Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

Let your passion drive you

Education and training are important attributes to have. Especially when it comes to achieving goals but passion should not be disregarded.

Passion is infectious. When I talk with passion and conviction about what I do, people listen. <insert tooting of own horn>

It works in reverse as well though. When I hear someone talking about what they love doing with a deep passion I’m instantly drawn in. I want to immediately know more about their work, buy their product or invest in them.

Passion builds community. When I talk about baking bread you can hear the passion gushing out of me. Not because I want you to buy my product but because before it is a business it is something I love.

I’m so passionate about baking bread that I will admit I’m not the best at it.

I’m not a trained baker.

I’m passionate about it and I’ll show you that good or not.

I will talk about trying new products. I will talk about the failures. I will talk about how I do it all. And when I do this I end up with an engaged community of people who support me.

Talking with passion doesn’t mean you have to be the loudest one in a room. It means when you talk about what you love or believe in people actually listen. They listen and hang off of every word. Most of the time that loud person is overcompensating for something anyway.

Letting your passion drive you is a profound notion and one I like to live by. Passion doesn’t always pay the bills though. Which is why I often let reality be the navigator.

If you look at the dynamics of a driver/navigator relationship you’ll see a symbiotic partnership. If the driver were to just drive with no direction they might end up going in the wrong direction or going too far. But if they have a trusted navigator to help direct their passion, they’re going to be able to change and adjust as you go.

The point being, letting passion drive us is key to having a successful practice and building a community of supporters. But without the direction of reality, it can sometimes misguide us.

So be the optimist who lets passion take them to new and exciting places. But remember to stop and consult with reality regularly about the truths of what you’re doing.

As a take away to this post, I encourage you to think about what you are passionate about. Then think about how much that plays into what you do. Can you take that passion and talk about it more? Can you show your community why you are passionate about what you do?

This is all part of letting the universe know what you want. Be bold.

This post is post is part of a bigger series called Let The Universe Know What You Want. See the other posts below:

• Seek Out Subject Matter Experts
• Let Your Passion Drive You

Doing it all.

I’ve read many book about the establishment of northern mining towns and I love them. I read the stories of different people who have adapted to their environment and who weren’t afraid to do whatever they needed to to survive.

Many, it seems, ended up doing things they weren’t necessarily educated in doing or had planned to do but did them because either someone asked them to or that particular thing just needed to be done.

I cherish this mentality and it feeds my constant wandering mind of ideas. 

Heck I can go from planning a piece on Yellowknife to baking bread to building a website to planning a content strategy. Why settle for just one thing?

How to do everything

Photo credit: http://howtodoeverything.org/

KyleWith: Photographer Dave Brosha

[podcast]http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53888dece4b0b0e91301d66b/t/55b33513e4b001a5c2015aae/1437808010254/kw_davebrosha.mp3/original/kw_davebrosha.mp3[/podcast]

Click here to download or listen on an iOS Device

Dave Brosha is one of the photographers I have always looked up to. I taught me the basics of photography; knowledge which I use everyday. So why I find he such a great photographer is not only that he is a great photographer, but also that he is willing to teach those who want to learn.

Photo by: Pablo Saravanja

Dave’s adventure started in the Resolute Bay, which is in the Canadian Arctic, where he wanted to started taking picture to showcase to his family back home. His photography slowly progressed and he also moved to Yellowknife, NT. He realized it was a passion and his and wanted to pursue it. He slowly took on clients and built up his name while still having the stability of a 9-to-5 job. Finally he took the plunge one day and quit his job and started doing photography full-time, he hasn’t looked back since.

Nowadays, Dave isn’t limited to Yellowknife, where he and his family lives. He has traveled as far north as Alert, as south Australia and has been to Egypt twice. He has traveled to these places on writing assignments for magazines or to document a friend living an adventure. He makes the point those that he is very fortunate to have the opportunities that he has had.

365 Project / A Year In 5 Minutes from Dave Brosha on Vimeo.

We go much more into detail about how his business grew and where he has been in the show. Dave also shares with me what is in his bag and who inspires him. So be sure to listen.

Be sure to check out his website and his blog and is ever-growing Facebook Page.

Thanks for listening and don’t forget to Subscribe on iTunes or by Email here.

Don’t forget if you know someone doing something interesting (or another photographer or yourself) send me their info, I want to talk to them!

I was big into the Biking Business

I may not be very entrepreneurial these days and I’m certainly not that much into biking as I use to be, but there was a time.

Back when I was 14 years old I was the bike guy. I started my 1st business called the YK Bike Corner. From 13 to 16 I was into biking, cross-country and downhill, I loved it, but I wasn’t very good at it. I still enjoyed it though, what I did start to get into was the mechanics. The 1st mountain bike I ever bought was a Kona Scrap. That is actually the only mountain bike I’ve actually bought, everything since then was built from the ground up. I then moved to a duel suspension bike, with a KHS frame. I rode that for about a year until settling in to a Giant AC 1 frame. I actually had two of those frames, one for back up parts. So in the time I spent building these bikes I acquired a set of skills, skills that I could use to help others.

My First Client

While looking through a local online classifieds site I found someone who needed help gearing their bike. I was 13 at the time I thought what the heck, I don’t know how much a person charges, but I can help. So I did just that, I rode my bike over to this persons place and I fixed the bike. I think I made $20 for about 15 min. of work, I was living large.

