In addition to Adsense, I also sold some ads direct, and I earned income from other ad networks too, although Adsense was by far the best one I tested.

Then one day in October 2008, I decided to stop hosting third-party ads altogether, including Adsense, as I explained in a blog post about dropping Adsense at that time.

The consequences were predictable. Overnight my income dropped significantly.

If I’d kept those ads running, it’s fair to say I’d have received at least an extra $300K in ad revenue since then — probably significantly more since my web traffic has gone up during the past 3 years. Google has undoubtedly continued to refine the Adsense program as well.

If I ever feel the urge to do so, I could easily restore these ads to my website. It wouldn’t take long — a few hours at most. And it would probably start bringing in an extra $10-15K per month.

Many people would consider my decision a foolish one. Some have told me as much.

But my vision of success is my own to nurture. It’s not for anyone else to decide. I intend to grow in the ways that matter most to me, not the ways that society tells me I’m supposed to care about.

Letting go of that $300K bought me a different path of growth than I would have otherwise experienced. It started with asking myself What kind of man do I really wish to be? and How far am I willing to go to become that man?

This soul-searching led to a cascade of other choices, including ending my marriage after being together for 15 years and making some significant lifestyle changes.

Of course I can never be sure what would have happened if I made different decisions — we only get to experience the results of the paths we take, not the ones we don’t — but I’m still pleased with the path I chose. In this case the ad-dropping decision remains easily reversible, but I don’t see cause to reverse it.

Life includes many tests that help us clarify our values. I could have come up with all kinds of reasons to justify why I should have kept taking the ad money and what I could have done on that path, but based on what I knew about myself and what I was already experiencing on that path, I concluded that a different path would be more authentic and empowering for me — but also more difficult.

One side effect of dropping advertising is that I finally started doing live workshops. I’ve done seven of them now, and I have two more coming up. But workshops produce active income, whereas advertising was passive income. I’d previously believed that passive income is always superior to income I have to keep actively earning. But I learned that having to earn income actively can help me grow faster, especially when I have to exercise my creativity to earn it; active income is more challenging, and challenge encourages growth.

When my life gets too easy, I like making things harder on myself because it stimulates more growth. I like getting up early. I like writing deep and insightful articles. I like pushing myself. I like having some pressure to take action. I like being challenged. I don’t want a life of ease and comfort.

I made the choices that I felt were best for me, and I balanced that decision with what I felt was best for others. I think my website is more usable and provides more value to people without all those ads. I also know that the workshops I’ve been doing are providing a lot of value to those who attend. I really like the business model I’m using today, even though it’s more challenging than other business models I’ve tried. Designing and delivering 3-day workshops stimulates a lot more growth in my life than watching ad revenue automatically plop into my bank account.

Society may nudge you to adopt certain values, but at the end of the day, you still have a choice. You can decide which values you’ll hold as sacred and which aren’t nearly as important to you.

Exploring different ways to make money can be an interesting challenge, but I hold my path of growth and how it affects others on a much higher plane.

Conscious success requires making choices to mold your character as you desire to be molded.

Sometimes your choices will receive the approval of others. Sometimes they won’t. Regardless of others’ reactions, do your best to stay true to yourself. Make the choices that allow you to look in the mirror and feel good about the person gazing back at you.

I’ve been thinking more deeply about what it means to succeed consciously as I prep for the Conscious Success Workshop in January. I see a lot of people struggling with fuzzy notions of success that are overly infected by assumptions that society has drilled into them. I know that many people feel pressured to improve their finances, and they worry that they may be sabotaging their success with limiting beliefs about money.

I’d like to suggest that perhaps it isn’t self-sabotage or laziness that’s getting in the way, but it could be a need to develop more clarity about your true values.

There are a lot of ways to potentially earn more money that I wouldn’t feel good about, so I don’t do them. Perhaps you’re in a similar situation.

On the other hand, there are ways to make money that I do feel good about. I feel great about selling workshop registrations, so I can be pretty shameless about that. When someone signs up for a workshop, it’s good for me, and it’s good for those who attend.

There’s a temptation to sacrifice your values to buy into someone else’s definition of success, but again you have the power to choose. At many personal growth seminars, for instance, there’s a big push to get you to spend more money on products in the back of the room. Some people earn more on product sales than they do on seminar registrations. In fact, BOR sales (BOR = back of room) is a common topic for pro speakers to discuss in organizations like the National Speakers Association. Speakers frequently share tips with each other on how to maximize BOR sales.

I don’t buy into this model though. It often creeps me out when speakers push for BOR sales so hard. It feels like they’re just trying to squeeze more money out of people who already paid to be there. Behind the scenes I know that speakers often calculate and track their BOR sales per attendee. Then they try to increase that number over time.

The only products I have for sale at my workshops are my books and Erin’s CDs, and they’re discounted. The main reason we do this is because some people want us to sign copies for them or to buy them as gifts. We don’t sell very much at all though. At the October workshop we did $100 total in product sales, just to give you an idea. In fact, one of those sales was to a conference center employee who was walking down the hall, saw our sign and got curious, and ended up buying one of my books.

It took me many years to figure out what conscious success means to me, and it’s still very much an ongoing process of discovery. I gradually learned that much of what is taught about success, achievement, and wealth just doesn’t resonate with me.

It’s nice to make money, but I prefer to earn it on my terms, even when it means earning less. I like making money from exercising my creativity, such as by writing and speaking. I like making money in ways that feel congruent to me, where more income equates to more value being provided to others. I feel better about earning money from workshop sign-ups than I do from seeing more clicks on third-party ads, for instance.

If you’re able to attend the Conscious Success Workshop next month, I think you’ll find it a very unique experience because it’s about understanding and achieving your own vision of success, not someone else’s.

As anyone who’s been to one of my previous workshops can attest, we create a special vibe at these events that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere. At the October workshop, for instance, I’d estimate that the average attendee received at least 5 hugs before they even made it to their seat at the start of Day 1 — from me, from Erin, from Rachelle, from KB, and from Shae. This doesn’t even include the hugs attendees often gave each other.

No one is going to force you to be hugged if you’d rather not be hugged, but I actually instruct our staff members to greet everyone by offering hugs. This isn’t for any manipulative purposes whatsoever. We do it because virtually everyone likes to be greeted in this way, and it feels good to us. It helps people feel very welcome and fosters an intimate, family-like atmosphere. I don’t know of any other success workshops where you can expect to be showered with warm hugs as soon as you arrive.

I share this because it’s another example of how we can define success on our own terms. Just because other people’s success seminars tend to have a vibe that’s more cold and calculating doesn’t mean we have to buy into that model. Whatever you don’t like about how society seems to be conditioning you to behave, you can say no to that. Then go do your own thing. I for one think American society is cold and disconnected enough already, and I want to help warm it up. I think we’re all better served by relating to each other as family as opposed to acting like strangers.

There’s a tendency to think of success in competitive terms, as if the point is to outperform other people. But that isn’t a very effective model. I think most people will experience far greater long-term success through cooperation, mutual support, and encouragement than they will through hard-hearted solo determination.

One tricky thing for me to figure out was how to create sales pages for my workshops that feel really good and congruent to me. I don’t like hard-sell tactics when someone tries to use them on me, nor do I like feeling that I’m being manipulated to buy something I don’t need. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel good to me to be shy about telling people about these workshops either. I know they help people, and so it would be lame not to encourage people to sign up.

In the summer when I launched some new workshops, I created very basic web pages for each of them. An example is the current page for the February Conscious Relationships Workshop. It’s a pretty simple page that’s mostly just a description of what people can expect to learn there.

My thinking in creating these pages wasn’t to try to sell people on new workshops but actually to get out of the way as much as possible. I wanted to give people a sense of what each workshop was about, but I didn’t want them basing their decision to attend on how persuasive I could be. I figured that it would be better for them to base their decision on whether or not they resonate with my work in general and if the topic appeals to them. That way we’d end up with a really good group of attendees who truly wanted to be there.

I was pleased to discover that these simple pages actually work just fine. Plenty of people have already signed up for each of the new workshops. And by and large, the people who’ve been signing up have been the right ones to attend.

But I still made some mistakes, and I’m continuing to calibrate my approach to feel more congruent to me.

For one, I used to offer a money-back guarantee on all my workshops. I discontinued that guarantee weeks ago. Of course it’s still going to be honored for anyone who signed up while it was in effect, but it isn’t something I’m willing to offer anymore.

I didn’t stop offering the guarantee for business reasons. Refund requests have always been minimal, so that wasn’t the issue. I don’t know if having a guarantee increased registrations overall. I didn’t have a guarantee for the first two workshops I did, and those were very well attended.

I realized that the way I was phrasing the guarantee was a mismatch for the kinds of people I wanted to attract. It was too far in the direction of trying to convince people to attend. My guarantee was based on my assuming 100% responsibility for people’s results, which in practice doesn’t make sense. Each workshop is a co-creative experience, and if people are showing up with less commitment because of that guarantee, that’s no good. I’m going to bring my A game to each event, but I also want other people to be fully committed as well.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I received a refund request from someone who didn’t claim to have a problem with the workshop at all. He just needed more money for rent, so he requested a refund as a convenient way to acquire some quick cash. I still honored his request, but it seriously creeped me out. That incident combined with a few other questionable requests convinced me to re-evaluate the decision to offer a money-back guarantee. I let the emotions of that incident subside, so I could make a clear-minded decision, and ultimately I concluded that it was the wrong approach for me.

Another thing I used to do was offer workshop scholarships to some people. I haven’t been advertising that fact because I don’t want to be inundated with freebie requests, but when I felt someone would benefit from the workshop and I knew that were very unlikely to attend due to financial issues, I’d offer them a free registration. Almost always when I made such offers, people took advantage of them.

In practice, however, this has been a mixed bag. Some people who were given free passes really appreciated it, put a lot of effort into the workshop, and got a lot of value out of it. That was nice to see. Unfortunately others utilized the freebies in ways I felt were hugely disrespectful. They’d show up late, skip out on key exercises, and not really take it seriously. They came to play.

So I’ve backed off from doing scholarships except in very rare cases, like with people I know very well and can absolutely trust to do their part. I don’t take freebie requests, so please don’t bother to ask.

My current approach to selling can be described as testing for resonance. This means that I seek to find the best matches for my workshops. As I see it, some people are really meant to be there. These people really resonate with the message of conscious growth, and they’re willing to put some effort into accelerating that process. Those are the people I want to work with.

Most of the material I’ve read about selling treats the process as one of persuading and convincing people to buy. But who actually likes to be convinced of anything they don’t already believe?

Testing for resonance makes a lot more sense to me. So I’ve been pondering how to do this with my workshop pages. I figured a good approach would be to simply write about the topic and share more thoughts about it, just like I do when writing new articles.

So a few weeks ago I rewrote the CSW web page to see how that approach felt to me. I wrote it to be more like a new article on success and achievement, not a sales page. I don’t think the workshop is even mentioned till about 2/3 of the way through. I mainly shared some personal stories about success and failure from my own life. My aim was to give you a better sense of my thinking about success and to see if that resonates with you. It’s only a small slice into the big picture, but I think it was a good slice to share. The page is much longer than the original version, but that’s because it’s long on content, not salesmanship.

On that page I also added some pics that I’ve never shared online before, namely copies of some of my college report cards.

Even if you know that you’re not going to attend CSW, I still encourage you to read that page if you’re interested in success since I do believe you’ll get some value from the content, especially if you’ve liked some of my other articles on the subject. If you don’t already resonate with the idea of coming to a workshop of mine, I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that page convincing you to attend.

Yet another area where I’ve been re-assessing the notion of conscious success is our discussion forums. I realized that I’ve been a bit lax as admin this year, and the standards for our community have been slipping a bit. Our rules haven’t changed, but our enforcement of those rules hasn’t been as consistent as it could be. Consequently we’ve been seeing a rise in problems like trolling, thread derailment, and members taking disrespectful jabs at each other. Some members have racked up a half-dozen warnings or more, when they really should have been banned months ago.

So recently I’ve been working with the mods to raise our standards when it comes to cutting members who can’t follow the rules as they agreed to do when they joined. Suffice it to say we’re going to be much more strict about it. Otherwise the community is at risk of drifting towards a juvenile stomping ground like so many other online forums. So if you’re active in that community and you sense a tightening of our standards, it’s not because our moderation team is ganging up on people. You can lay the blame for that on me. I want our community to continue to serve as a place where people come together to help each other grow and to offer positive support, and I want to our signal-to-noise ratio to stay high. For everyone else, there’s Facebook.

This article itself could serve as an example of resonance testing. If the ideas I’ve shared here feel good to you, you’ll probably get a lot of value from one of my workshops, and you’re likely to make lots of new friends there who share a similar resonance.

On the other hand, if you’ve read this and think “meh… you’re an idiot for not taking the ad money,” then you’re probably less likely to be a good match for my workshops. So you can also label me an idiot for not wanting your money either. You probably wouldn’t be a good match for the other attendees either.

A key lesson I learned about success is: Sometimes we have to say no to the paths that don’t resonate with us, clearing them out of the way first, and only after that will the more congruent paths come forward and make themselves known. In other words, you may continue to attract mismatched approaches to success as long as you’re still tempted to pursue them. When you finally muster the strength to say no to those paths, then you can gain access to much better ones.

And yes, I really do feel good about shamelessly plugging my workshops… as long as I’m doing it in ways that align with my values. Convincing you to go isn’t the right approach. Testing to see if you’re the kind of person who totally belongs there does feel good, however.

Incidentally, the $100 early bird discount for CSW is still good for one more week. I’m not going to extend it beyond that since we already have enough people signed up to guarantee a vibrant weekend, and from past experience I know that a lot of people sign up in the final week before the discount expires.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Of course it’s possible. Many people have done it before. But is it realistic for you? Well… that depends. The honest answer is: probably not. What it takes to succeed as an artist isn’t such a mystery these days. The real question is whether or not you’re willing to do what it takes to get there. If you’re like most people, you aren’t willing. So if you want to succeed as an artist, you must elevate your standards well beyond the level of those who are willing to give up.

Starving artists may be more common and cliché than financially successful artists, but as you’ll discover in this article, there are some very good reasons for that. For starters, artistic skill alone isn’t enough to guarantee financial success.

There are many challenges on the path to financially sustainable artistic nirvana, and all of them have solutions. Successful artists are willing to apply those solutions; unsuccessful artists typically aren’t.

Here are a number of guidelines for transitioning from creating art as a hobby into a financially lucrative profession:

Get Your Financial Beliefs in Order

Do you harbor any beliefs such as these?

• Great art and money don’t mix.
• It’s noble to be a starving artist.
• Artists who make tons of money are sell-outs.
• Money corrupts true creative expression.

If your thoughts have been infected by such limiting beliefs, even a little, consider how this will affect your efforts to earn serious income from your work. These beliefs are financially retarded. With such mental baggage, you’ll miss too many opportunities to generate income from your art. In fact, you probably won’t even notice them. These beliefs will cause you to behave stupidly.

Consider upgrading your beliefs to something along these lines:

• Money can help fuel creative expression.
• Creativity is free; paintbrushes aren’t.
• Great art is financially valuable; surely the artist deserves a fair share.
• Artists who make lots of money have good business sense.
• Great art deserves great financial support.
• Art is a creative endeavor, but it’s also a business.
• Fans are nice, but customers pay the bills.

It’s a lot easier to generate income from your art if you hold beliefs that support income generation instead of demonizing it. If you’re going to attach some kind of meaning to earning income from your art (an event which is largely meaningless from a cosmic perspective), then at least apply a meaning that will support you on your path instead of creating imaginary roadblocks.

Beliefs are infectious, so choose your friends carefully. If you regularly hang out with people who harbor negative beliefs about combining art and money, they’ll just drag you down. It’s fine to associate with them now and then, but be very careful about inviting them into your inner circle.

Seek Out People Who Are Already Succeeding

Art is a social field, and so is business. The business of art — any kind of art — is hugely social. Insiders have it way easier than outsiders, so aim to be an insider. Don’t even think about trying to go it alone.

Financially successful artists are generally happy to share their “secrets” of success, including how they make money from their work. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Make every effort to meet such people and hang out with them. Join clubs or trade associations, join forums, attend conferences, and find other ways to socialize with successful artists in your field. It’s not that difficult, but it does require that you make an effort. You’ll make some networking mistakes along the way, but eventually you’ll figure it out. Read through the extensive How to Network With Busy People series to get a better sense of how to do this.

I suggest that you identify a certain income goal — something modest — and target people who are earning close to that. If you’re making no money as an artist, it may be hard to relate to the advice of someone who’s earning $1M per year. You’ll have a better shot of understanding and applying the advice of someone who’s earning $30-50K per year. Then when you get to that level, meet with people who are earning $100K per year, and notice what they do differently. And keep stepping up from there.

If you always hang out with artists who are making the same or less money than you, I hope you like eating at Taco Bell.

When you meet successful artists, don’t do the fanboy/fangirl thing. It’s best not to even utter the word fan because it sounds too much like stalker, and it steers the conversation in the direction of putting the artist on a pedestal, which really isn’t going to help you. Aim to be friendly, interested, and respectfully curious, but assume equal standing as human beings. Artists are generally very comfortable discussing their work, so a great opener is to ask a specific question about their work. Feel free to pick their brains, but don’t bleed them dry.

Being passive ensures dismal results. Push yourself to go outside and meet people. Take some social risks. If you dork-out now and then, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll recover.

During my computer games business days, I was having coffee with my lawyer on a patio in Century City (a business district next to Beverly Hills). He suddenly turns and yells to a guy walking down the street, “Bill!” Turns out it was William Shatner, who was working with my lawyer on a book deal. Shatner approached us for a friendly conversation, and being a 20-something Trekkie, I dorked out — not too much but enough to feel self-conscious about it afterwards. I learned to be much less dorky around such people after that.

Successful artists in any field typically know each other. They may not get to spend a lot of time together, but they often meet in person as a consequence of moving in similar circles. If you want to become a successful artist, it’s wise to prepare yourself for this. The key is that it must eventually feel normal to you. If it seems like a big deal, you’ll push it away.

Networking with other pros in your field is good business. Most of the income I’ve earned from my creative work (writing, speaking, computer games, etc) has resulted from business deals that came through my network. Other people brought me those opportunities. This isn’t unusual. Money flows through people.

As an unknown artist in any field, it’s difficult to get much exposure for your work. But if you have many friends who will help get the word out, it’s no longer so difficult.

Networking gives you the chicken and the egg at the same time. You can receive income-generating ideas and opportunities as well as exposure, without needing one to get the other.

Create Art That People Want

Think of your favorite music group. Would you respect them more if they created music you didn’t like?

When you spend money on art, is it because the artist was super creative, or is it simply because you like what they created?

Most likely you aren’t spending too much money on creative work that you don’t like. When you pull out your wallet, it’s because you like the work — or at least you expect to like it.

This doesn’t mean that the artist created the work for you (or for people like you), but it does mean that if the artist wants to get paid, there needs to be some alignment between their creativity and what people are willing to pay for.

It’s absolutely fine to create art that no one else will appreciate. Do that now and then. Just don’t expect to pay the bills with such an approach.

If you want to generate income from your art, then pay attention to what people are buying in your field. What’s in demand?

You’ll likely find that you can just as easily create works that align with trending demand but which still give you plenty of room for self-expression. These constraints are not inherently in conflict. You can choose and instead of either-or.

This article, for instance, is one that I felt inspired to write, and I’m enjoying the process of creating it, but it isn’t merely a gratuitous personal journal entry. It’s an article that I expect will provide some value to certain people. It’s art, but it’s also socially purposeful.

Sometimes people will want you to express yourself in ways you aren’t willing to deliver. Feel free to say no. Sometimes you’ll want to express yourself in ways people don’t care about. Feel free to do that. But when you want to generate income from your work, focus on the area of overlap between what people want and how you enjoy expressing your creativity. Then you can enjoy your work and pay your bills too.

If you’re going to be stubborn about this, then be prepared to see much less talented artists whizzing past you financially.

You may not control the waves of public desire, but you can still surf them.

Publish or Perish

Creating art isn’t enough. To be a financially successful artist, you must get into the habit of publishing art.

Many amateur artists amass sizable collections of half-finished pieces. The pros often do this too, but the pros get into the habit of finishing and publishing their work.

I know from experience that if I create and leave something in a half finished state, and I go more than a few days without working on it, it’s dead. The inspiration is gone. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, it’s easier to start and finish a new piece than it is to rez and finish the old one. A half finished piece isn’t 50% done; it’s more like -50% done. To finish a half-done piece weeks later may take 150% of the effort of creating a new piece from scratch.

If I start writing a blog post, and I get it 60% finished, but I get interrupted and can’t get back to it for a week, I’ll virutally never finish it up and publish it. I’ll just delete it and move on. If it’s 90%+ done, or if I just need to give it an editing pass, then I’ll likely finish it, but if I can’t cross the finish line with ease, it’s a dead work that will never see the light of day.

I’ve learned how important it is to kill my unfinished work and let it be dead. I don’t save it or let it linger in my drafts folder. I put it out of its misery and kill it for good. Then when I look at my portfolio of creative work, I see 1000+ finished and published creative works: mostly articles but also computer games, speeches, workshops, a book, a poem, and some podcasts. I don’t think of unpublished works as being part of my portfolio. If I didn’t complete and publish them shortly after conception, they’re dead to me.

This may sound overly harsh, but what’s the alternative? Amass an ever-growing collection of partially finished pieces? How do you feel when you think about that monstrous pile of unfinished work? It’s draining, distracting, and demotivating, isn’t it? It’s clutter that weighs on you.

If you’re thinking about stuff you need to finish up from the past, then your creativity isn’t focused on the present. Creativity is limitless and abundant. There’s no need to tie it to past obligations. Thinking that there’s value to be extracted from partially finished work is a result of scarcity thinking. If there was major value in finishing those pieces, you’d have finished them long ago.

Chalk up the value of those partially finished pieces to the learning experience you got from them. If you wouldn’t get much growth from finishing them, let them die. Focus your attention on the sweet spot of artistry by creating works that provide value to others and provide growth experiences for you. Your creative energies must be focused on the present, which is the only place where you can create. Don’t allow your creativity to be drained by past regrets and obligations. The flow is here and now. The wave that passed you by is gone. Don’t go swimming after it. Just ride the next wave. And there’s always a next wave.

You could say that publishing is an unnatural process. A creative work is never really done — it’s abandoned. You can keep polishing and refining a piece indefinitely, but at some point you have to declare it done and move on. If I ever feel that I published an article too soon, I’ll give it an extra editing pass after it’s posted (that’s a nice thing about publishing online). Sometimes I over-polish a piece that probably didn’t warrant so much attention. It takes time to calibrate and get a feel for when a piece is ready to publish, and there’s no right or wrong solution per se. It’s mainly a matter of trial and error and experience.

When I begin a new creative work, it’s a race to the finish line to get it published. I need to express the ideas quickly and tune out distractions till the piece is done and released. Friends who’ve been around me when I’m designing a workshop, for instance, will know how single-minded I can be during such times. Even if I’m ahead of schedule, I can scarcely pay attention to anything but the workshop. My energy is focused on bringing everything to completion. I can pay attention to other things when the workshop is over.

I find it best to work on one major creative piece at a time. I try not to start something new until the previous piece is done. I can make some exceptions like writing a blog post in the midst of a bigger project like designing a workshop, but I want to avoid creating more loose ends. I wouldn’t want to design two workshops at the same time, for instance.

Visibility First, Then Income

If you want to become a successful artist, you’ll need to get your art into people’s hands (or eyes, ears, etc). If the art is hidden in your closet or buried on your hard drive, don’t expect it to generate much income.

I recommend that you focus on visibility first, and don’t worry so much about generating income at first. If you aren’t very visible, you probably won’t be able to earn more than a pittance anyway. But if you can gain visibility and sustain it for the long run, then it’s much easier to generate abundant income.

A good strategy for creating visibility is to give your work away for free. Spread it as widely as possible. Encourage people to share it with no restrictions. If you can manage it, favor media that encourages sharing without costing you anything — i.e. anything that can be put into digital form.

Show your work to anyone who might be interested in it. Give your art as much state time as you can. If you aren’t willing to do this, don’t expect your art leap onto the stage and market itself. Being timid about promoting your work will hurt you financially; don’t pretend it won’t.

If you give your work away for free or otherwise procure lots of stage time for it, and people don’t seem to appreciate it, consider the possibility that your work (1) isn’t very good, or (2) isn’t what people want. This happens to just about everyone. Everybody falls the first time. Keep refining your creative output until you strike something that people appreciate enough to share.

Once your visibility is high enough, then start charging for your work.

Commit to Excellence

Mediocre artists are broke artists.

Don’t settle for mediocre. Put in the hours and years it takes to become outstanding. If you want to become an overnight success, spend a decade building your skills first.

There’s little income to be made from most art forms except for those who commit to excellence. Such fields are simply too crowded and too competitive. The good news, however, is that most people in these fields are just dabblers. They aren’t serious about it. Rest assured they’ll give up within a year or two and go back to working at Starbucks, only to be replaced by people with even less experience. There’s a lot of churn at the bottom.

Consider the field of music, for instance. There are millions of wannabe musicians, but only a small percentage of them are committed to becoming truly outstanding. They’ll practice a little here and there, and they might dream of great success, but at the end of the day, they’d rather watch TV than invest an extra hour or two in practice. These people aren’t your competition. If you stick with your craft for 3+ years, you’ll be well beyond the majority of them, and they’ll never match your skill.

Persistence is your friend. With persistence you can easily outlast 99% of the people in your field. The longer you stick with your craft, the more the gains begin to pile up: a growing portfolio, a growing network of peers, and a growing fan base. As these aspects improve over time, it gets harder to fail, and it becomes easier to generate income. You have more work to leverage for income generation. You have a larger network to bring you opportunities. And you have more fans who could become customers.

If, however, you go around switching fields every year or two, you’ll have a hard time building a financially sustainable practice. If you’re unwilling to commit to long-term mastery, you’ll be denied access to its rewards. You can still switch fields if you really want to, but there’s a price for doing so.

It may be true that 99% of artists within a particular field aren’t making much money. But that’s largely because those 99% aren’t any good at it. The top 1% get paid because they’re the ones who put in those 10,000 hours to become world class.

Are you willing to commit yourself to joining that top 1%? Do you love your art so much that you’ll invest 10,000 hours into it? That’s about 5 years working full-time. If you aren’t willing to make that kind of commitment, well… Starbucks is hiring.

If 99% of artists in your field won’t become financially successful, then you’d better commit to bypassing that 99% if you wish to avoid their fate.

I realize this might sound like a very difficult challenge, but the truth is that it’s actually easier to make such a commitment in the long run. It only appears more difficult in the beginning. Think of it like this. The time is going to pass anyway. Someday that distant future will become your present reality. Now imagine that your future self is reflecting upon the decisions you made today, decisions that greatly influenced his/her results in life. Is that future you shaking his/her head in disgust or smiling in appreciation?

One reason I kicked off my 30-day trial of learning music is that I’ve been thinking about where I’d like to be at age 50 (I turned 40 earlier this year). I have the sense that my 50-year old self would really appreciate it he had some serious musical ability to enjoy during his 50s. He’s not too particular about which instrument(s), but he’d be disappointed if he had to enter his 50s with no musical skills to speak of. He’s glad I developed my writing and speaking skills to such an extent, and he can count on their continued development, but he’d be even happier if he could express himself through music as well.

I’m not at the point where I’m willing to commit a decade to learning music, but a 30-day trial is a good starter commitment. I’m enjoying it so far, and I’ll likely commit beyond that point, but for now an exploratory approach is best since I wouldn’t even know what kind of long-term commitment to make yet. Even as I conduct this 30-day trial, however, I’m approaching it with the mindset that I might be initiating a new thread of skill building that could last for decades. This long view sharpens my short-term decisions. I’m willing to embrace the awkward phase of being a newbie, since I know it’s a stepping stone to building new skills I can enjoy for years to come.

Get to Know Your Customers, and Serve Them

If you want to be financially successful in any field, not just art, then sales are very important. Without sales, there’s no income, and without income, it’s hard to sustain yourself as an artist. If you can maintain strong sales, then even if you screw up almost everything else, you’re still going to have a sustainable art practice. Strong sales are very forgiving of mistakes. Weak sales aren’t.

Fortunately, selling needn’t be pushy or manipulative. If you create work that aligns with what people want, then selling is largely a matter of letting people know that you have something that will please them. If, on the other hand, you have to do a lot of convincing to get people to open their wallets, then the problem is likely the art itself.

Earlier this year I went to a local art fair. I walked past a lot of art that didn’t resonate with me, but then I stumbled upon an artist from Arizona who had a collection I really liked. I have an affinity for Southwestern art, especially pieces depicting bears and eagles. This artist had some really unique copper pieces, and I bought one of them. It currently hangs above the fireplace in my living room. He did his part to help sell the piece — very softly — but it was mostly a “you had me at hello” situation. The main act of selling he did was to envision, design, and create a piece that someone like me would appreciate.

If you want to create art to sell, it’s wise to know why someone would actually buy it. If you haven’t a clue or if you assume you’ll figure out how to sell it later, best of luck with that.

Selling is often treated as a discipline unto itself, but for a serious artist, selling is an integral part of the creative process. Selling begins with the question, Who would most appreciate this? Ideally this question should be asked before you start a new creative project. Determine who will buy your work and why. Who’s the buyer? Does such a person actually exist? How do you know?

If at all possible, meet your customers (or at least your potential customers) face to face. Talking to your customers about what they want is perhaps the best source for your sales education.

At my workshops I like to spend many extra hours talking to attendees outside the workshop itself. On the first day as people are arriving, I greet them with hugs. I stick around during breaks, at lunch, and at the end of each day to talk to people. Partly I do this because I enjoy it — these are interesting people to connect with. But I also do it to better understand them. Who are they? Why did they attend this workshop? What else can I help them with?

It’s important for me to create workshops that give me plenty of freedom for creative expression, but it’s also important to give people what they desire, especially if I want my workshops to be financially sustainable.

Respect the role of money in your artistic endeavors, but don’t put money on a pedestal. Money is lubrication to grease the wheels of your artistic endeavors. You’re always free to create art for art’s sake, even if it won’t pay the bills, but if you want to get paid, then create art to sell.

Canadian actor Michael Ironside said in an interview that he accepts some acting roles for the money (Robocop being a good example), while other roles he performs for the soul. I make similar choices. Sometimes I write articles that I expect will boost traffic or generate income, while other times I write purely for the sheer enjoyment of being creative. And sometimes I get the best of both worlds. This variety is very nice.

Creating art to sell doesn’t equate to selling out. In my opinion the sell-outs are the artists who spend more time complaining than they do creating. If you create art to sell, then you can spend a lot more time creating art for the sheer joy of creating, and once you’ve built up the sales side of your practice, you may find that there are buyers for anything you create.

Buy Art

As a corollary to the above, when you see art you like, buy it. Yes, with money.

Get into the habit of financially supporting artists whose work you appreciate. Don’t do the piracy thing. Piracy is rooted in scarcity thinking, and it’s disrespectful of the artists. The beliefs that justify piracy are at odds with the beliefs that will help you generate sustainable income from your art.

By piracy I’m referring to illegally obtaining something that isn’t free. That which is given freely is a different animal. All of my blog posts and podcasts are uncopyrighted, for instance, so you can translate, republish, or share them however you wish, and it wouldn’t be piracy. But if you do this with copyrighted works without the artist’s permission, that’s piracy.

When I first began developing my own computer games, I was still into pirating games and other software. I realized that if I expected people to buy my software instead of just pirating it, it made sense for me to get my own house in order. So I stopped pirating, and I began purchasing what I wanted. If I wasn’t willing to purchase it, and if it wasn’t free, I did without.

Making that transition was easier than I thought, and it felt really good. I observed that I appreciated what I purchased more than I did when I pirated it. I also became more selective about what I consumed and less impulsive. My computer was easier to manage. I felt better about myself knowing that I was helping to support other people’s creative work. I felt like I was partnering with them in some fashion.

If you want others to financially support you as an artist, take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Are you an avid supporter of other people’s creative work? Do you readily purchase art that you appreciate?

Like many people I have a sizable collection of media, especially music. None of it is pirated. When I scroll through my collection, I not only see a lot of art that I enjoy, but I also see a list of artists that I’ve helped support financially. It’s comforting to know that Alan Wilder will never run out of hair gel.

I know it’s tempting to try to justify piracy. Don’t go there. You can claim that everything digital should be free, but such beliefs are at odds with those who choose not to release their work for free. Some people would still appreciate fair payment for their work. If you’re going to demonize them for making such choices, realize that you’re also necessarily demonizing the part of you that would like to make money from your creative work. That incongruency will surely come back to haunt you; usually it will show up in the form of self-sabotage.

When you support other artists financially, you reinforce the belief that you deserve to be financially supported. That’s an important belief to have if you wish to succeed as an artist.

Although it might seem more difficult to pay for work you could easily pirate, in the long run it’s easier than the alternative. If you wish others to respect your work and to pay for it, then have the integrity to show this much respect to other artists. Respect their right to ask for payment. If you feel their prices are unreasonable, don’t patronize them.

Supporting other people’s creative work can also be good motivation to increase your own income. I rather like spending money on books, seminars, music, and other art forms. This tells me that the more money I earn, the more I can support other creative people.

Learn to Handle Criticism

In any creative field, you’ll find plenty of people willing to assume the role of critic, largely because it’s easier to criticize art than to create it. Sometimes critics can be helpful by providing specific ideas for improvement, but they rarely bother to do so. More often they approach art with a sense of entitlement combined with undercurrents of bitterness, resentment, and envy.

A good summary of the relationship between artist and critic can be found in Teddy Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic” speech from 1910:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

What really disturbs critics is the knowledge that they don’t want to face — that they simply don’t matter. The critic is irrelevant and superfluous. History remembers the great artists, but it forgets the critics.

If you try to respect the critic, you’ll feed more power to the self-judgmental part of you, the part that says you aren’t good enough and can’t measure up. To empower your critics is to empower your self-doubt. If you want to be more prolific, then give your full attention to your artistry, and starve the critic of attention. A good way to transition is to laugh at the critical part of you. Poke fun at it. See it as the joke it truly is.

Abandoning self-criticism doesn’t mean letting go of reason and becoming blind to areas where you could stand to improve. You can still examine your work with an eye for improvement without getting bogged down by the voices of envy and resentment.

Genuine constructive criticism is what artists bestow upon themselves. Look at what you’ve created, and pay attention to your reaction. What do you think about it? How do you feel about it? Is this your best work? How could it be improved?

Feedback from others can be helpful, but such feedback rarely comes from would-be critics. Often the best feedback comes from other artists, people who understand what it’s like to play in the arena. Even then, you’ll still need to take such feedback with a grain of salt. If it makes sense to you, then use it, but don’t give it more weight than your own opinion.

Here’s some more text from that same Roosevelt speech:

There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities — all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness.

Offer your art to those who will appreciate it. You can safely ignore the critics, for history will treat them as if they never even existed. Their weakness is unworthy of your respect. Regardless of criticism, artists will continue creating art. The artists will have their cake and eat it too… while the critics scurry for the crumbs.

One of my most criticized pieces is the article 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job (2006). Another one is 10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion (2008). For me these were inspired pieces that I truly enjoyed creating. Criticism of those pieces has drawn even more attention to them, making them some of the most popular works I’ve ever created — both are in the top 1% in terms of the referrals and traffic they generate. To critique such pieces, the critic is admitting that the work was impactful, so the critic is actually validating and promoting the artistry of those pieces.

In the long run the critics ultimately serve the artist’s interests, whether the critics realize it or not. The critic draws more attention to the artist’s work, which can still benefit the artist with extra publicity, even if the criticism is largely negative. A professional artist will seldom return the favor by publicizing a particular critic, however. This dynamic reflects the artist’s commitment to his/her creative expression as well as the critic’s denial of his/her creative abilities. The role of the critic may seem pitiable, but ultimately the critic serves to elevate the artist, which is good for everyone.

Appreciate Your Customers

While your critics can be safely ignored because they don’t provide any value, your customers are actively supporting your work, making it easier for you to keep doing what you love. It makes sense to support your customers in supporting you.

As an artist it’s easy to confuse your customers with your fans, but these aren’t merely different labels for the same groups. Your fans consist of anyone who appreciates your work. Your customers are the people who are financially supporting your work. These groups will likely overlap, but it isn’t unusual for an artist to have many fans who aren’t customers.

If you have lots of fans but few customers, you don’t have a financially sustainable operation.

It may seem like a wonderful thing to have lots of fans, but fans who aren’t customers can potentially hurt you more than help you, unless they’re helping to refer more customers to you. Maintaining a large fan base can consume extra time and resources. For example, if you have a website, more fans may mean more web traffic, and more web traffic means higher hosting and maintenance costs as well as more communication.

It’s wise to appreciate your fans too, but be careful about encouraging too much fandom at the expense of customers. If you want to be famous, then more fans are great, but if you want a financially sustainable lifestyle as an artist, then put your customers first. If you lose some fans but retain your customers, you can still sustain your practice. But if you lose your customers by focusing too heavily on your non-customer fans, you could see your work becoming very popular while you become very broke. It happens.

Fans may feel that by appreciating your work, they’re somehow helping you. They may believe they’re on your side. But is that really true? Love and appreciation are nice, but they won’t keep the lights turned on.

Imagine that you hosted a dinner at your house. Guests arrive empty-handed, enjoy the food you provide, and graciously thank you for it. Do you perceive that as a form of support? It may be emotionally and socially supportive, but it isn’t financially supportive. How long can you sustain this? The more you do it, the more you incur a hit of time and resources. Sure, you may end up with lots of people appreciating your cooking and your generosity, and they may gladly refer others to you, but where will that lead in the long run? By itself this isn’t a good way to sustain your artistry.

To have a financially sustainable operation, it’s fine to have fans, but you’ll also need to see a certain percentage of those fans choosing to become customers.

Some artists take this to the extreme, focusing entirely on customers and ignoring non-customer fans altogether. Others go the opposite route, treating customers and fans as equally valuable. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. It’s a matter of finding the right equilibrium for you, one that can create long-term sustainability.

I enjoy seeing a healthy ecosystem around my work that consists of many more fans that customers. It gives me a sense of optimism because I only need to see a small percentage of fans become customers to maintain financial sustainability, and I’m happy to see people enjoy my work whether they pay for it or not. My conversion rate from fans to customers is high enough that I can afford to scale up without much risk to sustainability. But I do have to make some sacrifices for this to be viable.

I can afford to hang out with workshop attendees for a few hours after a workshop. I can’t afford to give this kind of personal attention to anyone who visits my website, however, despite receiving many requests to that effect. From a financial perspective, I can’t justify investing as much time and energy in non-customer fans — I have to put more attention on serving the needs of my customers. To fans who don’t wish to become customers, this may sound disappointing, but it should be understandable.

Your non-customer fans may not like the fact that you pay more attention to your customers, and this realization may cause them to feel under-appreciated, but ultimately this is a matter of common sense. If a non-customer fan feels under-appreciated and abandons you as a result, you’ll lose the chance to someday convert them to a customer as well as the other customers they may have eventually referred, but that’s a gain that may never have been realized anyway. On the other hand, losing an existing customer is a less speculative loss and one that anyone with good business sense would work harder to prevent.

In your relationships with other artists, notice the difference between being a fan and being a patron, and start paying attention to why you make these choices as you do. This will deepen your understanding of how you wish to relate to these groups as an artist. Again, there’s no right or wrong way to do it, but you’ll find that some ways feel better to you than others.

Socializing with fans and customers can be very enjoyable. It’s wonderful to connect with people who have shared interests, and you’ll generally find such people to be very friendly. After all, you’ve already earned their appreciation. But it’s crucial to maintain reasonable boundaries and balance these connections within the context of your life as a whole. It’s all too easy to overdo it, feel overwhelmed by too many people trying to connect with you at the same time, and actually end up resenting the attention. If left unchecked, you could end up sabotaging the very success you’ve been seeking.

So appreciate your fans, and appreciate your customers, but safeguard your boundaries. As your work becomes more popular, you’ll need to pay more attention to maintaining your sacred creative space. Don’t allow your fans, customers, or anyone else to encroach upon that. Your connection to the creator-god within you (however you may define it) must not be derailed. In the long run, your fans and customers will forgive you for not being as available as they might like… as long as you keep creating.

Learn to Surf

As your artistic practice matures, managing your relationships with fans and customers — along with all the other relationships in your life (family, friends, business partners, etc) — can be one of the trickiest aspects of your practice to get right. You only have so much time and attention to devote to each of these groups, and there are consequences for being too giving as well as for being too stingy. These challenges can be exacerbated as your popularity increases. The shifting populations of fans, customers, and business contacts will keep throwing you out of equilibrium, and solutions that worked for you last year may seem utterly broken this year.

The best advice I can give is to accept that your equilibrium is a moving target. Fortunately you have some say in the matter. If you want to be more social, take action by inviting new connections. If you’re feeling socially overwhelmed and need some privacy, feel free to back off.

I’ve learned that the more often I blog, the more incoming communication I receive. If I have a backlog of communication and need a break, the best thing I can do is to stop blogging so much. When things really get overwhelming, I can disable my contact form or take a break from social media. Then when I’m ready to be more social, I can start blogging more often, and I can more actively invite people to connect.

I have made more screw-ups in this area than I can count, but with each passing year, I develop a better understanding of where my equilibrium is, and I know how important it is to go with the flow. Sometimes the flow takes me in a very social direction. Other times I feel an intense desire to be alone and turn within. The biggest mistakes I’ve made were the result of failing to honor and accept where the flow was going — i.e. trying to be social when I really wanted to be alone in my creator space, or forcing myself to create when I’d much rather be around people and share love and laughter. As it turned out, the balance I sought was never a static state where I could run essentially the same patterns week after week. Balance looks more like a sine wave, constantly oscillating from one extreme to the other. And to make it even more complicated, there are smaller sub-oscillations that combine with those larger oscillations.

Imagine trying to balance a basketball on your finger. If you try to keep your hand totally rigid, the ball quickly falls. To balance the ball you must be in constant motion, making continuous adjustments based on what the ball is doing. This is how it feels to balance the creative and the social aspects of art. Inspiration never sits still; it is always in motion. Either you’re diving more deeply into your private creator space, or you’re opening yourself to more social connections. The key, as I’ve learned, is not to resist these oscillations. Instead, learn to ride them like waves, much like a surfer.

Another metaphor for thinking about balance — perhaps a better one than surfing — is to think of your artistic life as a song. Consider that your life is a combination of rhythm, melody, harmony, etc. A song is always in motion, but it isn’t chaotic or random — there’s a structure to it. That structure may be complex and difficult to grasp, but it’s there nonetheless. Notice where the song of your life wants flow next. Notice when you’re trying to force it to go in a direction that doesn’t feel right. What might be the next notes in the progression? If you can sense the structure of the song and develop a feel for where it wants to go, you’ll find it easier to cultivate a fulfilling life-work balance as an artist.

* * *

The bottom line is that making a sustainable living as an artist is doable. It doesn’t require a miracle, nor does it mandate putting money ahead of artistic expression. It does, however, require some intelligent choices and a genuine commitment. For those who are committed to the mastery of their craft for the long haul, ensuring the financial sustainability of one’s work is a worthwhile and achievable goal.

Invite the universe to express itself through you, and do your best to get out of its way. It will support you on this path if you’re committed; otherwise it will bring you every manner of obstacle to validate your lack of commitment.

The question being put to you now is: Will you do it? Will you step into the arena? Will you know the great enthusiasms and the great devotions? Or will you sit in the stands as a spectator… or a critic?

Is your future self looking back on this day with intense appreciation and gratitude… or with disappointment and regret?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Arbeit Macht Frei is a slogan on a sign above the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland (among other concentration camps used by the Nazis). It roughly translates as, “Work sets you free.” What the Nazis expressed with cruel irony, I say seriously. Embracing work is a path to freedom. Resisting work is a path to enslavement.

Much struggle is the result of hard work resisted, but hard work is more than just putting in the time. To ensure that hard work pays off, an intelligent effort is required.

Justifying Laziness

Laziness is an emotional impulse — a common desire to enjoy the pleasures of life before we’ve earned them — but it’s not a very effective or sustainable approach.

Do you need to earn the pleasures of life? That depends on what you want. If you want something that’s free or freely offered — by nature or by people — you can simply claim it. If you’re walking through a field and want to eat some of the wild plants, go ahead and enjoy nature’s bounty.

If, however, you desire something that was created by human hands (especially hands that expect to be fairly compensated for their efforts) such as a nice home or a speedy piece of technology, then laziness is largely a path to scarcity. Get used to being denied many of life’s benefits if your attitude is entrenched in laziness.

If you resist the emotion of laziness when you experience it, then the emotional feeling of laziness combined with your beliefs about what it means to be lazy will signal your brain to come up with plenty of logical-sounding justifications for your laziness-induced episodes, such as:

• Everything should be free without requiring effort.
• It’s okay to mooch off of others, just this one time.
• I can manifest whatever I want, even if I’m not willing to work for it.
• Laziness is more spiritual than hard work.

The problem with these justifications is that they don’t mesh well with reality. Laziness is an emotional impulse, not a logical choice. Justifying laziness with logic is like breaking your dishes in anger and then claiming that you did it because you needed new dishes. You broke your dishes because you were pissed and lost control. You slacked off because you felt lazy and unmotivated. Don’t overcomplicate this.

Regardless of your personal “shoulds,” there are lots of items and experiences in life that aren’t free but which can easily be attained by earning and spending money. A full wallet can do a lot of manifesting with grace and ease.

You can try manifesting your desires without lifting a finger. This can work for small things, and sometimes you’ll get lucky, but if you resist working towards your desires directly, it’s delusional to claim that you’re a vibrational match for receiving them.

If you want to improve your manifesting, at least meet the universe halfway. It’s hard to say you’re committed to experiencing a result if you aren’t actively moving towards it. Rest in the space of allowing when you get stuck and need inspiration, but when the next action is staring you in the face, taunting you to get moving, then release the parking brake and go, go, go!

Laziness isn’t spiritual — unless your intent is to cultivate an unrefined and slothful spirit. If that’s the case though, you should have incarnated as a rock… perhaps below the tree in my backyard where the birds like to poop.

Justifying laziness with seemingly logical explanations after the fact is pointless — pure nonsense used to explain a resisted emotion. The emotion of laziness requires no justification, however. Next time you’re feeling lazy, just admit that you’re feeling lazy, and leave it at that. Don’t try to justify it. If you decide to act on that emotion, make it clear to yourself that you’re acting emotionally. Be congruent with your emotional truth in that moment, and don’t try to layer it with nonsensical explanations to make your actions seem logical. Occasional laziness has its place — we all need a break sometimes — but if you resist it, you’re only going to expand it.

Recognize pervasive laziness for what it is — a block that stands between you and your desires. Don’t feed laziness with pointless justification. Feed your desires with action instead. If you’re going to indulge in laziness, then indulge in it fully and consciously till it runs its course.

Cultivating High Standards for Work

Hard work can be very enjoyable if you’re working towards desires of your choosing.

Let your desires motivate you towards action. Know that you can achieve them and that you will achieve them — if you’re willing to make a serious, committed effort. Don’t expect much progress though if you’re only willing to take a half-assed approach. Achieving meaningful goals requires that you commit your entire ass, not just one cheek.

It’s possible to work hard and not get much done if your standards for work are too low. These standards include:

• what kinds of work you’re willing to do
• how well you maintain focus and avoid distractions
• how well you’re leveraging your skills and talents
• what levels of quality you consider to be acceptable output
• favoring work you enjoy

If your standards for the kinds of work you do are low, you’ll get caught up doing a lot of pointless busywork that you don’t need to be doing and which doesn’t provide much social value. Doing work that’s beneath you can be a mild diversion for a while, but if you do too much of it, it’s just another time waster.

If you work with poor focus and succumb to distractions, you’re not working hard, and your results will suffer for it. Working for 3 hours with good purpose and focus is often much more productive than putting in 8 hours of distraction-laden half-work.

If you do too much work you’re not very good at, and you aren’t improving much, shift your work around to align more closely with your skills and talents. You’ll get more done in less time, and you’ll be able to take on bigger challenges as well. Regardless of whether you believe you work for yourself or for someone else, you ultimately choose the work that lands on your plate, either by direct consent or through silent approval.

Maintain high standards for the quality of your output. When you’re working on something important to you, do your best work. If you aren’t willing to do your best, then switch to work that demands the best of you.

Keep shifting your work in the direction of what you love to do. This week do more of what you love than you did last week. The more you enjoy your work, the easier it is to feel motivated. This kind of hard work feels good.

Think improvement, not perfection. Keep raising your standards over time. Strive to become more dedicated to your work this year than you were last year.

High standards require commitment. You cannot maintain high standards while simultaneously tolerating low standards. Start noticing where your standards are out of alignment with your best efforts, and make some real changes. Disconnect from those who are constantly dragging you down. Dump the uninspired work that makes you feel like procrastinating instead of contributing. Brainstorm a list of 20 things you can do to increase the quality of your work output; then implement one of those items immediately.

Hard Work and Growth

Holding public workshops is very challenging for me. I know my material well enough that I could surely wing it through a whole workshop, especially if it’s one I’ve done many times before, but I’m not willing to do that. Even if other people didn’t notice, I’d notice, and I wouldn’t feel good about it.

And so I work very hard at each workshop, from preparation to delivery to completion. I show up well prepared and well rested. I prepare myself mentally and emotionally for a demanding weekend. I arrive early, and I hang out during breaks and at the end of each day of the workshop to answer people’s questions. This work is very challenging, and I do the best I can each time, always trying to top what I did last time. After each workshop I do a postmortem to look for ways I can improve the experience for next time. I embrace the principle of kaizen — continuous improvement.

This is hard work, but it’s intelligent hard work. Small improvements in the workshop format and delivery can increase the value that people receive from it.

I could simply lock down the workshop format and coast for a while if I wanted to, but I wouldn’t respect myself as much if I did. If I’m going to teach others about personal growth, then I must embody that value. I want to keep growing and improving, both personally and professionally, and so my workshops must keep improving as well.

Perfection is an unattainable ideal. No human work product will be perfect. But growth and improvement are grounded and practical values. They’re achievable under real-world conditions. You can work smarter and harder today than you did yesterday. You can eliminate one distraction today that you succumbed to yesterday. You can do more work today that you enjoy and that matches your skills and talents. And this is all that’s required.

Make your best effort not to be perfect but to improve upon yesterday or last week. Take on one little change at a time. Find one small improvement you can make today, and do that day after day. After months and years of iteration, you’ll find your work much more productive, enjoyable, and rewarding.

Fulfillment

If you maintain high standards for your work, the work provides its own intrinsic rewards. Nevertheless, it’s well and good to be fairly compensated for your work.

A tremendous amount of neurological and psychological experimentation has shown that, barring abnormal conditions such as being a sociopath, our brains are hard-wired with a sense of social fairness. We typically reject approaches to life that are either too selfish or too selfless. People will even reject certain forms of personal gain if they perceive that those gains are unfair. Somewhere between thievery and sacrifice, we seek to find the right balance that keeps us feeling good about our exchanges with others.

These behaviors are normally subconscious. We don’t even think about them most of the time, but we often notice when such standards are violated, either by ourselves or by others.

I ask you to look within for a moment. Are you living up to your own standards of social fairness? How much value are you receiving from others, and what are you contributing in return? Are you too much of a moocher, taking more than you’re giving? Are you too much of a martyr, draining yourself to keeping giving even as you decline the best that life is willing to provide you?

I found that when I was mired in scarcity, I wasn’t contributing my best. I was usually working hard, but I wasn’t doing the kind of work that I felt close to my best potential contribution. And so my compensation was commensurate with that mismatch — weak.

When I shifted to work that I felt more congruent with, I didn’t have to put in as many hours, but I could still feel at the end of the day that I’d done my best. Writing one good article, even though it isn’t difficult work for me these days in terms of the skill required, is still an area where I invest a lot of hard work, and I seek ongoing improvement. I enjoy expressing inspired ideas through writing, and I share them through an efficient medium that allows people to receive them immediately after publication. I push myself to publish fresh content that can help people grow. I put a lot of myself into my work. I take risks. The payoff is that I respect myself, and I value what I’m contributing. I wouldn’t feel this way, however, if I constantly succumbed to laziness and then tried to justify it as “spiritual allowing” or some such nonsense.

When you respect your work and your contribution, it’s easier to allow yourself to receive the rewards of hard work. Abundance can flow through your life with less resistance. You’ll be able to receive more rewards if you make a bigger contribution because you’ll feel you deserve it; it won’t violate your biologically pre-programmed standards of fairness. But if you know deep down that you aren’t doing your best, some part of you will block that abundance. You’ll know you didn’t really earn it.

Earn It!

Fulfillment is earned, not bestowed. I know many people would like to convince themselves that this isn’t true, and I wish them the best of luck, but I still consider it a lazy and slothful mindset to expect the universe to open the floodgates of abundance in such cases. I’m privy to the results such people consistently achieve. Year after year they struggle to pay their bills. They deny themselves wonderful experiences due to lack of funds — funds that they could be earning if they’d finally devote themselves to intelligent hard work. I share from direct experience as well. I can look to my own past and see how weak my results were when I subscribed to this mindset.

It’s a serious character weakness to think you can get something of value for little or nothing, to believe that life will flood you with abundance when you won’t commit yourself to delivering your best contribution in exchange. In fact, it’s a safe bet that you’ll subconsciously sabotage yourself from being in such a place for long. You won’t allow yourself to receive what you don’t feel you’ve earned. To receive life’s bounty, you must know without a doubt that you deserve it.

I do believe it’s well and good to adopt an abundance mindset. But this mindset isn’t to be found behind Door #1: Laziness, Hope, and Wishful Thinking. It’s only behind Door #2: Intelligent Hard Work, Doing Your Best, and Making a Meaningful Social Contribution.

Do Your Best

Are you doing your BEST? Not just working hard… Not just putting in the time… Not just showing up…

Are you doing your personal best to grow and improve today? Are you besting what you did last week? Are you working on the best project you can be working on to make a meaningful social contribution?

If you aren’t doing your best, how can you shamelessly expect the best in return? If you output mediocrity, expect to receive that. That’s only fair, isn’t it?

If you truly do your best, then you have good cause to expect the best in return. Time and again you’ll see that when you really do your best, the universe will back you up. Social support will come to you. Resources will arrive. Obstacles will be overcome. Encouraging signs will appear. Life will flow with grace and ease.

Arbeit Macht Frei contains another level of irony. On the surface it may appear that hard work is in conflict with freedom. But the truth is that in order to extract real value from your freedom, you must make a serious effort. Freedom is a blank canvas. Hard work makes it a masterpiece.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” I hope you realize just how profound that statement is. But just in case you don’t, let me share a personal story about it.

During my first 5 years in business (1994-1998), I lost money every year, turning my $20K life savings into $150K of debt. That’s a net loss of $170K, or $34K per year on average. In 1999 I finally went bankrupt when my credit ran out.

Every year since then, my business made a decent profit.

So I suffered a negative cashflow each year from 1994-1998, and then from 1999 – present (12 years in a row and counting), I enjoyed a positive cashflow each year.

What the heck happened in 1999? What was responsible for this major change in results?

Learning How NOT to Make Money

I can actually pinpoint the exact moment when I felt the shift. I underwent a radical change in my perspective. I turned the way I thought about business upside down. My attitude and my motivation changed.

Obviously there were some catalyzing experiences that led to this epiphany such as getting kicked out of my apartment and going bankrupt, but when the conditions were right for it, the actual mental and emotional shifts happened fast — in a matter of minutes. It was like flipping a switch, partly in my mind… but mostly in my heart.

Here are the main before-and-after differences:

During my first 5 years in business, I focused on making my business successful. I pursued deals, money, and projects as if they were things to be acquired. I wanted to create hit products that sold well (computer games at the time). My motivation had a lot to do with proving myself, with making my mark on my particular field. I visualized my games getting glowing reviews, and I imagined seeing them selling in software stores. Money was a big concern. I always went for the deal that I expected would put the most money in my pocket and lead to the greatest success.

During my last 12 years in business, I focused on having fun, enjoying life, and creatively expressing myself. I stopped worrying about whether or not I was ever going to be successful. The bankruptcy supplied plenty of proof that I’d already failed dismally, so I didn’t see any point in continuing to pursue the same priorities that led me there. I was using a cardboard box as a piece of furniture, a symbol of just how much financial success I’d been able to achieve. Since I’d been soundly thrashed while playing the success game, I decided to change the rules and try my hand at the “let’s just play for fun” game.

A Tale of Two Mindsets

My initial motivation for starting my computer games business was to make more money. For several months before that, I worked as a contract game programmer on the side while going to college. I completed a 4-pack of Windows games, doing all of the programming and much of the design work for a local games company. When the games got published, I received about $1 in programmer’s royalties for every $7 the company received. Other people at the company contributed artwork, music, and some design work, and of course they closed a deal with a publisher too. But these were fairly basic games from a resource standpoint, and it was clear to me that I was doing well over 50% of the actual production work, probably 70-80% in terms of sheer hours invested. I even wrote the help files and instruction manuals.

I recognized that with a bit more effort, and with the help of the right people, such as an artist and a musician, I could essentially do what this company was doing, and I’d get to keep a lot more of the profits. Finding talented people to work with wasn’t too difficult, so soon I was off and running.

I had the technical and design skills to create more games at least as good as those I created for the local game company, but after years of trying, I was never actually able to make a profit.

While running the business for the first 5 years, I was constantly looking for ways to make money. If I smelled potential dollar signs, I’d chase after them. I ran after a lot of elusive deals that fizzled, fell apart, or collapsed, even after some advances were received.

I worked hard, hard, hard, sometimes even sleeping at the office. But I could never get the money coming in with any consistency. Ironically the harder I tried to make money, the faster I lost money. Instead of the Midas touch, I somehow mastered the Medusa touch.

Looking back, I didn’t do that initial contract programming work for the money. I did it for the love of game programming. I was in college at the time, and a friend pointed out a flier about a game programming position. He suggested I take a look at it because he knew I was into computer games, and we were both computer science majors close to graduating. It seemed like a wonderful opportunity to me.

I went for an interview with the company. I felt confident about getting the job, and I really didn’t care how much they paid me. I just wanted to work on games. So when they asked me how much I wanted to be paid, I said “$10 an hour,” which was a ridiculously lowball amount. Game programming may not pay as much as some other types of programming, but it certainly pays more than $20K per year, even for a starting programmer who’s still in school.

That company hired me on the spot, and I must say they got a great deal. I hit the ground running and threw myself into the first project they assigned me. They were stunned that I had a prototype up and running after only 9 days, and they actually pulled me off that project and assigned me something more ambitious.

One time my project manager asked me how many hours a week I was putting in. This was during the summer when I wasn’t attending classes. I told him about 40 hours, which would have seemed reasonable because I worked at their offices Mon-Fri during normal business hours. But I actually lied. In truth I continued working on their game projects at home on evenings and weekends. Realistically I was probably putting in 60-80 hours most weeks. And those hours were dedicated to solid coding work, not to email or any other distractions. I said that I worked 40 hours a week because I didn’t want to make the other programmers in the company seem less dedicated. I was on good terms with them — and I wanted to keep it that way.

I wasn’t working hard and fast for low pay to impress anyone. I did it for the sheer love of the work. I was enthralled by the technical challenges of each game. There was nothing else I wanted to be doing. I probably would have done that work for free.

Within a month or two, I think the management of the company could no longer stomach seeing me do such high quality work for so little, so they voluntarily doubled my pay. I didn’t request it, but I received it with gratitude. $20 per hour is a lot for a college student.

By the time the royalties were added in (after the game hit store shelves the following year), I probably ended up making about $50 per hour for programming those games, even though I only asked for $10 per hour. Plus it was really cool to walk into software stores and see something I created on the shelves.

That’s rather beautiful, isn’t it? I certainly thought so. It’s a classic example of sowing first, then reaping.

And then over the next 5 years, I proceeded to take this beautiful model and completely screw it up.

I underwent a perspective shift that seemed intelligent at the time. The potential for greater success hit me, and I began seeing dollar signs. That local games business immediately offered me another project to work on, and I turned them down so I could start my own game development business. I did that specifically because I wanted to make more money.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was simply expressing the American entrepreneurial spirit, right?

Getting My Ass Kicked by Kolrami

After 5 years of total failure, I finally had to admit that my great plan wasn’t working. Going bankrupt was a hint and a half that something went awry. The more I chased after money, the faster it ran away from me, as if screaming, “The horror! The horror!”

So in 1999 I finally gave up. I didn’t enjoy living this way. It wasn’t producing the results I wanted, so for that reason alone I could justify declaring “game over.” But beyond that, those 5 years were very frustrating. I did my best to be positive and optimistic, but seeing some great projects canceled after years of work were serious disappointments.

In my moment of epiphany, I realized that my decision to pursue money was when everything started going kittywompus. Becoming more financially ambitious simply did not work.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Peak Performance,” the master strategist Kolrami competes with the android character Data in a game of Strategema. The crew expects Data to win, just as you’d expect a modern chess-playing computer to kick your ass at chess. They confidently advise Data to take the shortest path to victory in order to put a dent in Kolrami’s smugness. However, Kolrami soundly defeats Data without breaking a sweat. Data is stunned by the loss and assumes he must have some kind of programming defect, going so far as to remove himself from active duty until he can figure out what’s wrong with him.

Later in that episode, Captain Picard informs Data that it’s possible to make no mistakes and still lose. This leads Data to challenge his assumptions about the game. He accepts Kolrami’s offer of a rematch, and this time he plays Kolrami to an endless stalemate, leading Kolrami to eventually surrender in disgust. The crew celebrates Data’s victory and asks how he did it.

Data confesses that he couldn’t defeat Kolrami by playing to win because that’s what Kolrami expected him to do. Every advantage-maximizing move that Data attempted was blocked by a superior counter-move from Kolrami. So in the rematch, Data used a different strategy. He bypassed obvious avenues of advancement and played for a draw instead of trying to win. This visibly frustrated Kolrami and allowed Data to theoretically play the game indefinitely, rendering defeat impossible.

This episode may contradict game theory and minimax algorithms, assuming that Data could search ahead more moves than Kolrami could, but setting aside that issue, I found tremendous value in this lesson. It seemed like the perfect analogy for my own situation. I felt like I’d made no serious mistakes, but I still lost. When I reviewed my previous moves, they still seemed reasonable even though they led to failure, and pondering whether I might have a defective brain proved as unhelpful to me as it did to Data.

During my first 5 years in business, I played to improve my financial score. I saw each business negotiation partly as a competition. If I got more money out of a deal, it meant that the other party got less. The more I succeeded in setting things up to maximize my financial score, the more I had to diminish the scores of others. In order to maximally win, someone else had to lose, at least a little bit. The harder I tried to win, the more friction I created that would ultimately cause me to lose.

Maybe some people are good at playing this kind of game. I wasn’t. Someone always had more resources, more time, or more expensive lawyers. The more I pressed for gains, the more I felt an opposing force pushing back against me. This led to many problems such as delays and cancelations. I could blame others for it, but the truth is that I was responsible for creating that reality.

When Internet marketers treat you as a dollar sign, can you sense it? Can you feel that tugging sensation — the sense that their main motivation is to get something from you? How does this ultimately affect your relationship with them?

Bypassing Obvious Avenues of Advancement

In 1999 I decided to stop trying to make money. I stopped trying to achieve success. I had 5 years of failure to convince me that it was time to change my approach. The bankruptcy was like a bonk on the head that told me I’d better not live the next 5 years like I lived the last 5. I had no more credit and no more cash to burn, so I had to make immediate changes. I had little choice but to try a different path.

When I tried to succeed, Kolrami always showed up to kick my ass. I could never defeat him no matter how hard I tried. The harder I tried, the more vigorously he thrashed me.

So I surrendered to his superior skills. I stopped trying to win. I accepted the irony that trying to get a higher financial score actually doomed me to a negative score. The opposing force was always greater than anything I could overcome.

I decided to apply Data’s lesson to my business. Instead of trying to win, I began to play for a draw. I bypassed what seemed like obvious avenues for financial advancement, recognizing that it was exactly what Kolrami expected me to do. If I made those self-maximizing moves, he would simply knock me back, and I’d be worse off than when I started. Again, I had 5 years of experience to drill this lesson into me.

In practice what this meant was that I stopped trying to maximize revenue or profits. In each business transaction, I opted to give more than I received in return. I always sought to leave extra value on the table.

For example, in mid-1999 I priced my next game release at only $9.95, even though I believed a competitive price would have been $19.95. I began writing articles for free. I committed hundreds of hours to unpaid volunteer work. I hosted free discussion forums on my website to help other game developers succeed. I spoke at conferences and hosted roundtables for free. I made it impossible for Kolrami to counter my moves because my moves weren’t competitive.

Last year I uncopyrighted all of my articles and podcasts and donated all of them to the public domain. I also committed to placing my new articles directly into the public domain (including this one). I encouraged people to republish, translate, and/or sell my work for their own financial gain if they wanted to.

I deliberately and intentionally earn less revenue and less profit than I feel I’m capable of earning. When it comes to income generation, I hold back when it seems like the logical move would be to advance. While Kolrami expects me to play to win, I’m actually playing for a draw.

Playing for a Draw

When I played to win, I lost for 5 years in a row. I never actually won. Even when it seemed like I nailed a winning move, it always turned out to be a mistake that led to my being checkmated several moves later.

When I played for a draw, I was able to make money for 12 years in a row. And I didn’t have to work nearly as hard to make that happen.

When you play to win in a competitive game, you’re playing for someone else to lose. If you want to maximize revenue or profits, you need to maximize the amount of money your customers or clients pay you. The more money you make, the less money they get to keep. You can only go so far down this path before you start meeting serious resistance. And the more tactics and techniques you use to try to combat that resistance, the stronger the resistance becomes.

How many businesses have had to learn this lesson the hard way? The more they try to extract the maximum amount of money from you, the more you feel driven to resist them, such as by resorting to piracy to cut them out entirely.

Which businesses do you dislike most? Do you feel those businesses are playing to win at your expense? How does that affect your ongoing relationship with them?

What are your favorite businesses? Why are they your favorites?

One of my favorite businesses is Google. I like them because I feel they give me a lot more value than they ask in return. They provide me with a free search engine, free email, free calendar, etc. I benefit from their engineering expertise every day, and I’m grateful for it. I’ve paid them back in some ways over the years, such as by generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of business for them when I had Adsense on my blog… and probably millions if you include all the referrals I must have sent their way, such as other bloggers who signed up for Adsense after learning about my results with it.

Facebook, on the other hand, left me feeling used and abused after two years as an active user of their service. So I shut down my personal page and my fan page and wrote multiple articles about why I had to abandon them and take my social networking to greener pastures. Ironically, one of those articles racked up 2000+ Facebook likes.

Of course these evaluations are being continually refreshed. Google might screw up, and I may have to bid Larry and Sergey adieu. Facebook might correct its problems, and I’ll have to refriend Zuck. But for now, my perception is that Google is still playing with me, while Facebook still wants to play at me.

Becoming an Enigma

What does it mean to win? What does it mean to succeed? Does it even make sense to pursue these ideals?

I learned the hard way that it’s actually easier to enjoy an abundant and fulfilling lifestyle by playing for a draw instead of playing to win or succeed.

When you play for a draw, you change the way others relate to you. They may not understand this consciously, but they’ll behave differently towards you nonetheless.

Some of your decisions may confuse people at first, especially if they’re used to dealing with businesses that play to win, but generally people seem to respond positively. A business that plays for a draw is a breath of fresh air.

When you leave extra value on the table without trying to extract it, that value rolls over into goodwill, which is the lifeblood of a sustainable business.

For example, by giving away so much free content, my business receives a massive number of referrals. New referrals happen every single day — passively and with zero marketing costs.

I’ve done okay financially too. Not counting income from my workshops or my book, my blog alone has generated well over $1 million in revenue since I started, mostly from joint-venture promotions and affiliate programs. That’s plenty for me to sustain a positive cashflow and to enjoy an abundant lifestyle.

What about the economy? I live in Nevada, which has the highest unemployment rate of any U.S. state, according to the U.S. Dept of Labor. Lots of people here are looking for ways to make money, and they’re getting thrashed by Kolrami. They’re trying to beat a game that they can’t win. The odds are better in the casinos.

The irony, however, is that I perceive my actual income as much lower than it could be if I put more effort into it. There are lots of ways I could potentially earn more money, and some are dirt simple. For instance, for about an hour’s work, I could immediately start earning at least an extra $10K per month in passive income just by putting up Google Adsense ads, which I used to have on the site for several years. See this post if you want to know why I dropped Adsense. I deliberately choose not to earn this money.

Now you might be wondering, What kind of idiot would pass up an easy $10K/month in passive income? The kind of idiot who’s had his ass kicked by Kolrami way too many times.

You see… I don’t run my business to optimize revenue or profits. When I tried to do that, my real-world results were the exact opposite of what I wanted. So these days I deliberately make business decisions that leave significant value on the table, untapped and unextracted. Kolrami cannot make sense of these moves, and therefore he cannot counter them. Consequently, any potential competition with him remains in a state of perpetual stalemate. He cannot defeat me, and theoretically I can keep playing indefinitely.

Instead of seeing me as a competitor, my peers in this field tend to regard me as a bit of an enigma. Many of them became very curious when I did the whole copyright giveaway thing last year. From their perspective it seemed like a very risky thing to do, perhaps even foolhardy. Some regard it as very brave, while others simply don’t know what to make of it. Most aren’t willing to go down a similar path, preferring to keep all their work copyrighted so they can control it. They know that I’m an intelligent and strategic thinker, but since this action doesn’t really make logical sense from the standpoint of maximizing revenue, they don’t perceive me as any sort of competitive threat, so by default I’m treated as a non-threatening ally. And the truth is that I’m not a competitive threat of any sort because I’m not playing this game to win. I’m still playing for a stalemate with Kolrami, and I plan to continue doing so indefinitely.

Making money is very easy now. I don’t consider myself uber-rich, but I’ve achieved what I consider to be functional abundance. All my bills are paid, and I have sufficient income to enjoy the lifestyle I desire. I can work when I want and take time off when I want. And I feel I can keep this going indefinitely.

Even though I’ve made plenty of money from this business, I always have the sense that I could be earning many times more than what I’m actually earning. But I deliberately avoid that level of success, not because I’m resistant to success but because I recognize that the pursuit of such success is a trap.

It was a major lesson for me to learn that I can actually make more money by trying to make less money. I can achieve more success by trying to succeed less. This is what has actually worked for me in the real world.

The path of abundance isn’t the path that maximizes velocity. It’s the path that minimizes friction. If you try to maximize velocity, you end up maximizing friction too, thereby causing massive amounts of heat. Ultimately, you burn up.

If you race to every destination by driving as fast as your car will allow, is that the optimal approach? Or is it better to intentionally hold back a bit, driving at speeds well below your car’s maximum potential?

Success = Sustainability

Instead of seeing success as some kind of accomplishment, victory, or conquest, I think it’s wiser and more effective to define success as sustainability.

This isn’t just about how we run our lives or businesses. It’s about how we relate to each other and to our planet as a whole.

Is the most successful energy company the one that extracts and sells the earth’s resources as quickly as possible? Is a successful relationship one in which you extract maximum value from your partner, leaving them drained at the end of each day?

I like Stephen Covey’s analogy of the goose and the golden eggs. If you try to maximize all-out production by extracting as many golden eggs as possible, you eventually kill the golden goose, thereby causing your production capacity to crash. For long-term sustainability, you must nurture the golden goose. Getting greedy with the eggs will cause Kolrami to swoop in and turn your goose into foie gras.

The game of business isn’t winnable. No matter how hard you play to win, you’ll always lose in the end. Even if you become an extremely cunning player, laying waste to all who oppose you, eventually you’ll die, and your deathbed score resets to zero. Kolrami always gets the last move.

But if you largely ignore the score and play for a draw instead of trying to win, Kolrami cannot defeat you. You can play the game for as long as you like.

When you seek sustainability, the games of money and business are transformed. Instead of competing for survival and success, you can relax and enjoy yourself. Playing for fun is a whole different ride.

When you play for fun instead of trying to win, most people will relate to you in the same manner. Some players may initially assume a competitive posture with you, but once they realize you’re playing for fun instead of trying to win, they’ll quickly lower their shields, and they’ll begin to play the game with you at your level — for fun. Even highly competitive players naturally sense there’s no honor in thrashing an opponent who isn’t trying to beat them. No real victory can be achieved against a player who stands no chance of winning. Players that try to overwhelm defenseless opponents simply make themselves look ridiculous.

I’m not saying that you’ll never encounter a stubborn victory-minded person who seeks to trounce you anyway, but it’s a lot rarer when you decline to resist them. Competitive people tend to expend more energy on those who resist them. If you offer no resistance, they’re more likely to consider you a potential ally.

When I tried to win in business, I experienced frustration and failure. When I played for a draw, I had fun and enjoyed sustainable success.

If you’re still trying to win, maybe it’s time to give it up. Kolrami is just too good. You cannot hope to beat him. He’ll take all your best moves and turn them against you, causing you to end up worse off than when you started.

As for defeating Kolrami, in the strictest sense, I did not win.

I busted him up.

Thanks for the inspiration, Gene. You are still loved. <3

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Watch the videos here: A Life That Matters

Once you’ve watched the first video, follow the link at the end of the text below the video to view the next video in the series. There are 3 videos in total, and each one is a little over 10 minutes long.

These videos will give you a good overview of the more detailed process you’ll experience in the Life on Purpose Virtual Video Coach program that helps you discover your life purpose and begin living in alignment with it.

If you feel you’ve been drifting lately and would like to have more meaning, focus, and centeredness in your life — or if you’ve been thinking about a career change to do work that’s more aligned with who you truly are — these videos are a good place to begin.

Enjoy!

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

One of the top requests in that survey was for a product on the topic of Life Purpose. In reading through the many hundreds of comments, it became clear that a lot of people still feel they’re drifting, and they need more help bringing a sense of purpose to their lives, so they can feel centered and at peace with themselves — and so they can feel they’re on a path to making a meaningful contribution instead of being stuck in unfulfilling situations.

Another thing that stood out was that people want more than how-to information. They need help motivating themselves to go through the process. So even though I’ve written a good deal about life purpose in the past, and many people have found it extremely helpful, it isn’t enough to get everyone to the place they’d like to be — the place of having a deep-rooted connection to one’s life purpose.

I started working on a product along those lines because it seemed like a good place to start. Many other aspects of self development stem from clarifying your life purpose. I completed the product outline, which I expected would become a 6-10 hour audio program. But when I reviewed the outline, something didn’t feel quite right about it to me. It didn’t feel like this was really “my product.” I felt like I was using a semi-forced process that wasn’t my normal process for creating inspired content.

I acknowledged to myself that I was out of flow, so I put the product on hold for a while, worked on other projects, and took a weeklong road trip through California, intending to come back to the project a little later with a fresh perspective. I pondered whether I should take the product in a different direction. I didn’t want to scrap it because I know there’s a need for it, but I’ve learned over the years that it’s important to trust my intuition when it comes to such matters.

Synchronicities

During this time I received an email from Dr. Brad Swift about a new product he was releasing on the subject of… you guessed it… life purpose. I was already familiar with Brad’s work because I reviewed his book Life on Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life in 2007, and we’ve kept in touch over the years. Life on Purpose is simply the best book on life purpose I’ve ever read, and it deserves the rare honor of maintaining a solid 5-star average rating on Amazon.com.

Brad’s new program is called the Life on Purpose Virtual Video Coach. It’s an online video-based course where Brad personally guides you through his 6-step Life on Purpose process one lesson at a time. All the videos can be streamed online, and the course includes a PDF workbook and some bonus material.

I went through the entire program in May, and I loved it. I had to chuckle at the synchronicity because this was essentially the product I was trying to create. My ideas and processes were different of course, but the end benefits would be the same — to help you bring a clear sense of purpose to your life and to fully ground it in your daily actions, so that you’re truly living on purpose.

I also thought to myself, Well… that was easier than I thought. I intended for the creation of a certain product, and here it is. I didn’t even have to record it.

So first, I received the lesson I seem to keep needing to learn — to create from a place of inspiration and not to try to force creativity. But beyond that, I also got a lot of value from Brad’s course. If you visit his website, you’ll see my testimonial there. That was actually part of an email I sent to him to tell him what I thought of the course, and I was happy to have him include it on his product page when he asked if that would be okay.

Life on Purpose Virtual Video Coach

I don’t think of this as an info product because it’s not primarily a course to put new knowledge in your head, although that is a part of it. The program guides you through a process that’s all about you, so it has more to do with gaining self knowledge and understanding.

One step at a time, you’ll be guided to reveal your inherited purpose (your fear-based false purpose that masquerades as your true purpose), then to discover your true purpose, and finally to ground your true purpose into your life so you can enjoy more happiness and fulfillment.

This course goes well beyond the point of forming a clear statement of purpose. It provides many tools and techniques to help you begin living congruently with your purpose and to shift away from stuckness as well as your inherited purpose.

I read Brad’s book and loved it; however, I gained much more value from his Virtual Video Coach. I was a bit surprised because I figured it would simply be a video version of his book. It does cover a lot of the same ground as the book, but I experienced the material in a totally different way. Brad has a very centered and peaceful way of communicating, and watching him on video is (in my opinion) a much better expression of who he is than words on a page.

I’m not going to go into detail about all the features and benefits of the course because you can find all of that information on his website. I think it would be more authentic to simply share how the course affected me.

Doing vs. Being

For many years I’ve had a pretty clear sense of my life purpose, and I like to think I’ve been doing a good job living it. I feel fulfilled most of the time, and I’m very pleased with my current direction. My normal experience is to feel that I’m in the flow of inspiration, and I seldom feel stuck. My life has been working very well, and it seems to be getting better each year.

Here’s the purpose statement I currently have on my About page:

to care deeply, connect playfully, love intensely, and share generously;
to joyfully explore, learn, grow, and prosper;
and to creatively, brilliantly, and honorably serve the highest good of all.

It may not mean anything to you, but I still get a surge of emotion each time I read it. I think it does a job of succinctly summing up how I wish to live and what inspires me most.

This purpose statement has worked well for me over the years, but Brad’s course gave me another way of thinking about purpose. It didn’t replace my current purpose statement, which I still love, but it gave me another perspective I hadn’t considered.

Instead of thinking about purpose in terms of doing, Brad encourages you to think about it in terms of being.

I think one of the reasons my purpose statement has worked so well for me is that it incorporates beingness, and it isn’t heavy on the doingness in a way that might make me feel pressured or stressed. If your purpose is only about doing, then when you aren’t taking action, you aren’t on purpose; that creates a pressure to be doing, doing, doing… even when you’re feeling burned out. I agree with Brad that it’s better to define your purpose in such a way that you can feel happy and fulfilled at all times, not just when you’re taking a lot of action. I figure I must be doing something right because I often feel very grateful even when I’m just running errands or hanging out with friends.

Fortunately my current purpose statement translates fairly easy to beingness. “To care deeply” means to be a caring person. “To connect playfully” means to be a playful person. “To joyfully explore” means to be an explorer.

I liked considering my purpose statement through the lens of being. It helped me recognize that no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I can always be living on purpose. I don’t always have to be doing something specific.

But there was a greater benefit beyond this. Brad’s insights encouraged me to reinterpret my goals, projects, and tasks from the perspective of beingness. I reviewed those items and asked myself, Who am I really desiring to be here?

My original purpose statement addresses the questions of what and how. I also have an intuitive understanding of the why. But it doesn’t really address the question of where. Where do I ultimately see myself living on purpose?

This is a fairly general question, but it gave me a lot of clarity. I thought about why I’m in Las Vegas and what I can do here specifically. I thought about where in the broad field of personal development I most enjoy working. I thought about what kinds of situations and positions I enjoy most.

There are so many facets to this exploration that I’m still exploring it — which is actually a part of my purpose: to joyfully explore. But I’ve already gained more clarity about some “locations”, or states of being, that I enjoy most.

One place I enjoy is being in the increasingly overlapping space between technology and personal development. I feel perfectly comfortable in both fields. I liked being one of the first people to leverage blogging technology to spread personal development ideas. Now it’s commonplace, and there are lots of people leveraging tech to promote PD. I think that’s wonderful.

I feel right at home in this tech-PD space. I like having an online business, and I regard the Internet as my digital home. I also love exploring personal growth and sharing it with others. Brad’s course gave me the clarity to see that positionally speaking, I love having one foot in the tech world and the other foot in the PD world, and I look for ways to further connect the dots between them.

Another location I love is the space of connecting deeply with people face to face. I like that I can discuss topics like life purpose or subjective reality with people shortly after I meet them. I like “breaking the ice” by recognizing that there never was any ice to begin with. I enjoy maintaining an open and approachable posture; I can’t always do that online due to the overwhelming numbers, but I’m at least able to do it in person most of the time. To me, being in the space of an intimate connection with someone is a very joyful place to be.

When I remind myself to simply be in these places, my life flows very easily, and I feel happy and fulfilled. Interestingly, this focus on being has led to a lot more action.

For example, by reminding myself that I love being in the overlapping space between tech and PD, I’ve been devouring tech company biographies lately, coming up with new ideas for how tech and PD could continue to merge. I’ve also made some tweaks to my website, so it’s serving up pages more efficiently than it was a week ago.

By reminding myself that I enjoy face time with people, I arranged a meetup in a local park last Sunday. About 14 people showed up. I brought a bunch of my discs that I use for disc golf, and several of us had fun throwing them around; that was my way of expressing “to connect playfully”. I’m also working on booking more workshops for the Fall, which will bring even more people together in the same physical location, where all of us can connect playfully and learn and grow together.

The irony is that I don’t feel like I’m really doing much, but I’m getting a lot more done than usual. I’m not trying to force anything. I just focus on where I want to be, and action flows effortlessly from there. I’m enjoying this really nice flow right now.

A few days ago, I was talking to Erin on the phone and she said something like, “I can tell you’re in a really good place right now. I’m not sensing that you need to change anything. You seem really happy right where you are.” She’s right.

Being in the right place is very powerful. When you’re in the right place — for you — the doing part follows naturally from it. You don’t have to push yourself to take action or fight against procrastination. When you’re in the right place of beingness, life automatically supports you.

More Distinctions

What I shared above is only one of many powerful distinctions I got from Brad’s course. Although he presents a 6-step linear process that’s easy to follow, I personally found that the course had a very nonlinear, expanding-in-all-directions effect on me.

If you watch the videos and do the workbook exercises in a straightforward manner, you’ll arrive at the point of having your own statement of purpose and a deep grasp of what it means. You’ll also begin living in alignment with that purpose, watching your life take on a positive new direction.

Don’t be fooled by the seemingly linear nature of the course, however. It’s a lot more than a step by step process. I found that several points really stuck with me, such as Brad’s coffee mug analogy, and got me thinking in new directions about other parts of my life such as my goals, projects, and actions. I started thinking less about to-dos and more about “Where do I want to be right now?” Once I figured that out, I discovered to my delight that the right actions flowed rather easily from there.

Let me conclude simply by saying that I highly recommend this course, and I think you’ll gain a lot by going through it — even if you think you’re already pretty clear about your purpose.

If you want to bring more purpose, meaning, and fulfillment to your life, you can’t go wrong here. Brad is definitely one of the good guys in this field, and I genuinely expect you’ll gain a lot from his program. It even includes a better than money-back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose by trying it.

I completed the course in less than a week, although you can certainly go through the lessons more slowly if you want time to integrate them one by one. An hour or two a week would be a very reasonable pacing.

To learn more, visit the Life on Purpose Virtual Video Coach page.

Well, that was an easy product to get out the door. What’s next?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Let me share some perspectives that should make it easier to understand the process of waking up.

The Cellular Perspective

From the cellular perspective, you can see yourself as an individual person interacting with other individuals. You’re like a single cell in the larger body of humanity, which is comprised of billions of other people-cells.

For example, I could say that I’m a guy (a cell) who’s dedicated to helping people (other cells) live more consciously. I may communicate with many people during my lifetime, but each person is a unique individual, so the impact is different for everyone. We may all be part of some larger body of humanity, but our interactions mainly occur at the individual cellular level.

This is similar to one of the cells in your body noticing the other cells around it and deciding to do what it can to be of service to those cells. It may help a lot of cells, but it still regards itself as an individual cell helping other individual cells. And it won’t help all cells equally, nor could it do so even if it tried.

The Holistic Perspective

From the holistic perspective, you see yourself as an integral part of the universe as a whole. The overall intent is to help universal consciousness grow and evolve, particularly the human consciousness of which you’re a part.

This would be like one of the cells in your body recognizing that it’s part of a larger physical body, whereby it stops thinking of itself primarily as an individual cell and begins to see itself as being of potential service to the greater whole. Its fate isn’t as important as the fate of the larger body.

So with this perspective, instead of thinking of myself as a guy who helps people live more consciously, I can see myself as a servant of humanity helping to create a more conscious humanity, or as a servant of universal consciousness itself. My primary role here is to serve conscious evolution, which isn’t necessarily what’s best for any particular individual human in the short term.

Other Perspectives

Of course there are other perspective too. We could discuss identification with community, nation, all life, the cosmos, etc. These perspectives are equally valid, but exploring them would add complexity without adding much substance to the core ideas. So for now I want to keep this simple.

On the atomic side, you’re an individual, and other people are individuals too. On the holistic side, we’re all part of a greater whole.

I’m not suggesting that any one perspective is best. All of these perspectives are valid. But I will suggest that it’s important to integrate the holistic perspective more fully into your life if you wish to experience a healthier flow of abundance.

“Waking up” basically means that you consider and integrate the holistic perspective as part of your daily life. Of course there are degrees of waking up, depending on how aware you are of the holistic perspective and how fully you’ve integrated it into your life. In the same manner, the cells in your body may have varying degrees of awareness that they are in fact part of a larger human body.

Alternatively, to be “asleep” is to be unaware of the larger holistic perspective. We could also define this behaviorally by saying that someone is asleep if they’re aware of the holistic perspective, but they don’t attempt to act congruently with it. In terms of semantics, I’d say that the first group is asleep, while the second group is trying to sleep.

Fairness

At the individual level, fairness seems to be about equality. But of course we don’t see that much genuine equality in the world. It’s quite obvious that some individuals have more resources than others. Some people seem to be luckier too.

Does your own human body care about fairness when it doles out resources like oxygen and sugar to its individual cells? To an extent, sure. When resources are abundant, there’s plenty for all, but even then the distribution isn’t perfectly equal. And when resources become scarce, the body will starve cells that are less important to its survival to divert more resources to the most crucial cells.

So the question is, are you an essential cell in the larger body of consciousness? Or are you superfluous? Well… look at the resources that life sends your way. Do you feel all your needs are well met — your physical needs, emotional needs, social needs, self esteem needs, etc? Are you a highly self-actualized individual? Or do you have strong unfulfilled cravings for things that are important to you? Have you possibly given up on meeting some of your needs? Are you flourishing or are you stuck?

If you’re struggling to get your needs met, that’s a hint and a half that life itself isn’t particularly concerned with your well-being. Don’t fret though if this describes your situation. It’s a problem that can be fixed. Just don’t try to fix it by clamoring and complaining — that doesn’t work and will often backfire.

This may not seem fair, but in a way it is reasonable. You may be a very nice, kind, and generous person, but if your focus is at the cellular level, you’re probably missing so much of the big picture that in the grand scheme of things, your contribution just doesn’t matter that much, at least not from the perspective of universal consciousness.

You may be doing what could just as easily be done by someone else, which means you’re highly expendable. You may be playing follow the follower. You may be genuinely helping, but only at the cellular level. You may be doing nothing much, which makes it easy to ignore you.

If you live in such a way that doesn’t really contribute much, don’t be too surprised if it seems like life is starving you for resources. After all, life doesn’t need you as much if you aren’t actively helping with its expansion and growth.

Consider the cells in your own body. You may scratch an itch on your arm and kill lots of cells in the process without even thinking about it. Individual skin cells just aren’t that important to your overall survival. But you’re less likely to scratch off a patch of critical brain cells. A cut on your finger is no cause for alarm, but a cut on your eyeball is something you’d do more to avoid. Your body is even designed to protect some parts more than others. If something flies at your face, you’ll automatically throw up your arms to protect your head. But you won’t normally use your head to protect your arms.

Do you think you’re among the critical humans that the larger body of humanity would move to defend and protect? Or are you among the sacrificial parts?

What Does Consciousness Want?

What do you want as a human being? Think about your goals, dreams, and aspirations for a moment.

Now consider what an individual cell in your body would want. It wants oxygen and sugar. It wants to eliminate waste. Is this on the same level as your goals? Do you aspire to breathe, eat, and take dumps as your primary goals for the year?

Hopefully not.

Now look at this from the other side. From the perspective of the consciousness itself, your human-level dreams and goals seem petty. It’s important to keep people happy to an extent, but the fate of any one human is largely insignificant. Universal consciousness really doesn’t care if you have a job or an income, if you get the house you want, if you have a good relationship or not. It doesn’t care if you get laid or remain a virgin.

Well, it cares a little, but it’s not a major concern, just as you aren’t overly concerned about the fate of any individual cells in your body. It’s the body’s overall status that matters. And you probably identify more with your mind (your collective cellular intelligence) as opposed to your physical body anyway.

Similarly, universal consciousness is more concerned with the evolution of consciousness itself (our collective consciousness) as opposed to the fate of any individual human or even of humanity itself. Now the loss of humanity would probably be a setback, but consciousness may eventually recover in other forms.

What does consciousness really want? Like you and like your individual cells, it wants to get its needs met, and it wants to grow and evolve. But the level on which it’s capable of doing this goes way beyond what you’re capable of as an individual.

Look around at all the amazing — and accelerating — achievements of consciousness. It’s expanding in many directions simultaneously. Consider what’s evolving on earth. Humanity itself is becoming smarter and faster and more connected. And it’s having some health issues to deal with as well. And consciousness wants to keep going.

Living Small or Living Large

You can spend your life fussing over your own piddly cellular needs, but in the grand scheme of things, it won’t be anything to write home about. No matter what you do or don’t do as an individual, it’s just not going to matter that much.

The same can be said of any cell in your body. At the individual level, a single cell isn’t particularly important.

Imagine asking a cell in your body what he’s doing with his life, and he talks about the Bloodstream Marketing course he’s taking and how excited he is about all the extra sugar he’ll earn from his efforts. Oh boy!

But will his efforts pay off? Probably not. If he isn’t getting his needs met, there’s probably a good reason for it. The larger body will see that his needs are well met if there’s a good reason to do so. Otherwise it will divert resources where they’re needed.

This is how silly we humans appear to universal consciousness. It still cares about us and wants to see us happy for the most part, but it finds our cellular perspective to be rather limiting. If you push to get your individual needs met, but you do so in ways that the larger body doesn’t care about or which may interfere with its bigger plans, it will either ignore you, or it will swat you down like a mosquito.

Imagine if a cell in your body said, I just want to eat food and reproduce like crazy. That might seem fun from his perspective, but then the larger body has a tumor to deal with. Send in the white blood cells.

If you feel like some greater force keeps knocking you back down every time you try to get ahead, you’re not imagining it. It really is knocking you back down, and it will continue to do so until you stop trying to get ahead like a cancer cell would. Have you ever noticed, for instance, that as soon as you try to make progress on cancer-like projects, you keep getting distracted, so your attention has to turn somewhere else?

Quite often we cry “Life is so unfair” when from a larger perspective, it’s a no brainer that life is either going to ignore us or attack us. Humanity’s white blood cells will come after us and make life unpleasant for us when we forget that we’re part of a larger whole and that its well-being is more important than our individual well-being.

Now imagine if an individual cell in your body said to you, “Wait a minute. I get it. I may be just a tiny cell, but I’m a part of this whole body. That’s cool. Is there anything I can do to help?”

What would you say to it? You might wonder what one conscious cell could do for your whole body. Not much most likely. But then you might think, What if this cell could wake up many others, and what if those cells could awaken still more? Eventually you could have a body filled with cells that were aware of the whole body and seeking to serve it. This would fix a lot of your problems. You’d have much better health for starters. Cancer wouldn’t be able to take root. Most diseases would be eradicated easily. You’d always be able to maintain your ideal weight.

So you might tell that one conscious cell, “Go around and wake up more cells. Gather them together. Then we’ll talk.”

Being a Conscious Human

A conscious cell is aware of the whole body and realizes that the body matters more than any individual cell. The cells are there to serve the evolution of the body and mind, not merely themselves. There’s obviously a connection between the good of the cells and the good of the body, but it’s easier to have a healthy body if on some level, the cells are aware that the body’s health is more important than their own. A cell that works against the health of the body is a disease cell.

A conscious human being is aware of the larger body of humanity and has a sense of a greater consciousness that’s unfolding and evolving at a much higher level than any individual human can.

There is value in the lower level perspective. It’s not a perspective to ignore but rather to integrate with the holistic perspective. For example, through relaxed meditative breathing, we can connect with the lower level perspective of our own cells. Breathe in. Breathe out. We’re getting plenty of oxygen. Life is good. This cellular level perspective can help to ground us. Many meditations are essentially about tuning back in to this cellular perspective, while other meditations involve expanding to a more holistic perspective. The ideal is to be able to consider all of these perspectives as valid.

If our cells aren’t healthy, our bodies can’t be healthy, and so humanity itself can’t be healthy. And of course the opposite holds true as well. But there are ways of meeting our needs on different levels that are in alignment with all of these perspectives, and there are other ways that are out of alignment. To live consciously, we need to shift towards the ways that are in alignment, so we can meet our needs as we also meet the needs of the cells in our bodies and of the greater body of humanity.

I’m certainly not the first human being to have the experience of “waking up” and becoming aware of this. Other conscious humans helped wake me up and continue to help me stay awake… or to reawaken me when I lose that perspective. I also endeavor to do my part and help other people wake up to the realization that jobs and money and marriage and retirement just aren’t that important. There are more important things to attend to here. Meeting our cellular needs is still important, but we don’t want to fuss at that level too much. We have more significant work to do here, and we could be experiencing life at a much higher level of existence.

Living your life as a part of humanity will take your experience to a level that’s far beyond life as an individual human being. Even if your intention is to help people, try expanding it to a vision of helping humanity, as if humanity itself is a conscious entity. It’s a whole different level of being.

Now what I’m seeing is that the gathering phase is well underway. Many years ago, it seemed like conscious people were very isolated. Now they’re coming together in bigger and bigger groups. I’m involved in multiple groups of this nature, and it seems like every few months I’m hearing about new groups forming. The conscious humans are clustering, and these clusters are growing larger and more organized. It’s as if new organs are incubating with the larger body of humanity. Something is definitely happening, and it’s a wondrous thing to behold.

Consequently, while I know some people are worried about where humanity is headed, I’m not worried at all. In fact, I’m excited about it. I have the privilege of being able to see what many of these conscious people are up to, and they’re starting to create transformational ripples. If you’re reading this article, then these ripples have already reached you, and you’re being impacted by them.

Some conscious cells are still isolated, however. Others are in very small groups only. And of course there are lots of people who still primarily think at the cellular level (go Bloodstream Marketing). But this is changing.

Perhaps the simplest way I can explain what’s happening is that humanity’s Power has been increasing by leaps and bounds, and now its alignment with Truth and Love desperately need to catch up. Otherwise humanity will eventually crash and burn. For instance, the first atomic bombs were dropped only 66 years ago, yet now we must somehow ensure that they’re never used on a global scale, not even 1000 years from now. One serious mistake or lapse during any minute that we have nukes, and it’s a major setback for us all. That’s a tall order that cannot be satisfied at the cellular level of consciousness. We’ve had too many close calls already (see the documentary Countdown to Zero for details on that). The larger body of humanity is aware of this challenge, and it recognizes that we need more people who are Truthful, Loving, and Powerful to deal with this existential threat.

You’re going to start picking up on this at the individual level, if you haven’t already. For instance, you’re going to feel far less tolerant of political leaders who lie to you. We’re going to see different kinds of leaders emerge, the kinds of leaders we truly need in this day and age. There are plenty of people like that, but in order for them to become popular enough, we just have to continue waking up more individual people. Once enough people are awake (or stop trying to sleep), we’ll see some major shifts. These shifts are already happening in the world of business, where popularity with the masses isn’t as necessary.

The Flow of Abundance

What we’re seeing is that on some level, this higher consciousness is taking note of what’s happening, and it seems to be assisting and accelerating the process. It wants human beings to wake up because a body of conscious cells can do much more than a body of unconscious ones. So if you’re concerned that there are too many crises in the world, recognize that there’s an upside. These major challenges are helping more and more people to finally wake up. We can’t even begin to address these challenges with cellular-level thinking, so we have to wake up in order to solve them.

There’s a lot of rebalancing that’s occurring as universal consciousness and individual human consciousness communicate with each other about how to best meet each others’ needs. How can humanity continue to evolve and expand while keeping individual humans happy and healthy? For humanity to be at its best, enough individual humans need to be at their best as well. You’re going to see this reflected in your own life too, as you grapple with the challenge of how to serve some greater life purpose while also making sure your individual needs are satisfied. In a way, you’re helping humanity experiment in order to find good solutions, which it can then spread to other cells. This is why cells like me feel an undeniable urge to pass on what we’ve figured out thus far.

As I’ve seen in my own life, this higher level consciousness is clearly listening. Somehow it can perceive the level at which we’re thinking, and it responds in kind. If you keep thinking at the cellular level, this higher consciousness will keep trying to wake you up. You may lose your job and other possessions, for instance, until you finally realize that those things don’t matter. We have more important things to deal with right now.

I’m far from perfect in this area, but I’m gradually getting the hang of it. I’m noticing that whenever I slip back down to cellular level thinking, I get a good smackdown. I feel like everything slows to a crawl. And when I shift back up to a higher level perspective, it’s like I’m back in the flow again. The phone rings with fresh opportunities, money just shows up, loving relationships flow into my life, and more. Fortunately perfection isn’t necessary. We just have to shift the balance far enough to achieve critical mass.

For those who are stuck at the cellular level of thinking, I suspect that life is going to become increasingly difficult for you. You’re going to see your worries, fears, and frustrations magnified. Life will seem to be getting worse. It may seem like important aspects of society are falling apart around you. This is happening for a reason though. These old systems are going to be dismantled. That’s actually a good thing. They’ll be replaced with better things.

For instance, you may be worried about debt, either your own or your country’s or someone else’s. But from the larger perspective of humanity, debt is meaningless. Humanity really doesn’t care if our financial system collapses or not. In fact, it may be better for it to collapse and be replaced by something else. So if you’re really attached to the current system and the money in your bank, you may get scared. But if you’re looking at the big picture, you’ll probably feel excited instead.

Be willing to lose what doesn’t matter, so we can all gain what does matter. Jobs don’t matter, but creativity does. Paying our bills doesn’t matter, but keeping our bodies healthy does. Getting good grades in school doesn’t matter, but preserving and passing on our collective knowledge does. Start reorganizing your life around what matters, and be willing to shed what doesn’t.

Try not to be too attached to remnants of the old cellular consciousness, like the money you have, the job you do, and the home you live in. The more you cling to those things, the more stressed out you’ll be. Just notice that these are all artificial cellular level concerns. What’s important is that humanity is evolving in a very positive way. You can resist that change and see your old goals fall apart, or you can flow with it and actively participate in the process of change.

For those who are waking up, life is going to become much easier in a way. Your life will explode with opportunities to learn, love, share, and grow. The good stuff will come from your alignment with the expansion of universal consciousness. But it’s important to keep the perspective of what really matters. Money doesn’t matter. Bloodstream/Internet Marketing is pointless and shallow. Waking people up and consciously co-creating something amazing is what matters.

When you align yourself with this higher level consciousness, abundance will flow through your life with relative ease. However, this type of abundance will be universal level abundance, not human level abundance. It doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have more money, a more luxurious home, or more possessions. That kind of stuff just doesn’t matter and represents artificial needs, not real needs. This level of abundance means that you’ll be experiencing the benefits of being in a healthier body. You’ll get more of what really matters — more growth opportunities, more love, more joy, more inner peace.

Focus on your true needs. What do you need to feel abundant? You need to keep your body healthy with healthy food, sunshine, and clean air and water. You need a reasonable degree of safety. You need love and belongingness. You need self esteem. You need an outlet for your creativity. Your true needs are quite simple in fact, and they’re easier to satisfy than your artificial needs. You don’t need the latest tech gadget. You don’t need a job or an income. You don’t need to get married. You don’t need to master Bloodstream Marketing.

Your artificial needs may not align well with humanity’s larger concerns. But your true needs certainly do align. It’s in humanity’s best interests to keep its best servants healthy, happy, and prosperous. In that sense, it you dedicate yourself to serving this greater body, it will surely watch your back.

Aligning With Higher Level Desires

In order to tap into this greater flow of abundance, you have to tap into higher level desires.

First, recognize that your human level goals are beginning to bore you. No matter how important you try to make them, you can’t get motivated to work on them. You just can’t get that worked up about making money beyond a certain point. People may tell you it’s important to have specific financial goals, but when you try to do this for yourself, it makes you feel yucky inside. You can’t get motivated to work on those kinds of goals. They don’t inspire you. And so you procrastinate and then beat yourself up. It’s time to end this cycle. It’s time to re-align your desires with something that actually matters to you. You can set better goals than the human equivalent of stockpiling oxygen and sugar.

Stop thinking about what you want for yourself as an individual. Start thinking about what you want for humanity as a whole.

In the past, you may have been hesitant to even think at that level. Start thinking at that level now.

What do you want for humanity itself? Where would you like to see this larger body go during your lifetime and beyond?

Do you want us to clean up the planet? Explore outer space? Improve our educational systems? Stop fighting wars?

Let yourself dream about what’s possible for humanity. Notice that these dreams are much more impressive than anything you could possibly do as an individual.

Become a billionaire? Who cares? Start a charity? Big deal. Discover a new planet? Nice try. When will you be ready to work on a real goal, a goal for humanity itself?

Receiving Guidance

The best part is that you don’t even need to figure this out yourself. All you need to do is wake up to this higher level perspective, and then simply ping this universal consciousness to tell it you’re awake and ready to serve. Ask it for guidance, and guidance will come.

Just be aware that universal consciousness is frakkin powerful. It’s way more powerful than human level consciousness. When you tap into this resource and align yourself with it, your life is going to speed up. At first it may seem like drinking from a firehouse. It will take some time to get used to it.

If you feel that the flow is too much for you, you can ask it to slow down. I do this all the time. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I say to the universe aloud, “Okay… this is too fast. Let’s slow this down for a week or two and give me a chance to catch my breath.” Then when I’m ready, I ask it to speed up again.

With practice you’ll get used to this faster pacing. You’ll get used to things showing up when you need them. You’ll get used to experiencing synchronicities almost every day.

A synchronicity is no accident. Universal consciousness knows what you need, perhaps even better than you do. You really don’t even have to ask for your specific needs to be met once you ask to be a better servant of humanity. As Jesus said, just say, “Not my will, but thy will be done.”

Lately I’ve been holding off on setting specific goals for myself. Instead I’ve been saying to the universe, “Bring me what you want me to work on, and also please bring me whatever you know I need for optimal health, happiness, and flow.” And then I do my best to remain open-minded and detached from outcomes. I let the universal consciousness guide me instead of having to set specific goals and intentions. I still have an intention, but it’s simply to do what’s best for humanity as a whole.

Partly I’m doing this because I’ve reached the point where any individual-level goal would bore me, and I wouldn’t be able to motivate myself to work on it. I just don’t care that much about oxygen and sugar to make it the central focus of my life. So I’m willing to risk things like losing my money, losing my home, having my relationships disrupted, etc. just for the opportunity to see where this flow leads. And yet somehow when I move past this fear of losing stuff, I seem to gain much more than I lose. As far as meeting my human needs goes, they’re all nicely satisfied and then some. Bloodstream Marketing just can’t compare.

