I have great respect for Rachman because he does his thing, without caring too much about what ‘people’ consider reasonable, adequate, sane or insane. And his approach is to enjoy life now and not defer the good life to some uncertain future. So instead of accepting a six figure investment banking offer after his graduation from Princeton, he decided to travel the world, found a business to finance his travels and do fun things.

In this interview Rachman talks about his new business, ‘How to make a woman‘, what he learned at Princeton, why service businesses are a bad choice for first time entrepreneurs and lifestyle designers and how to become a DJ over night.

If enough people like this post, we will put the transcripted version of the interview online soon.

Alexis Jaffar Rialt has been traveling the world for over two years , non-stop. I knew that I had to interview him for this blog when he wrote me that he and two friends did a hitchhiking race from Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia to Istanbul.

This post is not about his race, however. In this interview Alexis talks about how the book ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho has changed his life, the rich and the poor and why all the clothes you are ever really going to need while traveling, are three pairs of socks, three pieces of underwear, two pants, one sweater and three shirts.

When did you make the decision to become a long time traveler? 

»In a summer holiday in France with my father, I was about fifteen years old, I came across a book that was a revelation to me, Paulo Coelho’s “The alchemist”. It may sound naive, but with 15 it had a huge impact on my way of thinking and philosophy, this story gave me a huge amount of inspiration. As I finished the book, I knew I have to travel whatever happens, I have no choice but doing it, I would never find inner peace if I didn’t. And so it happened. Read more →

Felix Speiser works for a Berlin based Startup and is the initiator of AidOffers.org. He writes about Peer-2-Peer Economies and how sharing of resources will change the way think about owning things. He writes on simplethings.com

Shift your ownership paradigm towards temporary ownership and start making smarter purchasing decisions by comparing the real cost of an item against its benefits.

Why I think I can afford a EUR 400 LEGO Set – at least for a week.

I just bought a huge Lego set for EUR 400. Apart from the fact that I am 27 years old and many people would consider that too old to play lego bricks, that is not the first thing most people say. The majority of people actually ask why I would spend four hundred bucks on a box of bricks. Actually, I didn’t spent that much. I put down 400 € to get the bricks. Built it. Then took it apart, put it back in the box and and put it up on eBay. Seven days later I sold it for EUR 395. In the end it cost me  less than 45 € for round about twelve hours of brick-building fun for two people. It’s like renting.

Forget the price tag and calculate the REAL cost of an item

I bet you have faced a purchasing decision were you felt that something was actually too expensive for you to afford right now. I bet that the most important thing you took into account was the number on the price tag. It has always struck me as strange Read more →

This post is by Felix Buchwald. Felix is a former Poker Professional and Coach. His article is about cherishing the small steps in any endeavor and enjoying every bit of the way to reaching your goals. Its all about the small steps to success.

No, this post is not about two male achievers holding an indiscrete competition at a corporate restroom. What I would like to write about is why it is so important how you look at a project, goal or challenge of yours.

We all wanted something at some point really badly, started it and stopped pursuing it shortly afterwards. This can be anything – carrying out your vision of creating an amazing new business, establishing the habit of eating five healthy meals per day or improving the relationship with your partner.

In the past I looked at what I want and then tried really hard to push myself towards that goal. Once I was there (which was usually quite a long time after I set that goal) I could not even realize that I had reached my dream because I was already setting a whole lot of new goals and expectations for myself. I never took the time to actually say to myself: ‘hey buddy, you have done a real good job there – congratz’.

When I dream about something now I break it down into tiny steps and just look at the very first one. At first that might look overwhelming and not very productive but Read more →

I truly love my family. They are great and I owe them much. And I respect their opinion. But sometimes, I have to be patient with them. This is especially the case when I am about to try something ‘stupid’, am about to take ‘huge risks’ and should ‘take more time to think things over’. I know this has happened to you before.

So what to do when the loved ones call – to hold you back?

In this article I write about

• What I would have missed out on in my life if I’d listened to the warnings of my beloved family members

•  Why I think anybody should first and foremost make up his own mind. Then listen to objections and concerns from family and friends. And then ignore everything they said, unless it struck you as really important. (e.g. ‘Don’t go there. They are in the middle of a war.’)

• How I calm relatives that are slightly ‘uncomfortable’ with my plans to do anything out of the ordinary and how you can do the same

All the things I would have missed

Have you ever made decisions against the advice of family or friends? I am not talking about advice like ‘Dont smoke, it is bad for your health’. I am talking about decisions with the potential to take you ahead. Decisions and actions that could define who you were going to be and what your life would be like.

Read more →

I know that some of you have been thinking up some pretty cool ideas in their crazy little minds on how to change the world and make it a better place. Maybe it’s been some time but I am sure that you were not always a banker, consultant, teacher, officer or lawyer, having not much time left at the end of the day to think about something else than your work.

In this article I will explain my favorite technique to deal with risk aversion. I sit down and pull out this trump when I want to do something that requires me to take a ‘risk’ but the little voice in my head is still holding me from becoming serious about making the next step.

First things first – When you have a really cool idea, it will keep you up half night long, you think about how it could work, and how big this could be. I am convinced that everybody has had that feeling at least once. What happens to most of these ideas? At night you had the most awesome idea in the world, one that would make you rich, change the world, be loads of fun or any combination of the above. The next morning you wake up and doubt starts creeping in. This little voice in your head tells you that it would be crazy to take the risk. Throw everything away? Give up the job? Tell everybody that you have this idea that is totally nuts and have half the people reply that it’s not the idea that’s nuts but you? So how can you make sure that the little voice in your head doesn’t always get to interfere with your great ideas? Read more →

Should I do it or should I not? I’ve been staring at that freaking facebook fanpage for the last ten minutes. I was about to make a move that would cause some people to declare me nuts. I knew I could let my best friends in on my plans but almost everyone I knew? Tough decision.

Looking back on the past few days, I am glad that I let everybody know that I was going to cycle from Berlin, Germany to far away India. To me, publicly declaring my plans has been the boldest step in a sequence of bold decisions I took over the last two years. How I got to this point? I’ll get to that in a second. Let’s first look at why most people hold themselves back and how they can kick fear in the teeth and do what they want to do. Read more →

I bet every second person I know has at least once bought a book on how to learn a given language. They bought the book, felt good about themselves and never even read till page five. Since the day they bought it, the darn thing rests untouched on the shelf catching dust.

If you are one of the people who has a couple of books on learning Mandarin Chinese, Russian or Arabic sitting on your shelf that you never touched, don’t feel bad about it. It happens to all of us. Actually, I arrived at a point where I thought that it is not possible to learn a language by yourself.

However, when I was studying in Paris a few year later, I met an exchange student, who had managed to learn French by herself with a book and audio cassettes, without ever having been to France before. I was stunned. Until then I believed that you can only get to a certain level with these books and tapes. But this girl was well ahead of my level and I was conversationally fluent in French at that time. Since I was intrigued by how she did it, I walked up to her after class and asked her. The answer was very simple. Read more →