Power to Prosperity

Power Play # 32 - Get 1000 Fans

Love this interview on Seth Godin. He is very grounded in his approach to using web technologies to fulfill ones life purpose. The market has changed, have you? Get real and be the best in the world at what you do. Do not be a "wondering generality" but be a "meaningful specific". Brilliant!

Power Play # 31 - Be yourSELF!

I just enjoyed watching a few videos of Victor Antonio, a Motivational Speaker. This guy is cool, what got me was his passion and love for what he does for a living.  That alone is electric and worthy of attention.  He is very energized and animate, but boy is is real.  This blog post is to shed light on that idea.  Victor has figured out what it takes to be Victor!!

On Youtube.com you will find many videos on him and one of them is a Documentary, check that one out too. You will get behind the scenes to a very real person speaking about himself, his family and the reality that is him.  Love his openness. 

Check it out - get moved to be more of who you really are.  That is the biggest give Victor gives us.

Check this out ... I like this technique, it has NLP written all over it, but very powerful and very useful for everyday living.

Power Play # 29 - Do YOUR Thing!!

I recently met Donna Browning of Sweaty Bands (www.sweatybands.com) and loved her story of doing her thing!  She is living her dream, doing what she loves to do and energizing a host of people along the way.

She started Sweaty Bands from a need she found herself.  Let me tell you, she is one tough mama!! and has a career doing exercise related activity, from Personal Training to Yoga, it was during these workouts, that she was getting so irritated with her hair falling on her face, that she decided to find a solution.  And a solution she did find.  Donna designed head bands with super utility and style.  She improved on a product that been around for decades, but took it to the next level and made them much more effective and totally cool and exciting. 

What makes her story additionally powerful is that she is not outsourcing her manufacturing to far away lands of cheap labor and other costs. Instead her business model leverages her friends and others locally in the Cincinnati area to manufacture these head bands for her.  She is keeping jobs here and is giving people an opportunity to be productive right here at home.   What she likes about this model is that it makes her feel connected with people in ways she did not expect, some of these women have come back and thanked her for the opportunity to save their home, with the recession we are in - every dollar earned is put to good use.

Congrats Donna and we wish you all the very best.  Here is a pic of Donna with my wife, Shino; that bought a few of them which she will be sending to Tokyo to our friends that do Yoga there.

Sweaty Bands make great gifts!!

Where is the harmony in your life?

Had the opportunity to spend most of the day with Uncle Jim and Aunt Katie in Kentucky today.  I always love chatting with them, they ground my thinking in so many ways.  One of the many conversations we had was around the subject of the market and our speculation of when things might come back ... which led to a conversation on "Come back to what?"

The good news is that we were in agreement, that the market should come back, be more robust and enable people to make money and have better lives, but in a way that was healthy.

They spoke of some one they know who was living the "New American Dream" that just got shattered.  A $800,000 home, boats, cars, two jobs and lots of bills.  Well both husband and wife lost their $100K+ jobs over a two year period and sort of lost most of it.

The story ends with the husband finding a job with Toyota and the wife get a job that pays 25% of what she was making before, they now live in a much smaller house ... BUT they are in a sense, glad that it all happened.  What they say is that they came out on the other side - living happier lives, feeling more in love with each other and overall in a much healthier place. With that wake up call they now focus on what is important; the joy, the harmony the love in the their lives.

All's I'm going to say to this is ... Amen!

There is a lot going on in Cincinnati

I keep getting amazed at how much there is going on in Cincinnati, now that I have moved back.  I just spend the morning meeting the good folks at the Hamilton County Development Company (www.hcdc.com) which is like a center for small business development, they provide all sorts of services for small businesses and entrepreneurs. 

Was surprised to see them house about 48 or 50 start-up here and they represent a healthy mix of tech and non-tech companies.  Check out their list of tenants here.

While there, I met some very excited people from a new Apparel company called Know.  They  were off to deliver a shipment of t-shirts to a new client. Their excitement was infectious.  Congrats guy.

Check out their website at ....

Power Play # 18 - Being a Super Hero

The earlier post was about the Super Heroes of America - this new breed of people that are pushing the envelope on reality and how they interact with it. This is cool especially when they are trying to do something of value.  But as I watch this - it is hard to not notice how they seem to be scrambling for a sense of Identity.  Doing good things or important things without knowing who you really are and what is important to yourself might not be the safest way of spending your time.

My suggestion is to stay grounded and be a Super Hero to yourSELF.  Start by taking yourSELF seriously and aligning with what is important to yourSELF.  Are you living in power?  Are you in a loving relationship?  Are you being true to yourSELF in every way possible.  These are not easy to do.  Most people might think they are, but no; it takes effort.

When you have a family and children that need you ... all of you.  This becomes all the more important.  The jobs we have, the careers we hold on to the life choices we make - they all impact our lives and our families. Make the right choices.  Be a Super Hero at home.  I have begun to say something real simple. A happy wife makes a happy life. 

Make choices that support you and your life - be a Super Hero to yourSELF.

Power Play # 14 - Increase your Potential to Innovate

Its always moving, everything is moving, everything is changing - nothing is static, nothing is non-changing.  So why are you?  Why is your career? So why is your life situation un-changing.  A noodle that is dry and snaps and breaks into many pieces very easily, with a little pressure from the side.  I cooked noodle, a fresh noodle is flexible, is bending and remains whole, retains it's identity as a noodle and can be used as such.

Innovate, create, change, evolve, adapt ... but remain true to your truth.  This is paradoxical but true.  The more you know your truth, you know what is important to you, you become aware of what you want to accomplish and create.  The easier it will be for you to innovate, change, adapt and alter.

Go inwards anchor in your end goal, the sake for which you want see happen and then let your creativity free let your inspiration out.  Start with yourself, your family, your loved ones.  Then move outwards to your jobs, your businesses and then your community and the societies you live in.

It will flow, it will make sense to you ... you will make sense to yourself then.  You will experience harmony in your life.

Consider Reading pieces of this book - The Third Chapter by Sara Lawrence - Lightfoot.

Sara Lawrence - Lightfoot

It's Time ... To relax and take it easy

Happy Saturday!!
Hope you are relaxing this week end.
Taking some time off to rejuvenate and refresh, we are! her in Loveland. This is a photograph of Brenda's (our resident Raccoon) play ground and our back yard.
Shalom

If Your Life Was Music? ....

What beat would it be?  What genre of music would it be?  Think about it .... would you be a "marching" tune? Jazz, Blues, Zydeco, Salsa, Basa Nova, Rock n Roll or a "pop" beat?  or maybe its like folk music or even classical music.  Is your life filled with order, disciplined, mono tone or it is staccato? Or is it filled with sorrow and frustration or might it be filled with hope and possibility.

In my constant commitment to live a life of power and harmony - I find that it is absolutely critical to be able to improvise and innovate and be creative ... so you can change with the times, recession or not; yet have the ability to stay in sync and in tune with your heart.

That's me jamming on the Gatam with Badal Roy on the Tablas and Harold Smith on the Didj at one of my house parties, way back in 2001.

Now, if you know anything about Jazz and the Blues ... that is exactly what you do.  You stay true to your roots, to the basic tempo of the groove you are playing, you know your position and your place in the group and then you roll with it you get in sync and become one with the group, you play what comes best to you, you improvise, you create on the fly you respond to what others are playing and you produce good music.  You groove ... not easy to do right.

A little too much ego here ... you might just upset the groove.  Too little and you might send the dancers back to their seats.  You have to read whats going on and never forget that sound which is you,... which is all you baby!

So, what's your groove?  what is your sound? what is the type of music that becomes you, that is you?  Listen to your heart and you might just hear your groove. ... Now that's music!

Its Time to Commune

Commune, Communicate, have a Conversation, Correspond, Chat .... you know, reach out and say something to someone ..... but what?  Now, that is the million dollar question my friends.  

What do we say?  Do we think about it long enough?  Do we speak our truth?  Do we say something safe and not reveal what is really going on? ... because we are committed to controlling our public image?  Do we blabber on and on without much thought to what we are saying .... simply because we enjoy the sound of our voice or worse ... we are scared of the silence.

Think about .... have you had a good conversation recently?  Have you developed the skill to be able to?  This is something our schools do not teach us.  This is something we are fast loosing in this world of twitters and emails and voice mails and shopping sprees and exotic vacations ... our need for the "rush" is intense, eager, compulsive and thoughtless.  Did you know that in Tokyo, friends do not call each other on the phone as much anymore, they send them a Text Message instead, because it's less intrusive ... are we there yet? here in the US?

The art of the conversation is sacred my friends - its wonderful when you can have it one on one, but its also fantastic when you can do it in a group.  In groups, the art of the conversation is in people being sensitive to what others might want to say.  And its about letting them do so. Its sort of like "Jamming" with a music group.  In that situation, its not about who can play the loudest and the coolest music. Its about surrendering to the greater good - so there is harmony in what comes out - the groove my friends is elusive to self-centered musician.

I wish you a few good conversations this weekend ....

Here we are having a conversation after the recent workshop in Tokyo.