A very good friend of Nora's is going through some difficult times right now regarding money. She came to our house, three months ago, and had a frank discussion with us. Wants desperately to get out of her current situation. Wants to make more money than the $8 per hour she is making right now. No skills. No education. No cash. Has good credit though.
Based on what she was telling me about herself, I came up with a very low cost, start from home type of a business for her, which I know for a fact, is working for several people outside Michigan. Cost of startup was less than $3,000. She was nervous about putting that on her credit cards, "What if I lose that money if my business does not works out? What would my husband say?"
I told her that we would help her, write her a check for $3,000 as an interest free loan, would loan her my assistant to do all the grunt work for a month on my payroll and actually sit down and write her the first 30 day plan. Tears of happiness were streaming down her face when she left. I emailed her a list of around 10 Things-To-Do-Before-Launch the next day and told her to call Nora once she was ready and we will pull the trigger.
That was almost three months ago. So far no phone call. No email. According to Nora, she is working, in a different job right now, night shift, 10pm to 6am, five days a week right now for $9 hour at Wal-Mart while taking care of her two kids during the day.
Why?
There is thought that owns her, despite all the resources, help, knowledge offered to her, which says, "I will fail, lose money and my credit score and my family especially my brother and sister will laugh at me." That thought owns her. Completely. Buy books, go to seminars, watch The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch as he lines up one successful entrepreneur after another five weeks a night, buy and read the entire Rich Dad series, hang out at blogs on small businesses and attend every single workshop SBA puts out - it does not matter and will not matter till the day she realizes that she has a master and unless she get rids of that, on her own, there is no small business for her, only long tiring nights refilling shelves at Wal-Mart.
I have been asked, so many times, in the last 13 years in Michigan on "When did you come to USA?" Nobody ever asked me, the much better question, "How long did you planned this? How long did you carry this insane dream of coming to America while living in a third world country, 9000 miles away from Detroit?" I had a voice back then too that said to me, that I need to get to USA, that I will get there one day, that it is my destiny, "little" obstacles such as money or education be dammned. That thought of leaving where I was born and coming to America for a better life, had complete ownership of me for a very long time.
The things you own, end up owning you. TD was talking about hard stuff here - cars, houses, couches, clothes etc. But this applies to thoughts also, especially the ones we all carry in our heads, some times by choice, some times without knowing.
It is worth sitting sometime quietly and write down the conversation that you have with yourself all the time. The false assumptions made true by years of practice, inside your head. You don't have to tell anybody but it is good to know, at least for your own self-knowledge if there is a thought, that you own, which actually owns you.
