The Story of Mitch Broderick: A Praxis Adventure
Tag: life
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.
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
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
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?
Letter from a Praxis Participant
Praxis participant Nick Tucker is killing it. At age 19, he’s working with a successful entrepreneur at a great company and building the life he wants. Here’s what he had to say in a recent email:
“During my senior year of high school, I had questions coming in from dozens of different people about what my plans were for the following year. It seemed like the only right answer was to attend a solid college. But my heart wasn’t in it. Even when I was just applying for colleges I could barely force myself to sit down and fill out the applications.
Growing up in a college town, I had a pretty good idea about what a typical Freshman year was like in college. It had virtually nothing to do with preparing for real life and establishing a career. I wanted more, but I was stuck. It didn’t seem like there were any other legitimate options available. Then I discovered Praxis.
Now just 4 months into the program, I’ve developed many different skills that have made me valuable in the workforce. I’m working in sales on a very large scale which has been a dream of mine since I got my first job as a server. I’ve grown intellectually every single month since this last September. I have access to an incredible network of amazing people who I know are rooting for me to succeed. The program has surpassed my wildest dreams and I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”
Nick has the most important qualities for success: confidence and work ethic. The rest can all be learned, and he’s doing it now.
Feeling the itch to get into the world and do something awesome? Intrigued by the adventure and challenge? Been thinking about it but not ready to pull the trigger? Why wait?
Praxis or not, don’t just do what you’re “supposed” to do because you can’t think of anything else. Take the reins. Be in the driver’s seat of your education, career, and life.
Getting Started on Entrepreneurship While You’re Young
In “The Future of School” I share my biggest regret:
“I wish I had more confidence, and earlier, about going my own way.”
It took me a long time to realize that all the things I thought and did differently weren’t things I should try to shut down, hide, or change. They were my greatest strengths.
When you’re 14, 16, or 18, all the world seems to be screaming at you to look like the average of some aggregate. Well-meaning teachers, parents, coaches, relatives, and friends want to know how you stack up on a series of “normal” indicators of status and ability. They want you to know the stuff everyone else your age knows, and do the stuff everyone else your age does.
But the reality is that it’s the “Crazy Ones” who change the world. It’s those who gain the courage and confidence to not suppress their unique take; their hacks and workarounds; their weird approaches and unconventional interests and solutions. These are the makings of an entrepreneur.
And let’s be clear: entrepreneurship is the greatest single skill needed for the present and future marketplace. Machines and software are taking off like never before, and they can follow rules and obey orders and perform rote tasks better than humans. This is not cause for concern, but a huge opportunity. It frees up humans to do what only humans can: creatively problem solve, innovate, experiment, and adapt.
But it does mean that the vast majority of what’s taught in traditional education settings is of little and decreasing value. Knowledge of facts is nearly obsolete. We have Google. Memorization is silly when we have unlimited digital storage. Following the crowd kills the best instincts and opportunities for value creation. We need to re-ignite the entrepreneurial spark that everyone is born with.
That’s why we’ve built a 60-day entrepreneurship eCourse for teens. It all begins with a mindset. The mindset I wish I would have found sooner. The mindset that says your best assets are your most unique attributes. It’s about turning your creativity into a discipline. It’s about becoming a self-directed, perpetual learner. It’s about experimentation, trial and error, and approaching life like a game.
This course is hard. You could easily scan it and gain a few bits of wisdom. But that’s not what it’s built for. It’s built for an intensive 60 days. It’s built to make you a little uncomfortable as you learn to explore your own strengths, weaknesses, and passions, build a basic website, and share your ideas and lessons learned along the way. If you go through it – really go through it and complete every part – you will absolutely walk away a different person, closer to your goals and the life you want to live.
If you complete the whole thing we’ll be impressed. In fact, we’re giving you a free coaching session with course creator and Praxis Education Director T.K. Coleman if you do. You think you can do it?
You don’t need to have that big business idea to begin on the entrepreneurial journey. It starts by becoming the type of person who is ready and able to seize the moment when that big idea comes. It starts now.
Are you ready?
Announcing the Praxis Teen Entrepreneurship Course
It’s here!
After considerable demand from young people and parents of young people (primarily homeschoolers and unschoolers) not quite ready for the full, year-long Praxis experience, we’re now offering a 60 day course for teens.
Praxis Education Director TK Coleman guides you through this intensive two-month experience as you learn to adopt mindsets and habits conducive to the entrepreneurial life. This course is awesome.
Entrepreneurship is a mindset. It requires deep, philosophical thinking. It requires ridiculous levels of commitment and work ethic. It requires genuine self-knowledge and self-confidence. It requires big, crazy ideas. This course is designed to help young people begin the journey.
I want to emphasize that this isn’t something that will be successfully accomplished as a casual daily dalliance. It requires more than just consuming information. It’s full of activities and ways to engage the real world and put knowledge to the test. You can’t learn to ride a bike by reading about it. You can’t learn to be an entrepreneur sitting back in your chair.
From the course intro,
“Information is only one small aspect of a good education. Anyone with an internet connection can find tons of information – it’s the easiest thing to find in today’s world.
So if you want to set yourself apart from the crowd, the key element is learning how to think about information critically, creatively, and practically. This course will help you do all three of those things by giving you daily challenges, exercises, and questions designed to help you engage the materials at a high level.
Don’t limit yourself to just being a reader or a listener. There’s no value in scanning your eyes over the words on a page just to say “I finished the article.” Learning isn’t about impressing other people or chasing after rewards. It’s about opening your mind, unlocking your potential, challenging yourself to think outside the box, and figuring out ways to use information to create value.”
One of my favorite sayings is, Agere sequitur credere. It’s Latin for, “Action follows belief.” Entrepreneurship is about action, but a precondition to action is belief. Belief in the opportunity around you. Belief in your vision of something better. Belief in your ability to execute on it. Belief and the actions that flow from it are not inborn qualities. You can train yourself to see things differently, to habituate creativity and productivity, and to act on what you discover.
Are you ready?
*For the month of January, we’re kicking the course off with a 20% discount. Signup now and get started on the journey!
The Discontent Optimist
I’m an optimist and a big believer in consciously adopting an optimistic outlook. I’m also a huge fan of discontentment. I see these attitudes as complimentary, not contradictory.
Optimism is a belief in the possibility for a better future. It’s about seeing opportunity in every situation. A chance to improve the present condition. It’s an eye trained to see the way in which the most good can be extracted from everything.
Discontentment is a restlessness with the status quo. It’s a refusal to leave well enough alone or make peace with, “that’s just the way things are.” Ludwig von Mises describes discontentment with present circumstances as one of the three preconditions to any purposeful human action.
Discontentment coupled with pessimism can make you depressed. Discontentment coupled with optimism leads you to create the world you want.
It’s not all roses. Which means there is an amazing opportunity to plant some.
I’m Not Qualified
I don’t have a high school diploma. I’ve never taken the ACT, or SAT, or GRE. I can’t even type properly – I used one finger on each hand. Who do I think I am to write books and blog posts, give talks and podcasts, and run a business?
I don’t think I’m anybody. The thing is, I don’t think anyone else is anybody either.
I’m not qualified. Neither are you. No one is. That’s the big secret.
I’ll never forget the day I first realized that no one knows what they’re doing. I was sitting in a classroom at Western Michigan University and feeling stressed about how I was going to get a job and figure out how to survive in the world. I had imposter syndrome. I’m a fraud! I don’t know how to do anything. I’ve faked my way through everything. I BSed essay answers on tests. I pretended I was reading music during my piano lessons when I was really playing from memory. I took shortcuts and found the quickest ways to avoid pain and boredom. How could I gain enough mastery of anything to navigate the world?
The professor droned on. (It was a particularly boring political science class where the professor, who must have been at least at old as the Declaration of Independence, wrote the $150 textbook and taught word for word from the chapters he had written.) I looked up from my desk and around the classroom. It looked like the biggest bunch of half-witted, half-sober, half-pajama’d, half-serious degenerates I’d ever seen. Kids talked loudly to each other over the oblivious professor about how “schwasted” they were, where they puked the night before, and where to go do it again today. They scrawled incoherent sentences on essay questions I had to decipher when it came time to “trade and grade”. They chuckled and bragged about who they knew in the infamous “Crime Beats” section of the college newspaper.
If I’m worried about how I’ll cut it in the world, what will these kids do? How will they survive? I recall one of them said he wanted to be a dentist. How could he possibly?
Then I remembered a dentist whose office I had worked in recently, installing a telephone system. They guy made good money and ran his own little small town office, but he was a big goofball. He snuck into the back room every few minutes, making patients wait mouth agape, to day trade stocks. He was clearly an addict and a thrill junky without a serious bone in his body. He joked constantly and loudly and always wanted to get lavish lunches with alcohol….
Holy crap, this kid is going to be a dentist! And that girl is going to be a lawyer. And that other guy will probably be a government bureaucrat. Most of the rest will end up teaching middle school (Western had a lot of future public school teachers. It was common after flunking out of majors like “Communications” to switch to elementary education).
I realized in that moment I was going to be fine. More than fine. Not because I had any special ability. It hit me that everyone is making everything up. The bar isn’t actually that high. No one knows how to be a proper adult, or worker, or parent, or researcher. There’s no magic permission slip or grant of expertise that makes you qualified for anything. You just have to do it.
If you find a way to create value for people, you’ll be fine. And there are a surprisingly vast array of ways to create value for people. The demand for human minds and hands is so great that even these party-loving students would be gainfully employed. They’d probably be doing my taxes or taking an X-Ray for me some day.
Don’t worry about your lack of qualification. You’re not qualified for anything really. Neither is anyone else. You are, however, more qualified than anyone else in the world to do the things that are uniquely you. Go for it.
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*If you are a teen or you have a teen that’s interested in entrepreneurship, creative thinking, and out of the box living, check out the Praxis Teen Entrepreneurship Course!
Don’t Give Up Your Power for Attention
My friend has a theory. He thinks when people ask unbelievably dumb questions it’s not because they don’t know the answer or couldn’t find it themselves. They’re capable. It’s that they want the attention that comes from being answered more than they want their own power to independently get the answer.
There are a lot of examples of playing dumb as a way to get attention. Emailing questions that are already answered on a website. Asking how to listen to a podcast that’s already linked in the post being commented on. Pretending to not notice when someone does something nice for you just so you can demontrate your surprise later in a more attention-grabbing way.
It’s a weird thing, and disempowering. It’s actually kind of gross to observe. I think a big part of it comes from the schooled mindset. When you spend the first twenty or so years in a system based on pats on the back and ribbons and Dean’s lists and other forms of manufactured recognition by authority figures you learn to seek that kind of psychic and emotional reward. There are few things teachers and experts and authorities with official sounding titles like more than being reminded that they know more than you. They love an eager, pliable pupil. When you ask them how to do things, raise your hand for clarification, ask them to expand on a point, or request a refresher on their material, you get positive attention. So you develop a kind of learned helplessness.
It’s stupid and you should identify and shed it right away. Operate at full power. If you can discover or do something without anyone else’s assitance, do it. If you can achieve goals without appealing to experts and authorities, all the better. If you can create your product, start your business, write your song, or publish your book, do it. You don’t need to focus group your supposed betters or ask every person you look up to to coffee for feedback.
It’s great if people like you and what you create. It’s great to learn from others. But get their attention by being the most you you can be. Create something new and powerful, don’t pretend to be powerless in hopes of luring them in for a quick hit of, “She talked to me!”. This is why mentorship can be dangerous. Spend all your time seeking awesome mentors and you’ll forget to master what’s uniquely you and just build things.
Don’t play dumb. The attention isn’t worth the loss of power.
Why My Wife and I (and Our Three Kids) are Spending Six Weeks in Ecuador
Sticking with an important theme in my life the better question might be, “Why not?”
Still, given our stage in life, our kids ages, and our work and financial situation, it does raise some eyebrows when we tell people of our Ecuadorian excursion planned for early 2016. There are several reasons we chose to do this, not least of which is the fact that there are far, far more reasons we can come up with not to do this.
That’s the thing. The reasons not to will only ever pile up. Screw that. Perfect timing is a myth. If we waited for the right time we never would have gotten married, had kids, adopted, taken new jobs, moved, moved again, started a business, unschooled, and all the other things we cherish most about our life.
The Idea
It began a little less than a year ago. I was flying home from a business trip and listening to an episode of the Tim Ferriss Podcast. It was an excerpt from a book called Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. I knew in my gut I wanted to get out into the broader world with my family. Not out of nowhere. The podcast was just a nudge. My own experience had me jonesing for international adventure for me and my kids already.
Between ages 12-20 I spent at least a few weeks, sometimes a few months, every summer in another country. Mexico, Peru, Kenya, Honduras. These were the most important and formative experiences of my youth. I loved it. It was really hard sometimes. I learned so much and gained so much perspective. Perhaps I’ll write more another time about what these trips did for me, but one of the things was to teach me forward orientation. The first few times it was crushing to make deep connections to dear friends across the world then leave, never to see them again (and pre-Facebook, never to talk to them in most cases). It made me learn to live in the moment and not hold on too tightly to past experiences.
My wife and I have always wanted to travel with our kids and let them experience the world outside the suburbs. Not because we think it’s somehow morally superior or because we want to be international do-gooders. Just because it’s really fun, and the best kind of challenge. We both know how hard it was for us to move from the small-town Midwest just a few states away, and how good it was. It’s too easy to assume your current geography is the best fit for you simply because you’ve never ventured out. We want our kids to feel like the world is small and not be afraid of exploring all of their options. We don’t want the exit option to feel so daunting to them.
The Decision
I got back from that trip and told my wife to listen to the podcast episode. She did. She knew right away what I was going to suggest and she wholeheartedly agreed. Let’s spend some time abroad with the kids. Not a vacation. Not as visitors touring the sites. Just normal, day to day life in a different place. We knew this required more than a few weeks and a location that wasn’t just for popular attractions. Don’t get me wrong, I love popular touristy stuff and we aren’t the type to go searching for the “too cool for the travel guide” spots when we travel. But this wasn’t about travel. It was about living.
I wanted two months, she wanted one, we settled on six weeks. It seemed long enough to make us both uncomfortable and wonder if we’d get bored and restless and homesick. We couldn’t just distract ourselves with novelty for six weeks. We’d have to establish a daily routine. Perfect.
The Timing
It seems weird to try to spend time abroad at this point in our lives. Our kids are 4, 6, and 10. That’s still pretty young. We are not in a place to put money into anything besides day-to-day expenses. I launched my company, Praxis, just two years ago and every ounce of material and mental resources go into building it. We moved here to the Charleston, SC area just four years ago and we love it. It’s beautiful, we’re not bored, and we’re beginning to make very deep and rewarding social bonds. My wife and I are young, so it’s not like the clock is running out on us.
But we don’t want perfection. We don’t want some experience that’s been planned and built up for years or decades. We don’t want to overthink it. We don’t want it to be that big of a deal. We just want to try living somewhere else for a bit. That’s it. When will we be in a better situation? Realistically, never. There will always be something more pressing to spend our energy on.
Besides, there are several ways in which we’re in a perfect position to do this. I own my own business and all of my colleagues work remotely. Besides travel season, all I need is WiFi. I live and breathe Praxis, but where I live and breathe it from is of little relevance most of the time. We unschool our kids. We have no schedule or obligations. One of the reasons we chose to unschool was so that we could do stuff just like this. How many kids get to do that? Our kid aren’t wasting away in cinder block cells all day, so why should we follow the same routine as those that are?
We know it will be really, really hard. Especially for me in the most intense phase of growing a business and trying to revolutionize the world. But everything we do at Praxis is about living life on your terms. If we preach it, we can live it too.
The Details
We had several constraints and preferences, but a lot of play room. I travel a lot to conferences and events to speak and promote my company and the ideas behind it. We couldn’t go in late spring/early summer, or in the fall. Speaking season. We also needed this to be really, really affordable. As in, all-in, this six weeks in Ecuador needs to cost the same or less as if we had stayed home for the same six weeks. We also needed reliable, solid WiFi. (One of the first things we did was have our AirBnB host run a test and verify the speed, which is the same as what Comcast gives me in SC.)
We weren’t ready to fly more than 4-5 hours with kids as young as four, so South and Central America were the target. We searched around on AirBnB for a few days and found a place that looked crazy cool. A bamboo beach house like something out of Swiss Family Robinson. It was gorgeous, large enough, and well-rated. No A/C and open, so mosquito nets, but otherwise not primitive. Good price, good WiFi. Why not?
The Act
Never the type to dwell too long on a matter, we booked it. Was there something better? Probably. Would it be worth the agonizing and the time and energy to find it? Probably not.
Once our non-refundable house was booked, the rest had to happen as a matter of course. We’ve been alternating between excitement and terror since then, but that’s exactly what we want. Just a little fear to overcome, mixed with the thrill of overcoming it.
We’ll set out just after the Super Bowl (what, you think I’m going to miss the NFL season?) and return around the Ides of March. If all goes to plan it won’t be noticeable from the outside. I’ll be working most of the day most days of the week as usual. The kids will be doing what unschoolers do, which is precisely what drives their curiosity and interest, and we’ll be grocery shopping, going for walks, cooking, cleaning, reading, meeting with people, and enjoying the beach.
We’ll also be sweating, struggling to communicate in a village of Spanish speakers, adapting to new foods and smells and sights, and probably in many moments fighting homesickness.
This may be the first of many experiences living abroad. It may be the last we ever do. That’s why we’re doing it. We need to know. Will we love or hate it? No amount of analysis can answer the question. We’ll go find out for ourselves.