Whether you’re American or not, Thanksgiving is as good an excuse as any to be reminded of gratitude and to meditate on the people and things you’re thankful for.
I highly recommend each of you film your own short (1 min) video just thanking a few people close to you for what they’ve contributed to your life, or simply expressing your thankfulness for … well, whatever it is you’re thankful for this Thanksgiving!
(And if you want to join me, my Queen, and some good friends of mine for a 30-day meditation and mindfulness challenge starting today, from Thanksgiving through to Christmas and beyond, join the free Facebook group here!)
Anyone in the world, American or not, in the US or abroad, please join us in expressing gratitude. Let’s counter the noise and negativity with positivity, gratitude, and love!
00Cody McKibbenhttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/HERO-Foundry-Warrior-logo-300x162.pngCody McKibben2016-11-24 09:39:082016-11-24 09:39:08Make America Grateful Again
I didn’t always take that so seriously, but it’s true, you won’t meet successful people who aren’t readers.
Books can be your mentors — when you can’t meet or learn from someone directly in-person in real life, you can learn from them through books! Books can even be a window into the wisdom of the past, and you can learn from the greatest teachers who’ve ever lived — even if they’re not around anymore (you can even get inside the mind of one of history’s greatest emperors below!)
There are no secrets. They’re all just buried away in books.
Here are my “Most-Important Books” — or MIBs. These are the top 10 books I’ve read that have impacted me and influenced my life in a significant way for one reason or another, and that I recommend to anyone following a similar path. From what I’ve studied so far, if you read only 10 books after college, read these:
If you’re just getting started, I believe reading these few wisdom-packed tomes from 1-10 in this order would be the most intuitive mindset change from beginner to advanced, and have the greatest impact on you.
From our first conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Cody discusses 10 of the most important lessons he’s learned after building three new media publishing businesses while traveling the world for 8 years.
Cody is an event organizer, small business advisor, new media marketing expert, and e-learning consultant who has worked with Sofitel, Le Méridien, Sacramento State University, Princeton Review, TEDx, Courageous Kitchen, Grand Dynamics, Exosphere, Syndacast, Documentary Foundation, Prosper Magazine, and more.
He is a loving father, husband to Jam Milcah, photographer, writer, and serial entrepreneur. He is slowly working on a book titled Chasing the Sun, about his travels across 35 countries, living abroad for 8+ years on four continents, and close encounters with everyone from Warren Buffett to ISIS. Read Cody’s full bio here.
https://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/digital-nomad-family.jpg471800Cody McKibbenhttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/HERO-Foundry-Warrior-logo-300x162.pngCody McKibben2016-03-13 11:11:002018-04-18 06:38:55Lessons from 8 Years Bootstrapping Businesses and Slow-Traveling the World
Last month Johnny Jen and I co-hosted an amazing conference here in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with a high-caliber lineup of 10 diverse business speakers and about 250 eager attendees.
(I also took a pretty epic selfie with all of them!)
I’d been on a fairly large planning committee for Thailand’s first TEDx conference back in 2010, but this was the first large-scale event I’ve hosted and planned so closely. It was the first time I’ve attempted to create an experience of this scale from scratch (i.e., without a name brand like TED behind it).
A month beforehand, I had no idea I was going to organize a conference for hundreds of people in Thailand of all places!
But the Nomad Summit soon became a force of nature, we sold out of tickets and had people begging us for more within 10 days of listing the event on Facebook!
Ian Robinson made this great recap highlighting all of the speakers as well as the attendees of the event!
It all started in early January sometime when I met with Johnny to begin planning.
We opened ticket sales on January 25th, and 10 days later we sold out, filled beyond capacity.
In fact, there fast grew a secondary market for Nomad Summit tickets — as more and more people were wanting to get in, and as a few folks were unable to travel to Chiang Mai (yes, people flew here to Thailand from far and wide!), or just couldn’t make it at the last minute!
It was an overwhelming success actually.
We relied heavily on the strong brand reputation I’d built up at Digital Nomad Academy since 2011, and as I knew from the start — Johnny’s strong network paired with mine and we had an amazing reach, and lots of great people on board to lend a helping hand.
I made it my job to seek amazing speakers and sponsors from among my circle of friends and colleagues, as well as doing outreach to corporate sponsors who had backed other similar events — and in the end we gathered a truly impressive roster of 10 accomplished speakers, and four great companies who see the potential in events like this and serve our target audience (in this case, the business travel crowd, and entrepreneurs living in Asia as expats).
With a little persistence and the courage to ask people for their help, all the pieces came together, and we were able to get the largest event space at the Ibis Styles hotel, beverage service and staff. I flew in some of the best film crew I know to help us capture and create top-notch, professional video presentations for everyone to enjoy afterward.
There was SO much great sharing all over Facebook and Twitter! A few attendees even created beautiful artwork and mindmaps of some of the presentations:
I’d spoken on stage at before a large audience three times in the past, but this was the first time I really felt great about it. I felt like I really had something valuable to share, and like I truly impacted people.
Afterward, I got nothing but amazing feedback from an enthusiastic portion of the crowd (Johnny and I both even heard people saying they wanted to pay us more money for the tickets!), and online we got tremendous amounts of positive feedback:
So how did we pull it off?
Here are a few key lessons I’ve drawn from our fortunate success:
1. Be open to opportunity
When I first spoke one-on-one with Johnny, after talking with him, I learned that he’d launched and successfully run the conference the year prior within a very short time, and I learned that they’d been able to pull in Buffer as the event sponsor on short notice too!
But I saw plenty of potential to do much more with it. I could tell from the videos that the first event was held in a small space, with low ceilings, and only limited space for about 140 or so people. I thought, if Buffer was willing to get on board with an unproven, unestablished new event on short notice, then surely this time around we could get more companies involved to sponsor the event, and make it bigger and better. I saw room to grow and improve, and with our powers combined, Johnny and I did just that.
2. When it comes to events at least, find the heart of the action
Depending what your industry or niche is, do your best to find a location that’s central to that demographic. Chiang Mai is kind of like the Shangri La for Digital Nomads — over the last 5 or 6 years I’ve watched as the travel bloggers moved in and hyped it, then the lifestyle designer crowd, and now it gets talked about all the time in our circles of nomadic friends. There’s a growing and healthy expat population here, and at least several hundred of them consider themselves nomadic or are working on their online businesses — in other words, it’s become nomad central. So when we put out our feelers on Facebook to test the idea (before we had booked an event space or any speakers!) all it took was a compelling event description, both Johnny and I invited a small group of our personal friends in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and I believe we posted it once in a local nomad Facebook group. And the thing went gangbusters.
Perhaps the way we slowly dripped out clues helped pique people’s curiosity, but with all the excitement and people hungrily looking for tickets, even though we invited probably less than 400 people individually, the Facebook event reached 33,000!
3. It’s important to find partners
In the past, I’ve definitely been guilty (time and again) of trying to do everything all by myself… but especially when it comes to events, that can be a recipe for overwhelm and under-delivering. Events are social occasions, and as such, the planning and execution should be a social, shared activity too. Any gathering of such large scale will require a team of staff, volunteers, and logistical partners to make it a reality. So a willingness to collaborate with a partner or two will not only drastically cut down on the amount of effort you’ll need to put in to manage all the moving parts, but if done right, it will also hopefully allow you to focus more on what you’re best at, meaning everyone involved can produce better results. It also means you have quantifiably better ideas, and you multiply your reach and abilities with your networks combined.
Thankfully Johnny made my job really straightforward and simple, and he took responsibility for a lot of the tasks I wouldn’t have been overly interested in.
