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Steve Pavlina 2 – Lifestyle Design

2010-12-27-Black-Jacket

Steve Pavlina is one of the most widely read personal development bloggers in the world. He began blogging at StevePavlina.com in 2004, and within a few years, his web traffic swelled to 2.5 million readers per month. Hay House soon offered him a book deal, and his book Personal Development for Smart People was published in 2008. It hit the Amazon bestsellers list 3 months before it was released, just from the pre-orders. In 2010 Steve uncopyrighted his body of online work and donated it to the public domain. This includes more than 1200 articles and dozens of podcasts and videos — enough content to fill about 30 books. This made it easy for others to translate his work into other languages and republish it in a variety of formats — without having to ask Steve’s permission in advance. Since his work is now copyright-free, other people can repackage and even sell his content in other formats, and Steve encourages people to keep all the money they make from doing so. Today Steve centers his lifestyle around personal growth explorations, relationships, traveling, writing, and speaking. Any new material he shares on his website goes straight into the public domain, so it can be shared and translated freely with no restrictions.

Steve Pavlina Vroom Veer Stories

  • Steve “Totally nuked” all of his social media accounts!
  • We chat about the game-ification of social media and it's addictive and negative affects on attention.
  • He wanted to build a business for the long-term, that would run for decades, and not get bored doing it.
  • He wasn't interested in being a serial entrepreneur.
  • Why not make a business that's about growth?
  • He wanted to design a business that would track his path of personal growth, and share his lessons and experiences along the way via his blog, podcasts, and his book.
  • Steve's why is to grow, learn, and explore.
  • What was holding you back from starting your business?
  • Steve never had a corporate job…but after he worked in a computer game store in college, he realized he never wanted a boss again.
  • His first computer games business didn't make any money until the sixth year…he invested $20,000 into and then just started racking up debt.
  • The blessing in disguise was that the first model of his business blew up and he went bankrupt.
  • This taught him a valuable lesson about how to pivot and turn the business around and he made money every year after that.
  • He learned to stop trying to chase money, and running the business for all the wrong reasons.
  • He didn't want to repeat the last five years of working too hard, very long hours, with partners he didn't like.
  • Steve decided to get back to basics and just create a simple game that was really fun to play, and he could do it very cheaply…and that game helped him turn around his business.
  • Steve talked about nuking his social media and how being popular and creating a lot of traffic can be an empty victory when a large number of people are aware of you but only an inch deep.
  • Another empty victory is that high traffic and fame are ends of themselves, but it can become a endless treadmill. Once you have enough traffic and fame to sustain an independent income, you can get off the treadmill and decide you have enough traffic and fame.
  • Getting up early and going for a short run, mostly for the benefits to the brain.
  • He listens to personal development audio books while he runs.
  • Part of his evening shutdown routine is reading something calming before bed.
  • It's more about deleting habits that are not going anywhere versus adding in new habits.

    Steve Pavlina Interview Links

    StevePavlina.com