Note: this giveaway is now closed.
Time to give away the last seat on Josh Kaufman’s Personal MBA Crash Course FOR FREE!
For those of you that don’t know, Josh is the mastermind and brilliant leader behind the Personal MBA:
The Personal MBA (PMBA) is a project designed to help you educate yourself about advanced business concepts on your own terms. Instead of mortgaging your life to go to business school, it’s possible to dramatically increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost – without setting foot inside a classroom. This website will teach you how.
If you’re interested in educating yourself about business, the Personal MBA is the best place to start. The PMBA is more flexible than a traditional MBA program, doesn’t involve going into massive debt, and won’t interrupt your income stream for two years.
After a lot of hard work and research, Josh has put together an amazing “Crash Course” where he will be sharing, in his own words, “the results of five years and thousands of hours of research, including ideas and techniques I’ve developed and have never discussed outside of my private circle of coaching clients.”
Needless to say, Josh is a rock star and a true Untemplater.
What are going to do for you then? Let you join Josh, learn from him, and become super-wise in business. Josh has been kind enough to give away THREE SEATS for this course, and have spread them out throughout the week.
You can check our first and second giveaway to see which way to participate you prefer.
Just to be clear, this course costs $497. But here it’s free. You do the math.
How to Enter to Win the Last FREE SEAT on The Personal MBA Crash Course!
As we’ve said before, we love comments! And we are going to let them decide who the winner is once again!
Here’s the question:
How are YOU going to help OTHERS untemplate their lives in 2010?
Leave us a comment answering that question, let us know how you are going to help the world have more untemplaters!
Please don’t enter more than one comment or reply to anyone else. Only 1 comment per person!
Chances to enter end Jan. 12th, 2010 at Midnight EST!
We will be taking comments until this next Tuesday at Midnight, so hurry to tell us how you are going to untemplate people around you!
Comments, we want to see them…
In order to help others untemplate their lives in 2010 I am going to start my own business. I have been so inspired by this website that I want to share everything I know with others, teaching them how to be an untemplater and fulfill their dreams.
I have already revamped my blog and I have a lot of really great ideas for it. I might even try to write a guest post for Untemplater eventually, to give back to the community that has inspired me so much.
By listening to this site’s advice I am going to get on the path to untemplating my life, something I think everyone should do!
Thanks guys! Keep those posts coming!
Alright so here’s what I am planning for 2010 to help others Untemplate.
My friend and I are planning on transforming a van into a R & D lab and travel with it across Canada, the US, and Mexico. We are gonna develop many business projects and innovate new products within it.
The goal is going to be to meet as many people along the way that are as passionate about lifestyle design, untemplating their life, and whatever we can find!
We’d love to meet people along the way just for fun or to help them develop a project they have. We gonna have access to some advance engineering tools and 3d modelling and should be able to give a little hand along the way to anyone with an idea, but doesn’t have the resources to do so.
How are YOU going to help OTHERS untemplate their lives in 2010?
Food is my passion and in 2010 I will be launching a blog about Viva la Real Food. I will help others to appreciate real food with their 5 senses, to prepare food in a budget and teach them how simple and significant is to prepare nutritious meals, eat real food and save money. Most common mistakes people make when they go food shopping. How food marketing influence our eating habits. How to find the best jobs in the hospitality around the world and provide them with information about volunteering programs as an effective way to travel and get their hands in learning where the real food comes from
Talk is cheap. Where I live in Bangkok, so are noodles. As a leader in my community, I can see that complacency and inaction eventually burns inside far worse than the spiciest Thai food. Other untemplaters also know all too well the internal discomfort which accompanied their former lifestyle. However, instead of focusing on that discomfort, I will teach people to free themselves by emphasizing and exemplifying the lifestyle of fun and giving that I write about on my blog (http://insearchofsanuk.com). I will lead by example, showing people that the happiness I enjoy now, far outshines any advantages of the template life.
We are planning a 2012 6 month trip to Argentina/Uruguay with our two (hopefully three by then!) kids. We moved out of the US over a year ago and haven’t looked back, but want to live there for middle/high school most likely. My husband is the verbal one and he needs to get blogging; we have a pretty awesome story. Mostly I just want to challenge people to do what THEY WANT TO DO, given their responsibilities. 🙂
I am going to learn graphic design and make my own wedding invitations. On top of that, I am considering looking into opening my own breakfast cafe!
I am currently in the process of untemplating my life! I think the most important way for me to help others to untemplate their lives is to lead by example. I have many friends and family living the template lifestyle and I can see it in their eyes that it isn’t what they truly want to be doing. It doesn’t matter how much I tell them to untemplate their lives, they won’t listen until I show them how to do it. My untemplated life begins in March!
There’s always something daunting in changing things about yourself that you want to change, and something easy (ish) about helping others change things that THEY want to change about themselves.
You ask what we will do to help others untemplate their lives. I’ve been doing things for others my whole life. I currently:
1. Teach grown-ups and kids how to express themselves creatively through writing and making books and paper, and help them let go of labels and such so that they see themselves as artists/creators of their own lives.
2. Help others gain physical strength and ability through cross-training through the website http://www.chicagolazyman.com
3. Along with my husband, teach my four year old son how to be polite, kind, and thoughtful, while also taking care of his own needs.
4. Help my husband try to keep his company (www.thomeworksonline.com) running in this shaky economy.
To better and more efficiently help others, though, I need to learn better ways of making sure that I am expressing myself creatively, living my own life the way I hope to live it, and taking care of our financial needs. These are things I am working on for 2010.
In your Manifesto, several of the case studies talked about doing one thing or the other simply because it was the next step. That statement, more than anything else, describes my life.
Throughout my life I have had several crises of identity. All of these revolved around the question of, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” In each case, I took the template path. I went to college and got a degree. I took jobs without ever really considering if it was something I really wanted to do. I got married, had kids, bought the house, the cars, the flat screen TV, and ran up the debt to go with it.
So here I find myself at 33 years old. I have been married for 8 years to a wonderful woman and have three children that I adore. I have a decent job and have begun to get my finances back on track (thank you Dave Ramsey!). I have a lot to be thankful for. Why is it that I am so unsatisfied? Why is it that I look at my life and think that there is something missing?
I have a two and a half year old son. Recently, as he has learned to talk, he has a habit of saying, “Daddy, will you teach me to…….”. I have begun to seriously ponder this question. What will I teach him?
Will I teach him to be like me – to stumble through life without ever living out your passions, to do something because it is the next step in life, to work in a cube as a wage slave, to have all these ideas but never DO any of them? Will I teach him to follow the template?
You asked, “How are YOU going to help OTHERS untemplate their lives in 2010?” Just like every other parent, I want to provide my children with a better start in life than I got. I will teach my children how to umptemplate their lives. It won’t happen in a year. Over the course of the years and decades ahead (hopefully they will still listen to me!) I will teach them to always be in control of their finances, pursue their passions and live life on their terms.
In order to truly teach them how to untemplate their lives, I must untemplate mine.
I have some ideas of how I want to design my life. One of the keys to this is developing an independent income stream. I have some business concepts and have been doing the research on the mechanics. I can’t imagine how much the Personal MBA would help me in this endeavor.
That is how I will help others untemplate their life. Starting this year, I will gain the knowledge and skills necessary to break the chains that keep me from realizing the life I want. I will teach my children to reject the template and never become a slave to life.
The next time my son asks me, “Daddy will you teach me….”, I will answer, “Yes!” with a knowing smile.
I am trying to help others untemplate their lives by consistently pushing this type of content out to my friends. I just graduated from college two years ago and I have so many friends who think the exact way you mentioned. At first, I felt a lot of pressure to keep up and I felt that I should be “enjoying” my money by spending it every weekend. Through blogs like this, I realized that I am the one that is enjoying my money more because it doesn’t control me. I’m only 23 so I’m looking forward to a strong, financially sound life while many of my friends will start thinking about that in a few years.
Two years ago, I left my cubicle to work on a dairy farm — leaving the “comfort” of working at a desk, and the, ehm, “comfort” of doing what everyone else was doing. Now, people confide in me their own hopes for unplugging from their desks, and I have been quite surprised by the interest they showed in my work & lifestyle. At weddings, visiting my parents’ friends, reconnecting with old roommates, everyone seems to have heard about my change of lifestyle and is fascinated by it, wanting to know all the details.
I have a plan for helping people untemplate in small ways, all the while allowing me to untemplate in large ways. I am learning about landscape design and will open a business to help people replace their suburban lawns with fruit trees and edible landscaping. It’s probably not going to convince people to quit their jobs, but it will help people pursue their passions & find a little more of what they were looking for when they moved to the suburbs or country [while also reducing their carbon & chemical footprints]
Eventually, I will be working from home, and raising some untemplated [unschooled] children.
I would love to take Josh’s course to make sure I have the foundation to get this business up & running, while also making sure it doesn’t overtake my other plans.
Through inspiration.
I will be leaving my job as a rocket scientist in May 2010. I will have been working in a cube for six years. I am starting a blog about my escape from the cube. But beyond that, my blog will follow my journey of realizing all my dreams that have been put on hold since being a cube dweller. Some of these dreams include being a competitive surfer, starting a cookie company, becoming a public speaker on environmental issues, and becoming a professional actress. My blog will follow each and every one of my dreams and what I am doing to get there using a very “untemplater” approach.
How are YOU going to help OTHERS untemplate their lives in 2010?
I have been working with four partners for the past four months to develop and design three separate business ideas and models.
In 2010, these three business’ will go live. My contribution to each of the programs is both business acumen and individual exit strategy. I have been designing these business’ with the expressly stated intent of removing the individual from the process.
I will help my business partners untemplate their lives by (1) working with them throughout the year to make our business successful AND automated, and (2) as a result of that success allow them to leave their current jobs in pursuit of their passions.
The success, or failure, of any or all of these projects will be the necessary knowledge to both try again, replicate and proliferate the knowledge and skills gained throughout the process.
I’m 50 years old, and just found this site after seeing it highlighted on a local Tampa, FL TV program. I was so struck by the thought that life could be different that I sent the link to your site to my kids, so they won’t have to wait most of their lives to untemplate themselves! Thanks for giving me inspiration!
Hey there Steve! I’m actually in the Tampa area myself. Which TV station / program was it on?
My plan to help others untemplate their lives in 2010 is to share with other parents and young professionals that you can indeed follow your passion to do what you love and make money at it all along.
We’re a young family with small children and I don’t feel that there is an adequate amount resources devoted to this niche, therefore I’ll be using my blog as well as online meetings and a possible ebook to talk more to this audience.
Thanks for the great site and look forward to seeing what 2010 brings you!
wow… lots of great posts… here goes!
How are YOU going to help OTHERS untemplate their lives in 2010?
Well, I could go on about how recently quit my 6 figure job to spend the next 12 months travelling the world and that I am going to blog about it to “share the wealth”. How I am starting an ecommerce store and a consulting company while travelling. And how I am investigating a venture selling datacenters to African banks. But to be honest, I’m only 24 and I don’t really know that much…
I will tell the people I meet along the way about what I am doing, my successes, failures and sources that have influenced me, but I am not just going to regurgitate stuff I have read from other resources… that’s pointless.
What I will do in 2010 is to learn from the experts at places like untemplater and from my own experience so I can develop a unique skill set around location independence, on and offline business and social hacking.
So in 2010 I plan to untemplate myself, build my own life story and with it a skill set that I can share in the future to help others untemplate their lives.
I’m hoping to grow our business to support a small staff of work from anywhere types. I know a few friends who are getting ready to travel, and I’d love to kick them some business so they can pursue those dreams while earning an income.
By being an ‘incurable urbanist ‘in the concrete dessert of Phoenix. I’m showing that there are viable alternatives to living a car dependant, suburban lifestyle.
In 2010, I intend to inspire others to untemplate their lives by first untemplating mine. After seven years in May, I’ll finally be finishing a PhD in a subject that no longer points my internal compass to truth north. Instead of carrying on into academia as most expect me to, especially because many can’t see past academic uses for my esoteric subject, I’ll be taking a much bolder path at the crossroads. It means immigrating to England to join my British fiancé and completing my yoga teacher training to open my own studio in our city that lacks one! Instead of the rarified air of the ivory tower, we’ll be living a our ideal simple life of community involvement, creative abundance, making a difference. The process has been documented on my blog Yogademia for almost three years now, and I wasn’t sure what to call exactly what it was that I was doing. Thanks for coining the perfect term to define my efforts to break away from expectations with “untemplate” – I’m thrilled to finally be able to untemplate my life in the way I envision it!
Hello fellow Untemplaters! I am excited for this journey of of Untemplating our lives. In order to help Untemplate the lives others and myself, I have developed a project, coincidentally titled “The Life Design Project.”
