CHAPTER 15

Do You Have What It Takes?

Before you dive in and try out this new career lifestyle, let’s take a moment to determine if the Patchwork model is really the right choice for you. After all, being a Patchworker means owning your own business and running the show, which is new territory you are wading into if you are currently part of the 9-to-5 world. There are many important considerations to weigh; let’s take a look at some of them.

The Mindset

A mindset is “a fixed state of mind.”¹ In other words, it is a way of thinking to which you are fully committed. The Patchworker mindset is that of a mindful entrepreneur, committed to operating a successful business within the parameters of Lifestyle Design.

Your mindset will determine the limits of your success as a Patchworker; therefore, carefully consider the following characteristics (keeping in mind that you should possess most but not necessarily all of them):

• Do you have the energy? Do you have the energy required to complete all of the initial startup tasks? Are you too burnt out from your current or past job to do the work? Starting a business is work. In fact, you may work more than anticipated in the beginning in order to get the wheels of your business turning. Are you willing to put in the time and effort?
• Do you have the focus? Do you have the mental focus necessary to open, operate, and maintain a new business? When you are self-employed, you don’t have a boss keeping you on task and sending you reminders about approaching deadlines. You have to coach yourself, to motivate and propel yourself forward by staying on task. Can you do that?
• Do you have the dedication? To be a successful Patchworker, you need to be committed to following through on all promises you make to yourself and your clients. Consistency is vital in order to be successful as a business; it takes discipline. You will sometimes have to do things that are mundane, time-consuming, or uninteresting in the course of maintaining your business. Do you have the dedication necessary to stay on task?
• Do you have the organizational skills? Running a business requires basic organizational skills, period. You need not be a perfectionist—in fact, that may hinder your success. However, your clients will expect you to be on top of things related to the work you do for them, Uncle Sam will expect you to maintain records and pay taxes as required by law, and if you ever expect to get paid, you will need a good way to keep track of who to invoice, when, and for how much. The nutty professor style of filing with numerous stacks of dog-eared papers leaning over in a dangerous balancing act on your desk doesn’t cut it when you manage your own business. Can you start and stay organized?
• Can you multitask like a pro? If there is one thing that being a Patchworker requires, it is the ability to multitask. And to be a Patchworker, at times you may have to be an über-tasker as you manage multiple projects for an array of organizations simultaneously in a single week. Then there is invoicing, recordkeeping, collecting, advertising, and more. Do you have the will to keep a handle on it all? Can you play the part of CEO, secretary, accountant, and driver all in a single day? More importantly, are you willing to?
• Can you work independently? Even if you work on-site at your employer’s workplace location, there is still some amount of paperwork, such as invoicing, that you must do independently in your home office setting. Do you have the space, even if it is only a corner of the room, from which to run your business? Most Patchworkers spend most of their time working out of their home office, but there are exceptions—like me, for example! Could you stay on task, feel energized, and remain motivated if you worked independently at home? The location aside, could you simply work independently on the projects or tasks for which you are responsible? Could you stay focused?
• Can you drum up your own leads? To be a successful Patchworker, you absolutely need to scout out new opportunities and then determine if they fit into your lifestyle framework. Drumming up new business must be a regular part of your routine as the business owner. Can you get out there and sell? Before you say, “No way!” let me mention that selling doesn’t have to involve the traditional approaches such as in-person cold calls or telemarketing-like approaches. I have never made a single cold call or done any telemarketing to drum up a lead, just to reassure you.

  In today’s modern world, selling often means marketing yourself online via e-mail and social media sites such as Twitter. Because my business approach seeks work mostly from local businesses in my geographic location, I could walk in and talk with decision makers, but I find e-mail to be a practical, effective medium for making my pitches. Each business is different, so test out the waters and see what works best for you.

• Can you make your own decisions? The great thing about being a 9-to-5 employee is that you can always blame any misguided initiatives on the boss. Whatever goes wrong, you name it and the boss is a prime target at which to hurl criticism. However, when you are the boss of your own Patchwork business, the buck stops with you. Any and all decisions are yours to own. You must take full responsibility for the ideas, the execution, and the outcomes. When things go really well, it’s nice to bask in the glow and take full credit. However, when things go awry, you have to be able to deal with the consequences. Can you handle it?
• Can you keep learning? Lifelong learning is a prerequisite for most everything in life that is worthwhile; work is no exception. Although you will settle into a routine related to recordkeeping and other mundane tasks, you will likely never fully enjoy the “cruise control” mentality that you may now know in your 9-to-5 world. In contrast, as an entrepreneur you will be growing and learning in many directions at once. You alone will need to determine when you need to seek out a book, class, or mentor to guide you when you encounter new topics related to running your business, either to keep up with the industry in which you work or as you strive to honor your lifestyle framework. Are you able to ask for help when the need arises? Can your ego handle it? Are you willing to climb the learning curves that you will inevitably encounter?

Although the preceding points are only the main points of consideration, it is important to take some time to seriously consider the realities of being the boss. Being in charge is a much different experience from being a subordinate. Some people love it; others do not.

The People Skills

Emotional Intelligence (EI) counts for a lot in business, especially when you are self-employed. Your ability to work and play well with others can determine the reaches of your success on some levels. Are you familiar with this concept of EI, introduced by Daniel Goleman? EI has a long and controversial history of evolving into what we know it to be today, but generally speaking the term refers to a person’s ability to manage his or her own emotions and the emotions of others. Goleman believes there are five fundamental elements to EI:

• Knowing your emotions
• Managing your emotions
• Motivating yourself
• Recognizing and understanding the emotions of others
• Managing relationships (managing the emotions of others)

Ultimately, these elements all boil down to a few fundamental people skills—inspirational, interpersonal, operational, cultural, and “crazy”—you must master as a Patchworker.

Inspirational Skills

Inspirational skills are the skills you need to land work, keep it, and get called back in the future. These skills include the following:

• Exuding confidence when you pitch your ideas
• Performing under pressure
• Keeping your emotions under control if a client makes unreasonable requests or behaves badly
• Maintaining the relationship well enough to be someone the client would want to hire again in the future

You must inspire the individuals who consider hiring you, dazzle them with the work you do, and maintain a good working relationship throughout each project.

Interpersonal Skills

Each work environment has many different personalities to contend with, and your Patchwork career will take you to multiple organizations and require you to interact with an even greater number of people than a typical 9-to-5er. Can you handle the great variety of personalities with which you must contend? More importantly, are you willing to do so? Let me answer this one for you: YES! You must. The opportunity to work with a variety of people at an array of organizations makes your work more interesting, increases your opportunity to network, and makes the day more interesting.

As you might anticipate, the more clients you work with, the greater the likelihood of encountering a difficult personality. If this person is your direct supervisor, the situation can prove challenging. However, unlike a 9-to-5 worker, you can remove yourself from this work environment immediately after the project or short-term assignment ends and never return to work for that difficult supervisor again. Although a Patchworker is in the enviable position of being able to decline offers from clients they dislike, this knowledge often (and unfortunately!) comes only after having worked with the person.

One of the tough realities that you must face as a Patchworker is that if you sign on for a project only to discover that the client is difficult or unreasonable in some way, you must ride out the remainder of your contract as promised. Could you do this? Let me rephrase: You need to do this in order to protect your reputation. Although you may never want to work for that same person again, you may want to work with someone else within the organization. Alternatively, you may not like the company but may want a recommendation from this person as you bid for a similar project at another organization.

Operational Skills

One type of people skills critical to your business is the ability to interact productively with clients, including those who help you to sustain your business (accountant, banker, or webmaster, for example) and the employees in each of the key administrative offices at the organizations you work with (human resources or payroll personnel, for example).

The most heated situation among those that occur in this realm of operational management is related to receiving timely payment from a client. The bottom line is that you have done the work and now you want to receive payment. What’s the problem? In my experience, delayed payment is most often a communication breakdown that happens within the organization. For example, perhaps your supervisor forgot to send a directive to payroll or the payroll office is awaiting an approval from someone in human resources. These administrative tasks can cause frustration for the Patchworker, who is perhaps off-site and unfamiliar with the people working in these administrative offices. Navigating the waters within each organization when a problem occurs requires some finesse. If you create a big stir that leaves a lasting impression on your supervisor and perhaps others in the organization, it may leave an indelible mark on their memory. Take this snippet from one of my real-life adventures, for example:

Eight years ago, while working as a consultant, I was having trouble collecting payment from a rather wealthy organization. When the first pay cycle did not produce a check, I notified the boss in a calm way with a “by-the-way” tone. She assured me that the first check was delayed simply due to paperwork processing that plagued all new hires.

When the second pay cycle came and went without producing a paycheck, I decided to inquire directly with the administrative offices to be sure that I had completed all of the necessary paperwork and to make them generally aware of the situation. They, too, assured me that this was routine and I need not be concerned.

When the third pay cycle rolled around and there was no check in sight, I had a decision to make: Should I storm out of my office and down the hall to the boss’s office to demand immediate payment? Should I send out an e-mail message to everyone involved threatening to quit for lack of payment? Should I simply let things continue the way they were going and hope that it all worked out? Or should I do something altogether different?

These are the moments when the right move or the wrong move can be a defining move. I’ll tell you that I did get paid eventually, and because I remained calm under pressure, this account ended up being one of my biggest and best for the next three years. And yes, I was paid on a predictable and consistent basis once it was discovered that payroll had simply failed to add my electronic record to the check-cutting system to which they farmed out the work. Someone had simply goofed, and I got paid once it was figured out. Just imagine if I had stormed down to the boss’s office back then. What a financial loss that would have been for me, not to mention the hit my reputation would have taken within that industry. Yes, there are moments when you may have to lay down the law a little bit, but they should be rare and carefully crafted events.

Are you wondering how I handled this situation, three pay cycles (six weeks) of nonpayment? I scheduled a fifteen-minute appointment with the boss and explained in a pleasant but firm way that I would finish out the remainder of the week and then put the project on hold until the paycheck problem could be resolved. Right there, on the spot, the boss got on the phone and demanded a resolution from payroll. Within hours the situation was resolved, and I had a check for the entire outstanding amount by the next morning. I walked away looking like a professional with my reputation intact and a check in hand. Most importantly, I didn’t have to skulk around for the remainder of my assignment feeling like I had behaved badly. That counts for a lot in my book.

Cultural Skills

If you have ever traveled overseas to a country completely different from your own, you know that the experience can conjure up a potluck of emotion, including feelings of disorientation, elation, isolation, or fascination. New people and new perspectives challenge our deeply held beliefs and invite us to stretch and grow in new directions. Some people are good at navigating through the experience; some are not. Which category do you lean toward? Although you may think that this question is silly, because the topic of this book is not overseas travel, it is still quite relevant because overseas travel can in many ways be likened to working for an unfamiliar company.

Every organization has its own culture. In other words, each business community has its own unique values, norms, assumptions, acceptable behaviors, and tangible artifacts (such as awards on display or paintings in the hallways). Just walk into the headquarters at Google and look around at the people and the environment; then compare that with any conservative accounting firm. The people act and dress differently. Behaviors at one place may be encouraged, whereas at another place those actions are grounds for dismissal. Some artifacts may seem outrageous and out of place to one company, but not to another. For example, Google has a shiny corkscrew slide that employees can ride between floors as an alternative to taking the elevator or stairs. Show me any accounting firm that has one of those!

This discovery of new organizational cultures is an inherent part of being a Patchworker. You will have many different accounts, each representing a different organization. Each organization, in turn, has its own culture that you must observe and respect if you want to fit in and do well. However, sifting through the many cues and clues about what the culture reveres and abhors can require careful observation and thoughtful questions phrased carefully to sort it all out. Although the obligatory New Employee Handbook is available to reference, this guide often does not address many (or any) of the subtleties that are of greatest interest to you as a new part of the organization. Instead, you must sort out these nuances one day, one interaction at a time. Can you do this? Do you typically do this well? Can you refrain from being outspoken if your opinions about a topic are quite different from those of others in the organization? These are tough questions that only you can answer.

Crazy Skills

Some people are crazy, they just are. And sometimes those people are your clients. When this happens you have no choice but to sing and dance in order to appease them, at least until the project or short-term assignment that you committed to reaches a conclusion. This song and dance can be a challenge, but you must persist—you must honor your agreement with the client. You can do this simply by keeping your head down and charging ahead as you might do each day in your current 9-to-5 job.

To really excel as a Patchworker, however, you want to do more than just survive the experience. You want to learn how to get an otherwise grouchy decision maker who has unreasonable expectations to come over to your side. You want to groom the person into someone who could be tolerable in the long term. Now, this may be too tall an order in some cases or simply not worth the work if, for example, the likelihood of future work at the company seems unlikely based on a dwindling budget or some other relevant factor. However, for accounts that could be a veritable goldmine for you if only the decision maker was a bit more reasonable, you may wish to make note of a simple lesson spoken in an old Tamil saying that is well known in many parts of India:

Sing and milk if the cow sings,

Dance and milk if it dances

Put another way, sing the song or dance the dance of difficult clients in order to produce the most good from the encounter. To better understand the mindset and framework that the difficult decision maker operates within, stretch your way of thinking, ask questions, or befriend the person within professional boundaries; do something!

Engage with the person and find out why he or she is a bundle of nerves, a red-hot ball of anger, or whatever. You need to find out how to neutralize the person for the good of your working relationship if a future with the client is going to be feasible. Can you do this? Can you muster up the courage to approach a hothead and attempt conciliation? Can you manage your own temper when faced with a rage-a-holic? Will you have the determination to attempt transforming a dud of an account into one that has great potential? Sometimes an account is a diamond in the rough, so polish it up and reap the rewards.

The Fiscal Discipline

Yes, it has come to this. I am going to have the same conversation that your father had with you in third grade when he pointed to the piggy bank and suggested that you learn how to save your nickels and dimes. But instead of talking about money, let’s talk about marshmallows. They’re a lot more fun and, as it turns out, a bit more interesting to talk about than porcelain pigs.

In the 1970s a researcher at Stanford University conducted what is now famously referred to as The Marshmallow Experiment. He and his colleagues, with permission, invited one four-year-old at a time into a small room that contained only a chair and a desk. Placed on the desk was a single marshmallow. The researcher told each toddler that if he or she could wait to eat that marshmallow until the researcher returned from running an errand, he would reward the child with a second one. The researcher then walked out of the room and observed the child behind a two-way mirror for fifteen minutes. Some children ate the marshmallow immediately, some waited for a few minutes but then gave in, and some distracted themselves or covered their eyes in order to avoid the temptation and were successful. About one-third of the children grabbed the marshmallow right away, another one-third were able to wait until the researcher’s return, and the remaining group fell somewhere in the middle along the larger spectrum.

Although the results were interesting, the fascinating part of this longitudinal study is really what happened years later. Researchers followed up with the toddlers during adolescence and found that those toddlers who demonstrated an ability to resist the marshmallow (demonstrating self-control) had grown up to be more positive, self-motivating, and able to delay gratification in pursuit of their goals. These children had these and other habits of successful people, including happy marriages, higher income, and career satisfaction. Those toddlers who were unable to resist the marshmallow (demonstrating lack of self-control) were troubled, stubborn, and indecisive with impulse guiding their decisions, and they demonstrated habits of unsuccessful people, resulting in inverse lifestyle outcomes.²

This study went on to draw a number of conclusions related to delayed gratification, but let’s stop here and extrapolate in a way that is meaningful and relative to your decision about leaping into the world of Patchworking. Let’s consider self-identity. If you were a four-year-old, would you be able to resist the marshmallow? As an adult, are you able to resist the marshmallows that cross your path? Seriously, are you? Is having the latest and greatest of everything part of your current lifestyle? If so, could you realistically make a change away from that impulsive lifestyle in order to, say, delay making unnecessary business-related purchases when money is tight? Or save a percentage of your income when business is booming so that you can weather leaner times by dipping into those reserves? If this is not the norm in your current lifestyle, the real question is, could it become the new norm for you? Are you motivated enough to change how you spend and how you save?

Embracing the 9-to-5 Cure is an opportunity to change the focus of your life. To pursue dreams. To regain personal and professional freedom. To make money in the process. However, be ever vigilant of the fact that poor spending habits are the trap that can send any entrepreneur into the red and back to a 9-to-5 job. Consider the proposition that living modestly empowers you. It allows you to honor all of the other wishes of your lifestyle framework. Debt, conversely, traps you and robs you of that lifestyle.

Ultimately, your fiscal discipline determines a lot about the longevity of your business, so be sure to take stock of your spending habits, your financial resources, and your willingness to make a success of this business venture before you get started.

