Over at Digital Nomad Academy today we’re putting out another great piece of free content, a report full of Digital Nomad Case Studies—experienced, successful people from all different backgrounds, some single, some with partners, some with families, all running different kinds of mobile businesses in different parts of the world. (Note: if you want to be sure to get this free report and you’re not already on the DNA email list, then just tell me where you want me to send this in the form halfway down this page and I’ll send it out today.)

I’ve been running a location-independent online business for nearly 4 years now, and I’ve been asked time and time again why I don’t have a product or a coaching program of my own yet about the digital nomad lifestyle I live.

For ages, I thought I didn’t have time, or that I was too busy with my own client projects.

But a few friends and I got together and finally started to bring things together, and they kicked my ass into motivation mode. One day I asked you if you’d be interested in learning how to become a digital nomad. And lo and behold, between email messages, blog comments, survey responses, and more, I’ve received hundreds and hundreds of enthusiastic responses from around the world!

I just didn’t anticipate a response like this. This is the biggest idea I’ve ever put out there, and it’s had the biggest reception! Your surge of support was encouraging and exciting and unreal and inspiring and overwhelming and humbling and scary.

And for the first time in a very long time, I got really excited about something new.

Readers sent in 220+ detailed, lengthy, thoughtful, amazing responses. In your survey responses, you told me what you wanted in a Digital Nomad training program.

You said you want one-on-one coaching. You want an incredibly selective application process. You want case studies of those who’ve been successful. You want direct access to them. You said you want supervision, and marketing advice, and troubleshooting guides, a yearly conference, and so many more great and helpful things.

In addition to the exclusive business course we’re building, we also promised to share a bunch of cool free resources, and dozens and dozens of people wanted Digital Nomad Case Studies. So today, if you are on our DNA list, you can get a free report with profiles of several top digital nomads:

Cody McKibben from Thrilling Heroics

I’ve traveled to 25 countries, including all of North America, France, the UK, Spain, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, and more. I’ve been running my web development and online marketing company remotely from Southeast Asia for over two years now. You know me. Let’s move on…

Brooke Ferguson from Business Backpacker

Brooke was running her own business consulting company in Northern California when she decided to move her clients online and work remotely. She continues to coach clients one-on-one to turn their businesses into something that support their ideal lifestyle. All while blogging, rock climbing on the weekends, and earning her Divemaster certification. Brooke will serve as DNA’s curriculum director, and brings to it her comprehensive, all-inclusive self-mastery and business building system which she developed over the course of four years working with clients one-on-one.

Dan Andrews from Lifestyle Business Podcast

Dan and his partners have a series of niche manufacturing businesses with offices in San Diego and the Philippines, and has become a leading authority on outsourcing. He is based in Manila, and has spent significant time in Boracay, Dumaguete, Manila, Cebu, and Puerto Galera, Philippines, as well as Thailand and Bali. Meanwhile he co-hosts the #1 podcast for lifestyle designers and lifestyle entrepreneurs, The Lifestyle Business Podcast, and sponsors the Tropical MBA internship program.

Corbett Barr from CorbettBarr.com

Corbett started a major Silicon Valley tech company, raised $3 million in venture capital, had employees and the whole bit, when he and his wife decided to take a six-month sabbatical to Mexico. Now he has built his own small business around ThinkTraffic.net and his personal site, earning over six figures a year and spending half the year at home in San Francisco and half the year either in Mexico or elsewhere. This summer they’re headed to Croatia.

Adam Baker from Man Vs. Debt

Adam, his wife Courtney, and their two-and-a-half year old daughter Milligan spent over a year living and traveling abroad, in Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. They spent a year preparing for their trip, selling all of their possessions, and paying down $18,000 in consumer debt, so Adam brings a lot of insight into personal finance and minimalism. Now they’re voyaging out from home state of Indiana to wander around the United States in their newly-purchased RV.

Nora Dunn from The Professional Hobo

Nora had a successful financial planning practice in Canada when she realized her life’s dream to travel extensively around the world was passing her by. In 2006, she sold everything she owned to travel the world full-time and has already set foot in 15 countries while she works as a freelance travel writer. Her travels have taken her to Hawaii, across Asia, Australia, throughout Europe, and now she is starting the new year in New Zealand.

Jeanne Dee from Soultravelers3

The “Soultravelers3″ are a digital nomadic family into their fifth year of an open-ended world tour. They were living the American dream, with a large, ocean-view California country home, but when they had a child in 2000 they decided that a permanent travel lifestyle would give them more time for bonding and freedom. They’ve raised their daughter to be tri-ligual in Chinese, Spanish and English, and they’ve now seen 38 countries on 5 continents, usually spending their winters in Asia (they are currently in Penang, Malaysia), and summers in Europe.

Andrew Hayes from Sharing Travel Experiences

Andy launched two online ventures at once. Sharing Travel Experiences is an online travel lifestyle magazine where he puts to use many of the skills he developed when he used to do a lot of writing for clients, and Travel Online Partners is a tourism marketing company that he has spent time working on while he’s been in Spain, Canada, and California in the last year. He is also an iPhone app developer and a published travel author.

Michelle Dale from Virtual Miss Friday

Michelle is a mobile entrepreneur, mother of two, and the virtual assistant behind VirtualMissFriday.com and VirtualAssistant-Live.com. She left a high-paying job in the banking industry and left the UK to move to Egypt for two years. Since then, she took her VA business from a one-person operation to a 6 figure offshore company while living in Luxor and in a few different parts of France. Michelle currently lives in Spain, and will be making her way to Italy later this year.

Drop Your Email in the Signup Form Below to Receive Your Free Digital Nomad Case Studies Report

(Note: If you’re already on the DNA email list, you don’t have to sign up again, you’ll be getting this in your email inbox very soon.)

But people didn’t just want case studies of successful nomadic entrepreneurs. You asked for direct access to them. You said you want supervision, and marketing advice, and troubleshooting guides, a yearly conference, and so much more.

Looking at all the feedback to what we’ve been bringing together at DNA made me realize the immensity of what we’re about to do. Nothing like what we’re about to at Digital Nomad Academy exists. There is no rulebook for what we’re going to put together for our students there. And we’re going to blow every other product or community in this niche out of this universe! (Sorry guys)

This is going to be so much bigger than I had originally imagined. I’m going to need to cancel some plans this year, stop doing my normal client work for a few months, and pour my time and energy into DNA. This will be an undertaking for all of us because we’re not just talking about a 6 session class, followed by some Q & A sessions. We’re talking about a comprehensive all-inclusive training program.

All of the individuals profiled above will be Digital Nomad Academy Faculty Members.

That means they will each participate on weekly coaching and mentoring calls, and you’ll get the chance to ask them your questions directly.

Not only that, but this is just the first round of faculty announcements. We’ll have many more successful online entrepreneurs, nomads, and niche experts involved to contribute to the vast amount of knowledge and training we’re putting together for you at DNA over the course of 2011!

Do You Want to Learn Directly from These (and Many More!) Successful Digital Nomads?

If you do, then here’s what I want you to do next: drop your email in the sign-up form up above on this page and we’ll send you the free report “10 Real-World Digital Nomad Case Studies” (as well as my last freebie, the Digital Nomad 101 Resources Guide), and you’ll get a chance to learn more about how you can be mentored directly by myself and all of these experienced nomadic entrepreneurs and many MORE!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 10 Digital Nomad Success Stories, and How You Can Learn From Them…

Patrick Lockton is a lawyer for digital nomads and entrepreneurs whose Matrix Law Group practices what they call Law 2.0—a flexible, on-demand, virtual legal practice—an alternative to big law firms that’s rooted in notions of mobility, technology and efficiency. One of the questions clients have for him most frequently is ‘How do I raise seed capital if I don’t know any investors?’

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

Feature photo by chanchan222

For readers from the States, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving! A few months ago, I was thinking about all the individuals who have helped shape the course of my life and the person I am today. I’ve been extremely fortunate to have the guidance of some brilliant minds and to surround myself with motivated, creative, innovative people.

They say your character and your achievements are influenced most by the people you surround yourself with. There have even been studies that show your income bracket is likely to be equal to the average of that of your five closest friends. So who are you surrounding yourself with?

Today I wanted to share my gratitude to my many teachers, mentors, role models, and friends who have influenced my life and given me their support. It’s important to acknowledge those who help foster your abilities and empower you to pursue the life you want.

Alec Hodgins

A French Canadian who taught English in France for years and then migrated to the US to teach French! I was lucky to be in his class for three years in high school. Alec was the most influential teacher I ever had in school, always advocating the unconventional path. He was the one who inspired my fascination with world cultures, languages, and travel. My first travel abroad was on a class trip with him to Cannes & Paris, France, and he first got me drooling over photos of Thailand when he took his wife and son there in 2000.

Lesson learned: You don’t have to color inside the lines all the time.

Alan Haynes

My photography teacher in high school, again for three years. In another life, I was a professional photographer (now it’s mostly a hobby, but I have a travel photo site coming soon). Alan connected me with my very first job, working in a darkroom, and showed me that it was possible to earn a great living if you split your time as an artist and as a teacher, to pass on your craft to the next generation.

