Brad Marley, who provided a great guest post on parenting last week interviewed me for his site, so if you’re curious to learn more about the mystery man behind this site, check it out.

I think I come off rather well, although it was interesting thinking about these questions because it made me realize a couple of things:

1. I really love books and haven’t been reading enough of them lately
2. Being interesting is very hard, but incredibly important

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I got a question from a reader and I really don’t know how to answer it, so with his permission I’m putting it up here to see what you all think.

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I’ve gotten some emails from readers asking to write a few words about Ramit’s Earn1k course so they can get my impressions of it. So today I’m covering one of the topics he emphasizes early on: failing fast.

Here’s how most of us expect to start making money on the side:

1. Brainstorm ideas of what to do
2. Create a list of 20 ideas
3. After much harrowing thought, narrow down to five
4. Think long and hard about which one of those five is “the one”
5. Pick out the “winner” and don’t stop until you’ve succeeded
6. Keep trying
7. If you fail, try doing it a little differently
8. Try again
9. Keep Trying
10. You can do it!

Ramit doesn’t roll like that. First of all, he won’t cheer you one like a self-help guru—he’ll tell it like it is and then leave it up to you to make it happen. If you are lazy or expect it to be easy, it’s your own damn fault.

Persistence is a great quality to have, but sometimes it isn’t the smartest. And when you’re starting a freelance business (or even a real business), it’s crucial not to overdo it on the persistence. Unless you are very clear on the type of life you want to lead (freelance interior designer) and aren’t willing to compromise, then you’re going to have to learn to fail fast.

That means making the following sequence happen as quickly and efficiently as you can, so you can repeat it over and over until you find something that works:

1. Brainstorm ideas
2. Choose one
3. Test it
4. If it fails, move on to the next one
5. Repeat

First of all, that sequence is shorter. Second, it’s much more efficient that knocking your head against the wall until you start to see some progress. You’ll wind up exhausted, frustrated, and dumber than when you started. But it’s important to understand that the odds of our first idea being wildly successful are very small. How many times have you heard a successful entrepreneur tell a horror story about a colossal failure in their past? It happens to everyone—at least the successful ones.

Failure isn’t something you might bump into—it’s something you most definitely will crash and burn into. So you have to be ready to get out of the fire and start over instead of trying to salvage the burning wreckage.

This Is Not Easy

Part of this is that we’re programmed to want to seem persistent. Few of us actually are, but if we quit after encountering some difficulties that makes us feel like quitters. And in our society, quitters are synonymous with losers. And losers suck. And none of us want to suck. Unless that’s your freelance idea—sucking—in which case my advice is to fail fast so you can move on to the next one.

An Example

Say you want to get a new job. You’re an accountant and you want to be a newspaper writer because you’ve always liked writing, you read a magazine article that makes it seem like your dream job, and you’ve had your head in the sand for the past few years.

You could find a job with a paper, quit your old one, and live it up. Right? A few months later you realize you’ve made a big mistake: newspapers are dying, the pay is crap, you haven’t written anything since that story about the sock and the drawer in first grade, and you’re only eating pasta and butter for dinner these days on account of the shrinking bank account.

What do you do?

You could “try harder” and “get better” to see if that makes a difference (it won’t). You could keep at it for a few years to “get some experience,” falsely assuming that once you do you’ll be able to command a higher salary. You could sit down one day and say to yourself, “I don’t care about money—I just want to be happy. I’m going to keep at this and somehow make it work.”

Which is fine, but it’s not very smart. Here’s how you should’ve done it:

Find a freelance/part-time position at a newspaper. Or even an internship. You do it while you still have your accounting job. Do you like it? How does the pay project if you did it full time? Do it for a month or two and after that make an executive decision: keep trying or kill the experiment?

You kill it and move on to the next thing—now you’re failing but you’re failing smart. What then? You start your own blog. One of the articles you read during your experiment talked about how blogs were making a lot of newspapers irrelevant. So you start your own and you write as much as you can, learn, and try to get better. A few months later you ask yourself again: is this worth doing? is it helping me reach my goals? I would hope the answer would be “yes,” since blogging is awesome and can only help you out in the long run.

