1. Start a business.
2. WORK REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HARD.
3. Quit your job.

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Don’t kid yourself into thinking that you can skimp on – or skip over – Step 2.

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I am frequently asked questions, online and off, about the details surrounding how I quit my job. Before January 2010, when I did it myself, I never realized how many of you amazing folks had similar goals and dreams. Or, I should say that I never realized how many people not only wanted to quit their jobs, but really were willing to learn about their options and actually take action towards making it happen some day. Go, you! Because you guys? You all rock.

Easily, the question I get most often is, “How did you do it?”

When asked, I usually end up answering with something intelligent like, “It’s comprised of, umm…a lot, umm, of stuff.”

To finally answer the question completely and to gather all the details in one place, I’m posting a Question & Answer session on the very subject. I hope that this helps clarify the real details surrounding what it took for me to comfortably quit my day job to do what I loved, and how you can learn to do the same.

This is how it happened for me.

I hope you find it useful when making it happen for yourself.

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What business did you build that allowed you to be ok financially with quitting your full-time job?

I built a business with a company called Vemma Nutrition, that pays independent distributors to market their product and build a network of people doing the same thing via a network marketing model. The company is based in Scottsdale, Arizona and I was introduced to it by a good friend of mine, who also happened to be my boss’s wife. I launched the business in July of 2007 alongside my full-time job.

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Can I still build a business and eventually quit my job, even if network marketing isn’t a fit for me?

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. Networking was what I chose, because it was the best fit for me and my lifestyle and my experience at the time. And it worked brilliantly. Now that I’ve been out of corporate for 18+ months I’m working on not only growing my Vemma business, but generating additional streams of income, too. Eventually, on top of generally advising people how to generate a stream of income in their own unique ways, I’ll be able to specifically teach people how to generate a streams of incomes via network marketing, freelance writing, or real estate investing.

Networking was best for me, and I used it (and continue to) as an amazing vehicle to launch me and Hubz into entirely different levels with our other businesses and our lives.

I wouldn’t be able to be at home, spending time every day writing and blogging if it weren’t for my Vemma business.
I wouldn’t be able to be at home, helping Hubz find and remodel and rent out investment properties with a newly obtained real estate license if it weren’t for my Vemma business.

It was a vehicle for me to get from point A to point B, and I will forever be in debt to the company and its leadership for what it has allowed me to do.

The rest of the answers are general, and I hope you find that they will apply to your situation no matter what unique business you choose to develop.

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Why didn’t you quit your job and then launch a business? Wouldn’t that have been easier?

That depends on your definition of easier. For me, I didn’t want to quit my job until I had already successfully built a business that, once I quit, could easily replace the salary I was earning in the corporate world. I was willing to sacrifice my time for a little while when trying to do both more so than I was willing to sacrifice my finances and my lifestyle. This is also the reason that I didn’t quit my full-time job the moment my business earnings equaled, and then surpassed my salary.

I’m young. I have many, many years ahead of me in financial planning and in life. I wasn’t just about to jump off the cliff at the first sign of success. I was going to jump, but I was going to be prepared. I was going to be ahead financially, not just even, I was going to be ready.

And plus, talk about, umm…SCARY. Please don’t quit your job and then launch a business. Please please please. Pretty please.

Well, do it if you must, I suppose. But please don’t mind me watching with my hands over my eyes while you do it. Yikes!

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How did you build it around your schedule?

There are many one-word answers that would brilliantly satisfy this question; Prioritization. Sacrifice. Determination. Commitment. Nooks-and-crannies-ness.

I built it around my life, around my full-time job, the best I could. During certain periods, I also built it around planning my wedding and remodeling our personal home. Doing so requires discipline and a determination the likes of which you have never experienced before. You have to be sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a) this is something you want to be doing, and b) that it will be worth it in the end.

I was sure of both.

I knew the vision of what I wanted (read: time freedom) and was willing to do whatever it took in the short term to make that vision come true for the long term.

