Jun Loayza is a young CMO to keep your eye on! I met Jun through the Brazen Careerist Gen-Y blog network, and we’ve exchanged thoughts a few times as we both worked through some late nights! As co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Future Delivery, he’s certainly an interesting guy to follow if you want to learn about startups and entrepreneurship. Future Delivery has just recently launched their new project: a roleplaying game (RPG) that awards students and young professionals for things like joining new organizations, taking internships, scoring well at college, and attaining their career goals! I think this is a great idea, because it takes a form of entertainment that our generation loves—games, that is—and puts a really productive spin on it. Jun is also an exceptionally friendly, hilarious, and approachable guy who loves to share his insight and experience, so he volunteered to answer a few questions about his new venture and lessons on entrepreneurship for the Thrilling Heroics audience.

Hey Jun, so give us a little professional background on how you got to be where you are and what your role is with Future Delivery.

As an undergraduate at UCLA, I got a taste for entrepreneurship by founding Bruin Consulting, the UCLA Undergraduate Case Competition, and the Veridical Group. Each experience taught me something new about myself and really amplified my abilities as a leader and consultant, and my business sense.

After I graduated from UCLA, I worked at an international consulting firm for about three months. At the three month mark, I realized that the corporate life was just not for me. I mean, the pay was good, the job was steady, it was around 55 hours a week (not bad for consulting), and we even had an amazing Flavia machine in the kitchen! What drove me to step aside from the corporate world was that I felt unchallenged, and that I was in cruise control. You go to work, come back home, eat dinner, you might have time for the gym, and then you sleep. It became an endless routine!! From my experiences as an entrepreneur, I knew that my passion was in having my own baby (company).

I stepped aside from my corporate job and teamed up with Yu-kai Chou, my Delta Sig pledge brother who co-founded Bruin Consulting and the Veridical Group with me. Together, we founded Future Delivery. This is a startup company; therefore, I wear at least twenty different hats. My main responsibility is that of Chief Marketing Officer. I am in charge of everything having to do with our branding, advertising, lead generation, conversion, and client fulfillment. I am the face of Future Delivery, so I must always make sure I look my best!

What is the new FDCareer roleplaying game all about? Give our readers a run-down of the community and why it’s such a great benefit.

Many of you play video games and watch TV all day. Many undergraduates go to class, play and party all night, and ignore their careers until right before they graduate—which in many cases, may be too late. We created the FD RPG so that undergraduates and young professionals can have fun while developing themselves professionally.

In the FD RPG, every time you gain an internship, get a high GPA, or become a leader of an organization, you gain experience points and level-up on the site. As you level-up, you gain prestige, new abilities, access to new areas of the site, and will be able to recruit with more prestigious firms. We’ve also implemented Quests that help you develop career-wise. For example, a Quest for a Consultant could be a business analysis case. You will have to solve a company’s problem—could be profitability or an acquisition—and you will submit your solutions online to be reviewed by our expert panel. A Marketing Quest could be to gain social influence on Twitter by gaining more followers.

Monster.com is about helping people apply for a job.

Vault.com is about helping people research companies.

FD Career is about getting students and young professionals prepared for their careers. It helps you discover what you want to be, and how to get there.

You’ve got a great blog where you share your journey with entrepreneurship. Can you share some of your thoughts on the startup life and your opinions on work-life balance?

Hahaha… there is no work life balance. To be a successful entrepreneur (not that I’m successful yet), your work and life have to be one thing. That is the key. My personal relationships, family relationships, and girlfriend relationships have suffered because of the path that I have chosen. But these are the sacrifices that you have to make in order to put yourself in the position to be successful.

For example, I probably have time to hang out with my friends from UCLA or high school once or twice a month. I do see my girlfriend a lot during the week, but this is how we spend time together: her sitting in front of the TV watching a show or movie, me sitting by her side with my laptop and earphones on so that I can concentrate and meet my project deadlines.

This life is NOT for everyone. Cody, I chat with you all the time at 3am because we’re both still up doing work. We don’t even complain about it because we know this is the life that we have chosen, so all we can do is laugh. Though the road is tough, you will love what you do.

I keep pushing because I truly believe in the idea, I love my baby, and I love my team. If we fail, I would gladly start another company will all of them.

I’ve heard some rumblings about a sort of reality show that you guys are putting together to showcase your experience starting up a company?

Glad you brought it up! Our first video will launch this week! Hopefully it’ll launch before this is posted so you can link to the first episode. [See Episode 1, Part 1 here, and Part 2 here, also see below. —Ed.]

The Living the Startup Life video series is for all of those people who have a great idea but don’t know where to start, for everyone stuck in their corporate job afraid to leave their company to pursue their dream career, and for everyone who just wants to watch some guys have a lot of fun while succeeding or failing.

Lastly, would you mind sharing a bit about your education and how your experience has helped you become an avid entrepreneur. I’m interested if you have any good tips for students or twentysomethings that want to start their own businesses and really exercise their entrepreneurial muscles!

Why yes I do. My major at UCLA did NOT prepare me for my entrepreneurial quest. The three main things that prepared me to pursue the entrepreneurial life were:

1. Finding a mentor who guided me on my path to become an entrepreneur
2. Getting a taste of it while starting an orginzation and a company as an undergrad
3. Reading business books in class instead of paying attention to the teacher

• The E-Myth Revisited and E-Myth Mastery by Michael Gerber
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

If you do these three things, then you will be prepared to become an entrepreneur.

Thanks for your willingness to share your wisdom with the Thrilling Heroics community, Jun.

If you have any questions about entrepreneurship, Jun is genuinely interested in helping you guys out and making new friends on this great online web community of ours, so please feel welcome to contact him at Jun.Loayza (at) FDcareer (dot) com or on his blog Living the Startup Life. If you are interested in the FDcareer RPG, I highly recommend it! In my experience on the community site, I’ve already reached level 25 (currently #7 on the leaderboard!) so feel free to connect with me if you have questions about blogging, WordPress, or web development, and keep an eye out, because I will be creating some web design and blogging-related quests for you guys in the next few weeks! (Check out a little more about the FDCareer RPG in this intro video below.)

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Young Entrepreneur Jun Loayza Reveals the Interactive Web Game That Will Rock Your Career!

…Successful entrepreneurs decide to start a company and then think about it. They play with it in their mind. Maybe they talk about it, just a little. And then they make a commitment to the company, and you know what? Nothing changes. It still looks like a lot of nothing, because it’s mostly just thinking.

Penelope Trunk is a Boston Globe career columnist, and author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. With help from Ryan Paugh and Ryan Healy of Employee Evolution, she has just launched the brand-spanking-new Brazen Careerist blog network, and I am lucky enough to be one of the first handful of Gen-Y bloggers chosen to be a part of the community!

As she describes it, BrazenCareerist.com is “a network of fifty bloggers who have agreed to participate in a community of people helping each other with careers.” This is an exciting new thing I’ve never seen before–a huge group of Gen-Y professionals all working together to talk about career and personal development, so I am proud to be a hand-picked member of the first fifty writers. You can read more about the launch and about Penelope’s interesting entrepreneurial experience starting up the network in her recent announcement.

Here’s just a few of the awesome Gen-Y blogs I’m proud to be listed alongside as part of the new Brazen Careerist network (click the image above for the full directory):

• Ben Casnocha
• Newly Corporate
• Personal Branding Blog
  
• Devin Reams
• Young Go Getter
• The Big Transition
• My Gen Y Life
• Twenty Set
• Modite
• Employee Evolution
• Personal PR

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Also, some of you may have noticed a recent overhaul of ThrillingHeroics.com. I’ve completely redesigned and optimized TH, so let me know what you think and what else you might like to see, design- and usability-wise. For those of you who miss the old look, don’t worry. I plan on making the old template, optimized for SEO and reader retention, available soon.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: I’m Part of the Brand New Brazen Careerist Network!

Happy Holidays everybody. I wish you all the best and hope that you get a chance to spend some quality time with family and loved ones. If you haven’t heard yet, I am traveling in Spain for the holidays with some good friends, but I wanted to be sure to share my 2007 year-end wrap-up with you here on the blog. If you’ve got the time to visit, I thank you for reading!

Thrilling Heroics in 2007

2007 was a fantastic year for the blog. The site became an early participant in the Washington Post Blogroll program. And many things are still in development for the road ahead, but TH has recently been accepted as one of the first handful of Gen-Y career blogs to join the upcoming Brazen Careerist blog network, which should be a great opportunity. Over the course of the year, I also had the chance to interview several interesting individuals to get their perspective on leadership and success, so that Gen-Y readers can learn from their experience!

Thrilling Heroics has seen a lot of change this year as my personal interests and pursuits have evolved. The discussion is geared more toward personal and career development now than it was at the birth of this blog in 2006, but the central mission is the same: TH is a career-oriented resource aimed at college students and young professionals, with a strong focus on leadership, personal development, productivity, personal finance, entrepreneurship, and “lifestyle design,” with the purpose of inspiring and empowering readers to pursue their wildest dreams! In 2008, you can plan to see some further changes around here in content and design, and you will probably see a few guest writers. Click here to learn more about plans for ’08.

I also have to thank the readers, of course! Thank you for returning week after week. Thank you for your kind words of encouragement, for your patience with me as my direction and obligations change, and for sharing your thoughts on the discussions that take place here. Your comments and your supportive emails keep me going, and they keep the dialogue here interesting! In the next year, I hope to build more community here for you young readers, so please help us to grow the community by sharing the URL with your family, friends, and colleagues. Also, if you are a regular visitor, consider subscribing to the RSS feed to make life easier on yourself. Get posts delivered to your email inbox only when there is fresh new content, so that you don’t waste time visiting the site when there’s nothing new!

Best Posts of 2007

There were 102 posts this year, with over 6,800 unique visitors to the site. We made it onto Tom Peters’ homepage, Yahoo! Finance, and Consumerist.com, among others! This could not have been possible without you, the reader. Thank you! Here are the blog posts that caused the most buzz around the blogosphere this year and inspired the best conversions. Please take a moment to look back at the best of 2007:

Top 10 Most Popular Posts in 2007

1. Learn To Build A Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion
2. Interview with David Anderson, Founder and CEO of Green Options
3. How To Use Your Peers For Fun And Profit!
4. Karen Seeh, Corporate Sustainability Strategist, Talks About Social Enterprise and How to Break In
5. Global Marketing, Six Sigma, and The Donald: An Interview with 23-Year-Old Personal Branding Expert Daniel Schawbel
6. Six Simple Money Tips to Get You Back on the Financial Track
7. Warren Buffett on Doing What You Love
8. Interview with David Anderson of Palo Alto Investors
9. 17 Ways to Think Your Way to Wealth!
10. Bright Young Minds: An Interview with Duff McDuffee of Falling Fruit TV

2007 Women & Business Interview Series with IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com

• Interview with Michelle Goodman, Author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide
• Interview with Julie Jansen, Career Coach and Motivational Speaker
• Interview with Alexandra Levit, Author of They Don’t Teach Corporate In College
• Interview with Anya Kamenetz, Author of Generation Debt
• Interview with Pam Slim of Escape From Cubicle Nation

A Few More Notable Posts

• It’s Time for Some Thrilling Heroics: Commit to Pursuing Your Wildest Dreams with Me in 2008!
• The #1 Skill You Need to Succeed at Anything: Learn to Build Relationships
• 10 Great Ways to Distinguish Yourself from One of Silicon Valley’s Top Entrepreneurs
• The Need for Corporate Partnerships
• Keep Your Brand Current
• I Have A Dream…

Happy Holidays!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: ThrillingHeroics.com: The Best Posts of 2007

Over at CodyMcKibben.com in November, I wrote about my experiments with freelancing, and about my desire to shift my career so that my work is not just means to pay the bills, but more of a way to express my passions and continue to increase my personal growth. See the post here. In response to my thoughts on career development, my friend Gautam Valluri asked me about my plans to develop Thrilling Heroics in 2008, and to discuss my entrepreneurial plans further. He writes:

1. A while ago I remember you were very keen on going to study at Stanford. Are you still with that goal?

2. What new changes are you planning for Thrilling Heroics?

3. If you’re planning to detach your income from your time (as so brilliantly put by [Steve Pavlina in this podcast]) how do you plan to do it?

I ask these questions out of curiosity and as I too am facing them in my own version of things, I’d like to hear your approach to them. To be more specific, I’ve had a long-running goal of going to film school, I’m currently in the process of making some changes to my blog and I’m interested in the concept of detaching my income from my time.

I thought these great questions deserved a little more in-depth discussion, and they give me a perfect opportunity to recommit to my mission here at ThrillingHeroics.com and share some of the plans for its development in 2008, so I’m happy to answer them here on TH with this post!

Revamping Thrilling Heroics for 2008

New Developments & Directions
Some great news — ThrillingHeroics.com has recently been accepted as one of the first handful of blogs to join the new Brazen Careerist blog network! I’m deeply flattered to be chosen by Penelope Trunk and the guys at Employee Evolution, and I’ll be honored to work alongside some other fantastic Gen-Y career bloggers.

Thrilling Heroics has evolved and changed over time alongside my interests and pursuits, and it will continue to do so, but I remain committed to my central mission: to inspire and empower others to pursue their dreams and goals in the face of adversity. The discussion is concentrated more in the direction of personal and career development now than it was at the birth of this blog in 2006, but the central message is the same, with a new twist: namely, Thrilling Heroics is a career-oriented resource for college students and young professionals, with a strong focus on leadership, personal development, productivity, personal finance, entrepreneurship, and “lifestyle design.” Above all, I am passionate to encourage Generation-Y readers to pursue their dreams with reckless abandon!

TH started out with strong foundations in green business and social entrepreneurship. But whatever your interests, what remains central to the purpose of Thrilling Heroics is to empower the members of our generation to “think outside the box” of traditional work and traditional business, and really take advantage of all the things that are at our disposal to achieve our wildest dreams. Yes, that’s right — the ones you had when you were a kid. The world is your oyster! Whether your goals are to save the planet or to be the next CEO of GE! Join with other college students and young leaders who want to excel, make their dreams reality, and change the world. Watch as I experiment with entrepreneurship, living the mobile lifestyle, and practicing personal development and growth. Follow my adventures by subscribing to the blog, and share your own adventures as well!

New Format & Improved Features
For 2008, I will renew my commitment to sharing great content with you here at TH regularly, and the strong focus on career development and personal growth will hopefully manifest itself in several ways over the next few months: you should see a fresh, new, more personal design; articles will be organized into new categories and more useful chunk content; I’ve selected a new motto based on input from dozens of friends and colleagues; and I’ll continue to work hard to bring you great interviews within two new series: “Bright Young Minds” with young professionals who are making a difference, and “Proven Success,” a series where we’ll learn from the successes of established entrepreneurs and leaders. Check in later this week for an exclusive new interview with “Duff” McDuffy from Falling Fruit TV — Conscious Media for People Who Care!

Other features in the works include my definitive guide to networking, an introduction to lifestyle design, and further discussion of leadership, travel, personal finance, and personal growth. I’ll be serving up more consistent updates and sharing new, exciting content as I write from my experiences with personal entrepreneurship, and experiments with remote work, living the mobile lifestyle, and geoarbitrage. This is an adventure, so come along with me for the ride and learn from my successes and failures!

Help Me Create a Community for Young Professionals Who Want to Rock Their Careers!
I’ll be looking for guest writers that are interested to share their own stories. Other young bloggers who want to help encourage college students and Gen-Y workers to reach for their dreams, apply here! And to encourage user participation and build a true community, I’d like to potentially set up community forums to continue the discussion beyond the blog posts! That’s up to you guys too, though, so please help me spread the good word about Thrilling Heroics and tell your friends and colleagues. Get involved in the comments, submit your own ideas, and help me encourage our generation to kick ass and take life by the horns! Remember that my mission is to build your confidence to succeed, and to help you realize the freedom and flexibility to invest your time doing what you are truly passionate about.

Cody’s Entrepreneurial Roadmap

Freelancing & Entrepreneurship
To answer questions 1 and 3 above, let me start with the personal side. In the last three months, I left my traditional office job to pursue my true passion and I have been experimenting with freelancing and entrepreneurship. This is why I’ve been somewhat absent from Thrilling Heroics recently — I’ve been very busy with my freelance web development projects and laying the foundations of a business! I now work solely as a freelance web designer and consultant, building WordPress-powered blogs for professionals and small companies. I enjoy serving all kinds of clients, but work particularly well with other professional consultants who want to build up their personal brand, authors and columnists interested in transitioning to a web 2.0 platform, or speakers and coaches who seek to build an online community of raving fans! Some of my recent projects include Life Beyond Code, Moving From Me to We, HighlyObsessed.com, and TomAlexander.com.

I am in the very beginning stages, but my eventual goal is to incorporate and build my own web design company. In the next few months, you should see a full-fledged new business and website dedicated to my freelance design services, and at some point I may need to build a team from among my network of designers and creative-types — or outsource to other freelancers to help me increase my project capacity. This is not something I plan to do for my entire career, nor is it the only project I plan to have going at any one time, but over the next few years my end goal is to create a business that I own. The advantage of being owner, as opposed to president or CEO of a company, is that you profit from a company without necessarily having to run the business. (Not that there isn’t work to be done — but you hire smarter people to maintain things for you.)

How To Automate Your Income
Now to truly separate my income from my time, I plan to generate products that can bring in recurring income. You create it once, and see the profits from it repeatedly. Zen Habits has a great article on automating your income that discusses turning your service into a product:

Do you currently provide a service? If so, you have to devote many hours each week to provide that service. However, if you can turn that service into a product, such as a book or DVD or web site or CD, you can create it once and sell it over and over. Brainstorm the best way to create a product that gives customers the same information or skills that they would get from you in person.

Leo also goes on to speak about other forms of automated income:

Instead of creating an information product, you could create a real-world product, such as a gadget or nutrition product. Freelance designers can turn your idea into an actual design, and contract manufacturers can turn the design into a product. Other types of automated incomes include real estate, online retail businesses (including an eBay business), affiliate marketing, a blog, and a membership-type website. There are many possibilities. Find ways to turn your strengths into a revenue generator.

On my new web design blog, I hope to provide valuable free content, such as WordPress and business blogging how-to’s and instructional training videos that will attract both web design contracts and point users to products like website templates, podcasts, and eBooks that they can purchase from my site.

How To Get Into a Top University
Finally, I do still plan to apply to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, but not for a while. Once I prove myself with a few more years of career experience, either through the success or failure of my business and other professional pursuits, I feel I’ll be more qualified to work alongside other entrepreneurs and young leaders at one of the world’s best B-schools! I still maintain my strong interest in studying green business and social entrepreneurship at the University’s Center for Social Innovation and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, but of course, coming from a not-quite-so-prestigious state school, it will be quite a challenge. For anyone who wants to apply to a big, competitive university, the keys are to show your dedication to achievement and personal growth, and to convince the program’s admissions officers that you’ll do great things with a degree from their school. Also, it doesn’t hurt to build relationships with faculty or with members of the alumni network from the school you hope to attend! Here are more valuable tips from Penelope Trunk.

I’ll be sure to post more about my personal goals and my 2008 resolutions very soon, so stay tuned for that before the New Year if you’d like to learn more.

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I will be leaving to travel overseas at the end of the week (spending the holidays in Spain), but read my upcoming interview with Duff McDuffee — Co-Founder of Falling Fruit TV, philosopher, life coach, and yogin — in the next few days! Duff will share some great thoughts on things from conscious business to GTD to Buddhism!

Thanks again to Gautam for the great questions! Gautam Valluri is a friend from the blogosphere, a sharp young filmmaker, writer, and designer in Hyderābād, India. He does some fantastic exclusive interviews at BrokenProjector.com.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: It’s Time for Some Thrilling Heroics: Commit to Pursuing Your Wildest Dreams with Me in 2008!