I came across this article at Entrepreneur.com and I thought it was very honest and helpful! After all I run into people all the time that aspire to be their own BOSS.  These questiosn really get you to focus on if you have or are willing to develop what it takes.  Question #2 in particular I think is the most difficult...I can be VERY disciplined and at times I can be VERY slack!!! LOL. Some may say I work hard and play hard.  However, when you are doing what you love, even working hard can be like play.  Enjoy the article!

The only difference between people who want to be entrepreneurs and the ones who actually are is the work and the risk of getting started. If you feel like you want to be an entrepreneur but aren’t certain if you’re ready yet, here are five questions to help you determine your capabilities.

1. How comfortable are you with being uncomfortable? Entrepreneurship will mean a lot of uncertainty. If you’re the kind of person who needs a lot of control and a strictly scheduled life, you may not be able to handle the ambiguity that surrounds entrepreneurism. That being said, don’t think just because uncertainty makes you nervous you can’t be an entrepreneur. If you find you have a need for a controlled schedule, that trait could actually work in your favor.

Entrepreneurship requires long hours, hard work and dedication when you start out. Being able to manage your schedule and control your environment could help you with the organization of your business. However, you might want to plan before you leap in. A few great ways to do this are to stockpile savings, already have a business plan you’re prepared to work and seek out a community of support to talk you through the tough times.

Related: Risk is the Admission Fee of Entrepreneurship

2. Are you disciplined? You are totally responsible for yourself. Right now, wherever you’re at, whatever you’re doing -- it’s your choices that got you here. How do those statements feel to you? If you feel yourself bristling and ready to argue, then you might not be in the right mindset for entrepreneurship yet. When you start, you must take full accountability for everything -- there’s no back-up plan on why you got passed over for a promotion or why you didn’t get your report done on time. Clients won’t want excuses and they’ll drop you.

Even when it’s their fault you have to be prepared to deal with the possibility that you’ll have to handle it. You need discipline to survive and stay ahead of your work, ahead of your bills and to grow your business. If you struggle with accountability and discipline, don’t rule out entrepreneurship forever. Take stock of ways your current situation could be improved by better decisions and try holding yourself accountable.

3. How’s your health? Taking care of your body is important for everyone, but can have particularly far-reaching implications for the entrepreneur. There are no sick days in entrepreneurship when you’re getting started. There’s a chance there won’t be for years. That’s going to mean you have to be productive, even when you don’t feel good, or risk missing business opportunities. You have to keep yourself in good health with diet and exercise that keeps your body strong and your mind keen.

Related: When Passion Is a Pitfall and Seeking Bliss Is Bogus

If you aren’t a healthy person, you may want to figure out a plan for improving your lifestyle before you transition into entrepreneurship. Also important, think of how you’ll cover health insurance and medical needs when you start your journey. Get a plan for your health and work it.

4. Do you love what you do and are you good at it? There are going to be long hours in entrepreneurship. If you enjoy what you’re doing and are passionate about your project, that intense amount of work is enjoyable. Don’t fool yourself into thinking money alone will be enough to motivate you.

Make sure you’re passionate about what you’re intending to pursue as an entrepreneur and that you have the skill set to get to work. If you don’t, consider how you can improve your skills before making the leap and how you might get involved in something you’re passionate about doing.

5. Do you play well with others? You might think entrepreneurship is a solo activity, but the truth is that having great relationships is crucial to long-term success. It's not only for the value that comes from referrals and the camaraderie of close relationships, but also for the support you will need. If you’re starting out as an entrepreneur, you’re going to have periods where you need to rely on the strength, wisdom and friendship of others.

Look for opportunities to build your network: mentors, mastermind groups and other programs will help you find the right people. Just be sure that you invest in them, too. Relationships are based on give and take. Build strong relationships and open yourself up to the great support and learning that comes from others.