I made phone calls while driving to and from work in the mornings and the evenings. I scheduled phone appointments during the lunch hour, often skipping lunch to do so. I communicated as many things as I could via text message, so I could respond to something on the way back to my desk from a meeting, or on the way down to the cafe to get coffee. I worked almost every evening for a couple hours, and at least one day every weekend. I all but gave up television, aside from the occasional weekend DVR session. I resigned myself to the fact that the laundry wouldn’t always be done on time and the dishes would sometimes pile up in the sink. I was ok with it. It was a short term thing.

Many days I made a list while laying down to go to sleep the night before of 4 to 5 things that, if I did nothing else, had to be completed the following day. If I completed them, even if life got in the way of everything else, I considered the day a success.

I lived by the 80/20 rule. Nothing was going to be perfect for a little bit, and my life became so much easier and less stressful when I decided that I would be ok with that.

I made sure I had a spouse who was on board before I started. I wasn’t the only one sacrificing.

Long story short: I decided it was going to happen, and I didn’t let any excuse get in my way. Short term sacrifice for long term gain.

No one has extra time just sitting around, hoping to be filled. You have to make it, and that only happens with everything I mentioned above: prioritization, determination, sacrifice, and commitment. And repurposing the formerly wasted nooks and crannies of your day!

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What did you struggle with?

I struggled with the continual self-motivation. Over long periods of time, it’s exhausting. I went through a few (very short) burn-outs.

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How did you get past those?

Making sure that the burn-out moments only lasted a day. Two at the most.

I also scheduled “times off” where I gave myself permission to not feel guilty about laxing and not working as hard as I usually did. Vacations, occasional weekends with family, etc. They were infrequent, but when they arrived I let myself completely off the hook for a couple days. There was no way to allow the time off to refresh me and recharge my batteries unless I unplugged 1000%.

It worked. It still works. Every time.

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Did you have to save to start the business? How did you do that?

Due to the nature of networking, I had no start-up costs. My costs to run the business were limited to about $150 a month in product that I personally consumed and the value of my time.

That’s partly why I choose the business I did, no start-up investment. If I launched another type of business that required up front moola, I would have incorporated that into my plans, and the process would have been the same, just extended a bit to accommodate for that saving time.

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Did you work on your business at all while you were at work?

Yes. I’m not going to lie, sometimes I worked on my business while I was at my full-time job. Was that a big reason for my success? No. But it helped, no doubt about it.

I think everyone, to a certain degree, does a little bit of personal work while at their work work. Whether it’s calling your child’s school or making a doctor’s appointment or sending two emails to prospects, it happens.

Most days I would limit my outside work to a few minutes here and there throughout my day. Other days it would be…worse.

I struggled early on with personal guilt over this subject. For a while, I thought I would quit early and get a part-time hourly job somewhere so that I could have more time to build my business and not feel guilty about it. However, after months and months of contemplation, I realized a couple things:

1) Corporate is corporate. Even if you have close, professional relationships with several of the people you work for, it’s still corporate. In the end, the company doesn’t care about you, they care about their business. If they didn’t care about me, I realized, I wasn’t going to care too much about them.

2) If I was doing my job and completing my projects as assigned, I wasn’t going to feel guilty. I shouldn’t feel guilty. My Type A personality raged for a long time that I wasn’t doing my best and wasn’t going above and beyond, but I made the decision to ignore that and drowned that Type A chica in my hard work.

I walked a fine line between doing my job yet not caring one bit about my job. I completed it, but didn’t care about it. I took risks. I realize that not everyone might not be able to be as risky. I had a spouse with a salary just as great as mine, we didn’t have children to support, and we were financially stable. However, even if I wasn’t able to be as risky, I still could have done what I did. I would have adjusted and worked harder and longer after hours than I personally had to.

It still would have worked, just required a bit of extra time.

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What did you do at that corporate job again?

I was a software designer for a large healthcare software company based locally in Kansas City. I was a computer geek.

Wait. I still am.

Moving on.

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How did you keep your employer from finding out about your outside venture?

I didn’t. Sort of.

I didn’t talk about it directly online, yet I didn’t hide it either. I didn’t openly talk about it at work, either, but if someone happened to ask something specific about it, I wouldn’t lie. I didn’t try to hide it. I did, however, downplay the significance of my business on my life, my finances, and my future plans.

