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

“When you wish upon a star” may have come from a Disney song, but it’s very applicable to today’s news and translates well to both entrepreneurs and job seekers. It calls into question your power of belief and today’s story is very inspiring.

The Lucille Packard “Make a Wish Foundation” enables children with life threatening disease to make their fondest wish come true. Today we learned of a 7 year-old girl, Kassaundra, who fought death twice and now lives with a pacemaker in her chest. Kassaundra embraces the spirit of life. Ignoring her less-than-perfect health, she plays softball and swims. But her passion is singing and dancing — she wants to be a movie star!

The Foundation granted Kassaundra’s request. She was treated to a fancy dress of her choice and a new hair-do. A chauffeur picked her up in a limousine. The Police escorted the limo while photographers and crowds followed her to the theater where she was to perform. Kassaundra was then led onto stage and performed to cheering fans — truly her wish come true!

I found three pertinent messages in this story for everything you undertake in life:
1. Find your passion and keep striving to achieve your dream.
2. Illness (and any other obstacle) is only a detour — find the strength to overcome.
3. Believe you will succeed. Work for it.

The business side of this: look how much attention you are able to attract when you hit the right stride. Your mindset, along with your plan of action (plus implementation of course), become your marketing-communication strategies which ultimately attract more sales. Prospects, clients, sales, and business development on auto pilot will be yours.

Begin wishing upon a star to find your Smooth Sale!

Most smart entrepreneurs are customer focused. They want to make the customer happy and get more of them. But are there times when you shouldn’t listen to customers?

This question was the topic at one of our portfolio companies, PBwiki , last week. One of the senior developers had put together a list of articles that he had read about development philosophies. The one article that caused the most interaction by the team was an excerpt from The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper. Most people came down on the side that you have to listen to customers to make sure you are building things that the marketplace wants. But I actually took a different twist when I sent this email:

The key message here is that you have to know who your target is and listen to those customers. Don’t think that every customer fits your target audience.