I’ve been following Rand Fishkin’s career for years. He has one of the best rags-to-not-quite-riches-yet stories I’ve heard. Rand is a college dropout who spent his early 20s spiraling into a deep debt hole. His problems began when he tried to grow a marketing company but funded it in the worst way possible. He leased office space, rented booths at conferences, hired expensive contractors — and paid for everything with a personal credit card. Yikes. His credit card debt ballooned to $150,000. He couldn’t make the minimum payments, so he defaulted. The late fees and penalty interest rates caused his debt to swell to more than $500,000. Anyone else might have declared bankruptcy, but Rand stayed the course. He doubled[…]
Category: Launch a Biz
You Can’t Change History From the Middle of the Bell Curve
“If Elon Musk has asked people what they wanted, they would have said better gas mileage. “But Elon never bothered asking. Because he knows he can’t change history from the middle of the bell curve. And he knows design by consensus, by definition, leads to average results.” Last week I published a transcript of the speech I delivered at the World Domination Summit, in which I challenged people to be true to themselves despite the fact that others may not like it. A few days later, WDS released the video of the speech. (I had no idea they were going to release it so soon! I thought it would take a couple months.) It’s the most heartfelt[…]
How to Live Louder than the Sound of ‘Should’
WDS 2018: Paula Pant from Chris Guillebeau on Vimeo. One month ago, I made a speech at the World Domination Summit in Portland about the importance of being yourself, even if this requires setting difficult boundaries or relinquishing your people-pleasing tendencies. If you’re a creative entrepreneur, such as an artist, writer, musician, designer, craftsman, entrepreneur, or any other type of creator … this is advice you might not have heard before. I argue that your best business move is to stop giving a sh*t about what other people think. Even your customers. It’s a counterintuitive philosophy, one that runs contrary to the seemingly-benign “I want to help others” mindset that’s preached in the[…]
How to Stop Talking Yourself Out of Your Dreams
I once asked my friend Monica: “What would you do for a living, if you could do anything in the world?” I expected her to pause, but she knew the answer immediately. “I’d open my own clothing boutique,” she said. It was a fitting response (no pun intended). There’s a positive feedback loop between talent and passion. We enjoy what we’re skilled at, and we’re skilled at what we enjoy. Monica loves clothing; every outfit she wears is a masterpiece. Monica lives in a city of 5 million people. She could certainly find a niche for her boutique somewhere in her city. It’s an achievable dream. It requires hard work, but the formula is established: Raise funding.[…]
What if We Quit Setting Goals? (Seriously?)
It’s an old familiar hum: Every January, we kickoff the calendar year with New Years Resolutions: lose 10 pounds, make smarter investments, create an extra $1,500 per month on the side. Yet by February, we’ve returned to life as usual. The discarded New Years Resolution has become a tired cultural trope. We blame ourselves for these failures: “I should work harder.” “I should be more disciplined.” “I should stop procrastinating.” But what if we’re approaching this in the wrong way? What if goal-setting itself is the[…]
The Tools I Use in My Quest for Peak Productivity
It’s 6:30 a.m., and I’m watching the sunrise over downtown Las Vegas. The streets are empty. The last revelers have disappeared from the sidewalks and rooftops they occupied a few hours ago. Anyone else awake in this town has stayed up all[…]
A Backstage Peek at the Laptop Lifestyle – Tales from a Frequent Traveler
Last month, I tracked my time in 15-minute increments for a week and published the humiliating results. Afterwards, I opened this email from a reader: “You gave me a realistic view of what life might be like when I become an entrepreneur -– I could potentially face some of the same challenges that I do now working in corporate America, even though I thought they’d disappear: 1) Wake up to an alarm (and hit the snooze button) 2) Get distracted and have time disappear into the “vortex” 3) Working 40+ hours per week She asked me to describe a typical day of a lifestyle[…]
The Simple Habits That Make You Feel Invincible
How many days have you felt like this? You toss and turn all night. Wake up groggy. Curse at the alarm. You stumble through a morning fog. You’re drowsy, even after two cups of coffee. You stare at the computer screen feeling overwhelmed and unfocused. You get sucked into Email Hell. You spend the rest of the day bouncing between interruptions and distractions. You finish the day knowing you’ve accomplished nothing. You’re frustrated. You want to accomplish so much. Launch a business. Travel. You have a vision for your life. But days, weeks, months tick by without progress. You’ve chastised yourself to “work harder.” You’ve given yourself pep talks. And yet … yet … you can’t break the cycle. Sound familiar?[…]
The Incredible Power of the 1% Margin for Improvement
Another month is over. Your bills have arrived. You settle down on the couch, scanning through your statements. Sheesh. It happened. You’ve spent more money than you intended. Again. You made a resolution. Maybe for New Year’s. Maybe on your birthday. Maybe on any random day of the year. You promised yourself that THIS time, things will be different. This year would be the year that you pay off your debt. Hit your savings target. Buy that first rental property. Open that retirement account. Start a side business. Boost your income. But the only thing that’s happened is that you’re a little older. Nothing else changed. Despite all your determination, despite all your good intentions, you’re in the[…]
Everything I Know About Blogging, Condensed into One Post
Today is Afford Anything’s five-year birthday. Er, anniversary. Birthiversary? Exactly five years ago today, I published my first blog article. Actually, I published my first five articles. They were terrible. Deplorable. Appalling. Ghastly. An affront to the English language. I’ve edited those articles multiple times over the past five years. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’re “good,” but at least they’re no longer an insult to human[…]
