"Play...It's the New Learn"~ How Brilliant Sky's Tag Line Means Money for Entrepreneurs

I met Jamie yesterday at a Chamber function and asked for her card. I was delighted to read the tag line- "Play...It's the new Learn."

As really that's how my transformation from a frustrated, dependent, angry, and functioning-well- below-my-capabilities-housewife-ish (at least that's what my therapist said) mess all started. It started with play.

As a child, I had always been good at dance. I religiously took tap, ballet and jazz. And I pretentiously wrote in my dairy in the sixth grade: "Dear Diary- had my dance recital today and of course, I was better than everyone else."

But those days were long forgotten due to the toilet bowl drama I had allowed my life to become. Getting through a day without picking up a butcher knife was pretty much my only, sad and forlorn goal. (I am not kidding.)

I read a book. And in this book, "The Artist's Way", it began teaching me to start doing small, positive, nurturing and encouraging things for myself. And so I did.

I'd always liked to dance. So I turned on the radio in my room and just did that. I danced. I danced to all kinds of things. I'd dance for hours. And that's exactly where, though I didn't know it at the time, I began making money.

I was playing, but I was learning. In fact, I liked to dance so much and was a quick study about it- that's how I soon after became a professional dance instructor, ballroom and hip-hop. Adults only. (Except for a lovely and creative girl from India, Katya, because her parents took so many lessons from me each week.) But I did not stop there.

I used that skill to start another business. And I did not stop there. I used what I learned from that business to start another business. And I did not stop there. That business was so interesting, it spun yet- another business.

My whole life changed, because I started playing!

For me, and perhaps for all entrepreneurs, but I can say definitively for me, when something is fun and I'm having a grand time, money is always around the corner. I can find a way to take what my interests are and the fun I'm having, develop a system, market my business, develop a mission, train my staff and just keep on building from there.

All of my business were started because I thought that looked like an interesting, fun, unique idea and let's see how far I can take it.

I read that exceptionally troubled mental patients do not begin an arduous time of intense therapy sessions; but rather, they are taken outside and given a big, red bouncing ball to play with. The patents begin to play with this ball outside with each other before they do anything.

When I'm stuck in life- rather than beat my head against a wall trying to figure out what I need to do and should do and ought to do- instead I start playing.

Playing has been the only reliable way I know how to sustain both my sanity and my bank account. I'm sure it will work for you too. Give it a try and see if something pops.

What do you like to play?