Successful Blog

Do You Sleep in the Freeze or Invest in the Spring?

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about seasons of life and work.

When the sailors went home last fall, some cleaned up their boats and go involved in other things. Some might have figured they were done and sold their boats off. I suppose some “hibernate” — put their in storage because the season for sailing is over. They sleep in the freeze.

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The sailors who love sailing know just saw it as part of the yearly progress of the sailing “routine.” Winter is a luxury of time to fix what was wearing, mend what was tearing, and replace the broken things. They assess, check, invest, and work toward the days that bring back the summer breeze. They invest in the spring.

It’s a fact that that eventually the ice melts, the harbor always comes back in spring.

But you has to work on your boat, study the climate, and live your goals to set sail even better than before the water froze..

Most work that we love seems to have some cycle with a winter and a spring. A downtime offers an opportunity to get us running sleeker, faster, and in a more stable fashion again.

Most who do well when spring returns have been working all winter on a plan. We use the time have to build our skills, restring our offers and invest in our networks so that when up time and sunshine return we are sailing again. It’s even more than productivity and good business, it’s being invested in ourselves, our lives, each other and our dreams.

What are you doing to invest in the spring?

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Beach Notes: Sandimal 4 – Tina Turtle

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

This is the fourth of our “Sandimal” pictures of sand-sculpted animals and probably the last, unless our mystery sculptor returns one day. We have called this one Tina Turtle.

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We couldn’t think of anything particular to say about Tina, so we did some research on the well known fact of turtles’ longevity.

Did you know that the longest living turtle on record was kept by the royal family of the island nation Tonga, from 1777 to 1965? That’s 188 years and to put it in perspective, it’s from the year after the US Declaration of Independence to the 100th anniversary of the American Civil War. In relation to the history of music, that turtle was born in the year Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart turned 21 and died in the year in which Bob Dylan performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall, with audience members including the Beatles and Donovan.

Make of all that what you will, but a lot sure happened while that old turtle was around.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Thanks to Week 221 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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davorado
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radsmarts
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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Beach Notes: Sandimal 3 – Cedric The Crocodile

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

This is our third “Sandimal” post, this time with the sand sculpture of a crocodile we have dubbed Cedric.

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The challenge we had with coming up with a few thoughts prompted by Cedric was that some of them were frankly scary. Although for Cedric it’s just about getting dinner on time.

Then we thought that a couple of things that have enabled Cedric’s kind to survive through 200 million years is that somewhere along the line they became very observant and very fast to take action at the right time, from apparent total inertia to explosive movement.

So here’s the thought. Secrets of survival – be highly observant and move very fast when opportunity knocks. In business it’s called “speed to market”.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

What Influence Could Push You to the Magic that Is Missing?

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It’s old news and I think we all know …

If we’re not adding value, we’re taking it away.

So we’re busy adding value, doing great things, working, building, being productive. We want to get on with what we know how to do well. We do something that adds to the big thing and it gets bigger and better.

Somewhere near every one of us is someone who thinks differently. He or she is smart as we are, but has different experience or a different view of how things work. He wants to add his own extra value. She has reasons to care and contribute. He might not know the process, the culture, or the traditions. One’s a coworker. One’s a customer. One’s a big brand client.

Most come with a job. We have to include them.

The temptation often is to move forward. Try to ignore them or keep them from the core of things. Add our value and show them when we’re done. That makes it hard for even the most collaborative and curious to find the right way to join in.

But what if we invite them? What if we ask these different thinkers to sit beside us, to invest in our quest and be part of the process?

They’ll bring ideas, thoughts, and opinions. They’ll influence what we’re doing. They will challenge our assumptions. People who think differently make us uncomfortable … and that can make communication and progress seem a lot slower.

The more different we find someone’s experience and thinking, the more we should consider his or her questions and reasoning. It’s the best safety net and idea test in the population. We love and understand our own thinking. Agree with the guy who thinks unlike us and we’ve got something hot cooking.

That difference — in their experience, how they see things, and how they do things — is added value we might be overlooking. That influence could the the one thing that pushes us to add the magic that was missing.

When do you invite a different influence to be part of what you’re doing?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Beach Notes: Sandimal 2 – Elma the Elephant

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

In this second of our “Sandimal” posts from the beach, we feature the obviously intelligent Elma the Elephant, who is clearly using her time on the beach to do a lot of remembering as well as sunbaking.

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Elma prompted us to think about how a lot of people at this time of the year seem a bit fixated on bad things that happened last year and using that as some kind of motivation to expect good things this year. We prefer the old NLP technique of focusing on good experiences and successes we have had, whether yesterday, last year or many years ago and using that to put ourselves in a state of high expectation of achieving outstandingly positive results and multiple successes in the year ahead.

Happy remembering!.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh