The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Extreme Lifestyle Experiments and Systematized Disruption With Colin Wright

Colin Wright walked away from a bountiful financial opportunity to conduct extreme lifestyle experiments, like letting the readers of his blog vote on which country he should spend the next four months of his life in. This eventually resulted in the writing multiple books, and the development of an independent publishing company, Asymmetrical Press.

Finding the balance between professional and personal fulfillment
Why the meaning we find in money is starting to change
The tendency to default to traditions, simply because they are traditions
A look at what it means to live intentionally, in spite of our circumstances
Why you don’t need to live a crazy adventure to have a good life
Our tendency to demonize life in the cubicle
Why there is no downside to the hand you’ve been dealt
Implementing systemized self disruption into your life
What causes post traumatic growth versus post traumatic stress
Learning to navigate the constantly undulating wave of good and bad
A look at the pivotal moment in Colin’s life that would have led to significant wealth
The problem with living and measuring your life by one metric
Knowing where you fall on the spectrum of risk and reward
Lessons learned from Colin’s travels to various countries
What eventually led Colin to create a publishing company
The role that quality and talent will play in media and publishing

Colin Wright is an author, blogger, entrepreneur, and traveler. He periodically teaches classes online, gives talks, and runs workshops, all while travelling full time and publishing books with Asymmetrical Press.

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Duration:: 59m
Broadcast on:: 23 Jun 2014
Audio Format:: other

As you've probably noticed this month, we're bringing you our Life of Purpose series and revisiting some of our most transformative episodes, tune in to explore expert insights and practical strategies on help, performance, and community well-being, all aimed at helping you achieve personal and professional fulfillment. If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll not only get recaps of the key ideas in each interview, but at the end of the series, you'll receive our free Life of Purpose e-book. What you have to do is go to UnmistakeableCreative.com/Lifepurpose again. I'm Srinney Rao, and this is the Unmistakeable Creative Podcast, where I speak with creative entrepreneurs, artists, and other insanely interesting people to hear their stories, learn about their molding moments, tipping points, and spectacular takeoffs. Explaining football to the friend who's just there for the nachos, hard. Tailgating from home like a pro with snacks and drinks everyone will love, any easy win. 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Hey, Colin, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks for taking the time to join us. Yeah. Thanks for having me again. Yeah. It's funny because you and I go way back. I mean, you were probably in the first hundred interviews that I ever did when the show was called Blogcast FM. So, you know, I mean, we've known each other for almost five years, but we've got a ton of new listeners. It's probably been two or three years since you've been here. So, tell us a bit about yourself, your background, your story, and your journey that has led to what you're up to today. Sure. Well, the quick version is that my background's in design and branding, and ran a branding studio out in Los Angeles for a couple years, and then kind of found myself in a position where I was doing pretty well professionally, but lifestyle-wise, not so much. So I kind of decided to cancel that out and start traveling and pursue this lifestyle that I'd really wanted to live for a very long time, but was always putting off for, quote-unquote, "more important things," and that manifested by starting a blog and asking my readers where I should move, and then moving to a new country every four months based on the votes of my readers. And since then, I've kind of segued from doing branding work into publishing. These days, I write full-time, I publish books. I am the co-founder of a publishing company, a small kind of indie publishing company in Montana called Asymmetrical Press, and, yeah, still hopping around, kind of just taking on new adventures when they come and then experimenting a whole lot with different means of publishing, different ways of doing business, different ways of living my life, essentially. Well, let's start at the very beginning of this, which is getting to sort of this moldy moment, almost, of realizing that you were actually quite successful professionally but not fulfilled personally. And I mean, I think that's almost the epidemic of the culture that we live in, and sometimes I think people don't even recognize that they're almost kind of at sleepwalking. Exactly, and the thing is, epidemics are great word for it, and it's almost like people are saying, "Man, I caught this flu and it's kind of miserable, but if everybody's catching the flu, then it's not such a big deal because that's the right thing to have, right?" And it's not that it's all bad. There was a lot of very cool things and fun and interesting and challenging things about that type of lifestyle, but the living for the money and then hoping the money will bring you meaning thing is starting to look flatter and flatter every day, I think, and a lot of people that I know that were in the same situation that I was where they were doing very well professionally and making a lot of money but not having much of a life, they're starting to look around and see all these other people living different ways and seeing the different opportunities that their skills might allow them to pursue, and then starting to grab onto that and starting to say, "Well, maybe there is another option, maybe this way I was kind of taught is the only way, is not in fact the only way to go." Well, let's talk about this in a bit more detail because I think that it's one thing to sort of recognize it, and I was talking to a friend last night, I said, "You know, I think that there are some people who actually live outside the matrix and then there are those people who actually know it exists but choose to stay inside of it regardless," sort of the difference between knowing the path and walking the path, I guess, for lack of something less cheesy, but I think there's a mindset shift required to make this kind of a leap that you're talking about, and I'm really curious what your thoughts are around that, how you make that shift from a mindset perspective, because I can tell you the argument is going to be, "Okay, well, yeah, that's easy for Colin to say. He doesn't have baggage per se." Yeah, I've heard all kinds of arguments on that side, and to be perfectly