New Years On A Private Island!

We're soooo incredibly excited and blessed to be spending 12 days on a private island to to retreat, reflect and celebrate New Years! We have been given this amazing opportunity by the generosity of a friend. TO HEAR THE WHOLE STORY and see more pictures, explore Deyl's blog post: http://buildpipelines.blogspot.com/2007/12/little-eden-cay.html

Yahoo!

To see and learn more about the island we're going to stay at, see the video below. It includes some great footage of the Martin family that owns the island too.




We are so stoked and feel so blessed. This is one of our wildest dreams come true. We look forward to dreaming even bigger in 2008!

What Do These Have In Common?

Question: What does SEATTLE, MEXICO, SHOES & PEANUT BUTTER have in common?

Answer: This week I am in Seattle working on my next speech for a shoe company in Leon, Mexico. It's raining outside, and this hotel doesn't have room service so tonight's dinner was smooched peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I realized I could had figured out something more exotic for dinner but I was too lazy.

What am I doing in Seattle? I am working one-on-one with one of the nation's best speech coaches Jan D'Arcy in her clubhouse as she helps me prepare for my next international speaking engagement. Jan D'Arcy is helping me learn how to best communicate my topic over the language gap amongst other things. I will be speaking to a 100 non-English speaking C-level executives on Jan 16th. The Mexican company that hired me is the Andrea Company and they primarily sell shoes.

My speaking topic is: Achieving Impossible: How Today's' Greatest Leaders Consistently Beat the Odds.

Thanks to Anna Jordan for booking the gig for me. Anna = Great.

I am having a blast and learning a lot. I feel so grateful to be invited to speak to this group and to be doing this work! Besides P&J is kinda good sometimes for dinner.

The Facts of Life

When you’re writing a book, you come across a lot of funny and useless facts. Here are a couple winners.

PATHETIC:
Since 1978, 37 people have died as a result of shaking vending machines, in an attempt to get free merchandise. 113 have been injured

DESPERATE:
The first contraceptive was crocodile dung used by the ancient Egyptians.

DEPRESSING:
The average person spends 40 years cleaning.

USEFUL:
Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

STUPID:
5,840 people with pillow related injuries checked into U.S. emergency rooms in 1992

PUZZLING:
It it illegal to eat oranges while bathing in California (Does anyone have a guess as to why?)

And my favorite:

HILARIOUS:
Lime Jell-o gives off the same brain waves as adult males!!

More Millionaires Are Middle class

I found this article on how more millionaires are choosing more modest lifestyles.

But is it because millionaires care less about the big toys or is it because millionaire are simply becoming more common place?

There seems to be conflicting data on how many millionaires are in the US.

This study shows that in 2007, one-out-of every 200 Americans is a millionaire and it's expected that one-out-of-10 people will be millionaires within the next decade!

However private wealth specialists Lewis Schiff and Russ Alan Prince say the "number of Americans with $1 million to $10 million had risen to 8.4 million households -- or 7.6 percent of U.S. households -- and was growing at 15 percent a year".

As of 2007, the median home cost in America is over a quarter million dollars and a condo in New York city costs well over a million dollars. I wonder, how long will it be until we see billboards like the one above?

HERE ARE A COUPLE INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE NEW RICH

** More and more Americans worth at least $1 million want luxury goods such as yachts but otherwise lead family-focused, work-oriented lives. New millionaires adhere to middle-class values, earning their money rather than inheriting it, working 70 hours a week, and choosing neighborhoods based on the quality of schools.

** 89 percent of middle-class millionaires believed anyone could attain wealth through hard work.

** Middle-class millionaires are almost three times as likely as the average middle-class person to choose a career based on its likely earnings, three times as likely to belong to a networking group, and five times more likely to say they are always available for work by phone or email.

** He said the four main characteristics of a millionaire were that they were hard working, networked, persistent even in the face of failure, and put themselves in the flow of money.
"You could be a hard-working, dedicated chemistry teacher but you will never create wealth in that way," he added.


*** TO READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE ***

"You Are What You Eat" Says Marisa

I recently hired a wonderful nutritionist and person named Marisa Ericson with Conditioning Specialists to help me with the nutrition aspect of my California Half-Ironman training program.

Marisa is beyond wonderful. She looks at my training week by week as well as any travel plans, preferences for food and then comes up with a weekly meal plan (with all my favorite foods) specifically for me. It looks like this:

*** CLICK HERE TO SEE A SAMPLE WEEK Paige's nutrition plan ***

Gary Fong once told me over lunch that losing weight is all about what you eat and not working out. This experience has really made me realize the truth in his statement. I trained for an entire long course triathlon and lost hardly any weight. I also trained for two half marathons and still didn’t lose weight. I have been working with Marisa for just two weeks and I have lost more weight then I did the full four months of triathlon training.

This doesn’t mean you should listen to whatever Gary says or training isn’t still a total blast but it does mean that food may be king when it comes to the world of lbs. It also means that Marisa is great and I am so blessed to find someone so wonderful to work with like her.

Here is tonight’s dinner: Mojito Salmon, brown rice, 1 glass of red wine + cute husband. Prep time = 15 minutes. Cook time = 45 minutes.

Bon Appetit!