About the Author: Elinor Stutz is CEO of Smooth Sale, LLC, International Author, Sales Trainer & Coach, and Motivational Speaker.

Have you ever let your mind wander to think “what if…” and you happily let your thoughts drift into a far off land? And then you woke from your trance to shake off that possibility, believing you came back to your reality?

The reality you returned to is current, it’s today, but it does not have to be tomorrow. What is your “what if…”? Can you draw up a game plan to get there, or are there obstacles in the way?

Create a chart for your daydreams. Column A will be the far away ideas. If there are obstacles in your way for achieving your “what if”, list them in Column B. In Column C, next to each obstacle, list what needs to be done to overcome that challenge. Column D might be entitled, “Help Required”.

Your chart should be kept handy to remind you of what you really want and for enlightenment that it is not all that difficult to achieve.

Now you realistically can put a plan together to achieve your distant dream with the understanding that budgeted outside help will assist in getting you there more quickly. With this realization, what else would you like to achieve or do with your life?

Thinking and working in this mode will help you enjoy life more fully and positively impact others around you. Your positive mindset will aid your business development, will bring about positive marketing messages and attract prospects to your endeavors. Positive thinking will help build relationships and close more sales. More importantly this all leads to a Smooth Sale!

At the Wasabi Ventures Entrepreneurial Bible we love stories where people take a normal activity and turn that into a business.  Add in the effort of overcoming an economic downturn and you have the story of Carlos Pero and Coloring.com.  In the words of Carlos:

My Web site is the original online coloring book, Coloring.com.  It gets a fair amount of traffic now with hardly any effort (300,000 uniques a month), so the challenge is to grow traffic and monetize it more effectively.  I have a plan for subscription revenue to surpass what is possible solely with ads.

I originally started the site in 1994 as Carlos’ Coloring Book, and branded it Coloring.com in 1996.  Have mostly sat on it while working (and learning) professionally.

Question and Answer:

Q: Have you ever started a business from scratch before?

A: Well, back in 1994 I started my corporation for the purposes of Web consulting, but never as a full-time business. I completed graduate school in December 1995, and I got a job with the Chicago Tribune in January 1996.  Also, I wouldn’t say I’m starting this “from scratch” either. Running the site over the past decade has allowed it to build a base traffic level of 10,000 unique visitors a day.  There are a lot of start-up companies that would love to “begin” with that.

Q: When you first loss your professional job, was creating a new business the first thing you thought to do?

A: Certainly concentrating on turning Coloring.com into a real business was one of my first thoughts, but finding another job was equally on my mind. I was laid off only once before, back in 2000, so being unemployed has not been a major concern.  I’ve been able to craft my career making positive moves from opportunity to opportunity as I desired. When the Internet bubble burst in 2000, it was only the Internet economy that was affected. Now it’s the entire country, so this one feels a lot more “real” and foreboding.

Q: What is the largest challenge you have had as you started a new business?

A: For sure it’s been getting things done by myself; I’m used to collaborating with others. Even when I started my company originally back in 1994, it was with a fellow graduate school student. I’m also very much an idea person, so switching gears from thinking to doing is a daily challenge. They say to get a co-founder, which is again not entirely straightforward since I have an established asset. But I’m working on getting the help of a key developer who I’d be happy to give some equity to, so that he also has a vested interest in the success of the product, and I can delegate to him with confidence.

Q: What is the largest lifestyle change have you had to do undergo as you moved to being an entrepreneur?

A: Well, first there was the lifestyle change of being unemployed; you immediately go into cash-saving mode. Making meals at home, no more discretionary spending on wine or other nice-to-haves, etc. But also the lifestyle change I’m still working on is transforming from a consumer into a producer. As a corporate employee, I was a very good consumer of information and knowledge from others, for the good of the company. But now I’ve found that I need to limit how much information and online social interaction I try to consume before first spending time producing my own things. In other words, I don’t have a blog right now, and if I keep discovering and reading others’ blogs, I’ll never get around to finally establishing my own with what I have to say. And that applies to spending time producing a better Coloring.com site too.

Q: Do you ever see yourself going back to the corporate world?

A: I have some money saved up, so I’m not in a hurry to get another job, but if the right career opportunity comes along, of course it would make sense to stop burning my own cash reserve and start earning a salary again. That right career opportunity is probably with a smaller group of people, rather than a large company, though. I’ve spent a fair amount of my career working for large-ish corporations and think my skills and knowledge right now would be better utilized in a smaller environment.

Q: When will you consider yourself a success as a start-up?

A: My definition of start-up success is when I can build a comfortable lifestyle income for my family without sacrificing quality time. My son is 8 years old, and every day I wish to be home when he comes home from school. And I hope my plan for success includes providing rewarding employment for a few other people, too.
Creating jobs is one of the most admirable traits of an entrepreneur.

Q: What is your revenue plan for coloring.com?

A: Coloring.com is free, and right now monthly serving expenses are easily covered by an advertising network, but not enough to pay me a salary yet based on traffic levels today. I believe online advertising has a ceiling, with an abundance of inventory and declining ad rates, so now is the time to cultivate a community around Coloring.com and find the visitors willing to pay for additional value. My plans include a recurring subscription model, where a family can join the site for $9 for 6 months of premium access for all of their children. The fundamental benefit will be being able to surf the site without ads, but I will also develop premium subscriber-only features.  $9 for 6 months undercuts all of the competition, and I believe is a very fair price to charge a family, even in this economy.

Last week, we began our examination of where people find inspiration.  Our New Concept Factory project, Idea Offer, is all about creating a clearing house for ideas.  This week’s edition will cover inspiration that comes from events the world views as a setback.   These truly are stories of people “taking lemons and making lemonade“:

Angela Watson, Founder, Your Personal Poster

I founded Your Personal Posters, based in Long Beach, California. A graphic designer by trade, I created a line of posters that honor all the special people in your life by placing them on a poster surrounded by other famous people.

I made the first one for my friend, Lori Barnes.  Three years ago, Lori had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Lori lived several hundred miles away, and although I wanted to help my friend, I was frustrated by the distance that separated us.

Stuck in a cubicle in corporate hell, I sat down at my computer one afternoon, and started researching other famous breast cancer survivors and with some divine inspiration, created the very first SurvivorPoster™.  I wanted to give Lori some sense that a great many others had survived breast cancer and chemotherapy and that she would, too.

Well, that one poster turned into several others, made for friends and family. The feedback I received was just astonishing, my families and friends loved the aspect that it was so personal and unique. I decided a year later to set up SurvivorPosters™ and escaped cubicle hell forever. Of course, being laid off three times in eight years may have colored that decision somewhat as well.

I have been hard at work over the past three years and have introduced several new poster lines, including MomPosters™, DadPosters™, YouGoGirlPosters™, PridePosters™, ProfessionalPosters™, MilitaryPosters™, PoliticalPosters™, AlumniPosters™ and GoNativePosters™. They are now all housed under YourPersonalPoster™.

YourPersonalPoster.com™ gives you the freedom to express your thoughts within our unique and colorful posters. You choose the style, the size, and your own words to create a quality, lasting personalized gift of love that will capture a sentiment forever.

And if you’re wondering about Lori, she made it through chemo and radiation, and is doing just fine now.  In fact, to celebrate both her health and YourPersonalPosters.com, I recently gave her a black pearl necklace to commemorate her being “the grain of sand in my oyster,” that is, the inspiration for turning my dream into reality.

Angela Shipp, Founder, Bluehealer Diary

Angela Shipp here, author of the new bluehealer diary, a personal day planner and health journal. I wanted to touch base with you about my book, which I believe could be an excellent story about the inspiration for ideas for your blog.

Publishing has always inspired me. I was ecstatic when a poem I wrote was published in my school’s literary arts book. I wrote short stories I was sure would become novels. I designed family newspapers from craft paper and colored pencils.

So, it was no surprise when I began a career in corporate communications after college. I was 22 and was newly diagnosed with a chronic illness. I had a drive to help others who were in my situation but lacked the tools to make anything happen.

I became active in the community and mentoring, taking on a closet-full of hats. I was passionate about helping others and began saying “yes” to every opportunity to get involved. I was recognized for my accomplishments with awards, but I was overextended. Although I kept a calendar to prioritize my professional duties, my social calendar was even stressing me out and making my condition relapse!

Ten years had passed since my diagnosis, and I still aspired to help those struggling with the same illness. And now I had the skills to make it happen. Throughout countless tests, medications and treatments I had developed a calendar to track symptoms, medication and more. Because my health journaling helped my specialist guide my care, it led me to publish my calendar and share the method with others facing chronic illness. My dream is to help others realize that despite living with a chronic illness they can conquer any challenge and live life to the fullest.

Kelly Harmsen, Bjort & Company, Inc., Maker Of “The Eye Patch Kids” DVD

I have a very unique company that I started after my son was diagnosed with a vision problem called Amblyopia (Lazy Eye) and had to wear an eye patch to prevent blindness.  He was diagnosed at 2 years old, and it was impossible to get him to understand why he had to wear this eye patch. Then I came up with the idea to make a children’s DVD with puppets singing and dancing while wearing eye patches so my son would want to copy what they are doing.  It worked so well for him that I made this DVD available to the millions of other kids dealing with this issue.  Amblyopia is the most treatable form of blindness in the world, and all it takes is an eye patch, but it’s getting the child to wear it that is hard.  The DVD has been reviewed by CNN News, The American Academy of Ophthalmology’s magazine EyeNet, Insight Magazine, by the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the UK, The Optometrists Network, Tampa Bay News, Prevent Blinenss America and many others.

At Wasabi Ventures, we have a passion for alternative energy.  So when we got the chance to meet an entrepreneur who was tackling this space, we jumped at doing a profile.  Today we are going to profile Nick Blitterswyk and Urban Green Energy:

Q  Your business in three sentences:
A: Urban Green Energy is an international manufacturer of vertical axis wind turbines and associated products.  Our focus is on supplying stylish products that are both high quality and high performance.  Our products are available worldwide, either direct from one of our global offices or through one of our distributors.

Q: What made me leave the financial industry:
A: Some people might dream to work in baseball, but there were a couple years where I knew that clean energy was the industry I wanted to work in.  As I explored opportunities I noticed a need for innovation in the small wind sector and jumped at the opportunity.

Q: What is the biggest challenge for your business at this stage:
A: We have come a long way since starting the company to a place where we have what we believe is the industry’s leading wind turbine.  Although development used to be our main challenge, it is now a matter of increasing supply.  We have put a lot of focus into training our workers and investing in technology and have more than tripled our headcount since the beginning of the year (now approximately 75).  We have two more factory buildings coming on line August 1st (doubling the square feet of our factory) that will also help us in this effort.

Q: When will you consider your business a success?
A: My two co-founders and I entered this field because we wanted to contribute toward making the world a better place.  That is my focus and will be achieved by building a successful company that supplies innovative and high quality products to customers around the world.

Q: What is the one thing that you want people to understand about alternative energy?
A: What I want people to understand is the wide range of technologies that are out there.  I am sure a lot of people have not heard of vertical axis wind turbines before, but this is just one technology that has made significant advances in recent years.  It isn’t going to be one technology that puts humanity back on solid ground, it will be a combination of all of them: wind, solar, geothermal, and others.