Question The Rules

If you’re here and you’re reading this, let me tell you something I know about you: You are seriously punk rock, and nothing would please you more than to create (or improve) an awesome, nonconformist business and life.

Now, it’s possible a part of you wants to disagree with that. You may not think you’re punk rock. You may not swear and spit; you may not wear your hair in a green mohawk; you may not listen to The Descendants or The Exploited. But that’s cool, because punk rock isn’t about fashion. It isn’t — strangely enough — even about music.

Shane Stranahan, Age 8

It’s about having a rebellious spirit — the kind of spirit that is willing and proud to go its own way when the “normal” way kind of sucks.

And so, the question you probably have isn’t “How do I make a living?” because we all know a bunch of really crappy ways to make a living. You’re here because you want to make a living in a way that you actually enjoy. A “different” way. A punk rock way. Because on some level — be it on the surface or way down deep — you’re a rebel.

For instance, I’ll bet you a dozen Ramones pins and a CBGB T-shirt that:

• You have given the finger (or are about to give the finger) to the convention that says, “People have a job, go to work every day, and do what they’re told in exchange for a paycheck.”
• You don’t buy into the notion that “work” has to be something unpleasant that you drag yourself through before you can do the things you enjoy.
• When you told people that you wanted to start your own business, to make a movie, to sell all your stuff and travel on the cheap, to homeschool or unschool your kids, or to explore some new and exciting idea, your family and friends told you that you were being unrealistic or crazy.
• You probably don’t feel like you totally fit in with “normal” people, and a deep part of you (if not all of you) is actually pretty damn proud of that.

Let’s face it: You’re a bit of a rebel, and that’s a very cool thing. No great life was ever lived through the precise following of a script. No great influencer has ever blindly adhered to the rules of what he or she was “supposed to do.” No great invention has ever been created while coloring inside the lines.

More often than not, successful people owe their success to their spirit of rebellion — to their willingness to question the rules.

But there’s a problem, and it’s this: Rebellion isn’t enough.

The formula isn’t “Break from convention; pass Go; collect two hundred (million) dollars.” If all you had to do to succeed was to ignore the rules and pursue your bliss, there’d be more 40-year-old dope-smoking art school dropouts who made their millions playing XBox and learning to play “Free Bird” on the guitar.

And I only know a few guys who have done that.

If you’re buttoned down and very conservative, this might not be your course. But I like Question The Rules as a project because it speaks to the outsiders (and boy, I was quite the outsider for a lot of my life). ( .. more .. )

– Chris Brogan, New York Times bestselling author of Trust Agents

The problem with nonconformity (i.e. why life as a punk rock rebel can suck)

Lee Stranahan — one of the fine gentlemen bringing you this course — wrote and directed an independent movie called Breathing Room. There’s a character in the movie who’s a punk, and in one scene, a woman points at an odd patch on his jacket and asks, “What is this?”

He says, “It’s the symbol for Anarchy.”

And she says, “No, the symbol for Anarchy is an A inside of a circle.”

And he says, “You’re kind of missing the whole point of anarchy, aren’t you?”

The problem with anarchy, nonconformity, and rebellion is that they’re all about a lack of rules — about learning what not to do. It’s like teaching someone to drive a car by saying, “Now, don’t steer by eating a sandwich.” You put your teenager in front of the wheel with only that advice, and it’s likely your insurance rates will be going up soon.

Punk rock entrepreneurs usually start doing their own thing because they don’t want a nine-to-five job. Figuring out what they do want — and, by the way, how the hell they’re going to do it — is something that kind of happens later. Kind of. If they’re lucky.

Rebels though we may be, we still need some help answering a few questions:

• If you CAN’T endure a job any longer, how CAN you earn enough income to live the way you want?
• If you DON’T feel it’s necessary to keep up with the Joneses, what goals DO you want to pursue?
• If you’ve decided NOT to go from A to Z in the conventional way, just HOW the hell are you going to get there?

If normal rules don’t apply, are there any guidelines as to what to expect on your journey? And if you’re totally forging your own path, does that mean that no advice applies, that you’re totally, one hundred percent on your own?

