Meet Adam Marsland | Vlogger, “Adam Walks Around,” music entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Adam Marsland and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Adam, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
With great risks come great rewards.

You assume risk any time you take any action. Any time you take an action, not only do you risk failure, but you will always upset someone else that made different choices. To achieve your goals, you have to accept risk and accept that by moving forward you will make someone somewhere unhappy.

Risk-taking should be carefully calculated, however. Don’t just jump; take a measure of every possible angle, think through the consequences of failure, measure your odds, and if it still seems worth it, then jump knowing you’ve made the best possible guess.

I made several risky decisions in my life that paid off big later. First, deciding to leave my small town and move to Los Angeles to become a musician. Second, deciding to become self-sufficient as an artist when my record label went bankrupt, by touring the country as a solo artist to pay the bills and build a following, and starting my own record company. Third, becoming a full-time professional studio musician when my day job work dried up during the recession. Fourth, giving up my career and home to live in Asia and explore the world.

Each of these moves was scary and the outcome was uncertain, but they all reaped huge benefits in my life down the road. In each case, I thought the move through carefully and logically for some time…but I didn’t allow myself to worry that it was a risk most people wouldn’t take. That doesn’t matter; most people are risk-averse. What matters is: will this make me happy? Will it advance my life? Have I planned for things to go wrong? Are there any major reasons why this won’t work?

When I had all the right answers for those questions, I jumped. They were big scary jumps. But it paid off, every single time.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
As a musician, performer, producer and later as a youTube creator, I always wanted to grow and get better. This seems obvious but actually many people succeed simply by finding one thing they do well and milking it. From a branding standpoint, this is often better. People will support what they easily understand. But for me, it gets boring.

I want to always strive to do better work and tell a story that isn’t already being told; write and talk about people, ideas and ways of thinking that get shunted aside or dumbed down. I don’t just want to write a song that repeats the same four chords over and over again, or has the same kind of production everyone else has. These days, most successful creative media tells a very simple story that flatters one or another group of people. It stays in one lane. This is, again, smart branding, it’s just not what I believe in or am interested in. I want to do work for people that want to think further and experience something different.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
My favorite thing about Los Angeles is the natural environment, so I would probably take people on a hiking tour. I recently did an episode of my ADAM WALKS AROUND series called “The Hermit of Angeles Crest” where I took people hiking in the Angeles Crest National Forest, in Topanga State Park, parts of the Mojave Desert, Antelope Valley, and elsewhere. Rather than take people to this or that theme park or restaurant, I would show them the beautiful places I got to know during 30 years of living in L.A.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I was extremely lucky to rub close elbows with various musicians in my life that really knew what they were doing: producers Earle Mankey and Steve Refling and musicians Darian Sahanaja, Rivers Cuomo, and Stew were the ones that loom biggest in my life. I also was blessed to have talented musicians in my corner that were supportive, worked as a team, and rose to every challenge. Kurt Medlin, Teresa Cowles, Evie Sands, Robert Ramos, Jason Berk and Severo Jornacion in particular among many.

Website: bandcamp.karmafrog.com

Instagram: Adam_Walks_Around

Twitter: @karmafrog

Facebook: facebook.com/karmafrog

Youtube: karmafrog1