I enjoyed watching this as Will Smith breaks down the power of hard work. He says “You may be smarter than me, have more talent than me–but you will NOT outwork me.”

I admit… I’m not a committed “runner.” I start running for a few weeks — I stop — I start again — I stop. When I “stops,” I “stops!”

And his point about that little “person” telling you to give up because you’re tired and your body can’t take it anymore — that’s the same voice that tells you all the other things you supposedly can’t do. “Running,” according to Will, helps you defeat that voice.  Enjoy.

In order to make money you have to do one important first:

STOP PUTTING MONEY FIRST!

Taaa-daaaaa!

Look, it’s perfectly natural for you and everyone else to want wealth.  Wealth is power.  Wealth is power to give your family the stability and security that you want it to have.  Wealth is power to help others.  Wealth is one of the means by which one can fully life.  The person who says that they want to be poor is in my opinion a sour grapes type of person.   They generally have feelings of inadequacy or some sort of guilt complex.  Again this is my opinion.

DISCLAIMER:  Dammit, Jim, I’m Not a Doctor!

That being said, money and wealth are actually desirable.  What’s puzzling to me about the methods of individuals is the backwards way they view the creation of wealth.   Many people have a “Money First” attitude.  They forget that money is ‘fruit’.  If you’re unclear about the relationship between seeds and fruit please click here:

Seed Time and Harvest Time

For the rest of us my purpose for saying this is that it’s interesting that the same people with the ‘Money First’ attitude are also the ones with no money.  Why is that?  The reason is this:

People with a money first attitude become so money conscious that they forget that money cannot be harvested unless and until they plant the seed that grows money.

So what is the seed of money?  Hmmmmm… interesting question.  Earlier I said that seeds reproduce fruit of their own kind.  Apple seeds produce apples.  Pear seeds produce pears and so on.  This is true.  What I’m about to say will in no way negate that.   The seed of money is ‘SERVICE’.

WHAT?  You ask.  Is not the seed of money, money?  Well yes… it is money.  However we must come to the realization that service ‘IS’ money.  Let me elaborate by directly quoting David J. Schwartz, PhD, the author of ‘The Magic of Thinking Big’

One summer evening I was traveling by car through Cincinnati.  It was time for a gas-up.   I stopped at an ordinary but surprisingly busy service station.

Four minutes later I knew why this particular services station was so popular.  After filling up my car with gas, checking under the hood, and cleaning the outside of my windshield, the attendant walked around to my side of the vehicle and said, “Pardon me. Sir.  It’s been a dusty day.  Let me clean the inside of your windshield.”

Quickly and efficiently, he did a thorough job of cleaning the inside of me windshield, something not one service station in a hundred does.

This little special service did more than improve my night visibility (and it helped it a lot); it made me remember this service station.

It happened that I made 8 trips through Cincinnati during the next three months.  Each time I stopped at this gas station and each time I got more than I expected to get.  Interesting too was the fact that each time I stopped (once it was 4 a.m.) there were other automobiles filling up also.  In all, I probably purchased about 100 gallons of gasoline from this station.

The first time I stopped the attendant could have thought to himself, “This guy is from out of state.  Odds are twenty to one that he’ll never be back.  Why do more than give him the routine treatment?  He’s only a one-time customer.”

But the attendants in that station didn’t think that way.  They put service first, and that’s why they were busy pumping gas while the other stations looked almost deserted.  If the gasoline was any better than a dozen other brands, I didn’t notice it.  And the price was competitive.

The difference was the service.  And it was obvious that the service was paying off in profits.

When the attendant on my first visit cleaned the inside of my windshield, he planted a money seed.

SERVICE IS ALSO A SEED OF MONEY

Let me repeat that….

SERVICE IS ALSO A SEED OF MONEY

The reason is simple.  To perform a service requires time.  Individuals are paid for their ‘time’ in many ways including money.  Service is essentially money.  You’re planting a seed of money when you plant the seed of service.

So I think that we can safely say that we understand the importance of what it is that you wear for specific functions.  In fact it’s often said to me, “I get it.  I know that appearance is important but how do you expect me to afford the types and quality of clothes that I need to make the right impression on myself and my clients?”  This is today’s topic.

