Archive for January, 2010

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Wednesday Wellness: This January Try Something New

By Tammy Parkinson | January 13th, 2010 0 Comments

January, the first month of a NEW Year!

You see many ads about NEW goals, NEW you, NEW business strategies, NEW relationship promises, etc.

I love this!  Looking at your day with a “newness” towards everyday practices can and will revitalize your lives!

My message this week is short and sweet…simply…try something…anything…NEW every day!

If you frequent the same running trail, try a new one…just once!

If you always have oatmeal in the morning, try a protein shake instead

If you go to sleep at 11:30  and wake up at 7 everyday (uh, this would be me)  try to go to sleep at 10 and wake up at 6…just once!

Getting out of our ruts and daily habits will help us explore NEW areas of our lives which we have looked away from and possibly even closed!

Today, I stopped by a coffee shop I have never been in before.  The layout was cute and open and gave me an idea of something I can do to our screen room!  Who knew a coffee shop would give me an idea for a remodel!

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Cool Apps: Get the Gist!

By John Thompson | January 8th, 2010 3 Comments

gist“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

How many times have you heard that phrase? What if you could combine those two things? What if you could take who you know and increase what you know about them? From the perspective of a real estate professional — someone whose business is dependent on understanding people’s needs and desires — that’s something that could be pretty valuable, right?

As it happens, there is, in fact, an app for that.

Welcome to GIST.

Everyone with whom we’re connected online is searchable. Every blog comment, tweet, online profile, even reviews at places like Amazon, are searchable. But tracking down all of that information can be awfully time-consuming. Gist takes the legwork out of finding out what you need to know about your clients and business contacts before you talk to them.

An indispensable tool for anyone in sales, Gist is what Outlook wishes it could have been; not just contact management, Gist is knowledge management. Relationship management.

100% free, Gist couldn’t be simpler to use. Just log in and tell Gist where your contacts are listed: Gmail, LinkedIn, Twitter … wherever they happen to be. Gist aggregates all of your contact information, then turns that data into something really intelligent. Something you can really use.

The more you know about a person or a company, the more productive you’re going to be.

In the dashboard, you’ll see your lists of contacts (either individuals or companies), plus their latest tweets, blog posts, news items, comments and other online information that has recently been posted. Pretty handy information to have before that conference call or big meeting, right?

Gist is knowledge. Gist is power. Gist is totally cool.

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Thursday’s Thoughts on Leadership: Why Does Being A Visible Leader Matter?

By Gino Blefari | January 7th, 2010 0 Comments

Leaders need to be seen and heard. Most people take their cues from leaders. That is why it is important for leaders to be out and about all the time. Leaders must attend meetings with vendors, and business partners. They attend office meetings and social functions. They make presentations at the local, state and regional levels. They do this because the best leaders have taken the time to gain knowledge of their company and its values, mission and objectives and they make this known to others through their interactions. Every day, the leader on the go is modeling professional behaviors, responses and attitudes as well as sharing the values, mission and objectives of the company. When a leader’s actions demonstrate that certain behaviors and attitudes are important, they will be important for everyone.

John C. Maxwell writes in his book The 360-Degree Leader, “One of the greatest mistakes leaders make is spending too much time in their offices and not enough time out among the people. Leaders are often agenda driven, task focused, and action oriented because they like to get things done. They hole up in their offices, rush to meetings, and ignore everyone they pass in the halls along the way. What a mistake! First and foremost, leadership is a people business. If you forget the people, you’re undermining your leadership, and you run the risk of having it erode away. Then one day when you think you’re leading, you’ll turn around and discover that nobody is following and you’re only taking a walk.”

In fact, the word lead comes from the Old English word l?than, which means “to go.” It makes sense that a leader should be on the go. You can manage from behind a desk, but to truly lead you have to leave the comforts of the office.

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Wednesday Wellness: Longer Days

By Tammy Parkinson | January 6th, 2010 0 Comments

December 21 was the official Winter Solstice.  What this means is that during a calendar year, the 21st was the “shortest day” in terms of daylight hours of any other day during that year.

June 21 is the day known as the Summer Solstice.  Exactly 6 months later and this day determines the “longest” day of the year (or the day with the most hours of sunlight).

On or around the 27th of December this past month, I made the comment to someone that we are on the upswing to longer days.  He laughed and said that was so far away, how could I call longer days as getting closer when we are only gaining a minute or two each day, if that!

The reality is although you barely notice longer days on a day to day basis, in 5-6 months from now, we will wake up to sunlight and some of us will even go to sleep when the sun is barely setting (in Alaska, this is true for sure). This analogy is similar to our goals!

If we look at the steps we take, day to day, sometimes it seems we are only “inching” forward; gaining only a minute or two each day towards our aspirations and we can get easily frustrated.

However, if we fast forward to 6 months from now and are diligent in the goals we desire, the difference is phenomenal!

Let’s say you want to reduce your waistline; instead of going on a cleanse, detoxing and not eating for 5 days, consider replacing one of your “usual” meals each day with a colorful healthy salad, or replace the 3 pm candy with an apple.

Or, instead of running to the gym after being sedentary for the last 10 months and working out for 90 min 7 days a week until you are so sore and exhausted you wait another 10 months to go back, try adding in a routine of an extra 15 minutes every day…creating more dynamic workouts as the months go by!

As you are creating your goals for 2010, each day might seem like a baby step…but take them because by summer you won’t recognize yourself and you’ll be climbing stairs…literally!

