The following is from The Power of Attitude by Mac Anderson

OUR ATTITUDE in many ways ties directly to your “inner voice” that forever asks the question . . . “Are you moving toward your dream?” If your answer is “yes,” then hope breeds contentment. However, if the answer is “no, it’s too late,” despair may fester within your subconscious. You might not even realize why your life lacks joy.

I can say this with conviction . . . “It is never too late to be what you could have been.” Dreams are free, and just having them can make your life worth living.

Ray Kroc is one of my business heroes. He founded McDonald’s when he was 52 years old, after trying for over two years and talking to more than one hundred people to raise the money. Fifteen years ago, I had the good fortune of talking to Tom Seay, one of the potential investors whom Ray approached. Tom told me how Ray had come to his office one Friday afternoon with his business plan for this “crazy idea” called McDonald’s. For $100,000 he was offering Tom thirty percent of the company. Tom told him that he didn’t have the time to review it then but that he would take it home over the weekend.

Monday morning rolled around, and Ray was waiting at the front door when Tom got to his office. Tom invited him in and said, “Ray, I read this plan three times; even shared it with a friend. And we both decided that there’s no way in the world you can make any money selling hamburgers.”

We all know that Ray thought otherwise; and the rest, of course, is history.

The following is from The Simple Truths of Service by Ken Blanchard & Barbara Glanz

One way to get customers to brag about you is to begin thinking outside the box. That’s exactly what the owner of this appliance repair company my mother bragged about did. When I called him to find out how he could service people the day they called, he explained his story. It turned out that he had been a fix-it man in Massachusetts. Because of his health, his doctors suggested he move to a warmer climate. When he got to San Diego, he would find out when people were moving into a house they had just bought. He would knock on the door and tell them that he was a fix-it man. If they needed any painting or repairs done, he would be happy to do it at a reasonable price. All he asked was that they agree to refer him to other customers if they liked his work.

This guy always showed up on time, did what he said he would do with high quality, and charged a reasonable price. People loved his work. He built his business up so much that when old customers would call to get him to do something, very often he didn’t have time because he was so busy. A number of people suggested to him that he start his own company. But he was reluctant, because he was concerned about managing employees and having a big payroll.

One day he woke up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea. About thirty percent of the people living in San Diego are retirees. Many retirees are bored. They’d love to have something to do, and if they can help other people, that’s even more special. So he put an ad in the local paper that said: Retirees: If you’re good at fixing things, want to help people, and make some extra money, give me a call.

It turns out he had 25-30 retirees on call every single day. So if a customer like my mother called, he had someone he could send out to her. And he didn’t have the problem of a big payroll. If the people didn’t work, they didn’t get paid. Laughingly, he told me that he had a hard time paying some of the people, because it goofed up their Social Security. They just loved the work.

How’s that for out-of-the-box thinking? Johnny didn’t do too badly on that score, either.

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”

-Linus Pauling-