So today’s interview is with Neil Pasricha (pronounced Pas-reach-a), who is the genius behind the blog 1000 Awesome Things and the author of the soon to be released book, The Book of Awesome (which you can pre-order by clicking on the picture or the link above).
The podcast…
Episode 2 of the Being Awesome Series
I actually wrote about Neil (I never used his name in that post however) in this post, Quit letting life smack you around.
I’m pretty excited about this interview simply because I feel like I have scooped a big time author just before he became famous. I am making my prediction now: this book WILL be a best seller.
A bit of back story…
I thought I would tell you a little bit about how this interview came to be.
Whenever I am moved by a site or a post I usually send the author a personal email saying so (I don’t do it in the comments section). I also don’t hesitate to make suggestions or mention things that may help them moving forward. Sure many don’t ever respond back, but that is OK. That isn’t why I do this to begin with.
Back in January, while I was in New York attending Seth Godin’s live book launch, I emailed Neil to tell him of some of the cool things Seth did (because I knew he was doing his book launch in May). This led to an email exchange about some of the details of the book launch.
Then in February, Gretchen Rubin, who wrote The Happiness Project, came to Toronto to promote her book. During her interview she gave Neil a glowing shout out.
I knew Neil wasn’t in attendance, so that night I sent him an email telling him the all the juicy details of the shout out because I am a tattle tale of awesomeness. He was so appreciative that he asked if he could call me to give me a proper thank you, as he felt email wouldn’t do it justice.
And that discussion led to me asking if he would be interested in telling his story. Fortunately for me, he was.
Nuggets of awesomeness…
Here are a few things to anticipate in our talk. Neil dishes on…
- what he does to drive traffic to his site
- writing posts from different perspectives
- his week of posts in February where he really put himself “out there” and the amazing emails he got as a result
- dealing with personal adversity from a marriage that didn’t work out to a friend who took his own life
- how his book deal came to be
- the movie that parallels his story and who might play him if his story was turned into a movie (you might be surprised who we thought it could be)
- why he doesn’t consider himself a writer (and why he loves that)
Things I learned…
I also learned a few things from my second interview. I mistakenly recorded this podcast in the wrong format and had to scramble to get the audio into a format I could actually share. I did eventually find someone to help, but there are times where it sounds like I am talking into a tin can.
The perfectionist in me shudders when these things happen, but part of the journey of being awesome and doing awesome work is knowing things never go as planned (especially when you are first starting out) and accepting the fact that at that moment that was the absolute best I could do. I know number 3 will be much better.
Question for you…after listening to the podcast
What aspects of Neil’s story could you “steal” and apply to your own life to help you move forward in your quest to be awesome and do awesome work?
Be sure to head over to the comment section to share your views. I look forward to the conversation. Click here to go there now.
The podcast…
Episode 2 of the Being Awesome Series
(Note: to save this podcast to your computer right click the link above and go to “Save link as”.)
To being awesome,
Dean
ps…did you like this? Consider subscribing (click here) and also forwarding this to someone else who might really need to hear this today.
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