Given how much press the man has (deservedly) received, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone might not have heard of Chris Guillebeau at this point, but then Chris also looms very large in my own world. He is, in fact, the role model who kicked off my journey toward living the fully creative life I really, really wanted, rather than the “not quite” life I’d been settling for.

With his writing, his blog The Art of Nonconformity, and his business model, Chris showed me that yes, people actually can make a living doing what they love. And they can change the world along the way.

Of course Chris is by no means the only person doing this, but he’s the first one who landed on my radar when I was ready to take notice. My life was forever changed as a result. I started this blog. I started looking for the sweet spot in my work, where what I love to do intersects with what other people are willing to pay for. I started seeking out other people on a similar path — a supportive community to help me along the way. I started seeking out tools to get me where I wanted to go.

All catalyzed by Chris. Role models can be that powerful.

I have some more to say about Chris, but let’s get back to his new book for a moment.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy, and what a treat it is. My own mission is not to get people to quit their jobs and strike out on their own — I want to get you creating, doing the thing (or things) that fill you with joy and make you glow with life; I don’t honestly care one way or another if you want to make your creative thing your livelihood as I’ve done and am doing. I just want to see you doing your creative thing, period.

If you do want to build a business doing what you love, though, The $100 Startup is an essential addition to your library. Using dozens of case studies of all different kinds of businesses — from a guy who sells mattresses and delivers them by bicycle, to a professional dog walker who nets over $88k/year — Chris brings together the major lessons he shared in his groundbreaking Empire Building Kit into an easy-to-use (and fun to read!) guide. There’s also a multi-media component, with additional resources over on the book’s website, 100startup.com.

In short, it’s awesome. Highly recommended. Go check it out.

But back to Chris.

Here’s a guy who created a $50k/year business from his website in under a year (279 days, to be exact — and it’s waaaaaaay beyond $50k/year at this point…), who’s published two books, who created an amazing conference (the World Domination Summit, headed into its second year, also highly recommended), and who is well on his way to visiting every single country on the planet before he turns 35 — mostly on frequent flyer miles, by the way — just because.

From that list of accomplishments you might think Chris is some sort of superhuman. The truth is, though, that he’s no more of a superhuman than you or I. There is one big difference between Chris (and people like him) and most other people, though, and it’s this:

Mindset.

In short, “impossible” is not in Chris’s vocabulary. As a result, he doesn’t limit his dreams. He might be scared of them — scared of failure, scared of success (I don’t know, I haven’t asked him) — but he dreams BIG and (just as essential) he takes real steps to bring those dreams to life, to get from dreaming to doing.

Imagine if Chris had thought (and acted on — or rather, not acted because of) any variation on the following:

“I’m not smart enough.”

“I’m not capable enough.”

“Who am I to try to do this?”

“I don’t have enough experience/the right credentials yet.”

“Other people could do that, but it’s just not in the range of what’s possible for me.”

Any of these sound familiar? I’ll be honest, those are the beliefs I’ve held about areas of my own life, beliefs I didn’t even realize were beliefs. I just thought they were The Truth.

Which brings me to one of my favorite metaphors:

The Self-Installed Glass Ceiling

I call these kinds of beliefs self-installed glass ceilings, because they limit possibilities just as much as any rule or policy designed to keep you down.

Your mindset can be a glass ceiling that keeps you hunched over and playing small, or like Chris, it can be a source of incredible power that enables you to accomplish great things.

Which do you choose?

A Note on Sexism and Glass Ceilings:

It’s important to note that, because we (still) live in a sexist culture, the self-installed glass ceiling syndrome tends to operate in different ways on women than it does on men. No matter how much progress we’ve made as a society, there are still unspoken cultural beliefs and expectations about what women should/shouldn’t do, what women are/aren’t capable of.

Those unspoken beliefs and expectations are like a soup we all swim in, and until they’re pointed out to us, we have about as much awareness of them as goldfish have of the water in their tank. It can be hard to recognize them as cultural beliefs and expectations, and as a result, they affect our beliefs about ourselves.

We see them as just the way things are.

A glass ceiling is, after all, practically invisible, but you still bang your head on it when you try to stand up straight. It can take awhile to realize the problem isn’t with YOU (ie, “You’re just too tall, and that’s why you keep banging your head!”), it’s that there’s a sheet of glass in your way!

Men certainly face self-limiting beliefs — I in no way mean to imply that they don’t. But I submit that women have additional layers (or at least different layers) of self-limiting beliefs that need to be peeled away and deprogrammed in order for us to reach our fullest potential. This has certainly been the case for me.

The good news is that beliefs can be changed. Mindsets can be shifted.

Elsewhere I’ve talked about the 3 ingredients that together lead to the fastest mindset transformations:

1) An inspiring role model (like Chris has been for me)

2) A supportive community

3) An effective toolkit

Those are the ingredients that have made the most difference in my own self-installed glass-ceiling busting. (Click here for a blog post and video in which I talk about each of those ingredients in a little more detail.) And not coincidentally, they’re the ingredients I’ve brought together in my new program for women, Time to Glow, which you can read about here.

Perhaps even Chris Guillebeau had to bust through some self-installed glass ceilings to get where he is today — I don’t know, I haven’t asked, though it would be interesting to find out! I kinda like to imagine he did, even though his glass ceilings might be different from my own, because the fact that he shattered them would make him an even more awesome role model.

Not that he needs to be any more awesome than he already is. Love ya, Chris! Congrats on the book launch!

I’m curious, have you shattered any self-installed glass ceilings in your own life? What made the difference for you?

If you’re ready to bust through your own self-installed glass ceiling, to dream bigger and go from dreaming to doing, join me in Time to Glow, my program for women who want to answer the call of their heart, tame the gremlins, and finally live the fully creative life of their dreams. Doors open tomorrow, May 9. Click here for more info and to sign up.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

2012 is my year of Self-Compassion, Untangle(ing) and Practice. Within those three overarching themes, however, are lots of much more specific goals.

Busting clutter, for example.

Under the theme of Practice, and in keeping with the spirit of my 15 Minutes-a-Day Creative Challenge, 2012 is also shaping up to be my Year of Writing. And more specifically, my Year of Publishing.

Sure, I publish a couple of times a week right here on the blog, but publishing a book is a different animal.

So what am I doing to make this my Year of Publishing?

In addition to my blog-writing time, I put time in every day on writing for publication. I’m starting with an e-book (or ebook? or eBook? the debate rages), coming out via ASpindle later this year. When that’s done, I’m working my way through several real-life projects in Lee Stranahan‘s Digital Publishing Boot Camp. (Super-awesome course, btw — highly recommended!)

With Kindles and e-readers (e-readers? eReaders?) becoming all the rage, self-publishing is a whole new world, with gobs of potential that simply didn’t exist before. (The days of “Vanity Publishing” seem quaint now.) It will be very interesting to see how it evolves.

The big, E ticket goal for many, though, is still to get published, by an already-established, honest-to-goodness “Real Publisher.”

The 80% Dream

It turns out a LOT of people dream of writing a book — some surveys have shown that fully 80% of people have “write a book” on their list of life goals.

The world of publishing, though, has always been a big, opaque mystery. How does one even go about trying to get published? Do you need an agent? If so, how do you get one? How do you write a query letter? How do you craft a strong proposal? If you’re so lucky as to land a contract, how do you navigate the legalese?

The unknowns seem endless.

No wonder very few of that 80% actually ever follow through on their dreams of writing a book and getting published!

Chris Guillebeau to the Rescue!

If you’ve been here awhile, you may know that Chris Guillebeau was the unwitting catalyst for this blog. He’s been an inspiration to me in so many ways, starting with being a model of living the life you really, really want — doing what you love, making an impact, and making a damn good living at it.

He’s also created numerous amazing products that I’ve found incredibly helpful, and have used as models for my own offerings. (The Empire Building Kit, the Unconventional Guide to Art + Money, the Travel Hacking Cartel, to name just a few.)

Now, drawing on the experience of publishing his best-selling book, The Art of Non-Conformity (#8 on Amazon in its first week out), and his 2nd book (coming out in May), Chris has a new, comprehensive guide that anyone with “write a book” on their bucket list would be smart to get their hands on.

The Unconventional Guide to Publishing

Like most of Chris’ offerings, the Unconventional Guide to Publishing is a multi-media package, at the heart of which is a 45,000-word guide by Chris’ own literary agent, 20-year publishing industry veteran David Fugate.

Fugate and Chris have teamed up to offer a comprehensive solution to understanding the publishing industry, and I’m VERY excited about it!

In addition to the 45,000-word e-book (ebook? eBook?) are lots of supplemental interviews, recordings and transcripts, including:

• Sample query letters and a sample agent + author contract
• How to find an agent (and why you need one)
• How to craft a strong proposal that will get editors excited
• Questions to ask when considering an offer
• The three clauses in every book contract you should pay close attention to (Warning: if you miss these, you’ll regret it later)
• Everything about money—advances, royalties, foreign rights, auctions and more

There are three package options — “Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Austen” — and through Friday only you can get the top tier “Hemingway” option for a discount, plus more special rewards:

For 3 days only, early purchasers get:

1. A 25% discount on the $129 tier (discount price: $97) (This is the one I bought!)
2. An extended Q&A conference call with David Fugate, veteran literary agent and author of the guide
3. A personal review of the buyer’s community-building plan with Chris Guillebeau himself

It’s a pretty slick offer, but it’s only available until midnight PST on Friday, January 13, so I wanted to let you know about it asap! Click here to get your discount and rewards.

No I’m off to work on my e-book/ebook/eBook.

Full disclosure: I’m an affiliate partner with Chris, so if you click through and buy via one of my links, I’ll receive a commission. (Actually, for Chris’ stuff, I’ll only receive a commission if mine is the first link you click. So if you want to send that commission to someone else, go click on their link first!)

More full disclosure: I’m actually an affiliate partner with dozens of companies, most of which I never mention here. I only ever promote products and services here which I think are relevant to you, and which I can fully stand behind. (If you’re interested in other stuff I use, love and wholeheartedly recommend, click here.) In Chris’ case, even though I haven’t had a spare second to even skim through my copy of the Unconventional Guide to Publishing yet, sharing it here was a no-brainer.

Every single thing I’ve ever bought from Chris has been top-notch. I don’t even think anymore before purchasing from him — if it’s up my alley, I buy it. Period. I’ve never been disappointed with one of his Unconventional Guides. (If you buy the guide on the strength of my recommendation and are unhappy with it, you can complain to me about it — that’s how confident I am. Plus Chris offers a 100% Effectiveness Guarantee.)

 Tell me, is writing a book on your bucket list? What steps are you taking to make it happen?

PS — Pssst! Know someone else who wants to write a book and could use a secret weapon? Pass it on!

You’re a Creative. You want you need to express that inner creative drive. In small ways, in big ways — it doesn’t matter.

For Creatives, the act of creating — whether it’s painting or drawing or writing or making music or anything else — is essential. You have to create to feed your own soul. If you don’t, you feel like an animated mannequin, plastic and hollow.

But deep down (or perhaps right on the surface), you also want to touch someone (or even better, many someones) with your creations.

Let me ask you this: when you take your leave of this planet, what would you have to have accomplished in order to look back with pride?

I just read two free manifestos — both released yesterday — that address this very question. If you want to leave a legacy, if you dream of being like your success heroes, download both and read them today.

The Tower, by Chris Guillebeau

Chris Guillebeau is my Success Hero #1, for the simple reason that I discovered him at a critical moment, and as a result he became one of the big inspirations not only for this blog, but for embarking on the quest to create the life I really, really want. The title of Chris’s latest manifesto, The Tower, comes from a computer game he got hooked on while flying to Europe on one of his many jaunts across the globe.

The game became a bit of an obsession for him, and when he ruminated on why that was he realized,

The feelings we receive from a well-designed game closely replicate the feelings that we want to have in life.

The tower game gave him a clear goal, the ability to make continuous improvement over time, rewards and achievements, specific deliverables, and influence over the world contained within.

Yet aside from entertaining Chris, there was no good reason for any of it.

What if, he wondered, the laws of a simple game could be applied in real life? What if, instead of applying motivation to building imaginary worlds, we could learn to harness it for something truly useful?

We must work on our lives the way we would work on any other project. Instead of knowledge, pleasure, or happiness, the purpose of life is to create something meaningful that will endure after we’re gone.

The rest of The Tower focuses on how to go about doing that.

The Flinch, by Julien Smith

Another of my Success Heroes, Jonathan Fields, posted an interview yesterday (worth watching) with author Julien Smith, who just released a two-word-title free manifesto of his own, The Flinch.

Smith urges readers to a similar result — do great work! leave a legacy! — but where Chris Guillebeau’s The Tower manifesto inspires you to aim high, The Flinch offers some boot-camp-style training for getting past what gets in the way, so you can make a difference.

He starts out describing a boxing gym, where he goes to watch people fight, and where he notices a fundamental difference between real boxers and everyone else: if you hit them, the guys who have trained don’t flinch.

The Flinch is all about how to train yourself not to flinch. How not to let our instinct to draw back or shrink from the hard, the painful, the unpleasant stop us, so that we can do the important things we want to do.

I’ve written elsewhere that the only difference between you and your heroes is that they just do it. Smith puts it this way:

Fact: Those who face the flinch make a difference. The rest do not.

“There are enough viewers,” Smith writes.

There are enough cheerleaders. There are enough coaches and enough commentators. What there isn’t enough of are players.

His goal, with The Flinch, is to turn you into a player.

–

Download and read these free manifestos now. Then come back here and let me know your reactions.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance.
This second, we can sit down and do our work.

~ Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art has been on my “must read” list for longer than I can remember. I’m not sure what took me so long to just buy the damn book and read it (Resistance, anyone?), but if, like me, you’ve been on the fence with this one, don’t wait. Just jump. Quick.

Far from the heavy tome I feared it would be, The War of Art is a little gem of a book. It’s short enough to be consumed in one long or a few not-so-long sittings, and divided into tiny, bite-sized “chapters” of no more than a couple of pages, and often as short as a couple of sentences.

In other words, totally non-intimidating.

It’s the kind of book you’ll want to keep within arm’s reach in your creative workspace, to flip open to a random page when you need a little boost. A little reminder of how freaking important your creative work is, and that you’re not alone, or crazy, for having maybe the teensiest bit of a hard time getting to said work.

That last phrase? Totally sarcastic.

The truth is, if you’re like 99.999% of us, you frequently have an excruciatingly painful feels-like-you’re-pushing-a-three-ton-boulder-up-a-hill hard time getting to said work.

Or getting said work to a state of done-ness.

And The War of Art? This deceptively brief, easy to approach little 165-page gift is a powerful tool to add to your arsenal (to borrow Pressfield’s war metaphor) against the stealthiest, sliest and most pernicious enemy to your creative life: Resistance.

The Truth About Resistance

Resistance, in its many shapes, is the focus of Book One, the first of three sections of The War of Art. Pressfield lifts the veil, exposing the ways Resistance keeps us from the work we’re meant to do, including some you may never have thought about.

Fear? Procrastination? It’s pretty easy to spot those manifestations of Resistance. But how about support and healing? How about the choice of a mate? These – and many other surprises – can be sneaky forms of Resistance too.