Relax. There’s a way to be guided without being straightjacketed, and it’s to start thinking in terms of tools rather than plans.

How to build your dream house

Societal and conventional rules are like blueprints. They say, “Follow this blueprint to build this house.” Rules like that are neither good nor bad; they just have a clear end result that you need to consider when deciding whether or not you want to follow them.

If you want to end up living in the house that’s shown in the blueprints, then it makes sense to follow those rules. The problem occurs when your desires deviate from what the plans show.

Maybe you don’t want a 2-car garage. Maybe you want a basement rec room instead.

Maybe you don’t want to pour your foundation in San Diego, because you want your house to be in Portland.

Maybe you want a “green,” energy-efficient house, and the one in the plans is an eco hog.

Nonconformity would tell you, “If the house in the plans isn’t the one you want, ignore the plans.” And then you go off and be all proud of yourself for being punk rock and rebellious, but at the end of the day you aren’t any closer to your eco-friendly house in Portland with the 2-car garage, and you end up going back to your shitty studio apartment in Brooklyn.

But the plans aren’t wrong. The plans aren’t bad. The plans simply lead you somewhere you don’t want to go. So rather than being all angry at the plans or frustrated that no plans for your dream house seem to be out there, you should be learning the drafting skills that will allow you to draw your own.

And this is where we — Johnny B. Truant and Lee Stranahan — come in.

The Anarchist’s toolbox

We can’t tell you how exactly to build your dream house, but we can teach you how to sketch the plans for it. We can show you how to swing a hammer, work a drill, raise the roof trusses, pour the foundation, and wire the circuit breakers. You don’t need to follow someone else’s instructions to know what to do as long as you have the right tools in your toolbox. And that, my friends, is what the D.I.Y. ethic is all about.

I (Johnny) write for some of the biggest websites on the internet and built a six-figure online business within a year. I can’t tell you, in your unique situation, exactly how to do what I’ve done from where you are, but I can tell you how I did it from where I was.

Lee made a movie, writes for the Huffington Post, has appeared on CNN several times and in Variety magazine, and interviewed director Kevin Smith at Kevin’s house. Lee can’t tell you exactly how to do those things from within your shoes, but he can tell you exactly what steps led him there, and how he’d do it again.

We created Question the Rules: The nonconformist’s punk rock, DIY, nuts-and-bolts guide to creating the business and life you really want, starting with what you already have by reverse-engineering the tools we use every day — the ones that sit inside of our own personal anarchist’s toolboxes.

We can give you those tools. We can teach you how to use them. And we’ve also interviewed a bunch of master craftsmen (read: “awesomely successful people”) who were willing to toss a few of their best tools into the box as well.

Here’s what we came up with:

Module #1: The punk rock, DIY mindset

Most of you aren’t crazy, flamboyant, screaming punks. I’d wager that most of you are curious and defiant, but are still “normal” by most standards. Accordingly, you think you’re like everyone else… and you’re not.

If you think you’re normal, you’ll judge yourself and your actions by the standards of normal people. You’ll listen to the opinions of normal people, and you’ll mark your progress based upon the perceptions of people who aren’t like you.

At the least, this can be confusing and limiting. And at the worst, it can be spirit-crushing and cause you to quit.

In this module, we talk about:

• How inspiration for nonconformists typically precedes the plan, and how you’ll need to learn to act first and figure out the details later
• What “normal” people assume they need when starting a business, and why those needs may or may not apply to you
• Lee’s unconventional plan to start a restaurant for $1.99 (which he invites you to steal)
• Why there are many, many ways to approach a venture — and what’s stopping you from seeing most of them
• Why uncertainty and the possibility of failure are absolutely, inevitably, comfortably part of the success process
• “Johnny’s Rule,” and why the story of any breakout success always begins with, “That dumbass”
• Why you should be inspired by your mentors, but not duplicate what they’ve done
• How a DIY, stripped-down, minimalist approach to business can protect and empower you
• How some of the “normal paths to success” not only may not fit your life, but may actually take you to very different, much more unattractive destinations than people realize
• What the #1 ingredient for success in any endeavor is, in Johnny’s humble and quite punk rock opinion

Module #2: Setting your real goals

There are two ways to get you and your goals closer together. The normal process is to find ways — through work, research, introspection, grit, whatever — to move you forward on the path toward those goals. But what few people realize is that the distance between you and your goals can be closed in another way: By bringing the goals closer to you, which is what this module is all about.

