Mike Dicks - Who's saying you can't do what you want to do?
Mike Dicks is an Illustrator, Designer, Author, Satirist and the man behind The Mayor of Trumpton, The Brexit Comic, Mike & Scrabble. My particular favourite can be found on Linkedin where Mike describes himself as the CEO of Camberwick Analytica. But Mike's third career has been borne out of necessity. Mike was a very successful TV & Web guy whose bleeding edge technology and bleeding edge thinking had clients queueing at his door but he needed a job he could do from home in his pyjamas because one day Mike received a diagnosis of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia or CLL or Cancer. Mike had no choice but to slow down. Mike's story is about energy. For the first 50 years he had it in spades and used it to good effect. He's been one of those people who consistently spots something new and translates it for the rest of us. When we see a new-fangled technology, Mike sees solutions and opportunities. An early career in computer sales (when most people hadn't ever seen a computer) lead to a career in TV, which lead to a career in website development (when most people thought a website was an electronic brochure), which lead to a part-time career training and then Mike was forced into a career as a designer, author, cartoonist and now artist. These days Mike's work is delivered through his series of Avatars. The whole idea of using pseudonyms as a lubricant for creativity and in Mike's case thoughtful, important, purposeful creativity seems obvious when you hear Mikes story but it wasn't obvious to me before this conversation so thank you Mike. At the very beginning of this conversation, Mike suggests he doesn't bring out the real Mike Dicks ever. I reckon he got pretty damn close during this conversation. If you're vaguely interested in the idea of spending your precious time doing what you want to do - I'm pretty confident you'll enjoy this. As Mike says "Who's saying you can't do what you want to do?"
Neil and Ray - Introducing a Life Done Different.ly
This episode is different to the others. We (Neil Witten and Ray Richards) discuss the Do Something Different methodology, why we started Life Done Different.ly, how we met, what we've learned and what we're learning from the conversations we're having.