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How did they react when you finally resigned?

They were surprised. Not that I resigned, but by the timing of it. As I sat in a conference room, too early on a Friday morning to be considered normal, and slid my resignation letter across the table to my manager, he said, “Yeah, I knew you had plans to do this someday, but, man, I never realized it would happen so soon.”

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How did you finally decide to pull the plug?

When it became clear that, financially, it was becoming more and more real that I was earning beyond just a part-time income with my business, we set a bunch of goals. In my journal, I think it was titled something like Annie’s Retirement List. It was the list of items that had to be achieved, completed, or set into place before we could even think about pulling the plug.

The list included things like, the business must be profiting 25% more than your current corporate salary, add however much to our savings account, purchase a new car, purchase a new computer and get it all set up, etc. We tried to come up with any and all big financial hurdles and add them to the list to be completely taken care of before we even set a date for resignation. I drove a beat-up car and we knew that purchasing a new one was in the near future, so we made sure to accomplish that first and get past it financially. The computer I used was my corporate computer, so buying a new laptop, copying all my personal files over, and getting my own home office set-up was a must.

We didn’t want to be stuck with any surprises after I resigned.

We don’t have any revolving debt (read: credit card balances), but if we did, paying ALL of those off would have been on the list. I was already covered under Hubz’s insurance, but if I wasn’t and my employer was providing it for me, taking care of that would have also been added to the list.

In mid December 2009, we were sitting in the living room and I flipped open my notebook to review the list. We realized with a start that all of them had been met, looked at each other from across the room with wide eyes, and then Hubz said, “Well, let’s get past the holidays a couple weeks, then…go for it. Set your date.”

And then I died of happiness. Then I came back to life, threw my arms into the air, exhaled the largest breath I’ve ever taken in my life, and opened up my calendar.

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Did you involve any of your co-workers in your business?

Nope. It wasn’t worth it. I was already being risky enough, I didn’t need to add accusations of using co-workers for outside ventures to my list of Things To Feel Guilty About.

Not involving them was just…easier. However, it did make for some interesting conversations once I announced my resignation. Because I didn’t involve them, most had no clue how or what or why I was doing what I was doing. It was a whole other part of me I had to introduce to them. It was interesting. And fun. And interesting.

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How did you mentally handle separating your two drastically different “lives” – one by day, one by night?

Very carefully. And with a lot of determination and discipline and lack of emotion.

As I’ve mentioned, I had to care just enough to get my work done, but not care so much that I was bothered by the fact that I was working harder for myself than for my employer. Once I taught myself how to let go the emotion surrounding my full-time job, leaving it behind the moment I stepped out of my cubicle became easy. My mind immediately switched from employer mode to Annie mode, and I was off to the races.

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How long did all of this take you?

I decided in the spring of 2005 that I wanted to find something to build that could help me get out of corporate. I was 24 at the time. I worked with two network marketing companies in two years and, despite my hard work, failed miserably. I launched my Vemma business in July 2007, replaced my full-time salary with the profit Vemma was earning me by the end of 2008, and had met all of my goals and resigned by January 2010 at the age of 29.

So, it took me almost 5 years from the first realization that this was what I wanted, and then two and a half years with Vemma, the vehicle that got me there.

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What’s your main piece of advice for someone who wants to do what you did?

You have to be determined and committed. You have to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it will happen. That it’s simply a matter of time. I knew the first day I started work at 22 years old that I wouldn’t be there forever, and it was barely two years later that I realized I was ready to start working towards that goal. I had no idea how it would happen, it just knew that it would. Someday somehow.

That’s the type of mentality you have to have.

You will have setbacks, you will fail, you will do things wrong. The trick to making it happen is that you keep moving forward anyway, regardless of all of that stuff. Let the failures and the mistakes stop you and it will never happen.

I also think that a little bit of faith helps. Faith in whatever you have faith in. A belief that when it’s supposed to happen, it will, and if it’s not time yet, then it’s not time yet.

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And that’s all she wrote, folks! What other questions do you have about my story of how I quit my job? What questions may I help with regarding you quitting your job? If that’s your cup of tea, of course.

If you have a question you’d like me to answer, share it in the comments below and I’ll update the post with your question.

Happy job-quitting. Wohooo!

Life is so grand, isn’t it?
AS

I ran into this poster last weekend:

So the key, then, would be realizing when you’re just “being busy.” Right?

Knowing when you’re just being busy, or you’re not on the right track, or you’re in need of halting your dig.

Right?

Stopping, every once in a while, is a good thing, you know. Taking a moment to put down the to-do list, to take a step back and reflect.

Pausing is a good thing. A coffee break pause, a weekend pause, a summer vacation pause.

Use them to relax and determine if you are on that elusive right track, whatever that might be for you. Then – and here’s the kicker – make sure, before you take the pause in the first place, that you’ll be able to deal with and take action upon the realizations that come forth while you’re doing it.

Otherwise, what’s the point? Might as well carry on digging that hole that may or may not be in the wrong place.

Being busy is seductive. But what’s even more so? Being busy with the confidence that you’re busy-ing in the right direction.

Don’t you think?

Whenever I tell people what I do – run a few small businesses out of my home – they always ask me how I got the guts to quit my full-time job and start a business, and I can never answer their question.

I can’t answer it because I didn’t quit my job and then start a business.

I built businesses around my full-time job and then, when the timing was right, quit that job for good.

I never recommend people flat-out quitting their jobs without any successful business already built and generating consistent income. Talk about scary! I know there are some folks out there that might be able to do it, but I was not one of them.

And I believe the vast majority of folks out there wanting to do something similar fall into the same camp I did.

So how do you build a business around your full-time job? In general, here are a few things that might help:

1. Change your productivity mindset If you want to build a business in your spare time, you must revaluate your “wasted” time.

Do you realize how many seconds, minutes, even hours of the day go we waste? Shrugging and giving them up to the “well, I can’t get anything done in this small amount of time, so I just won’t do anything” mindset?

Answer: A lot. Way more than you think.

Most of us aren’t sitting around with extra time during the day, hoping and wishing we could just gosh darn find a way to fill it! We’re busy.

So you want to start a business, but your days as they are now, pre-business, are already full. You have to change your mindset on productivity. Change your mindset on productive time.

Challenge yourself to see how much you can get done in periods of time you would have otherwise dismissed.

Sitting in the pick-up line at the elementary school? Send two emails. No wait, three.

Boarded a plane, waiting for it to take off? Turn on those electronics. You have at least fifteen minutes to use them, if not twenty.

Pull up for a noon meeting at 11:58? Listen to those four, waiting voice messages, jot down who needs a quick call back. Can you send a text to respond one of them? Answer one of the questions with a thirty second call instead of an email that would take you five minutes to type on your phone? Do it.

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2. Simplify You’re holding down your full-time job, getting a part-time business off the ground, and still supporting all of your other personal responsibilities. You don’t have time for fluff.

Business-wise, if it’s not a direct, income-producing activity, get rid of it.

Income-producing activities are just what they sound – activities that are directly affecting your growth and bottom line…your income. Making prospect calls, setting up appointments to present to new potential clients, creating and developing your product, etc.

It’s been a busy Tuesday, and you carved out 25 uninterrupted minutes to work on your business this evening. That’s awesome! Better 25 than none at all. You sit down at your desk in your little home office and get to work on…organizing receipts.

Or updating the banner image on your website.
Or ordering new business cards.

Don’t devalue your time! You worked hard for those extra minutes. Set the fluff aside for your extra, extra time (you’ll know when that is).

Simplify the time you’re carving out for your business by only allowing yourself to work on direct, business-building, income-producing activities.

Simplify your activities, and it will suddenly feel like you have more time. I promise.

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3. Make it a habit If you’re used to “relaxing” for three hours a day on the couch, it’s going to hurt for a while after giving part (or all) of that up.

I went through a Grey’s Anatomy streak a couple years ago. There were reruns on every day that I DVR’d and watched most evenings. After a few months it started driving me crazy, my prioritizing Grey’s time over other things, so I cut myself off.

I broke up with the Grey’s reruns.

It hurt.