And have you ever thought about Resistance and love? Has it ever occurred to you that the more Resistance you feel, the more important your “unmanifested art / project / enterprise” is to you? Which means, of course, that when you feel the most Resistance, that’s precisely when you must fight the hardest against it.

You must play for keeps.

Which brings me to Book Two.

Turning Pro

In Book Two, Pressfield offers his thinking and instructions on how best to combat Resistance: by “Turning Pro.”

“Pro” in this sense doesn’t have anything to do with producing income (though it certainly can include that). It means taking yourself and your dreams seriously.

It means dedicating your life to your art / your project / your enterprise.

It means accepting that it is hard and painful to keep at it… and doing it anyway.

“The artist must be like [a] Marine,” says Pressfield:

He has to know how to be miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any other soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.

Turning Pro means showing up, no matter what, just like you do to collect your paycheck at your 9-5.

It means a lot of other stuff, too, which Book Two beautifully enumerates.

Pressman has made Turning Pro into an art in and of itself. He shares stories from his own life, when Resistance had him broken and beaten down, and in glimmering vignettes describes how a shift in consciousness – from “amateur” to “pro” – was what finally turned things around.

A guy who goes from broken, can’t-get-his-work-done-to-save-his-life, to international best-selling author is someone worth paying attention to.

The Higher Realm

If the militaristic message of Book Two sounds daunting, deep breath – we’re now on to Book Three, where Pressman looks at Inspiration, the Muses, the Authentic Self, and the allies and angels that keep us pressing on against Resistance.

When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

Whether you believe in angels or read Book Three as pure metaphor, I can’t see how any reader could not be moved by it.

Do your work, is the essence of Pressman’s message, because you must. The last page sums it up eloquently:

If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet….

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

Amen.

If you’re ready to take your own creative life more seriously, and would like to use the power of a small group of like-minded, creative comrades-in-arms to push yourself forward, I’ve got one spot left in my upcoming daytime Creative Ignition Circle, which starts this Wednesday. What could YOU accomplish toward your big, creative dreams in the next two months, if you had other people to brainstorm, encourage, and (perhaps most importantly) hold your feet to the fire? I invite and challenge you to take that next step to bust past Resistance and find out. Click here for more information and to join.

Yes, you can go ahead and watch the video, I know you want to. But before I write about the Boga Board, let me just say that yes, this post marks my farewell to the weekly 15 Minutes a Day art check-in.

Not because it’s failed, and certainly not because I’m stopping my 15 Minutes a Day daily art practice. Heavens, no!

Quite the contrary!

I’m saying farewell to the weekly blog check-in because my 15 Minutes a Day practice has gone so phenomenally well that, after two and a half months of it, I now have an almost daily check-in, in the form of my not-quite Daily ArtFix newsletter.

You can see what I’ve been up to in my daily sessions in the Creative Sandbox by subscribing to the newsletter. And since the whole point of the weekly check-in was accountability, and a (not-quite) daily newsletter provides waaaaaay more accountability than a weekly blog post, the weekly check-in just seemed rather superfluous.

So sign up if you want to get a 10-second dash of inspiration in your email box (almost) every day.

And now Wednesdays (or, when it gets late enough, as it has tonight, early on Thursdays) can be used for other stuff. Such as…

Video of my new Boga Board!

What, you may wonder, is a Boga Board? It’s a handy invention by watercolor artist Gayle Weisfield, to stretch watercolor paper.

“Stretch paper?” you ask? “Why in the world would someone want to do that?”

Well here’s the thing. Paper is a lot like a sponge – get it wet, and it expands. When it dries, it shrinks back down, but unless the paper is dried under tension, it will buckle like crazy, and end up looking like a rippled potato chip writ large.

If you want your paper to buckle, this can be cool. The paint pools in the valleys and can make interesting effects. But most artists who work with watercolor don’t want valleys. They want flat paper, so they can control where the paint goes.

The solution? Stretching.

Here’s what you do:

Step 1: You get the paper wet. Like, really wet. Soaking. This is called “relaxing” the paper.

Step 2: Dry the paper under tension or weight.

This involves either securing the edges of the paper to a strong, flat surface, with tape, or staples, or some sort of clamping mechanism, or putting the paper between sheets of blotter paper with a heavy, flat weight on top (I’ve used a piece of 1/4″ sheet glass stacked with books).

Most artists use the edge-securing option, because once the paper is dry, you can paint on it some more without worrying about it buckling again.

There are a plethora of stretcher board solutions on the market, but the problem with a lot of them is that they’re either a pain in the you-know-what to use, or they just don’t work very well.

I’ve been using a GatorBoard with paper tape for my recent Creative Sandbox daily paintings, but it doesn’t always reliably secure the paper edges. The last sheet I painted gave me fits, so after an extensive viewing of several YouTube videos of stretcher board solutions, I bit the bullet and ordered the one that looked the most promising: the Boga Board.

The letter carrier knocked on my door today with a Boga Board-sized package, and inspired by Michelle Nickolaisen of Wicked Whimsy, I decided to videotape myself opening the package and trying out the Boga. You get to see me being a bit goofy, and rather incompetently trying out the Boga Board for the first time.

Enjoy!

Love Stuff

Savoring the Date

Everybody loves a good “how we met” story. I’ve always thought it would be cool to assemble a collection of such stories, maybe in a book, or nowadays on a blog.

Thriving Artists Project member Toby Simon has been doing just that, on her blog, Savoring the Date. Toby shares the stories of couples young and old, and always includes their tips for a successful relationship. (Be sure to also check out Toby’s website of custom illustrated save-the-date cards, at SavortheDate.com.)

Two As One

Meanwhile, my friend and fellow calligrapher (or, more accurately, artist/calligrapher and poet), Sherrie Lovler has a pretty cool how-we-met story of her own, now available as a gorgeous book of art and poetry.

Sherrie and her sweetheart, Tony, started off their relationship writing poems to each other. Sherrie turned the poems into a series of calligraphic paintings, and now the entire collection is assembled into a book that would be an asset to any coffee table, Two as One.

More Love

Help-Portrait

Founded by Celebrity Photographer Jeremy Cowart, Help-Portrait is a community of photographers, coming together across the world to use their photography skills to give back to their local community.

In December, photographers around the world will be grabbing their cameras, finding people in need and taking their picture. When the prints are ready, the photographs get delivered.

The mission? Here’s what it says on the about page:

Our mission at Help-Portrait is simply to equip and mobilize you, the photography community. We want to make sure you have all the information that you need to successful participate in Help-Portrait on 03 December 2011. We want to help you find other people in your area that are wanting to be part of Help-Portrait or have already begun to plan the event. We want you to have the opportunity to give.

Projects like this deserve all the promotion they can get, so tell your friends, tweet, stumble, mention on Facebook and whatever else you can think of.

Goddesses Are Everywhere!

The more I do this work of facilitating creative abundance, the more amazing people I discover.

The other day I got an email from artist and shaman Laura Hollick, of Soul Art Studio. She’d stumbled on the Thriving Artists Project, and seeing that we both do similar things, she invited me to a Skype chat. That evolved into a full-fledged interview for tTAP, and WOW, what an inspiration Laura is! Just hearing her story has helped me think bigger.

She’s got a ton of free videos and other content on her site, so check it out.

That’s it for this week! Happy weekend!

xo,
Melissa

I chose Italy.

Why? Well, of course, if you’ve been there, you know why. And I’d been there.

The summer I was 15, my family went on a 7+ week trip to 6+ countries, starting with Italy. Our plane landed in Rome, which to my sheltered suburban American eyes felt wild and foreign and uncomfortable (not to mention hot and sticky) — the more North we traveled, the more “at home” I felt.

Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, England — they all made me feel more at ease than Italy. It probably helped that I’d had 4 years of German at this point, and of course by the time we took the ferry to England (oy, was I sick that night!) it was just such a relief to hear my native tongue everywhere I could barely keep from crying.

But after we got home, of all the places we visited, Italy stayed most firmly in my mind.

The Renaissance art! The sound of the language! The food!

The more time passed, the more I longed to return. I even studied Italian in college, rather than the more logical Spanish (being a Californian), with the hope it would motivate me to go back… but I never did get back.

Even the year I spent getting my masters degree in England, which I intended to culminate in a solo excursion around the Continent, didn’t work out that way.

Italy waited. I waited.

Then finally, in 2007, when I didn’t really have as much time or money as I needed, I made it back to retrace the steps my family had taken decades earlier: Rome, Florence, Siena and Venice. More decades later than I’d like to admit.

The thing that got me there? That free ticket across “the pond.”

The Travel Hacking Cartel

Well, guess what, if you’re like me, and love to travel but need a little kick in the butt to get you to hop a plane, you’re in luck!

Why? Because today Chris Guillebeau launches his Travel Hacking Cartel!

Chris Guillebeau, world-traveler and author of The Art of Nonconformity book and blog, is such an expert “travel hacker” that he earns more than one million-mile Frequent Flyer miles every year.

Now he’s put that knowledge to work for me and you, with this new membership club. As Chris puts it:

The goal of the cartel is to democratize free and low-cost travel. We’ll do this by telling travelers exactly what they need to do to earn large amounts of Frequent Flyer Miles (without flying) and then how to redeem those miles for high-value trips.

Here, in Chris’s words, is how the THC helps its members:

1. Regular “Deal Alerts” sent via email and SMS/text message (when a big opportunity comes up, our members will be the first to know)
2. Tutorials and an extensive Knowledge Base to get people started (our research showed that most people have no idea what to do with miles and points… we’ll tell them)
3. The Refer-a-Hacker Program that pays members 500 Frequent Flyer Miles for each referral (we’ve tried to make this process extremely easy – everyone has their own referral link directly in their account settings)
4. The “World’s Greatest Guarantee” – if members follow our directions and spend at least 30 minutes a month travel hacking, they’ll earn enough miles for at least 1 plane ticket every quarter, or 4 plane tickets a year (we also provide info on how to redeem miles for great awards)

Plus, for just $1 you can check out the entire program for 14 days, for FREE.

In the interests of transparency, I should let you know that I am an affiliate in Chris’s THC program, which means that if you click through one of the links here I’ll earn a commission. That said, I’ve looked through the THC site and am so impressed that Miss Frugal here fully intends to continue my membership after my free trial period runs out.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m throwing ALL of my money right now at growing my business, paying bills, and paying down debt. Period.

