This is the 10th Leap Day of my lifetime, and the 9th of Lani’s. And as it happens, we’ve been having some pretty intense conversations about our business, and our vision - not just for Epiphanies, but our own personal passions as well.

And for a while there, it wasn’t all fun. The energy Lani spent to cheer me up brought her down, then trying to bring Lani back up took a toll on me, and so on and so forth in a little vicious circle.

On top of all that, when you’re in business to create results and you spend the morning talking about things that have no seemingly direct tie to “deliverables,” it can get even more frustrating.

And then it hit me, and I finally said to Lani, “You know what? Today is a Bonus Day. This day doesn’t exist three out of every four years.”

To which she lit up and said, “Yeah! It’s like Brigadoon!” The reference was lost on me (that Wikipedia link helped), but this absolved a lot of guilt about what we “could” or “should” be doing today…and brought us both out of the muck.

Instead, we decided that, to honor the day, it was imperative that we do something awesome. And…we haven’t figured out what that is just yet, so I’m taking this little interlude to blog.

Back to the original point, though - what would YOU do with a Bonus Day? What if you were dying, and God came down and said, “You know what? Here’s a Bonus Day. Do with it what you will.”

So far, Lani and I have gotten our baby to roll over from back to front for the very first time, and dissected our wedding vows in geeky detail (we have them framed, with photos of us on our wedding day, hanging on our brick fireplace).

We’re talking about going to the planetarium (Lani’s never been, and I haven’t in two years), visiting Lani’s Aunt Joyce at her camp in Epsom (Joyce, born on a February 29th, is celebrating her Sweet 16 today), and eating at the Japanese restaurant where they turn food preparation into an acrobatic feat.

We may do all or some or none of this. And I’m totally okay with that.

More important, for me, is that I’m going to come out of this Bonus Day having decided, having chosen for my life, that I’m just going to have fun. I haven’t been recently. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the company of our clients, our partners, or our allies - it just means I haven’t been finding (or even looking for) the joy in our circumstances.

I read an interview with Jerry Seinfeld in GQ recently, and he described his career simply as an assiduous pursuit of fun. (Full disclosure - I had to look “assiduous” up in the dictionary.) And if that’s good enough for one of the most successful comedians in history, it’s good enough for me, too, especially as the co-owner of a company that preaches the power of “Bold Insight PLUS Joy-filled Action.”

It’s Bonus Day. Whatever you do, for love, money, or both, please: Have fun doing it today.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Lessons Learned. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Back in 2003, we had a dream:

To escape the constricting cubicles of corporate America, get out of Dodge (or in our case, Los Angeles), and build a business together that could support a family and a lifestyle so we could enjoy both to the greatest extent possible.

It wasn’t an original dream. Billions of dollars of man hours are lost in corporations worldwide to those who daydream within their cubicle confines.

And, maybe because it’s such a common daydream, more than a few people openly shared with us the “fact” that we wouldn’t be able to live a happy, financially sustaining, creatively fulfilling life out of a major metropolis’s arms’ reach.

Thank goodness we ignored those people - even though many were good friends, trusted confidantes, and even trusted mentors. Because that little, unoriginal dream has come true, and continues to unfold to bigger and better possibilities seemingly by the hour.

And this is what we know for sure:

Dreaming makes all things possible.

It is not a frivolous act.

It’s not something reserved for the idle, the impotent, the naive, or the lazy.

It’s the cornerstone for all progress. The key to all things good and beautiful in this life.

Room to Dream.

Permission to Dream.

The Tools to Dream.

The Freedom to Dream.

Time to Dream.

We need these things as much as we need air and water. We need them to live, love, grow, and become who we were meant to be.

WHAT IS “A DREAM”?

A dream is nothing more or less than a vision of how things could be. It’s one possible reality.

It’s hope and faith with colors and details.

It’s creativity unbridled.

It’s the human spirit at its best, without worries, fears, bills, illness, doubt, and anything else that falls into the category of the soul’s ambient crud.

SLEEPING DREAMS vs. WAKEFUL DREAMS

Sleeping dreams show you just how far your mind and imagination are willing to go if you let them.

They’ll show you the nooks and crannies of your everyday observations, strengths, and fears. They’ll turn things upside down and backwards, hoping you’ll look at the world - and yourself - from new angles, through new lenses, and with fresh perspectives.

Sleep dreaming kicks your ego and presumptions out the door so your brain can play with your mind’s arts and crafts table without adult supervision.

It invites your own personal cache of guest speakers, performance artists, set designers, writers, musicians, architects, teachers, rebels, and a slew of others sent from your subconscious to entertain, inform, and beguile you.

Wakeful dreaming is the toughest, because once you start doing it, you understand its power. It’s for real. You really are in charge of your own destiny. Anything you can imagine truly is possible.

If you find this fact to be daunting, intimidating, scary, or uncomfortable, do everything you can to snap out of it. It’s the blessing of your life. It’s your life’s mission to:

• Dream well
• Dream often
• Dream big
• Dream with passion and purpose
• Dream with love, compassion, and sincerity…

…And live your dream.

WANNA USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE?
Please do! Just kindly include this blurb with it:

(c) 2008 Epiphanies, Inc. As the “Content Lovers” of Epiphanies, Inc., Lani & Allen Voivod help lifestyle entrepreneurs and million-dollar small businesses ‘A-Ha Themselves!’ in fun, innovative, and profitable ways. For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business, sign up for their ezine, ‘The Inciter,’ at EpiphaniesInc.com!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Inciter Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

What a great flippin’ idea this was…wish I’d thought of it myself! Our friend and coach in the Ultimate Wealth and Success Circle Melanie Benson Strick put together a nifty promotion that benefits not just her blog, but raises awareness for her Virtual Team Building Tele-Bootcamp.

The scoop? She ran a contest asking people to send answer two questions related to why and how they’d benefit from a seat at the bootcamp. She and her team chose the top 8 answers (mine’s at the bottom), and now she’s having a public vote on whose answer should win that person a free seat at the next bootcamp.

So we have a small favor to ask - would you mind voting for us? All you have to do is post a comment saying you hope Lani and I get the free seat, and a brief note why if you feel like adding it.

The voting ends at midnight Friday, Feb. 22nd, so please, post your comment for us a few minutes early - say, by 11:55pm on Friday the 22nd? Thanks. We knew we could count on you!

And after you vote, take a few minutes to check out Melanie’s article library for some fantastic insights and useful information on building your dream lifestyle.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Dances With Gurus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

As a small business guy, lifestyle entrepreneur, microbusiness owner, et cetera, I’ve been told over and over again that I should read what used to be called “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber (now The E-Myth Revisited).

Well, the other night, I finished it. And when I asked myself what I would write on our blog about it, the first random thing that popped into my head was a chapter title from Richard Bach’s A Gift of Wings - “I shot down the Red Baron, and so what.”

Bach was writing about his experience as a stunt pilot on a Roger Corman movie, The Red Baron. Which has absolutely nothing to do with this post or The E-Myth, but the “so what” sentiment kind of captures how underwhelmed I was.

That’s not to say I didn’t learn anything from it. The Technician vs. Manager vs. Entrepreneur thing was very enlightening for me, for example. It gave me the gift of sanity - I’ve been a little crazy and frustrated in my head about our business sometimes, and to see so clearly why it was happening was a big “Aha!” for me.

It could simply be that people were hyping the book so strongly to me, there was no chance of anything but a letdown. How many times have friends told you that you HAVE to go see such-and-such movie, and when you see it, you’re left wondering, “What’s the big deal?”

Same idea. I’ve recently heard people say they’ve read The E-Myth three and four times, and gotten something different out of it every time, especially as they grew and progressed in their own businesses. A fair point. But it’s going to be like that for any business book, I’d wager.

At this point, the thing I’d be most interested in is reading more about Gerber’s own background. He tells his story in the book, but my goodness, if that was blown into a full-length biography, I think that’d be one of the best and most instructive reads of the year.

As for The E-Myth, I think on balance I’m glad I read it. Would I recommend it? Yes … but if people are telling you it’s going to radically change the way you think about your business, take that with a grain of salt, read it for yourself, and trust your own judgment.

Just my $0.02 on it.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 11:43 am and is filed under Gotta Reads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Our friend Lou Esposito, who’s the Producer at Mattel Brands Online for the BarbieCollector.com website, is awesome. (That’s him with Lani during her October 2006 visit to the old El Segundo campus she used to call “work” for three years.)

He’s wicked talented, as an avid blogger and member of the highly-regarded Shakespeare at Play theater company. (Check out a review, with him in the accompanying photo, of their recent Twelfth Night production.)

It’s the latter talent which inspired this blog post. Lou sent this email to some friends the other day:

Years ago (we’re talking decades here), my friend Anne’s boyfriend was working on a book on artists… interviews with struggling artists and performers and how they cope with the day to day survival while pursuing their craft. In the course of working on his book, he sent me a set of interview questions, which I was only too glad to reply to. And promptly forget.

Fast forward 20 years to learn that the book was published in ‘04, and I’m one of the ’struggling artists’ included … It is truly surreal reading my responses from 20 years ago and comparing them to who I am today, as I get back into acting after so many years away from it.

The book is “Artists on the Art of Survival: Observations on Frustration, Perspiration, and Inspiration for the Young Artist” by Bill Mesce. I’ve read through the parts you can see at Google Books, and I’m just amazed by how the things about which we’re passionate never truly leave us.

One way or another, you WILL “A-Ha Yourself!” in this life.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 3:27 pm and is filed under How do you "A-Ha Yourself"?, Lessons Learned. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

You know that weird phenomenon where you notice something, or mention it offhand, or it comes up in conversation, and suddenly you’re attuned to it? You’re picking up on it everywhere you turn?

That’s been happening with us on the subject of cold calling recently. It’s one thing to be doing it on the phone - our financial adviser just told us she has to do it face-to-face, knocking on door after door in local neighborhoods. With a goal of 24 doors in a day, every day! Good grief, that seems intense.

And Lani and I were just recently saying how strange it is that, despite being pretty outgoing people, the idea of cold calling actually freaks us out a bit. So far, it hasn’t been necessary to grow our business…but we know it’s a fact of life for lots of folks.

Well, by an odd coincidence, we got a note from Virtual Assistant extraordinaire Erin Blaskie about Wendy Weiss, the “Queen of Cold Calling.” Wendy’s putting on a free teleclass to talk about cold calling, appointment setting, and how to develop new business. In her words:

What would happen to your business if you were able to double the number of qualified, prospects you are able to reach?

How would it affect your bottom line if you met with and/or had comprehensive telephone conversations with twice the number of qualified, decision-makers?

How would it feel to have qualified, decision-makers eager, willing and delighted to meet with you?

For people who cold call for their business, it sounds like this would be pretty powerful. The teleclass is happening today, Feb. 5th, at 4pm ET - sign up for it here.

We trust Erin very much, so we’re sure there’s going to be a lot of good stuff on this call. Take advantage of it, and afterward, let us know what you liked best with a comment here!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under Tools to "A-Ha Yourself!". You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The mind is an amazing tool, ain’t it? Finicky, for sure, but amazing as all get out.

I was “re-minded” of this when I read Lisa Wilder’s blog post about a tip she read on Tamar Wallace’s “Business of Design Online” - or BoDo - blog, in her “Angels and Demons” post.

Next time you’re stuck on a problem, or searching ever DNA strand within you to come up with a solution or an idea, think about this: 

“Remembrance was a Buddhist philosopher’s trick. Rather than asking [your] mind to search for a solution to a potentially impossible challenge, [you] ask [your] mind simply to remember it. The presupposition that one once knew the answer created the mindset that the answer must exist…thus eliminating the crippling conception of hopelessness.”

Both Tamar and Lisa said that this trick worked for them several times in the hours and days following their read of the tip. It’s certainly easy enough to stick in your stash of Active Brainstorming tools. I, personally, can’t wait to test drive it over the next few days.

So have some fun with remembering how smart your really are, and share a comment here if it comes in handy for you anytime soon.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at 10:13 am and is filed under Brainstorm Blitz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.