Success Manifesto

Many people I speak with say that they would like to get a book published some day. Having just gone through the process of self-publishing, I have to say that it was much easier and less expensive than I had expected. Below are the costs for producing a book through Lightning Source (LSI):

Startup Costs (It is possible to do a lot of these yourself depending on the quality you want and how good you are at them)

• Illustrations - varies
  
• Editing - varies
  
• Cover Design - varies
  
• Layout (can be done in MS Word) - varies
  
• ISBN #: $225
  
• Incorporation (optional) - $500
  
• LSI Title Set Up - $80
  
• Copyright: $20

• Padded Envelope - $.50
  
• Shipping - $2.67
  
• Print-on-Demand 212-Page Book from LSI - $4.08

Of course, marketing is a whole other story, but that's another blog entry.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My 91-hour fast officially ended today at 9:45am when I had an orange. My energy returned surprising quickly, as I had three different meetings with NYU administrators regarding the book and felt alert. Here are some of the results:

1. I've lost weight. I'm not sure how much, but my pants are too big now. Once I go back to a normal diet and start exercising, I should gain it all back.
   
2. The fast was most difficult in the beginning, but actually got easier as I went along. My main symptoms were dizziness when standing abruptly, lethargy, and an "empty" feeling in my stomach, which felt good sometimes and bad other times.
   
3. Even though I wasn't eating anything, a lot came out of my system, which in a weird "detoxing" sort of way made me feel good.

Based on the research I've done, I will base the fasting and diet's success on:

1. Decreased need for sleep
   
2. Constant high energy through out the day

If I were able to get these two things on a sustained basis, my quality of life and productivity would take major leaps forward. If not, I can chalk it off as something to tell my children about when I'm older.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 02:24 PM | Permalink

Well, I'm over 50 hours into my juice fast now, nearly tripling what I've ever done before. All I've had to drink are:

1. The herbs from the ejuva cleanse
   
2. Distilled Water
   
3. Three Lemonades
   
4. 1 Odwalla Super-Food Drink

The logic behind fasting is that the beginning is the most difficult because our body is cleansing itself the most. And as we know from symptoms like head aches, runny noses, throwing up, etc; this is not the most feel-good process in the world. The past two days were fairly difficult because of this. It is weird not knowing how my body will feel next. I place my trust in the number of books I've read by authors who've helped thousands of others through fasts collectively and who base their findings on academic research.

From my understanding, the greatest risk that I face right now is my body being overwhelmed by toxins that are being let loose into the bloodstream for evacuation. While it is good for the body to cleanse itself, it is bad for the body to be overloaded with more than it can handle. Thus, whenever I begin to not feel good, I have lemonade or "food-juice" to help my body get rid off toxins.

Things have taken a big swing in the past hour, though. I really started to focus on utilizing what I consider to be one of the greatest forces in the world if applied; the power to be the change we want to see in every moment.

I believe that no matter how we feel or what we've done in the past, we always have the ability to control our thoughts, feelings, action, and attention.

Too often, we (myself included) justify being angry, stresed out, bored, or hateful for some reason or other. In other words, we unconsciously and sometimes consciously make decisions that are not the best decision available to us. Yet, in each moment, we have the power to change this. It may be easier for some than others, but we all still possess this ability.

By consciously focusing on this power, my energy and spirits have gone up tremendously in the past hour. Experiences, like what I'm going through in the fast, are incredible opportunities to increase this power provided I move forward with caution.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 07:17 PM | Permalink

As my meal for today, I had:

1. 4 apples
   
2. 1 orange
   
3. 60 ounces of Odwalla Superfood Juice
   
4. 1 large home-made salad with mixed greens, carrots, and onions

Now, nearly five hours later my stomach is still protesting angrily and I feel very sluggish. I feel like I went backwards on the cleanse. It is amazing how much the body changes in a matter of a few days. A week ago, that meal would have been fine. Oh well, now I know that I need to work up to more levels of food and I can't just make the jump.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 07:59 PM | Permalink

Going into my speech this morning, I had only slept three hours as a result of staying up late talking with Ryan Allis and doing last minute prep. That on top of the fact of having not eaten in nearly 24 hours beforehand because of the cleanse, made me fairly nervous that something would go wrong. To my surprise, I actually was very high on energy and I thought the talk went very well. So far 11 copies have sold out of 80 students, making it a 14% conversion ratio. I don't know if that is good or bad, but it only gets better from here.

Now, it looks like I might speak in two weeks at CSLC's next program. I hope that Sheena, my business partner and girl friend, has the workbook done by then so we can speak together!

Posted by Michael Simmons at 05:03 PM | Permalink

Today I got a shipment of 75 books into my house. They arrive just in time for my first (post-book) speaking engagement. It will be in Boston at a Lead America seminar for about 80 high school students. I have a few butterflies, probably a combination of the audience size and my lack of preparation thus far.

I am now in the 3rd week of the 4 week ejuva cleanse program. For the first week, one starts off with 3 meals a day; in the second week, 2 meals a day; and starting today just one meal a day. Surprisingly, today was one of my most productive days of the year with constant, high-energy. I also realized that after each meal, I pretty much fast for 24 hours until the next meal. This is daunting especially since I've never fasted for a full 24 hours before and I have the speaking engagement.

Since I've gone raw, I've gone from 185 to 177lbs. Once I finish the ejuva I should go back up to 185. The past week, I've noticed a fairly large increase in energy.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 09:17 PM | Permalink

One way that I get inspired is by reading the stories of and meeting youth who are doing incredible endeavors. Below are some great links:

1. Michael Furdyk - Social Entrepreneur
2. Joshua Newman - Serial Entrepreneur
3. Jeff Dunkel and Chris Portman - Teen Mayors
4. Chaille Stovall - Young Film Maker

Posted by Michael Simmons at 11:54 AM | Permalink

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." - M.K. Gandhi

Posted by Michael Simmons at 03:58 PM | Permalink

High: People ordering the book who I don't know. Emails from people who loved the book.

Low: Realizing I have my work cut out for me because only a very, very small percentage of high school and college students actually read books outside of school!

Posted by Michael Simmons at 09:19 PM | Permalink

For the past week, I've been waiting to receive a proof of my book from Lightning Source. As I'm self-publishing for the first time, I was nervous that the book would look unprofessional in print form or that something else would go wrong.

This morning I received a package that I thought was from Amazon.com. To my surprise, when I opened the package I saw the first copy of my book! It is difficult to describe the feeling that went through me, but it felt like a combination of laughing out loud and crying. There's something incredible about holding the first, finished copy of the book in my hand. I feel like it validates how I've been spending my time for the past year (See mom, taking a semester off wasn't a bad idea!).

Full steam ahead!

Posted by Michael Simmons at 04:43 PM | Permalink

Sheena and I are exploring the idea of extending the Extreme Entrepreneurship brand by digitally publishing youth who embody the principles of Extreme Entrepreneurship and who are experts on specific topics that have a wide appeal to high school and college students.

Who is the Extreme Entrepreneur Author?
eBooks are evolving communities of ideas based on intimate, real-time author-reader and reader-reader relationships. Taking advantage of low variable costs and quick time to market, each work will be an evolution of ideas rather than a static piece of work that is published once. Centuries ago, books were often created as responses to other books. As such, the original ideas that the original authors created were evolved. Extreme Entrepreneur Authors and readers work in tandem to create an evolving body of empowering ideas targeted at youth.

The Extreme Entrepreneur Authors are responsible for:

1. Creating empowering ideas and spreading them through ebooklets, which are shortened (15-50 pg) version of ebooks that cover topics related to Extreme Entrepreneurship such as:
   
   
   
   • Starting and Running a Business
     
   • Investing
     
   • Buying Real Estate
     
   • Winning Scholarships, Awards, and Competitions
   • Leveraging School
     
   • Going to Seminars and Conferences
   • Taking Time Off
     
   • Strategic Volunteering
     
   • Traveling
     
   • Shadowing
     
   • Informational Interviewing
     
   
   
2. Moderating a discussion board related to their book.
   
3. Maintaining a blog with updates on their own life.
   
4. Updating their ebooklets.

1. Percent of overall ebooklet revenue - similar to About.com Guide model (not definite).
   
2. Percent of revenues of their book.
   

Thoughts?

Posted by Michael Simmons at 05:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's 5 weeks and 1 day since I started eating raw food and I would like to report my results:

Observations

1. I have much less indigestion. I had once considered flatulence a part of life. Now it isn't.
   
2. I had once just ignored all of my body's indicators. Now, I've become much more attuned to indicators like breathe, energy level, flatulence, burping, cramps, runny noses, cough, bowel movements, etc.
   
3. My body has become more sensitive to bad food. Somebody who smokes is much less sensitive to cigarettee smoke than somebody who doesn't. This is because smokers develop a lining in their lungs, which protects them from the smoke they're inhaling, but also makes their lungs hard and less efficient. In the same way, I notice that it is more difficult to eat bad foods because my body has gotten rid of the mucuous lining that was protecting my intestines from bad foods.
   
4. My body has been detoxing. Following the smoking analogy: When somebody stops smoking they don't immediately feel better. They cough up everything that was in their lungs. I won't get into details, but my whole body has been "coughing" up toxins.
   
5. With a fully stocked kitchen and basic knowledge of raw food, consistently eating raw food is not that difficult, especially for a college student that doesn't really know how to cook. Also, I think going all the way raw is easier than going part way. When I go into the kitchen, I don't have any tempation to eat bad food simply because there isn't any.
   
6. My palate has expanded and I have a new appreciation for the taste of food!
7. I have less bad breathe and body odor.

Challenges

1. Eating raw is difficult in social situations for me right now. Practically, the only thing I can order on the menu is a fruit plate, salad, or bottled water. Also, I'm still trying to figure out what to do when I'm invited to people's house for dinner. Should I just bring my own raw dishes and share them with everybody?
   
2. People generally are against and afraid of raw, organic food. At first I was telling everybody that I went raw. Now, I simply don't talk about it because people have such strong beliefs about it even though they have little or no kowledge of it. I agree that people can be unhealthy eating raw food in the wrong way, but so can people eating a Standard American Diet. From what I've learned so far, eating raw in the right way is the most effective way to fuel the body.
   
3. Since I've been having considerably more fruit, I've been noticing spikes in my blood sugar. This leads to me feeling dizzy and moody sometimes. So, I need to work on building more vegetables into my diet.
   
4. At first, the fruits and vegetables weren't filling me up at all so I was constantly eating. Now, I'm noticing that my body needs less.
   
5. My main question is, "When is enough, enough?" When I started playing tennis in second grade I couldn't care less what string and racquet I used, whether the balls were dead or live, or whether I was wearing tennis shoes. As I began to compete in tournaments I started to change my diet, buy tennis clothes, accessories and racquets/string that fit my style of playing. These changes helped me compete at a higher level. At the same time, after awhile I got paranoid when I didn't have the racquet at the exact right tension or my grip felt a little slippery. In other words, I think I had went too far.

   Now, that I want to take my life to the next level in every respect, I think having a properly fueled body is crucial. I'm just having trouble figuring out when it isn't really worth my time to make small improvements in my diet.

Conclusion
I think that I'm making good progress on my diet and more importantly my health. One of the main things I'm looking for in the diet is increased and constant energy through out the day. I would say that my overall energy has definitely gone up, but also goes down more than I would like because of too much fruit. After I'm done a cleanse, which I just started, I will look more for the increased vitality.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It's official! The Student Success Manifesto (SSM) has received an endorsement from Stephen Covey, author of best-seller 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His book is one of the best-selling books in history having sold over 10 million copies since being published in 1990. This is a big step in terms of adding credibility to the SSM.

Unfortunately, I have no networking connection to Stephen Covey. So here's how I got his endorsment:

1. Created a testimonial request package from the advice of The Self-Publishing Manual.
   
2. Got his address from the FranklinCovey web site.
   
3. Sent out the package.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Getting to the core of life has always been a big philosophy of mine. In my opinion, constantly solving and resolving core life issues is an incredibly leveraged way to create positive change in all parts of our life. Addressing core life issues earlier in life (i.e. - quarter life crisis) is more effective than doing it later, because we are less locked down mentally and financially to a way of life that may not be right for us.

Like a drop in a pond, one small change in a core issue can solve many other, seemingly unrelated, issues we face on a daily basis. In my opinion, not taking a step back is like bailing water out of a sinking ship instead of focusing on plugging the hole.

Two core questions I ask myself often are:

1. Who am I?
   
2. Why am I here?

These may seem like simple questions that are self-evident, but each time I visit them, my understanding of them evolves, and the effects of this greater understanding ripple out as a result of the new decisions I make.

This summer I've left a lot of time for self-exploration and made it my #1 priority. So far it's been paying off very well. On a good day, I will do:

1. Yoga for one hour
   
2. Meditation for one hour
   
3. Journaling for one hour

At this pace, this will be the best summer I've ever had!!!

Posted by Michael Simmons at 11:32 PM | Permalink