Recipe for Success

Domenica grew up in a house that always smelled like something delicious was cooking.  Her parents loved small-town life, but they wanted their children to know there was a bigger world outside their home.  Every Christmas the family would drive to New York City to see the enormous tree and spend time in the gigantic five-story FAO Schwartz toy store.  Domenica came to believe that when she grew up, she would go to New York City and something magical would happen to her.

When Domenica was thirteen, her parents split up and she moved to upstate New York with her mother and siblings.  Her mom took a job managing eight restaurants, and as soon as she was old enough, Domenica went to work with her.  Her mother found Domenica to be a true asset.  She'd take on unglamorous tasks like setting up buffets and cleaning shrimp, eventually even learning her way around the cook stations, and she tackled them all with enthusiasm and bubbling energy.

After progressing from waitress to manager, at the age of 23, Domenica decided it was time to move to New York City.  She found a job managing a tiny candy counter at Macy's, where her boss gave her a crash-course education in gourmet food, something she knew almost nothing about.  She flourished at Macy's, but two years later, when they offered her a promotion to take charge of another department, she turned it down because she really was only interested in food. 

Domenica always had it in her mind that she wanted to succeed in New York.  However, coming home from work one night, she was confronted by a young mugger in the entryway to her apartment.  Domenica managed to scare him off with pepper spray, but the incident left her shaken.  It also made an impression on her attacker, who sought her out again just weeks later.  The second mugging put Domenica in the hospital, and she decided that she’d had enough of life in the city.  She moved back home and took a job as a waitress.

One year later, Domenica got a job at a specialty food shop.  Not long after, their chef quit, and Domenica’s years spent learning food prep and line cooking for her mother suddenly came into play.  She seized the opportunity to offer cooking classes inside the store to teach people how to prepare delicious meals at home in 30-minutes or less.

The idea blossomed into a weekly three-minute television spot on the local news.  Domenica would go to people’s homes and walk through the preparation of their favorite dishes for the television audience.  The appeal was that she was one of them, just a girl who loved food and wanted to enjoy what she ate rather than a prestigious and unapproachable chef.  She often cut corners by using ingredients you could find in a box, and jokingly said, “I’m not Martha Stewart.  I’m just like you.”

Being on television didn’t mean she was making any money, however, and Domenica was frequently on the verge of not being able to pay her rent.  She was able to arrange a meeting with a publisher to discuss a cookbook, and although the publisher wasn’t initially very interested, Domenica’s determination and energetic charm won her over.

Domenica’s cookbook caught the attention of television personality Al Roker, who watched her local news segments and mentioned her to his booking staff.  Nothing happened immediately, but when a freak blizzard resulted in a last-second cancellation, Domenica was invited with little notice to appear as a Today Show guest.

In a bizarre coincidence, Domenica got a phone call the day after taping her Today Show appearance from the president of the Food Network.  She didn’t understand their interest, given that most of their programming was of high-end food being prepared by established restaurant chefs, but it was her everyday accessibility that they wanted. 

Domenica, better known to the world as Rachael Ray, appealed to home-cooks and food lovers everywhere, and it made her name a household staple.  But it was her tenacity and dedication to what she loved that eventually took her from behind the candy shop counter and made Rachael Ray an internationally-known brand name with over a dozen cookbooks, a lifestyle magazine, numerous cooking programs, and her own network television talk show.

When it comes to your own personal recipe for success, remember how important it is to be true to your passions and stay comfortable being your authentic self.

Until next week...

Live Your Dreams

Knock, knock. Who's there?

Many years ago, when my wife was pregnant, we went on a long drive to visit some relatives.  Being pregnant, she had to go to the bathroom constantly, so she jumped out of the car as soon as we arrived and hustled to the front door.  She didn’t even knock, just rushed inside and announced that there was a pregnant woman in need of a bathroom.  They pointed her down the hall and off she went.  I’m not sure who was more surprised:  my wife, when she returned to a living room full of strangers; or my relatives’ next door neighbors who’d just let a pregnant stranger use their restroom.

I still laugh at that memory to this day, and wonder what those people were thinking when my wife came bursting into their home.  This week’s story is about another woman who experienced success on the other side of a closed door.

Angie’s first job was selling popcorn at the zoo, and it represented a significant part of her early work experience.  In other words, she didn’t have much.  The highlights of her young employment life included being selected as employee of the month at a steakhouse in Indiana and a short internship at a venture capital firm during college.  Angie’s strengths were her determination and ability to get any job done.

After college, Angie received a call from her former boss at the venture capital firm.  He was having a hard time finding a reputable contractor to do work on a house he’d bought.  Home repairs and improvement can be very expensive, and one of the most difficult parts of the process is deciding who to hire for a job when you don’t know anything about their work.  His idea was for a business that would collect and organize reliable information about contractors and service professionals… and he thought Angie should start it.

Angie wasn’t so sure.  She wasn’t a homeowner, and had never hired a contractor nor undertaken repairs of any kind in her life.  She liked a challenge, but wasn’t sure about turning her back on the safe path (an almost-certain job with an accounting firm) to risk starting a business.  But her family supported the idea of betting on herself, and the advice of her grandfather was particularly insightful:  “What’s the difference between looking for a job when you’re twenty-two or waiting until you’re twenty three?  Nothing!  So what do you have to lose?”

Angie decided to give the idea a year.  Alone in Columbus, Ohio, she launched Columbus Neighbors, going door to door to sign up members who would use the service and provide reviews of contractors.  As a result, she faced the kind of frustration and rejection commonly experienced when making in-person sales pitches.  She pushed through seven-day workweeks and slammed doors.  She was often demoralized, cried regularly, and considered giving up more than once.  But she was passionate about succeeding, and the demands of the door-to-door process helped toughen her up. 

In that first year, Angie learned what she was made of.  She continued knocking on doors and asking strangers for advice about who they'd hired to do work on their homes.  Eventually, she’d ask whether they’d pay for a trustworthy service that would make their lives as homeowners easier.  The worst result was an unfriendly rejection, but the best was quality information and a new member. Angie was asking people to trust her information when making major spending decisions, and it showed that she took their trust seriously when she put her own name on the company. 

In 1996, Columbus Neighbors became Angie’s List.  Angie Hicks personally signed up fifteen hundred members in that first year without the benefit of the Internet.  Today, Angie’s List is the trusted source of reviews on contractors, doctors, dentists and service professionals in more than 550 categories.  Over 1.5 million households nationwide check Angie's List before they hire, and her pursuit for reliable information has resulted in a resource that includes 40,000 new reviews a month.  It’s no wonder that her estimated net worth is $50 million.

Angie says, “Even more important than the "Great Idea," is the ability to not give up when you hit roadblocks.  You're going to have people hang up on you or turn their backs when you ask for help.  Don’t give up.  Success doesn’t happen overnight.  Perseverance will be your best friend.”

The real sound of opportunity knocking often comes when your own knuckles hit the door.

Until next week...

Live Your Dreams

Shoot for the Moon

Elon came from a family who viewed their bloodline as voyagers and adventurers.  Growing up in South Africa, there were always stories of what the family members who came before had done:  the grandfather who won a race from Cape Town to Algiers; the grandparents who flew on the first single-engine plane from South Africa to Australia.  Young Elon matured quickly in this environment, but it wasn’t always a blessing.  He started school early to support his rapid development, and this set him apart as the youngest and smallest in his class.  He was frequently bullied and given a hard time by the other kids.

Elon’s father helped provide distractions.  He took his family on exotic trips, giving them a sense of the world and how much of it lay beyond their home.  He was also strict, but with intention:  Elon and his siblings were made to do the chores often performed by servants in South African households.  Their father made it into a game that he called “America, America” for the chores American kids did, creating a connection between his children and the idea of a place where anything is possible.

That connection never diminished for Elon.  When he finished high school, he visited some of his mother’s family in Canada, and stayed there.  He had researched American citizenship, and determined that emigrating from Canada would be easier than from South Africa.  Having almost no money, Elon worked a series of jobs, and enrolled in Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.  He beckoned his brothers, sister, and even cousins to join him in Canada, helping them obtain citizenship before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania on a full scholarship.

Elon studied business and physics, getting degrees in both, and was accepted to graduate school at Stanford.  He also began to think about working in some way on what he saw as three areas of great importance to the future of humanity:  the Internet, clean energy, and space.  He had been working with personal computers from the moment they arrived in consumer households, having even programmed and sold a video game in his teens.  He left Stanford after only two days with a car, a computer, and $2,000 in the bank, and began working with his brother on an Internet company called Zip2.

Zip2 designed some of the earliest software to help media companies publish their content to the Internet.  At the age of 28, Elon sold the company, receiving $22 million for his share.  He invested half of what he made into his second enterprise, X.com, an online financial services company that allowed people to make payments using their email address.  Merging with a competitor, the new company was re-branded PayPal, and was eventually purchased by Ebay.  Elon earned over $150 million from that sale, but he was just getting started. 

Money for its own sake was never one of Elon’s goals, and he was now in a position to pursue his most ambitious plans.  He co-founded Tesla Motors, a manufacturer of environmentally friendly cars and engines.  He became the chairman of SolarCity, the largest provider of solar power systems in the United States.  And in perhaps his most far-reaching idea, he began thinking of how to build affordable spaceships so people could travel to other planets and, someday, even live on Mars.  The more he thought about it, the more he wondered:  how complicated and expensive could it be?  So he founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), and within a few years, had begun making trips into space.

Elon Musk accomplished more before the age of 40 than most people do in a lifetime, or 40 lifetimes for that matter.  He was even the inspiration for the film depiction of genius billionaire Tony Stark in the movie Iron Man.  Elon is a strong believer in the principles of the Live to Give mindset, and recently joined forces with Warren Buffet and Bill Gates in pledging to donate the majority of his fortune to philanthropy.

In 2011, Forbes called Elon one of America’s most powerful CEOs under age 40.  When asked for the secret to his success, he responded:  “Surround yourself with people who believe that everything is possible, and remember to always dream bigger.”  If you shoot for the top of the mountains and fall short, you will crash into the mountainside.  Instead, raise your expectations and shoot for the moon… chances are, you will find yourself among the stars.

Until next week...

Live Your Dreams 

Happy New Year

A wealthy man stood at the edge of his swimming pool in the backyard of his mansion. He was hosting a party and had invited twenty of the most promising young men from the community to his home for a very special occasion. One of the young men was going to be lucky enough to either marry his daughter, a beautiful and intelligent young woman, or become president of his multi-million dollar business. To determine who was the most courageous and motivated among them, a simple test had been arranged. The man explained that his pool was filled with snakes and baby alligators, and the first man to swim from one side to the other could choose to become the president of his business or ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

Before the man could finish explaining the rules, a loud splash was heard at the edge of the pool. One of the young men was swimming with tremendous speed across the pool.  He jumped out at the far side and came to stand before his host, soaked and out of breath. The wealthy man was impressed and said he had never seen such courage and initiative. He faced the young man and asked him if he wanted to become the president of his business. The young man shook his head. “No.” The wealthy man smiled and asked, “Then you have chosen to marry my lovely daughter?” Once again, the young man shook his head. “No.” Now the wealthy man looked perplexed. He said, “If you don’t want to be the president and don’t want to marry my daughter, then what do you want?”  The young man looked at him and said, “Sir, I would just like to know the name of the guy that pushed me into the pool.”

I was in my early twenties when a man named Hilary told me this story.  I’ll never forget that day for two reasons. First, how often do you meet a man named Hilary? Second, after hearing the story, I asked Hilary what it meant. He said the lesson wouldn’t be as valuable if he told me, and suggested I think about it and come up with my own meaning.

Hilary was a unique man in many ways. He was born in a rural part of the country, the tenth of twelve children. When Hilary was only five years old, his father died from a stroke, and just two days later, his younger sister died from an illness. The family was poor and suffering from two devastating losses. Hilary learned to improvise, and from an early age, he sold snacks at school to make a little money for his family. He joined the Navy as a teenager because they offered a steady job and a free college education.

While at college he sold sandwiches to make extra money. After he graduated he tried to turn it into a full time business. He married his school sweetheart, and although they worked side by side the business just didn’t work. Hilary took a job selling cookware. The problem was, he wasn’t a very good salesman. After two years, the owner of the company pulled him aside and told him he had great potential if he could only improve his self-image. Hilary viewed himself as a poor kid with limited opportunities. His boss told him that as long as he saw himself that way, then that’s all he would live to be. He told Hilary he had the potential to become a national champion if he could only change his mindset.

Hilary decided from that day forward to imagine he was a national champion. Within one year, he became the second best salesman out of 7,000.  Throughout his life, Hilary remained a top salesman. He was so successful that he started writing books on sales and delivering seminars to teach others. I was fortunate to hear him speak last year, almost twenty years from when we first met. Hilary Ziglar recently passed away at the age of eighty-six.  Most people knew him by his nickname, Zig, and he is certainly missed.

One of my favorite Zig Ziglar quotes is, “Where you start is not as important as where you finish.”  2013 is upon us, and The Time is Now to pursue your dreams.  Sometimes we all need a little inspirational “push” into the pool to get started, but it’s up to each of us to swim.  Happy New Year, and happy swimming!

Until next week...

Live Your Dreams