How to Make Your Mark

As studio-audience members file in to take their seats for the PBS taping, music begins to play over the soundstage speakers. It's the SEED theme song, written for Franks by singer Leina Marquez, her friend and personal trainer. Marquez's voice carries clear and bright across the room:

Today is my day,
a brand-new beginning.
The future will blossom magnificently,
'cause I'm planting?
a seed.

A catchy dance beat kicks in, and the chorus joins, sounding like a gospel choir. In the mostly female audience, shoulders rock and heads nod. The few people who have heard the song before are mouthing the words or singing along. The young man in the back feeding the script to the TelePrompTer rolls his eyes. "That song is sooo cheesy," he says. "I guess it's marketable, though."

His dismissal is harsh, and it suggests some of the challenges that Franks's idea will face. Not everyone will "get it." Some will condemn her for "selling out" by trying to mass-market seed. Only time will tell if seed becomes the Coca-Cola of women-owned businesses -- omnipresent and powerful -- or irrelevant and laughable like the macarena.

Even Franks has no idea how things will turn out. But she is certain that, win or lose in this bet that she's made, she will not confuse making her mark with making a life. "In the past two years, I've been able to write a best-selling book and launch the beginnings of a very successful multimedia-business brand that will help many people transform their lives in a positive way. And I've done all of that without feeling those same emotional highs and lows that I felt when I was achieving things in the 1980s," she says. "I don't have the sense that the business is me anymore. I care deeply and passionately about it, but I've gotten beyond the point where what I do is who I am. Work is a very important part of people, but we are bigger than what we do."

Nick Irons: Ordinary Guy, Extraordinary Journey

The day got off to a rough start for Nick Irons. He almost missed a 6 AM phone interview with an East Coast radio station because his alarm didn't go off. By chance, his brother and quasi-press manager, Andy, woke up moments before the interview was to start. He shook Irons awake and tossed a cell-phone to him for what was one of the 28-year-old's decidedly groggier interviews. Two hours later, in the lobby of rock station KISW 99.9 in Seattle, Irons arrives for his second interview of the day looking only slightly more alert.

He's there to talk to morning-show deejays Spike and Bob about his current project -- a five-month, 10,000-mile bike tour of the United States to raise money for multiple-sclerosis research. For 20 years, Irons's father, John, has had the disease, a progressive nerve disorder that robs people of control of their muscles. For four years, Nick Irons has been working full time at raising money to find a cure. He has established his own nonprofit, Going the Distance for MS Research Inc., and has raised $700,000. The bike ride is just his most recent effort. His two-day stop in Seattle is the longest break he's taken since he started the tour three months ago in Washington, DC. So far, he has cycled more than 5,000 miles, pedaling for up to six hours a day, six days a week. It has been a grueling trip.

The producer takes Irons back to the studio to join Spike and Bob. Andy listens in on the receptionist's radio in the lobby. After they welcome Irons to the show, Spike and Bob tell him that they have "something special" planned for his visit. It seems that the other guest on today's show is a woman named Lauren who is in the running for a skin magazine's Girl Next Door award. Spike and Bob have challenged listeners to call in and give Lauren their best pickup lines. If she likes the line, the guy gets a disposable camera with nude pictures of her inside of it. And they're shooting the photos in the studio -- now. Lauren takes off her shirt, and there's a moment of stunned silence after the deejays ask Irons to do the honors with the disposable camera.

Back in the lobby, Andy's jaw drops, "You gotta be kidding me!" he says. "This can't be happening." Andy watches the clock as callers ring in to woo Lauren, and the rush-hour audience slips away. It's nearly 10 AM before the deejays interview Irons. They mention the Going the Distance Web site, but given the timing, the interview is not likely to bring the results that the Ironses had anticipated.

Nick Irons leaves the studio baffled but grinning. Pausing at the elevators, he turns to Andy and starts to laugh. "That was really weird." Andy brandishes Lauren's complimentary publicity photo, which reads, "To Nick: I'm sooo impressed by the work you do! Good luck on the rest of your ride! XOXO, Lauren." Her jean shorts are around her ankles, and her bare derriere is turned toward the camera. "What makes you say that?" Andy asks sarcastically.