Tuned Into Business:

When Donny talks, it’s time to listen up. And when he gives the sort of endorsement he did recently, you really wouldn’t want to miss it. But just in case you did, Donny turned the reins over to the very talented and capable Carla Harris for his signature “Millionaire Secrets” segment. She may not be a household name to you, but she is a powerhouse. The show didn’t have my total attention until he shouted out, “You wouldn’t get a meeting with Carla Harris in a hundred years.” Harris is a managing director in global capital markets at Morgan Stanley.

Here are Harris’ tips from The Big Idea, along with some of the incredible things the Harvard grad has done.

1. Bring your authentic self to work. Make sure you leverage what makes you, you. Your competitive advantage is who you really are.
2. Be a risk taker. The person who is going to be rewarded in any environment is the person who is willing to think out of the box. Failure brings you a gift, and that gift is experience.
3. Live in your power. Understand your strengths and your weaknesses.
4. Perception is the co-pilot to reality. How people perceive you will directly impact how they deal with you. Think of three adjectives that are consistent with who you really are.
5. Be the author of your own agenda. It’s your life, and it’s your career. Do not manage your career based on someone else’s path.

Prior to her current position at Morgan Stanly, Harris was a senior member of the equity syndicate desk and was in charge of initial public offerings for UPS, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Ariba, Redback, the General Motors sub-IPO of Delphi Automotive and the $3.2 billion common stock transaction for Immunex Corp.

Honors

• Fortune magazine’s list of “The 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America”;

• Black Enterprise magazine’s “Top 50 African Americans on Wall Street”;

• Essence magazine’s list of “The 50 Women Who are Shaping the World”;

• Ebony’s list of “15 Corporate Women at The Top”;

• Network Journal’s 2005 list of “25 Most Outstanding Women in Business”;

• “Woman of the Year 2004″ from the Harvard University Black Men’s Forum.

She rocks, and my biggest regret is that what I’ve written doesn’t capture her enthusiasm. I felt like I wanted to go for a run after listening to her.

Troy Dunn was very entertaining on The Big Idea and had lots of great ideas that anyone can use to raise a self-sufficient kid. He should know. He’s a self-made millionaire and the father of seven children. His daughter, who is 10, has cancer.

Dunn’s Tips from his book, Young Bucks: How to Raise a Future Millionaire:

• Believe your children are capable of greatness.

• You don’t have to be a millionaire to raise one

• Identify your child’s business talents

• Light the learn-to-earn fire

• Start the startup

If you are wonderig who this guy is, here’s a snapshot:

1. Troy Dunn married his high-school sweetheart, Jennifer, and together they are raising seven beautiful children.
2. In 1992, Troy and his partner self-published their first book, The Locator, which drove revenue in excess of $10 million over the next eight years.
3. Troy enjoyed 14 years of national television appearances as “the reunion guy” on virtually every talk show on TV. From Good Morning America and Live With Regis & Kelly to 48 Hours and 60 Minutes.
4. He consults four corporate clients a year.
5. He’s the author of Young Bucks, a straightforward, practical and entertaining manual that debunks a number of parenting myths that work against financial independence, such as allowances.
6. Besides being a successful businessman, he is a public speaker, radio host and writer on the subject of financial success and personal happiness.

Tonight on the Big Idea, Dani Johnson shared her secrets of success. What’s interesting is that Johnson was homeless at the tender age of 21 and, while living out of her car, she turned her life around. By the time she was 23 she was a millionaire.

Johnson’s Millionaire Secrets:
1. Prepare for a marathon, not a sprint.
2. Weigh your ego with your bank account.
3. Prosper where you’re planted.
4. The marketplace pays for value.
5. Create results.

Johnson has written a wonderful book, Spirit Driven Success: Learn Time Tested Biblical Secrets To Create Wealth While Serving Others. While in her early 20s, she made her first millions in MLM. Today, she is founder of Call to Freedom International, a coaching and seminar training company that she and her husband Hans operate. I had the pleasure of meeting Dani, Hans and her family shortly after I profiled her for my book, Weekend Entrepreneur: 101 Great Ways to Earn Extra Cash.

If you want to be more and do more, or you are stuck and need a reality check and a roadmap to succeed beyond your wildest dreams, Dani Johnson is one of the finest trainers on the planet.

If his face looks familiar, it’s because this is the guy who was talking to his son about his vision board in The Secret. What you may not know is that John Assaraf is a high school dropout turned entrepreneur. I met Assaraf several years ago, and he is an all-around cool guy.

Tonight he shared a few millionaire secrets with Donny Deutsch and the gang at The Big Idea. With so much going on, Assaraf has managed to write The New York Times bestseller Having It All. He built four multimillion-dollar companies, and one of them generates more than $5 billion a year in sales. Assaraf’s dedication to help entrepreneurs inspired him to create the company OneCoach. I have to admit, I was pumped up with enthusiasm after seeing him tonight.

John’s 5 Millionaire Secrets:
1. Think like a business millionaire. Start thinking like a business millionaire. You’ve got to upgrade your mental vision of what you are going to achieve. Focus on what you really want, and start acting like you already achieved it (act as if).
2. Is your why big enough? If you have a big enough why the what will be easy. It’s not about the money: It’s who you become along the way that will drive you to do things when it’s hard.
3. Set grand, unrealistic goals that scare you. Unrealistic goals that make you feel doubt and fear force your brain to move to a higher order of thinking.
4. Opinions are free, and they are a dime a dozen. Don’t take people’s opinions that haven’t been there before.
5. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Click here to check out John’s website, blog, myspace page, videos on Squidoo and his book. I did.

Tell us what you are up to. It could be a tip, a quote or share your business idea with us.

Last night on The Big Idea, two of my favorite people joined forces. Über host Donny Deutsch interviewed an author of 30+ motivational books. The high-energy interview was all of four minutes long, and it was jam-packed with suggested steps to achieve success and to free yourself from the barriers that may be holding you back. Since The Big Idea often repeats its shows, it will probably be on again. It’s definitely worth seeing.

The guest was Joe Vitale, and I’m not the least bit shocked that his new book, The Key: The Missing Secret for Attracting Anything You Want, has already sold 500,000 books (whew). This book builds on his bestselling book, The Attractor Factor, and goes beyond his mega-hit book and DVD/movie “The Secret,â€? which features Joe.

No stranger to hard times, Joe has been broke and homeless, yet has achieved millionaire status. Here are some of the concepts from Attractor Factor that Joe shared with Donny:

Before Joe got started–he said step one is to watch The Big Idea every night.

1. Know what you don’t want
Use knowing what you want as a springboard to go to step two.
2. Check your intentions
Intentions rule the earth. Realign your body and mind to set a new target, stop complaining and state what you want. You can’t get what you want if you spend your time complaining about your bills, your job or whatever you are unhappy about.
3. Get clear
Most people don’t know that they may have counter beliefs and counter intentions that make them feel unworthy of success, so clean that type of thinking up.
4. “Nevillize� your goal
Feel what it would be like to already attain the thing you want. When you anchor the feeling within yourself, you are accelerating the process of going to it, you kick in your passion. Passion rules; passion is your key to success.
5. You let go while taking inspired action
You let go of your desperation, your addiction, your attachment to the end result. When you focus on your passion, you naturally take action.

For more information you can read more about the five steps he discussed in his book, Attractor Factor, and you can visit Joe’s website http://mrfire.com.

I loved the segment on The Big Idea featuring the CEO of BigString, Darin Myman. If you’ve ever mistakenly sent an email to someone and wished you could “unsendâ€? it BigString lets you delete accidental e-mails for FREE. Until now I have only seen this feature available when I send an email from my aol.com account to another AOL user. Now it’s available to the masses. And the best part is that it is easy to use… in fact there is no difference from regular email.

Three years ago, the BigString founders set out to build the best Spam fighting email system on the planet. Quite by accident, they invented the world’s first fully erasable email and didn’t even realize it.

Here’s what this revolutionary technology has to offer:
* BigString’s emails look and feel like any other emails that you get, except that the sender has complete control over all of their email functions by clicking on the “Edit Sent Mail� button.
* The unique “Edit Sent Mail� feature allows you to recall, erase, add or delete attachments and self-destruct your emails after they have been sent.
* BigString users have unprecedented control over all of their email, whether they choose to send it through the BigString.com website or an email client such as Outlook.
* You have the advantages of private email and secure email.
* BigString has filed a patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office that covers the BigString software, methodology and business processes for recallable and erasable email.

The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch is the most exciting and informative business show to hit the airwaves. It can be seen weeknights on CNBC.

Monday night (10/15/07) on The Big Idea two stories caught my eye. The first company pulled in 5 million in sales last year selling a forty-dollar bottle of Vodka called P.I.N.K. Their slogan… “World’s Perfect Party Spirit.� Created by David Mandell who initially ran the company out of his 2-bedroom NY apartment after quitting his job at the Federal Aviation Administration. What makes this Vodka different? Besides the beautiful award winning bottle’s design is that the Vodka is infused with both caffeine and the extract from the Brazilian guarana plant. So it’s more like a pumped up espresso than a martini. What’s amazing is how having no beverage-industry experience did not deter Mandell. He quickly filled in the blanks doing Google searches to locate a flavoring company that was willing to help him develop the formula. A major hurdle was to find a distiller willing to make a small quantity, 2,500 cases versus an order of 200,000 from Bacardi or Diageo.

The other story that won my heart is about two women who met when their daughters were first grade classmates. Long story short Bonnie Kelly and Teresa Walsh started chatting about how they could earn some extra cash. After experimenting with a few business ideas they each took 25 bucks from their grocery money and pursued their passion for sterling silver jewelry.

They started designing jewelry creations and hosting what they called “A Fun Ladies’ Night out Playing Dress-up with Jewelry!�™ One party led to another, and, it wasn’t long before Silpada Designs was born. In 2006 retail sales surpassed 190 million dollars and this year retail sales are projected to be nearly $250 million, making it the fastest-growing sterling silver jewelry home show company in the U.S. with more than 3 million customers across the country… and counting.

My weekend favorite is Your Business, the affable host is JJ Ramberg. This show focuses on small business and airs Sunday mornings on MSNBC. Of course shows like Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart and The View showcase entrepreneurs from time to time so I will keep you posted on these shows and many others as well.

Welcome to Tuned Into Business: Entrepreneurs as seen on TV. Today is my first blog posting. The content is designed with YOU in mind. Especially if you have visions of being on TV and sharing your story with the world. As a TV producer and entrepreneur I feel uniquely qualified to delve into this juicy topic.

Nowadays there are lots of shows featuring successful entrepreneurs. Donald Trump made ‘reality TV history’ with “The Apprentice.� The show earned him incredible ratings. His clever product placement and fascinating cast of characters made him and them an overnight success. “You’re FIRED� became the mantra that people associate with the show. The now defunct show ran its course after the 6th season. As they say, “That’s show biz.�

Switching channels for a moment, queen of the billionaire girls club and media darling, Oprah Winfrey teamed up with QVC and the Next Big Idea was born. It featured entrepreneurs who competed with 6,000 others and appeared on her show, May 3, 2007. Along with celebrity judges and the audience a winner was chosen.

Undoubtedly these shows are great examples of what is possible when your dream comes true! It doesn’t matter if you are in search of inspiration, innovation or want to keep up with what’s going on, you’ve come to the right place.

Step 1 - Know what’s going on out there in TV land as it pertains to business and entrepreneurs.
Step 2 – Make being successful a habit. And come back to Tuned Into Business often to check out what’s new in the world of entrepreneurs on TV.

I will be reporting on many of the most exciting entrepreneurs on TV. If you are an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur in training you will get a birds-eye view of unique business ideas and how people have launched their million-dollar empires. How cool would it be to have a place where you could find out about the winning formula for million dollar businesses?

Let me know what shows you are watching and what you like about them. Also, if you have an interesting story please leave a comment below I’d love to know what you’re up to.

With gratitude and appreciation,
Michelle Anton