Say I have a girlfriend called Britney (don’t judge me). A while back Britney asked to borrow some money.

Sadly, this soon became a habit. She’d borrow and borrow and never pay me back. Finally one night I caught Britney stealing from my mum’s wallet to fund her next cocaine fuelled sex tape.

At some point I might lose my temper.

Anger evolved to protect us from behaviour like this. It’s a defence mechanism, evolved to stop people from running all over us. It’s pretty nifty too.

If your playing videogames is annoying someone, that’s their defence mechanism kicking in. Chances are they feel that’s taking time away from something they feel is more valuable. Maybe they feel neglected. Maybe they don’t see games as of value (anymore than you see value in shoe shopping).

Although we think of anger as one emotion, it has a lot of range: from every-so-slight annoyance to apoplectic fury. This scale allows us to (mostly) act in proportion to whatever slight befalls us. When Britney first asked to borrow some money, I was a touch peeved – but if she keeps on asking I’ll eventually become furious. If Britney picks up on this, hopefully she’ll learn to stop before I get the police involved again.

In the same way, the anger you’re encountering here could be from playing games or from many other little things added together.

Essentially all anger stems from something violating a person’s standards. You just have to figure out what standard, and either come to terms with that or challenge it. Chances are you don’t understand what she’s thinking and she doesn’t understand you either. You’re probably angry that she’s angry!

In a way anger is a nuclear deterrent. Like all the countries pointing weapons of mass destruction at each other, we know that if we anger someone enough, they might stop at nothing to harm us back. So we do our best not to. For the most part, anger is a twistedly beautiful system for helping us to all get along. And as long as you keep it in check, it works pretty well.

As for what to do about it? Hiding your frustration will only make it grow. The solution – to quote John Green – is to “use your words”.

JJ I hope this helps answer your question. If you’d like to ask me a question please leave a comment below or on Facebook.

It’s the end of my helping others challenge. Here’s some of my thoughts on what happened.

Honestly I have quite mixed feelings about the experience – I’m not sure my efforts made much of a difference to the world, nor do I think they were particularly entertaining or inspiring for others. Unlike my previous challenges, this one hasn’t had much I could showcase; almost half of the people I’ve helped asked to remain confidential.

However there is plenty I can learn from. I’m visiting Russia later this week and will be starting my next challenge when I return on March 18th.

Just leave your guess and chosen charity here on Facebook. The closest guess by midnight tonight (Weds 11th April, British time) wins.

This is my loose change jar. Every day I empty any excess coins from my wallet into this; it’s been going for a while. Not wanting to give too much away, but there’s definitely a few pound coins in there…

Each person can only answer once (I’ll only accept your first answer) but if you want to increase your odds, you can ask a friend to post too.

I’ll post the results later tonight!

Update: here’s the result. We have a tie!

JJ from Arizona asks: “What is the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything?”

Transcript

Note: this isn’t an exact transcript. It’s actually my original script, which is slightly longer and I will have deviated from in my video. But it’s close enough.

JJ thanks for starting me off with such an easy question. No the answer is NOT FORTY TWO.

That particular cliché comes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

In that book a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings – that we call ‘mice’ – attempted to learn the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything by building a supercomputer the size of a city specifically for that purpose. After leaving their computer to think for 7½ million years it produced a final answer of: 42.

As it later explained, nobody understood the question.

So great. But is there a real answer?

A funny human quality is we try to find meaning in everything. Usually that meaning is kind of like a person.

Egyptians thought the sun was a God, rising and setting on solar boats. Romans saw lightning as the will of an angry Thor. In the Middle Ages we believed epilepsy was caused by demons – and we’d drilled into victim’s skulls to release those evil spirits.

We find that ridiculous now, but we ourselves might create meaning out of a dice roll, a passing cat or a celebrities’ sudden death. The more we’re affected by something, the greater our need to find meaning in it.

Oh people are pretty good at figuring out what other people mean. Our brains are wired that way. But we try to fit everything else to this mould, and end up seeing everything like a person. When the traffic lights change just as your car is approaching, it may feel like a person choosing to punishing you. You may even call the lights names, like ‘Barbara’. But it’s really just a timer.

So is there a meaning to everything? Let’s assume there is. Say that the meaning for everything is to love your fellow man and eat your vegetables. It doesn’t really matter. The problem is, what’s the meaning of that meaning?

