Read This Post

March 25, 2013 By Joel Runyon 12 Comments

Just read this post

We’ve got a lot of really intriguing announcements, meetups, races and job postings (yes jobs!) in this post. I could come up with a fancy title for all of this, but just read this post.

read

RSS –> Email

RSS is dead (mostly). If you’re reading this via email – relax and move on to the next item. If you’re reading this via rss on the blog – this is for you!

You might know that google recently killed google reader and if you’re reading this via GReader, as of July 1, you won’t be able to anymore – they’re shutting it down. Essentially, RSS is dead. If you really, really want to use RSS going forward, I recommend feedly.

However, the best way to stay up-to-date with everything is to join ~10,000 other really awesome people and subscribe via email right here. You also get a ton of really great stuff when you sign up (I like to bribe you). Not to mention, I’m doing a ton of new stuff with email in the next few months, so it’s going to be an even bigger deal than before. If you’re reading via RSS and want to keep up with everything we’re doing here at Impossible HQ after Google Reader goes to technology heaven, email is the way to go.

–> Subscribe here <— Get in on this.

Impossible HQ is Hiring An Editor

Big News –> I’m looking to hire an editor here at Impossible HQ. For the last 3 years, I’ve been running everything myself + a very tiny team of on/off contractors of mostly graphic designers.

As things continue to grow, I’m going to continue to expand (we have two big projects in the works as we speak). That stats with making sure everything on the site is high-quality, helping schedule & plan out content strategy as well as do some copy-editing to fend off the extra commas and missing words that sometimes creep into the site. Ideal candidates are great writers & highly organized but can deal with someone who is not (mainly me).

Note, this is a part-time position and you’re not going to make google money, but it is a paid position. You also get a first-hand look at what I’m coming up with next and other projects before I launch them publicly.

If you’d like to apply send an email to joel [at] impossiblehq [dot] com.

Please put “Editor Position” in the subject line and answer the following questions:

Name & Location (virtual position, but time zones are important)
What’s your relevant experience as a writer/editor? What should I know about you?
What type of time availability do you have on a weekly basis to dedicate to Impossible HQ?
How long have you been reading Impossible HQ? What’s your favorite article?
Why are you a good fit for this position?
Why do you want to do this?
What’s the one thing you’d like to influence about Impossible HQ?
What’s the next thing you’re crossing off your impossible list? When are you going to do it?
When was your last cold shower?
Is there anything else you want to brag about/I should know?

Applications need to be in by April 5th (10 days). Once I get them all, I’ll be reading through the apps, pick out the best to do an interview and a few test projects. If we find a good fit, we’ll run a 90 day contract (3 months) to see how it goes and hopefully move full steam ahead if things go smoothly. If you’re interested, I’d love for you to apply – just remember applications need to be in by April 5th.

Chicago Meetup

Chicago area people. We’re having a small meetup next week on Wednesday at 7pm(ish). We’re still finalizing venue details, but if you’d like to come, simply RSVP and click here and fill out the form below.

Chicago Tough Mudder

In another case of “I’m doing X, who wants to come with me?“, I’m running the Chicago Tough Mudder on May 18th & 19th…who wants to come with me?

If you want to get in on it – put your details in here. I’ll be sending out an email asap, pick our date and get a team together. If you’re in Chicago and think you’re tough enough to give it a shot, lets go.

*note, you’re going to have to be in decent shape to pull this off. It’s a 10-12 mile obstacle race with 20+ obstacles, so if you’re still struggling doing a couple miles, we’ll be doing some other events down the road. You might want to start training now.

To RSVP to the Chicago area Tough Mudder, click here and fill out the form below.

Non-Chicago & International Readers

Don’t worry – we’re working on a few solid meetups outside the Chicago area. Later this year, we’ll be doing more & more meetups around the U.S. and hopefully interenationally as well .

—-

Random Fun Fact: Last weekend I gave a TEDx talk here in Chicago. It should be online in the next few days & I’ll be posting it as soon as it’s live. Stay tuned!

—-
Whew! I think that’s it….

I’m constantly working on new stuff around here and I’m pretty excited about what 2013 has in store. I’m always working to make things bigger & better and as I do, the simple limits of what I think is impossible keeps moving further away.

As always, thanks for being a part of this . Keep doing something impossible.

photo credit: the bbp

Filed Under: BIT Updates, Business, Life, Meetups

We’re Building A School In Guatemala ≠ Impossible

January 4, 2013 By Joel Runyon 15 Comments

We did it.

We freaking did it.

I remember shooting this video in LA back in July and wondering “What the heck amI getting myself into?” Apparently the answer was: An Awesome Adventure.

The goal was $25,000. We smashed that a week early (on Christmas no less), and raised $26,406

Because of you guys, 1,000 kids in Guatemala are literally going to have the chance to do something they thought might be impossible – get an education. I really can’t accurately describe how that makes me feel. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The Breakdown

A large quantity of consistent small actions can produce incredible things.

An interesting thing happened as our campaign developed.

Most campaigns are dominated by the 80/20 rule. They’ll have big, generous, flagship donors who contribute anywhere from 25% – 50% or even 75% of the goal. We didn’t have that.

That’s probably something I can work on doing as I learn more and get better at fundraising, but personally I think it’s pretty freaking awesome that we raised over $25,000 with mostly small donations.

Now small is relative, of course, we had some very generous donors, but I think the biggest overal donations were a touch over $1,000. The majority were made up of $100, $50, and $25 donations. That means a ton of people got involved and took action.

That’s pretty cool.

Things I Learned

Clarity

Clarity is huge. Stating exactly what you want to achieve by an exact date is really important. It can be tempting to be vague when talking about doing something impossible because vagueness gives you safety. When you’re vague, you give yourself some cushion in the future in case you fail – you have a built in alibi.

Specificity makes it a hard landing. Interestingly enough, the bolder you are, the more precise your goals are, the easier it is to achieve them. Be clear. Be precise.

Deadlines

Goals without deadlines are nothing but dreams.

Always have a deadline. They have a way of creating an urgency and focused around.

Have a deadline. Make it shorter than you think you need. You might be surprised at how fast you can actually accomplish it (for more on this, see Parkinson’s Law).

The Origin of Service

Mentality > Ability

— Joel Runyon(@joelrunyon) December 16, 2012

Service (like most things) is more about mindset than capability.

It’s less about the amount of money than it is the idea of generosity. For some people, donating $5 takes way more than it does for other people to give $1,000. It’s not about the quantity as much as it is about the attitude of the person giving.

Anybody can donate $5. Few people will actually do it.

If you can see yourself doing something, you can do it. If you can’t see yourself doing it, usually you can’t achieve it. – David Goggins

Similarly, if you tink you can make an impact, you probably will. If you don’t think you can, you probably won’t.

Interestingly enough, this is exactly what happens when you want to do something impossible.

If you always say “I’ll start being generous when I have X amount of dollars”, chances are you’ll never learn how to be generous in the first place – even if you have a million, billion, trillion dollars (or whatever the number is for you).

Similarly, if you always say “I’ll start doing something impossible when [insert your reason here] (ex. I know more / I’m less scared / I’m more prepared), chances are you’ll never learn how to do things that require you being ignorant, scared and unprepared and you’ll never do much of anything.

You’re probably not ready to do the things you need to be doing. Do them anyways.

Special Thank Yous

Special Thanks to the following people for stepping up big throughout the campaign.

Elaine Morales at Not Just a Day Dream for stepping up huge and raising over $3,800.
Jarie Bolander at Endurance Leader for donating the first royalties of his book.
Gwen Irwin at Your Inner Joy.

All of them stepped up to raise more than $1500 towards the campaign.

Also, thank you to everyone else who donated or rallied their own friends & family to raise money for this.

For those of you who donated throughout the campaign, I’ve fulfilled my promise. I ran the race with a camera and shot videos throughout it giving shoutouts along the way. It’s a little on the long side (it was a long run), but if you make it through past mile 20, I start to get a little loopy and the shout outs get a little more convoluted/entertaining . You can click through to youtube you can skip directly to different parts. There’s a special thank you to EVERYONE (over 300 of you) who contributed in some way at the end of the video as well.

