Last week, before I packed up everything to move again, I had a great chance to talk on the phone with Karol Gajda from Ridiculously Extraordinary, phoning in from Wroclaw, Poland.

Karol is one of my favorite bloggers out there, and I haven’t shared his stuff enough. Karol lives life on his own terms. He travels where he wants to, lives where he wants to. He’s not afraid to be himself, to curse once in a while, he gets philosophical and vulnerable about the challenges of living a life of extraordinary freedom, and he digs into some really, truly valuable strategies and tactics for improving your life.

What’s in store for you in this excellent interview:

• 2:00 – What is ridiculously extraordinary freedom?
• 2:45 – Karol’s trip to Goa, India, to build a handmade guitar
• 3:18 – All about his guide How to Live Anywhere
• 6:36 – About Karol’s long career in affiliate marketing and info product strategies
• 8:26 – Specific tactics for earning money with your blog
• 10:55 – All about hustle
• 12:32 – Secrets to exploding your blog & Karol’s secret for guest blogging on huge sites
• 17:02 – Karol’s travels to India, Thailand, and Poland this year (see Karol’s guest post The Beginner’s Guide to Minimalist Travel on Zen Habits)
• 19:20 – What it’s like traveling and living in Wroclaw, Poland (Karol’s birthplace)
• 23:35 – Networking and using Couchsurfing when you travel
• 24:30 – What’s up next in Karol’s travels, BlogWorld conference
• 25:25 – How a Gameboy at age 8 helped Karol realize an extraordinary method for achieving goals

Download the MP3 here to listen on your own computer (right click and “Save As”)

How to Live Anywhere: The guide I wish I’d written

The last thing I want to mention is that I read Karol’s truly incredible guide How to Live Anywhere: The Official Guide to Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom while I was in Bali with my girlfriend a couple months ago now. Even as someone who’s already living the location independent lifestyle, I found several valuable strategies for making more money online and insights into improving my mindset, for example.

Update August, 2011: Unfortunately Karol has made his excellent guidebook unavailable, so if you want great lessons, interviews, case studies, and tools for how to live anywhere, make sure you become a part of the Thrilling Heroics Inner Circle (it’s free)!

Make sure you follow Karol Gajda on Twitter and check out these awesome articles on Ridiculously Extraordinary:

• 21 Reasons You Should Quit Your Day Job
• 17 Miniscule Actions that Produce Massive Results
• How to Pack Ultra Light

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Live Anywhere: A Ridiculously Extraordinary Discussion with Karol Gajda

Ramit Sethi was one of the earliest bloggers to inspire me when I first started writing Thrilling Heroics and building my online network. He was a graduate of Stanford University who’d studied technology and psychology, co-founded Silicon Valley startup PBworks, and was writing the hugely successful I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog to show college students and young professionals how to take control of their personal finances and get into entrepreneurship.

Although he’s based in the Bay Area, I reached out to him and learned that he’s originally from my hometown in Northern California. The first time I met Ramit in person was one chilly winter day in 2006 when he was in Sacramento to visit his family, and I had the chance to interview him about his education, entrepreneurship experience, and his perspectives on new media.

One of the first bold moves Ramit made in his career was to call up Seth Godin and negotiate a job opportunity with him! He later consulted with Omidyar Network, the philanthropic social innovation firm started by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar. He got himself featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, ABC News, CNBC, and more, sharing personal finance tips and bolstering his readership at I Will Teach You To Be Rich to over 250,000 visitors per month!

In March, Ramit published his book by the same title, which instantly hit #1 on Amazon and made him a NYT bestselling author. His educational background in social psychology translated well into a book that helps you make real behavioral change:

At last, for a generation that’s materially ambitious yet financially clueless comes I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi’s 6-week personal finance program for 20-to-35-year-olds. A completely practical approach delivered with a nonjudgmental style that makes readers want to do what Sethi says, it is based around the four pillars of personal finance—banking, saving, budgeting, and investing—and the wealth-building ideas of personal entrepreneurship.

These days Ramit hangs out with Tim Ferriss (check out his feature on the 4-Hour Workweek blog about the psychology of money and how to set up an automated personal finance system, with great excerpts from Ramit’s book).

How could you ask for a better twentysomething role model for personal finance and entrepreneurship success?

I met up with Ramit a time or two in San Francisco since first meeting him in 2006, but I’ve been wanting to catch up with him for a video interview for a while now to see what has changed in the last three years. Just my luck, this week he’s turning the six-week personal finance program in his best-selling book into a real online bootcamp where he’ll take you by the hand through a step-by-step online curriculum to automate and optimize your finances before the end of 2009, so I offered to help him promote the bootcamp if he’d sit down and answer some questions for you guys here.

Check out the video interview below for the following:

• Learn more about the I Will Teach You To Be Rich 6-Week Personal Finance Bootcamp
• Entrepreneurship, experimentation & failure
• How the things you spend your money on reflect your values
• How Ramit negotiated a book deal from his blog
• How he promoted his book to #1 on Amazon and the New York Times bestseller list
• Personal finance & entrepreneurship tips for travelers & expats
• Learn about the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Scholarship for Social Innovation

To learn more about Ramit Sethi, social psychology, technology in business, scrappy startups, and x-man abilities, make sure you also read my 2006 interview with him.

Feature photo from You 2.0

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Ramit Sethi Shows You How to Negotiate, Automate & Perspirate Your Way to Financial Success

Last week I encouraged business owners to concentrate on your passion rather than on making money. In The Monk and the Riddle, Randy Komisar points out the challenges that await you if you don’t consciously build your life around doing work that you’re passionate about:

“Personal risks include the risk of working with people you don’t respect; the risk of working for a company whose values are inconsistent with your own; the risk of compromising what’s important; the risk of doing something you don’t care about; and the risk of doing something that fails to express—or even contradicts—who you are. And then there is the most dangerous risk of all—the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”

Komisar’s book is geared towards entrepreneurs. What if you’re not entrepreneurially inclined though—what control do you have over creating a career that makes you happy and fulfilled?

If You Go to Work for Someone Else, You Damned Well Better Pick the Right Workplace!

If you’re gonna spend your career working for someone else, do it where the corporate culture is awesome. I’ve been wanting to talk about Tony Hsieh and his company Zappos for this very reason.

A while back I read an article by Inc. Magazine writer Max Chafkin called “Get Happy: How Tony Hsieh uses relentless innovation, stellar service, and a staff of believers to make Zappos.com an e-commerce juggernaut—and one of the most blissed-out businesses in America.”

Hsieh helped found the online shoe retailer in 1999, and it has since grown to over a billion dollars in gross annual sales. They’re so successful in fact, Amazon has just negotiated to acquire them (thankfully Hsieh will continue to run things his way and infuse the company with his awesome management style).

Zappos has been notable in the past few years for their innovative service (absolutely free shipping and returns) and successful use of new media to connect with customers. After sharing a note about how impressed I was with the Inc. article on my Twitter account, I immediately received a personal note from someone on their Zappos_service account with a cheerful offer to set up a tour of the Zappos facilities next time I stop in Las Vegas! (They’ll pick you up at your hotel for a fun, free tour of the company headquarters.)

In my opinion, even more important than their stellar customer service, Tony Hsieh has decided that his business revolves around happiness, which he studies with the dedication of a laboratory researcher. “What would make you happier in your life?” Hsieh asks the writer. He is fond of asking employees, customers, and everyone he meets, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you right now?”

And it shows in the company’s whacky, uninhibited corporate culture. You can follow Tony’s musings on Twitter, job interviews and company meetings often take place over drinks in nearby Vegas bars and hotspots, and every employee is encouraged to be themselves! (What an idea!) It looks like most employees wear their dyed hair, tattoos, piercings, and other unique styles with pride. They have no call scripts and are given the freedom to troubleshoot customer complaints on a case-by-case basis. One of the 10 crowd-sourced core values of the company is to “Create fun and a little weirdness”!

Salaries are modest (starting pay between about $8 to $12), but the real attraction to working for Zappos is the work environment. To weed out the folks who aren’t committed to a fun, weird work culture, each and every new employee is offered $2,000 plus time worked to walk away after their first month of training. For those who stick around, Zappos invests serious bank in their personal development—with classes, business books, public speaking and personal finance courses for example.

All of this is to say: if you are less inclined to work for yourself and more inclined to go to a job like a majority of folks are, ask yourself what’s important to you at work. You’ll spend the majority of your hours at your desk, in your cubicle, or wherever that puts you, so I suggest you find an innovative company that values it’s employees’ happiness and encourages a fun, meaningful, unique workplace culture.

To learn more about Tony Hsieh and how he got his start, also check out this recent interview Jun Loayza did! Tony’s advice to anyone planning their career right now:

“I would say rather than focus on what will make you the most money or be best for your career, figure out what you would be passionate for 10 years and go pursue that. A lot of people work hard at building a career so that one day down the road they think it will bring them happiness. And most of the time, when they finally accomplish their goal, they realize that it doesn’t really end up bringing happiness or fulfillment for the long term.”

Rather than preparing for the template career like everyone else, and saving for years to one day do what you’re really passionate about, just get started doing what you’re really passionate about now!

Feature photo credit: Randy Stewart

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Stay Happy If You Work for Someone Else

Today, LinkedIn has joined the application craze and opened their platform for developers to create user add-ons. I’ve got mixed feelings about saturating all the social networks with extras, but it looks like LinkedIn will hopefully try to keep its focus on professional tools.

If you’re a WordPress blogger who also happens to use LinkedIn to connect with your business network or promote your website (I don’t know why you wouldn’t!), then you can now integrate your blog feed into your LinkedIn profile with the new WordPress LinkedIn App:

“Connect your virtual lives with the WordPress LinkedIn Application. With the WordPress App, you can sync your WordPress blog posts with your LinkedIn profile, keeping everyone you know in the know.”

