IBV Insights Blog

Somewhere early in my mid-life journey, I found myself calling it a time of soulful excavation.  As a few years have passed, and having explored any number of converging paths toward wholeness, integrating mind, body and spirit, integrating spiritual and work life, a recurring theme has been the awareness that my body’s physical challenges are my teacher.  I can’t really call any of them illnesses per se, but I have become more and more aware that my choices regarding what I think, feel, eat, and do, deeply affect my overall well being, and most important, the quality of life I am determining into my maturity.

Considering that I plan to live to be 110, it’s imperative that I live well today to ensure that I live well for years to come!  I used to say, “I’ll take 78 good years,” but I have come to learn that I have a lot of work to do, and won’t be finished with my assignment by that time.  I need a few more years, and fully intend to live them fully!

Along the line of this pattern of thought, I realized that just as our bodies are our teachers, so, too are our clients.  Consciously or unconsciously, we choose to work with prospects and clients who bring powerful lessons into our lives – if we choose to acknowledge – and learn from – them.  Usually the lessons we refer to are the mundane, practical lessons that enable us to grow into savvy business people.  The lessons to which I am referring, however, are on a deeper psychological and spiritual level.

As in every other arena of our lives, in business, too, we choose people who are either our mirrors, our teachers, or both.  The business relationship is never only about the transaction.  The mundane results are what we focus on -  the product(s), service(s), the sale, the follow-up, and of course, the relationship(s), relative to the business.

But how many of us really pay attention to what is happening beneath the surface?  Thinking about what’s going on when we are miffed by a client’s attitude?  Frustrated when a prospect strings us along closing the deal or signing the contract, and when we allow that to happen, making the process arduous, and fraught with hand wringing, as well as with anger as the time to closing the deal adds up, and our hourly rate dwindles to a fraction of our true value.

Have you ever stopped to think what patterns with prospects and clients you are repeating?  And how many are mirrored in your personal lives?  It’s uncanny – they’re all related!

Our lives are totally integrated, and the problems or inner work that we need to do in our personal lives, face us in our work life.  And just as our emotional challenges manifest in physical ailments, the emotional challenges we have with clients can also result in physical challenges.  Our work is to recognize the patterns behind the challenges, and to decide to change them.  How???

Well first off, don’t expect to change newly acknowledged challenges with the same emotional toolbox you used to solve earlier, simpler challenges.  Remember Einstein’s definition of insanity – “doing the same thing over and again, expecting the same results.”  The Ithaca area is rich with healers, coaches, therapists, and others who have unique skills to assist individuals to reach their higher potential.

Investing in oneself requires a deep value in one’s highest potential.  In working to conquer one’s challenges, the greatest opponent is one’s ego.  While the ego deserves an important place in the affairs of humans, it needs to be reeled in, and kept in check, so our higher selves may emerge, and do their good work with mankind.

If you’re experiencing difficulties at work – with co-workers, employees, employers, customers, vendors…look inward and be open to exploring what it is in you that is screaming to learn.  I guarantee the challenges you feel you’re leaving at the office, you’re actually encountering again at home.  Look at your challenges as your teacher.  Do a “post mortem” on business transactions, whether they are daily sales, or involve selling or purchasing office equipment.  And be ready to change.

“Change is the essence of life.  Be ready to surrender what you are for what you could become.”  Anonymous

In my last article, I stated that a well-designed succession plan allows a business owner to pre-determine not only the destiny of the business, but also his or her personal destiny.    Today I will begin sharing information that may helpful to understanding why that is so.

Every business owner will exit his or her business at some time.  Some will do it with panache, and move on to either retirement or another venture, others will die at their desks. When business owners plan far enough in advance for their exit, their options provide the best opportunity to define and achieve their goals.

While most of you reading this article probably have plans in place to provide in the case of possible disability and inevitable death, at the very least in the form of wills and insurance, only 22% of business owners surveyed in 2005 by Pricewaterhouse Coopers reported having planned for their exit from their business – an activity that should be both voluntary and profitable!

So how does one go about developing a succession plan?  An expert at business planning will say the exit strategy should be included in the business plan before the company even gets off the ground!  But if that hasn’t been the case, the first step should be to determine the value of the business.  That is, what an able and willing buyer would pay for the business in the current marketplace. Of course, a good advisor will also take business owners through a rigorous examination of their values, to learn about how they want to live into their maturity, so they can plan effectively to realize their dreams and desires.

