There have been many times in my life, when I really wanted to do something that seemed impossible, but I made a choice to believe in the possibilities and go for it:

• When I was 10, I wanted to go to girl scout camp but didn’t have the money, so I sold more cookies than anyone else and earned a scholarship so I could go.
• When I was 14, I wanted to be on the club swim team. I got up at 4:30 every morning, rode my bike 30 minutes to someone else’s house, paid them gas money to take me to practice, swam for two hours, then rode my bike 30 minutes back to my part time job, and worked all day so I could pay swim club membership fees.
• I wanted to go to college and my parents were not in a position to help me. So I left home at the age of 17, put myself through college (umpiring men’s softball, working as a life guard, running the college intramural sports program, working as a bank teller, and doing an internship for a CPA Firm). I have been finically independent ever since.
• After working for Xerox as a Major Account Sales Representative for a year, I wanted to become a sales trainer. Everyone said it would take at least four years. Within eighteen months of stating my intention, Xerox moved me across the country, and I became a trainer at the Xerox International Center for Training and Management Development.

In 2008, when I was newly divorced and solely responsible for my three kids, I took them on vacation to a dude ranch in Colorado. I fell in love with that dude ranch and with Colorado. My heart told me I needed to buy a lot from the ranch, build a house, and move but my head said “Lori, are you crazy, what are you thinking? You don’t have the money to buy the lot or build the house, you would have to sell one business and move the other, you don’t know anyone in Colorado except the people at that ranch, and you have a perfectly acceptable life in Virginia.” I listened to my heart and three years later I was living my dream life in my dream house in Colorado.

Sometimes to make big strides forward, we need to listen to our heart, follow our intuition, and make a conscious choice to take a big leap, even if it is scary. I call it “scary, but right” and have done it many times. I have never regretted:

• Taking a big chance and leaving a prestigious, well paid position at a large corporation for a position at a small entrepreneurial company, where I felt I could quickly contribute to the bottom line while also creating a better work life balance for myself. I had a positive impact. The company grew, diversified it’s revenue streams and thrived. I became a Vice President.
• Leaving a lucrative job as a Vice President in a growing company, hiring a coach and starting my own consulting business, so that I could run a business based on my values and have the work life balance that I wanted. In the first year, I grew that business to six figures and have had six figure income every year, while working on my own terms and loving what I do.
• Diversifying my consulting business by purchasing a vacation rental company that managed twenty properties, despite the feedback from my then husband telling me that I did not know what I was doing and that I would never be able to be successful with it.   Over four years I grew that business to 40 properties and six figure revenue.
• Deciding after 20 years of marriage to extricate myself and my kids from an undesirable situation and get divorced. Rather than prolong the divorce, I choose to give up over half of my financial net worth and agreed to be completely responsible for our three children financially and otherwise. I had more energy, recaptured my positive spirit, reestablished my savings, funded my retirement, and paid for my dream home within five years. And most importantly my children are thriving.

So what business and life lessons did I learn from all of this:

• There is more to life than having a well thought out plan and thinking with our heads. That is important but we need to nurture, be in touch with, and trust our intuition. Oftentimes, going with our gut instinct is best.
• Life is too short to work a job we don’t like, are not passionate about, or that is incongruent with our skills, values, and beliefs no matter how much it pays.
• Paralysis is our enemy. Once we generate, consider, and assess options we can take empowered, confident, courageous action that will propel us toward our dreams.
• We have to invest in ourselves and in our businesses