A couple years ago, I got involved with this thing called The Million Dollar Project.

Started by Corbett Barr (one of my personal heroes), the project was an attempt to help starting bloggers post their progress, keep each other accountable, and collectively make one million dollars through online entrepreneurship.

Now, not to toot my own horn or anything, but soon after signing up, I was able to drive College Info Geek to the top of the leaderboard. As of this writing, it’s still holding one of the top three spots. (Since it’s based on traffic stats, I guess I have you guys to thank for that!)

Anyway, there was this other blog that was always just about neck-and-neck with mine on the leaderboard. That blog is Expert Enough, and it’s actually a side project ran by Corbett himself.

When I started reading it, however, I noticed he wasn’t the only one managing the blog. There was this other dude named Caleb Wojcik (rhymes with logic).

I read a few of Caleb’s articles, which were all pretty darn good. I soon discovered that he also helped Corbett run his main blog, ThinkTraffic. I thought to myself, “Alright, this guy’s a pretty good blogger.”

Then I found out that he’s got his own blog called Pocket Changed, which focuses on finance, personal development, and entrepreneurship. Aside from great content, Pocket Changed has a fantastic design as well. “Ok, he’s a pretty good designer and WordPress nerd as well.”

Some months ago, he launched a podcast on his blog and has been interviewing some pretty big names on it. “Damn, he’s a good podcaster and networker to boot.”

But here’s the kicker. Recently I saw my friend Pat Flynn post a video trailer for his new book Let Go:

As you can see, the trailer’s cinematography is fantastic – and guess who’s name I saw credited for it? That’s right – Caleb Wojcik.

At this point I was like, “Holy crap – how can one guy have so many different skills?“

Coding, design, photography, videography, writing, networking, podcasting – it’s beyond dispute that Caleb’s a pretty damn talented guy.

He’s also my guest on today’s podcast, and skill acquisition is one of the primary things we talk about in the interview. I believe having a diverse set of skills is important for keeping yourself flexible in today’s workplace, and Caleb agrees.

In this episode, Caleb and I talk about how you can go about building a skillset that adapts to a variety of very different tasks. We also dive in to Caleb’s story – from his college years, to his experience working at Boeing, to his current adventures as a rogue entrepreneur.

Strap on your kick-ass headphones and dive right in.

Items mentioned in this episode:

• Pocket Changed – Caleb’s blog
• Follow Caleb on Twitter

Things you should do right after listening:

• If you don’t currently have a side project that can help you build a useful skill, get one. Set up a self-study program and acquire dem useful skills!
  

If you enjoyed this interview, leave a review of the CIG podcast on iTunes! I’ll love you forever, or at least for the next 10^100 years until Hawking radiation evaporates the last black hole and renders the universe a black expanse of nothingness!

Oh, and one last thing: Caleb actually interviewed me for his own podcast some weeks before we recorded this interview. However, we thought it would be fun to publish them on the same day. If you’re interested in hearing that interview, check it out here!

RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: CIG 009: Building A Diverse Skillset With Caleb Wojcik

The red and white-dominated screen stared right back at me, daring me to second-guess its sobering proclamation. 2,073,600 pixels all banded together to thrust a singular message down my optic nerves and right into my occipital lobe:

“A night class. A. Night. Class.”

That was my option? My only option? After almost four years of careful planning, multiple trips to the advisor’s office, meticulous scrutinization of the course catalog and major requirements, and no small amount of Excel gymnastics – this is what it had come to?

It seemed so. To complete my MIS major, the project I had dedicated almost 1/5^th of my life to, I would have to take a night class. No other option presented itself on the course scheduler.

In a dance of alignment that merited astrological likening, the school, professors, schedules, FORTRAN-based computer systems, and – not least – the very quarks in my little corner of the universe had all colluded to force me into this decidedly disagreeable class arrangement.

This could not be allowed. Something had to be done. And so a plan was hatched.

“Dr. Tanaka? I’m Thomas Frank; I’ve been told you’re the man to see about independent study options…” 

An Idea is Born

It has long been known that not every class in a particular curriculum will offer material of any significant value to every student who passes through it.

Such was the case with the night class I had found myself facing; my goals and aspirations did not merit three hours a week of Software Development in Contemporary Languages.

What I did need, however, was an iPhone app. Up until that point, no attempt had been made to render my blog suitable for reading on mobile devices.

While a user could double-tap the content to fit it to their device’s window, there was a decided lack of true mobile optimization. Therefore, I began creating a plan for a College Info Geek iPhone app.

When I was faced with the singular option of enrolling in the aforementioned night class, I got an idea; could I possibly leverage my iPhone app plan into an independent study course that would replace this night class?

A little asking around was done. A pink sheet of paper gained a good number of indentations and markings. Some hands were shook, some pleasantries were exchanged, some business discussed.

Just like that, the idea became a reality. Now I just had to build it.

Floundering First Attempts

What does any resourceful person do when they need to learn something? Well, assuming the person in question lived in the pre-internet era, they would simply transport themselves to the nearest establishment of dead-tree-based learning and purchase a book on the subject.

One would assume that method obsolete, but as I still love the smell of a new book and feel of the pages in my hands, I hopped over to the nearest B&N and bought an iPhone development book.

I then proceeded to try reading through it for the next few weeks, and… almost no progress was made.

Other priorities filled my time. I was consumed with learning Japanese (こにちわ！), I was incredibly busy writing articles for the blog, and I had a myriad other things on my plate that simply took precedence over the seemingly impossible task of building an entire iPhone app. I needed something radical to happen.

That’s when my good friend @afrais enthusiastically directed me to this website:

“This sounds like Startup Weekend… but for finishing things!” I said out loud to no one in particular.

This was exactly what I needed – a dedicated weekend, surrounded by like-minded peers, to make progress on my project. My eyes twinkled in exactly the way slate doesn’t as I fired up Kayak and plunked down $600 for a plane ticket to Austin. 

Down to Silicon Hill

Austin is unlike any other city in Texas; in fact, were it not for the occasional decorative homage to the state’s cowboy roots, you would be forgiven for thinking you were strolling down the streets of a town in Silicon Valley.

Waitresses say things like, “Rick Perry would never allowed to eat here.” Young men wear Chucks instead of cowboy boots. Coffee shops are everywhere, and they’re all filled with Mac-loving entrepreneurs and creatives.

I touched down at AUS on the brisk morning of February 20^th, marched appreciatively past the ever-present live music show in the terminal, and was subsequently picked up by my friend Alex – the aforementioned owner of the @afrais Twitter handle.

The fact that he had offered me his couch for the duration of my stay offset the ridiculous cost of the airline ticket, so I was very grateful.

Alex is – by all accounts – a success story. At only 19 years of age, he runs a successful WordPress theme business that supports him completely. At 17, he sold his site Blogussion for $20,000.

Shortly after the sale (and his graduation from high school), he moved from “Middle of Nowhere”, New Jersey to Austin in order to be part of a more tech-focused climate.

During the two days before the conference, Alex and I tried out local restaurants and food trucks, explored the town, and tried to get work done in the café area of Whole Foods #1 (which has its own parking garage underneath the building). It was a much-needed break from the wintry monotony of Iowa, and it made up for the fact that I was unable to attend SXSW due to a class conflict.

However, the real star of the show was the conference…

Meeting Andy

Calling FinishUp Weekend a conference might give an uninitiated listener the wrong impression. That’s… not really what it is.

When Alex and I showed up at Chicon Collective, the site of the weekend’s proceedings, we found ourselves in front of an unassuming, medium-sized brick warehouse in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Upon entering, we met up with several other budding creatives – writers, photographers, and entrepreneurs. All were cordial and friendly, and all were diligently working away at their own projects.

A conference is usually defined by a few key features, not least of which is the itinerary. FU Weekend had none to speak of. Other than a 2^nd-day motivational talk and a planned after-party, the entirety of the weekend was dedicated to a singular pursuit: work.

We met up with Andy Keil, the conference’s founder and organizer. We chatted for a while; it turns out Andy actually attended Iowa State for a single year before transferring to a school in Chicago. This was interesting to me; it marked Austin as the second city in which I had randomly met someone with an Iowa connection (the first being San Francisco).

After talking for a while, Andy told us we were free to find a spot to work. This wasn’t a difficult task at Chicon; the warehouse was full-to-bursting with tables, chairs, couches, hidden nooks, outlets, and all the other amenities a solo creative could want.

It also sported a full-fledged photo studio, plenty of booze (for “taking breaks”), and a wonderful sound system through which I was introduced to some great new music (Kendrick Lamars’ good kid, m.A.A.d. city was the standout).

Even with all these amenities at my disposal, however, the real work didn’t begin until I met Mr. Long.

An Invitation to the Treehouse

“You’re here to build an iPhone app? Dude, you need to talk to Josh.” Andy enthusiastically told me.

As the so-called Cocktail Party Effect dictates, Josh Long shortly appeared in front of us after hearing his name mentioned. Josh, it turned out, worked for Treehouse, an online video education site in the vein of Lynda.com.

To my surprise, he informed me that Treehouse had just released a video course on building a blog reader iPhone app – basically the exact thing I had endevoured to build.

Now that I had the resource I needed, I got to work. And we kept working all through the night (I’m the left figure on the couch)…

It’s All Just One Big Turing Machine

It’s now the part in the narrative where I shall attempt to explain the development process that lead to my current achievements in app building. Don’t panic; we won’t be dealing with any strips of tape.

The first thing any aspiring app builder needs to do is download a program called XCode. A prudent developer who wants their app on the marketplace also needs to pay $99 for an Apple Developer License, which I did early on.

Once you have these two things, you’re granted access to development resources and a dashboard where you can create provisioning profiles that let you test your app on your Apple devices.

Those tasks being done, I hopped over to the Treehouse website. Since I had absolutely no experience with Objective-C – the language iOS apps are written in – I decided to go through the Build a Simple iPhone App course before tackling the blog reader course.

Going through this course, I worked my way through six distinct stages and learned the basic steps of building an app.

While learning Objective-C’s syntax and the correct XCode settings, I slowly created an app called Crystal Ball, which tells fortunes when a user taps the screen or shakes the phone.

Leveling Up, Hitting Snags

After I completed the Crystal Ball app, I continued on to the Build a Blog Reader iPhone App course. Featuring the same teacher, this course taught me how to create a list of items in an iPhone app, as well as bringing in a list of blog post titles from a JSON feed.

This is where I stared hitting snags, not least of which was the fact that the Blog Reader course was not, and still is not, done. Treehouse simply hasn’t finished creating the content for the course, so I wasn’t able to continue to the end of the project.

This is the point I was at when FinishUp weekend, well… finished up. Still, I got a lot of work done, and I was very proud. Alex did as well; he built an entirely new blog that would serve as a method of updating the world during his upcoming bicycle trip from Canada to New Mexico.

Afterwards, we attended the after-party in high spirits (although we refrained from consuming the spirits themselves; at 19, Alex is simply too young, and as in New York last year, I decided to stay sober with him). A great weekend over, we headed home and I packed up for the next day’s flight home.

Only, that flight didn’t happen. High winds in Austin kept my plane grounded until the next day.

No worries, I thought; Alex and I just turned the day into another work day. On the next day, he dropped me off at the airport and I boarded my flight, ready to return home.

The first leg of the flight – Austin to Dallas – went smoothly. It probably took less than an hour. I disembarked and proceeded to wile away the hours of my layover by pacing the terminal and listening to an audiobook.

The Dallas-Des Moines flight proceeded a little less smoothly – ok, a lot less smoothly – while were flying over Kansas City, the pilot switched on the intercom and informed everyone that Des Moines was being battered by a blizzard of horrific proportions.

We were heading back to Dallas.

There would be no other flight for me that night; I was put on standby for the last flight to Des Moines that day, but so was everyone else. They filled the plane first.

And so a full night of playing Pokemon in the Dallas airport ensued.

At 4:30 a.m., I decided to lie on the floor and tried to sleep; I probably got a couple hours’ rest before the morning crowd’s bustling noises woke me again.

Finally, two days after I should have been home, I was on my way. Arriving at the Des Moines airport around noon and discovering all my potential rides were sitting in classes, I paid a cabbie $90 to transport my exhausted jumble of carbon and water back to Ames.

Jason! I Mean… JSON!

Now at home, I resumed my attempts to finish my blog reader app.

The new problem I had encountered was a tricky one; it seemed that the Treehouse blog had a JSON feed set up that enabled the blog reader app to pull in their blog posts. When I replaced the call to their blog in the code with a call to my own, XCode happily presented me with a blank screen.

I soon found out that WordPress doesn’t come equipped with its own JSON feed; you have to install a plugin to get the functionality. I studied the source code of the Treehouse blog, found the correct plugin, and installed it on my blog.

Still… no dice.

It turned out that in addition to installing the JSON feed plugin, the Treehouse team had added a custom function to its code that enabled the functionality that the blog reader app took advantage of. They failed to mention this in the course, though this is probably because the course is yet to be completed.

Undaunted, I contacted the course’s instructor on Twitter. After a bit of flattery, I asked him if he would be so kind as to post the code for that function I so needed:

As you can see, Amit is a pretty cool dude. I finally had the code I needed.

After a few more tweaks to the unfinished blog reader app code, I finally found myself staring at something that could be called a result:

However, this is where the progress on this particular app stopped. Since the blog reader course isn’t complete, and since my knowledge of XCode is still very limited, I was unable to progress any further.

Instead of giving up, I took a new angle.

Another person I met at FU Weekend mentioned a program called Appcelerator, which takes normal HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and translates it into useable Objective-C – automagically!

I decided to give it a try. I downloaded Titanium (a hacked-up variant of Aptana), which is the IDE used to develop for Appcelerator.

After a bit of effort, I was able to create an app prototype that went a bit further than the other project. It still wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it at least would open a WebView for each blog article:

At this point, I’m stuck here as well. I haven’t quite figured out the method to bring in just the RSS feed rather than opening a WebView; however, I know it’s possible.

In the mean time, I’ve taken yet another angle.

I’ve started teaching myself the principles of responsive web design, so that eventually I’ll be able to rebuild the College Info Geek theme in a way that scales down on mobile devices. This way, even if I have to use a WebView, the page will be mobile friendly.

Recently, I learned how to use CSS3 media queries to dynamically change HTML elements when the browser is resized. I rebuilt my personal website using these media queries; as a result, it now looks great at any resolution:

Here is where the story ends, for now. I’ve learned a lot, I’ve built a lot, but I have a long way to go. With that $99 developer license motivating me, I’ll continue to build.

Oh, and about the independent study – even though I didn’t completely finish my app, I learned a lot- and passed. In fact, this blog post was my final paper for the project. Moral of the story? If you don’t want to do a required class, talk to a professor about doing a cool independent project instead!

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RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: My Quest To Build An iPhone App (Or, How To Get Out Of A Required Class)

Ever since I started blogging and doing things of an entrepreneurial nature, Gary Vaynerchuk has been a source of inspiration for me. His talks and tweets have motivated me to hustle - to work insanely hard to reach my goals – and to constantly build my brand and connect with others.

Gary is the founder of Vaynermedia, a company that does brand consulting for Fortune 500 giants like PepsiCo and Campbell’s.

He is also the author of three books - Crush It: Why NOW is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion (2009), The Thank-You Economy (2011), and the upcoming Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy, Social World, which drops in November of this year.

Gary got his start in college by taking the train home every weekend to work in his parents’ liquor store. From there, he added an e-commerce component by starting WineLibrary.com, which helped catapult the business from $3 million to $45 million in annual income.

During that time, Gary also became an expert in social media. He advocates a spirit of unbridled passion and insane hard work, and he’s shown that this approach works by gaining almost 1 million Twitter followers and speaking at high-profile tech and social media events around the country (this is one of my favorites).

In this interview, Gary gives his insight on how to identify your passion in college, how to go after it and succeed (minus all the typical career-advice bullshit), and why mentors are way more important than money or college credits.

Items mentioned in this episode:

• Crush It
  
• The Thank-You Economy
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
• Gary’s website
• Gary (@garyvee) on Twitter

Things you should do right after listening:

• If you’re still not sure what you want to do, start looking at your free-time activities and figure out if you could leverage any of them into a job.
• Find a mentor that can help you to achieve your goals.

If you enjoyed this episode, give the CIG podcast a review on iTunes!

—————

RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: CIG 008: Hustling, Connecting, and Winning with Gary Vaynerchuk

I was born not knowing, and have only had a little time to change that here and there. 

This quote marks the start of James Gleick’s Genius, a 438-page biography and tribute to one of humanity’s greatest scientists – Richard Feynman.

Richard Feynman is a legend.

Ranked as one of the 10 greatest physicists of all time, Feynman contributed a staggering amount to our understanding of the universe.

Feynman taught himself trigonometry, analytic geometry, calculus, and a host of other advanced math topics at the age of 15. After high school, he attended MIT and afterward become the first person in history to attain a perfect score on the math and physics portions of the Princeton entrence exam.

In the 1940′s, he joined the Manhattan project at Los Alamos and helped the Allies to develop the atomic bomb before Nazi Germany could do it.

While it may not seem very grand, I like to mention the other thing Feynman did at Los Alamos. In those days, you could get the last two numbers of a safe’s combination lock very easily if it was left open. Feynman had a habit of taking the last two numbers of every open lock he came across – which turned out to be a good amount at Los Alamos.

Though he was only playing practical jokes, he essentially pointed out some pretty huge information security flaws – at the place where they were building the freaking atomic bomb. So I guess you could say he was an early security consultant in addition to being a genius physicist.

A 1946 colloquium in Los Alamos. Feynman can be seen behind Enrico Fermi, who is 3rd from the left in front.

Once his work on the Manhattan Project was finished, Feynman went to Cornell University to teach theoretical physics.

After Cornel, he taught at CalTech, where he also did a ton of important work to advance the science of physics.

In the 1960′s, Feynman was appointed a member of the Royal Society – the same Royal Society that has, throughout history, been comprised of great thinkers such as Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley (after whom Halley’s comet is named), Lord Kelvin, and Albert Einstein.

Around the same time, Feynman wrote The Feynman Lectures on Physics, the brilliance of which cannot be overstated. If the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica is the greatest physics book of all time, Feynman’s lectures are at least the greatest introductory ones (especially since Newton purposely made his hard to understand).

Later in life, Feynman helped NASA scientists to uncover the cause behind the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger:

The greatness of Feynman’s intellect and accomplishments is undisputed. Among his many accolades, he received:

• The Albert Einstein Award (1954)
• The Nobel Prize in Physics (1965)
• The National Medal of Science (1979)

However, the reason I admire Feynman so much has more to do with his teaching. 

Feynman was an incredibly gifted teacher, and had a knack for showing students the beauty in science – much the way Bill Nye did for me as a kid. This amazing video does a great job of showing that:

Ever since discovering this video, I watch it at least once a day. It’s one of the reasons my interest in science has risen dramatically as of late; had my freshman Physics 101 teacher been Feynman, I might well have never majored in business.

Feynman’s sense of wonder and curiosity about how the world worked was absolutely inspiring. However, he also had a simple, raw desire to teach, which I admire so much.

Many elite schools that can boast about having celebrity faculty members often have a problem: the students there don’t feel like they get enough attention from said faculty members.

The reason for this should be obvious, and I think Zac Bissonnette put it best on page 118 of Debt-Free U:

“Here’s the thing: famous professors build their reputations primarily by publishing, and they’re not about to jeopardize that by wasting time teaching lowly undergrads.”

Richard Feynman was the complete opposite of that.

After the war, he rejected a job offer from the Institute for Advanced Study – a research center that, at the time, boasted an impressive faculty including Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel.

Why?

Because there are no students there to teach.

Feynman loved explaining physics to his students, and he made it his utmost priority to explain it in a way that was clearly understandable to them. It is for this reason that The Feynman Lectures on Physics are so famous and loved.

In an academic climate where a scientist’s brilliance and the greatness of his accomplishments seems to be inversely proportional to his desire to teach, Feynman stands out as a bright ray of clarifying light.

There’s a damn good reason he’s been called The Great Explainer.

When Feynman began teaching at CalTech, the standard physics course put the subject of Atoms and Molecules near the end of the course’s curriculum. But, as he saw atoms as the fundamental beginning of his understanding of the universe, Feynman chose to tackle them first in his lectures.

He started his first lecture in 1961 with the following (now famous) words:

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?

I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that…

All things are made of atoms – little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.

In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

This is what Feynman considered to be the most important fact.

Since I’m currently geeking out about Feynman – and since I needed to teach myself responsive design – I created a tribute to Feynman and this quote in the form of a website aptly called The Most Important Fact.

Come hell or high water, I certainly hope we’ll remember it and remember to pass it on.

If you’re interested in learning more about Richard Feynman, I highly recommend picking up two books:

• Genius, the biography of Feynman written by James Gleick
  
• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, a collection of stories from Feynman’s life (including the hilarious Los Alamos safe-cracking story I mentioned earlier), written by Feynman himself

I’ll leave you with this video, which contains the quote from the last video, as well as some more of Feynman’s wisdom. It also includes some ridiculously beautiful nature footage.

Now, go out and learn some science!

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RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: Greatest Professor Of All Time: Richard Feynman

Most of you probably know Jimmy Wales as the founder of Wikipedia, which is quite possibly the single greatest repository of human knowledge ever created.

All of us who have had to write research papers in the past probably have Jimmy (along with the army of contributors to Wikipedia) to thank for getting us started. Even though our teachers always told us not to use Wikipedia, we did anyway.

What you might not know is that Wales is also an adviser for – and investor in – another great website: the question/answer site Quora.

Quora, along with other sites like the Stack Exchange network, has been a big help to me in the past. Before question/answer sites like these, I’d often have to go digging through forums when I wanted an answer to a question. For that reason, I’m a big fan of Quora, and I used to be a frequent contributor as well.

Anyway, I recently stumbled across this question on Quora: What advice would Jimmy Wales give to the next generation?

I absolutely loved Jimmy’s answer to this question. Here’s a snippet:

“I think one of the most important pieces of advice I can give young people is that you should try to arrange your life in such a fashion that you minimize your consumption expenses as much as is practical so that you take on as little debt as possible.

Why?

If you want to do something interesting with your life, you will need a certain degree of financial independence, by which I mean, the ability to make choices without thinking about the immediate money involved.

Let’s say you start your first job and immediately make various spending choices to spend all or most of your paycheck, going into debt to do it.  A popular way to do this is to buy a car and rent a nice apartment.  Now, 6 months later when your boss is a jerk and you wish to change jobs, you’ve got a big problem.”

I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read Jimmy’s full answer to the question on Quora.

Jimmy’s advice reflects the way I’ve been trying to live and the advice I give everyone when it comes to managing money. Living below my means enabled me to pay off all my students loans before even graduating, and now I’m able to start saving for the future without worrying about debt.

This is the way to live. Regardless of how much money you’ll be making once you get out of college, it doesn’t make sense to go buying tons of crap just because you’ve got the cash (or, more realistically, the credit) to do so.

The New York Times recently profiled TreeHugger.com founder Graham Hill, and he recounted how he went crazy after receiving a huge influx of cash from the sale of his internet company in the late 90′s.

Hill bought stuff just for the sake of filling his house, and even went as far as hiring a buyer – some dude name Seven (not even kidding) – to buy things for his house when he was too busy working.

In the end, Hill wasn’t happy with any of it. He ended up selling almost everything he owned, and now lives in a 420-square-foot studio apartment. Even though his living area is much smaller now, he’s much happier.

I hope you’ll take to heart the advice from Jimmy, Graham, and myself. It’s not worth it to bog yourself down with tons of stuff and needless debt.

Things can be fun to own – especially if they provide some utility. But freedom is worth more than stuff. 

Freedom is worth more than stuff. | Tweet This

The ability to wake up in the morning, look at yourself in the mirror, and know that you’re not constrained by a huge monthly credit card bill is amazing. We weren’t meant to live with the perpetual stress of owing something to someone.

Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking you need to own lots of stuff to be happy. Or thinking you need a huge house to impress your friends and justify your years in college to your family.

Do what you enjoy, stay out of debt, and keep yourself free. It’s worth it.

RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: Jimmy Wales Gives One Huge, Important Piece Of Advice To Us Kids

I have a really good friend who always says, “You can trade hours for dollars, or you can trade ideas for millions.”

While he certainly chose the latter option, it seems that most people choose the former. But I’d like to propose a third option:

You can build systems to make money without trading hours. In other words, you can build passive income sources.

The idea behind passive income is pretty simple. You build a system that requires no work from you after you set it up. That system allows you to make money – even when you’re not actively working on it.

With a passive income system, you can make money while you’re sleeping, while you’re driving, and while you’re playing I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!!1

If you’ve read Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Workweek, then you should be somewhat familiar with this concept. However, Tim’s book makes it sound a lot easier than it is. While building passive income sources is definitely possible, it’s usually not possible to truly only work four hours a week. Getting these sources to be successful – and keeping them that way – requires dedication, time, and care.

Today’s guest on the College Info Geek podcast – Pat Flynn – embodies those three qualities.

Pat makes over $40,000 a month through several passive income sources he’s build up over the past few years. He also helps others do the same with his amazing blog, Smart Passive Income (which also includes a fantastic podcast).

Not only does Pat reveal all his secrets and operates on a completely transparent basis, but he also publishes a monthly report that details exactly how much money he makes, and where it all comes from.

Back when I was learning about online business, I stumbled upon Smart Passive Income and several other blogs. Pat’s blog became my instant favorite because he’s so transparent and honest.

In fact, it was because of the things I learned from Pat that I was able to pay off almost $15,000 of student debt before even graduating.

In this episode of the podcast, Pat talks about how he landed a great architecture job right out of college. He tells the story of how he was able to move up in the company faster than anyone else – and then how he was laid off when the housing market crashed.

Finally, he goes into how this event set him on the course that eventually led to his success in building passive income sources.

If you’re at all interested in the concept of earning income passively – whether it be on the side, in addition to a regular job, or as a possible business idea – this is an episode you won’t want to miss.

Items mentioned in this episode:

• The Smart Passive Income Blog
• Pat’s personal site
• Let Go, Pat’s new book - if you enjoyed this episode, I HIGHLY recommend reading Pat’s book. 
• Green Exam Academy (for you architecture students)
• How I paid off almost $15,000 in student debt

Things you should do right after listening:

• Start a blog. Even if you don’t make money from it, there are tons of other benefits (as you’ll find out in the podcast)

——————–

P.S. – If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review in iTunes! Thanks 

RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: CIG 007: Earning Passive Income The Smart Way With Pat Flynn

I have a horrible secret to tell you guys. I was going to write some clever introduction that would possibly lessen your inevitable horror-driven recoil, and possibly even lessen the chance that you’ll hate me forever, but that seems unlikely to work. So I’m just going to divulge it now.

I read fan fiction.

Alright. Secret’s out…. huh. I seem to have the same amount of Facebook friends. Maybe this wasn’t the worst idea ever after all…

Fan fiction gets a pretty bad rap, and honestly, it’s quite deserved. Most fanfic these days is nothing more than the wishful writings of teenage girls who have nothing better to do than “ship” their favorite characters together. Anyone up for 200,000 words on Katara and Zuko’s wedding and subsequent sexual exploits? Shoot me now.

What little fanfic that isn’t unrealistic shipping attempts is either poorly written, poorly edited, or both. It’s all worthless trash, and any time spent reading it is a disservice to real authors who actually take the time to build their own universes.

…or is it?

Since I’ve already outed myself, I feel I should justify my reasons. Don’t worry. I’m not sitting in the back of a 15-passenger van reading about Misty, Onix, and a sudden Vaseline shortage in Kanto.

Today I present, for your potential reading pleasure, three works of fanfic that are actually worth the kilobytes they take up. They’re creatively written, divert significantly from the original plots of the works they build off of (or eschew them altogether), and just might make you willing to admit you read fanfic as well.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky

I often hear my friends saying, “Damnit Tom, are you reading that stupid Harry Potter fanfic again?” Since they haven’t given it a chance themselves, they haven’t had time to come to the – very controversial – conclusion I have, which is…

I actually prefer Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to the original books.

Now, I absolutely love the original books, but this is more my speed.

In Yudkowsky’s universe, Aunt Petunia married a biochemistry professor instead of a total dolt, and as a result, Harry is a genius child more akin to Ender Wiggin and Artemis Fowl than to his original character. He goes to Hogwarts with the intent of using the methods of science and rationality to unravel the secrets of magic.

What follows is an incredibly entertaining sequence of events, plot twists, and a more than heaping helping of explanations of rational thinking patterns, logical fallacies, and the like. The book is as much an entertaining primer for Yudkowsky’s sequences on rationality as it is a work of fiction.

And that’s ok. Being a fan of authors like Neal Stephenson, I’m totally ok with info-dumps and tangents into psychological studies and rationalist ideals.

There are also plenty of wonderful references to other great works of science fiction and fantasy, such as tons of incoming Muggle-born students thinking themselves clever for giving Dumbledore a copy of The Lord of the Rings as a gift, or a certain wizard using a dark spell called Gom Jabbar that inflicts excruciating pain on the victim’s hand.

The way Yudkowsky diverges from the original work is often brilliant and simply awesome. I won’t spoil anything here, but I will say that Harry’s experience in learning the Patronus Charm is very different than in the original books, and it blew my mind.

HPMoR is a polarizing work, and Yudkowsky states this right up front, saying that if you’re not into it by Chapter 10, you should probably give up. I completely agree. It’s not for everyone.

But if you – like me – are interested in science, logic, reasoning, and other related stuff – if you’re a geek – you’ll probably enjoy it greatly.

Oh, and it’s more than twice the length of Order of the Pheonix, so you’ll have a lot to keep you busy if you do end up reading it.

The Last Ring-bearer by Kirill Eskov

The Last Ring-bearer’s status as “fan fiction” is actually that of considerable debate. Some consider it to be far too divergent from Tolkien’s story to be relegated to such a label – but the fact is that it’s still within the universe of Middle Earth.

The definition of fan fiction is a fuzzy one, and it starts getting hard to decide whether or not to apply the label when you’re looking at books that build upon classic stories, such as The Looking Glass Wars.

I ended up in a slightly heated debate with friends about this definition over 11:30 P.M breakfast at Village Inn one night. It would seem to me that work that uses the characters and universe of an already established work should be categorized as fan fiction.

My friends believed that the term “fan fiction” shouldn’t apply to works that build off of “classic” stories, and thus, The Looking Glass Wars isn’t fan fiction.

The logic in that statement (if there is any) eludes me - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland isn’t some fairy tale with no definite canon; it’s got a singular author, a publishing date, and everything.

But I digress.

The Last Ring-bearer seems to deserve the fan fiction label more than other works because it’s decidedly free. However, unlike HPMoR, it doesn’t follow the original work’s characters at all.

Instead, this work tells the story of the War of the Ring (and its aftermath) from Mordor’s point of view.

The central idea behind TLRB is summed up in the following quote:

“History is written by the victors.” – maybe Winston Churchill

Eskov’s retelling of the war sees Mordor as an advanced society which values science, reason, and technology over the barbarism and reliance on magic that pervades the kingdoms surrounding it.

Gandalf is a war-monger who seeks a “Final Solution to the Mordorian problem”. The story draws obvious parallels to the conflicts of Dark Ages-era Europe and the more learning-focused Muslim empires within its proximity.

The story essentially operates on the idea that The Lord of the Rings is essentially propaganda put out by the winning side. For a better introduction, check out Salon’s article on the book. 

My Immortal by Tara Gillesbie

I’m joking. It’s a joke. No, really, I’m just joking. Don’t read this if you value your brain.

Often cited as the absolute worst fanfic of all time, I’m including My Immortal simply for comedy value. Instead of explaining, I simply offer up a choice few lines from the text:

• “I MAY BE A HOGWARTS STUDENT” Hargirid paused angrily. “BUT I AM ALSO A SATANIST!”
  
• “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!” It was………..Dumbledore!
• Draco was standing in front of the bathroom, and he started to sing ‘I just wanna live’ by Good Charlotte. I was so flattered, even though he wasn’t supposed to be there. We hugged and kissed. After that, we said goodnight and he reluctantly went back into his room.

I sincerely hope whoever actually wrote this is secretly a master troll, because I don’t think I can handle living in a world alongside someone who actually thinks like this.

Still, if you ever find yourself in the back of van on an 8-hour drive to a remote part of Wisconsin and have a smartphone, it might provide some laughs -right before your own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaps straight up through your neck and throttles your brain.

…phew. Ok, we’ve gotten through the list. Just make sure you’re very intoxicated before attempting to read that last one.

You know, I only wanted to include one parody entry in this post – but now that I think of it, there’s another piece of god-awful fanfic that simply cannot go without mention…

RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: 3 Works Of Fan Fiction That Are Actually Worth Reading

When I was a junior during the spring of 2012, I added a giant, audacious, redonkulous goal to my Impossible List: I wanted to pay off all of my student debt - nearly $15,000 - before graduating.

In October of 2012, I made my first payment, kicking off my debt-obliteration journey.

And on March 13, 2013 – just six months after I started – my final payment to Sallie Mae cleared. I’m now completely debt-free, and I’m still in college.

In this post, I’m going to tell you my story, including exactly how I paid off my debt. Afterward, I’ll provide some additional strategies you can use to minimize your own debt and start paying it off today.

How I Got Into Debt

The average college student graduates with around $27,000 in student loan debt today. I shouldn’t have been one of those average students. I should have been an outlier from the beginning, taking on no debt at all.

My parents told me – well before I graduated high school – that I was pretty much on my own for college. They simply didn’t have the money to pay for it (though they did help me with some personal expenses, like car insurance and my phone bill, which I am very grateful for).

So I spent my last two years of high school applying for tons of scholarships. It paid off.

By the time I entered Iowa State for my first year, I had won enough scholarships to pay for all of my tuition, plus a few extra bucks for books and fees. I also managed to land a part-time job at the campus tech support center before even starting classes, so I had a weekly income to look forward to.

And yet, I still ended up in debt.

Why? It’s all in the room and board. You see, I was of the opinion that I needed to live on-campus for the first couple of years. I also didn’t do enough due diligence, so I thought my only option was to pay for the whole shebang right up front. My FAFSA results had offered me around $7,200 to pay for room and board through Stafford loans, so I said, “What the heck!” and took them.

And I did the same thing sophomore year. I moved back into my old dorm, and took another $7,200 loan.

In hindsight, I can see that I should have just asked to pay for my dorm in monthly installments (yes, this typically is an option). I was making enough money to do so, since I worked 20 hours a week at the campus tech support center.

This is where a ton of the money I could have used to pay for my dorm up front ended up going.

There was no reason not to do so – except I just didn’t think about it. I made the typical mistake of piling problems upon my future self, and proceeded to spend all my job money on my computer setup and other random crap.

My Original Plan

As I said in the section above, I did the typical thing college kids do – I heaped all my problems on my future self.

Of course it’ll be easy to pay off my debt after graduation, I thought. I’ll be making gobs of money.

But then I took a little bit of time to calculate how much interest I’d have to pay if I went that route, using FinAid.org’s Loan Calculator:

See that line near the bottom that says Total Interest Paid? Yeah, that’s over $4,000 I’d have to pay on top of the money I borrowed. Four grand I’d have to pay to get absolutely nothing in return.

Now, even under my original plan, I probably would’ve paid more than the minimum $50/month payment. Still, I didn’t want to have to pay any amount of interest. That just seemed to me like throwing my money down the toilet, and it was unacceptable.

So, I decided to get a bit audacious. I decided to set myself a crazy deadline.

Trying to Pay It All Off… Before Graduation?

During my junior year, I decided to try the impossible - paying off all my debt before I even graduated. I basically wanted to graduate without anything hindering me, and I saw my debt as the biggest and most annoying hindrance.

Even though my debt balance was near $15k, I thought it was doable.

I had around $6,000 saved from the summer internship I did with Principal, and I was also an RA for the first semester of junior year, which kept me from having to pay for room and board. So I figured I had a good chance of pulling this off. I just had to figure out how to make some more money.

Here’s where the coding skills I had been teaching myself since high school came in handy. A few of my connections ended up needing websites built, so I jumped at the chance. I ended up contracting about $3,000 of work for myself during the spring semester of my junior year. Things were looking up.

Then I got off track.

That February, one of my friends posted on Facebook that he was going to Japan during the summer and wanted to know if anyone wanted to come along.

I had never really been out of the country, so I said, “Sure, let’s go.”

I got a little – ok, a LOT – sidetracked in Japan.

Now, to be totally honest, my trip to Japan was amazing. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life, and I don’t regret it at all. Check out this post if you’re curious about how it went, or about Japan in general.

However, the downside was that I drained pretty much all of my savings during that summer, though that trip and a few other things.

I was pretty much back to square one.

The Japan trip was an excuse to once again put my burdens on my future self. I rationalized that the trip was an opportunity that wouldn’t come again, and that my debt would always be there for me to take care of later.

After the summer was over and I no longer had my huge savings account balance, I got a bit discouraged. Senior year had started, and I couldn’t honestly see how I was going to make close to $15,000 in one school year. I briefly thought of removing the goal from my Impossible List - though I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I was also pretty burned out from freelancing, and didn’t know what my plans were for graduation. I was kind of in a slump, to be honest.

But then, something awesome happened.

My Big Breakthrough

Ironically, my “big breakthrough” wasn’t something that just popped up in front of my nose. In fact, the thing that ended up helping me succeed was the very thing I’d been doing for most of college.

In the end, the thing that got me out of debt was the thing I’d been dreaming about for over a year – but thought was impossible. I was able to turn College Info Geek into my job.

When I started this site back in 2010, I had no thoughts of making money from it. In fact, I didn’t even know that was possible.

I started it because I just wanted to write about the things I was doing to succeed in college. I also figured it would look awesome on my resume, since it would be something I didn’t do in class and built on my own.

That’s exactly how things went for almost two years. College Info Geek steadily grew, and a lot of awesome things happened while I was dutifully working on it – my writing improved drastically, I got to travel for free, and I met a lot of awesome new friends. But I certainly wasn’t making an income.

Then I stumbled across a blog called Smart Passive Income, run by a guy from California named Pat Flynn. His blog introduced me to a concept called affiliate marketing. Here’s a basic definition, in case you’re not in the know:

Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting the products and services of someone else, and getting a commission when you lead someone to buy from them.

So, instead of selling your own product or service, you help someone else promote theirs and get a cut.

On the radio, you might have heard talk show hosts recommend a restaurant, and they always finish with a sentence like, “Tell them Dan and Bonny sent you!”

Now (I don’t know if this actually happens), imagine if the restaurant paid Dan and Bonny $20 every time somebody said they heard about the restaurant through their radio show. That’s affiliate marketing.

On the internet, it’s done through links. If you’re an affiliate for a product or service, then you’ll have a unique link to the website where it can be bought. If someone clicks your link and completes a transaction, the business owner knows it came from you because of your unique link – and then you get part of the sale.

So it’s a win-win-win, as Pat puts it, because

• You’re happy to get a commission
• The business owner is happy to get business they wouldn’t have otherwise had
• The customer is happy because you (the expert) pointed them to a product that hopefully will fill a need they have

Pat also outlined two rules that he always follows:

1. He only recommends products that he has direct experience with.
2. He never tells anyone to buy anything - he only recommends things.

I also noticed that he’s very up-front about his affiliate relationships. He always tells you right in the post if he’ll make any money though a link he posted.

That was the main reason his site stuck out to me. I’ve seen a lot of other sites that try to hide the fact that they do affiliate marketing – they basically try to trick people into buying things without letting them know that they have a vested interest in promoting those things.

I actually got to meet Pat when I went to Blogworld NYC last summer!

Unlike those guys, Pat is always very clear – in fact, he posts a complete report of every dollar he makes online every month. For that reason, I became a fan of his blog pretty much right away.

However, I didn’t really know how to apply his strategy to my own blog. Most of my content is about study strategies, internships, and other college topics. The productivity tools I talk about are mostly free as well.

So, as I said above, I basically went a year dreaming of turning this blog into my job. I knew there were methods to do it – but I didn’t think they would be possible for me.

Then, about a year ago, I realized that HostGator – the company that I host all of my websites through – has their own affiliate program. In March of 2012, I had written a post called The Ultimate Guide to Building a Personal Website – and that’s when it clicked.

I had already recommended HostGator in that post – now I could just become an affiliate and hopefully make some money from the work I had already done.

I set myself up just like Pat did – I inserted my affiliate link into my website building guide, and I made sure to say right up-front that I’d make money from it.

I added a disclaimer paragraph right after the introduction section of the guide. I made sure to let readers know that I recommended a certain hosting provider, that my recommendation was based on my own positive experience, and that it certainly wasn’t the only option. I stated right up-front that I make money through my links to it, and I even put the whole thing in blue to make it stand out.

At first, I was actually a bit scared.

I was worried that people would see the message and think that I’d somehow sold out. That I didn’t care about anything but money anymore. All sorts of irrational fears were floating around in my head.

However, I wanted to be clear and honest, just like Pat was. I respected him immensely for the way he ran his business, and I certainly wasn’t about to be less clear about mine just because I was afraid of being called a sell-out.

Luckily, nobody ever called me a sell-out. 

On the contrary:

People didn’t care at all that I was making money from the guide. In fact, there have been more than a few people who have contacted me personally after reading the guide to ask if I got a commission from their purchase. They wanted me to make money.

That’s when I really, truly realized the obvious: If you’re creating value and helping people, they don’t care if you make money from it. 

Pat put it a little more eloquently:

“Your earnings are a byproduct of how useful you are to your audience.” – Pat Flynn

So, what were the results? Well, I’ll just let the numbers speak for themselves…

• June 2012: $600
• July 2012: $200
• August 2012: $1,800
• September 2012: $1,100
• October 2012: $750
• November 2012: $1,200
• December 2012: $3,375
• January 2013: $4,620
• February 2013: $4,900
• March 2013: $5,880

So, at this point, I’m earning what amounts to a full-time income from College Info Geek. I don’t have to worry about getting a job.

Also, my student debt is gone.

And the best part? Since my website guide isn’t going anywhere – since new people can find it every day – I don’t have to constantly worry about getting sales. Which means I can focus on creating other content. 

My goal isn’t to get every student in the world to build a personal website. That’s just a small part of what I do. I want to help college students do all kinds of things:

• Learn to study more efficiently
• Create self-study programs and learn amazing things on their own
• Promote their skills and get the jobs they want
• Pay off their debt
• Travel the world
• Do awesome stuff

Even though the way I make my own income only falls into one small section of my site, it enables me to create content and help people in all kinds of different areas. Kind of like how Bill Gates can focus on his charity work now that Microsoft has him set for life – but on a much smaller scale

Oh, and before I move on, I just need to give a HUGE GIANT THANK-YOU to Pat Flynn for showing me how to make this all possible.

Also, another HUGE GIANT THANK-YOU goes out to every College Info Geek fan and reader out there. Without your support and feedback, none of this is possible. I truly hope you’ve found this site helpful (and that it continues to be), and I’m so thankful for all of you.

So… I Should Start a Blog to Pay Off My Debt?

…maybe. Probably not. Keep reading.

I’m not trying to say that this method will work for everyone. That’s not the point.

The point is that it worked at all.

I would have never thought in a million years that the way I’d pay off my debt was by building a profitable blog.

When I started College Info Geek, I had no intention of making money; in fact, I thought it was impossible. I looked at the superstar bloggers at the time – Darren Rowse, Michael Dunlop, and Alex Mangini (who was only 16 when he sold his first blog for $20,000) – and thought there was no way to get to their level.

And yet, here I am. After almost three years of working incredibly hard, focusing on constantly improving, and getting help from dozens of amazing people, I was able to pay off my debt. With a blog.

What does this mean for you? Does it mean you should start a blog to try and pay off your debt? Probably not, though I really do think you should start a blog (and here are 14 compelling reasons to do so).

What it does mean is that there are other methods out there for making money than just getting a job and trading hours for dollars (or a salary). You can take side jobs to make extra, or start an entrepreneurial project.

The path might not be clear to you right now (as you’ve seen, it took me almost two years to find mine), but if you want it bad enough, you’ll find it.

Strategies For Paying Off Your Own Debt (or Staying Out of It)

Now that you know my story, I’d like to share a few other strategies you can start implementing today in order to pay off your debt!

If You’re Still in High School:

Get a Job Now.  I worked around 30 hours a week during my last two years of high school. Had I actually saved that money, I could’ve graduated with over $20,000 in savings.

Ask your parents to cut small expenses and stash the savings. Skipping their $4 latte every day results in $1,460 per year saved.

Go to college at a public, in-state school. In addition to having more opportunities (bigger school, more classes, majors, clubs), you’ll also pay only a fraction of the cost of private or out-of-state school.

It may not be your dream, but after four years, you’ll be debt-free and have even bigger dreams within your grasp. Trust me, a prestigious private school will not magically make you more money. That’s a factor of your own effort.

Seriously, a public, in-state university is a great choice. I wouldn’t trade my experience for the world.

If You’re in College Now:

Get a part-time job on campus. Regardless of your class load, you’ve probably got some time during the week that you could use to make some money. If you don’t have a part-time now, I highly recommend getting one.

An on-campus job is ideal, as they’re usually easy to get to and flexible with your class schedule. You might even be able to find one that lets you do homework on the job.

Move off-campus next year. While I think it’s a great idea to live in on-campus dorms for the first year of school, you might want to think about bailing once you’re a sophomore.

For the most part, living on campus is quite a bit more expensive than finding an off-campus apartment – especially if you’re forced to have a meal plan.

Cut your own small expenses. If your parents can skip their daily latte and stash the savings, so can you. You can also choose not to go out to the bars every weekend, or at least sneak in a flask.

Build a personal brand. This tip was originally going to be “Find a high-paying summer internship”, but I’m sure that’s already one of your goals. If you want to do that, you need to start learning how to build a personal brand and promote your skills.

If You’re Already Graduated:

Make paying off debt your #1 priority. Don’t buy a house. Don’t get a nice car. Live like you did in college, no matter where you are, and focus on taking everything you make from your new job and throwing it at your debt.

This was exactly my strategy – I finally started making a good amount of money, and I immediately started throwing as much of it as possible at my debt.

Take a second job for a while, or do freelance work. You might be working from 9 to 5 now, but you’ve still got 5 to 9 free. Take the temporary hit to your social life and find a second source of income that you can dedicate 100% to your debt.

Once you’ve paid it all off, you can quit the second job and revel in the bliss of being debt-free.

Now It’s Up to You

I’ve shared my story, and provided some strategies for staying out of debt. Now, it’s simply up to you to take action.

If you have student debt – whether it’s $100,000 or just $500 – start taking steps today to pay it off. This is so important. 

You don’t know how amazing it feels to be debt-free until you’re actually there. But I know you can do it. Get started.

P.S. – A few people have called my story “unrealistic” and not relevant to the average student. While I realize that it’s not common, I absolutely will not back down from my belief that it’s possible to pay off your debt much faster than normal if you’re focused and driven. To those who still aren’t convinced, read the story of Brian McBride – a guy who paid off over $26,000 in just two years while making only $25 an hour.

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Did this post inspire or help you with your own debt-obliteration journey? If so, please share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well. It’s my goal to help every college student get out of debt, so every bit of sharing helps. Thank you!

If you’re interested in learning more about how to pay off your debt, and be awesome at college in general, sign up for my newsletter using the orange box below. In addition to updates about my best new content (and no spam ever), you’ll also get access to exclusive resources to help you learn to promote yourself and your skills to recruiters!

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RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: How I Paid Off $14,431 In Student Loans In 6 Months – BEFORE Graduating

So many students state their main college goal as “getting a job”. Often, that’s all there is to it. They just want a job.

But what about finding a job you truly love?

That’s the idea I explore in this week’s podcast interview with my friend Barrett Brooks. Barrett is the founder of Living For Monday, a blog dedicated to helping people find jobs that matter and live their lives to the fullest potential.

Barrett also created Career Kickstarter, a full online course built to teach students the entire process for finding (and landing) the job they’ll love. I’ve checked out Career Kickstart myself and I love the content Barrett has created there.

In this episode, Barrett tells his story of how he went from having a not-so-good first year in college to completely turning his life around for the better. He talks about how he landed a consulting position with a company that didn’t even want to hire grads from his school, and then how he went on to become a full-time entrepreneur.

Barrett’s story is really inspiring to me, and he’s got a lot of insight from his experiences that I think you should listen to. Check it out!

Items mentioned in this episode:

• Living For Monday
• Career Kickstarter
• How Barrett Made $5,000 in 5 days
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Follow Barrett on Twitter

Things you should do right after listening:

• Start thinking about finding a job you love
• Take the initiative to start building a network of strong relationships.

——————–

P.S. – If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review in iTunes! Thanks

RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: CIG 006: Finding A Job You Love With Barrett Brooks

If you’re not currently hooked up to an iron lung, you’ve probably heard and followed these two classic pieces of advice:

• Never get involved in a land war in Asia
• Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line

These are fantastic pieces of wisdom to keep in mind if you’re currently interested in not dying. I would also add to the list, “Press X to not die.”

If you’ve already got the whole not dying thing down, and are now looking to do things like impress recruiters, build your resume, and learn new skills, then I have another piece of advice:

You need to start a blog.

Almost six years ago, Kelly Sutton (the guy who started HackCollege), posted an article about his own college blogging experience. The title should be a clear message – Want a Job? Start a Blog. Here’s the main takeaway…

“A well-formed blog is like a resume that’s constantly updating itself” Tweet This

My experience reflects this quote perfectly.

Here are my top 14 reasons why you should start a blog while you’re still in college. I’ll be publishing a multi-part guide to building a blog soon as well.

However, should want to start now, feel free to reach out and ask any questions you might have on Twitter, or via the Contact page.

1. Teach Other People Useful Things

Those of you who are decidedly self-serving can go ahead and click away now. Really.

My other 13 reasons for starting a blog are all personal benefits, but there’s a reason this one comes before all of them.

Blogging is about helping other people. Really, if you’re doing it right, life is about helping other people.

Running a blog gives you an amazing opportunity to help others by teaching them what you know – and it’s the highest reward blogging will bestow upon you.

Every time I get an email or a tweet from a student telling me they found one of my articles useful, I’m absolutely elated. Every time a parent emails me, thanking me for some piece of advice, it makes my day and I’m honored to have been able to help.

Even if all the other benefits I’ve listed below didn’t apply, this reason alone would make blogging worth it. Think of the last time you helped a friend with something you’re good at, and now apply that to everyone you could connect with through the internet. The potential is amazing.

Get out there and spread your knowledge. Make the world a better place!

2. Establish Yourself as an Expert

Have you ever worried that no one would take you seriously because you’re a student?

Have you ever thought,

“I’m just a freshman with no job history – who’s going to hire me?”

Lots of college students have the same worries. I did too. The problem with college is that the experience you gain through your classes doesn’t really label you as “credible” until you’ve graduated (and even then, it’s limited).

Well, starting a blog can fix that.

Think about it. What if you picked a topic you wanted to become recognized as an expert in, and then wrote just one article per week about it on your blog?

After just one year, you’d have 52 articles. That’s 52 pieces of content that show, for all the world to see, that you know what the hell you’re talking about.

Coupled with the networking potential I talk about below, this becomes an incredibly effective way for you to become credible and establish yourself as an expert.

I’m sure this is obvious to you, but I’ll say it anyway. Experts get hired.

3. Build an Amazing Network

The key to meeting interesting people and building great relationships is finding others who share your interests, values, skills, and dreams.

By running your own blog, you’re broadcasting all of those things to the world. Guess what? Lots of other people are doing the same thing.

Once you have a blog, you can reach out to other people who share your interests and build a relationship with them. Of course, you can do this without a blog – but having one gives you a body of work that shows off your interests.

I’ve made some amazing friends through blogging – Shep McAllister, Steve Kamb, Bud Hennekes, Alex Mangini, Sean Davis – just to name a few.

I’ve both helped and been helped by lots of the people I’ve met through running this blog. Some have helped me with coding problems. Others have happily critiqued my work. There are couches in multiple cities all over the country open to me, should I want to travel.

My friends can also count on me to lend my knowledge, critique their work, or let them crash at my place should they be crazy enough to come to Iowa.

It’s a beautiful thing.

4. Solidify Your Knowledge Though Teaching

It’s not a well-guarded secret that the human brain is pretty lousy at retaining the information it learns.

If you input some facts into a computer and save them, it always remembers them. If you use a digital camera to take a picture, that picture will stay stored on the camera’s memory.

Yet, the human brain – the most powerful and complex computer in the universe – tends to forget a lot of what is put into it.

Want to hack your brain to remember more? Teach others.

You may have seen the oft-cited Learning Pyramid before, which is used to show the retention rates of various activities:

Now, I don’t really buy into those claims of specific percentages (cognitive science just isn’t that simple or exact).

But it stands to reason that if you have to spend time contemplating how to communicate information to others in a way that helps them remember it well, you’re going to remember it REALLY well.

I can attest to this phenomenon myself; in the cases where I’ve sat down to write a big tutorial on something, I tend to remember how to do that thing really well afterward.

So, if you’d like to learn better, teach others. Blogging is a great way to do that.

5. Get Access to Well-Known People (When Others Can’t)

If you’ve had a chance to check out the College Info Geek podcast, you might have noticed something about it:

It’s not just me talking. In every other episode, I interview another person.

Through my podcast, I’ve been able to have conversations with some pretty amazing people. Leo Widrich is the co-founder of the wildly successful startup Buffer, and Dan Schawbel is a bestselling author and incredibly well-known personal branding expert. I was able to interview both of them.

I’ve got a long list of other amazing people I’d like to talk to, and I get the sneaking suspicion that they’ll be willing to give me an hour of their time as well.

Here’s the thing: Once you start a blog, you become a publisher.

For well-known people, that means talking to you gives them the potential to reach a lot of other people through your publication. They’re not just spending time talking to a regular Joe.

It also means they can cite their interview with you as a press mention. If you take a look at my press page, you’ll see that I do this as well.

Any interview opportunity, small or large, is another piece of press that builds credibility for the person being interviewed.

For these reasons, well-known people are especially receptive to interview requests when they have a book or big product coming out.

So, drill this into your brain…

Start a blog, and well-known people will be willing to talk to you. You may even have the opportunity to forge a relationship with them afterwards.

6. Become a Better Writer

If you’re an avid reader like I am, you can probably point out great writing when you see it.

But can you write great content yourself?

Take a minute and watch this video, where This American Life host Ira Glass talks about closing the gap between your taste and your ability:

I’ve watched this video dozens of times, and I show it to everyone who tells me they think their work isn’t good enough.

Lean in close and let me tell you a secret…

You know this flowing, expertly-crafted prose you’re reading? These beautiful words, forged by what could only be described as a wise and nimble mind?

Yeah, I wasn’t always able to write like this. When I started out, my writing wasn’t that great.

I knew what great writing looked like, but I couldn’t replicate it. Same with design. I knew what a good blog design looked like, but for the longest time I couldn’t make mine live up to my expectations.

However, over time, my skills increased by virtue of the huge amount of work I did. After writing 250+ articles, both on this blog and others, I can definitely see improvement.

Given that most college students can’t write well to save their lives (I took a business communication class as a sophomore alongside mostly seniors, and almost all of their papers made me facepalm), you’d be hard-pressed to find a better opportunity to get a leg up on the competition.

7. Learn Useful Technical Skills

When you’re running a blog, you’re not just writing. Remember, the entire platform is yours to control – content, layout, design… everything.

Because you’re not just the writer, becoming a dedicated blogger means one of two things. Either you learn a few new tricks in order to improve your blog, or you end up paying other people to improve it for you.

I opted for the first route.

Here’s a list of some things I’ve taught myself or improved my skills in over the years – all from trying to improve my blog:

This probably doesn’t cover everything. The point is this:

Starting a blog is easy and doesn’t take much technical skill at all. However, if you’re dedicated, you may eventually want to improve things.

Once you start trying to improve things – your blog’s design, speed, SEO, etc – and start adding new features, you’ll be forced to learn new things.

Naturally, these skills don’t just apply to your blog. They’re yours, and now they’re boosting your resume.

Boom.

8. Transform Yourself Into a Solution Finder

In my opinion there are two types of people in this world. (there are also 10, but if you don’t understand that, I’ll leave you to ponder…)

There are Solution Finders, and then there’s everyone else.

To explain what a Solution Finder is, let me describe to you the people who are the exact opposite.

I know several people who, when faced with a question or something they want to know, will automatically ask someone else for the answer.

A good lot of these people don’t stop at just asking for the answer – often they want someone else to hold their hand.

I have a friend who asks me a lot of professional questions. More often than not, I’ve already written a blog post that answers his question in detail, and on those occasions I’ll direct him to that post.

Want to know what his response usually is?

“But Toooooom, you’re standing right here and can just tell it to me!!!”

You’d probably think that only an incredibly entitled dweeb would demand personal help from a friend who already created a resource they could just look at.

It’s like your bum uncle who finds out you’re good with computers and constantly asks you to fix his for free because, “we’re family, right?”

Sadly, you’d be wrong in that assumption. A lot of people are like that.

Starting to get the picture? Solution Finders don’t make this faux pas. When a Solution Finder is faced with a challenge, they know where to look for solutions and get right to it.

Solution Finders are masters of online search. They keep mental lists of information resources and methods for finding things. Their entire mentality is based on getting things done.

When I started college and got a job doing tech support, I was forced to become a Solution Finder of the highest order. It was my job.

However, you don’t have to get a job removing viruses from computers with a Chinese operating system to become a Solution Finder. Starting a blog will force you to do the same thing, if you’re dedicated to providing the best information to your readers.

9. Build Your Resume

This is related to the section on establishing yourself as an expert, but it’s a little more focused.

Running a blog is a resume builder. Your pre-existing notion of the typical blogger may be of a teenage girl blathering about her last date on her Xanga profile (shit, I’m old…)

…but make no mistake, running a good blog takes a lot of work. Like I mentioned above, writing isn’t your only activity. You’re controlling your entire platform, and if you want it to be successful, you’ll be doing a whole host of different things.

Take a look at my resume if you’d like an example. I list my blog as my main job (which it is).

Under my blog’s job listing, I describe some of my accomplishments and the duties I perform.

When I started out, I had it listed as an activity instead of a job. This is where you can list yours when you’re starting, and make no mistake – it looks good, especially if it relates to your major.

10. Express Yourself and Your Ideas

Unless you keep your blog locked down (why would you do that), it’s visible to the entire world and has the potential to be visited by a lot of people.

This isn’t the time to become a “professional” drone and turn your voice into a boring PR siren for your resume.

Your blog gives you the chance to express yourself. So show off (within reason) who you are.

Show off what makes you interesting.

As you can tell from this blog, I’m a total geek. I play DDR and even make my own step charts. I watch anime and cover my room in video game posters.

In my opinion, showing off who I am actually makes my blog more interesting.

You can do the same thing with your own blog. Now, obviously you want to keep things as professional as your intended industry requires them to be – but you can still express yourself to a lot of people.

11. Improve Your Personal SEO

When you type your name into Google, what do you get?

If you don’t share a name with a semi-famous author like I do (count yourself lucky), then you might find your Facebook profile, Twitter account, or a mention in a school newspaper or something.

If you’ve created your own personal website, you might find that at the top – which is exactly what you want.

Or maybe you won’t find anything relating to you specifically.

In any case, starting a blog gives you the chance to improve your personal search engine results.

Every time you publish a piece of content with your name on it, that’s one more page on the internet that mentions you. If your blog links to your personal website or social accounts, those rankings could improve as well.

With Google’s relatively new Authorship feature, you can even find your face in Google’s results themselves.

Go ahead and paste “How to Build a Personal Website” into Google and see whose face pops up.

Aside from that face making your blog a much more appealing option for people to click on, it’s also a huge credibility boost.

Bottom line – Google results matter in your job search, and having a blog can improve them.

12. Learn Marketing Skills

When you publish a new blog post, you naturally want other people to read it.

Unfortunately, there’s an iron law in blogging:

“If you build it, they WON’T come.”

That’s just the fact of the matter. There are millions of blogs on the internet, so simply publishing a post isn’t going to attract attention all on its own.

So, in order to get eyeballs running across your prose like Wal-Mart shoppers on Black Friday, you’re going to need to learn some marketing skills.

Most bloggers will automatically share their posts on Twitter and Facebook, but there are other ways to market your content. Googling “How to get more traffic” will get you countless blog posts offering tons of different strategies.

Whether you succeed in driving lots of traffic to your blog or not, the experience of marketing your content is going to net you some new skills. You’re going to find out what does and doesn’t work.

In today’s world, marketing skills are useful no matter what your profession is. Gaining them by running a blog (with all its other benefits) should be a no-brainer.

13. Become Incredibly Attractive to Recruiters

I’ve talked about a lot of different professional benefits to running a blog in this post:

• Establishing yourself as an expert
• Building your resume
• Making connections and building a network
• Improving your SEO
• Becoming a better writer

… and so on, and so on.

Remember the giant MegaZord on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers?

All of these benefits combine together just like the Zords combine to make the MegaZord.

Here’s the big picture. If I could manufacture a giant neon sign and plant it on a huge billboard in the middle of every college campus on Earth, I would:

THE SKILLS YOU GAIN FROM BLOGGING MAKE RECRUITERS LOVE YOU.

Remember it. Burn it onto your brain.

You can spend as much or as little time on a blog as you like. Obviously, making it successful will take time and hard work – but there’s no set 8-hour workday to commit to like with an internship.

It’s something you can start doing no matter how little time you have. So do it.

14. Make Money

I put this reason last because it isn’t likely, and I don’t want you to go out and start a blog with the main intent of getting rich off of it. It’s not likely, and making money off a blog is fucking hard.

That said, it is possible.

In fact, this particular college student isn’t even looking for a post-graduation job… because College Info Geek is my job.

I make a full-time income from running College Info Geek. Surprised? Join the club.

I would have never thought I’d make any sort of income from blogging. I started this site solely to share my study strategies with other students, and to build my resume.

When I would read high-profile, money-generating blogs like ProBlogger and Income Diary back in the day, I assumed those guys were gods of the Pantheon, achieving a feat nigh impossible by mere mortals.

But after almost three years of consistent effort, I’ve finally reached the point where I’m making enough money to live off of.

In fact, I paid off all of my student debt from this blog.

I’ll be writing an article soon explaining exactly how I did it, but for now, suffice it to say that making money from a blog is possible.

Is it really difficult? Yes. Is the time investment a terrible decision in the short term? Yes. Making money right away is pretty much impossible.

That’s why my first and foremost reason for running a blog is helping others. That’s where your heart should be.

But making some nice pocket money on the side after a while can be a nice benefit, and it’s not impossible.

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Hopefully you take this post as overwhelming evidence that you should start a blog.

As I said in the introduction, I’ll be writing a multi-part guide to doing just that in the near future.

If you’d like to get started now, you can use my guide to building a personal website to get your blog established. You can either have your blog on your personal domain, or pick a new domain for it as I have.

That will give you the foundation for starting. Good luck!

If you’d like to be notified when my blogging tutorial series drops, enter your email in the orange box below and subscribe to the CIG newsletter. Then eat your mom and call your spinach.

RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: 14 Hard-Hitting Reasons Why You Must Start A Blog In College

I always like seeing things that have the potential to motivate students to start designing things and build a portfolio. That’s why I want to direct your attention to a contest that’s currently being put on by Adobe.

Dubbed the “Battle for the Band” contest, students can submit graphic design entries for a chance to win a full-blown concert for their school with All Time Low.

Now, I’d be pretty pumped to be known as the person who got All Time Low to play a show at my school. However, it’s the second-place prize that interests me more - $1,000 cash. Not to say that a concert isn’t cool or anything, but having a grand in your pocket could be pretty useful – you could easily put a big dent in your student loans, or get a better laptop, or something.

If you’d like to enter, simply use Adobe Creative Cloud to create something related to that potential concert – a poster or t-shirt design, backstage pass, video, or basically anything else you could think of. If you don’t already have access, you can download a free trial of Creative Cloud (it’s also available for $20/month for students).

Once you have your design, you can submit it at the contest’s Facebook page.

For students who aren’t into design, there’s also a chance to win a free trip to any Live Nation concert in the U.S. or Canada. However, I think anyone can learn to design – and should, for that matter. If you’re a newbie, see if your school offers subscriptions to Lynda.com, or check out the tutorials at PSDTuts or Abduzeedo.

Aside from getting the chance to win $1,000 or a concert for you school, learning design gives you the ability to design your own business cards, build a better website, and more. It’s a skill I’m very glad I learned.

The potential contest winnings are a pretty sweet icing, though. Check out the Adobe blog for full details.

RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: Adobe’s Battle For The Band Contest: Design Something Cool, Win A Concert For Your School

Yeah, I said it – you’re wasting $87,998.50 on your education.

Or are you?

What are we really paying for when we buy a college education, or an expensive information product? That’s the question I tackle in this episode of the College Info Geek podcast.

The reality is that today, you can learn pretty much anything you want for free. There are so many resources around you that offer information on just about any subject – we’ve got libraries, Google, Wikipedia, tons of training sites, forums, and more.

And yet, we still spend thousands and thousands of dollars – why? Besides the ancillary benefits of college – the social status and credentials that a degree provides, the “opportunities to make connections”, what is it about college that’s so appealing?

Tune in to find out!

Items mentioned in this episode:

• How to Learn More Outside of Class Than You Could Ever Learn Inside It
• Paprika recipe manager
• FU Weekend
• Treehouse – online technology training
• Cost of college data

Things You Should Do Right After Listening

• Check out the article on self-study
• Start thinking about things you want to learn outside of class

Thanks for listening! Keep your ears peeled for another great interview episode coming soon

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P.S. – If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review in iTunes! I’ll totally love you forever, or at least for the next 50 years.

RSS is cool and all, but you can also view the original post here: CIG 005: Why Your Education Costs $88,000 instead of $1.50