I know there are several of you who will one day seek funding for your own big business venture, so I thought it would be of great value to get some of his expert knowledge about the early-stage and legal aspects of forming a business here (hopefully with more to come soon). Everything that follows is from Patrick–

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Long gone are the days of pitching investors with hot new ideas and having money thrown at you. Entrepreneurs are now much more likely to dive into their own pockets and battle hard to start up and stay alive. But if you don’t have the cash and need money to pay for the development of, for instance, costly new software and a complex website, what do you do?

Luckily, there are still options for funding, but finding and securing the cash will take time, research, good negotiating skills, and, above all, a strong commitment to your new business.

There is no easy, one-size-fits-all formula, but I have developed a short checklist that I use when meeting digital nomads and entrepreneurs.  It has taken me years to put together, but it seems to work every time.  It is designed to spark ideas and inspire confidence.  Some of the items may seem obvious and some obscure, but if you start at the beginning and work your way through, you will stumble upon something that can make all the difference.

1. Do you need as much as you think?

This seems obvious but you can build a small business without a huge amount of funding these days.  Sometimes entrepreneurs think they need more money than they actually do.  You can structure the development of a business so that you start small and build it up with the income your business earns.  This is a good way of ensuring you don’t waste money and develop strong foundations before you invest more money.

Angel Investor Howard Greenstein, a Social Media Strategist and President of the Harbrooke Group, remarked in a recent interview:

“Build something (anything), put it in the hands of customers and get some traction before raising money. Any hardware/software/whatever startup can do this thanks to lean startup and customer development techniques and the decreasing costs of doing everything.”

One of my clients was starting up his own brokerage firm.  He wanted to spend money on an expensive office, logos and branding, PR and sophisticated IT system when all he needed was a website, an online trading account, an internet connection, a laptop and his client’s confidence.  His overheads were so low that he had more money and time to invest in getting clients and the long-term development of the business.  His business has become a huge success.

2. Borrow from people, not banks, credit cards or yourself

Don’t cash in your investments or pension, don’t use credit cards and avoid banks at all costs.

Even a very well run startup involves risk.  You always hear success stories about entrepreneurs who max out credit cards, take out second mortgages and borrow from their retirement funds and then go on to become millionaires. The truth is that a lot of people who take great risks lose everything. You can start with a simple loan.

Try the obvious and easiest options first—approach family and friends with an investment opportunity

This doesn’t mean asking mom and dad.  This means tapping into personal ties to raise cash for a business that’s either too new or too small to get financing elsewhere.

Your personal network is a lot wider than you think.  A few emails and calls, using Facebook and LinkedIn can elicit a startling amount of interest.  A few tips on how to do this based on clients’ experience:

• Approach the issue with calm confidence, don’t appear desperate. You have to inspire confidence in your business’s biggest asset—you.
• Offer an investment opportunity, don’t ask for a loan.
• You should still follow professional standards in structuring and documenting loans or equity arrangements. Get a good affordable lawyer who specializes in working for entrepreneurs to do this for you quickly and cheaply.
• Give investors letters acknowledging their investments.
• Pay out attractive interest—say, 1% a month on a $10,000 investment. In setting an interest rate, consider how much money you are saving by borrowing from friends rather than a financial institution.
• Include a clause that allows investors to get their money back at any time. All they have to do is let you know and you will pay them instantly.

Try P2P Lending

Try the following P2P (Peer-to-Peer) online lending communities that are mostly made up of open-minded entrepreneurs.

• Zopa (UK only): where you can borrow between £1 and £15,000 from people.
• Prosper: USA’s largest peer-to-peer lending marketplace.
• The Lending Club:  offers some of the most competitive rates.
• First Funding: allows you to choose a lender from an online community of business angels.

Tips on getting a line of credit for your start-up ASAP:

• Get a good accountant to help you tell your story in numbers.
• Avoid conducting meetings with lenders at their offices. Try somewhere neutral.
• Do a team presentation, involving people you know  who will excel at them.
• Maintain, or clean up, your credit rating.
• Offer some collateral.
• Cut or eliminate your salary (i.e., don’t look for a loan to pay yourself).

3. Apply to Angel Investors, Mentorship and Seed Capital Programs

Angel Investors

Angel investors will want to have a lot of input into the way your business is run but they will share their money and knowledge. Think about this carefully; it is not free money.  If you raise money, it’s difficult  or impossible to take a small exit from your business, or run it as a cash business. This can be a godsend for many entrepreneurs, but I don’t often recommend this to mobile entrepreneurs because their lifestyles aren’t negotiable and can often rub Angel Investors the wrong way.

To find an Angel Investor, try:

• Angel List or
• Record yourself and upload your pitch to the investment community on My Pitch. Be precise, professional, use reliable accounting to tell the story as much as possible and focus on the figures.

Mentorship and Seed Capital programs

These typically include teaching, coaching, seed capital and introductions to investors.  So, if you’re a first-time entrepreneur and have little experience, money or contacts, these programs offer a good opportunity.  My top picks include:

Y Combinator: The Rolls Royce of mentorship programs.  They pay your expenses while you’re getting started and make small investments (rarely more than $20,000) in return for small stakes in your company (usually 2-10%). Entrepreneurs must move to the Silicon Valley area to participate in a three month program. These guys have funded over 200 startups, including Loopt, Reddit, Wufoo, Scribd, Disqus, Dropbox, Justin.tv and Posterous.

TechStars: TechStars is a similar three-month program offered once per year in four different cities: Boulder, Boston, New York and Seattle.  Startups receive up to $18,000 in seed funding for a 6% equity stake, intensive mentorship and the chance to pitch to investors at the end of the program.

Other Programs.  Below are some of the other good mentorship programs:

• Founder Institute – all over the US, Singapore, Paris, Brussels and Berlin.
• Capital Factory – Austin, TX
• LaunchBox Digital – Durham, NC
• SeedCamp – London (and mini-events throughout Europe)
• Launchpad LA – Los Angeles, CA
• DreamIt Ventures – Philadelphia, PA

4. Look into Government and Microfinance Programs

• Contact the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency that awards millions of dollars annually through its Advanced Technology Program.
• Kiva, the Opportunity Fund and Grameen Bank now support US businesses and have always lent money to entrepreneurs around the world.
• In addition, last year’s economic stimulus bill granted $54 million to the Small Business Administration for lending and technical assistance to microlenders.

5. Ask your lawyer, accountant and clients

If you don’t have any personal investor connections, ask your lawyer, accountant or one of your actual or potential clients if they do. If you don’t have a lawyer or accountant or client, contact me and I will see if I can put you in touch with someone.

6. Look for a business partner

Rather than borrowing, perhaps you can get a partner who can inject some cash, new ideas and contacts into the business.  You may not have much money, but if it is your idea and hard work driving the business forward they might be happy to stump up the cash.

7. Last, but certainly not least—learn to be a schmoozer

If you’re looking for seed capital, but don’t know any investors, you need to learn how to schmooze and build relationships.

Learning to schmooze means getting out there and starting to meet the right people, and knowing how to get their trust and attention.  It is not going to be easy but this is not necessarily a bad thing. One of the reasons so many companies went bust during the dot com bubble was that financing was too easy to get. Getting seed capital is a good testing ground for your business idea.

The goal is to get introductions to investors, i.e. an introductory phone call or email from a middleman whom the investor trusts and respects.

It takes time and patience to build relationships and trust, this does not happen over night, so don’t get impatient.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, met with about 60 private investors over a six-month period in early 1995:

“I talked to all the people I knew who I thought could afford to invest $50,000 …. Ultimately that $1 million was raised, $50,000 at a time.”

