Book Excerpts

Excerpts From The Introduction of I Can't Believe I Get Paid to Do This!

This book is for the dreamers of the world; those who want more than the status quo and who know more is possible.

It is for the non-traditionalists of society; those who rebel against the rules, mores, and traditions that don’t make sense to them.

It is for those with an entrepreneurial or creative spirit who want to climb to new levels of success.

It is for those who relish the idea of saying, “I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This!” (and for those who already say it).

And it is for the seekers of the world–those who are constantly searching….

If you are one of millions of people who have experienced success in one or more areas of your life but have other dreams that are unfulfilled, then this book is for you. Perhaps you’ve dreamt of writing your own book; starting a new business or taking the current one to new levels; recording your own music, performing on stage; creating residual income while you play at the beach; having your own Bed and Breakfast; investing in real estate; traveling around the world; or playing professional sports–and the list goes on and on. We all have dreams. Sometimes we suppress them or purposely squash them or we get confused about them, but we all have them.

This book is not just about achieving the dream. It is about the journey. The journey is every day of our life. If you are not enjoying the journey, then the actual achievement of the dream may give you a temporary high but leave you feeling empty inside.

To continue dreaming is what makes life exciting – it keeps it interesting. It is how we learn and grow. All of the people who I interviewed have achieved success with their dreams and they continue to have new dreams–sometimes it is another business goal, sometimes it is about having more balance in their lives or better relationships, but there is always more to learn. We are always evolving and our needs and desires change and grow as we change and grow.

So what will you get from reading this book?

You will:

1) Learn what it takes to make your dreams come true from people who have done it.

2) Receive coaching from me, The Dream Queen. As a Master Certified Coach, I will guide you in applying the key concepts in these interviews to your own life.

3) Begin to understand what we as human beings do to sabotage ourselves and start to recognize when you do these things so you can shift them.

How I Selected The People To Be In This Book

Many people ask me how I selected the people to be in this book. The main criterion was that they had to love what they were doing and they needed to have achieved a certain level of success at it. Some of them I intentionally sought out; many were referred to me, and most of the connections happened synchronistically. I interviewed many more people than there was actually room to include in this book. All had fabulous stories to tell and I greatly appreciate their sharing them with me. I learned something from everyone I spoke with.

When selecting the people and their stories, I wanted a diversity of topics that included many of the things that people dream about. The point is not whether you actually want to go into one of these fields as much as it is to hear the philosophies of the people of who have done these things and notice what sets them apart–what enabled them to go past fears and obstacles and actually live their dreams.

Each story that I selected has a different viewpoint, a different twist, and new things that you can learn. No two are alike. Some will resonate with you more than others; some may bring up fears or feelings of inadequacy, others excitement and delight. Your favorite story may be someone else’s least favorite. Know that there is something to get from all of them. To get the most from this book, read each story with the intention to get value and you will.

I consistently tell my clients, that in virtually every profession, there are those who are struggling to get by, those who are highly successful, and those who fall somewhere in between. If you want to be one of the successful ones, then you need to learn what the successful people did to get there; that is, choose a successful artist to emulate rather than focusing on all the starving artists in the world. This book is a tool to help you do just that.

Key Success Principles:

Each interview is followed by three key success principles I gleaned from the conversations I had with these remarkable individuals. You will find many more success principles in each story but I chose to highlight the top three principles that were best captured by that particular story.

There are also coaching questions that coincide with each success principle. Coaching questions are questions that cause you to look inside yourself; to get in touch with your inner wisdom. These are the types of questions I ask my clients to help them move forward. Here they are meant to help you apply the concepts you learn to your own life and dreams. Following each set of coaching questions are suggested action steps. If you are inspired by a concept, it is important that you take action now while the emotion is high. Use that emotion to fuel your motivation. If you don’t take action fairly soon, the sense of urgency will start to diminish. A month from now, the passion may be withering. A year from now, you may not even remember you had it. When you are inspired to take action, put the book down and go take that action. Come back to the next chapter when you are ready for more. Otherwise, you may find yourself overwhelmed with too many things to do, and that can lead to paralysis.

This book will inspire you even if you only read the interviews. But to get the most value, make the time to answer the coaching questions and then take action based on what you see for yourself. It is great to be inspired by others who are living their dreams–it is even better to be living your own dreams.

