A few weeks ago, I had the honor of interviewing Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non-Conformity. Chris has made it his mission to travel every country of the world before he turns 35 and he is well on his way of achieving this incredible goal.

Picture taken from Chris' Website

But not only that, he is also an entrepreneur and a blogging superstar who managed to make a living around his values and his idea of living to his own standards. He recently published his second book The $100 Startup, which I am eagerly awaiting to find in my mailbox in the coming days. If you haven't gotten your copy yet, you absolutely must grab one here.

Both topics, as you know, are near and dear to my heart, which is why I was extremely excited (and just as nervous) when Chris agreed to be my guest. The interview was great and Chris has this special way of making you feel great and very comfortable. I can't wait to meet him face-to-face in Portland in July for the World Domination Summit.

But without making you wait much longer, here is the interview.

Tell us why does the topic of living your passion even matter to you, or does it even apply to you?

Well, hopefully it applies. I guess the question is what is the alternative? If you don’t want to live passionately and live out your passion, then what else would you do? And for me, fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t know any other way to do it. I guess once you really start to follow your passion or do something that you are excited about; it’s very hard to go back. If you just have like a regular job and a regular life and you’re going through the motions, and you don’t know any better, then maybe that’s fine you can continue doing that just being discontented. But for me, I’m fortunate enough to have all these different experiences; I just can’t imagine giving them up and doing something else.  So I guess, I just find a lot of life in living with a passion that I am excited about.

Absolutely, I have experienced the same and once you do it, you can’t go back. You just can’t because you feel like your incarcerated or in a prison.

Very good word. Yes.

You’re known to be the guy who travels around the world and wants to have visited all countries by the age of 35. How did that idea come about?

It came about in stages, it wasn’t all at once. I started traveling a bit when I was 20 years old. And then I lived overseas in West Africa for about four years. So I did a lot of traveling then. Then I would also travel some in Eastern Europe and then a little bit in Asia. It was after I had been to maybe 50 countries that I just counted all of them up, I made like a list – like “where have I been?” I was curious. And then I started thinking, I was 26 or 27 years old then. I thought maybe I’d like to visit 100 countries. That would be great, that’s my goal. Then I started getting closer to that goal and I realized it was kind of easy because I could choose which countries to go to. So if something was difficult, I just wouldn’t have to go there. So as I got closer, I decided let’s do every country. So it’s 193 of them. I’ve just been working on it. And that’s what I have been doing over the last 8 years now.

How many countries have you visited now?

185 so far, so I just have 8 more to go.

That’s amazing. I love to travel too and you often say that traveling with an agenda is not the same as traveling for fun. But still, it must be amazing to have been all over the world.

It is amazing and like I said in the beginning, I feel very fortunate and very grateful and my life has changed a lot just by meeting people and experiencing so many different cultures. So I feel very glad.

When you say it was a process, did you ever have doubts or fears of the future while you were pursuing your goal? You have made a business out of your passion and your online presence is what supports your mission. So did you ever long for the “security of just being an employee” instead of doing everything on your own?

Yeah,

I have a confession to make: I am terrified of calling people. I don’t why, but something about not seeing people’s faces and expressions when talking to them makes me feel extremely awkward. At the same time, I am actually quite shy and often at a loss for words and those weaknesses are magnified when being on the phone.

However, I set myself a challenge and interviewed a few brilliant minds in the blogosphere and business world and I will give you excerpts of those interviews here on the blog and on the podcast. If you’d like to read the entire interviews you should wait no longer and join my email list.

The series is being kicked off by no other than Penelope Trunk. It was a huge honor to be talking to her and to say that I was nervous would be an understatement. However, the interview turned out great and I had tons of fun hearing her unique perspective on following your passion, life and doing work you love.

I remember the exact moment I first heard of Penelope. I was talking to Torre DeRoche at a meet up in Melbourne hosted by Farnoosh Brock. She was mentioning how Penelope Trunk had given some extremely honest advice to someone on a Podcast. I had no idea who Penelope was, shamefully, but ever since that moment I read her blog and was very intrigued by her brutal honesty.

Penelope is the co-founder of Brazen Careerist, which is her third startup and a networking tool for young professionals. So, the topic of finding work that you love and finding a career that fits your lifestyle are topics she is an expert at.

Does the topic of living your passion matter to you at all or is it something that is foreign to you?

Well, I’ve always had to support myself and I’ve never been married to a guy who can support the kids and me. So if I had unlimited money I would have a Pilates teacher and a yoga teacher live at my house and I’d probably have a chef that would be next to me while I cook so I learn to cook really well. And I also would have two full time nannies living in the house. So it’s hard to say this like I’m living my passion. I think people mistake living their passions for their dream life. Like what would we do if we had unlimited money is so, so different than what we would do if we had to support ourselves.

I don’t actually think there is any evidence that people who have unlimited money make better decisions about how to be happy. So then, the whole thing about living your passion, I don’t know it just seems like a lot of bull shit. We should all just try to do something that we are engaged in all day and support ourselves so we don’t starve to death and be surrounded by people who love us. I think doing that is super, super hard to do. No one has time to worry about if they are living their passion or whatever, it seems like a question out of a Mel Gibson movie. Is that a terrible answer?

No, absolutely, that’s a great one. Actually you kind of went into the next one too. That was, is it even realistic to do meaningful work and to do work that you are very passionate about? Do you think we can pursue that? Or is it like you said, just stuff that happen in movies?

There’s no evidence that people need to do work that they are passionate about. There’s very good research about what makes the best workers because it’s so cost effective for companies to dump money into that research because then it gets more work out of employees. This is extremely well research terrain here. What makes the best employees are the happiest, most engaged, most connected employees – obviously those are the ones that want to work. The way you get those employees is by creating challenging goals for them to meet and giving them control over their workload.

So that’s all people need it is absolutely, completely irrelevant if you’re working at something you are passionate about. It’s relevant if you’re doing something that’s challenging and interesting and it’s relevant if have goals that you can meet, but the whole passion thing,