A year later, venture capitalists began to line up outside Bezos’ door.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Raise Seed Capital When You Don’t Know Any Investors

Songkran water festival with Gary Arndt & the blogger gang

This week I finally want to share a fantastic interview I did with Gary Arndt from Everything Everywhere. You may be wondering where I disappeared to, I’ve been meaning to get this interview up for about a month, but unfortunately personal life took the driver’s seat for the last few weeks.

But today I’m excited to finally share this with you. I met Gary while he was in Bangkok, Thailand, for a couple months earlier this year. Coming from Wisconsin and Minnesota, Gary made his first trip around the globe when he sold his internet consulting company in 1999. Then he made it his mission to travel the world on a more permanent basis and left the States in March 2007. He’s been nomadic ever since and has visited over 70 countries in the last three years, traveling solo.

His blog has been recognized as one of TIME’s Top Blogs of 2010, and his work has recently been featured on Huffington Post. Gary and I got into some great conversation. Here are some of the highlights:

• 0:30 – Gary’s experience traveling to 70+ countries in 3 years
• 1:24 – Little-known secret destinations in the Pacific: Micronesia and more
• 3:33 – What it’s like to be a full-time solo world traveler
• 4:42 – The trap of over-thinking your trip before you go & how travel forces you to grow
• 5:50 – The vacation mindset versus the nomadic, permanent traveler mindset
• 6:30 – How Gary went from his parents’ basement to founding a successful tech company
• 8:50 – How he sold his company and leveraged it to take his first round-the-world trip
• 10:28 – More about Gary’s top travel blog Everything Everywhere and how he went from less than 100 visitors a day to one of the web’s top travel blogs
• 14:22 – Networking in the travel industry and how to get other people to pay for your travels!
• 17:50 – How Gary abandoned SEO practices and made it into TIME’s Best Blogs 2010
• 20:05 – Lessons he learned from 3 years of traveling the world (feature on Huffington Post)
• 21:40 – How the news makes people fear the “outside” world, and how the world is actually a pretty safe place
• 24:13 – Why Gary got kicked out of the island nation of Kiribati and changed their visa laws!
• 26:00 – About his new book deal (and how to use a blog as a marketing platform for publishing your own book)
• 27:28 – Gary’s beef with the lifestyle design niche and bloggers who don’t walk the walk (the importance of experience and credibility)

[Apologies for the rough video quality: it's late night for Gary so he looks like a ghost illuminated by his screen, and it's a bit choppy at one or two spots because I'm recording from a beach on Koh Phangan!]

Gary will be in Las Vegas next week, speaking at Blog World Expo at Mandalay Bay Convention Center on October 15th. Make sure to connect with him on Twitter to track him down wherever his world travels take him! He’s also instrumental in the This Week in Travel podcast.

If you liked learning about Gary and his Permanent Travel Adventures, click here to discover Case Studies of several more Successful “Digital Nomads”→

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 70 Countries in 3 Years: An Interview with Permanent World Traveler Gary Arndt

Cody, Brooke Ferguson & Craig Gonzales in Krabi, Thailand

But It Makes Us Seem Cool!

Having friends throughout the world makes me feel pretty cool. I remember having a coffee conversation with a group of friends in Memphis, Tennessee a few years back. We were on our way to the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago and got tired of the drive, so we stopped for some drinks with a friend. While chatting, our host dropped the “My friend in Georgia…” line. The young, arrogant boaster in me had to say, “oh yeah? I’ve been to Georgia…”

“Uhm… I meant the country,” she said while rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, me too. I spent time in Tbilisi after visiting my Peace Corps volunteer friends in Moldova and Azerbaijan,” I proudly remarked.

Shit like that is cool: To know what she is talking about, and to know that she thinks she is the only one who knows what she’s talking about.

There is a very real pride in knowing people around the world. The exoticness rubs off. It is like being attracted to the Brazilian exchange student or the British au pair. We are cool by association. Being from Texas is not cool if everyone around us is also from Texas, so we glean the coolness from our association with the Spanish, Qatari, or Thai friends that we have.