Lesson learned: It’s okay to pursue your creative passion professionally.

Nicole Pefley

I met Nicole in middle school and our paths have intertwined ever since. She’s been a two-time Coachellian with me, we have a shared love for travel, French, music, and other assorted weird experiences. After high school, she lived in Paris for many months, and then spent a year studying in Brazil, so she was a great example for me to follow when I chose to live abroad for a while. Recently, she’s followed in Alec Hodgins footsteps and began teaching French at our old high school.

Lesson learned: We’ve both found you really can be a drifter for a few years after school, explore your interests, and eventually land on your feet.

Ramit Sethi

I’ve mentioned Ramit a few times recently. He was the first big blogger I reached out to when I started building my online presence in 2006, and I found out we’re from the same town! He’s a perfect role model for gen-y bloggers and entrepreneurs—he’s a year older than me, a graduate of Stanford University, and a successful tech startup co-founder. He’s worked with bigshots like Seth Godin and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and now he’s a New York Times bestselling author!

Lesson learned: Nobody’s going to give you handout. But there’s no harm in asking for what you want.

Jeffrey Skoll

Jeff Skoll was the first president of eBay and founder of movie production company Participant Media (responsible for bringing An Inconvenient Truth to the world). He’s been an active voice at Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation, and took his wealth from his success at eBay to become a philanthropist and support innovative entrepreneurship and social change with the Skoll Foundation. I’ve never spoken to Jeff, but he has always served as a great social entrepreneur role model for me.

Lesson learned: You can make a damn good living and make a difference at the same time.

Warren Buffett

The “Oracle of Omaha” is known around the world as one of the world’s most talented investors and money managers, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the richest person in the world (up until 2008, worth about $62 billion). Buffett started out with the money he earned as a newspaper boy to buy his first assets, and despite his now immense fortune, he still lives in a home he purchased for $50K in the 1950s and embraces a frugal lifestyle. In 2006, I had the opportunity to meet him briefly, just weeks after his announcement that he’d be giving away 85 percent of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Lesson learned: If the wealthiest investor & philanthropist in the world grew his business from just a few dollars from his paper route, you can too.

Rajesh Setty

I connected with Raj through his blog Life Beyond Code in my early days of blogging. As a serial entrepreneur, he tends to be involved as a co-founder, investor, or board member in about eight companies at any given time. He shares his wealth of business experience and motivational wisdom through his blog, Twitter, speaking engagements, and his books, and he was a huge influence on me when I first started my freelance side business which later grew into Thrilling Heroics Consulting.

Lesson learned: Business isn’t about a product, it’s about the people you work with, the relationships you build, and the dedication you show to your customer.

Timothy Ferriss

My interest in coming to Southeast Asia was fueled by reading Tim Ferriss’ inspiring NYT Bestseller The 4 Hour Workweek. Ferriss noted that Thailand and Argentina were two of the world’s best remaining destinations where Americans can easily stretch their dollar, and that if you spend the time to build a business that you can run from anywhere, you can easily leverage the idea of geo-arbitrage—earning in a strong currency while you live somewhere with a low cost-of-living. Though I’ve never met Tim, his ideas and experiments have certainly influenced a lot of my business decisions since reading his book!

Lesson learned: You don’t have to wait until retirement to create the lifestyle of your dreams. Also, nobody ever said you have to follow the rules.

Jacqueline Novogratz

Founder & CEO of Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture fund that invests philanthropic capital and trains the next generation of business leaders in South Asia and East Africa to build thriving businesses focused on delivering affordable healthcare, water, housing and energy to the poor. She delivers a few incredibly pursuasive TED Talks and is a shining example of some of the social entrepreneurs that are trying to lead social progress for the developing world. (Side note: Jacqueline is married to TED‘s founder Chris Anderson, another inspirational figure who has proven that that ideas can change the world. I’m excited to bring Chris’ vision to Thailand in Febraury with TEDx BKK!)

Lesson learned: Entrepreneurial approaches can be applied to solve the problems of global poverty.

Matt Mullenweg

At just 25-years-old, Matt Mullenweg has developed a company that is changing the way businesses interact with their clients online. His company created the WordPress blog platform, which makes it easy for anyone to get started publishing online, and which is what I have built my two businesses around—Thrilling Heroics Consulting and FreelanceWP—to help make online publishing more accessible to everyone and help innovators and changemakers spread their message to the world. Matt is a huge advocate of open-source development, which is making great software more quickly and easily possible, and transforming how we think about ownership.

Lesson learned: Share your best ideas with the world freely to empower the largest possible community, and it will come back to you many-fold.