This weekend I attended Vicki Irvin's (Vickiirivin.com) 3 day Extreme Women Entrepreneur Event in Virginia. One of the guest speakers was the dynamic PR Expert of QuestMediaTraining.com, Zakiya Larry. She has booked clients on Oprah and CNN just to name a few.   Aside from being incredibly inspirational, informative and brilliant,  Zakiya gave us keys on dealing with the media, including how to pitch yourself or your message regardless of the questions asked, and do it in less than 90 seconds!

I couldn't help but think of her workshop when I stumbled across this article by MarcGuberti.com about Kevin O'Leary, Mr Wonderful, from Shark Tank.  In it, he highlights the common thread among entrepreneurs who seal the deal on the TV show.  They are:

1. People who got the deal were able to articulate their opportunity in 90 seconds or less.
2. People who got the deal were able to convince the sharks that they could execute.
3. People who got the deal knew their numbers.

Indeed Zakiya Larry was preparing us for the Sharks! Loved it!

I just came back from the 3 day Extreme Women Entrepreneurs Event (EWEevent.com) with Vicki Irvin. Not only was I on the panel on beauty and success (more abt that later), I got to learn a boat load of stuff to help navigate my own Entrepreneur adventure. Stedman Graham was one of the guest speakers and blew us away! I'll be posting pics, thoughts and lessons I learned over the next few days & weeks. This morning however, I came across this article on Entrepreneur.com and I couldn't help but repost. After all the conference touched upon these very same things and more...

Regardless of your definition of success, there are, oddly enough, a great number of common characteristics that are shared by successful businesspeople. You can place a check beside each characteristic that you feel that you possess. This way, you can see how you stack up. Even if you don't have all of these characteristics, don't fret. Most can be learned with practice and by developing a winning attitude, especially if you set goals and apply yourself, through strategic planning, to reach those goals in incremental and measurable stages.

The Home Business Musts Like any activity you pursue, there are certain musts that are required to be successful in a chosen activity. To legally operate a vehicle on public roadways, one must have a driver's license; to excel in sports, one must train and practice; to retire comfortably, one must become an informed investor and actively invest for retirement. If your goal is success in business, then the formula is no different. There are certain musts that have to be fully developed, implemented and managed for your business to succeed. There are many business musts, but this article contains I believe to be some of the more important musts that are required to start, operate and grow a profitable home business.

1. Do what you enjoy. What you get out of your business in the form of personal satisfaction, financial gain, stability and enjoyment will be the sum of what you put into your business. So if you don't enjoy what you're doing, in all likelihood it's safe to assume that will be reflected in the success of your business--or subsequent lack of success. In fact, if you don't enjoy what you're doing, chances are you won't succeed.

2. Take what you do seriously. You cannot expect to be effective and successful in business unless you truly believe in your business and in the goods and services that you sell. Far too many home business owners fail to take their own businesses seriously enough, getting easily sidetracked and not staying motivated and keeping their noses to the grindstone. They also fall prey to naysayers who don't take them seriously because they don't work from an office building, office park, storefront, or factory. Little do these skeptics, who rain on the home business owner's parade, know is that the number of people working from home, and making very good annual incomes, has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years.

3. Plan everything. Planning every aspect of your home business is not only a must, but also builds habits that every home business owner should develop, implement, and maintain. The act of business planning is so important because it requires you to analyze each business situation, research and compile data, and make conclusions based mainly on the facts as revealed through the research. Business planning also serves a second function, which is having your goals and how you will achieve them, on paper. You can use the plan that you create both as map to take you from point A to Z and as a yardstick to measure the success of each individual plan or segment within the plan.

4. Manage money wisely. The lifeblood of any business enterprise is cash flow. You need it to buy inventory, pay for services, promote and market your business, repair and replace tools and equipment, and pay yourself so that you can continue to work. Therefore, all home business owners must become wise money managers to ensure that the cash keeps flowing and the bills get paid. There are two aspects to wise money management.

1. The money you receive from clients in exchange for your goods and services you provide (income)
2. The money you spend on inventory, supplies, wages and other items required to keep your business operating. (expenses)

5. Ask for the sale. A home business entrepreneur must always remember that marketing, advertising, or promotional activities are completely worthless, regardless of how clever, expensive, or perfectly targeted they are, unless one simple thing is accomplished--ask for the sale. This is not to say that being a great salesperson, advertising copywriting whiz or a public relations specialist isn't a tremendous asset to your business. However, all of these skills will be for naught if you do not actively ask people to buy what you are selling.

6. Remember it's all about the customer. Your home business is not about the products or services that you sell. Your home business is not about the prices that you charge for your goods and services. Your home business is not about your competition and how to beat them. Your business is all about your customers, or clients, period. After all, your customers are the people that will ultimately decide if your business goes boom or bust. Everything you do in business must be customer focused, including your policies, warranties, payment options, operating hours, presentations, advertising and promotional campaigns and website. In addition, you must know who your customers are inside out and upside down.

Related: Keeping Your Customers Satisfied -- It's All in the Details

7. Become a shameless self-promoter (without becoming obnoxious). One of the greatest myths about personal or business success is that eventually your business, personal abilities, products or services will get discovered and be embraced by the masses that will beat a path to your door to buy what you are selling. But how can this happen if no one knows who you are, what you sell and why they should be buying?

Self-promotion is one of the most beneficial, yet most underutilized, marketing tools that the majority of home business owners have at their immediate disposal.

8. Project a positive business image. You have but a passing moment to make a positive and memorable impression on people with whom you intend to do business. Home business owners must go out of their way and make a conscious effort to always project the most professional business image possible. The majority of home business owners do not have the advantage of elaborate offices or elegant storefronts and showrooms to wow prospects and impress customers. Instead, they must rely on imagination, creativity and attention to the smallest detail when creating and maintaining a professional image for their home business.

9. Get to know your customers. One of the biggest features and often the most significant competitive edge the home based entrepreneur has over the larger competitors is the he can offer personalized attention. Call it high-tech backlash if you will, but customers are sick and tired of hearing that their information is somewhere in the computer and must be retrieved, or told to push a dozen digits to finally get to the right department only to end up with voice mail--from which they never receive a return phone call.

The home business owner can actually answer phone calls, get to know customers, provide personal attention and win over repeat business by doing so. It's a researched fact that most business (80 percent) will come from repeat customers rather than new customers. Therefore, along with trying to draw newcomers, the more you can do to woo your regular customers, the better off you will be in the long run and personalized attention is very much appreciated and remembered in the modern high tech world.

Related: Why You Should Never Prejudge a Sales Prospect

10. Level the playing field with technology. You should avoid getting overly caught up in the high-tech world, but you should also know how to take advantage of using it. One of the most amazing aspects of the internet is that a one or two person business operating from a basement can have a superior website to a $50 million company, and nobody knows the difference. Make sure you're keeping up with the high-tech world as it suits your needs.. The best technology is that which helps you, not that which impresses your neighbors.

11. Build a top-notch business team. No one person can build a successful business alone. It's a task that requires a team that is as committed as you to the business and its success. Your business team may include family members, friends, suppliers, business alliances, employees, sub-contractors, industry and business associations, local government and the community. Of course the most important team members will be your customers or clients. Any or all may have a say in how your business will function and a stake in your business future.

Related: Why Teamwork Should Be Your No. 1 Sales Tool

12. Become known as an expert. When you have a problem that needs to be solved, do you seek just anyone's advice or do you seek an expert in the field to help solve your particular problem? Obviously, you want the most accurate information and assistance that you can get. You naturally seek an expert to help solve your problem. You call a plumber when the hot water tank leaks, a real estate agent when it's time to sell your home or a dentist when you have a toothache. Therefore, it only stands to reason that the more you become known for your expertise in your business, the more people will seek you out to tap into your expertise, creating more selling and referral opportunities. In effect, becoming known as an expert is another style of prospecting for new business, just in reverse. Instead of finding new and qualified people to sell to, these people seek you out for your expertise.

