JonBischke.com

A buddy recently asked for recommendations for good nutrition audiobooks. I’ve probably read and/or listened to 300+ books on the subjects and while I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, I probably know more than most. One of my recommendations is to listen to nutrition-related stuff when you’re fixing meals. It’s a great way to reinforce good habits. So here are a few that I would recommend:

Ultraprevention – Mark Hyman’s books are among the best I’ve read/listened to and Ultraprevention is a great place to start. His Ultra Mind Solution is another excellent title for understanding the impact of nutrition on the brain and emotional well-being.

The China Study – I think there are some flaws with The China Study but on the whole it’s a worthy listen. For those looking to reduce or eliminate animal products in their diet, The China Study provides the best layman’s evidence as to why this might be a good thing.

You: On a Diet – Dr. Oz’s books are surprisingly good for a mainstream “guru”. As with most reads in this area, I don’t agree with everything but after you’ve read or listened to a half-dozen good books on the subject you should be able to do a pretty good job on triangulating around what a healthy diet consists of.

Eat To Beat Cancer – If you don’t have cancer why would you worry about “eating to beat cancer”? Well, I think it’s fairly obvious that learning good habits that might help to prevent cancer would be something everyone would benefit from. I listened to this one a while back and was very impressed.

Living Health – Tony Robbins is nothing if not entertaining and Living Health definitely influenced the way that I thought about health and energy. Some of Tony’s strategies have changed over the years and like a lot of other health recommendations from self help folks, he does have a line of products to pitch which clouds the message a bit but I do think this title is still a very worth investment.

On the reading front the three books that I’d recommend (that have not been recorded on audio yet) that have most influenced me as of late are Good Calories, Bad Calories, Primal Blueprint and Fantastic Voyage. I think you’ll find all three very enjoyable.

I hope this helps!

It’s been three months since I’ve blogged and so I wanted to check in with some updates as it’s been an exciting and very memorable month. So here’s what I’ve been up to (in chronological order):

eduFire is now a part of Camelback Education Group – In June eduFire.com became a part of Camelback Education Group, a higher education holding company in Phoenix, Arizona. The blog post on eduFire has more details but I’ll add here that I’m excited about the future of eduFire as a part of Camelback, a company that I think has the potential to be a huge player in the online education space in the future. I’ll be helping with the transition but also starting to look at what my next career-related adventure will be. I am incredibly thankful to all of the people who’ve supported eduFire since we started it in 2007. I’m very proud of what we accomplished and very grateful to all those who helped make it happen.

Carrie and I got married! – On June 19th Carrie and I tied the knot in Lexington, Kentucky. It was an incredibly special week for us as we got to enjoy it with ~200 of our family and closest friends. We were married by our great friend Mark Dowds and one of our all-time favorite musicians, Rob Costlow, played at the ceremony. Oh, and there was a rap. All in all we could not have asked for a more amazing experience and are humbled and awed by how blessed we are. Thank you to all of you who traveled from places far and wide to be there with us in Kentucky. It meant so much to us!

Dubai and Ethiopia – For our honeymoon we went to Dubai and Ethiopia. Dubai was first up and was a really interesting experience. I kinda think that Dubai might be the world’s biggest start-up. You drive around the city and see all the cranes and skyscrapers and it’s hard to fathom that most of this didn’t exist a few decades ago. Really, a very audacious place. From the world’s tallest building to the world’s biggest (and most impressive) mall to ridiculous man made islands, this place screams “larger than life”.

It certainly isn’t a perfect place. Far from eco-friendly and the whole “slave labor” accusations thing is more than a bit troubling. But on the whole I have to say that I loved Dubai because of how entrepreneurial it felt. Similar to Bugsy Siegel rolling into Nevada in the 40s and envisioning Vegas, Dubai is really the product of an insanely bold vision and imagination.

After Dubai we traveled to Ethiopia. We wanted to incorporate some service work into our honeymoon and my parents lived in Ethiopia for a year when they were first married so we decided to follow in their footsteps. Simply put, it was a life-changing experience. It’s one thing to hear about people who live on less than a dollar a day. It’s another to actually sit with them in their homes and talk to them and play with their children. The range of emotions that a place like Ethiopia evokes is overwhelming. I wish that everyone could have the experience that we had at least once in their life.

We spent several days working with orphans in Debre Zeyit, a town about an hour outside of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia’s capital and largest city). Carrie and I will never forget those kids for as long as we live. Many of them have lost parents to HIV and some of them are infected with HIV themselves. Their lives are poor and destitute and it would be easy to pity them. Until you realize what they do have. Huge smiles. A sense of community like none that I’ve seen anywhere else in the world. An unbelievable spirit. On one hand you want to help and do whatever you can to help lift them out of poverty. On the other hand there’s a huge part of me that felt that anything that disrupted their incredibly strong social fabric would be a tragedy. As I shared with many people after first going to Africa in 2003, nobody in the world smiles as big or as easily as Africans do. (By the way, if you haven’t already check out the documentary I Am Because We Are. It was similar to our experience although the situation in Malawi is even more dire than Ethiopia.)

To sum up, it’s been an incredible last few months and I’m left with both a huge sense of gratitude for how blessed I am and also a stronger sense of urgency than I’ve ever had before to go out and make the world a better place. I’ve been reminded several times in the last few weeks of Ted Kennedy’s eulogy of RFK. You really should watch the whole thing (often) but this passage in particular does a pretty good job of bringing it all together for me.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

This question was posted to Quora recently and I decided to hop in with a fairly lengthy answer since I was in a very similar situation about a decade ago. Since Quora’s still behind a wall for most people I thought I’d repost my answer here.

If you were 24 and had $200k in spare cash, how would you invest it?

I was actually in a very similar situation to you a decade ago (sold my first company at 24) so I can offer some of my thoughts in terms of what I did and what I would do differently knowing what I know now.

#1 – Absolutely do invest in yourself professionally. I’d recommend three things here.

First, consider any/all education opportunities that would allow you to build your network. While college or grad school is totally overrated from a “what you learn” perspective it’s a phenomenal place for getting to know other high achievers. If you can get into an Ivy League school or grad school that’s a really option to consider (since you’ll have enough money to live on for a while).

Second, consider moving to a big city if you aren’t there yet. The opportunities for advancement (personal and professional) are typically greater in a place like NY, SF or LA. Money prevents many people from going but it shouldn’t in your case. I made the move to Cali at 27 but wish I would have done it sooner.

Third, use the money to build your network. Go (selectively) to conferences where you’ll meet interesting and ambitious people. Attend a lot of events. Take a job with a start-up company where you may or may not cash out big but you’ll be able to meet other entrepreneurs and interesting people.

#2 – Invest in yourself personally. Spend some time studying health, exercise and nutrition. Investments made in these areas when you are young pay huge dividends later in life in terms of increased energy, less sickness, better quality of life, etc. The reason many people don’t spend the time they should in these areas is because of time or money. You have both which is a great opportunity.

#3 – If you are making any financial investments try to invest in things that have intangible benefits. Rather than trying to 100% maximize your financial gain (you’ll have plenty of time for that), focus instead on the overall benefit of your investment. For instance, if you think you might be interested in working in another country then invest in some stocks of companies in that country or in that country’s currency or bonds. Doing so will cause you learn more about the country and be that much more prepared if you do indeed make the move. Same thing is true for industries. Thinking about starting an education company? Buy some stocks of education companies and study their 10-Ks, S-1s, etc. You’ll learn a lot more about the industry and if you make money on your investments that’ll be gravy.

#4 – (Adding this one a day later). Travel. When I was 24 I had never left North America. Between 24 and 27 I visited Europe, Africa and Australia. Those experiences were awesome and I’m very glad I took the time and money to do that. I’d highly recommend setting aside a portion of your money for traveling. Specifically look to visit places that will play a big role in the global economic landscape. China and India would be the two musts on my list.

Meaningful travel where you can spend a lot of time in a given place becomes more difficult as you get older (things like kids, mortgages, etc. make this so). If you’re young and have the money and time to do it, traveling can be one of the best investments you could ever make.

#5 – Finally, give some of it away.

I hope this helps a bit. This is only my personal viewpoint based on my experiences and values. However, I *so* wish I would have read something like this 10 years ago. Not that things turned out badly by any stretch…

As entrepreneurs working hard is a given (if you want to be successful that is). Of course, there’s always a question of just what truly is working hard. I’ve found that most entrepreneurs, if compared to the average office worker at a big company, work extremely hard. However, just because you’re working harder than your buddy at some Dundler Mifflin clone doesn’t mean that you’re actually working hard. Instead, you need to be comparing yourself to some of the hardest working people on the planet

To help with that, I’ve assembled some inspirational stories of hard-working entrepreneurs with some non-business folks mixed in for good measure. Two caveats. First, hard work is completely irrelevant is you’re not working smart and being productive. Second, hard work is also counter-productive if you’re sacrificing your health to an extreme degree and if the increase in quantity of hours worked is leading to a decrease in your creativity (often the case!). With that being said, here’s some stories of people who’ve worked about as hard as a human being can.

Jeff Immelt – A few years back I read a story about Jeff entitled The Bionic Manager which reset my thinking about what hard work is. Here are a couple of passages from it:

Immelt, 49, says he’s been working 100 hours a week for 24 years. That does not take him back to his 1978 graduation from Dartmouth, where he was football team captain (as offensive tackle) and a fraternity president who liked to party….Most hard-charging types have put in a 100-hour week or two. But month after month, year after year—is that even possible? Let’s do the math. If you worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week, you’d still be two hours short of 100 hours. If Immelt has been working that hard for 24 years, then he has already done 60 years’ worth of 40-hour weeks.

Here he is on a recent swing through San Francisco: The first meeting is with institutional investors at 7 a.m. Then he addresses some 200 retail investors at 8:30, standing comfortably for 25 minutes with his left hand in his pocket and his right hand holding his PowerPoint remote; after his talk, he answers questions for an hour. Then it’s more institutional investors, followed by GE salespeople in Burlingame, a presentation to customers, and finally a big reception for customers and top salespeople. He seems as energetic at the end of the day as at the beginning. He had run virtually the same routine in Los Angeles the day before.

Mark Cuban – Cuban has written some posts on his most excellent blog on the subject of hard work and loving what you do. Here is one of my favorite excerpts:

The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do, you just spent 24 hours straight working on a project and you thought it was a couple hours. The edge is knowing that you have to be the smartest guy in the room when you have your meeting and you are going to put in the effort to learn whatever you need to learn to get there. The edge is knowing is knowing that when the 4 girlfriends you have had in the last couple years asked you which was more important, them or your business, you gave the right answer…The edge is knowing how to blow off steam a couple times a week, just so you can refocus on business…The edge is recognizing when you are wrong, and working harder to make sure it doesn’t happen again. (from The Sport of Business)

Steve Pavlina and Seth Godin – These guys have written millions of words in their relatively young careers, authored books, spoken at conferences and started companies largely as one-man shows. They do more in a year than most people do in a lifetime and are well worth learning from!

Steve sums up his philosophy towards hard work pretty well in the aptly titled post “Hard Work“:

Hard work pays off. When someone tells you otherwise, beware the sales pitch for something “fast and easy” that’s about to come next. The greater your capacity for hard work, the more rewards fall within your grasp. The deeper you can dig, the more treasure you can potentially find…Your life will reach a whole new level when you stop avoiding and fearing hard work and simply surrender to it. Make it your ally instead of your enemy. It’s a potent tool to have on your side.

Seth has a similar post entitled “Labor Day“:

Your great-grandfather knew what it meant to work hard. He hauled hay all day long, making sure that the cows got fed. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes about a worker who ruptured his vertebrae, wrecked his hands, burned his lungs, and was eventually hit by a train as part of his 15-year career at a slaughterhouse. Now that’s hard work…Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.

Eminem and Kanye West – These guys have legendary work ethics. Witness:

It is a little-known fact that the only book Eminem read as a child was the dictionary. He pored over it, searching for words that rhymed with each other that could later be pulled out of the bag during the freestyle rap “battles” that provided his education in hip-hop. The years spent studying the English language lie at the core of his technical brilliance. They turned him into the greatest rapper of his time. But they did so at a personal cost: for Eminem could be uncharitably described as an anorak. His life starts and ends with music. He writes constantly, scrawling lines on sheets of notepaper in a crabby handwriting. When he’s not composing new verse, or messing around in a studio, he’ll be listening to hip-hop. “The guy’s a studio rat,” says producer Terry Simaan, the owner of Oh Trey 9, one of the Detroit’s most influential hip-hop labels. “If he feels like it, he’ll spend 12, 15 hours a day in a studio.” (From Eminem: The fall and rise of a superstar)

But West initially had trouble convincing Roc-A-Fella execs to let him make his own album as a rapper. He was able to change their minds only after the accident that inspired his breakthrough single, Through the Wire. Exhausted from working around the clock, West fell asleep behind the wheel of his Lexus and got into a crash that nearly killed him. He was back in the studio three weeks later, recording that hit song with his broken jaw wired shut. (From Genius Is As Genius Does)

(Note to self…take a cab or have someone else drive you if you’re working your tail off!!)

Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods – While these guys haven’t exactly been choir boys the last few years they’ve definitely worked their tail off to get to where they are. Here are some of my favorite articles about them:

Commuting to Staples Center with Kobe Bryant

Kobe’s well-honed killer instinct

It’s 1995, and Bryant is the senior leader of the Lower Merion team, obsessed with winning a state championship. He comes to the gym at 5 a.m. to work out before school, stays until 7 p.m. afterward. It’s all part of the plan. When the Aces lost in the playoffs the previous spring, Bryant stood in the locker room, interrupting the seniors as they hugged each other, and all but guaranteed a title, adding, “The work starts now.”

(Don’t miss Spike Lee’s documentary about Kobe either!)

Tiger vs Phil Part Two: Work ethic.

I refuse to let anyone outwork me. That’s the reason I log so much time on the practice range. Besides, hard work is the only way to maintain a competitive edge, and I enjoy the process. The key, though, is to practice with a purpose.

Tiger’s Daily Routine and Workout Regimen

The Beatles – Gladwell made their Hamburg-era work ethic famous in Outliers. Here’s the passage in case you missed it:

“All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, in fact, they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times. … Most bands today don’t perform twelve hundred times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is one of the things that set the Beatles apart.” (From this blog post about the band)

Yolanda and Rogelio Garcia Sr. – You’ve never heard of these two and I hadn’t either until I stumbled across this article talking about how they put their kids through college:

For 21 years, the Garcias have supported their family by picking through garbage, often cutting their fingers on broken glass while searching for cans and bottles. Late at night they make their living on the darkened streets and back alleys of Los Angeles, recycling other people’s trash for cash. They’ve collected more than 8 million cans and bottles to help put two children through college. Their youngest is still hitting the books, so Yolanda and Rogelio still hit the streets every night.

OK, perhaps this doesn’t fit the definition of working as smart as possible but nevertheless, reading stories like this reminds us that our “hard work” probably isn’t as hard as we think.

Who’d I miss? Let me know in the comments!

As many of you know I’ve been teaching a series of courses related to entrepreneurship on eduFire. I wanted to post links here to some of the presentations I’ve used in case you find them helpful. Enjoy!

A Decade’s Worth of Entrepreneurial Advice
Entrepreneur Bootcamp: Your Idea
Financing Your Venture

How to Build a World Class Team
How to Create A Defensible Product

Plus a whole lot of other interesting articles and documents in our eduFire Content section. Check it out!

There are two kinds of “quit” in this world. There’s the smart quit. The one where you know you’re not doing the right thing with your life. The kind of one David Allen did. The one that intuitively feels right in every kind of way.

And then there’s the other type of quit.

The quit where a huge part of you wants to give up. The quit you make when you the world is against you, when you’re sick to your stomach half the time and when all those who told you it was a dumb idea to begin with are now reminding you that they told you that it was a dumb idea to begin with. The quit that just feels easier.

So what do you do when feel that kind of quit coming on? Simple. Never give up. But just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. So here’s what you’re going to do when you feel that kind of quit coming on (and I’m going to say “you” but it’s really “we” because these are the things I’m going to do as well when I feel this kind of quit coming on!).

#1 – You’re going to read Evan Williams’ story in Founders At Work. When Evan was at Pyra Labs they ran out of money. He laid off the team (actually just stopped paying them). Everybody hated him. He worked alone for a year in what I can imagine were far from optimal conditions. And what happened next? He sold his product (a little thing called Blogger) to a hot start-up (a little company called Google). The rest is history. And I’m pretty confident there would be no Twitter today if Evan hadn’t persevered back in the day.

#2 – You’re going to read Paul Graham’s essay The Anatomy of Determination.

We learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination.

Got that? Not talent. Not intelligence. Determination. Thank your lucky stars you’re facing adversity. How the hell would you be able to show that you have what it takes to succeed if you weren’t?

#3 – You’re going to listen to Joe Liemandt’s story of the starting of Trilogy. Trilogy was dead. Dead as in $500,000 worth of credit card debt dead. But this story is a prime example of entrepreneurial will (even if it will likely make every financial advisor cringe). Joe and his team didn’t give up. They believed in what they were building and they had a vision for the future that they clung to even in the darkest of days.

#4 – You’re going to read the story of Steve Genter in Friday Night Lights. Genter was supposed to competed in the Munich Olympics in 1972. One small problem. His lung collapsed before the Olympics. He swam anyway. Without painkillers. You gotta read the whole story but if this doesn’t make you re-think quitting I’m not sure what will.

#5 – You’re going to watch Jimmy Valvano’s (the former basketball coach at NC State) speech at the 1993 ESPYs. At the time Jimmy was only 8 weeks away from dying of cancer. This speech is intense. Some of his closing words? “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” (8:30 in)

#6 – You’re going to read the Three Feet from Gold story in Think and Grow Rich. Often when you’re faced with the prospect of giving up you’re simply three feet from gold. The world is full of people who were building what could have been the next Facebook or the next YouTube but stopped just a bit short. Don’t be one of those guys at the bar telling you the story of how he almost succeeded. Be the guy who gives it everything he has and has no regrets. Indeed, in your bleakest hour you’re usually three feet from gold.

#7 – You’re going to read this insanely cool collection of stories of people who simply did not give up. Reading through these almost makes you wonder if there has been anyone who has achieved something of lasting value who didn’t suffer rejection and defeat. My guess is that the number is pretty close to zero. Peoples’ failures often don’t get publicized but rest assured, pretty much anyone who’s ever risen to great heights has experienced more than a few Dark Nights of the Soul.

#8 – Finally, you’re going to realize watch the video below and realize that the greatest joys in life come precisely because you’ve been willing to go through the lowest of lows to get there. That’s exactly what makes them so sweet. One of my favorite professional athletes in Kevin Garnett (we had season tickets to Timberwolves games as kids). Kevin went through just about every form of hardship you can imagine. The Wolves sucked for years. Malik Sealy, one of his best friends on the team, was killed by a drunk driver (I was on the same road that same night so that one hit close to home).

All sorts of bad things happened. But he persevered. And last year he won his first NBA championship. Watch the pure joy:

That’s what you’re going to feel when you don’t give up. When you pull through and grow your company and get that big fat acquisition offer. When you ring the bell one day on the New York Stock Exchange. You’re going to remember those days when you wanted to give up and quit.

How sweet it’s going be.

As some of you already know about five years back I helped to start a site to aggregate audio content called LearnOutLoud.com. When I started eduFire in 2007 I turned over the reins on LearnOutLoud to my brother David and he has done a fantastic job growing the company and he let me know that they just exceeded the 400,000 monthly unique visitors mark which is quite an accomplishment for an e-commerce website. In addition to selling audio books LearnOutLoud also has one of the largest (the largest?) catalogs I’ve seen of free audio books and a killer podcast directory to boot. If you’re into the whole audio learning thing (I am completely addicted) then be sure to check it out.

I love supporting entrepreneurs in general too so if you’re up to something cool on the entrepreneurial front drop a line in the comments and I’ll do my best to try to feature cool companies here from time to time. Always feels good to shine my (fairly small but growing) spotlight on worthy endeavors!

I’m pissed. One of my missions in life is to help make education more equal. Equal as in “more access for everyone” kinda equal. And then I come across stories like this one:The Subprime Student Loan Racket and this one: Video Professor Tries To Bully Washington Post, Fails and I get pissed.

Pissed because people are selling education out of one side of their month and doing everything short of stealing money out of the other side of it. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year studying the inner workings of education and it’s amazing how shady many of the companies who operate in it appear to be. Sure, most people know about diploma mills. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. From artificially raising tuition to the student loan cap to schools doing whatever they can to scoop up stimulus/taxpayer dollars, it’s some pretty gnarly stuff. So I think it’s time we did something about it.

When it comes to education, it’s time to start taking the power back.

Too many of us have been sold a bill of goods that just doesn’t cut it. We’ve paid too much for degrees that aren’t worth enough. We’ve taken on an insane amount of debt that we’ll spend years (decades?) paying back. And the thing is…it doesn’t need to be this way. There *are* alternatives. And I’m not talking about crappy, “get what you pay for” alternatives. I’m talking about ways to gain a world-class education for a fraction of the cost that marketing-driven educational machines are trying to shove down our throats.

The guy who really got me thinking about is Josh Kaufman over at PersonalMBA.com. Josh is brilliant and part of his brilliance has been to promote the scandalous notion (I joke, but only partially) that a world class education doesn’t have to cost an insane amount of money. He’s been doing so for years at PMBA and more recently wrote a must-read article “Hacking Higher Education, Part 1: How to Obtain an Accredited Undergraduate Degree in 1 Year for $4,000” (follow-up articles here and here, all must-reads). While I’m not convinced that Josh’s recipe for getting a degree in 1 year is the right thing for most people I think what it speaks to is the larger opportunity to save significant money while pursuing your degree. And more importantly, to take the power back.

Hey Mr. University, want to raise my tuition 32 percent this year?! That’s fine. See this whole CLEP thingie over here?? I’m just going to do that and you can keep your little ol’ tuition hikes!

Students (and parents of students!) sick of paying insane prices for tuition need to start demanding alternatives. And we’re not talking ultra-low-quality alternatives. We’re talking about the opportunity to get a high quality education at a lower prices. Every year your mobile phone gets better and the price gets cheaper. Why shouldn’t your education? Instead, it’s quite the opposite. Every year it gets about 8% more expensive and at least according to many, every year it gets a bit worse (check out Kent Pitman who makes this case way better than I could).

We started offering online CLEP courses at eduFire to give people an opportunity to take the power back. Learn from some of the most engaging and brightest instructors but save 80-90% of the cost of taking the same number of credits at The University of Phoenix. And we’re not the only ones helping people to take the power back. Look at people like Chegg, BookRenter and Flat World Knowledge who are helping students take the power back when it comes to textbooks. Check out sites like AcademicEarth, Peer2Peer University and University of the People are helping people who simply want to learn without money standing in the way to take the power back.

I’m all for education period. But I’m more for education when the number one goal is helping the student succeed. Optimizing profits at the expense of students? Not cool. Playing tricks on students to force them into unnecessarily buying new editions of textbooks? Lame-o. As Umair Haque would say, these are classic cases of thin value creation.

The era of playing games with our education is over. Pink Floyd woke up a generation of kids and young adults with their rallying cry “Teacher, leave them kids alone.”

Our generation needs a new rallying cry around education.

Perhaps that one should be “Take the Power Back“.

(I’ll be back with Part 2 of this in a little bit. Excited to hear your thoughts in the comments.)

Entrepreneurship is hard. You’re going to go through moments where you feel like you’re on top of the world. And then you’re going to experience moment when you think the world is going to come to an end. And often those moments will occur within the same hour of the day.

When you get a little down on your luck (and we’re all there at some point in time), here’s a good little reading list (along with some comments) and a few videos for you. I tried to filter out the fluff on the subject (and there’s a lot of fluff on this subject!) and narrow it down to some articles with really quality advice. I think you’ll dig it.

Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic-Depression: Making the Rollercoaster Work for You – Classic Tim Ferriss article. The part about timing your actions around when you’re feeling incredibly confident or less than confident is sage advice.

The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup – This is the article that the Andreessen quote from the Ferriss article was from. It’s not necessarily going to make you feel anymore confident but rather will remind you that we all go through what you’re going through as entrepreneurs.

Some days things will go really well and some things will go really poorly. And the level of stress that you’re under generally will magnify those transient data points into incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude.

No truer words have ever been spoken.

The 21 Day Challenge Everyone Should Take – I liked this whole article but the “Realize you are going to die” part struck me particularly hard and reminded me of the Steve Jobs Commencement Address (embed at end of the post).

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

(full text here)

Ten Unusual Ways to Improve Your Appearance of Confidence That Really Work – A few of these were a little less than the best but I liked #1, #2 (who does that?!), #5 and #6. As with so much of this advice, it’s about trying stuff and seeing what works for you. But most definitely things like posture and exercise can do wonders for improving your mental state and your confidence.

How to Build Confidence and Destroy Fear – So much good stuff in this post. This quote alone was worth reading the article:

Remember that those times when you feel that your ideas aren’t good enough, or people are putting down on your ideas, or you’re getting fired — that these are the same ideas that you’re going to be celebrated for 30 years later. You almost have to have courage. — Francis Ford Coppola

Command a Room Like a Man – Apologies in advance to any women reading this blog (this is after all a post from a blog entitled “The Art of Manliness” ) but there are some good tips contained in here. The story about Teddy Roosevelt at 23 is classic as is the tip about taking control of your surroundings.

Al Pacino’s Inspirational Speech

Tony Robbins tells Rocky story

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Anything is possible. Go out and kick some entrepreneurial ass.

One of the best ways to prepare yourself to pitch your company is to watch other people pitch theirs. Here are a dozen of the best “start-up” pitches I could find (watching people pitch established companies is, in general, not as much fun ). Watch and learn! (PS Post any other good ones I may have missed in the comments and I will add them to the post.)

#1 – Sam Altman pitches Loopt at the WWDC 2008. Epic pitch.

#2 – Omar Hamoui pitches AdMob. $0 to $750 million in three years. Not bad…

#3 – Evan Williams talks about Twitter at TED. Great story about the power of taking on side projects and following hunches.

#4 – Yext presenting at this year’s TechCrunch50. A slightly crazy presentation but the proof’s in the pudding. They’re doing $20 million in annual revenue and just raised $25 from IVP.

#5 – Cafe Press’s “Lesson Learned” pitch. No video here (unfortunately), just slides. But powerful slides. Like “8-digit term sheet” kinda powerful slides.

“Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch

#6 – Drew Houston launches Dropbox at TechCrunch50 (2008). A year later Dropbox has 2 million accounts. For a 25 year old Drew’s one hell of a presenter.

#7 – Hey, just because it’s not a business doesn’t mean it’s not a start-up! Us businessfolks can learn a ton from how politicians sell themselves and get people to buy into their vision. Here’s a great example (Obama’s speech after the New Hampshire primary):

And another (Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech). Gotta balance the left and the right…

#8 – Aaron Patzer launches Mint at TechCrunch40 (they won top prize). Notice how he immediately gets you hooked by talking about something that’s important to everyone (money).

#9 – Kevin Rose demos Digg…in 2004.

#10 – OK, so these aren’t all startup pitches. But this is Steve Freaking Jobs we’re talking about. “Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” How can I not include him in this list?

Bonus awesome Steve Jobs videos here and here (jump to 4:50). And if you love learning about how Steve Jobs pitches a startup most definitely check out this awesome Venture Hacks post.

#11- David Sacks launches Yammer at TechCrunch50 2008 (they won top prize).

#12 – Michael Pritchard demoing Lifesaver. Make no mistake. A killer start-up pitch can save lives.

BONUS #1 – OK, a couple of funny ones too. The Tonchidot presentation from TechCrunch 2008 is straight hilarious:

As is Ali G pitching the “Ice Cream Glove”:

BONUS #2 – The best article I’ve read on pitching to investors. And a great video from Dave McClure on the same topic. And one more thrown in for good measure (”How To Demo Your Startup”).

BONUS #3 – Not sick of pitches yet? Check out the links below. Some are good, some are bad and some are downright ugly. You’ve been warned!

Richard Branson’s PitchTV
Shark Tank
TechCrunch50
TechCrunch Elevator Pitches