The Life Design Project is a POTENT combination of:
-LifeDestiny.net – Here is where I will build up a community to support (along with Untemplater) those looking to Untemplate their lifestyle. I will write passionately about topics that I STRONGLY BELIEVE will help a person to Untemplate their lifestyle.
-The Most Passionate Lifestyle Designers – Without these people, The Life Design Project is just me and a dream. These will be the people that want to go above and beyond to BECOME REMARKABLE!
-The Life Design Project Interview Series – which is an interview series recently started up that will focus on those that have Untemplated their lives among other achievements. First interview coming up…The Man behind Man Vs. Debt & one of Untemplater’s co-founders, Adam Baker!
-The Life Design Project Newsletter – An EXCLUSIVE Newsletter that will provide personal communication between the most passionate lifestyle designers and myself.
Spreading The Word of Untemplater – By pointing those passionately striving to Untemplate their lifestyle to Untemplater to provide further support and inspiration.
Rock it in 2010 everyone!
1) By exposing one of my best friends who is equally dissatisfied with his current life situation to all the sources of inspiration I’ve found so far (including untemplater.com!) and convincing him to join me on this journey.
2) By continuing to develop my recently founded blog focused documenting my own journey and encouraging people to ascribe to the mentality of conscious choice.
3) By being an active member of this community and many others focused on similar goals.
4) Spreading the word as much as possible. THERE IS A BOX!!!!!!!!
How are YOU going to help OTHERS untemplate their lives in 2010?
By trying to help people realize that untemplating is not all about me. It may be changing the way I work, it may be setting goals to improve finances, health or spirituality but all of that starts by helping my community. When I make an effort to help those around me, change happens in me. My life’s template is broken in reaching to assist others.
I am in the process of untemplating myself, working on my online business, and seeking viable channels to create income. I’ve always felt a little depressed leading a moderate and predictable life. I have not been traditionally employed for the past year, and I have been seeking my own identity without a job title. I would probably best help other untemplate their lives by setting examples and becoming living proof.
This year I would like to start a non-profit I have had in the works for some time now. It would be a group that focuses on introducing various volunteer oppurtunities to children of all ages. Twice a month kids and parents would help a different worthy cause from feeding the homeless to local clean ups to reading to the eldery. Anywhere volunteers are needed.
My plan is to begin blogging about, and then teaching about giving up corporate manufactured food. Going back to real food and the reasons we’ll all be better for it. The Personal MBA program would be a gift for me, in the sense that I’m an older woman who never had the opportunity to pursue a formal education. I found Josh Kaufman’s program a couple of years ago and have been reading and applying the principles, I’ve learned at his site, to enhance my ability to push through obstacles beyond my control. I feel like I’ve lived the untemplate life and would love to build my confidence to share it with others.
How are YOU going to help OTHERS untemplate their lives in 2010?
1) Let others know about untemplate.com thru social networking and good old word of mouth.
2) Actions speak louder than words: live it and they will notice. As I continue to untemplate myself other will see a new me and wonder why. I will fill them in. This has already worked on my husband, my mom, and aunt. This allow people to be slowly brought around to thinking there maybe more!
I decided after reading almost the entire Untemplater site the other day that I am going to join the Peace Corps (and will put off Grad school until after or ever) and so I signed up for the initial information meeting at the regional recruitment office in Arlington, VA. Today after the meeting, I was listening to a young man complain about how he was so torn between serving in the Peace Corps or pursuing his career because he was sick of riding the bus (no car, grew up economically “disadvantaged”) while his friends made 8-10k a month. I asked him if his friends were happy and he responded that they were not. I told him that he had his answer. I then gave him the URLs for Untemplater and Manvsdebt and told him to do some reading.
i will be the only person to support a friend with a dream. A dream of leaving the mediocrity of our small town Ohio. I will leave with this friend to the far corners of the country in order to fulfill this dream. I will be the the push she needs to succeed.
A few weeks ago, I was at a talk by an Untemplater-esque marketing entrepreneurial, Nick Armstrong (iamnickarmstrong.com) and I started a blog in large part because of his recommendation. After thinking long and hard about exactly what I wanted to write about, I created Entry Level Dilemma. Similar to the new direction Kerry is taking, it’s about job searching with limited experience and how to gain experience so you can find a job doing what you love. As I grow through my own journey, so will my blog.
a few years ago I sat down for a whole day and think of my purpose in life. This is what I came up with: “To inspire and wake the sleeping giants within us all.” The best way to help others is to improve myself so that I would be better able to lend a hand. I’ve personally put myself through the wash, through trials and tribulations, not only to cultivate myself, but to help act as a guide so that my friends, family, and those in need will be able to learn from my experiences. While this may not directly “untemplate” everyone, it will at least help those who truly desire and seek such a life.