But in this case I’m making an exception.

Yep, the THC is that good. (Plus the site design is incredibly beatiful and easy to use – when I have the budget to outsource my website designs, I am totally calling Reese!)

Check it out. I hope you and I will soon be racking up gobs and gobs of Frequent Flyer Miles and exploring the world!

I’ve always wanted to go to Paris. Maybe I’ll see you at the Louvre… or back in Italy.

Why?

In my quest to create the life I really, really want, I’ve searched high and low for mentors and teachers who could help me create a business model where I’m doing what I love, and making money from it. It took months of research to sort the wheat from the chaff (there are a lot of sleazemeisters out there), to find the people I want to hook my train to.

Dave Navarro is one of those people. His content is always excellent, much of it is free, and the stuff I’ve paid for has proven to be some of the best buying decisions I’ve made this year.

(Time-sensitive note: if you’re interested in super-helpful free content, today is the last day to see three awesome videos Dave made to promote his More Buyers Mastermind. Yes, he made these videos to promote a paid course, but the videos are not in the least bit spammy – they’re pure content, not sales. You’ll learn a lot from them. But Dave is taking them down when he opens the doors to More Buyers Mastermind tomorrow, so you better catch them quick!*)

Here are 5 specific reasons Dave rocks my world:

Awesome Free Stuff

1. The LaunchTips Newsletter

Every few days Dave publishes a newsletter with a link to a highly informative post, and frequently a video and workbook. The content is always top notch, packed with information you can use to make real improvements to your online business. Over 7,500 subscribers is some pretty good social proof. And it’s all for free.

2. The “Stop Settling” Newsletter

Over 3,200 people subscribe to this newsletter, which Dave calls “Your Monday Morning Kick In the Ass.” This bite-sized chunk of inspiration/motivation is a great way to start your week. And again, it’s free.

3. The Launch Coach Library

If you’re interested, even slightly, in learning about the world of making money online (in a non-sleazy way), Dave’s free Launch Coach Library* is a no-brainer. At the time of this writing, there a four excellent (and free) workbooks to download: 7 Steps to Playing a Much Bigger Game, 7 Steps to Networking Your Way to A-Listers Fast, 7 Simple Income Streams (That You Can Actually Create), and Start Making Money With Your Products in 3 Days.

As with all of Dave Navarro’s productions, these articles/workbooks are top-notch, “consultation quality”; the kind of thing you’d expect to pay money for. But they’re free.

Paid stuff

4. Awesome workshops

Back in April, after checking out a bunch of Dave’s free offerings, I decided to give his paid stuff a try. I bought Creating Products That Sell and Building A Responsive List (affiliate links), not knowing quite what to expect.

What I got kind of blew me out of the water. These are not just PDF e-books, but full workshops with several modules each. Dave walks you step-by-step through everything you need to know, from what works and what doesn’t, to the nitty-gritty technical aspects (ie, how to make a recording, how to set up a mailing list in AWeber). Solid stuff I highly recommend.

5. More Buyers Every Month Group Mentorship

When I figured out Dave was someone I could trust, whose products offered tremendous value, I signed up for his advance discount list, and the waiting list to get into his 2010 More Buyers Every Month Group Mentorship program. And when he opened up the doors for a brief time awhile back, I upgraded and snagged my spot.

What is the 2010 More Buyers Every Month Group Mentorship? It’s where you have access to every single workshop Dave creates, plus a group forum (which I confess, I haven’t even tapped into yet, being rather occupied already with the awesome Third Tribe (affiliate link) forum.)

Dude. Seriously worth the cash.

Upshot

In my personal Pantheon of blogosphere gods and demigods, Dave Navarro occupies a very high position indeed. He has earned my trust and respect, I’ve learned a ton from him (both from his content directly, and as a model of how to run my own business), and I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next!

*Disclosure: If you click through my link and end up buying something, I’ll get a commission, but I only affiliate with things I know and trust, and can wholeheartedly promote. I’ve bought a lot of Dave’s stuff myself and stand by it, and if you’re not happy, you can complain to me directly.

The big problem with being multi-passionate and always having a lot of balls in the air is that there’s simply not enough time to do everything I want to do, when I want to do it.

Case in point: I recently finished a website redesign for Susan Fox of a.i.m high coaching, using the Headway premium WordPress theme (affiliate link). I’ve been wanting to switch my own site over to Headway since I bought it months back, but never got around to it, and now I’m absolutely itching – itching, I tell you – to dive in and redo my site in Headway!

But with my street festival coming up in just over a week, client deadlines (art, design and copywriting projects at the moment) and guest blog posts to write, it simply does not make sense for me to spend the better part of an afternoon or evening (or knowing me, more like a day [or week..] or two…) digging into a site redesign. Even if I keep the basic layout essentially the same. (And being a designer, of course I’m always eager for a site overhaul.)

So I rein myself in and try to stay focused on the tasks at hand.

Soon, though, soon…

And why, you ask, would I switch from Thesis, a rockin’ WordPress theme if ever there was one, over to Headway?

Several reasons:

1) Drag and drop WYSIWIG editing functionality

No foolin’, this is da bomb!