honest, they're legitimate, they're legitimate arguments that I'm able to do what I do the way that I do it because I don't have kids, because I don't have roots put down in any place, and I've built my lifestyle intentionally in that way. I don't want baggage, literally or figuratively. I don't want to own a lot of stuff that I have to drag around. I don't want to own property that then I have to maintain from a distance, et cetera, et cetera. And it is a legitimate argument, too, that kind of going that direction where you are, just pursuing money, if that's what really gets you going, if that's your thing, cool. I'm not telling you that that's wrong, but I think for a lot of people it is, and to say that that's the default is probably a the incorrect thing to be teaching people. And the only reason that we are is because it's kind of a natural evolution of the industrial revolution model that here's the company guy, and here's the nuclear family, and this is the way that things are supposed to be. Therefore, if I'm really, really good, I do that like to the umpteenth, I do that even more so than my parents did and their parents did. And that, to me, is math that doesn't quite work out. And the evolutionary thought of that, I think, is just looking around and now having things to compare to. We have means of comparison other than the other people working in the industries that we work in now. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, it's interesting because I think I remember a few years ago, I met up with you somewhere. It might have been in L.A., you happen to be in town and you said, you know, just because something is a tradition, that doesn't mean it's a good reason to continue doing it. Exactly. In fact, that to me is a great reason to question it. If you ask why something is the way that it is, and the only answer you can come up with is this is the way it's always been done. Question it. That is an aspect of your life that is rife for some type of disruption. Because if you can't explain it, why are you doing it? Why? Potentially, it is the correct way to do things and there's just no better alternative. But potentially, there's a much better way to be doing it. And that could change everything. It could dramatically increase the value of your everyday life. Well, speaking of the value of your everyday life, you know, you talked earlier about living intentionally. And I actually want to spend a bit of time on this because it's something that I was asked to talk about at Misfit, you know, where we were both at recently in Fargo. And it's interesting, right? Because you know, you say that you can live the lifestyle that you do because you have certain, you know, things that other people don't, you also don't have certain things that other people do. And so you've got this sort of flexibility. But I think living intentionally is not limited to your circumstances. I think living intentionally is actually available to all of us. And that's kind of a day to day choice. I mean, and I think that we can do that even in the drudgery of everyday life. You know, I love what Patti Dye said, you know, somebody said, Hey, you know, this was an interview we aired recently, rerun. And she said, you know, what if the drudgery of everyday life was your masterpiece? And I'm really curious to hear your thoughts around this whole idea of how do you live intentionally if your life isn't, you know, if I'm not calling right and, you know, it's exciting, you know, living in different countries every four months, but I still want to live intentionally. How do I incorporate that into my life? Totally. Yeah, this is something I try to tell people all the time that you don't have to be doing something that sounds adventurous or exciting. I'll tell you the reality of travel is that it's actually incredibly uncomfortable most of the time. But you don't have to be doing something that sounds incredibly exciting and sexy and like it's in a movie or something in order to be to live a good life and in order to live a happy life. And what I do, I would say 99% of the population, if they actually did it, they would hate it and they'd be bored with it. But there's certain philosophies that you can take that you can apply to anything, whatever you happen to be pursuing. You know, if you want to work in a cubicle, we kind of demonize the cubicle in the entrepreneurial world. But if that's what makes you happy, do it, just do it really, really well. And living intentionally is how you do that. It means that you question the things that you do. It means that when you make coffee, you say, "Is this the coffee I want to be drinking? Is this the way I want to be making this coffee? Is this the best use of my money or the best use of my digestion?" Like you take apart the details of everyday life and make sure that they're optimized for whatever ends you're trying to achieve. And that living intentionally then results with the best possible version of the outcome that you're looking for. Oh, I like that. Yeah, we do demonize the cubicle, don't we? I mean, we really do. And it's popular to do so because it's something that we all kind of rally against as soon as we discover that there's another way to live. And I think that's wrong. I think it's a great initial step into recognizing that there's other ways to do things. But I think it's perfectly legitimate for people to work in a cubicle. And I think it's perfectly legitimate for people to bag groceries. And I think all of these things are totally cool as long as you understand why you're doing it. And there's kind of an end goal somewhere down the line that you're working toward. And if that means you're going to be the best bagger of groceries for your entire life, awesome, do it really well. We need people who do that well. We need people who do everything well. And there's no reason that we should have to mimic other people's lives and pretend to be into what they're into in order to live happily. It's so true. And the thing, I think that this whole sort of demonizing the cubicle has actually caused more misery than actual happiness. Even though the idea of it, the intention behind it was to create happiness. But I think it's actually created a lot of dissatisfaction because people feel this obligation that, hey, I'm missing out on something or I'm not living my life because I'm not going and doing all this crazy shit. Yeah. And you hear it from young people who think, oh, God, I'm wasting my youth doing things the traditional way. And then you hear it from older people a lot too, who just think, oh, man, I wish I would have thought about this. And now I'm too old. And now I've got kids, or yada, yada, yada. Again, couldn't be further from the truth because first of all, there's plenty of life to live no matter what age you happen to be. And there's plenty you can get done. And