Thrilling Heroics » Generation-Y

Join Influential Gen-Y Thought Leaders on their Remarkable Business & Lifestyle Journeys

Cody McKibben — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:42:44 +0000

What is social media? Some people think of geeks like me who spend all day on Twitter or Digg, some think of marketing or PR “gurus”, but really it’s just a conversation—empowered by new web technologies that connect people globally. It is reshaping how companies relate to and interact with their markets with people. It is giving more power to the consumer, nurturing communities of people with shared interests in innumerable topics. Social media is changing the rules of the game so that individuals can join, build and lead communities; rebel freelancers or micro-entrepreneurs can take on large corporations.

Viralogy.com is a community that strives to highlight thought leaders and influencers in this global conversation. They are quickly branding themselves as the place to go when you want to find the authoritative bloggers on any particular topic, by ranking individuals’ online influence through the blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Stumble, and Digg statistics.

Almost everyone has read the influential works of social media thought leaders like Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Leo Babauta, for example. But Viralogy co-founder Jun Loayza, as a member of Generation Y, wants to take a different approach to finding the authoritative voices on the web. “They have amazing content,” he says, “but at times it feels like I can’t relate with them. They’re in a position where they have reached success, and are now teaching us about how we can become successful, which may be the source of the disconnect. [But] I want to read about people who are in the trenches like me; I want to hear from people who haven’t made it yet, but are doing things the right way and can teach us how they’re doing it every step of the way. I want to hear from the experts in my Generation.”

Jun and his team at Viralogy decided to create Viralogy Experts—a platform that will feature Gen-Y experts on a range of topics, including personal finance, business strategy, marketing & PR, and personal development. And Jun asked me to join their expert panel as a thought leader on location independence, so I’m excited and proud to announce my partnership with them for the launch of this new community! The five debut experts are:

What we all share in common is that we are actually going through these challenges and transitions right now, so you can follow along with our journeys and know that our advice has been tested first hand. We hope to bring in a fifth expert on personal development and eventually expand to at least ten thought leaders, with the goal to help you separate the wheat from the chaff on the web and go straight to the blogs that give you actionable, step-by-step teaching from peers that you can trust.

Viralogy Experts launches today, so go check it out and please subscribe!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Join Influential Gen-Y Thought Leaders on their Remarkable Business & Lifestyle Journeys

Young Entrepreneur Jun Loayza Reveals the Interactive Web Game That Will Rock Your Career!

Cody McKibben — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:00:04 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vault.com is about helping people research companies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding a mentor who guided me on my path to become an entrepreneur

Getting a taste of it while starting an orginzation and a company as an undergrad

Reading business books in class instead of paying attention to the teacher

The E-Myth Revisited and E-Myth Mastery by Michael Gerber

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

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

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

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

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

Announcing an Awesome New Community Search Tool for the Blogosphere!

Cody McKibben — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:51:36 +0000

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

Career/Personal Branding

Lifestyle Design/Travel

Generation-Y Issues

Personal Finance

Freelancing/Entrepreneurship

Social Media/Technology

Blogging/WordPress

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!

10 Controversial Climate Change Fixes to Spark Discussion—From Wired.com

Cody McKibben — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:45:31 +0000

It’s been a long time since I wrote about sustainability, but it is one issue that will challenge Generation Y like no other generation yet. I’ve shied away from it because I got tired of reporting on news that always seemed to be negative. I got tired of feeling like a doomsayer, which—unfortunately—is what a lot of environmentalists come off sounding like. But Wired Magazine’s 15th anniversary issue has stirred up a lot of talk in the global warming circles that caught my attention yesterday.

Despite the fact that the discussion can be a depressing one, and the options can at times seen hopeless, it remains that climate change is a huge, looming threat for human society, and it will have a huge influence especially on those of us who will still be around in 30 to 50 years. A lot of my peers are passionate about green living and sustainability, and that’s encouraging, because the choices we make with our daily lives, and more importantly the advances we make in science and industry in our lifetimes will have a large influence on whether our planet will sustain human life for the next several hundred years.

I’m not here to argue how much human behavior has impacted global warming—that’s a moot point if you ask me. In my opinion, yes, climate change—to some extent—is inevitable, even without the impact of human society. But the fact still remains that we must either learn to deal with global warming one way or another, or our species may not be able to survive on this changing planet. Regardless of who’s fault it is, our generation has an opportunity to make some big changes. And the difference between failure and success could be several million human lifetimes. I’d rather see our generation preserve the Earth as a hospitable place for our children and grandchildren.

Wired’s latest cover story asks environmentalists, and all the rest of us, to rethink what the green movement means. The writers propose ten controversial “solutions” that run counterintuitive to traditional environmental agendas, citing that “winning the war on global warming requires slaughtering some of environmentalism’s sacred cows.” Here they are: Wired’s ten unconventional remedies for global warming. Click through to learn more.

Wired’s 10 Green Heresies

The Wired blog is attracting a lot of discussion—most of it negative. I can sympathize with those who place a great deal of value on conventional environmentalist tenets like conservation and energy efficiency, but I think it’s important to recognize that only a very small percentage of the population is ready to embrace the “less is more” mentality. As the article states, “We must accept that the world’s fastest-growing economies won’t forgo a higher standard of living in the name of climate science.” All across the world, as societies become more affluent, they become more materialistic and they consume more resources and energy. Changing that intrinsic human behavior will prove to be a much more difficult challenge than adapting to it. It’s time to find solutions that can work in our business-centric, materialistic world. That’s the real world.

What do you guys think? Am I off my rocker for embracing used cars and nukes? Do you think Generation Y stands a chance of turning the world sustainable? How do you hope to contribute? Or do you still think all this global warming stuff is bunk?

[source: Wired.com]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 10 Controversial Climate Change Fixes to Spark Discussion—From Wired.com

I’m Part of the Brand New Brazen Careerist Network!

Cody McKibben — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:24:59 +0000

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

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

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

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

###

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

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

Carl Schramm on Entrepreneurship

Cody McKibben — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:27:13 +0000

I’m still traveling through Spain for the holidays, but I have some useful goal-setting exercises on the way soon! In the meantime, here’s some interesting material to keep your appetite satiated.

At the 2007 Entrepreneurship Week USA opening ceremonies at Stanford University in California, Carl Schramm (President and CEO, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation) surprised some of the audience when he said that 70% of college students will start a business at some point in their lives. Schramm said that while our grandparents had four jobs on average, over the course of their entire careers, Generation Y students in general will look forward to working 13 major jobs during their professional lives! And who is responsible for creating all those new jobs? Entrepreneurs, of course!

Schramm is author of The Entrepreneurial Imperative and calls entrepreneurship the US’ “competitive secret,” which allows us to stay ahead of developing nations economically (who knows for how long?). Startup companies “birth the new” and give security to others by creating jobs, and they posses the only key to creating wealth! They even facilitate non-profits and philanthropic ventures. This presents an interesting new way to look at economic models that I hadn’t approached before: without the for-profit businessman to virtually create capital, governments could not operate (there would be no one to tax!), and the non-profits would not have any money for their causes. Without individuals to start up businesses, there can be no government, no philanthropy, no charity…

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Carl Schramm on Entrepreneurship

Get Your Parents to Stop Labeling You An Underachiever

Cody McKibben — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:15:40 +0000

Are you known as the family underachiever? Do you break all the rules that people around you expect you to follow?

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

An Interview with 23-Year-Old Personal Branding Expert Daniel Schawbel

Cody McKibben — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:19:46 +0000

Dan Schawbel is a marketing consultant, entrepreneur, and personal branding spokesman. He is a strong self-marketer who has made a name for himself first by writing the Personal Branding Blog, then administering the Personal Brand Awards and publishing Personal Branding Magazine, and was recently featured in an article for the Fast Company Expert Blogs called “The Young Turks of Personal Branding.” At age 23, has already accumulated six years of varied experience and led a high performance Six Sigma team to transform the marketing process for Global Services Marketing at EMC², a Fortune 500 company. Today he’ll give us some of his experience and a few lessons about personal branding.

What is EMC² Corporation, and what do you do for them?

EMC is the leading information company in the world, selling hardware, software and services globally. We also provide solutions that take both products and services together to solve specific IT or business related needs for customers. My role at EMC has evolved since I started here last July. My previous role was to generate marketing collateral for the launch of new services and solution offerings for the midsize market segment. I already created a series of business plans for the various practices here at EMC to grow their business for 2007. Then I shifted roles to eServices marketing, where I was in charge of our online support offerings, along with training customers, partners and employees on a global scale. At the same time I led a six sigma high performing team to create the new marketing process within my organization. My role has shifted again to eServices, Education Services, and I’ve been tightly aligned with our social media strategy, where I’m able to spread my knowledge [of web 2.0 technologies] across my organization.

What challenges have you faced because of your age?

Leading a team, where others have 7 – 25 years of experience can be difficult as a 23 year old in a Fortune 500 company, but the key is to not let that get to you. You need to show leadership and no matter what obstacles occur; you need to drive the project to completion. The challenges I’ve faced are related to credibility, experience and length of time spent at EMC. As one of the youngest members it can be difficult to sell your ideas and to showcase new ideas like social media to those who have continuously performed tasks in the same way through their lifecycle at the company.

Tell us about the businesses you’ve started.

I had my own website consulting business during college, where I helped companies take their ideas and materialize them into creative web pieces. I also [gained a] strong foundation in the core of marketing [through internships] at Reebok, Lycos, LoJack, TechTarget and smaller firms. I have done marketing plan consulting where I developed complete marketing communication plans that not only uncovered new opportunities but explained how to communicate it to the target audience. Currently, I consider the magazine that I publish my own business, as I gathered multiple authors globally together to collaborate through this medium, while raising money for charity and building a community around the topic of Personal Branding.

What can you share with us about Personal Branding Magazine?

You can subscribe to the magazine through the website at personalbrandingmag.com. There is a lot to look forward to in the next issue, which is due out in November. [Guy Kawasaki contributed an interview with Donald Trump for the first issue!] I say this because I’ve pooled around 40 authors together and now there will be columns targeted at specific ideas around personal branding. My goal with this magazine was to show others how valuable blog posts were and the content they write can be used in new and exciting ways.

What does personal branding mean to you?

I define Personal Branding as an individual’s total perceived value relative to competitors, as viewed by their audience. It’s composed of four main elements: 1) personality, 2) appearance, 3) competencies, and 4) differentiation. As a marketer, I feel that every individual needs to know how to use the principles of marketing and apply them to their own individual career. Personal Branding is the way by which I live, including how I dress, the words that come out of my mouth and my skill set. My philosophy is that it’s what you do that makes you who you are and how you project that to others that makes you memorable.

Can you give us a few of your favorite examples of strong personal branding?

I featured Donald Trump in the recent issue of my magazine because he is a world renowned brand. His brand gives off attributes like high quality and craftsmanship, which are built into his business as well. There are a lot of bloggers out there, such as yourself, that take a niche and have a slogan that really stand out. The idea here is to get noticed for your expertise in a specific field and then to be recognized by others by communicating that message. I think Oprah and Madonna have great brands as well, and the special part of Madonna’s is that she has evolved it over time to match the latest generation of people.

You recently wrote an AWESOME post on the “Beginner’s Toolkit” for establishing a great online brand. What are the most important steps in building a strong complimentary brand offline?

Your brand online and offline should be the same. There are tangible and intangible aspects to Personal Branding, but at the core is your overarching message that you want to convey to your audience. That message should be wrapped around the four elements of Personal Branding and be consistent across all media, both online and offline.Use your brand to network with other individuals who share your passion. Do for them first and then let them do for you later. Personal Branding is all about that mutual relationship or bond that you share through similar brand characteristics or tastes. Anyone can become a star if they have the drive and network to support them.

What’s in your personal press kit?

The Personal Branding Kit I created was my way of showing everyone that we are our own publicists. It captures most of what you see on DanSchawbel.com, but in a way that the media can consume and report on. You will see many quotes, the media I’ve created, my work experience, my speaking engagements and other information that will give you a firm understanding of my brand.

That’s a great idea, to package your resume as a marketing kit! I know you’ve been involved with the American Marketing Association (AMA) and several student organizations. What sorts of activities do you recommend to college students to increase the effectiveness of their personal branding and career building?

Life is about networking, so as you progress through your career you will always want that mentality. You need to keep meeting people and expanding your network, especially because you never know when you might need someone’s help. Getting involved in communities is not only good to connect with others, but it’s fun and can help you learn more about specific areas that you would not normally consider.

What can we look forward to seeing when you launch your new site DanSchawbel.com?

DanSchawbel.com is going to be a revolutionary site, which exposes all aspects of my brand in a format that I preach on a reoccurring basis. The special part of it is that it is written in such as way that it not only showcases my achievements, but serves as a training course on how to build your brand by using the site as an example. I think that most people will be shocked when they see it because I’ve done quite a lot in the past six months to build my brand. The idea is that as you build your brand, your site must adapt to that growth by growing at the same rate.

I want to thank Daniel so much for contributing time to answering my many questions and follow-up questions. He shares a very unique perspective, and serves as a great role model for young professionals everywhere! Here are a few of his great articles that elaborate on the necessity for personal branding:

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: An Interview with 23-Year-Old Personal Branding Expert Daniel Schawbel

What Generation Y Wants at Work

Cody McKibben — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:28:09 +0000

Now along come the 76 million members of Generation Y. For these new 20-something workers, the line between work and home doesn’t really exist. They just want to spend their time in meaningful and useful ways, no matter where they are.

—Penelope Trunk, in an article for TIME Magazine, “What Gen Y Really Wants”

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: What Generation Y Wants at Work

Book Review: Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

Cody McKibben — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 05:44:40 +0000

Anyone who’s crazy about business books knows Tom Peters, the management guru who foresees an Inescapable White Collar Revolution that will transform business in the next ten years! (And if you don’t, you should read him!)

Well, Tom is getting to be quite the old-timer. (Sorry, Tom.)

Penelope Trunk is his engaging, competent, young replacement. ‘Nuff said there. The Work Revolution Peters talks about is already transforming the office…and Penelope Trunk walks the walk. Penelope’s new book Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success picks up where Tom left off. The name not only describes Trunk’s bold approach to work, but it delivers on its promise to key readers in to the important ingredients in a recipe for delicious career success!

Big corporations hardly employ people long enough to stick around and climb the corporate ladder anymore. Instead, they hire strong individuals who lend their values and skills to the completion of the specific short-term goals at hand, and then move on to the next gig. Even when they’re called employees, these workers are really “consultants,” and Trunk says you better catch up because consulting will be the new norm. Businesses like and encourage consulting because it cuts salary costs; workers like it because it means more flexibility.

The fact is, job security is an artifact of another generation long past. In the workplace, generations X and Y must have a project focus rather than a job focus. There is no longer such thing as long-term loyalty to company brands–employees must have their own, personal brands (!) which they bring to the table for each project they work on.

This means you get to have more say in what you do. Younger people in the workforce are looking for work that they’re truly passionate about–not just a nine to five that will pay the bills. We want meaning, we want to learn marketable skills we can take with us to the next project, we want work-life balance, and we’re willing to trade a little purchasing power to have time at home to raise a family when the time comes! (Yes, even us guys want this!)

What does all of this mean? Penelope Trunk says it means the end of the stay-at-home parent, the end of the glass ceiling, the end of gender-based pay disparity. It makes office hierarchy irrelevant. Promotions are irrelevant. For young professionals wrestling with a boomer-dominated work world, Brazen Careerist is Trunk’s comprehensive manual for career success!

I recommend you read this primer early on, and keep it with you at ALL TIMES throughout your career as a quick-reference guide! Whatever you’re facing–resumes, interviews, the grad school question, starting your own business, your first management position–consult the index (Thank you, Penelope! That’s one thing too many biz books are missing!) and take her advice. Some of her most notable peices of wisdom:

Relish the Path from Starter Job to Dream Job. Starting out, most of us have no idea what we really want in life! Trunk says that young professionals’ primary task is to figure out who they are and what they want. As she describes, the trick is to spend equal parts time discovering your goals as attaining them, and it’s alright to explore. “The good news is that this is what most people are doing in their twenties: wandering. Taking trips to Thailand, changing jobs every year, volunteering for unpaid work while living at their parents’ house, and starting businesses that fail. All these options are, surprisingly, right on track for making a good decision about what to do with yourself in adult life,” she says.
Hunting for a Job Is Not a Task, It’s a Lifestyle. So get used to it. Research shows that Gen-X-ers and Y-ers will typically hold eight jobs before age 32! Career instability and holes in your work history are the new norm. And besides, you should always be on the lookout for what will make you happy–don’t settle if you’re in a job that’s a poor fit. “Concentrate your energy on finding the right manager as opposed to the right position. There is no reason to be limited by the job description–you can always pick up extra work that increases your experience and exposure. But a checked-out manager can limit you. So seek managers who will look out for you in the company and make sure you get on good projects … and develop new skills.”
First-Time Managers Do Not Need to Suck. When you find yourself in a position to lead, don’t make the mistake of focusing on tasks. Your job is to work with people–to coach them. They’ll make sure the tasks get taken care of, as long as you coach them right. “…Show the people you manage how to see themselves differently so that they are able to produce at a higher level than they ever imagined. For one person, this will mean you need to teach organization skills. For another person, you will help her discover what she loves to do and then set her up doing it for you. Each person wants something, and you need to find out what that is. Then help them get it.”
Authenticity Is the Buzzword of the New Millennium. Don’t be ashamed of your mistakes–be yourself. Many of the world’s most successful individuals have innumerable failures on their record, and like they say, if you wanna make a tasty office omelet you gotta break some eggs. The Harvard Business Review says that authenticity is what defines great leaders–so be real, be vulnerable, be sincerely passionate about your cause if you want others to give a damn. Trunk says to practice telling stories–”…If we get practice being our true self while telling a story, authenticity will come more naturally when talking about something more difficult.”
You Only Need $40,000 a Year to Be Happy. Research is showing more and more that there is a limit to how much happiness money can buy (gasp!). That means many of us are chasing the wrong incentives! “The first $40,000 makes a big difference in a person’s level of happiness. Happiness is dependent on being able to meet basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing. After meeting those needs you have to turn to something other than consumerism, because additional money has negligible impact on how happy you are. Your level of happiness is instead largely dependent on your outlook.”

Penelope offers direction on dealing with office politics and improving your likability (pages 88 & 90), some controversial (but excellent!) thoughts on how to use an incident of sexual harassment to boost your career (121 & 125), and advice on some alternate incentives to seek instead of a promotion (hint: training and valuable experiences, 166).

Trunk gives her readers insightful, unconventional tips on how to build great, fulfilling careers for themselves. She’s got plenty of attention-grabbing ideas, and she relates interesting stories about her diverse career experience (among other things, she’s worked in technology AND journalism, started three of her own companies AND taken international corporations public, gone through bankruptcy, and played professional volleyball!).

Bravo, Penelope! If you’re a young professional in your 20s or 30s, you NEED this first book from up-and-coming career rockstar Penelope Trunk! Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success comes out May 25, and you can pre-order it on Amazon. Penelope is also a columnist for Yahoo! Finance and the Boston Globe, and I’d highly recommend you become a regular reader of her Brazen Careerist blog.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Book Review: Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

An Interview with Alexandra Levit, Author of They Don’t Teach Corporate In College

Cody McKibben — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:00:42 +0000

Part three in Heroines of Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship series at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com: Alexandra Levit is the author of They Don’t Teach Corporate in College: A Twenty-Something’s Guide to the Business World, and a regular corporate and university speaker on Gen-Y employees. She is the founder and president of Inspiration@Work career consultancy and also serves as a VP at Edelman public relations agency. Here are a few questions with her:

Already in this series we’ve heard from Pam Slim, who specializes in helping people transition out of corporate life and into self-employment, but you actually encourage young people to stay and excel within the corporate world. Why?

I’m fond of saying that not everyone is cut out for the life of working for oneself. Not only is being an entrepreneur costly, nerve-wracking, and incredibly hard work, but because of the way our economy is structured, it’s simply impossible for everyone to be one. It reminds me of a psychology study my husband told me about recently, which showed that 75 percent of people believed they were above-average looking.

I bet the same thing is true of would-be entrepreneurs. A lot of people believe they have what it takes to run a successful business, but in reality, few probably do. When considering employment, young people should look at an array of options, including those that involve working in the business world.

At the end of the day, most people will end up employed in a more conventional work environment, so it may be wiser to develop the skills and the attitude that allow you to succeed and achieve your professional goals within the context of that setting. Maybe someday you will have the opportunity to “go entrepreneur,” but your happiness and success shouldn’t be contingent on it.

So tell us about your book They Don’t Teach Corporate in College. What makes you an expert on the challenges facing young employees in the workplace?

Well, you see, I graduated from college as a straight-A student hell-bent on skipping up New York City’s corporate ladder. But after six months on the job, I was so stressed out that I was ready to join the large numbers leaving the business world for graduate or law school. Eventually, though, by sticking around and paying attention to the few people around me who weren’t dropping from stress-induced coronaries, I developed many of the skills crucial to staying sane and building a career.

I wrote They Don’t Teach Corporate in College because I thought that if I shared my experiences with other twenty-somethings, maybe I would save them some of the pain I went through. The premise of the book is that the business world is not a natural fit for graduates who leave school expecting results from a logical combination of education and effort. Suddenly, the tenets of success they were taught since kindergarten don’t apply, because getting ahead in the business world has little to do with intelligence or exceeding a set of defined expectations.

If twenty-somethings want to survive in the corporate world, they have to treat their first jobs like first grade and learn the practical lessons that will help them climb the ladder painlessly. They Don’t Teach Corporate in College focuses on tangible tactics that twenty-somethings can put to work immediately to be successful and satisfied working in the business world.

You say that twenty-somethings experience lower morale and higher turnover in the workplace. What can young professionals do to avoid such challenges? And what can organizations do to improve their employees’ experience and productivity at work?

There’s no doubt that the business world can be frustrating at times, so I recommend that twenty-somethings combat poor morale by understanding their hot buttons (i.e. what pisses them off or stresses them out) and plan in advance how to react without getting angry or upset when those buttons are pushed.

They should also try to banish irrational expectations regarding what their organization or boss SHOULD do (i.e. my boss should give me a raise, the company should have a policy against this). Life does not always play out in a logical or fair way and twenty-somethings do themselves a grave disservice when they hold on to a fantasy of what work or people should be like. Finally, young professionals can motivate themselves by focusing on the big picture and acknowledging little but significant career successes along the way.

I tell managers of twenty-somethings that they should aim to understand each individual’s unique capabilities and go out of their way to develop mutually-beneficial relationships. The manager should position himself or herself as someone who is available to help twenty-something employees grow and improve, taking them to lunch to learn more about their career aspirations and the type of work that get them excited.

Twenty-somethings don’t want to be micromanaged, but they do like to receive timely and consistent feedback, and to have assignments customized in a way that helps them meet their individual performance goals. Managers shouldn’t be fooled by twenty-somethings’ assertiveness and independence – there’s a lot these young professionals don’t know and they’re looking to the more experienced managers to help them learn it!

Continue reading at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com: Heroines of Personal Finance and Entreprenuership #3: Alexandra Levit. Also pick up her book They Don’t Teach Corporate in College and check out her blog Water Cooler Wisdom.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: An Interview with Alexandra Levit, Author of They Don’t Teach Corporate In College

Interview: Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Cody McKibben — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 05:06:34 +0000

He won’t just teach you to be rich…he’ll also teach you the skills to get into college, get a great job, bargain for what you want, and so on. Ramit Sethi is one of my absolute favorite bloggers. He’s based out of Palo Alto, and is known for IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. But aside from being a personal finance guru, Ramit is a graduate of Stanford University, he’s founded several companies such as his latest, PBwiki, he has two books coming out in the next year, and he’s just an all-around nice Silicon Valley guy.

Now, part of my own personal mission is to start interviewing people who are doing what I want to do, or people who are experts in their fields–in business, finance, environment, technology… So, here is the first of what I hope to be many.

Ramit was kind enough to sit down with me (outside on a freezing Sacramento morning no less!) for a cup of coffee on a recent trip home to visit his family. I am so grateful for the time and thoughtful answers he gave me! We had such an amazing discussion, but here are the highlights.

Ramit, how would you say your essential self differs from your social self? In other words, if you could be living your dream, independent of how others might perceive you for it, what would that look like? Do you identify yourself more as the IWillTeachYouToBeRich teacher, or as something else?

Actually I think I’m lucky enough to be able to do whatever I want right now, and I’m doing it! Some of that involves trying to build a great company with some other guys, some of that involves writing a great blog that’s completely my own, and I can say whatever I want–no editorial control or anything. I don’t think there’s much of a difference between what people see on my site versus my personality. What my readers see me talking about day-in and day-out though is personal finance and entrepreneurship, and really there’s a lot of other stuff that I’m interested in–I don’t talk about college recruitment, and I don’t talk about my travel that I do on a personal basis. And if there’s one thing my friends would say about me that’s a little different from what’s on the site is that maybe I’m a little bit louder, a little bit more vulgar in real life, but pretty much what you see is what you get. The biggest compliment people give me is that they say, “When I read that I can actually hear your voice!”