Here’s what we talk about:

• How to separate “means” goals from “ends” goals (or “Why a practicing Buddhist would whack Tiger Woods with a cane”)
• How most people don’t know why they want what they want, and why they’re afraid to figure it out
• Why your imagined worst-case scenario — “losing everything” in pursuit of a gutsy goal — isn’t that big of a deal
• How unsystematizing, unautomating, and watching the “trivial details” in your life can pay off big time
• How to become a “valueist,” and get more goodness out of less stuff — maybe even at a lower cost
• Why many of the things you’re waiting to do until you’re rich can be done right now
• How to save money and eliminate annoying or depressing things in your life at the same time by finding and getting rid of self-perpetuating “circular expenses”
• Why going on autopilot is so incredibly easy, and so incredibly detrimental to living the life you want
• How mindfulness can start getting you some of your goals almost immediately
• Why a satisfying lifestyle actually tends to cost far less than an unsatisfying lifestyle
• The incredibly pervasive (and usually incorrect) perception that if you enjoy something, then it must be wrong — and how overcoming it can make big life changes happen fast

Module #3: Belief and faith

There’s a Stephen Wright joke that goes, “You know that feeling where you’ve tipped a chair back as far as it’ll go, and you feel like you’re just about to fall over backward? I feel like that all the time.”

That’s pretty much the life of an entrepreneur. No matter how successful or unsuccessful you are, you’re always a hair’s breadth away from falling over, given the wrong sequence of events at the wrong time. It’s easy to worry or get panicked, and learning how to keep your cool — to have faith and not look down, to believe in yourself and what you’re doing no matter what happens — is a skill… and not at all an easy one.

Here’s what we talk about:

• The fact that worry is normal, that you’re hardly the first entrepreneur to experience it, and how to deal with it
• How our natural tendency is to anticipate the worst — and how to bring yourself back more to center
• Why risk and uncertainty are not just expected in the entrepreneurial experience, but a required and vital part of it
• The incredibly difficult transition from “long-term security thinking” to “just get through today thinking” — which Johnny calls “staying one step ahead of the spider”
• What The Matrix can teach you about the reality of the world, of problems, and of business
• What worry really is, and why you therefore can never believe what it says, anyway
• Both of our curious stories of repeatedly finding exactly what we needed exactly when we needed it — as long as we kept stepping out there without a net
• What you should do about perceived problems that are freaking you out, giving you panic attacks, costing you sleep, etc. (a very easy thing to do that is also incredibly, bone-crushingly difficult to do)
• The cause/effect relationship between serendipity and keeping your shit together
• How faith and belief is like a muscle that must be exercised over and over if you’re to grow
• One thing about which the Rolling Stones were absolutely, totally, and completely right (HINT: It wasn’t the heroin)

Modules #4-6: Networking outside of the box (Parts 1-3)

Everyone has connections, whether they realize it or not. If you haven’t noticed those connections, haven’t seen their relevance to you, or haven’t gotten anything out of them, it’s because something in your networking strategy is a bit off.

And networking is where you really start to fill your toolbox… where you start seeing how you can start from where you are right now, and get to where you want to be in life and in your business. You’ve gotten your head straight, so in these three sessions, we’ve reverse-engineered the things we did to achieve what we have.

Hint #1: Most things come through the help of other people, which means that the better you network, the more you’ll succeed.

and Hint #2: If you do this wrong, you not only won’t get what you want, but you’ll also look stupid and piss a lot people off.

