By Erin @ Team Afford Anything
Do you love the idea of making money on your own — without a boss?
Can you imagine deciding how you spend each day?
Are you bored and looking for a challenge? Do you love the thought of adventure?
Today’s guest, Chris Guillebeau, knows all about hustling, living an unconventional life, working towards seemingly impossible goals, and combining his interests into an epic lifestyle business that brings him freedom and joy.
By Erin @ Team Afford Anything
Grant Baldwin felt burned out.
He worked as a youth pastor, which felt like a 24/7 profession. He had to attend student events held late into the night, which left him exhausted.
One night, he came home to find his wife crying. She told him that she felt like she had a roommate, rather than a husband, because he was gone so often.
So Grant did something drastic: he quit his job, with negligible savings, when his wife was four to five months pregnant.
(Editor’s Note: WAT?! Who does that?!)
For the following year, he waited tables and worked odd jobs, cobbling together gig-economy money while raising a newborn. During his rare unscheduled moments, he started crafting a new career for himself as a self-employed public speaker.
Today, Grant Baldwin is a speaker, entrepreneur, coach, and author of The Successful Speaker. He’s earned multiple seven-figures in speaking fees and has helped over 2,000 people become professional speakers.
He shares how he made his dream a reality in this episode.
By Erin @ Team Afford Anything
Ash Ambirge grew up in a trailer park in rural Pennsylvania.
She never met her biological father. Her father-figure mentor passed away when she was 14. Her disabled mother, who raised her on government assistance, passed away when she was 20.
Her childhood goal was to join the middle class. She dreamed of becoming one of those people who eats poppyseed bagels and lemon pepper chicken. After all, what’s more middle class than that?
Ash’s future changed the moment she received a need-based, full ride scholarship to college. After she graduated, she snagged a marketing assistant job and negotiated a $30,000 salary.
Ash had finally made it; she joined the middle class. To celebrate, she bought a brand-new car, financed a $5,000 mattress, and rented a luxurious apartment. Yet she felt that something was lacking (and it wasn’t the lemon pepper chicken).
Unfulfilled, Ash set out to answer two burning questions:
“What does it mean to live a good life?”
“What does it look like to do work that I’m proud of?”
Throughout her childhood, the answers to these questions had been elusive. Her mother hadn’t worked, and Ash had no idea what a “good life” involved. She had no role models.
By Erin @ Team Afford Anything
In November 2005, when Noah Kagan was 24, he was hired as Employee #30 at Facebook.
At the time, Facebook was a one-year-old company with only a few million users. The company was growing rapidly, adding 50,000 new users per day.
Noah joined the team as product manager. He made a base salary of $60,000 plus 0.1 percent of ownership, equivalent to 20,000 shares.
His stock options would have been worth $170 million if he’d cashed out in 2014, he says.
But he didn’t see a dime.
In June 2006, merely 9 months after he started working at Facebook, Noah got fired. Instead of making $170 million, he made zero.
He fell into a deep depression for a year. Then he rescued himself by starting his own company.
He became a serial entrepreneur. He tried his hand at a lot of things — including developing Facebook games, selling discount cards, creating a payment processor in the gaming space — but he’s best known for his two most successful companies.
In 2010 he started a company, AppSumo, which offers daily deals on software for small businesses. It’s like Groupon for online entrepreneurs. By 2012, AppSumo was grossing $4 million per year in revenue, with annual net profits of $500,000.
Yet Noah wasn’t fulfilled. So he pivoted. He offloaded the day-to-day management of the company to a colleague, and in 2015 he started a sister company, Sumo.com, which develops marketing tools for websites and online businesses.
In today’s episode, Noah and I discuss reflections on business, money and life.
Enjoy!
Written By Julia Kelly
In 2015, we ran a story about Julia Kelly, an entrepreneur who makes a six-figure income as a caricature artist.
Where is she now?
We decided to follow up her story. How sustainable is her business? How passive is her income?
Here’s Julia, with a follow-up in her own words. Take it away, Julia!
___________
The following is written by guest contributor Julia Kelly
When we left off, I was running JK Expressions and I was a couple of months away from finishing my degree. I was beyond excited to be done with my degree and focus on the business full time – I was pretty sure I would be living the dream!
I was in for a disappointment. About eight months after graduating and focusing on nothing but the business, it was hitting record revenues but I was dissatisfied, bored, unmotivated and thinking seriously about getting a “real” job.
I was confused. Everything looked great from the outside: I was my own boss, had a super flexible schedule, tons of time for hobbies, and good money.
What was the problem?
It probably would have worked for a lot of people — there’s tons of advantages to running a business like that:
Written By Paula Pant
In June, I flew to Atlanta and toured a few of my rental units. This was the second visit I’ve made to these properties in four years.
During that visit, I met with my property manager and a few of my tenants, and I had lunch with my contractor. He and I met at a suburban Atlanta strip mall.
We ordered a basket of spicy chicken wings and fries, then took out a water-logged spiral notebook and planned a $20,000 renovation.
Here’s what the early brainstormed edition of those plans looked like:
By Paula Pant
Nine years ago, I was flipping through an issue of Kiplinger Personal Finance magazine (as any normal 26-year-old does), when I came across an article about a woman who paid off $70,000 in debt in 16 months.
Her name was Jaime. She lived in Maine, with her then-husband and their young son. Her husband was a professional juggler who earned $30,000 per year; she brought home 3x his income.
They bought the trappings of the American Dream: the suburban house with a white picket fence, a brand-new Honda Civic, a Jeep CJ7 with 36” tires, several kayaks, and a premium cable subscription.
The result? They found themselves in massive debt, with a combination of vehicle loans, student loans, and a home equity line of credit.
By Paula Pant
Elaine Pofeldt, a writer for CNBC, Forbes, Fortune, Money Magazine and other business publications, decided to deep-dive into the world of solopreneur million-dollar companies.
What are the stories of entrepreneurs who gross $1 million or more in their businesses, despite having no employees? How did they begin? What do they do differently?
She interviewed hundreds of founders of non-employer seven-figure companies and wrote a book about her findings called The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Today, she joins us on the podcast to talk about what we can learn from this special class of entrepreneurs.
Written By Paula Pant
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 down at work. He decided to specialize in a marketing niche, search engine optimization, which set him apart from the pack.
He brought new clients into his business. He developed internal tools to use for his clients, then started selling subscription-based access to this software.
Written By Paula Pant
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 world of online entrepreneurship. I argue that your effect on others is outside of your control, so the best thing you can do is be yourself and let the chips fall where they may.
Bending over backwards to please others is inauthentic and, ultimately, ineffective. People will be served the most when they see a confident, strong person who is true to themself.
