We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris “mo” Mochinski. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chris “Mo” below.

Chris “Mo”, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I have TWO major risks to share…

As a teenager, I was immersed in rock and roll as well as technology – both very much subsequent to my dad insisting that I chase interests with eagerness and excellence. These were always the two things I wanted to do, but never in a million years thought I could pull either off as a “career.”

In my early 20s, I put everything into playing music, touring, writing songs, putting records out, etc, and snowballed from homelessness and being super broke for years into a fortunate situation that led to me fronting a group (for about 15 years now) that does very well regionally.

It wasn’t enough, though – I still had the technology itch. So, in my mid-30s, I dropped all of my OTHER side-hustle asperations, dumped all my investments and savings into survival, and pivoted into software development, something I’d been doing on the side for years. It was truly terrifying and the job market post-COVID was pretty scary. I approached everything with excellence and was obsessive about my presentation. I was so very lucky to be scooped up by an absolutely wonderful education technology organization called CharacterStrong as a front-end developer. I have now been with them for over 3 years and am currently a director of software engineering.

These were both scary and challenging experiences, but I often consider myself to be the luckiest person alive to be able to balance an incredible remote dayjob/career and working nights and weekends performing and doing other musical things.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I believe the foundation of any success I’ve experienced has been minding “the little things” – the stuff people overlook or deem unnecessary. The things that make you go “meh, nobody cares about that.”

“Nobody cares if I wear tight pants onstage.”

“Nobody cares if I clean up my guitar or comb my hair.”

“Nobody cares if I make that webpage beautifully responsive so mobile devices can display it perfectly.”

Truly caring about these things is what I believe sets me apart. I try to find the holes and fill the edge cases. I’m now 40, and I am determined to stay in shape and be a total goofball onstage. It’s my job to entertain, not just sing songs and go home with a paycheck. It’s also my job, during the week, to provide a service to educators – some of the most important people in the world.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I think social media is tricky, particularly with how saturated it is. There are millions of people out there going “I want to be famous,” and some of them accidentally accomplish this overnight (EG: “hawk tuah”). But guerilla tactics are still very much alive and well, and are totally effective.

Example – for several years, I’ve found a spot during live shows to inject a passionate, very real monologue with quiet backing music from the band, explaining how much we appreciate all in attendance and insisting that they visit us on Instagram and other social media, follow us, and that we will follow them back. We have ALWAYS made good on that promise. It certainly doesn’t propel anyone to superstardom overnight, and it’s a slow grind for us as well, but it’s all about chipping away, or “pounding the stone,” as CharacterStrong likes to say, and it often works exponentially.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I am a cryptocurrency investor and I actually own a couple of NFTs. Nothing crazy expensive, nothing super fancy, but just enough to consider myself a dabbler. With that said, I don’t quite get it. People pay thousands of dollars for blockchain-verifiable things like PNGs, of which you can still make infinite copies.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://chrismochinski.github.io/ AND https://www.junkfm.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrismochinski/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justmowilldo
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismochinski/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thankpleasedev (previous account = “holymosesmusic”)
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisMochinskiMusic

Image Credits

Jeff Rutland, Sharesa Blythe, Twelve Ten Photography, Eric Rengo,