Today’s Guest
Caleb Wojcik (pronounced wo-jick, unless you’re of Polish descent) is the co-founder of Fizzle.co, The Sparkline, & The Fizzle Show. When he’s not on Fizzle teaching people how to build their businesses, he’s teaching how to create videos that look amazing – at DIY Video Guy.
Caleb is one of the brightest entrepreneurs I’ve had the honor of meeting, so I was quite surprised when I learned that entrepreneurship wasn’t exactly his grand plan for life. His father was an entrepreneur, and the price the family paid, the things they couldn’t afford and the effect that the entrepreneurial lifestyle had on his parents’ marriage convinced Caleb that he should graduate, find a safe job at a large corporation, and live happily ever after.
And so, he graduated and got job at Boeing. A few weeks after, Boeing laid-off about 10,000 employees.
The Death Of The “Safe Job”
Caleb wasn’t one of the employes that lost their job that week, but it did make an impact on him. He started realizing that “having a safe job” was a myth of the past. He found himself considering entrepreneurship again… but there was one tiny little problem.
He had no idea what to build his business around.
He dabbled around with some freelancing, tried to develop an app with some friends – but it didn’t take off. Meanwhile, he started blogging and documenting his process of getting out of debt. That blog was the beginning of what Caleb does today as his full-time job, and in today’s episode he’ll take us through that quest sharing the lessons he learned along his way from cubicle to a successful online entrepreneur.
Episode Highlights:
- Entrepreneurship lessons learned from playing (a bit too many) video games.
- Creating an online business – starting with a blog.
- The disillusion of corporate America job-security, and leaving Boeing to blog and teach.
- Why it’s much harder to get referrals when you don’t niche down
- Finding the need of a market – at the intersection of the audience you want to talk to, and the problem that you can solve.
- Why gear doesn’t matter!
- Why gear does matter!
Mentioned Resources
- The 8 Most Common Mistakes That People Make When They Start A Blog – And How Can You Avoid Them!
- Fizzle.co
- Caleb Wojcik
- Caleb on Twitter
- Caleb on Facebook
- Caleb on LinkedIn
- DIY Video Guy
- IIP 002 : From $500,000 Debt To $22.3M Annual Revenue – Story Of Rand Fishkin & SEOmoz
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Meron
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Another episode! I love the fact that Caleb said that you don’t need top of the line equipment to make good product, but that you need to make product repeatedly to become good. I also like the real-life example of staying on your job, starting with Corbett Barr on a part time basis first, and them moving into full time and leaving Boeing. While there are people who can jump off the cliff and build their parachute on the way down, I think Caleb’s approach is one that more people will be able to follow!
Hey Trev,
I’m happy that hearing Caleb’s transition story left you inspired. For a long time I’ve been thinking I need to emphasize a little bit more about the transition, and also share some of the (many) story of transitions where people didn’t “jump off the cliff” – but made a slow process towards their new life. It’s true, as Greg said, and as Bernie said, that becoming an entrepreneur requires sacrifices, and that will always be true. But I think there are less lifestyle and financial sacrifices required if you’re willing to sacrifice more TIME in your “previous life”. As Caleb (kind of) said – no one ever had an overnight success. Very little amount of people “make it” in their first 2-3 months, so why put all that pressure IF you can do a more gradual transition? For me, for instance – that wasn’t an option. I was too miserable and couldn’t separate myself from my job. I had to walk away. But for those who can take it and still find the time to build the next career…. why not? 🙂 As long as you do actually take action every single day towards creating this new freedom in your life, and not use your current job as a gold handcuffs preventing you from making progress – use it! Let your job be your #1 investor in your new business – because guess what – you don’t need to give them any equity! 🙂
+ what a relief that my anti-spam system FINALLY learned to appreciate your writing 😉 Glad this one didn’t disappear like last week and the week before!
I appreciate the kind words Trevor. I’m glad you enjoyed the episode. 🙂
Thanks for checking in, Caleb! 🙂