Seventy-five days from today, my first print book hits the stands all across North America. As promised, I’ll be traveling throughout the U.S. and Canada to meet readers and raise money for our Ethiopia project.

—>Read the details and sign up to come out here

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The book is currently on pre-order for a whopping $10.08 over at Amazon. It tells my story and outlines a road map for your own world domination plans. I’ve been fortunate to get some kind reviews from other authors, and I know that a lot of people will love it. (Since it’s fairly provocative, some people won’t love it, but that’s OK.)

Once the publication date gets closer, I’ll tell you more about it… but for now, I’m gearing up for your help with the massive book tour.

Every State, Every Province… Crazy or Epic?

Because I like big goals, I decided to visit all 50 states from September through December. That includes Alaska and Hawaii, of course, and the District of Columbia, and since I couldn’t decide between a couple of hard choices (Dallas vs. Houston, San Fran vs. L.A.), I threw them both in. Then, I didn’t want to forget my friends north of the border, so I added all 10 provinces in Canada for an extra leg in January 2011.

At first glance, there are a lot of reasons NOT to embark on this project. The whole thing is self-funded and will actually cost more than I was paid to write the book. Most authors go to only a few cities, if anywhere at all these days. Doing the tour forces me to curtail my international travel for at least four months, which will be the longest I’ve been in one country (OK, two) for an entire decade.

Last but not least, most people in the publishing industry don’t believe in book tours anymore. They’ll put authors on a.m. radio stations that no one listens to, but they don’t think it’s effective to actually go out and meet real people.

All of these valid points raise a good question: why spend four months traveling to events in 63 cities?

The first answer is that at all of the meetups I’ve done so far, I’ve heard fun stories from fascinating people doing remarkable things. A great deal of my daily inspiration comes from all of you reading and participating in various ways from all corners of the planet.

The other day I was on an Alaska Airlines flight and someone tapped me on the shoulder to introduce themselves. A few days later I was in a hotel room in Vancouver and someone called my room because they saw my MacBook on the shared network and said that they read the blog. You guys are everywhere! So let’s take it up a level and go out to meet more people and hear more stories.

The second answer is that this project scares me—in a good way. Not everything that scares you is bad; in fact, many things that scare you are exactly the kinds of things you should be doing. Personal growth and overcoming fear are often correlated.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do one thing a day that scares you.” By setting up this tour, I’ve got 63 days taken care of. I really have no idea how to manage the logistics for this kind of thing, so that’s why we decided to put the registration site up now. Better to see who’s out there and who wants to get involved, then we can know more about how to make it happen.

A Few Notes

Co-Hosts and Special Guests. At many of the stops, I’ll be joined by co-hosts: other authors, bloggers, entrepreneurs, travelers, aid workers on leave, and other people from our community. I always like doing my meetups with a co-host anyway, but this time it’s even more important: many of the tour dates are back-to-back, so there’s no way I can arrange the logistics for so many events on my own.

Charity Project: A while back I mentioned our Ethiopia project. I’ll be ramping up the promo for it soon, and this will be a major part of the book tour. Among other things, I’ll be donating 100% of my book royalties for every reader I meet on the tour. More on this important project later.

International Readers: Right now the book is only being distributed in North America, so that’s why I’m focusing my efforts here. Maybe later on I can visit every state in India (28) or every province in China (23). Don’t put it past me! But for now, traveling throughout the U.S. and Canada will take up most of my time through next January.

***

Most important! Thanks for reading this. You’re awesome. I’m excited to hit the road in September.

I hope to see you on the Unconventional Book Tour. Are you coming out? Can you help? Let me know where you are, here in the comments or on the registration site. There are still a couple of places where I’m not sure what the best stop is (Tampa or Miami? Calgary or Edmonton? etc.), so we’ll see where people are, and that’s where we’ll do the event.

And by the way… are you doing things that scare you?

It’s worked out pretty well for me, and all of you are a big part of the journey. Thanks for rocking my world! See you soon.

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Image: Jon

Greetings from the capital of the Internet this week, also known as Austin, Texas. It’s a fun place with fun people.

In case you’re not familiar with this annual event, once a year everyone on the Internet moves down to Austin for an annual pilgrimage. Big companies give away free drinks at various parties. People talk on stages and bands play in what appears to be an unlimited number of bars.

Here is how I manage my time during this weekend: I “rent” a table at Jo’s Coffee Shop by buying one drink every hour. (It helps to switch to green tea after a few hours of coffee.)

I set up meetings in 45-minute blocks with friends old and new. Thus far I’ve seen the Great Communicatrix, Superstar Designer Reese Spykerman, Gretchen Rubin, Jonathan Fields, Valeria Maltoni, Jeffrey Tang, Emily Pearl, Adam Baker, Ramit Sethi, Naomi Dunford, Sarah Robinson, Jenny Blake, Johnny Truant, and Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein.

Last year I learned that you don’t need to buy a $500 ticket to SXSW to benefit from everyone being in the same place for a weekend. This time Adam gave me a free pass to the conference (what a guy!), but I confess I haven’t used it that much. Given the choice between talking with people at the coffee shop and listening to people talk from a stage, I usually choose the coffee shop.

Group Meetup

Last night our group took over a local diner for three hours of conversation. I wasn’t sure what the turnout would be like since every night has multiple parties going on, most of them sponsored by tech companies with free food and open bars. I’m not sponsored by Dell and didn’t hire a bartender to make martinis by the dozens, but dozens of people did indeed come out. As soon as I get the photos from our two volunteer photographers, I’ll post them up.

Monday morning I’m headed back to Portland for a couple of days before going out on a VERY BIG TRIP. It involves Central America, Eastern Europe, islands off the coast of Africa, a Chicago meetup, a talk in Pittsburgh, a 46-hour train ride with J.D. Roth, and the launch of the Empire Building Kit on my 32nd birthday in North Dakota. All on one trip! I love my crazy life, and I hope you love yours too.

Thanks for reading AONC and being a part of this adventure. See you soon…

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Image: VI

Greetings from Auckland, New Zealand, where I’m in transit to the South Pacific island of Samoa – via Vancouver on one side and Nukuʻalofa, Tonga on the other.

(If you’re coming from North America, it takes a while to get settled in this part of the world.)

I’ve been to New Zealand, the Cook Islands, and Hawaii before, but this is effectively my first trip to the inner South Pacific. On the way home next week I hope to visit Fiji as well.

Travel Planning ($7,000 Ticket for $1,096, 10 Days Notice)

I booked this trip just 10 days ago with U.S. Airways miles. The cost of the ticket was 110,000 miles and $211 in taxes, which included two free stopovers in Auckland. I’ve never actually flown with U.S. Airways, so I didn’t have the miles to begin with — instead, I purchased them through an end-of-year bonus offer for $875. All told, I picked up the Business Class Air New Zealand award for exactly $1096.

Not bad for a ticket that would otherwise have cost $7,000+ if purchased from Air New Zealand itself, or even $1,700 for the Economy ticket I’d more likely pay for. Save at least $600 and avoid sitting in the back of the plane for a 15-hour flight — I like that.

Not counting the Fiji portion, which I’ll be doing as a side trip, the itinerary is as follows:

PDX-YVR-AKL-TBU-APW-AKL-YVR-PDX

Note that if you’re coming to New Zealand (or Australia) on a Frequent Flyer award, you can effectively get a free flight to your choice of islands. You can also book it as an open-jaw — where you fly into one city and out of another, like I did here with Tonga (TBU) and Samoa (APW).

This part of the world is expensive to get to when paying for flights, but easy with awards as long as you have some flexibility on travel dates. The trip between Tonga and Samoa is especially interesting because the two countries are relatively close together, but divided by the international dateline. The flight from Tonga leaves at 9pm on a Tuesday, then arrives 90 minutes later at 1030pm… on a Monday.

Then on the flight back to Auckland, it leaves at 3pm Friday before arriving three hours later… on Saturday. You can be sure I carefully checked and rechecked my reservations and onward flights for this trip, because it would be just like me to screw that up.

3 Days Down, 362 to Go

I wanted to get 2010 off to a good start, so I left on New Year’s Day to head down to the other side of the world. This year my trip planning is getting more complex: I’ve got to make it to 20 new countries, and I’ve got to stay in the U.S. and Canada after September to promote my book. We’re also doubling readership here, ramping up the store, writing a second book for 2011, and so on.