You see, whatever your explanation is, there needs to be an explanation for it. Any explanation needs an explanation. And so on. I don’t know of any explanation that itself doesn’t invite another question.

And so we’re kind of like the mice, with 42 as our answer, and no idea what the question means.

The world can however have real meaning to you. Things matter to you in a way that the universe is indifferent about. But that meaning is personal. And I think it’s a crucial part of life to figure out why.

As Mark Twain said: “The Two Most Important Days In Your Life Are The Day You Are Born, And The Day You Find Out Why”.

Thanks to JJ from Arizona for today’s question. Leave your questions below and I’ll answer the best one next week.

If you’d like to ask a question, leave a comment below or on Facebook.

11 years ago I was an impoverished student about to graduate with £14,000 in debt. I did what any sensible person would do in this situation, and started my own business.

I co-founded with someone who proved to be less than ideal when he punched me in the face during our second board meeting. He owned 49% of my company.

It took a year for me to save enough to buy him out. Still – after our first year we’d at last turned a profit: a princely sum of £200, or about enough to buy one iPod touch.

My company grew rapidly into the largest web design company in our city – 15 staff, nice offices, and an expansive roster of pretty sweet clients. Some people considered me quite successful, at least for my age.

I wasn’t happy though. Whilst it soon became profoundly obvious to me why (I was in the wrong business) I struggled for some time with what to do about it. 9 months ago I shut down that business and changed my company into something else quite different, and we’re now making more than we did in our first 10 years. More importantly – I’m happy too.

So that’s my business experience, in a nutshell.

What we can learn from all that

For my current challenge I’m mentoring quite a few people who are just starting with their own business. I hope it might help a few more if I shared my thoughts here.

On you as a founder

• Firstly, do it.
  Every single person – from my family to my closest friends – ultimately doubted that this was a good idea. (Many started being supportive, and changed their minds when times got harder). If you feel compelled to do it, don’t let anyone stop you, and don’t expect anyone to support you either.
• Start with total brutal honesty.
  I’d say this is Rule #1 in life. Everybody deludes themselves in some way – and in groups it can often be easiest to delude each other. But the more honestly you can see the world, the better your decisions will be. Doubt yourself. Question everything. If someone put a gun to your head, could you tear holes in your ideas? When your plans can withstand that, they’re probably pretty good.
• Practice saying no. A lot.
  You will almost certainly want to do a hundred different things. Almost all business founders are like this by nature – they see opportunity everywhere and change the world (I’m certainly no exception). But this is a terrible way to run a business. You need to focus on doing a very small number of things really well, and that means saying no to 1,000 other things. This is harder than you think, and far more powerful than you can imagine.
• Growing past 2-3 people will cripple most founders.
  Most small businesses are started by a person who’s good at what their business does: accountants start accountancy companies, bakers start bakeries; I was a geek who started a web design company. These people will find it extremely hard to grow past 2-3 people; most often they struggle to hire someone ‘as good as themselves’, and end up tired and frustrated trying to do everything. If you only read one business book, get the E-Myth Revisited and learn what to do about it, or at least skim these free notes.

On your business idea 

• Don’t be afraid to change tacks.
  There is a saying that no business plan survives first contact with the customer. Nintendo started by making playing cards. Facebook was designed for university students. My own company built websites for 10 years. Changing direction doesn’t have to make you weak or indecisive – you may have to adjust to find your perfect niche. Just try to do it early and avoid doing it too often.
• Just one. Powerful. Idea.
  You can blend complimentary ideas (e.g. a restaurant with comedy shows) but not totally disparate ones (a restaurant that sells management consulting services).  When you start pick out just a few key features of your idea, and focus on making those amazing. Say no to everything else.
• A successful business is either loved or needed.
  It’s exceeding rare to be both, although as owners we always like to think our companies are loved! (see Rule #1: be honest with yourself). Ensure you’re essential or utterly irresistible. Most often if you sell to businesses you have to be needed – like accountants, lawyers, web designers; if you sell to consumers you need to be loved – like iPhones, movie theatres, cosmetics.
• Imagine being an outside investor.
  Pretend to be someone with a lot of self-made money but not much time. Meet yourself right now, and listen to your own explanation of your business. What do you think? Does it sound like a good investment? Once again – be honest. (Sidenote: it’s ok to have a business which isn’t planning to be a big financial success. But very few entrepreneurs believe they’re starting one of those).
• Align with your passions.
  True passion is infectious. It will win over doubting prospects. It can make staff loyal to you. Passion will give you boundless energy and keep you going when others would throw in the towel. Ultimately if you build a business around something you’re not passionate about – and I made this mistake – you’ll wake up one day and think “what have I gotten myself into?”

