Entrepreneur Intervention: Triumphs & Failures of Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneur Intervention

Triumphs & Failures of Entrepreneurs

A FINANCIAL BIN PRODUCTION

Copyright © 2011 BIN Network LLC

ISBN: 9781618424716

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of BIN Network LLC. To make a permission request, send an email to info@financialbin.com.

This book is dedicated to those of you who dream big, but are told you will never make it.

Now go out and prove the naysayers wrong!

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

RISE TO YOUR GREATEST ENDEAVORS!

PART I LEADING THE WAY

J. W. MARRIOTT

CHRIS SONJEOW

PETER KELLY & JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

ALAN GINSBERG

DALE WILLERTON

LANE SUTTON

PART II WINNING WOMEN

MADAM C. J. WALKER

KRISTIN MARQUET

HEDDIE CUNDLE

ROXANNE KLEIN

PAULA MACMANN

MELISSA DOHMEN

PART III FINANCIALLY SPEAKING

J. P. MORGAN

MICHAEL CARVIN

JESSE MECHAM

JAIME RASKULINECZ

LIZ CRYSTAL

PART IV JACKS & JILLS OF ALL TRADES

P. T. BARNUM

BENJAMIN W. MANGAN

BARB GETTY

ADARSH MENON

TIFFANIE WAGNER

JIMI ROMANUS

PART V Q&A SESSIONS

JERRY MCCARTHY

WALT RIBEIRO

RICHARD LUSTIG

DAVE YOUNG

JEAN-PIERRE ADÉCHI

GEOFFREY JEAN-BAPTISTE

LAVONYA REEVES

JOHN WHITE

WHAT IS FINANCIAL BIN?

COMING ATTRACTIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Entrepreneur Intervention is a compilation of stories from 28 incredible people who embarked on their own journeys of entrepreneurial success. The Financial Bin was lucky enough to receive these stories written in each person’s own words to truly capture the essence of their hard work, dedication, and victory over defeat. I would like to thank each person here and commend them for their achievements and contribution. This book would not have been possible without you or your business.

Please join the Financial Bin in recognizing the following entrepreneurs: Jean-Pierre Adéchi and Geoffrey Jean-Baptiste, Kathy Andersen, Michael Carvin, Heddi Cundle, Liz Crystal, Melissa Dohmen, Barb Getty, Alan Ginsberg, Peter Kelly and Jeremiah Sullivan, Roxanne Klein, Richard Lustig, Paula MacMann, Ben Mangan, Kristin Marquet, Jerry McCarthy, Jesse Mecham, Adarsh Menon, Jaime Raskulinecz, LaVonya Reeves, Walt Ribeiro, Jimi Romanus, Chris Sonjeow, Lane Sutton, Tiffanie Wagner, John White, Dale Willerton, and Dave Young.

I also want to thank Shwan Abdulmajid, Khaled Elsisy, and the fantastic team at Pinnacle Web Services for their excellent work on the cover of this book. Make sure to check them out at http://PinnacleWebServices.com.

Finally, I would like to personally thank my beautiful wife, Anna, for supporting me throughout this process since it began in the summer of 2011.

I appreciate the effort each person listed here put into this project and hope you, the reader, enjoy it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

David T. Domzalski, Founder

Financial Bin

Introduction

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to 28 remarkable individuals.

There are some here who will share the story of victory over spousal abuse or child abuse, others over losing a loved one, and those who were victims of the current economic struggles. They suffered through some of the worst tragedies we as human beings have to face. However, not only did they live to tell the tale, they created entirely different chapters for their lives.

These individuals are not defined by what happens to them. They decided who they are and what they choose to accomplish.

For me, personally, each one of these stories resonates with me. As I was compiling each entrepreneur’s words into what became this book, I noticed how I already learned many of the lessons they talk about.

A few years ago, I graduated college with $20,000 in student loan debt and started a job I hated. I was not sure what I wanted to do with my life and searched for answers everywhere. I decided to get my life together and quickly paid down the debt. I knew I wanted something more out of life than a typical 9-to-5 corporate job.

I knew I was destined to be an entrepreneur. With that, I founded the Financial Bin to help people climb out of similar situations like the one I faced not too long ago. Sure, being an entrepreneur is harder than having a regular job (if you can find one these days). But, whatever I did was my own. It was mine. I would decide everything about the venture. I would decide how large or small to make it. I would decide what revenue streams to use and how to market the business. Ultimately, in helping others, I would help myself.

While I still have my daytime J.O.B., as the famous entrepreneur, speaker, and author Jim Rohn once said, I am working full time on my job and part time on my fortune. It is in those hours that are yours that you become an entrepreneur. It is through your trials, tribulations, and failures that you go from entrepreneur to success.

You, like the individuals you will read about, want to find your purpose. Maybe it is as an entrepreneur or small business owner – maybe it is not. Maybe you simply want to be inspired.

At the Financial Bin, we are about financial education and self-reliance. We strive to empower people like yourself to better your own situation – and that of others in your life.

We want you to be an impact player.

An impact player leads by example. An impact player has those surrounding him or her follow their lead. That is how to describe these entrepreneurs: impact players.

Pull up a chair. Put down the video game or sports page. It is time to learn from real impact players – and hopefully – become one yourself.

Thank you for reading Entrepreneur Intervention.

David T. Domzalski

Rise to Your Greatest Endeavors!

Kathy Andersen

Author       Speaker     Consultant     Life Coach

"Whatever you do, do with all your being.

Wherever you go, go with all your soul.

Whichever your pursuits, pursue with the highest purpose.

Whomever you become, rise to your greatest self!"

Who Are You?

"Your work is to discover your work,

and then with all your heart give yourself to it."

BUDDHA

The most critical task associated with clarifying which endeavor you want to pursue is clarifying who you are. You must embark upon your entrepreneurial venture with your entire heart and soul in order to reach your greatest potential!

But do you really know who you are? Do you know your heart and soul? Do you know what deeply inspires you? Do you know what compels you to live? What is the True North that guides you? Do you know the things that stir you? Do you know what gives you goosebumps? Do you know what holds you in moments of awe? What makes you feel purposeful? What fills you with color and life? What touches the child in you? What nurtures the spirit in you? What fills you with love? What moves you with compassion? What makes you laugh from your belly? What moves you to tears? What is the essence of you? What are the gifts that fill you? What is your work in this world, in this one precious lifetime?

If you can’t answer each of these questions, stop here! Put your business plan down (assuming you have started one, or two, or three), and put pen to paper about who you are!

Your vision of your self needs to inspire the vision of your work. Your mission for your self needs to compel the mission for your work. What you want to accomplish in this life, needs to be the starting point for the goals you set for your work.

Embarking upon an entrepreneurial endeavor without knowing your self, is like captaining a ship in foreign waters. You will invariably get lost, run aground, and quite possibly sink.

You may want to dismiss this. You may want to skip to your business plan. Do so at your own risk! Remember, any business plan needs a S.W.O.T. (Strengths, Weaknesses,

Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. As an entrepreneur, your greatest strengths and weaknesses—the things that will determine if your venture leverages opportunities, or falls prey to threats—are your own attributes. As an entrepreneur, you are it! Your venture rises or falls on your decisions, your judgments, your stamina, your resilience, your character, your values, your essence—who you are.

Don’t misunderstand me, if you want to start a venture, you can start anything you like. This is not about starting a venture successfully—most people can do that. This is about embarking upon ventures that will thrive and endure. This is about embarking on ventures that will enable your being to soar, and not drain the life out of you. This is about creating ventures that will expand you, not expend you.

If you think you can make money by doing anything successfully, and money is your only desire, then read no more. This is for those who want to make money, and who also want to live well—for those who want to be more than just the sum of their bank accounts. This is for those who want to be meaningful in the world.

When I was thirty, I had a great bank account, a

challenging corporate job, a nice car, a wonderful condo, international travel, and more. Yet there was something missing. I didn’t know what that something was, I just knew that the things in the outside didn’t compensate for the empty space on the inside. I felt like I was playing monopoly every day, in a world of plastic game pieces.

Why did I feel like that? Because I was running as fast as I could to earn the most money, drive the coolest car, wear the best clothes, and have the nicest things. The problem is, the things come and go, they rise and fall, they wear out. They create a continual quest for fulfillment on the outside. Yet if they are not built upon a solid foundation of who you are, they will ultimately collapse on top of you. You will be buried and lost in your world of purposeless pursuits.

What was my answer to my feelings? To step away and discover my self, before I tried to discover my work. In my case, I swapped my corporate high heels for hiking boots, and left Australia with a backpack to travel the world. That journey lasted more than ten years. That journey enabled me to discover what is most purposeful in life for me, and led me to translate that purpose into the work I do every day.

You don’t need to pack a backpack and travel to unfamiliar places around you, but you do need to pause, and venture into the undiscovered places of your self. That is what will become your compass as you navigate your venture. That will become your center. That will become your strength and wisdom. That will be your guide—your best advisor.

So, how do you go about breaking away from the flock, to follow your greatest endeavors, on a path to your greatest self, and your greatest life?

Simply pause—reveal your self, and then start where you are!

Start Where You Are!

When you pause and look around to see where you are,

you will see worlds of possibilities crystalize!

Often our most powerful position is exactly where we are, in the present moment, with all that is in that moment. When we fully tap into all that we have, we create the greatest springboard to launch ourselves toward our greatest pursuits.

Taking the first step toward our pursuits can sometimes seem overwhelming. Where do we start? What are the first steps among what appear to be so many steps?

Visualize!

I’m a firm believer that what you don’t visualize doesn’t materialize. So, my first step is always to visualize the greatest outcome I could imagine. Just as athletes visualize their greatest performance, so too, entrepreneurs must visualize their greatest endeavors. Remember, you are about to start an endurance event!

When you visualize, visualize BIG! Don’t settle—there is no need! You are meant to be great! What is the greatest impact you can imagine? What is the grandest scale of your endeavor? What are the most monumental legacies you could create? What are the furthest peoples your endeavor could reach? How can your endeavor create the greatest life you can live? How can your endeavor change the world?

The key to visualizing your future is clearly seeing where you are now. You need to get your bearings. Look around you. Look within you. You need to take the picture of who you are, and visualize your life in the context of where you are. You need to visualize what you have around you and within you that is going to help you as you move forward. You will need to befriend those things, and nurture them as your greatest ally in your pursuits.

You also need to visualize the things that are going to hinder you as you move forward. You will need to know those things, and you will need to conquer them.

You need to visualize your virtual briefcase of all the things you will need for your journey. You will need to pack all of the things that will help you, and discard all of the things that will hinder you along your journey to your greatest endeavor.

Honor Your Thinking—Make a Record of It!

I’m also a firm believer that what you don’t write down often doesn’t materialize. So, my second step is to write down all that I have visualized. You may be tempted to skip this step—don’t!

Writing down your thoughts clarifies your thinking, and it often also expands your thinking. Your written work should be a great piece of creative writing. It should capture your dreams, your aspirations, your purpose. It should be the canvas to which you return many times to recreate, to reinvent, and to remind you of all of the wonderful reasons you embarked upon your path. You will often need that to keep you centered, sane, and resilient when times get tough—which they invariably will!

Writing also forces you to put words to your thoughts, which you are going to need to do exceptionally well in order to convince anyone that your endeavor is worthwhile—whether they are potential investors, potential clients, potential suppliers, advertising agencies, the media—essentially all of the stakeholders you will need to engage to make you endeavor a success. If you don’t have a great story about your endeavor, no-one will listen to you! Certainly, no-one will buy-in to your endeavor,  and without buy-in, you will have an unrealized idea. Your writing needs to inspire, not only you, but also those you need along the way. It needs to persuade. It needs to evoke. It needs to be art.

Your writing also needs to include what any business book will tell you—your vision, your mission, your goals, and the logical actions that you need to take for each of your goals. If you have done your visualization work, this will come effortlessly.

I see people struggle with business plans all the time, and that is only wasted energy. If you are having trouble putting words to paper, then you haven’t spent enough time visualizing. Keep visualizing until the words flow!

If the words aren’t flowing, it means you haven’t quite got it yet—you may have an idea, but in your mind, you haven’t turned that idea into anything that is clear enough to put into words. If you need to, go away, find a place of tranquil solitude, go to the beach in the quiet of sunrise, and allow your thoughts to crystallize and flow effortlessly into words!

Soon enough, you will feel the winds rise around you, momentum will fill you, and you will feel your self lifted onto paths where your visions and words start to turn into reality.

Change Your Shoes!

You can’t pursue your greatest endeavors

if you stand in the same place, in the same shoes!

To be an entrepreneur, to embark upon your own, distinct venture, is to be daring enough to change your shoes. You feel drawn to step out of the shoes that have walked a secure and comfortable path, and into shoes that will take you on your most enterprising and adventuresome endeavor.

When I was in the corporate world, a Far Side cartoon sat upon my office desk. It was the cartoon that showed one sheep leaping up in the middle of the flock, his hoofs outstretched into the air, shouting. Wait! Wait! Listen to me! ... We don’t HAVE to be just sheep! I think even then, in my nice corporate office, with my nice corporate desk, in my nice corporate shoes, my soul was being drawn to enterprises of my own.

At that time, I didn’t have a specific idea of what I wanted to do differently. There was no reason my job should have felt wrong—it was a great job, with a great salary, international travel, a nice company car—all the perks. But the perks on the outside didn’t make up for the something that was missing on the inside. To find what that something was, I needed to change my shoes, step out of the corporate office, and step into to shoes where I could feel what I was compelled to do.

For me, that meant literally changing my corporate high heels for hiking boots, and leaving Australia on a plane with no specific plan. Ironically, I found that when I stopped thinking so much about what I wanted to do, and stopped trying to plan every move, then I started to feel what I was compelled to do. The universe opened doors, and introduced me to places and experiences that I could never have planned to come across. Through those doors, and within those opportunities, lay the keys to our most purposeful and adventuresome enterprises.

For you, that step might be to go on your own personal visioning retreat—maybe to somewhere close to you, maybe to somewhere far from you. Maybe it is taking a few days just for you—alone. I would suggest that you step out of your familiar environment to somewhere you feel centered and peaceful. Try taking a time-out in Mother Nature—amidst awesome waterfalls, towering canyons, flowing streams, or vast wilderness. You will find Mother Nature has a way of tapping into the sensations that stir you, clearing your mind, and opening space for your deepest and most intuitive insights to emerge.

Most successful business people will tell you that thinking is critical, but that feeling—tapping into that elusive, but most powerful intuition—is what sets apart good business people from extraordinary business people. If you want to be a good entrepreneur, be confined by your thinking. Stay in familiar places. If you want to be an extraordinary entrepreneur, keep stepping out of your shoes, and expand beyond your thinking, to the infinite power of your intuitive feelings! Keep venturing beyond the places you know.

To be an entrepreneur, means to be willing to step out of what feels comfortable, and into the unknown. To constantly be daring, to leap into challenges, and to love ambiguity. The meaning of the word "entrepreneur has its roots in the spirit of daring, and readiness to undertake challenges. The word comes from the word entre-, which means to take, and prehendere and prehensile, which means to grasp, to seize—an abstract sense of a readiness to undertake challenges, spirit of daring."

If you have any doubts about your stomach for the uncertain, don’t leap into the shoes of an entrepreneur!

Sometimes, along your entrepreneurial journey, you will know exactly what you feel compelled to do. Other times, you won’t. That is part of the entrepreneurial journey, and it something you need to embrace with every step. When you are in the groove and you feel that you are on the right path, you will flow with your journey. When you