How many of us have dreams (hands raise)

I learned quite a bit during my time in San Diego. Despite that I was very cold in Southern California, I had a chance to do some inner processing of myself, I think that’s why I love, no… LOVE MK events like this. Not only only am I surrounded by hundreds (sometimes thousands) of Sharp women (a good number that make more money than I do) but I get to ride on my wife’s coattails and get free training and free stuff as well.

If you were around in July, I talked about it “Raining Firemen” (if that interests you, there ARE pictures, just go back to the July 2006/August 2006 archives), that MK event is called Seminar and is in Dallas every July. In January, the MK Directors have a conference in mid January called Leadership and is held at different cities around the Nation: Nashville (2004), New Orleans (2005), Atlanta (2006), San Diego (2007) and Houston (2008). Leadership is for Sales Directors only and is a time of cleansing with the new year as well as focusing on goals for the rest of the MK Year (July-June).

This year, a few of the National Sales Directors got together and had a Power Day, the day before Leadership actually started. It was this day that had the biggest impact. I’m writing most of this without looking at my notes, but if I don’t do it now, I’ll be way far behind…

But I figured out what my Dream job would be (which after saying it outloud, it seemed rather obvious):

To have a photography business where people could contract me to preferably fly me various places (with my family) around the world to take pictures for them, in whatever capacity they needed. I would be given time to explore the area with my family as well as on foot while running.

I still I have a few things to work out, but I am going to start on my dream job right now. In the next few days, I will be unveiling my new camera, but what I need to focus on is my W.O.W.

What is a W.O.W.? you ask. Well, the guest speaker for the Power Day was Marcia Wieder, America’s Dream Coach. I didn’t know who she was either until that day, but you know what… Oprah knows who she is. She was personally chosen to be on the Big O’s show about dreams ( not the ZZZZzzz kind).

Marcia expertise about dreams and we were treated to a short course on her normal workshop that she holds. I’ll give you two stories that Marcia talked about, one that a 70 year old lady and I have in common as well as a story about her dreams.

Marcia spoke about a 70 year old woman who had an aspiration of being a professional photographer. Do you know what the difference between an Amateur photographer and a Professional photographer? You guessed it… cold hard cash!

So at the ripe young age of 70, this woman wanted to be a professional photographer, but everyone around her told her that she was too old, too this, too that. Despite all the negative talk, she considered submitting one of her photos to a contest being held by Kodak (remember my Staples photo contest from a while back). She eventually did submit a photo and it won 1st place and for her reward, she was PAID $10,000 and her photograph traveled the nation in an art exhibit. I could not believe the similarities between us, except for the age and gender differences. You better believe that I am going to enter that Staples contest!

The other story is about Ms. Wieder herself. At an event that Marcia was attending, a women asked her to name one of her dreams, after all, she does have dreams too. Marcia’s dream was to spend time on a Greek isle writing a book. The women immediately whips out her card and says that she owns a home on the island and that it would be vacant all summer long. Talk about a mind trip.

The lesson here is to speak your dream to anyone and everyone. You are going to have discouragers and encouragers but you are also are going to have people who can do things to move along or catapult your dreams. You remember the tagline, “A mind is a Terrible thing to waste”, “Dreams are terrible things to waste” too.

So, I’ve told you my dream in a raw form. I will be sharing more about my dream and what steps I am taking to reach my dream and I hope that in some shape way or form, this will help you as well. In the beginning of March, we are going back to San Diego to attend her weekend conference.

But what’s the W.O.W. thing… it stands for Within One Week and it’s an action step that you take to reach your dreams. To use marathoning as an example, we don’t just go out and run a marathon. We map out a schedule (hopefully stick to it) but our goal of running a marathon starts with a short small success. It might be walk a mile, it might be run a mile, it might be walk/run 4 miles. Whatever it is, it’s a step toward the dream of finishing a marathon.

So my WOW task is to create a portfolio of my work. I used to have (it’s still there ) a photoblog of some of the stuff that I thought was decent, and scattered within it was stuff that I really liked. I abandoned updating that photoblog from the shear amount of spam that I was receiving. Since December, I have started another photoblog, which is not updated, with special thanks to Leesa for cluing me in on it. In addition to an online portfolio, I am also going to be making a real life portfolio, one that I can carry…