A business valuation takes into consideration qualitative as well as quantitative criteria.  It isn’t as simple as using a rule of thumb multiple of EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) or cash flow.  For example,  the value of a highly profitable company with only two customers is significantly discounted for obvious reasons.  Also, if the owner of a company is paramount to its brand, or is the only link to the customers, that also can negatively impact its value to a buyer.  These are examples of qualitative factors that impact a company’s worth.  Conversely, unique intellectual property can positively affect a company’s valuation.  It takes a seasoned expert to correctly determine the weight of qualitative factors in valuing a company.  The quantitative criteria are derived from the company’s financials, typically from the past 3-5 years.

There are several business valuation modalities, and again, it takes an expert to determine which type to utilize.  Also, a valid business valuation typically reviews the business through several chosen modalities, comprehending those best aligned to the evaluate the business’s performance.  For example, a selling price of a business in distress may be determined by different asset-based valuations.  A highly profitable business would be valued using discounted cash flow, among other, methods.

By whom may a business owner have a valuation prepared?  Mergers and acquisitions specialists, investment banking firms, and accounting firms with in-house mergers and acquisitions specialists, are the best sources for business valuations for determining fair market value.  Of course, you may check our website  www.integratedbv.com to learn about our valuation services:)   Beyond a valuation to determine a fair market price range for a business,  there are a myriad of other, more complex valuations that must able to be upheld in litigation.  For these purposes, it is essential to consult a certified valuation analyst, many of whom are also accountants.

Why a business valuation as a first step?  Many business owners have a significant amount of their personal assets tied up in, or collateralized to, their business.  Given the rapid decline in the financial markets, the amount of equity available from the business may be essential to their retirement, or to a lifestyle they developed as business owners, and prefer to maintain.

Of course, a review of one’s personal assets and involvement of a financial advisor may be warranted either at this stage, or once the business valuation is completed.  Also, an attorney specializing in estate planning may be important to this process.

Conversely, if  business owners find, through the information gleaned from the valuation, that the company is not actually worth what they assumed it to be, and its current value will not support their future plans, they have the fortunate ability to do something about that.  Growth planning provides opportunity to shore up the company’s financial performance and profitability.  This can be done either organically or through acquisition, and with the aid of outsourced advisors.  If your company is large enough to support a corporate CFO, and the company has been underperforming financially, it is time to find a more capable executive, and to thoroughly analyze all aspects of your business.

Next week I’ll address the importance of clarifying one’s intentions about one’s future in regard to the exit planning process.  Stay tuned!

In last week’s article, I stated that a well-designed succession plan allows a business owner to pre-determine not only the destiny of the business, but also his or her personal destiny.    Today I will begin sharing information that may helpful to understanding why that is so.

Every business owner will exit his or her business at some time.  Some will do it with panache, and move on to either retirement or another venture, others will die at their desks. When business owners plan far enough in advance for their exit, their options provide the best opportunity to define and achieve their goals.

While most of you reading this article probably have plans in place to provide in the case of possible disability and inevitable death, at the very least in the form of wills and insurance, only 22% of business owners surveyed in 2005 by Pricewaterhouse Coopers reported having planned for their exit from their business – an activity that should be both voluntary and profitable!

So how does one go about developing a succession plan?  An expert at business planning will say the exit strategy should be included in the business plan before the company even gets off the ground!  But if that hasn’t been the case, the first step should be to determine the value of the business.  That is, what an able and willing buyer would pay for the business in the current marketplace. Of course, a good advisor will also take business owners through a rigorous examination of their values, to learn about how they want to live into their maturity, so they can plan effectively to realize their dreams and desires.

A business valuation takes into consideration qualitative as well as quantitative criteria.  It isn’t as simple as using a rule of thumb multiple of EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) or cash flow.  For example,  the value of a highly profitable company with only two customers is significantly discounted for obvious reasons.  Also, if the owner of a company is paramount to its brand, or is the only link to the customers, that also can negatively impact its value to a buyer.  These are examples of qualitative factors that impact a company’s worth.  Conversely, unique intellectual property can positively affect a company’s valuation.  It takes a seasoned expert to correctly determine the weight of qualitative factors in valuing a company.  The quantitative criteria are derived from the company’s financials, typically from the past 3-5 years.

