From the beginning, Dan has partnered up with big names like Chris Brogan, Neil Patel, J.D. Roth, Jim Wang, Carmine Gallo, and many other valuable contributors, and his team has scored interviews with the likes of Donald Trump, Guy Kawasaki, Om Malik and Gina Trapani. Each issue offers some great interviews and profiles of a few big names, tips for career development, personal branding, and social media.

This month’s edition—titled “The Personal Branding Gold Rush”—has a feature interview with Gary Vaynerchuk, the social marketing guru behind Wine Library TV, and discussions with David Allen (author of GTD), Keith Ferrazzi (master of networking & author of Never Eat Alone) and Robert Cialdini (author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion). From Dan:

“Now is the time for building your personal eBrand. Laggards will be lost in a Google cloud of dust, while early adopters will rank #1 for their name.  Stop watching everyone else steal your gold (your THUNDER) and get involved today.  Many people are scared to develop an online presence, yet it’s the only way you can safeguard your brand and have “job security.”  This issue will highlight Gary Vaynerchuk, who will passionately force you to get involved in the GOLD RUSH.  As you read each page, you will gather the knowledge needed to not let these opportunities pass you by.”

Dan Schawbel’s own successful branding and his relentless work ethic have earned him recognition around the web and print media for his efforts. He’s recently been interviewed at Entrepreneur.com and Business Week (check out Thrilling Heroics’ interview with him in 2007).

If you’re interested to try out Personal Branding Magazine, a free sample issue is available here. The full issue will be available for subscribers on November 1st. If you’re an entrepreneur or freelancer of any sort, distinguishing yourself from the crowd is a top priority in today’s business world. Dan has been kind enough to include me as a lifetime VIP subscriber, so I can say from experience that every issue is a great investment. And if you needed any more excuse, 50% of the subscription proceeds get donated to the American Cancer Society.

[source: Personal Branding Magazine - Dan Schawbel]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Personal Branding Guru Dan Schawbel Never Ceases to Impress!

How long did it take me to fill my schedule with freelance work?

I’m actually consciously building my freelance business as a part-time venture to allow myself to concentrate on writing and a few other pet projects in my spare time. But, I left employed life about 11 months ago, and I strived to over-deliver and impress the pants off of my first several clients, which has paid off ten-fold in referral business. I’d say that after four or five months of freelancing, the work just started to come in on its own without me having to chase it too much, because I had built a good reputation, a great network, and a quality communications platform for my business.

Who do I consult with and where have I found my business clients?

I work with all kinds of small-to-medium companies and professionals, but my consulting is definitely aimed towards authors, columnists, speakers, coaches, and other thought leaders who already have decent writing skills or something important to say—blogging is a great tool for broadcasting a discussion and maintaining client relations, and particularly for personality-driven businesses where a CEO’s personal brand is tied to the business, for instance.

My first few gigs started with a few mentors of mine and clients who just happened to stumble across me, and I went all-out to deliver the best product to them at a low cost, so that created a lot of word-of-mouth and referral business which still keeps my freelance inbox full to this day! I’ve also found many clients and partners just through interacting with writers and users on existing blogs and social media sites, or just through conversations with other professionals at business conferences for example. But for me, it’s been truly impressive how many interesting people I have been able to connect with virtually through the blogosphere, and how much work one can find globally via the web! I’ve had clients across the States, and now in Canada and even France.

What skills or strengths does it take to be a freelance blog consultant?

Personally, people tell me that my strongest ability is in translating technical information and jargon into business-oriented language. My favorite part of what I do is actually hashing out ideas with my clients—talking directly with authors and business owners and helping them learn how to use their technology or interact with other online writers. So as a consultant, you definitely need some people skills and you need to be able to sell yourself. On the other end of the spectrum though, I currently do every part of this process from finding new clients to customer service to coding, and to be successful at the web design and programming, you just need the patience to sit at a computer screen for 10 hours straight some days, and a hungry desire for continued learning and improvement.

What are some good resources to learn the basic skills necessary for web design?

My college degree was in religious studies and history, so my business and web design skills have been completely self-taught over the last two years, often through lots of trial and error. Some people may not realize that web design and development are actually huge spheres, so there are tons of niche-specific resources and organizations, but the World Wide Web Consortium, W3Schools, and A List Apart are a few good places to start learning to write valid, attractive code. If you work with open-source content management systems like I do, there is usually a large, knowledgeable developer community with lots to offer (see the WordPress Codex, for example), or guidebooks like Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress might be useful.

What surprises have there been working as a web developer? What should other hopeful freelancers know?

As a consultant in any field, some people will expect you to be available at all hours, and some clients will have unreasonable expectations, so you need to learn to establish firm boundaries and you need to learn to say no sometimes. The earlier you learn these things, the less painful your experience will be. Other things to think about are the stigmas and challenges of self-employment and working from home, so I would recommend you do some research on those things before you take the jump, but I also highly recommend it to anyone who’s got the determination to do so.

One other huge tip I’d offer is to establish relationships or partnerships with people who complement your weaknesses or just areas you don’t focus on. So for instance, my niche is blogs, but I can pull in someone who’s a great graphic designer, or a wiki or podcast expert, or a web hosting guy when necessary.

How much have I invested to start my business and what were some of the biggest expenses?

Most of my operation has been budget-free because I work from home and use a lot of tools I already had from school. After I’d had some cash-flow, I did invest about $2k in a new desktop Mac for my development work, but I use all open-source and web-based design and development software, so licenses are almost always free or very inexpensive. My next move will be to put some money into very targeted online ad campaigns, but my research shows that investing even just a few hundred dollars via Google Adwords can be very effective.

Great related resources on the web about freelancing:

• 10 Misconceptions the Self-Employed Deal With Daily
• How to Ensure Working from Home is Not Boring
• How Working from Home Improved My Social Life
• A week of journalism: How to be a freelancer without starving
• Freelance Switch

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Thoughts on Working From Home and Starting Out as a Freelance Web Worker

Michelle Goodman, the blogger behind Anti9to5Guide.com, asked in her Career Management column at ABCnews.com, “Ever Dreamed of Working at Home in Your Pajamas? Make it Reality.” And she answered with Five Low-Cost Ways to Be Your Own Boss, an article that looks at five great occupations for new freelancers: professional organizer, copywriter, blog designer, bookkeeper, and virtual assistant.

It’s an easy read if you’re thinking about going into a freelance profession, and the cool part is that Michelle interviewed me for tips from my experience as a blog designer and consultant. This was my first time breaking into traditional media, and it was a cool opportunity for a little publicity of my freelance business, ThrillingDesign.com.

So how did I do it? I’d like to say that I was fortunate enough to score this brief interview for ABC because I was willing to invest into building a relationship. Michelle is someone I established an acquaintance with nearly a year ago when I interviewed her for Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog. I took a genuine interest in her work and her book The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube because obviously, freelancing is something I’m passionate about. We’ve stayed in touch since, and she must have kept track of me as I started up my own freelance business in the last several months. So when she was looking for a freelancer who helps business owners and writers customize their own blogs, she came to me knowing it was right up my alley.

The lesson here is simple: if you have a genuine interest in what others do—be they columnists, authors, CEOs, or whatever—don’t be afraid to reach out and ask them a few questions about it. I’ve met the second richest man in the world, and interviewed a billion-dollar hedge fund manager, and I think that almost anybody, no matter how rich, powerful, successful, or famous, likes to feel like others have a genuine interest in what they do. And often times, if you show that toward others, they will reciprocate at some point.

I feel very honored to be a part of Michelle Goodman’s piece on ABCnews.com. She’s a fantastic writer and the article takes an interesting look at the lives of a few different freelancers. She recommends you look at the Small Business Association (SBA) and SCORE if you’re interested in going self-employed, among a few other resources. I’m also looking forward to her upcoming book in October, “My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire.”

She had a number of great questions for me when we spoke, but naturally there was only space for a small portion of what we discussed in the finished news article, so I’ll try to share some more thoughts on freelancing and blog design in my next post here at Thrilling Heroics.

[see: Five Low-Cost Ways to Be Your Own Boss on ABCnews.com]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Make Friends with Career Columnists and Influence Mainstream News Organizations

There will be a keynote address by Steve Sabol, President of NFL Films, discussions on the growing network culture among businesses, and some appealing showcases on the High Technology and Internet/New Media Industries. The summit will also have sessions focused on cleantech, manufacturing, consumer products, healthcare, land development, and more.

• The event is designed to bring together the top 100 companies in the 19-county area that stretches from Redding to Bakersfield through the Central Valley
• The economy in this area is different than in San Francisco, LA, San Diego or other coastal counties
• The goal is to bring together the leaders of these companies, along with several early stage companies from the region, and hope to stimulate ongoing dialog and business activity among them to benefit the area
• The primary producer of the event is Golden Capital Networks, based in Chico, and the producer of several regional venture capital events (Venture Vineyard in Napa, Silver & Gold in Reno and Angel & VC Investment Summit in El Dorado Hills)

The New California 100 summit should offer many opportunities for CEOs, entrepreneurs, VCs, development professionals and professional services providers, but Josh Morgan, principle of Morgan/Dorado Public Relations, also wants to draw a younger crowd out to the leadership event this year. I know that there are special rates for students and free press passes available for a select few business- and entrepreneurship-oriented bloggers. Follow me on Twitter and send me a direct message to get connected to Josh for student/blogger passes. Or you can contact Josh directly via Twitter.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: California 100 Leadership Summit at UC Davis Next Week

Well, Alexandra Levit surveyed 500 gen-Y and gen-X professionals to find people with their dream jobs and she sat down for one-on-one interviews with nearly a hundred individuals to ask them that very question: “How’d you score THAT gig?” Her newest book comes out in bookstores today – How’d You Score That Gig?: A Guide to the Coolest Jobs-and How to Get Them – focused on young people in the workplace and the jobs they love.

Alexandra Levit is a leading business author and career consultant, and is one of the most prominent speakers of our generation on issues that face young professionals in the workplace. I recently had the opportunity to ask her a few questions about what she learned from writing the new book – from talking with all of these young professionals, like you and me, that love their jobs, and learning how they got to where they are now:

Alex, with your experience as a career columnist and consultant, beyond the traditional 9-to-5 job, what are some of the most coveted careers for young professionals these days?

My 500 survey responders thought the five coolest jobs were, in order of number of votes 1) Travel Journalist, 2) Event Planner, 3) Fashion Designer, 4) Documentary Photographer, and 5) Bed & Breakfast Innkeeper. I’m obviously partial to the book author and marketing exec careers myself, but I also found the futurist, forensic scientist, and screenwriter gigs personally intriguing.

So with information from your national survey of twenty- and thirty-somethings, tell us briefly about the seven main personality types that you’ve found among those surveyed.

The book features 60 cool jobs, divided into seven categories based on the broad personality types that are generally best-suited to those jobs. I selected the cool jobs via an online survey in which I asked nearly 500 twenty and thirty-somethings to tell me about their dream careers. Based on the responses, I generated a list of the top 60 careers and constructed a fairly comprehensive profile of each using the information I gathered from written sources and in-depth interviews with more than 100 individuals currently holding the jobs.

Then, I researched various personality type measures to develop my seven “passion profiles” – adventurer, creator, data-head, entrepreneur, investigator, networker, and nurturer – and placed the 60 cool jobs into the appropriate categories. In the first chapter, I designed an assessment (with help from my husband, who’s a psychologist) to help readers decide which passion profiles might be most appealing to them.

Of the many Gen-Y and Gen-X workers you spoke with face-to-face, who are just a few of the people that stick out most prominently in your mind, and what do they do?

Ethan won Survivor and parlayed his winnings into start-up funds for a new nonprofit organization called Grassroot Soccer. Peter worked his way up to become one of the leading news correspondents with NBC, regularly appearing on the Today Show and the national evening news. Carin left a very successful corporate career to open a hip bridal boutique in Washington D.C. Emily could name her price as a computational linguist whose job was to teach Japanese to a computer.

You’ve noted how Millenials have a hard time choosing a major that preps them for the real world and picking a career path after college. What are a few tips you recommend for college students who are deciding on their majors right now, or searching for their first real job after school?

Take time to do a self-assessment of your values, how you like to work, and what you’d be compelled to do even if you never got paid. Research careers and industries that map to your skills and interests. Hit the internet, set up informational interviews, take relevant coursework, and arrange to go onsite at a company in your chosen field.

What can students and recent grads expect to learn from your new book? What’s in it for readers to pick up a copy, and how will it benefit them in finding a career they’re happy with?

There are so many reference books out there that merely list cool jobs. I hope that How’d You Score That Gig? will provide a true insider’s glimpse into each and every one of the careers I profile, and provide access to people just like you and me who are in a position to give realistic advice about getting a job in each field. I hope that by learning about their personality profiles and the corresponding interesting jobs, a whole new world of possibilities will be opened up to readers, and they will have the courage to take the first steps on the journey to career fulfillment.

Order your copy today on Amazon: How’d You Score That Gig?: A Guide to the Coolest Jobs-and How to Get Them.

Alexandra Levit writes regularly for the Huffington Post, has published three career-related books, and runs a great radio podcast show on BlogTalkRadio for women in business. You can learn more about her on her personal homepage.

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If you enjoyed this interview with Alex, you might also be interested to read more from my past interview with her for IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com.

Congratulations go out to Alexandra on the new book, but more importantly on the new addition to her family–a newborn baby boy! I’d like to thank her personally for making the time to talk with ThrillingHeroics.com during this busy time.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Looking for the Right Job After College? Alex Levit Provides Some Answers

My favorite positive affirmation is that there is NOTHING you cannot DO, or BE, or HAVE! I like to repeat that to myself daily. But one must do some dedicated goal-setting, and a lot of goal-getting to get there!

This was supposed to be a New Year’s post, but unanticipated changes due to my travel schedule forced me to postpone writing it. That’s okay though, travel will teach you a few valuable lessons about embracing change and rolling with the punches. The nice thing about resolutions is that New Year’s Eve isn’t the only time you can make them!

In fact, you can set positive new resolutions for your life anytime you choose! New Years just gives us a great opportunity to reflect on our achievements in the past year and set some meaningful new goals for the year ahead. But you can do this anytime you choose—you can make yearly goals on your birthday, or on tax day, or you can set resolutions every six months, every quarter, or you can even set monthly goals! You get the picture…

It’s already three weeks into the New Year, why should I set resolutions now?

The advent of a new year simply serves as a good reminder to reflect on all the progress you’ve made over the last 12 months and take what you’ve learned, and build a roadmap for the coming year and beyond.

It’s actually better that there has been time for the hype of the New Year to pass by. A lot of people intentionally avoid setting new goals on January 1st because they see New Years “resolutions” as oh-so-cliche. Or perhaps you set a traditional resolution and already fell off the wagon. Revisiting what “resolutions” mean now might give you an opportunity to set more meaningful goals this year. So, stay with me here and embrace the change. Don’t think of this as a New Years post. Instead, we are going to focus on goal-setting for this year.

We’ve already seen how powerful it can be when you set goals for yourself. You won’t succeed at every goal, but review your personal development progress at the end of each year to see how much you do accomplish! Simply setting the goals for yourself will greatly increase the likelihood that you’ll get much closer to your dream lifestyle in all these areas of your life.

But I can never keep my resolutions anyways. Why should I care?

So, as you can already see from my experience getting this post out much later than I intended, embracing change means that you don’t always get to do things exactly when you planned. But that’s okay, just because the timing changes doesn’t mean you should throw away the whole plan! Just having made the plan in the first place makes you about sixty percent more likely to follow through on the action than if you hadn’t made plans and set a time in your head in the first place. So the timing has changed. So what? You can still follow through. That’s what goal-setting is! It’s setting a plan—not a commandment set in stone. Don’t give up on your goals if you miss your timeline.

Another thing about your goals is that they may change over time, or things may happen that prevent you from achieving them. Or you may simply not put in the effort to complete all of your goals by the end of the year. But what matters most is that you set them. The act of making meaningful, clearly-defined goals, and writing them down, will put you ahead of 95% of people out there, and it will certainly point you much closer in the right direction toward attaining the lifestyle that you desire in the year ahead. I guarantee that if you set ten goals for yourself in 2008, simply the act of setting goals for yourself will put you MUCH closer to achieving your dreams! As Abraham Lincoln said, “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” Get clear on what you want to accomplish in the next year, and focus your energy towards those ends, and you’ll likely achieve many of your goals.

Okay, okay. So how do you actually do this?

Now it seems to be a popular thing to try to create 100 life goals or 100 goals for the new year. (Just do a Google search for “100 goals” and you’ll see how many communities there are out there talking about the number 100!) Maybe it’s just that the number ‘one-hundred’ has so much appeal… There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go about it that way I suppose, but I think that’s going about it backwards. You’ve already started out by adding another goal to the top of your pile of things to do: To create 100 goals! But does having any particular number of goals really objectively have any value to you? No. In fact, the number is fairly meaningless, so don’t start out with any particular number to reach.

Instead, try starting with the bigger picture in mind. As Stephen Covey said in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind.” To do this, we will examine what roles we play, and what we want those areas of our life to look like in a year from now.

Brainstorm your personal Roles & Areas of Focus

The necessary first step is to brainstorm your life roles, and other important personal areas of focus. Some goal-setting systems will tell you what categories to set goals for, but I believe you will come up with much more meaningful “categories” if you reflect personally about what roles you play and what areas of focus are most important to you. This is the system that Tony Robbins uses in his Personal Power seminars, and many other professional coaches (like my friend Tim Walther) use successfully in goal-setting workshops with thousands of people every year.

Think about your work, your family, your hobbies… What roles do you play? For example, when I brainstormed, my roles included freelance web designer, business owner, professional networker, peer mentor, writer, traveler, and artist. But perhaps you are a mother, a CEO, an accountant, rock climber, church member, or amateur filmmaker. The roles that we play are different and unique for each individual. But what “hats” do you wear? What roles are important to you that you want to improve upon in the next year?

Roles tend to sound like titles or jobs, even if you don’t get paid for them! They are how you relate to other people. But besides your roles, what other areas of focus are important to you personally? For most people this will include things like personal finances, health and recreation, social life, and so on. But maybe your areas of focus include nutrition, or spirituality, or professional development and training…

Take some time to brainstorm and reflect on what roles and areas of focus are most important in your life, and once you have them all written down on a piece of paper, imagine one-by-one what each of those areas of your life could “look like” in a year. This is called visualization, and it’s an important tool in attaining your desires. Visualize how much progress you could make towards positive relationships with your family. Or how much you could improve upon your strengths at work. Imagine yourself in a new profession, being paid to do something you love. Or even picture yourself on vacation to some beautiful exotic location! But don’t imagine these things passively—visualize yourself participating in making those changes…in experiencing those improvements and accomplishments. Write down a sentence or short paragraph next to each role and each area of focus about what that “picture” looks like.

Now set some goals!

Now that you have your big picture and you’ve thought about where you’re going with each of your personal roles, you finally have some direction. Visualizing what each of those areas of your life could look like one year from now should give you vivid images of what you want to DO, BE, and HAVE. So the final piece of the puzzle in making meaningful resolutions this year is to break those visualizations down into smaller steps you need to take to get there. What are the next actions that will get you closer to your desired outcomes? If you want to buy a new laptop, how much money should you set aside each month? If you want rock-hard abs, how many crunches are you going to do each day?

The best way to set goals that are longer-term than your weekly To Do list items is to start practicing SMART goals. SMART, in this case, is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. You can review these questions in your head as you set goals, or you may want to write them out for each major goal you set.

Specific — Is it something concrete, that you’ll know when you’ve completed it? This is one big reason why “resolutions” fail. People often set ambiguous goals that are too broad to be actionable or too unclear to know when you’ve fulfilled the requirements. For instance, a popular New Years’ resolution is “to get in shape.” But how are you going to achieve that? That is only a very murky version of the visualization that we’ve already practiced above. Now make it specific!

Measurable — How will you measure your progress at the end of the year, or how will you know when you’ve achieved your objective? Think about what specific criteria you’ll have to fulfill to reach the specific outcome you want. And a good way of measuring may be to keep a notebook of your progress toward the goal, or involving your friends in keeping you on track.

Attainable — Is it realistic and possible for you to achieve this in the year ahead, or are you reaching too far? Do you have too much on your plate already? Set goals that will make you stretch, and learn, and grow. But don’t set unrealistic, far-fetched goals that will only discourage you when you don’t meet them.

Relevant — This is actually my favorite of these questions to ask when you’re doing these mental exercises, and it is the first one that I ask because it is the best filter because I think it is the most important. Put simply, is the goal important? Is it really going to get you closer to your dreams, and is it really worth investing your energy in? Or should you focus on other, more important goals?

Time-Bound — When will you complete this goal? Specifically? By October? In Q1? On your birthday? Remember what I said about being flexible with changes in timing toward the beginning of this post, but attaching a time to your goals makes them immediate and important. Remind yourself regularly that you have a goal to meet. When do you plan to start, and what is your target date for completion?

You may come up with a hundred goals for 2008, or you may come up with just two or three really important goals for the year. I go through my list and eliminate all the non-SMART goals, and I try to focus on the ‘attainability’ aspect of my goals and think about how much I can realistically accomplish in just one year, so I have about 3-4 top concrete goals for each of my 10 roles/areas of focus.

Examples of My Personal and Professional Development Goals for the New Year

In my own brainstorming, I found that my most important Roles included Web Designer/Consultant, Entrepreneur, Blogger, Peer Mentor, Traveler, and Artist. And other Areas of Focus for me included things like Social & Relationship-oriented goals, Health & Recreation, and Financial goals. After I settled on these nine top areas of importance for my life, I visualized how I’d ideally like to see each of those realms in a year from now… What sort of progress would I like to make? What things would I like to learn? How successful can I be in a year? And I not only asked these questions, but I tried to actually put myself in that future reality—what will it feel like? How will I get there? Is it truly important?

So, once I had the broader picture of where I’d like to be in a year (yet still very specific mental images), I worked backwards to think what smaller steps I’ll need to accomplish to get to that point. I tried to frame each of my goals into the three areas of things I want to BE, DO, or HAVE, and I tried to frame them in the affirmative, to reinforce to my own brain that I will accomplish these things this year! I also tried to phrase my goals positively, focusing on what I should do to get there, not what I want to do less of. Here are the 24 major goals I’ve set for myself this year, broken down by my Roles and Areas of Focus:

I. My goals as a Web Designer & Consultant

• I WILL HAVE a dedicated portfolio site for my web development work.
• I WILL HAVE a new Apple desktop computer.
• I WILL EARN $60K as a freelancer this year.

II. My goals as an Entrepreneur

• I WILL BE the owner of my own web consulting business.
• I WILL HAVE multiple streams of residual income (through products, training materials, and partnerships).

III. My goals as a Blogger

• I WILL WRITE at least one high-value article each week for Thrilling Heroics (52+).
• I WILL REDESIGN ThrillingHeroics.com.
• I WILL DO one interview each month for Thrilling Heroics.
• I WILL COMMENT on other relevant blogs for one hour each week.

IV. Career Development and goals as a Peer Mentor

• I WILL CREATE a dedicated Mastermind group website with forums to enable remote discussion of personal & professional development.
• I WILL COMMUNICATE with Mastermind members monthly to follow up on their goal-setting and career planning.
• I WILL READ one personal development book each month.