(click on my face to watch the video in email)

What’s Next

I learned a ton from this project and it’s not done yet. We’re still finalizing all the details, but we’ll be heading to Guatemala later this year to check out the school and add some final touches.

To everyone who’s been involved with the campaign in any way: thank you. You made this happen.

This is just the beginning.

Thanks for being a part of it.

- Joel

(If you’d still like to give, you can do so here – these guys will appreciate it).

Impossible Ones School

Filed Under: Adventures, BIT Updates, Good Stories, Impossible Things, Kicking A**, Life, Story, The Impossible Tagged With: big win, generosity, impossible ones, Impossible Things, mind blown, pencils of promise, pop, we built a freaking school

A Crash Course Intro To Impossible HQ

August 14, 2012 By Joel Runyon 11 Comments

We’ve had a lot of new people in the last 10 days so I thought I’d take the time to review exactly what it is we’re up to at the site (we have a lot of things happening). If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll still want to read this. We’ve got a ton of projects going on and you may have just missed a few things.

First things first, there are a lot of sites that are about inspiration, feeling good and happy self-talk a-la a virtual internet Oprah.

This Is Not One Of Those Sites

Here, we talk about pushing your limits and tell a great story by doing the impossible. Doing really hard stuff doesn’t happen by sitting around, and talking about how much you really want to do something, while waiting for the stars to align. It happens by going out and actually doing it. That’s why the unofficial shorter motto around here is:

Do something first.
Talk about it second (if you have time)

The even shorter version: Do something.

We believe inspiration is worth absolutely nothing if you never do anything with it – so we focus on doing. Cool?

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s how this whole thing got started…

The 2-Year, 20 Second Recap

2 years ago I was a laid-off from UPS driver helper and couldn’t get a call back from Starbucks. It was not awesome. I didn’t feel like I could do anything.

So I sat and moped around for a while while telling myself how hard life was and how everything was impossible….then something happened. I got sick of it. I decided that even if I tried and massively failed, it would be 100x better than sitting around in my parents basement feeling sorry for myself and telling myself how good my excuses were without actually knowing it myself.

So I started doing something. I made a list of all the things that seemed impossible to me and decided to start actually trying them. The first thing I did was a “fake” indoor triathlon (I figured it would be easier for them to fish my drowned body out of a pool than a lake when I drowned).

You can make your way through whole story, but things escalated quickly:

The fake indoor triathlon led to a real one, which led to a bunch more triathlons, my first marathon and a half ironman despite me hating running and never having run more than 3 miles in my life before.

As I started doing things, the blog started to expand as well. Since it’s inception, it’s expanded into a brand headquarters, a community, an apparel line and a manifesto that’s topped the charts on Amazon for weeks.

So what are we up to now? Well, quite a bit (we’re ambitious like that).

Current Impossible Projects.

Impossible School Project

We’re Building an #IMPOSSIBLE School in Guatemala

As a community, one of our main goals is giving back and helping others do the impossible as well. Currently we’re partnering with Pencils of Promise to raise 25,000 to build a school in Guatemala and help 1,000 students achieve an impossible goal of having a chance of education. (After announcing it just last week, we’re already 15% of the way there). But this isn’t a normal hands-off fundraiser, once we raise the funds, we’ll actually go visit the school and help build it with our hands. If you’d like to join in and help out, you can do so in two ways:

Donate Here
Read the background here and join in.

As part of this initiative, I’m running my first ultramarathon this October in Chicago to raise awareness and funds. Training starts today!

The Impossible Abs Challenge

My most recent challenge was my most daunting (and easily my most vain). For my entire life I’ve wanted six pack abs. I tried a billion different programs (approximately) and none of them worked. This spring I got sick of messing around and finally decided to get things done.

I sat down with Vic and we created a program that eliminated my excuses and in exactly 8 weeks I lost 34 pounds got to 5.4% body fat and finally the ever elusive six pack(and did a photo shoot along the way). You can read about exactly how I got six pack abs here.

After several requests, we’re releasing the training guide and coaching program in the next two weeks. If you’d like to be find out more about this, you can sign up here.

Impossible Gear

Nate Damm finishing his Walk Across America in his Impossible Shirt

Several people in the use impossible gear as a reminder to live a life worth writing about and do the impossible. It’s been all over the world with people doing incredible things. If you’d like to join in the fun, grab some gear, do something impossible in it and send it in. We just might feature you .

Impossible Shirts
Impossible Tanks
Impossible Cycling Jerseys (avaialble for next two weeks). Portion of proceeds go to our #IMPOSSIBLE school effort.

Josh doing a 200ft Gainer of a bridge

More People Doing Impossible Things [Get Your Gear Here]

Impossible-MarkLawrenceBolivia-e1328573837166

548041_3146017004501_1087290102_32432390_2079003467_n

294955_10151641319585144_754065143_23617736_1497820047_n

eff338edab220862a6e575efb1926e16-1428914720

Other Impossible Stuff

A few other happenings and references that aren’t neatly organized into one specific category.

I’ve spoken at Target HQ in Minneapolis, MN, the World Domination Summit in Portland, and a few universities.
Occasionally I take people on some impossible adventures to push them outside their comfort zone and physically do something (exhibit A | exhibit B). Want to come along on our next one?
I run own my own online marketing agency, an adventure blog and recently returned from a press trips with the Jordan Tourism Board
I created a triathlon guide, if you’re interested in running your first triathlon but don’t know where to start. People from all walks of life have used it to run their first triathlon ever.
There’s a small group of us that like to take cold showers (but for a much different reason than you’re probably thinking of). We also say #boom a lot. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.

—-

Whew that’s a lot! If you’re still with us, congratulations, we’re glad you’re here. If you’re an impossible veteran…you know the drill. We’re just getting started .

#boom

If you haven’t already, subscribe via email and then join the community of other impossible doers in the impossible league community.

Filed Under: Adventures, BIT Updates, Business, Impossible Things, Life, Physical Challenges, Six Pack Abs Tagged With: BIT Updates

Introducing Cold Shower Therapy: The Challenge

June 5, 2012 By Joel Runyon 22 Comments

Cold Shower Therapy is officially here.

–> Take The Cold Shower Therapy Challenge <–

The Backstory:

I get a lot of emails from people who feel “stuck.” They’re bored, frustrated and just want to make a change in their life, but don’t know how. They look around them and see people doing stuff they want to do, but they just feel like everything is impossible. They’re stuck.

I used to be there too. 2 years ago, I was living in my parent’s basement, laid off from UPS, wishing I could travel the world and live a life worth writing about, but it all seemed impossible for me. Other people could do it, but definitely not me. I was stuck – but, I decided to get “un-stuck”, started my blog and started changing my life one change at a time.

I introduced cold shower therapy a few months ago as a personal strategy I’ve used over the past two years to smash my excuses and do something and it simply works. The results speak for themselves.

The first time I did it, I launched Impossible HQ, Impossible League and wrote my manifesto all within a month.
The second time I did it, I quit my job and started my own business.
The third time I did it, I got into the best shape I’ve ever been in my entire life.

After getting an overwhelming response to the unofficial cold shower therapy challenge in April and several people running their own challenges, I decided to formalize it, build a course and turn Cold Shower Therapy into an official Impossible League Challenge.

Cold Shower therapy works by freezing you out of your excuses and showing you that the resistance in your head is just as imaginary and harmful as the boogie man.

(If you don’t know what cold shower therapy is, you can read up on it here).

What’s In The Challenge?

Cold Shower Therapy is a personal 28 day email challenge course that combines 1 part inspiration, 2 parts bootcamp, and 1 part self-administered pure ice-cold shower therapy to get you inspired and shed your excuses that you’ve convinced yourself are valid. In 4 weeks, you’ll move from excuse maker to excuse smasher. From passive existing to purposeful action. From “stuck” to “un-stuck.”

Obviously, I can’t make you take cold showers (because, lets face it, that would be a little weird), but I can give you inspiration and perspective to challenge yourself, kickstart a change and help you take responsibility for your own life in just 28 days. Plus, the all cold shower therapy challengers will get exclusive access to a private forum within the impossible league just for those taking the cold shower therapy challenge – so you’ll have a community of challengers to take it on with you – and getting “un-stuck” together.

Cold Shower Therapy is open for the next 7 days – after which, we’ll close it down for the first therapy challenge which will begin the 15th. Like everything around here, there’s a 100% no-hassle money back guarantee if you find after 28 days of cold showers, you still feel like you’ve significantly moved from “stuck” to “un-stuck.”

If you feel stuck, there is no better way to get “un-stuck” than 28 days of cold shower therapy.

Are you up for the challenge?

Take the Cold Shower Therapy Challenge.

See you inside.

Filed Under: Adventures, BIT Updates, Business, Life

Announcements Galore: New Impossible Gear, Community Forums, Cold Showers, Books, Meetups, Adventures And More!

May 30, 2012 By Joel Runyon 19 Comments

Holy canoly Batman! There’s a ton of stuff happening around the blog and HQ it’s getting a little ridiculous! There’s a lot of stuff to get through. Let’s just dive right in!

Impossible Gear

By popular request, we’re expanding the apparel line beyond just shirts. In order to do this, we’ve streamlined the impossible gear page and updated the gallery of people doing impossible things. Here’s what’s coming up.

New Women Tank Tops

Ladies, I know I’ve been saying for the last few months that we’re coming out with tank tops, but they’re finally here. I’d talk more about them, but at this point in the game, it’s easier to just show you a photo.

Front

impossible tank [front]

Back

Impossible Tank [back]

Major props to Juli Bauer of PaleoOMG for putting up with my pestering, modeling this and dominating crossfit this past weekend.

With some gentle nudging from my friends at {r}evolution apparel, these are printed on Alternative Apparel baby rib tank tops that are eco-friendly and socially conscious (not to mention, they look great and are super soft). I’m sorry to make all you wait so long, but they’re [FINALLY] available for order. Pick yours up at the store today for just $20 + Free Shipping ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

New Impossible Shirt Design

Don’t worry, we’re not changing much. The front is staying the same (of course), but we’re switching up the back to be a little cleaner and a little more bold. We’ll be updating the back logo to the Impossible HQ logo design and dropping the URL. It’s a little less promotional, a little better designed and if someone asks you what the shirt means – you get to have a fun impromptu conversation .

You can see the difference between the two shirts below – we’ve dropped the url, combined impossible with HQ and are leaving it at that.

Old Version

New Version

The shirts are currently en-route to me as we speak and they should start shipping in early June. Keep an eye out for them.

Impossible Cycling Jerseys

Are you a cyclist? A group of cyclists in the league want custom impossible jerseys? If you’re interested, sign up here. If we get 20 or more people interested in pre-ordering them, we’ll do a one time, limited edition custom jersey and order them up fresh. How about that? Get on the list.

Boom.

I’ve also had a bag of suspicious looking wristbands dropped at Headquarters. One of them has even been spotted in the wild. We’ll announce exactly what these are for in the days to come .

And, in case you’re curious, there’s more gear in the works as well later this summer (we’re looking at you tech shirts and hoodies).

Impossible League

Speaking of the impossible league, we’ve got a brand new platform for it! If you don’t know, the impossible league is the community of readers and doers who follow the blog as they work on telling a great story with their life and do their own impossible things.

We decided to change platforms because the last one was getting really slow and difficult to navigate as it grew to over 500+ people, so we started fresh, with better software powering it, clenaer navigation and more expandability (so we can do some really cool things in the future). We learned a lot on the old platform and we’re going to be bringing those lessons to the new platform. If you’re looking to make some changes and do something impossible, the impossible league community is absolutely amazing (did I mention we’ve raised over $6,000 for Kiva.org?). Check out the new impossible league community and join up here.

I really can’t explain how excited I am for the new platform. While we’re still working out some of the minor kinks, it’s a ton of fun to interact with other people on it and see what incredibly things people are up to (like Hailey Manning qualifying for the Kona Ironman Championship!). You should really check it out.

(Note: due to exporting restrictions from our old acccount, if you had an old impossible league account, it will no longer work. You’ll need to create a new one. I know, it’s a pain, but it’s going to be totally worth it – promise).

New Impossible HQ Promo Video

Back in September, I went to Ohio and did an interview with a friend Seth and Daniel Haley. We ended up creating a longer interview video, but also managed to put together this short promo video which will be living in the sidebar for the near future. It’s a pretty short video that’s really well done. Check it out.

Cold Shower Therapy: The Challenge Course

Back in early April, I threw out a challenge – 30 days of cold showers – 30 days of overcoming resistance to doing something impossible you’ve always wanted to do and dubbed it cold shower therapy.

A lot of people took on the challenge, did it and changed major things about their lives. I wanted to get serious about getting back into shape after a crappy winter, so I jumped into a hardcore workout regimen and focused on another impossible thing on my list – getting a six pack (results coming soon).

Not only did it work for me personally, but the post was one of the most trafficked in recent memory and it made me realize there was a real need for this type of challenge to happen on a continual basis. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve also been getting lots of requests for personal coaching to help people get “unstuck.” While I don’t do personal coaching, I decided to meet both needs at the same time and fuse the two pieces into a 28-day email challenge course focused on getting “unstuck” and making 1 lasting change in 28 days, by applying cold shower therapy to your life for 4 weeks.

The first challenge will only be available next week for 7 days at a ridiculously low price and the challenge will officially start a week later. Full details to come next week – so stay tuned!

Impossible Publishing

Impossible Manifesto

The Impossible Manifesto has a new cover! If that’s not enough for you, we’re also working on making it available in print! The first copy is en-route to me as we speak and it should be available for purchase in the next week. Yup, it’s like a real book now – neat! If you haven’t downloaded the kindle version yet – Amazon makes me charge .99 for it, but I fought their lawyers and made it free until the end of the week from their site, so pick it up!

Also, I’ve had a few professors ask me about using the manifesto as part of their high school or university curriculum. With a new print edition, that might get a little easier to do. If you’re a teacher or professor and are interested in doing this, get in touch and let me know!

Blogs To Books

Ever since publishing the manifesto on amazon, I’ve wanted to experiment with Amazon as a distribution source. I decided to go ahead and take some of the most popular blog posts on the site and turn them into short e-books you can take with you anywhere you go. You can see the three posts we turned into books below.

The Complete List of Unique Convincing & Legitimate Excuses

These are all available on Amazon for absolutely free for the next week, so if you’ve got a kindle, do yourself a favor, go over and pick them up (and if you liked them, I’d love for you to rate them while you’re at it). As a plus, as of hitting publish, these books were at 1, 4, 8 and 10 in Amazon’s Entrepreneurship section – not too bad, huh?

I’d love to give them away forever (and I am all this week), but Amazon makes me charge a minimum of $.99 for the rest of time other than these few promo days (so if you want them, you better act sooner than later – they’re only free until Friday!). You can see all the books I have right now on Amazon right here. (and my personal favorite review so far here).

Meetups, Adventures, Speaking and More

I mentioned after speaking at Target earlier this year, that I was going to try to do more speaking engagements. Well, we’re making that happen. If you don’t know already, I’ll be hosting a breakout session at the World Domination Summit so if you’re attending the conference, you should probably come and say hi .

Plummet at the Summit 2012

I’m also taking a group of 20-30 people to jump off a bridge with me before WDS (there’s only a few spots left, so if you want in – sign up here) for the 2nd annual Plummet at the Summit. 2 jumps, special edition impossible gear, the experience of a lifetime and another thing knocked off your impossible list.

We’ also going to be having one of our first Impossible meetups in Portland the Monday after WDS absolutely free. If you’re going to the conference and want to stick around for another day or are just in/around Portland and want to meet a bunch of really cool people, put it on your calendar – there’s more informaiton coming soon.

The bungee jump trip is a small part of impossible adventures - a new venture where I’ll take people on awesome adventures every 3, 6 or 12 months. If you’re interested in more details about this, visit the site for more information and to be notified of upcoming adventures.

ONE MORE THING: A Giveaway

100startupbook

I’m a little late to the party, but some of you know of this up and coming blogger fellow fellow Chris Guillebeau (aka Chris G-ihavenoideahowiactuallyremembertospellhisname). Chris came out with a little book a few weeks ago called the $100 Startup about building your own business – even if you don’t have massive amounts of capital or a trust fund to get you started. As soon as it went on sale, Chris did what he did best and completely dominated the best seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal so when I finally got back to the states last week, I grabbed my copy and read it in one sitting – it’s that good.

Chris has been a huge inspiration to everything I’ve done here at the blog (right from the second post on this blog) and since I try to make a habit of passing on books that I enjoy and I have two copies to give away. If you’d like one – answer this question:

What one impossible thing are you doing this summer? What are you doing today to make it happen?

Answer in the comments and a completely biased judge will pick my favorite answer and ship them out in the next week.

—-

Believe if or not – that’s not a complete list of stuff that’s happening around here. Things are growing crazy fast and there are a lot of cool opportunities coming up (including another adventure I’ll be sharing next week). If you want to get involved, get on the email list and join the League. There’s some big stuff is happening around here – this is just the start

—

Whew! That’s a lot of things. Just to recap in case you lost track.

Women’s Tank tops are here. Order yours today! (+ more cool gear coming soon)
Get Some free books on Amazon (you get extra points from me if you’ll leave a review ).
Join the new Impossible League Community
Cold Shower Therapy: The Challenge is coming
Jump off a bridge with me at WDS
Win a copy of Chris Guillebeau’s new book & tell me what impossible things you’re doing this summer.

Told ya we’re busy . Stay up to date with all the madness on twitter .

photo credit: Thomas Hawk

Filed Under: BIT Updates, Blogging, Business, Fitness, Life

What Can You Do In 2 Years Anyway?

April 23, 2012 By Joel Runyon 19 Comments

What can you do in 2 years anyways?

That’s a good question. 2 years ago, I started making some changes in my life that led me to where I am today. One of those, included starting this blog. That decision led to a whole lot of other things that I’ve been able to do over the last 731 days that I used to think were impossible. A few of them include:

Getting my first ‘real’ job ever (at a place that didn’t rhyme with QPS). Thanks Todd!
Running my first 5k.
Running my first triathlon.
Working my way up to Marketing Director.
Running my first half-marathon
Becoming an extra in a movie.
Quitting a job for my first time ever.
Getting recruited for the first time ever (by two companies).
Making a really poor decision that eventually turned out great.
Running a marathon
Going on road trips to Texas, Florida, the entire West Coast, Canada, Mexico, California and more.
Starting a clothing line
Funding 50+ entrepreneurs on Kiva.
Moving six (6) times.
Going skydiving with 41 awesome people.
Going Bungee Jumping with 20 other awesome people.
Quitting my job for the 2nd time in 6 months.
Speaking at Universities.
Creating a presentation that’s been seen over 111,000 times.
Selling my car, moving out of my apartment, packing up my Cora bag and “officially” becoming homeless.
Visiting London, Hawaii (2x), Austin, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami, San Antonio, Portland, Denver, and a whole bunch of other places.
Starting my own online marketing agency.
Running my first Half-Ironman.
Writing a book that’s been downloaded 10s of thousands of times.
Speaking at Target HQ in Minneapolis (yes, that Target).
Starting my own business.
Writing 212 blog posts on this blog (we’re just starting to hit that boiling point). Boom.
Meeting countless friends, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, working on inspiring stuff that pushes me to get better – a lot better.

Along the way, I’ve become a completely different person than I was two years ago. A few years ago, every time I tried something new, there was this voice in my head yelling YOU CAN’T DO THIS! THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE! 2 years ago, I would have agreed, given up before even trying and gone home.

2 years later, that voice is still there, but it’s a little quieter and a little easier to ignore and I usually go ahead and try it anyways – even in the little things (Yesterday for the first time in 25 years, I learned how to dive. After about a half-dozen belly flops, I managed to eek out a couple half-decent dives. There’s more work to do, but it’s a start!).

It’s quite humbling to look back at the last 2 trips around the sun and see how things have changed since then. In some ways it feels like it hasn’t even been a few months and in others it feels like it’s been ages. I look back at old posts and sometimes it’s hard to realize that I’m the one who wrote them. I look at my impossible list and wonder if I’ve really actually done all those things. But I am and I have. It’s been hard, but it’s also been worth it 100 times over.