Gathering Your Thoughts When You Have No Idea

Cool Ideas

 If you're like me, you get some way cool ideas on a fairly frequent basis...
 
What!!? You don't?
 
Ooohhh, let me guess,

 

You're one of THOSE people that thinks that everyone around them gets awesome ideas but you never do?
 
I used to think I didn't either. But do you know what I've found?

 

We ALL get them, but most of the time, we choose to dismiss them before we consciously realize we had one! 
 

Dismissing Ideas

 

Why do we dismiss them?  

I don't know, it's kind of silly, in all honesty.

If we listened to all the ideas we had and acted on one or two, you and I would've probably ran into Chris a couple months ago on some remote Caribbean beach just down from where we anchored our yacht! (If that's your thing...my point: we could be wealthy!)
 
Having great ideas is vital in business, leadership, and personal life.
 
I believe that you're smart. I believe you have a unique perspective of the world and that with your perspective and skills you could improve the lives of countless people! Your ideas are valuable! And they are right there in YOUR BRAIN!!
 

So how do we capture these ideas?

 
1. Be Aware: Pay attention to what you're thinking. Some of your best ideas will come when you are supposedly "not thinking". Proactively ask yourself what you are thinking about.
 
2. Write it Down. Committing your ideas to paper conveys to God (and your subconscious) that you value those ideas. When I show my wife I value her cooking, I typically get to enjoy MORE great food. The same applies here: Assign value to your ideas and you'll begin to receive and recognize more fantastic ideas!
 
3. Sundown Rule. Before the sun goes down the next day, share your idea with someone. Your spouse, children, close friend, mentor--someone! Articulating your idea out loud will clarify your idea and spark other related ideas in your mind and from those with whom you share them.

4. Come back to them. Keep all your ideas (good, bad, or ugly) in a note book or on 3x5 cards. Go back and review each idea once every couple weeks or each month. Some time may give you added perspective on an idea.
 
5. Act! You may have no idea how to bring your idea to fruition, but don't let that stop you! Take a cue from Andy Andrews. Andy says if he doesn't know what to do he asks himself this question:

"I know you don't know what to do, but if you DID know what to do, what would you do RIGHT NOW? (emphasis added)

Then make plans to do that one thing with your idea right away. Research the idea. Write a blog post about it. Do a brainstorming session. Seek further counsel.
 
YOU are intelligent. YOU have great ideas. You just need to convince yourself of as much!
 

 

Question: What do you do to recognize and develop new ideas each day?

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings! Please pass them along to your friends, family and associates if you find them valuable!



Twitter: @Skropp2

 

Raising Entrepreneurs....

Late Night

So this past Saturday my wife, my daughter and I were lying on the couch watching a movie.  Well, my wife and my daughter fell asleep so I shut off the movie.  Now we have Roku, not regular TV.  If you dont know what Roku is, it is a device that you hook to your TV and it allows you to watch "channels" via your internet connection. 

Anyways, there are always new channels coming out, so I was browsing through the new channels to see if I was missing anything super important.  And Lo and behold, I was!!! There was now a TED talks channel!!! Now, if you don't know what TED talks are, PLEASE click on the link right now!!! TED talks are one of the neatest things I've ever come across.  10-20 talks on all sorts of topics.  It allows you to learn about alot of difference subjects and new, cutting edge ideas in those subjects in a short space of time.  It's fantastic.

Anyways, so I download the TED talks channel and start browsing through the talks.  I found some really great ones.  I watched the Simon Sinek TED talk, which is absolutely mind blowing! That should be watched monthly by everyone!! AWESOME info! 

The talk that pumped me up...

Then I came across the talk that really pumped me up.  The talk was given by a gentleman by the name of Cameron Herold. (You can follow Cameron on Twitter @CameronHerold) His talk was titled "Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs".  This talk was absolutely amazing!  There's way to much to just summarize it, so I'd encourage you to watch the entire thing, then I'll share what I got from it!

