Ready, Fire, Aim

Don't just stand there...do something!

I had the idea to start Celtic Scrapbooking for months before I decided to do anything about it. what kicked me in the pants? finding out that my wife was pregnant with our third child. Within 4 weeks of finding out we were pregnant, Celtic Scrapbooking went from a nice idea in my head, tossed around over drinks with friends, to starting production in China and putting the finishing touches on our website. I had never done international trade, I had never studied it, I had never built a website, I had never started a business. I just did something, and then the next couple of things would come up then the next, and the next. Ready, Fire, Aim

"Once you've decided, don't delay. The best is the enemy of the good... a
good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week."
(Gen.
George S. Patton Jr.)

So Act now. If you have an idea. Act on it. Don't wait around until the time is right. AND Don't get discouraged if they fail. Remember failure is all part of the deal you have to fail to push the envelope. They say that 9 out of 10 businesses fail in the first 5 years. Is this discouraging to me? No, all it means is that I need to start 10 times. Heck that isn't hard! Besides by the time I get my 10th try at it starting won't be a problem at all. This is the idea behind Ready, Fire, Aim. Just start firring, see where the bullets hit the target, adjust your aim and fire again. don't wait to get it right because... YOU WONT!

Ready, fire, AIM .. Do it now!

Skiing your way to Success

I am a skier…OK I was a skier, now I am a father of 3 young girls and I might ski every few years.

When I was in High School I wanted to learn to ski. I was passionate about it. I wanted to ski. So I worked all year on a paper route to save enough to rent my skis and pay for my ski lessons. The first year I learned new mindset in order to learn to ski and to get better at it. The The Mindset was,

“Falling is as much a part of skiing as skiing is”.

This mindset was critically important to me learning to ski. This is still how I ski. The idea is, if you aren’t falling you aren’t pushing yourself and you won’t be getting better. Pretty simple right? You can learn to ski without falling, I guess, but you won’t learn very quickly and you won’t really achieve the full potential as a skier that you could. Makes sense right?

You will achieve more in life if you take this same approach to success.

"Failing is as much a part of success as success. "

So go out there and Fail spectacularly. Go try the moguls don't stick to the Bunny slope you won't get anywhere that way.

Olympic Spirit

Yesterday I had the great privilege of listening to and then meeting Ruben Gonzales, 3 time Olympian. What a great story he has. His message was inspiring and motivating and very helpful to me where I am today. You see, my message has been an still is, just show up and most of the work is done. Most people say they have a dream but they do nothing to make it a reality. The biggest step you can take, I believe, is to take that first step.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step – Chinese proverb

Ruben’s message was that if you will persevere you can have anything you want. He was 21 when he decided to take up the sport of Luge.

21!

The trainers at the Lake Placid Olympic Luge training center laughed at him. They normally start training athletes at 11. Here was this 21 year old who wanted to take up the sport. Well he persevered and in 4 years he became one of the top 50 lugers in the world and went to the Olympics.

His story of sticking with it is just what I needed to hear. Right now I have a business to which I was expecting a much greater response than we are getting and it was tempting to just give it up and go do something else.

Thanks to Ruben I am inspired to push on and figure out why to continue to persevere in my dream of building this company to support my family. I don’t know what I will do but like a bulldog I will not give up. I know our product is something that people will benefit from for years to come. So now I need to figure out how to make it real to them to help the prospects understand the value they have in it.

You can read more about Ruben Gonzales at www.thelugeman.com

Because I asked Part 2...

Ok it has been a few days and I get my wisdom teeth out tomorrow but I wanted to follow up from my last post. I am sure you are waiting with baited breath.

While I was contacting these folks I also contacted Irish Dancing magazine to see if they wanted the article. Ok can you believe this, the January issue (deadline November 24) is about Shoes, Feet and Floors. They were very interested in my articles.

The editor of Irish dancing magazine contacted me on the morning of Thanksgiving and wanted to know if I could have all three articles done by the weekend. Yes, three articles. You see the review had bloomed into three articles: how I made my floor, a review of currently available flooring, and a side-bar article about the differences between vinyl and hardwood flooring. I told them that I could not make the deadline for two of them because I don't have the floors yet, but I could probably make the deadline for the one about how I made my floor. With the help of my wife, my mom, and my mother-in-law we wrote a 300 word essay about how I made the floor my daughters dance on and did a mock photo shoot of how to make it yourself. We had it done by Friday morning (which is Friday evening in London where Irish Dancing is published) we made the deadline for the January issue.

The flooring review will be in the February issue. the flooring has already started to arrive.

What are the chances that Irish Dancing's next issue was going to be about the EXACT topic I was thinking of writing about? Well the Lord works in mysterious ways. sometimes just showing up is what it takes.

Remember this all happened,

Because I Asked

there is more to tell as well, You won't believe where the next turn takes me.... more to come

Because I Asked!

Ok so here is a perfect example of what I mean by just showing up.


Last Thursday I was thinking about posts for my http://www.feis-dad.blogspot.com/ blog, [quick side bar: a feis is an Irish Dance Competition] . I came up with a great topic. I would write about how I put in a sprung hardwood dance floor when my daughter started dancing seriously. I put up one post. Then I started to work on the next few and realized that I could do a series of reviews of commercially available sprung dance floors in addition to my article about how I did mine. I emailed a few of the manufacturers to see if I could get samples. [this is the part where I just showed up] I figured;

If I didn’t ask then I was saying “no” for them and I wasn’t giving them
the chance to say “yes”, how presumptuous of me!

Well I emailed four companies, three have gotten back to me, two are sending me flooring next week! (one actually asked if I needed it this week...remember I sent the email on THURSDAY what were they going to next day air the flooring? Yep! I told them not to bother that next week was fine.) A third uses a system for securing it that makes it impractical to have just a sample. But they sent me the information on a nearby studio that uses the flooring. I have not heard back from the 4th yet but I expect them to probably say yes.
So how much is this costing me to get? Nothing. They are sending it all to me for free. Why?

Because I Asked!

There is more to this story tomorrow...

7 Steps to Making a Dream

1 - Write it down
If you don't write down your goal many things will happen. It will change slightly every time you think about it and as it changes it will move a little further away from actually being accomplished. In Project Management this is called Scope creep or Feature Creep whatever you call it it is the death of many projects and many more good indented goals.

2 - Put dates on it not just timelines
Often, so often I cant' even count how often, people set timelines with their goals, thinking it is a good thing. Only setting a timeline, not actual dates, is just one step away from saying "someday". When you make a goal put real dates on it. e.g. "On July 10th I will have [goal] done." or, "By noon I will have [pebble goal] done". If you just say "in a month" then that month will never start.

3 - Visualize it
Get yourself in a quiet place and think about your goal, what does it feel like to have achieved that goal? How do you feel about yourself? Keep these feelings. I tell my daughters to imagine a chest with many drawers, now take that feeling, open a drawer and put that feeling in the drawer, (third drawer on the second row). Now you can bring it back anytime you want to, just imagine your chest and open the drawer. Feeling off target or down about where you are going? Open a drawer and bask in that feeling again. you will be amazed how quickly it gets you back on track

4 - Tell Someone else
Guilt is good. Well not all guilt but you can use guilt in your favor. Tell someone about your goal. Tell lots of people about your goal. You will find this does a couple of things, it makes you think about your goal, and what you think about happens. It also gets other folks asking you how you are coming on that goal. You will want to have something to say to them so you will find yourself taking action on your goal so you have something to report. On top of all that when you tell people about your really big goals, and they start to see you accomplishing them they will be amazed by how much you get done. This positive reinforcement for your accomplishments sets up a positive feedback loop and you want to accomplish more.

6 - Set pebble goals
"How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Everyone has heard this quip but how often are you overwhelmed by a large project or some unimaginable goal and you get paralyzed by the sheer size of it? Well Don't worry about the whole thing. Chip the big goal down into little goals, pebble goals. Pebble goals are great because they keep you motivated along the way. Break your big goal into three or four main pieces, then take the first one of those and break it down into little pieces, and so on until you get to a point where you have little goals that can be accomplished in a day or two. Keep a list of the pebbles so you can move on to the next one once you have completed one. And most important, Celebrate your accomplishments. These are small goals but you need to celebrate them they mark progress toward your larger goal, you have moved forward be sure to celebrate!

5 - Measure it
Peter F. Drucker said, "What gets measured, gets managed." and this is true of your goals as well. by breaking it town in to little pieces you will have milestones you can measure and celebrate. Measure your progress along the line and you will find encouragement through the accomplishment.

7 - Take Action
The fact of the matter is most people don't accomplish their goals because they don't even bother to start. There are a million reasons not to do something. Do it any way. with little pebble goals you can take small actions that add up to big payoffs. but if you don't take action nothing will get done. You can't wait for everything to be ready. That time will never come. If you wait for all the lights to be green at once between LA and New York you will never step on the gas.

You try it and let me know what happens

Try it. Think of something impossible. Like meeting a Tony award winning designer. Then don’t worry about it or think “What will they think of me?” Just do it. As long as you aren’t a stalker or something most people are just people and like to talk about what they do. Really it is easier than you think. Who is someone you would like to meet? Find where they work email. Be respectful! Whenever I do one of these kinds of contacts I always end the email with,

“I understand that you are very busy, if you can not help me at this time
could you point me to someone who might be able to?
Thank you so much for your time”

This gives them the out of not needing to help you if they are too busy. On top of that you receive a personal recommendation to this other person whoever it might be from a well respected individual. On the other hand I have never had the person refer me to someone else. A polite Short email is almost always effective.