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Do you remember Patrick Buckley, who I interviewed? He came up with an idea for an iPad case, then he built a store to sell it. In a few months, he generated about a million dollars in sales. Well, the platform he used is Shopify. If you have an idea to sell anything, set up a store on Shopify.com because Shopify stores are designed to increase sales. Plus, Shopify makes it easy to set up and manage your store. Shopify.com.
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Here’s the program.
Andrew Warner: Hey, everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. Today, I’ve got with me Chris Guillebeau. He is traveling to every country on the planet while building not just a business, but a movement. His movement has a growing follower base, too. He calls them his small army. I’m proud to say that I’m one of the people in his small army. He is the founder of the Art of Non-Conformity, a project that teaches how to change the world by achieving significant personal goals and helping others do the same.
I invited him to Mixergy so that we can learn three things from his experiences. First, I want to learn how you can launch and grow your own movement. I want that for my audience, Chris. Second thing is how can you build a business based not on making or selling stuff, but based on ideas? I really admire how Chris does that. Third, how can you travel and otherwise enjoy life while doing meaningful work? That’s the three goals that I have for this interview. Chris, welcome to Mixergy.
Chris Guillebeau: Dude, thanks for having me. Those are great goals and I’m happy to be here.
Andrew: How many countries are there in the world, and how many have you been to so far?
Chris: Yeah. It’s one of those things where it depends on how you count it because there are a few different lists. I use the United Nations list, which is 192 countries. I started this maybe five years ago or so after I had been working in West Africa for a while. I just counted up the number of countries I had been to then and I realized there were about, I had been to like 50 countries. I thought it would be fun to set a goal to go to 100 countries. I started working towards that and then I realized as I got closer to that goal, it wasn’t actually going to be that difficult. When you go to 100, you can pick and choose which ones you go to. It’s not super challenging. Then I decided let’s do the whole thing and go to every country.
So far, my current count is 151. I’ve got about 40-ish countries left. It’s the kind of thing where it gets progressively more difficult because you have to go further out, you have to go to the South Pacific, Central Asia, lots of countries in Africa. It gets more difficult, but it’s fun. I’m having a great time.
Andrew: By the way, as you were answering that question, somebody here was turning on a vacuum cleaner or something, and I don’t know how to speak Spanish well enough to find out what it is and ask them to turn it off. It’s hard when you’re away from home and you’re working. Do you have issues like that? How are you able to get the job done?
Chris: Oh, all the time. It’s the story of my life. Pretty much everywhere I go. I’m having a good time, but I also am conscious of my business and the blog and everything that I’m doing. It’s a daily constant battle to sort out WiFi and to arrange Skype conversations. I’ve done a lot of these things at three o’clock in the morning local time wherever I am just to accommodate people back in the States or whatever. It’s a constant thing and it gets frustrating sometimes. I always ask myself, “What do I really want to do? I could just be at home.” I could stay at home. My business would probably be better, but I have the chance to go and work from anywhere in the world. I’m pursuing this goal which is personally meaningful to me. I just try to put it in context.
Andrew: I guess that there’s a business benefit to traveling and dealing with all the issues around WiFi and working everything out in foreign places, right? What is it?
Chris: The business benefit? That’s a good question. I don’t know. Sometimes I think, like I said, if I was just interested in making money, which there’s nothing wrong with making money, I could probably make more if I was at home. I guess it is true that some people are fascinated by the idea of working in all these different countries and being location independent. I would say maybe the benefit is that I’ve walked the walk. I’ve done this between five and ten years. It’s not something that’s new to me, it’s something that’s very natural. I guess that would be the benefit. I also end up meeting with people everywhere I go, which would probably be even more of a benefit just in terms of building relationships and getting to hear about different projects and things.
Andrew: There are two things that have really drawn me into your mission, two big things. The first is the design on your site is . . . everything that you touch is so beautifully designed that I just get sucked into it. I go over just to check out who you are, to get a little bit of background information for this interview, and I get sucked into it. I think Seth Godin, a few years ago, linked to something you created, I clicked over and I got sucked into it because it was beautiful. The second thing is that you travel and you have such an interesting life. Talk a little bit about the traveling. The design, where does that come from? You design this, how much time do you spend?
Chris: Yeah. I can’t take any credit for the design. I work with this great partner named Reese Spykerman.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Chris: She’s @Reese on Twitter or DesignByReese.com. She has really invested a great deal of her time and energy and making this her big project and building everything out. Our goal in working together is to make everything consistent, as you say. From Twitter to the Facebook page to the manifestos to everything we do, we try to be consistent. I really have to give a lot of credit to her because a lot of people always mention the design and it’s all her.
Andrew: It’s stunning. You get us with the design. You get us with tough talk like “go conquer the world.” What is the mission? Once we’re in and we want to join your mission, what’s the mission?
Chris: The mission is to help people live unconventional, remarkable lives. The mission is basically to empower, but I have to be careful about using words like that because they sound self-helpy. I like to say that I’m doing self-help for people who wouldn’t ordinarily read self-helps. Basically, what I’m just trying to do is not so much to motivate but to reinforce, to provide a platform or a community to people who want to do something different or maybe they’ve always fought against the status quo and felt a little bit alone or something. That’s basically what it’s about.
I have to say that I wasn’t always very clear about that from the beginning. This is definitely something that has been an organic process and something that I learned about as I’ve gone along. In the beginning, I was mostly just writing about my own trips and things. Then I figured out, first of all, I’m not a very good travel writer. Second of all, some people are interested in travel stuff, but other people aren’t. Right? I had to learn to answer the question like, “What’s in it for me? What’s in it for the reader?” That kind of thing. That was something that took quite a while, but I think we’re finally getting to it now.
Andrew: How does someone come up with their mission?
Chris: Hmm. I think, in my case, it was something that, it was inspired by working in West Africa. I was in West Africa for four years working in post-conflict countries. It was a very emotional experience, but a very, very rewarding and meaningful experience. That created this desire to translate that to a broader platform. I felt like I helped people on an individual basis and also as an entrepreneur for a number of years, helping people on an individual basis, but I had no real platform. I had no way to help a lot of people, and I wanted to be a writer. That was the impetus for it.
Then I spent a couple of years in grad school just thinking about this project, what it would be like. Also, after I started, like I said in the beginning, it wasn’t that great or whatever. I would say a big part of it was connecting with the community and what people started reading and commenting and writing and asking hard questions sometimes, asking, “How does this help me? You’re visiting every country in the world and that’s great, but how does this help me?” I guess, probably just in the daily working out of it and committing to a schedule and I’m going to do this three times a week no matter what. I’m never going to miss a post. Just reading and engaging and continually being inspired to go further. That helped a lot for me.
Andrew: I say that because I think that we don’t want to be selling sneakers in the world, we want to be selling “just do it.” When you’re selling the sneakers, it’s boring and it’s something that someone else can sell better than you or cheaper than you, but if you’re selling a movement, then it’s hard for anyone to dislodge your customers. It’s hard for them to take away what you stand for. If you’re trying to figure it out with your audience, aren’t people who come to a leader who’s leading a mission, aren’t they expecting you to have the answers, for you to provide the direction? Nike isn’t saying to me, “Wear the sneakers. Tell me what you think what we should stand for.”
Chris: Right. It’s a tough balance, I think. I think a movement has to have a leader or leaders. Right? Not everyone can . . . it can’t be a leaderless movement. I agree that there has to be a message. When I met Seth Godin a year ago, I talked with him. I said, “Seth, I appreciate your support. What’s one thing I can do better? I know it’s a long list, but just give me one thing.” He said, “I think you need to have a little bit more of an agenda because consensus is overrated.” That was a very Seth thing to say. I definitely have thought a lot about that. Over the past year, I’ve been thinking, “Okay. What is the agenda? What are we about?” There is a whole side to that and that’s probably why I wrote a book. There’s a clear message there.
But, I don’t think everyone is looking for someone to give them the answer. I think there’s a good reinforcement in just knowing that other people are going through this process and other people don’t have it all together, they don’t have all the answers, they’re just walking through it. I write a lot about fear and insecurity. Sometimes I share my own fears and just say, “This whole culture of being fearless, I don’t like it. I think it’s kind of false because I think almost all of us have some degree of fear.” I think the thing to do in this situation is to acknowledge the fear and find a way to interact with it and engage with it and not to let the fear make our decisions for us, for example. I think it’s a balance. I think you got to have a message, you got to have a mission, but you also have to be willing to share what you’re struggling with, too.
Andrew: All right. That’s something that I’ve always admired about your writing. I remember reading some post about insecurity, or a topic like that, and going into it saying, “Okay. Has he figured it out now? Another blogger is going to tell me that he’s figured everything out.” You said, “No. Here’s how I handle it. I’m not always 100 percent. What do you guys think?” I thought, “Well, all right. I can’t really argue with someone like that. Let’s see what he’s got to say, and let’s see what his readers have to say about it.”
Chris: You just pointed out the secondary benefit there. The secondary benefit is you deal with the potential objections and you build a sense of community and saying, “Here’s what we’re all about, but hey, what do you think, too?” Gary Vaynerchuk’s been really good about that. A lot of people have been good at that. I like that style a little bit better than just . . . the message is hard-hitting, but I’m also trying to . . . it’s not really criticizing anybody, it’s just providing an alternative for people who . . .
Andrew: Okay. What I’m hearing is you want to get to a clearer message, but it’s okay along the way to figure it out publicly and it’s especially good to ask your audience for their feedback and help them think it through with you and basically encourage them to tell you what they stand for and what they’re passionate about?
Chris: Yeah. That’s how it’s been for me. I adhere to this, what I call a guru-free philosophy. It’s like, “I don’t have all the answers, you don’t have all the answers. But yes, we can figure some things out along the way.” I’m happy to share from my experiences. Maybe from my experiences, I do have some answers.
Andrew: Okay. We’ve given people that direction. Now they’re ready to get started. How do you launch a movement?
Chris: In my case, I wrote this manifesto called “A Brief Guide to World Domination.” I did that after I had built a little bit of a platform, maybe 3,000 readers or so, fairly respectable, but definitely not huge or anything. That was a presentation of my ideas. That was like, “Here’s my experiences. Here’s what’s happened with me so far and here’s where I’m going, here’s where I’m visiting every country in the world. Really what I want to do is help people find this connection between their own ambitious goals and how our lives connect with other people and stuff.” I guess just maybe putting that out there and asking for people to help, asking people to spread the word, that definitely helps.
You need to have some kind of platform. You need to have some kind of message like we’ve been talking about. You need to ask for interaction and engagement, definitely make the request. Also, make it clear who you’re writing for or who you’re pitching for or whatever it is. That’s something that’s also taken me a little while to figure out because when we were first pitching my book to publishers, they would say, “Who’s your target market?” I would say, “Well, my target market is people who want to change the world basically.” They were like, “That’s not a target market. A target market is like women aged 35 to 39 with a college degree, etc.”
I always had a really hard time figuring out how that fits with the Art of Non-Conformity because I’ve got a really broad demographic, and it’s almost equally split between men and women. I’ve got students. I’ve got entrepreneurs. I’ve got people in India and Africa and stuff. So I really target on the ideas more than the demographics. Just figuring that out. Like now, I would totally say my target market is people who want to change the world, and I don’t think anyone would object to that. But in the beginning, that was a little bit awkward.
Andrew: I see someone in the audience, FTimmons, is asking, “What do you mean by changing the world or by world domination?”
Chris: By world domination, I mean this combination of the individual as hero, like the journey, the quest, whatever it is most personally meaningful to you, whether that’s building a company or doing something really crazy like visiting every country in the world or whatever that is to you, while also recognizing that ultimately if all you do is something that’s self-centered, you’re going to be unsatisfied. Ultimately, the meaning of life that we’re all trying to find, whatever it is that’s connected to really being ourselves, doing that kind of stuff, while also figuring out how we can make a difference in the lives of other people. Not just in a generic way, not just in like, “Oh, I can write this check.” Or, “I can buy cookies from somebody.” Or, “I can give money to somebody on the street.”
We all have these unique talents. How can we use those to help the world in a way that no one else can? I think it’s really, really important to think about those things. What do you really want? What are you after? What’s Andrew Warner about, what’s he really trying to do? Then also, what does he have that can make the world a better place? What can you do that no one else can do?
Andrew: Can you give me an example of someone who’s doing it well? Someone who’s a hero of the movement?
Chris: A hero of the movement? Okay.
Andrew: Someone who embodies what you stand for.
Chris: Sure. I really like Scott Harrison with charity:water. I’m doing my charity project with him. I met Scott on his first day when he came to Africa in 2003, 2004. We were working in the same group. At the end, he was there for like a year, and at the end, he was like, “I’m going to go and start this water charity.” I was like, “Oh, that’s great, Scott, but here we are in Monrovia, Liberia and there’s like 40 water NGOs right here. Good luck.” Now he has the biggest water charity ever.
He’s an example of someone who’s always been very ambitious, and he had nightclubs and he’s promoting all these parties and doing stuff and also traveling around the world. But he felt dissatisfied because he felt like he had this missing link. The after coming to Africa, working for a year, he goes back to New York and starts this NGO and he’s still doing what he loves to do. He’s connecting with celebrities. He’s going to all these parties and things, but he’s raising millions of dollars. He’s building wells in Ethiopia that you can go on Google Earth and look and see them. He would be a hero of the movement.
Andrew: Okay. One of mine, too. We had him here on Mixergy, and he has an incredible story. By the time you wrote the manifesto, how much of your mission did you have figured out?
Chris: I would say maybe 50 percent, maybe half of it. It was still a very small vision. It’s funny to look back now. Maybe a couple years from now we’ll look back and say this is small. Now I say I want 100,000 people who are really passionate about living life on their own terms and changing the world. Maybe years from now we’ll look back and say that was small. I would say maybe half of it. I just thought I’m doing this thing and I want to inspire some people, but it was still vague and it still wasn’t really tied down.
I see people who are reading the blog and I see really big names and I hear Andrew Warner, he’s a fan. I’m like, “Wow.” That impresses me. As I’m creating more stuff, I’m always thinking about Scott or Andrew or whoever I’m thinking, “Is this going to be good enough for them or not?” I can’t just be too generic here because they’re going to see through that. I would say probably over the next year, we got a lot better, and hopefully next year as well.
One thing about writing a book, it takes like a year to write a book. Then because the publishing industry is so incredibly slow, it takes another year for the book to come out. It’s like this huge cycle. My book’s coming out next month and I was just re-reading it and I was like, “Some of this is pretty good.” Other things, maybe I’d say something different now. That’s just how it goes. Seth Godin always talks about shipping, right? And delivering. You just have to. . . an artist has to put something out and then, like Seth, you write another book, then you write another book or whatever. It’s definitely a process.
Andrew: You had bold statements in that mission statement. You’re making bold statements even at a time when you yourself are trying to figure it out. How do you do that?
Chris: People like bold statements. I just like to put stuff out and then try to do things. Here’s an example, and it usually works out. I’m going to do this book tour, right? When I first started talking with the publisher, I was like, “Great. Where am I going on book tour?” They’re like, “Chris, nobody goes on book tour anymore. Certainly not a first-time author. You can come to New York or something.” I’m like, “New York is great, but I’ve got readers everywhere.” I just decided let me take matters into my own hands, okay? One of the greatest things I’ve seen so far in the project is going to different cities and meeting with readers. I’m an introverted person, a pretty shy person, so it took some time to get used to it. But once I did, it was like I’d go and hear these great stories. It’s all about the stories.
I just decided let’s visit every state. We’ll go to all 50 states. I don’t want to forget Canada, so we’ll throw in 10 provinces, and then Washington, D.C., and then California it’s hard to choose, so we’ll do L.A. and San Fran. Anyway, we ended up with 63 cities. I’m like, “Let’s go on an unconventional book tour. 63 cities.” I just announced that a few months ago. I’m like, “I’m pretty sure I want to do this.”
Later on is when I started figuring out the logistics, okay? I don’t figure out it before. I think I can make it work, but it’s only later that I actually start creating a Google doc and I get an atlas and I get the Southwest Airlines schedule and I’m like, “Okay. How can we make this work?” Now I’m two and a half weeks off from starting this and probably 10 events are planned out of 63. Another 20, I more or less know what’s going to happen, but the others, like in North Dakota and stuff, I haven’t really thought much about that. It’ll be fine. It’ll work itself out along the way.
Andrew: That’s setting goals and then working out the details afterwards. What I’m talking about is when you make bold statements about world domination and you tell people how to do it because they’re looking to you for direction, they’re looking to you for education even more, I think, than direction and you’re teaching them something really strongly. Maybe a few months later, you say, “I don’t really feel that way. Things have changed.” Have you ever had that, and how do you handle that?
Chris: Okay. I’m glad you make this distinction because I would say in terms of the big statements, no I haven’t changed a lot in the big statements. The big statements are things like, “You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.” Then really breaking that down and thinking about what that looks like. That is definitely a core message of the movement of the Art of Non-Conformity. That’s been there from the beginning. It’s certainly the way I feel now and hopefully it will continue to be. I would say maybe the vision doesn’t change so much, it’s more the strategy and tactics that adjust along the way. Does that make sense?
Andrew: Okay. How do you come up with that? Was there a moment where you said, I guess it might have been when you were about to be done with school and you had to say to yourself, “What direction do I take?” Maybe that was what made you say, “No, I’m going to take a stand right now and it shouldn’t just be me. This is the way the world needs to be”?
Chris: I think there was a few things that led to it. One, it’s just the whole 10-year progression of working for myself and then volunteering in Africa and going through grad school where I saw a lot of people were disappointed because they expected grad school to be this great experience, and they felt like there would be this great career that followed and there was a lot of disappointment there. I didn’t have those expectations, so that was good.
I remember at the end, here’s one anecdote, at the end of the grad school experience, I had all this stuff. I’d be an entrepreneur, West Africa, etc., and someone said to me, it was a friend of a friend, they’re like, “That’s great, Chris, but are you going to get a real job now?” It was like they’re disappointed. They’re like all these things were a prelude to something else that would be like a real job. That’s when I was like, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I have no plans to do that. I’m just going to keep doing what I want to do.” I would say a lot of it just formed out of autobiography, out of not just myself, but maybe working with Scott and working with other people, seeing how they have challenged assumptions and expectations. People expected Scott to do a lot of different things. Just seeing how people pursued different paths and that’s where that came from.
Andrew: Yeah. I remember that. When I graduated from school and people who thought they were going to go change the world and start their own companies would suddenly feel disappointed that I wasn’t ready to go work for P&G or someone.
Chris: Right.
Andrew: I thought, “Oh, come on, what happened? We had all these dreams we were going to do something.”
Chris: Right, right. Yeah. Exactly. I think that partly there’s a jealousy factor, there’s an envy factor, because they know that they had those dreams too, and somehow they got caught up into what they think is the real world. The when you’re actually able to be successful doing something else, that makes people uncomfortable.
Andrew: Okay. How did writing a manifesto affect your work?
Chris: I always wanted to be a writer. I thought that’s my platform. I’m not the best speaker in the world, but I feel like this is a craft, writing, that I can eventually master, at least get good enough to put something out. I just had this sense that there’s not many blog posts that really change the world or change a life. You can read a blog post and it might cause you to think differently, but I can’t think of a whole lot of blog posts even by somebody like Seth or something that really fundamentally changed my life. That’s where a book comes in. That’s where a manifesto comes in. A manifesto is like a book, but you can control so many more elements of it. You can write it and get it out in a month or two. Hopefully, it’s some kind of flagship content where if you’re building a platform, whether business or blog or whatever, and people come to your site, they don’t just read the latest post but they’ll also go and read whatever this is. It provides a good foundation.
Andrew: Do you have the book, by the way, with you? I saw it on your website.
Chris: I do. This is the first copy and I’m excited.
Andrew: It’s so exciting to see it.
Chris: [inaudible 25:02] designers did the cover. I don’t know how well that shows up there, but I’ll send you one. I’m excited.
Andrew: It looks great. I was so excited when I saw it up on your website. I was probably as surprised as you were when it finally came.
Chris: That’s awesome.
Andrew: You were saying you work on it for a couple of years and suddenly it shows up in your mailbox and it’s like, “Wow.”
Chris: I know, I know. It’s like you feel like it’s fake or something. There it is. No, it’s good. I’m looking forward to it. There’s a lot of reasons why not to write a book, with the publishing industry changing and everything, but personally, I was really happy to do it. It’s fun.
Andrew: Okay. I was looking on your website. On the left, you got your blog posts, your ideas, links to manifestos. On the right, you’ve got all these unconventional guides. That’s where the revenue comes from, right? From the business?
Chris: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Andrew: Can you tell people about some of the guides? What are they?
Chris: Sure. Let me tell you exactly how it started first. I didn’t have a revenue model in the beginning for this project, didn’t really plan on monetizing at all. It was just after the first three to six months, I noticed that I kept getting the same questions all the time. People were asking about airfare in particular because I’m flying 70-something flights a year and people are saying, “How do you pay so little for travel? How do you do this travel hacking thing?” Then people were asking me about self-employment, because I’ve always supported myself as an entrepreneur or just self-employed in some form. I just decided I’ll just make this additional resource, and anyone who wants it can get it and everything else will continue to be free.
The first one was a discount airfare guide. The second was unconventional guide to working for yourself, and then both of those did really well. I sold maybe $1,000 in the first day of the discount airfare guide. $1,000 is not a huge amount of money of course, but it was the softest launch possible. It was just like, “Hey. Here’s this thing, here’s a link.” The fact that I can sell $1,000 in a day is great. I did that working for yourself guide and that did like $3,000 to $4,000 the first day. I was like, “Hey. I can actually build a business here without changing anything that I’m doing with the Art of Non-Conformity. The majority of the readers can still consume the content for free and that’s great, but here’s this other little thing off to the side.” That’s how it came about. I’ve got a few different guides. I’ve got the Empire Building kit, which is like the flagship product, got a few other things there.
Andrew: I’ve got here World Domination Made Easy, How to Become a Frequent Flyer Master. Is that the one you were telling me about with travel?
Chris: Yeah, that’s an updated version of that one. That’s actually been the best-seller, the Frequent Flyer Master has done really well, to my surprise. At first, I just thought it’d be a niche kind of thing, but that one’s out sold all the others.
Andrew: I think you promised people that they’ll get 25,000 frequent flyer miles, right?
Chris: Yes. The benefit’s very clear. Now I realize that. But in the beginning, I was like, “I’m not sure.” People have gotten hundreds of thousands of miles, in some cases, like a million miles or more which is just fascinating. I get the stories and the stories make me happy.
Andrew: What did you sell it for? You said the first day was $1,000, how many copies or what did you sell it for?
Chris: I was mentioning the discount airfare guide which is an earlier one. So Frequent Flyer Master, let’s see, I want to make sure to give you the right numbers. I think I did between $5,000 and $10,000 on the first day of that one. That was a $49 product. The business was so unstrategic in the beginning. It was totally organic. I had no upsells. I had no cross promotions. I did no marketing to existing customers. I knew how to do all these things because I’ve run businesses before, but for this, my whole energy was devoted to the blog and this was just on the side. It’s been a two-year process of very, very slowly making some more things optimal or efficient.
Andrew: Based on how many readers do you have?
Chris: Depends on how you count it. I would say the core base is about 20,000, 25,000. It’s 25,000 on the email list and then I got another number on RSS, which I don’t pay too much attention to because I think RSS is overrated, in my opinion. Then Twitter and Facebook, etc. Probably 20,000 as a core group and then 50,000 as the passive group.
Andrew: I think you’ve got something like 44,000 on Twitter who are following you.
Chris: Yeah, which is great. Also, Twitter works like a big majority, maybe not a majority, but a big section of those people might be passive or they signed up for Twitter a year ago and they followed you and now they’re gone or they’re spammers or whatever. Yeah, it’s great.
Andrew: Dan Blank in the audience says, “His guides cost $60 to $80, some for $130 per guide.” I think the one that I saw, How to Build an Empire, I think one version of it was about $500?
Chris: That was my highest end. Yeah, the high-end one was $449. The main range I stay in is between $39 and $129. I like the mid-range. I don’t have any $10 e-books. I don’t like to just stay on the bottom, but I also don’t have any $2,000 home study courses or whatever. I like that middle range. Empire Building kit I did on a tier structure, so I had a $149, $249, and a $449. I think the $249, the middle one, is the most popular.
Andrew: Okay. What do people get for that?
Chris: The Empire Building kit, the goal with that is to help people build a business in one year by doing one thing every day. Okay? What I’ve done is compiled a number of case studies with entrepreneurs who have built, what I call, lifestyle businesses. Lifestyle business in this definition is a business that makes $50,000 a year to $200,000 a year. They’re usually doing something that they’re passionate about, so the idea of following your passion and actually creating a business out of it. Case studies with a number of profitable lifestyle businesses and then case studies, tutorials, all kinds of examples, and PDFs. Then I created what I call the world’s longest email follow-up series, with AWeber. I have a 365 day email series that gives people one step a day towards building a business.
Andrew: Ah, I see. I saw that it was 365 different tips. I thought it was all coming in one PDF, you’re saying no.
Chris: No, you get . . .
Andrew: One a day.
Chris: Yeah, one a day. There’s a funny story which I don’t mind telling about this. It was going to be one huge outline. But while I was creating the content, I got to step 50 or 60 and I was like, “Huh. What comes next? I’m not sure.” And the launch was coming up, so I was like, “Let’s put it in a whole year format.” When I actually launched it, I only had the first two months. Then of course I’ve got time to . . . it’s kind of like the college professor working one week ahead, so I’m building it out over the year.
Andrew: [laughs] You know what? I think I’m allowed to say this out loud, but Neil Patel, when he created the pro version of his product, he created, I think, the first one and then he started selling it and it was an eight-week course. He said, “You know, Andrew, I got seven more weeks to work on this and that’s how I’ll do it.”
Chris: Right. Exactly. There’s nothing dishonest about it, as long as you’re delivering what you say you’re going to deliver.
Andrew: What kind of tips do you have in there?
Chris: I tried to break it down to where it’s really specific, one thing a day. Let’s see. I should pull up my AWeber and look at the 200 there. Let’s see. I just did this thing with PayPal that showed people how to avoid PayPal fees by using the mass payment option. I don’t know if you know that works, but if you pay people via PayPal, there’s usually a 3 percent to 5 percent thing you’re paying. But if you use the mass payment option, for example, then you can skip the fees and it’s just $1 to send any payment. The thing about mass payment is you can send one person a mass payment, even though it’s not really mass. That’s just one day. I’ve got a video about that.
Then I’ve got, anytime I see a fun little business that’s a lifestyle business that’s profitable then I’ll do a little, “This is what they’re doing. This is what their revenue is,” if I know that. If I don’t, that’s fine. I’ll still look at some examples. Tell people how to structure an offer, how to know if there’s a market to begin with, how to survey your customers, how to sell more to existing customers. It’s like an all-encompassing thing. I got lots of small little products, but this is my big one.
Andrew: That’s what some people would just put in on a blog post. That seems like ProBlogger.net, each one of these is one of his blog posts. Basically what you’re saying is, “I’m going to blog three times a week. I’m not going to do it 10 times a week the way ProBlogger might. I’ll put it into an email and I’ll focus it around this one topic and I’ll sell it instead of giving it away for free.”
Chris: Yeah. I think in some cases that’s fair. I would say, in terms of information product in general, all information is free. All information is publicly accessible, for the most part. It’s just a question of are you willing to put in the time and investment to read 200 blogs? With Frequent Flyer Master, most of that information is free if you can spend a couple of hours a day on FlyerTalk.com, then you can get this information, or you can pay $50 and I’ll tell you exactly what you need to know about it. It’s just a matter of choice.
Andrew: Okay. Actually, one more thing, the case studies, that’s essentially what you and I are doing, right? Interviews.
Chris: Right. You have a different model. It is essentially like I’m interviewing people and trying to figure out specifically how they started the business, what choices they made, and what challenges they had. What are some tips that really increased your revenue. Sure, I would say it’s similar to this. You’ve chosen to do a model where it’s basically open to everyone, and I’ve chosen to do a model, in this case, for this part of the network, where it’s closed.
I would say whenever somebody says, “Why not make the product offers free?” I say, “Well, everything else is free. You don’t need the product.” I have a very soft sell. Whenever people will write and say, “Oh, I’m trying to decide about this and I really don’t know if it’s best.” I always say, “If you’re not sure, then maybe just wait. It’s fine. It’s still going to be there later and maybe something else will serve you better. Maybe you should just read ProBlogger or whatever.”
Andrew: I got to say with many blogs, especially ProBlogger, I don’t have the patience to go read every day or figure out what’s appropriate for me. If he just said to me, “Andrew, I’m going to take all my past blog posts and I’ll weed out the ones that are really promotional for products that I care about but aren’t really related to what you’re interested in and I’ll sell it to you in one format.” Doesn’t have to be a book, in fact, I prefer it wasn’t a book. In a Kindle format or some other format that’s easy to digest and flip through, I could probably read it in three hours and be done with it. I wish that he would do that and of course I would pay 50 to 100 bucks to do that.
Chris: Right. There would be value for that for you.
Andrew: Yeah. Let’s see, what else? Traveling and all that you’re doing now, you’re paying off of the work you’re doing on your website, right?
Chris: Yep. Correct. I had the book deal, but I don’t make any money from the book.
Andrew: That’s what I’m hearing. I hear that from authors and the other thing that I hear is, I used to wait about a month to interview an author.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Andrew: They just would turn me down. The first month they would love to do an interview. The ones who I contacted after the first month would turn me down, and I didn’t understand why. I finally sat down over coffee with an author, and he said, “Andrew, after about the first month, that’s when authors get depressed. They thought the publishing company was going to do it all for them, send them on a book tour, the way you thought, send them out on TV. The world was just going to shower them with attention and nothing happens.” It’s honorable that you’re actually taking the reins and saying, “I’ll go do this myself.”
Chris: That was a mistake for them to believe that. That was a mistake for them to expect that from their publisher. I think what authors need to do is take responsibility for their own books and go out and do their stuff. My whole thing has been, obviously this is a high-profile thing to talk to you, but I’ve always been happy to talk to . . . I’ve done interviews with people who’ve got like five readers on their blog and I just want to connect with anyone because everybody has something they can do to help. Everyone has, if you have Facebook friends, then those friends trust you more than they trust some so-called authority figure. I’m all about getting the word out.
Andrew: Big question, we talked about this before the interview, how much revenue are you bringing in?
Chris: Sure. Okay. When I started the business model for the site, and then I wrote a manifesto, the second one, called “279 Days to Overnight Success.” That was in 2008, or no, beginning of 2009, excuse me. I said that I predicted that I’ll be able to support myself with this and I think I’ll make some . . . it was like $45,000 or $47,000 from that. I said I’m happy to do that because where I live, I’m already above the median income. I don’t spend a lot. I’m pretty frugal.
The business took off a little bit after that and I actually exceeded that. Let’s see. Last year, I think it was just under six figures at the end of the year. Now, I would say, basically, it’s going to be a healthy, six-figure business going forward. Not a huge business. I don’t think it’ll ever be seven figures or anything and not mid- or upper-six figures, but I think it’s definitely a healthy income now that I build the business a little bit more and create some foundation for it. We’re doing more affiliate stuff. The affiliate stuff is good when it actually works because other people are basically selling for me. It’s a healthy business and I’m happy about that.
Andrew: The second question that I asked at the beginning of this interview is how can you build a business based on ideas? What advice do you have for people who want to do that?
Chris: Hmm. Well, I focused first on, like we talked earlier, about building a movement based on ideas, then the business came out of it. I would say that even if the business is based on ideas, it still has to provide a very real-world benefit, okay? When I think about the business projects I’ve done with Unconventional Guides, when I think about ones that went really well versus ones that were just okay . . . one fun thing about information products is even if it’s just okay, you still haven’t lost a lot of money or anything. That’s good.
But I would do a comparison between two and say, before I launched Frequent Flyer Master, I had this idea to do this project called Travel Ninja. I thought Travel Ninja was a pretty awesome name. The whole benefit is basically like go anywhere, anytime in the world, etc. I got good feedback about it from people who did the review stuff, and then people seemed excited about it. To make a long story short, I launched it and I was disappointed with the results. I was like, “Huh. I thought I would sell a few hundred copies of this.” It really wasn’t that great.
Later on, I did Frequent Flyer Master and it was a huge hit. I realized the difference here. The difference was the benefit wasn’t actually that clear with Travel Ninja, and some people felt intimidated by it. A lot of people were like, “I don’t want to go to 20 countries a year. I just want to go to two countries a year, or I want to visit my grandma in Nebraska. How will this help me?” That wasn’t very clear. Then with Frequent Flyer Master, it’s like we talked earlier about the 25,000 miles, you buy this guide, you get the plane ticket basically, so that helped a lot.
Empire Building kit also was very clear. You build a business in one year by doing one thing every day. This is not going to help you build a million-dollar company probably, but we’re looking at $50,000 to $200,000 a year. That’s great. Ideas are one thing but it has to very clear, it has to be a clear benefit. It has to be something that people are willing to exchange money for. Lots of things they can go and read for free. It can’t just be travel tips, for example, because travel tips are free. It can’t be blogging tips. It has to be something measurable, tangible, hopefully something commercial. Those things help.
Andrew: All right. Before we move on, I want to give people the website. We’re not at the end of the interview, but I want them to check out the website. How do we give this to people? Your name is tough to spell.
Chris: Yes, it is. People can also go to ArtofNonConformity.com.
Andrew: Okay.
Chris: That will work. Or they can Google Non-Conformity, it’s the number one result. Yes, the follow-up question, which you didn’t ask, was, “Should you have named your site ChrisGuillebeau.com?” Probably not, but it’s one of those things where once it’s done, you have to move on. I asked Seth Godin once why his site was on TypePad. I was like, “Seth, TypePad sucks.” He said, “I don’t worry about things I have no control over.” It was like the same kind of thing. We got to move on. ChrisGuillebeau.com, ArtofNonConformity.com.
Andrew: Okay. I’m a little hesitant to even give out your domain because once people go over to your website, I’m feel like I’m going to lose them forever. Sign up for my mailing list first, and then go check out Chris Guillebeau.
Chris: Okay. Sorry, sorry.
Andrew: Nah, screw it. Go over, you’ll love it. I love your writing style. I love the way that you can sum up ideas and be honest about them. It feels to me, though, like you’re cranking stuff out nonstop. In the middle of this interview, I believe you’ve probably whipped up an information product or in the middle of this interview, you whipped up a blog post. I see three a day, not small, empty blog posts, but there’s some good meat to them.
Chris: Three a week. Not three a day.
Andrew: Excuse me. You’re right. Then I see the guides that you’ve written are pretty bulky. Then I click around your website and the About section isn’t just a picture of you and your bio. It stands for something, it says something. How often do you write? How do you produce so much?
Chris: I use the standard called “1,000 words a day.” It’s just a personal standard. It’s a personal goal. I’ve got to do 1,000 words a day. They may not all be for publication. Not everything I write is great, I know that. I basically am not going to be happy with myself unless I get the 1,000 words done. You’re doing tons of interviews, so I think you have a similar kind of thing. When things get really crazy, it’s very easy to spend a lot of time on Twitter, a lot of time on email, which I actually like email, I’m pro email, which I know is unusual for some people. It’s very easy to get distracted, so I just try to keep 1,000 words a day.
I would say other things that help are leverage. I write for CNN, but I don’t really write for CNN. They mostly are just taking my posts. “Psychology Today” and “Huffington Post,” it’s the same thing, they’re mostly just syndicating, so it doesn’t take a whole lot. In terms of the About section and all that, it’s really, really important to have that. The About page is the most important page on any website, I think. I think it’s as important as the homepage because it’s the first page that I always click. I go to read a blog, I go to see what’s that person about, what’s the story. It’s important to spend a lot of time pimping that out and making sure that’s really good.
Andrew: 1,000 a day, including weekends?
Chris: Like six days a week.
Andrew: Okay. We talked before the interview started about how I was just exhausted from doing an interview a day. Something happened the other day and I just was. . . I know what happened, I had two interviews to do plus I agreed to help out a college student with some help that she needed for an hour on Skype. By the end of the day, I was wiped.
Chris: Yeah.
Andrew: Do you ever feel overwhelmed by that goal? Do you ever feel like, “I can’t get up and do another 1,000 words. I’m done, I’m beat, I’m exhausted”?
Chris: I do take some breaks. I would say it’s like exercise. It’s a good habit you want to maintain. For me, if I don’t run one day, it’s probably going to be fine. I can run the next day. If I stop exercising for a whole week or 10 days or something, then I’m going to start feeling bad. It’s just mostly a habit that I want to do. I also think it’s important to know where you get your energy from. For me, interviews are good but I feel quite tired after a lot of interviews. I’m impressed that you can crank out as many as you do, whereas I like being by myself and creating things and outlining things and doing it. For me, it’s not really a tiring thing most of the time. Sometimes it is, it just depends.
Andrew: Usually doing interviews isn’t tough. Just sometimes it hits me. Usually it’s not tough because you’re doing most of the work. I ask the question and I can sit back and you give out your wisdom. You tell people how you find energy. You tell people how they can go and build businesses. What about the opposite side of that problem? 1,000 a day, I say, sometimes can be overwhelming because you have to do so much of it. Sometimes it can be tough because you don’t have enough coming out of you. What do you do on days . . . what can the average person who’s not as prolific as you, who says, “I heard Chris say 1,000 words a day is what he does. I’m going to start off doing 500 or maybe I’ll aim high and do 1,000 a day.” Then they’re staring at that white screen. What advice do you have for them on how to do it, how to fill it up?
Chris: I would say the specific number isn’t important. I would just say it’s the practice of doing something. The schedule also helps. If you have a blog, I’m a big fan of, “This is the schedule.” You’re going to have a post on Monday or on Friday, it doesn’t matter what it is, it’s for you to decide what that schedule is. Once you have it, just stick with it. I think that’s really important. When we start new projects, if we start an interview project, we’re like, “Oh, I’m going to interview five people a day.” We get burned out. If we just say, “Okay. Every Wednesday, this thing is going to happen.”
It also helps if you build up a streak. Right? If you got a streak going, you don’t want to break the streak. I don’t think I’ve ever missed a post. If I was going to miss a post, I’d be like, “Oh, I got to get something.” Even if it’s a placeholder or even if I’m like, “Here’s the placeholder post. The real one’s coming tomorrow.” I’m going to have something. It’s just fun. The motivation, also, comes once people start following along, like here on the interview series or on my blog or whatever, then you’re continually getting good feedback, so the positive feedback loop really helps a lot. Once you know that people are actually paying attention, then it makes a big difference, as opposed to putting something out there into space. I would say that it actually gets easier over time if you can push through a little bit in the beginning.
Andrew: I see. Start off small, create a schedule, it doesn’t have to be every day, make it public. Doing it public helped you, it sounds like.
Chris: Yeah. I think so. I would also add do you what you’re motivated to you as opposed to trying to motive yourself into something. That’s from “Good to Great.” I wish I could take credit for that myself. Basically, in that book, Jim Collins found that most of the great companies were doing things that they were really motivated to do as opposed to just, “Here is a business opportunity, we should pursue this.” That can work in the short term, but really in the long term, you have to commit to doing something. I’m really motivated to doing the project, and it’s a good thing because I don’t think I could sustain it otherwise.
Andrew: What about the project is so motivating that you can’t help but do it?
Chris: I would say the number one thing is the stories. The number one thing is, like I said, I get paid in emails. I’m happy when I see orders from Unconventional Guides coming in, but I’m also happy when I hear from some high school student who’s trying to make this choice and she read the site and she’s like, “Oh, I feel motivated to do this.” Sometimes they’re asking for advice, but mostly they’re just saying, “I’m glad that we connected,” which is great. That’s incredibly motivating.
Andrew: The third promise that I made to the audience before we started was that they’ll learn how they can travel, otherwise enjoy life, while doing meaningful work. You talked about your travel. You talked about how you run your blog. You talked about how you live life and you’re not just working. Someone in the audience said what about a wife? I guess they noticed that you have a ring.
Chris: I do. I have a ring and a wife.
Andrew: A ring and a wife. These guys are good. The question that he had was, let’s see, “What kind of relationship do you have. . .” Actually, can you talk about that, what it’s like to travel with the wife instead of me trying to read his question? Maybe you can tell us what it’s like.
Chris: Sure.
Andrew: And how you do it.
Chris: Sure. Jolie and I have been married for about 10 years now. During the whole time we were in West Africa, she was there as well. We were both working there. We went overseas from 2002 to 2006 and then moved back to Seattle together. That’s when I started traveling by myself. Sometimes I travel with her and we go together and other times I’m just out doing my own thing. She says she doesn’t want to go to all the crazy countries. Now I’m going to lots of crazy countries. I go for usually about two weeks at a time. Because I’m married, I don’t travel for more than two weeks. It’s a two to three week maximum. Partly that’s why some of the travel is a bit frantic sometimes. I’m going from here to here and trying to get there and stuff because I don’t want to be away for too long. We talk on Skype. We instant message and then I’m back. I’m actually home in Portland more than I’m away. Some people think I’m always gone, but I’m actually here probably 60 percent of the time and away about 40 percent of the time.
Andrew: Actually, I thought you were always around. I thought you were always traveling and haven’t been in Portland for years.
Chris: Oh, no. I got a home base.
Andrew: [laughs] What’s the best tip that you have for somebody who wants to travel for the first time, who says, “Hey, what Chris is doing sounds good. I’m a little intimidated. I want to get going.” What do you say to them?
Chris: I say pick one place. I have this post on the site called “Your One Place” and I show how people can save $2 a day for up to a year. Anyone watching this can save at least $2 a day, and they can have enough money to go to that place. That’s the first thing, understanding the objective. It’s not going to be too difficult or expensive.
Don’t worry about making a huge plan. You can read the guide books, you can connect with people, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s also okay just to go. It’s going to be fine. Latin America’s always a good introduction. South Africa’s a great country. A number of countries in Eastern Europe that I really like. I like Macedonia, Australia, New Zealand. I would say don’t worry about making a huge life plan. Don’t worry about planning your travel for the next five years or trying to go to every country in the world. Just find a way to go do something and see what it’s like and see how you respond to it and see what you like and what you don’t like. There’s always going to be things that you don’t like and that’s okay. From there, figure out what the next step is and where you want to go next.
Andrew: I remember reading in your manifesto that you, I think you said you earned $46,000 a year, something like that, and I remember thinking two things. First of all, damn, he’s such a freaking good writer. He’s got to earn way more than that. Like you said, it was the beginning and you were growing from there. The second thing is, once I discovered you were traveling, I said, “How the hell is he traveling on 40-some odd thousand dollars a year and keeping a home base?” How do you do that?
Chris: Right. I also had no debt. I had also been very careful about choices. I think that’s a really big thing. It wasn’t like I was paying anything. I was renting a home and living carless in Seattle and Portland, by choice. We just chose that we wanted to do public transit and stuff. Being intentional about choices. For me, frugality is not about skipping your latte, it’s about being intentional. Where do you want your money to go to? For me, I was happy because I had no debt and I structured my life in this way. I was happy to spend $5,000 a year or more on the travel. Now, I’m actually spending a little bit more because of what’s happening, but the income’s a little bit higher as well. I always say it’s more about intentionality than it is about careful budgeting or not going to Starbucks or whatever.
Andrew: You don’t have a car. You live simply. What happens when your friends have all this stuff? I hate to sound like a teenager, but you know what? You want to live frugally and everyone else is enjoying life, it’s really hard. You go out to dinner with a bunch of friends and they’re at the end of the dinner saying, “Let’s split up the bill,” even though you ordered this little, tiny thing. What do you do?
Chris: Right. You had one drink. That’s a good question. Those are things that people have to negotiate and figure out what their priorities are, what their values are. I don’t think it’s a total split. I don’t think you can leave your friends behind, but I also think each of us are going to be responsible for what we say we want to do. If what we say we believe and what we do are different, ultimately we’re going to be unhappy, right? That’s cognitive dissonance.
For people who don’t care about the traveling thing or don’t care about unconventional living, that’s fine. I wish them well. For people who are drawn to it, they’re going to have to make some choices at some point. I would say that ultimately the choices are going to be rewarding. They’re going to like the idea of having a cheaper car or not having a car or whatever so they can do something. Really, it’s all about personal choice and values.
Andrew: People are going to hear this, they’re going to say, “This is a great life Chris is living. I’m going to go try it.” Maybe they’ll buy a guide. Maybe they’ll spend time on your website absorbing everything, taking notes. Some of them will fail. Why? The ones who fail, what are they doing wrong? The ones who you’ve seen try to do what you’re doing and haven’t done it, what are they doing wrong?
Chris: Failure’s an interesting word. I always think I failed at so many different things at so many different times. I don’t know. Lots of things I have tried to do, I have failed at and I just keep trying things, like we mentioned. I would say though one thing is expectations. When we talked about travel, I think there is a very romantic ideal about this location-independent digital nomad thing, mostly from people who have never done it.
I think there is, like we talked in the very beginning about when I’m traveling around the world, I’m thinking a lot about my work at home and I’m not sitting on the beach all the time. And I’m okay with that because for me, travel is not something I do once a year. I’m always going places. If I didn’t have the business and the network, then I wouldn’t be able to do that. I think sometimes when people experiment with that for the first time, there’s definitely a disappointment that comes in when they’re like, “Oh, this is difficult. People don’t speak the language here and I thought it would be easier.” Things just don’t work the way they work in the United States or Europe or wherever when I go around the world. It’s just a question of whether we can adjust to that and whether we’re okay with that and we learn to take the bitter with the sweet or whether we decide to go back and do something else, which is also okay. When you say failure, I failed at so many things. I just keep doing stuff.
Andrew: Yeah. I have, too, and I’ve said it publicly. It’s so good sometimes to just say it publicly and move on instead of living with it and having it eat away at you forever. What’s next?
Chris: Getting ready to do this book tour. 63 cities, that will take a little time. Next summer, in Portland, Oregon, I’m going to do the World Domination Summit. I’m going to do a three-day event here with about 300 to 500 people, whoever wants to come. I don’t have the registration for that ready, but I’m working on that over the next month or two. That’s another one of those projects where I don’t really know what’s going to happen, but I’m excited about it. We’re just going to push forward and see what takes place. I hope you’ll come.
Andrew: I’d love to. How can people help? I’d love to and I’d love to help, too, with the new book. I know when you’re a new author, you want to get the word out and you want to get people to buy it. How can we help?
Chris: The biggest thing I tell people is it has nothing to do with the commercial side of the business. The biggest thing is if you read the site and you like it, if you’ll tell people about it. Whatever your circle of influence is, then that’s the number one thing I’d appreciate.
Andrew: All right. We’re going to tell them about the website again because I know that most people won’t come back to my website and click over to yours. They’re probably listening on their iPod, probably going out for a run right now, listening to you. I bet you that you’ve gotten them running faster just because they got to hear how you’re living and you’ve opened their eyes to what’s possible. I got to ask you one other question.
Chris: Please.
Andrew: I got a couple of emails yesterday from people who said, “How can you ask your guests how much they earn?” The secret is that I almost always will talk to them before the interview, and very often they tell me how much they want to say or they’ll come into the interview saying, “Andrew, I feel comfortable saying it’s $2 million a year that we made even though I can show you proof that we’ve done more.” Sometimes they even do show me. The question I got for you is, why are people giving out their revenue? Why are you telling my audience how much money you’ve made the first year, how much money you’re making now? I want to understand how you do it, maybe it’ll give me and my audience an understanding of why so many guests are so open today.
Chris: Okay. I would say you ask, and I don’t have anything to hide from it. I think it’s something people want to know about. People are definitely curious about bloggers and authors and how this whole new media thing works. It’s something that I’m curious about. I’m always curious about other people and stuff and how they’re doing. If I’m going to ask other people, if I’m curious about them, then I have to be willing to share as well.
In the Empire Building kit, I did the same thing. I asked everybody, “How much money do you make?” We did probably 20 interviews and 17 of them were happy to share. I was surprised as well, but I think it’s that people understand there’s a value in communicating that information. Hopefully if you can control how it’s going out, not just saying, “Here’s a number, but let me give you some context to it,” then I think it’s good. Also, it seems like you got a sophisticated, intelligent audience. That’s another thing that I think makes a difference. Since people are intelligent and they understand things in context, I don’t think it’s an issue.
Andrew: Thank you. Thank you for doing it. Thank you for being this open. Let’s tell people to go over. Check out, do this, guys. The website is ChrisGuillebeau.com. Go to ArtofNonConformity.com. Can they go to there?
Chris: Yep. ArtofNonConformity.com.
Andrew: ArtofNonConformity.com or Google Non-Conformity. Go check out his website and do this. If you go to his website and you don’t love it, even if you just go to his website for a minute and you go, “Meh,” tell me about it. I want to know that my judgment is completely off. My guess is, my sense is, as soon as you come on there, you’ll have the same experience that I had when Seth Godin first linked me to his website. Go, “Wow. There’s something here.”
There’s something about your energy, something about the way you communicate ideas, something about the way you design your products, something about the way you speak in your videos. It’s motivating, it’s encouraging, and it’s easy to connect with. Check out the website. If you don’t feel that way, come back and tell me that my judgment is wrong. I’ve corrected myself in the past, and I’m willing to do it now. My sense is that you’ll get on board, you’ll be part of the small army, and you’ll be a fan like I am. Chris, thank you. Thanks for building a website. Thanks for coming here and being so open on Mixergy. Guys, thank you all for watching. I’m looking forward to your feedback. Bye.
Chris: Thanks a lot, Andrew. Bye.
Andrew: Cool.
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