This was a vexing question for me as well for a while however the answer is quite simple.  This is one of those things that I really want you to memorize.  Write it down.  Sear it into your mind.  Take a picture of it.  Tell a friend.  Whatever you do, I want you to remember this:  Ready?

PAY TWICE AS MUCH AND BUY HALF AS MANY.

You’re welcome.  *taking a bow* Oh you’re too kind.  lol

All jokes aside I want you to commit this to memory.  Apply it to everything.  This goes for shoes, socks, blouses, slacks, every article of clothing that you can possibly buy as well as your accessories.  The beauty of this is that not only will you have finer quality clothes but you’re actually ahead of the game money wise when you practice this principle.  Why you ask?

1. Your clothing will last MORE than twice as long because technically they are MORE than twice as good and as an added bonus they will ‘show’ quality in the wearing of the item.
2. What you purchase will stay in style longer.  The more costly items are typically not faddish.  Timeless classic clothing will always remain in style.
3. The seller of the clothing will make sure that you get what works best for you.  The person selling you a $100.00 suit will not take nearly as much time making sure that you’re satisfied with that you get than the salesperson helping you with a $200.00 suit will.

Remember this axiom:

PAY TWICE AS MUCH AND BUY HALF AS MANY.

Understand that your appearance talks.  It’s simply a fact of life.  You may not think that it’s fair but it is what it is.  Make sure that it’s saying what you want to be said about you as an individual as well as about your event planning organization.

Sekou K. McHenry is co-founder and CEO of DIRM, LLC, a motivational coach and speaker.

A new year. A time to begin again.  A time for new ideas and clean slates.  A time for new year resolutions. It is that time when we reflect on the changes we need to make – and a few wants too.  And we then resolve to follow through on all of them.

Typically at the beginning of the year, I resolve that I will lose weight, that I am going on a diet now that the holidays are over;  I am going to join the gym or a boot camp;  I am going to eat better; I am going back to school; I am going to enhance my skills so I can find a better paying job; I am going to spend more time with my family… (any of these sound familiar) … The list can go on, all different things that people resolve to do every new year.

A couple of years ago, I personally stopped making new year resolutions.  I found that the more I made, like many others, the fewer I kept or followed through on.  I would always end up feeling bad about not keeping my resolutions and that just made the entire situation worse.

I decided to STOP making resolutions because the things that I was resolving to do are things that I actually need to do everyday anyway… It shouldn’t take a change of the calendar to ‘make’ me take care of me.  Hence I just affirm and reaffirm things to myself … Things that are true to me.

By definition, an affirmation is a positive statement designed to counteract a negative belief that you possess. It should be written in the present tense and should re-affirm something that you want to become true.  Interestingly enough if you look at four article series, “The Laws of Life”, you will notice that ‘affirmation’ is a recurring theme.

Affirmations help keep things, and me, moving. Simple things I say to myself every day to remind me of what I am trying to accomplish.

Throughout the year, I remind myself of my favorites like:

‘the universe is constantly working in my favor and never, ever against me’;

And those that know me have heard this one:

‘remember to do something nice for someone without them knowing it’

So for the new season we are entering, we at DIRM affirm that 2011 will be and is our ‘Tipping Year’!

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the excellent book “The Tipping Point”, defines a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”

Given that definition, our tipping year is the year when our business crosses a new threshold; when we accomplish that major milestone that will take us to the next level of success.

It is that simple.  Claim your Tipping Year!

Nnena U.  Nchege is an event producer with over 20 years of event planning experience.

The trend these days is all things green.  Yes, it’s all the rage.  Well, we only have one planet Earth, so why not take care of it. Why not?

Home, work, school… My nieces won’t let me get away with destroying the planet with litter. The impact of their lessons in school about the effects of litter on the environment has them in the know and ever aware of their immediate space. Now we save everything to be disposed of properly.

In 2009 while producing the Atlanta Jazz Festival, I decided I would work toward making the festival green.   You see, I used to kill a lot of trees.  So one day while surfing the net, I came across another festival that had won a ’green’ award and I thought to myself, ‘Self, it’s about time you produce a green festival’ … (not to mention I also wanted to compete and win another award for our outstanding festival). So this became my challenge for the 2009 festival – Going Green.

To accomplish this very new idea within the festival, we submitted an application to be considered for the Greener Festival Award. The Greener Festival Award is bestowed by A Greener Festival, LTD. A European based non-profit, they evaluate and reward music and art events and festivals around the world that make strides to adopt environmentally efficient practices at their events.

Well, as you may have guessed, we won. The Atlanta Jazz Festival was awarded the prestigious Greener Festival award in 2009.  To say I was elated is putting it mildly.

So what did greening the festival mean?  This is how we did it and what you can do:

1. Plan It – decide what you can or cannot do given your resources; assign one person, a staff, or a volunteer to help keep everyone on course.  My go-to person was Mona Austin. OMG, she is wonderful.  She embraced the project and ran with it.  Considering how tedious it is to change a culture of waste, she handled our team’s grumblings with grace. That’s what you need, someone who will get it done.

2. Team Up – Partner with other organizations, your sponsors and volunteers. We partnered with a biodiesel company that picked up used cooking grease for free. Our sponsor, Coca-Cola Enterprises donated the recycle boxes for the coke cans. Our waste collection service provider put out clearly marked plastic/paper recycle boxes to collect those items as well.  The following year, while we did not compete, we did partner with two organizations – the  Dogwood Festival and the Green Council of Atlanta and shared signage to help cut down on the cost of creating new signage.

3. Hey That’s Not Just Garbage – Composting waste from your food vendors. Composting simply put, turns old plants and things like vegetable peelings, actual discarded food products into food and soil for new plants to grow in.  Manure.  All you do is have your waste management company designate specific bins to dump food in to be later used for compost. Make sure recycle bins are around the food vendor area and easily distinguishable.  A great idea is to have free recycle units for capturing the frying grease for food vendors to dump their cooking oil.  That way each vendor knows of an environmentally friendly way to get rid of their oil.

4. Check It Out- Post signs around the event that make patrons aware that the event is green.  Hopefully this will entice them to share in the efforts of keeping it green.

5. See What I’m Driving – Consider using electric powered golf carts.

6. Share and Make the Public Aware- Check with your city’s mass transit office to see if you can provide ease of transportation to your patrons to eliminate them using their personal vehicles.  Our PR campaign encouraged patrons to use public transportation – MARTA (the bus and rail system in the Atlanta, GA area).  Through a partnership with MARTA, we developed a routing system that made it easy for patrons to get to and from the park and train station with ease… Collective Effort – Community and Sponsor involvement.

7. Go Green from the Start- From the beginning go green. We didn’t go green just at the park, it involved our day to day activities leading up to the outdoor event.  Internally, we reduced the number of collateral pieces we printed. E-vites were created; and we used our website www.atlantafestivals.com, and our email lists to promote the festival. Our social media sites – twitter and Facebook – also played a greater role in our PR campaign.

Now I must say that some of the adjustments were challenging but only because they were new.  In the end, however, our efforts paid off.

Many people think going green only means recycling your paper, glass, and plastic but there are many ways to help save our planet.  A few other areas of greening your event include:

• Selecting green hotels and venues.  Many hotels today make it easy for guests to contribute to saving the planet through water conservation.  By requesting that towels and bed linen not be changed daily, saves on the amount of water used.
• Buy local produce. Request that your caterer use locally grown food products.  This helps the planet by reducing the use of fossil fuels.
• Having a banquet at a hotel?  Talk with the staff to see if they will work with you to donate leftovers to a homeless shelter.

Need Resources?
Check out the following links to help you get more green ideas:
• www.epa.gov
• www.thegreenguide.com
• www.greenlivingtips.com
• www.TheEnvironmentSite.org

With these tips, you have the green light to go green and help our planet!

Nnena U.  Nchege is an event producer with over 20 years of event planning experience.

And with this change in season, we enter into the most celebrated time of year.  The start of fall marks the beginning of a variety of gatherings and parties—parties and gatherings for anything and everything.

Let’s see. We started off with Labor Day in America, where we finally took a break from working; Thanksgiving with families, visiting one another; Christmas with its gift giving frenzy, and before you know it, there is a new year on the horizon.  There are parties, parties, and more parties – football parties, Halloween parties, Thanksgiving gatherings, and holiday soirees. Not to mention birthdays and anniversaries.  Oh, oh and fall festivals with cotton candy and candied apples…mmmm yummy.   An event planner’s smorgasbord of events!

At the onset of fall each year, football reigns supreme.  This is definitely one sport that people enjoy watching together, celebrating their favorite team commonality or good-natured rivalry among friends.  Why not have a sports’ party where we celebrate athletic skill with tailgating gatherings around a bonfire or small fire pit with lots of beer, food, and painted faces? Even your typical Sunday football marathon can have a cool new mix. You can incorporate a lesson on the evolution of football in America or football around the world.  You could make up a trivia game to play during half-time.  Divide into teams and place questions on index cards.  Maybe a little battle of the sexes.

Need a new twist on tradition? Let’s introduce all things from a fair at a black tie event… kind of like dressing up a fall festival.  Imagine women in formal gowns doing a ring toss around champagne bottles or men in tuxes enjoying gourmet candy apples.  Brainstorm various fall carnival games and put an elegant spin on them.  Remember the attendees of this event will be dressed in formalwear so keep that in mind when deciding on games.

Maybe have a pumpkin carving contest for all ages.  Your version of a show on the Food Network.   And let me tell you, this would be fun for both adults and children.   If you have a table out on your patio or in your backyard; set up small to medium-sized pumpkins; and carving tools or paints.  You could make this into one big celebration of pumpkins.  Roast pumpkin seeds, have pumpkin shaped cookies, watch it’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Or for an older crowd perhaps watch scary movies while drinking pumpkin martinis.

And how about Halloween for kids? Perhaps try a movie theme and have all the kids dress up as a character from that particular movie. For instance, if the movie is the Chronicles of Narnia, why not have the kids dress as some of the interesting characters. Better yet, how about an old fashioned dress up party where you provide all the props and the kids dress themselves when they get there? Some role playing… The invites can be customized so that each knows who they will be ahead of time.  Your invitation could be a part of the script sent to each cast member. Takes a little planning but you can pull this off with a little ingenuity.

Here’s what I know, whatever event you are planning, you can change it up and add a new flair.  Remember, it’s time for a change – step out of your box and wow ‘em with something new!

Nnena U.  Nchege is an event producer with over 20 years of event planning experience.

An elephant in the room is a problem that everyone knows very well but no one talks about because it is taboo, embarrassing, etc.

As an event planner it is career suicide to hide the elephant.   Let’s look at an example of two individuals who have had elephants and how they handled the elephant in the room.

Richard Nixon.  President Nixon was considered by most to be on his way to becoming a great president UNTIL he decided that the Watergate issue was an elephant that needed to be hidden.  The moment he went in that direction his presidency was completely ruined.  Why you ask?  Because eventually someone is going to see the elephant… because it’s an ELEPHANT and it’s IN THE ROOM WITH YOU!   Even Nixon himself said as much when he made the following statement saying that he “was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy.”

Let’s take a look at how to handle an elephant.   John F. Kennedy did this well.  The Bay of Pigs incident which was an unsuccessful attempt by a CIA -trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support from US government armed forces, to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.  As stated, it failed MISERABLY and that failure was indeed the elephant.  A HUGE elephant at that, however Kennedy did exactly what you should do when there is an elephant in the room, he owned up to his part in having the elephant in the room and focused on what to do to get said elephant out of the room.

He did what Nixon didn’t do in that he acted decisively and forthrightly in dealing with the incident.  In response the nation loved him and even to this day he is revered as a great president.

What does this have to do with event planning you ask?  This has EVERYTHING to do with event planning.  Event planning is fraught with situations where there can be elephants in the room.  The caterer could be late, the DJ can have cancelled, the wedding cake could be chocolate as opposed to vanilla, you name it, it could happen.  What you want to do when a situation arises IF you cannot resolve the situation by yourself, is to let everyone that needs to know understand that there is an elephant in the room and what exactly that elephant is.  After that you need to let everyone, who needs to know, know exactly what you plan to do about the elephant.

This stance will do 2 things; first it will make you as an event planner appear to be responsible and professional and second it will let your client know that you are concerned with their event and whether it rolls out smoothly.  It is ALWAYS better to not hide the elephant in the room.

