One common question I’m asked a lot is how we actually balance our work lives and our family lives. Barb sums it up best:

How do you do it? You write tons and tons of stuff for The Simple Dollar, your wife works a full time job, you seem to have tons of time available for your kids, you read quite a bit, and you also seem to have a somewhat active social life. How do you do it? Do you not sleep?

There are a handful of tricks to making this all work. I’ll outline several, but I’ll start with the big one.

The line between work and family is pretty blurry at our house.
As I’ve mentioned before, I set aside a block of time each day to spend with the kids - and my wife does the same. This block usually goes from about 5:30 in the evening until 8:30 in the evening, with the last half-hour or so involving one of us putting the kids to bed while the other one does something else.

Outside of that, the lines between work and family are really blurry at our home. We’ll engage in family activities and in the middle, I’ll yank out my pocket notebook and jot down some notes. I’ll read books for review for The Simple Dollar in the late evenings when my wife is enjoying a piece of meaty fiction. My wife (who is a teacher) will grade papers on the way to an activity while I’m driving, or I’ll gather notes while she’s driving. Sometimes she even helps out with background tasks for The Simple Dollar, brainstorming ideas, correcting posts, and even helping with writing tasks here and there.

It’s not uncommon for us to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon watching a movie in the family room. The kids will choose a Pixar movie we’ve seen a dozen times and my wife and I will fire up our laptops, hers to record some grades and mine to answer some emails.

It doesn’t feel intrusive - at least not to me - because I enjoy the work so much. I love to write. I love to communicate with readers (in fact, I love it so much that I often get behind simply because I want to respond to as many emails as I can). It just feels - most of the time - like just another enjoyable thing to do in my life.

During the school year, the kids do go to daycare, a decision we put a lot of thought into before we chose it. The biggest reason, actually, was for the kids themselves - there are cognitive benefits and health benefits to such attendance. That doesn’t mean that we dump them at the door and run - I often spend days with them, taking them to the Science Center of Iowa or to the library or to the park - but I do try to maximize the time they’re at daycare, doing tasks that they can’t participate in (my work) or would greatly hinder.

The end result of all of this is that my children get my undivided attention vastly more than they did when I was working a full time job. When I had work intruding on my life then, I was either out of the house or mentally distracted when I should have been spending time with them. Now, when they need me and something work-related is on my mind, I have the freedom to slam the door on work whenever I choose. Plus, because I enjoy my work, I also have the freedom to pick it up whenever time allows without hating how it’s interfering with what I want to do - it is what I want to do.

We own one television - and it’s rarely on.
In the last month, the television’s primary use has been twofold. It’s kept us up to date with local storm coverage (since we’ve had some awful weather as of late) and it’s provided the source of our “family movie night,” where all four of us (once a week or so) watch a movie together. Other than that, I think it’s been on roughly two hours (to watch True Blood).

That’s it. The only television we own is down in the basement, and we simply don’t go down there that often. We’re too busy doing other things that we enjoy - activities that often involve active interaction with our children (like drawing pictures or building a giant model railroad).

We do lots of household chores together as a family.
We cook meals together. We clean together. We work on art projects together. We wrap presents together. We do dishes together.

Virtually any task that the children can possibly participate in is done in a social fashion. Everyone gets more out of it if we work together. Sure, there might be minor setbacks when the children get involved, but they offer a lot of help, too. Even our twenty one month old daughter can scrape plates and put them in the dishwasher (seriously) and our three year old loves stirring cookie batter.

The more things like this that we do together as a family, the tighter we bond and the more real world skills our kids have. Doing things this way turns household chores into opportunities for family bonding - and often gets things done just as fast, if not faster.

Many of our friends are also parents.
If you’re friends with parents that have children of a similar age, they’re much more understanding about things like taking kids to the bathroom or washing their hands. They’re also much more likely to be helpful when you need a hand, and you have a lot of experiences and advice worth sharing.

Here’s a perfect example. My wife had four bridesmaids at our wedding - two of them were her sisters and the other two were long-time friends. Today, one of those friends has a son that’s literally one day younger than our own, while the other has a daughter in between the ages of our kids and an infant son. The children have become part of the social bonds tying them all together.

Thus, our roles as parents and as social creatures overlap.

We choose enriching things for our relaxation time.
So when do we relax? Almost every evening, my wife and I spend some time unwinding. That time, though, is often spent reading or playing a game that requires some thinking. Last night, we both read for an hour and a half, side by side, before bed. The night before that, we played Dominion over a bottle of wine.

In short, we make an effort to keep our minds “on” as much as possible during the day.

Turning my mind “off” is done in a very focused way.
Obviously, though, being “on” all the time isn’t the best thing, so I have what I think of as an extremely focused “off” time each day. I meditate/pray for about twenty minutes - I clear my mind and do a few very basic relaxation techniques. Often, if I do this later in the day, I find myself hugely mentally refreshed for the evening instead of burnt out after a lot of work.

I used to try to do something like this during my commute, but it never really worked well, so eventually I settled on meditating/praying right when I got home. It’s a late afternoon tradition for me that I’ve used ever since - and it makes a huge difference in my energy and alertness in the evenings.

Doing these things - blending work and parenting and play, meditating, socializing with other parents, and engaging in activities that are usually mentally enriching - has been invaluable for juggling all the roles we have without needing to shell out the cash to bring in extra help (like a housecleaner, for example).

Charles writes in:

The real reason people want to be rich isn’t so they can buy stuff. It’s so they can have power over others. People want influence and respect and they see that people with money have influence and respect, so they seek money.

I agree with the point Charles is making - many people do want influence and respect. Similarly, people with money often seem to have a great deal of influence and respect. Thus, on a very simple level, many people who seek influence and respect do it by seeking money.

There’s only one problem: money does not result in influence and respect - instead, influence and respect often lead to money.

Many entrepreneurs want to be Richard Branson - he’s a billionaire, he’s dashing, and he has influence. What they don’t see is that in the late 1960s, he was selling records out of the trunk of his car at cheap prices. People came to him because he could help them find cheap, good records - not because he had a pile of money.

Many bands want to be The Beatles - they had more influence than pretty much any pop band ever and all of their members are/were fabulously rich. The Beatles had influence and respect first, though - they paid their dues for pennies in the clubs in Hamburg and played for years in obscure little clubs in Liverpool with barely enough money to put food on the table. They became THE BEATLES only after honing their craft for years and building not only a great local following, but good relationships with other bands on the Liverpool scene.

Many writers want to be Nora Roberts - her books are read by millions, she has an adoring fan base, and she brings in $50 million a year in royalties (my “writing hero” is Stephen King, but the same things largely apply to him). What they forget is that she wrote genre romances by the shovel full in the early 1980s for book-churning publishers like Silhouette, slowly building influence but not earning much at all.

What do these examples have in common? They built respect and influence first. Money came later when their influence and respect became clear.

If you’re sitting there worrying about how you’re going to become rich, it’s very likely you’ll never become rich. You might be able to earn a solid living in that area, but true and sustaining riches follow respect and influence, not a great scheme to put cash in your pocket.

So how do you get respect and influence?

You find something you can throw your heart into. If you don’t enjoy doing something, you won’t find yourself compelled to do it every day. If you don’t find yourself compelled to do it every day, someone else who does feel that compulsion will be the one who succeeds.

Many people tend to take this advice down the wrong path. They’re passionate about golf and thus they get in their minds that if they play obsessively every day, they might be able to get on the PGA Tour. Likely, that’s not true. You have to find a good balance of your passion and your natural talents. Perhaps you can become a golf teacher. Maybe you can become a salesman or an equipment designer for Callaway.

You work diligently at it. This isn’t just a matter of putting in long days of work - although that’s valuable, too. In order to really thrive, you have to practice the finer points of what you’re doing, smoothing them out until they’re perfect.

For example, if you want to be a writer, you need to write every day, even if it’s not for sale or for public consumption at all. If you want to be a great salesman, practice selling everything in a wide variety of situations. If you want to be a great musician, practice that instrument until your fingers bleed - and just attempting to play Seven Nation Army over and over again doesn’t cut it.

You find ways to share your work widely. The Beatles played several shows a night until they were ready to pass out from exhaustion. Nora Roberts wrote for a label that didn’t pay her greatly but distributed her work widely. Richard Branson carried his first record store around in the trunk of his car, taking the records to the people who wanted them.

The internet makes this easier than ever before. You can share your work as widely as you wish. However, there’s a new problem - a lot of people are doing the same thing. So how do you stand out? Be better than everyone else. Engage interested people as much as you can. Join in conversations that interest you even if they have nothing to do with what you’re doing (people will find your work if you’re interesting).

You live your life in such a way that you don’t need riches. The less you spend, the less reliant you are on what other people tell you to do. This gives you the freedom you need to actually throw yourself into something where you can build influence and respect.

It’s a lot harder to take a big risk if you need that fat paycheck provided by your employer, after all.

So, here we have it: my argument, in a nutshell, is that the path to riches comes from influence and respect, and the most powerful way to build influence and respect is to live your life so that you don’t need riches at all.

If you dream big, hop on board the train to your dreams. It passes through Frugality, makes a few stops at Passion, Diligence, and Hard Work, and finally finds its way to the twin cities of Respect and Influence - the place where your greatest dreams begin to come true.

An acquaintance from my previous career wrote to me recently asking about the steps I took when I made the switch to working at home:

It’s official: I’m ready to get out of here. I’m tired of working here and I have a lot of people lined up to hire me for home catering and cooking. I’m sure you did a bunch of planning before you made the leap. What exactly did you plan?

I know at least one other former coworker who is contemplating a similar move into a freelancing gig, though his plans are decidedly less clear at this point.

So what exactly did I do during that transition period? I started making a list of the things I did - then, soon, I realized that there were several things I wish I had done. Before I knew it, the email had ballooned into a guide that I thought might be useful to quite a few people.

Here are fifteen things I did (or wish I had done) during the months leading up to my transition to working for myself.

1. Learn to live on less.
One of the biggest challenges of freelancing/self-employment is the uneven pay. Gone are the steady paychecks of a typical job. Gone is the idea that you’ll make roughly the same amount next month as you will this month. During 2009, I have had months that earned only 25% as much as other months - and I anticipate a single month later in the year when several projects come to fruition in which I have by far the best month of the year.

If you allow your spending to match your income, you’re not going to be able to survive during the lean months. Instead, you need to adapt yourself to a consistent lower level of spending. Start looking now for fat to trim from your life. Every expenditure you have that’s not necessary for your basic living standards should come under very careful scrutiny.

Many people balk at this, but the truth is this: your first several months as an independent worker are going to be a real shock in a lot of ways. The last thing you need making this transition more difficult is a bunch of unnecessary expenditures. If things go well, you can always add some expenses back into your life - but you may find, surprisingly, that you’re quite happy without most of them.

2. Create a budget, both personal and business.
As I’ve written before, I’m not a believer in the “one-budget-fits-all” approach. Trying to make your budget or spending match an example provided by someone else is doomed for failure because that example doesn’t match your life.

I argue that the real value provided by a budget is that it reveals, loud and clear, how you actually spend your money and it can provide some clear pointers to where you need to make changes. Prepare a budget by just keeping careful track of what you spend for a month - make a giant list of every dime you spend, then organize all of that spending into categories that make sense to you. When you have that in place, look not only at the total amount you spend (you’re going to need an income level that on average exceeds that by at least a little), but also at the various categories - are there areas that you can cut?

A similar exercise for one’s business expenses is also useful, though it can be more difficult. Seek advice on the expenses that people typically have freelancing in your area of interest and use that for a basis.

3. Build up a big emergency fund.
If you’ve followed steps one and two and made serious cuts in your spending, you’ve now got a nice surplus of money coming in each month. Don’t be tempted to spend it. Instead, sock it all away into a savings account. In fact, do it automatically - instruct your bank to automatically transfer a healthy amount each week into a savings account on your behalf.

If you’ve done your budget, you have a good idea of what your monthly expenses actually are. I recommend having at least six months worth of living expenses in your emergency fund before making the leap. This will help you survive the lean months, particularly those early on in your freelancing experience.

4. Now make it bigger.
Quite often, people go light on the emergency fund before they make the leap. They have a bit of cash saved up, but they’ve convinced themselves that they’re ready - they have plenty of clients and opportunities lined up.

Don’t make that mistake.

The big problem is that freelancers and self-employed folks - especially early on - can have a tendency to count their chickens before they hatch. No deal, no matter how good it is, is a sure thing until contracts are signed and products are delivered. You might have ten potential clients that talk big about what they want to do, but when push comes to shove, all of them could vanish - and many of them will.

Be prepared for that. Don’t leave yourself in a desperate situation if a conversation doesn’t pan out. Cover your bases - and the best way to do that is with a healthy emergency fund. Build it now, build it later, keep it nice and fat.

5. Start reaching out to your audience and client base now.
There is no better time than right now to start digging for opportunities, even if your leap is far into the future. Get out there and start seeking out the people you want to know - and the people you want to sell to.

In a nutshell, this is market research - you need to find out if there are people that will buy what you do and figure out how to connect with them. Obviously, the internet and social media (like Twitter and Facebook) are good places to start, but they’re just a start. You should also go directly to where people who might be potential clients - or potential competition - congregate.

Start finding the people now. Join messageboards. Start Twittering. Start a blog. Pound the pavement in your local community. Dig through freelancing boards and other job boards. If you’re passionate about the field you’re leaping into - and you must be if you want freelancing to work - you have plenty already to talk about. Let the passion flow.

6. Eliminate as many regular bills as you can.
Back on the money side of the coin, start whacking your regular bills, particularly any related to entertainment. Ditch Netflix - if you want to watch a movie, use Redbox or a similar service. Ditch your cable bill entirely - use a digital converter box and Hulu to get your television fix. Sell your car - if you can use public transportation or ride a bike to work, do you really need one?

For the ones you can’t eliminate, trim. Make your living quarters as energy efficient as you can, with programmable thermostats and the like. Cut your cellular plan - do you really need that much data, those minutes, or that many text messages? If you decided to keep cable or satellite, whack some premium channels you don’t watch.

The more monthly bills you can eliminate or reduce, the more room you have to breathe when you make the transition.

7. Write a business plan.
Don’t worry about being too formal when you do this. The purpose of a business plan is to make you think about all of the details of what you’re about to leap into. Have you really thought things through?

Areas to include: market analysis (is there actually a need or a market for what you’re doing), product or service development (what kind of service or product will you actually offer), marketing (how will you draw attention to what you’re doing), financial organization (the money), and risk factors (what problems might crop up and how you might handle them).

Spend some time on this. Include everything that comes to mind, and flesh out details on every point. Don’t sweat the formality - just focus on ideas. The more effort you put in here, the easier it will be to make this all work when things get rolling.

8. Now rewrite that business plan.
Quite often, most freelancers make only a minimal effort at a business plan, if they bother at all. Big mistake.

I suggest using a self-imposed deadline of sorts. Arrange to show your business plan to someone you trust on a certain date for their input. Putting that deadline in place will keep you focused on the project, as you’ll want to present something reasonable.

Then, when you deliver it, ask for feedback of all kinds - everything they can think of that might improve the plan. What you’re really asking for is advice on the work you intend to do. This is a double check to make sure you’ve thought everything through.

When you get the suggestions, use them to rewrite your plan. Then repeat, perhaps with another person who might read it and offer suggestions. A few such repetitions will go a long way towards creating a real plan that works - and making sure you’ve really thought this through.

A good business plan isn’t a boring thing to “waste” your time on. It’s a great way to make sure all of your bases are covered, and often the revision process is the most powerful part.

9. Find a mentor.
So who can you take that business plan to? A mentor, that’s who.

Seek out someone that knows what they’re talking about that isn’t a potential competitor of yours. Look for someone experienced at freelancing in a tangential field - not a direct competitor - and ask them for advice and help. Be specific in your questions and don’t take criticism personally - it’s offered with the goal of making you better, not cutting you down.

Recognize that the person is probably busy and contribute some value to the relationship yourself, by promoting their work or offering them something of value, too. For example, if you’re a nascent blogger and would like to attract a professional blogger as a mentor, spend some time simply promoting their best stuff. Write about it on your own blog and talk about their stuff on Twitter. Buy their book and write a review of it (if they have a book out there). Participate in their comments and in their other conversations online.

Actions like these are ways that you can make a mentoring relationship into a fair value exchange instead of just a “gimme gimme gimme” relationship.

I wrote a detailed guide on finding a mentor in the past that can be very useful reading.

10. Make it easy for people to see the good stuff you can do.
Create an online presence for yourself that makes it very easy for people to find your best work. Regardless of whether you’re doing online work or not, have a website with an easy-to-remember URL that contains links to examples of the best stuff you’ve created. Join social networking services (Facebook and LinkedIn) and make professional pages about yourself that clearly show off your best side.

If people hear about you, they’re going to Google you. You want to make it so that the first things they find are good, positive, impressive things - the types of things that will draw them in, not push them away. Never take the attitude that you can appear antisocial and that if they don’t like it, they can walk - that attitude will push many of your potential clients away because you’ll seem unreliable from the get-go. There is never a downside to appearing friendly and accessible.

11. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
The more you talk, the more likely people are to discover you. Share your thoughts and ideas and comments as much as you can, as widely as you can.

Start a blog. Join social media sites (Twitter and Facebook, for starters). But, most important, join in on conversations. Link to interesting people and ideas on your blog and offer your take. Follow interesting people on Twitter and respond to the things they say. Comment on interesting blogs (with a link back to your own of course) and make worthwhile comments.

Most important, stick generally in your area of expertise, but don’t be afraid to jump into topics that are at best tangentially related. The goal is to make people interested in what you’re doing, and the best way to do that is to always speak from your heart and from your mind. Be positive, put your voice out there, and good things will happen.

12. Build connections with local small business/entrepreneurship groups.
Even if your work is outside of your local community (online work, for example, or freelancing work for remote enterprises), it’s worthwhile to engage with local small businesses and entrepreneurs - after all, that’s exactly what you are. Such groups are almost always sources of good ideas and leads for areas where you might improve, and they’re also places where you can float new ideas and gauge them. Even better, leadership in such groups provides countless ways to reach out and connect to others in countless ways - conferences, meetings, and so forth.