Here’s what we talk about:

• Why Realtors with business cards in convention halls have it all wrong
• Why everyone has connections, and how you can learn to recognize yours
• Why thinking too hard about “networking” will make you a huge networking failure
• How to decide how to approach people, with what (if any) offer, at which phase of your relationship
• How to practice “selective starfucking”
• Why not looking to get anything out of networking is one of the best networking techniques ever
• How photos and social proof can help make you new connections
• Why “hanging out and being cool” (a Naomi Dunford concept) is an incredibly important skill to learn
• The “massive exposure networking” technique, and how it primes people to want to talk to you
• Why not actively networking is one of the most powerful ways to network
• The “stair-step networking” technique, which is either very effective or very dangerous, depending on a few small differences in use
• How to pitch without really pitching
• The art of doing favors for others
• Lee’s “triangulation networking,” which sounds more ominous than it is
• How to stop looking for personal gain, and what you’ll probably gain by doing so
• Why learning to think in terms of win-win is one of the most powerful habits you can develop when networking
• How most people approach networking totally and completely backward, and why the inverse works better

Module #7: Defying the Box

Especially today, with the world changing as quickly as it does and with new iterations of reality and technology replacing the old faster and faster, there’s never been a worse time to “stick to what’s been working so far.” You need to be able to roll with the punches, to adapt, to evolve into new forms and to try new things. And that means stepping outside of your niche and your brand — outside of the box you’ve put yourself into — so that you can survive and thrive no matter how many things change around you.

Here’s what we’ll talk about:

• Why Johnny, who’s known as a human potential/personal development/tangentially business writer, wrote and published a novel about fame and baked goods.
• Why the economy isn’t bad but different, why it’s never going back to what it used to be, and how you can adapt and flourish.
• Why reinvention is a newly vital skill, and how to do it without losing the momentum you have now.
• How the shape of the new world paradigm has formed… and how to make it work in your favor.
• How to “unplug” the things that are anchoring you to your current way of doing things so that you can see untold new possibilities.
• Why waiting for the return of the old world economy will crush you.
• How to use location independence as arbitrage… and give yourself a raise without earning one cent more.
• How to “opt out” of the things in society that bother you, giving new life to the axiom, “If you can’t beat ‘em, refuse to participate.”
• How to create and prosper in your new “workplace of tomorrow.”
• How to give your kids the “classroom of tomorrow” today.

Module #8: Breaking Out of Business Dogma

Once you break business down to its core, you’ll see that there is really just you and the customer. There is a problem and the solution. There is what is needed to solve the problem and what is just bells and whistles. And once you do that, you’ll see that there are all sorts of business opportunities you’d never conceived of, because you were blinded by dominant perceptions of what a business had to look like.

In QTR-Land, business is business and little else… but it’s not “business as usual” at all.

Here’s what we’ll talk about:

• Why the increasing mobility of powerful technology is changing everything, and how to take advantage of it.
• What hasn’t changed about business… and which rules you’d question at your own detriment.
• What bare minimum is actually needed to start an entrepreneurial venture. (And it may surprise you.)
• How to demystify the “magic” nature of business — especially online — and get to a rock-bottom understanding that proves that you can actually do it… no matter how “magical” it used to seem.
• How to strip your ventures down to the “just do it” core that has you taking action today.
• How to invent jobs and businesses that don’t exist yet. (Hint: The ability to produce something out of nothing pretty much makes you bulletproof.)
• The incorrect beliefs about successful entrepreneurs that are holding you back, and the corresponding truths that will free you.
• The secret of success that involves doing a lot of stuff. And then doing a lot more.
• Why pure “art” or “creative” careers like filmmaking and fiction writing are more possible than ever in today’s market and with today’s technologies… and are totally, completely, realistically “do-able” for most people with stamina and talent.
• How to reverse the normal orders of business, such as selling a product before creating it.

Module #9: Redefining Failure

Your ability to handle failure is essential to your ability to break out of the normal, the boring, and the unsatisfying. Every amazing event or action is amazing because it’s venturing into the unknown, and if you do something unknown, there’s risk. If there’s risk, you could fail. But if you don’t risk, you’ll never truly succeed.

