Sky King on Growing up in Hawaii, Quitting to Work At a Smoothie Bar & Building The Future of Podcasts (The Pathless Path Podcast)
· 2 min read
This episode is with Sky King, the founder of Modern Stoa, a podcast advertising company for podcasters. His path is fascinating - he grew up in Hawaii, rarely wore shoes, was heavily influenced by Asian culture, had a father who was retired, and somehow ended up in a massive corporation right after college. In 2016. he became fascinated by how the media was shaping the 2016 US election and decided it was time to act. From a cold email to Ryan Holiday to helping build Aubrey Marcus’ podcast, Sky was on his way. His long-term vision is to build an alternative to traditional advertising in audio.
We talk about this and a lot more including:
- Why he quit a good job to work at a smoothie bar
- How a cold email to Ryan Holiday changed his life
- Working for Aubrey Marcus
- Buckminster Fuller
- Growing up in Hawaii
- Serendipitous events that lend to him moving to Austin
- The future of Audio
Links Mentions
- Modern Stoa
- Sky’s Podcast (Paid) or RMRK.app
- The Gray Lady Winked
- The Brass Check
- @consumersky (twitter)
Listen & Watch
- 0:00 – An Intentional life
- 0:31 – Intro to Sky and where his name came from
- 4:04 – : Sky’s influences growing up
- 10:41 – Why he went to the corporate world
- 16:00 – Cold emailing Ryan Holiday & vision for podcasting
- 18:37 – Sky’s “quake moment”
- 24:00 – Moving to Austin and working for Aubrey Marcus
- 29:00 – Sky & Paul on their desire to help people
- 32:17 – Growing up in Hawaii
- 35:30 – Going to China at 10 years old
- 39:10 – Everything anywhere all at once reflections
- 43:50 – The “true default path”
- 47:20 – Hiring someone & responsibility
- 48:19 – Bucky Fuller’s question: “what are you uniquely positioned to do?”
- 49:15 – Advertising Subsidy & Media incentives
- 57:00 – Meme farming & future of audio
- 1:01:45 – Bucky Fuller & specialization