13. Create a competitive advantage. A home business must have a clearly defined unique selling proposition. This is nothing more than a fancy way of asking the vital question, "Why will people choose to do business with you or purchase your product or service instead of doing business with a competitor and buying his product or service?" In other words, what one aspect or combination of aspects is going to separate your business from your competition? Will it be better service, a longer warranty, better selection, longer business hours, more flexible payment options, lowest price, personalized service, better customer service, better return and exchange policies or a combination of several of these?

14. Invest in yourself. Top entrepreneurs buy and read business and marketing books, magazines, reports, journals, newsletters, websites and industry publications, knowing that these resources will improve their understanding of business and marketing functions and skills. They join business associations and clubs, and they network with other skilled business people to learn their secrets of success and help define their own goals and objectives. Top entrepreneurs attend business and marketing seminars, workshops and training courses, even if they have already mastered the subject matter of the event. They do this because they know that education is an ongoing process. There are usually ways to do things better, in less time, with less effort. In short, top entrepreneurs never stop investing in the most powerful, effective and best business and marketing tool at their immediate disposal--themselves.

15. Be accessible. We're living in a time when we all expect our fast food lunch at the drive-thru window to be ready in mere minutes, our dry cleaning to be ready for pick-up on the same day, our money to be available at the cash machine and our pizza delivered in 30 minutes or it's free. You see the pattern developing--you must make it as easy as you can for people to do business with you, regardless of the home business you operate.

You must remain cognizant of the fact that few people will work hard, go out of their way, or be inconvenienced just for the privilege of giving you their hard-earned money. The shoe is always on the other foot. Making it easy for people to do business with you means that you must be accessible and knowledgeable about your products and services. You must be able to provide customers with what they want, when they want it.

16. Build a rock-solid reputation. A good reputation is unquestionably one of the home business owner's most tangible and marketable assets. You can't simply buy a good reputation; it's something that you earn by honoring your promises. If you promise to have the merchandise in the customer's hands by Wednesday, you have no excuse not to have it there. If you offer to repair something, you need to make good on your offer. Consistency in what you offer is the other key factor. If you cannot come through with the same level of service (and products) for clients on a regular basis, they have no reason to trust you . . . and without trust, you won't have a good reputation.

17. Sell benefits. Pushing product features is for inexperienced or wannabe entrepreneurs. Selling the benefits associated with owning and using the products and services you carry is what sales professionals worldwide focus on to create buying excitement and to sell, sell more, and sell more frequently to their customers. Your advertising, sales presentations, printed marketing materials, product packaging, website, newsletters, trade show exhibit and signage are vital. Every time and every medium used to communicate with your target audience must always be selling the benefits associated with owning your product or using your service.

18. Get involved. Always go out of your way to get involved in the community that supports your business. You can do this in many ways, such as pitching in to help local charities or the food bank, becoming involved in organizing community events, and getting involved in local politics. You can join associations and clubs that concentrate on programs and policies designed to improve the local community. It's a fact that people like to do business with people they know, like and respect, and with people who do things to help them as members of the community.

19. Grab attention. Small-business owners cannot waste time, money and energy on promotional activities aimed at building awareness solely through long-term, repeated exposure. If you do, chances are you will go broke long before this goal is accomplished. Instead, every promotional activity you engage in, must put money back in your pocket so that you can continue to grab more attention and grow your business.

20. Master the art of negotiations. The ability to negotiate effectively is unquestionably a skill that every home business owner must make every effort to master. It's perhaps second in importance only to asking for the sale in terms of home business musts. In business, negotiation skills are used daily. Always remember that mastering the art of negotiation means that your skills are so finely tuned that you can always orchestrate a win-win situation. These win-win arrangements mean that everyone involved feels they have won, which is really the basis for building long-term and profitable business relationships.

21. Design Your workspace for success. Carefully plan and design your home office workspace to ensure maximum personal performance and productivity and, if necessary, to project professionalism for visiting clients. If at all possible, resist the temptation to turn a corner of the living room or your bedroom into your office. Ideally, you'll want a separate room with a door that closes to keep business activities in and family members out, at least during prime business and revenue generating hours of the day. A den, spare bedroom, basement or converted garage are all ideal candidates for your new home office. If this is not possible, you'll have to find a means of converting a room with a partition or simply find hours to do the bulk of your work when nobody else is home.

