A Few Entrepreneurs You Should Be Listening To Today

In: Advice| Business Ideas| Education By: Brian Armstrong

5 Jun 2009

From time to time I get in touch with various readers of this blog who are “Breaking Free” in their own way.

Please take a minute to check out their respective sites below and give them a look! It’s always pays to get around like minded people and see what you can learn.

Gordie Rogers is an entrepreneur living in Tianjin, China and has built various web businesses
Andrew is just graduating and debating how to navigate corporate America vs. the world of entrepreneurship
John Bardos is runs JetSetCitizen.com and is living in Japan
Erica Douglass sold her web hosting business for over $1M after coming to silicon valley in 1999 and is now a full time entrepreneur
Manuel Zeh is currently traveling the world indefinitely and is a world class pianist. He has lived in dozens of countries (over 30 now?)
Mike McCoy created CollegeTownMenus.com and is in the process of breaking free
Gaurav Khandelwal helps companies launch new products and services online at the ChaiOne blog and has worked with numerous fortune 500 companies
Andy Liu is an experienced angel investor and dispenses lots of wisdom to first time entrepreneurs
Neil Patel is a self made millionaire having started a number of web businesses
Charles Cohn runs a (somewhat) competing site at VarsityTutor.com and is a brilliant guy to brainstorm with
Philip Arthur Moore is a freelancer living in Vietnam and fellow Rice University alum

These are just a few that I know of and there really is a “movement” going on right now of people who’ve realized working for someone else isn’t the end goal of life.

Who are your favorite entrepreneurs to listen to?

Tags: Education

13 Responses

Erica Douglass

June 5th, 2009 at 2:48 am

Thanks for the link! I need to do one of these, too.

Brian Armstrong

June 6th, 2009 at 6:30 am

No prob, I enjoyed your latest post…it’s amazing how giving such honesty (good and bad) can really draw people. People can tell when you’re being authentic! Thanks Erica.

College Town Menus (CTM)

June 5th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

Thank you for the shout out, Brian! YOU are truly a good inspiration to me. I love your attention to the smallest detail, your drive for always tweaking the business model and your innovative ideas for more side projects; and how to leverage all of that to have a nice steady stream of residual passive income. You definately have more balls than a lot of us do – just packing up and MOVING to another country with little experience of their culture, language, or haha — a job. Keep up the great work!

Brian Armstrong

June 6th, 2009 at 6:35 am

Much appreciated! The encouragement is always needed from friends since it’s never easy. Keep doing scary things in life…they are worth it :)

Andrew

June 8th, 2009 at 4:36 am

Hi there!

Just an FYI, when I try to visit your site, collegetownmenus.com my Avast antivirus picks up a trojan?

Compromised? Bad scanning by Avast?

Definitely something to look into.

College Town Menus (CTM)

July 15th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

Andrew, thank you for the comment. I’ve heard a couple other people say something about that, but the code is legit and no viruses, so not sure why that is happening? I will look more into it, thank you again for the comment. I’ve tried viewing the page from multiple computers with anti-virus protection and haven’t gotten the errors.

Gordie Rogers

June 6th, 2009 at 2:21 am

You’re very kind to mention me. Perhaps “budding entrepreneur” is a more appropriate label for me.

I’ll get cracking on another product review for your http://www.BuyersVote.com. Do you want me to review several local Tianjin restaurants and cafes for the site? If so, it’ll be no problem.

Brian Armstrong

June 6th, 2009 at 6:38 am

Fair enough :) The fact that you are out there trying means you ahead of 99% of other folks.

Sure, any reviews on BuyersVote are appreciated. I have some ideas for that on the back burner (redesigning the homepage and getting someone with a big permission asset to help spread the word, but it’s taken a back seat with all the UniversityTutor stuff lately). Your help has been great on all my little projects…forum, etc. Thanks Gordie…hopefully we’ll meet in person someday when I make it to Asia.

Andrew

June 8th, 2009 at 12:34 am

Brian,

You continue to amaze me! Not only have you been such an inspiration to me with all of the great work you’ve done and shared over the past months, but you still believe in the “human network effect!” (Sorry, to many of those Cisco commercials on CNN at work.)

It’s so encouraging to me that you take the time out and point out the fellow entrepreneurs that you’ve uplifted and given guidance to.

THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE LINK!

PS: You’ve got quite the following here, and I’m sure I can speak for everyone else in that if you need us to help you in any way, just let us know!

Brian Armstrong

June 12th, 2009 at 8:26 pm

Not a problem, thanks Andrew! :)