The Pathless Path with Paul Millerd

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Learning, Self-Employment & Making Business More Human (Mike Tannenbaum) Jan 16, 2019

Show notes

Mike was always a self-driven creator, developing TI-83 apps for his classmates to keep track of their grades from an early age. He spent a lot of time "head in in the clouds, making things." It is no surprise then, that he eventually found that self-employment was the right fit after several years of trying to make it work in the corporate world.

Mike and I dive into his path in which he slowly made sense of the fact that it was time to take the leap to self-employment. As he was about to take the leap, his company ended up laying him off anyway. Reflecting back, he has found many valuable lessons in his journey and has brought these together in a self-published a workbook called Clear Path Forward. The workbook helps people re-assess their relationship with work. We talk about the process he took to publish the book and where he sees his work taking him over the next couple of years.

He now lives and works around the tagline "making business more human" which he is using to run workshops with clients and have deep conversations with people around what really matters.

Topics Discussed:

Building his first program on TI-83
Creativity & Writing
Mindfulness & awareness
His relationship with work
Money and the fear of going broke
Learning & reading
Diversity of viewpoints
Embracing uncertainty
Making work more human

Books That Influences Mike (That We Discuss)

Connect With Mike:

Personal Blog — Link
Business — Enjoy Humanity
Workbook — Clear Path Forward
Download a Free Worksheet — Link
Offer: 25% off either edition of Clear Path Forward with code “Boundless” — Link

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10 Career Myths We Should Stop Believing (Jeff Hittner) Jan 09, 2019

Show notes

Jeff Hittner of Your Project X and Paul talk about their favorite 10 career myths. They dive deep into the beliefs and mindsets that drive these beliefs while making an argument for people to reflect at a deeper level to shift past the default to contemplate a wide range of options

Readable Version: Top 10 Myths

Myth #1 - "Once I land my dream job / make $X a year, I'll be happy" (2:35)

Myth #2 - "I need to find my passion" (7:15)

Myth #3 - "I should never take a pay cut" (14:15)

Myth #4 - "You should have a 'steady' income" (20:40)

Myth #5 - "I have to know what I need to do before I change directions" (26:15)

Myth #6 - "An extended break is irresponsible" (32:30)

Myth #7 - "It's fine to take a risk when young, but not when you have kids" (40:35)

Myth #8 - "I should go to grad school to figure out what I want to do" (46:15)

Myth #9 - "I can't make a change now after years in this field" (55:20)

Myth #10 - "I'll be happy once I'm running my own business" (1:04:54)

Links Mentioned:

How to Get Unstuck In The New Year, Jeff Hittner On Quartz
Self-Determination Theory, Deci & Ryan
Comparing Passion & Purpose, Thrive Global

Jeff Hittner leads Your Project X, a social venture with a mission to help 1 million people find more purposeful work. He has more than 18 years experience as an entrepreneur, consultant and changemaker. He is the founder of five social ventures, including IBM’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) consulting practice globally. In 2011, he developed the curriculum for one of the first MBA’s in Sustainability in the US, at Bard College, where he was the Leadership professor. He was also two-time Chairman of the Carnegie New Leaders at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Jeff’s passion has always been at the intersection of education and entrepreneurship. Prior to your Project X, he ran a career transition program for 64 New Yorkers, built global education programs including a blended learning initiative for high school dropouts in Latin America and career discovery programs for youth in Europe. Jeff received his Masters in Cultures and Development Studies from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from The College of William and Mary in Virginia where he was an elite gymnast. As a thought leader, Jeff has been published in a dozen major publications, including Forbes. Jeff lives in NYC with his wife, Grace, and one-year-old son, Rivington.

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Mini Episode: Five Things Before You Leap: Lessons From The Self-Employed Dec 21, 2018

Show notes

In this short episode, I talk about the five lessons I've found that help people make the leap to self-employment:

Find a friend taking a different path
Re-define your relationship with money
Build up your "eff you" fund
Teach others something
Find a way to make money other than full-time income

Full Article | This episode is also a YouTube video

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Bryan Victor's Education: wedding planning, year-long travel & building a visual animation studio Dec 12, 2018

Show notes

Bryan Victor has never taken a traditional path but he doesn’t know any other way. Perhaps that is why he started his own podcast in Singapore, Misfits, which interviews unconventional Singaporeans. At 20, he saved up $10,000 while he was serving required military time and decided he would travel the world for a year. During the trip, he realized this was all the “schooling” he needed (see 10 things I learned). After learning how he could live simply on very little money, he knew that this opened up many options for him. He knew that he would always value flexibility over maximizing income, learning this lesson earlier than others.

Regardless of any position towards “formal” schooling, his chosen path, wedding planning, wasn’t something you learned at school. He knew he had to create his own internship. So before his trip, he wrote to 50 American wedding planners (the best, he says), to ask if he could work with them. One person gave him a chance and he was able to learn while making enough money to live.

Going back to Singapore, he couldn’t get anyone to hire him, so he realized he was “forced” to create his own wedding planning business. In the process, he became named one of Singapore’s Top 10 Wedding Planners (though he argues there weren’t that many anyway!).

After proving he could make it, he started dabbling with a side business, 2D animation and founded Sage Animation. He decided to give the wedding planning business away as a gift and was able to find one person (out of 40) that he thought would do a great job.

Bryan has been fascinated with understanding what makes him happy. As he was on another trip in the United States, he was drawn to another project (motivated by the #vanlife movement) to build a liveable van for himself. While he accomplished the feat, he found that he was overcome with a “something-like depression” feeling after he achieved it. While he thought he had everything, it led to a new and deeper curiosity in what actually leads to happiness.

Books & Other Resources Mentioned:

Jose Villa – Wedding Photographer
Seth Godin
Tim Ferriss
Antifragile
Naval Ravikant Podcast on Farnham Street
Solve For Happy
SEO That Works Course
Vanessa Van Edwards – People School

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Why every company should adopt the 4-day workweek (Tash Walker) Dec 05, 2018

Show notes

Tash Walker is the founder of a firm and spends her Fridays making marmalade.

Before instituting a four-day workweek at her firm, The Mix, she barely had time for her relationships. She decided to start doing research about different ways of working. There had to be a better way than the default options of "Summer Fridays" and "flexible work," that never seem to make less anxiety or stress-ridden.

In her research, she discovered many examples of Swedish companies embracing 4-day workweeks and also found that when they instituted it, they often helped improve productivity. After bringing the option to her team at The Mix, they decided to do a three-month trial. They didn't even tell their clients.

The funny thing? The clients didn't even notice. Even better, when they shared it with their clients - they weren't offended. They were curious to learn more and impressed that they had prioritized their people. While many quickly reflex to "well that can't work here," Tash and her team went forward anyway and have shown that a 4-day work week can work and it can work in professional services - an industry where many take for granted the fact that you should always be available for your clients.

Beyond improving the lives of the people at the firm, they achieved some incredible results:

Revenues up 57%
Absenteeism down 75%
Productivity stayed the same
Doubled the number of clients
Client referrals up 50%

Want to learn how to make this happen at your company? You can download their "4-day week" report which is one of the best reports I've seen on the future of work.

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The Humans Behind The Gig Economy (Sarah Kessler, Quartz) Nov 28, 2018

Show notes

Amid all the buzzwords and reports on the future of work, I find Sarah Kessler's stories about the gig economy to be the most insightful and the most human. Her stories and her book, Gigged, give an accurate picture of some of the upsides of the gig economy, but also some of the downsides.

She shares stories of people that are sleeping in their office making five cents per task on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to creative freelancers who can make six-figure salaries working from anywhere. She also shares the story of companies that see limits to the gig economy, like Dan Teran's company Managed by Q who is following Zeynep Ton's Good Jobs Strategy and looking at people as valuable and investing in them as full-time employees and partners in the businesses success.

Our conversation dives deeper into some of the stories she shares as well as some of the current challenges with platforms, the PR machine (all the firms say people want flexibility, but fail to mention they are happy to give it up for more pay!).

One of her subjects in the book puts it most powerfully, Kristy Milland, “I am a human, not an algorithm”

More From Sarah:

Gigged (Amazon)
Her writing on Quartz@Work
Startups Incomplete Narrative On The Future Of Work (Quartz)
Managed by Q is Profitable (Quartz)

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Boundless

Screw The Cubicle (Lydia Lee) Nov 14, 2018

Show notes

Lydia Lee was a self-described "multi-potentialite" growing up and loves to experiment and play games growing up. You can probably draw a straight line from her hosting television shows for the stuffed animals in her room to her current YouTube channel Screw The Cubicle TV. However, life is never that simple.

Lydia is based in Bali where she is the Founder and Corporate Escape Coach of Screw The Cubicle, a movement to inspire people to break free from the shackles of conventional work.

From building businesses to forging freelance careers, she’s helped hundreds of talented professionals repurpose their skills to create better versions of their careers and become better versions of themselves.

Topics Covered:

How she balanced her interests with the default path
Burnout in Russia
How she started her business Screw The Cubicle
A cool approach to start your coaching business
What you need to be self-employed
The beliefs you should question
Coaching & continuous learning
Why so many pineapples in Lydia's branding?

Connect With Lydia

Boundless

How A Remote Company Enables Freedom, Trust & Digital Dance Parties (Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier.com) Nov 07, 2018

Show notes

Wade Foster was graduating during the worst recession in the past 100 years and traditional employers were simply not hiring anyone. He reached out to a local software company in Missouri and talked them into hiring him to work on marketing. The experience "opened his eyes" to the digital world and the enormous opportunities that were beginning to emerge. He also tapped into a "thirst for developing new skills" that pushed him to learn how to code.

The idea for Zapier emerged from some work Wade was doing with his friend Brian to connect different apps on the internet. They brought the idea to Startup Weekend in Missouri and ended up building a prototype of what would later form the foundation of Zapier. By Monday morning, they were committed to spending time on it and seeing where it would go.

Seven years later, Wade is the CEO of that company and he is leading it as a remote company. Wade shares reflections on building a remote company and the fact that you have to default to trust and be very intentional about building a connection between people. In traditional companies, he notes that "The default for most companies is that they don't trust you."

Connect With Wade & Zapier:

I highly recommend checking out the resources Wade and his team have put together on running a remote company:

The Ultimate Guide To Remote Work
Zapier Website
Follow Wade on Twitter & LinkedIn
Want To Work For Zapier? They are hiring!

Connect With Boundless:

Join 65+ people in the slack community
Carve A New Path With Paul

"My Name Is Nemo and I Don't Do Small Talk" Oct 31, 2018

Show notes

Nemo Ashong's bold vision is "a truly inclusive and empowered world" He helps people to be fully expressed and to be more authentic, be more unique and be more powerful.

This conversation brought out some vulnerability in both of us and we barely scratched the surface around some tough topics like diversity, & inclusion. I live for this type of tough conversation and appreciate that podcasts give the kind of space to explore topics with nuance. I'm not sure we ended up with any clear answers, but I think had the type of conversation filled with respect and curiosity that can enable us to go deeper with each other and with other people.

Connect With Nemo:

Empjoyment

1-On-1 Coaching With Nemo

World Joy Movement

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Boundless

Ervin Ling On Escaping The Corporate World At 30 To Travel The World Oct 24, 2018

Show notes

Ervin Ling followed the default path as an actuary, passing test after test. After passing all the tests, he found himself working harder than he was ever working. As he stared at the television and saw his friends on TV during a weekend trip to the Final Four, he realized he didn't want to keep doing this. He declared (after a few drinks, nonetheless) to his friends, "If UConn wins the national championship, I'm going to quit my job."

As any good number-driven actuary would, he didn't quit his job immediately. He took about 18 months to plot his escape from the corporate world. During this time, he re-thought his relationship with money, his possessions and his relationships with friends and family. He ended up traveling around the world for 12 months. Here are some stats from his trip:

Total USD spent: $24,740
Total days on the road: 338
Total countries visited: 38 (including the USA)
Most days in a single country: 30 (Vietnam)
Total number of miles traveled: 68,307 (109,925 km) – equivalent to circling the earth 2.7 times
Air Travel: 51,044 mi (82,143 km)

After this trip, he still felt a pull towards living abroad and now lives and teaches English in Taiwan. This journey has helped him discover and invest a life he could be proud of.

Link to Video Version Of Interview (Dumplings Included)

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