10 Life Lessons

10 Life Lessons

By Ryan Allis

I have known Ryan Allis for a few years now, and he's a really impressive guy. He co-founded the email marketing company iContact in 2003 when he was only 22. Since then, iContact has grown its user base and revenues at a double-digit pace year-over-year. And a few weeks ago, iContact announced that it had secured its 1 Millionth subscriber. Very impressive.

So, even though Ryan is only 30 years old now, when he speaks about life's lessons, it's worth listening. And listening closely.

Not too long ago, Ryan gave a speech to graduating college students on the 10 life lessons he's learned so far. And, importantly, he gave me his speech notes. Here they are...I hope you find some valuable nuggets in them as I have.

1. Surround yourself with people you like and admire. You are who you surround yourself with. It pays to choose the people you surround yourself with carefully.


2. Put positive thoughts into your head. The internal message that you tell yourself over and over becomes reality. Thoughts become things. Don't be insecure. Be confident. YOU ARE AMAZING! You are all here because you are brilliant. Life is a wonderful opportunity. Believe in your power to do good.


3. Laughter is the best medicine for stress. Laugh at yourself often. Find what is funny in whatever situation you're in.


4. Take time to think about and write down your goals and frame them!!! Set bigger goals than you think are actually possible to achieve and try to hit about 50% of them. If you're hitting more than 50% of your goals, they're not ambitious enough!


5. Don't worry about what other people think about you. Just be yourself.


6. Travel the world at every opportunity you get. Take an interest in what's going on in the world. Know about the tremendous opportunities in Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America.


7. Build authentic relationships in which you give. Don't build fake relationships.


8. Find something you're passionate about that you love doing that you enter the "flow state" when you do it, then figure out how you can create value (and maybe make money) doing that!


9. Save and invest money whenever you can and never ever go into debt for something you don't need. Make your money work for you.


10. Spend more hours reading than you do watching TV! Book recommendations: Think and Grow Rich, Rich Dad Poor Dad, and How to Win Friends and Influence People.

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Ryan Allis is the founder of iContact, one of the world's largest email marketing companies. Starting from nothing at the age of 22, Ryan has raised over $45 million for iContact and has grown the company to attract over 1 million subscribers.

Ryan is also the author of "From Zero to 1 Million" a book on entrepreneurship published by McGraw Hill. He is also involved with two non-profits: The Hunger Campaign and Nourish International.