It’s hard to put me in a bucket though–like, personal finance over here, wiki over there, college recruiting over here. That may be a little confounding, but my general goal here is to find what I’m really interested in, get really good at it, and then turn around and teach other people. That’s what happened with personal finance, that’s what happened with the musical instrument I play–the tabla… Teaching it absolutely helps me learn it better, because people challenge me all the time when I’m teaching things. That to me is pretty exciting, because I can read all the blog posts and all the books, but there’s nothing like having somebody with an individual question I don’t know challenge me, so I really appreciate that.

What sort of background do you come from and how did your childhood influence the person you’ve become?

We’re sitting here right now in Sacramento–we’re about a five minute walk from my house. I grew up very middle class here, my parents were very modest. They were immigrants from India, and what they taught me were things like “just ask”–ask for a discount, or ask to get published, just write it up and send it in to the newspaper! They taught me the scrappiness of “just ask–there’s nothing wrong with asking”, and not to fear failure. I manage most of my life through my email, and I have a folder in my inbox called “failures.” And for me, I say if I’m not getting 4 or 5 failures in there a month, then I’m not trying hard enough. When I was in high school it would be like applying for scholarships, in college it was applying for grants or projects, now it’s applying for jobs, etc. Learning from your failures is like: what did you do wrong? And what could you do better?

What was your experience like studying at Stanford University? How do you apply what you learned about psychology and technology to the business world?

I loved it! I had a great time there. I did my undergrad and graduate work there. I studied technology and psychology. It was about the people. The way I prioritized my work was: number one was my friends, two was my own business stuff, then third comes my academics. I don’t know if parents will like hearing this, but if it came down to me working on an essay that was due next week or going out with my friends, I would almost always choose going out with my friends. I don’t know if that’s for everyone, but it worked great for me, because I spent all this time meeting all these different people that are now all over the country that I can visit anytime, and they taught me more than any book could teach.

I studied a lot of bargaining and persuasion, and combined that with technology. In general I think it helps me understand things like, “Why are my friends saying this or acting like this?” In business, what are the levers that would motivate people? I’ll give you an example: Some people are really, really motivated by money, and that’s okay–they’re open about it. Other people are more motivated by ego, while some people–a lot of engineers, for example–are motivated by a challenge, like “How difficult is this problem? How big is the impact?” So, it’s like, you figure out those motivational things, and you work with the person to get what they really want. If someone came to me and they offered me a lot of money, it probably wouldn’t be the most motivational thing, because money is not as important as other things to me right now. So, it’s really important to understand people’s motivation and then turn around and apply it.

What would you say are the most valuable lessons you learned from your education that have helped you become successful since?

I learned that being smart is not the most important thing–I’m a big proponent of that. There are people who are way smarter than I am; probably most of my friends are way smarter than I am. And that’s good if you want to, for example, get into law school. But for my path, being book smart is not the most important thing by any means; it’s about, “How do you get things done? With really limited resources?” If I wanted to write an e-book or start a website, I’m not too technical, so I would need to persuade people to help me, and I would need to create this passion in them. Or how would I go around the bureaucracy of a university and get what I want? That was the most important stuff I learned. For me, what I value more than anything when I’m hiring somebody, it’s not your GPA–I don’t give a damn! It’s “Show me some examples of where you’ve gotten something done.”

What experiences outside of your education would you say have been essential? What skills are there that you think business-minded individuals need that aren’t taught in school?

Number one is taking initiative. In school it’s so easy to get by if you do the papers, take the tests, and get an A or an A- or whatever. You’re done, you’re satisfied. And to me, that’s like the bare minimum. I would rather get the B or a B- in a class, and have done something really cool outside of class. So taking initiative to really find what you’re interested in, talking to the right people… Like you emailed me and here we are meeting up! That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I do that all the time. I did that in college, I do it all the time with CEOs or anybody I think is interesting. Take them out to lunch, take them out to coffee. They teach you something, maybe introduce you to their friends. And that’s the way that I’ve been fortunate enough to really come further than I thought I would have been able to.

What motivated you to start blogging?

When I was a sophomore–this was around 2002 in college–I came up with this idea called IWillTeachYouToBeRich, and I came up with the framework for a one-hour class, which I still use. And I went around to my friends telling them, “Hey you guys have got to take this class! In one hour, I will teach you how to be rich!” People would be so excited but they would never show up. I was so frustrated, so finally I thought I’d just start a blog, and I’ll just write–I’m gonna make it funny, I’m gonna make it how I really talk in real life, and I’m not going to make it really pedantic and boring like the old white men at Wells Fargo and Fidelity. There’s really cool stuff to be taught here; there’s so many lessons! And I can learn as I teach. So I did that, and for the first six months there were very few comments–like maybe one or two comments per post. And I just kept writing because I liked it. After six months I had all this that I had written; I was like, “I’m on a roll.” People started commenting, and maybe about 8 or 12 months into it there was some sort of click and a lot of people started commenting. In the background I was also doing a lot of marketing to spread the word. I was covered in the Wall Street Journal and a lot of people started coming to the blog, and then it really started building into a community.

