Get a Big Dream

Have you ever had a dream that kept you up at night? I have. In March 2010, I was making up creative adventure stories with my 5-year-old son Kenny at bedtime where he was the main character in the stories. We were connecting so much as father & son, that my wife encouraged me to record them. I listened. By the end of the summer of 2010, I had a complete 10-book adventure, fantasy series filling up 22 hours of mp3. As I searched for the next step, a deep desire welled inside of me to not only convert the stories into a book for my son but to get them published. 'What if these stories could help other families?' This thought and desire was confirmed when I was given a bible verse as a mission statement - Luke 1:17 - He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

I quickly realized that I needed more resources to complete this dream. We were in a lot of debt at the time and I was cleaning houses 5-6 days per week, thus I lacked time and money. I also lacked the resource of knowledge on how to write a book and get it published. It's amazing how a powerful dream can get you to make changes in your life that you didn't think possible. There were 3 major changes we made:

1. MONEY - Teresa and I dug into Dave Ramsey's strategy to eliminate debt to free up money. We used this system to pay off $170,000 in debt in just over a decade. During the writing of the book, we cleared at least a third.
2. KNOWLEDGE - I dug into the craft of writing to produce the best resource I could for other families. I learned the art & craft of professional writing through critique groups, mentors that were published authors, joining SCBWI, attending conferences & workshops, and studying the successful books in my genre (children's adventure/fantasy). During 2011-2012, I read and studied over 120 of these similar books. I was able to get audio versions of many and listen while I was cleaning. For example, I listened to the entire Harry Potter series in 1 month. My writing improved dramatically during this time as I developed my voice. The connections I made in the author's world lead me to my book editors, mentors, and ultimately my publisher. After 5 1/2 years of hard work that I loved, Arctic Land published on 12/15/15. I would like to give a huge thank you to four men who helped me through this process:
   • Christopher Maselli (Author of over 40 children's books and writing coach at Writing Momentum) - Thank you Chris for replying to my email that lead to a friendship over the 5 years I wrote my book. You became my #1 writing mentor and encourager!
   • Darren Shearer (Founder of High Bridge Books and host of the Theology of Business Podcast) - Thank you for taking a chance on an unpublished author with no representation by an agent. You also became a friend and mentor to me on this journey, helping to bring my creation to life!
   • Billy Altman (Missionary at the Altman Crew with FamilyLife/CRU) - Thank you for being my friend and spiritual mentor/accountability partner for many years. Thank you for introducing me to Darren and for doing the graphic design work on the Arctic Land GAD Logbook & SMARTMaps!
   • Vincent Pugliese (Founder of Total Life Freedom) - We met in the final year of this publishing process. Thank you for keeping my head in the mindset of marketing first! Even if I didn't listen so good!
3. TIME - I went back to my engineering, analytical roots to make my current solo cleaning business more efficient to free-up time. In the beginning, I had to carve out time between 5am-7am prior to cleaning to write every day. And that's what writing takes, consistent creative energy daily. But I was tired with a 4:30am to 6pm work schedule between writing and cleaning. It was stealing from the very kids I wanted to help, my own! I needed a better solution to get my book written to fulfill my dream, make the income to pay the debt, and have the time with my family. My solution was the ISO Model that I've shared on this podcast. It was born out of necessity. By the time I published my book, I was cleaning 3.5 days per week at the same income as 5-6 days per week. I kept working my ISO system until I sold the business in 2018. At that point, I still earned the same income but on 2 days per week. Without this dream and my passion to grow as a writer, get out of debt, and have more time, I would never have created the ISO Model and optimized my solo cleaning business.

Our family had a shift in 2017. I was building a platform to help dads called Dadnamics in my at-home time to get my book into the hands of other families. At the same time, I was getting requests from cleaning company owners to coach & train them to be efficient like me. This lead to us following another long-time dream to leave NY and return to our family in the Philly Area after 18 years away.  Selling a business and moving our family was a huge endeavor and something had to budge. I made the difficult decision to put my dream on the shelf. I parted ways with my followers in a way that left the door open for the future and focused on the sale & move. 

My dream awakened a few weeks ago and it seemed so simple. I don't have to write a book this time. It's done! I just need to get this book into the hands of as many dads as I can and see what happens. Do you have kids between 7-12 in your family? Do you know other families that could benefit from an interactive reading experience between father & child? If so, I want to offer my interactive book, Arctic Land, to you for free! Just go to my website and download your copy or pass it on.

I have a few other resources that you may enjoy! This is the article I wrote when I launched my book to share the full development arc of conception to published. Here's a video I created shortly after publishing the book to share more of our journey. I hope this episode of Solo Cleaning School has shown you the power of a dream. Therefore, go get a BIG DREAM of your own!