Effect on Relationships

When you begin to align yourself with the perspective of higher level consciousness, your relationships with other people will shift. Try not to be too attached to what happens here. Your pairings with any one or more individuals aren’t necessarily going to be stable. It’s how your relationships affect the whole of humanity that matters. What ripples are you and your relationships co-creating?

People who aren’t compatible with this new perspective will fade from your life. At first you may fear that you’re going to end up alone, but there’s no cause for alarm. New relationships will come into your life, relationships with people who have a similar perspective. And these relationships will be much better for you than the old ones. They’ll help you hold the new perspective.

These new relationships will be different than what you’re used to, however. There will be less rigidity and more flexibility in this part of your life. Such relationships may defy traditional labels. You may feel a bit ungrounded in this new space. It takes time to get used to it.

Eventually you’ll realize that happiness and love can come from anywhere. You may have your emotional needs met equally well by a long-time partner or with someone you just met. Universal consciousness will guide you to whatever it is that you need to sustain your emotional health, as long as you don’t get too attached to how it shows up. If you remain open and flexible, your emotional needs can be satisfied with relative ease. Trust that universal consciousness knows just what you need, and it will deliver it right to you if you’re ready to accept it. Again, you don’t even have to ask once you’re on this path. It will satisfy your emotional needs because doing so makes you a better servant. You can’t serve humanity so well if you’re feeling lonely and disconnected. You’ll be more motivated if you have love in your life, so love will be delivered unto you.

Compared to where I was a few years ago, my relationship life might seem a bit strange these days. I have many relationships that would be difficult to label, but they seem to be healthy and flourishing in ways that are hard to get my head around. I can’t really define what they are, and I can’t predict where they’re going. But it seems like these connections are good and healthy for all involved. My biggest relationship challenge is unloading the traditional-minded baggage that nudges me to lock down and label each relationship, so I can feel like I understand it. But whenever I fall into that pattern, things get worse, not better. Conscious relationships don’t seem to like being locked down and labeled. They require more freedom and flow.

At first this sort of situation could make a person feel insecure. You may be accustomed to having a sense of security based on the stability of predictable interactions with people close to you.

However, when you align yourself with universal consciousness, you’re likely to move around a lot more relationship-wise. You’re going to meet and interact with a lot more people than you’re used to. Your social life will be rich and varied. Your stability has to come from trusting that no matter where you are, your emotional needs will still be satisfied. You’ll have the opportunity to share love, intimacy, affection, etc., and it can be more abundant than what you experienced at the individual level of being. I assure you that you won’t have to go it alone. This isn’t a lonely path — it’s actually an incredibly social path.

Effect on Work

Your work life will be transformed as well. You’ll probably need to stop thinking of your career in terms of having a stable job and earning a set income. Serving humanity requires a lot more flexibility and flow than a traditional job can provide. Thinking of starting or running a business is equally limiting. This is human level thinking. What does humanity need?

Humanity is more concerned with things like creativity, purpose, and expansion. It would love to see you contribute to the ongoing expansion and evolution of consciousness. That’s what matters. The other stuff is too trivial to fuss over.

I don’t really have a job title. Sometimes I make one up like President or CEO when it’s required for social convention, but the title is meaningless to me. When people ask me what I do for a living, I don’t really know what to say. I don’t do anything for a living. I just live. In certain situations I might say that I’m a blogger, author, or speaker, but that’s mainly what I say to people who are asleep and I don’t have time to wake them up in that particular moment. If I’m talking to someone who’s awake, then either they won’t ask such a silly question, or they’ll understand my honest answer… and they’ll probably share a similar feeling about job titles.

My business cards have the wrong address because I haven’t updated them in 5 years. My website obviously isn’t the prettiest one out there. I’ve never spent money to market or promote my website, book, or workshops. I don’t think it would be a bad thing to do so; it just hasn’t ever been necessary. Humanity takes care of all my marketing and does a better job than I could.

Last year I uncopyrighted all my blog posts and podcasts, so you have just as much ownership of this article as I do. From a cellular level, that might seem like a foolish decision. But that isn’t the level at which I made the decision. What does a copyright mean to humanity? Of course it’s meaningless. What would you think if one of your cells tried to patent the Krebs Cycle? Silly cells…

Some people are repackaging and selling my work for money. Does that bother me? Of course not. Even though they may be operating at an individual level of consciousness, they’re actually helping. They’re spreading ideas that humanity wants to spread; after all, humanity gave me those ideas to share in the first place. They’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. I think some of them have been donating back to me as well, since I’ve seen a modest increase in donations lately. But I didn’t do this to get more donations. I did it because it should help the ideas spread and get more people thinking about living consciously. It really doesn’t matter which humans get credit or make money from it.

I think my business actually works better because I don’t manage it with a cellular mindset. Millions of people have been drawn to my work, and it’s been translated into more languages than I can track. People keep sharing it, with or without my permission. New opportunities keep showing up. Money keeps flowing. Everything works. Well, aside from my web server, which I may have to upgrade yet again due to traffic growth. But that’s a good problem to have, isn’t it?

Why does my business work? Because it’s not really a business. It’s a service, not primarily for individual humans, but for humanity itself. The purpose is to help enough people wake up and live more consciously, so that humanity itself may continue to survive and thrive. And by performing this service for humanity, it takes care of all my needs. It’s really good at it too. I barely have to lift a finger to attend to such things. I rather appreciate that.

Individually speaking, there are some humans out there who don’t particularly like my work. But that’s largely irrelevant because humanity as a whole has made it abundantly clear that it appreciates what I’m doing and wants to speed things along with further expansion. These days I largely ignore cellular level feedback because it comes from people at varying levels of wakefulness, so of course they won’t all agree. But I pay close attention to feedback from universal consciousness, such as whether my life is flowing well or not. These days it’s flowing amazingly well, so I figure I’m on the right track.

Is humanity making it abundantly clear that it appreciates what you’re doing? If not, any guesses as to why? Could it be that you’ve been ignoring humanity’s needs, and thus it’s been ignoring your needs? Try doing the opposite and see what happens. I think you’ll like it.

Conscious Business

Recently I’ve been listening to an audiobook about the history of Google. Google began as a fairly idealistic company with the grand mission of organizing and providing access to all the world’s information. Does that sound like an individual level goal or a goal for humanity itself? Of course Google has since become a giant, besting all other search companies. Interestingly, one of the reasons it succeeded is because it attracted some of the brightest minds in the world, people who were inspired by its mission and who would not have worked for the company if it was just about the money. You could say that humanity diverted the best resources to Google because Google’s mission served the best interests of humanity. In fact, Google has helped to create a smarter, more self-aware humanity.

Microsoft used to be a similar purpose-driven company, with the mission of putting “a computer on every desk and in every home.” That was an expansive goal that served humanity. But a lot of people now believe Microsoft has lost its way, and sometimes it acts more like a cancerous tumor than a servant to humanity. Do you believe that Microsoft is here to serve humanity, or mainly itself? Is it working with the expansion and evolution of humanity, or is it working against it? Probably a bit of both. Hence its mixed results and recent stagnation. Microsoft needs a new mission that aligns with humanity’s expansion. So far its current attempts at a new mission have been fluffy and noncommittal. It wastes too much energy on trying to defend its turf, failing to recognize that there’s only one turf, and it belongs to universal consciousness. If you happen to work for Microsoft, do what you can to wake more people up within your company, and eventually the culture will shift, as will the company’s results.

The irony is that companies that care less about quarterly returns and more about service to humanity can often achieve amazing growth. Why? Because humanity wants those companies to succeed. It sends them whatever resources they need to succeed.

Notice which companies appear to be serving the expansion and evolution of humanity and which are only here to serve themselves and their stockholders. If you were a genius, which kind of company would you want to work for? If you were humanity itself, which companies would you support? Which would you ignore? Which would you wish to tear down or transform? Now what kind of company do you currently work for?

* * *

Martin Luther King, Jr. said that we have guided missiles and misguided men. Let’s change that. Guidance is available to you whenever you want. You just have to be reasonably awake to receive it. Then you’ll have all the inspiration you could possibly want.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

If you consider these tips from the employer’s perspective, I think you’ll agree that most of them can be considered common sense. However, my experience thus far suggests they aren’t commonly applied. Because most people make these avoidable mistakes, I’ve been rejecting about 80% of applicants based on their cover letters alone.

Most of the time, the mistakes people make in their cover letters are actively disqualifying them. So I don’t even need to look at their resume or CV.

While these tips are based on my recent personal experiences, I believe they’re general enough to be of value to others.

1. Avoid spelling and grammar mistakes.

Nothing says loser like a cover letter filled with spelling and/or grammatical errors.

What do such mistakes convey to a potential employer? They suggest that you do sloppy work, that you don’t pay much attention to detail, that you don’t care enough to do a good job, that you’re uneducated, or that you’re not very bright.

That one minor typo that sneaks through even after proofreading probably isn’t a big deal. Some may see it as a negative strike, but employers understand that mistakes happen and that perfection isn’t a realistic standard. However, if you have several spelling mistakes in your letter, or if your grammar sounds like you haven’t passed the 3rd grade, that’s likely to hurt your chances.

What if you’re applying for a job that isn’t in your native language? I still think you should make the effort to provide a quality cover letter and resume without spelling or grammar mistakes.

I’m used to communicating with non-native English speakers because 50% of my readers live outside the USA, and I’ve been doing business internationally since the mid-1990s. On a personal level, I’m impressed with people who can communicate in multiple languages. That said, it still makes a poor impression when you send a cover letter and resume with more grammar and spelling mistakes than most native speakers. This suggests that you may have difficulty communicating with other team members.

I’m not saying that you need perfect English skills. I’m simply saying that you shouldn’t let yourself be disqualified so easily by sending a poorly written cover letter. Don’t let your use of language betray you.

Take the time to have a native speaker proofread your cover letter and resume and correct any mistakes. This doesn’t take much extra time, but it could mean the difference between getting a follow up call vs. being disqualified as a poor communicator.

Think of it this way: If an employer has to decide between you and another equally qualified applicant, and the other person has an error-free letter while yours contains many mistakes, who has the advantage?

Speaking personally, I’d be very unlikely to follow up with someone who sent me a cover letter that showed poor English skills, even if it was obviously sent by a non-native speaker. I’m going to favor people who show can communicate well in the primary language of my company.

This is an easy mistake to avoid, so don’t be foolish or lazy here. If you simply provide an error-free cover letter and resume, that alone is probably enough to place you in the top 50% of applicants. Not doing so puts you in the bottom 50%; that’s the half that won’t get a callback.

Someone may think it’s ironic that I give such advice when my articles often contain typos. I do fix typos when people report them, but the nature of my work makes typos a lesser concern; I don’t compete with other bloggers to minimize typos. But perhaps I’d be interested in hiring people with a better eye for catching mistakes than I have.

2. Express long-term interest.

Businesses are built by people who stick around. From an employer’s perspective, there isn’t much value in working with someone who only wants to work for a few weeks or even a few months.

Hiring someone new is expensive. It takes time to filter applicants, interview them, and find suitable people. It takes more time to train and mentor them. Initially many employees produce negative value — they drain more value out of the company than they can provide.

High turnover is a problem for many companies. If you have a turnkey business that relies on unskilled workers who get paid minium wage, then high turnover may simply be par for the course. But for many small businesses or for businesses in creative fields, having stable, long-term workers is much better.

Suppose you’re an employer. One applicant says they’re looking for a summer job before they go back to school. Another indicates that they’re looking for long-term employment in your field. Who are you going to favor, all else being equal?

I received one letter from a man who wanted to work together for just 3 weeks, during a specific window of time he’s available. It doesn’t make sense to follow up with someone like that when there are other people looking for serious long-term work.

I’m not suggesting that you lie. If you’re only available for the summer, then be up front about that, and seek out seasonal positions. But if you see some possibilities for working together with an employer long-term, it’s wise to indicate that you may stick around if things work out. If you do the opposite by suggesting you probably won’t be around long, then it’s riskier for an employer to invest much in you.

If you position yourself as a high turnover employee, you’re also likely to depress your income. High turnover jobs tend to be close to minimum wage. If a job pays well, it’s probably not a high turnover job. So if you’d like to earn more money, position yourself as someone who will likely be around for years if you like the work.

No one expects you to commit up front to years of employment with a new company. You’ll have to feel each other out first to see if you’re a good match for each other. But at least suggest the possibility that if things go well, you may stick around. This makes you seem like a better investment. It can’t hurt your chances.

This of course assumes that you truly want to build a serious career, not just find a job. If all you want is a job, then read 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job and then see if that’s still what you want.

3. Apply locally.

If you’re applying for work far from where you live, you’d better explain why in your cover letter. And your explanation should sound plausible.

Otherwise the employer may wonder: Why is this person looking for work so far from home? Are they unable to find work locally? They must not be very good.

Wanting to move to a new city to expand your horizons is a good enough reason. Lots of people move to New York City or San Francisco because they want the experience of living in those places. But if you’ve been living in your current city for years, and if there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for a major relocation other than the fact that you need an income, that just makes you look desperate and unworthy.

When I get applications from people in other countries for positions that would require relocation and a special work visa, I cringe a bit. Hiring someone from out of the country is riskier and more complicated than hiring a local. It doesn’t make much sense to look so far away unless I’ve already exhausted local possibilities, first within my own city and then within my own country.

Las Vegas isn’t a city for everyone. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for having people relocate here just to see if we can work well together. Naturally I’m going to start with local applicants for work that would be done locally.

The only reason to go outside my city, state, or country is if I’m looking for people to work virtually (over the Internet), or if I need people with such talents that the local workforce cannot provide. All else being equal, I’ll hire someone local to me before I give serious consideration to working with people in other cities or countries. It doesn’t make sense to go beyond local if I can find good people locally.

4. Paint a clear picture of your intended position.

Some people send me employment-related letters that are so vague I honestly can’t tell what sort of work they’re interested in doing. These letters included phrases like, “I can do pretty much anything you need done.” Their resumes show a work history that has little or nothing to do with my field.

Since these people fail to specify what they want, they put the onus on me to use my imagination.

Unfortunately for them, I simply imagined myself dropping their letters into the recycle bin. That was fairly easy to visualize.

If you don’t know what you want, you should develop a clearer picture of that first before you go around applying for work. Don’t expect potential employers to figure it out for you.

It seems that some people mistakenly assume that raw enthusiasm and a willingness to work is enough to get them in the door. It isn’t.

Even if you’re looking for an internship, specify what type of internship you’re seeking. Are you a marketing student looking for a marketing internship? A programmer seeking a programming internship? Or an unfocused drifter looking for whatever? If you’re not clear, you’re positioning yourself as the latter. There aren’t as many quality internships for unfocused drifters.

If I get a vague letter from a local applicant who seems otherwise intelligent, and it’s easy to meet with them, I may do so if I’m not too busy. Perhaps we can have a nice chat, and maybe we’ll figure something out. But for the most part, I’m just being social when I do this. The person hasn’t given me sufficient cause to seriously consider working with them, at least not yet. If we share common interests, I may meet with them just to see what comes of it and because I have that kind of flexibility. But if I’m busy or if this sort of thing comes from a non-local applicant, there’s no reason to follow up.

Contrast these types of letters with someone who suggests something very specific in terms of working together. I received some great letters from web developers who want to upgrade my website. Their portfolios show a history of making websites for small businesses. It makes sense to follow up with these people. I don’t have to stretch my imagination to figure out how we might work together. They shared something clear and concrete to consider, something I can say yes to.

You might think you’re limiting your chances by being too specific. But look at this from the employer’s perspective. If I get a few letters each week from people who are offering to do “pretty much anything,” they’re all going to blur together. None of them will stand out. This approach is generic and warrants a generic rejection.

Now suppose I get a letter from someone offering to serve as my Logistics Coordinator for live events. They give me a list of things they can do. They build a good case for why they’re qualified to do this. Their resume shows some relevant work history. This makes it easier for me to imagine how I might fit this person into the company as a whole, making it more likely that I’ll follow up. If I don’t need to hire such a person just yet, then obviously I won’t hire them. But even in that situation, I’m likely to file their letter in case I need such a person down the road or if I decide to expand capacity in this area by bringing on a new person. And I may also follow up with something like, “Check back with me in 6 months. I may have something for you then.” At the very least, I’d be more likely to follow up with this person in some fashion.

If you’re too vague in specifying what you want to do, you’ll be passed over. Employers are too busy figuring out how to hire, train, and integrate people who actually do know what they want. They don’t have as much time to help you figure out what you want. Figuring it out is your job, not theirs.

Remember that most jobs are never advertised anywhere. You have the power to design and create your own position instead of merely responding to what’s being advertised. The advertised positions are generally much more rigid than what you can design for yourself, and they’ll also attract a lot more competition. When I ran my games business, I was able to find and hire everyone I needed without advertising any of the positions. I filled every position through my network of contacts.

If you have any difficulty grasping the importance of defining your own work position, and especially if you disagree with it, read How to Order.

5. Build your case to win.

Think like an attorney building a case as to why you should be hired. Make sure your case is a strong one.

When you’re seeking a rewarding long-term career, understand and accept that lots of other people are looking for the same thing. It’s a competitive situation, so you need to play to win. Being good isn’t enough. You need to be the best among the other applicants for your position.

In a criminal trial in the USA, the mantra is “innocent until proven guilty.” This means that you’re assumed to be innocent unless the prosecutor can prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Some people apply for work as if “employable until proven incompetent” is the mantra that applies. They provide pretty good cover letters and resumes, figuring that as long as they satisfy expectations and don’t screw something up, they have a reasonable chance of getting hired. They’re careful to avoid the obvious mistakes, and yet quite often they still lose. They lose to people who are willing to be unreasonable — unreasonably good, that is.

That’s because the mantra that applies in the world of work is closer to the standard in civil cases as opposed to criminal cases. In a civil case, the standard is “the preponderance of evidence.” This means that whichever side builds the best case wins, and the other side loses. One side may build a great case and still lose if the other side builds a slightly better case. This may not sound fair, but such are the vicissitudes of life.

Some people send me very good applications. However, a few surpassed the standard of very good. They provided something excellent — like a significantly longer letter explaining in detail how we might specifically work together. They didn’t merely offer up enthusiastic ramblings; they built a strong case for what we could accomplish together.

If you hold yourself to an unreasonable standard of going well beyond what most people do, then even if you don’t come out on top, you’re more likely to get a follow up. The employer might even add an extra position to accommodate you.

People with higher than normal standards are very valuable in the world of work. What employer would want to hire someone very good if they could hire someone outstanding?

Being too close to the average (even the good side of average) isn’t such a great idea if you want to be hired for a competitive position. You want to be at least one standard deviation beyond that. If you’re good-average, you’re still in the slush pile. It’s too easy for a more competitive candidate to knock you out of the running simply by trying harder.

If someone else could easily beat you by spending an extra half-hour on their cover letter, you’re probably going to be beaten.

If you claim certain skills, back them up with solid evidence. Explain how you developed skills that aren’t conveyed by your education and work history. Don’t claim general skills like being a hard worker or being well-organized unless you can back them up. Share a quick story to explain how you’ve applied these skills. Otherwise you’re doing what so many other people do, and someone else that includes such evidence will make you look like a second-rate applicant.

You don’t have to like the competitive aspect, but don’t ignore it either. If you’re going to compete, then compete to win; otherwise don’t bother.

6. Be professional.

Present yourself as a competent pro — or at least an amateur on the rise. Employers want to hire competent professionals with strong skills. It’s too risky to hire people who position themselves as emotionally immature and unprofessional.

I received several letters from people who:

• complained about their previous employers
• complained about their history, upbringing, current life situation, etc.
• shared what types of work they’re sick and tired of doing
• explained how under-appreciated and misunderstood they felt
• told me how fed up they are with their unfulfilling lives

This sort of thing may seem honest and open, but it’s really unprofessional. If you do anything like the above, you’re positioning yourself as an emotionally immature man-child or woman-child, not a serious professional. In my view any such applicant is an easy no, instantly disqualified.

I sympathize that you may be looking to improve your life situation, and you may have had real problems with previous employers. Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and say those problems were beyond your control. Even so, it’s unwise to position yourself as someone who needs rescuing. This doesn’t make you look like a quality hire. It makes you look irresponsible. A new employer can’t verify that your ex-boss was an idiot.

When an employer sees the above, they’re likely to assume:

• If this person had conflicts with previous employers, they’ll probably have similar conflicts here.
• If this person is willing to complain about their previous employers, they’ll eventually complain about me.
• This person is unappreciative, ungrateful, and disloyal.
• This person has an unreasonable sense of entitlement.
• This person has a negative attitude.
• This isn’t someone I’d want on my team.

Again, I sympathize if you really are in a rough spot, but it isn’t appropriate to vent your past resentments in a professional cover letter if you’re looking for serious work.

