The Powder Keg of Awesome

Join Jerry and Jackie as they interview, all the way from Chicago, Nathan Kontny. Nathan is the brains behind the fantastic blog ninjasandrobots.com He was a software engineer on the Obama Presidential Campaign (and fist bumped by the President himself) and he is currently hard at work on an app called "Draft". Draft is a project to help people become better writers and we're going to be asking him all about it. 

This week on the Keg, join us as we interview Jim Pelley and Adam Frick of the ULink Network, which started here in Sacramento.  Best friends for years Jim Pelley who started Laughter Works Seminars and Adam Frick creator of FolsomLiving.com frequently discussed how business owners connect to their marketplace. The discussions often revolved around effective use of technology and personal relationships with a need for systematic follow-up.

Welcome to our new monthly feature, Wine Wednesday with Christine Trice (you know, the one from OMG Wines)! Christine has joined us a few times in the past, and we decided it would be fun to get together on the first Wednesday of every month to talk about wine and work and whatever else crosses our minds. After a few minutes chasing various topics (including Jerry's pulled groin, Girl Scout Cookie wine pairings, U2 and Public Enemy, and the possibility of a Jim and John Harbaugh making out forJackie and Christine's entertainment), we moved on to more worthy topics. Christine shared details about an upcoming fundraiser she's put together for Sutter Middle School called A Taste of Sutter. If you're local to Sacramento and a lover of the vino, you should check it out.We also talked about Drink Careers 101, a new Kickstarter project that Christine is participating in. This is a very cool collaborative project started by the folks at Mutineer magazine. The discussion about Drink Careers 101 led to a quick discussion about the non-linear path to success. In a world of folks looking for shortcuts and "sure-fire" formulas, Christine reminded us that the steps that lead to success are often unexpected and that you often can't plan for them. More often than not, you just have to be paying attention and willing to say yes to the opportunities that come your way.From there, we explored the topic of sensationalism and ambush in the news media, specifically an incident involving Katie Couric and a group of mommy bloggers. The conversation led to a discussion of the over-simplification that seems to be the default setting of pundits, talking heads and news agencies.  Whew! That's a hell of a range for a sixty-minute show. Give it a listen, leave a comment to let us know what you think, andset a reminder for next week's show!

In today's episode we will be interviewing Francisco Dao. Francisco Dao is the founder of 50Kings, a private community for technology and media innovators. He is a former leadership columnist for Inc.com, a lifelong entrepreneur, author, and former stand-up comic. He writes every Tuesday and Thursday for PandoDaily. Francisco coined the term "smanker". He always brings a bold and irreverent take to topics and we cannot wait to riff with him. 

Today, on the Keg, we had the pleasure of interviewing Rob Nicholson, founder of The Nicholson Center, in Ohio. Rob is an old friend of the crew and we’ve been wanting to have him on the show for a long time. Rob is the kind of guy who can get stuff done. He started out building business when he was a college student. These days Rob is involved with Idea Pitch, in Columbus, Ohio where they recently had a competition where $3000 was shared among the top 3 finishers.

On PKA we are all about being around people who make stuff go. Coincidentally, we’re located in Northern California, near the heart of the commercial wine industry. We have access to all kinds of great wineries and winemakers. So about once every month, Christine will be bringing us wines and we will be talking about the wines, the people who make them, and even have interviews with local winemakers. Of course, we will hold fast to our PKA tradition of letting the conversation goes where it wants to go. We will continue to always be fast, friendly and totally not safe for work.  

You missed this one. We know you did, because we've been watching the numbers. No worries; we did it at an odd day and time, so it was easy to miss. Here's the thing, though: it was too good for us to let you miss it. So rather than leave it on the shelf, we've decided to go ahead and re-run it this week. Trust us...you'll be glad you didn't miss it after all. No need to say thank you...just send wine. :-) Here's what you missed:  Join Jerry and Jackie as we do a special Tuesday episode of the Powder Keg of Awesome with special guest Peter Buffett! Emmy Award-winning musician Peter Buffett has an acclaimed career that spans more than 30 years as a professional musician, composer, philanthropist and author.Buffett's latest venture is his inspiring book, Life Is What You Make It. The title, now available in paperback, has been translated in over 15 languages and has sold nearly half a million books worldwide. Personal and revealing, instructive and intuitive, Life Is What You Make It is about following passions over conventions, transcending your circumstances or status, taking up the reins of your destiny, and living life to its fullest.  

Join Jerry and Jackie as they talk about, among other things, yesterday's epic interview with Peter Buffett. As usual, we ended up all over the map, with the key theme: getting vulnerable. How do you get vulnerable with other people? What happens? Jerry and I get into one of our legendary debates over “how much is too much” when sharing stuff with new people, in new situations. One phrase we agree on: “You gotta practice showing up and telling the truth”. 

Join Jerry and Jackie as we do a special Tuesday episode of the Powder Keg of Awesome with special guest Peter Buffett! Emmy Award-winning musician Peter Buffett has an acclaimed career that spans more than 30 years as a professional musician, composer, philanthropist and author.  Buffett's latest venture is his inspiring book, Life Is What You Make It. The title, now available in paperback, has been translated in over 15 languages and has sold nearly half a million books worldwide. Personal and revealing, instructive and intuitive, Life Is What You Make It is about following passions over conventions, transcending your circumstances or status, taking up the reins of your destiny, and living life to its fullest.

Frequently we get asked about our tactics and strategy, in building a business and building a podcast. I had a conversation with one of our listeners about it and during the course of that conversation, it dawned on us that all along our strategy has been “dude, lets try this”. We started our podcast because we wanted to start one, we figured we’d try it and if we liked it, we’d keep doing it. That’s it. Nothing more complex or profound.

Today on the Powder Keg of Awesome we will be interviewing , once again, the fabulous Allen Fahden this time in person at Powder Keg Studios. Always a fun chap to chat with, Allen has a new book coming out called "Another Boring Derivative Piece of Crap Business Book" .

Join Jerry and Jackie as they finally get a much-wanted in-person interview with show regular Norm Schriever.  Norm Schriever is a humorist, cultural mad scientist, enemy of the comfort zone and author of "Pushups in the Prayer Room," a wild, irreverent account of a year spent backpacking around the world. He grew up in Connecticut and graduated from the University of Connecticut, where he was never accused of over-studying, and went on to live in North Carolina, Colorado and most recently in Northern California.  Dissatisfied with a conventional existence, Norm sold or donated all of his possessions and moved down to Costa Rica in 2011 to pursue his passion of writing. His first book was written in the sleepy surf town of Tamarindo with the help of his secret weapons: fresh ocean air and Baileys in his morning coffee. He now resides in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua where he is writing his next book, 'Get Happy,' a memoir about life as an ex pat, and writing for the Huffington Post. He sees his words as a way to illuminate the commonalities of human existence, and thereby hopes to leave this planet a little better than how he found it.

It’s a new year at the Powder Keg of Awesome and our 65th show. Join us today as we crawl out of our holiday drink & party phase and riff on “thrashing”, “shipping” and “busy work” because we find a lot of entrepreneurs spend more time looking and acting busy than actually doing their work.

Join Jerry and Jackie as they interview local high school student John Adams and Fresh Producers founder Rabbi David Wechsler-Azen. John, 15, is a student at Hiram Johnson High School and participates in the Fresh Producers fundraising program. John will tell us about how being in Fresh Producers sparked his interest in cooking, healthy eating and he will share how he lost weight and helped his parents and grandmother lose weight and eat healthy as well. 

Join Jerry and Jackie on the show as they interview the legendary Guy Kawasaki.  is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. Guy has a new book out: A.P.E. How to Publish a Book APE’s thesis is powerful yet simple: filling the roles of Author, Publisher and Entrepreneur yields results that rival traditional publishing. We call this "artisanal publishing"--that is, when writers who love their craft control the publishing process and produce high-quality books.