Paul Dickey

Paul joined E*Trade after high school and became senior internal auditor, working around the world and overseeing a team of employees with advanced degrees. We met in college when he returned to get his own Bachelor’s degree, lived together for nearly a year, and traveled to Spain together with friends. Paul led a campaign to implement leadership studies at Sac State, was president of several student organizations, and together we attended many entrepreneurship conferences, organized monthly Saturday art walks in Sacramento, launched the U.S.’ fourth university Toastmasters chapter, and networked with tons of other entrepreneurs. He’s got a few business plans laid out, a submission with the patent office, and real estate property.

Lesson learned: Set your life goals and manage your time appropriately, and you can maximize your involvement in different entrepreneurial opportunities to guarantee your success.

Chris Guillebeau

After Tim Ferriss, Chris Guillebeau has perhaps been the most influential writer encouraging the masses to think differently and pursue unconventional, remarkable lifestyles. Chris is on a mission to travel to every country in the world (he’s already visited 122), and since starting his blog The Art of Nonconformity a little under 2 years ago, he has managed to create a full-time income for himself just from his writing projects. He even has great tips on how to travel to rogue states and “off-limits” places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and North Korea. I got the chance to meet him on his way through Bangkok in February, and have often been inspired by his thoughts on entrepreneurship, success, and changing the world.

Lesson learned: You really can go anywhere you want, and create your own wealth along the way.

Dwight Turner

Dwight and I met briefly in college. When I learned he had taught for a year in Thailand, we became fast friends and eventually both ended up back in Bangkok together. Dwight’s In Search Of Sanuk is a grassroots charity organization that makes it easy for anyone to contribute their time or donations to make a difference for orphans and refugees here in Thailand. He housed me when I first moved out here, has supported me through a lot of the challenges of getting used to expat/entrepreneur life, and together we’ve done a lot of traveling, volunteering, and bringing cool people from different walks of life together for the monthly Bangkok Tweetup, charity mixers, and other social events.

Lesson learned: It’s easier than you might think to mobilize a community to create social change.

Vanessa Rubin

An incredible young woman I was lucky to meet this year here in Bangkok—Vanessa is an aid worker who has spent nearly a decade working on humanitarian projects (frequently as a food & hunger advisor) in places like Nepal, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, & Bangladesh—she’s full of life, an avid rock climber, and earlier this year she was filmed for the BBC’s TV series Extreme Dreams on an expedition to scale Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. She came to Thailand to review progress made by Care International since the 2004 tsunami.

Lesson learned: Always reach for new heights and seek ways to improve the lives of others, but never neglect yourself either.

Larry McKibben

My dad has been the biggest supporter of my unconventional entrepreneur & digital nomad lifestyle. Though I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, he has often been the one to encourage me and give me the pep-talk I need. Although he didn’t finish his college degree the first time around, he has had an extremely successful twenty-year career in retail sales and training and quickly worked his way to earning an envy-inducing salary. He’s always been dedicated to his family and a great example of a hard worker.

Lesson learned: With enough dedication, you don’t have to let perceived barriers-to-entry prevent you from being successful.

So who are the teachers that had the most impact on you? Who are your mentors? What supportive friends and role models are you thankful for?

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Show Thanks For Your Teachers, Mentors & Role Models

Ramit Sethi was one of the earliest bloggers to inspire me when I first started writing Thrilling Heroics and building my online network. He was a graduate of Stanford University who’d studied technology and psychology, co-founded Silicon Valley startup PBworks, and was writing the hugely successful I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog to show college students and young professionals how to take control of their personal finances and get into entrepreneurship.

Although he’s based in the Bay Area, I reached out to him and learned that he’s originally from my hometown in Northern California. The first time I met Ramit in person was one chilly winter day in 2006 when he was in Sacramento to visit his family, and I had the chance to interview him about his education, entrepreneurship experience, and his perspectives on new media.

One of the first bold moves Ramit made in his career was to call up Seth Godin and negotiate a job opportunity with him! He later consulted with Omidyar Network, the philanthropic social innovation firm started by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar. He got himself featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, ABC News, CNBC, and more, sharing personal finance tips and bolstering his readership at I Will Teach You To Be Rich to over 250,000 visitors per month!

In March, Ramit published his book by the same title, which instantly hit #1 on Amazon and made him a NYT bestselling author. His educational background in social psychology translated well into a book that helps you make real behavioral change:

At last, for a generation that’s materially ambitious yet financially clueless comes I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi’s 6-week personal finance program for 20-to-35-year-olds. A completely practical approach delivered with a nonjudgmental style that makes readers want to do what Sethi says, it is based around the four pillars of personal finance—banking, saving, budgeting, and investing—and the wealth-building ideas of personal entrepreneurship.

