Posts will include:

• How to work more efficiently
• Tools and software to help you along your way
• Automating tasks so you have more time
• Networking 3.0: how to do it right
• How to make sure you’re not underpaid

There’s a log of good stuff here, so if you want to make sure you don’t miss any of them sign up for the Ninja Newsletter and I’ll send you a weekly recap of all the tips:

To kick things off, we’re going to start with a basic tip that everyone should do on a continuous basis to make sure you’re aware of how your job is evolving in the marketplace.

—

Find Yourself

You have a job…congratulations! Now you need to make sure you stay up to date on the kinds of skills other people in your field and in your role are developing. If you let yourself become stale, it’s the beginning of the end for you.

And I don’t just mean it for the job you have, but your career in general.

You know that guy who walks into the office and is all excited to announce that he finally saw Lost and wow, you guys should really check out that show because it’s really quite good?

Don’t be that guy.

The tip: Make sure you know what’s happening in your field and in your particular job. It’s not hard, you just have to schedule it.

Timing: This shouldn’t take more than an hour of your time…unless you discover that you’re woefully behind.

Follow the Coders’ Lead

Developers (some call them programmers) do this all the time because technology moves so quickly. I don’t envy them—it seems like a new language comes out every few months that’s all the rage and employers (who don’t know squat about most of this stuff) will always ask about it.

So do you know Ruby on Rails? We love Ruby on Rails! You should know Ruby on Rails…

It’s annoying, but you know what? Every good developer I’ve ever worked with stays on top of these new languages that are always sprouting up…and it’s not easy.

What You Can Do

This tip is called “Find Yourself,” and that’s exactly what you should do: just pretend you’re looking for a job in your role and see what comes up. Browse through Craigslist or an industry-specific job board to see what kinds of qualifications and skills are required.

Take note of:

• The “must have” skills that candidates absolutely need to have…do you have them?
• Are you really good at the “must have” skills?
• What about the “would be nice” skills?
• What type of software is mentioned?
• Do you know what all the acronyms stand for?

If you notice that certain skills or software packages are popping up a lot and you don’t know much about them: learn them! There is so much training and documentation online that it is not hard to keep up with this stuff.

Reviewing around 10 job openings that match your role should give you a good idea of the kinds of things employers are looking for in someone like you. Being proactive and keeping up with the hiring trends is something your employer should appreciate.

But even if they don’t, you’ll be better off because if you ever decide to move on (or are forced to), you’ll know exactly what’s out there and you should be in a better place to find a new gig.

Added Bonus

Doing this kind of audit once a quarter or every couple of months should also give you a good sense of what the market is for your position.

If you see a lot of openings, congratulations! You’re in high demand.

Can’t find any postings for your role? Maybe there’s a reason for it.

Again…you should know these things. No one should know your job better than yourself.

Image by Fenanov

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I’m a big fan of Chris Guillebeau’s work.

Chris is the guy behind The Art of Non-Conformity, a fantastic site that publishes great content about travel, life, and doing things that are both remarkable and unconventional. If you haven’t visited his site before, I really recommend you take a look: he has a lot to offer.

He’s also the guy behind The Empire Building Kit, a program I bought a couple years ago that taught people like myself how to build their own empire.

But enough about Chris! Today I want to spend some time talking about his latest project: The $100 Startup.

A Startup of One

When we think of startups, we usually picture some high-tech company with a new app or website that’s all the rage. We associate words like IPO and VC and angel investors.

This is something totally different. This book is about starting a business with almost no overhead at all and doing something you’re passionate about.

I know that sounds like something you’ve read about a million times, but Chris tells his story differently. He focuses on real people who’ve done it, how they’ve overcome obstacles, and what they learned from it.

The early parts of the book are very inspirational and motivating, which is good because it gets you in the right frame of mind.

Value and Freedom

For the skeptics, the two concepts that Chris sees as the basic building blocks of any “one-person” startup are value and freedom.

In order to provide something valuable that people are willing to pay for, you need to create something valuable. There aren’t any ninja marketing techniques here to get people to buy your thing if that thing isn’t helping them in some way.

It’s tough to fully comprehend the idea of creating a business built on helping other people, but that’s what Chris is suggesting.

And I’m totally down with this. That’s why I started over and that’s why I enjoyed the book so much.

Freedom is why so many of the case studies in the book got started. They wanted to spend their time working on what they wanted to work on.

This is the most alluring part of the book: the idea of being able to create a business where you’re the boss and dictate your own hours.

Actionable

While the book offers a good measure of encouragement and inspiration, this is not a feel-good book. It also contains actionable advice and worksheets to make sure you get off your ass and start creating.

The amount of case studies he has in the book are so varied that you shouldn’t have trouble finding examples of how you can create your own business and how to grow it.

And if you need more help, Chris has tons more resources on 100startup.com.

Don’t Forget: It’s a Business

There’s a chapter at the end of the book called Show Me the Money. I’m glad it’s in there because I can see how some people might read the book and start feeling all positive-energy-ish and happy and mushy and the possibility of starting their own business.

Of being empowered and being their own boss. Of helping other people around them and doing good things.

But if you’re going to call yourself a business you need to remember: it’s about making more money than you spend.

It’s about the money.

Helping people and making money isn’t mutually self exclusive.

Win a Copy!

Leave a comment with an idea for your own microbusiness and you could win a new copy of The $100 Startup.

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• A Guide to Working for Yourself
• On Picking a Business: It’s Hard
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When I was young I though my future depends on three things:

• SAT scores
• GPA

Once I graduated, I realized none of that really matters. 

It’s kind of sad that I spent as much time as I did worrying about SAT scores and GPA scores. I wish I would’ve spent my time learning how to program or building my first website. Or even learning to play the guitar.

Grades were crucial to get into a “good” school, but once you’re in there all this stuff is pretty irrelevant.

So What Does Matter?

Experience, plain and simple.

Skills.

What do you bring to the table as an intern or as an employee? What can you do for the company? What value to you bring?

What’s your potential?

As someone who has hired interns and scanned resumes, I’ll tell you this much: GPA didn’t matter one bit. What mattered was the personality and the skills we would get if we picked one person over another.

It’s the reason you see kids getting drafted my Major League Baseball teams even when their numbers aren’t very good: the teams see the skill and the potential and they pay up for it, regardless of what the numbers say.

What Now?

If you’re young and in college (or about to go to college), what do you do with this advice? Should you stop studying and get Cs from now on because grades don’t matter?

I would advice against that. Grades matter in the sense that they show how well you can play within a system.

If you can navigate the collegiate education system successfully, then that means something. It says you’re aware of what’s going on around you and you’re capable of figuring out the rules and succeeding.

This counts for something.

But my advice is to start making things you’re proud of.

Whether it’s a blog or art or a novel or a new way to use Excel—just start making things you think are cool. Things you would be proud to share with your friends.

You’ll develop some skills. You’ll have things to put in your portfolio. You’ll become more valuable.

You’ll be 10 times more interesting and twice as valuable then the other guy who comes in with his chin high because he has a perfect GPA and knows how to take a test.

Image by Mark Gstohl

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The book is about creating a micro-business that focuses on helping other people by offering them something of value.

Sounds like my starting over post, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I’ll be writing up a more in-depth review but I wanted to share this with you since it’s a pretty big day for Chris and he’s a really good dude.

In case the name sounds familiar, he writes over at The Art of Non-Conformity and I’ve written about his Empire Building Kit here before.

Congratulations to Chris! It’s a great book and I highly recommend it.

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Some people think internships suck:

• The pay is usually terrible (or non-existent)
• You wind up doing other people’s errands some of the time
• The work isn’t terribly exciting
• Nobody calls you by your name (“Hey intern!”)

But you know what? It beats sitting on your sofa watching Jerry Springer every day after class. Try putting that on your resume and see what happens.

Internships are about experience, and you have to get that where you can. Even if it means being “Intern!” for a few months.

Lack of Experience

It’s one of the loudest complaints you’ll hear from employers and from employees, especially young ones.

How am I supposed to get experience if all the jobs I’m looking at demand 1-2 years of experience and I just graduated?

I covered this in Not Enough Experience? Get Some, and one of the best ways to get some experience is through an internship.

It doesn’t matter if you’re getting paid or not.

It doesn’t matter if you think you’re being exploited (you are).

It doesn’t matter if you don’t like getting bossed around (get used to it).

It’s time/money in exchange for experience.

The Benefits

Internships aren’t just about filling out your resume (although that is important), there are a bunch of other reasons why young people should get one:

• Network: Add everyone you meet to your LinkedIn network on day one, they will come in handy.
• Potential job: Lots of people get a full-time offer after interning.
• Variety: Odds are you’ll get to do lots of different things. Find out what you like and don’t like.
• Skills: Learning a new piece of software, taking some training, interpersonal skills, etc. Soak it all up.
• References: If you have real people at a real company to vouch for you, it will go a long way at your next interview.

Exploitation

This happens. Some employers don’t see internships as a trade, they see it as cheap labor.

You want to try to stay away from these places, but if you find yourself being exploited try to fight to get what you came for: experience. Do the job they ask of you and try to find a good guy/girl in the company that can help you build up your skills and make the most of it.

Awesome

Overall, I still think internships are a great way to get the experience you need. There are some bad eggs out there, but  I have nothing but good things to say about them.

What’s been your experience with internships? Good? Bad? Ugly?

Image by dumbledad

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Resumes are interesting documents: everyone has to have one but they’re losing their relevance in an increasingly digital world.

People in my generation were always taught to nail the resume because that’s how employers ultimately decide whether or not they want to hire you.

Was it fair?

No, but that’s not the point. The point is that’s the way it was.

It’s similar to the idea of working hard to get good grades in high school and college: your GPA depended on it. A good GPA got you into a good school and a good GPA once you were there opened the doors to a good job.

That was the idea, anyway.

Theory vs. Reality

That was how we were brought up.

But things have changed:

• Skills have superseded institutional references like diplomas and resumes
• Diplomas have gotten increasingly expensive
• People can’t afford to go into debt to pay for school
• Entrepreneurship has exploded (what @chrisguillebeau calls microbusinesses)
• Businesses have been forced into being more efficient with their hires

That paints a pretty grim picture, but it also creates an atmosphere that’s perfect for a person that’s simply good at what they do.

Regardless of where they went to school or what their grades were.

Why Portfolios are Great

When I first started getting into advertising, I remember loving the idea behind the portfolio.

Instead of creating a boring resume, here was a chance to show off what you could do.

In my case, it was to write good copy. Instead of writing “Copywriter with extensive experience in both long and short form copy” on my resume, I now had a chance to show instead of tell.

The best part was reading about all the people who had become incredibly successful copywriters despite never having gone to school to learn advertising.

These were people who worked in all kinds of odd jobs that had figured out they could write compelling copy.

And that’s what mattered.

And that’s what should matter: can you do the job and do it well? Do you have proof of your past successes? Let me hire you based on your work, not on a piece of paper that probably exaggerates what you’ve done in the past.

What’s why everyone needs a portfolio.

As they say in programming, it’s time to deprecate the resume and focus on your portfolio.

Who’s with me?

Image by psd

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A few years after I started this site, I decided I would try to monetize it. I was putting in so many hours and so much work, it only made sense.

Like so many others out there, I tried it all. I tried AdSense. I tried affiliates. I tried anything I could to make some money off the pageviews I was getting.

None of it worked.

But my site had a good reputation, decent traffic, and was starting to get well known in the personal finance space.

Thanks to that reputation, I started getting emails asking to buy text links on my site. $50 for a simple little link? Easy money, baby!

The Money Keeps Coming

The money started trickling in and I got greedy—I decided to up my asking price to $100/month and the money started to really pile up.

I was so excited! I could finally tell people that I was a blogger and that I was making money.

Deep down, I felt a little icky about the whole thing.

As the numbers kept climbing, I set higher and higher goals. In order to meet those goals, I had to ramp up.

So I started selling links to anyone who asked. I rejected a few of them because they were sketchy, but most of them sent me money and I placed an innocuous text link in the sidebar.

Suffice to say, I was able to achieve my goal for 2011: I made over $10,000 (between freelance work and text links).

But the text links were the easiest money of all, and it quickly became a larger and larger percentage of my income.

The Great Delusion

Deep down, I knew this was unsustainable. I told myself I was running an online business. I told others I made “some money” by writing on this site. I started to believe that I had “made it.”

But really? I was simply selling off little bits of reputation I had worked for years to build up. Little by little, I sold off parts of my hard, honest work in exchange for a little money.

Looking back on it, it’s sad that I was willing to make that trade. This site had started as something I was passionate about and every time I got a comment it was like I had “made it.” Now all I cared about was how many dollars I could squeeze out of it.

The thing is, when you’re getting money poured into your Paypal account for not doing a whole hell of a lot, it’s hard to put your foot on the brakes.

The worst part is, I was writing less and less. I was trying to focus on some other projects I have because they actually felt like they could turn into sustainable income.

The Beginning of the End

It all came to a head a few months ago when Google sent me an alert in my Webmaster Tools account:

Now, I’m not one of those people that believes everything Google does is great and fantastic. I don’t think they’re perfect.

But I definitely felt like I had been reprimanded for doing something I knew I shouldn’t have been doing. It made me realize that this was not a sustainable business model and that if I really wanted to create a business and connect with people online, this was not going to be the way to do it.

In other words, I needed to change.

I needed to start over.

But still I dragged my feet.

It took me a few months to realize what I needed to do. I had to work with advertisers to give them their money back. I had to get rid of every single text link on the site and stop accepting “free” money.

I needed to re-focus and do things differently. I needed to do the right thing.

And that’s what I’m doing today. Instead of just starting a new site with a new URL and keeping the money, I’m starting this site over again and focusing on an area that I’m passionate about and that I feel there’s a real need for.

The site is going to focus on career advice and ways to enjoy going to work.

I’ll still write about money, but right now my goal is to help as many people as I can become happier at work and to become free from the stress of wondering where your next paycheck is going to come from.

No more easy money. No more selling off bits of my reputation.

Starting today, I start to build it back up.

Starting today, I do things the right way.

Starting today, I’m back.

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Duh.

More interesting to me is the Employee’s guide near the end: it makes some decent points but doesn’t tell you what you can do to build your case ahead of time.

What do you think of this kind of data? Is it helpful at all or just noise?

*Favor: Can you please take my super quick survey on making more money at work? It’s six questions and won’t take more than 3 minutes, I promise! Thanks!

[click to enlarge]

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The accountant that dreams of being a writer. The engineer that wishes he was a carpenter.

We all have these feelings. Most of us, however, suppress them.

• It’s too hard
• It’s too late
• I can’t do it
• I don’t have the money
• My head is in the clouds

It’s because of those kinds of excuses that we stay in the jobs we’re in. It’s the reason why we stop growing as we get older. It’s the reason why we get more and more unhappy as time goes on.

And when we do meet someone who has done it, who has managed to put the work in and take a leap of faith and—surprise, surprise—show us it can indeed be done, we feel like losers. It’s that strange combination of envy and jealousy that can either motivate us or bury us even deeper into our daily rituals of normality.

Sounds pretty depressing, doesn’t it?

Fear not! This post is a positive one—I want to share a post that has the potential to get you off your ass and into action.

Most of us think that starting a new career or learning something new takes years and thousands of dollars. It doesn’t have to.

Check out Michael Ellsberg’s fantastic (and now infamous) 8 Steps to Getting What You Want Without Formal Credentials.

In it, he shows a way to get around the whole credential problem. He shows you the importance of the informal job market.

He shows you a way out.

So if you’re ready to take that leap and commit to finding a way into a career that has more meaning and depth, make sure to check out the post.

It could change your life.

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Why You Shouldn’t Wait Til Next Year to Ask for a Raise: Sweating the Big Stuff has a post that shows how important a raise can be over time and how much money you’re leaving on the table. Even the tiniest raise can snowball into a lot of money over time, so if you’re putting off asking for a raise read this first.

5 Options for Earning More Money: Passive Panda looks at five different ways to make money and winds up recommending something he calls The Remora Method. Exotic as it seems, I think he makes getting a raise sound nearly impossible for most people. Not true…and something I hope to shed more light on in the coming days.

$1,000 Giveaway: Ramit is giving away $1,000 as a social experiment. He wants to know what people would do with some free cash. Hit up the link and enter to win.

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