College students and recent college grads are my core audience, that’s who I go after. But what’s interesting is that I have all these people I had no idea about. I have a very large group of 30-40 year olds, and I have high schoolers, and I have people who write me that are senior VP at a Fortune 100 company and they’re reading my blog! And it just happened because the word spread.

How significant do you think blogs and podcasts are as a new medium of communication?

I think they give everybody the ability to write something interesting about what they do, or communicate something interesting. I always say, everybody has an X-man ability… everybody’s got at least one thing that they’re amazing at—-they’re an X-man! Somebody’s got the piano, somebody’s an entrepreneur, someone may be a Westinghouse Scholarship winner, whatever it is. Everyone’s got something. If everybody just put their one thing, or their passion, on a blog or a podcast… I’ll tell you IWillTeachYouToBeRich was probably the best business decision I ever made. Now I have a huge reach, and I feel very fortunate about that. Business opportunities have come my way that I never would have found. The ability to start a blog–which you can do in like ten seconds–is great. It’s letting the really passionate people come out and spread the word.

What was your first company and what was it like founding and running your own business for the first time?

First one was right out of high school, called Scholastic Advising, which still operates with the involvement of my parents. When I was in high school I got so frustrated because so many people would say, “Oh I’m not going to apply to Stanford, because even if I got in, I couldn’t afford it.” This is exactly the wrong way to think about it. The right way to think about it is “I’m going to apply everywhere. I’m going to do a great application, and if I get in, then I’ll think about the money.” And usually what happens is if you’re good enough to get in, then they’ll take care of you. I saw a lot of kids doing this and it made me sad. My parents were very middle class and there were four kids in the family. They told us, “You guys have got to get scholarships, otherwise you can’t go to college.” So we did! And there’s no secret, it’s the same things I talk about: take the initiative, be patient, learn from your mistakes, that sort of stuff. So Scholastic Advising was an advisory company, a consulting company. We helped high school students get scholarships and financial aid, and with admissions. That was what we worked on, and it’s still continuing through my parents.

You’ve done some consulting with Omidyar Network and Storm Ventures. What has that taught you? And what do you think of the whole “web 2.0” phenomenon?

Pierre Omidyar was the founder of eBay. He’s very wealthy now and he wants to give back to improve the world. I was brought on to do some social psychology consulting. I would evaluate deals and make suggestions–”I think this is good, I think you should invest this much…” Similar thing for Storm and I’ve also done some consulting for a capital firm called Gemini. Mostly they want to get in and learn about this web 2.0 stuff and what young people are doing these days.

I think one thing a lot of young people don’t realize is that they are experts at what young people are doing! If you use instant messenger, Facebook, Myspace…you are an expert, and older people have no idea what’s going on! And that is a marketable opportunity. So, I turned that around and I marketed it, and they hired me as a consultant to teach them about blogs, social networks, photos, music sharing, all that stuff. A lot of companies are stuck in the past and they’re just buying big billboards, and they don’t understand young people don’t care about that anymore. We care about personalized recommendations, we care about what our friends say, we see it on Myspace and blogs and YouTube. And these older folks are struggling to understand that, so I think there’s a humongous opportunity for young people, if they’re smart and they package it right, to say “Here’s the things you need to know, here’s what I’m getting on a daily basis, and here’s the things you should be doing.” Older companies are paying a lot of money to have market research firms come in and instruct them, and I always just say why not get together a group of 5 or 10 people and just talk to them?

You’re also a co-founder and VP of Marketing for PBwiki. Tell us about PBwiki and where you hope it might lead you in the next few years?

It’s a scrappy startup that I love! We all co-founded this, there’s three of us, three Stanford grads. PBwiki means it’s as easy to make a wiki as it is to make a peanut butter sandwich. And a wiki is an easy-to-use website that lets a lot of people edit it together. You may have heard of Wikipedia; that’s a good example of using a wiki as an encyclopedia. So if you have a group project you might say “Hey Mike, you put the information about Thomas Jefferson, I’ll put the information about Susan B. Anthony.” Or if you’re taking a vacation, “You do the airfare, I’ll do the hotels, and we’ll put it all together and see what everyone has done.” And of course businesses are using it, educators are using it in the classroom… If you go to PBwiki.com it takes about ten seconds to set one up, we host it and manage it, and it’s free for you! And if you want to have more features or more space then you can pay us a small subscription fee. So we’ve hosted over 140,000 wikis in about a year, and it’s growing very quickly. We got offices a few months ago, which is a big step for us. And we just hired somebody else on, and have taken some funding. The goal here is: wikis for the masses. Most people still don’t know what a wiki is, and we want to share that, because if you’ve ever sent emails back and forth a hundred times editing this and that, why not just put it on the wiki where everyone can see the changes and everyone can go back in time to see past revisions?

You’ve co-authored a book on college recruiting coming out — Recruit or Die, scheduled for release July 5, 2007! And the big news is that you just signed your second book–this one to go along with your personal finance blog! What will be in your forthcoming IWillTeachYouToBeRich book that is unique from the online resources?

IWillTeachYouToBeRich, the book, won’t be coming out for a while. In fact, I’m just starting to write it. But if you’ve read my blog, you know that I have a no-nonsense style. I’m not about platitude, I’m not about being bought by any corporate interests, I’m just about telling people the best things to do. And I offer some different ways of thinking about things: for example one thing that I encourage some people to do is buy a new car instead of a used car. And that’s different than a lot of personal finance people, and I explain why. If you like my reasoning or not, at least you understand it. IWillTeachYouToBeRich the book will have a combination of personal finance and entrepreneurship, and you’ll be able to pick it up and finish it and say “Man, I know what to do tomorrow, I know what to do next week, and I know what to do for the next 30 years.” You can never finish learning, and I’m not saying this should be your only book, because of course it shouldn’t. But in terms of getting your strategy together and getting started, in the one or two hours it takes you to read it you will know exactly what you need to do. That’s the difference–I am very tactical. I could give you a lot of generalities like “start early” and “diversify,” but that doesn’t mean anything if you think “Shit! What bank account should I get?” Or, “What do I do with this debt?” I’ll be saying: here’s the steps, here’s what you do, and here’s what to look out for.

You’ll be able to see excerpts of the book on my site. And it’s not going to be just a book. I’ll be letting my readers contribute to it and actually add some of those stories to the book, and I’ll be asking people to actually help me shape the way the book looks, give me links, tell me what you think should be in this book. So it’s going to be a pretty collaborative effort. And there will be some fun stuff that I won’t announce yet, but stay tuned.

In your opinion, who are 4 of the most authoritative experts (other than yourself, of course) in the personal finance field today?

One I really admire is Suze Orman. I’m actually a big fan of hers. Some people are not a big fan of her style, but I don’t mind someone’s style so much if they have good things to say. Every time I watch her show I learn something. What I like about her is that she encourages people to manage their own finances. One of my core tenets is that almost everyone can manage their finances without a financial advisor. And she teaches you that you don’t want to be paying fees to these financial companies–you want to learn a little bit, and do it on your own.

Another guy I really admire is Jonathan Clemens at the Wall Street Journal. He’s saying “Think long term.” And a lot of young people are very stupid–they’ll say things like “I bought this stock and I sold it for a 20% profit.” And they don’t realize that–no they didn’t–they had to pay a huge amount in taxes on that, and they didn’t realize their gains as much as they could have, because if they just held it and read the research, long-term investing beats short-term almost every day of the week. He focuses on getting started, putting your money away and diversifying. It isn’t sexy, but there’s a difference between being sexy and being rich.

JLP at AllFinancialMatters is great. And J.D. Roth, who just started up a new blog called Get Rich Slowly, has just been around for a few months and he’s doing very well–he’s got great readership and great articles and it’s not a surprise. I think these guys are doing a phenomenal job. I think it’s interesting you have these experts like Suze Orman, but then you have just these regular guys doing everyday blogging, day-in and day-out.

To top this all off, do you have one financial tip you think everyone should know?

I don’t do that. It’s pretty sensationalistic to say I have one tip. IWillTeachYouToBeRich is a sensationalistic enough title! If you go to the site, you’ll be surprised because it’s not about any secrets. There are no secrets, but I’ll tell you a few things that I think work. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room, you just have to get started early. And what I mean by that is you have to understand your financial accounts. You have to look at how much you are spending–most people don’t even do that!–and I will teach you to do that. And then you say “Alright I have one credit card; I need a few other sources of credit and I need to use them effectively.” And then you can get a free E*trade account and you can start trading a little bit and investing in index funds, which are a pretty good bet. And don’t be stupid! A lot of people just watch MSNBC and read CNN Money, which are some of the most hyped-up, unbelievable things, and they buy stocks that they read about in Smart Money. Big mistake! Because those magazines and those TV shows have to sell something. And I’m not out to sell anything, it’s just about picking something that you know and you love, and you use. Finally you need to learn to track these things, whether you use a pen and paper, or Excel. Tracking exactly what you’re making and what you’re spending is a way that you can get rich over a long period of time.

I have a very boring investment strategy: evaluate my diversification strategy, understand that I can take a lot of risk because I’m young, buy stocks or index funds and let it ride. If I think there’s a good value, buy some more. I’ve hardly ever sold. That’s not sexy, but at the end of the day the question is: do you want to be sexy or do you want to be rich? My basic message here is you don’t have to be the smartest person in the world, you just have to get started. And taking that first step will put you above 99% of other people your age. If you do start early and you are sensible, I think long-term you will be rich. That’s it, it’s as simple as that.

Well, again I want to thank Ramit Sethi so much for taking the time to meet with me and discuss his successes and experiences. If you’d like to learn more about Ramit and what he does, check out his blog IWillTeachYouToBeRich, his company PBwiki, and his upcoming book Recruit or Die. Students who’d like to learn more about personal finance can start with this article on Thrilling Heroics, Six Simple Money Tips to Get You Back on the Financial Track.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Interview: Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich