“How intimidating can it be?”
That’s what I said to myself about starting a podcast.
As it turns out it wasn’t at all, however writing a blog post has stymied me until now. A close friend of mine said “Just write one paragraph, then another one. By the time you have written five or six paragraphs you have yourself a blog post.”
Another friend suggested I start writing things that I am certain about, but since I am certain of almost nothing these days, I am now less than 100 words in and I am stumped.
Then it occurred to me that since I am asking other entrepreneurs the question of how they got started every week, I thought I would answer one of my own podcast questions.
When did you decide to become an entrepreneur?
Like so many famous stories, my journey to become an entrepreneur started out of a tragedy. In January 2020 my oldest son Pierce ended his life after recently graduating from university. This event dramatically shifted my life’s trajectory in every single way you can imagine.
As my wife’s scream first hit my ear, I knew what had happened. In that split second, I rushed to my son Pierce’s room to find him slumped against the closet door lifeless and grey. I remember calling to his younger brother to call 911 as I lifted his body on to the floor of his room to begin compressions.
Pierce lay in front of me lifeless, his 25-year-old body heavy, grey, and cold, his lips purple. As I begin compressions it was obvious to me that this had happened hours earlier and that there was no coming back from this.
In the next minutes, police and other first responders arrived, ushered our family to the main floor while they worked on my son. It was at least 20 minutes later when I heard them call the time of death, at which point I lost my footing and fell back against the sofa. As I came to my feet, tears streaming from my eyes I reached for my wife and son Tristan.
That was January 17th, 2020.
Since that fateful day our entire family has been healing, albeit slowly and without any expectation that this road of grief will ever have an end.
Prior to this horrible event, I had been recently laid off in November of 2019 from my role as the vice president of sales with a software company. I had decided I would begin my new job search in January. This would give me a few weeks to clear my head and enjoy the holiday season.
So, with the new year off and running I was optimistic; new decade, new year, and all is good, or so I thought until January 17th.
After January 17th we were all numb. I reflect on that time now and have very little memory or actual recognition of the events and conversations that took place most of the first year, and I have come to accept that I may well have been in shock for most of 2020.
At my darkest point I became a cliché for depression. I had to physically use my hands to lift my right leg off the bed to start the day. I didn’t want to get out of bed, instead of speaking to my friends I would simply hide behind text messaging. Over the course of about 6 weeks in February and March my sadness had metastasized into a full-on case of depression with a new touch, flashbacks and anxiety brought on by PTSD.
It was about the anniversary of Pierce’s death when I found myself in a great deal of emotional and physical pain and my depression had amplified to where it unsettled me to the point that I immediately called my doctor. My sense of it all is that the shock and PTSD of the trauma insulated me from feeling the depths of pain I would feel through the winter and spring of 2021.
After additional dialogue with my two doctors, I was given some new medication to help with my anxiety and depression. Within days I began to feel better and committed to actually getting better so I had a clear head to figure out what I could still do for a living going forward.
It was at this moment that I knew returning to a sales leader role would almost certainly include managing women and men that were my late son’s age, which was something I would rather avoid. I also had to consider the impact the PTSD and other medications were having on my once outgoing and happy go lucky approach to life.
There was a lot to sort out at that point.
It was Spring so it was the perfect time to start walking outside and, although I had dismissed the idea of journaling many times before I decided that I would try it. As I started my daily walks in the sun, my journaling and my new medication had me feeling better than I had in sometime.
The daily walks gave me time to listen to the music of my youth exclusively which I believe was another contributing factor to my rebound. I listened only to the music from a period in my life when everything and anything seemed possible.
The idea of starting my own business came to me while out walking and I heard the someone use the term raconteur. That’s all I had. One word started me on this adventure. What is amazing to me is that I heard raconteur and it stuck, I processed it because my depression had me in such a state that much of what I would hear would go unprocessed to memory.
I caution my family and friends that they should be grateful the word that got through wasn’t troubadour.
Over the next few weeks, I would spend my time walking thinking about what kind of business I could start but also had to consider what kind of business I wanted. That was trickier both mentally and functionally for me but after doing an inventory of my personal assets and thinking about some of the ideas in my son’s thesis “The Future Is Cancelled” I determined that I wanted to start a lifestyle business that could support our family and pay respect to the ideas my late son Pierce included in his thesis.
Before you ask, a lifestyle business is simply a way of saying I am not returning to the stresses of working for someone else, instead I am prepared to accept less and do more with it as it suits a lifestyle that I feel I need to live at this point. Town Crier Raconteurs is not going to take on investors, worry about shareholder agreements or be traded on any stock exchange, it’s just my little homegrown business. That’s exactly what I want it to be.
Initially, I thought about chasing independent sales representative contracts as I had done between gigs earlier in my career. I was really stuck at this point and knew the clock was ticking.
The pandemic was still crazy, and I was feeling isolated but somewhat frozen from taking any actions. Picking up the phone to call someone seemed impossible and although I was doing much better, I was still hiding in text messaging.
It occurred to me that I know a lot of smart people that also knew me well and I thought I would start reaching out to them to get their advice on what kind of business I should start. So, I started reaching out to people and asking if they would have a web call with me. Everyone was so generous with their time; it was really a boost for me mentally to receive so much openness from some people who have incredibly busy schedules.
It was at this time that as a joke I started posting on Facebook who I was speaking with that day. At the time I remember thinking this will show people I am not isolating and that I am busy moving forward. The joke was on me in the end. The podcast which I had openly mocked at one time was becoming my salvation. I found something I love doing and if it is only a hobby, it’s one can do for a long time that I enjoy immensely.
After a couple of weeks of this tomfoolery I started getting friends asking where they could listen to the interviews. At this point I could only tell them the truth that it was just Gregg being silly with his posts. However, it did get me to thinking a little further a field for what Town Crier Raconteurs (TCR) could be.
Having worked for iotum a few years earlier I was familiar with podcasts in as much as I knew they existed. I had never even heard a podcast. I didn’t know they had theme music or RSS feeds or anything else. Then I thought well, sure my friends might like to hear me chat with someone they know but what would we talk about that would have appeal beyond a handful of friends.
While pouring through some old DVD’s one day I came across Spectacle, Elvis Costello with… and an idea was born. I wasn’t a musician so I couldn’t do musician to musician interviews, but I could interview people who have started their own business like I am doing. I decide early on my best path forward to interview small business owners as I already knew so many and they probably don’t get the chance much to tell their story like this.
What would I interview them about?
And it stuck me that every single business owner I will encounter will have a great story about starting their business or going through hard times (like a pandemic). I gave some consideration to other subject matter but settled on origin stories and decided that if I can gain some momentum, I could always introduce different show formats to grow the audience.
How does doing a podcast that doesn’t generate income make a business?
The short answer is it doesn't. It's a hobby at this point and it's both fun and therapeutic for me so why not?
On the upside, it does expose my name and my company name to an audience that doesn’t know me at all. This approach also allows me to engage directly with actual business owners understand the pain points and solutions facing small businesses. This builds a network of business owners with whom I can potentially engage for my business development, sales strategy, social media management and related professional services.
…and that’s how I became an entrepreneur, Check out Episode #24 to hear more from me in an interview conducted by Alec Saunders.
