It’s 2010. Where Are You?

There was a small hotel I stayed at on several visits to London. It was within walking distance of Victoria Station and in a nieghborhood filled with bed and breakfast places and all sorts of little shops.

After a day of sightseeing, I’d often stop at the corner convenience store to buy a magazine or some Cadbury’s. The same man stood in the same spot behind the same counter (probably wearing the same clothes), with the same stony expression on his face—year after year.

Frequently, I’d  leave the store pondering such a life. I can barely imagine going to the same place at the same time and having the same experiences day after day after day. That’s a death sentence for the creative spirit and breeding ground for all sorts of negativity.

I also know that it’s an unquestioned way of life for many people. I was reminded of that the other day when a friend told me about a woman she’d met who said that the best thing about her job was that she didn’t have to learn anything. That’s not my idea of a job benefit. 

There are, of course, many ways to keep from evolving forward. For instance, there’s a man I know who seems to have formed all his opinons about life at the age of eleven and has spent the last thirty years looking for evidence to support those beliefs.

Consequently, his philosophy of life includes such things as people can’t be trusted, if something can go wrong it will, and so on and so forth. He’s quite certain about the correctness of his beliefs and determined to keep proving them. Needless to say, he’s a grumpy old man in a middle-aged man’s body. He doesn’t laugh very often, either, I’ve noticed.

Although I don’t hear it so much anymore, when I lived in the Midwest, I often heard people defend their limiting notions by saying, “I wasn’t raised that way.”  My (unspoken) reaction to that was, “You wouldn’t wear your mother’s clothes, would you?  Why are you wearing her outdated beliefs?”

We don’t need to trap ourselves behind the counter of a convenience store in order to be trapped in a world without discovery and adventure. Yes, I understand that limiting beliefs are often fueled by fear and self-doubt, but if we don’t challenge our assumptions, look at other perspectives, we stay stuck in certainties that may not bear any resemblance to the truth.

Opening our hearts and minds to a bigger world, a world where ideas flourish, where people are spreading joy, is absolutely essential if we’re ever to discover who we are and what we can become.

It’s no coincidence that the motto of the wildly successful Cirque du Soleil is, “We must evolve.” If we don’t take that challenge, we stay stuck in the Twentieth Century while the adventurers are blazing new trails.

Quite simply, we can’t make it better by keeping everything the same.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Every Friday morning, I wake up to a mailing from the folks at Prairie Home Companion. My favorite part is always The Old Scout’s essay and this week’s is worth passing along. Garrison Keillor is hanging out with the college crowd. You may want to eavesdrop. http://tinyurl.com/2c6hcdm

Teachers That Show Us a Better Way

“There’s an unspeakable pleasure,” observed Oliver Goldsmith, “attending the life of a voluntary student.” It’s no coincidence that the most successful entrepreneurs are enthusiastic voluntary students.

Author Jess Lair once said that when it came to living his life, he wanted the best teachers he could find. That made perfect sense to me and I’ve continued to build my own portfolio of teachers.

Some of them stick around for a long time; others come along and share an idea or show me how to do something in a better way and then I move on. 

In the past few days, I’ve encountered three insightful fellows who all added to my learning. 

One of them is Dave Courvoisier who is best known here in Las Vegas as a television anchorman. He also is building a voiceover business and actively shares tips and information with others who are doing the same.

His article on making better videos caught my eye and I promptly filed it for future reference. If you’re an aspiring vlogger or YouTube star, check out these on camera tips from a pro to improve the look of your videos.

As I told my Facebook friends, I don’t always agree with Ben Stein, but yesterday he and I were soulmates when I heard his piece “Follow Your Heart: Risk Be Damned” on CBS Sunday Morning. Don’t miss it.

Finally, there’s Jason Mraz. I’ve been a big fan of his music and became even more intrigued when I learned he’s also an avocado farmer. After seeing this piece on MSNBC Business, I realize he’s also a kindred spirit.

Excuses or Options: Pick One

Five years ago, Marilyn decided to leave her soul-squashing job and start a business that would share her love of animals. Today she’s still dragging herself to that same job and her entrepreneurial enthusiasm is weak from neglect. 

When questioned about her business plans, she replies, “Oh, I decided in this economy it was better to hang on to what I had. Besides I hate to give up my benefits and I really need the money from my job so I can remodel my family room.”

What Marilyn—and so many others— demonstrate is that whenever we ignore our dreams we rationalize it by creating a villain. It’s never our fault, for goodness sake. Someone or something outside us is standing in our way. 

That thinking leads us to look for the villain which we disguise as an excuse.

Since finding an excuse is not a creative exercise, most excuses aren’t too original. Knowing that, syndicated columnist Dale Dauten put together the Excuse-O-Matic which can be a handy tool. Just find your age and under it you’ll find the corresponding excuse not to take a risk.

 Under 30—too young

Need to get established/planning marriage/ kids/house

No experience/no credit/no capital   

30 to 40—too busy

Have spouse/children/mortgage

Too much credit/need to save for college tuition    

40 to 55—too stretched

Kids in college

Need to pay down debt/save for retirement

Over 55—too tired

Not up on latest technologies

Too late to risk capital

Concerned about losing retirement benefits

Deceased—too dead

The final and best excuse

Now I’m not a mathematician, but I can see that if you add up these excuses all you’re left with are excuses. 

If you want to amaze and dazzle yourself,  make a pact with yourself to give up, once and for all, anything that sounds like an excuse. Giving up all excuses is not enough, however. 

In the part of your brain where you’ve stored reasons and excuses, start building an Option Bank.

An Option Bank, just like the place where you store money, is a repository of good ideas, dreams and goals. Like an ordinary bank, the more you put in, the more you can draw out. 

The best way to get started at this is to convince yourself that there is never just a single option available. Never. If you begin with that premise, your creative spirit will be free to go to work. 

A word of warning: this is not the same as the frequently used expression, “I’m keeping my options open,” which usually means, “I have no idea what I want and am waiting for something to happen to tell me.” 

What I’m talking about is a proactive listing of any and every possibility that occurs to you. Here’s how to build your own Option Bank.

On a blank sheet of paper, draw a line down the center. At the top of the page, write a goal that you have in the form of an affirmation. Over the left hand column write Excuses and over the right hand column write Options. 

Think of your excuses as debits and your options as deposits. Now write your lists. If you can’t simply ignore your excuses, what direct alternative can you take to eliminate or change them? 

When you repeat this exercise regularly, you’ll discover that your Option List will grow while your Excuses List will shrivel.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage,” Anais Nin wisely observed. 

 Keep building your own Option Bank and you’ll discover that life not only shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage, but also in proportion to one’s options.

They Just Happen To Sell Shoes

If you had lived in the neighborhood where Tony Hsieh grew up, you might have met an earnest little door to door salesman just discovering his entrepreneurial spirit. Now at the ripe old age of 36, Hsieh shows us the path that took him from selling earthworms and photo buttons to running the success story known as Zappos.

As highly publicized as Hsieh and his company have been, his new book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose  tells a far more complex story. In the first part of the book, we get to know Hsieh; in the second part we get to see the evolution of the unique culture that is Zappos.

Hsieh’s story is so captivating (and I assume that his youth contributes to his recall of details) that you may find yourself identifying with his ups and downs—and cheering for him even though you know how the story  turns out. 

To my delight, I discovered Tony Hsieh and I have a number of things in common.

1. We both became fascinated with mail order when we were kids.

2. We both adopted Las Vegas as our hometown.

3. We both believe that business is about much more than just making money.

4. We both look for lessons from diverse places (i.e. poker) that apply to running a successful business.

Much of his story is wonderfully unique, of course. From his student days at Harvard where he was more excited about building his pizza business than he was about studying to his partying days in San Francisco, Hsieh seemed to be perpetually looking for opportunities.

Although many people start a business because they fall in love with a product or an idea for a service, Hsieh is one of the ones who are fascinated and challenged by  the entrepreneurial journey. By his own admission, he isn’t all that crazy about shoes, but bringing them to the marketplace in an innovative way is the object of his passion. 

Happily, for the reader, you don’t have to dream of building an online empire in order to find the useful ideas in Delivering Happiness. There’s a stunning lack of corporate hubris and plenty of examples of how Zappos walks the talk every single day in each and every part of the business. 

Numerous Zappos folks share their stories giving us even clearer insight into how the much-quoted core values influence their daily lives. Even the story of how those values evolved shows us that this is not a business as usual operation. 

 Zappos Core Values

1. Deliver WOW Through Service

2. Embrace and Drive Change

3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

5. Pursue Growth and Learning

6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication

7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

8. Do More With Less

9. Be Passionate and Determined

10. Be Humble

While each of those values is described in great detail, it seems obvious to me that they provide a foundation for building a standout operation, even if you’re a one-person enterprise—or a school or nonprofit organization.

You’re going to be seeing Tony Hsieh and hearing a lot about Delivering Happiness in the coming weeks. There’s even a DH site to share in the festivities. I urge you to pay attention. This isn’t just a smart book—it’s a wise one as well.

After all, Zappos isn’t just a company that’s making it better; they’re also showing us how we can do the same.

Bringing Back Balance

Over a quarter century ago, writer Dianne Hales fell in love with the Italian language and has invested much time in learning to speak it. I spent the holiday weekend sharing her adventures thanks to her delightful book, La Bella Lingua.

What Hales discovered along the way—which explains why this is about much more than simply becoming bilingual—is that the Italian language has had a deep impact on creating the culture.

Readers of the book are treated to discussions about music, art, history, literature, movies, cuisine and, even, profanity (which the Italians have elevated to an art form of its own).

One of my favorite stories appears in the chapter La Storia dell’Arte where Halle introduces us to an artist that was part of the early Renaissance scene. Tomasso Guido only lived to be 27 and just a few of his paintings exist, but they were so different to the style of other artists around him that they helped other painters to see things in a new way.

He was also, apparently, a workaholic. As Hales reports, “He was so on fire with le cose dell’arte (literally ‘the things of art’ or artistic matters) that he paid no attention to the clothes he wore, the food he ate, the money he received or owed—and went down in history as Masaccio, or Messy Tom.”

Masaccio is not alone. One of the most difficult things for all of us is to create a life of balance. We all know when life gets out of balance, although we may not notice it until it becomes extreme.

Nevertheless, in every nook and cranny of our lives, balance is necessary if we are to feel peaceful and powerful. Too much of anything can throw everything out of whack.

This notion runs counter to the popular advice to make “singleness of purpose” and “blinding commitment” our operating philosophy. That is not the path to a balanced life.

A woman in a seminar once told me she’d started a gardening business  that had become so successful that she’s busy all summer long. “Now I don’t enjoy my own garden anymore,” she complained.

She had decided the solution was to give up her gardening business and find something new. I thought a more reasonable option was to start a non-gardening profit center and keep only the clients she really enjoyed. I’m not sure I managed to convince her.

 In seeking balance, we often eliminate when it makes more sense to moderate. It’s not diversity that causes us to lose our balance: monotony and repetition are the culprits.

Creating diversity can be a great balancer since it allows us to tap into different passions. It’s also necessary to constantly reassess and discard what no longer works, what we’ve outgrown. 

Next time, I’ll show you how I managed to find balance amidst the passion. Stay tuned.

A Library of Your Own

When I think about my Dream House, it’s not a big glistening kitchen, high-tech family room or backyard swimming pool that catches my fancy. 

No, my perfect home has a library, a real library, with  floor-to-ceiling books, and aladder on wheels for exploring the top shelves. There’s a fireplace with a cozy reading chair and a good light.

I’m am not alone in thinking that would be exquisite. “When I have a house of my own,” said a character in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, “I shall be quite miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

Eda LaShan once said that middle age begins when you realize you won’t live long enough to read all the books you want to explore. According to that definition, I was born middle-aged.

Fortunately, I landed in a family that assumed reading was an important part of a well-lived life and we were always surrounded by books. As much as I love the library, I can’t imagine living without books of my own at my fingertips.

Libraries are as unique as the people who assemble them, of course. When I scan my own shelves, I see a record of my life as telling as a photo album. 

Creating a wonderful personal collection can be both haphazard and intentional. If you are serious about success, your library will reflect this. 

What kinds of books show up in libraries of the Joyfully Jobless?

Inspirational. We quickly learn the truth of the adage that you can’t outperform your own self-image. 

While we all have our own favorites, I know that on the days I feel stuck or frustrated or conflicted, I can get back on track more quickly if I spend time with an old friend like The War of Art. 

The books that inspire us the most are often those that stand up to repeated visits. They help us reconnect with our own best selves and nudge us to move past pettiness. 

Informational. Of course, we require different kinds of information all along the way as we build and grow. How-to books are hugely popular, although not everyone is keen about putting what they’ve read into action.

With the avalanche of  information which abounds today, there’s really no excuse for saying, “I don’t know how.”  You can fill in the gaps easily.

 Whether you need help with marketing or how to start a profitable petsitting business or how to write a killer book proposal, a book written by a reliable source can get you pointed in the right direction.

Heroes and heroines. A well-rounded library for an entrepreneur would also include some great biographies and autobiographies from successful self-bossers. 

I’ve just finished reading an advance copy of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness, the upcoming story of the entrepreneurial evolution of Zappos founder. It will be taking its place alongside numerous stories of inspiring entrepreneurs in my library. 

If you’d like to see some other biographies that I’ve loved, check out my list, First the Business, Then the Book over at Flashlight Worthy Books.

And speaking of Flashlight Worthy, pay them a visit for hundreds of great book recommendations compiled by all sorts of experts and aficionados. 

“We are all pilgrims on the same journey,” said Nelson DeMille, “but some pilgrims have better road maps.” 

Fill your library with the best maps you can find and consult them regularly. Going places may just start in the quietest room of the house.

*********

Did you know that May is Get Caught Reading Month? Participate.

 

 

 

 

It’s Simple: Bibliophiles Know More

Every so often I’ll be chatting with someone and mention a book that I loved or that seems appropriate for them. I’m always startled when the response is, “I don’t read much.”  

Why would anyone deprive themselves of the pleasure, ideas, information and inspiration that can be found in books? 

During a time when I was wondering if I’d ever figure out what to do with my life, it was a book that lit the way. One evening years ago, I read a short newspaper article about two women who had started their own business using their natural talents and imagination to create a successful enterprise. 

The next day, I went to the bookstore and found their only copy of Supergirls: The Autobiography of an Outrageous Business by Claudia Jessup and Genie Chipps. Their story became my handbook. 

Although I ultimately started a very different business from the one they’d created, I gleaned so many lessons from their story. 

They started on a shoestring. So did I. They got lots of free publicity. Me too. They evolved into a very different business over time. That’s what happened to me.

I still wonder if I would have found my entrepreneurial spirit without that book to point me in the right direction. What I know for sure is that books have made a continuous contribution to my growth and development as a person and as an entrepreneur.

In Tim Sanders’  book Love is the Killer App, he speaks passionately about the importance of books. Here’s what he has to say:

Here’s another 80/20 rule: Spend 80 percent of your time on books and 20 percent on articles and newspapers. And by books, I don’t mean just any book. I mean hardcovers. A paperback is made to be read. A hardcover is made to be studied. There’s a huge difference.

True, hardcovers are more expensive. But I’m talking about your career. If you can afford to party, or to buy new techno-gadgets, or to eat in fancy restaurants, you can afford a few hardcover books. The books you read today will fuel your earning power tomorrow.

 Simply put, hardcover books are the bomb. They are fun to hold. They become personal the first time you mark them up, the first time you bend back the binding. There’s something exciting about writing down the ideas that interest you. Soon your book becomes more than just pages between covers. It becomes your ticket to success.

The ability to transfer knowledge is a huge advantage for anyone struggling to succeed in the new economy. It’s an easy skill to learn, it’s simple to facilitate, and there are more good books than you will ever be able to use, which means that the resources are unlimited. In fact, it’s so easy that there’s no reason why you shouldn’t start now.

Buy a book. Carry it with you. Its power is so great that you will feel as though you were carrying plutonium in a briefcase.

 Jim Rohn was a popular speaker who frequently encouraged his audiences to take up reading if they want to succeed. “Skip a meal if you must, but don’t miss a book.”

Why? “The only thing worse than not reading a book in the last ninety days,” said Rohn, “is not reading a book in the last ninety days and thinking it doesn’t matter.”

Four Easy Ways to Create Opportunity

Not long after Making a Living Without a Job was launched as a seminar, I had a hunch that a book would follow. I also was certain that it would take some time until I had gathered enough stories from seminar participants to use in the imagined book.

When I felt confident that I was ready to take on such a project, I explored the traditional ways of getting a book published: write a proposal, shop for an agent, revise proposal, have agent search for publisher. I knew, also, that as an unpublished writer, this would be an long process.

Perhaps I could create an opportunity for a publisher to find me, I mused. As it turned out, three publishers did just that. Although each of them  found me in a different way, they all showed up within weeks of one another.

When most people think about opportunity, they envision an unexpected bit of good fortune coming out of nowhere or something they’ve uncovered after a long search. 

And, of course, both of those circumstances do occur on a daily basis. However, I’d like you to entertain the idea that you can create favorable circumstances that will connect you more frequently and quickly with opportunity after opportunity. 

Here are four of my favorite ways to do just that.

* Offer your services to the media. Several years ago, I met an architect who had joined with several other architects to prepare a media kit introducing each of them and describing their specialties. They distributed it to all their local media outlets and made it easy for reporters working on a story involving architecture to connect with the perfect source.

Two great resources for building your own media campaign are Joan Stewart’s Publicity Hound and Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out.

* Conduct a poll. Hardly a day passes when I don’t see a poll online, in the newspaper or on the CNN crawl. Apparently, we’re fascinated by the opinions and behaviors of our fellow humans. 

One summer, Garage Sale Fever author John Schroeder conducted a poll at every garage sale he visited. What are your plans for the money you’re earning from the sale he asked. He turned his findings into a press release, giving him another opportunity for media exposure.

* Get into the conversation. All over the world people are talking about a million different things. Some of those conversations have to do with things that are your specialty or interest.

You could respond to articles in magazines and newspapers with a letter to the editor sharing your thoughts. You could weigh in online in chat rooms or commenting on blog posts. 

With social media, there are more opportunities to share ideas, opinions and resources than ever before. Speak up.

* Show up. Almost every successful speaker I know has at least one experience that taught them the importance of showing up. 

In every instance, they agreed to speak for free, were questioning their decision, kept their agreement anyway, and had someone in the audience who loved what they offered and hired them for a substantial amount of money to speak at a future event.

There’s a fundamental principle that’s operating in all of these instances. That principle is this: we all like to do business with people we know and like. If people don’t know you, they can’t like you.  

That, however, is the basic tool for creating opportunity. Get creative about finding ways where such connections are naturally going to happen.

And if you’ve been waiting for opportunity to knock, how about meeting it at the curb and inviting it in?

Anatomy of an Idea

After the sudden deaths of his parents in 1999, University of Oklahoma employee Jim Miller was devastated. To help ease his grief, he began working at a local retirement community and writing a question-and-answer column for seniors in his hometown of Norman. 

At first he did it for fun and to help the retirement community get a little free publicity, but the deeper he delved, the more he realized that easy to understand information pertaining to senior issues was hard to come by. 

Miller was convinced that there was a market for his Savvy Senior column. When finding a syndicate to distribute his column failed, he decided to self-syndicate, contacting small newpapers throughout the country. Thousands of letters and follow-up telephone calls brought in hundreds of buyers at $3 to $5 each. 

Miller’s idea continued to grow. Not only does his column appear in more and more newspapers every week, his Web site The Savvy Senior  is loaded with more great information. 

His first book, also called The Savvy Senior, was published by Hyperion and he now makes regular appearances on The Today Show sharing new products designed for the senior market and offering tips.

So what did Jim Miller do right? And how can we follow his example? There are several obvious and a few not-so-obvious aspects to his success story.

°  His business was born from his heart.  Miller got a master’s degree in education, but never got past teacher training because he found out he didn’t enjoy working with kids.

Through volunteering, he discovered that there was a group of people he enjoyed being around and helping. 

° He identified a problem—saw something was missing—and set about to solve it. Many great ideas come about in just this way. Most people who find something missing simply sigh and say, “Why doesn’t somebody do something about this?” 

The entrepreneur recognizes that a void is something that needs to be filled—an opportunity to explore.

° He focused on his niche market. Miller’s audience was clearly defined. His idea to market the column also was highly focused with small local papers being his target.  

° Began with intellectual capital, not big financing. Miller created his business by generating cash flow with a minimal financial investment.

° He was willing to do the groundwork. Locating and contacting thousands of small papers was a grueling, time-consuming task, but Miller embraced the chore because he was convinced that his idea was a good one.

° He was not intimidated by his youth, his lack of credentials or existing organizations that served his market. In other words, he focused on his vision, not his obstacles.

° He kept building his expertise. Research is a big part of what it takes to become an expert.

Miller didn’t start out being an expert in the fine points of Social Security or Medicare, but he proved that he’s a willing learner and thorough researcher.

* Personal touch is crucial. Miller answers all e-mail questions himself and gets his column ideas from the mail that comes in. His audience is an on-going source of ideas.

* He took advantage of opportunities to grow. Collecting his columns into a book was a natural progression; getting a gig on a popular morning television show required a willingness to stretch.

So what did Jim Miller do right? Just about everything, it appears. We can all learn alot by applying this same process of analysis to successful enterprises and see what winners have to teach us..

Tools Tell a Story

For half a century, Andy Rooney has been an outspoken and opinionated journalist. For most of that time, his stories were written on his beloved manual typewriter.

It is only in the past few years that he’s relented and switched to a laptop computer. His ancient typewriter is enshrined in his office where it remains a symbol of a long and creative career.

Andy Rooney is not alone. Watch someone masterful at work and you’ll notice that there’s almost a reverence given to the tools of their trade.

On the days when Eric Clapton performs, he chooses not to see or touch his principle guitar. He says that as he prepares to go onstage, he walks to get his guitar and it’s like going to meet a lover.

There is no work that I can think of which doesn’t involve some sort of tool or prop or machine. Whether it’s a computer, a ladder, a camera or a chisel, humans continue to devise tools to elevate the quality of their work.

Tools also provide valuable clues about whether our work is our passion or merely a way of filling time.

Although we hear alot about the role of technology, almost nothing is said about the role that tools (technological and otherwise) play in our success. Tools are never mentioned as a vehicle for self-awareness.

And yet they’re a nearly foolproof method of getting in touch with how we feel about the work we do with them. Far too many people do not experience anything close to the feeling of going to meet a lover when they pick up their telephone or dental drill. 

On the other hand, people who love what they’re doing regard their tools in an entirely different way. Besides keeping them in superb running order, they often personify them, giving them names and talking about their tools as if they were a partner. 

Paul Hawken was touring British gardens when he learned about the personal relationship some folks have with their tools.

He writes, “As I watched the gardeners work I studied their tools. I hefted a spade, the tool of choice. It seemed unusually heavy and it was sharp as an ax.

“The gardener saw me looking and came over. That was not merely a spade, that was his spade. I asked him if it wasn’t heavy and tiring to use.

“With a smile he invited me to give it a try. I toiled away as he grew increasingly amused. In his Lancashire accent he said, ‘Let your tool do the work. That’s what it’s made for.’ He showed me how use the weight of the spade, how to make the tool an extension of my arms, how to move my body.”

Hawken was so impressed with the lesson he’d learned that when he returned to the United States he tried to interest some companies in importing English garden tools.

No one was interested. Eventually Hawken realized that this idea belonged to him and the successful mail order business Smith and Hawken was born bringing the tools Hawken loved to a new market. 

Our relationship with tools is important—and maybe even a bit mystical. “I’m always looking forward to opening the ovens in the morning,” says glass artist Dale Chihuly. “Glassblowing is a spontaneous medium that suits me. I’ve been at it for forty years and am as infatuated as when I blew my first bubble in 1965.

“We use the same tools they used 2000 years ago. I know if I go down to the glass shop, I’m going to make something that’s never been made before. That in itself is an inspiration.

“I used to think it was the glass that was so mysterious, but then I realized it was the air that went into it that was miraculous.”