It's been exciting watching the U.S. Open on television. I've been there three times in person. I've also been to Wimbledon and the French Open. In January, I'll be at the Australian Open for the first time and I've designed an entire 10-day experience in Australia around it. Drop me a comment or DM to learn how to join this trip! We also have an option to join us in New Zealand before. #usopen #australianopen #atptennis #wtatennis

Travel teaches you about humanity. In this clip from Episode 169 of the @AgentInnovation podcast, @jess_gives shares a story that is an example of the goodness you see from strangers while traveling to foreign lands. Episode 169 of the Agents of Innovation Podcast is available now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch here: youtu.be/RdEpXCxXuzs?is=S5IH…

How do you build a career that aligns with your passion and the kind of life you want to live? It doesn’t happen overnight. When you’re young, you often need to put in long hours, perhaps sleep on floors in offices, and maybe even do work for free. No matter what path you take, gaining skills, experiences, and building connections is the thing you want to lean into. In this clip from Episode 169 of the @AgentInnovation podcast, @jess_gives talks about how he volunteered on a political campaign for 100 hours a week. It led to his first opportunity in a career that took turns he never would have expected. And he’s also built a life that gives him the freedom to travel around the world. Episode 169 of the Agents of Innovation Podcast is available now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch here: youtu.be/RdEpXCxXuzs?is=x9ue…

There are different ways to travel but the first time doing something new is always the most exhilarating. Chase that next adventure! Check out our conversation with @jess_gives — a man who has been to 192 countries. But what were his earliest travel adventures like compared to the ones he does today? Episode 169 of the @AgentInnovation Podcast is available now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch here: youtu.be/RdEpXCxXuzs?is=HVEt…

Happy Monday! Chart your own course. Whether that is aspiring to do something fun and meaningful in all 197 countries in the world or staying home and raising your family. Build your own American Dream. That’s what makes this life truly yours. Check out our conversation with @jess_gives — a man who has been to 192 countries. He has built a life and career that enables him to pursue his own dreams while constantly getting outside his comfort zone. We wonder what Jess is doing on this Monday. Probably something adventurous! Episode 169 of the @AgentInnovation Podcast is available now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch here: youtu.be/RdEpXCxXuzs?is=QNmV…

What does a man who has been to 192 countries have to say to someone who has been to less than 5? Or hasn’t left their home state or region? Check out our conversation with @jess_gives — Episode 169 of the @AgentInnovation Podcast, available now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch: youtu.be/RdEpXCxXuzs?is=YZHI…

Meet the man who has been to 192 countries! @jess_gives was my guest on episode 169 of the @AgentInnovation podcast. Full episode here: youtu.be/RdEpXCxXuzs?is=hrp0…

My new book, "The Soundtrack of Success: What Musicians Can Teach Us About Entrepreneurship and the American Dream," is out now on Amazon. It features more than 15 musicians and bands — and one of my favorite stories in it started at a wedding. In 2015, I was invited to the marriage celebration of Shawn Fisher and Jordyn Jackson — the folk duo @FlagshipRomance — just outside Gainesville, Florida. They hired other musicians for the day, and one of them was a 20-year-old from the small town of Chiefland named Houston Keen We talked after his set. He gave us his info, we followed him on social media, and just like that, we were friends — not fans. That's actually his whole philosophy: "I don't even count fans... You're a friend now. We know each other on a first name basis. I'm not going to charge my friends money." That's the first lesson, and it's easy to miss while you're busy chasing growth: relationships compound, transactions don't. A transaction ends the moment the sale does. A relationship doesn't — it tells other people about you, it comes back, it grows alongside you. Houston never set out to build an audience. He built friendships, one at a time, and the audience showed up as a side effect. Houston picked up a guitar at 11, started gigging at 17, and by 21 he was touring Florida and beyond, eyeing a move to Austin. He never went to college. Instead, he worked construction and lawn care jobs while building his music career one relationship at a time. He gives his music away for free — and that's the second lesson. Not because he doesn't value his work, but because he's playing a longer game than most: "I want you to grow to love it... and then I want you to grow to appreciate it." Give first. Let people fall in love with what you've made before you ever ask them to pay for it. The loyalty — and eventually the money — follows the relationship. It almost never works the other way around. After a couple of years in Austin, he moved back to Chiefland, just before COVID hit, and took a 40-hour-a-week construction job while still booking three or four gigs a week, reinvesting every dollar back into his music. He calls it being a "restless entrepreneur" — getting up every day with a purpose, even when it's exhausting. If you're building something of your own — a business, a brand, a following — that's the real takeaway. Stop measuring your reach. Start measuring how many strangers you've turned into friends. That's the number that actually compounds. Houston's full story — and others like it — is in "The Soundtrack of Success," available now on Amazon. Get it here: amzn.to/4aX4fGO And find Houston's music -- "for free" -- anywhere music is available online. And then I recommend getting to one of his lives shows, especially if you find yourself in North/Central Florida. You're bound to have a lot of fun!

My new book, "The Soundtrack of Success: What Musicians Can Teach Us About Entrepreneurship and the American Dream," recently released on Amazon, and one of the artists I write about is @paulpfau I met Paul in 2013 at @RockByTheSea, a charity music festival in north Florida where I served on the board of directors for six years — which is exactly how I got to know so many independent musicians, year after year. That particular year was one of two we held the festival in Panama City Beach, and Paul was filling in on guitar for the band Melodime. I assumed he was their guitarist — turns out he was just a friend covering until they found someone full-time. He pointed me to his own music. Two hours into my drive back to Tallahassee, I was hooked. Bluesy, soulful, the real deal. Paul taught himself guitar at 14. Singing was harder — he actually developed a vocal nodule and had to stop singing for six months and have surgery, the same year I met him. Two years later, in 2015, he appeared on Season 8 of NBC's The Voice. What people don't always see is the three years of "cattle call" auditions before that, including one where he didn't even get invited onto the show. Most people take a no like that as their answer. Paul kept showing up. Eventually a random callback came, out of nowhere, and led to a private audition, then Los Angeles, then one of just 48 people, out of 108, to make the televised blind auditions. That's the first lesson, and it's an easy one to skip past: rejection usually isn't information about your future. It's just information about that particular day. The people who make it aren't the ones who never hear no — they're the ones still in the room when the yes finally comes. He didn't win. He lost his battle round to the eventual champion, 15-year-old Sawyer Fredericks. But Paul's response stuck with me: "It requires much more work after it's done... now I have to stay at this level." That's the second lesson. A big break can open a door. It can't walk through it for you, and it definitely can't build the kind of loyalty that's still showing up a decade later. That loyalty came from something smaller and slower: house concerts, small clubs, a handshake after a show. "The fans who are lasting," he told me, "are the people you've had moments with." I've had many great moments with Paul over the years and, most recently, we crossed paths again at the 2024 Rock by the Sea festival, more than ten years after we first met, and that loyalty — built one real moment at a time, long after the cameras left — was still showing up. Paul's full story — and more than a dozen others — is in "The Soundtrack of Success," available now on Amazon: amzn.to/3Qyzxga Learn from the lessons so many of these great musicians have taught me about entrepreneurship and the American Dream. And consider coming with me to Nashville July 24-27. We might just run into Paul again. Find his music anywhere music is available online.