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What Is So Special About Leaders?

By Gino Blefari | January 5th, 2010 0 Comments

What is so special about leaders? Do we ever really stop to ask ourselves this question? There are a million different responses, but consider this one … they bring out the best in us. Leaders recognize what is possible before we do. They recognize the potential in an individual and perhaps more importantly, they know how to bring it to the surface.

Consider, Joe Montana. We all know how his story ends, but do you know how it started? As a freshman at Notre Dame in 1974, Montana was the seventh string quarterback. The following year Dan Devine, the newly hired coach stated to his wife after being impressed by Montana’s performance during training: “I’m gonna start Joe Montana in the final spring game.”  When she replied, “Who’s Joe Montana?” Devine said: “He’s the guy who’s going to feed our family for the next few years.” Today we all recognize what Dan Devine recognized in that spring training game in 1975. It is a difficult task to find six better quarterbacks in the history of football than Joe Montana, much less on one college football team. It took a leader with vision to see that.

Montana did go on to have a very good college career at a highly regarded college program, yet when he entered the NFL draft in 1979 he was once again overlooked. He was selected in the third round by the San Francisco Forty-Niners because Bill Walsh, like Dan Devine before him, recognized the potential that everyone else missed.

Walsh knew that in Montana he had found the perfect understudy to lead his team and execute his plans. As Montana related years later in the foreword to the book, The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership, “He (Walsh) had in his mind this ideal – an image of perfect football – couple with the nuts-and-bolts details of how to accomplish it, which he then taught … the place you dreamed of but didn’t know you could reach? Bill Walsh taught me how to reach it. He taught all of us how to reach it.”

I do not have any doubts that Montana believed he could make it in the NFL, but having a leader like Walsh who believed he could be one of the best ever played a vital role in Montana achieving that status. When others see potential in our abilities and they believe in us, and they reinforce that belief every day through their interactions with us, we are strongly influenced by that support. Our Chairman, Bob Moles played that role for me. If the potential exists within us, it will come out when a leader takes the time to bring us along.

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Cool Apps: Stay Connected With LogMeIn

By Tom Tognoli | January 5th, 2010 0 Comments

logmeinWhen you’re working from home, you have access to all of your passwords, your networks…everything is AOK. Hunky dory, even. But sometimes, we’re away from home or the office, for any one of a multitude of reasons, and suddenly, things aren’t so straightforward.

When you’re away from your own computer, you might be faced with some serious firewall challenges or other security issues. Let’s face it: remote access is tricky.

There is an answer.

Let’s talk about LogMeIn. LogMeIn is a 100% free site that provides solutions for remote control, file sharing, systems management, data backup, business collaboration and on-demand customer support of PCs, servers, MACs, smartphones (iPhones, BlackBerrys, Pres, etc.)

With LogMeIn, you can access your personal computer and all of its resources over the web. You can access your desktop from your iPhone, no matter where you are. You can create virtual, peer-to-peer networks. You can control your PC or MAC remotely from any web browser. You can back up your files and important data, so that you are always in control, and so you won’t lose anything, even if something happens to your computer.

Cool, right?

Even cooler is the price. LogMeIn is completely, totally and, in all other ways, free. The only time you have to pay them is when you want to sync files across machines or do remote printing. When compared to other services like this, many of which charge $20 for each computer you use (this can really start to add up after a while), LogMeIn does it for free.

LogMeIn isn’t flashy. It isn’t exciting. What it is, however, is dead useful and practical. It’s a great service to have in your arsenal for those times when the unexpected rears its ugly head. For those times when you’ve left your laptop behind and you suddenly need access to your computer.

Check it out today. You never know when you might need it.

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Monday Mojo: My Big Audacious New Year’s Resolution…Easy Does It!!!!

By Tom Tognoli | January 4th, 2010 0 Comments

Today marks the first full week of a New Year and a New Decade. It is an opportunity for a fresh start on whatever it is that we have wanted to accomplish with our health, faith, family, business, and finances. We just need to remember it is the beginning and not the end, so we need to pace ourselves. Don’t let what happened to your last year’s resolutions happen to this year’s resolutions. Be realistic and don’t burn out.

We all have these big audacious things we want to accomplish in life, but remember, if it is really worth doing, it is probably not going to get done in a day, in a week, or in a month.  If it could be done quickly, we probably would have already done it. For the most part, most New Year’s resolutions are life changes we need to make – not day changes, week changes, month changes, or year changes. We need to look at our life or our resolution like running a marathon. We cannot wake up one day after not running our entire life (or for years) and expect that we are going to knock out running 26 ½ miles.  But, if we start small, perhaps with something as easy as a 1 mile walk and build on it, anyone can do it. It is about committing ourselves to something we know we can maintain and building upward – not choosing something that is going to bury us.  It is also important that we have “mini goals” so we are experiencing success/winning along the way to that big audacious goal.

Using the metaphor of running a marathon – start with lightly jogging or walking one mile everyday and over a month or so, build that to lightly jogging 3 miles a day. Then over the next month build it to lightly jogging 3 to 5 miles, then 7 miles, then 10 miles, then…before you know it, if you are consistent, you will be ready to run that 26 ½ mile marathon. You will be accomplishing whatever your Big Audacious Goal is. The coolest thing is once you have that under your belt, can you can begin to imagine what next year’s resolution is going to look like – talk about big and audacious.

Easy does it…

Let’s make 2010 our best year yet!

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