Get involved in peer groups, both in your own physical community and in your professional community - and don’t be afraid to dive right in and participate, even before you’ve made the leap. The number of valuable connections you’ll make there will pay off time and time again.

13. Have a place where you can focus on work - and only work.
Many freelancers start off working at the desk in the corner of the living room - the same one that houses lots of personal material as well. What often happens, though, is that the personal material begins to interfere with the professional work and the lines begin to blur. You find yourself working when you should be engaged in personal activity, and doing personal things when you need to be working.

Find a location somewhere that you can devote solely to your work - no personal stuff. Ideally, it’s a place that you can isolate yourself from the things around you. For example, I have a room in our home that serves as an office. When I need to work, I go in there and close the door and I’m in “work” mode. When I leave that room, I’m no longer in “work” mode (unless I’m headed out to do some research).

Without that barrier, it would be incredibly easy for me to constantly take my eye off the ball - and if I did that, I would constantly find myself falling behind on my work.

14. Build your current bridges as strong as you can - and don’t burn them when you leave.
Many people, as they begin to transition mentally into freelancing, let their current work relationships slide, deciding that they don’t matter. Actually, quite the opposite is true - they matter more now than they did before.

Here’s why. The strong connections you have in your previous line of work will continue to serve you well after your transition. The connections may provide you with new clients and interesting angles to pursue. Plus, if freelancing doesn’t work out, you often have a strong foot in the door for returning to a position in your previous career path.

On the other hand, if you let those relationships burn out, you miss out on these opportunities - and that big safety net.

Spend your final months tying up loose ends, but make sure that the relationships you’ve built don’t fray, either.

15. Practice, practice, practice.
This is perhaps the most useful lesson of all. If you want to be a real standout in your area of expertise, keep practicing at it. Study it. Try new things, and work to get better at the things you already do. In short, practice every single day.

If you’re a writer, write (and share them, via a blog). If you’re a graphic designer, make designs and share them (via Flickr or other avenues). If you’re a musician, practice daily and share demos with the world. Doing this not only makes you better, but it shows that you’re a hard worker and helps you get a better grasp on what people like and what they don’t like.

As time goes on, you’ll get better and better at what you do - and you’ll have a long track record that shows how diligent you are at your work.

A Final Tip: Dig Into Freelancing/Self-Employment Resources and Communities
Here are five websites I visit all the time for advice and thoughts on being self-employed and accepting freelance work.

FreelanceSwitch
http://www.freelanceswitch.com/
FreelanceSwitch is my website of choice for thoughtful and insightful conversation on freelancing and self-employment issues. It’s a daily read for me.

Elance
http://www.elance.com/
Elance is a clearinghouse of freelancing opportunities of all stripes. I like to keep an eye on freelancing opportunities in several areas.

Guru.com
http://www.guru.com/
Guru is a similar clearinghouse for freelancing opportunities.

Web Worker Daily
http://webworkerdaily.com/
If you do computer-based freelancing, this site is a must-read. Again, I read this one almost daily.

Freelance Folder
http://freelancefolder.com/
Freelance Folder offers a ton of widely varied and interesting advice on freelancing topics.

Good luck!

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal development, personal productivity, or entrepreneurship book.

It’s no secret to long-time readers of The Simple Dollar that I loved Keith Ferrazzi’s first book Never Eat Alone. I thought it was a brilliant discussion of how to network ethically in the modern world by building real, valuable relationships with people centered on giving of yourself to others. Even though I’m an introvert, I’ve taken many of the principles in Never Eat Alone to heart in my own real-world experiences - and online as well.

While Never Eat Alone does a great job of outlining how to build relationships with a large group of people, it’s fairly self-evident that there’s a lot of value in building particularly strong relationships with a small group of people. These are people you trust and who trust you, wise and insightful and willing to spend significant time with you because you make each other better. Mentors, advisors, friends - all of those titles apply. Most people are lucky if they find a handful of such people in their lives.

Finding and cultivating this inner circle is what Who’s Got Your Back focuses on. How do you find these core people? What traits do you have that will click well with others, and how do you find the traits that will click well with you? How do you maintain relationships with them over the very long haul?

I’m a huge believer in the power of mentors, and I’ve discussed techniques for finding a good mentor in the past. Let’s dig in and see what Ferrazzi has to say on the subject.

One: Who’s Got Your Back
Ferrazzi argues that the need for an inner circle of mentors, advisors, and friends that you trust and respect is something that almost everyone in the modern world strives for - if that wasn’t true, why would things like “life coaching” be such a huge multi-billion dollar industry? Even more disturbing, according to a 2006 study in American Sociological Review, the average person has only two confidants, and 25% of people have none at all. In a ever more complex world, confidants and advisors are more important than ever before - yet people have fewer of them.

Ferrazzi then makes the case for how valuable “lifeline” relationships are, focusing on four ways that such relationships are critical:

1. To help us identify what success truly means for us, including our long-term career plans.
2. To help us figure out the most robust plan possible to get there, through short-term goals and strategies that would tie us in knots if we tried to go it alone.
3. To help us identify what we need to stop doing to move forward in our lives. I’m referring to the things we all do that hold us back from achieving the success we deserve.
4. To have people around us committed to ensuring that we sustain change so that we can transform our lives from good to great.

I know that in my own life, my chief “lifeline” relationship is with my wife, and I constantly talk to her about the things above. It helps more than you can ever know and often guides me towards difficult decisions that I might “chicken out” on if I did them alone.

Two: The Four Mind-Sets
Ferrazzi identifies four “mindsets” - more like traits, actually - that, when cultivated, provide the foundation for building such lasting “lifeline” relationships.

Generosity You have to be willing to give sincerely of yourself without expecting a thing in return. Generosity is the foundation of trust, and trust is what makes such relationships work.

Vulnerability You have to be willing to be vulnerable. Can you move outside your safety zone? Can you accept criticism from others?

Candor You have to be willing to be totally honest with others. If something’s on your mind, you shouldn’t hold it back. It might be valuable.

Accountability You have to be willing to follow through on the promises you make to others.