These days Ramit hangs out with Tim Ferriss (check out his feature on the 4-Hour Workweek blog about the psychology of money and how to set up an automated personal finance system, with great excerpts from Ramit’s book).

How could you ask for a better twentysomething role model for personal finance and entrepreneurship success?

I met up with Ramit a time or two in San Francisco since first meeting him in 2006, but I’ve been wanting to catch up with him for a video interview for a while now to see what has changed in the last three years. Just my luck, this week he’s turning the six-week personal finance program in his best-selling book into a real online bootcamp where he’ll take you by the hand through a step-by-step online curriculum to automate and optimize your finances before the end of 2009, so I offered to help him promote the bootcamp if he’d sit down and answer some questions for you guys here.

Check out the video interview below for the following:

• Learn more about the I Will Teach You To Be Rich 6-Week Personal Finance Bootcamp
• Entrepreneurship, experimentation & failure
• How the things you spend your money on reflect your values
• How Ramit negotiated a book deal from his blog
• How he promoted his book to #1 on Amazon and the New York Times bestseller list
• Personal finance & entrepreneurship tips for travelers & expats
• Learn about the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Scholarship for Social Innovation

To learn more about Ramit Sethi, social psychology, technology in business, scrappy startups, and x-man abilities, make sure you also read my 2006 interview with him.

Feature photo from You 2.0

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Ramit Sethi Shows You How to Negotiate, Automate & Perspirate Your Way to Financial Success

Business shouldn’t just be about making money. Entrepreneurs should approach business as their opportunity to create a legacy—their chance to add something to the world and leave a positive impact.

“[Entrepreneurship is] the chance to turn ideas into viable enterprises that can change the world and to prosper in the process.”

Today I want to point your attention to Randy Komisar, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Silicon Valley, California. I spent the last two weeks reading through his book The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living.

Komisar has been an influential collaborator in at least a dozen innovative Valley companies like Claris, LucasArts, Crystal Dynamics, WebTV, GlobalGiving, TiVo, GO Corporation and Apple. The Monk and the Riddle is an eye-opening look into the mind of a Valley venture capitalist, but it also serves as an unconventional philosophy about the motivation behind work and integrating what you do with what you truly believe.

“I admire people who are willing to bet everything on a belief. Some of these risk takers…have a profound impact on what happens in the world. They place bets on the future, often against fantastic odds.”

The fact is a lot of entrepreneurs want to build something that will make them rich. But to be truly successful at what you do, you must make it about something you’re truly passionate about—something that you’ll get out of bed excited to do each day. Komisar asks the question, “What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life?”

“…business isn’t primarily a financial institution. It’s a creative institution. Like painting and sculpting, business can be a venue for personal expression and artistry, at its heart more like a canvas than a spreadsheet. Why? Because business is about change.”

Komisar also introduces readers to what he calls the “Deferred Life Plan,” which is what most people mold their lives around. Step 1) Do what you have to do, then, eventually, Step 2) Do what you want to do. You build a career, build a business, and hope to earn enough so that finally, one day, you can retire and do what you really want to do with your time—whether that’s spending more time with friends and family, traveling, focusing on your hobbies, or giving back through some sort of charitable work. We sacrifice our time and energy now in the hopes that we’ll get a big payoff and have more freedom to do what we’re passionate about in retirement.

But why not just start doing what you really want to do with your life? Why waste 30 or 40 years doing something mediocre, something that pays the bills but doesn’t get you excited? Something that isn’t fun?

“It’s the romance, not the finance that makes business worth pursuing.”

What would make you willing to stick with your current business for the rest of your life? What changes would you need to make it a real mission business? Or if you’re just starting, how can you build a legacy project from the beginning?

This is a fantastic book if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or want a peek into the mind of a hugely successful investor and “virtual CEO” about how to transform an average business into something that will truly fulfill people’s needs and become a huge success. Komisar explains the necessity of being a leader who can “develop a compelling vision worth following.” (Steve Spalding wrote about sharing your story in another great recent article.) If you need to re-orient the way you look at work and transform the focus of your life and your business into something you’re passionate about, grab this book.

Randy is also a lecturer at Stanford University, and you can watch some great discussions on entrepreneurship, innovation, philanthropy and more at the Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner. (If you’re interested on his take on applying an entrepreneurial discipline to social missions, also check out this discussion with Stanford Social Innovation Review.)

How can you turn your passion into something that will also earn you a living? How can you build a legacy with your business?

Feature photo by Dwight Turner

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: It’s Not All About Money—Building a Business is your Chance to Make a Difference

Happy Memorial Day, dear readers. Today is an important U.S. holiday when we offer remembrance for all the women and men who have lost their lives in military service to our nation. It is also a time for family gatherings and BBQs that for many families coincides with their children’s’ next rite of passage as they make the switch from colleges and universities into careers.

I hope you all have the opportunity to spend quality time with your loved ones today, and to those students who are celebrating their graduation from college this weekend or will be graduating in the weeks ahead, I give you my sincere congratulations! As a special treat for you guys, I’d like to share a link to some of the best commencement speeches, including wise words from greats such as Kurt Vonnegut, Winston Churchill, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Will Ferrell.

Here I’d like to share my favorite commencement address, delivered by Steve Jobs at the 2005 Stanford University graduation ceremony. Jobs is a creative and technical role model for many, and an incredible public speaker. Of course for anyone who’s passionate about Silicon Valley like me this is an exciting address to hear, but Jobs offers something for everyone. The CEO of Apple and Pixar shares his experiences with adoption and growing up in a working-class family. He talks about love and loss, about his fight with cancer and embracing one’s mortality.

Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, for a short time, and he relates stories about how he dropped out of college when he didn’t see the returns for his parents’ financial sacrifice, sharing what he learned as he continued to audit classes that appealed to him. If there is one big take-away, Jobs encourages new grads to find what they love to do, citing that “work fills a large part of your life,” and that following your passion is of the utmost importance.

“…it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Congratulations to all of you who’ve worked so hard to graduate from your degree programs this summer.

[source: Gawker]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: College Grad Special: The Top 10 Best Commencement Speeches

John Hennessey is the president of Stanford University, U.S. News & World Report’s #4 university in the nation and voted one of America’s best colleges for entrepreneurs by Fortune Small Business. Hennessey is one academic who has an entrepreneurial legacy himself, as he transferred his important research in microprocessor technology to actual industry application by co-founding MIPS Technologies. Not to mention, he also sits on the boards of Google and Cisco.

At last year’s Entrepreneurship Week, President Hennessey described how teaching entrepreneurship does five important things within our society:

1. It increases people’s creativity and willingness to think outside the box
2. It encourages individuals to follow their passion and excel at what they do
3. It creates a community which embraces and leads change
4. It encourages people to have a “glass half full” attitude and approach problems as potential opportunities, and…
5. It increases students’ willingness to take on and overcome new challenges by building excellent teams!

The entrepreneurial spirit is definitely prevalent throughout Silicon Valley, and perhaps universities like Stanford are to thank for it. It certainly is home to many people who refuse to let the fear of failure prevent them from pursuing their BIG dreams! Remember, as Wayne Gretzky says, “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 5 Kickass Benefits of Entrepreneurial Learning

Rajesh Setty is president of Foresight Plus, where he helps give his professional clients the unfair business advantage. He also blogs at Life Beyond Code, where he coaches the rest of us on how to have the unfair life advantage! Rajesh has written numerous books (he had his first one published at age 13!) and founded several successful companies, and he shares his experience and knowledge with us in his Distinguish Yourself series, an invaluable resource on productivity, efficiency, and plain old good tips to raise your likability in the workplace and beyond! In an October 2006 interview with Little India magazine, he shared his top ten life tips:

1. Focus on ROII (Return on Investment for an Interaction)
Time is precious for everyone. Ensure that you provide the highest value for anyone investing time in an interaction with you.

2. Keep the promises you make to yourself
Making promises to yourself is easy. Keeping them is very hard!

3. Set right expectations
The first step in trying to exceed the expectations is to set them right in the first place.

4. Set higher standards
Raise your standards higher than the general norm and watch miracles unfold!

5. Avoid complacency at all costs!
There is nothing like maintaining the status quo. You are either falling or rising.

6. Commodotize your work at regular intervals
You don’t have to wait for someone else to commoditize your work.

7. Balance home runs with small wins
Home runs are great. But small wins are important too!

8. Think!
Set aside time to “Think.” Most often thinking is done in parallel to other activities.

9. Never take people for granted
Would it be any fun if someone took you for granted?

10. Ask the right questions
Answers help. But, it’s not always the answers that matter.

————

Rajesh is one of a few individuals whose success and generosity with his gifts is inspiring me to aim high, continue learning, and hopefully become an entrepreneur one day. So, thank you for your continued generosity and your painstaking work to share meaningful information and lessons with us all here in the online community, Raj!

[via: Top Ten Life Tips From a Tech Wiz]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 10 Great Ways to Distinguish Yourself from One of Silicon Valley’s Top Entrepreneurs

Tech/management blog Rands in Repose has a few really interesting little tips about creating that resume. The author, an engineering manager in Silicon Valley, says he spends about 30 seconds glimpsing at each resume that comes across his desk, so you had better grab his attention!

One of the most important (and funniest) realities is to write like you’re a human! With a lot of HP and Intel engineers applying to our Executive MBA program, I see horrible things like this come across my desk from time to time:

Here’s a doozy, this intern says he “planned, designed, and coordinated engineers efforts for the development of a mission critical system”. ZzzzzzzzzzZzz. What did this guy actually do? I honestly don’t know. Let’s call this type of writing style resume mumbo jumbo and let’s agree that usage of this style is tantamount to saying nothing at all.

What was the mission critical system? Why was it critical? How in the world did an intern plan, design, and coordinate the engineering efforts? I’m a fan of giving interns real world work, but it’d take a world-class intern to plan, design, and manage engineers on whatever this mission critical system is.

A few to-do items:

• Google your name. What comes up? If its a bunch of dirty Myspace images, think about cleaning up your online rep. Think about starting a blog!
• Don’t just give your job description. Try to convey how you grew in each position, and why you made a transition to a new job.
• Your personal interests and extracurricular activities ARE important! They can distinguish you from the competition.
• Don’t use any buzzwords in your skills/qualifications area if you can’t back them up with some good examples.

And for recent college graduates, like myself, the author recommends that you include all types of work experience, no matter how unrelated they may seem. As he says, “Any job teaches you something.” What was that something? And how does it apply to what career path you’re pursuing now?

A Glimpse and a Hook (Rands in Repose)

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Win Over A Recruiter in 30 Seconds Or Less

I LOVE this article by Ron Davison! The Bay Area and the Reinvention of Self:

“I don’t know if there is another place on the planet where people are so full of possibility – whether it be the possibility of reinventing themselves by a change in thinking…or body…or starting a business with which they expect to change the world and become rich.”

I think I love Ron’s musings about Silicon Valley and the Bay Area because they reflect my own. I am SO drawn to that region because of the tremendous number of creative people! It is a hotbed for startups, entrepreneurs, and young-at-heart companies–the kind I love, that toss out the traditional rules! There seems to be (at least a bit) more sense of collaboration as opposed to competition. People are less afraid of failure. They are more passionate about their ideas, and doing whatever is necessary to make them become reality! These are not people who give up easily.

And it’s not to say that the region is the only one with determined, creative professionals. I think what actually happens is that those sorts of people are attracted from all over the world to come and work together in this centralized area. Actually, I KNOW this is the case. When I’ve visited Stanford, and interviewed with small companies down there, I meet people from all around the globe. It is a creative center. Take a minute to read Ron’s thoughts as he visits Silicon Valley.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Excuse Me While I Slip Into a More Comfortable Paradigm

Last week was EntrepreneurshipWeek USA across the nation and beyond, sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the New York Times, and Inc Magazine. Over 350 participating universities host their own events to bring together the best entrepreneurial thinkers and leaders–events like Brown University’s 60-second Elevator Pitch competition, Purdue’s Idea-to-Product (I2P) competition, and the Idea Bounce contest at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I’ve been meaning to share my travels to Stanford for a few days, so I’ll start from the beginning. Last weekend, February 24th, was the national opening ceremony for E-Week at Stanford University. I travelled down to Palo Alto with my roommate Steve, where we stayed with our buddy Patrick Briggs (the Zazzler).

At the E-Week kickoff, Jonathan Ortmans (National Executive Director of EntrepreneurshipWeek USA) stressed the value of entrepreneurs to the US and world economy, citing that entrepreneurs especially reflect the pioneering spirit of the early American colonizers. An entrepreneurial career definitely highlights the difference between merely taking a job that someone else provides for you and making a job for yourself! It is a move back toward the self-made legacy of great American heroes like Ben Franklin, for one.

Next we heard from John Hennessey, president of Stanford University. Hennessey is one academic who has an entrepreneurial legacy himself, as he transferred his important research in microprocessor technology to actual industry application by co-founding MIPS Technologies (he also sits on the boards of Google and Cisco). President Hennessey explained that fostering an entrepreneurial atmosphere does five important things: it 1) increases people’s creativity and willingness to think outside the box, 2) encourages individuals to follow their passion and therefore excel at what they do, 3) creates a community that embraces and leads change, 4) encourages people to have a “glass half full” approach to problems and see them as potential opportunities, and 5) increases people’s willingness to take on and overcome challenges by building excellent teams. This entrepreneurial atmosphere is definitely prevalent throughout Silicon Valley–which is why I feel myself drawn there. It is one community of people who do not let fear of failure prevent them from giving their BIG ideas a shot! And they are great at assembling quality teams to tackle problems-as-opportunities.

