We were lucky to catch up with Taylor Berryman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Taylor, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the best boss, mentor, or leader you’ve ever worked with.

The greatest leader I have ever met was a man named Gil Buthlay, a retired Navy admiral, He owned BEK, an IT shop in my hometown of Brunswick, Maine. Up until working at BEK, I had always worked retail gigs – grocery stores, big box stores, music stores etc. I started out at BEK as an intern. Eventually, I got hired by BEK as a salesperson. It was my first foray into a professional sales world. I was slinging copiers and making cold calls. I absolutely loved it. I was hooked. I learned from Gil because he led by example – he put a strong value on people, morals, and fairness. There were times where I would make a bad move – but he would sit down to talk to me about it. He would want to know want to understand what I was thinking before he gave me feedback. Every time I got a talking to, I earned it. He never laid into me or really yelled at me but he let me know if I disappointed him. I was honestly very dumb. There were so many things I didn’t understand back then – about life, about myself or about the world. The secret is, things are mostly gray and there are very few “answers”. But he was young once. He knew I was young, stupid, and a little arrogant. But he never gave me a hard time about it. He would allude to it, sometimes he was direct when he had to be, but he read me and knew what I would respond to. He saw what my underdeveloped strengths were and got me on the life long path of honing them. He played to my strengths in terms of being an individual and what I did well on a team. What he did, without me even realizing at the time, was help me improve in those areas that I was weak and helped me develop skills today that I am using in my career. For instance, I learned how to send short and sweet emails. Which is gold for booking the podcast. I can email or cold call anyone from record labels to business owners to dinosaur experts and ask them to be on The Poptimist with Taylor Berryman. One thing that really resonates with me was his ability to take his ego out of things. There were times where he would make a mistake when I was in the room, he would sit me down later and explain to me how he made that mistake and what he was going to do so it wouldn’t happen again – accountability. It builds trust as a leader and on a team. I hope to be half the leader he is one day. It changed my life and greatly impacted me.

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 am a bassist, producer, songwriter, and podcaster. If you are down to clown, check out my podcast The Poptimist with Taylor Berryman. Be on the look out for my debut solo single, Deception Pass, coming at you in 2023. It’s got a reference to Trailer Park Boys, S, Craig Zahler, and Rush Limbaugh. So if any of that interest you, I’m your guy.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Honestly, if I understood what NFTs are I would probably have a lot more money than I do now.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Yes, I wish I would have bought bitcoin in 2012.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: the_poptimist
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/taylor.berryman.39
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcorbettberryman/
• Twitter: dapoptimist
• Youtube: The Poptimist