Put yourself in the employer’s shoes. When one applicant sends a letter complaining about their “poor me” situation, while another equally qualified applicant writes positively of how much they learned from previous employers and why they moved on without burning bridges, which person would you invite to join your team?

A potential employer isn’t your therapist. Put your best foot forward if you want to be hired. Do you want sympathy, or do you want to work?

7. Inject your personality.

Cover letters and resumes are typically very bland. It’s likely that your potential employer will be looking at several other applications at the same time. I’ve be going through them in stacks of 10-15 at a time.

If your communication style is just as bland as everyone else’s, it won’t help you stand out. But if you inject some originality and personality in your cover letter and resume, this can help you.

For one, it makes you more memorable. If your letter is more memorable, you have a better shot of getting a follow up.

Some of the letters I received expressed a lot of personality, such as a quirky sense of humor. I can’t speak for all employers, but I appreciate it when people do this, as long as they’re expressing positive aspects of their personality.

You take a bit more risk when you do this, but I think it’s a reasonable risk. I respect people who do this. It gives me a more realistic sense of what it would be like to work with you. If you express your geeky side, your humorous side, or your creative side, then I can more easily visualize you as a real member of the team as opposed to a faceless applicant.

A friendly tone is generally good, but don’t be so casual that you seem unprofessionally goofy. Make sure that each paragraph of your letter contains substance and value; cut the fluff.

Another thing you can do to personalize your cover letter or resume is to include a photo. Since most people don’t do it, it’s one more easy thing you can do to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Even a grayscale photo is nice. If you’re worried about discrimination based on how you look, then feel free to decline this suggestion, but keep in mind that if you do an in-person interview, your employer will eventually see what you look like anyway. If you show an employer what you look like, it’s easier for them to visualize working with you. I think this is a risk that should generally work in your favor.

If you can express some of your skills through your cover letter and resume, do that too. Follow the mantra “Show me; don’t tell me” when possible. If you claim to have strong design skills, make sure your resume reflects it. If you claim to be highly creative, but your cover letter and resume look very bland and typical, that’s a mismatch that can work against you.

On the other hand, I don’t recommend expressing aspects of your personality that could work against you. Try not to position yourself as someone dark and creepy who’d be difficult to work with in a team environment. For instance, don’t share your interest in collecting firearms unless it’s relevant to your work.

8. Don’t play the destiny card.

If an angel came to you in a dream and said you’re going to work for this company, or if you receive several synchronicities about applying for a certain position, please don’t put that in your cover letter. It may be exciting for you, but it can come off as immature and manipulative if you convey this to a potential employer.

One problem is that when you do this, it’s not unique. It won’t impress any but the most gullible employers. Most of the people who play the destiny card aren’t going to get hired. So when you claim that your application was divinely mandated, you’re actually triggering a “don’t hire me” pattern by grouping yourself with others who weren’t hired. This is more likely to hurt you than help you.

Another problem is that from an employer’s perspective, this sort of thing can come across as manipulative and border-line desperate. I’d like to believe that I have the free will to hire or not hire you according to your skills and qualifications. If you suggest that I’m supposed to hire you or that I’d be wrong, foolish, or mistaken to do otherwise, you’re going to trigger my B.S. detector. And I’ll drop your application into the recycle bin right along with the other divinely inspired ones.

If I happen to experience a major synchronicity with respect to hiring you, then great; by itself that wouldn’t be enough for me to say yes, but it might nudge me to take a second look. But your synchronicities are yours; they mean nothing to me. If you frame our potential working relationship as something that’s fated to happen, then I’ll provide you with a lesson in free will. Perhaps you were fated to apply and get rejected, so you can learn how to avoid this mistake in the future.

We may choose to work together, but we aren’t fated to do so. Don’t try to subvert a potential employer’s ability to decide. If you seek to be the best choice, then earn it without playing the destiny card.

9. Express your greatness.

Don’t position yourself as weak, timid, desperate, or needy. Do position yourself as an excellent choice in a competitive field.

What do you excel at? Why should an employer hire you instead of someone else?

Identify one or two qualities you possess that you’ve developed to a much greater degree than most people. Emphasize those qualities. Present them as strengths, and center your application around these strengths.

For example, if you believe you’re very creative, then send an application that you’d expect to be the most creative one an employer will see this year. Otherwise you’re just blowing smoke; your creativity claim is weak.

If you claim to be an excellent video editor, then why would you send a plain text cover letter? Send a video application, and make it shine. Or at least send a letter with a link to a video.

Share that which makes you stand out from the crowd. If you’ve won some awards, share that. If you’ve published some articles in your field, share that too.

If you can’t share anything that makes you seem different and better, someone else will. They’ll get hired. You’ll get ignored.

10. Apply for work that matches your skills and experience.

Don’t apply for work for which you aren’t qualified with a “what have I got to lose?” attitude. You’re just wasting people’s time.

Apply when there’s a strong match between the position and your skills, experience, and goals. Otherwise don’t apply at all.

One thing that’s actually impressive is when you share where else you’re applying to. If you send an employer a letter that you’re applying to them as well as 5 of their top competitors, they’re more likely to take notice of you. Some employers may want to hire you partly to keep you from joining their competitors, especially if you’re well qualified. This is particularly true in technical fields.

Even if you manage to get a job for which you’re a mismatch, it’s unlikely to work out in the long run. And while you’re stuck in that mismatched job, better opportunities will pass you by because you’ll be too busy to notice them. Meanwhile, you probably won’t be very productive in a job you don’t really want to be doing.

You’re responsible for your own career development. Don’t put the onus on potential employers to figure out who you are. No one else can give you a life purpose; you must figure that out for yourself.

If someone applies to work with me, but their education and work history shows a mismatch with what I can provide, I can’t really take them seriously. I’ll hold out for a more qualified applicant. I’d rather keep a position vacant than fill it with someone who’s a mismatch.

If you know that your resume won’t seem to be a good match for a new position for which you’re applying, you’d better explain that, and your explanation had better make sense. Otherwise it seems like you’re branching out in desperation because you couldn’t find work in your intended field. It also suggests that you don’t really know what you want, and you probably won’t be sticking around for long.

Decide what kind of work you’d like to do. Build your education and skills in that direction, whether through formal university education or self-education (both are equally valid in my view). Then apply for positions that match your current skills and which will help you continue your career development.

* * *

I don’t think anything above is particularly controversial if you simply consider the hiring situation from the employer’s point of view. This POV is important to consider because it’s the POV that decides whether or not you get hired.

You have the ability to create an amazing career for yourself, but only if you step up and do what it takes to make it a reality. Most people are unwilling to pay that price, and so they wallow in unsatisfying work. The price of fulfilling work may seem high, but it’s still affordable for those who accept that fulfilling work deserves a premium price.

This article assumes that you seek meaningful and fulfilling work — a consciously chosen career that challenges you as opposed to a cog-like job to pay the bills. You aren’t likely to find such career positions advertised anywhere; it’s up to you to define and create them. But if all you want is a job, there are plenty of frappuccinos in dire need of frapping.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

I thought up this idea 3 weeks prior when I decided I should finally do an Aprils Fools post. This idea seemed like the perfect combination of various things I’d written about previously (wanting to build a staff, not having a regular job, domination and submission), enough to make it sound semi-plausible. I still thought it was pretty ridiculous and wondered if anyone would really buy into the idea that the poor state of the economy is a justification for enslaving people. I did my best to make it sound convincing though.

When I checked the forums, I saw that the early responders immediately recognized it as a joke — as one person noted, the fact that I included it in the Humor category was a dead giveaway. However, at least one person seemed to consider it possible, so I took the opportunity to make some forum posts to stir up more doubt and get people wondering. I probably overdid it because then I had lots of people asking questions, so it turned into an April Fools week. As I see it, I cashed in my credits from previous Aprils Fools oppportunities that I missed.

I admit that I was intrigued by the discussion, wondering how something like this might actually work if I we tried to do it for real, so I tried to fill in the gaps as if I’d had it all figured out. When people asked me something I couldn’t answer, I ignored them or gave them a dismissing joke reply. Eventually the thread swelled to 200+ replies, and I finally confessed it was a joke and let people know I’d post a serious version soon. I’ve never done an April Fools blog post before, so I hope you’ll forgive me for milking this one as much as I did.

Regarding Domination and Submission

I also wanted to poke a bit of fun at some people’s public perceptions of me, especially those who think that D/s is akin to actually enslaving someone. D/s is nothing but role-playing where the participants temporarily agree to play roles where one side has authority over the other. If you have issues with D/s, then you have issues with acting, movies, plays, etc. Was Michael Douglas really being sexually  abused by Demi Moore in the movie Disclosure? Of course not. They were just playing characters. The actors probably enjoyed making the movie. I see nothing wrong with this as long as it’s consensual. Do you?

Is it so hard to imagine that people might actually enjoy playing roles where they get to be a slave, Master, etc? Millions of people willingly choose to play together like this because they enjoy it and because it helps them discover new insights about themselves and their partners. I would suggest that those who have issues with this sort of thing are probably being unconsciously triggered to project their own power struggles onto others. This often happens when people feel powerless. I can understand and empathize with that, so let me recommend that maybe it’s time to take a look at those feelings instead of lashing out at those who are engaging in conscious an deliberate explorations that are perfectly legal, entirely ethical, mutually consensual, deeply experiential, and yummy.

Moreover, may I point out that my “slave” is a playwright and professional actress with a university degree in theater/drama?

I’m sorry to disappoint those who thought the April Fools joke was for real. Perhaps it could have been a fun social experiment if enough people were actually willing to do it, but in terms of staffing I’m heading in a different direction. I’m afraid the reality will seem a lot more vanilla in comparison.

I did receive several applications as a result of that post, but it seems that those people saw through the enslavement part as my being playful and addressed the serious prospect of potentially working together in some fashion. I’ll make sure they see this post first just to be sure.

The Truth Behind the Joke

As you may have guessed, while the post was intended as a joke overall, there was a nugget of truth to it.

First let me clarify the joke parts. These include:

• having a bunch of people move in with me
• offering people free housing and food in exchange for their submission and obedience
• requiring that everyone works for zero pay
• all the D/s stuff, such as referring to people as slaves and requiring them to call me Master and act submissive
• pretty much the whole post except for the general idea of wanting to build a staff

So the true part is that I’m ready to start building a staff.

There was also a not-so-subtle personal growth aspect to the post. I wanted to get you thinking about your current work situation and to consider what important elements may be missing. Do you feel enslaved? Are you well compensated for your work? Would free room and board in a nice house be an improvement over what you’re getting now? Do you have great social support and feel like you’re part of a team? Are you encouraged and appreciated for your contribution? Are you doing meaningful, purpose-driven work? Do you feel you’re making a difference? Do you feel that your employer cares about you?

Are you happy where you are?

So the post wasn’t entirely a ruse. There were multiple layers to it. Since I had to wait 3 weeks to post it, I had a lot of time to refine it. Looking back I wonder if I went a bit too far with it, but I think that overall it did more good than harm, as most people seemed to appreciate the playfulness of it. It also got people opening up and considering new possibilities for what they might want to experience in their working lives.

If we seriously tried to do something like what I wrote in that post, it might be a fascinating growth experience for all involved, but I can just as easily imagine it becoming a mess. The core idea of getting a bunch of growth-oriented, committed people working in the same location is sound. As I think about it though, I wonder if it might actually work better with such strongly defined roles as opposed to giving it a looser structure.

Now I’ll share a more realistic (yet still evolving) vision of what I’d like to do in terms of creative staffing. I invite your feedback on this to let me know what you think, especially if working together in some fashion appeals to you.

The Idea in a Nutshell

The idea is too big to fit in a nutshell, but I’ll do my best to give you an overview.

The main reason I want to build a staff is that I see lots of opportunities to do a better job of fulfilling this business’ purpose of helping people grow, but it’s too much for me to handle by myself. I’ve already pressed down the time management road, dumping things like cable TV and Facebook, but it’s obvious that no amount of personal time management can help me complete several person-years worth of projects all at once. I’m sleeping biphasically now, so I have more time each day, but even if I try to devote it all to doing extra work, I still see that hard limit of not having enough time to get things done as quickly as I’d like.

There are many options for staffing up the business. I could hire a virtual staff. I could get an office and build a co-located staff. I could enlist the help of interns. I could combine any or all of these things. Intuitively I feel it’s best to focus on finding good people first and then evolve a structure over time that suits the emerging group’s dynamics.

I also have people practically begging me to let them do certain things for me because they’d really like to help. For example, people have sent me detailed mock-ups of new web designs for my site. Most are a lot nicer looking than what I have now — and probably more user-friendly too. They typically offer to give my site a facelift for free, as a way of saying thanks for the value they’ve already received. Several programmers have been eager to work with me to create some personal development software apps, especially for the iPad, iPhone, and Android platforms. Other people would love to help produce more original content for my site, like doing creative videos. But when I have dozens of offers like that for different types of improvements, it becomes overwhelming to look at it and sort through it, and I see it as this gigantic blog of “too much”. I’m always having to triage and pick the best opportunities to pursue, which means saying no to lots of good and even great opportunities. I can’t personally manage all of that and keep up with doing what I do best.

Another factor is that I enjoy working with people face-to-face on a daily basis. It’s rewarding to work with creative, talented people, and I miss having that in my life from my game development days. Doing live workshops last year gave me a taste of what that might look like for this type of work, since we had a small staff for each event. I can’t deliver good workshops all by myself — it’s very much a team effort. With a good team in place, we could be holding workshops in other cities and doing them more frequently, and there’s a clear demand for that.

There’s also a very personal factor. I turn 40 on April 14, so naturally I’ve been giving some thought to what I’d like to do with the next decade of my life.

How to Compensate People

I’m open to a variety of different compensation methods here. While I said I don’t want to hire employees in the April Fools post, that part was on the joke side. I’m already set up to handle payroll and such because I do it for myself. I’m also open to working with independent contractors, interns, or other creative arrangements.

Let’s explore some possibilities.

Working for Free

I think it’s important to take advantage of free help when it’s practical to do so. Free help keeps costs low, it’s less risky (sometimes), and it makes it possible to get more done. It gives more people a foot in the door who might not otherwise get in. Then these people have the opportunity to gain real-world experience, to learn useful skills, to learn teamwork, and/or to prove themselves and make it easier to offer them a paid position.

Does this mean that everyone who wants to work for free gets an automatic yes? Of course not. There are still significant costs in terms of time and energy with bringing anyone new on board. Training and management require good focus. But if there’s no direct compensation, it greatly leans the risk factors in favor of saying yes. I would think this is mostly common sense.

With free help you also have to watch for “you get what you pay for” situations. Erin recently had an unpaid intern, and after working together well for a few months, the intern just up and left Erin hanging… stopped returning emails and phone calls with no explanation. Maybe she felt that since she wasn’t getting paid, it didn’t matter if she was irresponsible in how she chose to end her internship.

I have to be especially careful with this too. At past workshops we’ve had a staff of mostly volunteers to help us facilitate them, but I limit this to people that who’ve already convinced me they’re trustworthy and dependable. We can’t be doing workshops and have flaky people on staff who might not show up. So when someone I didn’t know offered to volunteer at a CGW, I felt it was too risky to say yes to that. I’d have to get to know you first.

For practical reasons, the no-direct-pay situation would likely be temporary for most people who go that route. If you do it for a while and love it and want to make it a more permanent arrangement, and we’re able to find ways that you can keep contributing to good effect, then we may be able to turn it into a paid position down the road. I don’t want to promise this up front for anyone though because it depends on so many factors — what skills you bring to the table, how much money the business is bringing in, who else wants to shift from free to paid work, and how dependable you are and how quickly you learn. Rest assured that I recognize the practical consideration that most people need to generate an income in the long run.

Short-term free help is usually no big deal for most people. It’s not a huge sacrifice to help facilitate a workshop for a weekend, especially since you get to attend the workshop yourself and hang out with all the attendees for free. I don’t expect I’ll ever have difficulty finding people to fill those roles.

What about free help that lasts much longer though, like some kind of apprenticeship for a few months? The apprentice learns about a real business, and I get some extra help without having to take too big of a risk. Personally I think this kind of education is potentially a lot more valuable than taking classes at a university, but in this case you only pay for the education with time, not with time and money. I’m open to this kind of arrangement with the right people, but I haven’t given it much thought yet. It really depends on the person and what they can bring to the table. We’d need to make sure it’s going to be a win for both of us.

For the long-term stability of the business, it’s more attractive to bring on free people that seem like they could be around for the long-term and upgrade to paid positions. High turnover might be okay for a turnkey business with lots of repetitive work, like a fast food franchise, but my business relies more heavily on creative work and long-term consistency. It doesn’t do the business as much good to invest time and effort bringing someone up to speed if they’ll only be around for a short while. I’m not saying we can’t find a place for those people, but I don’t think that’s the best situation. If someone just wants to help out for a couple weeks, and they’re largely unskilled and would have to be trained to do useful tasks, then I don’t see that as being worth the effort. I’d prefer to work with people who are seeking a 90-day commitment or longer. Otherwise I can’t justify the effort involved.

In my own life I’ve done a lot of work for free, and I see it as a good thing. It’s certainly not a form of capitalistic exploitation, especially since it’s completely voluntary. When I worked in the software field, I served as Vice President and then President of the Association of Shareware Professionals (now renamed the Association of Software Professionals). For two years I devoted many hours to the organization and was never paid a dime for it. I also wrote many articles and had them published in the ASP newsletter, also without pay. Much of the work was behind the scenes and thankless. I’m glad I did it though. I learned so much from the experience, and it’s nice to know that I was able to make a positive difference in some people’s lives.

I know from personal experience that investing time and energy in a cause you believe in, even for no direct pay, can still provide many benefits. If someone else had offered a free internship in this kind of business when I was younger, and it seemed practical for me financially, I could easily see myself wanting to jump on it.

Whether or not you think this is the right option for you depends on where you are on your career path. Do you have strong skills that are in high demand? Is it easy for you to get fulfilling paid work already? If so, then I wouldn’t recommend this option. But if you’re fairly young, passionate about personal growth, don’t need an income from this, think you’d gain a lot from the experience, and feel like you’re leaning towards working in this field, then I’d say it’s a good option to consider.

Virtual Contractors

Another possibility, especially if you don’t live in Las Vegas and don’t want to move here, is to work from your current location via the Internet. This could be done for free or for direct compensation, depending on your skills and the nature of the work.

A redesign of my website is a task that could be done anywhere, and if the work is of high quality and makes the website meaningfully better afterwards, then it could certainly be justifiable to pay for it.

There are lots of ways to work out the pay here. It could be done with a flat fee for each job, a series of payments based on milestones, or an hourly rate, for instance. It’s usually less risky to know how much a project will cost in advance, but I know that isn’t always possible for creative work.

For certain tasks I could use existing websites to find contractors, but as long as the costs are reasonable, I’d rather work with people who are already familiar with my content. I would think they’d have more motivation to see that the work is done well because they’re a part of the community that’s served by it, not an outsider who may not care as much.

My personal preference is to favor working with people that I can meet face to face, at least occasionally. I don’t like working with people via the Internet as much unless I’ve already met them in person and have gotten to know them. If I can never meet someone face to face and we can only connect via phones or the Internet, I’d be less inclined to work with them if there’s a local alternative. At the very least, I’d probably want to talk to each person via video Skype before considering working with them. If you’re a contractor who’s very private and prefers to remain shielded behind email, then I don’t think we’d be a good match for working together, even if you’re extremely talented. Tone of voice and body language are a significant part of communication when it comes to things like scoping out how a person feels about a particular task or idea. I’d like to avoid situations where someone says yes to an idea while their body language suggests they have serious doubts about it.

My friend Lisa Nichols (from the movie The Secret) has a virtual staff of people in different cities, but periodically she flies everyone to the same location for a weekend, so they can have an in-person pow-wow about upcoming projects. I think that would be too expensive for me at this time — I haven’t been on Oprah like Lisa has — but I like the idea in general. This wouldn’t make as much sense for short-term contractors, but if you have a virtual staff of team members that have been working together for years, I think it’s a good idea to get everyone to meet in the same location from time to time.

I can see virtual outsourcing being useful for some tasks, but I’m not looking to outsource everything overseas so I can check out from the business and do something else with my time. I’d rather bring people together and be actively involved in projects as opposed to distancing myself from them.

If you see yourself wanting to do something along these lines, I’d have to approach it fairly cautiously. I understand the benefits of outsourcing, but I’m not as drawn to grow a business that has the core people spread all over the planet where we can never get together face to face.

Revenue Splits

A revenue-split arrangement makes sense for projects that are associated with a measurable revenue stream where contributors share a stake in the financial results.

For instance, I’d consider a revenue split deal if someone creates a quality piece of software that would be a good fit for my readers. I have such an arrangement with the developer of The Journal. We met many years ago when I was a game developer, and since I’d been using his software since 2002 (and still do), I got in touch and suggested a joint-venture deal whereby I’d personally review his software on my website, and we’d split the sales revenue that came from that. This way it generates new incomes stream for us both. And to make it a better deal for my readers, I created custom journaling templates for the program, included as a bonus for no extra cost. We did that deal a few years ago, and it still generates monthly income for both of our businesses.