we live in a time where technology is incredibly accessible. So any of these things or any connections that you want to make, it is possible. But also looking at it through that lens of all these other people are doing this interesting stuff. And I'm not. And therefore, I'm a failure or I'm behind or whatever, it totally, totally a false premise to operate from because we all come come at this, come at intentionality from a different standpoint. We all have different backgrounds. We all have different starting hands of cards, for lack of a better metaphor. And we play what we've got. And if that means coming at this later than other people, that's cool. You play it. Coming from an entrepreneurial background, being 29, I am like the old dude at every entrepreneurial meetup I go to because it's supposedly a young kid's game, but that's okay. I have certain advantages that they don't have. The dude who shows up who's in his 50s that shows up to the same meeting, he's got advantages I don't have. And the same thing applies across the board. So there really is no downside to anybody's starting hand. It's just a matter of being able to look at it and say, okay, I'm getting started later, or I'm getting started earlier, or I'm starting with less money, or I'm starting with fewer connections, and saying, that's okay. How do I get where I want to get? Yeah. Well, you know, I love this because there's so many false stories that drive it, false stories, false comparison. And that leads to sort of what I call the mimicry epidemic where people are trying to become other people. Right, right. And it's kind of the natural way that we work, isn't it? Because we look at other people as brands, and we look at that celebrity and say, oh, they're the edgy one, or they're the geek turned good looking person, or whatever it happens to be, there's this brand that's built up, and that's just the way that we market people and ideas. And so that happens within the blogging world that happens on TV, it happens in movies, it happens within the business world, where we look at a particular person and say, I want to be the next Richard Branson. And that just doesn't make sense. There's already a Richard, why would you try to be someone else and try to force yourself into a Richard Branson-shaped hole? When you yourself are you, you know, you can make an absolutely excellent, amazing version of yourself instead, and stop forcing yourself to stand off those rough edges, those wonderful rough edges that you have that you should be sharpening. Yeah, I mean, I think the sharpening of rough edges, I mean, that's a whole other conversation. We'll get into that. I think we'll talk about that quite a bit, actually. Let's move forward a little bit, but let's shift gears. You know, one other thing that you mentioned is this idea of your life could possibly use some disruption. And I love that. And I want to talk about that in a bit more detail, because it's you know, you and I have had some personal conversations recently, and it's something that I'm going through is a significant amount of disruption in a way that I never have before. And, you know, I think back to what Lisa Fabregu said, she said, sometimes we contract in order to expand. And I really want to hear your thoughts on this whole idea of disruption and, you know, intentionally disrupting your life. And then we'll start getting into some of the stories and crazy things that have happened to you and some of your experiments. Yeah, well, the experiments are actually kind of my form of systematized self disruption, if that makes sense. I like that. Yeah, I mean, it's something that I've found really adds value to my life, and it consistently improves my life in some way. Even if I do an experiment and spend some time with it and find out that whatever I'm trying out is not for me. Now I know. And now that's one less path that I have to go feel like I need to go down or one more perspective from which to view the world. And that to me is in that game every single time it's in that game. And I've come to enjoy this actually, even though like travel, it's very frequently uncomfortable or limiting in some way. But those limitations kind of force you to be creative and it forces you to learn or recognize something about yourself that you wouldn't otherwise learn or recognize. And that to me is insanely valuable. And it's it's kind of gotten to me where I am now, where I'm very, very, I tend to be at least very self-aware and aware enough to know that there's plenty I have left to learn about myself and about the world and about just about everything. And that's a great place to be. I think that recognition of ignorance but the acknowledgement that you can get where you need to be at any given point. Yeah. So you've talked about systemized disruption and I love that you you know you called it a net gain. But you know in a lot of cases it happens when it's not systematized and it's unexpected and we don't actually want it. You know things are things are going great and life throws you curve balls. And so this this you know comes to a question that I keep asking a lot of people. One of the common themes that seems to come up here on the unmistakable creative is a lot of people who who are end up being guests have had some sort of traumatic experience that actually really ends up being the catalyst for change in their life. But there's I find two types of people people who experience post-traumatic stress and people who experience post-traumatic growth. I like that. And and I can't take credit for that. You know that's a comes from the happiness research researcher Sean Acor. And as somebody who has continually disrupted your life on purpose. One how do you how do you navigate the uncertainty of all of this and how do you differentiate you know how do you make sure that you end up a person who experiences post-traumatic growth instead of post-traumatic stress. That's a great question. You know a lot of my metaphors are travel metaphors forgive me. But the way that I tend to look at it is the way that I tend to look at places where I live. And people often ask me so what if you end up some place what if your readers vote for you to go someplace that is just dull that is just incredibly boring. And it's just like the worst little town in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing to do and everybody's backwards. And what if you end up in a place like that. And my answer is always that if I am bored anywhere it's my own damn fault. If if I am bored I am boring because there's something interesting to be found everywhere. Whether it's in the place or whether it's that that place allows me to be alone and therefore I can do some internal exploration. But if at any given point I'm not excited and interested and motivated. It's my own fault and it's me not taking advantage of whatever it is that