“It is one of the great tragedies of civilization that ninety-eight out of every one hundred persons go all the way through life without coming within sight that even approximates definiteness of a major purpose.” ~Napoleon Hill

To be honest, are any of us certain that we’ve found our true calling in life? I love what I’m doing, but there are parts of my job that I find awfully tedious. Further, I believe we can have more than one purpose in life or that our purpose will most surely change as we age. For myself, I was a partner in my own company for many years and when we received a good offer, we decided to sell it and move on. That was around the time that my children were embarking on their own journeys in life and going off to college. I also had to overcome some health issues. All of these things combined — some good, some not so good — led me to a bit of a crisis of confidence. What was I going to do next? While I liked my job that I had done in my company and I appreciated what it afforded me, I didn’t feel like it was a true calling or my life’s purpose.

An older friend was talking to me about his large and prosperous company one day. He had become enormously wealthy starting and growing this company which in all honesty, sounded incredibly boring to me. At one point I stopped him and asked, “Yes, but was it your dream?”

He responded, “No, it was my opportunity.”

Fair enough. Would you do a job for your entire working life that you weren’t really passionate about, if you could make a very large amount of money doing it?

The renowned psychologist, Frederick Herzberg, developed and wrote about the two-factor theory of job satisfaction. He called the two factors that influence people in choosing jobs or sticking with them, motivators and hygiene. Hygiene factors are things such as comfort, benefits, location, colleagues and salary. These are mostly extrinsic factors — beyond one’s control — and that must be there for people to choose a job. But they will not make people happy about their job, they will just keep them from hating their job. The opposite are the intrinsic factors, or the motivators. They are things such as, “achievement, recognition for achievement, the work itself, responsibility, and growth or advancement,” or growth factors.

This is what we need to go after our life’s purpose, our passion. The risk is the hygiene job. You start a career because the salary is good, and then you get married, have kids, and you can’t leave, and all the while, you are not satisfied with your career, and yet you stay in it for obvious reasons.

How many of us have found ourselves in the hygiene careers?

Around the time of my crisis of confidence, a couple friends and I started our First Friday Mastermind group (which I initially wrote about in my S.W.O.T. Analysis article). I got the idea because I thought about all the business principles I applied to my business that helped it become successful to the point we were able to sell it, but I never did that kind of planning for my personal life. I’m talking about vision strategies, mission statements, S.W.O.T. analyses, goal setting, marketing plans, projections, board of directors, and so on.

I deserved that. You deserve that.

I was also re-reading the iconic, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill. He’s the one who suggested the idea of a mastermind group, to take advantage of collective intelligence.

Five of us got together the first Friday of every month, to learn about business principles which sadly most people don’t know about or use, and also to drink (wine) and eat (potluck) and check-in with each other and pour out our hearts and cry and laugh and hold each other accountable. In written, almost beseeching snippets of exercises, told with heart-wrenching honesty and longing, every one of us wrote knowing, knowing we could do better, we could be better.

I remembered that my partner and I had gone through this period in our company where we were just struggling all the time and nothing we did seemed to work or improve our situation. Money was always an issue and I was tired. We hired a consultant who used a methodology called, “Chart Your Own Course,” by Caryn A. Spain and Ron Wishnoff. The idea was to choose the four things your company should focus on — your vision strategy — and do those things really well. Every management decision or action taken, should be to further something on your vision strategy. The value of a vision strategy in business cannot be overestimated in my opinion. Our business turned around and within a few years we were able to sell it for a huge multiple.

“Chart You Own Course,” suggested starting your exploration process by listing all the things your company does well. At the first meeting of our little group, we convened on a wet and chilly December evening, took off our shoes, and did our first tell-tale, potent exercise. It was a variation on that first step. I called ours, The Top 50, a list of fifty things that you do reasonably well. It didn’t actually need to be fifty things and could be more, but fifty is a good number.

Some felt that there was no way they could come up with fifty skills or talents, but I told them that they could. We looked at it like a brainstorming exercise and did it right there in the meeting and then read the results to each other. I personally, completely missed some of the things at which I excel. No fewer than two Masterminders put down, “loading the dishwasher.” One of us came up with over seventy five that first night.

The TOP 50 was a list we would use over and over as a springboard for other exercises, like in writing our vision statements and our mission statements. It was the start of a process for many of us to figure out what we wanted to do, to question our direction, our life’s purpose, our calling in life, our dreams. We then utilized business tools to put our dreams into action.

Here is the theory behind The Top 50 and why it’s important:

First of all, you’ll be surprised at how many things you do well. It’s an esteem booster. I revisit my list whenever I am feeling down about myself, frustrated, or impatient with how things are going.

Second, the reason we use this list as a springboard for other exercises is because it makes sense to start from a position of strength: we’re reinventing ourselves not the wheel.

Third, you want to do something you enjoy, and typically people enjoy the things they do well.

Fourth, I believe that writing things down makes them real. It is an acknowledgement in ink. Indelible.

Fifth, by thinking about your strengths and writing them down (and even being reminded by your friends in the room when you have momentary lapses about the things you do well and have never acknowledged), you may discover something helpful about yourself that surprises.

My last word about the importance of working from the TOP 50 LIST: Don’t let anyone else define you. There is a Latin expression: Temet nosce. Know thyself. The longer version of that is, “Know thyself and thou shall know all the mysteries of the Gods and of the universe.” This is your choice, not the Universe’s or God’s or your spouse, mother, children or monk’s choice.

Here’s what I learned about myself from my Top 50 list. I was really good at business skills, but I also possessed many creative talents like writing, painting, music, and graphic design. I knew that with my next company, I had to be doing something more creative. Even though I could make a lot of money in management and finance, I didn’t want to do that anymore. Working through all the exercises as a part of my mastermind group helped me to start my company, Bloomers Island.

I highly suggest that if you are reading this, do your own Top 50 and let me know if you discovered any surprises. Also, I’m curious how many of you think you are living your life’s purpose.
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Next up is your vision strategy.

There seems to be a lot of hate out there these days. According to the F.B.I., 2018 was the third consecutive year of increases in hate crimes. What do we do about it? I’ve always thought that the antidote to hate is love, but sometimes loving is hard. Is there another way?

I’ve been thinking about this problem. I did some research on hate. In psychology circles, hate is not considered a primary emotion, it’s a secondary emotion, or a reaction to a primary emotion. The primary emotion that typically drives hate is fear. You’re afraid of something and so you hate it.

We’ve been told that to combat hate in this world and in our lives, we should counter it with love. That’s nice, but sometimes it’s hard to feel love or respond with love when someone is writing hateful comments about you and your beliefs, or calling you names. At those moments, it is hard to conjure up love, to think about love, to be generous with our feelings. At best it is difficult. At worst, impossible. And what does loving even mean?

Talk to any kid who has been bullied at school. They are afraid. Tell him or her that they should be loving toward their nemesis. As someone who has been bullied, I can tell you that it would have been impossible to love this person.

One of my earliest memories was going to the enormous public swimming pool in our town. To my four year-old eyes, this pool was like one of the great lakes. At the time, my six year-old brother and I were complete landlubbers. I never even saw the ocean until I was a sophomore in college. I was terrified of the water and my brother had no swimming skills beyond doggy paddling. In what was a common practice at the time, and what I now refer to as, “The Great Pool Incident,” my dad unceremoniously picked up my brother and in one swift motion threw him into the deep end of the pool. My brother sank like a stone. With a sideways glance to me, my father said that it would force him to learn to swim.

I was mortified. After a long few moments with my brother on the bottom of the pool, my dad finally jumped in and peeled him off. My brother, in a panicked mode, clawed at my dad’s chest. When the whole ordeal was over, they both climbed out of the pool, my dad bleeding profusely from surprisingly deep gashes down his front, my brother heaving and coughing, his eyes open wide like a cornered wild animal.
I think my dad was embarrassed that his son couldn’t just tough it out. My brother was fearful and then angry and finally hateful that my father had betrayed him like that. Through all this, I clung to my mother’s leg, just in case my father got the thought in his head that I should be subjected to the same failed experiment.

I give my father a teensy bit of a pass on this. He was 25 at the time, not particularly adept at parenting, heck, no one was adept at parenting back then. Grownups were still spanking their kids and subjecting them to all kinds of old-fashioned, humiliating parenting techniques that make us cringe now.

My brother was afraid of the water. My father’s method to help him overcome that fear was ridiculous. Equally as absurd would have been to tell my brother to think loving thoughts about the water. What would have been better? Simply, to practice.
Here’s the thing, it is a lot easier to act on something than to think something (or to not think something), especially when emotions are in play. I wrote about this in my blog post: IT’S THE MESSENGER NOT THE MEDIUM. Action is easier than thought and practice is an action.

Practice to overcome your fear, and as a recommendation if you know someone else who is filled with fear and perhaps its resultant hate. If anyone does something over and over, it loses its power over them. They are not afraid anymore.

In the “Great Pool Incident,” if my brother had been given some swimming lessons and the luxury of time to practice them, none of this would have been necessary. He could have jumped into the deep end himself, and my dad could have joined him, playing with the beach ball, diving for pennies, and perhaps racing from side to side. Instead, my brother didn’t learn to properly swim for many years. And me? Not until my senior year in college when I needed one last Phys Ed credit to graduate and Swimming 101 was the only thing left that fit into my schedule. (I really liked it and even took Swimming 102 — the benefit of a four-year college degree.)

When your children are afraid of something, have them get out there and practice. Back to the bully, a good idea would be to role play with your child against their bully. That is practice. Or practice self-defense. Or have him or her practice asking for help.

We can apply this in our own grownup lives. We can communicate it to others. We can apply it in business. You’re afraid to call a potentially important customer? Pick up the phone and practice calling smaller customers. Write a script and role play with a friend or colleague. Practice. (I think role playing in business is highly underrated.)

If someone is afraid of immigrants, invite them to dinner with an immigrant or a refugee family. Invite them to volunteer at a local refugee center. Who knows? Maybe it will make a difference. In the meantime, send them a link to this article.
If you are afraid of something, practice what you are afraid of. Start really small. Practice sports. Read more. Learn more. Educate yourself. Practice job skills, foreign languages, writing. Practice going out and meeting other people. Practice your social skills. Don’t be afraid of other people. Improve yourself.

By defeating fear, you go a long way to overcoming name calling, bullying, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, otherism, and hatred.

Oh, and by the way, you can practice love too. Maybe start small with a smile and a complement.
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What fear have you learned to overcome by practicing?

As a published children’s book author, people have often asked me how I came up with the idea for my book series, Bloomers Island by Rodale Kids, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books. Most people don’t know that my stories are based on my own children from many years ago. It all started with my daughter, Sophia.

​When Sophia was in preschool she had two best friends, Rosie and Lily, whose names were not as ubiquitous as they are today. I thought, how sweet, they are like little flower girls. Around the same time, I hired a babysitter named Iris. She was older, single and childless and not the warmest or most fun babysitter, but with four kids and only five years between the oldest and youngest, safety and control were more of my concern.
My kids didn’t really like Iris. She made them eat their vegetables, take their plates to the sink after dinner and take a bath before bed. I LOVED Iris. I always knew that with her iron rule, there was little chance for any mishaps. I was right.​

Kids (Almost) Grown Up

Let me tell you a story about someone I knew.

She was a single mother with four kids in daycare, an out-of-work partner, a very tenuous job situation, a boss that hated her and she didn’t have the money for a week in summer camp for one kid let alone a down payment for the house she wanted to purchase. Those were her weaknesses.

Those were my weaknesses. That person was me.

What were my strengths? I was making a good salary and had an aggressive loan broker recommended by a colleague. She said she only “claimed” $25,000 a year in income and that if he could get her a $1,000,000 house in Los Angeles then he could get anyone a loan, even me with a zero down payment. And he did! I got a first and a second for the down payment. In hindsight, I suppose I was one of those “sub-prime borrowers” that ultimately contributed to the crash of the economy. But I’m happy to say it worked out well for me (and my bank).

My weakness: not having money for a down payment. My strengths: my network of colleagues, the loan broker, my high-paying job. What I achieved: I bought my house.
This is Part 2 of my original article, “You Should Know How To Do A S.W.O.T. Analysis,” published in Medium, October 3rd. As a part of that article, you might remember that to do your S.W.O.T. Analysis, you should start with what you want to achieve. I want to sell 100,001 books in one year’s time. Last month I covered the O.T. part of S.W.O.T., Opportunities and Strengths. This article focuses on S.W. or Strengths and Weaknesses.

Strengths
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As I continue on in my career journey, I am reminded more and more how much of my success is based on just believing in myself and not taking no for an answer. And isn’t that really about recognizing my shortcomings and figuring out how to fix them, go around them, over them or through them? Or looking at my strengths, owning them, and using them to achieve what I want to achieve?

Let’s start with owning your strengths. If someone asked me if I was a good writer a year ago, I probably would have said no. Wait. I am a published author of five books with Random House Children’s Books. Of course I’m a good writer. In my defense, maybe I denied that because I was turned down a million times. Okay, not really a million, but it felt that way.

One of the things we did in our first meeting of our Masterminds (see Part 1 of my S.W.O.T. Analysis article), was to write down fifty things we do well… your strengths. If you’ve never done that, it’s a worthwhile exercise and can be quite revealing. It’s based on a business school idea that if you want to come up with a winning vision strategy, you should start with something you do well, because you will probably enjoy doing that. Furthermore, why start from ground zero? If you are focusing on something you already do well, you will come up to speed much more quickly and therefore reach a level of success much faster.

It has to be at least fifty. Why? Because anything less just isn’t enough. You have to trust me on this.

The interesting thing about this assignment is that initially people protest that there is no way they can come up with fifty things. I always have to reassure them that they can and if they come up short they can always put down that they are a good parent or child or sibling. People usually think of skills and don’t really think about personality strengths. Are you optimistic? Outgoing? Empathetic? Organized? Those are all strengths. I had more than one younger woman list that they were a good dishwasher loader. Okay, it’s the small victories. Go ahead and list them.

Finally, narrow down your strengths to those that are relevant to what you are trying to achieve. For me, it was to sell 100,001 books.

1. I am a good writer
2. I am disciplined
3. I am not afraid to ask for what I want
4. I am an extrovert
5. I am good at technology
6. I am relentless
7. I have a good network of friends and family
8. I already have a licensee I’m working with who manufactures my gardening products
9. I like to travel and I am in a position to do so

How do I leverage my strengths:

1. Keep writing. Keep creating content. Use this in marketing.
2. Come up with goals and work at them diligently every day.
3. Ask my publisher for help. Ask my followers for help. Ask friends for introductions.
4. Plan and go on a book tour.
5. Launch my website, develop email marketing campaigns, social media, little videos, etc., to increase my engagement.

Weaknesses

It is important to recognize our weaknesses because if we’re going to improve, we need to overcome or work around them. Paradoxically, I think that weaknesses are easier for people to list. Most of us are hard on ourselves. However, some of us are in denial or simply haven’t yet recognized what our weaknesses are. Many of us, myself included, aren’t adept at honestly evaluating ourselves. Here are some helpful suggestions:

1. Talk to someone who knows you well, whose opinion you trust. Ask them what they think your weaknesses are. Buy them a cup of coffee and tell them you’re doing a S.W.O.T. analysis. Ask your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend, mother or mentor. I asked my daughter. That was the motherload (pun intended) of information. It amazes me that most people have never asked their own children how they are doing or how they did.
When whoever you’re asking tells you, don’t be defensive. Listen. Take notes. Remember, they’re taking time out of their day to help you. You may not agree with everything they say, but if everyone is saying the same thing, then you’ve probably got a legitimate weakness on your hands.
2. Another thing I recommend is evaluating what part of your job or daily routine you don’t like. What tasks drain you? Those are probably your weaknesses.
3. Take a test. There are many personality tests out there. Myers Briggs is well-known. They can tell you what your weaknesses are.
4. Self-evaluate. Identify negative patterns in your life and ascribe what weaknesses may be contributing them. You’re don’t finish what you start. Why do you think you do that?
5. Therapy. Find a good licensed therapist.

After making notes, observations and evaluations sit down and make a list of your weaknesses. Edit it to reflect the things that have relevancy to the goal you are trying to achieve.

Ultimately, more important than the specific ways to overcome your weaknesses is the idea that you CAN overcome or work around any weakness you acknowledge. This is not an exercise that is meant to bring you down. Everyone has weaknesses. It shows strength that you are able to look honestly at your situation and then think of ways to improve upon it.

What are the best ways to overcome your weaknesses? Education, research, practice, affirmations, trying anyway, using a partner who already possesses the skill, hiring someone, subcontracting tasks to outsiders. There’s always a way. Always.

In regards to my goal, (selling 100.001 books) these are my weaknesses as I see them:

1. I get easily distracted.
2. I am impatient.
3. I don’t have a lot of followers.
4. I am not good at prioritizing.
5. These are my first books — I don’t have a track record or a reputation.
6. I am uncomfortable in front of the camera.
7. I don’t consider myself good at marketing.
8. I don’t have the time to do everything I need to do.

Overcoming my weaknesses:

1. Daily to-do lists. Pick the top six things I need to do every day to move me closer to my goal of selling 100,001 books. This helps me to keep focused and to prioritize.
2. Build followers. Spend more time on social media. Have contests. BECOME RELEVANT.
3. Utilize influencers to help me get the word out about my books. Offer them a tradeoff (I will market their products or services). Give them free books.
4. Set up affiliates with the Amazon affiliate program.
5. Get more reviews on all the websites that are carrying my books and other sites such as Goodreads.
6. Get more press: television, magazines, newspapers. Practice talking and filming myself. Make sure I am comfortable in front of the camera. Practice good posture.
7. Work with regional booksellers to book school events. Make a parent brochure to send home with the children. Work on my presentation. Make it great!
8. Establish myself as a thought leader in healthy living for children — speak at relevant symposiums and conferences.
9. Continue to read marketing books to educate myself.
10. Utilize outside experts in marketing and subcontract time-consuming tasks when possible.
11. Continue to learn about the business of publishing. Reach out to other successful authors. Talk to booksellers.

In closing, my most recent S.W.O.T. analysis was incredibly helpful to me. I have already incorporated many of these ideas and tasks. I started with the goal of selling 10,001 books and accomplished that within three months. I therefore increased my goal to 100,001 books.

Do your S.W.O.T. Analysis! I look forward to hearing back from you on your progress toward your goal. I will keep you posted on mine. Follow me on Medium or my RSS feed here for updates. 

A couple weeks ago, I read with dismay a new report from the U.K. that showed child obesity rates continue to rise there. Likewise in the U.S., obesity rates amongst children remain stubbornly high and perhaps even more disturbing is that 13.9% of preschoolers are considered obese. While the levels of overweight children have plateaued, and even fallen a bit in some areas, the prevalence of extremely obese children continues to rise.

This, of course, has enormous implications for healthcare systems in all of the developed world because obesity is associated with many kinds of health problems: higher levels of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, not to mention expensive health conditions such as knee and hip replacements, and other morbidity and mortality issues. And the bad news is, once a child or adult is overweight, it has proven to be extremely difficult to lose the weight and maintain the loss. According to the American Heart Association, obese kids have an eighty percent chance of staying obese their entire lives.

This begs the question: what is going to happen to these children when they become adults? As an economist, I ask, who is going to pay for their health care costs?
As stewards of our children and therefore, our future adults, we must be vigilant about really helping them to be healthier eaters. And here is the simple truth I refer to in my title:

We have to start when they are young.

We must help our children to not become overweight, because if they do, it is going to be a battle they will have to fight their entire lives and usually with little success.

Let me make a distinction, I am not talking about baby fat here, I’m talking about obesity. If you have a question about this, look at the Body Mass Index (BMI) charts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We must be vigilant to help our children and here’s the thing — it’s a lot easier to do when they are young, because of course we control the type and amount of food that we buy and prepare for them.

My life’s work is about teaching and inspiring children to lead a healthy lifestyle. As a part of that mission, I help parents understand ways that they can encourage their children to be healthier. One of the main ways to start a child off on a good foundation, is to help them to eat more vegetables. Nine out of ten children, after all, still don’t eat enough.

Because I’m a geek and I’ve done a lot of research on this, it might help you to know that human beings are hard-wired to not like vegetables. Way back when humans were in the hunter/gatherer stage, sweet foods such as fruits, were much less likely to be poisonous than savory foods.

That makes it hard to succeed in getting our kids to eat more vegetables. I get it. That’s where I come in. There are many tips and suggestions I give to help you along. But, as a broad stroke, we have to start thinking as a society and culture how to improve our children’s relationship with vegetables and fruits and other healthy foods, and to use the science that already exists to help us do that.

One of my favorite books that I’ve mentioned before is “Influencer: The Power to Change Anything,” by Kerry Grenny, Joseph Maxfield, David McMillan, Ron Switzler, and Al Patterson. They make the point that to change anyone including yourself, you should start by looking at what works. Find someone who has done and succeeded at the thing you want to do, and then study their methods.

The book makes a case that usually only two or three things account for success and therefore focus on just a couple things. This tidbit of information makes any task seems much less daunting. I mean, who can’t change two or three things? (They have tips for how to change behavior too.)

And here’s the cool thing about researching and finding successful methods: in this day and age, chances are someone has already studied what works and written about it. (By the way, this is an excellent book to read whether you’re running a corporation or a household, trying to change a reluctant customer’s mind or a recalcitrant teenager’s behavior.)

Back to our kids. Here are three already researched and proven methods to get your child to eat more vegetables:

1. A 2007 study suggests that persevering in offering children a particular vegetable can help them develop a taste for it. In a study with young children, it was explored if kids would accept a vegetable into their diet if they did not previously like it. What was found is that toddlers can be made to like a new food by introducing it five to ten times. It might take a little longer with preschoolers, up to fifteen times, but you can still help them develop a taste for it. Eventually more than 70% of the young children liked the tested vegetable. The cool thing is that nine months later, 63% of the originally tested group, still liked it.

When I am doing book readings at schools, I tell the kids that they have to taste a vegetable seven times, and if they do, they will like the vegetable. They always love this. It’s as if I have given them some kind of valuable secret (which I have), and a way to removing the nagging and actually enjoy their meal.

2. Researchers at Texas A&M University, looking for patterns in food consumption among elementary school children, found an interesting quirk about when and why kids choose to eat their vegetables. After analyzing plate waste data from nearly 8,500 students, it seems there’s at least one variable that tends to affect whether kids eat their broccoli, spinach or green beans more than anything: what else is on the plate. In short, kids are much more likely to eat their vegetable portion when it’s paired with a food that isn’t so delicious it gets all the attention.
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Try this: put a vegetable on your child’s plate (make sure you do a good job cooking it for Pete’s sake), put the plate in front of the child who is waiting for his dinner and tell them that they can get started and the main dish is almost ready. That way the vegetable is not competing with the chicken nuggets or french fries. Or try pairing it with liver or baked fish.

3. My company, Bloomers Island, has found that over 90% of the thousands of kids we’ve worked with will eat a vegetable if they’ve grown (or are growing) it. This is based on our own metrics. So we set about to make growing a vegetable as fun for kids and as easy for grownups as possible.

Growing is a long process that also improves children’s delayed gratification skills, but in the meantime, while you’re waiting for the vegetable to grow and ripen, you can take your child to the grocery store and tell them that this is what they’re growing. You can buy it, ask them to help you find a recipe they might like, and then help you cook it. These are all important steps to establishing a healthy vegetable relationship.

There are other scientific ways discussed in the studies linked above, that work. You can read about them and try your own interpretations based on the research, but remember to try only two or three methods at once.
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I’m not saying that if kids eat more vegetables they will not have to worry about being overweight or that childhood obesity will be cured, but … it is a good first step.
What successful methods have you used to get your kids to eat their vegetables? Please share in the comment section below.

Today we went to Newtown and for me, it was the first time. I’ve done a lot of firsts and gone to a lot of places for the first time during my 100,001 Book Tour. Dennis had a meeting at the Cyrenius H. Booth Public Library. I was along for the ride, as he is so often with me. I planned to donate a book to the library. That’s not out of the ordinary, because I have done it with many libraries touring around the USA this year.
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Newtown is a Norman Rockwell town. Yet, a pall had been cast — no fault of the residents, but nevertheless one that they had to contend with for the rest of their lives. You would think that a town where an unspeakable horror happened would be shadowy and foreboding and unwelcoming with cheerless streets. Not so. Like much of Connecticut, I found myself marveling over the perfect porches on the perfect homes on the perfect streets as we drove into town. Pumpkins sat next to cornstalks on the front stoops. Fall leaves lay on the grass lawns patiently waiting to be raked. I compared it to the messy streets of my hometown of Los Angeles with its gum-stained sidewalks strewn with tell-tale signs of the homeless interspersed with street art, cigarette butts and food wrappers, the detritus of streets well-lived in or on, as it were, but at least in L.A. what you see is what you get.

We went to the library and had our meeting in a private room made available to Newtown residents. It was 12:30 when we finished so we agreed to meet at a local coffee shop to have a coffee and a bite to eat. On the way out, I signed and donated my first book, “Bloomers Island The Great Garden Party,” to the library, and we made a big deal out of it as I took a photo with the librarian downstairs in the children’s book area, surrounded by the innocence of, “Goodnight Moon,” and “Oh The Places You’ll Go,” and “Where The Wild Things Are.” My book would be in good company. I was grateful for that.

I am an original founder of a mastermind group started over a decade ago. The idea is to apply business principles to our personal lives.  I noticed that a lot of people don’t know how to properly construct and use business principles — things like vision strategies, legacy statements, marketing plans and financial projections — things that would really help them in their personal lives. Our mastermind group consists of five women (some have come and gone but it consistently remains five) who meet once a month and hold each other accountable as we work our way through our life planning. Part of this blog post is excerpted from the exercises that we are documenting.

One of my favorite exercises we have done is a standard business application called a S.W.O.T. analysis. It is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The formula I came up with to do a SWOT analysis is to first, decide what you want to achieve or evaluate, and then break your analysis down into two basic categories.

1. Evaluate the opportunities and threats that exist for what you want to achieve. Think of these as external factors.
2. Honestly assess your strengths and weaknesses. Think of these as internal factors.

The difference between the two categories, internal and external is huge because you can personally work on internal issues in order to improve. External issues are harder because you can’t change them. For that reason they are often the cause of worry which is fruitless and the nemesis of many of us. However, you can leverage external situations to your advantage or hedge against them to protect yourself.

Remember to start with what you want to achieve. My present goal is to sell 100,001 books in one year’s time.

Opportunities and Threats
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What are my opportunities? I am with a major publishing house. My books are good. I know this because I read it to children all the time. They are engaged. It is being sold at almost all the major booksellers, and if they don’t have it in stock, they can easily order it. Penguin Random House has an entire structure set up for these types of logistics. Other products I’ve invented, such as my Bloomers Island VeggiePOPS and Growing Kits are currently being sold in major retailers. I can leverage my relationships there.

I can employ these things to my advantage. On my website and in all my sales sheets and brochures, I make sure that I mention Random House Children’s Books because it gives me legitimacy, after all they are the number one publisher in the world, for which I’m humbly grateful to be a part of. My licensee is calling on our current retailers and pitching them on including a book with one of our VeggiePOPS.

What are my threats? The economy can crash. Booksellers can and do go out of business. People read less books now. They buy eBooks which are cheaper and don’t make as much money.

How can I hedge against these threats? Help booksellers increase their sales with things like my influencer’s shop, Bloomers Island, on Amazon, and school events done in conjunction with book stores. Package the book with existing products that I am already selling in major retailers to substantially increase sales.

These are just some examples. There is a lot I can do to both leverage and hedge.

One of my esteemed advisors, John Michael Morris, used to tell me to make a list of twenty things whenever I was confronted with a worrisome or uncertain issue. I listed twenty ways I could protect myself and exploit opportunities to reach my goal. You might think coming up with twenty things is hard, but once you get started, it’s easier than you think. Start with five. You’ll get to twenty. Use your most powerful weapon, your brain. It also forces you to dig deeper (pun intended), and get really creative with solutions. You can do it.

Your Homework: Come up with your threats and opportunities related to your goal, and then twenty ways you can take advantage of the opportunities and protect yourself against the threats. Please share your methodology and your list and next week I’ll tackle strengths and weaknesses. Happy digging.

​Let me tell you about a good teacher.

Good teachers can make a world of difference and I believe that many don't properly realize it. Being a children’s book author and doing school events across the country to promote my Bloomers Island book series, got me thinking about my favorite class in high school: Organic Chemistry. Upon reflection, I realized that Organic Chemistry was my favorite class not necessarily because of the subject, which I mastered well, but because of my teacher, Mr. Crawford. Without a doubt, he was the reason why I mastered the subject as well as I did. He was a shining example of the difference a good teacher can make for a relatively difficult subject matter and sometimes, that time, in the life of a student.
 
Another example that clearly backs up my argument, was my calculus teacher my freshman year in college. He was a recent immigrant from another country and didn't speak a word of English. I'm not exaggerating. Not one word. I was failing the class and had to drop it. My parents were not happy. I took the same class the next semester and aced it. I can measure the slope of a line like there's no tomorrow.
 
Back to Mr. Crawford. I was going through a particularly difficult time my senior year in high school. I was weathering some significant family and health issues. Mr. Crawford made me feel special. He made me feel smart. He was engaging and funny - traits you might not typically associate with a chemistry teacher.
 
He called me Cinderella.
 
When I started composing this blog I decided to Google Mr. Crawford. I didn't even know his first name! So I Googled: “mr crawford chemistry teacher seneca valley high school,” and up came his obituary notice from our local newspaper, “The Butler Eagle.”
 
Tears came to my eyes, but why was I surprised? I'm not going to go into the math (even though I aced Calculus), because I would then have to divulge my age, but suffice it to say that he died fifteen years ago at the age of 85.
 
His first name was Roy.
 
I learned that he was from Denver. He taught at Seneca Valley School District for 35 years. He served in the Army during World War II. He had a son and a daughter, two sisters, and a wife, Jane, who predeceased him. He had four grandchildren.
 
I'm not sure Mr. Crawford even knew that he was my favorite teacher. Or that he was one of the reasons I went to college and got a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture. Or that when I was in his class I was able to focus on how molecules are put together and forgot about why some families are put together in the dysfunctional way that they are.
 
Why don't a lot of teachers realize it when they make a huge difference in our lives? Maybe it is because so many of us don't go back and tell them.
 
I have a challenge for you. Share your story about a teacher that made a difference in your life and how, and then go tell them if you still can.
 
I’m lucky that I knew Mr. Crawford. He was a good man. He was a good teacher.

I am a founding member of an active startup founders group. We started with a dozen or so entrepreneurs and I appreciated it because being a startup founder without a partner can be a lonely endeavor. I’ve seen a lot of fellow entrepreneurs walk in and out of the doors over many years. I can now tell if someone is going to “make it” after about three meetings. Here are my observations of why they eventually don’t succeed:

1. They don’t show up. If you want to be successful, you have to show up. I mean that literally and figuratively. You have to show up on a consistent and regular basis. Even if you are tired and can’t seem to find your customers, you are not booking sales, you are getting rejected and you know deep inside your gut that you probably have to pivot your plan, even though you are exhausted. You must keep going — putting one foot in front of the other, executing the marketing plan, calling on customers, pivoting if necessary — you just keep at it. Do they show up on time? If you can’t show up at our meetings on time, what about their business meetings? What if you have a meeting with a venture capitalist? Are you going to be late? Are you going to flake and not show up? Because you and your husband had a fight? Being a C.E.O. of your own startup company is being a self-starter in the truest sense. If you aren’t 100% committed to this, you just won’t make it.

2. They aren’t willing to sacrifice. There is a lot of inherent sacrifice in starting a company. Generally, you have to work long hours, drain your savings, if you’re lucky enough to have some, borrow from friends and family to get started, if you’re lucky enough to have some, give up the money you would make in another job which is called “opportunity cost” and give up time with your family and loved ones. Whenever I see that members aren’t willing to make sacrifices, I know that they are finished. And it has happened with regularity. Usually they will take a job and not come back. Prepare yourself for a lot of sacrifice and if you’re not willing to accept that, you won’t make it.

3. They don’t accept the fact that it’s most likely going to take a long time. This is closely related to sacrifice, but it’s more than that. There is a perseverance factor to it and a necessity of faith. A major problem that I’ve noticed is what I call, “The Spouse Factor.” It’s when the spouses, usually women because most founders are men, I’m sorry to say, think it’s taking too long and give up on their husband’s dream. It is sometimes accompanied by ultimatums and all kinds of bad behavior that I won’t go into here. And it’s sad, really. Because you have this person who is putting it on the line every day working as hard as they can. They are trying to have faith in themselves. Some spouses won’t even get a job. Sometimes the lack of support is breathtaking. My advice is to talk to your spouse before you start a company and make sure they are completely on board. For a long time. And make sure you are, too. The myth of starting a company and selling it to Facebook in three years is just that. It’s a myth. If you don’t know this going into it, you won’t make it.

4. They can’t, or won’t sell what they are making. My first job out of college (Penn State) was selling encyclopedias. I generated my own warm leads by doing magic shows at pre-schools and elementary schools. Yes, I became sort of a magician, and I was good. My low point in the job of selling encyclopedias was going into apartments, in the Housing Projects in Washington D.C., where the rats were as big as possums and the cockroaches ran along the kitchen walls with impunity like it was the Capital Beltway - at a time when my potential customers and I were sitting there talking with the lights on! That year, in between undergrad and grad school, I made over $40,000.00 (almost $119,000.00 in today’s dollars) and I was able to start paying for my first year of grad school at Georgetown University. Moreover, I learned how to sell. Steve Blank, the famed Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Stanford University professor says, “you will find no answers inside your office”. You have to “get out of the building and knock on doors”. I believe that is something very few people are comfortable with, but one that every entrepreneur must learn. I don’t care what you end up doing in life, and I don’t care how you do it, but learn to sell. If you don’t, you won’t make it.

5. They don’t take advice. In our group, members present the most pressing issue that they are dealing with that month, and we have a methodology to “process” that issue. It includes a lot of questions and a lot of feedback. When someone is taking the time to give you advice, especially if it is in a group and collective intelligence is at work, you should listen. Try not to be defensive. And you should take action on that advice. After every processing session, that person is given a Call to Action, or CTA. If they come back without seeing their CTA through, that does not bode well for them. As a startup founder, you are going to need advice from other people because there is no way you can know everything you need to know to do this. I’m not saying you have to listen to everything everyone tells you, but I am saying that if you have smart advisors, or paid professionals, you need to be able to evaluate their advice and act on it. If you can’t, you won’t make it.

6. They aren’t willing to change. Are they so entrenched in their vision that they can’t accept that the world doesn’t want their exact product or service, or that there is something wrong with their product, service, or business model and it needs to be changed? Almost every startup business has to pivot. What is a pivot? It’s when you change your business model in some way because your current model isn’t working. In my latest business, Bloomers Island, I’ve pivoted four times. I know it can be exhausting after your first try and it’s difficult to start over. If that’s the case, take a couple weeks off. I got so burned out after my first couple of years and first couple of pivots, that I went to South America for six months. It was the best thing I ever did. At the end of the day, if you’re not willing to make changes, you won’t make it.

7. They aren’t comfortable crunching numbers. I have seen many people start a business without knowing how to construct a basic income statement let alone a balance sheet. They try to make decisions based on imperfect information. In our group meeting, if a member is presenting an issue to the rest of us, looking for us to help them decide between two alternatives, I always ask: “What are the numbers?” I’m not saying you have to be a CPA, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a basic financial course, or sit down with a friend who knows numbers and cook them a dinner to show you how to construct a set of financial projections. If you look at the numbers — the cost of doing one thing with a projected outcome versus the cost of doing another with that projected outcome (otherwise known as a Cost Benefit Analysis), the answer usually becomes clear: crystal clear. The truth is in the numbers. Get comfortable with numbers or you won’t make it.
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8. They are overly emotional. My favorite line in the motion picture “The Godfather” is when Sonny, Michael and Tom are talking about killing the bad cop. That is when Michael says, “It’s not personal, Sonny, it’s strictly business.” Of course, Sonny was made vulnerable because he was too emotional. His enemies knew that and they were able to kill him. Don’t be overly emotional. In A League of Their Own, Tom Hanks’ character says, “There’s no crying in baseball!” Well, that applies to business, too. You’re going to get rejected and criticized and insulted. Save your crying for the shower. Take solace in the fact that the more you are rejected, the easier it gets. Develop a tough skin. If you don’t, you just won’t make it.
What is an honest appraisal of my weaknesses? Number three and number six. I was unrealistic about how long it would take. I was too invested in what I wanted to do and took too long and wasted too much time and money before pivoting. I kept going though, because I do the other things really well. Now, it is finally paying off.

I’m a big believer in the Tortoise. Most of my accomplishments have been achieved by plodding.  Plodding has an almost negative connotation but I like to think of it as working diligently on things and being content to achieve them in smaller increments. To me, that is the secret to success… setting and achieving small goals to work toward a larger goal.
 
Living in Los Angeles and being exposed to the entertainment industry, I am well acquainted with people that have the hare mentality. You may already know the type. They are always looking for the big hit, the big win, instead of working on a series of small wins that will eventually add up. As a result, they are almost never successful at reaching their goals and if they are – they eventually lose everything.
 
In the book “What They Don't Teach You in the Harvard Business School,” author Mark McCormack tells of a study conducted on students in the 1979 Harvard MBA program. In that year, the students were asked, "Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?" Only three percent of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; and a whopping 84 percent had no specific goals at all.
 
Ten years later, the members of the class were interviewed again, and the findings, while somewhat predictable, were nonetheless astonishing. The 13 percent of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And what about the three percent who had clear, written goals? They were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.
 
What was I able to take away from this?
 
I was reminded to set goals for myself. Simple but not easy. What kind of goals? There are a hundred different ways to set goals. Ultimately, I guessed that the best goal setting method is the one that works for you. Here’s what worked for me.
 
The first thing I did was to set the BIG GOAL. The BIG GOAL was to sell 10,001 books before the end of the year. I even created a hashtag: #10001booktour.

I then came up with hundreds of other little goals to make the BIG GOAL happen. Every day I made a list that covered a page. Every morning I went through my list and I highlighted the top six things I needed to do every day to make the biggest impact on moving my BIG GOAL forward. It’s worked pretty miraculously. I’m plodding and I’m comfortable with that.
 
As I have been marketing and selling my books, something that has become incredibly helpful to me is a quote by Stephen Covey, “The main thing, is to keep the main thing the main thing.” It is not just a question of coming up with my goals, it is to stay focused on them!!!! And the main thing is my BIG GOAL.
 
Lastly, I did a thorough S.W.O.T. analysis which is extremely helpful to use as a bridge for setting goals. That is the subject of my next post where I will list all my little goals that have helped me sell books.
 
In the meantime, as of my last quarterly report, I’ve sold 9,169 books so I’m close to selling my 10,001. I increased my BIG GOAL to 100,001.
 
What is your BIG GOAL right now? Do you have one? ​