YOU WILL FAIL in your life’s journey, especially if you work outside the box. Get used to it, embrace it, and make it yours. You’re going to fail, so you might as well get comfortable and turn it into something useful.

Here’s what we talk about:

• Why you’re not done failing no matter how successful you become, and why that’s a good thing
• Why you should actually quit a lot of what you’re doing (and accept the mini failure) instead of pushing through to “succeed”
• Why you never want to become truly numb to the pain of failure
• How to turn failure into a learning experience
• Why Lee’s customer asking for her money back made his course much better
• Why failing in grad school was one of the best things that ever happened to Johnny
• How Johnny “succeeded” after “failing” to complete a half Ironman triathlon (both sets of quotes intentional because the concepts are both arbitrary)
• How failure gives you better opportunities and results than success would have given you
• How to rise from the ashes
• How to survive your difficult time in the ashes (before rising from them) without losing your optimism or your mind
• How to tell your success story in advance
• Why failure in the important things is always temporary on the big timeline
• How to stay cool under fire

And we included transcripts!

This required questioning our own RULE that said “everyone will want to listen and nobody will want to read,” but we did it, and so Question the Rules includes PDF transcripts of all nine of the above modules for you visual learners and note-takers.

Then, we talked to other successful rule-questioners

Because we don’t expect you to be “blind followers” and simply accept what Lee and I say, we wanted to find some of the kick-ass people around us who had built great businesses and lives and find out if they’d defied convention to get to where they are now. We wanted to get under the hood — to see what rules they’ve broken, and what differences disobedience has made for their lives and careers.

And guess what? They were even more unconventionally fantastic than we’d thought.

Here’s who you’ll hear from:

Adam Baker - Debt crusher and paradigm breaker who took his family to tour the world while pursuing minimalism and destroying debt; utilizer of cactus.

Benny Lewis – Language expert whose fluency strategy is “just start speaking the damn language.”

Chris Garrett – Successful speaker, author, and blogger who proves that you don’t need to be an asshole or an extrovert to make it online.

Chris Guillebeau – Writer, traveler, citizen of the world, and author of The Art of Non-Conformity who travels for a living and has never had a real job (and will never need one).

Chris Pearson – Creator of the Thesis WordPress theme and somewhat outspoken proponent of “nobody’s going to tell me what to do.”

Clay Collins – Brilliant businessman who “fucking loves marketing” and who runs a huge, successful business despite being kind of A.D.D.

Dave Navarro - Launch coach to the stars, and guy who can generally get more people to buy what you’re selling. Launched a breakout product with “****” in the title, but suggests that it still might not be masking profanity.

Debra Gould - “Staging Diva” who voluntarily left a high-paying job to start her own higher-paying (and freer, and self-determined) business.

Derek Halpern - Master of psychology in sales and marketing who used a blitz strategy to appear as if from out of nowhere and become a huge name on the net.

Derek Rydall - Writer, actor, and “Emergineer” who quit the Hollywood life to become a monk before deciding to return and bring some serenity and “NON-self-help” back to the entertainment world.

Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein - Writer, actor, and coach who gave up her law career to teach people how to “live their truth.”

Eric Proulx - Creator and featured “lemonade-maker” in the film Lemonade, which is about people who lost their jobs and then found their life’s work.

Hugh McLeod - Artist, cartoonist who built his fame on business card doodles, and author of the book Ignore Everybody And 39 Other Keys to Creativity.

Ishita Gupta - Seth Godin’s “Head of Hoopla” and editor of Fearless magazine, which is (wait for it) about overcoming fear.

James Chartrand - Designer, blogger, and teacher who broke onto the scene as a man, then revealed that she was actually a woman.

Jason Fried – Co-Founder of software company 37signals (makers of Basecamp, Highrise, and others) and co-author of the unconventional business bestseller Rework.

John T. Unger – Artist, entrepreneur, and impossibility remediation specialist. Choosing to defy the “starving artist” cliche, he makes a six-figure income by selling giant bowls of fire.

Jon Morrow – Newly-Mexican Associate Editor at Copyblogger.com and co-founder of Partnering Profits; ridiculously successful businessman who was “supposed to” die before the age of two, and then repeatedly thereafter. Interestingly, this was a convention he decided not to adhere to.

Julien Smith – Bestselling author, speaker, edge-walker, and blogger who has turned the word “fuck” into a strong brand element.

Marie Forleo – Multi-passionate blockbuster entrepreneur and bestselling author of Make Every Man Want You who somehow defies a niche by (among other things) offering high-end business mastermind groups and her own workout videos on the same website.

Megan Elizabeth Morris - Founder of IdeaSchema.org; adventurer, catalyst, seeker of ideas; holder of the ridiculous notion that playing video games is an essential part of the workday.

Naomi Dunford – Author of IttyBiz.com, the extraordinarily popular unconventional marketing blog aimed at “helping solo-preneurs earn more and suck less.” Maker of crafts; consumer of coffee; unschooler of boys. Also: incapable of bullshit.

Nathan Hangen - Internet “mercenary” who started online while deployed overseas through massive action… and then turned a few bucks into a five-figures-in-24-hours product launch.

Pace & Kyeli Smith – Lesbian, pagan, unschooling, geek, tattooed and pierced (Kyeli), bisexual and transgender (Pace), passionate world-changers and paradigm shifters who are leading the Freak Revolution.

Pat Flynn – Radically transparent passive income specialist who manages to “be everywhere” with a dominant YouTube presence and a wildly successful podcast.

Sonia Simone – Senior Editor for Copyblogger.com and founder of Remarkable Communication; co-creator of the Third Tribe (and coiner of the phrase “Third Tribe”), parent, meditator, self-described “confused and fragile human being.”

Warren MacDonald – Speaker and climber of extreme peaks and frozen waterfalls who lost both legs in an accident before deciding to step up his game and climb even bigger things.

Interviews with the course creators

We decided to see what was “under the hood” for each of us, as well, to go beyond the formal course material and find out why each of us does what we do.

The interviews turned out really well, but if you think interviewing each other was a ridiculous thing to do, it was Lee’s idea.

Johnny B. Truant – What authenticity really means, why fear can be your ally, and why using a pseudonym might just give you the freedom you’re looking for.

Lee Stranahan – Unconventional living, unschooling kids, unassisted birth, ungolfing, and if he was ever less “un” than he is now (answer: not really).

Then, because that wasn’t quite enough, we made bonus recordings

There are seven of these. We won’t describe them in full here because this page is long enough and the titles are either descriptive enough or WTF enough that they’re enticing even without description:

• Help Get Johnny’s Novel Out Of The Closet
• Marketing for non-marketers
• Imperfection
• Narrowing your market
• Standing out and Hiring Clowns
• Pocket Full of Woo-Woo
• Pocket Full of Woo-Woo Redux

Enticing, right?

So, come on in and join us!

But wait, there’s more!

We don’t have Shamwows or OxyClean to toss in here, but we do have a crapload of bonuses that we and our interviewees have contributed. You know — just to make the stupidly good offer even more stupidly good. (It’s a marketing strategy.)

Here are some of the extras we’ve lined up for you:

• 20% off a Great Bowl O’ Fire by John T. Unger (up to $300 value)
• $25 off any web or design package from Caffeinated Design Studio (the folks who made this site)
• Best of the IttyBiz SpeakEasy – A collection of the most popular sessions from the now-closed IttyBiz SpeakEasy. Totally limited release… not even available for sale.
• Megan Morris’s Idea Catalyst e-Book
• A full free month from Pace and Kyeli Smith’s popular 52 Weeks to Awesome course
• The first two chapters of Beyond Blogging, Nathan Hangen and Mike Cliffe Jones’s book of interviews, analysis, and case studies of 15 of the world’s most successful A-List bloggers.

So you’re getting like $500 just in bonuses. And that’s on top all of the course content. WE’RE OUT OF OUR MINDS! (All used cars must be liquidated today, etc.)

So what are you waiting for? The value of the bonuses along cover the price you’ll be paying. So… let’s get to rocking.

We’ll see you inside, punk rocker.