A quality journaling program is a very good fit for my website, and I could easily recommend it because I was a fan of the program long before I started blogging. I had also met the developer, and I knew that he was passionate about journaling, not the kind of person to crank out fluff just to try to make a buck. So this made the deal fairly easy to do.

Such deals can be tricky though, so I approach them cautiously. It’s actually more important to avoid bad deals than it is to find good ones. I don’t have time to wade through lots of different software, and there’s so much low-quality and very derivative stuff out there.

I give careful consideration to people behind the product or service. If I get approached for this kind of thing by someone I don’t know, I immediately see it as 10x riskier, and I’ll put a lot more onus on the developer to reduce that risk. I’d have to see something that looks like a super-strong fit for my readers, it can’t be a fluffy program where there are already much better offerings on the market, it had better not be something that I could see myself coding up in a weekend. And this should be a talented developer with a provably solid track record. Otherwise there are just too many unknowns, and I simply can’t touch it.

I’ve also done revenue splits for info products a number of times. That worked out well revenue-wise and has been my business’ #1 income generator since I started blogging.

The downside to opening the door to too many revenue splits is that when enough Internet marketers become aware that you’re doing them, you get hounded endlessly. People have sent me hundreds of products in the mail unsolicited, and they often follow up to try to get me to pitch them on my website in exchange for a cut of sales. They usually don’t care if I even look at the products. I won’t recommend something I haven’t thoroughly checked out though. So in the end, I feel it’s a bit too time-consuming for me to do these kinds of deals relative to how much value they provide to my readers. I think I’m better off shifting this time to my own product development.

Unless all the factors line up beautifully and a near perfect match comes along, I’m inclined to say no to most revenue split offers from people I’ve never met. Even for people I have met, I usually say no. But everyone once in a while, a really good match does come along. I learned about one this past weekend that looks rather promising.

Obviously this is a much looser arrangement than other forms of staffing, but I wanted to mention it because it’s something I already have a lot of experience with. The nice thing about revenue splits is that they’re fairly low risk. You have to invest some time, but you don’t have to pay out any money except as a function of sales. So if you do a deal like this and it bombs, it’s a disappointment but not a disaster.

Employees

For certain positions we can go the employee route. This is a bigger commitment both financially and legally, so I need to have a compelling reason to add someone to the payroll. Suffice it to say that I’ll be very selective.

Right now the business is financially sustainable. It’s been that way since it launched in 2004. I want to keep it that way.

In order to create the capacity for adding more employees, we’ll need to add more revenue streams. I’m not at the point where I can justify hiring too many people just yet except for fairly basic positions. The least risky positions to fill are those that help bring in revenue directly, that support and enhance existing revenue streams, or that save me time so I can do more revenue-generating activities.

For example, hiring an employee to handle the logistics for delivering more workshops, such as finding and booking venues, coordinating the room setup with the venue, getting badges printed, managing the registration table, coordinating with the audio tech, etc. would be reasonable. If we can schedule more workshops, we can start selling tickets right away (as soon as the venue is booked), and this should create a revenue stream to more than cover the salary and costs for that position. This would free me to focus on creating and delivering the content of the workshops.

One simple position I’d like to fill would be to hire a personal assistant, someone who’s local to me and who has a car, so they could run errands and handle a variety of simple tasks, freeing me up to focus on other things. It wouldn’t be like The Devil Wears Prada though.

Since I plan to bootstrap the business as we go, I have to pay a lot of attention to resource and risk management. I don’t want to add people and then have to lay them off a few months later. So for any paid positions, I’m going to be careful in scaling up gradually and building a sufficient cash reserve, so we don’t get ahead of ourselves by being overly aggressive.

I don’t have an assembly-line type of business, so for employees I’m going to look for flexibility and adaptability. Is this someone who can only perform a few types of tasks, or is this a quick learner who can wear a variety of different hats? Can this person perform multiple roles as needed, like an audio engineer that can edit and master our audio programs, help produce new podcasts, record interviews, and serve as the audio tech for our live workshops? The more flexible and adaptable someone can be, the more I’d want to hire them.

Employee positions are likely to be the most competitive, especially in this economy where there are a lot of people looking for work.

Fortunately this business has some awesome advantages. Having a consistent flow of web traffic means we don’t have to worry as much about marketing expenses. To date I’ve never spent a dime on marketing or promotion, not even for my book or workshops. I simply leveraged existing resources to get the word out. As long as we’re careful about it, it shouldn’t be a problem for this business to sustain and grow a paid staff.

Other Possibilities

There are other possibilities too, so if you want to suggest something different than what I’ve mentioned above, feel free.

My main concern is the cost-benefit aspect. What kind of value is being contributed, and how much risk does the business have to assume? Are people doing quality work, and can the business safely sustain them financially?

As far as rules and structure are concerned, I think it’s impossible to plan all of that in advance for this kind of business. We’ll have to see what’s needed as we go. When people work together in the same location and there’s a heavy amount of communication involved, then I think we’ll need a good bit of structure to keep things flowing smoothly.

How to Apply

In lieu of spelling out what specific positions I need to fill at this time, I think it makes more sense to invite people who might already have some ideas about how they see us working together to share their interest. This is a flexible and creative business, and I’m open to letting people define what kind of contribution they’d love to make. Then we can see if it’s realistic and workable.

The reason I’m doing this is that I think it’s more important to find great people to work with and then find a way to work with them, as opposed to defining fixed positions and looking to fill them. Ultimately I expect I’ll need to do both, but for now I have the liberty of remaining open to creative possibilities without needing to be so rigid.

It’s reasonable to expect that there will probably be a lot more people interested in working together than I can say yes to. So from the perspective of people who might apply, this is likely to be highly competitive. If you don’t think you have much to offer and you’re just looking for any sort of job, don’t bother. It’s pretty much a certainty that someone more qualified and/or more willing will apply. I value enthusiasm and motivation, but I also place a high value on talent and skill. I wouldn’t hire someone just because they’re really enthusiastic about working together.

Consequently, I want to discourage casual “what the hell, I might as well” applications. So for starters, I’m not going to accept any applications via email. I don’t want to check my inbox and find hundreds of resumes from people who have no business applying.

Also, I’m not going to accept any generic applications that look like they could have been sent to someone else. If I receive something that looks like it isn’t personally directed to me, I’ll simply toss it in the recycle bin. I don’t feel I need to consider someone who’s just fishing for a job.

If you want to apply, please do the following:

1. Write a personal letter telling me about your interest. You can say whatever you feel is important to share. What are you interested in doing? How do you envision us working together? Why does this appeal to you?
2. Include a resume/CV that lists your work history and education.
3. Include other resources you feel are relevant (optional).
4. Be sure to include your email address, so I can follow up, and the URL of your website if you have one.
5. Mail it to me at the address on my contact page.

Please skip the “Dear Mr. Pavlina” formalities. Just write to me as your normal self. Assume we’re already good friends, and go from there. Don’t be concerned that you might scare me off if you express too much emotion or that you might seem cold if you express too little. Allow yourself to express whatever comes through for you.

I might be opening Pandora’s Box here, so I’ll do my best to follow up with each person who applies, but I can’t predict in advance how many people that will be. So if you don’t hear back right away, don’t panic. I recognize that everyone would like a timely follow-up, but since I’ve never done this before and since I don’t have an HR department, I can’t guarantee much except to say that I’ll look at what you send, and if it excites me and I think we can do something together, I’ll follow up, and then we can discuss it further. Does this mean that if you don’t hear back within say, 30 days, that you should assume the worst? Probably.

Consider this an open invite with no deadline. Once I see how things are shaping up and go a bit further down this path, I may add a jobs section to the website and lock things down a bit more… or better yet, I may have someone do that for me.

But for now I’m using the Ready-Fire-Aim approach.

If you’re in a rush for employment and you need a job yesterday, this isn’t the right opportunity for you. It would be unreasonable for me to even suggest that I can provide a speedy turnaround. This is not a situation where I already have well-defined positions in urgent need of filling.

Rachelle and I are leaving for another road trip in a few days to celebrate my 40th b’day (we’re going to Napa Valley, Mammoth Lakes, and L.A.), so I won’t even be in town to look at anyone’s applications till late April at the earliest anyway.

There are some key factors I’ll be looking for in anyone I work with. Originally I had listed them out in this post, but I decided it was best not to share it because I don’t want people to try and game me. I need to find people who truly possess those qualities, not actors who can pretend they do. I hope you can understand that.

Consequently, I don’t recommend that you try to tell me what you think I want to hear. You could just as easily guess wrong and unnecessarily rule yourself out. Just focus on sharing who you are and what you want, and then we’ll see if we’re a good match. It’s not going to do either of us much good if we have to part ways after just a few days of working together.

Being Playful at Work

Incidentally, there’s another reason I wrote the joke post first. I wanted to make sure that anyone who applies for real has a compatible sense of humor and can handle a bit of joking around. This is a serious business that can deeply impact people’s lives, but against the backdrop of that responsibility, I think it’s important that we all enjoy working together. I’m certainly not known for my excessive reverence. I need people who can share in that same spirit of playfulness and still get things done, such as when we had a day of CGW where people wore Halloween costumes. I had a blast doing the workshop dressed as “Master” Obi-wan Kenobi, and the costumed workshop really raised the energy of the room and gave everyone reasons to socialize a lot more. This isn’t about foolishly messing around for no good reason.

If you have issues with this kind of playfulness in the workplace or if the whole D/s role-playing thing rubbed you the wrong way and you thought less of me for even suggesting it, then let’s accept that we’re incompatible and wouldn’t enjoy working together.

I’d rather work in a place where people jokingly call me Master or Captain or Your Highness instead of Boss or Sir. In my games business one guy used to refer to me as the Evil Overlord. And if you can’t handle being addressed as Slave, Minion, Number One, Third of Five, etc. then you probably wouldn’t enjoy working with me because I honestly love that kind of stuff. Just ask Rachelle how often I call her by her actual name. More often it’s Tasty Treat, Squish Bunny, Crazy Canuck, etc. I ran a game development business for 10 years, so I still have some appreciation for the importance of lightheartedness and play. That said, I’m totally against interactions that are truly degrading to people and that create a hostile work environment. That doesn’t serve anyone. But I don’t think we need to be so paranoid to the point of turning the business into a funeral parlor. Suffice it to say that if you do enter into this environment, and you truly find some aspect of the playfulness uncomfortable or excessive, just tell me about it, and we’ll take steps to fix it. Fair enough, Ensign?

Style and proficiency are two different things. I don’t see them as being in conflict with each other. I think a healthy sense of humor and lighthearted playfulness in our interactions will make for a much better workplace than expecting people to leave their souls at home. It fosters better bonding and teamwork and makes it more fun to come to work each day.

The reality of my staffing situation may seem a lot more mundane than the dramatic April Fools version, but I’m still excited about it. Let’s work together to create a more socially just, environmentally responsible, spiritually aware, emotionally honest, and mentally intelligent world to live in.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then you’d probably expect me to take a non-traditional approach to staffing. You’d be right.

After writing articles like 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m not interested in creating dull, corporate-style positions and then looking for people to fill those predetermined roles, as if I’m buying parts for a machine. My business is too fluid for such rigidity anyway. I need people who can be flexible, adaptable, and willing to do what needs to be done. This tends to be true of small businesses in general though — people wear many different hats.

Second, I think the traditional employer-employee model is too rooted in industrial-age thinking. My business is highly creative and always evolving, so I need growth-oriented people who will push themselves to develop new skills and embrace new experiences. I’m aware that many businesses spend millions training their employees to become Farmville pros, but that isn’t a core skill for my business.

And lastly, I don’t want to work with people who just want a job to pay the bills. I want people who have the right heart set, people who are motivated to help create and deliver growth experiences for others — and to contribute to a powerful group energy that’s dedicated to this pursuit.

Lots of people are looking for work right now, and I have far more work on my plate than I can personally handle. I have an abundance of opportunities that I need help to pursue. So I think the timing is right to start building a staff.

Economic Considerations

Let’s be brutally honest. Unemployment is very high right now. In my home state where the reported unemployment rate is around 13-14%, it’s estimated that the true unemployment rate is more than 22% when you factor in the people who’ve given up looking for work.

Lots of people are in need of work. And I have plenty for them to do.

Many people think they need money to pay their bills, but they really don’t. Those are merely socially conditioned needs. People need food and shelter, but if they have those needs covered, then they don’t actually need money.

This isn’t a situation where I need to pay people to do work for me. I just have to make sure their basic needs are met well enough, and it should be no problem finding plenty of people to work for me for no pay.

This eliminates a lot of red tape as well. If I don’t have to put people on the payroll, then it’s less paperwork, less taxes, and more money to reinvest in growing the business. And if people aren’t officially employees, then I don’t have to worry about various rules and regulations that apply to employer-employee relationships. This greatly reduces the complexity of my business and makes it leaner and more efficient, meaning that we can provide more value to people with less overhead. It also means we can offer lower prices for products and services.

In light of the above, I’ve considered many different staffing models, trying to figure out what would be the best fit for my business, my values, and the current economy. Eventually I settled on a model that I feel pretty good about…

Slavery

I have to admit that I don’t really want employees. If I wanted employees, I’d have hired some years ago. Deep down, I know that hiring employees isn’t the right direction for me. It’s not what I truly desire.

What I really want is to build a staff of slaves.

Slavery solves so many problems that I’d otherwise have to deal with if I hired employees or worked with independent contractors. Even unpaid interns can be a bit burdensome. Slavery is clearly the best option.

This model also aligns well with my ongoing exploration of D/s. I don’t want my workers calling me Boss. That just sounds lame. I’d much rather be called Master. It’s better for my self-esteem.

I already have more than a year of experience in the role of Master, and I like to think I’m getting pretty good at it. I have one excellent slave who’s been with me for more than a year, and I enjoy her immensely. However, she’s more of a personal slave than a business slave, although she does a great job of giving me typo reports on new blog posts. Eventually it dawned on me how great this slavery model would be if I extended it to my business as well.

The good news is that I’m a very benevolent Master. I have no desire to abuse or punish slaves, so there’s no need to worry about that. I only use positive conditioning and training methods. I’m very good at expressing gratitude and appreciation. I want my slaves to be happy and fulfilled. Unhappy slaves are no fun to work with.

Female slaves can be very sexy too. I’d especially love to have one as my secretary. Why on earth would I want to fill such a position with an employee — and be subjected to all the burdensome rules and regulations and potential liabilities that come with it — when I can fill this role with a willing slave instead? It’s a no-brainer — and it’s certainly a lot more fun — to recruit slaves instead of employees.

Also, since I’d prefer female slaves for certain positions (such as missionary), I don’t want to have to deal with laws regarding discrimination based on sex (slave sex is awesome), religion (you can’t have two Masters), height (shorter slaves are easier to dominate), etc. Involuntary slavery may be illegal, but voluntary slavery is perfectly legal, and it isn’t regulated by the same burdensome package of crazy laws that I’d have to deal with if I hired employees.

I also think that slave is a more honest and authentic job title than employee. I command. You obey. This is simple and straightforward.

The Benefits of Slavery

Fortunately slavery isn’t just about work, work, work. I intend to take really good care of my slaves, so there are some pretty cool benefits. I think that once you consider the overall lifestyle package of what enslavement can offer, you’ll surely agree it’s better than getting a regular job.

First, I’m happy to feed and shelter my slaves if they’re in Las Vegas (or willing to relocate), so you’ll get free housing and free vegan food. I have a big house in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Las Vegas, and there are some empty bedrooms that could easily be converted to slave quarters. We could probably fit 2-4 slaves in each room.

Slaves will also have full access to the pool and spa. Imagine relaxing in the hot tub and gazing up at the stars on a warm desert night at the end of a day of hard work. Your slave accommodations will be quite luxurious, certainly better than what most employees enjoy.

As my slave, you’ll be immersed in personal growth. You’ll gain valuable skills, learn the inner workings of my business, and have the opportunity to hang out with other growth-oriented people as well. You’d be surrounded by an amazing support group of fellow slaves, encouraging you to become the best slave you can possibly be.

As a slave you won’t have to worry about being fired since you’re not employed. If you got really uppity, the worst thing that would happen is that I might pawn you off on someone else. So you could still enjoy being a slave, just not with me as your Master. While I enjoy playful slaves very much, at the end of the day I need them to be obedient, not ornery.

Another benefit of slavery is that you no longer have to worry about discovering your life purpose. I know how challenging and confusing it can be to figure this out. Fortunately when you become my slave, it then becomes my responsibility to define your life purpose for you. Your purpose will be to serve me and my business and to help the business grow, prosper, and provide strong value to more people.

Full enslavement may seem like a big commitment, but I can make the decision easier for you. We can start with a probationary period of 3-6 months — a trial enslavement. Then you can see if you like it. If at any time during this period you decide that enslavement isn’t for you, we’ll restore your freedom and send you on your way. I’ve always had strong faith in the try-before-you-buy model. I think that once you get a taste of enslavement, you’ll never want to go back.

Of course the rewards for full enslavement can be even better in the long run. If you’re able to earn my trust, and if I see that you are indeed a hard working and loyal slave, then I may offer you the opportunity to travel around the world with me. I’d like to do workshops in other cities, both in the USA and abroad, so I’m going to need some slaves to help make this a reality. How does an all expenses paid trip to Europe sound? This could be your opportunity of a lifetime.

Now obviously you’ll have to relinquish your freedom to get access to all these benefits, but were you really taking full advantage of it anyway?

You see… enslavement is the new freedom. Think of how freeing it will be to no longer have to worry about paying rent, affording healthy food, or figuring out what to do with your life. You’ll be provided with abundant healthy food, a luxurious shelter, and limitless social opportunities. You’ll automatically inherit a meaningful life purpose — to help people live happier and more fulfilling lives and to co-create a more conscious planet. As a valued team member, you’ll be able to make a powerful contribution. You’ll be surrounded by a benevolent Master and fellow slaves who love you, and you’ll be showered with appreciation and gratitude for your service.

Think of how much happier your life will be as my slave. For some this is a dream come true.

How to Apply

If becoming my slave sounds good to you — and I’m sure it does — then please apply by writing to me at the mailing address on my contact page. I must insist that you use regular postal mail. I won’t be accepting emailed applications.

Qualified applicants for enslavement must be:

• loyal
• obedient
• submissive
• caring & compassionate
• hard working
• trainable
• horny (for certain positions)
• playful (but not too ornery or uppity)
• growth-oriented

Please include a personal letter explaining your interest in working with me. What kind of work appeals to you? How would you like to develop yourself? What would you like to contribute to my business and to this field?

Do you want to help improve Master’s website, assist in facilitating live workshops, serve as a personal assistant, be Master’s sexy secretary, etc? If it’s the latter, please include a submissive-looking photo of yourself.

It would be helpful for me to see your educational and employment history and what special skills you have, but please don’t merely send me your resume or CV. Your work history isn’t the only factor I’ll consider, and in some cases it isn’t even the most important element.

I need to get a good sense of where your heart is. What’s important to you in life, and how does enslavement fit into that picture?

Lastly, let me know if you’re willing to relocate to Las Vegas (or if you already live here) and if you’re able to meet up for an enslavement interview at some point. I could potentially use virtual slaves for certain tasks, but it’s just not the same as co-located slaves. The immersive environment is a significant part of the enslavement experience. And the more people I have calling me Master in person, the more motivated I am to do my best work.

Obviously I don’t need to know your salary requirements since there is no salary.

If you’re curious as to whether I can offer a health plan, I certainly want my slaves to be healthy and fit. I’ll make sure you get plenty of exercise and that you’re fed only vegan foods, so you don’t get sick too often. If you get hit by a bus, that’s a shame indeed, but I’m sure you can still do some kind of work once you recover. We’ll do the best we can to nurse you back to health.

I sincerely regret that I may not be able to enslave everyone who desires and deserves it. If you seem like a qualified candidate and if there’s still space available, I’ll do my best to accommodate you. Even if I can’t enslave you right away, it’s possible that with enough hard work from the initial group of slaves, we may be able to purchase a larger estate that can house more slaves. So don’t give up hope if you don’t make the first cut. If you want it badly enough, we can probably find a way to make it happen.

My staffing plan may seem unconventional, but I think you can see the logic of it. It’s obviously a win-win situation. I win with a staff of dedicated, loyal, obedient helpers and no stressful bureaucratic red tape to deal with. My slaves win with free food, shelter, training, love, encouragement, an amazing lifestyle, and in some cases… sex play. And my readers benefit with an abundance of fresh value such as an upgraded website and new products and services offered at very reasonable cost. After years of struggling to figure out how to build a staff in alignment with my values, I finally discovered a path that excites me.

Update 4/11/11 – Is this for real? Read Help Wanted (the Serious Version) to find out.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina