“Every great entrepreneur understands the value of finding out the reason why a person is in their life,” Ryan Blair said, gearing up to tell another grand story of fateful meetings. “Many people are put into your life for a reason. You never know where a chance encounter will lead you.”

The day Ryan Blair met John Wooden was a perfect example of two destined events. When he arrived at John Wooden’s house in Encino that afternoon, there was a man walking out of the garage. A writer by the name of Don Yaeger.

Don Yaeger was leaving Wooden’s house to pick up some cold medicine. It was spring allergy season. He’d been traveling back and forth from Tallahassee to LA, spending several days at a time with John Wooden in the process of writing a book on the famous coach.

Blair asked if he could borrow the writer’s recording equipment for his meeting. Yaeger agreed, hoping they could use the material for the book, which was centered on Wooden’s lifelong perfection of mentorship. Yaeger got the two men set up to record, and then headed out to the doctor’s office. When he came back, Yaeger said Ryan Blair was getting the most out of his mentorship. He was still there, and they were still talking.

“He was maximizing his time with the coach,” Yaeger said.  

After the interview ended, Blair expressed interest in reading the John Wooden biography, which Yaeger said was coming out by fall 2009. The two men parted ways, but destiny was already working to rejoin them in the near future.

Blair realized when he left Wooden’s house he should have brought his own recorder to the meeting; all he had were his notes. He pulled out Don Yaeger’s business card and contacted him. The writer’s assistant sent him the transcribed tapes, and included a press kit on the author.

“I didn’t know anything about Don Yaeger,” Ryan Blair said. “I looked at this press kit, and come to find out he wrote Walter Payton’s book, he’d been on Oprah, Larry King, was a 4 time New York Times best selling author, 11 years at Sports Illustrated as an Associate Editor.”

Ryan laughed. “Here I thought I just met some random guy in Wooden’s garage.”

One day Ryan Blair was talking to mutual friend Coach Dale Brown about his struggles to get his book written; it was difficult to make the time to write a book while actually doing what he wanted to write about. Shortly after, Brown sent him an email reintroducing him to the well-respected author. It simply said, “Don, you met Ryan, you need to write his book.”

So the discussions began. The Wooden book would be soon be finished, and Yaeger set his sights on his next big project, tackling Ryan’s story.

“This was way out of my comfort zone,” Yaeger said. “But then I realized that Ryan’s sport is entrepreneurship. I’m used to talking to competitors, and Ryan is a competitor. As fierce a competitor as Tiger Woods or Jimmy Connors.”

Don Yaeger told Ryan that he had a number of books in him, but he was interested in writing about how to become an entrepreneur. “I own a handful of businesses, from a comedy club to a PR firm,” Yaeger said. “I have a taste of being an entrepreneur, maybe not to the extent Ryan has. But I was taken by the things I was learning in the conversations with him, and before long it made complete sense.”

The author already had an idea for the title of their book: Nothing to Lose. It was a reference to an episode of Donny Deutsche where Blair mentioned leveraging this mindset.

“When he said Nothing to Lose, I thought, you’re right,” Blair said. “That is the mindset that you need to have to start a new business.”

Blair said he wants to make people aware that getting caught up in financial fears, and fear of failure, and their pride, prevents them from taking action. Having nothing to lose is one of the first ingredients to success.
 
“Now would be a unique time to offer up these ideas to people,” Don Yaeger said. “If a book can be pulled together in time for millions of Americans to use it, it’s the greatest legacy you could leave behind.”

The book Nothing to Lose, which will be out later this fall 2009, aims to be both timely and timeless; an ultimate handbook for entrepreneurs. The authors are looking for feedback about business advice topics the audience would like to see covered. Check back for a follow up article with a chapter outline of Nothing to Lose, and information on submitting suggestions.