Chris Guillebeau's Top 10 Rules For Success (@chrisguillebeau)

If you have a dream, if you have this crazy idea, you must believe in it even if no one else does. When you talk to people who have found the work they were born to do, they are so excited about it. You can tell that they have found something that is really unique. I've never really been interested in living a balanced life. You know, I don't— I think balanced people don't change the world. I didn't want to get old, right, and be like, you know, oh, once, like, 10 years ago I had this idea, you know, to do something, but I never did anything about it. We tend to focus on all the fun things, and the fun things are great, but we have, like, Not everybody wants to pay you to do those fun things. I'm a big fan of defining our aspirations and then crafting our life around them, essentially. I actually don't think you need a niche. I don't believe that you have to have something super specific. Well, you have to connect with like-minded people. You have to surround yourself with people who aren't necessarily doing the same things that you're doing, but they have the same attitudes or the same mindset, at least. You know, she says, people are always telling you to think outside the box. She says, my advice is to get in the box. But because life is short, Why not try to work towards something, you know, that is not just, you know, okay, but is amazing? I'm a writer, traveler, and entrepreneur. I'm best known for going to every country in the world, all 193, and for writing the Art of Nonconformity blog and books. My new book is called Born for This. It's all about how to find the work you are meant to do. I'm Chris Guillebeau, and here are my top 10 rules for success. If you have a dream, if you have this crazy idea, you must believe in it even if no one else does. So when I had the idea to go to every country in the world, that's kind of what it felt like. It felt like this crazy idea. It was like, this just sounds like totally ridiculous and absurd, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I realized that if I didn't pursue it, I would always regret it. And that knowledge, that fear of regret, kind of drove me to say yes. And I talked to lots of other people who used very similar language. There's a guy from Portland, Maine, whose crazy idea was to walk across America. And he wasn't even sure, like, how does that work? How much time does it take? Has anyone done this before? It was this crazy idea that wouldn't leave him alone. And so one morning, he left his home in Maine, and he started walking, and 7.5 months later, he arrived in San Francisco. And I talked to him throughout the whole journey. I talked to him in the beginning, and in the middle, and the end, and I asked him, you know, what were the challenges like, and how did it go? And he said something that stayed with me for the rest of my journey, He said, you know, there were lots of external challenges. It was hard on the body to get used to walking that much. Lots of things went wrong. There were some emotional challenges as well. He had just had a breakup and he was kind of processing all of this. He said, but what I realized about 2 weeks in, once I started complaining, once I stopped complaining and grumbling about the whole thing, he said, I realized that my task was pretty simple. All I had to do was walk. Essentially. And if I did nothing else, if I got up every morning and I made a little bit of progress, then eventually I would reach the goal. Eventually I would arrive in San Francisco and achieve that goal, reach that destination. And it sounded really simple, but it's kind of stayed with me for the final 2 years of my quest, because that's how I felt it was for me too. All I had to do was get to 193 countries. And I had my list of countries. And I was making progress. And if I got stuck somewhere, eventually I'd have to overcome that challenge, but I could go and do some others first. I liked the logical, analytical progress of it. It's something that related to me. So just keep going. You have to believe in your dream, even if no one else does. I think a lot of people, when I talk to people about this book, they were worried about mistakes they had made. And they were worried about, like, you know, I had this opportunity and I let it go, or I should have done this and I ended up doing something different. I really learned that you can recover from most mistakes. Like, most of us have made mistakes. We've done different things, and that's normal. So there are a lot of different paths. I don't think there's just necessarily one path for everyone. There's this whole poem about the road not taken or the road less traveled, and I took this one. It made all the difference. But we don't really know the other story, right? We don't know what happened. Like, what if you'd actually gone back and taken the other one? Maybe it would have been great too. Maybe it would have been better. So I do think there's more than one path. But I also think when you talk to people who have found the work they were born to do, they are so excited about it. You can tell that they have found something that is really unique. And really special. So even though there's more than one path, I think it's important to kind of work toward whatever this special thing is, work toward this, this combination of factors to where like we're really happy and we have all the money that we need and we're doing something that we're really good at. I think, I think that's the goal, right? So it's not like this one elusive thing. But if you look at really successful people, if you look at Beyoncé, like Beyoncé probably could have done a bunch of different things. But isn't it so good that she's doing what she's doing? Or anyone that you admire. You kind of look at them and you're like, they have really found their thing. I've never really been interested in living a balanced life. I think balanced people don't change the world, first of all. I think balanced people don't really follow a dream. This doesn't mean that you don't have responsibilities. Like, just go to the other part of his question, how can you have a family? Well, sure, you can have a family, but balance is kind of like, I feel like balance is like a made-up word. It's like invented by corporations to make their employees think that they're happy. It's like you got this balance, like you could work at Microsoft or something here in Seattle.

There's like 10 Microsoft people in the audience.

That's right. No disrespect to Microsoft. Let's pick another company. Microsoft's a great company.

1 out of every 5 people in Seattle works at Microsoft.

That's right. And it's like you got this thing, and maybe you love your job. And if you love your job, that's great. But I hear from a lot of dissatisfied people. At some of these big companies, and they write in, they're like, "I'm reading your blog from my cubicle, and I have this good job, and I've got my health insurance, I've got free yoga every Thursday, but I'm not really, you know—" Fulfilled. Right. "I'm not really fulfilled." So for me, I guess I'm much more interested in that word "fulfilled." Like, you know, how can you live a fulfilled life? And you can live a fulfilled life and still pay your bills. Lots of creative people do it. Lots of unconventional people do it. And I would say, if anything, it's actually much more common now than it used to be. You know, when I first started working online, you know, 15 years ago, I didn't know a lot of other people who were doing that. You know, my friends thought I was selling drugs or something. Well, you were. Well, I was, you know. But— or like online gambling or, you know, whatever. Like, parents have no idea how the internet works and stuff. But now it's much more common. So I don't really like the word balance myself.

So what we'd like to do is we want to replace the word, like, living a balanced life is not the goal. The goal is living a fulfilled life.

I started traveling. I had been to a bunch of countries, really liked it. I lived in West Africa for 4 years and started kind of trying to figure out, okay, how many countries have I been to? How many countries in the world are there? Once I had this information, it was very difficult to do anything else, right? Because once I had this information, I was like, oh, I've been to like 50 countries. There's 193 countries. It was 192. I would like to visit 100 countries sometime in my life. I set that goal first, you know. But you just said, you say, "I would like to," 'cause I would like to do a lot of things, but I'm not gonna do it. No, no, I want to. I feel drawn to it. I feel like this is a goal I'm gonna attach to myself, and at the time it wasn't public. It was just like a private thing. This is before I was blogging, you know? And then as I started getting closer to that goal of 100 countries, that's when I thought, well, what's next? Because if you're only going to half the countries, then you're missing a lot of challenges, and you could just go to easy places. So that's when I, so I had this information of like, okay, Could I really do, you know, and I was like, could I really go to every country? I don't know if I could or not. Like, this is like a huge thing. It's gonna cost a lot, not just in terms of money, but also in terms of time and like sacrifice and logistics. Things could go wrong, you know, fear. But really what it came down to for me was not the fear of something going wrong along the way. Once I actually started thinking about this and was like, maybe I could actually do this in like 7 to 8 years if I really worked at it. What I was afraid of was not doing it. I was afraid of like, you know, having this idea and then just passing on it. Right. You know, and just continuing to travel a little bit. I'm that guy who travels once in a while, but what's that? You know, like, and then I didn't want to get old, right? And be like, you know, oh, once in a while, like 10 years ago, I had this idea, you know, to do something, but I never did anything about it. You know, that's what drove me. The fear of being ordinary or of not— The fear of regret, of not following up on a dream that I had, that I knew I could— I didn't know if I could succeed. I thought I might fail. But I figured if I failed, I could deal with that, you know, but not if I just didn't do it, right? That's what drove it. For those people who have heard your story and want to live a sort of nonconformist traveling lifestyle as well, can you recommend a business model that they start out with? You tried info products, you tried eBay. What do you recommend? The most important thing I recommend, regardless of what the specific business model is, is to really kind of focus on what I call the convergence between what you love to do and what you're passionate about and what other people are also passionate about and what other people are actually willing to exchange money for because those things can be different sometimes. I think often when we focus on location independence and doing what you want and stuff, we tend to focus on all the fun things. And the fun things are great, but not everybody wants to pay you to do those fun things. No. So you have to find it. You have to find a link between what you can do that's really helpful, where your skills are, how your passions can align with other people. That took me quite a while to figure that out. But if you really focus on that from the beginning, then I think that helps regardless of the specific business model. Now in terms of the business model, right now I'm in the information publishing business. I really do love it. I think it's great. But there's other things you can do as well. So it just depends on what you're into and what kind of business you want to pursue, I think.

We all have these like great ideas, right? And at the same time, we have responsibilities and mortgages and, you know, whatever. So I guess I'm just wondering what your advice is to people who, you know, want to go out and pursue certain things, but there are also like certain limitations, I guess, that we have to like exist within. I mean, I guess we don't, but, you know, I can't walk away from my condo tomorrow and walk across the country. It probably wouldn't work out well for me. But yeah, what's your advice?

So that's a great question. But do you want to walk across the country? Like, is that your aspiration, right? So I'm a big fan of defining our aspirations and then crafting our life around them, essentially, you know? And so like the quest to visit every country in the world, for example, I was thinking about this the other day, 'cause people ask how much it costs, right? And the first 100 countries cost about $30,000. So $30,000, at least I would argue, is not a huge amount of money for going to 100 countries and all the life experiences experience that I got through that, and also I didn't have to pay it all right away. You pay as you go, essentially, in something like that. So these limitations, as you said, maybe let's not call them limitations, they're responsibilities, especially people with families. You don't just leave your family and walk across the country. But again, there are ways to cultivate the value of adventure. That's why I like the story of Sasha and what she did at home. There's a woman in Omaha who's knitting 10,000 hats. And her passion, the thing that she really loved, was always knitting. And one Christmas time or holiday time, she made 100 hats for her friends and family, and she was like, that was really fun, I wanna do 1,000, but 1,000 is not a big enough challenge, so she took on this goal of 10,000 hats, and there's a charity component to it. You can connect with her on her website and eventually get a hat. So, I mean, I don't know, responsibilities and things are real, but if something matters to us, I guess I'm also a believer in figuring out how to how to do that, right? Like, we do have to trade off things. We do have to sacrifice, and especially for all of us with so many opportunities available to us, it's a matter of prioritization. You know, it's a matter of, you know, I can probably do anything I want, but I can't do everything, right? So if this thing really does matter to me, whether it's walking across the country or whatever it is in your case, then it's something that you have to plan for and build for, and for me, it was, it was worth it to do that. When you're starting a blog or trying to build an audience, how important is it to have a niche, and what can you do if you have multiple interests? You find a way to meld the different interests. You find a way to, I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit, to kind of put them together. And the word that I like to use is not niche or niche. I like to use the word theme. So I actually don't think you need a niche. I don't believe that you have to have something super specific. I know that there are some people who say that, and maybe that's been true for them. That's great. In my case, it certainly wasn't the way that I chose to do it, and partly that was because I was worried I would get bored, you know, if it was something too specific. I had started a lot of projects in the past where I was really motivated and excited for a while, but then it kind of dropped off. And with this one, when I started writing the blog, it was something that I really liked the medium, and I wanted to be able to keep doing it for a long period of time. So I didn't choose a niche, but I did, as Dave kind of referred to, I did meld the interests together, and I chose a theme. And I said, what do all these things have in common? You know, it's more of a worldview, nonconformity, than it is anything super specific. Well, you have to connect with like-minded people. You have to surround yourself with people who aren't necessarily doing the same things that you're doing, but they have the same attitudes or the same mindset, at least. So that's another thing that has been transformative because now when I meet readers or I come to do things like this, I find it— like I'm in this weird business of inspiration, right? And people are like, "Oh, it's so inspiring," and stuff. But it's totally true that I legitimately derive like a great deal of my inspiration from the feedback and the interaction, as you were saying, with Twitter. So online and offline, you know? Online is great. I mean, relationships can be forged online and you actually meet that person and you feel like you know them already and stuff. When I do stuff like this, part of the reason we do the World Domination Summit is to bring together people who are like-minded, especially if they come from small towns or something. I hear this a lot of like, I live in this place where it's not like Seattle or Portland or wherever. There's just not a lot of people who think like I do, or my ideas aren't accepted, or maybe my family doesn't understand why I want to be an artist or why I want to travel. They're just like, why don't you just go on vacation? Why do you want to like go and see the world. So bringing people together and then just myself by being in that, it's helped so, so much. I guess the general principle is I am pro-goal, right? I am pro-parameters. There's this good story in the book about a woman named Elise Blaha Cripe who's a serial crafter and she makes all this stuff and she shares it with the world and she's incredibly prolific. And her whole advice is, She says, "People are always telling you to think outside the box." She says, "My advice is to get in the box." Basically, make yourself a box. Make yourself these parameters, these goals, whatever. Again, it's not something that's being imposed on you. That's really the clear point. It's not like someone saying, "Here's your goal. Here's what you should do." No, it's you. It's the things that you select for yourself. But I believe there's so much possibility in those parameters or in those constraints, as we talked about. Whether it's like my goal is to climb Mount Everest, or maybe it's the 10 mountains or something. And stages are also good. So stages are milestones, the levels in Mario Brothers. For me, it was like 50 countries, 100 countries. Then it was like every continent. Once I finished all of Africa, that was a big thing. So I do think it's important to celebrate small wins along the way. Everybody who's successful— and by successful, I mean absolutely fulfilled in their career, passionate about it, and feeling like they're doing something that they're supposed to do— they have these 3 characteristics. And first of all, they joy. They're happy in their work. They enjoy what they do most of the time. They're not doing a soul-sucking job. If they have a job, it's a great job, or if it's something that they've built for themselves, they really enjoy it. And the second quality is money because there's lots of things you can do that you enjoy, but if you don't get paid for them, then it's a hobby, which is great. Like, it's good to have a hobby, but if you're talking about a career, it has to be financially sustainable. So joy, money, and then the third factor is flow. Which is really doing something that you're good at, really doing something where when you do it, you're immersed in it and the hours just kind of pass by. And it's also really easy for you because it's something that you're good at and other people are like, "Wow, like, you know, she's really good at that. It takes me a lot longer to do that," or, "I'm not good at it." But so I think what we're looking for is this combination of all three factors. We want something that brings joy. We want something that is financially sustainable. We want something that brings flow. And I don't think people will be happy unless they have all 3 of these factors. Yeah, I think you can be a little bit— you can be okay, right? There's lots of people who do jobs they don't love, and that's fine. They get a paycheck, and, you know, maybe they're satisfied in other areas of their life. But because life is short, why not try to work towards something, you know, that is not just, you know, okay but is amazing, right? Isn't that the goal?

So those are the top 10 rules, but since we have you here live, I'd love to hear a bonus 11th rule from you?

Okay, all right, no pressure. Bonus 11th rule is if something isn't working, I think you should stop doing it. I think you should quit. And this runs contrary to a lot of things that you've been told in your business education, through case studies, et cetera. You've probably been told that winners never quit. And what I saw through my research, looking at lots of successful people who've done a lot of amazing things, winners actually aren't afraid to quit. Winners quit all the time. And so I think it's not persistence that's the predictor of success, It's flexibility and adaptation. Being willing to kind of go down a path and say, actually, that's not the right path for me. I'm going to go back and take the other path, or I'm going to create an all-new path. So winners never quit, maybe, but winners actually give up all the time.

And how do you know? It's the magic question. How do you know when to quit and when to keep going? Because this is still your dream. It's just really hard. Absolutely.

Well, there's a magic answer. You ask yourself two questions. Is it working? Do I still believe in it? So if it's not working, but you still believe in it, then you have to change what you're doing. You have to adapt because it's not working. You have to recognize the reality, but you still believe in your dreams. You have to change it. You know, if it's not working, you don't believe in it, then you stop and you quit. I would also say if it's actually working okay, but you no longer believe in it, you have to make a change there too, because ultimately you're not gonna be fulfilled doing something you don't care about.

And what would you tell people who don't know what they believe in yet? I guess, you know, read the book, but— Oh, sure. What, what, like, there's a lot of anxiety around finding the perfect job for me, the perfect business. How do I go about finding something to actually believe in?

Yeah, well, here's some reassurance. Most people actually have no idea what it is. Most people do not know their life purpose when they're 20 or even 30 or older. What most successful people do is they go down a lot of different paths. They do not follow a linear path. They aren't actually driven from a young age to be this profession or whatever. They experiment, they aren't afraid to go back, as I said, but over time they refine. Over time they kind of discover that. But if you don't experiment, you won't discover it. I love it.

So thank you guys so much for watching.

Hey, thanks a lot, Jay Rise. I heard you nominated me to be on the program. Really appreciate that, man. Thank you.

I'd love to know which of the top 10 rules, or 11 rules I guess here, you guys like the most. Leave it in the comments below and I'll join in the discussion. Now usually I throw it over to you guys for your suggestions on who to profile next, but since I have Chris here with me, if you had to pick a few people for who you'd want to see a profile of, who would you pick?

Right, right. Well, obviously it's an amazing show, so I got to think of amazing people. First person I thought of is my good friend Jonathan Fields. Lives in New York City. He's done a lot of different things. He's probably most known for the Good Life Project now. Fantastic video series. Michelle Poler, also in New York, although she's originally from Venezuela. She did a 100 Days of Fear project where every day she made a different video all about fears she was overcoming. Really, really good stuff. And then the third person I'm thinking of is Barbara Sher. Now Barbara Sher is a little bit older. She's been writing books for at least 30, 40 years. A lot of people who are kind of new get credit for like this lifestyle design movement, but she's actually been doing it for a very, very long time. She wrote a book called Wishcraft, like W-I-S-H, Wishcraft, that influenced me a lot.

So thank you guys so much for watching. Make sure you pick up a copy of Born for This.

Continue to believe, and we'll see you soon. I like a quote by Seth Godin. He said, "Effort can be its own reward if you let it." So when we're talking about motivations, I think it's critical to be motivated by doing the work itself, that the work itself is enjoyable. Maybe not each aspect of it, but it has to be because, as you said, you can tell. You can see drafts and iteration. You can see a person has gone through something. I guess for me, once I started, once I was like, once I actually found a little bit of a process and said, "Okay, I'm gonna write these blog posts, I'm gonna write books and things," like I actually really, I was like, "This is what I want to do." And it's great that, it's wonderful that people care about it now, it's great that so many people do, but I'm pretty sure I would do it anyway. And I said that in the beginning, I was like, "I just wanna put this out for those who care." So for me, I'm very motivated by, we talked about delayed gratification, I talked about deliverables earlier. Like, every day I'm trying to write 1,000 words. This is an actionable habit that has helped.

Yeah, well, I wanna get into that. We made some notes about this. What are these tactics that you do? Tactics.

You know, for me, so I write 1,000 words a day. You know, and I'm always traveling, I'm doing lots of different stuff, and my goal is every day I'm gonna write 1,000 words. A lot of it's not gonna be good, some of it's not gonna be usable, but that's all right. You know, I'm just trying to create. Every day, 7 days? I think of it as exercise. If I miss a day or something, it's okay. If I miss a couple days, then I start feeling it. It starts to be bad. So like 5 to 6 days a week, basically. It's amazing.

Anybody out there in the audience?

It's not that hard. It's amazing, but let's pull that back, because I don't think it's that hard.

Right, because you're just sitting down and doing the work. Chuck Close, famous artist, said, "If I only painted, or if I only went to work when I was inspired, I wouldn't have done very much work." So there's sort of, there's a process of going, getting up every morning and saying, you know.

Right, inspiration is like sitting down to do it, you know. Right. It's like inspiration doesn't, what was it, Jack London's like inspiration doesn't find you, you find it with a club or something. You gotta go after that inspiration, you know.

No, I love that. I love that.

So 1,000 words.

1,000 words, these are tactics that a writer, that if you wanna write, you should do every day. Get up and write 1,000 words.

Focused on outcomes and deliverables, not focused on time schedule. What I mean by that is I often see advice that's like, okay, you know, you're gonna set a timer or something and you're gonna like work on this project from like 8 o'clock to 8:50 or something like that. And that works for some people and that's great, but for me, I'm like always in different time zones, like lots of stuff's happening, so I'm only focused on what the actual product is. The product is like, okay, blog post, you know, manuscript for something, you know, interview email or something. So I'm always focused on like shipping. There's an objective, shipping a piece of software. Phrase again, shipping deliverables, outcomes. And just like that quote, effort can be its own reward. I find, I find that enjoyable. Like, I find the process of like sending something out or pressing the publish button or whatever, I find that enjoyable. And so that's the reward that I'm working for. I'm not looking for the reward of like the viral blog post. I'm not looking for the reward of like, you know, lots of people buying something or whatever. I mean, that's great, but those are byproducts. So I'm looking for the reward of getting it out.

So the reward is in the act. In the act. In the creative act itself. And if the reward is not in the creative act itself, then you're probably doing the wrong thing.

Then it's not sustainable, I would say. It's either not sustainable or it's not good. You know? I mean, the quality is not there, I would say. One thing I believe is it's really important to define your own success. It's really important to decide for yourself what success looks like. As opposed to letting someone else impose their definition of success upon you. So whenever you begin a big project, if you're doing something on your own, if you're starting a business or a blog or going back to school or even if it's an exercise program, whatever it is, you know, you should have your own definition of success. I think maybe if we go back to somebody who's in that beginning part of their career, I think the wrong advice to them would be say, "Just pick one of those things." And that's what everybody says all the time. They're always like, "Oh, you have, you have to focus. You have to just pick your niche or your niche. Like, you gotta do that." And how are you really going to find that combination of factors of joy, money, and flow without expanding your options, without trying a lot of different stuff? So you did that. You did that in your career. I did that. And I think in the beginning part of really trying to figure out what am I good at, and also not just what am I good at, but what is going to be rewarded, you know, in the marketplace, you know, I said yes to a lot of different things. And so I always encourage people when you're starting out, expand your options. Do everything that you can to have a lot of different experiences. And then as you become more successful, as you have more experience, then you limit the options. Then you start being more selective. Then you start being like, okay, I am going to apply that litmus test more often. I am going to say, okay, you know, I've got, I've got all these different things I could do. What is most aligned? What— where can I have the most convergence? You know, what am I really like getting close to? How am I going to have the biggest impact in the world? But I don't think you can necessarily do that when you're just getting started because you don't know.