The Courage to Change

Change takes courage. For some, change can be invigorating. For others, change can be terrifying. If you find yourself wanting the 9-to-5 Cure described in this book but feel resistant to making the necessary changes, then I suggest that you take a moment to look back at your life to this point. Are you frustrated with your career or your lifestyle (or both) but fear of the unknown causes you to stay stuck? If so, isn’t that exhausting? Take the leap into the unknown already—just do it! An expert on change, M.J. Ryan offers some thoughts on change resistance:

Resisting change wears down our bodies, taxes our minds, and deflates our spirits. When we resist change, we keep doing the things that have always worked before—with depressingly diminishing results. Frustrated, we expend precious energy looking around for someone to blame—ourselves, another person, or the world. We worry obsessively. We get stuck in the past, lost in bitterness or anger. Or we fall into denial—“Everything’s fine, I don’t have to do anything differently.” We may engage in magical thinking—“Something or someone will come along to rescue me from having to change.” We don’t want to leave the cozy comfort of the known and familiar for the scary wilderness of that which we’ve never experienced. And so we rail against it and stay stuck.³

If you feel frustrated with your 9-to-5 lifestyle, then I invite you to jump out and make the changes necessary to free yourself from the captive career lifestyle you now lead. Here are a few pointers for riding out change in a productive way, based on Ryan’s philosophy:

• Stay focused on the outcome. Keep the goal in mind and use that as a motivator for moving forward.
• Prioritize. Determine which of the many tasks that lie ahead are the most important and then work on them one at a time in that order.
• Schedule. Plan time to stop and tackle your worries. Limit your worrying to this isolated period of, say, fifteen minutes of time each week.
• Fake it. If you doubt your ability in some area of the business startup process, just fake it ’til you make it. This approach “has validity in brain science. The thoughts we hold and actions we take really do create new pathways in our brains,” according to Ryan.⁴

One of the biggest challenges of starting a business is not always knowing what’s around the next corner. There is much to learn, and that all-important question of “How much can I earn?” can keep a new Patchworker awake at night. However, know that like anything else in life, experience is the remedy that soothes us. With each passing day, week, and year, the questions you now hold at the front of your mind will retreat and ultimately disappear altogether as each one is answered in turn.

The most pressing question that I encounter when people ask me about becoming a Patchworker is how to handle periods of time when business may not be booming. This is the biggest concern for many; is it for you? It may well be because before you make the leap into the unknown you want to know you can pay your bills on the other side. I won’t mince words in this regard: In the beginning of your business startup, you may have periods of time when you are not working as much as you would like to be. It’s true. But before you slam the book shut and walk away, let me give you a look back at my own startup experience with my Patchwork career.

The first week on my trial run of being a Patchworker, I landed work. How did I do it? I played the numbers. I was interested in teaching a specialized computer class, and I approached decision makers at a large number of organizations in my area via personalized e-mail messages. That first week I landed a few interviews that were scheduled for the following week; one group hired me on the spot just days after the initial inquiry. By the end of that month, I was employed by seven organizations.

I put myself out there and it worked, practically overnight. And all of these years later, being a Patchworker still works, like a charm. I can’t promise that it will work for you this quickly, but it very well could. What’s important is mustering the courage to step out into the unknown and see what happens. To echo a Michael Jackson song, “Make that change!”

The Nerve to Tackle Your Fears

Becoming a Patchworker takes some nerve. I’m not going to sugarcoat it; there is some hard work and risk involved. Your reputation is on the line, and some start-up money may be as well.

Does the prospect of being your own boss and calling all the shots invigorate you or cause you to shudder like a hairless polar bear? Do you enjoy learning many new things on a regular basis or does the thought of that make you feel like you’re back in middle school where, let’s face it, no one had much fun. Most importantly, you have to take inventory of your fears and look down the road at what may lie ahead for you as a new entrepreneur. Although it is unlikely that you have a real “fear” of the situations included in the following list, it is worth considering to what extent you are willing to step out of your comfort zone in order to move your business forward. Join this logo-phile (word lover) as I take you on an unconventional walk through a list of important thinking points for budding yet timid Patchworkers:

