Upon first looking at 48 Days To The Work You Love by Dan Miller, you may wonder, what in the world is a review doing for this book in an entrepreneurial mastermind magazine? After all, most of it teaches you how to find the job of your dreams and be the best at it. As a matter of fact, I would put it at the top of the list for anyone searching for a job or what career field they want to go into, but I read it for a different reason.
My husband, Jim, and I were in Nashville on a summer vacation last month. Jim has worked with both Dan and his wife, Joanne through some consulting we do with Morgan James Publishing, but I had never had the pleasure of meeting them.
They joined us for lunch in the beautiful town of Franklin, and within minutes of sitting down, it felt like we had known them for years. The Millers are just that type of couple that bring total ease to any conversation. I didn’t know that much about them before our lunch meeting, but by the time we left Puckett’s Boat House, I wanted to know more.
I had previously ordered Joanne’s book and was waiting for it to come in, but I decided to pick up a copy of 48 Days; and funny enough, I had it read in 48 hours!
“Its usually in the midst of muck and mess that the conditions for rebirth are being created.”
Dan Miller
Dan has created quite a following of both people in the workforce and entrepreneurs alike. I got his revised copy and was amazed to find out that when he asked his readers for suggestions for the update, over 165,000 words were – he said it would fill two more books if he was able to include them all!
As I was reading, I wondered if there were areas I really didn’t need to read because I am an entrepreneur. But had I skipped to just the chapters I felt were really relevant to me, I would have missed gleaning some really great information. After all, as an entrepreneur, aren’t you going through a type of interview process on a daily basis as you meet prospects whether in person or through a website, brochure or sales letter?
Dan is very big on setting goals. As an entrepreneur, if you don’t set goals, how will you ever know where you are going and how you will get there? In 48 Days, Dan states he has seen people transform their levels of success almost instantly simply as a result of getting clearly defined and written goals.
He says that NOTHING is unrealistic if you have a clear plan. That is a big problem for entrepreneurs! Sometimes we feel what is in our heads is our clear plan, but let me ask you, how is that working for you? Think back a year or five years ago and the plans you had for your business. Are you there? Are you even close? Have you surpassed or are you still sitting on the wishing, hoping, dreaming bus?
Dan encourages to start with 3 year goals and to work backward starting TODAY to make deposits for where
you want to be at the end of those three years. He says you will be amazed at the doors that start opening with that plan in place. Or, you can always keep doing it the way you have been doing it and watch yet another year literally fly by without any change. (It’s already October of 2016 – where has this year gone?!)
In 48 Days, there is a series of questions you need to ask yourself to decide if you are even entrepreneur material. Just a few of them include: Are you a self-starter? Are you able to accept responsibility? Can you take advice from others? Do you have a high level of confidence and belief in what you are doing? There are a total of 18 questions, all of which are very important for us as entrepreneurs.
Dan quotes Brian Tracy as saying that every one of us has 3-4 ideas a year that would make us millionaires if we just did something with those ideas, but we dismiss them as being unrealistic, too expensive or feel someone else has already done it. Thus we lose the opportunity to change our own success.
He states that only 20% of your success will be due to your IQ while 80% of your success will originate from skills such as attitude, enthusiasm, energy and a myriad of other items such as little things like tone of voice to big things like self- discipline and self-motivation.
Dan reminds us that our work satisfaction impacts our life satisfaction. If your life doesn’t feel joyful, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate what you are doing. But, don’t look at past mistakes or the fact that you have not moved your business forward the way you wanted to. Instead, learn from it, get a clear plan and move into the future!
