The Derek Loudermilk Show

The round things are the virus I discovered Some of you may know that I used to be a scientist. I was in grad school, studying viruses in the hot springs of the Yellowstone National Park and I discovered a new species of virus. I recently interviewed my academic mentor and adviser, Mark Young, and he talked about his discoveries. Now, I want to tell you about how it was for me. I was sitting there in a dark microscope room, looking in the electron microscope and I am looking at this very thin gold-coated surface, looking for geometric patterns - that would be a signal for a virus. All of a sudden, to my field of view, there were polka dots, full of hexagons. I jumped out of my chair! THIS IS IT! I just discovered a virus! That was a single, exciting moment that was only possible with the year and a half of preparation and was only provable with another year and a half of research to back it up. So, when you see something, and you see that it is a new discovery, you still have to prove and characterize it. You need to describe and learn more about it. Discovering it was a big process. We designed an experiment explicitly to discover new species. We went out to over a hundred different hot springs and took samples and spent over a year trying to grow microorganisms. Once I was able to grow them, I had to concentrate with the living material from the vials. I began to think, I could, maybe, find something new. I spent time screening through the samples over the microscope and didn't find anything. But because I had seen viruses, I knew what I was looking for. And so, after I saw it, I quickly took photos and there were just lots of virus particles. I took them to my colleagues and advisers, and we all looked at it. Did it look like something already discovered? It looked different enough that we decided to characterize and describe it. One of the most important things is to see what the genome is, because once you understand the DNA or the RNA of the genome, you can compare it to all other known viruses. So, all this took a really long time. It was emotional roller coaster! When you see the thing right there, there is nothing like that feeling of knowing you are the first person to look at it, and just knowing that you found something new. To the long hours of manipulating things in the lab, trying to take some evidence, learning some technique, and failing it, until you finally get a new piece of evidence – that's  what a lot of people don't see in research. There are months of trying things. Trying to get a little piece of information takes so much work, and that was really hard for me. I'm really glad that I had the chance to work as an academic scientist because there is such rigor and it's a phase wherein you really need to put in a lot of work. Having that long-term focus really translates to almost anything else. It's very similar to endurance sports – you train for several years and you still won't hit the peak of your ability. A long-term thinking is involved. You build something over the long haul. The other best part of it all is going out into Yellowstone and setting up an experiment where you have to go on an adventure!

It's amazing how much overlap there is between parenting and coaching. Half the time, I am coaching high performers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders. The other half, I'm dealing with a two-year old. Both of them make me become better at the other. So here are the lessons that I learned from my toddler that you can use for your business.   * Feel all of your emotions When you are trying something really hard, and you just can't get it, or you fail, make sure you feel all of your emotions. Process through that feeling of frustration, anger, or disappointment. My toddler throws a mini tantrum but feels better afterwards. He then comes back and tries again. This is so important. The most successful people are prolific creators. If you are stuck on the sidelines, you are going to be way behind.   * Take a breather I see my toddler give up right when he is about to get the puzzle piece in. Oftentimes, we are  so close to success and we just can't quite see how to get there. All you need is taking a breather and coming at it from a different angle.   * Ask for help For toddlers, it is totally normal to be a beginner. But for us, we do not like to feel like beginners, so it is harder. As a result, it becomes harder to ask for help. One may already have had some success in his adult life but it becomes crucial when you get outside perspective and emotional support. Go back on that thing that is giving you the hard problem and frustration and work on it, this time, with the help of others.   * Manage your energy well You have probably seen some screaming kids in the middle of the afternoon. That's because it is about naptime. When we start getting tired, our physical energy dips and it becomes hard to deal with challenges. If you do not have a full cup, then all of a sudden, your problems are going to be way harder. It is thus super crucial that you manage your internal state.   * The power of reciprocity My toddler started bringing gifts and looking for hugs to try to get attention and I listen just for a moment, which pretty much solves everything. If you can figure out how to continue to be a giver, then people will be programmed to want to help you.   Also, don't forget to celebrate!

