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The Relationsheep Factor: A Successful Blog Birthday Bash Interview with the Phil Gerbyshak and Lisa Gates!

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Phil Gerbyshak, sheep, Liz Strauss, Lisa Gates = Relationship Geeks



In honor of Liz Strauss, the fabulously sticky writer and queen of relationship blogging, Lisa Gates of Design Your Writing Life and Phil Gerbyshak of Make it Great team up to offer this first-time-ever interview to talk about Liz’s impact on the Relationsheep factor and what it’s like to have Liz inside your computer.

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What is He Talking About? Chris Cree on Hard Work

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“The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.” –Harry Golden

The Blame Game

We live in a lottery culture. Instant gratification is the working model we are presented with most times. If it doesn’t happen right away, then most folks tend to give up.

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When they give up they tend to fall into one of two categories, both of which are looking to find a place outside themselves to affix the blame for their lack of success. I guess our psyches are somehow wired in such a way that as long as there is an outside source that we can point to as the cause of our circumstance, then we can press on without facing the pain of actually working though our own part in events leading up to where we find ourselves.

This blame phenomenon is so prevalent in our culture that we used to joke about it when I was in the Navy. “It doesn’t matter if you fix the problem as long as you fix the blame.”

The first category of blame fixers either point to some entity as the cause of their circumstances (“I can’t save any money because the government taxes me too much.”) or they will double down on their circumstances and blame one circumstance for another (“I can never be wealthy because I was born poor”).

When I ask one of these folks how they are doing I’ll probably hear something like, “{Sigh} OK. Under the circumstances.” I want to fire right back, “What are you doing under there?”

But usually I don’t. Read more

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What is He Talking About? Chris Cree on Friends

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“Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.”
–Peter Ustinov

I like people.

I mean as a general principle.

Oh, sure. There are some folks that I really would rather not be around. But mostly I like hanging out with other people.

In my book there is nothing better than hanging out with a couple people either over a good meal, or perhaps in a big cushy chair with some coffee and shooting the breeze. It doesn’t much matter to me whether we are solving the world’s problems - politics, religion, famine, disaster, war, WordPress vs. TypePad - or just simply making small talk, either way I’m for a good round of jawing most times.

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So when it comes down to it, I’m all about friends.

Friend Defined

Who is a friend? I mean there are friends and there are Friends, if you know what I mean. Read more

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What is He Talking About? Chris Cree on Order

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“First things first. But not necessarily in that order.” –Doctor Who

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Liz said something very kind to me the other day.

We were catching up on some post conference details when she said, “Chris, you are a Choreographer of Success. You clear roadblocks so things can get done.”

That’s me. Mr. Snow-Plow.

I clear the way and things happen.

I guess you could say I’m sorta like Doctor Who, but on a much smaller scale.
Doctor Who
I mean the good Doctor seems to chronically stumble onto some sort of doomsday end-of-humanity scenario. Then he’ll figure out exactly what needs to be done (and no more), and get it done just in the nick of time. All with a cheery attitude and a touch of drama (of course). And then he slides off into the Tardis as anonymously as possible.

One of the tricks to being a successful snow plow (a snow plow of success?) is the ability to prioritize well. And that obviously means the ability to put first things first.

Except when it doesn’t.

The thing is we try so hard to formula-ize things like success as though we can follow a recipe or program ourselves like a computer to achieve success. There is a whole industry making a ton of money selling people all kinds of formulas.

Some work better than others, no doubt.

But the truth is success isn’t so much a set of action steps as it is a montage of guiding principles that when collectively applied produce desirable results.

One trick is to know when to keep first things first. And then recognize those times when you will get better results doing something else first. Unfortunately I haven’t found the formula that will tell the difference every time.

Until I come up with one, I’ll just plow on. Like the good Doctor, I’ll keep applying what I know and making the rest up as I go.

And that’s just the Way I C it.

–Chris Cree, SuccessCREEations.

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Tid-bits from SOBCon ‘07 - An Insider’s Perspective

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I know many of you might be SOBConned out at this point but I thought I’d share a bit about what the conference looked like from my perspective. Call it an insider’s view of the conference.

So here are a few tid-bits from what I saw at the conference that you might not have seen:

  • Liz ended up getting to the hotel way later and way more stressed than she planned because there was a service failure in the shipment of the purple bags. Long story short, after spending hours on the phone tracking them down she managed to get a commitment for them to be delivered to the hotel early Friday morning. And fortunately they were.

  • Lorelle, Joe, Easton, and I don’t know who all else worked for a good while stuffing those bags full of goodies for y’all.

  • Robyn Tippins grew up right down the road from where I live. If the accent didn’t give it away she’s way more Georgia than San Francisco.

  • In addition to being a phenomenal singer and song writer, Christine Kane is incredibly funny. At dinner Saturday night she had our end of the table roaring with a little help from Tony Clark and Ben Yoskovitz. Gorgeous and I were close to peeing our collective pants. I’m surprised no beverages came out any noses during that meal.

  • Speaking of funny people, Rodney Rumford had Gorgeous and I rolling too. He arrived at the hotel Thursday and we were able to spend some time with him before things started rolling. Rodney is a guy who is full of ideas and is a very innovative thinker. Definitely interesting conversation there.

  • Andy Sernovitz’s speaking experience showed as he rolled in a bit before his timeslot with his presentation in hand. He gave us plenty of time to upload it and have him set up before he took the stage. A professional and a very nice guy to chat with too.

  • Speaking of presentations, Rodney Rumford has Vista on his machine and wouldn’t you know his was the only presentation that ended up being incompatible with the presentation computer. Even the Apple users were even able to produce compatible versions. What do you suppose that says about Vista?

  • Dawud Miracle gets this whole idea that business is about relationships as well as anyone I’ve ever met. It was refreshing to hear how committed a man like him is to his family. If you get the chance, spend some time getting to know him. And thanks, Dawud for volunteering your blog for Liz and David to critique.

  • I’ve been a part of these sort of things many times before. One thing that stood out to me was how little went wrong during the event. Sure we had some challenges. But all of them were minor.

  • The Sofitel did an outstanding job helping us make SOBCon a success. They did a great job ensuring that we’d want to have our next event at their hotel again. Not only that, but all of their employees were wonderful to work with. Nice people, every one.

    They were accommodating and willing to help us out with all sorts of things. They even rearranged the room for Saturday not once, but twice to get it the way we wanted it. Stephanie, Volkmar, Mike, and Salvador did a wonderful job making everything just the way we wanted it. Thanks guys!

  • We stayed on our timeline until we got to the raffle time in the afternoon. That was the one thing we didn’t build into the schedule. I’ve never worked with a group of presenters that large where everyone of them honored the time of the following speakers so well.

    My hat’s off to each of them. They were all wonderful.

One final tip for everyone who attends next year. Some of the best conversation and connections happen outside of the formal sessions. You will completely miss out if you don’t

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