The last few weeks have been chaotic here in the office, and with things in life. In addition to working hard here, Erin and I are both about to face our last finals week of our undergraduate education. All of us are getting ready for the holidays, and I will be leaving town on Friday to be with my family in Washington. On top of all of this, I just got engaged and am now in the throes of stressful wedding planning. Now, typically I deal well with a busy life, I even enjoy it. But I am also a stress case. I get sick at least every couple of months from wearing myself out with worry and concern. Last Thursday the stresses of recent weeks seemed to be evident on mine and Erin’s face. As he often does, Rich took us to the white board and decided to teach us an important concept.
He said that for everyone there is an area of concern, and an area of influence. In our area of concern are things we cannot control, like the weather, or traffic, or others’ actions. People typically spend 80% of their time in this area of concern, a place we can do nothing about. What we need to do is focus on our area of influence, and not just right in the middle of it, but right on the perimeter. As we utilize our influence in this way, it will actually grow. Rich emphasized this point more on Friday when he asked me to take on a task that is somewhat outside my comfort zone, pushing me to use my area of influence further than I normally do. He again explained to me that if I push through these sometimes awkward tasks, they’ll eventually become natural, and my area of influence has grown.
This has been extremely helpful in my life the last few days. As I studied for finals this weekend, I started to do the normal overreacting thing I do. I began to think about when my finals were scheduled, wondering if I would have time to study in between. I learned that one of my take-home finals is due sooner than I thought. And I began to stress out about whether my flight home would be delayed, and I couldn’t shake images of sleeping on the airport floor for days. But as I thought about Rich’s wonderful lesson to me, I decided to stop wasting my time in this area of concern. All my energy has been focused on doing what I can do to prepare for finals, and today on getting caught up in the office before I leave for home. By leaving behind that area concern, I have been more productive than I ever would be in my area of influence. Learning to love our limits can actually help us to expand them.

This past year I have taken a bit of a sabbatical from my entrepreneurial efforts in order to join with my friend and colleague, Ron Porter, and write a book. We have changed the name of the book multiple times. It started as The Entrepreneur Recipe Cookbook , then Bootstrap Business and now we have narrowed down to the name of The $5,000 Millionaire. Although the name of the book has changed several times, the primary purpose of the book has remained the same. This book is about:

1) How to take $5,000 and turn it into a multi million dollar business.
2) How to balance your business and personal interests. We call this “human business”.
3) It focuses on actionable, proven steps and not just theory.

The book is a compilation of personal stories and examples. In fact we have gone so far as to test the principles of this book by starting a new company with just $5,000. We are now 7 months into the new company and have already grown it to have a $140,000 of revenue per month. The principles in this book work!

This project has turned out to be one of the most challenging projects of my life. I am pleased to announce that we have now completed the entire first draft of The $5,000 Millionaire. We are now in the process of finding an agent and a publisher. Our team has shifted into a new phase. Up to this point, we have remained very quiet and have not actively promoted the book. As of the weekend, we are beginning to actively and aggressively highlight and promote both the book and the web site.

One of the fun things that we have on the web is an Entrepreneurial Appetite Test (EAT). This is a 39 question test that gives you direct feedback on your strengths and weaknesses in relation to becoming an entrepreneur. It then points you to the chapters in the book that focus on the attributes or challenges you may have in becoming an entrepreneur. It is a powerful tool that can help you overcome your weakness and steer clear of painful obstacles as well as reinforce your strengths.

So far, Erin and Shanna have done a great job of offering some tidbits of things that they have learned while working on the book. However, starting this week we are going to change our blogging format. Each week we will send out a powerful blog that gives practical tips and correlates with the principles of the book. These blogs will rotate between myself, Ron, Erin and Shanna. .

There are several authors and books that I have found invaluable to the way in which I have done business. The following books have had significant impact on me:

Seth Godin’s thoughts on permission Marketing
Victor Frankle’s Mans Search for Meaning
Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Jim Collins Good To Great
Robert Kawasaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad

The $5,000 Millionaire will be released this coming year. Just as I have found the above books valuable in starting and sustaining my businesses, I am confident that readers will find The $5,000 Millionaire to be an equally valuable resource in your business endeavors.

It is our intent within the next year to turn this website into an online entrepreneur community where networking can take place and ideas can be generated. We hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity and become a part of our community.

I invite and welcome any comments and feedback from you. Please bookmark, share and promote the key information from this website and book. Our goal is the help as many up and coming entrepreneurs as we can.

Up until I was about 17 years old I didn’t have to learn too much about failure. I was one of those “blessed” kids that swings through school like it was Saturday morning cartoons. My last year of high school I met a teacher who recognized me for what I was, someone who had never gotten knocked down. What did he do? He gave me the first D of my life. I was shocked, I couldn’t believe that I had done so poorly! I had prepared! Reviewing my paper with another girl in the class I saw that she had done something very similar and gotten a much better grade. I went to my teacher and he explained that I had not risen to my full potential, and that he measured everyone on a scale of what he thinks they can do, not what they have done in the past.

That semester was full of D’s and C’s and yes, even some F’s. It was awful- but I soon learned to embrace what seemed to be my biggest obstacle. I spent the time to get it right, I challenged myself in new ways, and, resultantly, ended up with the grade I wanted and a new understanding of how to push myself. Funny- years of success had resulted in mediocrity, but a few months of failure gave me a chance to find out what I was made of. I’m just grateful that I had that first experience with failure in the playpen of high school instead of in the real world.

What can your failures do for you? As a business owner you won’t get it right all the time. Occasionally you’ll hit a wall- what then? It starts with your attitude. Don’t let your failures define who you are. Just as my failing grades didn’t make me a failing person- your failed business or decision doesn’t mean you are incompetent. It just means you’re human.

There’s another side to embracing failure that requires you to take action. After a failure you can’t just pat yourself on the back and move on. You need to reflect, understand what went wrong, and change. Rich has shared this with me on a variety of occasions, a couple of times in the context of mountain climbing. When trekking in the Himalayas understanding your failures is not something you put off. Making the same mistake twice could mean you’ll never get out- instead, it’s essential to be grateful for survival, and to take immediate action to make sure you’ve changed.

Long story short? Don’t come out of any situation empty handed, whether it be a success or a failure. Make your failures work for you.

What a week! Sorry I have neglected the updates as of late- a little over a week ago I came down with a hearty cough (among other things) that disrupted the schedule for a few days. I came in to work Tuesday- and I must’ve looked a little frightening because I was sent home around lunchtime. The office didn’t want to risk any sort of wide-spread contamination. Thinking I just had some sort of run of the mill cold, I came in Thursday morning (just a part-timer for the moment, finishing school next week!) to give it another go. I wasn’t considering going home until I saw the looks in the team’s faces…and was invited to go home and rest. Rich, Ron and I decided to do our edit meeting for the day over the phone. (It’s harder for germs to get through that way…) When I answered the phone, however, I couldn’t even vocalize a proper greeting. My pitiful little plight was met with the response, “Hang up. Get better. We’ll see you next week.”

I know what you’re thinking. Crazy, huh?

This got me thinking about one of the chapters in the book, Climb High, Sleep Low. Rich tells a story about a business trip to England he took to meet with his boss and mentor, Dr. Peter Horne. When summoned across the pond Rich’s life had reach maximum capacity, too full for leisure time, and even too full for family. When he arrived in Peter’s office, Peter told Rich something that has stuck with him: “You can replace anything in life. You can replace a job, a car, money, anything, but you can’t replace your health, your trust relationships, or your family.”

By and large, this advice fueled the entrepreneurial fire in Rich. He wanted and needed to create businesses that reflected this ideal- to make room for his family, to allow himself and the people he works with to be human beings, and to invest in his future health and happiness. This phone call last week shows that he has achieved that balance. My health mattered to them, as much as it did to me, as does finishing my education. Because Rich and Ron created this company together, they get to make the rules. And it just so happens that the rules allow for a cold every once in awhile and a hectic finals week, for which I am very grateful.

The trouble with this kind of a human office, quite truthfully, is that it can be taken advantage of. However, I don’t like to see it from that point of view. I would like to think that trust and respect for life events and priorities would lead team members to fill a higher sense of duty and encourage them to work to their best ability because of their integrity. (Novel idea, huh?) We’ve all had (or maybe some of you haven’t…lucky you) the kind of job where they make you “clock out” to use the bathroom and where you are expected to get through the day as long as you can be on your feet, regardless of how you feel. Yes, that kind of policy will illicit long hours and the fulfillment of duty- but isn’t it preferable to be treated like an adult, be allowed wiggle room for life, and work up to your potential because you want to? I think so.

Last night was our Christmas party!  We went to Magleby’s as a team and spouses and guests and had a nice meal, played a white-elephant gift game (hysterical…), had a little kareoke, and enjoyed each other’s company.  Sometimes it fun to see each other in another light- just having fun, celebrating the success of the year.

Rich and Ron gave each team member an exciting Christmas present: a new IPOD Nano!   We were given a posters, as well, with a list of goals for the upcoming months using the word NANO as an anagram. Oh, and I can’t forget the other activity: Rich prepared a slew of questions about the office, the companies and their histories, and whoever got them right got “points” in the form of $1 and $10 bills.  A few of the questions were for “spouses only,” and it was fun to see that my husband John remembered a lot of what I tell him about the office!  Of course, no one can beat Rich’s wife Gaye when it comes to knowledge about the companies he creates!  Rich also thanked the significant others for their support, recognizing their part in the success of what happens in the office.

It was the perfect mix of fun and focus- gearing us all up for the new year!