Blogging Allstars: 10 People that Inspire Me

by Karen on July 17, 2009

I used to have the closed minded belief that all bloggers were self absorbed people who wanted to indulge themselves by having others read about their lives. I stereotyped this ginormous niche in the internet to the worst few qualities that I knew about the genre. I have come to find in the past few months that I was dead wrong. Below is a list of the people that have gladly proven me wrong with their inspirational, mind-opening writing. I’ve found that these incredible people inspire me to live a better life, which is well worth wading through all of the bad writing out there, in order to find them.

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I am now a blogging advocate. I am a cheerleader of my favorite writers and a student of the great, successful ones. About two months ago, I Stumbledupon Amber Zuckswert’s blog

Epic Self, and my whole outlook on blogging was altered. When I saw this post, I connected deeply with this twenty-something young woman who was just like me, except she was living her dreams. She was was traveling the world independently, and had created a website to fund and write about her journey. I was struck by the thought that, if she could do this, I could do it , and it propelled me into creating my own blog. My newbie eyes were so impressed that she was running a direct domain (without a blogspot, or blogger service), and at that time, it seemed like such an incredible feat. She had created a website based on her life. Since finding Amber’s site, I have had the pleasure of “meeting” many incredible people in the personal development blogging niche. This list of people has just snowballed and keeps building on itself on a daily basis. And I am so grateful for finding a new passion in social media and marketing, as well as in writing personal development articles online. Although I feel like I have just begun my journey, I am confident that I have tapped into a passion that I never knew I have new self-employment career goals have begun to endlessly excite me.

So, here is a short list of my favorite, inspiring people. I wanted to share them with those of you that are familiar with them, and to say a big thank you, in a public way, for inspiring me.

1. Amber Zuckswert of Epic Self

As I described above, Amber is the one who inspired my blog. Seeing what she has accomplished made me believe I, too, could do this. Everyone else on the internet seemed inaccessible, and much more technically advanced than I. She made it seem possible to not only tour the world, but set up a public platform to write about your dreams. She is originally from my home state of California, and is currently living a nomadic existence by traveling through Australia. Her new blog, Two Backpacks just launched, and is devoted to chronicling her location independent lifestyle.

2. Glen Allsopp of Plugin ID

For anyone that is familiar with my blog, it is obvious that I’m a big fan of Glen’s. While Amber inspired me creatively, Glen’s writing on HQhow taught me the nuts and bolts of how to set everything up. Without his down to earth explanations, and endless question answering, you wouldn’t be able to read these words. He also just released Cloud Living which is his first premium 176 page ebook that is a collection of exactly how he makes his living solely online (aka “in the cloud”). I will be doing a throughout review of the ebook shortly in a separate post, and I highly recommend it anyone interested in the business of the internet.

3. Shannon Albert of Remarkably Clever
I met Shannon from the comments sections of Glen’s tutorial blogs. She’s quickly become my Twitter BFF (which I’ll reluctantly give her credit for coining the term), and I have been learning from her ever since. She is a self described techie, with a degree and full-time career as a Digital Producer at an ad agency. Her blog got up and running just weeks before me, but it is so professionally done that it looks as if it could have been around for years. She updates her blog incredibly frequently (3x/week) with insightful and practical tips about blogging, travel, and tech tips, among other things. When she isn’t working, taking care of her two kids, or recovering from surgery, she is answering my beginner questions or entertaining me endlessly on Twitter.

4. Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Nonconformity

I have already talked a bit about how much Chris inspires me here. I was introduced to Chris from a comment that Shannon left about him. (I did really discover all of these people in a snowball effect.) Quickly, I began devouring every word he writes. He has the incredibly ambitious goal of traveling to every country in the world before the age of 35, and writes fascinating articles about it. Besides this little side hobby, he is on a mission to create his own social revolution by writing about living an unconventional yet remarkable life while going against societal norms. If you have never heard of him, go check out his website. It sucks you in, and before you know it, hours have gone by.

5. Sean Ogle of Location 180

Sean is a 24 year old guy from Portland, OR that has a well-written blog about travel, achieving your goals, and living a location independent lifestyle. He started his blog as a way to chronicle his ultimate bucket list, or list of things that he wanted to accomplish in his lifetime. Anyone that is on a constant quest to live better, more authentic life scores big points in my book, and Sean definitely falls under this category. He is also fairly new to the scene (since April ’09), but I think he is someone that will be incredible successful, and continue to have interesting stories to tell as a result.

6. Jonathan Mead of Illuminated Mind

I’ve stumbled upon Jonathan in the personal development blogoshpere recently, and one of my most recent post was to review his ebook Reclaim Your Dreams. He is a young guy, with a ton of momentum in his up and coming-ness. He writes personal development articles about living a unconventional life, and following your dreams that are wise beyond his years. His wife also has a blog that I’ve found recently full of character and cuteness called apricot tea.

7. Cody McKibben of Thrilling Heroics

Cody has an awesome blog founded in 2006 centered around lifestyle design, running a location independent business, and travel. He is currently living the ex-pat life at an amazingly young age in Bankok, Thailand. He has a stunning altruistic nature, and he is currently donating 5% of his profits to the charity based on giving while having fun called In Search of Sanuk (see below). He preaches making a difference in people’s lives, while having fun. I don’t think there are any more worthwhile of causes.

8. Alex Conway of Unleash Reality

Alex makes up his own language. Which is one of the reasons I love him so much. And, I’m a sucker for a South African accent… even though I can’t exactly hear it through the computer. At his tender age of 19, he has a genius way of being ridiculously silly and interspersing young-people’s slang with a SAT-like vernacular. He is one of Glen’s best friends and the amount of wisdom that they both hold despite their age, astounds me. The unique, stream of conscious ramblings of his posts are filled with wisdom and silliness. Whenever I read his writing, I am enlightened and get this strange giddiness through osmosis. His spirit just comes alive through his writing. He is another young blogger that the successful ones should keep and eye on.

9. Jonathan Fields of Awake @ the Wheel

Jonathan has newly come into my view, but he is one of the heavy hitters in personal development and tips for making money doing what you love. He is a master at conveying his information in almost every format- podcasts, articles, vlogs, and books. I have yet to get my hands on a copy of Career Renegade , but will shortly as it is highly recommended. One of my tricks in finding new mentors has been to find out who is closely acquainted with people I already admire, and I found out about Jonathan Fields from Chris Guillebeau’s list of 26 people he highly respects. I appreciate it when people I look up to have lists of people they admire, because it easily expands my horizons of inspiration.

10. Dwight Turner of In Search of Sanuk

Last but not least, is a guy I met on Twitter. He instantly comes across as one of the most genuine and giving souls I’ve ever seen. His website is all about helping others , and you can tell by the way he writes that he doesn’t have a selfish bone in his body. He coordinates events, Tweetups, and fundraisers for the purpose of having fun while helping those in need. His blog describes him perfectly by saying, “Dwight is a social entrepreneur who’s always busy trying to think of ways to incite people’s concern for one another.” If only more people in the world were more passionate about helping others, the world would be a better place. Dwight makes me believe that one person really can change the world.

There are many more people that I am sure I have left out, and my list is expanding quickly on a daily basis! I am sincerely grateful to these people for inspiring the hell out of me, continuously, and I haven’t even begun to read all of the information that they have published.

Who has inspired you? Who are your favorite bloggers? I’d love to hear in the comments!