What are the personal dreams you put on hold, defend the tardiness, excuse the incompletion, perpetually move down on your list, figure ‘no’ would be the best course of action because the time is just not right?

How about saying YES, now?

You are a person on a mission – an entrepreneur with a method to the madness – a force to be reckoned with. You just have a heart and a gut intuition that ‘something’s got to change’ or maybe just shift. You realize it is not about everything, it is about preserving the best and enhancing the rest. It’s not about big, it is about one small step…..

What is the change, the shift, you want to see and experience in your world, our world?

Say YES now. Consider the following:

• Keep your circles small. Avoid the tendency to ask an army for their opinions. Most have grand advice for what won’t work. Whether ‘it’s been done before,’ or ‘you can’t do that,’ negative opinions tend to stall your momentum. Initially, I asked five friends and colleagues not only about the vision, but to join it. My sister said, ‘never heard of it, but if you say it is going to happen, it will.’ All jumped in the trenches including a friend as treasurer who didn’t even know how to balance her own check book?!
• Delay the business plan. Strategic business calls for a business plan. And, that plan takes analysis and long range insight. What if you just do it, and then plan based on the outcomes? From the time I had the vision, to our first program, was three months!
• Think small and one program at a time! Dreamers tend to think big. What if you just make a difference in one person’s life? Or in my case minimally two? The vision was to reunite a minimum of two siblings from a family. Our first Camp hosted 32 siblings from many families. When the last camper departed, the volunteers looked to me for what was next? ‘I don’t know, I replied, but I just fell in love with 32 kids, let’s do it again!’ Annual Camps and year-round programs flourished.
• Assume the permission. Know when to hang up the phone or walk out the door. Sales people know that sometimes closing a deal is based on silence. However, with that pause comes body language, and, a skirmish opportunity for the person listening to say no. What if you hang up or walk out the door with confidence and go forward assuming a yes? When my main constituent said, ‘that’s a great idea,’ to have youth in foster care from Nevada travel to Colorado to Camp, I said thank you and left his office. I knew what would follow would be a conversation about the challenges of taking these youth across state lines. The next exchange I had with him was from the airport in Denver when the campers arrived. “The kids are here, I said.” He replied, ‘Where?’ I excitedly shared, ‘in Colorado, you said it was a great idea!’
• Replicate without ego. It takes one person to have a vision, skipping the stone across the water. Once you prove the model, it takes a village to bring it to fruition, the ripple. Invite people to collaborate, not only by telling them about your vision taking place, but inviting them to experience it and then replicate it. Your volunteers will be chomping at the bit to share the vision where it hits home for them. That ‘do it again’, and ‘power of the ripple’ has resulted in reuniting over 10,000 siblings in 10 states and Australia – with partners and volunteers who live the journey in many meaningful ways.

So, as we head into the end of…today…say YES to your dream. I welcome presenting a keynote or passioning with you one-on-one to take your vision from do it now, to do it again!

It’s all about … your … YES to change or shift … NOW! One small step!
Lynn Price
Social Entrepreneur – ChangeMaker – Ripple Creator
Ashoka Fellow; Founder and President Emeritus, Camp To Belong