How many of you earn over $100,000 / year?

How old are you?

What do you do for a living?

How did you feel once you earned $100k?

What, if anything, changed?

If your friends earn a lot less than you, does that ever present problems when hanging out?

Get featured in the Wall Street Journal — today only

Every 2 weeks, I send out an email newsletter with material that you never see on the blog.

It’s over 45,000 members strong, and it’s filled with insider material that helps my readers get an edge in investments, negotiations, entrepreneurship, and psychology.

I’m sending out another newsletter today at noon. Today’s issue will contain:

• An exclusive interview with one of my students, Andrew, where he describes exactly how he started earning thousands/month on the side…enough to quit his full-time job and set his own schedule.
• The weekly opportunity to get featured on ABC News, where I’ll answer your question live on-air
• Opportunity (today only) to get featured in The Wall Street Journal. Lots of reporters ask me for people to feature in their national columns/TV shows and my subscribers get first crack at the opportunities.

I also use it as a testing ground to give away free PDFs and other goodies to test them and see what you think.

So — the newsletter is free and I make it very, very worthwhile by giving you stuff that nobody else ever sees. And if you don’t like it, you can unsubscribe instantly.

If you’re interested, sign up before 12pm today to get the WSJ details:

(Can’t see the form above? Click here to join my free newsletter.)

Thank you to this month’s IWT sponsors

In the last few months, I’ve been restructuring a lot of my business behind the scenes to help me focus on writing and producing more stuff to help you guys — whether on this blog, my newsletter (which is dramatically improved…and still free), on TV, Earn1k, and more.

My team has been helping me handle things like technology and customer service. When I saw how well it was going, I built a team to proactively find the best companies I want to partner with — so I can stay focused on writing for you.

So today, I wanted to thank a couple of great sponsors that have been helping me out.

FreshBooks is an online invoicing service that virtually my entire team uses (I use it myself). It saves us a time on paperwork and gets us paid faster. It’s also free — so if you’re offering services and need to get paid, sign up for an account.

DebtGoal is the best tool I’ve found to pay off debt. Debtgoal helps you aggregate all of your debts and make a plan to pay it off, focusing on the exact date you’ll be debt-free. They understand that debt is not all mathematical — it’s psychological.

* * *

Advertisers: We selectively work with outside partners. If you want to reach 300,000+ highly engaged users who actively want to know about the best tools and services to lead a richer life, contact melissa@iwillteachyoutoberich.com.

Best backhanded compliment of the year

I have long been a deep admirer of backhanded compliments. The very best ones require a perfect combination of sarcasm, wit, bittersweet praise, and disdain. Women are especially good at them.

So when reader “FinanceDad” left this one, I was overjoyed:

“To think I was just going to call you a narcissist before reading this article”

Pure art. I can’t stop laughing.

Here’s what I’m going to do: Whoever leaves a comment with the BEST backhanded compliment gets a free signed copy of my book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. The only rules: It must be about me and/or “I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” and you must leave the comment within 48 hours.

This will be awesome.

How to go from $25/hour to $75/hour in 2 weeks

I’ve been helping a friend earn more money, and tonight was a breakthrough.

Here’s what happened…

My friend has a full-time job, but recently she’s been doing some freelance project management on the side for a small consulting firm, where she earns $25/hour.

After a while, she realized that $25/hour doesn’t really add up to much, and she was getting frustrated with the owner’s poor management skills. (You know how it goes: Very disorganized, non-responsive, took days to get back to emails…)

But I encouraged her to stick around for 2 things: to get referrals and raise her rates. The client knows my friend has been doing a superb job, so she was happy to refer her to a colleague at a different company.

At this point, my friend talked to the new person — a guy who runs a different company — but was skeptical of getting too involved. “I don’t really want to do this for $25 an hour,” she told me. “And I realize that it’s not just the time I’m working…I have to deal with managing clients, who are just really unresponsive.”

I suggested a few things she could do. She went into her first meeting using my Ask Without Selling technique. Then she then went back to him with a proposal.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she told me on the phone. “I quoted him $50/hour and he didn’t even blink. Shit! I should have asked for more!”

I love it.

There are several non-obvious things going on here:

1. When you get referred to someone, you don’t drop your rate — you raise it. Many people mistakenly drop their rate, thinking that the referrer will divulge the rate they currently pay (they won’t), or that you should discount for your client’s friend (you shouldn’t). In fact, you should raise your rate since your client has removed all risk by vouching for you.
2. There are many other options besides quitting. If someone’s paying you — even if it’s under your desired wage — you don’t just quit. Quitting is one of the worst things you can do. There are many other clever ways to help your client and yourself — like asking for referrals.
3. By charging more, you get a higher-quality client: First, they can afford your higher rate, which means they’re more financially successful and therefore probably have better business skills. Second, since they’re paying you more, they don’t want to waste your time.

So the guy didn’t flinch at $50. How does my friend get to $75/hour?

She needs to package her services properly

I suggested she offer her baseline services at $50/hour, as she discussed, but also offer 2 higher tiers: For example, she could include marketing services for $60/hour, and project-manage the entire project for $75/hour. I just made those options up — she knows her business best — but the important point is to offer increasingly valuable options.

Do you know why it’s critical to offer more than one package? There are 2 reasons, actually:

1. He might actually pick a higher tier, which would be money in your pocket — and a new hourly rate
2. By offering 3 options, she’s shifted the prospect’s decision from “Should I buy her services or not?” to “Should I buy $50, $60, or $75/hour?”

Imagine how implementing even one of these techniques could change your earning power forever. If and when my friend closes the deal, even if it’s for $50/hour, she’ll have doubled her hourly rate. That lasts forever — and it only goes up.

You can use these same techniques to earn more money, whether you have an idea yet or not. And the techniques I covered today only scratch the surface.

I teach my very best techniques in extreme detail — including scripts, videos, and case studies — in my Earn1k course. Get a free sample of my Earn1k course here.

Dumb things I’ve heard in the last 10 years

“You’re taking psychology? What kind of pointless major is that?”

“I really want to work for X company, but Y pays $10k/year more.”

“You definitely need to set up a Twitter/FB account. Social media is the most important kind!”

“Personal finance is all the same stuff. Spend less than you earn.”

“If you want to speak at our company, you have to change the name of your website.”

“Ramit, you should really fix your eyebrows.”

“What SEO tricks did you use to get readers?”

“Can I advertise on your site? My budget is $25/month.”

“You work from your apartment? Ha, I wish I could have a fake job like that too.”

“You should expand your userbase. What about insurance and retirement for people in their 40s and 50s. Don’t limit yourself!”

“Wow, I wish I could have a flexible schedule like you.”

“Ramit, how dare you say you’re not writing for single mothers of 2. I’m really offended. I used to like your site but now I’ll never be back again.”

“This site jumped the shark after you started charging for things I can find free anywhere else.”

“How about this savings tip? I can save $10 by not buying your book! Ha hah ahahaa!”

“Don’t spend money on lattes.”

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(Read more at my never-updated blog, Things I Hate.)

Why personal-finance “experts” continue giving worthless advice

Today, I’ll share a behavioral-change technique that’s helped me create a New York Times best-selling book, a blog that’s been read by millions of people, and a course on earning money that has helped my students earn hundreds of thousands of dollars on the side.

In 1954, researchers Hastorf and Cantril published a seminal study in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology called, “They Saw a Game: A Case Study.” What they discovered would change the way we look at rational behavior forever.

Yet decades later, much of that research has not trickled down to ordinary people — most notably “experts” in various fields, including personal finance. We continue to ignore the lessons in Hastorf and Cantril’s study. Why? Because it challenges our worldviews about perception, psychology, and behavioral change.

For example, nobody ever wakes up, stretches, clears their eyes, and says, “TODAY I REALLY WANT TO GET FINANCIALLY LITERATE!!”

It just doesn’t happen. Nobody wants to be financially literate…they want to be rich. Nobody wants to learn about stocks and bonds…they just want their money to be doing the right things, automatically. (Just like nobody wants to go to the gym…they just want to lose weight.)

Yet virtually every college course on personal finance is pedantically called “Financial Literacy 101″ or “Managing Expenses” — yes, the things we “should” do, but the last thing anyone actually wants to do. Witness how most personal-finance books treat people as robotic automatons whose only goal is to consume structured information on stocks, bonds, insurance, annuities, and other pointless encyclopedic topics.

Today, I want to show you something I’ve learned over the last 10 years of writing this blog and systematically developing my skills in behavioral change. This will change the way you view personal finance — and changing others’ behavior — forever.

What do people want to do with their money?

Last week, I asked what was wrong with this page in the Wall Street Journal.

The 100+ responses were terrific:

It seems overly complex and could cause analysis paralysis. Reader thinks ‘it’s all too much effort’

The reporters and columnists are telling me ‘how-to’ do all this stuff, when I don’t know ‘why-to’ do it.

I feel overwhelmed just looking at that page! A ton of acronyms and frankly, gibberish to most people. But I feel like the most important part they overlook is that money is really about emotions. There are no emotions on that page.

…the essential problem is that it isn’t going to reach anyone…few of your fellow undergrads would show up to your personal finance classes because they didn’t think they needed the help or didn’t want to admit that they did.

What’s going on here?

To understand, let’s go back to the 1950s…to a psychology experiment on, of all things, football.

The Hastorf & Cantril study: How Ivy League football explains personal finance failures

In the famous study, the two researchers analyzed a 1951 football game between the Dartmouth Indians and Princeton Tigers. The game was unusually rough, with the Princeton quarterback being injured so badly that he had to leave the game.
One week later, researchers questioned students who had attended the game to understand their perception of what had happened. Who played dirtier? Who was responsible for the fouls and injuries?

When asked, “Do you believe the game was clean and fairly played or that it was unnecessarily rough and dirty?” a staggering 93% of Princeton students responded “Rough and dirty,” while only 42% of Dartmouth students agreed.

When asked, “Which team do you feel started the rough play?” 86% of Princeton students surveyed responded that Dartmouth had. Only 36% of Dartmouth students blamed their own team.

In a clever twist, the researchers then asked students to watch a film of the game and report how many infractions were made. Both groups watched the same game on video, but Princeton students reported twice as many infractions as Dartmouth students did.

These students watched the objectively same game, yet had astonishingly different perceptions of what “actually” happened.

Please read that last sentence carefully. You’ll notice that I wrote they perceived the game.

That is indeed what happened. Even though they physically “watched” the very same game, each set of students — Dartmouth and Princeton students — were unconsciously affected by their group membership and beliefs. Despite what we think, we do not objectively see what happens around us. You and I could be watching a clown walk across the street, and we would perceive two VERY different things. Our perceptions are colored by a variety of factors, including our beliefs, history, group membership, culture, and more.

That might seem obvious. But now think about politics, the most fertile ground for misunderstood perceptions. Most people believe they are rational and know what’s “really” going on. Obama is a socialist! You’re a crackpot Tea Partier! But have you ever considered that the other side has a legitimate reason to believe what they believe? Again, if you put two people in front of the same situation, they will perceive it very differently. One is not right or wrong or smart or dumb — to him, his perceptions are true and indeed, very real. But they are nonetheless surprisingly discrepant from someone else’s views of the identical situation. (Read more about political marketing.)

No matter how simple or clear-cut or objective we think a situation is — whether a simple football game or a complex political belief — the person next to us is likely seeing it totally differently.

What does this mean for personal finance?

It means that experts in personal finance have gotten fat and intellectually lazy by writing bullshit like, “The 7 types of bonds.” In general, facts do not change behavior. Nobody cares about “objective” advice that’s not tailored to them.

But it’s easy to write a post on “the 7 types of investments you should hold” and call it a day, isn’t it?

Imagine a regular person clicking around and ending up on The Wall Street Journal, or Smart Money, or even this blog. Most “experts” think, “Well, he’s here. He needs to understand how stocks and bonds work and how they fit into his portfolio!”

Meanwhile, the person does not give a damn about stocks or bonds. In fact, he doesn’t even know where stocks and bonds fit into his universe of options. He simply knows, “I just got screwed by my bank on late fees and I really need to figure this out.” How effective do you think it is to throw a kitchen sink of terms and definitions at this person?

99% of people care about their money and couldn’t care less about “learning” about personal finance in general.

Unfortunately, personal-finance “experts” are obsessed with their own encyclopedic knowledge and seemingly take any opportunity to intellectually masturbate about the depth of their knowledge. ‘Why yes, I CAN present a glossary of terms like CAGR, NPV, Black-Scholes, and derivatives. Will this change anyone’s behavior? Who knows! But I sure sound smart!’

If your goal is to write a glossary, just take your pen and paper and throw them in a fire. You can save yourself the trouble. But if your goal is REAL BEHAVIORAL CHANGE, you need to model an approach that resonates with your readers.

When it comes to money, what do people REALLY want?

I’ve spent the last 10 years trying to understand this. I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned here:

People want…

• To not worry about money
• To be in control
• To occasionally live extravagantly
• To dominate their friends (virtually everybody neglects the social aspect of money)
• To get relevant, tailored information for their personal situation (this doesn’t necessarily have to be via a person…think also of Amazon-like personalization/recommendations)

People do NOT want…

• To have to “learn” about personal finance as a whole — they just care about their own situation
• To be told they CAN’T do something (this is probably the #1 biggest mistake personal-finance “experts” have made in the last 50 years: turning money into a conversation of “no”s, which elicits reactance)
• To wait 50 years to see results
• To have to manually “throw money away” into a savings account
• To ignore their emotions about money

Each of those seems deceptively simple, but they are deeply complex when you dig into the psychological underpinnings. (And there are a few other insights that I’ll keep to myself, since I’ve spent years discovering and refining them.) Here are more specific examples.

GOOD: “Here’s a 4-step process to start investing”

BAD: Let me explain what stocks and bonds are and how they work (NOBODY CARES)

GOOD: “Here are 2 ways to pay off your debt, and this is the way I recommend the best”

BAD: Let me explain how debt works (NOBODY CARES)

GOOD: “Here are scripts to use to negotiate against your bank. Read them off and watch the customer-service rep melt like butter”

BAD: You should really negotiate stuff (LAZY)

GOOD: Here is what YOU need to be doing, Mr. 26-year-old dude who I deeply understand and therefore know that you spend a significant portion of your income on drinking

BAD: Here is a comprehensive list of things that everyone should be doing: Insurance, retirement, estate planning, tax optimization, family planning… (BROAD AND WORTHLESS)

GOOD: Spend extravagantly on the things you love, but cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t

BAD: Keep a budget (HAS THIS EVER WORKED?)

(The last one really makes me mad. So many “experts” write nonsense like “Keep a budget” or “Stop spending on lattes!” that lets them wipe their hands clean — “I’ve done my job!” — WITHOUT ACTUALLY CHANGING ANYONE’S BEHAVIOR. For example, this article says: “We need to start a new tradition for Valentine’s Day, one that includes a focus on personal finances rather than consumerism to demonstrate our love.” Right. I really want to talk to my girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife about money on Valentine’s Day. YOU might think that’s important, but nobody else does…and as a result, it won’t even get cognitively processed, much less cause behavioral change.)

Personal-finance “experts” need to get off their asses and start talking to the people they’re writing for to understand what they’re really looking for. For example, I could write the most technically brilliant article about asset allocation, but if people are afraid of investing or don’t believe they have enough to get started, none of my brilliance matters. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. IT’S ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE.

Case study: The WSJ How-To Guide

Let’s go back to the WSJ image I posted above.

Can you now see what’s wrong with it?

When I asked a few days ago, lots of commenters harped on the lack of automation, earning more, or even the order of the presentation. Frankly, that’s stylistic. But there’s something far more damning — but you have to look deep beneath the hood to understand.

Several commenters said, “They don’t write about the why.” This is true, but incomplete. For example, how many of you have had parents emphasizing how IMPORTANT IT IS TO START INVESTING RIGHT NOW??!? Yet you ignore them. Because of both the source, and the way they communicate the information. Explaining “why” is critical — but not enough. There’s something else.

Here it is: Each of the topics is me-focused. The editor thinks understanding bonds are important…but ordinary people do not. And so they will not read this page.

In other words, the editors did a terrific job of simply listing off topics, much in the same way an encyclopedia editor organizes and lists off material. But the encyclopedia editor doesn’t expect anyone to ever read his material.

The average person comes to this page with dozens of inherent biases:

• “I know I should be doing something with my money, but I don’t know what…” (and throwing complicated terms at me will just cause me to shut down)
• “I keep hearing about paying off credit card debt, but they don’t understand. My situation is different — I have [details that are actually very similar to everyone else but SEEM different to them]“
• “I need to figure out all my stuff before sitting down and really starting to invest”
• “I’ll do this later”
• “I’ll let my husband/wife do this”

And so on.

Now, you also have Wall Street Journal readers, who are likely far more sophisticated than the average person. One of my commenters, Wren, said it best:

“Typical WSJ readers aren’t going to look at a how-to guide because they already think of themselves as above-average investors (even though they’re probably losing money trying to pick stocks or buying shares in the latest hotshot mutual fund). Even if they made it to the page, the first article on “What is a bond” would convince them that there was nothing to learn there. If instead the WSJ paid more attention to its audience and titled the page “Little Known Tips for Skilled Investors” the page views would be through the roof and readers might actually learn something.”

By the way, I’ve made this mistake myself. When my book was published, I spent hours working with my publisher carefully crafting the copy on the front and back cover. When it was published, I noticed that this back-cover copy had slipped through the cracks. See the problem?

Nobody wants to be financially literate. They want to be rich.

Personal finance needs better marketing

Marketing is not a bad word. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that I Will Teach You To Be Rich readers use this site to implement real behavioral change, instead of just reading about money over and over again.

After reading your book, I’ve now signed up for my company pension plan (target lifestyle funds too!) and am on my way to automate my savings.

I got the bank charges reversed 3 times

Negotiating credit card interest rates: I went from 27% to 6% with one 20-minute phone call

I’m the only person within my group of friends (I’m 23) who already has $1000 saved for a wedding

The biggest you have taught me, is that personal finance is 95% psychological. The tactics are pretty simple, it’s more about getting over the mental barriers we place on ourselves.

…haggled him down about from $4500 to $2500…

Pay off $12K in student loan debt in 18 months rather than 10 years.

Marketing matters. It works in persuading people to change their behavior, unlike simply “putting the information out there” or claiming that “you have to really want it to change,” which embraces a highly ineffective persuasive mechanism where you simply list out the info and hope people “get it.” Good luck with that. People don’t respond to pure information because they have frame information based on prior experiences, culture, group membership, etc.

Yet even though the corporate world knows that marketing works, ordinary people think marketing is a bad word. “Ugh, that’s just advertising,” they’ll say (then, amusingly, claim that advertising does not affect them).

No. Marketing is not just advertising, or writing copy for brochures. Marketing is the end-to-end customer experience, from deciding what to build all the way through the design and delivery process — including deeply understanding your audience’s biases, beliefs, and barriers. As an example, here’s a terrific TED video — “Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man” — illustrating how marketing adds value every day.

Personal finance needs better marketing. What personal finance needs is less people who think that “information” alone will change behaviors, and more people with marketing and psychology backgrounds who know that it’s critical to connect with people in order to change their behaviors. More information alone won’t do. Education is not the solution to personal-finance problems.

Banks need to stop sending out useless campaigns on the importance of saving and investing. We “know” that. Why aren’t we doing it? Do banks really know? Why aren’t they sending me lifecycle communications when I get married, buy a car, buy a house, have kids, and other personal situations?

Why do credit unions continue to talk about how they’re different than banks? Nobody cares. Talk to me about ME, my problems, and how you can solve them for me.

Why do personal-finance magazines continue to talk about investing in stocks? Well, that’s easy — they have 2 customers: Advertisers first, then readers. But even they could do an infinitely better job and still make tons of ad money.

I’m not trying to highlight myself as the best at this. I have a lot to learn and I’ve only scratched the surface of behavioral change, which I will continue to study for the rest of my life.

But one of the main reasons that “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” has been so widely read and shared is that I try to use classic marketing and psychology principles here, rather than pedantic lecturing of the same old boring topics (lattes, budgets, start early, blah blah kill me). For example, you want to spend $21,000/year going out? Do it! Let me show you how to automate your personal finances to do it.

Remember: Nobody wants to read an encyclopedia. Next time you’re trying to change behaviors, don’t fall into the trap of writing a me-focused article that highlights what you think is important. Nobody cares, especially your audience. They have their own filters and biases filtering any information they receive. To execute real behavioral change, you must understand and address these concerns first.

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If you want to read more of my essays on personal finance, psychology, and behavioral change, you can join 45,000 other people on my free newsletter.

Now I live in New York, too

I wanted to let you guys know that I’ve moved to New York.

I’m still keeping my apartment in San Francisco, but I’m spending most of my time in NYC.

When I was explaining this to a friend’s parents, they were totally confused. “You’re keeping BOTH apartments?” they asked, completely not understanding my ridiculous lifestyle. “Yeah,” I said, “I’ll be bi-coastal.” This made them look completely lost, so I told them, “That’s just a word that young, entitled people use these days.” That made them feel better. Ah, old people.

I moved to NYC to grow “I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” the brand, and to understand the very different culture here vs. Silicon Valley. I’ll be doing lots more TV, media, and other partnerships. In fact, starting this week, I’ll be a weekly contributor on ABC News Now (get your money question answered on the air).

I’ve always wanted to live in New York. But the main thing I realized was that if I didn’t actively DO IT — not think about it, not say “yeah, I should really do that…” — it would never happen. I’m 28. We all have a limited time to do the carefree things we want. It never gets easier than now.

And I’m keeping my SF apartment because I like it and I have a lot of friends there. To me, the ability to use money to live the lifestyle you want is EXACTLY what this site is about.

So look for lots of new developments from me. This is a new chapter with “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” and I’m thrilled to have such an amazing community along with me.

* * *

If you live in New York and want to attend an NYC iwillteachyoutoberich meetup, leave your info here.

Can anyone spot what’s wrong with this?

I love the Wall Street Journal, but as I was browsing it yesterday, I found this page. Who can identify what’s wrong with it?

Why might this be a sub-optimal way to talk about personal finance? What does the typical reader thinks when they see this page?

Hint: It took me about 4 years to figure this out.

“He’s passively waiting for his dream career to happen”

Why are some people able to find their dream jobs…when so many others are not?

A lot of you know about Earn1k, the course I created to help you earn more money on the side.

But I’ve never publicly mentioned that I also run an accompanying program called Beyond1k, which provides live weekly calls, a Mastermind group, and ongoing support for accountability and time management. (Some interesting stories behind it…like how I made a $300,000 mistake creating it…but I’ll share those later.)

Anyway, I got this email from one of my Beyond1k students, Candy, yesterday.

I had to share this with you since I just got back from vacation in SoCal; apologies in advance if it sounds ‘insane’. I met up with some friends of mine I hadn’t seen in 4+ years down in LA on Saturday. One of them is an amateur photographer but takes great photos with the little equipment he has. I asked him if he’s tried to market his photography skills to people and he said, I shit you not, “I do not have the self-entrepreneurship in me.” What is he doing right now? He quit his job with a logistics company he worked with the past 5 years; cashed out his 401k; and is now back in school taking interior design hoping that’ll help him move to a better fulfilling career.

I had that moment I wanted to yell at him in your same mannerism but I held my tongue, and went, “Ah-huh.”

Look, I know I’ve been a bad student and a lazy ass one at that with B1K. But talking to my friend about me trying to do freelancing on top of working two jobs and him passively waiting for his dream creative career to happen made me realize how much value this program you’ve offered is to people. I was really thinking of canceling my membership before the end of this month but I’m definitely finishing the quarter. I don’t want to be part of “them” anymore.

Ramit, if I could give you a hug, I would. But I don’t think my fiance would enjoy me hugging the guy whose voice he finds annoying

Aside from Candy’s fiance calling my voice annoying, which made me feel pity for this young man’s severe hearing impairment, I found this note very insightful.

• “He’s passively waiting for his dream career to happen.” How many of us do this? We say, “If only I had more time/money/ideas/freedom, then I could REALLY do what I want to do.” Which is, of course, complete bullshit. To the wishful dreamer, there’s always something on the horizon to wait for instead of doing something today. There’s always another excuse. You don’t wait for something to happen, you get off your ass and do it.
• “I don’t have the self-entrepreneurship in me.” Notice how passive that is. Someone who really wanted a dream job (and had the ability and willingness to pursue it) would re-frame the question: How do I think more entrepreneurially? Who do I need to talk to? What books/courses should I take? What have other successful people done?
• Perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that Candy is so motivated by what NOT to do. Honestly, this was what motivated me early on, too: seeing some really smart friends go to work for cog-in-a-wheel jobs that they didn’t love, then fast-forwarding 10 or 20 years to see older friends who were stuck. I never wanted to be like that, so I took steps to ensure that I wasn’t. There’s nothing special about me. There’s nothing special about any of the people I know who have dream jobs…except that they looked ahead to see what they wanted…and didn’t want.

(One more sidenote: Anyone notice how the amateur photographer decided he needed a credential to really make it? That is one of the biggest mistakes people make when pursuing their passions: thinking that a mythical credential will REALLY help them, when actually getting experience is almost always a better move. People don’t like hearing this, though, because it reduces the magic of the silver bullet of credentials and degrees.)

Finding a dream job doesn’t have to be a 100% deep plunge where you quit your job today. I’m all about setting smaller goals and starting off gradually. You can start by thinking entrepreneurially, figuring out which of your skills can be turned into side income, and then testing your ideas. It may sound like a confusing black box, but you can only illuminate it with action.

Whether you sign up for my Earn1k free preview course (which shows you, step-by-step, how to do this), or buy some great books on doing what you love, or even just take someone out to lunch and pick their brain, I hope you can make the switch from passively waiting for your dreams…to actively pursuing them.

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