I almost faltered a couple times. But I held strong. I said no. I said no not to never watching a single episode of Grey’s for the rest of my life (tradegy!), but to consistently, habitually, dedicating 45 minutes every evening to it.

After a couple weeks, a month at most, it hurt no more. That long lost love was forgotten. Just like that I got back 45 minutes from an “obligation” that I had inserted into my schedule every weekday evening.

Where was I going with this? Grey’s can be very McDistracting. Oh yeah, habits!

Yes, it will hurt at first, changing your ways a little bit. Giving up a few things here and there to dedicate some time to your new business isn’t going to be easy.

But stick with it. Make the changes a habit, and before you know it you won’t remember ever not having the business time you now have.

Remind yourself that productivity is a habit.

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4. Pick a residual income business model Time is at a minimum. If every minute worked has the potential to pay you back multiple times in the future, you’re making that much better use of your time.

You will get tired, you will get worn out. Focusing on being productive all the time is great, but boy oh boy can it be exhausting at times. Frustrating at others. When will it ever end, you know? Once in a while, you just need a short break.

An evening off.
A week off from your full-time job and your part-time business without guilt.

And that’s ok. You have the discipline now to get right back into it with gusto and confidence. But wouldn’t it be cool if your part-time gig still paid you, even when you took a moment off? That’s residual.

And powerful.

(Some sales companies pay the salesperson in this manner. Additionally, both real estate rentals and network marketing are classic residual-income model businesses. Do you know of more? If so, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!)

If you’re selling a product or a service for time, that’s great. But know that after weeks, months, even years of being in business, if you don’t work, you don’t earn. From an encouragement and productivity standpoint, consider if you’re ok with that.

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5. Get organized You have to get a grip on your organization. Specifically, your mental organization.

If you’re upping your productivity mindset, simplifying and working primarily on income-producing activities, and making productivity a habit, you have to have a strong hold on when you’re doing what and how and for how long and who needs who and what needs to happen first and who has what and do I need to go on?

Keep a notebook with you at all times. Electronic or paper, doesn’t matter. But you need a nerve center. And you need one that’s NOT your lovely, little head.

No offense. I’m sure your brain is lovely. And I’m sure you do have a great memory, it’s just…it’s just…it’s just better if you don’t rely on it all the time.

Trust me.

Take that weight off your shoulders. Allow your non-business moments to be spent thinking about your full-time job, or your children, or your golf game, instead of constantly forcing yourself to remember all of your tiny business dealings for the week.

It gives me anxiety just thinking about it.

Create reminders on your calendar to call Bob back on Monday morning, as you promised him you would when he called right before you ran into a meeting on Thursday afternoon.

When the reminder pops up Monday morning, and you can’t get to his call that minute, don’t dismiss it! Or, dismiss it, and immediately write “CALL BOB” in your notebook.

You get the picture. There’s no point in wasting so many brain cells trying to have a perfect memory. Let yourself relax a little. Get organized by writing everything down.

Plus, once organized, hen you pull up for that noon appointment at 11:58 and wonder, hmm, who can I call back in these two minutes?, your answer is right there.

Organization and productivity go hand-in-hand.

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Can you build a business around your fill-time job? You bet. Resolve yourself to making it happen and then…make it happen. It’s not as difficult as it’s made out to be.

What do you think? Are the five things listed above possible for you?

If someone asked you how they should build a business around their full-time job, what would you recommend to them?

Greetings from (rainy. very very rainy.) Omaha!

I’m excited to get to spend the next couple days learning and networking and drinking coffee at Big Omaha. In its third year, this conference is “the nation’s most ambitious conference of innovation and entrepreneurship.” Also, it rocks.

If you’re in the Midwest, or if you’re entrepreneurial-minded, or if you just like learning something new, I’d encourage you to follow along Thursday and Friday.

The best place to do so? Twitter.

Follow the #BigOmaha hashtag or @BigOmaha mentions.

Additionally, keep tabs on SiliconPrairieNews.com for posts and articles related to happenings at the conference. They won’t be livestreaming the talks this week (but they will be recorded for you to watch later), so Twitter will really be the best – and only – place to catch knowledge nuggets in real time.

Follow along, yeah? You’ll hear opinions and ‘overheards’ from those in the audience, in addition to pieces of the talks from entrepreneurs from all over the country. The full list of speakers and their bios can be found on BigOmaha.com.

Oh, and one more thing, I must warn you – you might catch my crazy mug on the Big Omaha homepage. Do not be alarmed! Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

Wait. What?

I attended Big Omaha last year and, unexpectedly, my friend Andy forced me to stand in front of a camera for a few minutes. The footage that I thought would never see the light of day kind of, umm, well, ended up very much seeing the light of day.

Eek.

Looking forward to seeing/chatting/tweeting you tomorrow!
Learning and networking. We will be doing.

If I were to have the opportunity to start my adult life over again, I would do one general, albeit very important, thing differently: go faster.

Much faster. Taken action earlier, made the decision quicker, pondered less, acted more. Gone after the bigger fish right off the bat, instead of piddling around so long with the small stuff. Waiting until I had “enough experience” or “more time” before I went bigger, thought bigger, acted bigger.

I spent too much time being careful and thinking small.

Maybe I would have learned even earlier than I did that you get what you ask for. (Err, get what you fish for?)

If I were to start over, I would have read Rich Dad Poor Dad earlier.

I would have taught myself sales and customer service and rejection and leadership via network marketing younger than the old – cough ahem cough – age of 26.

I would have obtained my real estate license sooner. Invested sooner.

I would have networked and prioritized my likeminded friends sooner.

Ohh, the places I could be now. *sniffle*

Sorry. I just turned 30 and I’m feeling old and nostalgic. Bear with me, I’ll get over it eventually.

Maybe.

Anyway, if I could start over with a clean slate at 22, fresh out of college, that’s what I would do.

More. Sooner. Faster. Earlier.

Is this what everybody says, though? I think it is. Hmm. What does that tell you?

I’m borrowing this quote from my current read, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, and it gets an entire post all on its own, it’s that good.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of life you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into the flames of achievement.
- Foster C McClellan

Each piece could be a quote all on its own. So today (not tomorrow or next week), take that step. A first step, perhaps. Create your ‘kind’ of life. Define your kind of life. Trust. Take that small idea and decide to act on it.

Trust. Act. Create.

Sounds like a good mantra for the week, yeah? Cheers to you!

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Here is the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari on Amazon. It’s one of the few personal development parables I have ever read that’s not painfully corny. Definitely worth a glance. Also, it has Ferrari in the title! BONUS.

Want your business to grow this year? Making a big difference on the success of your 2011 doesn’t have to mean making big changes.

1. Throw out your New Year’s resolutions and annual goals. It’s January 19th; define five, specific mini-goals you would like to accomplish by February 15th. Then get to work.

2. Be honest with social media. In 2009 the masses were introduced to the social media world. 2010 they tested it out and tried to put every, single piece of it to use for their business. This year? Be honest about what fits best for you. If you don’t connect with Twitter, decide not to use it. If you get a lot of use out of MySpace, don’t be guilted into not using it. Be honest with yourself and the best use of your time online.

3. Send a gift to a networking contact for no reason. Write “Just because I thought you’d enjoy it” on the card. My recommendation? A book, of course.

4. Say no. You can do it, ready? Nooohhhhhhuuuuwahh. Try it again? Noohhuu. Nice! Now keep practicing.

5. Set aside ten minutes every day to learn something new. You pick the method – a non-fiction book, a blog, a trade magazine, whathaveyou. Do it either first thing in the morning or last thing at night, and discipline yourself to never skip a day.

6. Contact a local university and submit a job posting for an intern. You’ll be providing a student with valuable work experience and getting a second pair of hands for free in the process.

7. Answer the question – what do I have to offer? What specific experiences and knowledge do I possess? Write down the answer (or answers) and make a plan to develop a product around it. Be it a new email series for your clients, a weekend convention for potential customers, or even an ebook for your blog audience, you’re offering something new, building relationships, and adding an additional income stream to your business.

8. Every other time before you hit Send on that tweet or Update on that status, erase what you wrote and write a sincere promotion for someone else instead.

9. In the next week, identify two of the most common processes that occur in the everyday operations of your business. Pick one of them, step back from it for a minute, take yourself out of the equation, and find a way to automate that process. Everything can be systemized, you just need to figure out how. Make it happen. Put the system into effect immediately. If you’re feeling super-productive, repeat this exercise monthly.

10. Say “thank you” to someone – anyone – every day.

11. Once a quarter, if not once a month, spend a long weekend with the most likeminded friends you have. Travel across the country if you have to. If you don’t have friends with the same goals and mindset as you do, attend a networking event every week and network your face off until you find them.

So, what do you think? What would you add to the list?

Molds. Everywhere you go it seems people want to compare you to others.

Ohh, you’ve been dating 3 years and aren’t engaged? Well, Joe and Jane over there only dated for 2 years before they got married.

I’m starting a business, so I have to get funding before I begin.

Be You

Molds scare me. And not just the kind that tends to grow on the walls of our dungeon-like basement.

You are who you are, and no else but you knows the full story about your situation. Your relationships, your finances, your business, your life. Learn from the mistakes of others, yes. Follow in the footsteps of the successful, yes, but still use your head. Be yourself. Be TRUE to yourself.

See the difference?

Compare yourself to others for the sake of learning and adjusting your course of action. Compare yourself to others to inspire and motivate and perhaps even instill a sense of urgency. Be careful, however, when comparing yourself to others as a determination of success or failure. Be careful when assuming you have to fit into the mold.

Don’t Get Sucked Into Assumptions

Some entrepreneurs credit their ability to work from home as the key to their success. Does that mean other entrepreneurs who choose to work from an office or a coffee shop will never find that success? Of course not.

With some examples, it almost sounds silly that people would force themselves into a mold like that.

Be very hesitant to box yourself into ideals. Or, taking it further, boxing yourself into assumptions. Assuming that one way is the only way does nothing for you but close doors.

Keep An Open Mind

I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but thinking outside of the box is such a popular, cliche phrase because it’s (mostly) true. Thinking outside of your assumptions, allowing your mind to be open to “different” ways of doing things can do no harm.

Do you have to take actions on all of the crazy, out-of-box ideas that you run across? Of course not. But don’t box your mind into the normal assumptions of how things are “supposed” to work, or what’s expected. (Which brings up another thought – who sets the expectations on us, anyway? Who is They?)

Vemma & Twitter

In my Vemma business we follow a system. This is how you build the business, a b c d… Why is this successful? Because it’s duplicatable. The business is all about building a network, and networks support their own growth by easily being able to grow, and around and around. It’s duplicatable because it eliminates everything NOT to do.

You follow the system, yes. But while you’re working on step 2 does it matter if you’re doing it from your porch or your office or a cruise ship? No. Does it matter if you work 1 minute a day or 10 hours a day? Nope. Who says you have to move fast if moving slowly but surely is the way you roll?

With Twitter, many will argue the benefits of auto-following those who follow you. Others will argue that the reason for their success is NOT auto-following and making every interaction personal. Some say you have to use a third-party application like TweetDeck, others swear on Twitter.com.

Are we all still using Twitter? And taking advantage of building our businesses and our brands by sending concise 140 character messages to our audience? And listening and conversing? Yup, yup, and yup.

The moral? Follow the system, use the tools – but do it your own way.

Consider It

Be a continual bigger thinker. Step back and identify what assumptions about the way things “have to be” can be removed from your situation. Follow in the footsteps of the successes before you, but do it your own way. Be wary of comparisons for comparisons sake.

Get good at thinking about Why something has to be a certain way. You don’t have to take action away from the mold. Just don’t completely close your mind to the possibilities. Just…consider it.

What say you?

A huge thank-you to Tim Jahn over at BeyondthePedway.com for this interview. I met Tim at Big Omaha in May – amongst many, many others – so it was wonderful to chat with him 1-on-1 for a bit.

Check out the interview, here.

And while you’re there, be sure to check out the rest of Tim’s blog. Amazing interviews with impressive folks such as Dennis Crowley, the founder of Foursquare, Jason Sadler of iwearyourshirt.com, David Hauser, the co-founder of Grasshopper, and much, much more.