There are several business valuation modalities, and again, it takes an expert to determine which type to utilize.  Also, a valid business valuation typically reviews the business through several chosen modalities, comprehending those best aligned to the evaluate the business’s performance.  For example, a selling price of a business in distress may be determined by different asset-based valuations.  A highly profitable business would be valued using discounted cash flow, among other, methods.

By whom may a business owner have a valuation prepared?  Mergers and acquisitions specialists, investment banking firms, and accounting firms with in-house mergers and acquisitions specialists, are the best sources for business valuations for determining fair market value.  Of course, you may check our website  www.integratedbv.com to learn about our valuation services:)   Beyond a valuation to determine a fair market price range for a business,  there are a myriad of other, more complex valuations that must able to be upheld in litigation.  For these purposes, it is essential to consult a certified valuation analyst, many of whom are also accountants.

Why a business valuation as a first step?  Many business owners have a significant amount of their personal assets tied up in, or collateralized to, their business.  Given the rapid decline in the financial markets, the amount of equity available from the business may be essential to their retirement, or to a lifestyle they developed as business owners, and prefer to maintain.

Of course, a review of one’s personal assets and involvement of a financial advisor may be warranted either at this stage, or once the business valuation is completed.  Also, an attorney specializing in estate planning may be important to this process.

Conversely, if  business owners find, through the information gleaned from the valuation, that the company is not actually worth what they assumed it to be, and its current value will not support their future plans, they have the fortunate ability to do something about that.  Growth planning provides opportunity to shore up the company’s financial performance and profitability.  This can be done either organically or through acquisition, and with the aid of outsourced advisors.  If your company is large enough to support a corporate CFO, and the company has been underperforming financially, it is time to find a more capable executive, and to thoroughly analyze all aspects of your business.

Next week I’ll address the importance of clarifying one’s intentions about one’s future in regard to the exit planning process.  Stay tuned!

I was at the gym recently, and while on the elliptical, read a short expose about Bernie Madoff in Vanity Fair, which I picked up off the magazine rack by the treadmills. It was written by his longtime personal assistant, who was totally unaware of his behavior until he was arrested. Reeling from the effects of such a violation of trust, her feelings did a 180 from total dedication to and admiration of Madoff to feelings of disgust and real hate.

We all love to hate Bernie Madoff. His greed. His arrogance. His lies. How he bilked his best friends out of their riches. His betrayal of trust, ruthlessly absconding his clients’ life savings, leaving them destitute while living in the lap of luxury.

Madoff did with money what Hitler did with nationalism. He created a system that made obscene the very thing his contemporaries valued most. Hitler’s early appeal to the Germans was his passion for returning to them international status and respect. Madoff’s success as an investor resulted from the striking returns his clients believed they could receive from his brilliant financial acumen. Madoff’s madness began manifesting when his zeal for making money broke his moral compass just as Hitler’s did when his lust for power took possession of his soul.

The past couple of years I’ve heard myself say more than once that a person can’t get to midlife without having been betrayed as well as having seriously betrayed someone else. Betrayal is in all of our shadows. If each of us examines our conscience, we uncover behavior we prefer to hide not only from others, but most carefully from ourselves. That’s why we love to hate Bernie Madoff. He’s a blatant representation of what we hate in ourselves. Our greed. Our arrogance. Our betrayal of trusts.

As Americans, regardless of what spiritual path we choose, our national god is the all mighty dollar. However our founding fathers tried to eliminate theocracy from our governing systems, in practice, our history proves that the dollar has ruled not only our economy, but our socio-political landscape through the institution of the corporation since the earliest colonies were established on our shores. The very structure of the corporation, which legally requires its officers to act with fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, by definition, requires them to betray every other stakeholder in the greater community, if the best course of action for making the most money is in conflict with the community’s best interest. Those interests may include their health as well as the health of the planet.

So how is Bernie Madoff our, my, mirror? We all work for and/or with corporations every day. Given two simple reasons for business owners to incorporate, among many others, the tax structure and our litigious society, most entrepreneurs understand it is in their best interest to incorporate, even if they have come to hate what some corporations have done to the fiber of American business ethics, not to mention its environment.

However much I may rail against actions by our government to which I morally object, such as acts of terror in the name of freedom as we send more troops to Afghanistan, I realize they are also my acts. I am an American. I enjoy all of the advantages of being an American, of having the ability to create a corporation if I want to be self-employed. Of having the resources to think about investing or not with crooks like Bernie Madoff.

So how do we deal with this dark shadow? What is practical and prudent? Finger pointing is hypocritical. Instead, I believe we must be open to new ways of thinking. Of acting. Of doing business. There is no one solution to a broken infrastructure as complex as ours, but it is evident we need to begin creating new business models. As all the systems – financial, political, social – continue to break down, the scandals are constant reminders that we need to be open to creating deep changes in America’s infrastructure.

I believe we live in the greatest time in history, in which we have the ability to choose to change. Bernie Madoff, like Hitler, reminds us that we all have the potential, and the choice, to do great evil, or great good. Collectively, we can affect change, and we can do it consciously, or be forced by the tides of change, as we have experienced in the past year.

I wanted to write about sustainability for my first entry of the New Year, and found inspiration from a Christmas card a dear friend sent me.  The front of the card reads “Wherever you stand be the soul of that place,” by Rumi. How 2010, a Christmas card quoting a mystic Sufi poet! ( actually, it was a blank card, with a hand-written Merry Christmas message on the inside.)

Nevertheless,  the message is two-fold and very Aquarian: of the conscience of sustainability coupled with a celebration of spiritual unity. I’d like to make a connection of these ideas to business.

With so many American companies being transplanted overseas, operating often without regard to the environment or to the health and wellness of the community from which they were removed, we can see business sustainability through an ecological lens.  I’d like to suggest that not only can local businesses contribute to the health of the planet by integrating green practices to decrease their carbon footprint, the green movement equally benefits businesses by imbuing a soulful respect for the Earth into day-to-day practices.

How many of you consciously integrate mind, body, and soul in your business language and practices?  Do you sandwich your business life between morning and evening prayer &/or meditation, or do you also make time during the day to center yourself and allow your higher mind/self to participate in your business decisions?

By committing to more and more activities and practices that reduce your company’s waste stream, that lower your energy consumption, that reduce your overall carbon footprint on the earth, you concomitantly engage in a conscious , daily spiritual practice of loving the Earth.

I recently visited the website for the Green Resource Hub of the Finger Lakes,  www.greenresourcehub.org.  If you haven’t visited it, you must.  It is a clearinghouse of  resources that “works to nurture sustainable businesses and communities.”  And it does so through collaboration of businesses and organizations whose members care deeply about the Earth.   The site says “The Hub provides education, training, and networking opportunities in the following areas: energy efficiency, renewable energy,  green building, and green purchasing.”

As more and more organizations, individuals, and businesses begin networking and collaborating to share ideas and resources for a purpose greater than their individual needs or wants, that conscience of sustainability feeds the greater community, and we share the opportunity to become”the soul of that place.”

Best wishes for a happy, healthy, prosperous 2010!

I went online to review the buzz that followed Obama’s meeting with a dozen top bankers at the White House on the 14^th.  While he admonished the “fat cats on Wall Street” for their role in keeping money tight for Main Street and larger small businesses, he failed to address one major hole into which the economy leaked significantly – the TARP funds.

Whatever happened to the 700+ BILLION DOLLARS that helped bail out the banks (beside what was used for executive bonuses and to fund bank acquisitions)????  And why, still, isn’t it being used to help American businesses?

Last week my partner Michael and I were at a conference attended by bankers, private equity and venture capital firms.  With an inquiring-minds-want-to-know demeanor, he raised the never-yet-satisfactorily-answered question as to where all the TARP money went.  One answer totally floored us – it was made available to the banks at 9% interest – and it is available for qualified borrowers at 12%.  That takes me to the main point of this article:  if business is down across most industries, and businesses have struggled with reduced sales, and consequently reduces cash flow, their financials won’t support the most conservative approach to lending in decades. Ergo, the TARP money sits, and sits, in the banks.  It’s not flowing.  It’s not priming the pump.

So here’s something I just picked up from CNNMoney.com that supports that point. “The 22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury’s bailout programs have decreased their small business lending by a collective $11.6 billion since April…”

The article continues, “When loan and credit lines dry up, small businesses have trouble launching, expanding, and funding their daily operations. President Obama met Monday with CEOs from a dozen of the nation’s biggest banks to pressure them to do more to rebuild the economy they helped blast apart.”

‘We expect some results,’ Obama told the bankers. ‘I’m getting too many letters from small businesses who explain that they are credit worthy, and banks that they’ve had a long-term relationship with are still having problems giving them loans.’

However I may agree with what Obama just said, I’m still wondering why he isn’t also lighting a fire under SBA officials.  If we weren’t spending billions to “get the job done” in Afghanistan, perhaps our tax dollars (i.e. Americans’ own money) could be used to provide low-interest loans (or even grants…) to small businesses, and therefore to help fuel a real economic recovery.

To that end, CNNMoney reports, “President Obama’s administration has been trying all year to revive the small business credit market. Most of the initiatives are currently either stalled or out of gas.”

“In October, Obama unveiled a collaborative effort between the Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration to make capital cheaper for community banks. The administration wants to use the Treasury’s Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to make ultra-low-interest loans to banks that will use the money to expand their small business lending.”

“But nearly two months after Obama’s announcement, the Treasury is still hashing out the details. ‘We expect the program to kick off very soon,’Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said.”

“Meanwhile, a popular Recovery Act measure to boost the Small Business Administration’s loan programs has run out of money and awaits Congressional action to replenish its funding pool. More than 700 SBA loan applications, totaling $390 million, are in the queue and on hold.”

“‘This is a very hard problem to solve,’ Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said at a small business lending forum in Washington last month. Speaking to a room filled with small business owners and lenders, Geithner was candid about the struggle.”

The good news is that amidst all of the finger pointing coming from Washington, American business owners are standing on their own and surviving on their own. Creativity is the brainchild of survival, and business owners that are surviving are accomplishing it with creativity and courage. And the good news out of all the banking gloom and doom is that forecasts by all the major banks call for more lending activity in 2010.

Perhaps the banks should begin looking at a new category of criteria for lending – any business owner who has weathered last year’s storm, and is still standing and doing business should be considered not only very good credit risk, but a valuable customer!

I have a feeling many business owners will gladly ring out the old this new year’s eve, drink more than one toast to the new year – and to the promise of new opportunities.  I know I will be focusing on keeping the wave of possibility open in the coming months!  May we not lose sight of the lessons coming from financial debacle we’ve been weathering; and may we drink a toast to a prosperous new year from a glass that’s half full!  Happy holidays!

With the release of The Secret a few years ago, there’s been an ongoing buzz in ever widening circles beyond the New Age strata about the art and science of manifestation.

From the get-go I believed the authors of The Secret were capitalizing on the unexpected cult success of What the Bleep?, and put together a watered down version of teachings that have been available for millennia.  While the principles of manifestation may now be explained using quantum physics, the power of mind has produced in human beings fantastic results for ages.  Witness the great pyramids, Stonehenge, and Machu Picchu, to name a few.

How we choose to engage our minds, and to invest our related emotional energies directly affects whether we create in our lives prosperity or scarcity.  Universal laws, such as the Law of Attraction, dictate what becomes manifest is a result of the attention and energy in which we invest our minds and emotions.

We have all heard of and have seen the powerful results of visualization.  World-class athletes have been using visualization techniques to stretch the limits of human achievement for decades.  While miracles of all sorts have been attributed to divine intervention, it is not without the express intention applied by human beings, in prayer, that directly affects the end results.

In business, we also see miracles whose inception begin with people’s focused intentions that direct their minds to begin selecting opportunities to create their expressed desires.  This, in a nutshell, is what I believe distinguishes successful entrepreneurs from those with chronic struggles.  Of course, in every business, challenges arise.  But the difference between those business owners who have prosperous, profitable companies and those with chronic losses, is their state of mind.

Prosperity consciousness is the state of mind in individuals who not only expect their desired results, but who focus their positive mental energy on engaging in activities that will support their success.  High emotional intelligence supports how they select opportunities that further their goals. Inner confidence and trust in guiding spiritual principles support behaviors that engender prosperity that can be measured in whatever ways are meaningful to each individual.

