“What do you do?” is the classic question we ask strangers but it’s the wrong one to ask ourselves.

We must stop thinking of ourselves in the same way as a machine. Computers can keep logs of the tasks they’ve completed and have list of what tasks they have to go. They don’t have feelings or emotions so this forms the basis of their purpose. Yet we aren’t machines.

We’ve got moods, hormones, and doubts. Some days we feel like crap and I don’t know why. If I force myself to act the same way all the time, I’m fighting my own biology and you can guess usually wins.

Randy Wolken has had an incredibly successful career by most people’s measures. He’s the President of the Manufacturing Association of Central New York and it’s his role to help the companies he represents to compete in the global market. Combined they employ over 50,000 people!

His schedule is often packed with meetings and he rarely gets a moment to think in the working day. But he makes sure he makes the time to check in on his emotions to keep his mind and life in balance. If part of you feel lost or empty, you can do the same to bring your true self to the forefront.

This article is based on the Mindful & Driven episode with Randy. You can listen here or find the YouTube video at the bottom of this article.

Who am I? Who do I want to be?

Keeping up with the world is exhausting. It’s moving faster than it’s ever moved before in human history. If you try to keep on top of too many trends, you’ll be left overwhelmed.

My previous career was in technology consulting. No matter how well I understood the software I worked with, there was always a new update around the corner. The side skills of other platforms I needed to know expanded at an exponential rate. Staying still meant falling behind.

Randy is almost double my age and finds working with technology naturally harder. To record our podcast together, I had to help him on the technology side for nearly an hour. He tries his best but knows he must focus elsewhere.

He asks himself every day “Who am I?”. It’s his method of mediation to listen to his thoughts and analyzes any doubts which pop into his head. Be careful of becoming so obsessed with learning about the world outside your mind that you neglect the world inside.

Be open about your pain

There’s no contest when it comes to Randy choosing the toughest period of his life. His daughter was seriously ill in her youth and it crushed him.

In most other problems in his life, he would throw himself into finding a solution. He would look at all the numbers and get in all the experts. Yet she was already in the hands of capable doctors. There was nothing he could do to help someone he loved so deeply and it tore him apart.

Out of necessity, he turned to his friends and family for support to process his emotions. Unsurprisingly, it made the pain far more bearable. His daughter is now a happy and healthy 24-year-old but the lesson of being open about his pain stuck with him forever.

I don’t believe there are “strong” people and “weak” people. Our mental strength fluctuates throughout our lives and just because you feel weak now, it doesn’t mean you can’t be strong in the future. Never feel ashamed for acting in a way you consider weak. We all need help sometimes. It’s human.

People remember how you made them feel

A mistake Randy made earlier in his career was doing things for people in the hope they’d like him and they could build a relationship. Yet this isn’t how people work. They remember how you made them feel not what you did for them.

Before the camera started rolling, I talked with Randy about struggles in his personal life. I appreciate him as a fellow human being and I’m certainly not only interested in his job title. There’s no hack to this though.

If you care about people then you’ll show it in the way you act with them. It can’t be faked and it’s insulting to try. If you ask someone how they are then you better be prepared for if they give the real answer otherwise don’t ask.

You can’t do this with everyone of course as we don’t have enough energy each day. Yet you can choose to treat people with respect once you have their time. They’ll be grateful and your life will be enhanced by sowing the seed of a meaningful relationship.

I hope you found these tips useful and can see ways you can apply them to your own life. If you’d like to hear Randy talk about it with me in more detail, check out our conversation in the video below.

Freedom and flexibility were constant features in my ‘screw the corporate world’ daydreams. I’d read so much entrepreneur porn, and I had an idealized vision of what life would be like. I believed I’d be able to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.

Four months later and I’m self-imposing a nine to five lifestyle. It turns out the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Too much freedom can be stressful too.

I feel compelled to show the downsides of losing the structure in your life because I wasn’t prepared. It seems like the whole internet sings in unison against the 9–5, but it has significant upsides and might be the better lifestyle for you. If you already know it is for you, then you shouldn’t be ashamed to say so.

What’s strange about the post-pandemic world is more companies are offering their employees the chance to work hours on their terms. A new choice which was unthinkable a decade ago has emerged where you can escape the 9–5 while still being paid a stable salary. This is often portrayed as a good thing, but are we sleepwalking into a dystopia?

Restrictions are good

Hands up if you crammed everything last minute before exams at school. I know I did. My freedom in choosing when I did my work ended up in long droughts followed by massive binge sessions. I know this is unhealthy as a grown-up, but that doesn’t mean I still don’t fall into the same trap.

Being my own boss, I’ve learned that having an end to the working day is so underappreciated. I can technically create whenever I want. It sounds great in theory, but in reality, it means I’m almost always doing everything at the last moment. I’ve had days where I chill out during the day and end up at my desk at 2 am telling myself I’ll be more responsible tomorrow.

Set working hours creates an external anchor on which your mind can fixate. You want to get this done by 5 pm so you can shut up shop. This is easier when you have a physical workplace because you have the added incentive of it being home time. Some of my friends have noted that everyone seems to be finishing work on time now that they’ve returned to the office. The boundaries were blurred when everyone worked from home.

While it might sound counterintuitive, constraints encourage creativity. Games without any limits aren’t any fun. The challenge comes from trying to solve an issue within set rules. It’s easy for someone who has total control of their time to fall into analysis paralysis because of the abundance of time. Restricting your working hours forces you to get practical and triggers you to get moving.

Don’t let flexibility fool you

I dance multiple times per week because I prioritize it, but the views of some of the other dancers baffle me. They are so grateful to their boss for letting them have an hour break between 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm, then they go back to the office and work until midnight afterward.

This is toxic flexibility.

If you’re working 80 hours weeks, you don’t need flexibility; you need a more sensible workload. The corporate world’s new favorite buzzword shouldn’t distract you from the underlying problem. For some, there’s an unwritten rule for people to be available at all hours outside of where they’ve asked for something specific.

The obvious winners from the current trend are working parents who can take their kids to and from school. I had several clients who took advantage of this, but they also seemed to have the worst boundaries for calling me out of hours. They’d also take calls while driving, and it felt like their work and blurred into their life. Parents need structure and downtime too.

When my dad was my age, there were no cell phones, and you couldn’t check your emails before bed. He clocked in at 9 am and left at 5 pm. There was little room for discussion. It meant office hours were the company’s, but more importantly, free time was truly his. It worries me how many people I know can’t say this anymore.

It’s a simplicity I envy, and I will attempt to impose this on myself through technology restrictions. One way is through using an old dumber phone during the day, which has all my business-related accounts on it, but it gets locked in a drawer when it’s “me” time.

With great power comes great responsibility

The best thing about being my own boss is I can do what I want.

The worst thing is I have to make all the decisions.

It’s a trial by fire of learning what I can do when and I’ve made many mistakes. I was excited about training off-peak at the gym when I first left my company but soon realized the reality wasn’t as great. It means traveling both ways plus a shower when I get back and then having a snack, and before I know it, a few hours have passed. This squashes my productivity, so I end up working later into the night to get things done.

In the last 30 days, I’ve had social plans for 26 of them. I’m my own boss, isn’t this why I quit? But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t exhausting. People know I’m in charge, and if they want to see me, it’s hard for me to say no. I shift all my tasks around to make space for them. Though it shouldn’t, telling people I want to get stuff done for the business sometimes feels weird. In seizing every opportunity, I’m leaving myself spread thin, whereas the routine of a 9–5 had an elegant balance.

If you currently have a 9–5 where your boundaries are respected, remember the other side isn’t as glamorous as you might believe.

The fact you can read this today is incredible.

You need to have both the senses to take in the information and the brainpower to understand it. We both needed access to devices that let us view information from a web that only exists digitally. For most of human history, what you’re doing would seem like magic.

Yet we take it for granted.

John Mashni, a full-time lawyer who somehow also wrote a bestselling children’s book, views the world through a different lens. Years ago he was burnt out doing a job he hated but his wife held an intervention. She told him he was going back to law school to study because it’s what deep down he wanted. The return to school gave him the time to reinvent himself to a far more positive frame of mind.

For John, there are no ordinary moments. Each interaction we have with the world has the potential to be special. It doesn’t need to be flashy or Instagram-worthy but it can still live on in our minds for decades afterward. I confess I sometimes fall victim to despair but taking John’s advice fills me with joy instead.

This article is based on the Mindful & Driven episode with John. You can listen here or find the YouTube video at the bottom of this article.

Right now counts forever

How much attention do you pay in conversations with your loved ones? People won’t be around forever but their memories can be.

John still remembers conversations he had with his grandma before she passed away 20 years ago. He loved her and cherished each word she told him and is now passing on her stories to his kids. He dreams one day they’ll be telling their kids about how much of a badass their great-grandma was.

Yet for these stories to survive, you have to be in the right mindset when you listen. If you’re distracted by what’s on the TV or what’s happening on social media, you’ll forget. Something which could have lasted forever has instead disappeared.

I’m a product of my age and am told off by my family all the time for my absent-mindedness. I can’t think of any justifiable excuse for my behavior and hope to be better.

Be open to different experiences

Minimalism took the self-help world by storm a few years ago yet John thinks it swung too far. We say “no” too much.

We don’t always know what’s best for ourselves and pure rationality could lead to missing out on moments that live in our hearts for years. His wife once didn’t want to go to a festival with a new group of friends because it felt like too much effort. At John’s pestering, she went and those people are now her best friends!

Life doesn’t always make sense and can’t be planned to the moment. I try to be as efficient as possible with what’s in my control to allow myself the space for spontaneity. The random experiences can sometimes unlock new levels of joy in your world.

There are no ordinary people either

It can sometimes pay to be irrationally kind to strangers too. John described his beliefs about the importance of each person using a parable from the bible. Then we both geeked out on Marvel’s Captain America.

Without spoilers, one of his most famous lines is “We don’t trade lives.” It’s this idea there’s no one who can just be sacrificed because everyone matters. While you are the main character of your own life, it’s easy to forget other people have stories as deep and amazing as our own. We may make snap judgments but we only see a tiny fraction of who anyone else is.

It blows my mind to think about the vastness of human thought happening this very second. Sometimes we need to take a moment and appreciate what a tiny speck we are in the universe to realize how lucky we are to be alive. Learn other people’s stories because it’s a privilege we are even able to.

I hope you found these tips useful and can see ways you can apply them to your own life. If you’d like to hear John talk about it with me in more detail, check out our conversation in the video below.

If you’re reading online today searching for the secret thing that’s going to make you rich with no effort, I’ve got bad news for you.

It doesn’t exist.

The internet often uses a liberal definition of the word “passive” to sucker people into clicking. Everybody wants the idea of free money so it’s hard for creators to resist selling the unrealistic dream.

Let me be clear.

Writing an article or making a video every single day is not passive.

Spending weeks building an online course is not my idea of passive.

Messaging everyone you went to elementary school with individually on Facebook begging them to buy your e-book is not passive.

The only one I’ll concede is automated investing where it goes straight out of your bank account into some form of asset. Even then prices can go up and down so there’s no guarantee.

The idea of scalable income is far less misleading. It does make sense to focus your efforts on channels where there’s the potential for the same amount of effort to lead to far higher revenue in the future. You just need to make the important shift of understanding you have to put in some work.

You only see the tip

If you follow me, you see a few articles a week and a podcast episode through Mindful & Driven. You have no idea what I do outside of that time.

The problem is we tend to glamourize those in passive-like industries without stopping to think about what their actual days are like or how they got there. A lot of my revenue-generating activity is behind NDAs. I don’t talk about the boring side of my work which can distort people’s mental images. This is common across many successful-looking people online.

I’ve grown multiple income streams fast but there’s a lot of work behind it you don’t see. I also benefitted from a sea of unfair advantages that I know the average reader won’t have.

I was born in a rich English-speaking country. I went to a top university and studied economics. I have a stable middle-class family. I had a tech career where I worked with big multinationals. My parents supported me in any of the hobbies I wanted to pursue.

You could say I was an overnight online success story but it ignores the skills I built through my 28 years of life before I started. There’s a lot of accumulated hard work. For many others who work less than me and earn more, these unfair advantages will be more extreme.

Red light, green light

In Squid Game, the contestants play a kid’s game called Red Light, Green Light. The aim is to catch the person at the other end but you can only move when they aren’t watching. This is what happens in business, if you turn your back, you can be damn sure people will catch up with you.

The world doesn’t stand still for you while you’re sipping cocktails on the beach.

If you create a product or online course, it won’t be long before it becomes outdated or someone builds a better one. I created a course about this platform in spring but things have changed so much since then. I will be recording everything again and launching another marketing campaign as a result. Passive my foot!

For any product, you need to continue to get customers in the door and the traffic needs to come from somewhere. If you stop producing content then it won’t be long until your supply dries up. Evergreen is a myth too unless you produce something out of this world. One of my articles received half a million views and there have been half a million copycats since.

You’re going to need to either update your products, work to generate leads, or pay someone to do it for you. Sorry to shatter your cocktail dream.

Perfect market

Be skeptical.

As an editor, I’ve seen so many articles sent my way about how to become a millionaire through passive income. None of the writers were millionaires. Funny that isn’t it.

Making extraordinary money isn’t so easy otherwise everyone would do it. A tiny percentage of YouTubers make any money and most “passive income” ideas aren’t worth the pixels they take up. It’s impossible to get rich doing something everyone else can also do unless you get lucky and are early.

To have an income source that continues to feed you long after you’ve done the work, you must have robust barriers to competition. It must be something other people can’t just replicate which probably isn’t going to be found in “101 PASSIVE INCOME IDEAS THAT ANYONE CAN DO TO MAKE YOU RICH NOW!!!!”.

One to many

The question isn’t how can you make money without any effort. The question is how can you maximize the return on the effort you put in.

The answer is scalable income. Where you do the work once and each additional sale doesn’t take up much of your time. You’ll need to continue to invest time throughout the stream’s lifetime to ensure it stays healthy. This is a more honest description of what online courses and ebooks are.

There’s also the inherent risk that you can do everything right and do the work then it doesn’t scale. Nothing is guaranteed yet it’s better to focus on scalable income which has the growth potential. When you are stuck trading hours for income then there’s no possibility of your rewards going into the stratosphere.

The forgotten path

The basic revenue equation is price x units sold.

Everyone seems obsessed with how many products they sell rather than the potentially smarter route of increasing prices instead. If you have a product worth $10k then you need to sell less than one a month to make six figures. You can scale your income by entering an industry where greater skills convert to higher prices at a steep rate.

Break out of the mindset of how many $5 ebooks can you sell and think about how can you build your brand so you can sell a $500 ebook instead. Gaining this kind of expertise is active work but it could lead to the results you’re hoping for.

This is what I’m aiming for long term. Trying to grow a huge presence to sell everyone a budget product is exhausting. I’d rather focus on high quality so I can deliver exceptional results for a few people whilst others can benefit from my free content.

Scalable income is often mislabeled as passive income. Pursue scalable income all you want but don’t let anyone trick you into thinking it’s eas

In the movies, people spontaneously quit their jobs and leave in a ball of fire. The reality often isn’t so simple.

Nikita Ladwa, the founder of The Naked Laundry, wrote her resignation letter six months before handing it in. Each day was an internal battle and she agonized over making the right decision.

This was despite the company gathering significant momentum. This wasn’t a new venture where she would be guessing if there was a market. She’d started The Naked Laundry several years before and orders had already been flying in. Nikita had created a strong brand in bespoke crop tops that straddled Western and Indian fashion despite working full time.

She knew she loved working on her business but the thought of not having the safety of a salary scared her. I can empathize with her because by the time I quit, I was already matching my former salary but it’s scary to take the plunge. Unlike me, she had invested all her savings into the business and had less of a safety net which makes her path even braver.

Over a year later, she says it’s the best decision she’s ever made. If you’re struggling to make a choice right now then don’t beat yourself up over the time you take. It might be what sets you up best for the future.

This article is based on the Mindful & Driven episode with Nikita. You can listen here or find the YouTube video at the bottom of this article.

No need to rush

Doing a job you don’t think is perfect for you may feel like a waste of time but it could be what helps make your dream a reality.

Nikita’s previous job was as a digital marketer and those helped her to build her brand’s online presence rapidly. If she had quit when she first thought of her clothing brand, it might have been much harder for her to reach the level she is now.

The other obvious advantage to starting your dream project on the side is the income. This puts far less pressure on you to generate profit in your business and frees you up creatively. Since I became a full-time creative, my relationship with writing has changed and it’s no longer the outlet it once was.

There’s no shame in taking a long time to decide to go all in to your business nor is there in choosing to keep it as a side passion project. Don’t ever feel pushed based on other people’s timelines when it’s your life.

Passion through everything

Nikita doesn’t believe in only having one passion. She’s lucky because what she does for The Naked Laundry combines much of what she loves in one role.

A key highlight for her is delivering her products directly to customers who live near her London. She gets to see their happy faces and understand who they are and what matters to them. She’s also able to be creative in different ways through fashion design and the strategies she uses for online marketing.

Nikita starts every day by talking to her team in India and during our conversation, it was obvious how much she enjoys working with them too.

In whatever you love, remember to consider what other tasks come with it. If the part you love is only actually 10% of how you’d spend your time then it’s worth considering your other options. It might mean it’s not the right path for you or simply that you need to bring on team members to handle those parts for you.

Stay true to what you believe in

Turning something you love into your livelihood comes with trade-offs. They might start with lofty ethical standards but abandon these for the harsh realities of profit. Nikita refuses to make this sacrifice despite knowing it would make her numbers look better on paper. She’s against fast fashion and intentionally keeps the number of items she creates low. This increases her costs per item but ensures there is less wastage. With her team, she comes up with ways to make sure as much of the material she buys is used as possible. Nikita outsourced her production to India but visited the factories herself to ensure the safety standards were high. She talks directly to her producers at a friendship level and cares about what’s going on in their lives. Once all the travel restrictions are lifted, her plan is to rotate her time between Delhi and London so she knows exactly what’s happening in all parts of her business. By ensuring she lives up to her own standards, she stays proud of what she does know she’s not only doing the best for her customers but for her staff too. If you decide to forge your own path, make sure you think about both sides to keep everything in balance. I hope you found these tips useful and can see ways you can apply them to your own life. If you’d like to hear Nikita talk about it with me in more detail, check out our conversation in the video below.

How many different areas of your life are you trying to keep in some type of balance right now?

Work. Family. Friends. Hobbies. Sleep. Rest. Play.

It’s a lot to squeeze into 24 hours and Ashley Simon,Director of Creator Marketing at Medium, argues it’s nearly impossible. She doesn’t strive for day-to-day balance and thinks about it as a long-term concept instead.

Her therapist encouraged her to view life as a dresser. Each area of her life was one drawer in the dresser. If you try to keep all them open at one time, it inevitably topples over. Crash. Burnout.

Yet if you open one or two at a time whilst keeping the other closed then it stays upright. You have stability. It doesn’t mean you abandon the other drawers as you can’t wear the same clothes all year round. The seasons change and close the open drawers and pull out others instead.

I’ve been guilty of trying to maintain balance on a microscale and it doesn’t work out well in busy periods. The dresser analogy will help me to look at the bigger picture and I hope it helps you too.

This article is based on the Mindful & Driven episode with Ashley. You can listen here or find the YouTube video at the bottom of this article.

Urgency is often overrated

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve run around like a headless chicken for deadlines which don’t matter at all. I need to do this now because I’ve told myself so isn’t a good enough reason to risk burnout. We lie to ourselves all the time with such confidence.

Ashley had a toxic voice inside her head which told her she isn’t working hard enough and she would never be successful. Negative self-talk can eat a person up from the inside out. What’s worse is her conscious voice would reply “that’s true.”

It wasn’t until her late 20s that she realized she didn’t have to believe her own thoughts. Now when she attacks herself she stops and pauses. She doubts the voice in her head and is far more compassionate to herself. She knows she isn’t superhuman. One question helps her:

Do I really need to have this drawer open right now?

It’s a simple question yet sometimes the answer is much harder than you might think. You might keep trying to come up with valid reasons but realize they sound ridiculous. We do things on autopilot because our brains have a weird sense of laziness. It would rather force future us into more stress to avoid being uncomfortable now.

Shift your mindset to think about how to reduce your overall stress instead.

The work drawer can be closed

A former colleague of Ashley’s quit her job to take a break and rest up. Yet despite not having a job, she was even more stressed than before.

After being productive for so long, her friend felt guilty about giving herself the time off she needed. She was sabotaging her own happiness by forcing herself to go to networking events and keep her mind sharp.

It’s strange the way we’ve been conditioned in the modern world where we can ignore our health or friends for long periods without an issue but our identity is so tied to our work.

If you’ve worked hard and have enough surplus to just live for a few months, there’s no shame in letting go. Ashley’s friend didn’t need a job for the income, she desired it because she felt lost without it. Ashley seeded the idea that there were no real career consequences from taking a break.

It would help in the long run as she would be in a better state of mind for whatever her next project was. The same might be true of you. You might be trying to fit something into your life out of shame or worry of what others will think of you rather than because it needs to be there.

Work is perhaps the hardest of all the drawers to close because it can become so wrapped up in our self-worth but you can always pick up your career again.

You need to take the rest you deserve.

I hope you found these tips useful and can see ways you can apply them to your own life. If you’d like to hear Ashley talk about it with me in more detail, check out our conversation in the video below.

Life sucks sometimes.

I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on improving my mindset but I won’t lie to you about the realities of life. Not every day is great and sometimes I wonder why I bother trying best when things go wrong. Then I get over it and continue with my day.

Yet Jordan Gross has a healthier way to react to these scenarios than my occasional catastrophizing. He views life through the lens of a story and it gives him the optimism he needs to take on the world.

It doesn’t matter what the negative emotion is. Pain. Fear. Nervousness. Whether it’s an acute bad event or a string of them. He considers it all as part of his life story. It’s happened but it doesn’t mean everything can’t change for the better in the next chapter.

He asks himself a simple question:

What would make my story the most exciting from here?

This article is based on the Mindful & Driven episode with Jordan. You can listen here or find the YouTube video at the bottom of this article.

The lows give the highs meaning

Something I ponder when I have too much time on my hands is whether I would actually want to attain enlightenment. A state of contentment where I’m never happy or sad.

I’m not sure I would.

The variance in life is what makes things exciting and gives us the memories in life that matter. While it would be nice to never have any negative experiences again, I don’t want to sacrifice the positive side for it.

Ice cream as a treat tastes great but ice cream as breakfast, lunch, and dinner is nauseating.

It’s a way you can spin things in a positive light. The fact you feel upset shows you have the emotional range to feel great in another day. Ending bad days isn’t necessarily the goal as much as reducing the damage it does to us.

Be the hero of your own story

There are two different ways of thinking about life. Either you drive the story or you let the story happen to you.

Jordan believes you are an active participant in your life and the choices you make matter. Not everything is under control but there will always be something you can do. You can choose whether you see the world as half empty or half full.

It doesn’t mean you have to do it all alone as sometimes asking for help is the most courageous thing you can do. It can be the step that brings joy back to your life.

Dr. Edith Eger summed up this superpower in her book, The Gift. She lived in unimaginably traumatic conditions during the Holocaust yet still managed to keep her mind sharp. No matter what they did, they couldn’t control her thoughts and this gave her power.

Find a reason to giggle

One of the strange things about Marvel blockbusters is how much humor is embedded in stories literally about the end of civilization. Yet we watch and smile even in such serious situations. It’s rare to find someone who complains about the momentary reduction in tension. Humor in the face of difficulty is a sign of strong mental health. Sigmund Freud argued humor is our best defense against the anxiety in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. It might seem strange or inappropriate to laugh when times are bad but it’s normal. If your life is like a Marvel movie then it’s ok to slip a joke in to break up the doom and gloom. I hope you found these tips useful and can see ways you can apply them to your own life. If you’d like to hear Jordan talk about it with me in more detail, check out our conversation in the video below.

Most people reading this article will live in a lucky world where all their thoughts aren’t consumed by how to survive.

It brings the higher-level question of how to make life meaningful.

This seemingly simple question invites others that can bug people for their entire lives.

Am I making an impact?

Am I making the world a better place?

What will be my legacy?

It’s not uncommon for people to worry about this but never take action. I know when I’ve asked myself in the past, my stomach has sunk at my honest answer. Objectively I may have been well off but the grind drained the soul from my body. It created a sense of dis-ease that bled into all areas of my life.

Raj Mendhir worked as a consultant before running several successful businesses. He’s now a startup coach and loves what he does but when the pandemic struck he knew he had an opportunity to do something good for the world.

He advises people to always make time to do good in this world.

This article is based on the Mindful & Driven episode with Raj. You can listen here or find the YouTube video at the bottom of this article.

Act fast and imperfectly

Raj’s idea was to make a soft skills EdTech platform for underprivileged people from all over the world.

He came up with the idea one day and within a week he had his team building a minimum viable product for EqWippd. He didn’t sit around and procrastinate.

Started is better than perfect as a raw platform can still help people whereas an idea stuck in someone’s head can’t. Raj appreciates EqWippd has areas to improve and is passionate about improving the experience for the users.

In one year over 800 lessons were created for not only skills for the job market but also day-to-day life.

If you want to do good, what’s stopping you? Choose something and start doing it. Even if you only dedicate a couple of hours a week, you are making a difference. Think small and grow it as you gain momentum. Don’t let overanalysis paralyze you.

Use your strengths

Raj is lucky because he enjoys all aspects of his life. Yet he appreciates the powerful set of skills through his profit-making work that has allowed him to make a splash in the non-profit space.

What skills could you impact the world with? EdTech is a particularly interesting space because we all have something to teach. You might find a new lease of enjoyment in what you do by explaining it to people who don’t have the same access to resources that you had.

You could choose to be behind the scenes. Raj doesn’t write the content for EqWippd himself but acts as the editor to ensure a high-quality standard. You might have exceptional organization and could act as a bridge between those with skills and those who need them.

Most of the way I try to make a difference is through donations. My strength in online business means my time is well spent earning money there to fund those who’ve chosen to dedicate themselves to others. In the future, I will move to more an active role but we can all do good in our own way.

Remember the domino effect

It’s so easy to underappreciate how much good you’re doing already. Let’s say you take some time out of your week to help a friend who is going through a tough time. By giving them emotional support, you make them stronger and this could lead them to lend this strength to someone else. We never see the domino effect of good deeds. Research has proven smiles are contagious, I like to think acts of kindness are too. Whatever small thing you do could have a much bigger effect on the world than you might think. Raj’s EdTech platform could help someone who was long-term unemployed to land a job. This empowers them to provide a better standard of living for their children. They’d perform better at school and have greater skills to impact the world themselves. Never underestimate the power of educating one person. I hope you found these tips useful and can see ways you can apply them to your own life. If you’d like to hear Raj talk about it with me in more detail, check out our conversation in the video below.