These four traits are vital for building lifeline relationships - ones where you can bounce ideas freely, receive criticism, and truly grow as a person as well as in your ideas and goals. Others that you build such relationships with must have such traits as well - without them, the relationship is not going to succeed over the long haul.

Three: Building Your Dream Team
So how exactly do you build this team? Ferrazzi identifies a nine step plan for finding these people, cultivating the relationships, and maximizing their value in your life.

Step One: Articulate Your Vision This means soul searching. What do you really want in life? What are your big goals and dreams? What are your interests and passions? What do you really value? For me, my values center around my family and my writing, so if I were looking for people for my own inner circle, I’d want someone that valued family and had some insight into creative careers.

Step Two: Find Your Lifeline Relationships Look throughout your life - your work, your extracurricular activities, your personal life - and identify people who match up at least somewhat with what you want in life. Get to know that person a little and find out if they actually exhibit those valuable traits. Are they committed? Do they have some know-how - knowledge of what they’re talking about? Do you get along well with them? Are they curious by nature? If you see a lot of these factors, you’ve got someone very promising.

Step Three: Practice the Art of the Long Slow Dinner Gradually get to know a potential lifeline quite well. Have a lot of meetings with them - lunches, dinners, coffee. Talk about anything and everything. Feel them out. If it’s right, you’ll know it - if it’s not, don’t be afraid to move on and try again.

Step Four: Broaden Your Goal-Setting Strategy The first real way to get your lifeline friends involved is to talk about the goals you have - and the goals they have. Offer candid input on their goals, and invite (and accept) their candid comments on your own goals. Develop new goals together - and talk about how you can get there.

Step Five: Create Your Personal Success Wheel The “personal success wheel” is a wordy way of describing the key areas in your life that you want to succeed in. Financial success, spirituality, giving back, physical wellness, intellectual stimulation, deep relationships, and professional growth are areas that Ferrazzi mentions that are common to most people. Ask yourself what you’re doing in each of those areas - and bounce your thoughts off of those people in your lifeline. Similarly, encourage them to do the same - think of their core areas, ask themselves what they’re doing in each, and bounce their thoughts off of you.

Step Six: Learn to Fight! In other words, you have to be able to (and be willing to) diasgree with people in your inner circle. More importantly, you have to be able to debate ideas without making it personal - Ferrazzi calls this “sparring.” The key is realizing right off the bat that you’re just comparing and analyzing ideas, not attacking each other, and you can both grow from this process.

Step Seven: Diagnose your Weaknesses Introspection is a key part of all of this. You have to be able to not only figure out your weaknesses (and Ferrazzi gives a lot of tips for this), but be able to reveal and discuss those weaknesses with others, along with strategies for overcoming that weakness (or turning that weakness into a strength).

Step Eight: Commit to Improvement Steps four through seven are going to give you constant ideas on how to improve your life (and, along the way, give the others in those relationships with you tons of ideas as well). In order to actually get something out of it, though, you have to be willing to commit to improving yourself. You need to take at least some of those ideas and actually implement them, making yourself better, or else you come off as very insincere. Doing is much more valuable than talking.

Step Nine: Fake It Till You Make It - Then Make It Stick Ferrazzi’s big point here is that practice and repetition are vital. All of the steps above are ones that you should be constantly repeating. All of the ideas generated should constantly be worked on. They should just become a part of your life - and they easily can. Why? Because those “lifeline” friends will eventually become your closest friends - the foundation of your life.

Four: Make It Your Life
The final portion of Who’s Got Your Back picks up where the final point leaves off. The ideas in the book aren’t just a one time process, but elements of a successful life. Ferrazzi offers several worthwhile points to cap off those ideas - here are three.

A group of like-minded people is a great place to start. If you don’t know where to start, look for an already-existing group of like-minded people that share your interests. If you’re an entrepreneur, check out local small business associations. If you’re a parent, look for PTA meetings. Find people that share your passions and you’ll have a great group to start with.

Forming an actual group can be quite scary. Ferrazzi suggests several approaches, but the real foundation is the people. Your best bet to make a group work is to try to cultivate the relationships between people you have lifeline relationships with. If you can get, say, four people where every person has a one-on-one relationship of this kind, that group will be invaluable to all of you.

Suggestions are invaluable. If you have an out-of-the-blue idea that really fits a person you have a lifeline relationship with, write it down and treat it with the weight you would treat a great idea for yourself. If you’re doing this for each other, it’s like having two or three or four minds out there trying to come up with great ideas to push you farther.

Is Who’s Got Your Back Worth Reading?
To put it simply, I loved this book, too. The material in here applies well to virtually everyone, particularly people who are somewhat introverted who may need that extra push to build strong life relationships (I’d put myself in that group). What appeals to me, as with Never Eat Alone, is that everything is underlined with giving of yourself. Paying it forward is a strategy that has never, ever failed me in life.

This one is already on my re-read pile. I plan to let the contents of it sink in for a while, then give it another read-through in a few months.

My only criticism is similar to the criticism I had with Never Eat Alone, but it’s one that I understand. Ferrazzi has a tendency to name-drop in places. My interpretation of it is that Ferrazzi is actually much like myself - he’s an introvert who has to work on being an extrovert, and being able to drop those names makes it easier. I do a similar thing, to be quite honest - I tend to talk in big bursts when I don’t know someone well. I’ll be quiet for half an hour, then drop a two minute wall of words. It’s something that comes up as a result of my natural introversion - and it’s something I’m aware of and try to work on.

Put this on your Amazon wish list or your library list. This one’s really good.

A career is like a brick wall. If it’s built well, from a collection of bricks that fit well together and are thoughtfully put in place, it can be a very strong foundation for whatever dreams you may want to reach for. A great collection of bricks, well assembled, will build a platform for you that allows you to stand tall in your profession.

Yet, sometimes, we find ourselves in situations where we must knock the wall down and start over - or so it may seem.

I argue that the entire scope of our professional life is a series of bricks. Every time we complete a class, we have another brick to add to our wall. Every time we complete a major project, we have another brick to add to our wall. Our choice of bricks - and where we place them in that wall - makes all the difference.

My Story, In Brick Form
I usually think that personal stories explain an idea very well to begin with, so let’s start with my college years. I made the unusual choice of double majoring in two “hard” sciences - biology and computer science. My coursework in these areas helped be to build two seemingly separate brick walls…

Yet they weren’t entirely separate. Any hard science has some elements in common with other ones: a strong preference for logical thinking, the scientific procedure, the teasing apart of complex problems. It’s easy to see how training in one hard science lends itself in a strong indirect fashion to other hard sciences. However, a degree in computer science does not open doors for a career in biology, and vice versa.

You’ll also note that third brick wall sitting over there, separate from the others but not quite as tall. This was my ongoing passion for writing, a smaller wall built of bricks made from my own self-directed projects and flailings about. We’ll get to that one later on, but for now, it’s clearly not up to snuff.

Luckily, late in my college career, I found a brilliant mentor who helped me to bridge those gaps. He employed me in his research lab, taught me many techniques for applying computer science to biology, got me into some graduate-level courses, and actually paved the way for many of my jobs right after college.

It was upon that foundation that I started my career. I spent a few years digging deep into life science data analysis using computers. I tore apart databases. I studied (and applied) various statistical models. And, along the way, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Yet, through it all, I still yearned to write. It felt like the thing that I was called to do.

So, as time went on, I began to seek out opportunities at work to communicate the ideas I was working on with others. This was hard at first - I’m a natural introvert and it took a lot of work for me to get over it. I started by taking charge of writing reports on the work that my lab was doing. Over time, this grew into making presentations on scientific data and scientific tools. Eventually, I was giving long presentations in front of rooms full of people who knew far more about hard science than I did - but I was able to communicate with them, translating the ideas in my head into a common language we could share.

It turned out that this work experience really opened the door to further exploration of my own writing. I began to take my writing in new directions, writing more nonfiction things and exploring new areas - writing about parenting and, eventually, writing about the personal finance changes going on in my own life - The Simple Dollar, in other words.

Eventually, my writing took off and I made the choice - for the time being - to focus entirely on that for my career.

Will I return to science? There is a very large part of me that wants to go back to graduate school. There’s also a large part of me that feels very compelled to write. Perhaps someday I’ll wind up writing science fiction or “pop” science books along the lines of Fermat’s Enigma. I’ve certainly built a foundation for it.

What Is a Brick?
A brick is any distinct element that helps you build a career. Some common bricks include:

Close professional relationships People who you’ve helped in the past and you can rely on for help in the future if you were to need it. Close confidants or that guy down the hall who owes you one and sticks by his word both apply here.

Completed coursework What classes did you take in college? What degrees did you achieve? Both are important - one builds skills and knowledge, the other is pure resume fodder.

Projects, completed and otherwise A completed project teaches you skills and becomes perfect resume fodder. Yet, I’ve often found that failed projects tend to provide you with much more in terms of personal growth.

Natural talents Everyone has some natural talent in some area. Yes, some are blessed more than others, but each of us has something to build from.

Membership in reputable organizations Groups of like-minded people are not only resume fodder, but are also great places to build strong relationships that can only help you later in life.

Training Much like completed coursework, training both offers you extra skills as well as potential juice for the ol’ resume.

Choosing Where to Place Your Bricks
As you can see, a few bricks are somewhat set in stone (talents and passions). For the most part, you can’t control these - they’re bricks that are already put in place for you.

Most bricks, however, are ones that you choose. You choose what to major in. You choose what classes to take. You choose which projects to tackle. You choose what organizations to join. You choose which friendships to cultivate.

Each of these bricks requires some time investment and distinct effort on your part. A semester spent in a class. Several afternoons spent with a business acquaintance. Three weeks of burning the midnight oil on a project or a presentation. A year spent as president of the Rotary Club.

Some bricks fit anywhere - they’re transferable skills. Time management. Administrative skills. Creativity. Interpersonal communications. Information management. Personal development. Leadership. All of these things fit well into any wall you might want to build - and can be used over and over again.

Other bricks can only be used in certain walls. Specific training. Specific projects. Certain organization memberships. They’re vitally important in building some walls and completely useless in others.

A Brick-Based Alternative to Knocking Down Your Wall
So, let’s return to the situation I described in my own story. What if you have two completely separate walls, one built from your own passions and interests and another built from experience and work?

My suggestion is twofold.

First, work on those transferrable skills. They fit into almost any wall. Find opportunities to work on them and grow them whenever you can. This will not only help your career, but it’ll help any other directions you might choose to take in life.

Second, look for “bricks” that can build a bridge between the two. Jump hard on any project at work that lets you incorporate pieces of your other passions. You’ll build skills and produce a brick that bridges both walls. You can even try to seek these out - suggest possible projects at work, or use your work for inspiration in your other endeavors.

The Final Question
The real question here is simple.

Right now, are you working on another brick to add to your wall so you can stand above the crowd? Or are you peddling in place while others add bricks to their wall - and their walls grow just a bit taller and stronger?

Recently, a friend suggested to me that there are two distinct types of careers - and it left me thinking quite a bit about my own career choices.

First, there are stable careers. You’re an hourly employee or a salaried employee with small bonuses (or none). You work hard to try to get ahead, but getting ahead usually just means a 10% raise in a few years or possibly a small promotion. No matter what you do within the course of this career, you will never increase your earnings by an order of magnitude. However, your income is quite stable - and it’s often plenty to live comfortably on.

On the other hand, there are scalable careers. Scalable careers often revolve around self-employment and often offer opportunities for enormous growth in income and prestige. Examples: writers, professional athletes, actors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and musicians. However, in these careers, there are often just a handful that get the lion’s share of the attention and the earnings, while the others subsist on little - often significantly less than those in stable careers earn - and try to make their way up there.

Which career path are you on?

workers and activists making their point. Photo by Old Sarge.

The Big Choice
Most career advice encourages people to avoid scalable careers and to focus on stable careers - and for good reasons. Stable careers enable you to live a comfortable life. Stable careers have comparatively less risk, too.

Yet, quite often, the big dreams people have are all about scalable careers. When I was very young, I dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Later on, my dream shifted to being a writer. Some of my friends had similar dreams: a sculptor, a painter, a professional golfer, and several more writers.

