The Wedding of the Year: Jam + Cody

“The Art of a Good Marriage” by Wilferd Arlan Peterson

A good marriage must be created. In marriage the “little” things are the big things. It is never being too old to hold hands. It is remembering to say, ”I love you” at least once a day. It is never going to sleep angry. It is having a mutual sense of values, and common objectives. It is standing together and facing the world. It is forming a circle that gathers in the whole family. It is speaking words of appreciation, and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways. It is having the capacity to forgive and forget. It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow. It is a common search for the good and the beautiful. It is not only marrying the right person — it is being the right partner.

October 8th, 2017, Sacramento, California

Anniversary Edition: Remastered Hi-Definition Wedding Video

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Planting a New Seed

Engagements are a special time in a couple’s relationship to reflect on the moments of dating that got them to where they are, and to look forward to the nuptials to come.

Photos from July 12th, 2017:

Cody and I have enjoyed being engaged so much! It truly creates a deeper bond in a relationship to plan a future and wedding together. On August 26, 2017 , we host an engagement party at his parents’ backyard, together with some of our family and friends.

At long last, Jam Milcah and Cody will make their long-time partnership a legal one. After battling dragons together for three years, they have undertaken the perilous journey to relocate from Asia to the USA and to finally make their own private, sacred commitment to each other a public one… to officially join their family houses under one banner in America:

House McKillinit!

One Team, One Dream

(See our wedding website here)

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How to Make This Your Best Year Ever

As we embark upon another new year, today we have a transformational guest post from my fellow HERO Challenge member Emelina Minero, cofounder of the Love Warrior Community. This is sure to help you overcome some limiting beliefs and negative self-talk, so I highly encourage you to dig into this article as you plan the year ahead. With that, here’s Emelina:

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I’m going to tell you a secret. I was walking with a friend at George Lucas’ Big Rock Ranch, and we were talking about the power of thought.

I was telling her about the thoughts, feelings, actions loop. She shared with me that she had just recently heard about that, and it revolutionized her life.

In case you haven’t heard about it, here you go:

Your thoughts influence your emotions, and your emotions influence your actions.

Like the Buddha said:

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.”

If you think you’re going to fail. You’re going to fail. If you think you’re not good enough, that’s the life you’re going to attract, proving to yourself that you’re not good enough.

You Have the Power to Change Your Beliefs

A belief is created by repeating a thought, over and over again. Our behaviors are formed in the same way. We strengthen neural pathways by repeating the same thoughts and behaviors.

Think of a neural pathway like a canvas, and you are the paintbrush. The more you repeat the brush stroke, the thicker the paint will get. The more you repeat a thought or behavior, the stronger the neural pathway will become in strengthening that thought or behavior.

Let’s say every time you’re stressed, you smoke a cigarette to relax. This action creates a brain pathway, which will trigger you to want to smoke every time you feel stressed.

But here’s the thing — at any moment, you can reverse these thoughts. You can reverse your behaviors. At any moment, you can choose differently. You can choose to create new neural pathways.

Instead of grabbing a cigarette each time you feel stressed, what if you replaced that with going for a run, stretching, meditating, or calling a friend — soon, when you begin to feel stressed, your brain will trigger you, craving a run, meditating, or calling a friend.

At Some Point, We All Play the Victim

I can’t quit smoking. It’s just too difficult. I can’t get this business going. I can never follow through. I’ll never close my first deal. People just don’t respond to cold calling, webinars, email lists, [fill in the blank.]

Let Me Know If This Is Where You’re At Right Now

You feel overwhelmed and discouraged after embarking on your new business, blog, or goals, and you give up; you stop taking action. You quit.

You always quit. This is what you tell yourself. You’re great at starting projects, but you can never finish them. It’s not your fault. You’re just not capable of following through.

Or How About This? 

You walk into a bar, see the most beautiful girl, want to approach her, and don’t.

You never approach her. You’re not good with women. You freeze up. You become awkward. You don’t know what to say. So why even try if you already know the outcome?

You Have to Know Your Beliefs Before You Can Change Them

Do you have trouble with following through on your goals? Are you the person who never approaches the woman? Why?

Let’s say you never approach the attractive girl. Here’s why:

Every time you see an attractive girl you want to talk to, you start thinking, “I’m shy. What would I have to say of interest? The guy talking to her right now is more attractive than me. She’s a 10, and I’m a 6. Why bother?”

Every time you see an attractive girl you want to talk to, the above thoughts begin to play like a broken record. You might not even be aware of them. They’re the unconscious background playing throughout your day.

Everyone has thought patterns, a series of thoughts that they repeat every day. A lot of the time, they’re negative, and most of the time, we’re unaware of them.

You can’t change something you’re not aware of. 

Learn to View Your Charged Thoughts and Emotions Objectively

To become aware of and change your thoughts, you need to develop your inner observer. Your inner observer is that part of you that observes and notices your thoughts objectively. This is different from your inner critic.

Let’s say you’re on a mastermind call, you’re sharing what you’re working on, and you realize that you just said something that can make you appear really stupid.

Your inner critic activates your emotions and remarks on your flaws. “I’m so stupid! Why did I just say that? They’re going to realize I’m a complete beginner.”

Your inner observer notices your thoughts, including your self-criticisms, and detaches from the anxiety and other uncomfortable emotions that they’re prompting. This allows you to notice your thoughts and work with them from an objective viewpoint.

Instead of thinking, “I just said something so stupid! They’re going to think I’m a fraud.” Your inner observer may notice, “What I just said doesn’t make any sense. They’re going to realize I’m still learning this, and that’s okay. Now that they know that I’m struggling, I can tell them that I’m still trying to figure this out and ask for help. I’ll be able to make a lot more progress now in a shorter amount of time.”

How to Develop Your Inner Observer

Make it simple. Give yourself 5 minutes once a week. You will simply sit for 5 minutes, and notice your thoughts. Write down what you notice.

If you want to speed up this process, carve out 5 minutes a day, and try this for a week.

You’ll notice that you have thought patterns.

I often think about:

  • What I have to do or should be doing
  • How I want to be more in the present moment with my family and friends, instead of thinking about or doing work
  • My energy levels, and how I should be taking better care of myself so I won’t be craving caffeine
  • How I want caffeine

My most prevalent thoughts are about my to-do list. They start right when I wake up, not in a productive, “Let’s get going!” manner, but in a nagging, “You should have already done this” manner. When I allow those thoughts to prevail in the morning, they drag me down. My morning and my energy start on a low note.

My mornings don’t have to start out like this.

Once You’re Aware of Your Thoughts, You Can Change Them

Once you catch your thought, you can confront it, replace it, apologize to yourself, and commit to change. This is called the 5-Step Process:

  1. Catch your thought.
  2. Confront your thought.
  3. Replace your thought.
  4. Apologize to yourself.
  5. Commit to change.

The 5-Step Process helps you to create new neural pathways, forming the thoughts and behaviors that you want to manifest.

If you want more in-depth practice on the 5-Step Process, you can join me in the 31-Day Self-Love Diet Writing Challenge. It’s a free event. You can sign up here, and you’ll receive 31 Self-Love Diet writing prompts for 31 days in a row, as well as have access to a free, private Facebook group for accountability and support.

The Self-Love Diet expands beyond the 5-Step Process. More specifically, it’s exploring your relationship with yourself through the lens of your spirit, body, emotions, thoughts, relationships, culture, and world.

It increases your self-awareness, your emotional awareness, and your self-confidence. 

I know, the term Self-Love Diet sounds woo woo.

But here’s the thing — being in charge of your life, not playing the victim, it boils down to:

  1. Becoming aware of your thoughts and emotions
  2. Being okay with experiencing and feeling all of your emotions
  3. Having the power to choose how you respond to your emotions

If you can do the above three things, you can begin to create the thoughts and feelings that you want to experience. You’ll be able to successfully change your behaviors, and you’ll even be able to change long-held, harmful beliefs.

How you view yourself, how you interact with the world, and how others perceive you — you have the power to shape these things.

You have the power over how you experience each moment of your life. You always have a choice.

Let Me Introduce Myself

I’m Emelina Minero, and I love and accept myself unconditionally. This too sounds woo woo, I know.

But I also know this: I believe in myself fully. I know I can accomplish anything I set my mind to. There are no obstacles that limit me — because I’ve stopped limiting myself.

  • I’ve created two online communities and a publication.
  • I’ve gotten free trips to Palm Springs, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and London.
  • I wrote, directed, produced, and hosted a variety show and donated the profits to nonprofit Una Vida.
  • I created a documentary about the transition of my woman’s college to a coed institution.
  • I pitched the publisher of Curve Magazine, the best-selling lesbian magazine in the world, to develop their social media platform and to create an intern program. She said yes.
  • I made a connection with the former President of Production at Paramount Pictures, who now owns her own production company.
    • She’s going to give me feedback on a screenplay that I wrote.
    • Through her, I interviewed Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls) and Mary Agnes Donoghue, a screenwriter, director, and producer whose credits include White Oleander, Beaches, and Veronica Guerin.
    • I was also flown to LA for the premiere of Jenny’s Wedding, where I got to interview Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy) in-person.
  • Through the Love Warrior Community, an online community I co-created, I’ve helped people change their behaviors and how they view themselves. People have told us that they’ve:
    • Stopped cutting themselves
    • Let go of their shame around their mental diagnoses
    • Lessened or stopped their eating disorder behaviors
    • Become more comfortable with expressing their emotions, and because of that, they’ve strengthened their relationships with their partners

If loving myself and accepting myself unconditionally sounds woo woo, I don’t care. 

It feels a lot better than shaming myself, doubting myself, and not taking action on the life that I want to live.

I know what fear feels like.

I lived in fear from 5-years-old to 19-years-old. I feared what would happen if people found out that I was a lesbian. Now, I no longer care. I let go of that fear a long time ago.

I know what shame feels like.

I struggled with being diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder and paranoia. I feared how others would perceive me if they found out. I struggled with how I viewed myself. For a while, I stopped believing that I had the power to choose how I reacted to my emotions and how I reacted to my life experiences. I believed that my diagnoses controlled me, but they don’t.

I let go of the struggle, and I let go of the shame.

I now view my neurodiversities as strengths, and opportunities to further explore myself and grow as a human being.

How did I do this?

I wrote. I did self-love writing. Self-love writing is what I have been doing for the past 6 years. It’s essentially allowing yourself to self-reflect.

Today, I can honestly say that I love all of myself. Loving myself doesn’t mean that I never have self-doubts, insecurities, or negative thoughts, but it does mean that I’m equipped to become aware of them, confront them, and try to change them. Loving myself doesn’t mean that life will always be easy, but it does mean that I’ll be able to navigate it in the most loving way that I can. Loving myself doesn’t mean that I will always choose the most loving thing for myself in each moment, but it does mean that I will be kind and patient with myself.

My Only Two Life-Long Goals

I’m going to share my only two long-term goals with you. If you can embody these two things, you’ll be able to accomplish anything you set your mind to.

1) Live life with love — non-judgmental, compassionate, unconditional love – for myself, and for others.

When you stop judging yourself and others, people pick up on this. When you’re comfortable with yourself, people notice. It invites others to feel comfortable as they are, to let down their walls, and to be open to you in a non-judgmental, compassionate way.

Loving and accepting yourself, as you are, invites others to do the same. It’s contagious.

Would you rather spend your time with someone who makes you feel comfortable in your own skin, who brings you into the present moment, and makes you feel alive, or would you rather spend your time with someone who makes your feel self-conscious and insecure?

It’s a no-brainer.

By loving yourself, you can have this effect on others. Others will be drawn to you for how you make them feel. This will open doors for you, create new connections, and expand your possibilities.

