How to Get Ahead

Want to get ahead in your life and career?  Here’s a really simple way to think about and approach it:

Find something someone is currently doing that you can do better.  Convince them to hire you to do it for them.

That’s it.  That’s pretty much how every job and customer has ever been won.

So how do you do it?  First you need to observe.  Look around and see what people are doing.  Look within and discover what you do well.  Look for places where the quality gap between what you can do and how most people are doing it is large.

Then you need to convince.  This part seems pretty hard.  It’s actually fairly straightforward, though it takes a lot of grit and determination.  There are really only two ways to convince someone to give you a chance to do something for them:

  1. Demonstrate beyond a doubt that you can create value for them.
  2. Be so cheap they’re willing to take a chance on minimal evidence.

Many people get stuck on number one.  They think it’s a catch 22.  How can you prove your ability to create value if you need proven ability to get the chance?  That’s where number two comes in.  Make yourself so cheap – minimal to no money, minimal instruction and maintenance – that it’s hard to say no.

Once you get the chance to create value for someone for free, you’ve got a calling card.  You’ve got proven value creation.  Now you can go to the next opportunity and prove that you can do whatever they’re doing (or paying someone else to do) better.

Every one of the best people I’ve worked with began working for free.  I had a hunch they could create value for me, but it was a risk.  They mitigated the risk by offering to work free until they demonstrated how valuable they were.

This advice, if you take it to heart and really apply it, will get you further than any degree or credential you can buy.

Episode 46: Counseling the Counselors, with Joe Sanok of Practice of the Practice

Joe Sanok is one of the most enterprising people I know.  We are old friends who started a band and a nonprofit together a decade and a half ago.  We both went our way and haven’t regularly kept up.  But Joe hasn’t stopped finding creative ways to build things and provide and capture value.

He started a counseling practice of his own on the side, grew it into a full-time gig, then started hiring people to help, and now he’s launched a podcast, website, conference and series of products aimed at helping other counselors do the same.

This episode is not just about counseling practices.  It’s a great exploration of mindsets for success.  We talked about his beginnings in Kirby sales, starting his own counseling service, keeping his finances in control and how to look beyond the zero-sum-game view.

Joe also states what he sees as the biggest obstacle people face when they want to launch something of their own into the world and shares his E-Course with listeners:

Moving From Being Paralyzed by Perfection to Getting Things Done

This episode sponsored by FEE, where 14-16 year-olds can check out amazing conferences and apply here. Tell them you heard about it here.

We’re also sponsored by Praxis, where you can get off the conveyor belt and build an entrepreneurial career today, no debt, no waiting, and no credentials required.  Apply today.

This and all episodes are available on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.

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What the Heck Are ‘PDP’s’ and Why Are They So Awesome?

I’ve written before about the power of daily challenges, about how simply eliminating unwanted elements from your life is often better than trying to achieve some lofty goal, and about how identifying and overcoming obstacles one at a time can be better than plotting a perfect long-term path.

All of this, as well as concepts like deschooling yourself and creating your own structure are wrapped into a very tangible tool we at Praxis call a Personal (or Professional) Development Project (PDP).

My colleague Cameron Sorsby writes about PDP’s:

“A Praxis Personal Development Project (PDP) is a short-term set of challenges with the goal of gaining self-knowledge, overcoming obstacles to success, and gaining mastery in areas of value to the individual and the marketplace.

For the majority of a young person’s life they are told where to be, what knowledge they need to gain, and what skills they need to develop in order to be successful. Their day-to-day structure is designed for them, which makes it an incredible challenge to transition to professional life successfully.

Creating and completing a PDP helps you instill creativity as an everyday habit, develop marketable skills, and provide tangible evidence that you can create value for others. It helps you overcome those unproductive habits you developed in over-structured institutions like school and start deciding for yourself what knowledge and skills you value.  Ultimately, the purpose of a PDP is to become a superior version of yourself within a short-time frame.