In addition to feeling cool, worldwide friends make our personal and professional lives more fulfilling. We can operate business remotely, we can rely on a warm bed and a tasty meal, and we can gain powerful insight into local business markets.

My young arrogance was not simply to seem cool to other people, though that was part of it, rather it was to make me more professionally capable and more culturally aware. But developing friendships takes time and energy. Networking is hard work, and if you know too many people, you run the risk of spreading yourself too thin.

The only surefire way to do this is to spend extensive time internationally. Spending several months in a new destination seems a requirement for this sort of true international experience. Sure, on my last trip to Darjeeling I met a lovely Tibetan lady in my hostel, but she is not really part of my network. She is someone I sometimes “like” on Facebook.

Superficial, one-off relationships are not what I am talking about.

But I Chat With People All Over!

We have conversations on the web: chat through MSN and Facebook, comment and communicate on Twitter and on blogs, and expose our language skills to those in language exchange programs. That is nice, but it is not what I am talking about.

Online friends share ideas. Good ideas—intelligent and helpful ideas. Relationships you maintain with other people online can be good, but they’re different from relationships with in-person friends, true friends.

Online friends are like study buddies or colleagues that enjoy each others’ company. The communication is intellectual, idealistic, or sophomoric. However it works, it’s narrow and important.

In-person friends do share these intellectually stimulating conversations, but they also share experiences. Money blogs and relationship blogs have individuals bearing their souls, so I am not saying web friends cannot be intimate, but true in-person friends grow together. They watch football together, go tubing together, eat breakfast together, and go through relationships together. They grow through time with each other in a beautiful way. This is something online friends cannot have, really, and it is something that some perpetual travelers and lifestyle designers may not realize we miss.

We spend time building a network, responding to blogs, and chatting on Twitter. But this is only a band-aid used to fill a very real void. Our “friendship void” makes us reach out however we can. In some cases, it is to people on the web. This is a very real experience and a very real problem.

Meeting online friends in real life (Cody, Carlos Miceli, Colin Wright, Ross Hill)

[Craig's] Personal Experience

The words ‘I’ and ‘me’ get thrown around far too often in blogs, but with that said, if I want to play the game, I should at least read the rulebook. I formalized my opinion based on the following experiences:

• While I was in high school. I had a core group of high school friends. I was part nerd, part bully, part social magnet, and part crescent fresh dude. I made many friends in high school. Most of my friends went to the same colleges, universities, military, or jobs after school. They all knew each other. I went to a school where I knew nobody. I left my friends behind for the great unknown.
• I went to university and had to make new friends. I stayed in contact with my high school friends, but they kept their relationships going. Throughout the four years of college, as I built new relationships and developed strong social skills and bonds with beautiful friends, my old friends grew closer. What I left after four years, they continued for eight.
• Upon graduation, I decided to go to graduate school. I didn’t know anyone in this new city. Most of my friends stayed in either Austin or Houston, Texas. They hung out all the time. They loved each other. I still talked to them. And sometimes I went to visit them. But throughout my entire time in graduate school, my high school friends kept their lives together, my college friends kept their lives together, and I made a brand new base of friends. In graduate school, most of my friends were undergrads. (I was still in that mindset.) In grad school, I realized that I needed some life experience, so once again, I moved away, and once again, I was the only person I knew making the decision I was making. I moved to Ghana.
• In Ghana, I made new friends. Wonderful expat and local friends. My high school friends now had almost 10 years together, my uni friends had six, and my grad school friends had already been building more than two years. I had these three groups of friends to keep up with, and surprisingly, while some came and went, there was always a core group, my core 3-6 friends, that always were together. They’d vacation together, they’d movie together, they’d have mid-week cookouts together. They grew up together. They knew each other so well. Their lives were beautiful. And I kept having to etch a new social life out of my experience. I had wanderlust.
• This experience happened to me three more times. Once, after Ghana, I took a job in a new city. I knew so few people, and had to make new friends. Then, after working for one year, I moved to Thailand. I was the only person I knew in Thailand, so I again had to make new friends. Then, after one-and-a-half years in Thailand, I moved to Singapore, where I had to start the whole process again. As you can see, this is a cycle that gets exhausting, because while I have known my new friends here in Singapore for three months, my old core groups (what is it now, five core groups of friends?) have become so close that they are experts on each other. They have spent so many hours together that they can finish each others sentences.

But Is It Worth It?

You have to decide that for yourself. Personally, I am pleased with my decision.

But I didn’t know the full consequences, mainly because I didn’t take the time to rationalize the cause-and-effect of this sort of lifestyle. I know more people than some of my friends; I know a more diverse group of people, and I have a wider perspective and more things to talk about. I love it. I love it so much. I would never trade it.

But I recognize what I have lost, and what I will not have with those I care about. For many people, family and friends are everything. Not just having them or chatting with them, but being with them. Daily, weekly, or monthly.

To have a work/life/relationship balance, you need to think of more than just money and freedom. You need to think about others. A lot of the location-independent bloggers have a positive, no-holds-barred approach to living life by one’s own means. I support that 100%. But our decisions affect not only ourselves but also our family and friends. And it is essential that we recognize and are comfortable with that transition—with that life.

For me, it is worth it. For you, I do not know.

But know that there are pros and cons to everything; there is nothing wrong with having a traditional home base and taking many mini-retirements. There is nothing wrong with taking your winter trip to Vail and your summer trip to Cancun. There is something wrong, however, with wishing you could live a different life but doing nothing to get that life.

Conclusion

Living a perpetual travel lifestyle or a location independent lifestyle has consequences. For many, the consequences are too dire to live with. That is fine. For others, those consequences are small when compared to the exciting life we live. As Socrates said, a truly wise man knows what he does not know. Consequently, a truly wise nomad knows all that he gives up in order to live this life, and is validated by his decision.

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Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Nomadic, Permanent Travel Lifestyle and the “Friendship Void”

Mount Bromo, Indonesia

How to Be a Serial Couchsurfer

I was in South America in 2008 when I first heard about this genius idea of making a connection through a website called Couchsurfing.com and sleeping on a random couch for free.  It’s pretty simple, make a profile, search for a place to stay, contact that person with a message, and finally stay with that person.  I excitedly joined the website but my endeavor was faded for almost 4 months as I got discouraged by lack of replies and a rapid traveling schedule that made it next to impossible to make online contacts.

When I arrived in South East Asia in March of 2009, I was determined to give Couchsurfing another shot with a full intent of making it truly happen this time.  About 30 minutes of couch searching and I had politely contacted 3 or 4 decent looking profiles to find a place to crash.  I was encouraged when I received a number of replies, and soon I found myself hanging out with unbelief at an awesome condo in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, overlooking the Petronas Towers.  With a flexible attitude and a friendly nature, my host graciously allowed me to stay for a few weeks before flying to Indonesia.

Indonesia is where I truly became excited about Couchsurfing and realized the unparalleled opportunities and benefits that can result.  In Jogjakarta, Indonesia, I was greeted by a crew of local Couchsurfers eager to meet and show me around.  For a week straight I lived with a local family, was passenger on the back of a motorcycle zipping from place to place, ate delicacies that few have dared to eat, caught fish from the pond for dinner, saw ancient, unheard of temples, trekked through an abandoned cave in the middle of nowhere, and checked out a swarm of other “unknown” attractions.  These new friends were equally excited to practice their English and ask me questions about the world outside of Indonesia and what I thought of their country.  I was happy to speak with them, answer their questions, and simply tag along to see their daily lives.

An ancient temple in Indonesia

My Couchsurfing spree continued for nearly six months, staying in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand.  At each location I was not only blessed with a free and secure place to sleep, but also priceless local and cultural experiences.  I was treated to favorite local hole-in-the-wall eateries and directed to impossible-to-find locations.  In the Philippines I Couchsurfed in an area of Manila known as Novaliches, far away from any popular tourist attraction, but submersed in the real Manila.  I could go to Filipino markets, watch cockfights in the neighborhood streets, take free cooking lessons from local mothers, and talk to interesting strangers.

A volcano in the Philippines

Tips to Be a Serial Couchsurfer:

1. Don’t be afraid to make contacts: The bottom line is that nothing will happen if you don’t jump at the chance to contact other Couchsurfers, so take the first step!
2. Give the host a good 2 weeks notice or so: Not only are you more likely to get a granted request, it’s courteous for everyone.
3. Try to contact locals: Staying with or meeting locals is truly an enriching way to travel, and the best way to find those off-the-beaten-trail things to do!
4. Be friendly: This is simple but important, if you are friendly and get along well with anyone, you just might be invited to stay with someone for a more extended period of time.
5. Be accommodating and flexible: Remember that you are the guest, be grateful for an awesome place to stay no matter what the condition.
6. Work around your host’s personality: If your host wants to hang out as much as possible, that’s great, if your host lives a pretty independent life and wants you too as well, that’s okay too.
7. Show respect to everything: A lot of Indonesians don’t drink. In cases like this, try to adapt to your host and live like they do.
8. Have a backup plan: Before you travel, quickly research a guest house or hostel in case you have a problem contacting your host and absolutely need a place to sleep.

What started as a way to save money, led me towards amazing contacts, friendships, cultural learning experiences, prized restaurants, and local establishments that I never would have known existed.  These meaningful relationships and rewarding Couchsurfing times have far outweighed the free accommodation.  Though I broke my spree, Couchsurfing is still the first place I look when traveling to a new country looking for an amusing adventure!

See if Couchsurfing works out for you, you just might be the next serial couchsurfer!

Mark Wiens is a world wanderer, a durian smuggler, a culture crosser, a spicy food connoisseur, and a buffet finisher. On his blog, Migrationology, he serves spontaneous observations from an unplanned migration of adventurous world travel revolving around food and unique opportunities!  You can also follow him on Twitter at @migrationology or Facebook.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Have Free Accommodation and Friends Around the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vault.com is about helping people research companies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a new social network/instant messaging mashup that’s being referred to as a micro-blogging tool. It allows users to send text updates (called “tweets”) to all their friends—from twitter.com, instant message (via AIM or MSN Messenger, for example), or even from a mobile phone. It’s like posting an instant blog post, but you’re forced to craft your message with a 140-character limit.

The site asks members “What are you doing?” Answers range from the mundane (“eating a burrito”) to the interesting, hilarious, and even useful (well, okay, once in a while). While some use the service merely to updates friends on their whereabouts and activities, many people are using it to promote their blogs, share valuable links, and otherwise brand themselves and their businesses online.

Below: The default Twitter profile page.

(Click image for larger view.)

Most web nerds like myself are saying Twitter will be big (like, Facebook big) over the next few years, but right now it’s still at the early adopter stage, which means it’s dominated by bloggers, web designers, and technologists. For many Twitterfolk, it has become a primary channel of communication over the last year (*read: easier to reach them via Twitter than via email). I’ve been able to get the attention of a few power users in the “Twitterverse” over the last few months, including great folks like Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, and Chris Brogan, and I’ve even had some pretty decent exchanges with them! If you’re in the technology or internet industry and you’re not using Twitter yet, it is a MUST. What are you still reading this for? Run! Go! Right now!

What About Twitter for Business?

For the rest of us, the question is how does one effectively leverage Twitter for business or personal branding? If used properly, it can easily bring more readers into your camp. I’ve already built a pretty decent sized following myself (follow me here), using the service mostly to share helpful tips and links I find across the web and to promote my own writing. One cool function is that you can easily plug your “tweets” in to the sidebar on your own blog or into other social networks and share your updates with friends that aren’t already on Twitter. (See Twitter badges and WordPress plugins.)

Below: My Twitter replies from other users. Yes, you can
add your own crazy backgrounds too!

(Click image for larger view.)