My guest in this episode is the Virologist, Mark Young. Mark is a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiologists, an awarded distinguished lecturer, and on the board of the society of virology and many universities and organizations.  His work has been cited over 15,000 times. Mark Young was my academic adviser and mentor when I was a grad student at Montana State University. Together, we designed the experiment that led to my discovery of a new species of virus in the hot springs of Yellowstone. I chose to work with Mark not just for his academic credentials, but our shared interest in adventure and unconventional thinking. Mark's mentorship ultimately led to the creation of this podcast. Mark is known in the scientific community for discovering viruses in the hot springs of Yellowstone and for the discovery that you can do chemistry inside a virus particle. Recently, Mark has become the first person to synthetically create a new virus from scratch. (Don't worry it doesn't infect humans, just E. coli). Mark is both a highly social, adventurous, and unconventional scientists and a rigorous academic focused on excellence. What you will learn in this episode: * What it is like to discover a new species * The challenges of doing field research in Yellowstone * How Mark seeks out wild and crazy ideas * What it takes to succeed in academic research * What we need to know about synthetic biology * Ethical questions about biology and the future of humanity Thanks to this week’s sponsors Publishizer: The crowdfunding literary agency I used to launch Superconductors and Experience the Revolution.  If you are a Social media marketer, podcaster, coach, speaker, and woman in leadership, activist, founder, trendsetter, educator, entertainers or the like, submit your book idea to the Business Impact Book proposal contest – an agent will review your proposal and help you get started. Quotes: "Viruses are beautiful tools for asking biological questions" - Mark Young "To succeed in academic research, you can either be better at what you do than everyone else, or you can do something nobody else has done"- Mark Young "I purposely interact with people way outside my field to achieve a constant and diverse input of ideas"- Mark Young "Effective scientists are highly social"- Mark Young "We designed this synthetic virus evolve. I've always wanted to observe evolution from the beginning"- Mark Young "I would like to see open access to all journals and new discoveries"- Mark Young "We need a mechanism where we build trust in experts"- Mark Young "Our rate of technological growth is outpacing our ability to understand consequences" - Mark Young Continue the Adventure:Mark Young Faculty Page at MSU

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash Before I coached entrepreneurs, I coached professional athletes and there is a lot of overlap. Here are 10 entrepreneurship lessons that translate from from the world of Pro sports: * Manage your energy. Pro athletes know that the most important thing is recovery. In sports, you can't improve unless you give your body time to rest and adapt. Learn to understand your physical body and how it best operates. Understand the aspects that provide you with that fire so that when you need to be on point, you are going to be performing at your highest level. * Self experimentation. Study yourself so you know how you perform best. Try different times of day, different foods, technologies, etc. * Seek progression. Find the best coaches, design your training around ways to keep getting better. Understand what the next level looks like by looking at the worlds bests. Hiring expert coaches and competitors to highlight the smaller and smaller areas for improvement * Make the basics unconscious. Get so good at the basic skills that you don’t have to think about them any more * Rehearsal. Pros understand what a perfect practice looks like. If you mentally rehearse the perfect stroke, you are going to improve much faster. They place themselves in a situation before it really happens making then comfortable when the situation does happen. * Mental toughness. Pros do workouts that are harder than their competition days so they know they will be able to handle the hardest situation * Understand your psychology. Notice when you lose focus, notice your self talk, understand your motivation * Optimize for the most important output. Define the rules of the game you are playing in life and how to win. You don’t have to be the best at everything to win - just key skills in your one sport or your one career output - getting too much muscle can make you run up mountains slower for example * Optimize your routine. Patterns, rituals, habits can help get you in the zone, and take care of the things you do over and over. * Embrace pressure, challenge, get comfortable with the difficulty * Keep the joy. Get to the place where you really love what you are doing. Enjoy mastering something, get back in as to why you were trying to enjoy that thing in the first place. If you don't think you can find that joy, then something is out of alignment

  Today’s guest on the Art of Adventure podcast is the amazing copywriter and persuasive writer, Chen Lehner. Chen has quickly grown a six-figure business running ad campaigns for other businesses. He teaches people how to write persuasively and write sales copy. He also helps entrepreneurs make money online. Chen considers himself a healer. He helps other people find their passion. He wants to help humanity. He want to understand further human behavior and how and why people change so that he can contribute and help in making this a better humanity and eventually have a better world. Let’s take a peek at how Chen’s mind works as he shares with us to not overthink things. People get caught in formula and specific steps and structures and in he reminds us to write as you are. Chen writes from the heart and says that one should write words that create emotion for people. This can never be achieved when certain formulas are followed. As an advice, he also says stay in tune with your emotional self and connect with the emotions of others to generate that much needed action and to ignite that passion in others as well. What you’ll learn in this episode: * How Chen learned to be good at his copywriting skills so fast * How Chen was able to get to the top of his game * What Chen’s motivation is in his work * How to connect with others and spark their emotions and generate actions Quotes: "Good marketers never stop trying to improve what they have created" "Sales is about understanding humanity" "Most people sit down and try to think their way into writing copy, but you have to feel it" "The first things I change in people's copy writing is to add more white space" "When writing copy, stay connected to your emotional self" "Get into the mind and emotion of who you are talking to" "If you understand what motivates someone, you can go into their world" "The cutting edge of marketing is storytelling plus salesmanship" Thanks to this week’s sponsors Publishizer: The crowdfunding literary agency I used to launch Superconductors and Experience the Revolution.  If you are a Social media marketer, podcaster, coach, speaker, and woman in leadership, activist, founder, trendsetter, educator, entertainers or the like, submit your book idea to the Business Impact Book proposal contest - an agent will review your proposal and help you get started. Continue the Adventure:Chen LehnerLinkedinTwitterInstagramMediumFacebookCopy Hour from Derek JohansenHemingway Editor AppFREE 5-Day Master Your Message Challenge Starting May 27th, 2019   

Preparing to ski out the next morning This is the story of the nearly deadly snowstorm It's dusk and I'm clawing my way out of the snow. I have just fallen off of the trail to neck-deep snow and I am using my ski to make stairs so that I could climb out of this pit of snow back onto this narrow trail and I could hardly see where I'm going because it's winter, and Valentine's Day, to add to that. The sun is setting, and this is the first Valentine's day with my then girlfriend. We were in Montana, and so, as every good survival tale, the story starts with the comedy of small errors. We had decided to join our friends on a weekend trail to the fire tower. We only had touring skis, so we had to go through the long way, that is, to ski around the mountain. We were going to meet our friends as they would be getting there ahead of us. We drove to the starting point of the trail, and when we got there, we realized that the boots we had rented for my ex were two left boots! We did not turn around at this point as it would cost us a lot of time, so we headed on and continued to the trail. Just before we had gotten out of cell service, that was when we realized we had no map with us. We quickly downloaded the map on one of the phones with us and it was amazing that we got the app just before we lost cell service. We were, however, limited by the battery life of the phone where we got the map on. It started as a beautiful sunny day, but pretty soon a snowstorm rolls in. It starts snowing, more like a warm snow which started sticking at the bottom of the ski. Instead of covering five to eight miles an hour, we went to half a mile an hour! We had been at it for six hours, and the sun started to set, and the phone battery started to die, with no spare batteries at hand. We didn't even have head lamps. All these little dumb errors make this sound like a not-so-great adventure at this point. The amazing thing about the trip was that we weren't fighting. We just kept moving up and figured our way to get there. Finally, we get to see the light of the light tower and saw our friends. It was such a relief when we got there. Looking back, it is such a ridiculous story, we could have been so much better prepared, yet we survived and made it through! It was a wild and crazy adventure experience. Let me know if you'd ever had a crazy survival story or what we call "type two fun!"

Today’s guest on the Art of Adventure podcast is a great writer, influencer, mentor, and founder of Digital Press, Nicolas Cole. Cole started as one of the top-ranked teenage gamers in the World of Warcraft and had since then found his way through the workings of the internet. He started a blog about gaming and became one of the most read blogs for gamers. Since then, there was no stopping him in sharing his ideas, experience, and expertise through his brilliant writing. Cole is one of those rare individuals who are good at several things. He once focused on body building and became a fitness influencer. He wrote for Quora and became a top and viral writer. He is a columnist and eventually founded his own thought leadership and branding agency. Take a look inside the thoughts of Cole as he teaches us building thought leadership through writing and writing in such a way that it is easy for the reader to engage. He shares how it is to build a unique voice in writing and being heard by your audience. Enjoy this episode as we get to listen and learn more about this world class writer, Nicolas Cole. What you’ll learn in this episode: * Building thought leadership through writing * Writing in such a way that it is easy for readers to engage * Building unique voice through writing * How though leadership influences business * How Cole got high quality mentors * How mentorship is an investment and how you can get the best return * How to sell in so many different fields Quotes: "Immerse yourself in a community in the thing you want to be the best at" - Nicolas Cole "I'm led by curiosity - I will immerse myself if I am interested"- Nicolas Cole "You can become financially successful at anything you want"- Nicolas Cole "Mentorship is a gift - reciprocate by integrating it"- Nicolas Cole "The most compelling writing is the intersection between answering a questions and telling a personal story"- Nicolas Cole Continue the Adventure:Nicolas ColeDigital PressInstagramQuoraMinutes MagazineMedium  

This is the story of how I came face to face with a mountain lion. It was sunset and I was running on the trails of the Santa Rosa plateau in California. We were staying there for a couple of months with my wife's family and everyday I would go up to this nature preserve with is this amazing trail, much like an African savanna. It had rocky outcrops and grassland. It was a wonderful place to spend some time running every evening. I was running with a podcast playing. It said, "you need to be more present", and I realized that I was focusing on the what I was listening to and not the actual running. I then turned the podcast off and put everything away. It was then me running  and the sound of the crunchy gravel of the trails underneath my feet. It was very meditative. I got really deep into the zone, having ran for about an hour and a half. There was deer running my path, and falcons were nearby. It was sunset and the slight breeze was cooling the day off. It was perfect. Just then, the coyotes started howling, calling back forth. It was eerie. As I was running back towards my car on the final stretch of the trail, I saw an animal ahead of me. I though it was interesting - could be a coyote that walked of the trail. I ran over the hills and got to the spot where the animal had been standing. I looked, and the animal was still there, just a few feet off the trail. The animal was laying  down, crouching at the outcrops. I thought it was interesting that the animal would let me close to it. I have never seen a coyote not run away before. I then realized, it wasn't a coyote after all! I was looking eye to eye with a mountain lion. Because of the meditative run I had, I did not panic, and felt connected with the mountain lion instead. I just kept eye contact and slowly backed away. When I reached a bend, I immediately took off running and screaming! I ran as fast as I could back to the car. It was so unreal, so the next day, I went and talked to the ranger who worked at the Santa Rosa Plateau. He then told me an interesting story which explained why the mountain lion had acted that way. For me, it was a big reminder that even though we have been able to control the natural world, we have also forgotten the real wildness of nature. At times that I feel agitated, I come back to that moment with the mountain lion and remember what it felt like to arrive at that calm place. I use that as a trigger to pull myself back into a state of alignment. I remember that moment when I was at one with nature, which was also when I was at one with myself.

The guest on today’s podcast is the founder of Citrus and Gold, a marketing, coaching, and consulting business for thought leaders, Akansha Agrawal. As she puts it, Akansha helps purpose-driven brands find their voice & master their messaging to attract their dream customers and to create marketing content that not only sells but also feels good to promote. In this episode, Akansha answers questions not only with regards to business and entrepreneurship, but also as to personal matters as well. She gives great straightforward advice and ideas based on her actual acquired knowledge and experience and shares how she applies this in certain situations. You’ll love and enjoy listening to this interview with Akansha as she inspires you how to create great stories and the right content for the audience you want to attract and how to properly engage with them through social media. What you’ll learn in this episode: * How to create the right content, the engaging social media posts to lead someone to become your customer * How to be good at honing in and relating to your customers * How to understand your own business objective as a starting point in determining what to put out in terms of content * How to do research and understand your customer and to make them the focal point of your posts * How to make content that  ultimately generates income * How Akansha’s team is helping her in her business Quotes: "You get to choose what you speak up for" - Akansha Agrawal "What do you want to share but are afraid to say it?" - Akansha Agrawal "There is no perfect way of marketing - you don't have to copy other people" - Akansha Agrawal "The biggest mistake is not knowing why you are creating content"- Akansha Agrawal Continue the Adventure:Citrus and GoldInstagram

For my 36th birthday last week, I decided to ride the longest ride I had ever done - 200km.  I had ridden long rides before, including races that were more than 170 km, but this would be just me and the open road. We are living in Portugal for a few months, and there are no mountains here, but there are also no flat places. I could expect just as much uphill as in the mountains. In this episode, I talk about what I was thinking and feeling as I rode more than 9 hours, how i prepared for the process and some of the more philosophical reasons behind doing a big adventure challenge like this Here are some themes and concepts that I cover in this episode: * The film that inspired me: "35" * Last years birthday challenge: 24 hours of adventure in Bali * The amount of planning that goes into a big ride * Why its important to test yourself * Feeling the experience - there is no other way to know * Comparison of this ride with other hard things and making future things feel easier * Physiology change - did I "get in shape" in a single day? * Managing nutrition during the ride * Managing mental chatter during the ride * The story of the world record setting "3 peaks challenge" * My previous biggest day of cycling in Spain * Racing against Lance Armstrong * A near death experience being caught in a snow storm * Why the ride was never too hard at any moment, but overall extremely challenging * The superpower of being ok with discomfort * Physical vs. Emotional discomfort