 Enjoy!

Mr. Herold makes some great points.  The first that I noticed that is absolutely true is that our school systems are focused on making all of us great employees, but we don't recognize and develop kids who may be wired more towards being entrepreneurs.

He gives alot of examples of what he did growing up, but what really stuck out to me were the ideas he suggested for teaching our kids to be more entrepreneurial.  Some of the suggestions he gives that I am going to implement with my daughter are:

No Allowance

He says allowances teach kids to expect a regular paycheck, which is a job, not entrepreneurial.  He suggests you teach your kids to look around the house and find things on their own that need to be done, then have them come to you and explain what you want to do, then negotiate a price.  This teaches them to look for a need and negotiate a price to fulfil the need.

Don't just read bedtime stories

Reading has a place.  But he said to take a few nights a week and have your kids tell you a story.  Give them a few items and have them make up a story.  This teaches them to think on their feet, to imagine, to create, to sell.

Stand infront of groups and talk

Give your kids opportunities to speak infront of groups, even if its just their friends or your friends.  This helps them learn how to speak, how to present to an audience, etc.

Point out Good and Bad Service and Employees

When you're out and about, point out when you receive poor service, explain why the service wasnt very good so your child learns by observation how to serve and how not to serve.  Do the same with employees so they know what a good employee looks and acts like and how to spot bad employees.

Craigslist

When you're getting rid of old toys of your childs, don't just give them away, have your kid put them on Craigslist, ebay, etc.  Teach them how to write a description, have a good picture, determine and set the price, spot scammers, and negotiate. 

My Take Away

It seems that his point was that there are so many every day experiences with our children that we just overlook that could be HUGE learning opportunities for them! 

I was blown away with these ideas!  What great ways to teach and train our children to look for and fulfill needs around them. 

I believe if we can teach our kids some of these principles and thought processes we'll raise a generation that will power this economy.  A generation that will provide jobs rather than looking for someone to give them a job!  A generation that will be self-sufficient, confident, and successful! 





Question: What every day experiences do you have that could be used to teach success principles to your children?




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Twitter: @Skropp2

Hello and Goodbye, Baby Step One!

Our TMMO: Update

As you know from my previous post, our family began the journey of a Total Money Makeover a few weeks back. It has been fantastic feeling like we are in control of our money rather than the other way around!

We're doing some "weird" stuff now. Putting cash in envelopes, using cash more and cards less, living in a more planned out, on purpose sorta way.

Baby Step 1

As part of your TMMO, the first thing you do (Baby Step One) is to save up $1000 cash as fast as you can. Here's why,

Crap happens; life happens. Things go wrong. Cars break, appliances break, emergencies happen. So we want to "insure" against those things that we CANNOT budget for.

The emergency fund is NOT for chips, dip and a case of Livewire Mt. Dew (my personal preference) when you spaced that you invited friends over.  And it's not to get your hair and nails done because your friends invited you out to "like, this totally awesome party..." it's for EMERGENCIES!! Hence, "emergency" fund.

It gives you peace of mind, knowing that if something happens, more than likely you'll be able to take care of it--and do so with cash, not your pals Capital One or AmEx.

Success!!

Monday we finished our emergency fund. $1000 cash, phew! What a relief. Now things are great! We're rockin' and rollin' into the Debt Snowball and Baby Step Two!

That is until our freaking fridge decides that it no longer wants to keep our food cold! Butter melting and semi-cold milk (that's where I draw the line! Milk has to be ICE cold!).

So within 24 hours of yippee-yahoo-ing about having our emergency fund in place, we waved goodbye to half of it!
Initial reaction:

"AHHHHH YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! We just barely get things somewhat in line and THIS happens??!??!"

We were bummed.  I mean, we'd met out first goal! We were movin on, making progress, ready to go Ninja Turtle on our debt! It was like when you land on "Chance" right before "Go" in Monopoly and the card you draw says, "Go to jail, go directly to jail...". We were ALMOST to Baby Step Two and then we weren't!