Praxis participants complete a series of 12 PDP’s throughout their program experience. With the help of their program advisor and access to resources like the Praxis Curriculum Library, each month they create a PDP and follow through with completing it.”

Check out a few recent Praxis participant PDP’s here.

Check out the Praxis Teen Entrepreneurship Course, which includes a 30-day PDP built into the program.  If you can successfully complete it (harder than it sounds), you get a free coaching session with Education Director T.K. Coleman.

The Power of Broke

Yesterday I listened to an episode of the James Altucher Podcast with FUBU founder and Shark Tank star Daymond John.  It was awesome.

John talked about his new book, “The Power of Broke”.  What a great title.  The subtitle is, “How empty pockets, a tight budget, and a hunger for success can become your greatest competitive advantage.”  The concept is as straightforward as it sounds.  Being broke is an advantage in many ways.  The power of broke is the power you harness because you have to.  It’s the creativity you employ when you can’t buy your way to the next step.

I’ve written before about the advantages of being broke (with a much lamer title, “Your Lack of Income Can Be An Asset“).  While I focused on the freedom and flexibility to experiment and the low cost of failure, John talked in the podcast more about the clearer decision making and enhanced hustle when options are constrained.

One particularly poignant example was when he was selling hats on the streets of Queens.  LL Cool J would come to the neighborhood frequently, and John would stalk and harass and beg him to wear his hats.  He finally did, and it resulted in an explosion in demand.  John said if he had $500,000 to spend at that time he would have spent it all…on getting LL Cool J to wear his hats.  Because he didn’t have the money, he found a way to do it without.

One of my all-time favorite TED talks is called “Embrace the Shake“.  It’s about how creativity can often be unleashed if you give yourself constraints.  An artist who lost his ability to do his favorite technique was forced to find other ways.  He eventually began a series of experiments in creating art with ridiculously tight constraints.  He could only use paper cups and ink, for example.  The results were as much about what it did to his mindset as about the art he produced.

If you launch a startup with no money, you’ll figure out how to move forward with no money.  If you raise $1 million in venture capital, you’ll figure out how to move forward spending $1 million.  The activities you engage in may even be the same.  Or worse, the money blinds you to problems with your model or assumptions and creates a lag in the feedback loop.  Test small and quick, fail small and quick.  Money often makes that harder.

This is obviously not about any kind of moral superiority to poverty.  It’s not about pretending fewer resources always provide an advantage over more.  It’s about a powerful mindset shift that occurs when incentives and desires are tightly connected.  When you don’t have a backup plan or the ability to give up after the first setback or buy your way into the next step, you have something most of your larger, better funded competitors don’t.  You have the power of broke.

Since it’s a mindset, you can employ it even if you are rich, but it’s definitely harder.  Take advantage of the time you have now as a young upstart and get every drop out of the power of broke.

As Long As It’s Interesting, It’s Good

I wrote on the Praxis blog about how silly it is for young people to worry and stress about working in or studying a specific industry:

“Many young people think they know what industry or category of job they want.  They’re mostly wrong.

We’re trained by the school and university process to think in terms of big career categories and majors.  Marketing.  Hospitality.  Management.  Financial Services.  But these categories are so generic and ill-defined that they offer almost no value for an individual trying to forge a path to life and career success.

The truth is, you have no idea what industry or job will make you happy.  How could you?  You’ve barely seen any of them up close.  The roles within these industry labels can be more diverse than you can imagine.  Many jobs and entire industries have no label.  Many more will emerge that don’t yet exist.

The good news is that this is good news.  Opportunity abounds, and what major you pick or what label you spit out when someone asks what you want to do are of little importance.  You have massive flexibility and a chance to explore and experiment.  You can even create new roles that no one ever thought of.

Stop stressing about it.  Don’t fret over getting an internship that perfectly aligns with your imagined industry of choice.  As long as you’re not doing something you hate, you’re heading in the right direction.  You don’t know what you’ll discover.  You can’t learn it from a course catalog or guidance counselor.  You’ve got to engage the world and see what you respond to and what responds to you.

Not only that, but it is well documented that ‘outsiders’ are most likely to innovate.  If you go directly from a finance major to an investment banking internship and then job, you’ll have experiences and knowledge identical to nearly everyone you work with.  If you first spend a few years working at a software startup, building a network of owners of financial service businesses, then transition into investment banking, you’ll have a persepctive and paradigm that makes you truly unique.  You’ll have a network that most of your peers lack.  You’ll be able to do that thing which is the holy grail of the creative process, and create a new instersection of separate matrices of thought.

Your theories about what industry or job fits you are like all theories.  They need to be tested.  Go try some stuff.  Anything you don’t dislike is fair game.  You might discover new roles you never thought of.  You might invent and new industry or join it as it emerges.  You might gain a distinct advantage and a unique outlook, network, and experience set by working somewhere unlikely first.

Don’t try to pick your industry yet.  In fact, don’t ever pick one.  Just do interesting stuff.”

I stand by this advice.  If you want to get started doing interesting stuff, apply to Praxis!

Some Great Bucket List Items

Last week I asked for people to send me some bucket list items – things they want to do before they die.

I got some great stuff in response.  Matthew Hartill won the books via the random selection process (my ten-year-old kid picking a number).

Thanks to everyone who played!  Here’s a compilation of submissions.  I’ve anonymizes, slightly edited, and combined similar items.  Maybe you can take inspiration from a few of these…

  • Become fluent in one romance language, and one language with a (very) different alphabet
  • Live in 4 foreign countries for a period of 6 months or more
  • Create, launch, and flip a business from start to finish
  • Create, launch, and maintain a business from start to finish
  • Hike sections of the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail
  • Vastly improve my skills and be a ____ bum for my three favorite extreme sports (rock climbing, surfing, and skiing)
  • Get good enough at code and computer programming to keep up with my imagination
  • Make a crucial impact in one or more charitable organizations that I admire
  • Reach a place of spiritual comfort; whether that be through meditation, religious practice, or anything else
  • Travel
  • Fall in love
  • Create a successful business that changes the world.
  • Have a child, and/or adopt a child
  • Meet Bob Dylan
  • Meet Mike Rowe
  • Live in the house of my dreams
  • Be a pilot
  • Participate in Praxis
  • Graduate high school a year early
  • Stay frugal, stay giving, despite income growth
  • Reach 50,000 hits on an article
  • Drop acid with Tim Ferriss
  • Legitimately learn Spanish and maintain fluency
  • Finally write my stand-up comedy sketch and prove to myself that girls can be funny
  • Do a scorpion shot a la James Bond in Skyfall
  • Deadlift twice my body weight
  • Climb Mount Kilimanjaro (and post-Kilimanjaro, complete a Bang Bang Bang in the style of Louis C.K. — three consecutive full meals, consumed all in the same timeframe)
  • Visit Meteora Monasteries
  • Start a ministry in a city that has never heard the Gospel before
  • Visit a country currently listed as “3rd world”, then visit it when it becomes 1st world
  • Write a novel
  • Give a sermon
  • Be a part of a metal band’s album or tour
  • Buy something for my child, in cryptocurrency, from a major department store
  • Win a baking competition
  • Travel to space in a commercial flight
  • Slam dunk a basketball while in my 30s
  • Watch the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team win the Rose Bowl

 

 

 

 

How to Not Let Your Parents Control You

This post is not just for young people.  I’ve known plenty of grown adults with kids of their own who cannot live, act, or think free from their parent’s emotional control.

This is not an anti-parent post.  Most parents mean well.  Many are unconscious of their own forms of manipulation and if revealed to them, they’d prefer to change it.

If you are to create a meaningful and enjoyable life you must break the power of parental control.  It’s a massive psychological burden and it’s sapping your energy, freedom, and fun.

I knew a guy who dated two very different girls.  At some point in both relationships, things got pretty serious.  Maybe this was going to be a long-term thing.

In the first relationship, the girl was smitten but her parents were not.  Not even close.  They did not approve of her dating this guy and they made that clear.  Things were icy.

He’d go with her for family holidays and it always ended the same.  Afterwards, she’d cry and share with him how hard it was to have them unhappy with her choice.  Even if he wasn’t there, every time she’d visit home he knew there would be fallout when she came back.  She’d confide in him just how much it meant to have her parent’s approval of the relationship.  This put tremendous pressure on him to live up to some standard in her parent’s head.

The relationship eventually ended.  It wasn’t too pretty either.

Time passed and he eventually began dating someone seriously again.

In the second relationship, the girl was smitten but her parents were not.  Not even close.  They did not approve of her dating this guy and they made that clear.  Here we go again.  He was nervous. He knew he couldn’t take another situation like the last.

But this time things never got icy.

The very first time his girlfriend’s father voiced his displeasure she said, “This is who I’m dating.  This is who I want to be with.  If you want me in your life you’re going to have to accept the choices that I make.”

Her dad did not disown her.  Instead, he had to overcome his own prejudice and work to get to know they guy.  He did.  Now they’re in-laws.

Consciously or unconsciously, parents can sense your need for their approval.  The stronger and more desperate it is, the more leverage they have to control you.  But the thing is, you’re parents don’t have that leverage in reality.  They want to have a relationship with you just as much or more than you do with them, and this feeling increases as they age.  That’s why if you are definite in your purpose and you make that clear to them, they will nine times out of ten see that earnest resolve and adapt to it.

This makes knowing who you are and what you really want paramount.  If you’re unsure, you’ll just end up issuing a constant stream of threats to your parents, which isn’t healthy for anybody.  But if you really know what you want, you are fully prepared to live the consequences with or without your parent’s support, and you can calmly and clearly let them know, they are very likely to end up supporting you.

You don’t need to disown them.  But let them know their threat to disown you will not stop you.  And don’t bluff.  Don’t pretend to have resolve just because you hope it will win them over.  Be fully prepared and committed to follow your chosen course of action even if they don’t come around.  Paradoxically, it’s only then that they are likely to eventually come around.

They’re not as stubborn as they may seem when it comes down to it.  They want you to be happy, and if it’s clear that you will only be happy pursuing things your own way – and you’re aware of the risk and willing to take it – they’ll stop trying to resist you.

There is no amount of parental approval that’s worth your dignity, freedom, and power as an individual.

For some specific applications, see here.

Episode 45: How to Be a Free Person, with Jeff Till

My good friend and fellow rabble-rousing podcaster Jeff Till joins me to talk about his experiences freeing himself from the chains of obligation.

We go from his schooling ups and downs, pursuit of an artistic career, navigation through the corporate world to breaking out of his corporate suit, building a family, launching a company and moving out to a different place.

Jeff writes and does podcasts about things that will affect the future, and he also wrote two books on homeschooling – follow up on him at fivehundredyears.org.

This episode sponsored by the Foundation for Economic Education.  Check out their summer seminars if you are between the ages of 14-24!  Tell them you heard about it here.

This and all episodes are available on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.

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Ask Isaac: Intro Music, Business Ideas, Information Freedom, Books, and Living in Charleston

  • Anonymous asks why the new intro music
  • Thomas Bogle asks what to do with business ideas if you don’t have the expertise to build them yourself
  • Andy Heinen asks how we can really have information without gatekeepers when people are trying to incentivise us to choose certain things all the time
  • Matt Needham asks for a book recommendation, and what the best and worst things are about living in Charleston

Submit your own questions anytime via this simple form.

This and all episodes are available on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Stitcher.

Hanging Out With People Your Age is Overrated

Slow down.  I didn’t say, “worthless”, or, “not really valuable”.  I said overrated.

There are obvious benefits to building a social circle of people in the same age range.  Shared aesthetics and cultural touchstones, similar stages in life that provide better understanding (try explaining to a single 23-year-old that you really do prefer to stay home and watch ‘Air Bud 15’ with your kids on Friday night), and similar energy levels.

Still, a network of age-similar people is overrated.

It’s overrated because almost everyone talks about social life as if it is not only preferable among sage-aged peers, but impossible with anyone else.  People assume that if you move to a city or company or join a church or club without a large population of people your age you will be incapable of building a social life.  This lack of open-mindedness and creativity is disturbing, and you shortchange yourself if you adopt it.

It’s not easy to see beyond your age group because most of us spent the first 20 or more years of life bound exclusively to those within 12 months of our own age, outside a few parents, teachers, and others who were always in “authority” positions and never seen as equals in our network.  I’m amazed how much schooled kids think it’s weird to hang out with someone even just a few years their younger or elder.  I’m amazed at how little adults interact with children or the elderly through the course of everyday life, not just on holidays and special occasions.

It’s not morally bad to associate exclusively with people your age, and you have no duty to do otherwise.  But it’s impractical and limits the value and enjoyment of your network.

My colleague Zak Slayback has written about the limitations in having a predominantly “horizontal network”, the kind you build in school, vs. a deep and multidimensional “vertical network”.  It’s well worth a read and Zak has some nice visualizations.

The ability to build an age diverse social circle is not only for professional network richness, it’s also great for personal happiness.  The kind of person who can comfortably hang out at a cocktail party of people half or twice their age is someone who will be more interesting and interested in life in general.  If your social scene is built around shared excitement, rather than shared station in life – often an artifact of a stodgy, top-down centrally planned education-career conveyor belt – you’ll be ridiculously adaptable and quick to connect wherever you go.

Don’t let yourself succumb to hopelessness or frustration if you move somewhere or work somewhere without a lot of people your age.  See it as an opportunity to connect with fascinating people from all stages and stations in life.  You’ll always be able to (at least superficially) connect with people your age.  It’s an easy fallback and can sometimes make you lazy about building deeper connections.  The chance to create a vibrant social life that’s far more diverse is one you should seize as a challenge and a game with big rewards if you don’t give up.

Invite someone over who’s well outside your age range but who you find fascinating.  Ask yourself if similar people would invite you over just for fun.  If not, get working on it.

James Walpole’s Praxis Story

Walpole

Now that we’ve had a few classes graduate and more are getting underway every month, the stories are beginning to roll in.  I love it.  This is the stuff that reminds us why we do what we do every day.  It’s not easy, but nothing good is.

Praxis September 2014 participant James Walpole joined the program right out of high school, deferring a college experience he wasn’t entirely sold on so he could get some real world time under his belt.  A year later and James was running marketing for a tech startup in the Bitcoin space…at age 19.  No degree, just the kind of job he had hoped a degree might get him four years and untold thousands later.  Not to mention a new outlook and the confidence to try a great many things never before considered.

I’ll let James tell it in his own words…

“I’ve always had big goals for my life. When it came to actually accomplishing them, I wasn’t much different from many people my age: I was getting nothing important done. I was keeping my head down and working hard to do well in school and have a “normal” teenage life. I had done well at these, so I was waiting for the conveyor belt to carry me on to my dreams of being a great thinker and entrepreneur.

I was being complacent. I think that complacency would only have gotten worse if I had chosen to stay on that path into college and beyond. I had already applied to several schools. While I wasn’t impressed by the conformity of college culture, I thought I had no other choice but to go.

Praxis was a breath of fresh air. It shook me back to the awareness that I was sleepwalking through important decisions in my life. More importantly, it showed me than an education that fit my values was possible and did exist. I could bring my ideas to life in my work, and I had no excuse not to take the first steps toward making my goals real.

While it was scary at first to turn down college and scholarship offers to do something so different, the decision to apply was one of the best I made. Throughout my time in the program, I gained hard skills and work experience in an industry I loved, explored great works and ideas alongside my Praxis advisors, and built strong networks in my business community and friendships with my fellow Praxis participants. I know a little bit more now about what it takes to be an effective entrepreneur and thinker, and I’ve taken responsibility for getting there.

The growth I experienced in Praxis has continued after the program. I’m still working full time for my Praxis business partner, managing marketing work to which I was new just a year ago. Learning how to handle this responsibility and the challenges that have come along with it has made me a better, braver, and more competent person.

When I think about my future now, I’m not worried about who’s going to pay me or who’s going to hire me. I’m also not expecting to achieve my goals automatically. I know I can handle challenges above my “approved age level”, and I know how to create my own path. I have Praxis to thank for that. This experience didn’t just save me four years – it’s changed how I’m living my life.”

If you want to take a leap and do what James did, apply now.  There’s nothing to lose but the known, well-worn path that will always be there.

James blogs regularly at the Praxis blog as well.  Read his full story and other posts here.

If you want to talk to him about his experience, email James here.

Send Me Your Bucket List and Win Some Books

Win these books!
Look at these lonely little critters, just waiting for a good home and a hot meal…

I’ve got some extra books lying around being lazy and generally unproductive and I want to give them to someone.  To make it fun, I want to compile a bunch of really cool items for a mega bucket list.  What things do you want to do before you die?  What are the big goals, far off or right around the corner, you need to achieve before all is said and done?

This contest is for the young’uns, so only those 25 and under are eligible.  If you’re older than 25, find someone who’s not and tell them to do it.

Here’s how to play

Email me the top ten things you want to do before you die.  Rank them in order 1-10, with 1 being the most important to you.  Submit them by January 20.

isaac [at] discoverpraxis [com]

Then what?

Then two things will happen.  First, I’ll compile the lists into one mega-list and publish it to this blog.

Second, I’ll randomly select one person to get a bundle o’ books, pictured above.  It includes Better Off Free, The Future of School, Freedom Without Permission, and, Why Haven’t You Read This Book?

If nothing else, they make great paperweights or kindling.

Join in!

So put together your bucket list and share it with me!  I want to see what kind of cool ideas and ambitions you have.  No holds barred.  What will you wish you did when you’re too old to do it anymore?

Send ’em along.

Answered on Quora: How to Do Stuff Outside the Normal Path

A Quora user asked:

How can I start studying at college or any school program without a highschool diploma?

My response:

I have no HS diploma and I got an associate’s then bachelor’s degree (and later MA). I never got a GED or took the ACT or SAT.

At age 15 I just enrolled in community college. They don’t care, they just want your money. I took an assessment test to determine which classes I should start with. I did two years of classes there and got an AA. The AA and my CC grades transferred to the nearby state university no questions asked. They, too, want your money.

There may be a more fundamental question: Why do you want to go to college? Getting a HS diploma was (correctly, IMO) deemed not worthy of your time. Why is a degree better?

If you want the college social experience, or the knowledge from classes, or anything other than the piece of paper, just move to a college town, go to parties, sit in on classes without registering, etc. Save yourself tens of thousands or more and get all aspects of the experience.

If you want the piece of paper, ask yourself why. It’s a signal to employers that you are roughly average. If you’re even a little bit ambitious and creative, you can build a better signal yourself. Google>resume, and a portfolio of value created, an online presence that proves it, a network, and great experience>generic degree.

The most compelling reason to go to college is if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt you want to do something that legally requires a degree – law, medicine, academia, or government bureaucratic work – even here, I’d encourage some thinking about entrepreneurial ways to approach it, or at least spend a year or two working in these fields before sinking 4+ years and 6 figures into a degree that almost locks you into that work for life.

If entrepreneurship, art, software, sales, marketing, or a host of other self-directed, creative endeavors appeal to you, don’t wait around in a classroom. Save the time and money and start doing awesome stuff now. (check out Praxis if you want some help doing awesome stuff with no credentials.)

Whatever you do, don’t be bored. Life is too short and too valuable to do things you don’t enjoy.