Really Big Goals

Would you give One Million Dollars to your favorite charity or would you keep $100,000 for yourself?

Really Big Goals wants to know — we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is!  Enter over the next 6 months to win the chance to choose between having $1 Million Dollars given to a charity of your choice or getting $100,000 cash for yourself.  Which will you choose?

How to Enter :

There are three ways to enter over the next six months:

1. Comment on Really Big Goal posts.  The top 100 commentators as of November 31st will get an entry.  You’ll also be featured on our homepage with a link to your website.
2. Link to Really Big Goal posts.  Every linkback link made on posts between May 23rd and November 31st will get one entry per link.
3. Subscribe to the Newsletter.  All newsletters subscribers who confirm their email addresses are automatically entered.

Bonus Entry:  Subscribe to the RSS Feed for Really Big Goals.  Every RSS feed subscriber can get an additional entry by following the directions at the bottom of every RSS Feed Post.  One entry per feed subscription please.

The Prizes:

The winner will be drawn using a random number generator on December 1, 2008 and announced on Really Big Goals on December 15th.  Winners will be contacted by whatever means we have (email or via a website).  Prize must be claimed within 10 days of being announced or another winner will be drawn.  The winner will be given the choice between the following:

1. The sum of the Susan Reed Charitable Fund, up to $1 Million Dollars, as of April 15, 2009.  This amount will be given by the fund in the name of the winner to the charity of their choice.  All charities must meet the IRS charity designations and guidelines and must be non-discriminatory in nature.  Susan reserves the right to veto a charity choice.
2. 10% of Susan’s personal earnings from efforts described in this blog, up to $100,000, as determined by her net worth as of April 15, 2009.  Winner is responsible for all taxes associated with this winning.

All participants agree to allow their likenesses, names and choice of winning to be used by Really Big Goals.com should they be declared winner.  Prizes will be awarded in a lump-sum payment after April 15th, 2009.

Good Luck Everyone!

It’s time for me to take a REALLY BiG STEP towards my goals, but I find myself almost completely unable to get it done. Basically I need to get some big-time publicity in order to get things rolling, but I’m scared to death to get said publicity. Isn’t that crazy? It’s also very normal.

Right now this blog has about 0 readership. My email list is relatively small (less than 100). I’ve made some steps towards learning about real estate, but not found my first deals yet. If I gave up tomorrow and faded into the background, I’d only be out ~$200 in set-up and Adwords costs. It’d be easy to quit.

This is the point where I’ve always failed before. When I’ve had great business ideas and I’ve tried to start in the past, it’s right at this point that I get scared and stop. It’s that old inertia thing. Like I’m on the edge, ready to dive in, but I’m suddenly scared of getting wet.

All these thoughts start coming at me. What if people laugh? What if I fail? What if…

*Snap*

This time is different. I’m not going to live in fear of what might be. This time I’m jumping in head first and trusting my instincts. I know how to swim, once I’m there I’ll do just fine.

Robert Allen recommends wearing a thick rubber band on your writs. Every time you have a discouraging thought, a “Yeabut” or a “Whatif” you snap the rubber band. It’s a cognitive behavioral therapy technique to re-train your thought patterns. I’ve been wearing one for almost a week now and it’s working. It’s hard being aware of my thoughts so much, but I can already feel it making me more confident in moving forward.  I’ve also started ’snapping’ when I find myself procrastinating or wallowing in negative thoughts.  The brief pain is just enough to interrupt my unhealthy pattern.

So we start!  Today is the launch of the media campaign.  I’m scared to DEATH! but I’m going to do it.  Someone famous said that only the bold become millionaires.  So here’s to being bold.  And only ONE DAY behind schedule!  Yay!

I went for my first training run on Monday night and then again yesterday.  DUDE!!! Running again sucks.  Perhaps if I’d done ANYTHING except eat my weight in Mocha Frappuchinos since last season’s run it wouldn’t be so bad.  But here’s my great accomplishment for the past 6 months - I’ve managed to GAIN 30 lbs.

Yes, there were holidays.  Then there was a change of job and all the stress that comes with that.  Then there were another couple of holidays and a move across the country.  Then (again!) there was change of job stress.  Then Grandma died and, of course, that requires even more eating than normal.  Then we moved, again.  And then i think there were another couple of holidays thrown in there.  But seriously.  That’s an average of gaining 5 POUNDS a month!  What the f*** was I thinking?!!

So, in addition to all the lovely fun that starting to run again after a season of sitting on your butt is anyway, I’m carrying around the equvilant of one of those BIG sacks of dog food on all my runs.  No wonder my back hurts!

Long and short.  I joined Weight Watchers.  It’s simply the only way to go for me since I obviously have no clue how much stuff I’m putting into my mouth on any given day.  And yes, for all those of you out there who like to worry, I’m being extra cautious of my knees.  I’m interspersing treadmill runs with street runs to give my body a break while I loose the weight.  I’m also going to start swimming daily to strengthen my body without the impact on my joints.

But seriously.  Right now running really sucks, not as much as chemo, but DUDE!

It’s amazing how things have a way of getting themselves worked out, sometimes without any participation on my behalf.  Sometimes the people who change our lives the most are people we never get to meet.  This is my story of Laiken.

The thing that sealed the deal for me raising money for and running with Team in Training this fall was a brief mention on the radio about a month ago.  [Don’t tease me, I listen to Country! I just love songs that tell stories that I can sing to.]  Anyway, my favorite So.Cal. radio station is KFRG (K-Frog) 95.1FM.  I’ve listened to it since I was about 8 years old and learned what a radio was.  Ever since before we moved to Chicago for a couple of years the DJs at KFRG have been keeping listeners up to date on a local girl’s battle with cancer.  I am horrible about paying attention to names when they’re mentioned on the radio and I never knew what hers was.  About a month ago, I was driving to San Dimas on the 10 freeway and listening in my car.  They interrupted the afternoon broadcast  to inform listeners that at the age of 12, she had passed away from Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia.

“Wow” I thought, “I ran that marathon last fall, I should run another one in her honor and raise a bunch of money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society.”

But again I missed her name.  And one day passed into another and I didn’t hear anything more about her on the radio.   I did, however, register for Team in Training fall season.

On my way to the Kick Off party this Saturday, I was listening to KFRG again and thinking about how I got into doing another marathon.  I thought to myself “I should call the station sometime and get that little girl’s name and run in her honor.”  But things were moving ahead without me.

When we got to our break-out team meeting for the Inland Empire team we me our honored teammate and our honored angel’s mother.  When the Stacey, the honored angel’s mother stood up to tell her story about her daughter’s recent passing due to Leukemia she began by saying this:  “There are a handfull of people who know exactly where they were on April 21st 2008 at 4:36 in the afternoon.”

Immediately I knew.   I run in honor of Laiken.  Help me raise $1 Million to find a cure for Leukemia by donating here.

Read Laiken’s and her mother’s story here.

So I’m changing my approach a bit. Recently I’ve been reading books by Robbert G. Allen and his various co-authors. Why do I like him? Because his ideas of how to become an Enlightened Millionaire have helped me get past my major block of thinking that it’s a bad thing to be rich. I’ve decided to change my approach to diverse streams of income to more align with Robert’s suggestions about putting all you hooks in the watter when you’re working on a deadline.

Originally I had planned to make money from internet streams of income first and then to use that income to finance my start into Real Estate investing. Karen Bells’ book “Nothing Down for Women”, which is co-authored with Robert G. Allen, has changed my mind. Her book, for the first time, showed me how I can do true Nothing Down deals. Mind you, this isn’t the first time I’ve read about the process - I’ve basically devoured the entire section at the bookstore- but those books have only succeeded in lightening my pocket book and frustrating me because they wouldn’t walk me through the actual process (they wanted me to sign up for a course for that!). Karen’s book, as well as Robert’s books, actually walk you through the entire process for a ‘nothing down’ deal. So, this month, Karen’s book is going to be my Guru.

The plan is changing, like I said. Instead of adding one thing after another, I’m approaching it as an “all at once” sort of idea. Which suits my mildly ADD style well. I’ve already started developing a mailing list for creating internet income through online products, now I’m going to add in Real Estate and paper investments on top of that.

As I work my way through this year, each month I will take one guru and follow all of the action steps outlined in one of their books EXACTLY. The thinking here is this - I don’t have the money to pay someone to mentor me, so I’ll follow the books exactly and see what happens. This will apply to not only financial things but also to my athletic pursuits and fund raising.

At heart I’m a bit of a scientist, so I’m approaching this as an experiment. I expect that it will be very interesting to see how each of the different guru’s steps works when put into action. My hypothosis: Each guru’s steps will work in some ways, but my results will be dependent on my own ability to implement them.

One month and 19 days into this journey and I’m already behind. I’ve not been doing the blogging or social networking I intended. I’ve not developed my list as much as I wanted to. I’ve not yet found a real estate deal to start on. So I’m behind.

Isn’t that the way though? Things are always easier said than don. Personally, I blame Newton. Remember him? I think that he was probably a procrastinator like me if he was able to come up with his laws of inertia. Remember the one that says “An object a rest will stay at rest unless a force acts upon it?” I still can hear my crazy 12th grad physics professor doing a white-boy style sing-song rap to drum this law into our heads. Crazy he might have been, but it works. I still remember it (actually, all of them) even if I don’t remember their exact numbers, order or names. Ah well…

Franky, it’s hard (sometimes seemingly impossible) to get going on achieving our goals. Take as my shining example this blog. Now here’s the thing. I KNOW how to grow a blog community, how to write and how to develop readership. I’ve even done it for one of my crazy past J.O.B.s (just over broke). But the thing is that I’ve not touched this blog since last month’s ‘launch’ - save for a few pre-written posts that I put up. Nothing at all like the every day thing I imagined it would be a month ago.

If we’re blaming Newton for my inertia that is keeping me stuck in the same place, I also have to recognize him for the inertia that will keep me going. You see, the ‘lazy’ law of inertia is met equally by a law of motion that states “an object in motion will stay in motion unless a force acts upon it.” Once you get going, it’s easier to keep going. That’s why people always say that the first million is the hardest. Once you’ve gotten going, it’s much, much, much easier to keep moving.

For me, the trick to achieving a goal is the getting started. It’s always best for me to just rip off the bandage and jump in head first. I thrive on creating solutions, so once I’m going I’ll figure out how to keep it going. This is where regular blogging here will be my biggest asset. Now that I’ve gotten moving again I’m on the downward slope.

Have you ever looked into making money online? There are literally THOUSANDS of ways to do it! You can make money with your blog. You can create an email marketing list. You can make money from adds on a static website. You can promote affiliate products. You can create electronic products for others to sell. You can make money from a monetized facebook application. You can license your photos for other people to use. You can create MySpace layouts or Wordpress Themes and sell them to the highest bidder. You can sell your soul on Ebay. You can even do work for other people and become self-employed. Ways to make money online seem to be endless. And these are the LEGITIMATE ways! There are just as many scams out there, if not more.

So I decided that I needed to decide right from the get-go what methods I am going to use to make one million dollars this year. My plan is that most, if not all, of this income will be from internet-based sources. Why internet-based? Because I don’t want the hassels and investment of a traditional business start-up. I’ve tried them, and frankly they get discouraging before you even get to the starting line. With an internet-based income stream, I can work from anywhere and write off my home office while I avoid the overhead costs of a bricks-and-mortar business.
Much of this research I’ve done ahead of time, before my year began on April 1st, so that I’d have a clear idea of what kind of projections I could come up with for making money this way. I wrote business plans and ran numbers. Then, frankly, I decided based on what would require the littlest physical effort on my part. What can I say, I’m lazy.

This great image comes from DS Brennan photography, one of my favorite sites to look at cool new images. Please check them out!

In order to be motivated for change, one must usually be uncomfortable with the current situation in their lives. Enter my biggest barrier to success at making money online: my hourly job. Here’s the problem- I love it. I work for a wonderful start up, with great people and an energetic environment. And I telecommute, which means that my schedule is very flexible and I don’t have to spend any excess time in the car or on the roads. We’re able to live wherever we need to and I don’t have to worry about changing my job.

I find myself wanting to spend more time than necessary doing work for them, wanting to figure out ways to follow a ‘traditional’ corporate structure and move up in the ranks. This could become positively deadly to my REALLY BIG GOALS. If I allow myself to remain in this frame of mind, I will never be motivated to do otherwise.

So my dilemma becomes, how do I continue to be good at and successful at my day job without letting it become a barrier to my success?

So with three goals looming in front of me, I needed to develop a timeline and general ‘plan of attack’ for achieving all of these goals. That way I don’t get overwhelmed by all the things that need to get done and I can press forward at a regular rate.

The general timeline roll-out is as follows:

April: set up newsletter campaign, get subscribers, begin making money online. Sign up for gym membership & TNT info event. Find Ironman triathlon that will take place at the right time of year (Jan/Feb of next year).

May: Register for TNT and start exercising regularly. Get a personal trainer w/ extra money earned from online income. Continue building online list, add 2 additional income sources to online empire. Finish coding for Facebook TNT application.

June: Major push for blog readership and list subscribers. Launch TNT application. Get ‘body sponsors’ for training events. Run a 5k training run. Develop a major joint venture partnership for list building.

July: Create and broadcast press releases and schedule media interviews. Plan August’s large fundraising event (still to be determined). Create enough income to get my net worth to $0.00 (even steven baby! That’d be $60,000 income for the month). Begin investing seriously in Nothing-down real estate.

August: Hold large fundraising event for TNT. Begin outsourcing as much work as possible to competent contractors while still maintaining income level. Do my first sprint triathlon. Break $100,000 income for the month.

September: Begin strategic investing in non-internet business related things. Finish raising $1M for TNT. Run 20miles in prep for Marathon and get biking up to 60 miles.

October: Complete Nike Women’s Marathon with TNT. Hold San Francisco conference. Begin taper for Century Ride.

November: Complete a Century Bike Ride. Scale back my work through good automation and outsourcing. Break $300,000 income for the month, reach half way point for total income goal. Launch non-electronic products.

December: Get an accountant, if I’ve not already done this. Incorporate (if not already done). Complete an Olympic length triathlon.

January: Begin taper for Ironman. Break the $750,000 income for the year level. Launch the 2009 goals.

February: Compete in Ironman at end of the month. Cross the $1 Million income level since last April.

March: Clean-up and ‘elbow room’ time in case anything runs over.

As you can see, I have still to flesh out the post October time. This is because I’ve still not made a final decision on the Ironman I’m going to be competing in. Once I’ve gotten this decided I think that a lot of other details will begin to fall into place. As the months pass, my plan is to update this blog with a revised schedule each month.

by smcgee

Part of the reason I chose to raise one million dollars for charity is that I want to do something significant for others as I attempt two goals that are unusually self-centered in nature. Also, there is something about volunteering and working with a charity that keeps you grounded and thinking beyond yourself in a way that I think is not only healthy but necessary. Especially if, like me, you have a narcissistic website like this!

I also feel a huge debit of gratitude to Team in Training for the way in which participating in their program opened my eyes and my mind to the ability to achieve great things. I’ve always know that there was more to my life than what I was currently doing, but it wasn’t until I finished the Nike Women’s Marathon last year that I fully understood that I could accomplish anything that I set my mind to. The inspiration of their program is a great reason for ANYONE to do an endurance event

This fall I will be running the Nike Women’s Marathon again, and I hope to have lots of my readers there to cheer and run with me! If you’re interested in raising money and doing this with me, contact me. We’ll be arranging additional ‘fun’ things for the weekend for TNT members who are also RBG members to participate in, I’d love the chance to get to know all of you personally!