On marketing

• Marketing isn’t about changing people’s minds.
  Your job isn’t to convince people to want what you’re offering. It’s to help your prospects convince themselves that what you’re offering will help them get what they really want.
• A few things not to skimp upon.
  Your logo, tagline and website are utterly essential; they’re the first impression you’ll make to most people, and your only message while you’re not there. (If you sell face-to-face to businesses add business cards to that list). If you need professional help, get it. Don’t be tempted to hire your teenage nephew, or do it yourself. This is akin to being your own lawyer, and equally disastrous. You don’t have to pay a fortune – just keep your requirements simple and emphasise quality over quantity. Don’t worry about letterheads or compliment slips or custom email footers or any of that crap until you’re making money.
• Advertising is a tax you pay for being unremarkable.
  A good idea is easy to sell; a great one will sell and spread itself. The harder you have to work to explain and sell what you do, the more your idea needs work. There are two solutions: simplify what you do, or change tacks entirely. You won’t sell more of a bad idea by making it more complicated.

Everyone has to find their own path, but you can save yourself a lot of time and stress by learning from the best and brightest who have come before you. I highly recommend reading just three brilliant books: The E-Myth Revisited, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and the Personal MBA; they’re worth at least a year’s head start by themselves. Good luck!

Forget my other rubbish challenges. I’ve had enough with endlessly being stopped for autographs on the street. To forge a new identity, I’ll be undergoing advanced hair replacement therapy for 30 days, until I look like this.

Look, it must be true. I announced it on Facebook and everything.

Posted conspicuously on April 1st. Yes, that means this is an April Fool.

As part of my current challenge, I’ve been asked to give a lot of people my advice. Apparently the fancy term is ‘mentoring’.

Yesterday I met with my sister. Recently unemployed, she started a rather fabulous blog which she dreams would be her full time occupation. I’m going to try and help her make that dream a reality.

Whilst my advice won’t apply to everyone, this is what I said to her.

Reality check

First, some harsh truths. Lots of people want to make a living blogging. Working from home, bowl of Cheetos perched on your lap, lighting up Cuban cigars with $100 bills is quite appealing. But very few succeed. Those who do usually had to invest at least a year to make it happen.

Also however good you are, and even if my advice was perfect (it isn’t), there’s no certainty this will pay you enough to live off. At least for a while, I’d think of it as a supplementary income; so you should continue to look for work, pay your mortgage, and run this on the side. However – as I’ll mention later – it is possible to earn extra money writing for other people.

The time you have right now – as a delightfully unwashed full-time hobo – is incredibly valuable! You’ve got more time now than you likely will for a while (until you can do this full time) so use it wisely. Let’s get started.

How to make stacks of cash blogging

Mixing your passions with your income can be a messy affair – one tends to sully the other. But it can be done. Here are some tried-and-tested money making approaches for blogsters:

Bad ideas

• Advertising
  You need absolutely ludicrous traffic to live off this: millions of hits / month. You can definitely run some ads to supplement your income, but don’t expect to retire off it. All you need would is a free Google AdSense account.
• Sponsorship
  If you’re lucky enough to have an established audience – and particularly a niche – people may want to sponsor you, or at least give you free stuff. Again you’re going to need a sizable audience, and you’d have to be doing phenomenally well to help to live off this. Let’s move on.

Good ideas

• Books
  Now you might well be thinking that writing a book whilst building a successful blog is akin to climbing Mount Kangchenjunga on the back of a unicycling dolphin. And you may well be right. But! Many bloggers have successfully sold books that simply compile what is already on their blog; typically one year of material. This is achievable assuming you planned for it. You don’t need a publishing deal either – just self publish an e-book on Amazon. It costs you nothing and you keep the majority of what you sell. Bonus: you’re now a published author!
• Merchandise
  If you have a powerful identity that people connect to, people will pay for your stuff. Generally people don’t care as much for (say) your logo on a t-shirt, as they’ll care about one of your slogans on a t-shirt. Of course, for this to work, you’re going to need a strong identity that makes sense on t-shirts / mousemats / posters / tea-cosies / whatever. Blogs with strong visuals (e.g. comics) have a bit of a built in advantage here, so you might want to consider posting regular images (more on that later). Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, you don’t need to make any of the stuff, or hold stock, or charge for it, or deliver it. You just need to create the visuals.
• Freelance
  Prostitute your writing talents – at least for a while. Throw up a more professional website offering copywriting services. Link your blog to it. Go to local networking events – they’re usually free –meet people and tell them you do copywriting for blogs. Consider marketing/web/SEO agencies as possible sources of work; they often need help writing copy for their clients. You’ll probably need to start cheap, but it all adds to your credentials, gets you out of the house and supports your writing skills. This is the one idea here which could make you a full-time salary quickly; if you like the idea of working as a writer, it’s not a bad start.

Slightly wilder idea

• Kickstarter
  Kickstarter is a website for raising money from crowds of normal people, instead of via a publisher or company. For example, musicians might raise money to create a new album, if they could only persuade 1,000 people to give them say $5 each. Kickstarter has successfully raised millions for a fantastic array of creative, technical and entertainment projects, and if you have a worthwhile idea, it might be a way of ‘kickstarting’ your own. If you can build a loyal audience and they’d like to see you quit your job to write that collection of unicycling dolphin poetry you’ve dreamt about, this is one way to get paid for it. You need a strong idea and a great pitch video – a loyal audience will make a big difference too.

Building your audience

So these are all cute ideas, but you probably noticed they tend to revolve around having a large audience. You have hundreds of loyal readers; now you need to grow to tens of thousands and more.

I will spew forth a tonne of highly personal suggestions. It’s your integrity on the line though – so only go with what feels right to you:

Broad suggestions

• Expand your concepts
  You do a fabulous job of writing about things close to you, like your family or collection of mutilated Troll dolls. However this has limited appeal beyond your most loyal followers. If you are Justin Bieber, you can write about your favourite shade of pasta and get 20 million hits.  If you’re not, you can always piggy-back off his name – e.g. “10 horrible things I wish would happen to Justin Bieber”. If you think about it, this is what all newspapers and magazines do. It doesn’t have to be celebrities, just link your work to include things that more people relate to: like losing their job, or crappy British weather, or sandpapering Simon Cowell’s face.
• Make your titles so attractive your mouse wants to make sweet, squeaky love to them all night long
  I cannot emphasise this enough: Most people will only see the title of your page. In Twitter, or Digg, or Stumbleupon etc. that’s all they’ll see. In some cases, some might also see a small picture. From that precious morsel they decide whether to view your article or not. So optimise the crap out of your titles. Read up on this. Pay attention to how many people Like / re-tweet / Digg etc. everything you do and learn from it.
• Get timely
  Most popular articles are in the moment. This is one reason why we rarely keep old newspapers for fun. People like what’s new, and there’s usually something big going on in the world you can piggy back off. I’m not saying every post has to be about current news, but if something big happens and you can comment on it in time, you’ll get a readership boost.
• Create one or more regular series
  Series are good for lots of reasons. They’re less work, because you get into a pattern. Your audience knows what to expect, and if they like it, they’ll see out more. They’re ideally suited to making an e-book you can charge for too. I’ll list some specific ideas in a moment.
• Create a visual element to your identity
  Comics have a slight edge over plain writers when it comes to merchandise and making shareable posts. Consider drawing the odd cartoon – it really doesn’t matter if you can’t draw, some of the best cartoonists can’t – as long as your message is funny and shareable. Post these drawings on Facebook et al for people to share and make sure your web address is tucked in the corner somewhere.

Specific ideas

• Ask Aunt Jessseeker
  Let your audience ask you questions. Answer them with a comical alter-ego – the delightfully inappropriate Aunt Jessseeker – a well spoken, deliciously direct lady of leisure and part time frequenter of crack cocaine. Or whatever. Encourage people to post their questions in advance, but if they don’t you can always make some up to start with. This is great because it encourages people to engage with you (and share your hilarious replies).
• Fantasy interviewer
  You’d attract loads of visitors if you could only interview big name celebrities. Well don’t let pesky ‘reality’ or ‘integrity’ get in the way! Make up regular interviews. Make it as bombastic and ludicrous as you dare. You don’t have to stick with celebrities either – perhaps historical figures or fictional characters?
• Spammers up your game
  Where you employ your copywriting skills to rewrite spam emails you’ve found. “Oh dear. I don’t think PENI5 is spelt with a number 5!”. Et cetera.

And finally…

This is the end of my epic rant. I hope you found it useful.

Over the next week I’m look at how we might improve the design and brand of your website. We’ll also follow up with what you’ve been writing since.

I didn’t say it above because I selfishly wanted to make this article interesting to other people, but your writing is already fantastic and never fails to make me smile. I hope only to help direct your considerable talents into something that can justly support you, your husband and your love of gold-plated chocolate medallions.

Now get out there and write!

I’ve been wrestling with the idea of ‘helping others’.

Like many I don’t believe I do enough. Most of my time is spent on myself and those close to me. I’m not against helping people, but I certainly wouldn’t claim to do it very often. Some might call me selfish.

As a person I’m pretty aggressive about going-out-and-getting-what-you-want; I founded my own company fresh out of University and spend a lot of my free time on self-improvement (this website, for starters). As an entrepreneur who works with software I’m also used to making decisions based on logic. I wonder if the resulting mindset makes me less liable to sympathise with others?

In a way, I feel I’m missing something here, and while I don’t have the answers, I’m willing to explore some possibilities.

My new challenge

For 30 days I will make a conscious attempt to help others, every day. I’m going to try and explore as many ideas as possible – from teaching to creating to just listening. Some examples:

• Mentor someone starting their own business
• Help a friend launch their band by creating a music video
• Write a letter thanking an old teacher for their inspiration

I’ll be mixing up ideas big and small – some will take many days, others only minutes.

If you have a request, please leave a comment or email me (mail at oliveremberton.co.uk). I’ll be doing my best to fulfil as many as I can.

So I screwed up. I failed to complete the final 3 days of my cooking challenge. And by my own rules, that means a punishment.

What went wrong

For the past 2 months, throughout my challenges, I’ve been pushing myself harder and harder to get more done in less time. I’d typically be doing a full day at work, going to the gym (6 times a week), dance classes (5 times a week) and then trying to fit 3-4 hours in of an art or cooking challenge afterwards. It wouldn’t be uncommon for me to finish at 3-4am and wake up at 8am.

Pretty soon my energy was running so low that I got less done in the same time, so I ended up falling even further behind. I cancelled a few things, tried to buy time on weekends etc; but ultimately it was too much for me.

After finishing my last ‘big’ day of my cooking challenge, I still had 3 boring, normal days to go. I also had to prepare my company for exhibiting 6,000 miles away at SXSW, and I cancelled everything from gym to dance classes to fit it all in. I don’t know how much of it was running out of time, and how much of it was apathy at this point; it didn’t help that I’d already done my big finale. I do know I was working up until the very last hour I departed for Texas though.

My punishment

As promised, there is a punishment for failure, and mine was to eat a tin of dog food. It seemed fitting, if only because I’d been inflicting a similar fate on my recent dinner party guests!

What next?

I have no intention of continuing this pattern. I started 30 Day Challenger to help develop myself, not to kill myself.

In future I shall:

• Allow a little leeway for random events (for example, my grandmother’s death last month forced me to attempt a challenge between 4am and 6am after a funeral; really I should allow myself a day off for something like that).
• Account for more goals weekly, and less daily. It still makes sense to do something every day. But some days are more suitable than others; making goals weekly lets me move things around if needed.
• Accept that if I’m depriving myself of sleep/health that something needs to change. This may sound obvious, but my brain doesn’t always work that way!

My next challenge starts tomorrow.

For my final dinner party I chose to cook a full Sunday roast lunch for my mum, sister and one of my brothers. What could go wrong?

There were only two courses, given that my weedy little kitchen could barely hold the main as it was. I cooked roast chicken, roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese, broccoli and carrots:

The end result was tasty but sadly compromised: the chicken was undercooked and needed a few extra blasts in the microwave before serving. This did throw my timings out somewhat.

The desert (from yesterday) was much more successful:

Overall it went down pretty well with everyone but my sister, who shall henceforth be addressed as “She Who Won’t Be Receiving Any More Christmas Presents”.