4. Don’t forget the value of the meeting in-person, and shaking hands
As much as I love running a business remotely from my laptop, there is definitely a LOT to be said for the value of working with people in real life, and looking your partner in the eye! Never undervalue face-to-face contact when you’re getting to know a new collaborator and decide whether it’s best to partner up, and what your vision for the project is. I’ve been fortunate to know Johnny socially for a while, but this was a chance for us to really start to get to know each other, and I’m thankful we had the opportunity to meet up in person a few times as we planned our event. I think it had a measurable impact on how well we were able to communicate with each other, and understand each other’s desired outcomes for the event.
I’ve tried to organize events with partners remotely in the past, and while it’s not impossible, it does tend to be exponentially more difficult.
5. Use smart tools to split the workload
This is the case with any project, but for our purposes with the Nomad Summit, we used Google Docs for spreadsheets and documents in the cloud and shared folders with our whole team, we used a shared Google+ brand account and YouTube channel to showcase our videos, Dropbox (mostly for photos gathered from numerous volunteers, attendees, and our professional crew), Slideshare for uploading all our speaker’s slide presentations afterward, and Eventbrite for ticket management and for accepting sponsor payments.
If you do need to communicate remotely with your team/partners, I recommend Google Hangouts for the best overall connectivity, and ScheduleOnce for setting appointment times across timezones.
6. Be generous
The Summit was started as a not-for-profit event, and we wanted to keep that spirit the second time around. My vision was to bring in more corporate sponsors this year to cover as much of the costs as possible, so we could offer an amazing free/low-cost event that rivals some of the other conferences out there that you’d easily pay $300–$500 and up to attend.
So we started by offering 100 free tickets through the Facebook event page, which had the side effect of helping kickstart a bit of viral sharing. Then we encouraged donations (starting from about $6 USD up to $25) so we could upgrade our space to a much larger seminar room to accommodate twice the people. Thankfully because we offered a lot of value up front and maybe established some good will with free tickets, and because of the reputation Nomad Summit had already built in its first year, people were more than generous in return when we asked for assistance to scale up the event 2x. A fair number of people even commented that they wanted to pay us more money!
7. Tap your network to amplify your potential
Just like you can double the possibilities with two partners, you can also bring in other skills, resources, contacts, perspectives, and capabilities just by bringing in the right strategic collaborators — whether they’re speakers, sponsors, crew, or even volunteers, your job should be to find other people who have a vested interest in your vision, and ideally those individuals who also bring their own connections to the table. That’s why I immediately made it my job to start cold emailing people who I thought would be excited to be a part of something like this, to help fund it, or support us in any way possible.
Find win-win-wins and know how to frame things to create the perception of value for others. Some people said no, and that’s fine, just find people who would benefit from being able to add this to their resume.
A few of those early supporters for example were Brendan Tully, and Ozzi Jarvinen at Iglu. Once I was able to say we had BT from The Search Engine Shop on board as a speaker, and Iglu (a great business services company based here in Thailand) on board as a significant sponsor, then others were more eager to get involved too! So, special thanks to you guys.
8. Write a solid sponsor proposal document!
Early on I knew that having a couple significant corporate partners would multiply the possibilities for what kind of experience we could create for people. It’s essential to get as creative as you can about what value you can provide to your sponsors (thankfully with two popular blogs, Johnny and I had some good leverage). And it’s wise to pitch companies specifically for how they would benefit from reaching whatever demographic you’re planning on pulling together.
For me, I am fortunate to have lots of friends and acquaintances who run tech and travel-related companies that want to get in front of our audience, but I also did my research and made my best efforts at connecting with larger corporations that had sponsored similar events in the past as well. Have courage in seeking representatives in lofty companies — though we didn’t close the deal with everyone (on a very short timeline), surprisingly I heard back from almost everyone, and got connected to the right person in several larger organizations (connections that might prove valuable in the future!)
The Nomad Summit was generously sponsored by:
DRIP – Drip is the email marketing software trusted by Dan and Ian from the Tropical MBA, James Clear, Dan Norris, Brennan Dunn, and many, many more. If you’ve ever used MailChimp, Drip is more powerful than MailChimp, similar to Infusionsoft – but much cheaper and easier to use.
Empire Flippers – THE go-to marketplace if you’re interested in flipping/buying/selling websites, or if you’re interested to sell your own website or online business! We’ve personally met nomads who sold their businesses on Empire Flippers for $10k, $20k, and even $30,000+ dollars that they started right here in Chiang Mai! Great service!
Iglu – If you are looking for an easy, legal method to go legit here in Thailand — get your business visa, work permit, a great coworking space, help with accommodation, bank accounts, transportation, etc. Or even if you’re looking to relocate your startup or set up a business here in Thailand, Iglu are the guys to talk to!
Coworkation – Inspiring people in inspiring places doing inspiring things. A coworkation is a pop-up coworking space in exotic locations such as Bali, Croatia, Costa Rica or Thailand where your workspace is not confined to an office desk. Work from stunning villas beside infinity pools overlooking the jungle, below waterfalls, lakeside, swim-up bars…or other incredible locations!
Nothing would have been possible without these guys! Thank you to Rob Walling, Justin Cooke, Joseph Magnotti, Ozzi Jarvinen, Stuart Jones, and more!
9. Provide value/tell a good story
Of course at the heart of every good conference are great talks by compelling people. We were very fortunate to get several top-notch individuals involved who all provided tremendous value by sharing their experiences, their insights, tips and tricks. And of course, as co-hosts of the event, Johnny and I both wanted to present our own perspectives as well. So I spent a significant amount of time digging deep for the best wisdom I felt I had to offer this particular audience, and crafting a presentation that I believed would best convey my most valuable ideas. Plus, I tried to go well above and beyond in packaging something that would be engaging, a little funny, and full of useful related tools and resources. This is really the key to a successful conference: stories worth sharing.
If you want to see our presentations from Nomad Summit 2016, keep reading below.
10. Try to surprise
– with bonuses, juicy insider knowledge, humor, special deals, free offers… anything useful and unexpected. Attendees got to see some behind-the-scenes insights into a $100 million dollar business, for example, they got a few laughs from strategically-placed comic relief, they got to watch a world-premier trailer for an upcoming digital nomad documentary featuring Tim Ferriss and Matt Mullenweg (creator of WordPress), and we thankfully had amazing special offers available ONLY to attendees — for great email marketing software, website brokering, coworking/co-living, online training and more.
11. Maintain your commitments to all parties involved
Whatever you promise to your partners, speakers, hired staff, volunteers, sponsors, and your customers/attendees, deliver on it to the best of your ability. As in any sustainable business, you don’t just want to concentrate on what you can get from people now, but you ideally want to build good relationships for the future. This is an ongoing commitment, but for me that means trying to give our speakers and sponsors every grain of value possible out of their participation, and making it easy for them to share and take credit for their contributions.
12. Give incentives for people to share their constructive feedback and testimonials
Thankfully I got tons of in-person feedback from listeners who approached me after the event. But I also wanted to encourage people to leave their testimonials (that we might be able to use for future events) and their critical feedback about how we might be able to improve as well. We managed to negotiate some free coworking passes from Punspace and AngkorHub fortunately, so I got creative and decided to use them to incentivize people to share!
13. Gather social proof you can use for next time
Since we were successful in bringing on several sponsors, we were able to hire great photographers, which was one of my top priorities for this event (if you need a stellar professional videographer, I highly recommend Cadu Cassau and his amazing team, who took most of the professional shots included above, as well as produced all of our videos this year).
Invest in a professional photo/film team and you’ll have top-notch speaker videos to share afterward and photography you can use to showcase your event. Also encourage your attendees to use your event’s own special hashtag (like #nomadsummit) and be creative in your use of social media content created by conference-goers themselves, like I have in this post.
Want to Watch the 10 Expert Speaker Presentations from the 2016 annual Summit?
We will be releasing a new talk every few days to our subscribers, for for now here are the first two:
Check this sweet mindmap illustration from Kat Ingalls below for a sneak peak, and subscribe below if you want to get my video presentation when it comes out, along with access to my full slides, related resources/tools, and special offers 😉
Many thanks to all our fabulous speakers, our emcee Petter Miller, to our volunteers Veronica D’ Robzario, Brad Wages, Alicia Orre, and Angharad Owen, and to the many of you who attended the event!
https://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Cody-McKibben-conference-organizer.jpg13662048Cody McKibbenhttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/HERO-Foundry-Warrior-logo-300x162.pngCody McKibben2016-03-09 11:06:102018-04-18 06:42:19How We Organized an EPIC Conference in Just 3 Weeks
This is a guest post from Charlie Houpert of Charisma on Command. He helps people to create their dream lives by practicing courage and improving their charisma.
Ever wonder what allows some people to live the dream?
I’m talking about breaking out of the 9-5 office life, traveling the world, and pursuing projects you genuinely care about. Have you heard of people doing that and though “Damn, I wish I could do that?”
Then buckle up.
I’m about to share with you a powerful mindset that will enable you to finally set up your life so that you can escape the corporate grind. If you’re 100% fulfilled by your job – perfect. This post isn’t for you. But if part of you longs for that world traveling, self-employed dream, I want you to know you can have it literally within the next few weeks.
But before I talk about the mindset, first watch this scene from Batman: The Dark Knight Rises…
Why? Because it’s a metaphor. You are Bruce Wayne. The prison is your job. And the rope is everything you think you need.
You’ll see how soon.
My Story
I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I have an apartment 2 ½ blocks from the beach that I share with 5 of my best friends For half of what we spent in NYC, we eat out every night, spend part of every day on the beach, and are healthier and happier then ever.
And we all work for ourselves.
People assume I must have had some charmed background to live like this. Mom and Dad must be supporting me or I must have sold my company for a crazy exit.
Not at all.
I moved to Brazil five months ago with $20,000 in the bank, $100,000 in debt, and no job prospects. That’s a net worth of -$80,000 for the numerically challenged.
Chances are you are not in financial circumstances worse that that. So if I can set up the dream with such dismal financials, you can too.
You just have to shift your mindset. Make the shift and you can be on your own beach – wherever that may be – by the end of the month.
What’s the mindset?
Make the Climb Without the Rope
What is the rope?
The rope is everything that feels like your lifeline. The things that guarantee you’ll wind up right back where you started if you should take a risk and fail. The rope represents certainty and security.
The rope is your paycheck.
The esteem of your colleagues.
The flawless resume.
The comfort of continually saving, month after month
As long as you insist on having those things, you’re tied to the status quo. You’ll stay in the corporate world because it is the ONLY way to maintain them. There is no monthly salary for traveling the world and pursuing what you love (at least not immediately). Plus, if you leave your current job, you’ll miss the upcoming promotion and the glowing HBS recommendation from your boss.
If you want to get out of the corporate world, you need to be willing to leave the corporate world behind. Sounds obvious, but people forget that also means leaving the security of the corporate world behind. That means leaving behind an ever-increasing bank account, the adulation of your colleagues, a sure-fire 3-year plan… all that gets temporarily tossed out the window. And the more you insist on not leaving behind those things, the more stuck to your current situation you become.
Which reveals the paycheck/the resume/the rope for what they really are… they’re not safety nets. They’re chains. They might keep you safe from catastrophe, but they also ensure that you’ll never break free to live the life of your dreams.
If You’re Still in the Corporate World, Maybe You Can Relate
Maybe you’ve heard yourself say:
I don’t have enough money
I need someone to go with me
I’m not as brave as other people
Life isn’t about goofing off
What would everyone say?
Every one of these excuses says: “I NEED MORE CERTAINTY THAT THIS WILL WORK!” The irony is that it is only by giving up certainty and security that you can achieve something greater.
So what should I do?
Try this. It’s an exercise from The Four Hour Work Week called fear setting.
What if you stopped caring about all the things that give you security today?
What if you cut the rope?
Seriously…
Ask yourself: what would happen if you HAD to leave work in 90 days to chase your dream for at least six months?
List it out.
Your bank account would take a hit, that’s for sure.
There’d be a gaping hole in your resume.
Some people would think you were crazy (and some people would think you were a hero).
You’d piss off your boss and your family.
You’d have to find some other way to pay for yourself.
Not ideal. But not terrible. You could get another job. Earn money doing side gigs.
And if things went belly up you could come back on your hands and knees and beg your way into a similar position, given the skills you’ve developed.
All in all, pretty recoverable.
And what’s the upside?
Worst-case scenario, you’d be living the dream for six months. Then back to the doldrums to save up enough money to take another crack at doing something you love.
Best-case scenario, you find a way to make the dream sustainable by working for yourself. That decision to leave could be the best decision of your life.
But you won’t make that decision as long as you refuse to take a risk. You won’t make it out of prison if you insist on wearing the rope. That’s not how the climb works.
So Are You Still Committed to Getting Out?
Seriously?
Then do what I did. This is what got me out after 2 years of talking about it and not doing anything. And it worked the first try.
Set a FIRM date within the next four months to leave your job. A specific date – i.e. April 5th. Take into consideration bonuses, and projects and all that good stuff, but absolutely do not postpone it until next year. It needs to be real.
Then schedule time to talk to your boss and let him/her know. That will force you to stay committed to your pursuing your dreams. If you keep it as an internal commitment, you may waver. Tell your boss you’re leaving and you’ve got no other option.
You can even pitch it to your boss as a necessary six-month sabbatical. If you like, you can leave the door open to return. Though remember, you’re not asking permission to leave. You’re telling your boss you’re leaving and offering him the chance to get you back at the end of six months (if you decide that’s what you want).
The point is: stop waiting for a perfect fall back plan. Put a date on the calendar and force yourself to do what you know you should, come what may. Like Tim Ferriss says:
“For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.”
To get out, you have to make the climb without the rope.
https://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/king-rise.jpg7811600Cody McKibbenhttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/HERO-Foundry-Warrior-logo-300x162.pngCody McKibben2014-05-28 07:27:192020-09-18 11:50:50The Reason You Still Work a Corporate Gig While Others Live Your Dream
I’ve been enjoying Joe Rogan’s musings for quite a while now. It might sound strange, if you remember Rogan from News Radio or Fear Factor, but the stand up comedian turned actor turned UFC commentator has made a lot of personal transformation since those days, and has quite a lot of interesting perspective to share on life.
His Joe Rogan Experience podcast is jam-packed with fascinating interviews and inspiration. Here are a couple great episodes with Tim Ferriss, Anthony Bourdain, Graham Hancock, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson… if you listen for long, you’ll find the JRE is full of gems. One of my favorite sayings Joe has coined is about being the hero of your own movie, or your own epic story. That resonates perfectly with what we’re all about here at Thrilling Heroics.
If your life was a movie and it started now, what would the hero of your life’s movie do right now?
“We define ourselves far too often by our past failures. That’s not you. You are this person right now. You’re the person who has learned from those failures. Build confidence and momentum with each good decision you make from here on out and choose to be inspired.”
00Cody McKibbenhttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/HERO-Foundry-Warrior-logo-300x162.pngCody McKibben2014-05-01 14:53:192014-05-01 14:53:19Be the Hero of Your Own Movie
Anyone motivated to be successful—to really make an impact with your life—has a list of important things they want to do. Things to have, things to be. Places they want to go, people they’d love to meet.
You may not have a list of life goals all written down on paper. You probably keep an immediate to-do list, you might have some of your long-term life goals written down on scraps of paper or word doc lists on your computer here and there, but you know at the very least you have those things somewhere in the back of your mind.
I’ve challenged myself with yearly goals in the last couple years, and I’ve mapped out plans for my businesses and different projects. I don’t frequently achieve everything on my lists, but as my friend Ramit Sethi once told me, if you’re not failing at a couple things each month, you’re not trying hard enough.
And I’ve found that sharing those goals publicly gives me additional motivation and accountability to follow through, and sometimes friends and readers can offer words of advice, help, or partnership on some goals.
I’ve had some pieces of the puzzle in the works for a long time, but I hadn’t put together a comprehensive “bucket list” of things I want to do before I die until recently. It wasn’t until Sean Ogle recently wrote about bucket lists, and how to identify the most important life goals that will enable you to achieve the other items on your list—the travel goals, the possessions, the fun stuff—that I finally got motivated to really solidify my whole life list and put it out here to share with the world.
Severalfriends and bloggers have compiled greatbucketlists that have helped inspire some of the things I decided to put on my list. There’s a mix of places I’d love to jet set, landmarks I’d like to see, adventures I’d like to have, experiences I hope to share with specific friends and family, and of course I immediately took Sean’s advice and prioritized the importance of the enabling goals that will make everything else possible.
So without further ado, here’s my bucket list—or, 84 adventures you can follow me on here at Thrilling Heroics:
Enabling Goals
Develop an online business that earns over $3000/month in passive income.
Build a blog with 10,000+ subscribers.
Write an ebook or launch a digital product that earns $6,000+.
Publish a best-selling book.
Achieve 100% freedom from all debt.
Get an article published in the print edition of Esquire, GQ, Wired, Details, or Maxim magazine.
Go to a shooting range and fire off a Kalashnikov rifle and a Desert Eagle .50 Action Express. More importantly, learn to disassemble & reassemble them.
You’ll notice I’ve included a few things I’ve already accomplished (plus I come back to update this list every few months, so things are continually getting crossed off).
I’ve also taken Sean’s advice to have a few things that will be easier to achieve, and a few goals I can obtain in the very near future.
I think when you make your own list it’s important to recognize the big things you’ve already done that you’d always dreamed of, and include a few “gimme” goals so you can start off strong and stay motivated.
Of course I expect that my feelings about some items on the list may change throughout the course of my life. I may not achieve everything, some of my goals will change, or I may add new items to the list. But, it’s a starting point and it’s something I can always refer back to to remind me what I want to accomplish.
Of course if there’s anything you can help me achieve, or something you want to join in on, leave a shout out and we’ll talk!
If you have a bucket list already, share it. If not, take a look at the above articles and get on it! Your time here is short, so remember to value every day you have and make the most of it.
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.
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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!
00Cody McKibbenhttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/HERO-Foundry-Warrior-logo-300x162.pngCody McKibben2007-08-02 18:47:012007-08-02 18:47:0110 Great Ways to Distinguish Yourself from One of Silicon Valley’s Top Entrepreneurs
Steve Jurvetson, managing director for the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, says that there is a common human desire that ties philanthropy, raising families, creating art and literature, and entrepreneurship together. Stephen Covey talks about it. It is the desire to create a legacy — something that will last beyond our short time here on earth.
Successful entrepreneurs are rarely lone rangers, but more often come in dynamic duos, so Jurvetson recommends that students who are hopeful entrepreneurs pay close attention to their classmates — keeping an eye out for uniqueness, persistence, and infectious enthusiasm among their peers. After all, his own classmate Jim Yang went on to start up Yahoo! Most importantly though, he says to look for ways you can harness what you’ve learned from past experiences in new and perhaps unfamiliar territory. How can you apply the things you learned from Chem 105 to starting a new side business, for instance?
That is you shouldn’t let job descriptions discourage you when you’re looking for something new — if you’ve accumulated experience across many different job types it will lend itself to being a flexible team-worker in different settings even if you haven’t worked in that field before. And for students, experience leading teams successfully in your academic career 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.
“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.
00Cody McKibbenhttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/HERO-Foundry-Warrior-logo-300x162.pngCody McKibben2007-03-20 09:20:382007-03-20 09:20:38The New Mecca for Dreamers