V. My goals as a Traveler

• I WILL COMMUNICATE with international friends once each quarter.
• I WILL PARTICIPATE in online traveler communities like The Thorn Tree Forums and The Couch Surfing Project.
• I WILL LIVE in Thailand for 3+ months.

VI. My goals as an Artist

• I WILL SELL my photography professionally via an online gallery or stock photography community.

VII. My Social and Relationship-related goals

• I WILL CONTACT old friends on their birthdays.
• I WILL ATTEND Burning Man.

VIII. My Health and Recreational goals

• I WILL DO 30+ pushups each day.
• I WILL DO 3 half-hour cardio workouts per week.
• I WILL HAVE a great road bike.

IX. My Financial goals

• I WILL ELIMINATE any credit card balances.
• I WILL HAVE a $2000 emergency fund.
• I WILL HAVE my own self-employed medical/dental/vision insurance.

Remember, the more specific you get, the more likely you are to actually achieve your goals! I went through all of my goals to see if they were each Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely, and if they weren’t, I’d throw them out. I won’t include each step for ALL of my 24 goals here because I don’t want to bore you! But, I’ll demonstrate with my first goal how I answered these questions in my head:

GOAL: I WILL HAVE a dedicated portfolio site for my web development work

1. Specific: I will create an online portfolio with client testimonials, service & product offerings, and business contact information.
2. Measurable: I’ll know this goal is completed when I have a freelance site on its own unique URL that directs potential clients properly to my pipeline.
3. Attainable: I have built numerous websites in the past, so I will easily be able to build myself a business site (it doesn’t have to start out perfect!)
4. Relevant: This is important in order to establish an online home for my business and build instant credibility with potential clients.
5. Timely: I will complete this project before the end of February, 2008.

Now that you’ve seen my own detailed example of brainstorming Roles & Areas of Focus, visualizing outcomes, and SMART goal-setting for 2008, what are your personal resolutions for the new year? What goals are important for you to achieve this year? If you haven’t already spent time thinking about meaningful resolutions for the year, brainstorm on this and let me know what you think of my process in the comments.

When setting your career and academic goals for your business advancement, consider one of these online degrees that will help you manage your time better.

Please hit that comment section below and share your thoughts… Good luck goal-setting!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Set Meaningful Personal & Professional Development Goals and Make Progress Towards Your Ideal Life

Maybe you’re 26 and you still haven’t completed your degree. Or you still work at a local coffee shop, when your parents would really prefer that you become an investment banker. Perhaps you refuse to pay your dues and climb the corporate ladder like mom and dad did. Or you just want to wander around Europe for a year and “find” yourself, to your parents’ frustration?

Penelope Trunk has written an open letter to the parents of “underachievers” and “lost” twentysomethings everywhere, encouraging boomers not to apply old standards to today’s college students and young professionals.

Today success is personal. It’s about using the years of emerging adulthood to figure out what works for you. This is time to experiment – try things and quit them and try other things. This is a time to have gaps in resumes, red in bank accounts, and a suitcase packed, ready to go at a moment’s notice. These are symptoms of someone who is learning a lot and growing a lot.

Personal growth looks a lot like being lost. Lost is okay. Who wouldn’t be with twenty years of schooling and no preparation for adult life? People grow more when they are lost then when they are on a straight path with a clear view of where they are going.

Don’t tell me that your kid is a bar tender and will never grow up. Bar tenders have some of the best social skills in the workforce, and social skills are what matters. Bar tenders are not underachievers. Also, did you ever stop to ask your bar-tender kid what he does during the day when he’s not pouring drinks? He’s probably doing something fun and cool and a little risky that you didn’t have the guts to try til you had a midlife crisis.

Perhaps I just like this great article because Penelope says it’s okay to take a year off and live in Thailand, like I’d love to do this year! But, this is a great post if you’re feeling lost and need a little encouragement to keep you pressing ahead, or if you need to reassure your boomer parents that it’s okay for you to take it slow as you work on your personal development and seek out what you truly want to do with your life and your career. It’s a big decision!

[source: Stop worrying that your twentysomething is lost on the Brazen Careerist blog]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Get Your Parents to Stop Labeling You An Underachiever

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!

I left my full-time employment at Sacramento State University almost two months ago, after which I took a short break while my broken hand was healing. I continued to do my freelance web design, and then I also took a temp job with my stepmom’s company in Roseville. I worked just four days a week helping the scientific company rebuild their website. The experience was valuable, and the people were great. But I was still working in a cubicle, taking assignments from someone else without having any creative input. When I stepped back and thought about the bigger picture, this still wasn’t getting me any closer to the lifestyle and the career I truly desire.

So I left that job after only three weeks, even though the pay was great and I was making more in four days than I had in five days per week previously. I decided that if I don’t devote myself–all of my time and energy right now–to doing what I really am passionate about, I may very well never take that big, scary step. Right now, when I’m young and have no car payment, no mortgage, no wife, no kids–that is the time to take a risk and see if I can work for myself or start a company!

I’m tired of being an employee. I know I haven’t done it for very long compared to some of you, and I haven’t “paid my dues.” But, I know that’s not the life I want. I want to be in control of my own time. I want to be in charge of my own personal and professional development. I want to decide what tasks inspire me enough to take on. I just had to realize that I have skills that other professionals are ready to pay me for! In some areas, I have a lot of knowledge that can benefit others. So I started designing small webpages for professionals and small businesses. Creating blogs as public relations tools for small companies, and doing technical consulting on the software and programming used to create and run them (I work with the WordPress open-source content management system, so if you or any of your friends need technical assistance, consulting, or web design, please get in touch!).

So I’ve been working on my freelance web design and business blog consulting full-time for a week and a half now. It’s a brand new experience that I’ve just started, and I realize that it will take some time to adjust to (and it will take some time to be lucrative). Other reasons that I decided to quit “work” and eliminate a few other things from my plate right now include focus on healing my fractured hand, keeping a schedule that agrees more with my own circadian rhythm, and practicing a healthier lifestyle…so I am perfectly happy to take it slow and accomplish one goal at a time. But in the first week I have already experienced a few of the challenges that await me: we become so trained in school and the traditional workplace to accept tasks from someone above us–staying motivated and determining the priority of tasks is a new experience to get used to; and the workplace does provide one thing even I can’t live without–interaction with other people! Adjusting to the frequent social isolation of working for yourself/by yourself is tough too.

Regardless, I chose to make the change. At least for now. I enjoy the work that I do–I am able to keep learning and growing, I get to be more flexible with my time, and I get to work with new, diverse groups of people from time to time. I’m self-employed, and my long-term goal is to set up the infrastructure of a full-fledged, legitimate business. Start my own design and consulting firm! It’s a lot of work–defining specifically what products and services I offer and what I don’t, conveying that concretely for the non-technical client, refining the business process, setting up the DBA and tax paperwork, and possibly writing a business plan and trying for a small business loan. Maybe I will fail…but either way I will learn a LOT along the way.

I’ve also studied a lot about automating my income, lifestyle design, and geo-arbitrage. Tim Ferriss talks at length about these exciting concepts in his book The 4-Hour Workweek. And I recently came across an older yet fantastic podcast from Steve Pavlina in which he discusses moving away from trading your time for money. Eventually, I would like to shift my paradigm from thinking of myself as merely self-employed to being a business owner. As Pavlina discusses, the idea is to detach your time from your income, put your income on autopilot, through generating information products for instance, that can earn you residual income, even while you sleep. Or I could develop my web sites further, and try to monetize them. He says how his multiple streams of passive income allow him to spend the bulk of his time doing what he is passionate about, regardless of whether or not it is profitable. Eventually, I would love to develop this business structure, so that my work is less of a means to pay the bills, and more a way to express my passions and continue to learn and grow.

Keep me in your thoughts. Your motivational words (and small contributions to my startup fund!) mean a lot. =)

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Experimenting with Career Options

Everyone has had difficulty with goal-setting – it’s a rough part of life. A lot of people try to do too many things at once, or they simply have a huge, ambitious goal that is too much for one person to accomplish alone – and eventually you experience burnout. As creatures of habit, it is frequently difficult for us to make the necessary changes on our own, and we give up on our biggest dreams and desires and slink back into regular behavior. It’s easier. But deep down inside you know you can do better. You undermine your self-worth when you constantly give up on what you want to achieve most.

But don’t beat yourself up! As Leo Babauta of Zen Habits recently said, when it comes to forming new habits, “It’s not a lack of discipline, it’s a lack of motivation. The most powerful motivators are logging your habit and public pressure.” Now as a budding entrepreneur, trying desperately to start my own web design and consulting company, I know how hard it can be to stay motivated! School and traditional workplaces train us SO well to depend on our superiors to tell us what to do, how to prioritize, and when to get it done. But when you go to work for yourself, or you go off into the world to accomplish some personal goal of your own, no one is telling you what to do, and often times no one is setting hard deadlines for you! It’s a new skill you have to learn to do these things yourself.

So today I’m writing to advocate that if you want to achieve those big dreams (and we ALL have them…maybe you want to go meet Al Gore and help stop global warming…or be the next CEO at Apple…or start your own business…or write a book!…or simply lose 20 pounds) – I encourage you to set up a strong accountability structure for yourself. I created a group with my peers about 10 months ago that we call Career MasterMinds, to provide a place to talk about our career and personal development goals. Every week, about six to eight of us meet at a local coffee shop and share about our weekly goals and accomplishments. This support structure is based on proven techniques that many highly successful individuals have used to achieve great things, and it provides a perfect opportunity each week to log your progress and participate in a friendly yet professional environment for public accountability.

Now many businesspeople, world leaders, and other successful individuals have set up similar accountability groups for themselves. In the book Think And Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill discussed MasterMind groups, where individuals coordinate their knowledge and effort for the attainment of a common purpose, and how these groups could multiply an individual’s brain power and continually motivate positive emotions. Andrew Carnegie, Charles Schwab and others used the principles of the MasterMind group to become hugely successful businessmen and philanthropists. Benjamin Franklin had a similar group centuries earlier that he called a Junto. Tom Peters, one of the most respected experts on business management practices, best-selling author of In Search of Excellence and Re-Imagine!, also proposes similar support groups for wage slaves tired of “Dilbert nation,” calling them a great “place to discuss your fears…your hopes…and your plans with work and non-work colleagues.”

Besides the proven success of such systems, peer accountability groups are an intuitive win because they also give you an important chance to review your progress each week and brainstorm your next actions. You can meet with your colleagues as frequently as you choose, but for me, meeting once per week has proven to be the most effective accountability tool in meeting my day-to-day goals. I recommend that you keep a binder just for your goals, and in preparing to meet with your peer group you set aside a predefined time to reflect on your achievements each week and then spend some critical thinking time about what your most important tasks (MITs) should be for the next week. Which 3 or 5 things that you can accomplish in the next seven days are most instrumental in getting closer to the lifestyle and achievements you desire? Write them down, and be sure they are specific and measurable. You can reference this list throughout the week to provide guidance each day. As you track your progress, checking off those three most-important tasks each day, it will give you the motivation to keep pressing for your desired outcome.

The second major benefit of a peer group besides having a written record of your progress is having the support and accountability of others. Answering to someone else is absolutely key in achieving those difficult goals. Knowing that someone else will hold you accountable gives you the added fuel not to let them down. And they’ll also share in celebrating your achievements each week! The most rewarding trend we have found with our group is that each week we continue to learn new things about each other – common interests we share, projects and tasks we can help each other achieve together, or maybe someone has a contact they can connect you with to help attain your goals quicker. Our members have connected each other with key contacts on several occasions…I connected one of my peers with the VP of Engineering at a company he wanted to interview with (it just happened to be where my step-mother worked!)…one student was plugged in to the Sacramento Housing & Redevelopment Agency to share his brilliant foreclosure research…and so on. Not only will your peers give you support and accountability, but they will also help you out a TON by sharing their knowledge, networks, and resources with you.

Nobody can achieve great things alone, but together we can help each other find great opportunity. When you network closely with your peers, and get to know the things that they are interested in and passionate about, you learn what sort of people and opportunities you can connect them with. And if you do this in a spirit of collaboration and teamwork, they will do the same thing for you. As Zig Ziglar said, “You can get everything in life you want, if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.” You know deep down inside, we all wanted to be great, noteworthy people when we were kids – cowboys and astronauts! Well don’t give up the dream. Many respected and celebrated individuals throughout history have relied on their peers for motivation to become the great, noteworthy people they were! A formal group will give you a structure to track your written goals and progress, and it will provide a synergistic group dynamic where you can share your successes and challenges with others. So talk with your friends each week about your goals, start your own MasterMind group, or use a similar club as your accountability group! Just remember that to achieve great things, many heads are better than one.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How To Use Your Peers For Fun And Profit!

Rajesh is the president of Foresight Plus, a management consulting firm that helps businesses get the most leverage out of their pre-existing relationships and resources and extend their reach with new media communications. The same concepts apply to your personal life, and this e-book can help teach you how to form the most valuable kind of relationships, as well as maintain a productive list of contacts—helping them achieve their goals as they help you achieve yours—like Zig Ziglar said, “You can get everything in life you want, if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.”

Raj notes how many professionals consider spending lots of money on precious MBA programs for the built-in social networks they seem to offer, because as he states, “To succeed well—what many call making the dream a reality—you need help.” But luckily, you can build a great network without a degree from Harvard or Wharton.

Rajesh shares many insights he has learned throughout his business and entrepreneurial life:

• Number one is that no one can succeed alone. Networks are necessary to ensure success.
• Some people might approach networking with a great attitude and have something of value to offer, but if you don’t develop your communication skills, you may leave the other party guessing how to assess your value.
• Even quality business relationships require the proper time and energy to invest in. “If you don’t have the bandwidth to foster a relationship, you are better off not starting one.”
• When you meet a new contact, take time to listen first, and understand what they are trying to accomplish, or what goals they are trying to reach. If you know these things, then maybe you will know how you can be useful to the person!

Rajesh has made his ebook available to everyone for free, and I highly recommend that you invest time in learning the value of interpersonal communication and building great relationships. This is a quick, easy read, and it teaches some invaluable lessons.

Lasting Relationships ebook at LifeBeyondCode.com

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The #1 Skill You Need to Succeed at Anything

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: An Exciting New Podcast for Young Professional Women