How to get $1.2 Million from Richard Branson

A couple weeks ago, I went to a book signing here in Austin. My friend Taylor was launching his book The End of Jobs, and decided to co-host a meetup with two other authors that were in town promoting their book 2 Billion Under 20. Don’t let my extraversion confuse you, meetups are not generally my favorite things. I’ve talked about my aversion to “networking” in another post, but my desire to connect with new people, and my enthusiasm for all things The End of Jobs pulled me out of the house and downtown to mix and mingle.

Per usual, I was glad I went as it was truly an inspiring and eye-opening event. The other two authors at the meet up, Stacey Ferreira and Jared Kleinert, were not only successful entrepreneurs, but they were both under 25. One of them, I later learned, was in fact 19.

That’s right. By 19 Jared had built 2 businesses and written a book. I’m pretty sure by 19 I had managed to skip at least half of my 8 am classes, and attend all of the “Welfare Wednesdays” at the Sigma Chi house. Impressive, I know.

For the record, I ended up getting straight As and transferring to a bigger better school, and I turned out all right and my mom loves me…

Point being, these kids had chops. They were doing big things.

And even more importantly, they were on a mission to show the world (especially other millennials) that anyone under 20 has the potential to do big things. Technology and the accessibility of knowledge means that any teenager can pretty much learn any skill and affect any sort of change they wish to make, just as much as any “adult”.

I was so intrigued by these two.

Stacey and Jared told me about how they had met at the Thiel Foundation Summit. As in Peter Thiel, as in cofounder of Paypal. In case you don’t know what the Thiel Foundation Summit is (I didn’t), it's a gathering of young entrepreneurs, hackers, scientists, etc. who are looking to change the world.

They gather to inspire each other and collaborate with one another to build new companies and even new technologies, all with the goal of affecting a positive change.

Did I mention these people are all under 20?? Okay, just making sure.

A handful of the attendees, including Stacey, are part of the Thiel Fellowship Program. This program may be controversial to some, but I think it’s amazing. Probably not shocking given a lot of the content on this blog...

The Thiel Fellowship is a grant - a $100,000 grant (!) - given to young applicants who show promise and passion for achieving big things. The money is then used over a 2 year span to pursue their business and personal growth. The not-so-fine-print states that all the fellows must participate in the program away from university. AKA they must drop out of college to get the dough.

I won’t go into the “you don’t need college to have a successful career” spiel in this post. One of my favorite writers, James Altucher, says it better anyway. If you’re interested I’ll let you pick from a variety of his articles on the topic.

I know, I know, I’m halfway through the article, and I haven’t yet mentioned Richard Branson. I’m getting there.

So after Stacey and Jared blow my mind apart with the reality of this amazing subculture of under 20-somethings doing ridiculously big and inspiring things, I learn that Stacey and I actually have something in common. Other than wanting to inspire people, and write books, and wear peplum well.

Earlier, I wrote about my foray into the world of location independence, and how I used twitter as a vehicle to accelerate that journey, and it turns out that Stacey’s story of early entrepreneurship began in a similar way.

When she was 18, she and her brother had just moved to LA to focus on their business and try to hunker down for a few months to build their technology company. Their parents had said, if you want to skip college to build a business like an adult, then you need to move out and support yourself like an adult.

So there they were living in LA, sharing a room, writing code all hours of the day, when they saw on twitter that Richard Branson was hosting an open meet up in Miami in just 2 days. Anyone that could donate $2000 to the charity he was supporting, could fly out and meet him for cocktails.

Both Stacey and her brother were too young for cocktails, but they knew that this would be a game-changing move and they needed to try nonetheless. So they tweeted back that they were not 21, but were really interested in meeting up with Branson, and was there something that could be worked out.

Branson’s assistant told them that if they could pull together $4000 to donate, then they were welcome to attend the meet up.

Stacey and her brother didn’t have $4000 + airfare (remember, they’re sharing a small apartment in LA eating ramen and coding all day) so they reach out to their parents for help. They did what any parent in that situation does, and they told their budding entrepreneurial kin to provide a business proposal.

One badass business proposal, and 48 hours later, Stacey and her brother were on their way to Miami to meet up with Branson and his business partners. They were able to impress Branson, as much as they had impressed their parents, and the $4000 loan was quickly repaid.

Stacey walked away from that meeting with $1.2 Million dollars in funding for her new company My Social Cloud and would go on to sell that company before the age of 21.

You can build and sell a multi-million dollar company, but you can't legally have champagne to celebrate the sale? Makes sense...

I digress.

Jared and Stacey are just two of the people I've encountered lately who are walking examples of everything this site stands to teach.

By being bold, taking risks, and ignoring societally imposed (or self-imposed) limitations, you can go on to do really amazing things. There's no such thing as "too young." There's no such thing as "not college educated enough." Many employers would disagree, but then that's why you opt to employ yourself!

Jared and Stacey's book 2 Billion Under 20 is full of amazing stories of young people doing inspiring and interesting things.  They took it upon themselves to show the world what their generation is capable of. I can only hope that older generations can feel inspired to follow in their footsteps.

Richard Branson_dreams

So. How does one get $1.2 Million dollars from Richard Branson?

We already know how Stacey did it, but these are the fundamental principles I've come up with.

1. Shed your limiting beliefs. If you think you're too young, you are. If you think your idea isn't good enough, it isn't. Whatever you think is your truth because you create your reality.

Eliminate any negative internal dialogue because successful badass people don't cater to that. Billionaires, dream employers and dream clients don't cater to that. They show up for people who believe their worth. So know you're worthy and get over the rest!

2. Be clear on your purpose. Be so confident and clear on your ideas and your pursuits that you let the money (or the job or the relationship or whatever opportunity you're after) come to you.

Having such clarity around the use for the money gives it a reason to find you. Investors' money wants to go somewhere, that job you want is created to be filled. So get clear and get out of the way.

3. Ask. Be tenacious. Be bold and freaking ASK already. If you don't send the tweet, or the email, or if you don't *show up* you're just leaving the money and the opportunities sitting on the table for someone else.

What proverbial $1.2 million dollars have you left sitting on the table because you just didn't show up to ask? What life-changing opportunities are you foregoing because you're letting your self-doubt or your fears keep you from them?

Ditch your excuses, get clear on your goals, then articulate the hell out of them and let the universe freaking deliver.

Why Public Nudity is Like Chicken Soup for the Soul

Spanish Nude Beach

It started in Berlin. I was living there for the summer and my boyfriend and I were having dinner with some friends we’d known in Chiang Mai. We were sitting outside at one of my favorite Turkish restaurants in Neukölln (This one, it’s delicious. You’re welcome.) and they were telling us about all the different things they’d already done in Berlin that day. They ate burgers, here, saw a statue there, went to a nude bathhouse. A coed. Nude. Bathhouse.

Hold the phone.

Now these are two grown heterosexual American men. Call me a prude, but I was shocked. Mostly intrigued, but also shocked.

What did they do there? They said they had gone for over 4 hours. Were they just sitting around holding their junk in a steam room that whole time? Not possible! They’d die. (Don’t fact check me on that. I don’t actually know the length of time a human can physically spend in a steam room before kicking it.)

Throughout the conversation, they seemed perfectly at ease with the whole thing, and were even talking about going back before they left town. There were apparently multiple steam rooms, and saunas, and cold plunge pools, and even a DJ and a bar!

Needlesstosay, I was sold. I needed to go to the coed nude bathhouse.

My boyfriend (bless him) was always open minded about these things, and supported any opportunity that came about where I could celebrate my womanhood and my body without shame. He was in.

So the next day we looked up the Liquidrom Bathhouse, and hopped the U-Bahn. When we got there, we forked over our credit cards, and headed to our respective changing rooms. Well, not until after I grilled the front desk man about every possible detail.

Where was nudity mandatory? In which pools were swimsuits mandatory? Was there a limit to the number of drinks a person could order? Was he sure there wasn't a limit?

I was such an American.

So we go into our change rooms, and immediately something feels off. My boyfriend had walked into the room next to me, but I could still feel his presence. Not in like a “he’s always with me” kind of way, this isn’t that kind of post. But in that he was literally. Still. Right next to me.

I looked up and realized that I could see in the entire men’s changing room. And that they could see in ours. There were no walls! What was the point of the whole separate door charade??

We laughed awkwardly, and gave each other that “We got this” look of support before stripping down to our skivvies and heading out the other side of the locker room to the unknown.

What we found was incredible.

Everywhere we looked, men and women were lounging naked, drinking cocktails naked. Sitting in glass-walled saunas naked. And no one seemed to give a DAMN that people could see their naked bits, and they could see everyone else’s.

Liquidrom Saltwater Pool

We spent the next four hours canoodling in the hot tubs, on the lounge chairs, and in the saltwater pool room with the DJ.

Other couples all around us seemed to be doing the same thing, so we didn’t feel like it was taboo to show affection. Remember, NO ONE CARES YOU’RE NAKED. It’s Europe. They have advertisements on the subway showing more skin than you do at the beach in the states. Bless your heart.

The liberation we felt after that experience was hard to shake. And why should we?

A year later, we found ourselves in Spain and decided to venture out to a nude beach to bare it all once again. Spanish people are not new to the concept of going topless, much like other parts of Europe.

That being said, you’d think it would be easier to access the nude beaches. We took a train an hour or so north of where we were staying, and then hiked a good 30 minutes along the coast. It was beautiful, of course, but damn the sangria from the night before was showing her face with every minute that the sun beat down on us.

When we finally reached the stretch of shore deemed naked-territory, we ditched our sweaty suits, and cuddled up under an umbrella. Groups of Spanish people chatted around us as we all just hung out with our stuff out. It was refreshing and liberating and one of the moments I’ve felt most alive.

The ocean breeze, the gritty sand. My white ass out for the sun to scorch. The sheer amount of fucks not given. It was awesome.

I look back on my time in Vietnam, when I would go to the sauna and cold plunge pool at my gym. All of the women there were butt-ass naked. Except me. I wore a bathing suit. They would sit in the sauna giving each other massages—naked-- and I would sit there in my Victoria’s Secret bathing suit, hiding.

Why?

They had lady bits. I had lady bits. Who carrrres?

I feel regretful that I was so embarrassed. How good would that cold plunge pool have felt without my bathing suit as a barrier? How much more relaxed would the sauna have made me feel if I wasn’t so busy trying to sit comfortably with a stick up my ass?

I feel grateful for having had such a supporting partner to usher me through those moments of liberation. And for always supporting my desire to be nude behind closed doors, and sometimes outside of them.

There are enough things in the world to be anxious about, our bodies don’t need to be one of them. (Pssst, half the world is working with the same goods you got. It’s nothing they haven’t seen before!)

Does this mean I’m one of those "free-spirits" who walks around all my American friends in the nude now? No. I respect that people have boundaries, and societal norms would have me wear clothes in most social situations in America.

I am however much more inclined to bare it all, and not think twice about doing so. I’m much more inclined to support anyone who feels comfortable with their body enough to bare it, or who wants to feel that way.

Life is short, go swim naked once in awhile.

How I Used Twitter to Quit My Job and Travel

I’ve always hated the word “networking”. It makes me think of college career fairs. You know the ones. You’re carrying a leather resume holder that you bought at the school bookstore, wearing the grey pant suit you bought at Express. At this point, it probably smells like B.O. because you can’t machine wash those things and what college student is getting shit dry cleaned on the regular.

If you’re a girl, you have those stereotypical black pointy toed heels on, because god-forbid you show your toes at a career fair. You’re supposed to approach potential employers and act like you have acquired some sort of skill set at your overpriced university, while meanwhile all you want to do is take their free mints and airplane-shaped paper clips and run. (Thank you Boeing, I still use those).

What were they even hiring for? What did a Marketing Major really know how to contribute to a company at that point? The answer: nothing. No one was hiring anyone with Marketing degrees! HA! I might as well have majored in liberal arts.

The point is, for someone who prides herself in being outgoing, “networking” events always made me feel forced and unnatural. And sweaty.

I’ve since grown out of that to a degree (alcohol helps) and can comfortably approach strangers at these once-dreaded “networking” events.

But what if I’m trying to network with people who aren’t nearby? How do you go about doing that?

A lot of people would say LinkedIn. And good for those people. I’ve yet to master the Facebook of professionals.

For me, the secret was Twitter.

Two years ago I successfully networked my way out of a 9-5 job--and around the world--through my use of twitter.

It wasn’t about followers. I think I had like 30 at the time. Yeah… I was a big deal.

It was about conversation. I engaged people I wanted to know in conversation. I didn’t ask them for anything, I didn’t try to sell them anything. I just wanted to talk to them. And somehow this made them want to talk to me.

I’ll give you a little backstory… I was working a 9-5 job at a Web Marketing Agency in Maryland. I had attempted to take my position remote, and failed. I was working 12-14 hour days on the regular and it was making me miserable. In addition to the fact that I would go to sleep thinking horrible things about mean clients, I knew that I wasn’t living the type of life I always pictured for myself.

Traveling 10 days a year and maxing out PTO in the process just wasn’t cutting it.

Enter, The Four Hour Work Week. I won’t dive into the book in this post, but let’s just say it’s a game changer. For me and millions of other people who have fantasized about slow travel and being their own boss.

So there I was, riding the Tripper Bus back to D.C., after spending New Years Eve in New York with my friends, when I finished the 4HWW. It clicked in THAT moment. My life would be drastically different in 6 months and I knew it.

Anyone who has ever had one of those "holy shit" clarity moments (some people call them "aha moments") knows what I'm talking about. From that moment on everything just seemed to fall into place.

I recently heard it referred to has "Pronoia." Instead of thinking that the universe is conspiring against you, instead you feel like the universe is conspiring to help you.

Fast forward a few weeks later, I had started throwing money at any info product or online community that would take me. Digital Nomad Academy led to Location Rebel, led to CopyHour. And ultimately, the DC.

Often those communities are targeted towards newbs who want to start a business and quit their jobs to travel. Ideally working 4 hours a week on a mostly passive-income-generating business. (Of course that’s not how it works for most people).

The DC was different though. I had to have a business to get in! That made me want it more. I knew if I just got into this community that everything would change.

So the only logical next step was to befriend everyone I could who was inside the forum and hope for the best. Hope that I could learn from them enough to get my own thing going and get accepted.

I took to twitter and started following everyone I could. Note: once you’re inside the entrepreneurial, location-independent, internet marketing world, you realize how small it really is. This is probably true for most subcultures.

It was pretty easy for me to see who was connected to who, and actually where in the world they were living.

Following Sean Ogle of Location Rebel (and a former Tropical MBA/ DC Intern) led me to Derek Johanson of Copy Hour. Derek was in the DC at the time and seeing who he was chatting with on Twitter led me to a whole slew of people.

There was a big DC contingent in Chiang Mai back then, so I started following anyone who was using the DC Chiang Mai hashtag. It snowballed.

Maneesh Sethi was another person I began following through Derek and one day I saw he was hosting a meet up in New York. Derek Johanson would be there, along with Derek Halpurn and some other people that were doing business online.

As if I needed an excuse to skip work and go to New York….

2 Days later, I took a half day from work and hopped the train to NYC. I was the only female at this meet up of successful internet entrepreneurs. I was the only person who didn’t have a business. And guess what? It didn’t matter.

We drank beers, we talked travel, and to this day I still count some of those people as friends.

How I Quit My Job to Travel

A couple weeks later Derek referred me to the DC (along with another person that I’d connected with on Twitter) and I was in! I finally got to give them my money and pretend I was an entrepreneur. All of a sudden my conversations were moving from Twitter to inside the forums, and people were treating me like they knew me.

A few weeks after that, the creators of the DC posted a job opportunity for the Community Manager. I applied, and because of my twitter stalking networking, they already knew who I was. My ability to connect with people across the world who had no idea who I was made them think, "hey maybe she's good with people?" A pre-req for managing them, it would seem.

So I got the job. (I hope you saw that coming. So much build up and all...)

And 2 weeks later I moved to Vietnam.

The End!

Not really, that was just the beginning. But it was a start that would not have come to fruition if I hadn't used the resources available to me to MAKE SHIT HAPPEN.

If you want something, don't be scared to do unconventional things to make it happen.

I didn't have a business. It didn't stop me.

I didn't know anyone living the life I wanted. It didn't stop me. It was out there. I had read it in a book (!) and that was enough for me to get started.

I may have had an advantage, in that I've always been comfortable getting to know people virtually (my AIM game was strong in my youth) but the reality is that anyone can do this.

Here are 3 tips to start networking on twitter today:

1. Find the right people to follow

Understanding who you want to be talking to (and why) is step one. In my situation, I just wanted to talk to people who were doing what I wanted to be doing. Who were living where I wanted to be living.

I could tell who was influential, and who would be likely to respond, based on their tweets with other people. It may sound like a lot of work (and perhaps creepy) to go through people's twitter history, but I assure you it's worth it. Some of those original tweets I sent were to people I have since lived with and become best friends with. We've seen each other in countries all over the world, and it all started with a single tweet.

Follow people who look like they will engage in conversation!

2. Retweet. Retweet. Rinse. Repeat.

Retweeting content of people you follow is one of the quickest ways so show them that you're interested in what they have to say, and you're willing to share it. If you're uneasy about sending them a tweet, and they haven't yet followed you back for you to send a DM, start by retweeting.

Be sure to balance retweets with original content of your own. If people do take note of you, you want your twitter log to have show some representation of who you are. Avoid looking like a retweeting robot.

3. Learn their lingo.

If you're naturally a sarcastic person, but the people you follow seem to be more literal, avoid banter in the early stages. On the other hand, if people you want to connect with seem to respond well to humor and wit, offer it up freely. Give people a reason to bond with you. 140 characters is not a lot, so use every one of them wisely.

If you combine these tactics, and are able to offer up some value to the people you're looking to connect with, you'll be ahead of the game.

*****

I'd love to hear stories of how other people have used Twitter in a bold way to make strides in their business, or in their life. Leave a comment below or send me an email to tell me about it!

The Beginning of The Bold Life Movement

Below is an email I sent to a group of close friends last week.

The responses I received, combined with some incredible talks I recently heard (more on that later) inspired me to start this blog.

Hopefully this blog will inspire you to start something too.

---

SUBJECT: I did something bold today....thought I would share!

Some of you knew me when this relationship dominated my life, some of you knew me after. Either way I know that I've at least mentioned my long distance/online boyfriend Nick* from [city name]*. I met him in 9th grade (online), and eventually started dating my junior year. Multiple hours of the day spent texting, talking on AIM, and racking up our parents' phone bills. Multiple cross country trips to visit each other, attend high school with each other, even prom, and ultimately Mexico. He was my best friend for so much of my adolescence and he was my first *AHEM*.

Anyway, distance, youth, and technology make our long-distance breakup a big blur. Drunken texts (mostly mine) and "don't talk to me anymore"s (mostly his) left me without closure for SO. LONG. I can't even tell you how many times my mom has said, "Kimber. Let it go."

True to form, I ignored that advice and just bided my time til the day I would go back to [city name]*. The internet would once again prove a useful tool for knowing too much about people and I would easily message him on Facebook and get the reunion I always wanted.

Well not quite.

I'm in [city name]* now. I'm here for a conference with friends and I did what we all knew I would do, I looked him up on Facebook.... Got nothing. Looked him up on Instagram. Nothing. Linkedin, twitter, whitepages, google. All yielded NOTHING. As if he DOESN'T post pictures of his food and let people tag him in drunken photos from 4th of July. (What kind of monster is he??)

So in a last ditch effort I googled his full name, Nicholas*. One picture showed up. This picture.*

So for three days, I've had this knowledge. For three days I've known he is a short 6 minute drive from where I'm staying between the hours of 9-5. For three days, I've been in [city name], wondering how to casually show up at an auction house* and not get the cops called on me. Not get screamed at by someone who thought they had eliminated me from their life.

I didn't even know if he'd be there. I mean what is the work environment even like at an auction house?? Does he go in every day? Does he wear a suit? Does he talk really fast now? Who knows.

I managed to convince a girlfriend to come with me as a buffer. Also to catch me when I fainted.

We blasted "eye of the tiger" in our rental car as we drove to the Auction House and I screamed and laughed out my nerves.

When I got there, I asked the closest front desk person "if Nick* was working"... like I'm in freaking high school calling Subway to see if my bf is working that day. She went back into her office and said she'd call him to come down.

F*CK.

He actually does come into the office. I gripped the nearest structure for support, hoping it wasn't some $15,000 antique waiting to be auctioned off. My girlfriend took a seat on the sofa, trying to act as natural as someone could for feigning invisibility.

And then he walked out. He was wearing the same skater clothes I had seen him in 12 years earlier and after the longest 10 seconds of my life, he said "Kim?? is that you?"

And then I passed out.

Ok, not really. I said that I was shaking... as if that would make it stop. Said that I had looked him up on google, and wondered if he wanted to grab coffee while I was in town. He made some passing comment about me being a stalker (as you do). But really, it went so much better than I could have ever thought.

He asked if I could wait a few minutes and wanted to grab lunch. At a nearby cafe, we talked and reminisced and I dropped the word "surreal" a good 20 times. I was very smooth.

I showed him pictures of Abby, and explained my current lifestyle in a way that [I hoped] didn't make me sound like a jerk. He said he lived at his grandma's because she needed someone to take care of her and refused to leave her house. I remembered how he was always more selfless than me.

It was a reunion I've literally dreamt about for 12 years. Because that's what lack of closure will do. He was so sweet and so thankful for me being bold, and my heart is so happy and warm.

It could have gone horribly, but I feel rewarded for taking the chance and I just had to share! BE BOLD LADIES. In whatever way that means to you.

xoxox Kim

*I've changed his name and hid his photos and the city he lives for privacy's sake. Just because I can look him, doesn't mean everyone should. 

---

Here are the responses I received from my friends:

So from these messages, I was able to glean a few things:

First, someone needs to teach my friends how to update their email signature on their iPhone.

Second, no one thought I was bat-shit crazy for having tracked down a high school love to find closure! So either we’re all bat-shit crazy (haven't ruled it out) or the happy ending made the ballsy move easier to digest.

The biggest takeaway, though, was that every single friend SUPPORTED me. All the taboo or scary things I’ve done in my life have maybe invited a few questions, but mostly they’ve inspired or impressed those who knew me.

People ask me all the time, “How did you quit your job to travel?” “How did you make money and live wherever you want?” “How did you date someone across the country when you were 16??”

The answer is usually just… because I wanted to. I often don’t ask permission because I won’t accept no as an answer. (I'll explain in a later post the logistics of dating someone you met online when you're a minor, pre-tinder, pre-facebook. YES I'm that old.)

For 12 years, I didn’t accept no as an answer and last week it came to pay off.

Do I think this is a green light for anyone to track down old flames or not appease someone’s request for space? No. Absolutely not. You could maybe --probably-- end up in jail.

I’m saying I had a gut instinct and I went for it. I didn’t let my fear of rejection or the advice of my parents stop me. My need to know and my willingness to act trumped everything else.

It’s okay to take risks if you trust yourself.

It’s okay to be curious about things people tell you to leave alone.

Sometimes fostering that sense of curiosity is more important than trying to be courageous. Author James Stephens has a quote, “Curiosity will conquer fear more than bravery will.”

Curiosity for me has come in many forms. Most of them challenging the status quo in some way. Why can't I love someone I met on the internet? Why should I work from a desk in Maryland if I could work from a desk in Italy? Why are cheez-its so much better than cheese nips?

Why should I feel ashamed of these questions? 

In this blog I want to share stories and adventures that I would not have otherwise had if I didn't ask why?

Ultimately I want to hear the stories of my readers as well. If we don't share what we know, then how will anyone else learn?

tldr:

1. This is the first post. Chances are good that my writing will improve.
2. It's okay to take risks when you trust yourself.
3. Give people the chance to be inspired by your courage and curiosity.
4. Cheez-its ftw.