#15 TNT in NYC Joshua Keay: Keys to a Great Gap-Year 🌎 Thinking about taking a gap year, but don’t know anyone who did it without becoming a good-for-nothing wastrel? 💩 I was planning to interview Dennis Sarkozy (episode #13 TNT in NYC) during my tour of NYC, but I didn’t expect the surprise guest of today’s show — Joshua Keay. 🗽 To use Dennis’s words, Josh “jumped” when he heard I am focused on finding the best ways for people to take a guilt-free gap year without going broke. Having taken one himself, he was excited to share his thoughts on the concept with anyone considering a gap year. 🤔✈️ Listen to the show and read the notes/quotes here🌈: ☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️ Josh developed some basic skills in graphic design (namely photoshop) around age 16 or 17, and was supporting himself entirely within a year of graduating high school. ✌🏼️💵 After realizing a college degree wasn’t 100% necessary, he worked more and more independent gigs with design agencies, or architecture firms; eventually earning enough to survive only working 2-3 days a week. 🗓 Josh is big on semantics, so calling himself an “artist and designer that works in technology” is mostly a simple tag line for when people ask the classic question: ”What do you do?” 🕴🎩 Furthering that thought, he talks about certain words being “precious” and shares brief stories about working with the founders of Air BnB, who would rarely mention what they do at a party, even though they are billionaires: 🔮🛌 “There’s something interesting to be said about when you get to a point of not broadcasting what you do. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and humility is the ultimate status symbol.” - Joshua Keay This interview is one off the most full-bodied and informative I’ve done so far. Josh considers the word ‘insights’ too precious to describe them — preferring ’ramblings of a madman’ — but I highly recommend reading through the show notes/quotes dictated below. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Especially if you are at all interested in developing a career as a designer, artist, programmer, consultant, or anything traditionally considered “freelance”. (Josh doesn’t like the word ‘freelance’ either, lol: )✏️💻🎨🎷 I admire his semantic obsession, if he would call it that, and found myself with an increased awareness of my own speech after our conversation. Of course, it helps listening to my own enchanting voice 100 times over while editing these episodes, but let me know if anyone experiences a similar phenomena in the comments below! 🤓 As always, thanks for listening to THE NOMAD THEORY 🔮 Stay Wild Folks! A.C. Ridenour🍌 (THE NOMAD THEORY is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and GooglePlay. If you feel so inclined, leave a review on Apple Podcasts and I would be very happy :) ☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️
#15 TNT in NYC Joshua Keay: Keys to a Great Gap-Year 🌎
Thinking about taking a gap year, but don’t know anyone who did it without becoming a good-for-nothing wastrel? 💩
I was planning to interview Dennis Sarkozy (episode #13 TNT in NYC) during my tour of NYC, but I didn’t expect the surprise guest of today’s show — Joshua Keay. 🗽
To use Dennis’s words, Josh “jumped” when he heard I am focused on finding the best ways for people to take a guilt-free gap year without going broke. Having taken one himself, he was excited to share his thoughts on the concept with anyone considering a gap year. 🤔✈️
Listen to the show and read the notes/quotes here🌈:
☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️
Josh developed some basic skills in graphic design (namely photoshop) around age 16 or 17, and was supporting himself entirely within a year of graduating high school. ✌🏼️💵
After realizing a college degree wasn’t 100% necessary, he worked more and more independent gigs with design agencies, or architecture firms; eventually earning enough to survive only working 2-3 days a week. 🗓
Josh is big on semantics, so calling himself an “artist and designer that works in technology” is mostly a simple tag line for when people ask the classic question: ”What do you do?” 🕴🎩
Furthering that thought, he talks about certain words being “precious” and shares brief stories about working with the founders of Air BnB, who would rarely mention what they do at a party, even though they are billionaires: 🔮🛌
“There’s something interesting to be said about when you get to a point of not broadcasting what you do. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and humility is the ultimate status symbol.” - Joshua Keay
This interview is one off the most full-bodied and informative I’ve done so far. Josh considers the word ‘insights’ too precious to describe them — preferring ’ramblings of a madman’ — but I highly recommend reading through the show notes/quotes dictated below. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Especially if you are at all interested in developing a career as a designer, artist, programmer, consultant, or anything traditionally considered “freelance”. (Josh doesn’t like the word ‘freelance’ either, lol: )✏️💻🎨🎷
I admire his semantic obsession, if he would call it that, and found myself with an increased awareness of my own speech after our conversation. Of course, it helps listening to my own enchanting voice 100 times over while editing these episodes, but let me know if anyone experiences a similar phenomena in the comments below! 🤓
As always, thanks for listening to THE NOMAD THEORY 🔮
Stay Wild Folks!
A.C. Ridenour🍌
(THE NOMAD THEORY is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and GooglePlay. If you feel so inclined, leave a review on Apple Podcasts and I would be very happy :)
☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️☮️
3:45 Josh talks about the term “sliding not deciding”, which sociologists use to describe people who follow in the steps of their life based on “what others think they should do” v.s. “what they personally want and think they should do.”
4:05 “[Find] opportunities to do a cold stop and say ‘wait, is this something that I want, is it really really important?’ And that gap year that I took between high school and college made all that difference — and it was definitely an opportunity to self reflect. I went into it with a certain amount of confidence and I emerged with dramatically more confidence when everything kind of worked out.” - Joshua Keay
5:30 “After graduating high school, Josh walked into a Boston temp agency and said, “hey, I’m a graphic designer” and showed them his portfolio as a 17 year old. They didn’t even notice he hadn’t been to a University and a week later they called him with a job offer.”
7:00 Josh joined the Brown University entrepreneurial society without actually attending the school.
9:30 Josh gives his opinions about not going to college: He says if you are not going to go to college, you should have some sort of group to attend or activity to practice on a consistent basis that gets you to need an alarm clock in the morning. I agree with him. It can be as simple as writing in a journal everyday or some kind of meditation practice, but having a grounding intention of improvement at some kind of craft or practice helps when trying to make decisions.
11:15
“You can think of Universities and corporations as medieval kingdoms;
you’re either part of this one, or you’re part of this one.”
15:30
"Paying my way through school made me keenly aware it is an expensive
hobby. Every single day sitting in class is costing hundreds of
dollars and suddenly playing hooky is quite expensive."
16:25 Josh talks about the variance in the price of College depending on if you are getting student loans or not. It is kind of like paying for a hotel; there’s the rack rate, which is the highest possible cost, but with a little bit of haggling that can usually come down. It’s the same way with college.
17:00 “An artist and a designer that works in technology”
18:00 “The founders of Air Bnb don’t even mention what they do. There’s something interesting to be said about when you get to a point of not broadcasting what you do. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and humility is the ultimate status symbol.”
19:00 Josh describes the difference between a freelancer and a consultant. “As a freelancer you are more like an employee with no job security. As a consultant, you are providing your opinion about what should be done regarding the direction of a company or project.” I think this distinction is key, and might be extremely valuable before starting out in a bootlegger-type scenario.
20:00 Josh talks about confidence and shares some examples of how it feels to be worthy of sharing your opinion with conviction. “I’m still wrong about stuff, but I’m wrong with conviction” Sometimes it’s like being a therapist and your client just needs to sit down and talk through their problems.