22. Get and stay organized. The key to staying organized is not about which type of file you have or whether you keep a stack or two of papers on your desk, but it's about managing your business. It's about having systems in place to do things. Therefore, you wan to establish a routine by which you can accomplish as much as possible in a given workday, whether that's three hours for a part-time business or seven or nine hours as a full-timer. In fact, you should develop systems and routines for just about every single business activity. Small things such as creating a to-do list at the end of each business day, or for the week, will help keep you on top of important tasks to tackle. Creating a single calendar to work from, not multiple sets for individual tasks or jobs, will also ensure that jobs are completed on schedule and appointments kept. Incorporating family and personal activities into your work calendar is also critical so that you work and plan from a single calendar.

23. Take time off. The temptation to work around the clock is very real for some home business owners. After all, you don't have a manager telling you it's time to go home because they can't afford the overtime pay. Every person working from home must take time to establish a regular work schedule that includes time to stretch your legs and take lunch breaks, plus some days off and scheduled vacations. Create the schedule as soon as you have made the commitment to start a home business. Of course, your schedule will have to be flexible. You should, therefore, not fill every possible hour in the day. Give yourself a backup hour or two. All work and no play makes you burn out very fast and grumpy customer service is not what people want.

24. Limit the number of hats you wear. It's difficult for most business owners not to take a hands-on approach. They try to do as much as possible and tackle as many tasks as possible in their business. The ability to multitask, in fact, is a common trait shared by successful entrepreneurs. However, once in a while you have to stand back and look beyond today to determine what's in the best interest of your business and yourself over the long run. Most highly successful entrepreneurs will tell you that from the time they started out, they knew what they were good at and what tasks to delegate to others.

25. Follow-up constantly. Constant contact, follow-up, and follow-through with customers, prospects, and business alliances should be the mantra of every home business owner, new or established. Constant and consistent follow-up enables you to turn prospects into customers, increase the value of each sale and buying frequency from existing customers, and build stronger business relationships with suppliers and your core business team. Follow-up is especially important with your existing customer base, as the real work begins after the sale. It's easy to sell one product or service, but it takes work to retain customers and keep them coming back.

James Stephenson is an experienced home based consultant with more than 15 years of business and marketing experience.

I saw this article on mentalfloss.com.  It is intriguing, funny, weird and interesting.  If you have ever experienced any kind of creative block, perhaps this will help!

There are plenty of competing theories for how to boost your creativity: paint your room blue, work someplace noisy and distracting, complete a bunch of silly sentences Mad-Libs-style. But there’s no better source for creativity advice than a creative genius. Here are 11 tactics practiced by big thinkers, artists, and innovators.

1. Hold your breath Ig Nobel Prize-winner and Japanese inventor Yoshiro Nakamatsu, who has more than 3000 patents to his name, has a Plexiglas board installed in his pool. He thinks underwater and takes notes on his board, a process he calls "creative swimming." And while it seems silly to take notes underwater when there are perfectly serviceable desks available, Nakamatsu swears by it, saying "oxygen is the enemy of the brain."

2. Embrace insomnia Leonardo da Vinci had a lot going for him, what with the still-unmatched talent and cultural importance and, you know. Mona Lisa. But he was a weird mix of perfectionist and procrastinator, and sometimes he'd work for hours on one minuscule detail while leaving the larger scope of a project untouched. To keep himself going for as long as possible, he practiced polyphasic sleep — short naps every four hours, for a total of around two hours of sleep per day. Probably not for everyone.

3. Or just take a nap Thomas Edison was a fan of the power nap. He gave it a good twist, though, which he claimed was integral to some of his best ideas. Edison would sleep sitting upright in his chair, elbow propped on the arm with a handful of marbles. He would think about his problem until he fell asleep, and soon enough he would drop the marbles on the floor. When the racket woke him up, Edison wrote down whatever was in his head, regardless of what it was—creative solutions, new ideas, a reminder to pick up milk on the way home.