WordPress is one of the first nine approved business applications to launch on the LinkedIn platform. Also available:

• Share your reading list with your network via Amazon
• Share large files and content with Box.net
• Showcase your slideshows or presentations with SlideShare or Google Presentation
• Broadcast your travel plans and track where your colleague’s are with TripIt
• Create private online workspaces to collaborate with your network using Huddle Workspaces
• Track what customers say about you and your business on Twitter with Company Buzz
• Link up your non-WordPress-powered blog with BlogLink (by TypePad)

Visit the new LinkedIn Application Directory to integrate your WordPress blog with your LinkedIn profile or take advantage of any of these new business tools on the LinkedIn network.

Other Must-Reads for LinkedIn Users:

• Guy Kawasaki: LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover
• Chris Brogan: Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work for You
• Copyblogger: Use LinkedIn to Create Authoritative Content

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Broadcast Your Blog to Your Professional Network with the New WordPress LinkedIn Application

There have been several recent changes in my online empire. In addition to the new blog community search tool I recently introduced to the blogosphere, I’ve mentioned my new freelance site a few times, and my recent interview at ABCnews.com, but I wanted to take this opportunity to officially invite you all to visit Thrilling Heroics Consulting, a new sister site to Thrilling Heroics that will serve as my official business site, where I’ll offer my business blog consulting and other WordPress technical help aimed at professionals and non-geek bloggers. If you need a blog re-launch or are looking for some simple tips and tricks to increase your effectiveness with the WordPress blog publishing platform and expand the CMS’ functionality, it’s a good starting place. But I’ve just set the site up with another fresh design (thanks to Vinh Le’s awesome open-source theme from BlogDesignBlog.com) and I need YOUR help to send me your WordPress-related questions! If you have quick WP questions, follow me on Twitter and send your questions there, or contact me via Thrilling Heriocs Consulting for more detailed requests. I try to answer as many questions as I can on Twitter, and if you’ve got a good one, I just might discuss your requests on the blog.

Since it’s brand-spanking new to the blogosphere, I could really use your help promoting the Thrilling Heroics Consulting site to the community, so please vote it up on the social media sites and share the URL address if you’ve got friends or colleagues who are bloggers too. Thanks!

CodyMcKibben.com Will Now Serve As My Social Media Homebase

I’ll be compiling my portfolio and services listing at ThrillingDesign.com, but I’ve also recently transformed codymckibben.com into a static homepage. All of my articles that were originally posted there have been moved here to the Thrilling Heroics blog. codymckibben.com will serve as a social media HQ of sorts, so please feel free to reference it if you’re looking for my contact info or to see what projects I’m currently involved in, but looking ahead I encourage you to follow all my future updates on personal development, careeer, Gen-Y issues, social media, and more here at Thrilling Heroics (get the RSS feed here).

Visit the New Thrilling Heroics Bookstore!

In addition to the Thrilling Blog Search tool, I’ve also recently created an online bookstore for the Thrilling Heroics reader community. People that know me know that I love reading personal development and business books, and I really enjoy sharing the best of what I read. I’ve started an Amazon aStore where I’ve hand-picked the best personal and business development books. Several of these have been the most impactful books in my life, while others have been highly suggested by mentors and colleagues.

Whenever I find great new resources that I think the community will benefit from, I’ll add them in. For transparency, I receive a 4-6% commission on any books you purchase through the TH Bookstore and it will go to help offset the costs of running the site. Please consider buying a book to help support the site! (You can also purchase other books through my Amazon link for up to 34% discount!)

Browse the Thrilling Heroics Bookstore »

Thanks for being a member of my online community and please feel free to get in touch with your thoughts and feedback. Cheers!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Check Out Thrilling Heroics Consulting If You Need Help With WordPress & Blogging

April 15 through 18 is the Web 2.0 Expo at Moscone Center West, in SF. There are a whole host of expensive learning sessions and workshops, but I just registered for an expo pass today. The normal prices is $100, but if you visit web2expo.com/registration and try using the discount code WEBEX07ECON before the 12th you might just find you can save a hundred bucks on any package!

An expo pass gets you unlimited access to the keynote presentations, exhibit hall, and sponsored sessions (any of the Services & Platforms sessions).

Keynote speakers include Jeff Bezos (Founder & CEO, Amazon), Eric Schmidt (CEO, Google), Jeff Weiner (SVP, Yahoo), Bill Tancer from Hitwise, blogger Kathy Sierra (Creating Passionate Users), and more. The events main sponsors are Etelos, Adobe, AOL, Coghead, Cognizant, webex, Amazon Web Services, Ask.com, Cambrian House, curl, eBay, PayPal, fast, Google, Yahoo!, impetus, Intel capital, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, and many many more. All of these sponsors and more will be featured on the tradeshow floor.

One unique feature of the Web 2.0 Expo is Launch Pad–a venue for new internet startups to debut to the public. Flock, Zvents, Rollyo and Adify are notable alumni companies of the Launch Pad platform.

I’m not sure what’s involved yet, but it also sounds like the expo is working hard to make this a great networking venue for everyone in attendance–and it sounds like they expect a decent show of entrepreneurs and VCs. I know I’m having my name published in their networking book they will be presenting to attendees at the event!

If anyone would like to join me, please let me know!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Upcoming Web 2.0 Expo