What This Book Is Not:

I believe we all have dreams that we have suppressed and reading these stories may re-ignite some old desires that you forgot you even had. That having been said, this is not a step-by-step book on how to figure out what you want to do with your life.

This book is not just about making money. It is not just about doing what you are passionate about. And it is not about living your dreams to the exclusion of family and people you care about. It is about having what you want in all areas of your life with ease and abundance. That is what I am passionate about.

I have fulfilled many dreams and others are yet to be lived out. From the time I was a little girl, I wanted to have my own business–at that time I thought it would be a clothing boutique. (Actually, Dad thought I would have a clothing boutique; he even named it for me: Len Stacey Limited.)

Instead, I decided I wanted to make a positive impact on the lives of others. I wanted to empower people to live out their dreams with ease and abundance. In 1995 I left a successful corporate job, where I was Vice President of Human Resources, to start my business, The Center for Balanced Living. I coached my first paying client over a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Afterwards I remember thinking, “I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This!” – I get paid to talk to this interesting person…to do something that I have naturally been doing all my life. My hope and intention is that everyone who so desires will say I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This with regards their career(s).

On the personal side, I left an unhealthy marriage many years ago and have since found and married my soul mate. We live on a lake with our two golden retrievers, Lover Boy and Georgia.

I have talked about writing a book for many years and now it is actually in print.

But more important than those achievements is what I learned along the way. I learned about what I wanted from a career by noticing what was missing from my career as it was. I learned how to have a healthy relationship from first having one (okay, maybe more than one) that was toxic. I am writing a book after having started two books that I did not complete. I went from doing things the hard way and working long hours by myself, to creating with ease an ongoing stream of business. I did this with the help of others and by learning to harness the universal Laws of Attraction. I now teach others how to create their careers and businesses with ease.

And I have more dreams. I am working toward lifelong goals of inner peace and financial independence. I have made significant progress on that path and I learn more every day. But if I die tomorrow, I will know that I was the creator of my own life, I experienced true unconditional love, and I made a difference in the lives of many others. For those things, I am very grateful.

The people in this book created their own lives–every success as well as every failure. It is my hope that you will learn a great deal from them and from me as you move forward to make your dreams a reality. Take what resonates with you and toss the rest. But if you find yourself resisting something, know that it may be exactly the thing you need to do to go to the next level.

I wish you the best in living out your dreams and in shouting from the rooftops, “I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This!”

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Excerpt from Chapter 2: Mary Youngblood, Grammy Award Winner

Mary, what else did you dream of when you were a little girl?

I always watched the Super Bowl, Wimbledon, the Miss America Pageant, the Olympics, anything that was the crème de la crème, where people were getting acknowledgment for being the best at something. I was drawn to those kinds of shows. I don’t know exactly where that stemmed from in my child psyche. It might have something to do with having been adopted and feeling like I didn’t have much of a voice as a child, and wanting some attention. I mean, who knows, but I was really drawn to those kinds of programs and events.

I would think, “Oh, it would be nice to be on stage. Wouldn’t it be fun to hear the applause? Wouldn’t it be great to get noticed for being the best at something?” I always wanted to be the best at something and really worked hard to achieve that. It ended up being a music career.

You knew you wanted to be the best at something. You knew you wanted to be performing. You knew you wanted to be on stage and receive that acknowledgement. And there you were just receiving that acknowledgement on the Grammy stage, so you definitely made that dream come true.

It was surreal.

I bet. It says something for dreaming and I really want to acknowledge that. Many times people put down dreams as being unrealistic and it’s all up to you whether it’s realistic or not, isn’t it?

I really visualized it, too, even as a child watching those programs. I could visualize myself walking up the stage, up the stairs. For me, visualizing those dreams happening was pertinent to making that happen, because I could see it. I pictured it in my head.

I had an imagination, and I could just picture things–such as being at home plate at the World Series, even though, of course, I’ve never played baseball. But I could picture being there. I could picture playing that final wondrous winning game.

I think what you’re saying is relevant for everyone. There’s a saying that if you can see it, you can make it happen. That’s how many athletes practice their shots. For example, golfers and tennis players visualize hitting the ball beforehand. That’s what you did and that’s relevant for everything in our lives.

Learn more about how Mary went from welfare mom to Grammy winner and apply her success formula to your own dreams

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Excerpts from Chapter 3:
Loral Langemeier, Single Mom, Financial Literacy Coach and Millionaire

Loral, talk to us about the role of mentors in your life.

