Highlight an Entrepreneur today!

So, I have a request!

In an effort to promote people that are entrepreneurs, I'm starting to ask people to highlight an entrepreneur you know through one of your social networks or blog.

Do you have an account on Blogger, Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, or another social site?

If so, would you be willing to highlight someone that is taking a chance to forward their own good ideas - their company, their consulting services, their art, their book....?

Nudge Village - promoting entrepreneurship!

If you don't know anyone (or temporarily forgot), take a look at http://www.nudgevillage.com/ and select someone under the "Villager" section. There are some amazing people out there trying to make a living and creating things that never existed before they acted on their idea.

Just want to reach out and ask that we all help each other, especially in a time where a lot of people are struggling.

Oh, and if you think a little harder, you'd be surprised at how many people you know pursuing ideas and business ventures! I've been amazed at how many of my friends are actually doing so. When I brainstormed a few months ago, I realized that I knew over 100 people that were pursuing things! Wow!

P.S. Let me know if you'd like to highlight someone on the site. We are always looking for more people to talk about. (-:

Inspirations

By all intensive purposes, this was a normal day.

I went back to work after being out for a few days. I drove for the carpool and we caught up on a few items of minutiae. I went into my office, filled the plastic jug with water, closed the door and started going through the 400 emails that accumulated over the last couple of days.

Nothing new.

Then Angela emailed. She wants to go get a certificate in human performance improvement and her work will pay for most of it. Then she told me about a women in technology group that I need to join. I told her about the spiders that were in the hallways at work. Yuck. She then asked if I wanted to join the group and become part of a committee. I got a little excited about her plans, even though I told her that I've got a few things I'm working on right now (job, marriage, de-junking, the big idea that I want to have yet haven't) . We then got into an email conversation (all while I'm completing my real work emails of course) about what is the necessary background to be a good CLO (Chief Learning Officer). With some of these leadership jobs, I think that sometimes the "maybe she's born with it" phrase comes to mind. We have way too many people in leadership roles that should never have that responsibility.

But, I digress. I go on doing my work, putting out fires, making sure we have product going live, attended a meeting about tagging and metadata, talked to some people about "issues" that were going on, and made sure we had a now inappropriate telephone number removed from one of our online courses that just happens to be taken by over 100,000 people in the department of defense. Yikes!

Then I talked to Ann who was all excited about all of the real estate, entrepreneur, running a business stuff that I've always wanted to do. She brought up all of these books that I've read in the past (The Secret, Think and Grow Rich, Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Richest Man in Babylon, The Greatest Salesman in the World, etc.) and I started getting all excited about the possibilities I have in this life.

Drove home with the carpool and shared a little of my conversations with the car pool. Came home, exercised, cooked dinner and opened hotmail.

iTunes sent me a link to the iTunes U. Nice! The classy advertising lured me in and even though I already know that you can download information for free, this time I really paid attention and now really know all of the fabulous stuff you can download for FREE from iTunes U. The world really is flat! Instead of just accessing MIT Open Source or Open University on the web, you can now download it to your iPhone or iTunes. Has this been around a while? Yes. Have I used it? Only a couple of times and more for testing purposes for work. Right now I'm downloading 26 sessions on Innovations Design from Open University to listen to while I go on a walk. All kinds of topics and subjects are available. There is no excuse now for someone not to be educated or to feel like they can't have access to the best. If MIT, Harvard, Yale and others are offering their courses for FREE to all of us...no excuses. Sure, you'll have to pay the big bucks to get credit for them from those schools, but a lot of us aren't looking for college credit. We are looking for continuous learning opportunities that fit into our busy lives.

Anyway, long story even longer...

I'm feeling very inspired today after good conversations, life changing innovations and the ability for all of us to continually learn and improve.

Secret Happiness - composition book

I seem to have a lot of secret happiness entries lately, but there are some simple things that make me happy. I went to Target the other day and was looking for my next composition book. I use these to take notes and compile offline "to do" lists for work. I also buy these for the kids I teach at church so they can take notes during the lessons and tape/staple the handouts into them before leaving class.

Anyway, I found the coolest composition book.

Plus, there was a matching pad of paper next to it. So, I had to buy it, but still don't know what I'll use it for... Either way, I'm happy to have something festive to write in everyday.

Becca House

My brother Scot has been into architecture for years. Although he is a construction management major at BYU, he is in a job that allows him to design/re-design different places on campus. One project involved a few simple steps where another requires that he re-designs an entire floor at the Missionary Training Center. I guess if you have done this since your early teens, you should be fairly qualified by the time you are 23-24 years old.

He even has a new blog about architecture and his design insights/ideas. He's an amazing writer and so the blogs should be an interesting resource to follow.

• http://aboutthebox.blogspot.com/ (architecture)


• http://theascotmanners.blogspot.com/ (his personal blog)

Over the past couple of years I've been able to give Scot my ideas for a home and he has begun the process of translating those requirements into a beautiful product called the "Becca House." It is inspired by the Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style homes and Japanese gardens. Soon he will place it into a software that allows us to view it and make changes in 3D.

My Dad keeps joking that I will have to purchase some land in the north part of North Dakota so I can afford it. I might just have to, but right now I'm not worried about that because it's been fun to go through the design process.

It's important to note that I'm not trying to be an architect. That's Scot's area. My area is knowing the main requirements and sharing them with him in a way that he can translate it into a reality. It's often a better reality than I had envisioned, but in a way that meets my needs. I'll be the expert in what I want and he can be the expert in implementing it.

Now, if I could only figure out how to get this concept working well at work.