Hey everyone,
My name is Neil Pasricha.
I am an author, researcher, and speaker focused on helping people live happy lives.
I am probably most well known for my books The Book of Awesome and The Happiness Equation.
I am looking for someone full-time, based or frequently in Toronto, who would like to work alongside me to help manage and grow everything I’m trying to do with my writing, research, speaking, and community.
You would become the second-full time person working on all of this … after me. You would have open access to everything. And you would see the many chinks in the armor up close.
Here’s the Background, Job Details, and How To Apply.
Background
For nearly ten years I have been writing, researching, and speaking about positivity.
I started this daily blog back in 2008 while working full-time at Walmart. Over the next nine years it grew into a 50-million-hit website, 300 speaking engagements, 150,000-person community, five books, five calendars, two journals, and an app that is really broken and probably needs fixing.
Job Details
Fixing that app could be an example of what you would do. As well as researching chapters for new books. Inspiring and growing the community with regular interaction. Traveling to speaking events. Partnering with organizations to conduct positivity research. Shooting and editing videos. Designing course content. And a hundred other things. Some of which are not very sexy.
Now, while the laundry list of achievements may sound like I have things figured out, the truth is I am nowhere close. Your careful online creeping of me will reveal massive opportunities you are welcome to address in your application. What I know for sure is that what I am trying to build is growing rapidly and I need your help.
To provoke your thinking, here are some people or tribes I find fascinating: Brené Brown, Box of Crayons, Evan Carmichael, Rupi Kaur, Tim Ferriss, The Flaming Lips, Chris Guillebeau, Ryan Holiday, Intelligent Change, Jonathan Fields, Adam Grant, PostSecret, School of Life, Soul Pancake, Tiny Buddha, and Tim Urban.
How To Apply
Are you still reading?
Now it’s time for the fun part.
There are no education and experience minimums to apply. I don’t believe in arbitrary filters. I believe the right person will jump through a fiery hoop for the right job if they feel deeply like it could change their life.
So here’s the fiery hoop I have for you:
Please send me a PDF, up to a maximum of ten pages, containing the following.
1. Creativity – You can design, stylize, address, and include anything you like in your application, as long as it contains the other items in this list.
2. Community Building – Please share all your personal / business social media links and explain how you’ve grown them to where they are.
3. Design – Please share up to three examples of things you have designed. Could be digital (blog, logo, Instagram post), physical (library bookshelf, flower arrangement, hat), or experiential (travel itin, meditation seminar, campus sing-a-long). Also include a list of design tools or programs you can use.
4. Entrepreneurship – Please share something you built and why it failed or succeeded.
5. Organization – Please share a picture of something you have organized and (if necessary) explain how it works.
6. Passion – Please share an example of something you are personally passionate about.
7. Research – Please find my personal email address and submit this application directly to me, along with the origin of the quote “Strong opinions weakly held”, and make the subject line “Hi Neil – My application – X hours” where X is how long it took you to put your application together.
8. Sales – Please share a sample cold email you have written to successfully get someone to do something.
9. Why – Please share one sentence on your why – your purpose, your ikigai, or just what gets you out of bed in the morning.
10. Writing – Please share the last three books you read and what you thought of them.
Yes, it’s a lot. But that means most of you will tap out before applying. And that’s perfect, because I only want to work with someone a tiny bit feisty and nuts like me.
I hope that person might be you.
Thanks so much for reading,
Neil