Welcome!  I put this blog together to journal my experiences in business and life.  You might find it useful if you’d like to quit your job, start a business, become financially free, or spend more time doing what you love.

What’s this blog all about?

1. Most people don’t love their jobs, but they need to make a living.
2. If you don’t love something it’s hard to be great at it.  There might be something else you could be doing which would be much more valuable to the world and yourself but no one wants to pay you for it at the moment.
3. There is a solution to this but it’s not easy: you’ve got to build a business which allows you to quit your job and become financially free.  If you can pull it off a whole world of possibilities opens up.

Why is starting a business a good idea?

1. Wealth
   It’s the best way to build wealth: 74% of millionaires in the U.S. are self-made, meaning they started their own businesses. Your chances of becoming wealthy in a traditional job aren’t as good.
2. Important work
   Finding something you’re good at and love doing means you can contribute great things to the world.  But if your boss at your current job isn’t interested in funding that, you might have to do it on your own.
3. Freedom
   If you no longer need to spend 40 hours a week doing something you don’t like, then you have more control over your life.  There are all sorts of ways you can use that time (forming better relationships, getting enough sleep and exercise, traveling the world, working harder than you ever did before, etc) and it’s completely up to you.

What stuff have you done?

• 2002-2004 – did some internships at IBM and several startups
• 2004 – co-founded UniversityTutor.com
• 2005 – graduated from Rice University in Houston, TX (economics and computer science undergrad, computer science grad school)
• 2005 – started a consulting job at Deloitte & Touche, quit 3 months later to work for myself full time, scared my parents to death
• 2006 – started a variety of other businesses which utterly failed
• 2007 – started this blog
• 2007 – published a book on how to quit your job and work for yourself called Breaking Free (the eBook is free)
• 2008 – got interested in real estate investing and bought some rental property in Houston
• 2008 – changed the UniversityTutor.com business model and expanded all over the U.S. (article series here)
• 2009 – moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina to try living there for a year
• 2009 – started BuyersVote.com – a collaborative website for online product reviews (article series here)
• 2009 – started FeedmailPro.com – a blog newsletter tool that kicks Aweber’s butt (article series here)
• 2010 – was contracted to get Seoaholic.com off the ground and running – a web app to help you track your search engine rankings and build more incoming links
• 2010 – moved to Palo Alto, CA to join a Y-Combinator startup (haven’t publicly launched yet, more info soon)

What current projects/companies are you working on?

I’m mostly interested in web businesses which I program and run myself.  These are built with Ruby on Rails.

UniversityTutor.com

BuyersVote.com

FeedmailPro.com

Seoaholic.com

What are some of the best posts on Breaking Free?

I have a list of the most popular posts in the sidebar at the top right of this page, but if you want to check out some of the older posts that I think are good here are a few:

• How To Create A Business Website In 4 Hours
• 46 Ways To Start A Business With Little Or No Money
• Interview With A Self-Made Millionaire – Steve Davis
• Interview With A Self-Made Millionaire – Howard Rambin
• Interview With A Self-Made Millionaire – Kevin Morgan
• How To Understand And Create Financial Statements For Your Business
• How To Go From Business Idea To Launch In One Month
• How To Choose A Killer Domain Name For Your Business Website
• 10 Ways To Come Up With A Million Dollar Business Idea

Where are you now?

How can I get future updates from this blog?

By creating this website hopefully I’ll meet some other cool entrepreneurs and inspire some people along the way.

Keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong