A Guide to Working for Yourself

A few weeks ago I stumbled onto Chris Guillebeau’s site, The Art of Non-Conformity. Chris is an interesting guy—he’s an entrepreneur that has set a goal of visiting every country in the world. And guess what? He’s out there doing it. When I visited his site he was in the midst of promoting a new product called the Empire Building Kit. It’s basically a very detailed, very action-oriented guide to starting and running your own small business (from what I can tell/remember, it’s not open for sale now).

There was a deadline on when you could buy into it and the deadline ran out before I could make up my mind. So instead I visited his store and the found another guide that seemed like a “lite” version of the Empire Building Kit: The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself.

Itching as I was for some help and direction with starting Applied Analytics, I decided to buy it and see what Chris and his guides had to offer. I had already been exposed to some of his work from reading his Brief Guide to World Domination, which was a really slick, really entertaining read. And that’s something you’ll notice when you fire up his Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself—it is very pretty, very readable, and very slick.

What’s It All About?

The goal of the guide is to help readers start a micro business, which is defined as a business that can earn at least $200/month. That’s to start of course and you can always think bigger and go bigger. But the purpose is to get a small business started that makes a relatively low amount of income.

Chris does a great job of tailoring the guide to a wide variety of people. Whether you know what you want to start or not, Chris has got you covered. Personally, I felt like the guide was better tailored for people that have no idea what they’d want to start since he runs through a lot of potential businesses and possibilities. From eBay to blogging to photography, he covers a fair bit of ground that should help you make up your mind about the direction you want to go in.

Chris also does a good job of telling his own story via his experiences as an entrepreneur. You can tell that he’s actually done a lot of these things and it’s reassuring to know that you’re taking the advice of someone who knows what they’re doing.

Is it for You?

If you need a kick in the pants to get started with any type of side business, this guide will give you that bit of added motivation. The audio segments add a nice dimension to the package and Chris is very responsive to any issue that comes up with the guide. If you already know what you want to do and have done a fair amount of work, then you may want to wait until he opens up the Empire Building Kit again. Either way, there are some good marketing tips in here that anyone can benefit from.

And if you’re on the fence about this specific guide, check out his site (The Art of Non-Conformity) and his free Brief Guide to World Domination guide to get an idea of what you’re getting into.

If you’re interested, check out The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself. You’ll notice that’s an affiliate link and that’s another cool thing about his guides—once you buy one you can apply to the affiliate program and make some money off every sale you drive to him. Like I’ve been saying—Chris is a smart guy. If you don’t want to go through the affiliate link, you can go straight to the guide here.