What if you like your job, don’t necessarily want to work for yourself, but crave some of the lifestyle that working for yourself or being location independent comes with? We don’t all want to be Timothy Ferriss, but we should all know what all this minimalism, optimisation, organization is buying us. What are we going to do to make this extra time meaningful? Watch more tv? No. Spend time with kids? Perhaps, if we have them. How can we start living the lifestyle we want and choose to make time for meaningful things if we like our current job? Is there a way to mold a traditional career to be more flexible or do we really have to “leave the system/cube/etc.” to do that? I would be interested to find that out or at least work on it. Can we really strive to not be mediocre and be rewarded for that with flexibility or is it not possible? I’m sure there are others who aren’t wanting to jump off the cliff of chucking it all, but are ready to make changes and who could sympathize with someone else going through that process.
This is easy. I already am doing it. I’m teaching my 60 ish year old friends to think outside the box. Start changing how you think. I’m also teaching my children to look at opputunites differently. No one has to work 9-5 until their soul dies. We have wonderful lives to grab hold of. I myself am just learning that. I want to be free of wage slavery. I don’t my any of my friends or family living the life I used to live. I thought I was living, but I was in every way dying. I look forward to reading and learning, putting new knowledge out to share with friends I have now, and friends I’ll be meeting down the road. Thanks for the web site.
I never took a plane ride until I was 18, but I left a respectable university after one semester with an A average, then took a job that many would work several years out of college to reach– but after just three months I knew that this wasn’t the life for me. At 19, I became a freelancer.
I never crossed the Mississippi until last winter. Coming up on two years on my own. I’ve worked on a WIDE variety of web, television and film productions and used that as my excuse to travel all over.
This year- I plan to take on my first employee and show them the ropes of untemplating. My friends often ask how I do what I do– but their eyes glaze over when I begin to describe. I want to mentor one untemplater, to reciprocate the guidance I’ve received that has gotten me to where I am.
My goal is to travel the US for several months. The problem has been managing client expectations and porting the hundreds of GB’s of data I need to work.
~M
I aim to use my blog as a tool to help others realize their goals of getting out of the template life, and live however they want to live.
I think If I can figure out how to do it myself – I can set an example for others….
I’m currently in the process of converting whatamidoingwithmylife.com from a place where I was going to chronicle how I was changing my life and doing what I want, into a resource to help others do the same. I knew by the end of college that I had gone down a path that I didn’t want, but felt there wasn’t much I could do about it and would just have to grin and bare it. Well, I want students, 20-somethings, anyone who is looking for something rewarding and fulfilling that that is not the case. You don’t HAVE to just get through the next hour, day, week, or year to get to a point where you will be happy. YOU have the ability to make the change, now.
My challenge now is to figure out how to make this sustainable, I’ve never built a business, I’ve got limited cash reserves, but I’m going to make this work. I’m a man on a mission, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to end up working full time in a traditional office again in the near future.
We’re thinking about selling our house this year and living in an RV! I will blog about it if it happens and I hope to inspire someone else!
My goal is to provide some great content over at LifeExcursion that will allow myself and others to gain freedom over their lives.
David Damron
Lifeexcursion
I’m the girl that tells all my friends to quit the jobs they hate.
I finally drank my own kool-aid and quit my architecture job two months ago, never been happier. I’m working hard to build an online income, and will continue working hard during my teaching. So far been following internet marketing advice for fairly soulless sites – I’m a more then a little discouraged at connect-the-dots buisness-making, and am trying to build a more unique, personalized, dug into my passion online presence, FanTheEmber.com. I hope it can be a resource for anyone looking to live a life outside the norm. I’d like to offer something unique with it – for one, I’ll be a female in a domain that seems to be fairly successfully dominated by men, but I’m looking for my own spin as well. (Just fired it up yesterday, so I’m still thinking 😉 )
While I build it up, I’ll be teaching English in South Korea (starting in late Feb.) – moving towards complete location independence.
I’d love having a more complete worldview/business-view for doing what I’m doing – the PMBA seems like a fantastic resource to help me get there. Thanks!
I will encourage some of my friends to subscribe to untemplater.com