Business Began

After that first client I started to market myself. I built myself my 1st little website, albeit it was a free one, on a service that I don’t even think exist anymore. Anyone remember freewebs? I would put flyers up around town, I would put up classified ads, and I even went to the extent of advertising on the local classified site. Things actually started to pick up. At the same time as I was doing the bike stuff I was also flying into Treeline Lodge where I would work for a couple of weeks and then come back again.  Over the course of 2 summers I got myself established, people actually  started to know who I was. I made enough money to buy myself an outdoor tent garage, and convert it into a bike shop. I had a bike stand, and I had all the common tools, plus a lot of the specialized ones, for things like the crank and cassette. At 1st my whole shtick was that I could come to the client, and I wasn’t talking about big repairs here, but the little things that the average person can’t do. So I had my backpack full of tools and I would bike around town and fix people’s bikes.

Then I turned 16

When I 1st turned 16 and got my license it was a whole new world. Instead of going to people, I could go to them and get their bikes, bring them back to my shop and fix them there and return them the next day. It was awesome. There’s nothing like working in your own shop, in your own environment, with your own stuff. It was pretty cool, at one point I even had people coming to me and dropping off their bikes. In the summer of 2007 though, I spent most of July up at a place called Bathurst Inlet Lodge and when I came back I took off to British Columbia for most of August. I think this was the last summer that the bike business was still going. I had done a lot of work in May June, but when I started to go away things dwindled. I lost interest in the biking and really had no time to do the fixing anymore. Do I miss it? Absolutely! A year or so after I stopped fixing bikes I contemplated trying to get a job at the local sports shop, but it wasn’t for me. What I liked about my little business, was that I got to talk to the people, and I got to meet them. You will be hidden away and just fixing something and then sending it out again. I like the interaction.

In the past

The reason my memory got jogged about all of this, was because the bike forum, Pink Bikes sent me an e-mail the other day. I hadn’t signed into my account in probably 4 years, but it still worked. ykbiker!  Not only was able to sign in, but I was also able to find some old pictures. Here’s some pictures from my past… Which was actually not that long ago.

Pinkbike3

This is my complete bike to this day, with minor changes. I have a stronger rear rim now and a different rear shock, which has a blown seal.

Pinkbike1

Pinkbike

This was the parts frame. With all the moving parts on this frame I wanted to have extra bearings and bolts.

Pinkbike2

This is a Haro frame. I had bought this as a complete bike for my brother, but then he didn’t like it, so I stripped it and sold it.

Pinkbike4

Finally we have a .243 Frame I bought second-hand. This stuck around for a while although I don’t remember what I did with it.

Kylebike

I did just manage to find a picture of the KHS frame before I swapped everything onto the Giant frame. I of course am in the picture… back in 2005, while visiting Jasper.

Peace Glass has my Windshield Covered

Getting a windshield is something I hate doing. Having grown up in the Northwest Territories, specifically Yellowknife, I’m afraid that any bit of driving will get a crack in my windshield. In Yellowknife, in the winter, the gravel roads, all the roads. Everyone has a crack in the windshield, it doesn’t matter what type of vehicle you drive. That’s why I try to put off getting one as long as possible because you’re most likely going to get a crack right away.

The windshield and my Jeep when I bought it was Artie a roadmap of its own. There was cracks streaking up and around the passenger side. Luckily the driver side didn’t have any, so I was able to see out without any problem while driving. That was until I was driving back to Dawson Creek from Yellowknife.

As I was barreling towards the BC border from Alberta an oncoming truck and its trailer slightly swerved into a gravel area of the road. The result was this trailer picking up a fist size rock. And flinging it straight across the road. It bounced once twice and three times as I saw it coming towards me. I tried to swerve towards the other lane to avoid it from hitting the driver side, but I didn’t swerve enough and it hit the very edge on the passenger side resulting in a massive spiderweb. Glass shards sprayed everywhere on the passenger side seat.

DSC_0430

I kept driving to Dawson Creek, and eventually Fort St. John that night. As it still wasn’t affecting the driver side, I wasn’t ultimately concerned about it. I knew I wouldn’t drive it much here in town but I knew it needed to be done. So finally on Thursday I called Peace Glass, a local glass store. They quoted me a good price and said they could do it the next day, so I said sure.

Peace Glass

If you went up close to this hole in my windshield you’d find that the only thing holding it all together was the protection plastic. Now this was unsafe of me, yes. Many people would probably get mad at me, but nonetheless I only really drove it to work in my house, which if you know is only a block.

I left my Jeep with them while I was at work and when picked it up at around 3:30pm. The process of doing this was easy and the staff were very friendly. I’m sure this is the same in most places, so that didn’t really strike me as special. What struck me as special was when I sat into the vehicle. I was in shock, not only had they replaced the windshield they had cleaned my entire dashboard and center consul. That I was not expecting. Maybe other company’s do it as well, but I was certainly impressed with Peace Glass. It was spotless and smelt wonderful.

Peace Glass

I would recommend Peace Glass to anyone. No they didn’t pay me to write this post, gosh they’re not even on twitter, I doubt that know about blogging. I chalk this up to me writing about great local businesses, like this coffee shop, that I come across. Although his great as I think they are maybe you had a different experience. Share with me your experiences below in the comments.