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. He referenced the common statistic that while our grandparents may have had on average four jobs over their career, we will have something like 13! 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?). He says that startups “birth the new” and give security to others by creating jobs, and they posses the only key to creating wealth! This presents an interesting new way to look at economic models that I hadn’t really approached before: without the for-profit businessman to virtually create capital, governments could not operate (no one to tax), and the non-profit foundations would not have any money to give to their causes. So without individuals to start up businesses, there can be no government, no philanthropy, no charity…

Finally Steve Jurvetson (Partner in the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson) shared some insight into what ties philanthropy, raising families, creating art and literature, and entrepreneurship together–people’s desire to create some kind of a legacy that will last beyond our short time here on earth. He recommends students pay close attention for uniqueness, persistence, and infectious enthusiasm in their classmates (his peer Jim Yang went on to start up Yahoo!) because successful entrepreneurs are rarely lone rangers, but more often come in dynamic duos as he says. Most importantly, he says to look for ways you can harness what you’ve learned from past experiences in new and perhaps unfamiliar territory. That is why I try not to let job descriptions discourage me when I am looking for something new–I feel that my accumulated experience across many different job types will lend itself to being a flexible team-worker in different settings even if I haven’t worked in that field before. And I hope that my experience leading teams successfully in my academic career, recruiting and assembling student teams, and creating my own leadership projects in a position where I’m not officially given a lot of seniority, will translate well into being a fair and effective leader in business. You take the lessons you learn, and just apply them in a new setting.

In the end, I really felt like these guys opened my eyes to a few new ways of looking at entrepreneurship and how it benefits society. In a capitalist community, it really spurs all progress, and is responsible for all wealth- and job-creation. Carl Schramm says that all entrepreneurs are social entrepreneurs for these reasons.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: E-Week at Stanford

So, on Monday I took the day off and went down to Palo Alto for an interview. My friend Patrick Briggs works for a small internet startup called Zazzle.com. They were founded in 1999 by brothers Jeff and Bobby Beaver and their dad Robert, did R&D into new printing techniques for a few years and came out with some awesome inks that are supposed to stay on apparel better than any other. The site opened up in ’03, and from what I’ve read, they’re already turning around $20m in sales annually. Pretty good.

So, they basically just allow users to upload their own designs and artwork and create custom t-shirts, posters, buttons, mousepads, and dozens of other things. Simple idea. It’s cool.

I’ve been keeping my eyes open for jobs in the Silicon Valley area (because I’d like to make a move to be closer to Stanford), or in San Diego, so when I heard about a possible new position opening up from Briggs, I saw it as a big opportunity. I’d heard Jeff and Bobby (the co-founders) speak about entrepreneurship and innovation before to the Stanford Technology Ventures program. And the new project they’re starting up is sort of a community-building effort, utilizing web 2.0 social communities and so on, which is EXACTLY the sort of thing I’m personally interested in improving my skills at. (I’m interested in using social communities to gather support for environmental/social causes one day when I start my own biznazz.)

Anyways, I spoke to my mentor John Pefley (a VP/attorney at a local law firm) for quite a while the day before the interview, and he gave me an INCREDIBLE resource: it was a list of the top 12 things hiring managers are looking for in new employees, and much of it reflected the qualities I know a strong entrepreneur needs (check out my friend Ben’s “Top 10 Ways to Know You’re an Entrepreneur”). So, I took the 9 qualities/values I felt I best reflected and made a list of why I value them or how I bring those characteristics to the table, and I tried to have a story for each one:

• TEAMWORK
• PASSION
• EXTREME FOCUS
• ENTHUSIASM
• AWESOME COMMUNICATION SKILLS
• RESPONSIBILITY
• RESULTS-ORIENTED
• PROBLEM-SOLVER
• INITIATIVE

I turned this into a neatly-designed little “Who Am I?” document to supplement my resume. And I think that (and the mindmap chart I did of all my ideas for where we could take this new project) really impressed them. I know at least one of them said it was better than a traditional resume! I interviewed with five individuals from Zazzle’s team, and it was a really awesome experience. I think I really connected with Jeff because I let him know that I really desire to go to Stanford for grad school (he’s an alum) and that I REALLY want to participate in that fast-paced, bootstrapped entrepreneurial environment and learn from some guys like him and his brother.

After the project/responsibilities are nailed out a bit more, I’m hoping to sit down with them again in the next few weeks. So we’ll see where this goes. At the very least, it’s an awesome opportunity and I’ve gained a few cool new contacts! And if I get to be a part of the team, it’ll really stretch me and teach me some new things I really want to know…

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: My Job Interview with Zazzle