Success Can Come Right Out of Nowhere

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog | 16 Comments

Next in the the b5media Business Apprentice Team Challenge . . . This week’s challenge? Everybody loves a success story. New business owners find them inspiring. Tell Kay a success story that inspired you - it could be a famous person, a company, a family member.-

Some Successes Only Look that Way Later

Can you imagine?

A singer songwriter David LaMotte, had to cancel a weekend of shows. He asked a friend, a young writer, singer, aspiring performer — who was working as a waitress — if she would fill in for him. Filled with anxiety, she agreed.

The young singer pulled together what courage she could muster to sing her way through songs other people wrote. All the while, she sang around her fear and did her best to disregard her self-doubt.

Thoroughly exhausted, the young singer was stopped at the end of a set. There before her was an actor from a traveling theater production. He was amazed to hear this was her first performance in a club. The actor reached in his pocket to hand her a $100 bill with the words, “never give up.”

And we know her. She’s a wonderful writer, songwriter, and singer. It’s five CDS later. I’m proud to call her a friend. Her name is in my sidebar and has been for almost two years.

“It was an endorsement from the angels,” Christine Kane said about that night when she was handed that $100. Sometimes you don’t see your own success coming.

It makes me smile to think that one of my favorite lines from her songs is a lot the same.

When courage finally comes you never see it coming.

I wonder that night is what the song was about.

You decide.

Right Outta Nowhere the words and the song are waiting behind that link.

Sort of makes me feel like a success just listening to her sing.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Tags: businesss-life, Christine-Kane, success-stories

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Song of Life: Right Outta Nowhere

Filed Under Songs of Life, Successful Blog | 17 Comments

My Heart Is Always Singing

When I read Dawud’s post about the songs in his heart, I knew I was a goner. My heart is always singing. It’s the way I wake up. It’s the way I go through my day. It’s the way I think of my friends. It’s my life.

Sometimes I think that everything I know has been set to music somewhere.

Right Outta Nowhere

by Christine Kane

I was walking with Richard in London. We were talking about his international travel, my international travel, my first trip to the UK, his trips to visit my office, and my bicoastal commute.

“In the last year,” I said to this lifelong friend, “the longest time I’ve been home is 21 days. Once I was gone for 63 nights. I have a “home” at home, another at Peg’s, and several in small hotels in cities like this. What d’ya make of it?” I was walking half-backwards to see him as I spoke.

He pondered. Then he said, “I think it means, you don’t want one home anywhere.”

I turned to walk beside him, keeping pace and thinking his thought. Then I turned back to say, “Could be, yet when I try it on, it feels more right to say ‘I want to live everywhere!’ ”

“Oh dear,” my dear friend remarked. “That is you, spot on. Takes courage, that.”

We think of courage as a loud battle, but in my life it’s never been a fight. It’s been a waking up to something that isn’t right.

When courage finally comes you never see it coming.

Just three years before that walk, I’d been hopelessly lost about life. I’d gotten caught in trying different clothes and dfferent shoes to figure out how to walk the road that everyone else was walking. I’d tried desperately, valiantly — with amazing resilience — to remake myself to fit the success story.

Some people got a lot to prove and that’s the way I used to be.

From the first misstep I took, I lived in my head, over-analyzing At the same time, I believed I wasn’t good enough, yet I thought that I could prove my value by changing who I am. Where’s the logic there? Look again —> prove the value of who I am by changing it?

Disconnected from my head, my heart knew I was moving in the wrong direction. It took a chance at being me again. My heart understood that I needed my own shores to find my place to stand. That’s where the courage came in.

Dream and the way will be clear.
Pray and the angels will hear.
Leap and the net will appear.

When my heart and head came back together, those shoes that fit were walking on a road away from trying to change myself to prove my value. It wasn’t easy, but it felt better.

And I could be sure that the folks who met me . . . met me, and those who like me . . . like me.

So when people ask me about how to find their way, I point them to Christine’s song a song in my heart and tell them what it says . . .

Right outta nowhere
Open your heart, believe in everything
And you’re going somewhere.
And all you need to know is that you’re free.

I had asked Richard before I ever got to the UK, “When I get to London on business, will you take me around to all of the publishers?” I’d been asking him for 6 years, before my plane actually landed.

I had to learn that I was free to go.

Right outta nowhere, you open your heart, have faith in everything
And you you’re going somewhere.
And all you need to know
Is that you’re free
to go.

Thank you, Christine, for saying it so beautifully.

<br />

Open your heart, believe in everything — especially yourself.
That’s how you get to where you want to go.

Tags: Christine-Kane, Dawud-Miracle, Right-Outta-Nowhere, Songs of Life

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SOB Business Cafe 05-25-07

Filed Under Great Finds, Successful Blog | 9 Comments

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Smart Wealthy Rich wants a scientific formula to measure success.

Measuring A Blog’s Success

Technosailor points out an even more serious technical issue.

98% of WordPress Blogs Vulnerable

The Blog Herald’s Gary King solves one technical difficulty.

How to use widgets with more than one sidebar on your WordPress blog

chrisg suggests we set aside our fear.

Fear of Blogging, or What Bloggers Can Learn From Shakespeare

Good Word Editing sheds insight on what is worth our attention.

Blog Tours - What Mattered and What Didn’t

Steli Efti explains “the dip,” and why it’s not the time to quit.

Where To Look For Powerful Lessons? In the dip!

Related ala carte selections include

Christine Kane offers a challenge about lying.

Lying Works Wonders

Alex Shalman has found a key to life.

How to Make Everything the Bright Side

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Tags: Alex-Shalman, chrisg, Christine-Kane, Good-Word-Editing, Smart-Wealthy-Rich, Steli-Efti, The-Blog-Herald

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Hey Listen to Christine Before SOBCon!

Filed Under SOB Business, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Not Only a New Blog

Christine Kane not only has a new blog, but she has an entire CD, Right Outta Nowhere, set up for our listening pleasure. Be sure to check out #1, #5, and #11. Click her picture below to go there.

Christine will be playing a live set at SOBCon 07 on Friday night to help us unwind after our arrival, before a very special LIVE OPEN MIC NIGHT!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
ONLY 12 DAYS UNTIL THE BLOGGING EXPERIENCE THAT WILL BE INCREDIBLE — Why SOBCon not that Other One. Click the button to register now.

Tags: Christine-Kane, Right-Outta-Nowhere, SOBcon-07, sobevent.com

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SOB Business Cafe 10-20-06

Filed Under Great Finds, Successful Blog | 18 Comments

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the title shots to enjoy each selection.