A year ago I read a blog post on Tim Brownson‘s blog in which he was making some recommendations for other bloggers. One of them was Vlad Dolezal. I started to follow the guy on Twitter and liked its stuff. No non-sense personal development and even more, a touch of humor in every single post. A few days ago, Vlad launched his first paid product, a guide called Unleash Your Confidence. You may find it hard to believe, but this guide is actually about… confidence. Go figure.
So, instead of writing a review of the guide, I chose to do something different: an interview with the guy behind the guide. Without further ado, ladies and gents, here comes Vlad Dolezal. Questions are mine, if you wonder, and the answers are his.
1. Who is Vlad Dolezal?
Hi, that’s me. Wow, what a coincidence that you happen to ask this question when interviewing me specifically! I really lucked out to know the answer to that one, huh?
Okay, more seriously now. I’m just a guy who’s utterly fascinated by the human mind. I love figuring out its many secrets, and finding ways to get it to do what you want. Like being confident in the situations you want.
2. What are you doing for a living?
I’m a life coach, and I write a blog about personal development. I’m also in the last year of getting a degree in mathematics, because that’s one of my other big passions.
3. What is your bigger passion?
This is going to sound really corny, but… I love helping people grow and be happy.
I (try to) do this in both big ways (like writing my blog) and small random ways, like walking around with a big cardboard sign giving out free hugs. Because that’s just really FUN!
4. What is your bigger fear?
This is a tough one, but I think I’ve got the answer for you.
I’m most afraid of wasting lots of my time procrastinating, playing computer games, and generally doing things that don’t align with my core values and thus neither leave me very happy, nor improve other people’s lives much.
Why that? Because I believe that whether a serious injury, or financial difficulties, I could handle those things when they come. And I don’t dare even contemplate losing loved ones. (That’s one of my “if it happens I’ll find a way to deal, until then I refuse to think about it.” things.). That leaves the above as my biggest active fear.
5. Why did you write an ebook?
A lot of my readers were interested in learning more about confidence, and after thinking about it for a while, I decided that an e-book would be a great way to cover the topic.
But also, I’ll be honest with you, money. Selling e-books is one of the ways I earn enough money to be able to keep producing lots of free content on my blog to help people improve their lives.
6. Name 3 difficult moments on the road of writing this ebook.
My biggest problem when writing Unleash Your Confidence was letting go. Specifically, I first had to let go of an old, rather mediocre, idea I had for an e-book. It took me about two years to accept that the idea just wasn’t that great.
My other big sticking point came when it came to contacting other bloggers I knew (like Dragos). I wanted to help as many people as possible with the e-book, and I knew contacting other bloggers with established audiences was the best way to get the word out to lots of people. And this was scary.
Luckily, I’d just written a book about confidence, so I handled my fear and talked to them. But even I’m not immune to fear. Confidence isn’t about magically getting rid of all fear. It’s about learning to draw upon the resources of confidence in any situation you want, which involves reducing the feeling of fear to manageable levels and then acting despite it.
I had some other small sticking points, but nothing major.
7. If you would wake up one day on planet Mars, what are the first 3 things are you going to do?
– Jump up and down, and get excited by how high I go in the lower gravity (only 38% as strong as Earth’s).
– Check my e-mails… wait, damn!
– Travel to a point where I can see Earth and think about “all those people over there”.
8. Say something nice to my readers. 🙂
Dear reader, you have a nice smile. No, really, you do. I hope other people get to see it often!
***
So, that was it. If you want to know more about Vlad’s guide, I have something for you: it will be on sale until March 16th, 12:00 PM. Usually, the guide is 17 USD but you can get it at only 11 USD until March 16th. Yeap, I also have a link for you (which is an affiliate link, if you wonder, meaning I trust this guy not only to promote his products, but to make some money out of it too).
Unleash Your Confidence.
we all need confidence skills, we tend not to ask or be direct because we are expecting the other person to say no, but how do mwe know they will, we havent asked AND we may be surprised that they say yes
lots of confidence books all with same stuff…..sell confidence or sell “how to make money” …these are two ways to make money…!!!
Wa, i guess it was yur first e-book, i can imagine how excited youwere , keep them comming, they motivate us also to write our first books! Thanks for the humorous parts 🙂
Btw, love the cover of the book, i guess you know the reason.
Yes, it is my first book and yes, I’m excited!
And I know you obviously love the cover because it includes my name on it. So in a way, it includes me on it.
No? Hmmmm…
OMG how did you know!
You could have exchanged the places of Unleash Your Confidence and Vlad Dolezal on the corner, and put yourself instead of the stickman.
Anyways, love the harmonic color and the smooth font 🙂
It’s funny that I had found Vlad’s blog very recently (interesting content, and he is kind enough to answer all comments… not everyone is like this!) and this week for his book launch I’ve seen him everywhere in blogs I already followed.
I’m intrigued by the book… I’ll keep reading his blog and maybe take the plunge when I feel like it. Unless he wants me to review for free, which is always cheaper for me 😀
By the way, last night I sold one copy of ADD-The book. Wooho!
Cheers,
Ruben
Actually, I don’t answer all comments. Just the ones where I feel that I have something to add. (It’s hard to say anything meaningful as a response to “Great post!”)
You just seem to have a knack for making comments that can actually start a conversation 😉
Well, this is mostly because if the only thing I can say is “great post”, I say nothing, I retweet it or stumble it. If I can add something to what the post says, or ask for a clarification, or just freakin’ say something, I try to do so, but I don’t force it. I like when someone appears in my blog and says “great post ddue”, but I prefer when they say it is bullshit and give reasoned arguments and thoughtful opinions 🙂
Cheers,
Ruben
He, he, congrats for the sale 🙂 Eerything has a start 😉
Yeah, I remember the first time I made an affiliate sale. It was really exciting, as it was the first time I’d ever made money from my blog 😀
But this was a long, long time ago… When one of my posts landed the first page of Hacker News, I sold something like 40$ in Amazon books, just in a day. Never made it as well as that time, but any penny is good enough 🙂
It’s not the first, I think it’s 3rd or 4th, I’m not sure 😉
Haha, I like the way you both communicate and sharing. By being honest on the part that ebooks and affiliates are to make money, rather than some other fake people that refuse to admit it and “hiding” their affiliate links in their content in hoping that people would click and purchase it.
Be truthful to readers and eventually readers will support you more, sincerely. 🙂
I don’t know about Dragos, but for me, part of the reason I talk about all this stuff openly is that I’m simply a very direct person.
Some people I know seem to have a hard time wrapping their mind around the concept of being direct, asking for things you want, saying no to things you don’t want, and saying exactly what you mean. But that’s just how I roll 😉
Indeed agree with you Vlad.
I like to be direct too, as cyberspace consist of too many fake information and fake people, finding a honest and direct person to interact and follow is a great things to be found on this cyberspace.
Sincere and truthful to readers and readers will did the same to us. 😀
You “don’t know about Dragos?” C’mon, Vlad, you can do better than this :))
I see that confidence guide is going to be utter popular because confidence is something we all require and there are times, a lot many times, when we get out of confidence and depressed. This is the anti-depressant pill from Vlad Dolezal.. Thanks and congrats!
That’s a very nice way to name it: anti-depressant pill :))
Interesant articol…. fain site 😉