you go.
And learning by doing. This was a big one from Terry Allen that I learned from well, episode number five with Terry Allen. He talked about, and again, it was like school versus actually doing something and how you can learn a lot more from doing. So I’m learning as I go and I’ve learned a ton and I know I’m trying to just get a little bit better each time and why am I doing this? I guess that would be maybe the number one question people have for me is why are you doing this podcast?
And I’ve given it a lot of thought, especially on vacation of why I am doing that and really trying to articulate to myself why I’m doing that. And initially I think my original answer would be just to make something cool, make something cool that I can publish. And I’ve done this before with an alumni website and some other projects I’ve done just because it sounded fun. And maybe that’s a good enough reason is to do this because it’s fun. I love the idea of recording. I love making little content clips. I love trying to find … My favorite part is when you get towards the end and I try some stock music just from Adobe Stock to run to add as the soundtrack to the clip, and trying to pick the right one and trying to set the mood for that clip. One of my favorite things in the world is discovering new music. And so this kind of taps into that, I don’t know, itch that I have.
But this morning when I got up, it was after this weekend. So today’s Sunday, yesterday was Saturday. Saturday, I had written something from a book that I would highly recommend to anyone that’s a maker or maybe a frustrated maker, meaning you’re not making enough and you really love to make, you like to draw, you like to write, whatever. There’s a book by Lynda Barry called What It Is. And it was so inspirational to me because I’ve had so many starts and stops on this, but I’ve realized that at the end of the day, I’m a maker and I love to make. Whether my stuff’s good or not, you can be the judge, but that’s what I like to do. I like to make things and share them, and it’s just always been a thing for me for a long time.
Some of my favorite memories in my life was first of all, before my Mormon mission, that was Craig Nybo and I got together, he was a musician, he was the talented one for sure. But I had a bunch of gear, I had a bass guitar, I had an electric guitar, I had some distortion pedals, things like that. He had a two-track karaoke machine, and he came over and we wrote, I don’t know, half a dozen songs together. One of the infamous ones was called “She’s Ugly” and just he’s such a creative genius, Craig Nybo, and he has continued to make his whole life to the point where he’s running his own company. I’d love to have him on the podcast. Craig, if you’re out there, we should talk about Media Riff and reconnect.
But this was so many years ago, and it was literally one of the funnest times of my life was writing songs with him to the point where I was like, this is so cool. Do I want to go on a mission? I didn’t have any talent for sure, then or now, I’m just a hack when it comes to music. But it was just so much fun. And then on my mission, I did write a very silly play that a bunch of missionaries performed at a sales conference, a sales conference, a zone conference. Anyway, and it was just sort of making fun. Our mission president was President Green. He was named in the play President Mean. So we just did all these rhymey kind of names for different people. Elder Alder, he was losing his hair, so he was Elder Balder.
And anyway, I just remember writing and directing that and then just getting the reaction of people’s laughs and things like that was just so, I don’t know. It was so cool. And then have co-authored a couple of books, one with a guitar teacher, one with a professor up at the U. I do have five songs that are probably not even demo worthy on Spotify that I finally finished and produced and put out there, but I’ve always kind of had this itch to make things and share them. And what going on vacation did for me was to really clarify that this is about making, and the book that I was reading yesterday, What It Is by Lynda Barry, talks about feeling alive and doing the making. I translated that into, and maybe she says it in the book, but I do this to feel alive, and I think that’s good enough. That’s a good enough reason.
I don’t think anyone’s going to sponsor me, even though [inaudible 00:40:27], if you’re out there, I would love you to sponsor me, but I’m making something that’s cool. I’m sharing people’s stories about being entrepreneurs, hopefully promoting them, hopefully inspiring people to keep going, entrepreneurs or inspiring people who want to be an entrepreneur to just start. That’s what I’m doing. And if that’s all it is, is because I’m doing this because it makes me feel alive, that’s all I need. I don’t need to make money doing this. And I’m hoping that … Obviously today I met a really cool person, Sierra McCleve. So that’s kind of gravy for why I’m doing this, but I’m meeting really cool people, I’m reconnecting with my network, and that’s why I’m doing the podcast.
So those are some of my learnings from the first 10 or 11, I guess 11 episodes, and I hope that was worth recording and putting out there. And I look forward to doing the next 11 podcasts. And just to put a plug in there for anyone that’s local here in Utah that wants to meet some of these guests and do a little networking, I am hosting at Kiln in Salt Lake City at the Gateway on August 31st. It’s the Thursday before Labor Day weekend starting at 4:30. I’m hosting an event. There will be six speakers. I’m going to be having Lyn Christian, Benoy Tamang, April Frampton, Ben Moffat, and Sierra McCleve just agreed to speak. So there’ll be six, maybe seven speakers that evening.
We’ll start at 4:30. There’ll be networking, you can meet people. Lyn and Benoy who both have books, will be signing books or making those available. I think you’ll be able to buy Lyn’s book, a signed book, her Soul Salt book. And then Benoy has a book that he’s just getting ready to launch that will be available for free download. So you’ll be able to access that. You’ll be able to meet Benoy, meet Lyn, meet Sierra and April and Ben, and they’re going to speak for 5 to 10 minutes each and share some hopefully just really actionable advice for business owners, founders, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. So if you’re one of those types of people, a mover and shaker out there as an entrepreneur, or you want to be, a link will be available here in the next week or two to buy a ticket to that event at Kiln in Salt Lake City at the Gateway. So that’s another thing that I’m really looking forward to, just sponsoring little events like this and doing some more networking, reconnecting with people from my network and networking and meeting more really cool people.
So I’m going to sign off. It’s again, Sunday morning. It’s Sunday afternoon now, it’s almost one o’clock here in Kiln Park City. The vibe here is so cool. I was talking to Sierra afterwards, and she loves the vibe here too. So she’s going to be getting a virtual office membership for Kiln here pretty soon as well. This is the first time recording in the Pink Room with Sierra, and look forward to many more episodes being recorded in Kiln. And I’d like to thank them in advance for sponsoring the event that we’re going to be having at Kiln Salt Lake City, Maker Manager Money seminar, palooza, party, festival, whatever it ends up being, there’ll be some really cool entrepreneurs there sharing some advice. And we’ll do a live podcast recording at the same time. And there will be networking before and after the seminar. Thanks for listening.