For those folks, quite often the stable career becomes the choice because it is the safer choice. They’re walking through life without a safety net - if they fall, they can’t just land in the safe arms of a parent or into a strong financial net. Talented people often sit down, do a realistic risk assessment of their life, and conclude that a stable career is the way to go, regardless of their talents or passions.

I found myself in this very position early in my college career. I was drawn to writing - and thus choosing a career in English - but I recognized that there were limited career opportunities down that path. So, I put away training for a scalable career and chose training for a stable career - I majored in computer science and biology, figuring I would find work as a programmer or a research assistant (which I wound up doing).

Scalable Careers as “Side Hustles”
Many people who really dream of a scalable career but settle into a stable career hold onto that dream through a “side hustle” of some sort. They attempt to practice it on the side while spending much of their time working at their stable career.

One friend of mine, Jon, did this quite well. He’s passionate about bluegrass music and plays it all the time on the side, often making a few bucks from small gigs, but his “stable career” is in science.

Another friend, Ron, is a gifted sculptor. His “stable career” is teaching, but he fills his summers with sculpting and plying his trade at art fairs and other venues.

I actually have many friends doing this - one friend does office work and spends the weekends writing. Another friend does system administration and spends the weekends being a DJ.

I did this myself for many years. I spent my weeks working in a research lab. On the weekends, I wrote - short stories, essays, and all kinds of other things. I sent them off and got all sorts of rejections. It took many years of failure before I saw even a bit of success - and it was in an area where I didn’t expect it (personal finance writing).

Why this compromise? To put it simply, it lets people follow the scalable career they’re passionate about on their own terms while still earning a stable income. As I said above, many, many talented people do not have the financial safety net to give a scalable career a try.

Musician. Photo by fiat luxe.

Starting Your Scalable Career on the Side
The way it really worked for me - and for many of the people I mentioned above - is that I just viewed my “scalable career” as a time-consuming hobby. Quite simply, I really enjoyed doing it, so I just took it on as a hobby.

To many people, writing short stories, sending them off, and getting rejection letters doesn’t sound like a popping good time on a weekend. Yet, inside almost all of us, there is some sort of windmill we’d love to chase with our inner Don Quixote. We might never conquer that imaginary giant, but the journey to get there seems like a lot of fun to us - though it might seem a fool’s errand to others.

My suggestion is simple: whatever that dream is that you have, don’t let it go. Instead, spend your free time practicing it in the way you want to. If you already have a stable income, don’t worry about what sells and what doesn’t - just do it. Practice deliberately. Have fun doing it. Don’t worry about the end product - just have fun with the process and try new things.

In other words, treat that hobby as you might treat a scalable career if you didn’t have to worry about the income at all. It actually frees you to experiment, since income is merely an unexpected bonus. Try new things, practice the details, and enjoy what you’re doing.

What happens next? You get better. You produce interesting things. And people begin to pay attention. It might take years - it might never happen - but does it really matter? You’re enjoying the process.

Eventually, things might click and opportunities fall in place and you can ride the rocket ship of a scalable career on the bloom. But, if it never happens, you’ll have fun anyway.

Encouraging Young People
A final thought: I’m a parent. Will I encourage my own children to try a stable career or a scalable career?

For me, it depends greatly on the child. If they have an obvious talent - one that’s recognized by others, not just by me as a proud parent - and they want to ride that talent and see what happens, I’ll encourage them to do just that.

However, most of us don’t have that sort of awe-inspiring talent right out of the chute. Millions of kids grow up playing basketball in the driveway, but very, very few are LeBron James. That doesn’t mean, of course, that we can’t grow that talent through practice and passion over the long haul. After all, Michael Jordan was cut from his eighth grade basketball team.

So, my plan is this: instead of pushing them towards a career, I’d rather push them towards discovering their passions and cultivating their talents. My dream is not to send my kids to an Ivy League school at age eighteen. Instead, I’d rather have a child knowing where his or her talents lie and how he or she might utilize them. In the end, all I want for them is that they’re self-sustaining, self-reliant, and happy - and if they find that in a scalable career or in a stable career, I don’t care at all what it is. Your life isn’t over if you don’t get into Yale, after all.

One of my favorite sections in what is undoubtedly my favorite personal finance book, Your Money or Your Life, discusses the process one can go through to find a job that is both high in integrity (meaning it’s actually in line with your values - you’re not selling your soul or killing your spirit by doing it) and high in pay.

A lot of people, quite frankly, view this as an impossibility. The general equation seems to be that following your passions means low pay and following the bucks means ditching your passions. From my perspective, this feeling usually results from too many years working thankless jobs that are incompatible with personal ethics and passions. Others have made themselves comfortable with a low-paying job that gives them the freedom that they want, but not the financial resources to create a strong personal safety net.

Your Money or Your Life argues that there is a third way (and, frankly, so does What Color Is Your Parachute?, which is a brilliant guide solely focused on careers). From page 228:

There is no Job Charming. The people we’ve met in these pages have had to do a lot of soul-searching, risk-taking, experimenting, and challenging of old beliefs in order to move forward into jobs with higher pay and high integrity. They’ve had to see that their lives are bigger than their jobs. The parts of themselves that had been suffocated by their paid employment had to be given room to breathe again. Visions from childhood of how life could be had to be excavated from under the status, seriousness and self-importance that masquerade as adulthood. They had to tell themselves the truth about whether or not their current employment was really doing what paid employment is supposed to do: earn money.

In other words, Your Money or Your Life argues that it is very difficult (not impossible, but difficult) to spend significantly less than you earn and build a financial foundation for yourself if you’re working in a way that’s at odds with the person you are. The solution? Get your spending under control, then find a job that pays well and lines up with your values.

Job Hunting Checklist
But how do you actually find that job? The book offers a checklist, and here it is, with some of my notes.

1. Purpose What’s the purpose of the job? Obviously, a big part of the purpose is to get paid - you need money in your pocket, right? But ask yourself this: is the task you spend many hours of your life on each day actually have a purpose that you find valuable?

This is trickier than it seems, especially since jobs that seem to have purpose early on eventually grow to not have that purpose later on. I felt this to some extent with my research job, where I felt a great deal of purpose when I first started, but that feeling waned as my project matured, eventually leaving me still enjoying some aspects quite a bit (the people in particular, and some individual pieces of the work), but being nervous and going through the motions in other respects.

For now, almost all of the work I do earns some money, but perhaps more importantly to me, it has a purpose - I’ve somehow been blessed with the opportunity to write about things that actually help people and this stuff is read by thousands upon thousands of people every day.

2. Intention Do you have the internal motivation to actually make good on your goals? Procrastination and a lack of focus are your enemies. Self-motivation, on the other hand, is a huge ally.

To put it in a more tangible sense, think about the career you dream of having - the high-paying, high-integrity job that you’ve always wanted. That’s your goal.

What are you doing today to get there? If you’re not doing anything at all, you’re not actually motivated to get there. If you know what you need to do but keep putting it off, procrastination is keeping you where you are.

3. Willingness It’s one thing to know what you need to do to make it happen. It’s another thing entirely to put your foot down and actually do it.

For years, I dreamed of being a writer, particularly one who could reach a lot of people with stuff that actually affected and helped them, and made enough from it to at least survive. I held that dream in my head - and I let it flounder.

It wasn’t until I actually started trying to make it happen that it actually happened. And it didn’t happen immediately. It took years of constant effort, eating a lot of my spare time, to make it happen.

The most important step is the first one - and the willingness to follow that step with another one.

4. Consciousness Keep your eyes open. The world around you is full of possibilities. It sounds sort of trite, but it’s true. Our days are loaded with opportunities to stand out from the pack and do something exceptional and interesting.

Look at every interaction you have as a meeting with a potential customer. Look at every experience as a possible source for an article. Look at every shop you visit as a potential retail location. Look at every moment as a source for ideas and opportunities.

The more you step back and look at your daily life through this lens, the more opportunities will bloom into view.

5. Recognition When do you know you’ve been successful? Most of the time, it’s not a clear demarcation.

Your Money or Your Life argues that the only real way to tell if you’re successful comes from inside. You can’t use income or recognition from others as a metric - it comes from you.

Some people feel successful immediately, with only a bit of success. Others never feel successful. The truth, though, is somewhere in the middle - you’re successful when you wake up, realize you’re happy with what you’re doing and what you’re getting paid for it - and you can’t imagine doing anything else.

You can get there. Today is the day to get started.

When I was in college, the vast majority of my classes were effectively training for a career in research and scientific data management. Seven years after graduation, though, I find myself drawing instead on the transferrable skills I picked up in other classes: public speaking, writing, leadership, information management, and so on. To put it simply, transferrable skills are those things that you can utilize no matter what specific career path you find yourself on.

Transferrable skills are often left by the wayside in competitive college majors. In order for a computer science major to get a leg up in the post-graduation workplace, for example, it’s often preferable to jam in another programming or algorithms class than it is to insert another public speaking class. Even if the program does require classes on transferrable skills, those classes are often looked down upon as “blow off” classes - ones that have to be finished in order to get down to the real classes within the major.

I believe this is a mistake. As change in this world accelerates, people are spending less and less of their life strapped to one particular career. They have the freedom to choose other avenues - starting a new career, starting their own businesses, and so on. In that environment, transferrable skills become more and more valuable. In fact, a well-polished transferrable skill makes for brilliant resume fodder no matter what your job - communication skills and leadership experience are a plus for almost any post-college job you might apply for.

Obviously, course loads often aren’t very flexible in a college environment, so my recommendation would be for college students to seek out other sources for picking up and mastering transferrable skills - extracurricular activities, internships, and other sources. Beyond college, transferrable skills are useful for everyone to work on at any stage in one’s career

Here are six significant areas of transferrable skill well worth working on, both to improve yourself and to prepare for your future.

Leadership Can you actually lead a team? Can you herd a group of people towards a greater purpose? Are you self-motivated enough to do this? Can you set goals and actually achieve them? Can you plan large projects and push them forward?

How can I get it? Join a community or student organization and take charge of a large project. Later, run for a leadership position within that group. The best way to learn leadership skills is to learn them in the laboratory of life, and organizations provide the perfect opportunity.

Administrative skills Are you able to prioritize the tasks in front of you? Can you analyze information and then describe it in layman’s terms for others to understand? Can you interpret rules and use them effectively?

How can I get it? Get involved in the planning of as many large projects as you can. Project planning teaches you many of the administrative skills you’ll need in life. If there is a large project, volunteer to help with the planning - if there’s already a planner in place, learn everything you can from that planner.

Information management Can you actually research a topic? Can you take a pile of research and use it to answer worthwhile questions? Can you communicate those facts to others? Can you manage a budget and handle financial records? Can you use a wide variety of computer programs?

How can I get it? If there are opportunities to present anywhere around you, take them, even if you aren’t familiar with the topic. Of particular use are topic areas where you’ll have to do some research in order to get the presentation right. Another great avenue is to volunteer to be the secretary or (particularly) the treasurer for a group. Such activities will require you to carefully manage a large amount of information on behalf of a large group.

Creativity Can you come up with interesting ideas of all kinds? Are you good at coming up with marketing ideas? Are you good at formulating the next step in a process? Are you good at creating visually appealing layouts?

How can I get it? Create some websites for groups - and learn how to do it along the way. Whenever there’s an opportunity for brainstorming, get involved and throw out ideas. Creativity is something that is best learned by practice - so practice it.

Interpersonal communications Are you willing to speak in public? Can you communicate your ideas well in writing? Can you lead a conversation? When you communicate with others, do they understand your ideas?

How can I get it? Participate in conversations and meetings instead of just sitting there. Volunteer for any and all public speaking opportunities that come your way. Volunteer for difficult and arduous tasks of documentation - that’s the best way possible to practice writing to communicate information.

Personal development Can you use the experiences in your life as a source for growth and personal change? Do you have a personal moral code that you actually follow? Can you effectively and honestly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of others (both people and things)? Can you deal with stress?

How can I get it? Don’t shy away from challenges - step up to big projects. Keep a journal and use it to explore what you really think about things, particularly the people around you.

Every moment you spend learning the above skills is a valuable moment. You’ll find yourself returning to these skills time and time again throughout your life - and they’ll provide a surprisingly strong backbone for your career and personal success.