The Power of Gratitude

Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow

This is the fifth video segment in the series I did with Lisa Rae Preston on "Branding Yourself, Becoming Popular and Developing a Fan Base." In it we discuss how to strike a balance between what you love doing and earning money.  I'm getting so many positive comments on these videos. My daughter Laurel truly is a creative genius. :)

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Building a Fan Base

In this video Lisa Rae Preston and I discuss how to create a thriving fan base that gobbles up everything you have to offer. It examines the success of romance novelist Marcia Lynn McClure and her old fashioned romance novels as an example of personality driven marketing.

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When Is The Right Time to Start a Business?

Should you start a business if you're having a hard time putting food on the table? Can you build a business while working another job? Is there a way to make instant riches online? Find out the blunt and honest truth in this 3rd video I did with Lisa Rae Preston.

How Long Does It Take to Build a Business

This the 2nd video in the series I did with Lisa Rae Preston talking about the determination and time required to build a successful business around your gifts.

Creating a Business Around Your Gifts

I recently had a conversation with creative genius, Lisa Rae Preston, about the differences between building a business around products and building a business around your personality and gifts. There are pros and cons to each, but for many, a personality-driven business is more organic, natural, and enjoyable.

My daughter turned this conversation into a series of fun little videos. Here's the first one in the series.

Learn more about monetizing your gifts here.

The Invisible Woman

I love this video by Nicole Johnson. It puts motherhood ... and womanhood ... into perspective . . . God's perspective

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It reminds me of a tribute I wrote to my mother about 10 years ago:

The Influence of a Righteous Mother

As I look back over my life and the influence that my mother had on me, I realize that the things she taught me have never left my memory. They are burned into my character and will stay there forever. A righteous mother's influence for good spans the generations and touches the lives of so many more than her own children. Her influence radiates in the lives of her children, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and out to all they come in contact.

There are five attributes my mother possesses that are worth modeling. Unfortunately, the apple has fallen far from the tree on some of these characteristics. I feel that I (and everyone else in the world) would do well to incorporate these five principles into their lives.

Work Hard

My mother was always working. I'm not talking about a career really, although she did have a good career before marrying my father and having children with him. She was cleaning, cooking, planting flowers, working in the yard, or teaching us to do the same. We had regular jobs that we had to do. She taught us that being part of a family meant everyone chipped in -- not just the mother slaving thanklessly while no one else lifted a finger. She got in there with us and showed us how to work, taught us the proper way to vacuum, to dust, to mop, to wash dishes. She instilled an intense desire to work for what we wanted in life.

Waste Not a Minute

My mother taught us to use our time wisely. We quickly learned that you don't tell Mama that you're bored. If you did, you'd be given some household chores to enliven your day. If we fought or quarreled, we were put to work. My mother lived by the motto that an ''idle mind is the devil's workshop.'' Constructive use of time was paramount, and that principle is indelibly burned into the character of her children.

Keep Your Word

My oldest sister fondly refers to my mother as, "The burning bush." If my mother said it would happen - regardless of whether it was punishment or reward - it would be carried out. So let it be written; so let it be done. She didn't make promises she wasn't prepared to keep. If she promised you something, even if something else came up to intervene, she would still find a way to carry out her promises. In all my years of living, I can't recall that my mother ever told a single lie. Her character was and is beyond reproach.

Be Consistent

My mother was ever consistent. There were no surprises. If you disobeyed, you knew you'd reap the assigned consequences. When it comes to her devotion to God, she is ever faithful, ever true. My mother saw that we were in church ever Sunday. Only on rare occasions, in cases of definite illness, did we miss a Sunday. She taught consistency and faithfulness by example. Although one could hardly say I am consistent in raising my children, at least her consistency in her devotion to God has worked its way deep into my mind.

Serve Others

My mother has one of those sixth senses about serving other people. When I was a young mother, I'd run out of fabric softener in the morning, and who would turn up on my doorstep that afternoon, but my mother carrying a brand new bottle of fabric softener. The woman is amazing. She anticipates the needs and desires of her children with the intuition of a psychic. She lives to serve her children and others.

These five characteristics that my mother possesses in such intensity affects not only her own children, but also her grandchildren. And as her children and grandchildren go out and attempt to follow in her footsteps others are blessed and impacted for good. The example of a righteous mother avails much, spans the generations and permeates to all within the reach of those she touches.

Happy Mother's Day!

As a Man Thinketh

I spent the day recording my own version of "As a Man Thinketh" by James Allen, adding commentary throughout. It'll be part of what Monetize Your Gifts members receive when they join.  I read this book as a teenager and then rediscovered it as an adult. It's had a profound impact on my life.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from it:

"As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances."

"Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are."

"Man has but to right himself to find that the universe is right. And during the process of putting himself right, he will find that as he alters his thoughts towards things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him."

"Be not impatient in delay,
But wait as one who understands;
When spirit rises and commands,
The gods are ready to obey."

"Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns."

"You will become as small as your controlling desire, as great as your dominant aspiration."

"Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil."