On October 12th, 2010 I wrote a post about Momentum.  It was the story of how MyRecyclingReports.com got off to a fast start and then fizzled because we let our momentum die.  When I wrote that post and claimed to be kicking off the re-birth of our project I had envisioned that we would fix the budget and the deadline of Jan 1 and flex the scope to ensure that we made it on budget and launched on time.

Fast-forward to today and we have good news & bad news.  The bad news is that I didn’t abide by this valuable advice and we ran over budget and we are late to launch.  The good news is that we are riding high on momentum and we have a hard launch date set!

This is the official announcement that on May 12th, 2011 MyRecyclingReports.com is launching worldwide.

Please visit our temporary landing page to sign up for more information.  We will email you on the big day when we go live.  You can also follow us on Twitter @MyRecycReports or on our Facebook Page.  I of course, can’t stop talking about it on my personal Twitter account as well: @michaelpmills .

I want to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who has worked on this project.  Thank you to all of our programmers, writers and designers who have truly leveraged their amazing talent to bring this app to life.

One more special note to the recyclers around the world, I hope you’re excited! MyRecyclingReports.com enhances customer communications, encourages loyalty, adds value to your business, invites higher profit margins, and strategically brands your company as never before. All in 55 days from today!

Recently before hiring a new employee I asked him for three character references.  I called all three of his references in the evening when I knew the people would be home.  All three of the candidate’s friends had very similar things to say about him.  “He is a hard worker”, “He is dedicated to his job”, “He will show up on time”, etc.  However it was another character trait that all three mentioned that really had a profound effect on me.  They all described him as someone who would do anything for a friend.  “Whenever we’ve ever needed him, he was there, no question asked.”  “If you’re in a bind he’ll go out of his way to help you.”  These were the words I heard about this man.

After speaking with the third reference I sat in my car in the parking lot and thought how fortunate I would be to have this man on my staff.  I then began to wonder if my own references would describe me this way. I wondered, “Do I offer this level of loyalty to the people that are most important to me?”

I hope someday after I’m long gone that people will speak as highly of me as they do of this man.  In fact, I need to take this farther than "hoping" that this will happen.  I'm going to ensure that it will.    

I do not have an attitude of entitlement.  Nobody "owes" me anything.  In fact I believe that I don't even deserve most of the material items that I own.  It is this trained belief that pushes me to work harder.  I want to feel like I deserve the things that I have so I work harder to convince myself of it.  The US Government doesn't owe me a job.  They don't owe me protection, a bailout or a safety net. Your financial future is no different then venturing 100 miles offshore to catch tuna. You better be prepared and you need to admit to yourself that no one will save you out there.  Whether or not you return to port with fish is entirely up to you. Whether or not you obtain financial security is up to you too.  

Dropping my sense of an entitlement attitude was one of the greatest things I've ever done as an entrepreneur.  I'd highly recommend it if financial security is on your goal sheet.