Not Afraid to Dream

Two weeks ago, Alice Barry did a delightful teleclass to celebrate the anniversary of her Joyfully Jobless life. The title of her program was 7 Lessons I’ve Learned in 7 Years in Business.

She told us that she learned her first lesson at a seminar Nick Williams and I did in Las Vegas called Creating an Inspired Business. What was that lesson that launched her?

Start where you are. To hear Alice tell it, those words served as a mantra and she began moving forward putting her ideas into action.

Today, her business, Entertaining the Idea, helps others put their ideas into action, too.

Alice isn’t the only person I know who’s building a dream, of course.

Liz deNesnera flew from her home in New Jersey to Los Angeles yesterday. She’s spending the week in California taking her Voice Over business to the next level. Happily, she also took time to spend several hours with me.

Like Alice, I first met Liz in person in a Creating an Inspired Business event in Las Vegas.

Liz had been a longtime subscriber to Winning Ways newsletter and had attended a Making a Living Without a Job seminar in New York, but this was the first time we’d officially met. “You’re not just a name on a mailing label anymore,” I joked after we’d become acquainted.

Since then, I’ve received excited calls from Liz when she wants to report on the growth of her business;  it was a real treat being able to get the latest update in person.

As usual, she was bubbling with excitement over the continuing growth of Hire Liz which puts her talents to work in both English and French.

Another former seminar participant has also been on my radar lately. I first met Dyan deNapoli when she attended Valerie Young’s Work at What You Love seminar in Northampton, MA.  Dyan was wearing her passion for penguins on her sleeve—and on her cute VW Beetle.

Her passion has brought her wonderful opportunities including lecturing on an Antarctic cruise and authoring The Great Penguin Rescue. Dyan is also the first person I’ve known to be featured as a speaker at TED Talks.

Then there’s Valerie Young. I’ve known her longer than the other three and still remember our first conversation when she called me after attending Making a Living Without a Job to discuss an idea she had to help corporate employees change course.

Over the years, she’s helped thousands of people do just that through her coaching and seminars. But that was only part of her entrepreneurial endeavors.

Valerie became a popular speaker on the Impostor Syndrome. One day a publisher came calling, and in mid-October her book, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, will be published. It’s a stunner.

I was honored to see the manuscript after she invited me to write a testimonial for the book. From the first chapter, I knew this was more than an ordinary business or personal growth book.

Yesterday, another big accolade came in for the still unavailable book when she learned that Publisher’s Weekly is giving it a starred review. Valerie wasn’t the only one who found that exciting!

I’ve been thinking a lot about all four of these inspiring women and what they have in common. Obviously, they’re all lifelong learners. They’ve also all patiently followed their dreams and created their own unique enterprises.

But the thing that just hit me about them all is that I’ve known all of them before any of these achievements occurred.

If there’s anything more inspiring than knowing real life dreamers who are also doers, I don’t know what it is. Their achievements add to the joy in our lives—and urge us to stretch farther.

It’s also easy to forget that when we see personal achievement, there was a time when it didn’t exist, but all successful people have a Before and After story.

That’s probably why writer Nikki Giovanni warns us, “Do not surround yourself with people who do not have dreams.” The After story is even sweeter when we were present Before it happened.

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Working on some wild dreams of your own? Join me on the Idea Safari and collect some dreambuilding tools.

What Would You Do For Free?

Like many people, I became a fan of Malcolm Gladwell after reading The Tipping Point. Not only did I find his ideas fascinating (and applicable to the Joyfully Jobless life), but his storytelling made the book fun to read. So when I saw an article in Time magazine about his new book, Outliers, I eagerly read it to learn about his latest exploration.

This new book looks at extraordinary success. Gladwell contends that talent and, even, genius aren’t enough. Instead, he cites what he calls the 10,000-Hour Rule which says that great achievement is most often the result of constant practice––about 20 hours/week for 10 years, to be exact.

Can you imagine devoting yourself to something that passionately? Would you do it for free? Many people won’t, of course, and consequently will never actualize their full potential. 

The ones who are willing to put in the practice often dazzle us once we learn about them. I was reminded of that when I read a recent edition of Valerie Young’s Changing Course e-zine. She had this little quote from Rachel Ray tucked away at the end of the mailing:  “I did 30 Minute Meals for five years on local television, and I earned nothing the first two years. Then I earned $50 a segment. I spent more than that on gas and groceries, but I really enjoyed making the show and I loved going to a viewer’s house each week. I knew I enjoyed it, so I stuck with it even though it cost me.“

When I first decided that I wanted public speaking to be part of my business, I made it my policy to accept every invitation that came my way–whether money was attached to it or not. I knew that the only way to polish my speaking skills was in front of other people. And if someone was giving me the opportunity to practice with a live audience, I was going to take it. I even found a volunteer gig as a backstage tour guide at the Guthrie Theater, which gave me additional speaking practice.

Eventually, I began to get calls where I was asked, “What is your speaking fee?” That’s when I turned pro. (That’s not quite accurate; in my own mind, I had turned pro right from the start. It just took a lot of free talks for it turn it into a reality.)

In Phil Laut’s nifty little book, Money is My Friend, he says, “An easy way to create an abundance of clients is to give away your service at the beginning until you have more clients than you can handle or until people force you to accept money. If you don’t like your business well enough to give away your services, this may be an indication that you are in the wrong business. When you have an abundance of clients, it is a good idea to continue to give away a portion of your services, even if you have to refuse the money.”

Think of it as an investment. Think of it as sweat equity. Think of it as the unsung road to success. By all means, think seriously about what you would do for free.

I think the best investment that you can make it to start a business that is so much fun that you don’t care if you go broke. With this approach, you can be certain of success. ~ Phil Laut