It’s in the news this week that Newsweek Magazine is for sale. Although I confess that I don’t read Newsweek with any regularity, the mention of it always catches my eye because my grandfather, Thomas John Cardell Martyn, originally founded the magazine in 1933. Clearly, I inherited his entrepreneurial instincts (and also his nose).

However, I don’t talk very often about my grandfather because while he was able to do impressive things in the business world, he failed at what I believe to be one of life’s biggest achievements, one that makes any business success look unimpressive in comparison: My grandfather was a lousy father.

After he left Newsweek, my grandfather for all intents and purposes abandoned his family and went to South America to pursue various business endeavors. My grandmother essentially raised my dad and his sister as a single parent. It was not that acceptable to divorce in those days, and raising her family by herself was not an easy task. My father’s sister, my aunt, never spoke to her father after she left home and refused to speak about him with anyone for the rest of her life.

My father dutifully kept up a letter writing campaign with his father as his father lived out his days in southern Brazil. But the impact on my dad was very deep and, in my view, essentially crippled him emotionally. Of course the result of this wounding affected the kind of parent he was to me and my siblings, as well the kind of husband he was to my mother.

So when you get down to it, I don’t care if you are Donald Trump or Bill Gates and have a ton of money in the bank and all sorts of business accomplishments in your “win” column. What does all that matter if you are a lousy parent, an absent spouse, or if your friendships run fast and shallow? It’s that old question about: what do you want them to write on your gravestone: “I wish I had spent more time at the office” ?

Fortunately, having good relationships is a lot more important for many people these days. Most people want to leave a legacy of healthy, positive relationships with partners, children and friends.

This is an especially hard challenge for entrepreneurs. We have to marshal all our strength, intelligence and heart, as well as tap all the help available in order to achieve a healthy balance and not let our business completely take over our lives. The price is too high. In fact, our businesses have a better chance of succeeding if we don’t become completely obsessed and unbalanced, and shortchange the personal relationships in our lives.

Newsweek may go the way of the dinosaur, but my grandfather has left his legacy. He could have done better.

What will your legacy be?

Times are still tough in the U.S.A., not to mention the rest of the world. But one thing is sure, we are holding fast to one of the truly American qualities I treasure the most – our sense of humor.

Yes, it’s April Fool’s Day and I got suckered by Google – and had a good laugh – a great way to start any day!

Google has been playing around with their search home page, dressing it up for various holidays like St. Patrick’s Day. I indulge them that, but mostly I really want them to stick to their wonderful usual clean, simple look. They’ve done a great job of branding, haven’t they?

But today Google’s home page proclaimed “Topeka” and a little link “Not in Kansas – learn about our new name” explained that Google is changing it’s name to Topeka. A little sign at their corporate HQ confirmed it, along with a press release.

I admit, I fell for it for about a minute and then it dawned on me that it’s April Fools’ Day. I sent an email this morning to my step-daughter not to waste her time calling or emailing today, because we were on to her April Fool’s Day hijinks. Nonetheless, I feel for Google’s trick.

Day in and day out I provide my small business consulting services to small businesses across the country. Everyone’s working hard, dealing with the challenges. I say as long as we can laugh at ourselves, we’ll be just fine.

Thanks, Google, for a good laugh today.

It’s a little known fact that I was once the founder & CEO of a business conglomerate. It had nine divisions. See one of my original marketing pieces here:

I was 11 years old and the name, A.I.C. & M., Inc., (pronounced “ace and em” was derived from my initials, plus I knew that “Ace” had some marketing juice, at least it did back then (think Ace Hardware)!

Of course, I was the chief cook and bottle washer, the only employee. My most successful division was T.R.P. – short for “traveling rubbing parlor,” and my best and only customer of that division was my dad, who was what we now call a raving fan.

Although at that age I giggled whenever anyone tried to rub my feet, I understood that a business must deliver what its customers, not we, want.

I had already learned some key marketing lessons:

- the best form of marketing takes an educational approach (“The
Understanding Booklet”)

- offer several levels of service and pricing (I had two levels of foot
massage available)

- focus on benefits (“You are the master!” – who could resist that?)

- let people test out your products and services (“you can test us on
a few things”)

- always have a call to action (“If you have a job to do, contact us!”
– a little lame, but not bad for an 11 year old)

My second most popular division did not appear on the above marketing piece. It was my candy store. I bought candy from the local grocery store (Canada mints, as I recall) and resold them at a profit to my delighted customers, my mother and sister.

Yes, entrepreneurial qualities tend to surface early in life. However, whether we start earlier or later, we all must go through much trial and error to learn the ropes of starting and running a successful business.

No matter how awkward, lame or inexpert our first attempts may be, the brilliance is in starting, and then learning, tweaking and trying some more. Not every venture will pan out, but as countless real life success stories have shown, quantity eventually leads to quality.

So whether you’re 11 years old or 91, get out there and keep throwing stuff against the wall!

You may heard of Karl Wallenda, the founder of The Flying Wallendas, an internationally known daredevil circus act, famous for performing amazing stunts.

I recently came across a quote from Karl who said, “Life is being on the wire; everything else is just waiting.”

Are you on living on the wire, or just waiting?

To me, “living on the wire” means being where the action is, not waiting on the sidelines while you look to jump in. It means being fully engaged with your mission, being really alive.

Most of the time I live on the wire. It was living on the wire when we decided in 2006 to move 1500 miles across the country to a brand new community (Fort Collins, Colorado). There were social risks, financial risks and business risks.

After three wonderful years in Colorado, we decided we wanted to be closer to family and to deciduous forests and so moved last month back to the mountains of North Carolina.

Some people may have wondered if we were a little crazy to move after only three years, especially with the housing market near the bottom. It would have made more financial sense to stay put, since there are substantial costs involved in selling and buying, as well as moving.

Yet living on the wire requires us to trust ourselves to make good decisions, using our skills honed in the crucible of life’s experiences – that exquisite blend of knowledge and reason with our intuition and gut feelings. Then we can bravely step forward, focused on the wire, truly alive.

Living on the wire isn’t just about physical challenges or changes and relocations, though. It can also be about your internal attitudes and beliefs – not letting yourself play it too safe in your business and get complacent or waiting for things to change on their own.

Even when it feels like a high wire act, it’s important that you challenge yourself to grow new skills, such as learning how to better navigate conflict (a vitally important skill needed in both business and private life), how to delegate (one of the best skills anyone can master), or how to hone your marketing skills to grow your business to the next level.

It takes courage, determination and discipline to take calculated risks, which is what smart entrepreneurs do. They live “on the wire.” Life is too short to just play it safe. Don’t waste anymore time. Get focused, take calculated risks, and experience being truly alive.

I’ve missed posting for a few weeks because my father passed away on May 22. His health had been declining for several years, but you never know when it’s going to happen. I was en route to Connecticut when, according to his wishes, they removed the ventilator and with a sedative he quickly and peacefully faded away.

He was in many ways not an easy man. However I think his life has some lessons for us as we continue our efforts in our businesses.

One of his favorite sayings was from Ernest Hemingway: “Everything’s your own fault if you’re any damn good.” While I don’t believe this is true about everything, I do think there is much wisdom in it. When we take personal responsibility, we are empowered to change, grow and improve.

Dad’s heavy drinking and years of smoking as a younger man probably had a significant effect on his various ailments. But he never blamed anyone. He knew it was his own “damned fault.”

When corporate politics forced him out of the insurance company where he had worked for 29 years, he didn’t waste a lot of time railing against the injustice. He continued on to several other senior executive positions and was elected president of his industry’s national association.

Years ago, when one of my businesses encountered severe difficulties that precipitated a drastic restructuring, I didn’t blame my business partner. I took personal responsibility, cleaned up the mess as best I could and carried on.

So what’s going on in your life that you need to take responsibility for? Something that you’re ready to tackle, learn from, turn around and rise above?

Here’s a photo of my Dad on an expedition he co-lead with college pals in the Yukon in the early 1950′s. He was one tough cookie and I think mountain climbing was his way of rising above things.

Thanks for everything, Dad, the good stuff, the hard stuff, the toughness, and the underlying steadfast love. May we all remember what’s truly important in business and personal life: taking responsibility for our relationships with spouses, family, friends, colleagues, clients, customers and, yes, even strangers.

John Lennon said “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” Surely that’s what happened on my 50th birthday. My oldest friend took me and my partner out to breakfast at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse ( a fabulous place to check out if you’re ever in Boulder, Colorado).

Afterward we headed up to the National Center for Atmospheric Research to participate in their guided tour. It’s supposed to be a cool place about weather and other things scientific.

However, no sooner did we arrive in the lobby when my partner, Susan began to feel dizzy and nauseous. They called in their onsite medical team, and discovered that Susan’s blood pressure and heart rate were alarmingly high. So they called an ambulance and soon we were heading over to the local ER.

At the ER, blood work and chest X-rays also revealed everything to be normal. After about four hours, we went home and by morning her blood pressure and pulse had returned to normal. In situations like this, it’s easy to imagine the worst, like heart attack and even death. We both felt this fear acutely and it took a few days for us to really calm down.

So…this was obviously not the birthday I had anticipated! The gift was pretty quickly evident, however, because my beloved partner of eight years is alive and well.

Sometimes, just getting back to “regular” life is a huge blessing! A regular day coaching with my wonderful clients, seems doubly miraculous. Eating healthy, plentiful food becomes even more of a gift. Answering emails is almost a holy act. Discussing business strategies with Susan, I feel like the luckiest person alive.

Most entrepreneurs need to do more planning and not go after their business in a random manner. Yet, as in life, business is what happens when we’re busy making plans. If seen in a wider perspective, rebuilding a database after a computer crash makes you giddy with relief. If your business endures a fire or a flood and no one is hurt, just putting the pieces back together and running normally becomes the most amazing blessing.

Life/business happens, and rarely according to plan. Yet there are always silver linings, if we look for them. When you see your life as the precious thing it is, you empower yourself, your loved ones and your business.

I’m turning 50 on March 30 and yes, it will be a shock! But I am boosted by several clients who have told me that turning 50 was a positive experience for them. Now, they say, I’ll really get to reap the fruits of all my experience.

My hair really is as dark as in that photo, but I’m proud of my gray ones, too. I’ve earned them!

So, big deal, right? I’m about to be 50 years old. WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?!

Because we all need those frequent reminders to be grateful and there’s nothing like a milestone event in your life – or in the life of someone you know – to remind you to take stock and count your blessings. Time truly does fly and you never know when your number will be up. Actress Natasha Richardson went skiing last week, fell and bumped her head and it was all over at age 45.

There’s no time like the present to re-evaluate and recommit to your purpose and passion here on earth. For me, one of my passions is helping small business owners thrive!

You hear a lot about passion these days and for good reason. Without passion – without deeply caring about your life and what you do – you can fall into a dreary pseudo-existence. I’m happy to say my clients all embrace their passions. They sell real estate in a creative new way. . .help people enjoy knitting . . . create amazing non-toxic kid toys or dog collars. . . make natural fertilizer… guide people on amazing eco-bike tours. . .and in many other ways bring their gifts into to the world.

So please don’t give up on your dreams or your passion. We need you!

As I prepare to celebrate 50 years, I wish you much joy, passion and some “moments of glad grace,” as William Butler Yeats once wrote. (Thanks, Mom, she loves that phrase!) For me those moments include swinging in my indoor hammock, hiking, playing with my dogs and cats, eating chocolate, and great conversations with family and friends.

You wouldn’t think that my mom, age 77, a former college English teacher, would know much about business. But I’ve found that two of her life lessons contain some crucial things we business folks all need to understand and apply.

Lesson #1: Frugality for the good life

Mom was a child of the Great Depression. Her parents literally came over on the boat from Poland and both did manual labor to make ends meet for their family of seven. Yet, they always had a solid roof over their heads and good food on the table. (The other side of my family came over on the Mayflower, which makes me a typical American mutt.)

From this experience, Mom taught me the value of healthy frugality. She doesn’t waste things. And in business – especially in this recession – we need to be extremely good stewards of our resources.

Your greatest resource is people: you and your employees. When you truly get your employees on board with the vision and mission of your business, when you empower them, listen to them, and care about them, they can literally increase your business 25 or 50% or more.

Here’s an example: I just read in article in Inc. Magazine about a woman who owned a small upscale clothing shop in Missouri. She empowered her seven employees to get financially literate, teaching them about inventory turns and margins and how they relate. In October 2007 she did $55,000 in sales and a year later in October 2008 she did $81,000, in the midst of one of the worst recessions of our life times.

Lesson #2 Understand & use the wheel of life – wherever you are at the moment

Mom also taught me about the wheel of life. As a kid, I envisioned this as a Ferris wheel. She told me that things always cycle around – when you’re down, you will always come back up. Hard times cycle back to good times. My mom, an avid gardener, would probably put it in terms of nature – that winter always leads to spring and new growth. Keeping that perspective is vitally important at times like these!

Are you at the bottom of the wheel right now? Take heart. Remember the other times in your life when things looked bleak and you were ready to hang up the towel. Use that knowledge that you can get through anything.

Or perhaps you’re at the top of the wheel right now. Yes, even in our big, bad recession, some people are doing very well. I’m not telling you to start living in fear of the inevitable turn of the wheel. I’m reminding you to always have your Plan B, and Plan C. The most successful entrepreneurs are actually not really huge risk-takers. They take calculated risks, and hedge their bets.

One of my mentors recently reminded me that about 80% of the things you try in your business will fail, no matter how much you think they will do great. This means we will be “failures” most of the time!

Isn’t that amazing? In order to be very successful, you just have to fail more than others. You have to turn that wheel more times. So don’t be afraid of the low point of the wheel.
Just keep on turnin’. You’ll be at the top again before long.

You know moms are always right. So how can you apply my mom’s two business lessons today?

When I was in college studying political science and related fields, I read constantly about current events, especially about what was wrong with the world. I was current in everything. Too current! No surprise, I burnt out and after graduation, I stopped following the news for a few years.

Thankfully, I eventually got back into the habit. But since then, I’ve been very careful to regulate my news input at a level that supports my well being, while still letting me be an informed citizen.

The fact is, we need a lot less news than we may think we do, and definitely a lot less than is available.

If your newspaper is like mine, it loves to plaster stuff every day about how bad things are with the economy.

Yet, in scanning the business page today, I noticed some GOOD news. Note the following items:

One of our local breweries is moving forward with a major expansion.

Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s largest maker of wind turbines is expanding its Portland Oregon work force from 350 to at least 1200 and building a 500,000 square foot office.

Nationally, Thanksgiving weekend retail sales were UP about 1% over 2007.

A local running shoe store had a 40 percent increase in sales over 2007 over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Additionally, one of my clients told me yesterday she continues at 20% growth over last year, when her competitors are reporting drops in revenues lately of 30% or more.

I thought that was quite a good bit of good news for your average Tuesday at the end of a year of recession. I guess it’s a bit like the glass half full saying. During the Great Depression, 25% of people were out of work. While that’s a lot of unemployed folks, the way I see it, this means that three quarters (75%) were working!

Yes, there’s plenty of bad news right now. So what do you want to focus on? I stay informed of national and world affairs, and it doesn’t take much to do that. To keep your positive energy up, you might want to do what one of my wise clients did last week – a news fast.

As for me, I choose to stay positive. In the fourth quarter this year, I brought on six new wonderful clients with really cool businesses, prepared to launch two new low cost/high value coaching programs, brought on an exceptional assistant, got my office 100% cleaned up and organized, and renewed my business plan for 2009. I know the only thing I “can’t afford” is to be negative.

So get out there and make your own news! And let me know if I can help.

I read a compelling memoir recently called Drawn To The Rhythm by Sara Hall. In it she describes what she loves about rowing a single shell.

She wrote, “In racing, your fuel must be all your courage, skill and strength in your tank, including your spare tank, and you must plan to run dry just as you cross the line. When you do finally cross the line, the expenditure leaves you writhing in pain and gasping great tearing sobs for oxygen. This may not sound like fun. It isn’t fun. It is totally fulfilling.”

Based on experience in my own businesses over the years and working with my wonderful clients, I think that running a business is pretty much the same way. You wouldn’t necessarily call it fun, but it can be totally fulfilling. And sometimes, it’s fun, too.

Whether we own a business or not, we are called, like Sara Hall, to use all our courage, skill and strength to cross the various finish lines we encounter.

When we really give it everything we’ve got – and use our “spare tank” too – we experience the fulfillment of a worthy endeavor, whether we “win” or not. We have used ourselves for a noble purpose, as we have defined it.

For Sara Hall, rowing was her way out of an abusive marriage, a way to find her incredible inner (and outer) strength and her self-confidence. In business most people must uncover their unknown reservoirs of confidence, too, to keep going in the face of all the challenges.

Have you ever experienced any of the following situations? All of them have happened to my clients:

 Your key salesperson quits one day in your peak selling season.
 You get an unexpected whopper bill from the insurance company.
 Your computer crashes and you haven’t backed up everything.
 Your boss is indicted for fraud.
 Your best customer goes over to a competitor.
 Your mate and kids start to forget what you look like.
 There’s a bug in your software that can’t seem to be fixed after days on the phone with
tech support.

You can no doubt add a few of your own!

However, I think it’s also important to remember the fulfilling parts about our businesses. Here are gifts offered by some of my clients to appreciative customers:

 Your company provides home health care to an elderly person.
 You remodel a forty year old kitchen to the delight of a large family.
 You publish a book that brings readers pleasure, knowledge and skills.
 You give your client a great audit that they need to assure their supporters that they are in 100%
compliance with all laws.
 You manufacture a natural fertilizer for farmers who grow wonderful food.
 You make exquisite dog collars that bring joy to their owners.
 You help IT companies solve problems for their clients.
 You give hundreds of kids a great experience at summer camp, helping them grow as human beings.
 You provide customers with incredible clay walls that bring warmth and delight to all dwellers and
visitors.
 You provide the best hosting in the world to thousands of websites while using the profits to
promote social and environmental justice.

These are some of the things my clients do for their customers. I’m proud of them and of what they do. They use their courage, skill and strength in their pursuit of contributing to the world through their business.

Are you giving your work your “all”? Are you crossing the finish line, completely spent, but totally fulfilled? If not, see my special offer below. If you are, I congratulate you on using your talents to their fullest!

Lately I’ve burned out on reading business books, for a little while, at least, and decided some biographies might re-energize me. Skimming the stacks of my library recently, I came across Miracle In The Andes by Nando Parrado. It’s the story of the plane crash in the middle of the wilds of Andes Mountains in 1972. 16 young men survived 72 days on a glacier at 12,000 feet high. This new book, published in 2006, is a first person account by one of the survivors.

It is a riveting tale and I literally could hardly put the book down.

Out of 45 passengers, 16 people survived injuries, sub-zeros temperatures, avalanches and had no choice but to eat the flesh of their dead companions in order to survive. When they realized no rescue was coming, the author and a companion scaled a mountain that would intimidate fully equipped technical mountain climbers and walked 45 miles in nine days until they met a shepherd and got themselves and their companions rescued.

The story is wrenchingly honest about the emotions, the constant fear, the questioning of God and of “why me?” and how they used their team training as members of a rugby team to survive.

The story gave me several gifts especially:

1. It gave me renewed perspective about the “problems” and challenges I am facing.

2. It helped me understand that we all have our “personal Andes” story or stories – challenges,
misfortune, and struggles that seem completely against all odds to turn out well.

3. I was inspired by their courage, inventiveness, team work and sheer guts.

I know many of you, like me, have faced some exceedingly difficult situations, where the odds seem stacked against you and you don’t know if you will survive.

Maybe you’re in such a situation now. At times like these, we must use the stories of others to inspire us, help us find our inner hero, and take another step.

Author Nando Parrado wrote that it was his love for his father and his desire to see him again that kept him going against all odds. (His mother and sister who were also on the plane had died.) At one point when he was sure he was going to die, he had an epiphany that the opposite of death was not life, but love. He stated, “only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear.” His circumstances, no matter how overpoweringly bleak and crushing, could not stop him from loving. It was an insight that changed his life.

So whether you’re facing a business challenge, an illness, financial crisis, relationship failure or other situation that seems unsolvable and impossible, I hope you are able to claim the courage and insight that will help you weather the dark night and experience your own version of a miracle.