But if it doesn’t, you kill it and move on to the next thing.

What This Has to Do with Ramit’s Course

Failing fast one of the pillars of the Earn1k course. Without it, you wouldn’t get very far. Even Chris highlights how important this is in his Empire Building Kit.

The key is that you have to fail smart and you have to fail fast, which means you have to put your idea through a rigorous process that will leave no doubt in your mind when it comes time to move on to the next thing. The last thing you want to have is a bunch of regrets about the newspaper career you could’ve had.

So to sum it up: fail smart, fail fast, and move on to the next thing. If you do it right and you’re persistent you’ll eventually find a winner.

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This is a fantastic guest post from Brad Marley—it’s funny helpful, and you can tell he’s been paying attention. Brad is a technology PR professional in the suburbs of Detroit. When he’s not getting his PR on in his cubicle, he likes to golf and watch the Detroit Tigers. He’s currently trying to get his two-year-old to watch a full inning with him.

I couldn’t help but notice that Carlos is fretting over the imminent arrival of his first newborn. So I decided I would offer to try and ease his fears about soon being the sole caretaker of a tiny human being that will depend on him for everything, by sharing how his life will change when el niño arrives.

And, of course, by “ease his fears” I mean “feed his terror.”

After all, I’m also a father.

Here are five things that you can expect:

1. No More Sleeping In I was never a morning person. But that quickly changed when my first daughter arrived and started waking up at 6:30 on Saturday mornings. Who knew TBS plays back-to-back-to-back-to-back episodes of Saved By The Bell this early?
2. Jealous Of Friends With No Children Remember those spur-of-the-moment trips to the movies? The unplanned weekend getaways with your wife? Forget them. You have to put them on hold until the kid goes away to college, or gets pissed off at you for cramping their style and moves out at 16. Whichever comes first. For now, live vicariously through the friends who still have a life.
3. Hours Between Their Bedtime and Your Bedtime Are Gold I have never been so fiercely protective of a two-hour window than I am of the one between the time my kids go to bed and when I go to bed. Do not call or text me after 8. I will be relaxing on the couch.
4. You Will Begin To Understand How You Drove Your Parents Crazy My two-year-old loves to sleep in. When I have a difficult time  rousing her in the morning, I flashback to my Mom yelling at me to get out of bed because it was noon. I used to hate it when she did that. But now I understand. Sorry, Mom.
5. Getting Finances In Order Might Finally Take Precedent My wife and I were by no means standing on the edge of a financial sinkhole when our first baby arrived. But we realized that if we didn’t want college and other expenses to take us by surprise down the road, we should get our financial house in order. It still isn’t perfect, but having set up ROTH IRA’s and 529′s now will only lessen the financial stress down the road. And the little peanut lying in the crib was the impetus.

Of course, I love my kids. But there is no doubt that life changes completely when they arrive. But the only way to really understand what I’m saying is to, well, have them.

And, sometimes, the only way to cope with the responsibility of having them is to plant your tongue firmly in your cheek and write about it.

I hope this guide helps all soon-to-be parents out there.

This post was included in the Carnival of Money Stories over at The Financial Blogger.

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Very exciting times around here as I am ecstatic to announce that I’ve been published in a magazine for the very first time. I always wanted to write something worthy of being in a magazine, I just always imagined it would be an exposé or some piece about baseball and how awesome it is.

Instead, my very first published piece is about money. Actually, you may have already read it—Five Money Ratios to Live By appeared on Wisebread back in March. I guess an editor for US Airways Magazine read it, liked it, and wanted to put it in the magazine (which you can read online here). Sweet!

I’m adding some scans of it because that’s what people do when they’re featured in print.

Obviously, the article is longer than that, but what’s the point of scanning the whole thing in here? That’s a bit much.

On an interesting aside, I’ve already gotten one email directly because of this from someone pretty exciting (it’s not Michael Lewis), but more on that later.

Image by notsogoodphotography

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I’m tired.

It’s 5:42am right now and I don’t have to be at work for another three hours. I’m tired and I feel like I’m not getting anything done. It’s not that I haven’t made a list—oh I have a list—it’s just that my list is too long and I’m trying to get too much of it done at once.

Diversifying one’s income was one of the first things I learned when I began blogging about money—and it’s a great tip—but right now I feel like I’m overdiversifying myself, my income, and my life.

Here’s what I have on my plate right now:

• I write the Cubs Fan Report on the weekends (write most of it at night, get up at 6:30am Sat & Sun to polish up)
• I write a weekly article on Wisebread
• I try to write at least once a week here on The Writer’s Coin (used to be every day)
• I try to write once a week on Applied Analytics
• I try to write one guest post a month on another site
• I’m doing case studies for three different “clients” to drum up business for Applied Analytics
• I’m putting together my first ever product launch—the Making More Money guide, which is all about geting a raise at your current job or getting a bump by switching jobs
• I’m trying to get people to answer my super-fast survey to make the product launch awesome
• I’m going through Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit (daily emails, lessons, videos, etc.)
• I’m doing Ramit’s Earn1K program, which is basically a college course without the boring parts
• I have a full-time job
• I am a full-time husband to M, who rocks it
• I am expecting my first child in September, which is a full-time job in terms of anxiety, stress, and decision making
• We moved into our new place three months ago and there’s always stuff that needs to get done/bought
• I play two games a week on a baseball team here in the city

Damn!

Writing all that down kind of sums it up, doesn’t it? It’s pretty hard to be laser focused with this much stuff on my plate—that’s pretty obvious. But I also feel like I need to tackle it all at once before September hits, because I don’t know how I’m going to get anything done when the baby comes.

[note to self—add one more bullet: email other bloggers who have kids to ask how they did it and what tips they have for me]

I’m run down right now. The weekend, which is when I’d typically catch up on my sleep, had now become an exercise in sleep deprivation. Last weekend I took a nap in the middle of the day for the first time in years.

Fear not! I’m not just complaining here—I think this is going to be cathartic for me. Writing all this stuff down makes it pretty obvious I need to prioritize and attack one step at a time if I want to get any of this done.

First thing’s first: I’m going on vacation for a week. Taking a break is crucial and I think this is the perfect time. I can step away from the pressure of producing and publishing (and working!) and just think about these projects, where they fit in, and what I want to take on first.

You know how they say you should write posts that are useful to your readers? Well this one is useful to myself, so thanks for listening.

Image by dominiqs

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Over the weekend, there were two plays during World Cup matches that were blatantly missed by the referees. In the Germany-England game, the Brits put the ball in the goal but the refs didn’t think it crossed the line. Announcer Tommy Smyth called it one of the worst calls he’s ever seen in his career.

In the Mexico-Argentina game, Argentina scored a goal that shouldn’t have counted, as the player was offsides. The refs allowed the goal despite the Mexicans irate protesting. Both Germany and Argentina wound up winning and advancing to the next round.

I was listening to the Germany-England game on the radio and a helpless feeling came over me that I’m sure the Mexicans felt when the refs blew the call during their game: it’s not fair or right and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Play continued and the clock kept ticking—there was no break in play for the Brits to complain or make their case to the ref. In soccer, play goes on and the clock waits for no one. They couldn’t stand there and argue because Germany would push ahead and score another goal.

We would all be wise to remember this analogy when something unfair happens to us—life isn’t fair. We can spend our time jumping up and down complaining about it or we can get right back in the game and prepare for the next play. Spend too much time complaining or feeling sorry for yourself, and you’re setting yourself to miss your next chance.

This is one thing I like about soccer. In baseball, football, and basketball you can stop play and complain. You can argue. You can make your case. You can wave your arms like a crazy person in the hopes that the ref will think twice about the call he missed. Sometimes it’s fun to watch and sometimes it’s a little embarrassing.

There’s a fine line between complaining and being a cool customer when something like this happens to you. On the one hand, you want to make sure everyone knows you’ve been wronged. I’ve watched baseball games where players player didn’t complain at all, so everyone thinks the call was the right one even though it clearly wasn’t.

Well, I don’t see Soriano complaining too much, so maybe he was out.

And on the other hand, when a player is wronged like that and he just plays it off like it’s nothing—well that just looks cool and it makes me want to be that player.

Curious to hear what people out there think—which of the two are you and which one would you like to be? The complainer or the cool customer?

Image by NathanF

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Wall Street is a classic movie. I decided to watch it again this week because I’m mildly interested in the sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The original movie was about Gordon Gekko, a powerful Wall Street mogul with an insatiable thirst for money. I expected the movie to really resonate with me because of all the crap that’s happened in the financial world recently.

It didn’t. Instead, I found myself focusing on the infamous speech Gordon Gekko gives to Bluestar stockholders:

Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge—has marked the upward surge of mankind.

It’s a very convincing piece of rhetoric, and it’s no wonder so many young people wound up wanting to become the next Gordon Gekko, which was the exact opposite of what director Oliver Stone was trying to accomplish with the movie.

Greed is Good

It is. Think about it: without greed you wouldn’t have any companies churning out new, exciting products. You wouldn’t have Pfizer pumping millions of dollars into researching new medicine that cures all kinds of diseases. They do it for the money—for profit—and we all get the benefit of feeling better/living longer.

For a price, of course.

There would be no Apple if it wasn’t for greed. Maybe Steve Jobs does actually have a more altruistic reason for pushing Apple as fas as its gone. Maybe it’s not about money, but he’s still greedy. He wants to be on the cutting edge of technology and design. He wants his products to be the sexiest. He wants to be in control.

That thirst to accomplish these things—it’s all one form or another of greed.

We Are All Greedy

With our time, with our money, with our freedom. Think about it these questions:

• Why do we want more money?
• Why do we want a promotion?
• Why do we want to pay as little as possible in taxes?
• Why do we want to leave work at 5pm on the dot every day (or earlier)?
• Why do we want to be our own boss?
• Why is there such a thing as “alone time?”

It’s all about greed—be it money, time, knowledge, or personal freedom. We want what we want and most of the time greed is the motivator.

Morality vs Greed

Nobody has ever gone to jail for greed. In the movie, Gekko and Bud Fox go to jail for breaking the law, not for being greedy. The key here is that greed didn’t drive them to break the law, it was their lack of morals. They were willing to break the rules in order to make more money, and that was their downfall.

But that’s not greed, that’s a lack of morals.

This is where most people get it wrong: they like rail on people like Gordon Gekko for being greedy and being “in it just for the money.” Well guess what? Without that inherent interest in the money, the world wouldn’t be where it is today.

Gekko was right on that: it has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And we should use that insatiable feeling of greed (for whatever it is you really really want) and turn it into a motivator.

Warren Buffett is Greedy

If there’s anyone in Wall Street (or just in the world of business) that is the anti-Gekko, it’s Warren Buffett. He’s known for being honest and anything he aligns himself with immediately benefits from his cachet. But guess what? Warren Buffett is greedier than most of us.

It’s why he pored over an ungodly amount of financial statements and annual reports in his life—he was looking for opportunities to make money. People like Warren Buffett don’t need any more money—but there he is still making deals left and right trying to get a proper return on his investment.

It may sound odd because we’re so used to using greed as a negative word. Instead, let’s use greed as a motivator to get us to contribute to this “upward surge of mankind.” And if that’s too much to ask for, then at least the upward surge of you.

Next time you feel guilty about spending too much time on something or trying to make more money or trying to make things better for yourself somehow—don’t. Accept the greed and use it to push you ahead and get things done.

And please don’t break the law.

This article was included in the Carnival of Financial Planning.

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If you want to make more money there are basically two ways to do it:

a) make more money by getting a raise or getting a new job

b) make money by starting your own small business

If you’re not interested in starting your own freelance business or side project that can generate some money, then stay tuned for my Making More Money guide. It will lay out a step-by-step map of the tactics you can use to get a raise or get a new job that pays you more money. I hope to have this ready by August and if there’s anything you’d like to see in the guide, leave a comment on this post or email me.

For those of you that are looking to start your own side project, I’d like to share my experience with Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit.

Who is Chris Guillebeau? He’s a guy that has set a goal of visiting every country in the world, he has a sweet blog called The Art of Non-Conformity, and he’s been creating side businesses for a long time. I first heard of him when I read his Brief Guide of World Domination, which has great content and an impressive design.

What is the Empire Building Kit? It’s a kit filled with PDFs, videos, webinars, and some extras that are going to teach you everything you need to know to start your own freelance business and make money on the side. Chris sums it up way better than I can:

Build a Meaningful Lifestyle Business in One Year by Doing One Thing Every Day.

I bought Chris’ Empire Building Kit about a month ago and I have to say this: the information inside is well worth what he’s charging. Not only that, he focuses on that “meaningful” word a lot. This isn’t just about money—it’s about freedom doing something that is worth more than just cash. I want to highlight two of my favorite parts of the kit:

1. The case studies
2. The daily emails

Case Studies: There’s that old cliché about learning about the past so you don’t make the same mistakes in the future. Well, that’s what case studies are all about. Chris includes over 15 case studies that cover all kinds of start-up ideas that are currently making great money. From the predictable (web design) to the “you can make money doing that???” (murder-mystery hosting…yup I’m not kidding).

The variety is awesome because you can take a little bit from each one and eventually build up what you need to do (and what NOT to do) for the freelance business you want to start on the side. There are no bad ideas—one case study shows how the Raw Foods Witch turned her passion into a business. So if you thought that idea of teaching people how to telepathically communicate with their cats was stupid…think again.

If someone out there is willing to pay you for it, it’s not a dumb idea—it’s creative.

Daily Emails: The course has TONS of content. It’s almost too much when you see the list of stuff that’s included (this is for the premium version, which is what I bought):

• 15+ case studies
• 7 video interviews
• 365-day series of tasks
• 43-step launch checklist
• Behind-the-scenes module
• Bonus videos

But what Chris did is brilliant—he chopped it all up into a daily guide where you tackle one concrete thing each day. Every day, you’ll get an email that will focus on one very specific concept. This does two things:

a) It keeps you from getting overwhelmed and makes you focus on each element of the course

b) It serves as a reminder to work at it every day—the same way Poets & Writers reminds me every month to keep on writing

Who Should Buy This? If you want to make some quick money without doing too much work, then you should pass on the Empire Building Kit—it’s not for you. But if you want to create a meaningful side business and learn a thing or two about strategy, marketing, and creating value, then this is what you want.

Cost: Shelling out $249 or $449 is tough. I’m as cheap as they come, so I didn’t come around right away. I liked everything I read about the Empire Building Kit, but the money was a big hurdle for me. So what I did was I bought Chris’ Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself (which was $79 and I reviewed here). It made me a lot more comfortable with the quality of product that Chris puts out. After that, I was ready to take the next step.

BONUS #1: Chris has sold the Empire Building Kit twice before, and both times he only opened it up for 24 hours. This time he is opening it up for good. But to entice people to buy it today, he is giving away a 60-page guide called Backyard Biz Profits (which he’ll later sell for $50) to everyone who buys the Kit today. It’s all about
combining online marketing with local businesses.

BONUS#2: Everyone that buys either of the Empire Building Kit versions will get a free web-analytics assessment. I’ll take a look at your site and assess what metrics you should be paying attention to and tracking based on your goals.

If you currently have a site, perfect. If you don’t, you can use it once you start to build it out later on. Why should you care about web analytics? Because web analytics is cool and because it can make you smarter. Check out my site, Applied Analytics, to read more about how learning this stuff can make you and your site smarter. Just forward me your receipt and we’ll work together on figuring out what your analytics needs are.

That’s It

By the way, if you click on any of the links in this post and you buy something, Chris will kick back some of that money to me. It’s called an affiliate link and it shows you how much Chris appreciates other people promoting his products. And trust me, this is an easy product to put my stamp of approval on—it’s pretty sweet.

If you aren’t interested in putting the time into starting something like this, stay tuned. My Making Money Guide is aimed at all of you that feel like you’re not being paid what you’re worth and want some help to get what you’re worth.

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Maybe you want to stay at your current job or maybe you want to move on somewhere else. Either way, you want more money coming in and you’re willing to make some changes in your everyday routine to make it happen.

Could you please fill out this survey? I’m putting together a step-by-step guide and I need to make sure I’m covering most of the issues people have when it comes to this stuff.

Thanks!

Image by stopnlook

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