4. Save yourself for science (or what-have-you) Though he’s been called the greatest geek of all time, Nikola Tesla was a reasonably handsome guy, and the ladies liked him. But he attributed much of his success as an inventor to his strict celibacy, and no evidence exists that in his 86 years he ever had an affair with anyone. Ever. But rumor has it he recreated ball lightning in his lab, so it was probably worth it.

5. Find the bad apple There's no reason to believe it'll work for anyone else, but Johann Wolfgang von Goethe insisted that a rotten apple on his desk helped him write effectively.

6. Engage hermit mode Artist Jasper Johns worked three full months of each year in total solitude, painting and hanging out in a cottage in St. Martin from Christmas through March. Before he defiantly flew to Yugoslavia to reclaim his international chess champion title, Bobby Fischer lived for nearly 20 years in undisclosed locations. Add to the list J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, Howard Hughes, Emily Dickinson... the list is long, but it's clear that for some people, hiding from the public eye is the key to thinking differently. (With mixed results, obviously.)

7. Chill out for a while When Cervantes had deep thoughts to think, he filled a tub with frigid water and sat with his feet and calves submerged until he had an epiphany.

8. Head north Charles Dickens was a quirky guy. One of his required writing-time necessities was a desk that faced due north, and even when he slept he took every precaution to ensure that his body was aligned with the poles—head at the northern end, feet toward the south.

9. Get a little macabre In addition to his bizarre directional work and sleep arrangements, Dickens also liked to hang out at the morgue, where he watched people work on incoming bodies. He followed his "attraction to repulsion" to crime scenes, too, where he'd try to analyze the locations to solve murders. Whether any of this was helpful to his literary plots is second to the regular practice of thinking creatively to solve hard problems. (That said, there's no report that Dickens ever solved a murder.)

10. Invest in that Clover machine Just about everyone loves coffee, but almost no one loves coffee in the way Honore de Balzac did. He worked 16 hours a day, tossing back cup after cup of specially blended Parisian java (some sources say he could down 50 cups in a day). To overcome caffeine tolerance, he ate dry grounds, and on an empty stomach, no less, famously saying that after a mouthful of coffee beans, "sparks shoot all the way up to the brain. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army...."

11. Booze! Alcoholism and artistry go way back, and everyone has a favorite drinky singer or writer because there's no shortage of them, really. But it seems science is siding with Hemingway and Winehouse on this one: a recent study shows that a few drinks can release your verbal inhibitions (obviously) and allow your mind to wander just far enough to come up with novel solutions to complicated problems. At a blood alcohol level of .075 percent, the study's volunteers were able to solve word association puzzles faster and better than the control group of sober peers.

No I didn't have a lemonade stand growing up, or made any kind of goods to sell when I was younger. Perhaps it would have prepared me for what was to come.   Then again maybe it wouldn't have.  I went to a great school, got a gig I enjoyed and could live off of and was pretty content.  Then I was forced to become an entrepreneur - when the job that I was so comfy doing disappeared.  My company declared bankruptcy and I had to do "the hustle" to pay the bills.  It was at this very stressful point in my life I realized that if I allowed all of my various skills, including my hobbies, make room for me, I could actually live off my gifts... This realization represented the start of a shift in my mind set. 

Artists in all forms - singers, dancers, actresses, etc are all entrepreneurs and I admired them as such, except I didn't call them entrepreneurs. I called them faith walkers.   To me it took some serious faith to audition repeatedly believing/hoping/praying that you are going to get that next gig, when a majority of the time there was an extremely high percentage that you would not...The artist life was unstable. I liked my radio gig.  It was artistic, engaged me in the creative world while giving me a steady paycheck, a flexible schedule and a decent living.  It was safe... or so I thought...until I got THAT pink slip.

Now I have had pink slips before but this time it was different because my field had changed. Consolidation reduced the amount of employment opportunities available.  The jobs were no longer there. Some of the ones that were, seemed like demotions, were located in places I didn't care to live or were already filled before they were even posted!  Others were just part-time.  So what could I do?  There was no running home to mama, and daddy couldn't bail me out.  I realized once I couldn't find a full time job, I had to create one.

However, that didn't really initially happen either.  I found myself doing multiple smaller jobs  where my skills shined and were sharpened. It was piece-meal but it worked.  I realized these were all gigs that I chose, that ultimately I enjoyed and actually got paid decent money to do.  I still didn't necessarily call myself an entrepreneur though. I thought of myself more as a hustler.  Entrepreneur seemed so high brow, hustlin' seemed more grounded, driven, grimy and desperate even.  I don't even know how I survived my first year of "hustlin".  When I did my taxes for that year, I think i made less than $25,000, a monumental difference from my previous years. Thing is I don't really remember being unhappy -- stressed at times -- but never miserable and never w/o hope.  In fact now I remember in part how I survived. Some of those gigs paid cash! LOL! and truth be told, I set some of them up that way. It was faith more than anything that got me through that year though, and my faith grew exponentially.

It started with a faith experiment.  Despite my tight resources, I made an agreement with the Holy Spirit.  I said "God if you give me an extra grand a month above and beyond what I need, I will give it right back to you." Humble but challenging enough when you are suddenly making $25,000 a year.  Mind you this was not a tithe in the traditional church sense. It was an offering that, quite frankly, I could have used towards savings, debt and eating out for a change.  Still I had already designated a ministry to receive it.  I guess deep down I knew the Almighty Creator would make it happen, After all isn't that what a creator does? Make. things. happen. The first three months I looked for that extra grand and when it came I made good on my promise.  By the time the fourth or fifth month kicked in, something changed in my thinking. I no longer looked for it. I EXPECTED it!  I had no idea how or where it would come, i just knew that it would & it did -  consistently.  There were times when i would look at my budget (Lord knows I would have been an accountant in another life because I enjoy crunching numbers!) and say " Ok I need these people to call me to work within the next two days in order to make that extra grand to give back to you."  And you know what? It happened. Time and time again! A grand and then some! I would speak what I would want to happen and it would.  I was in the "flow" as they say.   This experience built an inexplicable confidence in me that all would work out -- "That I could have whatsoever I say & believed" regardless of what obstacles lie before me. This deeply held conviction I later learned is one of the key characteristics of an entrepreneur & a visionary.  Even as I write this, I realize that God him/her/itself is an entrepreneur & what a vast business this universe is to run! hmmm makes me wonder what my employee evaluation would say  PROMOTION! LOL!

Faith w/works gave me life in this season. I learned just as I was freely given blessings, so I too must freely give. It was through my faith based giving agreement with God that I received my heart's desires.   You know what I decided to do then? GIVE SOME MORE!  It seemed like the best investment w/a 100+% return.  I asked for a significantly larger consistent sum of money to give back to God - and alas the greater challenge kicked in.  Not for the Holy Spirit, so to speak, but for me. Based on what I was currently doing, I was asking for miracles.  Like how can a minimum wage cashier, for example, receive the salary of a Fortune 500 CEO?  The answer? I HAD TO BECOME ONE and therein lies the journey, and the faith walk I began. 

My way of thinking HAD to change, my way of seeing had to change, my way of believing had to change and it still is! In the process I realized everything I needed was inside of me, abundantly placed there, for that is also where the Almighty Creator takes up residence anyway!   Through my personal "money agreement" with Spirit, I held myself accountable for the resources I was blessed with. During that season until now, I have to believe that my gifts would make room, and that if I am willing to do the work necessary to prosper them, & learn from my mistakes, I would make it.  I don't mean barely make it either! LOL Abundantly make it and I am still on that adventure (There is always room for abundance however you define it). Overall, I recognized that when I made a commitment to manifest my divinely designed potential, to agree honestly to work to realize my dreams, I became an entrepreneur. 

So this blog is where I share part of my journey, including articles I have read, lessons I've learned and whatever else crosses my mind as I continue to carve out a space where I thrive doing the things I love...

Here's to the journey...

In faith,

NS