• Allodoxaphobia (fear of opinions): Everyone has an opinion, especially when you are the boss. Suddenly, people are not afraid to tell you what they think of every minute decision you make. Those who are most vocal may include your significant other, your immediate family, your friends, your lovely in-laws, and absolutely everyone who is negotiating with you about your pay rate. The question is, can you handle it? Do you have the confidence required to stand tall and defend yourself and your business? Being in business is not for the faint of heart, especially when your business model is unconventional.
• Chronophobia (fear of time): How well do you respond to deadlines? Are they motivators, do they paralyze you, or do you ignore them altogether? Deadlines are a very real factor to contend with in any work environment. But when you are the boss, no one is sending you a series of increasingly alarming reminders. Managing deadlines well is critical; I cannot overstate this point. If you fail to pay your quarterly taxes on time, you will face a penalty from Uncle Sam. If you fail to deliver a product by the agreed-upon deadline, the client likely will not hire you again. You have to be able to self-monitor when it comes to deadlines if you want to maintain and grow your business.
• Decidophobia (fear of making decisions): You’re the boss. If you don’t make the decisions, who will? If making decisions and owning them are not part of your makeup, then you need to dedicate great time and effort cultivating these skills—beginning immediately! The inability to make decisions is a nonstarter for any entrepreneur; look yourself in the mirror and decide if you have the courage to make choices and stand by them.
• Enissophobia (fear of criticism): Undoubtedly, some opinions are steeped in criticism and require you to develop a thick skin. Can you do it? Can you hear someone tell you that your business idea is crazy/horrible/stupid or some other descriptor and still hang in there? The ability to believe in yourself and your abilities even if and when few others do is crucial to your success.
• Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (fear of long words): C’mon, you have to admit that this is a cool-looking word, even if it is impossible to pronounce. It highlights the fact that learning a variety of new jargon is only the beginning of the learning curve that lies ahead for any new Patchworker. There are new government terms and forms to learn, new computer skills to master, new accounting routines to set up, new marketing strategies to develop, and more. Learning comes with the territory, and being hungry to learn is a real asset.
• Isolophobia (fear of solitude): Can you handle spending long stretches of time by yourself? The answer to this question needs to tend toward “yes” if you are going to make it as a Patchworker, because you need to spend a great deal of time thinking, reading, creating, writing, and doing other rather solitary activities. Although the actual work you do to earn money can be very people oriented if you so choose, the invoicing and other recordkeeping work you do, for example, requires that you be productive when spending time alone.
• Macrophobia (fear of long waits): If instant gratification is important to you, then you just might have trouble facing this entrepreneurial reality: Things take time. You will apply for a federal employee identification number (EIN)...and wait. You will pitch an idea...and wait. You will mail the client an invoice...and wait. Waiting is an inherent part of most businesses. This concept goes back to the discussion about the marshmallow experiment. Can you resist the marshmallow and be productive in the meanwhile?
• Soteriophobia (fear of dependence on others): In the beginning and to varying degrees throughout your tenure as a Patchworker, you will be dependent on others for their advice, resources, contacts, and more. Your ability to reach out and ask for help from the right people at the right time, a willingness to accept assistance graciously, and an ability to reciprocate will determine a great deal. Can you put your ego aside and reach out for help at key moments?
• Xenophobia (fear of strangers): How well will you be able to approach people in positions of power and pitch your ideas to them convincingly? Will you be able to stand up and negotiate your salary, even if it takes some doing? Even if you tend toward introversion, do you have the nerve to walk into a negotiation and do what needs to be done to close the deal? If the thought of pitching your idea in person and negotiating across a table seems terrifying, you may be able to remedy this by changing environments. What I mean by this is taking advantage of online marketplaces where discussions take place by phone or live chat. Although this does limit your potential client base significantly, many people make a successful living this way.

If ultimately you suffer from ergophobia (fear of work), well then, it’s an easy call. Otherwise, take this alphabetized list into consideration going forward, but don’t let it hold you back. The best strategy for overcoming apprehensiveness about tasks or situations previously listed or any others that occur is simply jumping in and tackling them head-on.

And while we are discussing the practical realities of being a Patchworker, let’s take it one step farther. The next chapter describes the personal and professional drawbacks of this career lifestyle in a no-holds-barred fashion.

Endnotes

¹ Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “Mindset,” www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Mindset (accessed August 30, 2010).

² Jonah Lehrer, “Don’t! The Secret of Self-Control,” The New Yorker, May 18, 2009, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer (accessed August 30, 2010).

³ M.J. Ryan, “Learn to Be a Master of Change,” The Women’s Conference, www.womensconference.org/learn-to-be (accessed August 30, 2010).

⁴ M.J. Ryan.