It’s going to be intense, so I don’t want to waste any time. Three days of the only 2010 in history have already vanished! (And then there’s that whole dateline thing, which always confuses me.)

Perhaps your goals are different than mine. But whatever you need to do, better to get a head start now while everyone else is still making resolutions.

Cash out your miles and fly to the South Pacific!

Finally get started on that business idea you’ve always had!

Or whatever… you know what to do.

How is your 2010 going so far?

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Auckland at Night by SK

Friends and readers, greetings from AA flight 84, en route to the Dallas Ft-Worth airport. I’ve been there several times recently, and am thinking of setting up a tent around A-20.

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to our meetup in Washington, D.C. on Thursday night. I had a great time and was humbled as usual by all the fun and interesting people who showed up.

Check out the meetup photos courtesy of Jen Lemen and Roxy Allen. And of course, here’s my thank-you video for those who were there.

The rest of the post is the Sunday Store Update, where I share news about the small business side of AONC.

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Democratizing Free Travel on Thursday, November 5th

After a flurry of effort, the final Unconventional Guide of 2009 is now ready to go. It’s called Frequent Flyer Master, and the goal is to democratize travel by empowering more people to travel for free.

Lesson learned: if you’re going to create an awesome information product without a partner, I’d advise against trying to edit a full-length book manuscript at the same time you’re writing 15,000 words of content for the manual in addition to several other deliverables. I’ll try to remember that for later, but despite the time crunch, we’re on schedule for the launch on Thursday morning.

I recorded the audio session from a nook in the Dallas airport on the way in to Baltimore earlier this week. Then I went to the print shop in D.C. to pick up the PDF proof from Reese so I could copy-edit on the flight back to Dallas after my three days of meetings.

Side rant on FedEx Kinko’s: I heard about this neat service from FedEx Kinko’s that allows you to email a document to a local store, then show up later and pick up the printout. What a great idea, I thought. That sounds like it could really help when I’m traveling and on a time crunch to proof a long document.

While working at a coffee shop in D.C., I followed the instructions and sent them my file—but then they sent me a release form I had to PRINT OUT and fax back to them. Aside from the fact that no one I know actually has a fax machine anymore, how was I supposed to print the form? If I could print anything, I would just print the document I needed to begin with. I finally just walked down the street and did everything in person.

***

All of that aside, I really hope this guide will help a lot of people achieve their own travel goals through the creative use of Frequent Flyer Miles. The challenge in making the materials was to think about how to help people who don’t travel that often but would still like to fly more often or more affordably.

I think I’ve done that fairly well, and I think forward to tell you more about it tomorrow and Thursday. Next week, I’ll follow my own advice and head out to Baku, Azerbaijan thanks to a Lufthansa award booked with United miles.

Until tomorrow, I hope all is well with you, wherever you are. Thanks for reading.

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Friends in Portland, if you’ll be around on Friday, October 23rd, I’d like to invite you to a benefit dinner and auction for a cause I am proud to support.

The Short Version

What: Dinner and auction for Sisters of the Road, a local non-profit that serves the homeless population in Portland.

When: Friday, October 23rd, 6-10pm (includes dinner, drinks, auction, and something called a “hoedown”)

Where: Portland Art Museum, Grand Ballroom, 1237 SW 10th Ave

Cost: $85/person

To Register: 1) Go here and sign up, and 2) Go here and let me know you’re coming

***

The Longer Version

When I first moved to Portland earlier in the year, I went looking for an excellent, local non-profit to work with. This is the first year in seven years that I haven’t been directly involved in non-profit leadership, and while I’m not looking for a real job somewhere, I want to make sure I’m doing my part to support charities that do good work.

After hearing good recommendations, I made an appointment to visit with Sisters of the Road, a local group that serves the homeless population here. Portland is a great city that I love more than almost anywhere I’ve lived, but we do have a large number of homeless people from all ages and backgrounds. Sisters provides daily lunches (in exchange for $2 or 15 minutes of work), but more than that, they offer all kinds of community resources for people who live outdoors.

I had my own lunch in their café with Monica, the Executive Director, and I’m convinced that the mission of Sisters is a good one. When I received an invitation to attend their largest annual event, I promptly signed up, but then I thought I’d extend the offer to some of you as well.

I’ve recruited J.D. Roth from Get Rich Slowly fame into this benefit as well, so we’ll actually have a joint AONC / GRS table at the event. If you’re local and would like to join us, here’s what you need to do:

1. Register over here.

2. In the field where it asks for Table Names, write “AONC / GRS” in addition to your own name so the organizers know you’ll be sitting with us.

3. Send me a note from my contact form so I’ll also have a list and can know to expect you.

Also, if you’re not in the area but still want to help, you can make a donation on the registration site. 100% of proceeds go to Sisters of the Road.

(I’m not asking you to make a donation, or even to come if you’re in Portland, but I wanted to give you the option.)

***

In other brief news, as of this weekend I’ve completed 48,000 words of a 50,000 goal towards the AONC book– of course, not all of those words are good, but that’s a problem for next week.

I’m also still welcoming submissions for the upcoming Frequent Flyer Master project. Thanks to everyone who has submitted tips and stories so far.

I hope all is well with you. Happy October!

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Image by Orb 9220

Hi everyone. I’m high on life and writing in from the Cathay Pacific LAX-HKG flight. I’m fading fast, but with 13 hours to go until arrival, there should be plenty of time to a) sleep and b) write this note to you.

It’s been a full week in my world so far. On Sunday I got up early and drove a rental car half an hour out of town to get to a half-marathon race. Monday was spent prepping for the product launch — I worked on it off-and-on throughout the day, finishing up just after 11pm. At 5am the next morning, I got up to do the last-minute things and launch the product. A day in the life of a product launch deserves an article all of its own, so we’ll save that one for later.

Wednesday I started my latest trip by heading south and meeting with 40+ remarkable people who all braved Los Angeles freeways to come out and visit with me and each other. (Note to you guys: thank you all for coming, it was an honor to meet you. Stay tuned for Extreme Gratitude, L.A. Edition on Sunday.)

After not eating much during the day and engaging with people non-stop from 2pm-11pm, I went to the airport and got on a 14-hour flight. While schlepping through security and waiting to board, I was starting to drag after all the excitement over the past few days, but I also had a deep sense of fulfillment.

My life is so great! I’m thrilled! What else could I want?

Important: the point in all of this is not just to be busy. Lots of people can be busy and never get anything done. Instead, I am interested in filling my life with big things that challenge and energize me.

At the end of the day, I want to be tired – not from a grind of tasks that leave me with a feeling of “what did I really do today” but with a sense of wow. I want adventures.

For me, the recent adventures have been marathons, product launches, meetups, and travel. Next week’s adventures take me to Bhutan, a country I’ve been hearing about for years but have never made it to until now. Your adventures may vary, but if you’re like many of the people who read this site, you need adventures of your own on a regular basis.

Here is how I see it:

The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from Flow

Half-marathons are difficult and worthwhile. Product launches are difficult and worthwhile. Getting to Nepal takes time, but I’m glad to do it. And so on.

Note that not each step along the way is enjoyable. The half-marathon, for example, went like this:

Miles 1-3: cautious, warming up
Miles 4-6: feeling better
Miles 7-9: initial onset of fatigue, but also growing confidence that I would finish the race well
Miles 10-12: this is so hard
Miles 12-13.1: ommmmmmm one foot in front of the other ommmmmmm

If it was supposed to be easy, then the race would be six miles, not 13.1. On Sunday, my race effectively began at mile 10. I finished fairly well (1:39:57), but those last few miles were definitely pushing it.

The premise extends to my other adventures. The last time I was in Hong Kong, my onward flight to Malaysia was delayed 14 hours. I wasn’t thrilled about that, but looking back, I’m not sure I would have done anything different about the trip. I could always live a normal life and not get stuck in Hong Kong airport until 3am, right? No thanks.

The Problem with Burnout

The whole concern about burnout has always bugged me. Personally I’d rather go for something and see how far I can take it without worrying about running out of steam.

If anything, I think my life has been too restrained thus far. I want to say yes more. There’s a lot more left that I want to do, and we can’t recover anything from yesterday.

Besides, think about it this way:

Wouldn’t you rather burn out doing something you love than plod along doing something you merely put up with?

Don’t get me wrong; I have no plans of going down in flames in the foreseeable future. I have a close circle of trusted advisors that I listen to carefully. If they told me I was in danger of exhaustion or boredom (the latter being more dangerous, I think), I’d pay attention and make some changes.

But my close advisors are also the kind of people who understand that I shouldn’t always be making the safe choices. They know me, and they know I’d die a slow death if I slowed down too much. I went in the bank the other day to open a new account and looked around at everyone working there. I felt like I aged three days in the 40 minutes I sat in the chair filling out paperwork. I just can’t fathom the idea of a life like that.

All things considered, I’d rather regret something I did than regret something I wanted to do but was restrained by fear or insecurity from going for it. In other words, I want a full life. I don’t want to miss out on anything. There will always be time to sleep later.

Speaking of Sleep

Twelve hours have sped by now (I ate dinner, took a two-hour nap, and watched the first parts of a few movies), and the sun is coming up as we approach the city. Many of you will already be halfway through with your Thursday when this gets posted, but it’s bright and early Friday morning over in this part of the world.

I’m hoping to take another nap before catching my connecting flight to Nepal, but first I have a Skype interview to do a few minutes after I land. Hong Kong airport, here we come.

Good Questions to Ask

• What’s out there waiting for you to take hold of?
• What’s most important to you?
• What can you do to embrace your own full life?

You can answer the questions here if you want, but that’s optional. What’s not optional is making decisions. Every day we all make decisions actively or passively, and I am an advocate for active decision-making. What I am prodding people about, including myself on a daily basis, is making choices deliberately.

Thanks for reading this far. Thanks to everyone I saw in L.A. last night. Thanks for being remarkable and inspiring me to go further.

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Hong Kong Sunrise by Slack12. Rwanda Image by The Remarkable Jen Lemen

On Thursday night, about 50% of Portland, Oregon descended upon the Pied Cow, a local beer garden to talk about travel, entrepreneurship, blogging, and all kinds of other topics.

At one point a waitress came over to ask what our group was working on, and someone said “World Domination.” Nice one. Later on, the same waitress told me we were “the most polite group of non-conformists” she had ever met, which I also appreciated.

Most of the items on the Pied Cow’s menu are $5-10, but they also offer a special “$50 Dessert” available if you have a big group or are just in the mood for a LOT of ice cream. I had promised to order this massive concoction if at least 20 people showed up on Thursday, which definitely wasn’t a problem. (In retrospect, we probably could have used a $150 dessert – maybe next time.)

The whole set of photos is now online, or you can also view a Flickr slideshow.

As I continue to connect with more remarkable people from all over the world, the overriding themes for me are gratitude and responsibility. Gratitude comes from the present — I’m grateful that so many people find resonance with the work I do. Responsibility is for the future — whenever I look through the email list signups or take over a restaurant with an eager group of new friends, I realize I need to keep raising the standard.

(Don’t worry, slacking off is definitely NOT part of the plan. I enjoy learning from all of you and have no plans to stop. Thanks for caring. )

The next meetup will be in Los Angeles on August 19th, while I’m en route to Asia on the last red-eye fight later that same night. If you like to plan ahead, send me a note and I’ll put you on the list for details as soon as we know them.

***

A couple of short items for the Sunday Store Update:

Art and Money – New Interview

The Unconventional Guide Art and Money continues to help artists around the world. Despite strong sales, I’ve decided not to raise the price – and we keep posting new content at least once a month.

The latest new interview is with Elizabeth Briel, a self-described “travel artist” currently crusading to fame in Australia and China. If you already own Art and Money, you can download Elizabeth’s interview on the owners’ resource page. If not, the order link with more info is here.

Social Web Preview

My next product is called the Unconventional Guide to the Social Web. It launches to the world on August 18th, and the goal is to demystify the art of using social media to promote something without being lame.

I’ve gathered a lot of social media success stories (thanks to everyone who sent them in), and now I’m creating a FAQ file to compliment all of the other materials. Naturally, I’ve got all the basics covered – how to use Twitter, how to find people who are predisposed to your cause, how not to be a moron, etc. – but if there’s something that’s bugging you, send me the question and I’ll try to add as many as I can to the file. For those who are interested, you’ll hear a lot more about this product later in the week.

Again, thanks to everyone in Portland who came out the other night, and thanks to everyone else all over the world who follows along. I’m sure I’ll see you somewhere.

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