You ship will never come in

“Once ship to comes in, I will retire and relax.”

I am here to tell you…Your ship will NEVER come in.

If you never send it out.

Anthony Robbins calls it "Massive Action." Nike says, “Just do it.” In the Bible it says you reap what you sow. Robert Kiyosaki says, "9 of 10 business fail...that just means I need to start ten times."

Whatever you call it these sources are all getting at the same idea. If you ever expect to have "your ship come in" you need to send it out. If you want to have good luck, go out and make it. And it just makes sense. Success isn't going to just drop out of the sky and land-in-your-lap. You have to take action. Sitting on your can surfing the Internet is going to get you nothing.

“A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step.” - Chinese Proverb

Small steps are fine. You just have to take lots of them.

They say that you reap what you sow, but that isn't really true. Really you Reap MORE than you sow, but sowing takes faith. Seeds are small, compared to the plants that grow out of them. We were planting seeds last spring for my daughter's small business of kitchen herbs. The instructions said to plan 3-5 seeds in each hole we dug. 3-5 seeds?! But we only see one plant that really grows and becomes viable. Some of the seeds are dead to begin with, they produce nothing. Other seeds do germinate and grow, but they produce weak plants, I don't know if it is the soil, or the seed, the water or a host of other things that might be involved but they grow but in a short time they die. Then there are the other seeds some of them grow and they really grow strong. They go crazy and take over all the other ground. They take up all the light and grow grow grow. Can you pick the seeds by looking at them in your hand? No? Neither can I. So, we just planted them, following the rules, 3-5 seeds per hole, and you know what? Each pot has a great little plant in it now!

So no one wants your product. So that seed is dead. Move on. So, you sell a few products but you can’t turn a profit. That plant is anemic. Move on. Plant more seeds. More and more and more seeds. Take Massive Action! Planting one seed at a time? Then expect to see a lot of failure. Plant a lot of seeds all at the same time and you will be amazed at how many plants you have. You will also not remember the seeds that didn’t grow. They aren’t failures they are just the seeds needed to get to the few that grow.

The Most Important thing my Father taught me

I learned a lot from my father, but I thing the most important thing I learned from him was that ignorance is good.

Talk with any inspirational speaker or any very successful business person and you will find that they are ignorant too. Yep. The more you can cultivate your ignorance the better off you will be.

Ok, now, of course you know that I don't mean that the way it sounds.

Somewhere in my high school days I was in a deep conversation with some friends. I knew that the point I was trying to make was right but I couldn’t really explain why or how. I talked about it with my dad. I remember it clearly we were in the basement office of our house. He shared with me a phrase that I remember often. A phrase that propels me to success.

The phrase was, "I don't know the answer." If you can get comfortable with the idea of not knowing you will find yourself much more successful. IF... IF you follow up that phrase quickly with, "But I can find out." these two ideas, "I don't know, but I can find out." will propel you over the top. So many people think they have to know it all, so they bluff and because they bluff they don't learn.

Me, I am happy to say I don't know. I want to surround myself with people who are smarter than I am. They make me successful. My advisors and mentors help me do better than I could ever do myself.

Face it, You can't know it all. So, accept your ignorance, embrace it, revel in it and surround yourself with smarter people.

Repeat the phrase

"I don't know, but I can find out."

Lessons from Christopher Columbus

"In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

Have you ever thought you knew what you were doing ...only to find out that you were completely wrong? Was this a bad thing or a good thing? Is there a pattern to when it is a good thing or a bad thing? In my experience, as long as I am taking positive action toward a goal, it almost always turns out to be a good thing.

Look at Columbus. He was trying to find a new Silk Road, a new route to Asia. Well he missed it by about 15,000 miles! More than a little bit off buddy. He messed up. But he discouraged because he didn't find a new route to Asia? um. no! (fact is he didn't know he wasn't in Asia) What he found was a route to the Americas. A world whole world that Europe didn’t know existed.

I recently ran in to a roadblock with a project I was working on. I had all kinds of plans, time, and personal investment rolled up in it. But ran into an issue that made it impossible to continue. At first I was really upset about it. But then I thought, Well, What if I had run into this problem 5 minutes after deciding to pursue this project? I would have let it roll off my back and not thought further of it, knowing there are a Million good ideas out there and the fact that this one is not possible to pursue just means that there is another, better idea for me out there. Something just waiting to be discovered.

You act. and yet something goes wrong. What do you do with what is handed to you that is what determines the outcome.

So next time life throws you a curve ball, a road block, or a sharp turn. Check yourself. Your reaction is what will make the difference. (Of course I question the sanity of Chris C. If I had landed in the Bahamas with no crush of tourists around, I think I would have settled down with a palm frond umbrella and a cool drink and just kissed Europe bye bye. :-)


For more information about Christopher Columbus see http://www.columbusnavigation.com/

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.

Meeting Chris Perry

So here is what happened


• If I emailed him and he said “no” what would I loose?



• Nothing



• If I emailed him and he said “yes” What would I gain?



• Everything – I would get the opportunity to meet with a world class lighting designer.
  

So what do you loose if you try and fail? Nothing! You are just right back where you started and you may have even learned from the failure. The fact of the matter is most people don’t know what they can do because they don’t even try. Just showing up is 80% of the work!

Here is what I did.