The BBC and CNN are using it to broadcast breaking news. Companies like Whole Foods, Zappos, Dell, Cisco, Comcast, and more are using it to send updates to their customers. If you provide value, you’ll make fast friends. Aside from sharing my links and blog posts, I also use Twitter to search for people with questions about blogging and answer my clients’ questions about WordPress. If you use it wisely, Twitter can give you a platform to show off your expertise, cultivate a reputation as an authority in your field, and build a loyal following.

Here are 5 tips to go from Twitter Newbie to Twitter Ninja:

1. There are several third-party Twitter clients that will run on your desktop much like your instant messenger does, so you don’t have to be logged in at twitter.com, and they give you quick navigation and search tools at your fingertips. First of all, I would recommend that you lookup Twitter clients and find one that suits you. I use Twhirl (see image at right), which makes my experience much more like a chat client that I can easily turn on and off when I want to.
2. Learn how to us the @replies to send messages to other users, and learn how to use a URL-shortening service such as TinyURL or SnipUrl to condense long hyperlinks so you can fit them within your 140-character tweets. (Twhirl and most other Twitter clients have URL-shortening services built-in.)
3. If you’re a blogger or a social media freak like me, hook up your blog’s RSS feed and feeds from your bookmarking services (del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Google Reader…) to auto-publish to your Twitter account with Twitterfeed.com.
4. Subscribe to keywords if you want to monitor the larger discussion about certain topics across the whole Twitter network. This is how I find a lot of users asking about WordPress, and I just try to answer people’s questions when I can. I’ve made a lot of new friends this way and have even scored last-minute freelance gigs by answering strangers’ questions with helpful advice. (Watch Ed Dale’s awesome tutorial video “Become a Twitter Master with Twhirl” for more about @replies and subscribing to keywords within the Twhirl client!)
5. Once you’re used to how the rules work, check out Lee Odden’s list of Five New Twitter Tools You Should Know to help you find more new people to connect with on Twitter and expand your network.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter and send an @codymckibb to ask your WordPress and blogging-related questions!

Helpful Twitter Articles from Others:

• Why Twitter?
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners
• 9 Ways Twitter Made Guy Kawasaki’s Website Better
• Three Ways to Maximize Your Twitter Time for Networking, Marketing and Fun

photo credit: somefool (MatthewM)

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Tweet and Grow Rich: 5 Tips to Rock Your Business With Twitter

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!

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

Branding and Credibility

For newcomers, I like to describe blogs simply as a great tool for personal branding or client relations. You can try to define a blog as a “personal publishing platform,” but that description can still be very limiting. Blogs powered by open-source software like WordPress can be built for virtually any application—an online magazine, a technical journal, e-commerce site, an online CRM client, or even a full-blown social network—and blog designs and functionality can easily be manipulated to do almost anything the user could want it to do.

For me, since I began a professional blog less than three years ago, it has opened the door to many opportunities for me. I’ve made friends with readers and other bloggers from around the globe, I’ve met entrepreneurs from across California, I’ve been asked to write for various publications, I’ve had conversations with some of Silicon Valley’s big movers and shakers, and as a freelance web worker, I’ve landed clients in Texas, Canada, and even France because of my visibility through my blogs.

Skellie of Skelliewag.org is another web freelancer, and a very well-known blogger across the web. At her new site Anywired, she shares some tips for how to Earn More Income Online By Leveraging A Blog:

Whether you’re advertising freelance services, starting a website to sell a product or becoming a virtual assistant, you won’t find work if nobody is paying attention to you.

If you can start to think of an active blog as a source of attention you can leverage, it becomes apparent that even a moderately successful blog is an incredible resource for anyone working to earn an income online.

One other great tip she shares:

Your blog is a portable asset. It adds value to your business anywhere in the world (and allows you to avoid “I’m big in Japan” syndrome when you try to find work internationally.)

[via: Anywired]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Why You Should Start A Business Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lasting Relationships ebook at LifeBeyondCode.com

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