Back in 2002, I was having a milestone birthday and thought a celebration was in order. I invited my friends and family to join me in Las Vegas, a place I had avoided for many years.
When I called my travel agent to make arrangements, she laughed and said, “Oh, Barbara, I can’t see you in Las Vegas.”
“That’s the point,” I told her.
As you probably know, that was the beginning of a surprising love affair that led me to moving to that unlikely place. That wasn’t all that happened as a result of that party.
My younger siblings decided to mark their milestone birthdays with gatherings. One year we met in Lucca, Italy. The next year it was the lovely Cotswolds in Britain. That was followed by trips to Venice and Catalina Island.
When another milestone rolled around for me last year, a big trip didn’t feel right so we spent a day at California Adventure and called it a celebration.
About six weeks ago, my sister Nancy sent us an email saying she’d like to mark her upcoming birthday in 2014 in Provence. Would we be interested in joining her?
We gave her a unanimous and enthusiastic thumbs up and the planning began. We decided to add on Amsterdam at the beginning and Paris at the end.
The time and budget kept growing as the hundreds of emails kept flying.
I checked my Wings (travel) fund. It was going to need some financial help. Although I had the money elsewhere that I needed for the trip, I thought it would be more fun to create a special project to fund it. (Note: this is how the self-employed create stuff.)
After giving it some thought, I decided to schedule some teleclasses and designate the income to Nancy’s birthday celebration.
Checking my calendar, I saw that the timing wasn’t auspicious for me to add a new Idea Safari to my current schedule. Then I got the idea to run a sale on my existing teleclass audios.
It took almost no time to figure that out and I promptly alerted my Web Wizard, Lisa Tarrant, to set it up on my website. The announcement went out on September 5 and the sale was set to run for three days.
I’m happy to report that I’ve tripled the funds in my Wings account and I’ll be designating new projects to reach my goal.
First the What. Then the How. Creating a project to fund a dream.
It’s just another reason why self-employment is my definition of security.
While I’m sure your business might be classified as milestone, I think you meant birthday. 🙂
Della, you are right. I shall fix that promptly. Thanks for proofreading for me!
I love this! What a smart way to fund the trip to Amsterdam, Provence, and Paris without busting the bank! I’ve a milestone birthday coming up in a few years and I’d love to celebrate the big day in Paris, France, where I was born. Since I don’t have a product at the moment, I’ve got to get the gray cells engaged on how to make that happen without maxing out my credit card since I’d like to be able to eat while I’m there. I’m funny that way. 😉 Thank you for the insight, Barbara!