2) Create a vision, dream big, and follow your heart. As Dr. Seuss said:

As vast as your vision can show,

As high as your highest dreams grow,

As far as your passion can reach –

These are the places you’ll go.

Without a vision, without a map, it’s hard to get to your destination. If you want to change your behaviors, but you don’t have the self-awareness to know the first step to take, it will be difficult to make that change. If you want to start a business, but you don’t have a plan, it will be hard to follow through.

A detailed plan is helpful, but you don’t have to have every single step figured out. Allow yourself to dream big and to follow your heart. Allow yourself to be inspired. If you have a plan, and there are a few steps you don’t know how to do, don’t let that stop you. You can ask for help. You can find resources. You just need to keep on moving forward and taking action, one step at a time.

You are your worst enemy and your biggest supporter. Your success depends on which you choose to nurture.

Which will you choose?

I hope you join me in the 31-Day Self-Love Diet Writing Challenge. You can sign up here, and join the Facebook event here.

May the force be with you, if you choose it. That choice is up to you.

-Emelina Minero

 

[Republished from 2016]

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Lessons from 8 Years Bootstrapping Businesses and Slow-Traveling the World

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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.

Follow along with Cody’s slides below:

My top lessons learned so far:

  1. Don’t stay isolated
  2. Find Mentors (important lessons on finding mentors)
  3. Keep a MasterMind group.
  4. Practice gratitude (daily).
  5. Failure is necessary. (more about failure)
  6. Don’t stay married to your ideas.
  7. Don’t jump into bed with the wrong people.
  8. BUT…do collaborate with others. (how to find the right partner)
  9. Take care of yourself first.
  10. Never stop learning.

Sketch notes by Kat Ingals

Thank you to our sponsors Drip, Empire Flippers, Iglu and Digital Nomad Academy for making this event possible.

The 2016 Summit was co-hosted by Johnny FD and Cody McKibben. Click here to read the whole story.

 

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How We Organized an EPIC Conference in Just 3 Weeks

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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.

And it was glorious:

We had an amazing lineup of thought leaders:

Stephanie Simon – Copyhacks: How Copywriting Can Get You Sexier Dates, Swankier Accommodations, and a Souped Up Bank Account

Marcus Lucas – Superheroes: and 3 Superpowers for Your Online Business

Cody McKibben – Lessons Learned from 8 Years Bootstrapping Businesses & Living Abroad

Brendan Tully – Ecommerce Marketing & Optimization: From 5 and 6 Figures to 7 Figures and Beyond

Taylor West – Personal Brand Building: Liar. Cheat. Thief. Nomad.

Sean Lee – Creation Is Our Most Powerful Work

Joe Lannen & Dylan Basile – Tree Tribe – Social Enterprise: Giving Back is Awesome!

Alice Bush – Coacherr.com – How Success Without Personal Development is Not Sustainable Long Term

Sam Marks – Building a $100 Million Business the Nomadic Way

Johnny FD – Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Hacking

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:

Stephanie Simon – Copywriting Hacks:

Marcus Lucas – Superheroes:

If you want to watch my presentation, click here.

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 😉

Some photos courtesy of Stefanie Oeffner, Nick Martin, Bruno Eiroz, L Lee Horton, Cadu Cassau, and Jon Wilkinson. Thanks to Ian Robinson for your great video.

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!

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10 Great Ways to Distinguish Yourself from One of Silicon Valley’s Top Entrepreneurs

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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!

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

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Career MasterMinds

Founder & Small Group Facilitator

January 2007 – April 2008

Sacramento, Carmichael & Roseville, California

Career MasterMinds was an exclusive Sacramento Mastermind group for young professionals and college students to empower each other through the college-to-career transition and beyond. We ran an organized group of 8-10 peers across different disciplines—from entrepreneurship to economics to philosophy to engineering—who met weekly for over a year to serve each other as a personal “Board of Directors”, supporting one another and holding each other accountable to goals in career planning, personal development, professional development, and in business.

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