Check it out: the image here (click to get a larger view) shows the Headway Visual Editor in action.

You see the site you’re building, as you’re building it.

People, for folks like me who are not native to the Land of Techie-Geek, this is seriously awesome!

Yes, it does have its own learning curve, and it’s not always as intuitive as I’d like (for example, you have to remember click “Enable Header Rearranging” before rearranging the header – doh!), but you can literally drag Leafs (content boxes – which come in various types), nav bar buttoms, etc. to create your layout.

No fussing with code.

That said, as with all things web-related, the more HTML and CSS you know, the better off you’ll be, but you do not – I repeat do not – have to be a code whiz to use this theme.

Can I tell you this rocks?

Headway also makes site-wide changes to fonts and colors super-easy – just select the item you want to edit in the Element Selector, and a panel drops down where you can change all the specifics. And because your site is showing as you edit, you don’t have to switch over to a new window to see the result.

Coolness!

2) Flexibility

Unlike with Thesis, Headway allows me to easily make every page on my blog or website different, if I so desire. If I want a different header on each page, or a different page layout, I don’t have to be (or hire) a code jockey to make that happen. Just click a few settings, and shazam!

Very cool.

3) Cost-benefit for developers

This was probably the kicker for me, the thing that pushed me over the edge to buy Headway when I already owned and used Thesis.

Here’s the deal: with Thesis, every time I want to use the theme to create a site for a client, I have to pay an additional license fee. Not so with Headway. The theme is now an asset that I can leverage to earn more money.

The ultimate of coolness.

4) Support

Thesis is known for having an amazing support community, and it does. But Headway‘s support forum and direct support has been awesome so far. One tweet about building a client site in Headway brought a reply from Grant Griffiths, the developer himself, asking if I had any questions. When I tweeted back that I’d be asking some in the user forums, he told me to email him directly.

So I did, and he answered my question within minutes.

Now I don’t expect Grant Griffiths to be on call for my questions at all times, day or night, but I was pretty impressed with that level of concern about his users. All businesses should be so customer-focused.

In addition, the Headway website has a whole slew of tutorial videos, so getting up to speed is as painless as possible.

5) A full suite of other great features

From the Headway website:

Behind the oh-so-pretty Visual Layout Editor is a throbbing settings engine for Headway Configuration. This lets you get at settings that are “behind the scenes,” so you can change what you want. Headway Configuration has several tabs, so let’s take a look at what’s under the hood:

• General Tab: Contains main blog settings for feeds, Google Analytics or other scripts, and more.
• Styling/Features: If you want to disable the Visual Design Editor, then you can change your style and font settings here, via drop-downs and checkboxes. If the Visual Design Editor is enabled (the default), there’s nothing to see here. Carry on.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tab: Headway has the most thorough SEO features of any premium theme… all without any additional plugins. Here you can manage various kinds of page titles, description meta tags, nofollow settings, noindex settings, and more to boost your search engine rankings.
  [Want more specifics on why Headway is so awesome with SEO? See this page on the Headway website.]
• Social Networking Tab: Here you can integrate your Twitter account into your blog without extra plugins to bog down your blog’s page load times. You can have your tweets automatically appear in a leaf on the blog, and automatically tweet your new blog posts to Twitter as soon as they’re published.
• Headway Permissions Tab: Have a multi-author blog or a team of designer/developers? Set their permissions for how much of Headway’s power they can access. You get to choose what type of user account (administrator, editor, etc.) has permission to see and use the various Headway tools, such as the Visual Design Editor or Headway Configuration. No other premium theme has these capabilities built in.

Put these 5 points together, and it only made sense to make the switch… but of course I haven’t done so quite yet…

Unless there’s a good reason not to do so, I’m building all new client sites in Headway, and as soon as I can liberate some time from my current pressing deadlines, I’ll be buckling down to redo Living A Creative Life in Headway too. (In other words, don’t be surprised it you see a new design here sometime in the not-too-distant future…)

And now I’m curious: if you’re running WordPress, what theme do you use on your blog? What do you like about it, what you don’t like about it?

(And if you don’t have a blog or website and need one, I’m accepting new clients, so shoot me an email.)

]]> http://melissadinwiddie.com/2010/09/30/making-headway-5-reasons-why-im-switching-wordpress-themes/feed/ 4 http://melissadinwiddie.com/2010/09/07/7-reasons-why-my-hero-car-thief-chris-guillebeau-art-of-nonconformity/ http://melissadinwiddie.com/2010/09/07/7-reasons-why-my-hero-car-thief-chris-guillebeau-art-of-nonconformity/#comments Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:26:54 +0000 Melissa Dinwiddie http://melissadinwiddie.com/?p=3290 I admit it: my hero is a car thief.

Well, okay, a former car thief, but still.

Who is my hero? Chris Guillebeau, whose Unconventional Book Tour for his new book, The Art of Nonconformity, starts today.

Okay, the car thief part is a bit inflated, though Chris did indeed steal a car at age 15, a tidbit I learned in a Question the Rules (affiliate link) interview. What he’s done in the intervening years, though, is a lot more interesting than this sensationalist factoid.

