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Last week I headed out for the Sunday morning long run, and my legs decided not to cooperate. After four miles, it was time to pack it in. Bummer—so I tried again a few days ago. The same thing happened ... almost. At mile four I was ready to quit. Through an act of God and the new Josh Ritter album, I managed to pull it out and keep going. At mile six I was feeling great, and as I headed home, I was glad I didn't quit. Eleven miles for the win!
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I’m a big fan of Jim Collins’ work, especially the modern day classic Good to Great. Even if you’re not interested in business, the book is inspiring and practical. Nine years after publication, it’s still kicking ass, and deservedly so. I recently re-read my favorite passages, and I especially liked the introduction Jim used to convey how much the book meant to him before publication.
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It's a new month, and time for a new profile. My friend Tsilli Pines recently quit her job to go full-time with the side business she's been building for the past three years.
Yay! Congratulations to her. And when we were talking, she told me how she had worked at the job for eight years, and has spent the past three years carefully building her business to the point where she could take a big leap ...
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I wrote a feature article for Writer's Digest this month, and it looks like it just hit the newsstands. I also received permission to include the full PDF here if you're interested: Changing the Rules for Unconventional Success. You can also read a brief online supplement on their site here.
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Now that the birthday is over, we're officially heading into Year Three of World Domination. A few people said they were surprised that everything has happened so quickly. I regularly receive notes that say “I've been reading your blog for years.” It feels like several years to me too—but we've only just now crossed the second year point ...
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If you're involved in any kind of creative work, you and inertia are probably well acquainted. I wish I were an exception, but no—inertia and I are mortal enemies. Every day I get up and fight a battle against that beast. Sometimes I win; sometimes I lose. Sometimes we get “stuck” in something and have a hard time figuring out what to do next. If you're feeling stuck, try one or more of these ideas ...
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I read an interesting article in USA Today recently, which profiled seven people who unexpectedly lost their job, then turned around to create a situation better than the one they lost. From a bus driver to a piñata maker, each of these very different individuals used the negative experience of being laid off to make an even bigger, positive change ...
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Note: this is a modified excerpt from the Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself. This week I’m staying in one place and working on my book. Have a great Thursday!
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As I mentioned in last week's survey invitation, when you’re trying to build a business, blog, non-profit, or pretty much any venture, regularly checking in with your peeps is an important way to make sure you know who they are and what they want.
This is especially important when it comes to a) transition points in the growth of your community, or b) product development at any time. Surveys allow you to take the pulse of a large group of people in a short period of time -- and because of how sampling works, you don't actually need to hear from all of them to know what most of them are thinking. Read More
Greetings, friends and readers. This week I’m holed up on the Oregon coast working on my book. Updates will continue as usual, starting with this weekend one where I write about the small business behind AONC.
Since I wrote about $100 businesses last Monday, I’ve heard a lot of fun stories from readers ...
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I'm working on this concept for a longer project, but for now, here's the basic principle: Just as you don't need someone else's permission to be happy, you also don't need a lot of money to start a business.In fact, to start a very small business, you don't need any number of things that are frequently thought of as prerequisites or first steps ...
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This is the follow-up to last week's article on Product Launches. The series deals with the business side of blogging and social media – a topic that some will be interested in and others won't.
This article will look at site comments, scheduling, organizational structure, and taking control over where your paycheck comes from. My goal is not to provide a comprehensive overview of everything related to business and blogging, but rather a close look at a few specific topics.
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This is the story of what happens in a typical product launch. Fellow entrepreneurs and people interested in the business side of what I do will be interested; others probably won't.
I'm going to outline a few of the things I've learned in doing product launches over the years. With AONC I've done six of them so far (including the two non-commercial manifestos), but before that, I worked on dozens of others in my first decade of self-employment.
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Let's be clear: there's no real secret. I subscribe to the 10,000 hours theory. When I wrote about it six months before Outliers came out, I called it the 14,600 hours to virtuosity.
Then Gladwell's great book arrived, everyone started talking about 10k hours, and I thought, “Awesome. Now we can all save 4,600 hours!”
Anyway, the secret connection between art and money involves working hard on the same thing for a long time.
There you go! Get to work. By the time evening rolls around, only 9,992 hours will remain.
HOWEVER...
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The AONC readership has expanded quite a bit recently, and I know that not everyone here cares about business. Even though I’ve made my living as an entrepreneur for more than 10 years, I’d like to let you in on a secret:
I don’t much care for business either… at least, not in the traditional sense.
What I care about instead is business that a) doesn’t feel like work and b) is centered around building real relationships.
Here are a few unconventional business ideas that reflect this philosophy. None of these ideas are truly original (most ideas aren’t), but I’ve tried to gather them together here before writing about them in more detail for future articles.
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