A scarcity mentality accompanies many businesses whose owners always seem to be barely surviving.  Vendors are consistently paid  late.  The owners have perennial fears about being able to meet payroll.  In looking at the historical financials, one sees a business run on the backs of its creditors.  Often the owners are lacking basic skills, yet never make the time to become educated or trained properly to execute good business practices.  I wonder whether they have a deep, perhaps unconscious feeling on unworthiness.  Conversely to prosperous business owners who focus on they most desire, those who consistently struggle, attract what they also focus upon, what they most fear.

Making the change from scarcity to prosperity is not as simple as just changing one’s mind.  Our emotional patterns run deeply beneath our consciousness.  If you are running a business and have always seemed to be struggling to make ends meet, before you continue thinking that all you need is more money, consider investing first in yourself.  Find a life coach who can help you identify the root of your scarcity mentality, and who will provide appropriate tools to help you make the shift in consciousness that can create in you a true desire for the prosperity you can indeed manifest.

How often are you aware of opportunities that seem to arise out of the blue?  If you notice what seems to be an unusual opportunity, do you immediately act upon it…or do you hesitate, allowing your mind to weigh whether and how to seize what may seem like a fluke, a gamble, or perhaps something  too insignificant to actually be of any purpose?  Or perhaps too big to be able to take on?

I’ve had about two weeks of ongoing synchronicities surrounding the theme of opportunity.  Piggy-backed with that are events and people so integrally connected, that the opportunities are beginning to look like giant jigsaw pieces coming together, as if their sides were magnetically charged.  Sound familiar?  This kind of thing happens to people all the time – it’s more natural for opportunities to abound than to be lacking.

This latest attention on opportunity all started with Kevin Shreve,  who is a financial planner providing advisory services through his business Financial Designs. He and I are members of the Ithaca Thumbs Up! Chapter of BNI (Business Networking International), and recently met,  along with my partner Michael, to learn more about one another, our businesses, and our driving values and business philosophies.

In our discussion, Kevin shared how he attributes much of his success to having learned to see opportunities when they present themselves, and to embrace the possibilities that unfold when he acts upon them.  After that meeting I had a couple of “book synchronicities” that gave me the following material I’d like to share with you.

Three days after having the “opportunity” discussion with Kevin, I picked up a book sitting on the coffee table at home, thinking it was a Spanish cookbook I was looking for, opened it, and read this:

“Prepare for opportunity.  If you were presented with a unique opportunity, would you be prepared to engage it?  How many times in life has opportunity arrived, but you weren’t prepared so you had to pass?  The one thing you can start doing now is to prepare yourself for anything.  Then you’re going to create opportunity.  The more prepared you are, the more chances will come your way.  If you do not participate because of fear that you’re not ready or aren’t good enough and will fail, you will be stuck sitting on the sidelines of life.  You become the passive spectator watching everybody else in action, saying, “That looks like so much fun.  Why am I not dong that?”

“So prepare yourself emotionally, spiritually, physically, intellectually, and creatively.  Take every part of your life that needs sharpening and start honing.  Focus and unclutter so that when the opportunity appears, you’re ready to go.”  (p.86)

The book I picked up was the same color as the Spanish cookbook, but its recipes are for living more fully, instead of filling one’s belly!  The book is Living in the Moment, by Gary Null.

This morning Michael read to me from John Kehoe’s book, Mind Power, which contrasts prosperity consciousness with scarcity mentality. (I’ll share more about this in next week’s article).    Prosperity consciousness recognizes it’s an abundant universe, and that there are staggering numbers of opportunities in every aspect of our lives.  Kehoe posits that if we believe that, then we will actively search them out.

In our consulting practice, we’ve worked extensively with business owners who are either in dire need of turnaround assistance, or conversely, who engage us to help grow their businesses.  In most cases, those companies with chronic problems, and losses, have owners with scarcity mentalities.  And those who believe they deserve success and the abundance that accompanies it, possess a prosperity consciousness.

Where are you in your life?  Are you always struggling?  Worrying about finances?  Blaming the economy for your bad luck?  Always experiencing conflict with others?  Or are you happy with your life?  Enjoying bountiful opportunities, and being grateful for your prosperity?  In what ways do you feel prosperous?  Financially?  Great health?  Wonderful relationships with family, friends, colleagues?  Spiritually fulfilled?  It’s your choice.  Just decide what you want, and start paying attention.  Soon you’ll begin seeing more and more opportunities, realizing they have many faces and dimensions, and that they’re always available when you’re ready to make them yours.