Tips on Starting Your Own Business
Starting your own business is one of the most powerful ways to take control of your life and your financial situation. You set your own hours, pursue projects that you find fulfilling and meet interesting people. Best of all, you are responsible for how much you earn. And it doesn’t necessarily mean quitting your day job either.
I’ve covered how to earn more money elsewhere on this site. So here I’m collecting some writings on personal entrepreneurship, including the characteristics of some of the successful entrepreneurs I’ve met and some really specific advice on how to market your products online. There’s also my series on Friday Entrepreneurs; in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs that have actually gone out and created something - ideas don’t count.
The characteristics of entrepreneurs
- Knowing vs. doing: Let’s compare these 2 friends who try to earn more. Erica sold her company for over $1 million at age 26. When she talks, I listen.
- Time management: How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defense, and 6+ peer-reviewed papers — and finishes by 5:30pm. Cal is totally dominating his post-doc while maintaining a successful blog. His trick: ruthlessly optimizing his schedule and and saying No, a lot.
- The Tripod of Stability (video). Tim Ferriss of the Four Hour Work Week asks me about false starts and success rates.
Practical advice on marketing your business…
- How to get 150,000 people to read your blog post in 1 week (and how I did it)
- Here’s a simple way to get 50,000 people to your blog in 1 day
- How I use beta tests to rapidly optimize new products
- Sell It Now — how to make hundreds of dollars in 37 minutes
…and marketing yourself
- New ebook: Recession-Proof Your Career
- The best $20 You’ll Ever Spend
- “Why don’t companies ever hire me?”
Friday Entrepreneurs
Friday Entrepreneurs is a series I run that features entrepreneurs doing interesting stuff. It can be a website, a retail store, or whatever, even a buffalo-wing-eating device.
There are too many interviews to list here, so you can check out the whole series, or start with one of my favorites, an interview with Premal Shah of Kiva – a microlending platform that supports entrepreneurs in the developing world.
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I'm the New York Times bestselling author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I co-founded PBwiki and graduated from Stanford.