environment has to offer. And I think the same is true with any disruption with anything that happens to your life. If you're not gaining from it in some way it's not because there's nothing there to gain. It's because you're not looking at it the right way. Okay so you mentioned not looking at it the right way. Let's talk about the shift in perspective. I mean how do you make that? Because I think that when you're in it it can be really hard to see that. You know when it's like Greg Hartle has a great way of saying he said you know when when you're having a problem or challenge it's the worst thing in the world because it's happening to you. It's true. It's true. And part of it is about kind of regularly plucking yourself out of the moment. It's good to be in the moment. I think it's vital to be in the moment because then then you actually get to see what a thing a place a person a conversation whatever looks like from ground level. But it's important to be able to push that aside as well and to step back and say okay here's what's going on. Here's what's happened. I found myself in this place that is incredibly boring or I found myself in a situation where I've lost my job or I found myself in a situation where a relationship is ended. Difficult things to deal with but if you're able to see it from the ground and experience that and take that with you and really take a snapshot of what it feels like and what it looks like so that you'll know that for for the future but then also step back and see the big picture then you're able to get that that real wealth of sensory information and a wealth of of information to act on really because it's one thing to experience a flood of emotions and it's another thing to be able to to surf on on that flood of emotions and to just dip your hand in when you want to and it's important when you're in a difficult situation I think to to be able to use that perspective to your own gain and not be washed away by it but to actually float above it and to be able to dip your hand in when you want to but then you know kind of see see that there's land around you and to see that there's plenty of waves that you can hop on if you want to and to really to understand where you are in in all of it rather than just being on that one wave. Yeah so I love that you're using surf analogies naturally. I figured you'd appreciate that. Yeah it's well it's interesting because you know you think about it when you said the bigger picture you know these events happen in our lives and and then you look at it over the course if you look at it as sort of still frame or you know frames in a movie you're like oh okay this is one section of the movie. Right right this two shall pass right. Yeah exactly or as Greg says you know temporary or temporary circumstances don't have to become your permanent identity. Amen and they never do even if you want them to that's something worth remembering too. That's that is actually a first dive. Nobody has ever said that before. So I don't think I've heard anybody say that you know. Yeah it's it's worth remembering because things could change on a dime and that that's something that helps me appreciate the good moments too because it's it's one thing to get past the difficult moments but it's also worth recognizing why it's so vital to to really to dive into the water not just surf above it when you're having a good moment because because that that'll pass and things will be bad again and things will be good again and it's it's this kind of constantly undulating wave of of good and bad and as long as you can can deal with that and accept both for what they are then you know then you don't feel bad you don't you don't worry that the good is going to end but you also don't worry that you're in the bad when you're there. Yeah that's a good point. Spark something uncommon this holiday with just the right gift from uncommon goods. 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I mean we've been having very much a philosophical discussion which I think is really cool which is not surprising to me considering what I know about you. That's the way that we operate. Yeah I mean which I love but let's start talking about your story. I mean I think that the real thing is you know when you first when you decide to do something as crazy as hey you know what I'm gonna put up a list of countries where random people can send me and I remember my ongoing joke was I'm gonna send you to Somalia one of these days when we first met. I was like I'm gonna send you somewhere that's incredibly challenging and see how you come out of that. You know you got to go to India which even I wouldn't have done that. But the thing that I think is interesting is that you have this capacity for doing something that is very very it's risky and it's uncomfortable and it causes you to grow and you know we talked a bit about disruption but I think developing that capacity to have these kinds of experiences the kinds that maybe are uncomfortable but we all know will cause you to grow. I mean how do you do that and what's I mean talk to us about the story and the challenges and I mean I want to know about the darker moments of this because you know you said that travel can be a real pain in the ass and I know from some of your stories but I'm you know we usually we usually only talk about the sort of interesting and exciting parts of this. I want to get into the parts that really have challenged you and moments when you have felt sort of like I mean talk to me about your personal dark nights of the soul in this whole process. You know it actually it kind of starts at the beginning like back in LA where things were going so well right as I was making those first initial digs into the internet and I was kind of scouring and saying you know maybe this is possible. There weren't as many people talking about this type of stuff back then but there were still plenty and I was starting to think well maybe I could do this maybe I could leave this lifestyle maybe I could do something a little more interesting and a little more risky and maybe I don't have to be the best at this particular thing and get the high score by measuring my bank account numbers and such the way that I was measuring my worth up until that point. And the thing that shifted me from that was the same thing that allows me to kind of get through some of the tougher moments now is just recognizing that you know this is not a trial run that I have a finite number of years in which to experience everything I'll ever experience and therefore if I'm not doing exactly what I need to be doing what I want to be doing something that will help me grow and something that will help me live then that's time I'll never get back and therefore to me time wasted. So looking at this opportunity that I had right before I left LA I was running a business things were