One of the first things you need to do is visit every potential event location with which you plan to work. Work with the marketing manager to tour each site and learn what is available at each location. Start a database that will allow you to sort venues by varying features — the number of people each site holds, if there is AV equipment available on site, will you need to arrange for rental chairs, etc. Then when you are beginning to plan an event with a client, you can find out what the key parameters are for the event and easily pull up the three or four sites that meet the basic criteria.

The word ‘brand’ has been applied to products and companies for decades, but by the turn of the millennium we clearly saw the emergence of personal applications to the concept.

Certain names have the power to evoke strong thoughts, images, and emotions: Lance Armstrong (determination, yellow), Michael Jackson, (universal, icon), Nelson Mandela (strength, peace) or Tina Turner (powerful, sexy, survival). Some celebs need only one name to express a powerful brand (Oprah, Prince, Bono, Cher).

Celebrity branding boosts earning potential and career longevity. An enduring, marketable brand can lead to lucrative:

- Endorsements and sponsorships
- Movie deals & television contracts
- Favorable media coverage
- Business enterprises
- Improved leverage to negotiate contracts

Branding can also serve as a catalyst for launching new careers. It is imperative for celebrity actors, athletes and entertainers who want to generate more income. Whether at the onset, peak, or twilight of a career, celebrities should focus on building a viable brand that they can leverage over their lifetime (or beyond). Paul Newman created a brand that even his descendants can capitalize on.

It is never too early to brand your celebrity. So ‘get your brand on’ today.

Jai Stone is a certified celebrity branding expert with more than 15 years of industry experience. She has worked with some of the most recognizable brands in the world to create effective strategies and campaigns.  Jai currently resides near Atlanta, GA. www.TheBrandCoach.com

1. You MUST first plant the seed.
2. You MUST plant the seed in a place that will allow it to grow.
3. You MUST provide the seed with water and sunlight.
4. You MUST remove the weeds and other things that will kill the young tree as it as growing.

Now let’s jump right into the final step;

1. You WILL receive a harvest and that harvest will be ‘of’ that seed.

As I said previously EVERYTHING is a seed.  For example, if you plant an apple seed and you plant it in good soil and you water it and remove anything that can harm it you will eventually get a tree.  What type of fruit will be on that tree?  The fruit will be apples of course.  You cannot plant a peach seed and get apples.  Apples come from apple trees which come from apple seeds.  If you plant a seed of customer appreciation in your event planning business then you will get appreciative customers.  If you plant a seed of money… you WILL get money.  If you follow the rules then you will get what you give.  By the same token if you plant a seed of negativity and you nurture that seed you WILL get a harvest and that harvest, that fruit from that tree will be MORE negativity.  If you plant a seed of hate then you will get hate.  If you plant a seed of discord then you will get discord.

This is why it is VITALLY important to plant good seeds, in fertile ground.

I’ve seen so many people in their lives have trouble with their families and they wonder why, but every word from their mouths is one of anger or bitterness or disappointment and from planting these seeds they can only get harvests of anger, bitterness and disappointment.  The law works.  For good and for bad, the law works.

I know that some of you are saying, “This is too easy, all I have to do is give good things and good things will come back to me?”  The answer is a resounding YES.  This is how the world works.  There is really nothing at all you can do about it.  The best course of action is to use your knowledge of this law to your advantage.

Throughout this blog I will be giving you examples of situations based on this Immutable Law but for now I’d like to challenge you to think for a moment.  Think of everything in your life, good or bad, positive or negative, and determine the seed that it came from.  The answers might surprise you.

Rule Number One: You cannot receive without first giving (or you cannot harvest without first planting)

1. You MUST first plant the seed.
2. You MUST plant the seed in a place that will allow it to grow.
3. You MUST provide the seed with water and sunlight.
4. You MUST remove the weeds and other things that will kill the young tree as it as growing.
5. You WILL receive a harvest and that harvest will be ‘of’ that seed.

If you miss ANY of these steps you will NOT receive.

Sekou K. McHenry is co-founder and CEO of DIRM, LLC, a motivational coach and speaker.  A native of Louisiana, Sekou understands first hand the importance of continuously uplifting the human spirit in all aspects of life.  He is also an IT guru with over 15 years of experience having worked with numerous IT companies including his own -www.eclectic-solutions.com.  Contact Sekou at smchenry@dirmcorp.com.