Today I’m really excited to unveil an exciting new community for twentysomethings, college students, and young professionals who want to shatter the ‘template’ lifestyle and live an awesome life on their own damn terms!

Work where you want… Live how you want… Be who you want to be.

Untemplater is the culmination of nearly four months of hard work with some incredibly cool co-founders: Jun Loayza from Viralogy.com; Adam Baker, nomadic family man at Man Vs. Debt; the philosophically-brilliant Carlos Miceli of OwlSparks; published author and consultant Monica O’Brien; and our rad web developer Andrew Norcross. We’ve also got dozens of fabulous writers lined up—young entrepreneurs, lifestyle designers, digital nomads, and more—who will share their personal stories and guidance on how to design your ideal lifestyle and career.

There are many blogs and books meant to teach and inspire you to leave your corporate existence in order to pursue a venture that you’re “passionate” about. Most of these sites mean well and are inspirational, but they’re written by gurus who’ve already “made it” and aren’t in touch with your reality, or they’re written by pure theorists—people who haven’t actually put their lessons to action—they talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

Untemplater, on the other hand, is composed of real people who are in the trenches, working hard to live the life that we want to live. It’s not easy, nor is it glamorous. You’ll see our pain, struggles, successes, and failures as we create an existence that we are proud of and enjoy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

We are MBAs; we are husbands, wives, and fathers; we are scrappy entrepreneurs, authors, and freelancers. We live all over the globe. We’re a small group of unconventional folks who hope to build a thriving community for anyone who ever sought more out of life—and we hope to help you learn how to sidestep the traditional life to find the career, relationships, and lifestyle that makes you come alive!

Grab a Bunch of Awesome Free Shit!

Jump in, read the free download we’ve put together for you that examines the Untemplater lifestyle and shows you six unconventional, remarkable lifestyle case studies.

[Also check out my first feature post at Untemplater to watch my lifestyle design video success story since reading The Four Hour Workweek in 2007]

We’ve also partnered with some incredible folks like Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Chris Brogan to give away tons of great business books, as well as a few $500 seats in Josh Kauffman’s Personal MBA Business Crash Course! Starting tomorrow and for the rest of the week, we will be hosting giveaway contests to win all kinds of stuff, so sign up for our exclusive Untemplater Insider email list and stay tuned to Untemplater.com throughout the week to participate!

Join our rebellion against the status quo at Untemplater and learn how you can Work Where You Want to Work, Live How You Want to Live, and Be Who You Want to Be in 2010.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Take Back Control of Your Life in 2010!

Feature photo by woodleywonderworks

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Oscar Del Ben, a freelancer, blogger and entrepreneur. He writes about personal development, productivity and lifestyle design at freestylemind.com. His personal mission is to help as many people as possible to switch to doing what they love.

People often ask me if my job is secure or not. The reason they ask me this question is that I don’t have a regular job. I’m not employed by anyone and I don’t have a fixed paycheck.

Instead I am a freelancer, blogger, and internet entrepreneur. The majority of my income comes from freelancing work that I do for internet startups. Recently I also started building internet assets, like my blog, a web application, and a few mini-sites. My goal is that each of these assets will eventually generate an interesting stream of money one day.

So, is my job secure? Actually I don’t have an answer, mainly because it depends on what you mean by secure, but also because I don’t believe in job security at all. The real question is: can any job be secure?

Unfortunately the answer to the last question is no. It doesn’t matter if you are employed full-time in a big corporation, because history teaches us that you can lose your job any day. Even working for yourself isn’t secure, because when you lose your client you have to start over again.

Does this mean there’s not a solution to job security? Not at all. It is possible to build a relatively secure lifestyle if you plan ahead and follow some guidelines. The main problem is that our society doesn’t teach us how to do it. When we go to school they prepare us to work for one company, not many, and when you quit working there, you are often in a big trouble.

There are many solutions to this. For example you can build a remarkable resume by staying competitive and managing your reputation, so that when you quit working for a company, you’ll already be considered an expert and you’ll get another job more easily. Another solution is to create different sources of income, so that if you lose one, you’ll have many others that support you.

How to build a second income stream

The good news is that it’s not hard to come up with a second income stream. You don’t need to be an entrepreneur or an internet marketer because there are plenty of opportunities available to everyone.

If you have trouble thinking about how you can diversify your income, the following list might be a good start:

• Find a part time job. Having a part time job is not uncommon; many people have one. For example you can work in a bar during the weekend or do baby sitting on Saturday. If you are good at math, or you master a foreign language, you can also offer repetitions. Do a local search in your area to find out which part time jobs are available.
• Offer consulting. If you already do any kind of technical work (writer, programmer, marketer, accountant, etc.), you can offer consulting to companies or individuals in your free time. By offering your expertise you can earn higher rates, even if you work only a few hours per week.
• Build a website. Creating a website is a good idea if you are already familiar with technical stuff. The trick here is to find a niche where competition is not huge and where you can fulfill some necessity. Building a successful website it’s not easy, but it can bring great rewards, and potentially a lot of money.
• Ask your friends for collaboration. Many times you don’t need to approach new people to find a part time job. For example I have a friend who runs a company and he needs someone who does some errands for him. He can only hire for 4 hours a week, so he’s looking for someone who can do this just on Saturday mornings. Another thing I often do is to offer my help to people who are creating a new product. Everyone is willing to accept your help if you can add value to them in some way, so don’t be shy and just ask.

There are tons of opportunities available to anyone who wants to start making money in his free time. You just have to remember that there’s no quick fix and you have to put real work and time in whatever you choose to do.

When you find an alternative stream of income, it’s important that you don’t immediately raise your lifestyle expenses and spend all your money. Save cash for later, or better yet put it into a high interest saving account, otherwise you’ll be in the same situation as before.

Case study

I have a friend who works full time in a company during the day, and then offers design consulting at night. She usually has no time to do other work during the day, but she can manage to find one hour in the evenings and another six hours on the weekends.

I asked her how much this part time work brings her. She replied to me that her hourly rate is 30 dollars, and in a normal month she can make $1,400–$1,500.

That’s not bad for just one hour per day and six hours in the weekend. I expect her to quit her job soon if she can find even more clients, but that’s another story.

Remember, it’s better to find something else now, rather than waiting for the necessity to arise later.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Is Your Job Secure?

This guest post is from Corbett Barr, an entrepreneur and blogger who lives in San Francisco and Mexico. He writes about lifestyle design at Free Pursuits and started a new Q&A community about online business called Gatejumper.

Taking a sabbatical was easily one of the most life-changing experiences I’ve ever had. My wife and I spent the first half of this year on a road trip through Mexico with our dog (an 11 year-old Vizsla named Kinsey).

We both returned with fresh outlooks and a deeper understanding of what’s really important to us in life. I have since adjusted my priorities and am now finding it easier to be successful in the things that matter to me.

If you’ve ever considered taking a sabbatical, now might be the right time for a lot of reasons. Personally, I was between gigs anyways (I’m an entrepreneur and independent consultant), so the choice was easy. Whatever your situation might be, here are 10 reasons to consider taking a sabbatical now.

1. It’s not as expensive as you think

Cost is one of the biggest reasons people think they can’t take a sabbatical. The truth is, it really depends on where you will live and what you’ll be doing. For example, in Mexico, my wife and I lived on one-third of what it normally costs us to live in the U.S. We sublet our apartment in San Francisco while we were gone.

By living abroad, we were able to take six months off at the cost of just two months’ worth of expenses. We met people living comfortably in Mexico and Latin America for less than $1000 per month.

2. The economy probably isn’t getting better any time soon

If you’re already between jobs, you might be having a difficult time finding your next gig. Times are tough right now economically. It’s hard to say when things will improve, but it probably won’t be until next year. Why not use the downtime to do something you’ll really remember?

Would you rather look back on this time and remember how you spent months looking for a job that didn’t really exist, or how you used the downtime to reevaluate your life, experience a new culture, learn a new hobby or even start a new business?

3. It’s a great way to change careers and hit life’s “reset button”

Have you wondered once in a while if you’re on the right career path? Do you feel like you need to hit the “reset” button?

Getting away from it all might be the only way you can really reset or change course. If you continue around the day-to-day, making significant changes is tough. Taking a few months off will give you the space you need to figure things out.

4. People in other countries have it already figured out

Speaking of figuring things out, did you know that sabbaticals and gap years (time between college and your first job or time between jobs) is much more common is some countries than others?

In the United States especially, the work culture is so strong that friends and colleagues might think you’re crazy for taking some extended time off. Realize that not everyone in the world is so productivity-focused and that taking time off can actually be a good thing.

5. You’ll reconnect with who you really are

After years or decades of spending 8+ hours a day working for someone else, it’s easy to lose track a little of what we really want as individuals and of who we really are underneath our “work selves.” Disconnect with your work self on a sabbatical, and you’ll reconnect with who you really are.

6. You could have a major breakthrough about what you want from life

When did you ever really “decide” to pursue the path you’re on now anyways? Are you doing what you really want to be doing, or are you following more of the default or acceptable path?

A sabbatical might open your eyes to what you really want from life. You might even decide that you’d rather space a portion of your retirement out over your working life.

7. Those things you stress over now aren’t that important.

Once you’re away from your old job for a while, you’ll start to see clearly again. Eventually you’ll barely remember details of things that once seemed life-or-death important. You will start to understand that the truly important things in life exist outside of work – and you might begin to wonder how you ignored them for so long.

8. You might meet some special friends

We’ve never made so many great new friends as we did during our sabbatical. I attribute that to the fact that we were happy and free, with time for new interactions and interesting things to talk about. The best part is that making new friends just leads to a cycle of being even happier and meeting even more new people.

9. Aha! moments require a wandering mind

If your current life is like most working adults’, you probably don’t have much free time to really let your mind wander. Schedules, meetings, email and other responsibilities keep our minds in the analytical mode most of the day.

Some studies show that breakthrough “aha!” moments are made by your insightful mind, not your analytical mind. A sabbatical is a great way to break the routine of daily life and let your mind wander where it will.

10. “Normal life” will still be there waiting when you return

We came back to the U.S. and it seemed as though nothing had changed. We could jump back into our old life exactly as we left it, if we wanted to. Instead, we intend to keep the parts we really love and replace the rest. We’re already looking forward to our next extended time off.

What do you think? Can you think of other reasons to take a sabbatical? What about reasons not to take one? Please share in the comments!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 10 Reasons to Take a Sabbatical Now

Feature photo by Diego Cupolo.

This guest post comes from Jonny Gibaud, who writes at TheLifeThing.com

School – Work – Eat Some Strawberry Pie – Die.

Surely there is more to life and living than this? because if not then I want out. Shall we just take a moment to remind ourselves of the road “most traveled” and why getting out of the un-winnable rat race, whether by leaving the track completely or just moving to the outside lane where the views are better, should be high on our life goal list?

This Beautiful Thing Called Life

Life is not simply about surviving, for making do and settling for less then the best. Life is not something to be endured or regretted. Life is not being stuck in the middle of six lanes of traffic going in a direction you really don’t want to go with an aggressive backseat driver.

Life, conversely, is like imported Italian ice cream. Something to be enjoyed, to be experienced, to be toyed with, risked, investigated, challenged, experimented on and, over all, “Devoured” with lots of mess around the facial region.

Life is too short and too expansive to be trapped on autopilot on the superhighway that is the “Road Most Traveled.” How can we slam on the brakes and get off? How can we avoid falling into the trap of following the “Road most Traveled”, and instead go for a wander along the “Path” that is least followed? Away from the pollution and the noise, it is a much more beautiful experience.

The Road “Most” Traveled

I have found, in my experience, that the road “most” traveled is generally job-focused.

It is the old cliche of “go to school to get an education in order to get into college so that you can get a good job and start a good career, spend 50 years of your life working hard and then spend a few of the last years having fun with your walking stick before kicking the bucket.”

I don’t know about you but, like four-day-old seafood, that’s just not doing it for me.

In this case, the term “Job” can be supplemented for any individual aspect of a person’s life that takes an uneven share of a person’s focus.

Like farting in public, it just so happens that jobs and careers tend to be the main single-focus offenders to most people.

Life is not just about a career or any other single aspect of living, and yet those riding along on the road most traveled tend to focus solely on this facet whether this be a career, your relationships, your goals, your 10 Pin Bowling prowess or any of the many things other things people focus on.

Whether you are driving a Ferrari or a Banger, on the road most traveled you’re all going to end up in the same place.

I understand the logic for people focusing on their career early on, then maybe shifting focus to their family after that and then finally shifting focus to themselves when all the kids have left home, it’s just that this approach tends to lead to a very unbalanced life all the way through, where one aspect is focused on to the detriment of the other aspects of life.

This single focus of just one section of a person’s life, having it as the center of existence to one degree or another, is the key indicator of the road “most” traveled and leads to an unbalanced and ultimately, in my humble opinion, less interesting and overall fulfilling existence.

So what is the alternative? Well, here is a suggestion.

The Path “Least Traveled”

There will be uneven ground, there will be potholes, there might even be the odd wild cat, and yet all this is worth it because there will be spectacular views.

The path least traveled is just that, a path – a more risky and thus generally more eventful journey than the road tarmacked for the majority.

The path less traveled is like a Tightrope walking Cat performing in a very strong head wind. It is “Balance”-focused.

A “balanced” approach to life is not about not focusing on a job or any other single aspect of life but conversely focuses on seeing a job or career or any other aspect of one’s life as exactly that, one aspect of their life, not the aspect.

The path least traveled focuses on ensuring a healthy balance between all aspects of one’s life so that, in the same way that eating some greens with your red meat, you will enhance the experience.

The path “least traveled” understands that life is not and should not be defined by a single focus, but that ultimate happiness comes from experiencing everything life has to offer, at every stage.

Puffer Fish Jobs

Like the puffer fish, a job can give the illusion of being a monster with spines that requires your full attention, but in reality it is but a tiddler in the vast ocean of your potential experience.

A job, while important, is but a small part of everything that makes you who you are, and yet how many of us spend up to 100 hours a week or more focusing on careers to the detriment of all the other things that life has to offer. Your job will eventually be taken over by someone else, the company will go on without you, and you will be forgotten about fairly shortly after you leave. It is a brutal truth.

Unfortunately that is just the nature of the beast that is corporate life, it has sharp teeth, a rather bad nature and a very poor memory.

Knowing this then, are the hours you are pouring into this one avenue of your life really that well invested?

Is spending up to a 100 hours a week focusing on one small part of your life really time well invested?

People who travel the path less traveled see their career or any single aspect of their life as just one small part of their journey and existence and not the sole focus.

The path “least traveled” is an unconventional approach and people are right to say that with this more balanced approach one will probably not be able to build empires, reach the lofty career heights, be involved in every moment of their kid’s lives or spend a couple of years of pure self-focused retirement. This is true but…

It is worth remembering that empires do not last, careers are fleeting, children will not want you in their lives 100% of the time and retirements, like office parties, are vastly over-planned and under-executed.

The Key To A Full And Successful Existence

The key to a full and successful life is always to have balance. If you are currently doing 80 on the “Road Most Traveled” maybe it’s time to reflect on exactly how this is shaping your life and whether straying from the road and moving to the “Path Least Traveled”, having more balance in how you spend your time, finance and focus would improve your quality of life.

I have found that, in the most part, so-coined “Life Designers” are quite good at living in the moment and experiencing as many aspects of life as possible in balance, no matter what stage of life they are at. We could learn a lot from these guys on how to enjoy life and live more fully involved with everything it has to offer, no matter what your age or situation.

-If nothing else why not try it, if it’s not for you it is very easy to find your way back to the road again: just follow the noise.

Jonny Gibaud writes for the love of Helping People, Inspiring People, and Katie Holmes. He honed his unique writing style through his refusal to read for fear the words would attack him and borrowed his life philosophies from the local stray terrier but plans to give aspects of them back.

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A Reminder About Ramit Sethi’s Personal Finance Bootcamp

Remember to check out my video interview with Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You To Be Rich. Ramit has been the personal finance king for over four years, and his book is now a New York Times best-seller. If you want to get your finances in shape for 2010, sign up for his 6-week bootcamp through Thrilling Heroics and get $75 off (details here). Here’s what you’ll get:

• Week 1 – Unearth secret credit card hacks. Find better credit cards and negotiate with your credit card companies. Get perks from free airline flights to free hotel stays with “secret” credit card hacks you aren’t currently using. Get a plan in place to pay off your credit card debt once and for all!
• Week 2 – Stick it to the big banks. Negotiate fees and get rid of them with step-by-step scripts. Use the support of Ramit’s community to switch banks if necessary.
• Week 3 – Retire early and happy. Why your friends haven’t invested; how to become rich on $100/month; how to legally evade taxes!
• Week 4 – Spend guilt-free on the things you love. How to get out of the joy-fear-guilt cycle of debt spending. How to spend money on what you love and cut back on everything else.
• Week 5 – Automate your way to freedom. Spend just a few hours a month managing your money, and stop letting it manage you. Special techniques for those who are freelancing, self-employed, or who have irregular income!
• Week 6 – Invest like a pro without taking the risks. How to automate your investing so your money works for you. The top ten mistakes people make when investing — are you making one of these? Running the numbers on investment strategies (with Ramit’s help!)

Click here to see Ramit’s detailed video interview or sign up for his personal finance bootcamp!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Road “Most” Traveled Is Frickin’ Dangerous Man

Steven Roberts was a pioneer of the mobile lifestyle in 1983 when he took off on a solar-powered recumbent bicycle—lovingly dubbed the “Winnebiko”—loaded down with computer gear, traveling 17,000 miles across the United States and earning his way as a freelance writer.

Naturally, Steve is a huge inspiration for digital nomads and location-independent types. But it really struck me when I came across this video of his presentation at Xerox PARC in 1989 about his solar- and human-powered journey on a custom-built technobike: he was an eager young guy like myself, extremely passionate about his work and about living life on his own terms, and forging new ways of working remotely from anywhere in the world.

Now he lives part-time on a beautiful, fully-loaded sailboat, a 44-foot steel raised-salon pilothouse cutter called the Nomadness, which is sure to induce envy in geeks and boat lovers alike. You can follow his sailing and digital nomad adventures at Nomadness.com and check out all of his experiments and projects at Nomadic Research Labs.

There has been a lot of talk about passion and responsibilities recently. My friend Jun is someone I know is really intrigued by the mobile lifestyle, but he recently wrote about the challenges of doing what he’s truly passionate about because of his responsibilities to family. Then “Nerdy Nomad” Kirsty asked if it’s selfish to reject the average lifestyle, and others’ expectations of you, to follow your passion.

The below essay from Steve is something that instantly resounded with me. (Perhaps it was the Pink Floyd opening!) In his words, “this little essay from 1992 captures some of the mad, driven intensity that is the engine behind creativity and growth.” Roberts touches on the desire to embrace those serendipitous moments where your life could take you down very different, alternative paths, rejecting the template lifestyle even if it means you go broke, and living life consciously and not falling into mediocre escapes. Steve Roberts is someone who has a few more years, a bit more wisdom, and a lot more experience, and I found this too powerful not to share with you.

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Passion: The Heart of Nomadness

Dangerous Influences

Maybe it’s the music, classic Pink Floyd penetrating me as I write this. Wordless memories overtake the present, obscuring it, rendering the computer puzzling even while practiced fingers perform their familiar little dance.  Perhaps madness lurks herein:  time is inside-out; the swirling vapors of time are suddenly real.  Guitars like scalpels part the callused years, revealing visions of terrible glorious color overlaid upon freight trains rumbling gritty in the night, memories of adventures and obsessions potent enough to raise gasps and gooseflesh… my first astonished discoveries, 20 years ago, that life is a thing of infinite potential.

I recall suddenly a day up Boulder Canyon, long ago, free-climbing far beyond my skills.  The rock, hard and hot against my cheek… my legs, vibrating with the tension of death’s leering proximity… and on top of it all, that crazy moment when reality gets lost among a dozen hotly competing alternatives – each convincing, each alluring, each equally fatal if mistaken for the real thing.  I grinned into the stone and inched impossibly upward, curiously disconnected, vision overloaded, abruptly FREE…

Yes, freedom.  That’s what is behind all this:  the exhilaration of walking empty-handed away from Somebody Else’s Plan and sticking out a thumb, leaning against the superstructure of a drawbridge for a thrumming three A.M. liftoff, dynamiting a love nest with walls where once were windows, releasing the brakes what-the-hell and flying with a shout down a mountain road, releasing reality and flying wide-eyed into the infinity of psychosensory unknowns… it all tastes of freedom.

Try, please, to capture this.  Reach into your past, before marriage and business, and examine the brief gaps between commitments.  Inside those gaps are subtle tears in the fabric – glimpses of wild seductive alternatives to everything you knew at the time… other realities inches away, dancing just out of reach, teasing you with infinite possibilities even as you turned dutifully from one chapter of your destiny to the next.

But did you let it lure you away?  Did you leap into the unknown and hitchhike off somewhere, not caring where, yearning for the sweet sense of movement and discovery?  Did you shock your family and chase a crazy dream, abandoning years of conditioning to let that spark inside you explode into flame?

And what about now?  Is the notion of staying ten years in one place depressing… but somehow inevitable?  Are you doing exactly what you want to do with your life, not only at this moment but at 9:00 Monday morning and tonight in bed?

The most delicious freedom comes from venturing beyond the assumptions that other people have made about you.  The real prisons are those of expectation:  denying the possibilities of your life in order to be what somebody else wants you to be.  I’ve watched brilliance tarnish, fade, and finally disappear in the murk of a stupid marriage.  I’ve seen those capable of pushing the big envelope waste a lifetime waiting for little ones with paychecks, rationalizing lost time with vague dreams of retirement travel and future ventures.  I’ve seen others, constrained by circumstances or interests to a steady job, discard all leftover energy in a nightly haze of television, alcohol, drugs, religion, or dull routine.

I am not a proselytizer for nomadics – or anything at all, really, other than what’s already inside you.  There are countless ways to explore that, and my own peculiar choices are obviously not for everybody.  But damn it, do you have any idea how much brilliance and wit rots away undeveloped?  We need to do away with the numbing influences of this mad age and start developing passion.  What could you teach others if you applied your skills and insights to whatever you love most?  Could you change the world if given a chance, even if only through a tiny increment in the evolution of intelligence?

Today’s assignment:  do something that involves risk, learning, awe, passion, courage, invention, insight, or the sweet sparking of another’s awareness.

Tidal Passion

Let’s talk about passion.  It’s a driving theme of nomadness, of learning, of life in general – it’s the crystallization of dreams, the lust for evolution, the antithesis of comfort.

Without passion, life is spent waiting… waiting… waiting for someone else to make it all seem worthwhile.

With it, growth is a way of life and you are in control.

Passion is not an intellectual notion, nor a psychological abstraction.  It often appears for a while in association with sex, but that’s not what it’s all about either.  Passion is raw and all-consuming, and can’t be replaced with religion, New Age interpretations of experience, academic compartmentalizations of the universe, pleasure seeking, or a romp up the career ladder.  It’s intense, almost violent; it renders everything else in life unimportant while driving you on a quest of personally epic proportion.

Something like that is not to be taken lightly, especially if you once felt it but now sense it slipping away.

The problem is that our cultures, in different ways, discourage passion – although not overtly, of course.  We’re politely encouraged to excel, to invent, to make something of ourselves.  But the people who actually do so have had to struggle past the boundaries of a society that offers up numbing entertainment, reduces education to the level of homogenization, discourages personal risk in its corporate world, applauds conformity, treats the exceptional as aberrations, and rewards the successful with that spectacularly sanitized mediocrity known cynically as suburban bliss.

There’s an abrupt boundary between the haves and the have nots, as far as passion is concerned.  You can’t just dabble in passion – it’s all or nothing.  Suddenly finding it makes you resent Christians for appropriating that otherwise useful term “born again”; losing it makes you feel dead.

No, there’s no such thing as a passion dilettante.  Your life is either driven by a grand, magnificent, all-encompassing design… or it isn’t.

What is possible, unfortunately, is to live passionately for a few years then suffer through the agonizing process of watching it slip away – without even knowing whether it’s recoverable.  It must be a bit like Parkinson’s Disease…  the mind goes, but slowly enough that you witness your own dissolution and understand perfectly well what it means.

I am discovering, however, that passion can be viewed as a tidal, and thus cyclic, phenomenon.  It has been in my life, certainly, with every ebb a slow tragedy and every flow an exuberant celebration of new growth.  I recoil from stasis with the fire of a new project… then burn out and fall back into stasis.  The question is:  how can one short-circuit this process and keep passion alive?  Could we survive nonstop passion, day in and day out?  Is endless passion even possible?  If we see it slipping, can we snatch it back?

One way, I think, is with landmarks.  For me, it’s a strange mix of favorite road music, an amusing juxtaposition of nomadic system design concepts, fantasies of magical encounters Out There, and a few freeze-frame images of intense romance or adventure etched like lightning flashes on my brain.

Another way to hang on to it is by spending time with passionate people – other mad, driven souls who brave the chortlings of the complacent, celebrate risk, and fear not the specter of bankruptcy.  It’s powerfully reinforcing stuff, and when you forget your own passion, a spark from someone else’s can reignite the blaze.

Yet another way is through obsessive learning:  peeking under rocks, exploring different cultures, chasing seductive unknowns, and emerging into the sunlight from the mine of your own specialties to exchange information with those in other mines (a process better known as consulting).  Learning is a delicious addiction, even though schools usually present it as a method of working for approval rather than daring to reveal the terrible secret that education is actually a magnificent form of play.  Satisfying your curiosity at every opportunity is a good way to keep your passion alive.

Now let’s list a few methods that don’t work:

• Making lists of things to do, especially if they represent the intellectualization of something about which you were once passionate.
• Perennially reshuffling your workspace, filing systems, business structure, software choices, circle of friends, or hometown – all in the name of correcting problems that are interfering with your pursuit of the Big Dream.
• Waiting for someone else to come along and solve your problems, or, if you’re wealthy, attempting to subcontract your quest.
• Praying, drinking, getting stoned, swilling coffee, playing computer games, watching TV, or otherwise engaging in any numbing and time-consuming ritual that by direct effect or superstition is somehow involved with soothing your psyche or warding off danger.  (Not that all these things are necessarily bad, mind you, they just don’t have much to do with passion… even though some of them feel pretty good.  Why, one day on a coffee buzz I broke 2 million in Crystal Quest and celebrated with a drink.)

The important thing is recognizing when your passion is slipping – and stopping it before it’s too late.  The trappings and rewards of past brilliance echo sweetly with the magic of days gone by, and it’s blissful to sail upon remembered waves if you ignore the fact that you’re not on a boat anymore.

Remember why you are.  Life is only once, and slips by so smoothly that you can get away with coasting through a whole career and still look pretty good.  Think about what you really want.  Grasp it with unshakable passion and focused desire.   Everything else is secondary.

© 1992, 2004 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs

Reprinted with permission

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Finding Your Passion and Living on Purpose

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

UPDATE May 14: The winning participant is reader Daniel Hoang—Investor, Lifehacker, Technologist, Analyst, Careerist! Daniel, I’ll be in touch with you via Twitter/email soon and we can arrange a time for your free 1-on-1 consulting call. Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry!

UPDATE May 10: This contest is now closed. The winner will be announced via Twitter & the blog soon. Thanks to all for your participation.

I’ve been back in the States for a few weeks this month—my only brief trip home this year—and it’s been a lot of fun catching up with friends and going to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in the Southern California desert. But I had very mixed feelings about coming back to the U.S. right now, and my visit has been a little bittersweet.

The U.S. has been hit hard by a down economy, and California is showing visible signs of the recession. Restaurants are empty. Small businesses are closing their doors. A lot of folks are looking for work, a lot are depressed, a lot of people are stagnating.

In this economic downturn, it’s time to take your reputation, and your career, into your own hands. There is no such thing as job security anymore. Pensions and benefits can be taken away at a moment’s notice. And even your retirement savings can’t be relied upon these days.

I believe that entrepreneurship, as risky as it can be, is truly the best solution. As a freelancer or business owner, you take your destiny into your own hands. And if you prefer the “security” of a full-time job, these days you should at least develop a second, side income stream, and actively manage your “employability”. That means staying sharp on developments in your field, keeping your resume fresh, and regularly adding people to your professional network. You should never quit job searching really, because the unfortunate reality is that everyone’s job is disposable.

It’s funny—in conversation you notice there are fundamental differences in the way employees and entrepreneurs think. I won’t say one is better than the other, but I think at least a little bit of entrepreneurial thinking is good for everyone. It keeps you on your toes and makes you realize that you can create your own prosperity if you try hard enough. My mission here at Thrilling Heroics is to help people break out of conventional thinking and pursue their potential, so I expect you guys to be able to hear me say that, or else you wouldn’t be my audience!

Anyways, I’m working on a few things to help everyone kick ass at life just a little bit more. My mission this year, in everything I do, is to empower as many would-be freelancers, entrepreneurs, and other do-gooders to take back their power, to realize they don’t have to be just a cog in a wheel and take what life gives them. You can build an awesome business, you can live a remarkable life, and you can do anything and go anywhere you want! You just have to work for it.

Here we go:

Discount Social Media Consulting for New Clients

It’s no secret that I provide social media consulting and blog development services for select web entrepreneurs and professionals. Just this month I helped Kare Anderson—a dedicated blogger and author who already kicks ass even without my help—launch her new site HowWePartner.com. And I helped coach Eileen McDargh—a professional speaker and management consultant—on introductory ways to utilize social media more effectively for her business. Eileen was completely ecstatic and said this after our first hour together:

“In just one hour, Cody cut through the chaos and confusion of social networks, showing me what I needed to do and—even more importantly, what I did NOT need to do. It was very valuable and worth the time.”

My fees are typically somewhat substantial, because I try to filter out only the most dedicated and remarkable clients, and dedicated people tend to have money to spend on their remarkable projects. The amount of attention and commitment I give to each client makes the investment worthwhile. My job is to follow industry trends in the social media and blogging space, filtering through the noise to find the most important solutions for my clients. I maintain a wide knowledge base and an active network in the blogosphere so that I can provide my clients with relevant news and resources, software and tutorials, and even introduce them to like-minded professionals and key influencers in their niche, to establish authority on the web and improve their business.

Because we’re all feeling the negative effects of this economy, I’m offering a small discount on my consulting for new clients right now. If you’ve got something important to say, I want to help you get the right web technology and social media strategies in place to increase your online exposure. Add me to your team and leverage my expertise in the following areas:

• WordPress
• Blogging
• Social networks
• User-friendly, accessible web design (XHTML, CSS, PHP)
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Personal branding
• Online project management & collaboration tools

I usually bill $95 per hour for my consulting time. But if you book an Introductory Blog & Social Media Consultation with me in the month of May, I’ll give you your first hour of consulting for just $75. I’ll talk with you directly via phone or webcam to understand your specific business situation and your online marketing objectives, and help point you in the right direction.

An Awesome FREE WordPress Theme in the Works

There is a sizable market for my premium web services. But I realize there are also several important demographics out there who can’t afford pricey web consulting and development work, including young professionals like myself who are interested in personal branding and establishing their reputation on the web, micro-business owners and other solopreneurs who are tightening their belts right now.

As a low-cost alternative for these rockstars in training, I’m currently building a killer app—a premium, all-in-one blog design, which I’ll release as a free WordPress theme. “Thrilling Theme” will be my masterpiece. It will serve as the framework for my future web development projects, and it will have everything you could ever dream of! The free theme will include:

• Multiple color schemes and style options to choose from
• An easy way to upload your own custom logo or header image
• Integrated Twitter updates, Flickr photos, and more
• Easy insertion of your Google Analytics tracking code, your FeedBurner RSS feed, etc.
• And tons more. Please share your ideas in the comments!

For do-it-yourselfers, the theme will be available as a free download. For individuals and small businesses that want some basic help getting started with Thrilling Theme as the template design for their site, a basic setup & customization package will be available for a nominal charge. (We’re talking about a complete social media platform—possibly the framework for your online business—for less than 400 bucks!)

What About for Non-Blogging Nerd Types?

Additionally, I’ll be doing as much as I can to provide free, valuable advice on this blog to help as many people break free as well—talking about going solopreneur, building a strong reputation on the web, and taking your business location-independent if you desire. Blogging and leveraging social media has allowed me to make awesome friends in all corners of the globe, and I’ve even attracted clients from five continents! My only desire is that I can help you guys experience similar success.

I have a few projects on my back burners, some things that have been marinating for a while. In the coming months, I look forward to teaming up more with great folks like Jun Loayza, Jonathan Mead, Carmen Isais, Mark Weins and Tom Barrett to deliver some fresh, unique perspectives and experiment with some new ideas.

Locally, I’ll continue to work with Dwight Turner of In Search of Sanuk to host charity events and fundraisers in and around Thailand, and I hope to provide discount services to many more non-profits this year. I’ve just partnered with Fusion International on a new project to help them relaunch and revitalize their website focused on victims of extreme poverty, conflict and internal displacement. When you support this site, do business with me, or tell people about Thrilling Heroics, you’ll help me continue to support good causes, and promote events like our Bangkok Tweetup for Charity.

The Part Where I Ask for Your Help

In order to empower as many people as I can this year, I need your help to reach the biggest audience possible. What can you do? You can subscribe. You can tell people about my mission and about ThrillingHeroics.com. You can check out my company, Thrilling Heroics Consulting. But I’ll go a step further: if you blog about my mission with link to this post by May 10th, you’ll be entered for a chance at a FREE 1-hour Blog Consultation. It’s simple:

1. Write about my mission to help as many people become Rockstars as possible with discount consulting. Write about the upcoming free Thrilling Theme. You can even write about the competition itself.
2. Include a direct link to this post or to ThrillingHeroicsConsulting.com
3. To make sure I get your submission, leave a comment on this post and include the URL for your blog post about this competition.

On May 10th, I’ll choose one commenter at random to receive a free consultation with me by phone or Skype. You’ll get a full hour to ask me any questions you like about blogging, social media, and WordPress.

Thanks for staying with me this long. Forget the crummy economy. Let’s all combine forces to do some good this year. Check back soon for more on living a remarkable life.

Feature photo credit: Elmo Keep

Can’t get enough Thrilling Heroics? Follow @codymckibb on Twitter.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: I Want to Make You A Rockstar!

Thrilling Heroics was born in 2006 with a different purpose than it serves today, and it has gone through many “evolutions” if you will, but I wanted to take this opportunity to share my personal life philosophy and my hopes for this site with loyal readers and new-comers alike.

Why I started this site:

By the time I graduated from college in 2006, I had become rather unenthusiastic about my major, as I had with most of my education. I believe it was a reflection on the poor public school system in the U.S.—an antiquated institution that was crafted during the industrial era to brainwash train young people to gladly take their number and accept social norms. (Translation: I don’t think public school teaches kids any of the skills necessary for true greatness.)

I had gone through the motions. I was going to college because it’s just what you do. I chose a major that probably wasn’t best for me because I just had to finish in four years. Then I took a crappy staff job because it basically fell in my lap.

This all turned out to be very boring. Like many a poor sap, I ended up pushing paper, going to a lot of dumb meetings, and basically sitting around watching my life end one minute at a time.

I must have gotten lucky somehow, because it was at this point that I became interested in technology, startups, and entrepreneurship. I started watching Stanford lectures online, listening to podcasts, and I got this crazy idea in my head that it would be cool to get an MBA from one of these top business schools and start something big.

Meanwhile, I watched a lot of my good friends fall into the same trap I had fallen into: taking shitty jobs after college and buying into this myth that that’s all there is to it. 1) Get a career. 2) You’re not gonna like it, but just do it like everyone else and keep your mouth shut.

This ain’t no race. And I am certainly not a rat.

To fight off the apathy, I started a mastermind group with some friends where we discussed our careers, entrepreneurship ideas, and personal development. Sort of a Napoleon Hill/Tom Peters-inspired support group where we would encourage each other to kick asses.

I also started this blog, which had a huge impact on my life. That might sound nerdy, but yeah:

Starting a blog was a defining moment in my life.

Blogging gave me a good excuse to keep reading, keep learning, to talk about the current events, ideas and technologies that interested me. Blogging also gave me a means to reach out to interesting folks from all walks of life, ask questions, and make friends with people around the globe. People I never imagined would take a naive 22-year-old kid seriously.

It was when one of these new friends needed help—an amazing serial entrepreneur who I was incredibly lucky to call a mentor—that I started the next chapter of my life: working for myself.

Books like The 4 Hour Workweek and a few fantastic blogs convinced me that jobs are for suckers. I started doing freelance web development for small businesses on the side, and I quit my job shortly thereafter.

I’ve spent over a year-and-a-half learning to master the whole self-employment thing, and now I’ve set out on a year-long journey to live abroad and do remote work on the web. It’s rarely easy and it’s not always fun—in fact I frequently want to pull my hair out—but I enjoy the freedom that freelancing and entrepreneurship have given me. And the philosophy that underpins my choices is that I make the rules. I’ll say that again:

This is my life. I make the rules.

This blog is all about breaking the traditional “rules” that we think apply to us. It’s about challenging assumptions. There is no such thing as a One-Size-Fits-All lifestyle. You don’t have to go to college, graduate within four years, take a desk job, stay close to home, get an MBA, climb the corporate ladder, or anything just because it’s what herd mentality tells you you’re supposed to do. The world is a complex and beautiful place with a wide spectrum of possibilities, and full of unpredictable opportunities. Your life is your masterpiece, and you are the painter.

A few other like-minded rule-breakers out there—folks like Chris Guillebeau, Tim Ferriss, John Bardos, Clay Collins, and Andrew Warner—are preaching similar nonconformity. Here at ThrillingHeroics.com I approach this philosophy from a career/lifestyle point-of-view, and you’ll find discussions on personal development, travel, productivity, personal finance, entrepreneurship, web marketing and collaboration, lifestyle design and more.

Optimize your Life, Rock your Career, and Make the World your Playground!

That’s my motto. My number one priority here is to encourage my peers—young professionals and entrepreneurs—as well as readers at any stage in their career, to strive for excellence and make a positive difference in the world by doing what they’re truly passionate about.

For over three years Thrilling Heroics has been my baby—my “pet project.” It is and always will be “the professional blog of Cody McKibben,” but it is also a community-centered project where I hope to encourage others to pursue an exciting, unorthodox lifestyle and career. I’ll try to highlight individuals who are breaking the rules and living their dream lifestyles. While this is my “personal” site, there are many ways you can join or support the community, like joining our community on Facebook and subscribing to the exclusive newsletter, and I leave the door open for guest posts and other contributing writers in the future.

Is the idea of an unorthodox career—living passionately—exciting to you?

Well, I’m recruiting believers. Sign up here. Follow my journey and learn from my mistakes while I attempt to sidestep the traditional corporate world, concentrate on personal growth, travel around the world, and create my ideal lifestyle!

Can’t get enough heroics?? Follow me on Twitter.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Choosing the Life Path Less Taken

I believe that over the last year I’ve figured out the central principle that will lead to true prosperity in life—the “Secret” as some people have called it. Seeing as how I’ve been on my annual vacation with my family, this is all sort of stream-of-consciousness, but I thought it important enough to share even before my ideas are fully developed. Obviously, there will be a lot more to discuss as it relates to this, but here are some basic thoughts on this success principle.

I’ve been reading one of the most influential books of my life: Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. This 1937 classic contains the principles that led people like Andrew Carnegie, Charles M. Schwab, Thomas Edison, and many others, to great wealth and success. As a young man, Napoleon Hill met the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who instilled in him his most important business teachings. Over the course of twenty years, Hill interviewed about five hundred of the most successful businessmen and leaders in the U.S. and the world, to understand more about the common beliefs that helped lead to their great success.

What these 500 individuals had in common is also what forms the foundation for the newer book and now movie, The Secret. While they give a decent introduction to a very powerful idea, I feel that the practitioners in that film greatly oversimplify this principle which many of the world’s rich and powerful share.

After talking at length with my sister about the concepts in Hill’s Think and Grow Rich—what some call mind over matter, visualization, the “Law of Attraction”—we decided that the most effective way to describe the “Carnegie secret” succinctly is this:

You become that which you think about most.

You also attract the things and accomplish the goals that you think about most. But the first step to great success is to know specifically what you want out of life: financially, personally, socially, etc. In other words, what you occupy your mind with most prominently will eventually, in one way or another shape your reality. I find that most people I talk to, even though I love many of them dearly, don’t really know what they want to achieve in life. But if you think about it critically, the principle fits with most of what we know about life. People who concentrate solely on achieving some sort of success may fail ten times before they become a great success seemingly “overnight,” but those who don’t fill their heads with grand aspirations rarely see great success, and those who stop concentrating on their highest goals and start believing that they can’t achieve their aspirations eventually give up.

So we can see how this works both positively and negatively. Once you start telling yourself that you can’t do something, you’re right! So be careful that you don’t concentrate your thoughts on what you don’t want out of life, because eventually you will attract those things to you. This even explains hypochondriacs and placebo effects. The mind works hard to align belief with reality. Instead phrase all of your goals positively, believe sincerely that you can achieve what you want in life, and fill your mind with vivid visualizations of what it will be like when you’ve actually attained your goals.

Hill says that definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. You may eke by with a decent living without any definite major purpose for your life, but you will never excel without concrete, specific goals. Hill says that financial goals in particular should be specific, measurable, and timely. Set specific goals for how much money you want to earn, specifically by what date, for example. But the example holds true for any sort of wealth, not just monetary. And most importantly, be clear and realistic about what what you will give in exchange for that wealth, what value you intend to share with the world in exchange for your success.

Figure out what your purpose is. Decide specifically what you want in life and what you are willing to give in return for it. Visualize your success and repeat to yourself often what you intend to achieve. Then back it up with massive action, and you’re certain to reach the heights of success, wealth, and influence.

Otherwise you’ll have to settle for what falls in your lap. Sometimes that’s decent, but you can’t say you never got a chance if you don’t know specifically what you want out of life: what you want to BE, DO and HAVE. When you know what you want, you will be prepared to recognize and take advantage of the opportunities that life presents to you.

(Oh P.S. the title is a silly geek reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!)

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Secret to Life, the Universe, and Everything

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

Ever since I discovered Google Custom Search, I’ve been using it to pinpoint the exact kind of awesome articles, tips and tricks I’m looking for much quicker, and to increase my efficiency and decrease the time it takes me to find answers or write up blog posts.

Personally, I’m a big fan of productivity lists, how-to’s, and life hacks, so my custom search engine includes a lot of big name sites like Lifehacker, Zen Habits, Tim Ferriss’ 4HWW blog, and many more. Anytime I’m curious how to do something, like how to install a certain software application, how to improve my resume, or how to get the most out of a particular social networking site for instance, my custom-build search engine returns incredible results! And if you like to hyperlink to other resources and articles as additional support when you write new blog posts, this will serve as a fantastic tool for you just like it has for me.

I highly recommend Google’s Custom Search, and since I’ve already done the work and compiled a master list of over 50 of the web’s most credible and authoritative blogs, I’d also like to introduce my own Thrilling Blog Search engine as an open community tool for the Brazen Careerist network and the blogosphere at large. Try it out. Seriously! It provides some really cool results for all sorts of subjects from personal development to social media to finance. Link to the search engine page here and try a search for “resume,” “savings account,” or “LinkedIn” for example:

If you’d like to utilize this tool for your own blogging workflow, feel free to bookmark my directory/links page, or you can easily add it to your iGoogle homepage or your own website. Be aware that this search engine already crawls several of the most trusted blogs on the internet, but I will be adding to the sites in the future. If you’d like to contribute to the project or suggest a site for addition, you can get in touch with me but be aware there will be a strict review process. In other words, if you email me with a suggestion, you better be ready to pitch your site and why the community will benefit from it!

Here are the top-notch blogs/bloggers that are already a part of this fun customized blog community search tool:

Personal Growth/Productivity

• Lifehacker
• Zen Habits
• Steve Pavlina
• LifeDev
• Life Optimizer
• The Positivity Blog
• Scott H Young
• Duff McDuffee
• Today Is That Day

Career/Personal Branding

• Personal Branding Blog
• Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk
• Life Beyond Code
• Water Cooler Wisdom
• Personal PR
• Newly Corporate
• The Urban Muse
• PR Interactive
• Erik Folgate

Lifestyle Design/Travel

• The 4-Hour Workweek
• Anywired
• The Art of Nonconformity
• Real Social Dynamics
• Ronnie Nurss
• Brave New Traveler

Generation-Y Issues

• Employee Evolution
• Twenty Set
• WorkLoveLife

Personal Finance

• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• Get Rich Slowly

Freelancing/Entrepreneurship

• FreelanceSwitch
• Escape from Cubicle Nation
• Erica Douglass
• How to Change the World by Guy Kawasaki
• The Anti 9-to-5 Guide
• Instigator Blog
• College-Startup
• Jamie Harrop

Social Media/Technology

• Chris Brogan
• Dosh Dosh
• Copyblogger
• Tobias Baeck
• Paul Stamatiou
• Greg Rollett
• Moving From Me to We
• Paul Woods

Blogging/WordPress

• ProBlogger
• Pearsonified
• Theme Playground
• Blog Perfume
• Lorelle on WordPress
• Thrilling Design

Remember, this is a community project, so please feel free to get involved!

» Add a search widget to your Google homepage.

» Add the custom Thrilling Blog Search to your own site.

» Get in touch if you’ve got a suggested site that will benefit other bloggers and readers.

» Blog about this or tell your friends about the Thrilling Blog Search engine!

These are just the first round of additions to the Thrilling Blog Search community search tool. As I come across more great sites, I’ll be updating the list and the search engine tool. You can view several of my favorite blogs and suggested resources, as well as my custom Thrilling Blog Search tool on my Links Page here.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Announcing an Awesome New Community Search Tool for the Blogosphere!

As a follow-up to my post the other day, How to Make Friends with Career Columnists and Influence Mainstream News Organizations, I’d like to share some more of the insights from my conversation with ABCnews.com columnist Michelle Goodman. She asked a number of really great questions, and naturally only a very small part of our discussion made it into the final print article at ABC. I’d like to take the opportunity to share about my experience as a freelancer so far, and I’ll also take this time to officially invite you all to visit Thrilling Heroics Consulting, my business site and sister site to Thrilling Heroics where I offer business blog consulting and WordPress help aimed at professionals and non-geek users. If you need a blog redesign or are looking for some simple tips and tricks to increase your blog effectiveness with the WordPress blog platform, I hope you check it out and share it with friends. And for those of you who are interested in working from home yourselves, or interested in learning about web design, check out the conversation below. Michelle’s questions really got my wheels turning, so hopefully there are some good tips in here:

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