Lessons

Lesson Info

Chris Guillebeau - The $100 StartUp

We've got our next speaker is standing right there. He's, a dear friend of mine, someone who has changed my life because I read a couple of his books. One one was a great book called the art of non conformity. And a non conformity is not about how you like where spray painted levi vests and like, run around moping art of nonconforming is how you think different, how I behave different and how you work differently. He did that. He did that book couple years ago. It was a big inspiration to me. Follow that up with a book called one hundred dollars startup which that's one thing I hear all the time people saying I don't have the money and have the capital. How'd I get my business off the ground? Well, chris interviewed people from all over the world who started their business from scratch bootstrapped it with with about one hundred bucks. He's a dear friend he's a visionary he's also the first person in the history of the world under the age of thirty five, to visit every country in the w...

orld. Please give a warm welcome for mr kick chris what's up everybody it's, a creative life think I got something coming up here cool, hello, good morning got out to the beautiful in studio audience shout out to everybody watching online from all over the world. This is a huge honor for me. I love the creative live platform I've learned so much from it already, so I hope to contribute a small part to all the amazing stuff that's happening and what I'd like to do over the next hour. So is facilitates and interactive conversation about life and work, broadly speaking and maybe more specifically about creative self employment. And I would like to tell a few stories of how different people all over the world are embracing creative self employment, how they're finding their own freedom by making something valuable for other people. These two themes were going to come up a bit freedom and value. I'm going to tell us some stories, hopefully not just stories. Hopefully we'll have some lessons that we can take away from these stories. Hopefully we can look and see what other people have done, maybe see how that can apply in our lives have some lessons, tips on dh then throughout the whole process I would love to engage everyone who's here as well as many people online. I'm going to start by reading. Very brief excerpt some of what I talk about today will be based on a hundred dollars start out, and if you've never heard of that, I don't care about it. It's fine she's not a product placement s o just a very short excerpt to kind of frame our conversation, then I won't read from the book after that, because that would be boring this's from the introduction. So wherever you are watching this in the role, I just want you to kind of imagine this scenario. Imagine a life where all your time is spent on the things you want to do. Imagine giving your greatest attention to a project you create yourself instead of working as a cog in a machine that exists to make other people rich. Imagine handing a letter to your boss that reads, dear boss, I'm writing to let you know that your services are no longer required thanks for everything, but I'll be doing things my own way. Now imagine that today is your final day of working for anyone other than yourself. What if, very soon not in some distant, undefined future, you prepare for work by firing up a laptop in your home office walking into a store front, you've opened, phoning a clients who trust you for helpful advice or otherwise doing what you want instead of what someone tells you to do all over the world and in many different ways thousands of people are doing exactly that they're rewriting the rules of work becoming their own bosses and creating a new future this new model of doing business is well under way for those unexpected entrepreneurs most of whom have never thought of themselves as businessmen and business women it's a micro business revolution a way of earning a good living while crafting a life of independence and purpose so I use this word freedom I mentioned it a few times already and I'd like to talk about independence and purpose because I believe there's an increasingly common value of people all over the world people who want to work independently even if they want to work as part of an organization or want to do something bigger than themselves they long for freedom and they kind of established this as a core value and said you know I want to make my own choices I want to kind of forge my own destiny I want to do something that matters it's not so much about working less as it is about you're contributing to something and being responsible for my future and so I've done a lot of travel as chase mentions and uh you know wherever I go I I hear all these different people who are pursuing that dream of freedom and many people who are achieving it in their own ways often through self employment and there's also aa lot of folks who I want that or desire that for themselves but they don't necessarily know what the next step is and they've heard some success stories they don't know how it applies to their life but they think that they don't have this skill to be self employed they think you know, maybe I even went to college or university and I have this specific you know, degree or a piece of paper but I don't see how that applies in a different way and so there's these two groups of people those who have found that freedom already er and those who are looking for that freedom and so the whole point of the hundred dollars start up some of what I hope to share today eyes to connect those groups and to kind of bridge that gap and say ok, you know all these people who have found that freedom and whatever away that that looks like for them it's going to different for different people what can they teach all of us who are looking for that freedom? So that's what I hope to kind of cover in a few different areas but I would love to get to know some of you who are here as well I know you've been some reductions is ready already but for the sake of repetition and for the new online audience if you are self employed already would you raise your hand? Awesome preaching to the choir here this morning. We can maybe ship the stage in a minute. I actually call it a couple of you to maybe share a brief introduction if you wanted a second and then I do want to get anyone in trouble. S so you don't have to raise your hand, but if you currently employed and you like the idea of pursuing something for yourself and you're able to raise your hand, would you do that that's? Right? That's, right? We're going to keep it anonymous. That's going to get you in trouble. You as well. We're facilitating this conversation. We're going to the internet right now. That is going to raise my hand on both of those. Okay, what is the internet saying? I think I'm excited. I am excited. I love the internet to say hello, that's. Great. Eso would there be a few people who would be open tio just raising your hand and doing a quick introduction saying those who are self employed, saying, you know what it is that you do as well as what your greatest challenge is? What's, right? Thirty years. That one. Ok, there's one behind you is well on the one in front also. I asked the question at the end of the last session, I'm jenny warner, I run a digital design agency, and I split my time between teaching web design of been honored chase to be part of your creative live instructor team. I love what you're doing here, and I also do designed for clients, and that leads me to working with a lot of entrepreneurs, and I think, like most of us, I just found myself I find myself structured in a lot of different directions and with a lot of ideas, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to prioritize but jump in with that. Is that a lot of a lot of time thinking about how to prioritize? Ok, that's, great, next person high and c j limits from west virginia, and I'm I'm a lawyer to a lot of oil and gas negotiations now seven of their idea that I would like to start an agent, see for djs in new york city so very various, my current organization that I have my biggest challenge is in for marriage, information, management flow and finding it again. I have a number of probably seventy five open projects and it's very difficult, tio keep that keep that flowing, eh, so that I can address each person in in a timely manner and keep their expectations realistic as well. That's awesome! Seventy five projects that's a lot. I have a lot of problems going on, but I don't have seventy five so that's amazing. How is west virginia? Oh, it's. Wonderful it's beautiful. Come visit. I did once. I did a tour fifty states for my previous book chase mentioned and I had a good experience. West virginia. I'm glad to hear it. Almost having that's, right? A couple of people got some okay, fine. And elizabeth? Yoko says I'm self employed and I own a business that hosts a number of reliable web solution services. My biggest challenge has been expanding my clientele. Ok, see that, of course, over and over. All right, that sounds good. Can you keep a notice some of these things as we go along thank you. And maybe want let's do two more of my name is aaron government without erin ji were awesome. And I do some investing advising and start up companies and also done some my own start ups, mostly focusing on ios development. I think my biggest challenges is focused, finding one specific area to dig into and really good okay, me too that's great, and there was somebody up in the front as well if we can get out of here our business is innovative psychiatric solutions and our bacon and more texas in our biggest struggle or challenges, how to scale our business to me, our global mission, while at the same time maintain the integrity of the service that we provide. And ok, interesting, just one more quick survey of those of you who are self employed. How many of your solo preneurs we're kind of a business of one person for the most part, awesome. Until I'm guessing the other half of the year the opposite. I love what pam said in the previous section, what you talked about scale and talked about how you don't have to scale and that's something that I'm trying to focus on a lot because I haven't ever really scaled a business and a lot of the people that I relate to a lot of people that I've worked with, they're very much focused on this aspect of freedom and lifestyle and building something that supports their lifestyle as opposed to scaling it, but we'll talk, we'll come back and talk about all that. So when I when I started the process of research and going around the world to talk to all these different people, I knew I wanted tio. Get a broad set of stories I didn't want to just kind of tell my own entrepreneurial history first of all because that's just kind of boring and if you just tell one person story than people feel like they can't relate to it they say well that's good that that person you know he's been able tio work themselves but how does that apply to mean a same time my own entrepreneur history is a bit random I haven't really built a business until the past few years I was just always motivated by the idea that I want to do something for myself and I'm not a good employee and I'm not good at you know devoting the majority of my hours every week towards somebody else's project and so you know for me it was like a number of years how can I whatever I can do you know to kind of pay the bills and support myself to allow myself and my wife to volunteer overseas in west africa we did that for a few years that was my whole thing but I thought well, you know if we're really going to talk about how people can embrace creative self employment we need a broader story, eh? So I went all over the world to all fifty states as I mentioned they went to every country about twenty countries a year especially over the past five years on dh I kept hearing from all kinds of different people in different, different walks of life who had all created this freedom through self employment ce and so we said, let's, let's, gather this information let's understand what we can learn from these people, how they can help the other group of people, and we had some initial criteria we said, okay, to be in this study, uh, you know, first of all, like, you have to have a profitable business, you have to be making at least fifty thousand dollars a year in this business, and many of them did much more than that. There were a lot of, you know, six figure multiple six figure businesses, but at least fifty thousand dollars a year, you have to operate this business with five or fewer employees, because, again, for the most part, I'm looking at silla preneurs you didn't go into debt for this business. You started this business with the low, you know, investment, usually less than a thousand dollars and often less than one hundred dollars and the title of the talk think the average was something like three hundred sixty four dollars, but we decided to hundred sixty four dollars startup didn't sound is good one hundred dollars start ups, we went with a hundred um, and for the most part, everybody that we looked at started their business with no special skills and they used the skills they already had didn't mean that they had no skills it means they had no highly advanced technical skills you know that they didn't do something that wasn't accessible, you know, to people and uh I gathered maybe fifteen hundred different case studies out of this research and we ask people to be very specific ensuring their lessons with us they had to share full information about finances to talk about how much it costs to get started and how much money they made you know, each year along the way and if they made mistakes what were those mistakes you know and how did they recover from that and what was their greatest success? And once they found success you know, how did they grow it from there? And this was just a fascinating process for me and I learned so much I felt challenged, you know, in my own business because I felt like I had never you know really built something significant compared to a lot of these people. But I heard stories from people who had been laid off and or fired unexpectedly sometimes due to the difficult economy sometimes just due to a changing industry and you know, these people often ended up starting a small business and then later they said things like when I lost my job that was really difficult, unexpected perhaps even a dramatic first but it turned into the best thing that ever happened to me because then I was able to pursue this dream that I had I was able to kind of, you know, go off on my own and so I'm glad that that happened I talked with people who found a way to take the existing skills that they had and apply them in a different way through a process of skill transformation which we'll talk about this became kind of one of the core principles of the whole model is you know, if you're good at one thing you're probably good at something else as well and sometimes it's the something else that can actually make a more successful business than the official thing that you're trained in. So if you're a trained as a teacher for example, you're probably a good communicator you're probably good at lesson planning you're probably good at crowd control discipline even you know you're good at figuring things out in a short period of time so really kind of understanding you know what people's skills where and a zay looked at all of this this different data that came in you know, over over two years the big question was ok what do these people have in common because they are from all over the world they are operating different businesses a lot of them are online businesses but not all of them there were some retail businesses there were some offline businesses a lot of creative professionals but also all kinds of other people as well very different demographically young people older people people had retired and we're starting a new career single mothers you know, single parents in general who started a business got out of poverty all this different kind of stuff they're very different but what do they have in common and what can we learn from that? You know and that's what I want to focus on this section what what can we learn from successful people? And the first thing that I noticed is that they took action quickly I know pam touched on this a little bit they took action quickly for the most part they didn't wait nine months to write a business plan they didn't write a fifty year, eighty page business plan they did something you know often within thirty days often by answering a few very specific questions the questions that they I thought about it I thought about ok what is my business and what am I trying to start? They answered three things what is the product or the service who are the group of people who are willing to pay for it how can I connect with them and what is the means of getting paid? They're really focused on getting that a cz quickly as possible a story that I really liked came from a photographer who is actually in west virginia and his name is nick gaitan's and when I met nic, he talked about how he had this, you know, he had a day job and that was fine, but he really liked photography and he wanted to sell his prints, you know, to the world and so we talked about, you know, how he would do that in the platform he would use and all this kind of stuff. And first he was kind of discouraged, he said, well, you know, like, nobody has has purchased anything yet, and I was with him in a coffee shop, and I had my my phone and I pulled it out and I said, what can I can I take a look at the website like, I don't know everything, but maybe there's something I can I can share, maybe I can see something obvious on dh he said, well, I don't actually have the website up yet, and I said, ok, I think we've identified the first problem, you know, you have to have the website up and he's well, of course I know that, and so it was funny because you felt a little embarrassed by that, and so they're going to be embarrassed it's fine, you know, um and he went away and he e mailed me two weeks later and he said, you know, chris, I thought about this experience, you know, after we talked and I had all these technical questions about the platform and such but what I realized actually, it wasn't the lack of the platform that was the problem, I just had some kind of fear or insecurity or anxiety about putting this work up, you know, for the world and and once I finally realized I should just get over that and do it, you know, I had to sign up in two days and what I was so excited about was, you know, yesterday I got an email from paypal notification of payment received and someone had gone to my side and purchased a prince, and they purchased a fifty dollars prince, and he talked about how excited he waas by that and how empowered he felt, you know, by this by his first sale, and he talked about how it meant far more than just fifty dollars, some because this meant that he was now started, and now he was excited about, you know, expanding the platform and offering prints in different ways and all of this so the sooner you can get started, the better that's the first lesson how's it going online, it's going great people are charming and there's already questions a number of questions coming in shall we do some questions this on this first part of that keep going? Absolutely if he would like to know what we've got questions in here you khun grabbed the mike and get those ready. So this is a question from karma wheel I have no other solo preneurs among my friends that I can talk tio about startup challenges and to hold each other accountable any tips on how to connect with like minded people in really life and great when you are traveling all over the world, how did you connect with those fifteen hundred people are right, and that is in question you amazing question, I guess, you know, the first answer is is you're not alone out there, you know, and there is this worldwide community of people now who are interested and doing this for themselves and who are doing it themselves, and you can connect with him through things like creative life. You can connect with him through meet ups. When I traveled, social media helped a great deal, different blocks, there are different events, and this is why I feel like it's so there's, so much power in that community now that there wasn't even ten years ago, and it used to be very unusual to kind of embrace this form of self employment there, people who did it, certainly, but you didn't know people all the time so especially if you live in the small town or if you live in some place where you don't know folks, you know, the internet allows that connectivity and that's great. When I met nic and the coffee shop, there are other folks who came out and, you know, often it different these different events, some people would say I thought I was the only one or I thought, like nobody else was interested in this, but you know, you're not alone, so that for me has probably been one of the greatest lessons, you know, as I've gone through this, I started my project as a personal project of this traveling, and it turned into a business thing, and and I was I was challenged in thrilled to find lots of people who saw the world in a similar way and hoped, you know, to contribute something as well, absolutely well, you certainly don't feel alone when you are here in the creative live around that's for sure let me go with one more question from l yes, who is in morocco all right, and joining us from rocco, which obviously we know you have been too he's a freelance web designer and developer and stuff trying to actually get into entrepreneurship every time I start brainstorming, I feel like I'm looking to create the next big thing is that normal? And it just stops me from actually executing? Well, I think it could take me a lifetime to actually find something absolutely knew. So do you have to reinvent the wheel? Well, I don't know. Do you think you have to create the next big thing every time? I don't think so personally, I don't think so. You know, this might be kind of heresy to say this. I realize that the secrets of silicon valley so please forgive me that's, right? I am from portland, oregon. I forgot this this spandex or whatever you mentioned earlier, I would say that there's a lot of people get hung up on this question of innovation, and people feel that they have to create something that's never been made before my suggestion would be, don't focus on innovation, focus on usefulness, focus on something that's going to help other people focus on something that genuinely creates value. You know, mention these words freedom and value just to define that a little bit. The way I think of value is temple simply helping people. You know, I think value just means you're doing something that that improves the lives of ah small group of people, maybe a large group of people, but that's what it is, so I would say, focus on helpfulness let's go let's go go to a couple of stories that people that I met along the way and we'll talk about how that may be related to some of these questions uh sometimes I met people who didn't want to quit their jobs who actually like had a good job but they also like the idea of not turning all of their income from an employer they like the idea of maybe having different options in the future possibilities or doing something on the side. So one of my favorite stories was a guy named gary left who's in arlington, virginia and gary is a cfo for a research university during the day but he's also been very passionate about travel like I am and he and his wife for years had traveled the world in first class and business class using their frequent flyer miles and so for years his colleagues had asked him like, hey, how do you do this? Can you help me with my itinerary? You know I don't know how to book these tickets whatever so he did this for free he just helped his friends for a long time and then he thought maybe there's ah you know business model here maybe there's something I can do do about this, you know, to offer this to the world and so he set up a very, very basic website it certainly took less than thirty days to put it together and his website is called book your award dot com and he said, you know, if you're out there and you have these miles you want to go on a trip you don't know how to do it I will do it for you you know I hope you get a good itinerary and all of that I think he charge something like two hundred fifty dollars per itinerary you know, for a person in the beginning and he put that out not knowing you know what would happen if that would anything would come of that and within within less than a year I believe within six months he was making one hundred thousand dollars on an annual basis from this side project and he worked on this project early in the morning and late at night before he goes to his job at the university and when I talked to him I said, well, this is a fantastic you know, this is this is great and wonderful business but it sounds like it could be more than a side business you know, why do you still have the job on? And he said, well, you know, I like my job actually and I like the colleagues that I work with, I work with different kind of problems, you know, it's a very collaborative work environment s o I don't want to quit it but I also like the fact that I have this very substantial side income now, and it is it does seem like it's, somewhat reliable, and so if that situation at work ever changed, if I didn't like it, you know, eric, something shifted then I've got something that I couldn't kind of fall back on, so I like that story because it also illustrates the question of usefulness, you know? He wasn't making something that had never really been done before, it was a very simple, you know, convenience service that he was offering them, but it was very helpful and useful and it, you know, given this great, sustainable side project, yes, sir. So one of the things that myself is a creative on many of my friends is creative entrepreneurs, one of the things you know, we've in the earlier session with family talked about paralysis through analysis, and I think that's a it's, a key stumbling block for a lot of folks, and I have learned over time, and I keep falling back and do what I've learned over time that it's really like it's, iterating it's taking the first step, and can you talk a little bit about how your businesses have evolved in the first thing you didn't did actually doesn't? Look very much at all like what you finished with the book process with the information product you talk I think that would be helpful over I'm dying to know how you did that great great question you know, I guess the first thing I say is like when you're stuck in this analysis, you know, paralysis I love what pam said I forget exactly how she phrased it, but I think she said something about just start just pick something and if you're torn between all these different things, you know there are some exercises you can go through to kind of rank stuff, but you can also just kind of pick something and go with it because picking something is better than picking nothing. I do think there's a very natural process of evolution in most small businesses certainly in mind I had a very small vision uh for my small business when I first started I think chase and I talked about this a little bit in seattle a few weeks ago, you know, when I first started writing and said, ok, I want to build a career is a writer I'd like to write a book, but I don't know how that works and you know, so I started blogging and, you know, my initial goal is I said I want to reach one thousand people and if a thousand people ever read the blogger and I'll be thrilled and happy andi I was happy with that goal but now you know we're reaching thousands of people right now online and I guess I shifted along the way to focusing more on helpfulness and usefulness because in the beginning I'm just kind of writing about my own travel and stuff and that was fine but you know, some people wrote in and said, you know, it's interesting that you're going to every country in the world how does that help me? You know, what does that do for me? It was a good question actually, you know, because I thought huh well, I could I could just, you know, go off and be a traveling right or whatever, but I want to contribute something I wanted to do something that you know, hopefully helps other people and so then I started writing more about how I travel and like the practical aspects of it and for other people who wanted to travel where here's, how you can travel, you know, cheaply and affordably here's how you can have a great experience without spending a lot of money and my business grew a lot more after that because then I'm actually providing a solution to people and actually doing something that cz muchmore external externally focused and it is and really focus awesome thank you can we talk for a moment about following your passion? Yes, I'm not sure if this is like an elephant in the room this is another silicon valley thing you know? I don't know what do you what do you have some thoughts on this but what do you think about following your passion chase? Um I feel well, I feel like you're trying to hook me into something I think you know, I'm not actually way over the head with this lynching or in a minute you jumped in, I thought I'd yeah ok, that is great. So uh I feel like it's at the core of our society were programmed to do the things that other people want us to do that is my own personal experience, and it took me years I wanted to be a creative professional creative since aiken is early as I can remember, but it literally took me until I was twenty four years old to call myself because I had to sort of break out of all of the sort of the cultural norms and the thing that is it's a loaded question like, oh, you don't want to make your passion your job because I need them, then you have two jobs, you don't have the pastor, but I truly have the belief now that it took me a lot of struggle and courage to break through and do the thing that I wanted to do more than anything the world which is to be an artist and entrepreneur and create things like creative live and in process I feel like I had to decide to follow my passions because I get up every day and I think steve jobs said if you get up and look in the mirror at yourself too many days in a row and you're not doing the thing you want to know want to do you'll know it and so in my personal experiences that passion is actually the thing that gets me up in the morning and if I can spend as much time as possible doing that then I feel more fulfilled so feel free to hack that three points from sorry no no I love it and in truth that s so there's a there's a I feel like that is something that's undervalued culturally we don't placing a value on people doing the things that they're supposed to do in the world absolutely I also feel very excited about getting up in the morning and doing what I want to do and if I whenever I don't if it goes more than a couple of days and then definitely kind of regroup and say ok what's going on there's something that's what's wrong here I think when people are you know beginning their small business they're beginning this kind of journey toward self employment you know sometimes they start with this question okay like what am I excited about what I like to do and I don't think it's a bad question but I think it's it's somewhat incomplete I think it has to be followed up with okay what do I would like to do that other people are also interested in so one of the lessons that I learned you know over the past couple of years of talking with all these people is they did follow their passion but they didn't follow just any passion you know they followed a passion that was linked to something useful helpful interesting valuable you know whatever that is that's that's how they created their success so they found what I call the convergence you know between their passion their skill and what other people were interested in so that so you know I always say like you know when I was young I played a lot of video games and I was very passionate about playing video games I was passionate about video games was passionate about eating pizza you know, lots of different things but no one came along and you know hate me for it and then even when I started traveling you know I was pretty passionate about traveling and seeing the world but I didn't get page you know to travel you know that was kind of my own thing I only got paid once I started creating something you know that was helpful or useful so I always encourage people as much as possible to find that convergence and find that that point sometimes it takes a couple of generations so sometimes you start something it doesn't go the way you expect and so then you shift a good story about this uh a friend of mine his named mignon fogarty and you might not recognize that name right away but many of you would recognize the name grammar girl if you heard that grammar girl has a very popular podcast all about writing an english language using language better her name is mignon and what a lot of people don't know this grammar girl podcast is hugely popular with hundreds of thousands of subscribers a whole line of books and you know, it's really growing the past few years but before she was grammar girl she was science girl essentially she had another podcast called absolute science and she started this podcast I think from seattle actually, uh when she was looking for something to do and she had she had a undergraduate degree and in science, I believe and she said, I'm really passionate about communicating science to the lay person love the medium of podcasting I'm gonna put this out and so she did everything she was supposed to do she put a lot of energy into it, but for whatever reason it didn't super connect with people and she had like a small group of listeners but not a big group so then she kind of shifted she said okay, you know I like podcasting I like this medium I want to share some expertise of my own but maybe it should be something different so when she switched to grammar and writing which is something she was also excited about that's when it really took off so I think I'm going to take some different iterations so I know you've seen that and your business I'm certainly for me as well so you have a hand up some of the comments on what's going on online here I asked people the same question that you asked about what passion are how do you feel about following your passion are you following and one come of that came in from marin burr was passion is good but purpose it is better that's also really like that a lot get retweeted like a thousand times yes and this other one I mean there's so many coming in but elizabeth coco said following my passion is challenging but allows me to test myself further and it is evidence that I want something deeply I it adds value to my hobbies and career expect to share my passions through my business and it will allow others to do the same she said I was molded by the quote build your dreams or someone will pay you to build their like that that's good how do you know what people want? This is another common question people have like when you're like I got this idea you know, how do I know you know if it's going to be good or not should you know is that this market testing thing or you know is it going to be received? Well, s o this lesson that I've learned from one hundred dollars start up I call it give them the fish and it relates to this this story there's this old quote about how if you you know give a man to fish he'll eat for a day to teach him he'll fish you know, for a lifetime are you for a lifetime or something on guy like to say this is a great idea when you're working with homeless fishermen but it's not always the best business idea and the story I tell about this is let's imagine that it's friday night we've had this busy week we've all been doing like lots of stuff it's been stressful has been good. Whatever it is we want to go somewhere and we want to relax we got our restaurant and we go out, we sit down, have a nice glass of wine and the server comes over and servers giving some recommendations says we have a great salmon risotto tonight you say oh, that sounds good like maybe all ordered that and server says ok, you know just a moment I'll have the chef come out and speak with you you think ok that's kind of strange but all right whatever you know so you're sitting there and the chef comes out and she says good evening I understand you've ordered you know, the senate risotto and you said yes you know sounds good to me and she and she says ok, we'll go ahead and get washed up and I'll meet you back in the kitchen you know I'll start the prep work done you can help me make this and and uh obviously you're thinking that's strange like that not only strange that's kind of annoying like I didn't go to the restaurant and then I'm gonna pay like, you know, ten times what it would cost me to make it myself I go to the restaurant so to enjoy the service and to relax I don't actually want to go back in the kitchen and make something you know, I don't even want to know what happens in the kitchen perhaps you know the whole point of it is desperate to be done for me so obviously that would never happen but I tell that story because something that I've learned and I've experienced in my own business as well way often think that everyone wants to know kind of the behind the scenes of what's happening, everyone wants to know, like all of the details, they want the inter information and lots of times they don't, you know, lots of times they just want the fish. So what I've learned through a lot of the different stories, like I mentioned with gary left the frequent flyer guy, you know, you can learn to book these airline tickets yourself if you want to or you could just pay him, you know, and he's making this good living by giving people the fish by giving people something that they really want, comments or questions in that we could go back to some some additional questions for you again on the on the passion side, this is a question actually from liza, who spews out of who is a regular here, a critical eye on an entrepreneur herself. What about self discipline in working from home? I feel that sometimes runs over the passion. The lack of discipline runs over the passion it's something I struggle with as well, I guess I try to focus on outcomes I try to focus on deliver bols, but that's not what I'm actually trying to achieve, like if I have a certain number of goals or I've got this set goal like I have to, you know, produce this session or write this this book or I have this bog post done, I guess I try toe, you know, tie myself to that much more than telling myself to a time based schedule, and this is something that I I think creative individuals especially have to learn to adapt to write because if you if you're working a traditional job, um, then your job is very much based on hours and time, and you have to be there from a certain time to a certain time and presumably you're supposed to accomplish something while you're there, but the focus is very much clock based where is when you start working from home or working for yourself, however you do it, it doesn't matter, you know, when you do it, so for me, something that helps his I really focus on the delivery bull's eye focus on those outcomes and like, ok, you know, it doesn't matter what I'm doing between eight and eight thirty per se what matters is, you know, by a certain time this this thing has to be done, but I also take a lot of breaks. You know? I take a lot of breaks I try to focus on maybe, you know, a couple of hours of productive work as opposed to eight hours of sitting there kind of surfing the internet. I think that's that's what I'm going to spend a lot of eight hour days for the internet, I think it's a really great way to look at it because I think we're so trained, especially I haven't been in the corporate world that we have to be productive and that it's all about putting these things out, but that when you're just talking about getting those little things done versus like spending all this time, um, I think that's great. Another question that came in was from phoenix. Ash, what do you recommend when following your passion often feels harder and actually working a basic shudder job? I guess it comes down to what really matters to, you know, I guess it comes down to, like, what are you trying to accomplish or to build? And, you know, I'm not an evangelist, I'm not trying to say like, everyone should be self employed, everyone should do this or should do that. You know, I guess what I want to help people do is to follow their dream, whatever it is, and if you have a dream, your dream is going to have some cost to it. You know, if it's a real dream, you know, your dream can't be just like, you know, I want to take off an hour early one day right, because that's probably not there's not much cost to it, but if there's something that you really want to accomplish, if it's going to matter to then you're going to want to do that more than you want the other thing you're going to be willing to accept, whatever the the consequences of the sacrifices are for that. I thought about this a lot when I was visiting every country in the world because, you know, on the one hand, this was a dream, but I also had to believe in it because it took a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of, you know, times where I had to choose to do something related to the travel goal as opposed to doing something else, and I just sleep on the floor of the airports and all these random, you know, african countries, did you do that as well? So you're raising your hand let's go, I'll come to you one second down, so I guess I guess you should think about regret is what you should do it you should think about, you know, if I have this idea of pursuing this project, whatever it isthe, you know, I think I had a year from now five years from now, whatever you know, how are you going to feel if you don't try that's what I always say when people ask about failure and I think about failure to I failed in many different things I guess I'm ok with trying something of failing but when I'm really excited about something I know if I don't actually try that to me is going to be much bigger failure you know I can live with the regret of whatever happens but if I have this idea and don't pursue it I think that's what you should think about thank you you have something like that yes I think the biggest question I hear all of the time is if I'm really passionate about something that has nothing to do with business well you know like I'm a photographer I'm very passionate about photography but I don't know how to make money from it I have to become a business person in order to make money from my passion now I'm no longer doing my passion do you understand? So how do you teach people that they can learn about business and comments and income or but not lose but they actually wanted to do which was to take photos where I see a lot of creative's going get creative a business partnership and then sell half of themselves because they simply cannot make money with the passion which that yeah ok so there's two different things here I think because you know the first thing is the acquisition of the skill all right, first thing is like, you know, I don't know if I have this business skill, I don't know how to require that skill. That is something that I believe very strongly that everyone can acquire that's, something that creative life is great about teaching people, and, you know, in just a short period of time, you know, you can gain access to the information you need to accomplish what you need, and and you, you don't have to have a lot of technical skill, you don't have to have a lot of marketing skill, you know, a little bit goes a long way if you can learn to connect with people, if you, you know, start the basics of building community, you know, in terms of whatever else you need to know about, you know, bookkeeping or something, you can either learn that or someone can help you with that. I think the other question and is, though, you know what happens when you start doing this and then you spend all your time doing it right? You spend all your time on the aspects of the business as opposed to what you love to do and what got you in it in the first place, and I think that's a common struggle, I think that's something that I've struggled with, definitely. You know, and the amount of time, like spent on other stuff kind of increases. And so there is attention there, I guess it's something that you have to block off space for and block off time for and say ok, you know, I I started doing this because I loved I loved your doing the photography or the writing or the design of the traveler. Whatever. I can't let these other things take that over, you know, I have to have to be a very clear and have some boundaries about that and it's kind of like what shea said about how if you, you know, you know, you do something tomorrow if you wake up tomorrow, you're not excited, maybe that's, ok, but if it's three or four days in a row, then that's a problem, you know, it's kind of how I feel about exercise, you know, if I miss a day or two exercising its not a big deal, if I missed three or four days, I started feeling like I need to make some adjustments and in my life. So when I mentioned earlier about about writing, you know, my goal is a writer is I want to write a thousand words every day. And I know if I write a thousand words every day it's not a huge commitment but if I write a thousand words every day then I'm gonna be able to write a book or you're gonna be able to write you know, the one hundred block posts that go up to be able to write different articles that I commit to you know, that's kind of my standards and if I miss a day or two it's ok, but I missed like four days that I've got to make some adjustments basically I've got to stop doing something else you know, I got it back off on some other commitment so you can apply this thousand words a day standard to another creative field whatever it is, the point is to make it measurable to make it specific and into it here to it you know over time hey, chris, yo, what question? And I think it's partly is nicely what you were talking about so I've watched your ted talks were in all your books one of the things that I enjoy most about how you share what it is that you do is it's very tactical like these are the things and I think that's the folks at home the folks in d I didn't say they want to know like what chris g did to go from here to here to here to here so I was wondering you know you just touched on your thousand words a day thing but I've heard you say it before we were said you know like I wanted to be a writer and so I figured the first thing I should probably do is start to write because you really think this is a fantasy that you wanted to you know escape cubicle nation work for anyone else and and can you walk us through the steps because clearly you went from having a dream of passion and now you are best selling author who is accomplishing all sorts of goals in business and in life so talk to me about give me there I step by step basis so the folks at home can have their pen and pencil ready absolutely okay so for me for better or worse probably some false steps in the way or you know but for me yes I wanted to be a writer you know, two thousand and six I came back from living overseas in west africa for about five years I wantto write something I don't really know what I want to write but I feel like I've got some kind of message you know to share with the world blah blah so I started a blood you know, very simply very basically and I called the blood theory of nonconformity unconditional strategies for life working travel I chose something very broad in the beginning so I wouldn't get border because in the past have had problems of like you know starting something and then stopping I get bored I wanna do something different so I tried to choose something that I could grow over time and I just started writing posts and in the beginning I wrote to everyone I knew people I had gone to school with people I worked with and just at hand doing this project you know you know I talked about this briefly you know, in the beginning I think I had like five subscribers to my block and one of them was my grandma you know and then she subscribed twice I saw she had two email addresses thiss talk because I was like, ok, I lost like twenty percent of my readership they're you know um but I guess eh? So I looked at other authors I knew and I wrote to them and said, hey, your work has influenced me and I just want to let you know I'm starting this thing as well and hopefully something will come out of it and I said I'm gonna have you know, three posts a week every week it's going to be out you know originally was monday wednesday friday no it's monday and thursday and I said I'm never going to miss a date basic I'm never gonna miss a deadline even if no one's reading you know my grandma on the three others it's always going to be there and then in overtime it kind of grew a little bit I thought I got a little more specific about what I hoped to accomplish I wrote a manifesto called a brief guide to world domination and you know, a lot of people a few people like that and then shared that that kind of went out of it but I'm learning all the way I'm like making so many mistakes, you know, along the way and the writing isn't very good but that's just that's a tight work, so I'm just going to keep doing it I mean, it eventually improved through sheer repetition basically and then when I had my first book, you know, my first book was with a small publisher they didn't pay a lot of money for it they didn't give a lot of support to it, which is fine that's a normal process, but I said, I want to do everything I can to make this a success so I said, I want to have a tour, you know? And so I wrote to them and I was like, hey, guys, what's the plan for the book tour, you know? And they're like, oh, we don't do tours you know anymore most authors don't want to do them it's expensive, and they said you can come to new york if you want to do something and I was like, well new york is great but not everyone lives there you know? So that's when I had the idea of the fifty state tour it was like I'm going to go and meet my readers in all fifty states and I'm not going to get about canada we'll do every province you know up there so it became a sixty three city you know, unconditional book tour and the way that came to be was like I just wrote to my readers such as they were at the time and said, hey, I you know if you're out anywhere I would love to meet you come out and we'll do something it was a very delight the eye y effort but I guess I'm just kind of building you know, I'm trying to build community and this is one of these things that people talk about build community you know, it's kind of like this word you like shoot me in the head you know, build community the authentic but still, you know, it's like person by person you know? I call it the small army of remarkable people approach trying to build these relationships you know, when I went to west virginia or north dakota, you know, there would be like ten people there and I was like, oh guys, I'm happy to come for a small group and they're like, offer north dakota this is a big group you know you're like backing him in like ok great but my theory was like you never know what's gonna happen with these relationships okay, so this is something that pam touched on before like you come to these events you know you never know what's gonna happen with a single relationship you know, you should exchange cards or email our twitter you know you should get to know someone because my theory was I could meet somebody in north dakota and that person could end up you know, supporting my worker I could support there's you know, years later and I guess I knew it was going it was gonna be a lot of flaws along the way but I knew I was going to stick with it and so that to me was a big thing I knew I was going t o keep going because I believed in and I follow up nate johnson is really excited about this step by step thanks giving and it appears to me that what you're doing is is a following your instincts and be making sure that you're not too hard on yourself because you made two mistakes you're here on the path but it occurred to me and I have you know, I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs so I think this is true for and I wanted to get your take is if you're on the path that you're supposed to be on these things like doing a sixty three city book to her they don't seem like a big deal like that would be fun I would love that and if you're if you're you're not meant to be an author and you're trying to start out and you have no traction then a sixty three to r sixty three city book tour sounds crappy sure and so these barriers are meant to keep everybody else out and clear a path for you and so if you're finding that you don't really know what you want to do, you're exploring these passions would you agree that that if you find a bunch of road blocks and you don't really feel like getting up in the morning to jump over and that it's probably not really your thing if you find roadblocks and you don't feel like you're not excited about overcoming them then you should stop if you give up and turn it into something else that's hard I think that's hard to hear you know and then you you need to go back to the passion and that's ok? I've started a lot of different product here I'm talking about a project that I'm very committed to and so I was going to keep it you know keep it up but I started lots of different stuff that didn't work and then I just give up and move on because it's very hard to sustain yourself you know, in a long period of time doing something you're not excited to do so that's why you know, to take him back to follow your passion, which I didn't intend to focus on so much but you know, it's a good topic and you know, you have you have to choose the right passion but most people who are successful they are doing something they're excited about so lots of you know, if your guess there's confirmation along the way and a lot of people that we saw one hundred dollars start up so they didn't spend much money in the beginning they did start quickly but then you know, if they saw some initial success they kind of doubled down a little bit, you know, if they saw successes like okay, maybe I started three different projects this one is really taking off that's what I'm going to choose to focus on, you know, maybe I got that website up really quickly and it doesn't look so great that was okay to start with, but now you know, I'm actually gonna go back and invest in that a little bit or maybe now if this product or service is going well, then I'm gonna build a complimentary product or service I'm going to try to increase income by creating a supplemental product or service, so I believe a lot and kind of, you know experimenting and seeing how things go but then if you find something that is a little bit successful doubling down on it uh you talked about chase asked you about sort of how you got to where you are right now what about michele powers what about a day in the life day in the life christie how do you what does that look like are a week if that's a better time frame to do it you dio a day in the life I spent a lot of time working stuff chris describe your schedule because I think that's one of the things that people we want to be on today I know I get it yeah I think it's your uh I guess I don't have really scared you know it's a schedule I mean I get in the morning I'm like what's next what are we doing you know like how do you prioritize I don't know if I do it all at once it's something I'm struggling with actually been talking with chasing other people I admire and saying how do you guys do this because this is hard for me sometimes I do have like a lot of inputs coming all the time and you know every once in a while somebody else say something like I wrote you and you responded and I always say thank you but in the back of my head I'm thinking about all these people haven't responded to something I haven't done well um so that's why I'm trying to think how what is a day in the life it's really kind of scattered in some ways I'm trying to make it more focused just something I'm working on but I guess I try you know as much as possible like rough balance in terms of the work I try toe t spend fifty percent of the time making things so creating in some way and then fifty percent of the time connecting in another way so and this is kind of like the hustling model that I talk about one hundred dollars started if anyone's familiar it's like you have teo you have tio you spend a lot of time building and creating one make sure you block out that time as we discussed but you should also spend time you know, connecting with people so that's social media that's e mails you know, that's all this stuff and I don't consider that stuff superfluous. I think it's really important my business at least especially has built very much on relationships with people and so I wouldn't want to you know, delegate my email or something to someone else but for a different kind of business maybe maybe that's what he would do all right, the audience now like you like this presentation, thanks very much my question I want to go back to the following your passion um example, I think I have my answer but I would like to ask this question cause I'm sure many people online have it, which is how do you find your passion because for instance, for me it was unknown to me that I would who would ever know that I would find happiness in connecting djs with venues and old school hip hop and all sorts of things that never were in my steer before and I really like the quote to go back and steve jobs quotes, you know you can't connect the dots looking forward, you have to connect them looking backwards. So for me, the discovery for me for my passion, which I did not know for a very long time was instrumental, but I think many people probably I know that they want to do something no, that they want to be entrepreneurs. So in your conversations with the fifteen hundred entrepreneurs that you had, do you have any stories or examples of how people actually knew they wanted to change the world knew they wanted to do something had the skill set to do something, but they didn't know what it was a great person there's a few things you can do to find your passion I think one thing you can ask yourself is was there something I was excited about when I was young and I kind of stopped doing that or maybe I had the dream to be a musician or a dancer doesn't have to be something like that it could be something different just something that I like to do but I kind of you know, just kind of went away from me I gave up on it or maybe someone said to me that I couldn't make a a career out of that or something and so I shipped it is something else that's one thing another thing is if you're really not sure okay what what am I good at and what I like to do are there questions that people ask you frequently like your friends do they ask you about specific topics you know are you like to go to expert on something even if it's something very small something that you wouldn't necessarily think you know could you know, make a business or a career or a life out of I think that's always a good thing because that shows that you're a perceived authority it also shows that people are interested in that because they keep asking you on but I guess the last thing is just kind of experiment and try different things and you know the big discovery for me out of my project I knew I wanted to write and travel I've always been very introverted you know, a super introverted guy but once I started doing this and connecting with people all over the world I just realized you know all the different amazing stories that the readers have another people happen that's been a great change for me so I guess until I did those meet ups until I started traveling and you know, doing events that was the whole aspect that I didn't have so it was through experimentation that I that I found it I guess their willingness to take a risk as well because two part question yeah, I was wondering, um a you've there's really articulate question can you tell us on the internet world how you connect the dots looking backwards and god from being the judge in the job that you were into connecting djs with venues? Because if it is a massive jump, most people that I know they don't want to go from being a day banker to a nighttime banker, you know they want to be something you know, like uh, what they were and now what you're doing, thanks very much for asking and following up I'm happy to tell you it's actually quite an exciting story begins with the tim ferriss book launch in new york city. It was the second time that I've ever been to new york city it was the greenhouse nightclub and I will I've always liked to organize things I watched how that event was organized and I thought, you know, this is a really cool cool thing I'm coming back to new york, I just felt it in my gun and I'm from a very small area you've been to west virginia you know, where I'm from very, very small area and, you know, not a lot other than top forty playing on the radio or country, and when I went back to new york city, I've always liked I've always been curious of other people always open to talking to different types of people. I went back, I stayed at this hotel that I gotta deal with in times square and the manager was a promoter for a club which, you know, it's a different I didn't know what that meant at that time, essentially we ended up going going to the club, becoming friends because he had he's a promoter, he has all of these friends that do it, and I mette had so many questions for these people just just because I'm always curious of what's going on where I became friends with them, I kept going back and I established basically a community and I didn't understand why, but I loved new york it was so different from where I was from, I need I just felt in my core that I know need to keep going back I also loved the music it was amazing to me to see honestly so many young people out in one space and tio to see the music and an alive setting in a large setting so essentially what what it was is that I just I felt something extreme because I took like he said risks and just tried different things just it's much exposure I think is possible because many different people and ideas in places and situations like any traveler um did and when I noticed something, I had no reason why I had no justification, I ignored every single person in my life that was like, you're wasting your money hanging out, doing this ridiculous stuff I mean, they want me to be going to if I'm going to new york, they want me to be going to broadway and I'm not so I, you know, followed that gut instinct, and I also ignored what everybody else in my life was telling me I should be doing with my time there's answer is ignoring everyone nor everything people tell you yes, but honestly but there's there's a theme that's emerging chris, is it not there's a theme, which is the thing that sounds hard and that everyone told you shouldn't do right? Like I had that personal experience, I think a lot of people that I know we're just another person in the audience here and what that's doing is it's going against your intuition like so this you know, steve jobs we talked about steve jobs is a remarkable person lived a remarkable life but he relied heavily heavily on intuition and those are things that are scary to rely on that's what your risk taking sort of stance comes in you know, I like the derrick savories model as well he has a model called the hell yah model which is very simple is basically when you're trying to think about this you know, you got this idea here weighing all this stuff you're doing like pros and cons and stuff he said you should ask yourself like when you think about this thing like doesn't make you say hell yeah, you know and if it does that's what you should do you know derek sievers hell yeah model yes it's pretty pretty basic that's it right? Because the things that you want to do, those big things they should be challenging, you know, as I said, you know, your your dream if it's a big dream it it's going to involve challenged but when you think about it, you're gonna be like, hell yeah, I want to do that was that was creative live in hell yeah and absolutely was wanted it change the world with creative education, one of the note that I think is a, uh I might add some to the conversation uh, I'm I'm sure you're from the earth. Robert green is that he sold millions of books, wrote a book called the forty eight laws of power roland with did he sent called fiftieth law and most recently wrote a book called mastery and in in mastery, he talks about how to specifically find these things you're talking about that you actually, that there was some sort of music and culture q in your past that made you ultimate look back. And these air the dreams that when I was this tall, I wanted to be a fireman. Like why do we eject those ideas? Right? So can you comment about those early? You know, did you always want to be a traveling? You just figured it out when you were twenty five or or did you have that? Ah ha. Moment. You know, I think so. If you want to be a fireman like your name, your kid, maybe the answer is, you know, ultimately you want to be a fireman, but maybe there's something else about that that you like, right? Maybe you want to help people. Maybe you want to do something active, maybe you want to do something it's, physically challenging is always attributes, you know? So I guess for me I did spend some time as a kid growing up in different places I had a step parent who was in the military so we live in the philippines for a while lived in you know, eastern montana for a while and it's kind of things I didn't actually love that when I was a kid you know, I was I was separated from the biological dad and you know, having these different experiences it wasn't so great at the time but I think it did actually help later for like, an awareness of the world and interest in like, you know, a cross cultural things and how people see the world differently in different places I think it helped so we have a couple minutes left so can we do a couple things here and then I do because I really like this question I don't think we've ever had anybody incredible ad that has been to every country so something mile high guy says chris and all of your travels did you find that the entrepreneurial attitude is about the same everywhere or is it more intense in some cultures than others you talk about that the entrepreneurial attitude beer it yeah, the spirit I think the practice of unfamiliar is and this certainly different you know everywhere um but as for the spirit you know I lived in sierra leone in liberia for about four years and my wife and I were volunteering for a charity there and that was that was a great experience and I also saw so many entrepreneurs there who would never call themselves entrepreneurs because especially in poor countries especially in africa and other places there's there's very little formal economy and you know almost almost everyone is unemployed so they have to make their way their own you know however they can do it they're all buying and selling everybody's hustling you know, everybody in the village there like making their way so they are all entrepreneurism I guess that's kind of what what excites me is you know have the way the world is changing is like, you know slowly they're gaining access to global markets it's a slow process is going to take a long time but all of us here and all of us like participating in this online conversation everywhere we have, you know, access to people all over the place that khun connect on shared values and shared ideals shared worldviews where is if you live in the village? You can pretty much only connect with people in that village that's something that I think is exciting I'm sure in different places and people are more eager about entrepreneurialism and others they don't always call it that I'm seeing a ton of questions and one thing that always like I feel like it's really uh it's a great first step for aa lot of folks in the audience again I'm looking to try and make this is tactical is what what books I mean this comes in from I'll find out in just a second sid on the internet what books do you read that give you the idea is that you have and I know you're a reader and and what else can you throw out some titles? This is stuff that people could go by and do and get inspired from her sir, you know, I actually read fiction and mostly you know, I'm not sure how that tactically answers question directly I think it's a great tactical because you have make all kinds of like actual tactical applications of the life that you want to lead, but you're inspired by by fiction think so my favorite author is hard team are coming, which I'm sure many of you may be familiar with if you're not my first recommendation would be the book called a wild sheep chase and tara creamer comey is a japanese novelist who writes about exploration and he writes about you know he probably didn't say this but essentially about following a dream are kind of pursuing something and seeing what happens along the way, so I have actually been inspired by some of those books in terms of maybe some more practical things I love pam's book escape from people condition I think is a great resource think there's a lot of books in this kind of sector and some are better than others I think hers is one of the best ones a good friend of mine is named jonathan fields, johnson and pam and I've done a lot of stuff together he wrote a great book called uncertainty, which is all about tactically embracing uncertainty and how you know the things that causes hesitation can be the things that we should pursue um I don't know first couple recommendations great is there lovely thank you I'm not able to type fascinating, but I got a recording of this whole event the questions from the studio audience they keep going I got a lot of them and I'm going to go back online as well because this topic comes up all the time and it's come up from several people here and that is fear and so I have I had an idea I know it would be successful and I always use money as an excuse for why haven't moved forward but I believe it's really not the money but the fear of failure how do you get over it? Well, first first step you acknowledge that very thing you acknowledge that what's holding you back is something is something internal it's not the lack of resources it's not someone else giving you permission I really I really believe that's something that holds a lot of people because they're waiting for someone to kind of say like you should go and do this, you know, like now you were free to to go and start this project and really you have to take that permission for yourself so I guess the other thing I would say is you know, I'm not trying to live a fearless life and I don't think anyone can really do that I think there's this culture of like I don't know mountain dew fearlessness that a red bull I guess we should say fearlessness and I don't really buy into that I think you know the things that you really want to do maybe scary but that's okay, so I guess for me it's about not letting fear make those decisions for you you make your own decisions, you know you're going toe, you know, evaluate the situation and if you want to proceed, you're going to do it if you don't want to that's okay, but I guess I wouldn't be happy you know, if I if I made a decision not to do it because I was afraid say this is just the therapist part of me saying, you know, the biggest my I got our fear of failure is stop the finding its failure is your definition of things that really to find it as soon as filler to death there's growth doesn't see that as a training opportunity or a learning opportunity versus a personal defect a failure that I feel that I absolutely agree love it we should have more therapists in the audience of fantastic do you have a creative life section on therapy coming our way that's also good you guys are great I wanted to mention a friend of mine is starting a project called makers nation dot org's this is a bit the charity component that I'm doing its part of charity life are creative live and this is an organization in portland that's going to be global on the whole idea of it is to connect creatives with business skills helped them embrace community so it's very much in the spirit of creative life I told him I'd give him a shout out its makers nation dot org's fantastic and you guys are great I appreciate what she said in the beginning of this morning earlier you know? He said there's people watching online from cubicles um I get a lot of email from people and cubicles you say like I'm reading your block and like dreaming of another life I'm like dreaming of something that I want to do for myself and I'm just kind of figuring out what those steps are maybe I already have that I'm trying to, you know figure out how to go to the next level and you know whatever message I could share is that you know you're not alone doing that and as you can see there's this huge community folks on and there's lots of things you can do to be supported if there's anything that I can do you know to help you people here people watching I feel free to write in or tweet or anything and more than happy to do it ok it's been an honor to be here awesome way there's a flutter of questions that were all exactly the same s I want to ask you that upon stage here which is there's a lot of people in the world that want to be a writer and you talked about waking up every day and having the discipline to write a thousand words and then starting a block or go the city had ten readers or ten thousand readers a lot of folks on the old information superhighway they want to know exactly the steps that you took to get your book deal the steps I took to get my book deal because you're probably a couple wanted be others out there that you have to tell in the story until it's actually funny story I'm glad you asked him because you know when I started blogging few readers few more readers et cetera I want to write a book how do I do it I knew that the first step would be to connect with a literary agent, but I didn't know any glitter agents eso I went online like look for literary agent and I wrote them and none of them will be back basically I wrote like fifteen people didn't get a single response, you know? Yeah see, but that's not failure what is it you just the therapist here what we do say yeah it's a growth opportunity and that's gonna growth up right? Because I posted on the block and said, hey, I'm trying to find little rage and if there's somebody out there he's written a book because I probably know somebody who has you know is there something you could help with ongoing one of my readers actually connected to me to david few gate has become a great friend and agent and ironically you could send us to reid hoffman she connected us through lincoln so that was like, all right, my little lincoln moment here and then he was a great guy who helped me with the proposal I had to write a book proposal most difficult thing I've ever written was my first book proposal I wrote a master's thesis you know, a few years ago and like I did three drafts of that and I was like, that's good three draft is good, you know, but proposal was something like ten drafts I just could not get it right and really struggled with it and I think he finally just excuse like, okay, we're gonna get this out where we go we're talking messing with chris so he pitched it to different publishers I think fifteen publishers turned it down you know, fifteen agents turned it down and fifteen publishers turned it down and finally, you know small publisher came through and he's like the publisher wants to publish the book and I was like, great and we hung up the phone I was like, oh, we're going to pay anything for it I'm going to ask that that part of town but I was just so happy that like I was so excited and I think self publishing is great also introduce himself publishing but for me I was just happy for the chance to also write a traditional book and and then when you found out that sort of say wasn't what we talked about earlier there wasn't a lot of marking support and so you created your own marketing support because it was what you wanted to do was connect with your readers yes and tactically speaking for anyone who wants to write a book that was the best thing that helped me because that helped me, you know, to get a better deal with a different publisher for the hundred dollars start up it was a much more competitive process by that point maybe a year and a half later because I had shown one I have some community but also I'm willing to go to work you know? So I made it much easier for david my agent to kind of pitch the second book when he was like, you know, calling around to publishers and they said all that's great can we get chris to new york's we can talk to us and david said, well, normally chris would like just get on a plane to fly there tomorrow but he's actually the middle of his own sixty three city book tour you know? So they were you know, actually kind of like the idea that I was doing that helped great so if we can let people know that you're actually on this one hundred dollars start up are you not on a seven continous have incontinent book tour? Yes. Last time I checked, there were seven continents that's, right? Yes. So you're gonna go to antarctica that's right? You have done five so far five hundred so far but I got two more, you know, for hundreds started how many? I mean, what is it going to be worse than north dakota when you get here? Yeah, I would actually planning an article thing yet I just I knew I had to do something to follow up on that previous book tour. Because when we were discussing the book, they said, ok, like, you did every state and every problems last time, how are you going to top it? And so I just off the top of my head. I just said every continent so well, that goes with the mantra that I believe in, which is be different, not just better on what chris did with his, you know, in promoting his own book was certainly different. Uh, can you guys please join me? Give me one more round.