Chris Perry was actually going to be in Seattle in a month or two. I contacted him, told him I was an aspiring lighting designer and asked very politely if he would like to have lunch when he was in Seattle. He said “yes.” We had a great lunch and talked about the profession of lighting design. On his next trip to Seattle I took a week off work and sat at his elbow while he designed, “A Little Night Music” for the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle. It was great and I learned a lot directly from a Tony Award winning designer. If I had not emailed I would not have even had the chance.

Shoot for the Moon

A while back I thought, “Hum, I would like to learn more about theatre lighting design.”

I went on the Internet to find people who know a lot about lighting design. I found one. Chris Perry, Tony Award Winner for the musical “The Who’s Tommy, ” also taught lighting design at San Diego State University.

So, now I have a choice. I can search around the Internet some more to try and find someone less high profile or I can try to contact Chris.

What Should I do?
What would you do?

Tomorrow... What I did

Good Goals

Ok... So what about that goal in my last post. It was not a good goal. It is a nice sentement but not a goal. So what makes a goal? I like the SMART goal model

S-pecific
M-easureable
A-tainable
R-esults oriented
T-imebound

I don't think my goal met any of these. well maybe it was realistic but maybe not. If I wanted to do it in a month I don't think it was realisitc. so what aobut it.

I want to have passive income from small web businesses that are self running, equal to or greater than my current income, within 14 Months (not specific enough) by December 2008-Better!

Ok that is a better goal. So now what? Anyone think it is attainable?

A goal has to be inspiring to you, it doesn't matter if others like it or don't it has to be inspiring to you. It also has to be something that is difficult to attain. If it is easy you wont work for it. trust me I have been there. A co-worker of mine says, "No one rises to low expectations." and he is right. so set your goals high and they will be easier to attain. sounds counter intuative but it is the truth.

"I will run through walls to get a free catamiran trip through the
medaterainian, but I might not change brands of cerial to get a tour of
Cleveland Ohio." - Timmothy Ferris - The 4-hour work week

Try it set high goals and then try to reach them. If you are having trouble setting good goals post them and we can work on them together.

Peace

Joseph

So what is my dream?

The name of this blog is making a dream. What is my dream? My dream is:

To be able to create art full time and still provide for my family in a manner they are accustomed to living.

How do I plan to do that?

I have had several ideas but right now it is to Build a few businesses that don't need me to run them.

This is a new idea for me.

About 10 months ago I started listening to some books on these topics here is the list:

• Rich Dad Poor Dad- Robert Kiyosaki
• How to get Started in Real Estate Investing - Robert Irwin
• Rich Dad's Advisors the ABCs of Real Estate Investing - Ken McElroy
• The Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Classon
• Creating Customer Evangelists - Ben McConnel & Jackie Huba
• Selling the Proud Profession - Zig Ziglar
• The Ultimate Sales Success : Motivation from top Success Coaches
• The New Buffetology - Mary Buffett
• The Millionaire next door - Thomas J. Stanley and
• The Millionaire Mind - Thomas J. Stanley
• Secrets of the Millionaire Mind - T.Harv Eker
• the Magic of Thinking Big - David Schwartz
• The E-Myth Revisited - Michael Gerber
• The Four-Hour Work Week - Tim Ferris
• Small is the New Big - Seth Godin
• Getting Things Done - David Allen
• Real Estate Investor's College - Dolf De Roos (12 CDs)
• Choose to be Rich - Robert Kiyosaki (13 CDs)

So those are some of my influences. Many of these books I have read more than twice in the past 10 months. Really. It is all due to the wonder of the iPod and having a 45 minute to an hour commute each way each day. You can listen to a lot of books in that time.

I have learned a lot and I will share what I can. Plus my own insights
Peace
Joseph

Creating Customer Evangelists - Book Review & comment

Times Read 5+

Repeat customers are NOT customer evangelists. Evangelists are customers who extol your products virtues and your company they: Purchase you products as gifts, ignore small dips in customer services, but let you know. They provide unsolicited feedback and suggestions. They love you!

The following are the tenants of Creating Customer Evangelists:

1. Customer + Delta – continual customer feedback


2. Napster-ize your knowledge – give away your knowledge


3. Build the Buzz – Spreading the word


4. Create community – Bring customers together


5. Make bite-size chunks – Make smaller products to get customers to bite


6. Create a cause – make your company about more than your revenue
   

Traditional marketing (the 5Ps: product, placement, positioning, price and promotion) is changing and the idea of needing to beat a customer over the head 9 times or more for a message to be heard, just annoys people. This is marketing from the 1960s. The 5Ps and the 9x advertising message assault are ancient and outdated approaches to marketing.

IN CONTEXT
Take this in the context of The Long Tail. The old 5P approach is an approach is designed to build blockbusters not create niche market winners. Niche marketing follows the tenants above for Creating Customer Evangelists.

Changing blogs

Hi I am chanig to blogger from my old blog. So, I am starting over from scratch.
I am a father, artist, project manager, I run one business and I am starting three others.

People are always asking me:

"How do you do all the things you do."
"How do I get it all done?"
"how do you keep track of it all?"

I have a hard time telling them so I thought I would start keeping a blog here to share my thoughts with them . . . and with you.

whoever you are.

who are you?

let me know.

I love to hear who is reading my posts.

Well that is all for now. Enough for an introduction.