I’ve had mentors forever, since I can remember. Even through college, a president of a bank was mentoring me. Coaches were mentoring me. A lot of people think of mentors as the big stage names and the authors, but there are so many mentors that are just in people’s back yards. My current company, Live Out Loud, pertains to that: It’s how to be in the conversation about money to get what you want, and understand how this game’s played, because there’s a lot of unspoken rules to the game.

You started out with both your first mentor and your first business in college.

Absolutely. And in any subsequent move I made, I would first ask myself, “Who’s doing it the best?” “Who’s successful?” “Who’s doing this the way that I’d want to do it?” Then I would go and seek them out. For instance, Dr. Ken Cooper was a prominent figure in the health industry–and he’s still very well known—so during college I went and interned in Dallas with Ken Cooper. It was phenomenal.

You sought out the best from the get-go.

Absolutely. In my late 20’s, I switched to an organizational corporate training company. Again, I sought out who was doing it really well, who knew how to get inside corporations. I went and worked for them for a while–not as an employee, but I offered my services and my time. They said, “Well, you don’t have enough skills,” and I said, “I’ll fly anywhere for free if you let me learn from you.”

What I notice about a lot of people is that they’re unwilling to stretch to that place because they say, “I don’t have time,” “I don’t have this,” and “I don’t have the money to fly.” I would move things around to get what I needed. I would get to where I was headed a lot faster by learning in the field versus going back to a traditional school and thinking there was going to be a traditional model. There are entrepreneurial models, and you can adopt one of those, and still get to do it your own way. That’s what I love about it.

You sought out these people and were willing to volunteer and work with them for free in return for their teaching you.

Absolutely. I have people learning from me all the time, too. They’ll just want to be in the office or be at an event with us. Events are usually where people get an enormous amount of experience. They get to see what I call ’the game.’ They get to see how any game–whatever game (or business) you choose to play–gets done. You can read all you want, and I’m a huge proponent of reading, but where the real learning happens is where I call “out on the streets.” You need to see, experientially, how the game gets played. You get to see the business from the inside out.

I bet you shortened your learning curve considerably doing that kind of research.

Well, that’s why I am where I am, in my fourth business. In six months we grew this business to a million dollars, and it’s because of the pace of that accelerated learning. I believe that everyone who’s going to take on an entrepreneurial business and really have a millionaire mindset must get very efficient about the road map. You need to know how to take what I call the shortcuts, not from a quality standpoint, but shortcuts.

2nd excerpt from Loral’s story….

You’re diversified.

Yes. I want to speak to that, too, because I think one of the biggest entrepreneurial mistakes is when people diversify too fast. For instance, a lot of people who come to us for coaching have four or five things on their plate, but none of them are in revenue. When I say revenue, I mean, I want a minimum of $100,000 gross business when I’m working with somebody. Minimum. I would rather see that be more like a half million, and then they take on another business. Unless they have a big team.

I think people misconstrue what multiple streams of income are. They have four things going, they have four interests, but none of them are really businesses...

Learn more about how Loral balanced being a single mom, having her own businesses and becoming a multi-millionaire and how you can too.

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Sample Key Success Principles:
Key Success Principle #2

Laser in on One Idea, Business, or Income Stream at a Time

One of the challenges Loral talked about is people diversifying too quickly. This is true whether you are trying to build multiple streams of income or are just working on several different ideas at one time. The key is getting the first stream or idea up and running, producing good revenue, and having systems in place so it will keep running without you before going on to the next unrelated stream. Remember what Loral says, “Several things going on at one time is a distraction to cash.”

As a person with many ideas, I know this can be challenging. At one time I was beginning to invest in real estate, writing this book, and maintaining my coaching business. I was making progress, but it was slow progress. When I put the real estate to the side, the momentum for this book increased. The stress factor declined substantially and the joy factor increased accordingly.

How Loral Focused On One Stream At A Time:

Loral has many ventures but she didn’t create them all at the same time. She learned to get each business up and running solidly and have a team in place to maintain it before going on to the next one.

Coaching Questions:

1) How many streams or ideas are you working on at once?

2) How much progress are you making on each of them?

Call to Action:

1) Pick one idea and focus on it solidly for a period of time. Notice any difference in your progress.

Apply just a few of the 26 proven success principles in this book to your own life to dramatically shorten your learning curve and soar to new heights.

Click Here to Order Your Copy of the Book Now