going incredibly well and I had an offer from one of my clients to come be his protege and and he was one of these big money market guys billionaire doing incredibly well like to the way that I did business and made a very tempting offer but looking at where he was and looking at where his former proteges were and looking at the fact that they were doing so well by that one metric by the money in the bank but not very well by any other metric and these metrics that I was starting to appreciate and starting to worry about like quality of life and having something to talk about and going out and learning and meeting people and seeing new things and seeing the world from different perspectives it made it pretty apparent what I needed to do and so anytime that was some difficult nights there though because he made the offer and I had to to go home and think about it and I really had to weigh should I take the opportunity where I stay in LA and become a big wig and earn all this money and and reach that goal that has always been incredibly important goal to me or do I kind of scrap it all and throw it out the window and go on this kind of wild goose chase of trying to find something else that I feel like is out there but may or may not be out there and and the deciding factor was well you're going to die so between now and then what how do you want to be spending your time do you want to be in an office do you want to be really really happy about the numbers in the bank and spending that money trying to get over the day that you had to spend earning it or do you want to go out and do something and take some risks and maybe be poor maybe be poor again because I've been poor before that I guess the question for me then becomes you know what separates the type of person who will go in the wild goose chase from the one who chooses the guaranteed outcome because I think what we both can agree that we have chosen paths that don't come with a guarantee like we we have chosen something that is inherently uncertain and what I'm discovering more and more is that is certainly not for everybody no no and I think it's a spectrum too I think we've talked about this where it's kind of a comfort level with security and instability and for me I'm probably near the far end one of the far ends of one of these spectrums in terms of security and stability in that it doesn't actually make me happy and that's something that I recognized in LA is that what I was working toward was stability and what I was working towards was a certain type of security and it didn't make me happy it was something I felt like I was supposed to do but when I measured it against this idea of this kind of adventure this kind of foolhardy reckless throwing of myself into the world with no safety net or no guarantee of a safety net at least the latter options sounded much more appealing to me and made this this other option that I was weighing just seemed very stark and gray and in comparison for other people that's not the case though for other people maybe they could have taken that first option and really enjoyed it and really made a good run of it and been incredibly happy and and again I think that's just as legitimate I just I think it's important to know yourself well enough to understand where you lie on that spectrum and on other spectrums you know what other things do you need and how much of it do you need and what does that mean for what you do with your time well I think knowing knowing where you fall in that spectrum is is one of those things that it's easy to think that you fall on one side versus the other because you know you've got you just get a constant barrage of inputs trying to convince you yeah yeah and on one side it's kind of the the traditional tack where everybody's saying listen you this is what you want you want this family and you want this house and this white picket fence and you want to earn a big paycheck because then you can do x y and z and that's one argument and then the other argument is kind of coming from the online world the entrepreneurial world saying you don't need any of that and scrap it all and give it away and live like live like a hermit and live in a cave or whatever like travel the world like some kind of crazy person and that's that's kind of the other side and neither is inherently correct or incorrect it's just you have to figure it out and nobody can tell you where you lie on that spectrum other than yourself and in a lot of cases you won't even know until you've had the opportunity to taste pulled sides explaining football to the friend who's just there for the nachos hard tailgating from home like a pro with snacks and drinks everyone will love any easy win and with Instacart helping deliver the snack time MVPs to your door you're ready for the game in as fast as 30 minutes so you never miss a 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results may vary so let's do this let's uh let's shift gears and talk a bit about the travel itself and some of the places that you've been and kind of the insights and and learning that you've gained and kind of you know i mean you've obviously had challenges with some of this as well and i'd really love to hear you know of all these countries you've been through like kind of you know what is what have been some of the takeaways from it you know what you know what have you liked what have you hated you know what what misperceptions do we have as somebody who's sort of the lawyers of all of this yeah something that was immediately apparent and and i'm glad it stayed consistent but immediately apparent to me was that we're all pretty much the same it's it's a very flat thing to say i know and there's a lot of depth there that's left out when you say it like that but around the world everybody that i've met people when i've been visiting their country when they've come to visit me when when we've met up in in neutral countries um we're all kind of the same and that we're looking for the same thing we're all kind of searching for happiness we're all looking for some combination of happiness and security uh we're all on the spectrum somewhere and we're we're all kind of uh on good terms with each other until we're told not to be and generally there's some kind of overarching force saying that some type of cultural or governmental boundary put around us saying they are different from you and we are better because of x y and z and that's kind of a means of maintaining control but in general people left to their own devices we're not trying to screw each other over we're we're not trying to hurt each other we're not trying to do wrong by each other and that has been such a wonderful thing to discover especially with the rhetoric that's thrown around uh in this country but every other country to a certain degree that i've been to as well um basically calling everyone else the other and saying that we are different and unique and special and protagonists in this story and everybody else is at best an anti-hero but probably an antagonist and that is simply not the case everybody is acting according to their own philosophy their own beliefs within the context of what the culture they've been brought up in but nobody wakes up thinking i am the villain nobody wakes up thinking i'm going to really screw somebody over today and thank god for that what what they're thinking is uh i hope somebody else doesn't try to screw me over i hope those people from from the other country don't come over here and try to screw us over like if if there's any antagonism going on it's because of some kind of misunderstanding generally uh so so that's been a wonderful thing to find out and most of the the discoveries that i've made uh discoveries for me because growing up in the midwest of the u_s you don't have a lot of exposure to this type of thing um these discoveries have been mostly along those same lines where where people are in general good uh and what a wonderful thing to think about the world to think of it as a good place mm-hmm yeah well let's do this let's uh let's shift gears and let's start talking about the career that you've built out of all of this i mean you've you know you've clearly done something really interesting in that you've combined all the things that you you know you've learned your experiences your background and you've turned it into a pretty interesting career as an entrepreneur and i i'd you know i'd love to talk about that in a bit more depth i know you've talked about publishing you've talked about publishing company so let's let's get into all of that sure yeah well uh what i was doing in l.a. was branding so i was doing kind of a combination of design work and essentially building companies for other companies where they would come to me with an idea and say listen we want to do i don't know a reddit for fashion and then i'd make the logo and i'd build the website and do whatever marketing materials are necessary that type of thing kind of a complete package which i enjoyed because my interests are varied and my skill sets are kind of varied as well and i really like learning new things and you know hence the the travel and reading a lot and trying to discover all this new information and meeting new people but when i started traveling that became very difficult very quickly because of time zones and and uh internet uh the speed of the internet in particular in different countries and the cost of the internet so trying to do branding work from uh New Zealand where just the internet was abysmally slow while i was there and it was something like 16 time zones ahead of most of my clients uh it just simply wasn't practical so i started to take some of the experience that i had from blogging uh for uh i don't know a year or two at that point and trying to turn it into a business of some sort and a whole lot of us at that that point this was like five years ago we're trying to do that and trying to figure out the best way to do it and in a lot of people figured out ways that worked for them in different types of marketing or sponsors or advertisers or um affiliate marketing or whatever happens to be none of those really a good fit for me so i i kind of decided that blogging was going to be something that i did as a platform that that would bring people in and that would help flesh out my brand uh taking some of that knowledge of what i did for other people and doing it for myself and then i would build on top of that i would build products i would build something i would create some type of product or service that then i could make a living off of and i i wrote a couple books just to kind of share share what i knew to try to bring people into the blog i gave the first couple ones away for free and and this was kind of a wild west of ebooks at the time so the fact that i put this e-book into the world made it uh and in the fact that it wasn't terrible looking back by my standards now it was in fact terrible but by the standards of ebooks at the time and especially free ebooks it was great so those first two each were downloaded a few hundred thousand times and brought in a lot of people to the blog and that got me thinking well maybe i could earn a living by writing these ebooks and and at the time it was much more common to see ebooks going for for very high cost like 50 to a hundred bucks piece and and i thought well i i don't need to charge that much i could charge 20 bucks for this e-book and still make make a living so i published a book on networking and priced it at 20 bucks and ended up making a fairly significant amount of money all at once and started pushing more into publishing and and i recognized that from the experience of those first several ebooks that this was something i could do from anywhere and then get on the internet just sometimes and not be tethered to the rest of the world the way that i had been when i had clients and so since then it's been kind of just a myriad of experiences and experiments figuring out what publishing is and what it's going to be and how i can use it and where i fit in that yeah so so at this point i've written probably like 25 or 30 books uh varying lengths and subject matter and fiction has been kind of a recent dalliance for me but something i enjoy immensely i found that nonfiction i write a whole lot faster uh and and they tend to sell a lot better too because of just the the makeup of my audience i think um but you can only write so many nonfiction books you know based on what you know or things that you've done narrative nonfiction stories that i have to tell so i have to go live for a while before i can write those books whereas fiction as long as i have ideas i can keep writing and i've got just innumerable ideas on that subject so i've been going like a crazy person writing these fiction books and then it's been experimenting with business models within that as well because i've always been kind of an entrepreneur and i love the the creative challenge that business brings anybody out there who's a creative person like a painter or a writer or something and thinks that business is not a creative endeavor i call shenanigans on that it is one of the most interesting creative endeavors you can possibly undertake and i highly recommend you you learn the fundamentals so you can start playing with it uh in terms of supporting your craft but also in terms of just having fun and so the the publishing world for me has been kind of that it's it's like learning a new medium picking up a paintbrush for the first time and then just playing and and uh experimenting and uh the publishing world in particular right now is just right for upset it's it's nobody knows what's up or down anymore and there's no right or wrong way to do it so i've been playing with like serialized fiction uh writing a series as uh seasons kind of like tv shows like five books per season and releasing them once a week um playing with longer format short of format essays i've recently been taking kind of like as a promotional thing but also as an experiment uh taking essentially very short summaries of essays that i've written or chapters and books that i've written and trying to reduce them to something that would fit on an image and then using that image and spreading it around social media as both a promotional tool but also uh trying to figure out if i understand what i'm talking about enough to be able to be that reductionist about it so lots of little challenges and opportunities and experiments and uh yeah it's just been a blast it frankly it's been a blast and being able to interact with the other people in the field and then actually teaming up with Josh and Ryan from the minimalists and forming asymmetrical press was kind of a formalized version of all this experimentation we're getting together with somebody else saying let's let's make a real business out of this not just a crazy person playing around and uh and see what we can do with all this experimentation and see if we can formalize it and kind of offer up templates for other people to use yeah well let's uh let's talk about this idea of you know what publishing is and what it's becoming uh because i think that's that's you know one of the that's sort of the million dollar question right everybody is is sitting here wondering where is this all going to go what does it mean for the individual what does it mean for the masses like what does it mean for big media what does it mean for the independent creator i mean i'm really curious to hear your thoughts on all of this yeah i frankly i think that it's great and i come from a standpoint where i'm able to make my living off of it right now so i mean different people have different opinions on it but for me i think it's great that kind of the old guard is being upset to a point where they're having to change their ways i think that it's great that new new people uh the young guns like josh and ryan and i can come in and actually you know make some waves in a field and actually make a living from our work and that anybody else could conceivably do the exactly the same thing um i think we're reaching a point where the the media is less important the the vehicle is less important and myself and and most of the people who i know who are working in this field who are comfortable working outside of the traditional definition of a book being a you know some some stack of paper bound uh between two a cover and uh stored in a bookstore anybody who's comfortable getting beyond that as a definition for a book is having fun because we're able to look at it and say okay i'm vehicle agnostic i don't care how my message in my words reach the other the the recipient the the reader the consumer at the other end what does that mean what do i do with that information what is the best way to get this piece of information to the intended recipient and thinking of it in those terms makes every single publishing project uh and experiments all to itself and something that's a little bit uncertain but really incredibly uh fun because you don't know what to expect but it could be something amazing and it could be something that shifts the way people think and it could be something that reaches audiences that don't read or that typically would never open a book and that to me is incredibly exciting mm-hmm yeah well i mean i think the the i think really the cool thing is that the power dynamic um has shifted so much in terms of of you know suddenly the ability to create media has been democratized in a way that it ever has before which is really i think amazing but there's one side of this i think that nobody really wants to ever talk about uh which you know greg and i have kind of hit is the role that talent plays in all of it and the role that quality plays you know because i think that we i mean for i think for every single thing that you see on the internet that has you know an audience there's there's play you know effectively what are digital graveyards or projects that have been abandoned or or things that just really had no shot from the get-go and i'm really curious to hear your thoughts about that yeah you know it's funny because there's this big uproar in the publishing industry that now now that anybody can publish everything is shit and i i couldn't disagree more i i think it's a great opportunity for talent to shine because there's finally something to compare it to and this is something that i went through when i was a designer as well uh living in LA everybody was worried because now there's all these new tools allowing people to edit their own photos and to create graphics really easily and build websites without trying and they're thinking oh my god the barbarians are at the gate we're all going down and i'm just thinking no way man this is an opportunity you you finally now if somebody comes to you and says no i don't want to pay that for this project then you can point to one of these other people and say okay go pay them a hundred bucks instead that's cool if that's what you want and this is the caliber of work that you want excellent otherwise this is my price and it really helps you stand apart as somebody who's trying their best to do really high quality work rather than you know the kind of the mass-produced Walmart work and there's a market for that too though i think there is a market for people who just want to pay the least possible to get the bare minimum and it's great that that bare bare minimum has increased in quality over time but now the people who really do shine and who really do care about the work that they're putting out have an opportunity to to rise with that tide as well and have an opportunity to really stand apart and that proved to be the case in the design field you know that all these young guns putting up their work on five or something and saying yeah i'll build you a logo for five bucks that actually brought me more clients because suddenly these people were looking at all this shit that was being produced and they were able to see good good work for good work they had had that comparison and i think it's the same within publishing there's going to be millions and millions and millions of books published every year now and that's awesome and and that means that slowly but surely the minimum will increase in quality but anybody who's above that average above mediocre will look even better by comparison and as long as you can express that and as long as you can show people that and give people a means of of checking out your work ahead of time for example then i think it's it's a great opportunity for those who are really trying hard and who have the talent yeah yeah doubt well i think that that makes sort of a perfect way to wrap up our conversation and you know kind of ask you my final question because i think it's a perfect segue uh you know our show is called the unmistakable creative and you know we live in in such a noisy world like you know like we've been talking about so you know based on your experience your your sort of uh you know journey through the internet and through the web and you know through life what is it that makes somebody or something unmistakable who that's a great question i think uh basically we all start out unique we all start out as our own person like i mentioned before it's silly to try to replicate somebody else because you're in a much better position to be you um and then the task becomes refining that you and making uh turning yourself over time into the best you possible uh and and i'd mentioned before like the the sharpening of rough edges i i think that's vital i think we all have a unique blueprint it's kind of like the nature versus nurture debate right and the best science available says that most of what we do and most of who we are is a little bit of both there's some genetic code in there that kind of sets tops and bottom run or uh ceilings and floors essentially and then what we do in life and what we're exposed to sets where we are in that spectrum and i think it's vital to to really look inward and figure out who you are what you are what value you have to offer what you enjoy what you want to be doing with your time and honing in on that and really really focusing and figuring out what it is that you do better than other people and what it is that you don't and what it is that you could improve upon and what it is that maybe you should stand off and focus on and focus on those other unique traits that you have and the people that i know of in in any field that i respect most and whose work i respect most are the ones who have done this who have kind of carved out their own niche and who haven't necessarily looked at the the established way of doing things and said oh i'm not i don't fit there i'm not welcome therefore i should just settle for mediocre they've instead said well that's that's an interesting standard an interesting default that we have now i'm going to change that i'm going to do something different i'm going to change what the default is or i'm going to remain an outlier for my entire life and i'm going to be the best outlier that i can possibly be and and finding that finding out who you are and then really refining that it seems to be the best way to be unmistakable because who could be a better you than you well i love that i think that's uh poetic way to finish our conversation callin uh as i expected it's been absolutely fantastic to have you uh back here as a guest on what is now the unmistakable creative and uh i can't thank you enough for taking time to join us and share some of your insights with our listeners that's my pleasure thanks for having me man yeah and for those of you guys listening we'll wrap the show with that you've been listening to the unmistakable creative podcast visit our website at unmistakable creative.com and get access to over 400 interviews in our archives how did you actually sleep last night if it didn't feel like your very best rest then you need to upgrade to the softest most luxurious bedding from bowl and branch their signature sheets are made from the finest 100 organic cotton and get softer with every wash millions of sleepers love their sheets and right now you can feel the difference for yourself during their biggest sales of the entire year hurry to bowlandbranch.com to shop their best offers limited time only exclusions apply see site for details cue the fireplace and your favorite fall movie there's nothing better than a cozy evening at home with a class of first leaf wine first leaf is a personalized wine club that delivers right to your door sounds magical right they get to know your favorite tasting notes which varietals you enjoy and whether you prefer sweet or dry wines so in every shipment you get bottles tailored to your unique pallet go to tryfirstleaf.com/fall to get your first six minds for just $44.95 with free shipping at sprouts farmers market we're all about fresh healthy and delicious step into our bulk department to scoop up as much as you like from hundreds of bins filled with wholesome grains and limited time goodies visit your neighborhood sprouts farmers market today where flavor fills every scoop have you ever felt a twinge of worry about AI taking over your job or diluting your creativity well what if you could turn that fear into create a fuel we've just published an amazing new ebook called the four keys to success in an AI world and this is more than just a guide it's a deep exploration into the human skills that AI can't touch the skills that are essential for standing out and thriving no matter how much technology evolved we're talking about real differentiators here like creativity emotional intelligence critical thinking and much more inside you'll find actionable insights and strategies to develop these skills whether you're a creative person a business person or just simply someone who loves personal development this isn't a story about tech taking over it's a story of human creativity thriving alongside AI picture this AI is your creative co-pilot not just as a tool but a collaborator that enhances your unique human skills the four keys ebook will show you exactly how to do that and view AI in a new way that empowers you instead of overshadows you transform your creative potential today head over to unmistakable creative calm slash four keys use the number four ke y s that's unmistakable creative calm slash four keys and download your free copy [BLANK_AUDIO]

Finding the balance between professional and personal fulfillment
Why the meaning we find in money is starting to change
The tendency to default to traditions, simply because they are traditions
A look at what it means to live intentionally, in spite of our circumstances
Why you don’t need to live a crazy adventure to have a good life
Our tendency to demonize life in the cubicle
Why there is no downside to the hand you’ve been dealt
Implementing systemized self disruption into your life
What causes post traumatic growth versus post traumatic stress
Learning to navigate the constantly undulating wave of good and bad
A look at the pivotal moment in Colin’s life that would have led to significant wealth
The problem with living and measuring your life by one metric
Knowing where you fall on the spectrum of risk and reward
Lessons learned from Colin’s travels to various countries
What eventually led Colin to create a publishing company
The role that quality and talent will play in media and publishing

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