The Portfolio Life With Jeff Goins

We don’t need more books in the world; we need better books. We don’t need another mystery novel or cancer survival story or career advice tome. We don’t need another seven steps or four laws or twelve rules for anything, really. Sorry. We just don’t. The world is full of bad books, and we don’t need any more of them. This is a job. It’s a calling, a sacred responsibility that ought to be taken seriously. If you can get out of it, you should. When Augustine became bishop of Hippo, he wept. Any leader who grasps the weight of her vocation understands this. Writing is a gift and a privilege, to be sure, but it is not an indulgence. It is not something you are owed. Writing is work. And we need you to do your job.  We don’t need more bad books. We don’t need another author in the world who takes a selfie at a book signing. We don’t need a book at all—at least not unless it’s going to be a better one. Download the Better Book Manifesto here.

This week, my first ghostwriting project, The Successful Speaker, comes out. This was a collaboration with Grant Baldwin, the leading expert on what it takes to build a successful speaking business. It was a lot of fun, but what I didn’t expect was how much it would make me a better speaker. For more information on The Successful Speaker, visit www.speakerbookbonus.com.

I tend to think of life as a journey these days far more than a destination. If I could summarize what I believe about almost everything in life, it would be this: Clarity comes with action. This is harder than it sounds. Do I quit my job or not? Do we make that big move or stay here another year? Do I take the risk, letting go of my fears of what I want, or is that selfish? How do you know what the next step is? The wisest people I’ve met have all said the same thing: You don’t. You may have an intuition, a sense of what should be. But there is no absolute clarity. Fear is always strongest before the first step.  

"Why do we need art?" In a world that seems to more and more focused on "work works," is there still a place for beauty? Do artists matter anymore? I think they do.

There are three messages creativity can communicate, and these messages are what connect us as human beings. Which is to say, without the arts—without the ability to creatively express who we are and what we care about—we lose a bit of our humanity. 

We are all hyphens. That's what Chase Jarvis, founder of CreativeLive, amazing photographer, and best-selling author of Creative Calling, told me in our recent conversation: we are all hyphens, and I couldn't agree more.  In this episode, I have a chat with my friend, Chase Jarvis, a brilliant photographer, entrepreneur, author, thinker. Chase is a bit of a Renaissance Man. We have a fantastic conversation about creativity, the arts, and the business world and why we need you to do your art, why we need you to make things more than we ever have before, and why we need the world to care about art and creativity. This is a great conversation, a bit of a lengthy one at almost an hour, so get your coffee ready and listen in. We are all hyphens -- we are more than just one thing. I love that. Listen to Chase share all of his wisdom and be sure to check out his book, Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life.

Whether you’re bored, out of work, or simply wanting a more fulfilling career, I believe that by embracing a portfolio life, you will finally have the peace and contentment you seek in your work.

When it comes to achieving goals, many of us may be thinking about them the wrong way. You and I have been told that you can have everything you want in life if you work hard enough and persevere long enough. But is this really the way life works? Is that even what you want? How often in life do we set our stubborn sights on some goal — a relationship, a kind of work, or even something we want to possess — and as soon as we get it, we are disappointed?

All good stories involve dying. The often-literal death of a mentor requires the hero to grow and move on in his journey. But there is also the shedding of a character’s old identity in exchange for a new way of being. Not to mention, the loss of friends and foes throughout any adventure is a necessary part of the process. Death is a part of every great story, and so it must be for all great lives.

A few weeks ago, I did an episode of The Portfolio Life called "Don’t Build an Empire, Find a Few Friends Who Care." It was about how the secret of marketing and getting your ideas to spread is really just about having a few friends who care. You want to create remarkable work and put it into the right hands to get it to spread. So, in the email that I wrote for that podcast and blog essay, I asked people to email me a question, something that they were struggling with or need help with, and I got a ton of questions. Here I am a few weeks later, still not having answered those questions (sorry!) and so I decided to just turn on the old mike, pull up the inbox, and answer those questions in a podcast. Hopefully, these are answers to questions not just a handful of folks asked but maybe questions that you're wondering about. Often, when you're in a classroom or workshop setting, some brave soul raises their hand to ask a question. It's often something lots of other people around are wondering as well so hopeful

Often, we think the way to stand out from the pack is to be better. And sometimes that is the answer: to become an improved version of who you were yesterday, to do what the “other guy” is doing with a few added features. However, this is often a losing strategy, as you are making iterative improvements on someone else’s work. A better way to become world-class at what you do is to change the game completely. Don’t be better; be different. 

I've often wondered what would it be like to be a nomad and travel the world. I did this for a brief time in my early 20s and then stopped, and recently I've been falling back in love with travel. I’ve bumped into some really interesting people who have traveled the world. I've learned that travel is not so much about the places you go or the people you meet, but instead, it's about the person you become. In this episode of The Portfolio Life, I talk with Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt. Matt spent 10 years of his life traveling the world. He's the New York Times bestselling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day, as well as a follow-up book he just published called Ten Years a Nomad. In this interview, Matt and I discuss: How a movie changed Matt’s trajectory and a vacation led to a new career What is means to like the “art” but not the “job” of being a creative professional as well as the difference between a hobby and a profession How travel and a change of environment makes you uncomfortable and wh

"Just be yourself" is probably the worst advice we could ever receive or give a person. Few of us actually know who we really are. And yet, if we can acquire this art of self-awareness, everything changes. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." But how do I do that? For full show notes, click here: https://goinswriter.com/unbearable-lightness/

Recently while speaking on stage, I heard myself say something I didn’t plan on sharing. I didn’t rehearse it. I didn’t have it in my notes. It just came out. The line was: “Sometimes, the good has to end before the better can begin.” Full shownotes available here: https://goinswriter.com/pruning

The best marketing you can do for your work is not to build an empire, but to find a few friends who care. We all want to reach the masses and see our work get into the mainstream. We want to have an “impact.” But the only way to reach the many is to first reach the few. This is all marketing is: Finding a handful of misfits who appreciate your work before anyone else does, then giving those people the tools to help spread the message. The way we get a Harry Potter, Apple Computer, or Amanda Palmer is not by trying to reach everyone all at once. Quite the opposite in fact. Full shownotes available here.

Whether you want to write books, make art, or share your music with the world, having an email list of fans is a must. Email is the most effective way to communicate with your people. Social networks come and go. Marketing trends fade. But email is forever. Today, I want to share with you how to pull all of this together. Full show notes here: https://goinswriter.com/elist

It’s one thing to understand the importance of email marketing and quite another to actually build an email list that allows you to reach a large audience. One of the best things I ever did as a blogger was to build my own email list. It gave me the power to no longer beg for attention, but be able to communicate regularly with an audience of people who wanted to hear what I had to say. Not only that, it changed my life and work forever. Full show notes here: https://goinswriter.com/email-list-build

Over the years, I’ve seen all kinds of marketing fads come and go. MySpace FriendFeed Xanga1 Google Plus Blogging Podcasting Some of these have come and gone and come back again. And some have stayed gone. But do you know what has always remained? Email. Email marketing is the best, most reliable way to grow and communicate with an audience online. Full show notes here: https://goinswriter.com/enewsletter/

You need an email list. It's just that simple. If you want to write a book that sells thousands of copies or more, you need people paying attention to your work. If you want your message to spread, you need people's permission to communicate with them. And if you want your words to change something, then you need an audience. The best way to do all that is by building an email list. Full show notes here: https://goinswriter.com/email/

Is it possible to live life on your own terms? Can you do what you want when it defies the expectations of others? Is the way you’re living right now a story that others would want to tell? And how do you do all this with bills to pay and responsibilities to manage? In this episode of The Portfolio Life, I talk with my friend Lex Latkovski (who also happens to be a member of my Tribe Writers Mastermind). Lex has been to 80 countries, all 50 U.S. states, lived as a Zen monk for 16 months, and recently launched a successful Kickstarter campaign that led to his first book Passport Forward. Full shownotes here: https://goinswriter.com/lex-latkovski