"Nothing ever goes our way, this kind of stupid stuff ALWAYS happens to us, etc, etc."

Hold the Phone!!

But then I started thinking...hold on. We purchased a major household appliance with CASH, when we needed it, and it didn't hurt us financially! WOW!!

Two months ago I don't know what we would've done...payments to the store, loan from parents, I'm really not sure! No matter what, it would not have been good and it would've caused a TON of stress!

What a blessing our TMMO has been already. We are sooo far for where we want to be, but in this case, I feel like a million bucks! Our planning and commitment paid off (and my milk will once again be ICE cold!).

Following Dave Ramsey's plan brings hope, structure, determination, and in this case financial PEACE! Thank you Dave!



Question: How important is financial peace to your life?

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Twitter: @Skropp2

MY TMMO....

If you clicked on this post, there's probably one of three reasons...#1 You are my friend and just want to read whatever I write (thank you!). #2 You recognized the acronym "TMMO" or #3 you don't recognize the acronym "TMMO" and you're curious (well, you'll find out!).

TMMO is an acronym for Total Money Makeover, which is the name of Dave Ramsey's best selling financial book.  Before we get into MY TMMO, I want to explain the journey that I went on to get to this place.

In December, my little brother, Kevin, who blogs over at The Next Successful Farmer emailed me and told me that he thought I'd enjoy Dan Miller's 48 Days Radio podcast.  So I began listening to Dan, and REALLY enjoyed it!  In the process of listening to it, Dan mentioned Dave Ramsey's Entreleadership podcast, so I started listening to that.  After listening to that for a few months, I finally took the host, Chris LoCurto's advice, and began following him on Twitter (@ChrisLoCurto).  The day after I followed him on Twitter, I was VERY surprised to get a direct message from Chris himself!  That type of personal interaction really solidfied my dedication to the podcast and Chris, and I started following his blog at www.ChrisLoCurto.com.  As a side note, while there, I made several new friends as we have chatted in the comments of Chris' blogs (isn't technology great?)! 

Anyways, back on track.  Since I was now listening to Entreleadership, as well as following and reading the blog of one of Dave's VP's (Chris), I had opportunity to learn more about Dave and get to "know" him.  I decided one day to download the Dave Ramsey Show podcast.  I LOVED it! 

Now, I'm not saying that we're in the worst financial shape in the world, because we arent...but we've definitely got more debt that we'd like to have (of course, $500 would be more than I want to have!). 

So after listening to Dave for 3 of 4 days, I decided to go buy The Total Money Makeover. 

This is a book I would recommend to everyone! Basically, it is a roadmap to getting out, and staying out of debt.  It is a great book.  It outlines the myths that we all have been taught to believe in our culture and then shows you a very doable plan to get out of debt and build wealth.

I'm not going to outline the whole book for you here...you've gotta read it to really get it.  But I will tell you that it is broke up into "Baby Steps" that make the process bearable and allows you to focus your efforts on one thing at a time.

We are currently working on Baby Step 1.  Saving $1000 for an Emergency Fund.  This allows you to take care of any emergencies that come up while you are working on the other baby steps.

The greatest blessing so far has been getting on a written budget.  How to do this alone, is worth the price of the book!

Bottom line, just having a plan laid out to get out of debt, gives hope!  It helps you to see the end of the race, and that keeps you going when you get discouraged and think you'll never be able to get out of debt. 

It is that plan and that hope that has given me the assurance to sell my 1979 Camaro that I love dearly.  I've thought about selling it several times before, but never wanted it to be sold just to have the money used for something stupid.  With a plan in place to pay off our debts and become financially stable, selling my baby (the car, not really my baby ;)) is bearable, it means something. 

Besides, I've already decided, once we are debt free I'm going to start saving up to buy a 1969 Camaro RS/SS with cash :)


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On Twitter: @Skropp2