And truth be told, I have a lot of heroes, both the long-dead kind (Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, Sojourner Truth, to name a few) and the contemporary kind (Gloria Steinem and Jill Robinson spring to mind).

But Chris occupies a special place in my pantheon of heroes for a few simple reasons:

1) Timing

(Mundane, but true, and the only reason that has nothing to do with Chris. Timing may not be everything, but it’s a big thing.)

When I first discovered Chris and his blog, The Art of Nonconformity, my life was at a turning point. I’d tolerated “pretty good, but not what I really, really want” for years, but a series of personal crises had gotten me to a place of desperation. I was finally ready to make a change, but I had no idea how.

Right at that moment, this guy appeared on my radar who was actually living what he really, really wanted. Not settling for what the world told him he could get, but dreaming big, and really going after his dreams.

And making a living at it, to boot!

Chris showed that maybe what I really, really wanted was possible after all. I was primed to listen and learn.

2) He’s a beacon for the rest of us

Chris isn’t just living the life he wants; he’s also leading the way for all of us who want to live the lives we want. His writing, his impressive line of Unconventional Guides (affiliate link) – all are crafted to help people with big dreams to make them reality.

Chris first shows you that it can be done, and then helps you do it.

3) He makes his own rules

From stealing a car (okay, probably not something to try at home), to dropping out of high school yet still graduating with two bachelor’s degrees in two years, to volunteering in Africa for four years, to creating several profitable online businesses, to setting a goal of visiting every country on the planet by the time he turns 35 (at the time of this writing, he’s at 149/192), to creating a massive following and thriving business through generosity, to self-funding a 63-city book tour, Chris has never done things by the book.

4) He goes after big goals

Did I mention his goal of visiting every country in the world by his 35th birthday? And writing a book? Then there’s the World Domination Summit he’s in the middle of organizing, to bring like-minded nonconformists together in one place for a few days.

Oh, and I think changing the world counts as a pretty big goal.

5) He models generosity

It’s all very well to create the life you really, really want and step on people along the way. Or to make a fortune from exploiting people. Chris is just the opposite.

Not only is he generous with his time (he gave me a fantastic Thriving Artists Project interview), his energy (did I mention 4 years of volunteer work in Africa?), and his information (unlike some people I know, Chris is not tight-fisted here), but he’s generous with his money as well.

The Unconventional Guides affiliate program (yep, that’s an affiliate link), which has paid me back and then some for all of the courses I’ve purchased from him, has a 51% commission – the most generous I’ve seen.

But that’s not all: Chris is donating 20% of all royalties from the sale of The Art of Nonconformity to the AONC partner project with Charity: Water for at least 12 months following publication. And for each reader he meets who purchases the book during the Unconventional Book Tour or World Domination Summit events, he will donate an additional 80% of his royalties, for a total of 100%.

Is this guy cool, or what?

6) He’s a model of running a profitable business ethically, and with customer service that cannot be beat

So this one is kind of embarrassing (for me, not for Chris).

Months back, I wrote a review of the $100 Business Forum, an online course that Chris ran with Pam Slim. The course was top-notch, but I found the Ning platform they were using frustrating. I was writing my review late at night, when I was tired and cranky, and, well, I clicked “publish” when I would have been a lot better off sleeping on it and reading it again with the objectivity that a good night’s sleep can bring.

When you’re tired and cranky, sometimes you don’t realize how much it infects everything you write…

The next morning I woke up to a personal email from Chris, and a complete refund for my course tuition.

Needless to say, I felt awful, and I immediately purged the gratuitous crankiness from the review.

(I also made a mental note to never publish a review when I’m tired and cranky.)

And Chris instantaneously became my Customer Service Hero, because I realized that with that $100, he had bought himself a customer for life. And isn’t that what all of us business people want?

7) He doesn’t let fear stop him

On page 59 of The Art of Nonconformity, Chris shares a few of his fears:

• I’m only on chapter 3. Will I ever finish writing this book?
• What if it sucks? What if I get bad reviews? (Or worse, what if no one pays attention?)
• I’m afraid of the forces of mediocrity and lethargy. I’m afraid of becoming too comfortable or getting lazy.
• When I travel, I’m afraid of trying to speak another language.
• Sometimes I feel paralyzed. People say they want to travel with me, and I think, “Oh no–then they would figure out that it’s not always that exciting.”
• I’m afraid that people will think I’m faking it.
• I’m scared of getting older and missing out on something I should have already done. (In the words of John Mayer, “I’m only good at being young.”)

Did you see the one about being afraid of trying to speak another language? Yet Chris has been to 149 countries (and counting).

Rock on.

****

In short, Chris is my hero because he inspires me, and helps me believe that I can set big goals and achieve them too.

Would you like to be inspired? Do you want to set your own rules, live the life you want, and change the world? (And help out a great cause at the same time.) If you’ve ever thought, “There must be more to life than this,” The Art of Nonconformity is for you. It’s an easy read, but the kind of book you’ll want to go back to again and again.

In the words of Tyler Tervooren from Advanced Riskology, it’s How To Change The World for $10.08.

You can’t get better than that!

PS – I also recommend catching up with Chris in person on his Unconventional Book Tour. If you make it to the San Francisco stop, I’ll see you there!