In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews George Mocharko, the producer and host of the DC Entrepreneur podcast and a multimedia content creator. Mocharko shares a personal narrative of early career aspirations in international development, followed by a series of setbacks—including job loss, a house fire, and the deaths of his parents—that forced him to reassess his identity beyond his job title. He emphasizes the impermanent nature of external circumstances, the importance of core family values, and the practice of accepting the present moment. Mocharko offers career advice, urging listeners to identify their strengths, stay continuously learning, and keep abreast of emerging technologies in media. He discusses productivity, introducing the concept of "strategic procrastination" from Adam Grant’s Originals and the need to enter a flow state to complete tasks. He advises his younger self to disregard the illusion of job security, instead cultivating resourcefulness under constraints. On happiness, he argues that shifting from being a consumer to a producer—creating and giving value to others—creates lasting joy. He lists several influential books, including Susan Cain’s Quiet, Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and others, and shares his favorite quote, "Don’t panic." Finally, he directs listeners to his online presence via his website dcentrepreneur.com and major podcast platforms.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have George Mucharko with us. He is the producer and host of DC Entrepreneur, a podcast and radio show featuring startup founders from the Washington, DC area. He is also a contributor for Technically DC, a blog that focuses on the local tech startup community. and he is a multimedia content creator with background in marketing, communications, and journalism who specializes in writing and editing for digital and print publications. So welcome to the show, man.
Thanks so much, Tyler. It's great to be here.
Of course, great to have you here. We'll jump right into the first one. The first question I have for you, George, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Well, so this might be a little bit of a long story, but I'll go ahead and shoot. So back in 2010, I was in grad school and had finished up in 2011. And I had envisioned a very different life for myself back then. I had seen myself traveling the world, traveling to different countries, working for a company that would be working in international development or as a diplomat. And after I graduated with a degree in public policy, I ended up realizing how hard it was to actually get a job in that world. And my life turned out different. So in the span of a few years, I ended up losing my job in international development after a couple months working there. And then shortly after that, I lost my house in a fire. A couple years after that, my father died. And then after that happened, I had to take care of my mother who was having trouble with mobility. And she ended up dying after complications with her hip surgery. So I had a whole slew of bad luck just happen in a number of different years from— 2011, kind of going to about 2016. And what do you think the hardest thing was for me to go through?
I mean, I can't— I still have both my parents, so that, that to me seems difficult. I mean, that's what I would say. I mean, the house is terrible, but I like having my parents around.
Yeah, I, you know, it's funny, I, I thought that would be the most difficult thing to get through, but I felt that I was actually really prepared for the time of my life to deal with their loss. And it was actually losing my job. And the reason why is because I had put so much of my identity and had it wrapped up into what I was going to be doing as a career. And I was pursuing this so intensely, but didn't really realize that your job title is not who you are as a person. And I think a lot of people here in the Washington, D.C. area, they're very careerist, very career-oriented. Type A personality driven folks. And they do kind of make this assumption that who they are, the role that they are, is who they are in this life. And this was probably like the hardest time of my life. You know, I really had no way to respond. I mean, I was angry, obviously, anger was probably the main emotion that I've had for the last 5 or 6 years. And then I realized I just needed to get kind of zen about it. I think you have to when you have some things happen like that. Like the house fire that happened, this was a house that I had purchased from my parents in 2005, lived in for a couple of years, done renovations in, and then turned into a rental property so that whenever I was going to grad school, I could have passive income coming in from my rental. The people that were in the house there, thank God no one was killed in the house fire. But it was also something that I realized, this labor of love, all this, you know, time and attention that I give into this house, you know, in renovating it, you know, it was all gone, like in one day. So I realized, you know, the kind of main lesson that I got from that is that pretty much everything's temporary, you know. So I learned kind of how to be not attached to what things are in the present moment. And I've tried to just, you know, learn to accept things as they are. As they are right now and kind of love the things that you have, even the problems that you have in this moment, love those problems. Because what you're experiencing at this current moment right now is kind of, you know, all the paths that have led up to this point that you're at now. And I think the one thing that I realized too is that even though nothing's really permanent and there's all this temporary nature to life, the things that don't change are your core values. And so if you think about it, you know, my main values were being there for my family whenever they needed me there. And so I wasn't focused on my career. I was there to help, you know, when my dad was, you know, sick and in the hospital and dying. I was there to help out my mom. And so I realized, you know, family was kind of the core at what I did, not being this international, you know, freewheeling professional. So I just say, you know, don't worry about the future or where you're at now. Just try to enjoy the ride and realize that it's all temporary. And even if the moment, like, you're angry and things are difficult, Just realize if the skies are dark that the sun's still behind those clouds.
Thank you for sharing that with us. The next one I have for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Wow, so the one thing that I would say is the, the most valuable piece of information is find what you're good at and make that really the anchor of what you do and in your profession. You know, I've been in publishing and meeting media as a writer, an editor, communications professional, now a podcaster and reporter. And really, I wish I could just have one job for life. It'd be just much easier that way. But I think one thing you have to focus on is always to be constantly learning and improving yourself. You know, like I said, it'd be great to have like a job where you worked at it for 30 years and got a gold watch when you retire. But I think the thing that makes you valuable in your industry is being knowledgeable about what the new technologies are that are coming down the pike so that you can prepare yourself for the changes in your industry when they happen and then constantly keep learning to keep yourself at the top of your game.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?
Okay. Best piece would be get the job done, basically. Just complete the task at hand and get things done. Now, that's something I have a lot of trouble with because I'm a hardcore procrastinator. I actually just heard about this concept called strategic procrastination. It was in Adam Grant's book Originals. I don't know if you know what strategic procrastination is, but it's sometimes—
Sounds interesting.
Yeah, you should definitely look it up. Sometimes people procrastinate on purpose because they realize it's not really the right conditions or right moment to do something. But you know what, I realized like procrastination is bad because always in the back of my head, I'm sure you know this as a business owner that has multiple kind of ventures, there's always something that's nagging you at the back of your head to get this done. And if you don't get it done or complete the task at hand, it's always going to be nagging at the back of your head. And for me personally, like I have a hard time like just going and relaxing. Like it's the summertime, I should be at the pool, you know, or I should be at the beach, but I don't feel like I can do that 'cause there's something in the back of my head, you know, just saying, hey, you need to finish this one thing that you didn't do, you know, you need to go paint the room. The other thing too, I would just say it's best as a creative to see if you can get into the flow state as much as possible. And it's really hard to get into that state too. So just find what your process is and see if you get into the flow state because once you get into that flow state, easier to accomplish the task at hand. Sometimes it's just taking a walk, sometimes it's just typing 300 words before you have to actually type a full article, but you have to get that momentum first before you can even start and finish those small steps, before you get past that part of you that doesn't want to do the job at hand. And then remember, even though you can't do it now, you can still think about doing something in the future and plan for it, but don't delegate everything to the future you, because the future you may have different circumstances where it's hard to do that job. Think about when is going to be the best time for you to schedule it and get it done.
I agree, man, especially with writing books and how we know the flow state is crucial with writing. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
I'd say don't worry about job security. The reason I say that is because I don't think it exists anymore like we used to think about. And when I was mentioning how I had gone to grad school, I was hoping to get a good government job and have something where I wouldn't have to worry about changing careers all that much and staying in an industry where I could be for 10, 20 years. And I don't think it really exists. And I've just observed this a lot through my own career and other people's careers. And I think the thing that you really need to focus on is just pursuing what you enjoy. And keep doing that because you'll find out what you're really meant to do by finding all these things that interest you outside of what you think is going to provide the most security. Now, we do have to take care of paying the bills, right? So we have to figure out ways to take and make that happen. Well, what I've found is, you know, and my younger self probably wouldn't have realized this, is you become really resourceful when you have constraints. And, you know, maybe you don't have the job security right now, Or maybe you're stuck in a job where you feel you have too much security, but you don't have too much creativity. The best thing to do is just really think about how you can be resourceful and rely on yourself during those times. And I'd say to my younger self, just think about how you can be resourceful to get where you need to go.
And you kind of touched on it a little bit there, but in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
I think the key to happiness as I've found, is the shift from becoming a consumer to a producer. And the reason I say that is because I think there's something joyful when you have something to give. I feel tremendous joy when I have advice I can share with other people or a contact or even like a website or a book I can recommend. There's something about sharing and giving that really gives me a lot of joy. And I have to say, like, there's a lot of bullshit in business and life, but the worst person to bullshit is really yourself. And I think a lot of people think that they're not talented enough or they don't have what it takes, or they have imposter syndrome. But you know what? You have everything within you. You have the knowledge within you. You have resourcefulness. Just start creating for the sake of creating and be happy to give to other people. 'Cause sometimes you don't necessarily have to do everything kind of transactionally. You know, like, as an employee, we often think transactionally where, you know, what we do basically is we're doing it because we can make money. But figure out how you can go beyond and give, whatever it is, whether it's information, sometimes just giving your time, giving an ear to somebody, but find out how you can give. I think that's the key to happiness.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
So I'm constantly reading. It's probably easier if I just tell you what I haven't read versus—
I feel you, man. I'm the same way.
I mean, I love a lot of business books, right? So, you know, I've read all the classics like Think and Grow Rich and, you know, Zig Ziglar's books. And I'm sure that's probably a lot of what your audience reads too. But I, I read beyond just kind of the genre that I see what I write in and, you know, what I think I'm supposed to be focused on. But I think there's a lot of good books out there. You know, one that I'd say I think was really valuable to me was Susan Cain's Quiet. And she talks about how introverts in that book really have a lot of value and how sometimes they're undervalued because they're not the ones that are always communicating and being out there in the spotlight. I'm an introvert myself, but, you know, I force myself to do a podcast. I love being in front of people, but I also have to have a lot of downtime. So during my downtime, you know, I have to do a lot of like interior things like read and, you know, work on puzzles. Like, I'm reading a book right now called The Crossword Century, which talks about how to get better at doing crossword puzzles. I love the New York Times crosswords. Right now I'm up to the Monday and Tuesday crosswords. I can't do a Sunday puzzle because those are really challenging. But, you know, I love solving puzzles. And, you know, right now I'm reading some books that I missed whenever I was younger. One that I'm reading now too is the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is all 5 books in one volume. And I don't know how I missed this when I was younger, but I never saw myself as like a sci-fi geek, but Douglas Adams' writing is just so captivating to me. And he's such a great author. He's able to like kind of make these points in his book that just combine like the vastness of space and the galaxy and imbue it with humor, with us talking about kind of like the largest of our egos that are involved in that. I think that's been a great book. And of course, I'm reading a bunch of other things too. I've actually had 3 authors on my podcast recently, one of which I think has just been on your show, Monica Kang. She has a book coming up in September called Rethink Creativity. And the other 2 were Benga Ogwungeme, who wrote Borderless Voice. I read that actually on the bus ride back from a trip to New York City a few weeks ago. And then Sahaj Sharda wrote The Extinction of the Price Tag. And he wrote that as part of a class that he took when he was at Georgetown University. And I'm excited to read those two books too, because I've had those guests on my show. And I've been getting copies of both of those two.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
Well, since I stuck with Doug Adams for my favorite book, I guess you could say don't panic. Cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide. I don't know if you're familiar with it. Yeah, just don't panic. It's short and to the point. There's a lot of great quotes I could probably say, but we'll just go with that one.
Awesome, man. Dude, thank you so much again for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find you online?
Sure. Yeah, you can find me online by searching for my name, George Mocharko. It's spelled M-O-C-H-A-R-K-O. Just search on Google and see what pops up. You should see a bunch of the articles that I've written along my LinkedIn profile and other stuff on there. Of course, you can go to my website, dcentrepreneur.com. I should have content that I'm populating in that by September during the relaunch of my podcast. And of course, I'd love for you to subscribe to my podcast. It's on iTunes, Stitcher, Mixcloud, TuneIn, Google Play and Radio Public.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for hopping on.
Thanks, Tyler.
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