bold ideas
The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."
It doesn't interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
Hillary Clinton's Equal Rights Speech
The following is a recent speech given by Hillary Clinton on human rights and equality. Whether you are a fan or not of her politics, her words are a bold challenge for all!
The Renaissance Minimalist from 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris

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I am continuing to learn amazing principles for finding financial/life freedom within the pages of 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris. In Chapter 9, Income Autopilot I: Finding the Muse, he shares the story of an entrepreneur he knows who created an online source of income...his business generates $10,000 with the click of a few buttons and creative thought. Read closely for inspiration:
Douglas Price was waking up to another beautiful summer morning in his Brooklyn brownstone. First things first: coffee. The jet lag was minor, considering he had just returned from a two-week jaunt through the islands of Croatia. It was just one of six countries he had visited in the last 12 months. Japan was next on his agenda....
Two years earlier in June of 2004, I was in Doug's apartment checking e-mail...he was finally extricating himself from a venture-funded Internet start-up that had once been a cover story and his passion but now it was just a job...he made a decision -- enough complicated stuff. It was time to return to the basics.
He then created Prosoundeffects.com, launched in January of 2005 after one week of sales testing on e-bay, was designed to do one thing: give Doug lots of cash with minimal time investment...
(Ferris writes that Doug has access to a huge collection of) sound libraries and CDs that film producers, musicians, video game designers , and other audio professionals use to add hard-to-find sounds--whether the purr of a lemur or an exotic instrument--to their own creations. These are Doug's products, but he doesn't own them, as that would require a physical inventory and upfront cash. His business model is more elegant than that. Here is just one revenue stream:
1. A prospective customer sees his Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on Google or other search engines and clicks through to his site, www.prosoundeffects.com.
2. The prospect orders a product for $325 (the average purchasing price) on a Yahoo shopping cart, and a PDF with all their billing and shipping information is automatically e-mailed to Doug.
3. Three times a week, Doug presses a single button in the Yahoo management page to charge all his customers' credit cards and put cash in his bank account. Then he saves the PDFs as Excel purchase orders and e-mails the purchase orders to the manufacturers of the CD libraries. Those companies mail the products to Doug's customers--this is called drop-shipping--and Doug pays the manufacturers as little as 45% of the retail price of the products up to 90 days later (net-90 terms).
Let's look at the mathematical beauty of his system for full effect.
For each $325 order at his cost of 55% off retail, Doug is entitled to $178.75. If we subtract 1% of the full retail price (1% of $325 = $3.25) for the Yahoo store transaction fee and 2.5% for the credit card processing fee (2.5$ of $325 = $8.13), Doug is left with a pretax profit of $167.38 for this one sale.
Multiply this by 10 (say he processes 10 orders at a time) and we have $1673 in profit for 30 minutes of work. Doug is making $3,347.60 per hour and purchases no products in advance. His initial start-up costs were $1,200 for the Webpage design, which he recouped in the first week. His Pay Per Click advertising costs approximately $700 per month and he pays Yahoo $99 per month for their hosting and shopping cart.
He works for less than two hours a week, often pulls in more than $10,000 per month, and there is no financial risk whatsoever. Now Doug spends his time making music, traveling and exploring new businesses for excitement. Prosoundeffects.com is not his end-all-be-all, but it has removed all financial concerns and freed his mind to focus on other things.
What would you do if you didn't have to think about money? If you follow the advice in this chapter, you will soon have to answer this question.
It's time to find your muse.
Another reason to buy this book!! If you are looking to stop being a slave to your heavy workload, there are ways to leap beyond it all. I shared the above story/scenario to get the wheels in your head churning.
I'm learning that one of the sure keys to bold living is automating our lives -- using our creative minds to figure out a way to offer something to the world in a way that allows for us to breathe, laugh and enjoy our lives.
Thanks for reading!!
More to come on my search for boldness tomorrow :-D
- Jen Engevik of Project BE Bold
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Powerful Marketing Tips from Book "Your Marketing Sucks"
I was just made aware of a great marketing book entitled, Your Marketing Sucks by author Mark Stevens (Thanks for the suggestion Hillary!!) The book isn't for the faint at heart, but for those who are looking to be bold enough to take their businesses to the next level. The following are a couple powerful excerpts:
p. 115 - "Extreme marketing takes an entrepreneurial perspective that demands a measurable return on the investment dollars allocated to the marketing process. Extreme Marketers are both strategic and tactical. They identify opportunities - often considered inappropriate or impossible to cultivate by others - and pursue them vigorously. In fact, they never accept the notion that something cannot be done because it has not been done in the past."
AND...
19. "Scrutinize everything you are (and are not) doing. Put it all under a microscope. Be a skeptical SOB about every dollar you are spending. Keep those programs generating the highest returns. Eliminate everything else, no matter what. Your company will grow - profitably."
Wishing you success in your business!
Would love to hear how you are taking your business to the next level!! Comment below!!
- Team Project Be Bold