I am working on 101 Alternatives to a Real Job and including another suggestion from my cousin Jordan.  Jordan is more entrepreneurial than I am.  He’s made money in a bunch of different ways, and while writing about him today the phrase came to mind:

Serial micro-entrepreneur

I googled it, sure that I’d find thousands of blog posts about it, but I really didn’t find anything.  Wierd, huh?

Here’s a breakdown of the phrase:

• Serial: Does a number of them, one after another, or at the same time.
• Micro: does stuff at a very small level.  Not anything that will become the next Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest, but many small things can provide healthy streams, if combined with others.
• Entrepreneur: you know what this is already 🙂

That’s the phrase that came to mind immediately… and it is the perfect way to describe Jordan 🙂

I reviewed Seth Godin’s The Dip book a while back. One of the major messages is that if you are going down the wrong path, stop, turn around, and do something else.

I agree with what Seth says… don’t keep doing bad stuff.

The art of doing that right might be recognizing when you really are on a bad path.

Bad != hard

I think too many people are on a very hard, long and seemingly torterous path, and they don’t get the results they think they should get, and they say “I’m must be on a dead-end, bad path,” and they quit.

Right before they could have been successful.

Pinterest is the lucky (luck = when opportunity meets preparation?) overnight sensation (overnight = they started years ago, and drudged along for a long time before they were an overnight sensation).

Check out this awesome, inspiring writeup AND short video interview with founder Ben Silbermann at TechCrunch: Pinterest’s Unlikely Journey To Top Of The Startup Mountain

I am a little hesitant writing this post because some of you should quit, and move on… but maybe you shouldn’t.

I’m busy working on my 101 Alternatives to a Real Job book.  Two days ago I was on the phone with someone and I said something like this:

“We are so busy chasing our career dreams (meaning: the traditional job) that we are giving up the American Dream.”

I thought that was profound, especially as the elements of the career dream has changed so much in the last decade.  Before, it meant steady, secure, pension, benefits, safety.  Today it doesn’t have much more meaning than what you might get as an unattached contractor.

The American Dream, though… ah, the images that conjures up!  Hope, freedom, prosperity, reward for ideas or work… have we lost sight of this American Dream?

Before all the American Dream haters come out, I’m not saying that big corporate greed, or small corporate greed, is part of the American Dream.  I’m saying that a chance to earn a reward, whether it’s on your one acre farm, or on your family’s 20k acre property, is yours for the taking.

The American Dream is not about “what I was born with, so I’m limited,” it’s about opportunity for everyone, if they only want it and work for it.