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Christmas day I got the news that a friend of mine had passed away. I want share some words that I wrote that morning on his behalf.

This morning I was sitting in my sister in law’s house contemplating scents, yes scents. You see, I am a big scent guy, I love candles, incense and the smell of fresh rain on trees. I had mentioned to my sister in law that her house smelled marvelous and I knew it was from the fresh Christmas tree that was in the room.

So I started thinking of the scent of candles, a HUGE industry I might add, and I thought how the wax was infused with a scent that when lit gives off a wonderful smell…yet, with all candles, the scent does not have staying power and seems to fade or blend in after a while to the point that it has no impact at all.

Then there is incense, with a strong odor (My favorite is jasmine) that really takes over a room. The scent is strong and all encompassing. The trouble with incense is that after it is burned the fresh aromatic scent goes away and a heavy mud like presence takes over. You walk into a room an hour after it has burned and you smell nothing but YUCK!

So that leaves the real deal, like my sister in law’s Christmas Tree. A fresh cut tree, that they trimmed  and kept the trimmings to decorate their fireplace mantel. She said that the needles can be a bit tedious to clean up but it was well worth it. The thing about that fresh cut tree is that it smelled the same, strong and pure, every time you walked in the room.

You know, both the candle and the incense are something that has to be infused with a scent to become attractive. Wax alone does nothing for anyone in the scent arena, and the composite that makes up incense has no redeeming value in the smell area either. Yet that tree, all it had to do is be what it is, without pretense, without help and it changed the room.

Well people are the same way. Some are candles that can be whatever you want them to be. They can dress up all nice and fancy and play the part and for a short period of time, they can have a positive effect on you. Yet, after a bit of time the “scent” wears off and you find them, well, kind of boring. The other thing is that you have to LIGHT the candle, and sometimes people are not very much fun either unless they are lit.

Then there is the incense person. They come on strong and with a lot of “personality” and for a while you really enjoy their presence. They can change a room with their vibrancy and presence, but in the end it is just the strong scent that you enjoy, when they leave there is a lasting negativity that remains behind. We all have met a person of this ilk.

So that leaves us with the real deals, the Christmas trees of people. First of all, they do not try to be something they are not. You can buy candles and incense that are “Christmas Tree” scents, but you cannot buy a Christmas tree that is trying to be a candle, it never will try. The tree is just that, the tree, and some people are the same way. They come into the room, change the atmosphere and you know you are in the presence of the real thing. They have a refreshing presence that you look forward to.

Our friend, Josh Tabares, was the Christmas Tree. He was the real deal, without pretense or a phony facade. He dressed his own way, he walked his own way and he cared for others in his unique own way. He left us way to soon, with a lot of work still to be done, yet he left an indelible lasting impression on everyone he met, me included. So take a moment to think about the “Christmas Trees” in your life, the real deals, those rare people that walk the walk and talk the talk, the “Josh Tabares'” that you know. Thank them for what they bring to the table and recognize that you are lucky to have a few in your life….

Live life to the fullest and inspire others!!!

Christmas Eve, 2016, a lovely morning in Florida. So this will be the first Christmas that I will not hear “Merry Christmas” from either my mom or dad. It is a real strange thought. For my entire life, Christmas was always a magical time of the year, and my parents made it even more magical. When mom passed away in March, I didn’t know that it would have the effect it is having on me today.

Now, how I feel is not what is important. What IS important is the lesson it can teach and that lesson is that life is fleeting, it is only momentary in the grand scheme of the earth. I am not sure that we have had a year like 2016. So many well known icons, gone, not forgotten, but gone. A presidential election unlike any other in memory and so many other odd occurrences. Yet the searing memory of the year for me will always be my mom taking off to spend eternity with my dad.

So do yourself a favor this year, look at the ones you love around you and make sure that you appreciate that they are here. Take the time to call just to say hello. Put the ones you love on speed dial, take an hour or so tomorrow and call them, just to say “Merry Christmas”! Find reasons to love, to connect, to share and to care instead of always finding reasons to hate or criticize. If you are a son or a daughter, do not wait for your phone to ring, be proactive and reach out. If you are a parent, don’t wait for your children to call, do it yourself, because the silence lasts forever, I know.

See how many good wishes you can share this year, with everyone and remember, life gets better when you decide it does!

Merry Christmas!!!!

Christmas Eve, 2016, a lovely morning in Florida. So this will be the first Christmas that I will not hear “Merry Christmas” from either my mom or dad. It is a real strange thought. For my entire life, Christmas was always a magical time of the year, and my parents made it even more magical. When mom passed away in March, I didn’t know that it would have the effect it is having on me today.

Now, how I feel is not what is important. What IS important is the lesson it can teach and that lesson is that life is fleeting, it is only momentary in the grand scheme of the earth. I am not sure that we have had a year like 2016. So many well known icons, gone, not forgotten, but gone. A presidential election unlike any other in memory and so many other odd occurrences. Yet the searing memory of the year for me will always be my mom taking off to spend eternity with my dad.

So do yourself a favor this year, look at the ones you love around you and make sure that you appreciate that they are here. Take the time to call just to say hello. Put the ones you love on speed dial, take an hour or so tomorrow and call them, just to say “Merry Christmas”! Find reasons to love, to connect, to share and to care instead of always finding reasons to hate or criticize. If you are a son or a daughter, do not wait for your phone to ring, be proactive and reach out. If you are a parent, don’t wait for your children to call, do it yourself, because the silence lasts forever, I know.

See how many good wishes you can share this year, with everyone and remember, life gets better when you decide it does!

Merry Christmas!!!!

Don’t underestimate the power of each and every small habit exercised over time. For good or bad, your habits determine who you will ultimately become. What you do everyday adds up each week, it adds up each month and each year. The accumulative value of that, can make a significant change in who you are and what you have. The rule is true for the positive part of life as it is for the negative side also.

Take for instance, if someone is extremely overweight, that did not happen overnight, it was an accumulation of weeks and months and probably years of neglect. To make the transformation back to where someone might want to be weight wise, will take another period of time to achieve. The same is true with our mind as it is with our body.

If you want to improve your skill in any select area of your life, you must be willing to put in the effort and the time. You must be willing to discipline yourself to practice the new habit daily and you must condition your mind to the amount of effort that is needed. What you do today is another action towards what you will be tomorrow. As we repeat that action day after day for a week, you start to make gains on where you want to be in the future. When you repeat that over a month you start to see and feel your results taking shape, ever so slightly. When that action becomes a habit, a daily habit repeated year after year, you begin to experience the transformation of who you are. You realize over that time that whatever way you are trying to change, you will change completely.

So it is the smallest change today, the change of an everyday habit, that can truly change our future selves. One of my mantras is that “You can’t say you did it everyday unless you DO it everyday”. So many times I hear people say, “I do that everyday”. Then  as the conversation goes on, their everyday might be three times a week…that is not everyday. If there is a way that you want to change, and that change has enough meaning to you, then you will discipline yourself to do it everyday.

So take joy in the fact that you alone control the changes in your life, and that you can accomplish your goals by changing your daily habits. It is up to you!

Inspire someone to greatness today!!!

Over the years one of the things that has amazed me is how people react when they are in an uncomfortable situation. I am talking in a business sense, you know, doing whatever you do not like doing? I remember a boss telling me “We get paid for the things we do not like to do”, that was good advice. So getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is one of the ways to improve your opportunity for success.

In all aspects of our business world there are times that we just do not like doing something, not the lazy way, the uncomfortable way. The call on a tough account, an upset client, someone we owe money to, all tough calls to make. To be truly successful this one area that you cannot dodge, that you cannot avoid, we all must learn to deal with these events. But how?

Here is a 3step process to make it happen

1. Start Small

Do not push yourself into a huge situation without working on smaller items. Look for places that you feel uncomfortable, write them down and then prioritize them. Approach the ones in which you have the least amount to lose in the situation or ones that you feel most confident in. Go ahead, take action and understand the process.

2. Take Notes

Both mental and written. Notice when you are the customer/person that is upset and how the other person handles the situation. What do they say that makes you feel good/bad, what are the things they do and say that deflates the tension. Observe how some people  do one of two things, fight or take flight and notice how it makes you feel.

3. Reward Success

When you do handle a situation where you have stretched yourself, reward yourself. Even if it is something small, give yourself credit. Feel good about working through every challenge.

We may never get to the point that we feel comfortable in all situations, yet learning how to feel more comfortable when you are uncomfortable will take you a long way in business.

When I was in college, a friend of mine introduced me to the music of The Guess Who. A band from Canada that had a couple of mega hits that were more of the “Soft rock” genre. What I found was that they were quite a rebellious and rowdy bunch on stage. The almost twenty minute version of American Woman they used to play in concert was incredible. Over the next 10 years or so I attended many of their shows…some of my favorite songs were ones that never hit the radio. My Own Way To Rock was one of those songs.As I got older and into business the title of this song gained a lot of meaning to me.

Early in my career I was selling radio advertising for a station in Lansing Michigan. I was having moderate success when one year we went to our yearly sales training. The guest sales guru flavor of the year was a gentleman by the name of Jim Williams. If I remember correctly, he was from Oklahoma and he was an “In your face, HARD SELL” person. For three days we were taught how to get bigger orders and close more sales. Alas, it was almost the end of my radio career.

When we got back to our hometowns, we had to adopt this new style, which was the antithesis of my style. I tried, and quickly my sales were dropping like a lead balloon. My customers were not granting me appointments and my sales had tanked. I actually had one client request a different rep, and I had a good relationship with him up to that time. I was looking for different avenues for my future, it was that bad. I had a mortgage on a home in Detroit, I was paying rent on a home in Mason, Michigan and I was a brand new father with a four month old son.

Early in November of that year my boss, Chuck Mefford, invited me into his office. Now you never want to be invited into the BIG guy’s office, especially when you are not even close to your sales budget, I was nervous. Instead he offered me advice, three words that would resonate through my entire business career. JUST BE YOURSELF That was it, just be yourself. I had tried so hard to adopt and adapt that I was somebody that nobody knew.

From that day forward I learned to take what I was taught and adapt to my style or personality. Fortunately for me my career blossomed from that time forward. I continued on that path for many years, learn, adopt and be yourself. No matter what I learned form the guru’s over the years, I had to put it into my own way of doing things. I always worked with a lot of enthusiasm and love for what I was doing, so that was easy to incorporate.

One of the things I see today, in my life of training, are people that forget who they are. They forget to let themselves be a part of the process. If you have the basic qualities of a business person, then letting your own style show is not a problem. What is a problem is when you try to be somebody that you are not. When you try to take on somebody else’s personality or style because you think it is more effective than your own. The only thing that happens is you create a bad replica of someone else. So take a lesson from The Guess Who, and take the motto, My Own Way To Rock….and if you work hard, stay focused and enjoy the process…you may end up like another of their not so famous hits that I love, a Star Baby!

Enjoy the week and inspire others!!!

So often I hear that we do not have the poets anymore in our society. Sure the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, Frost, Whitman and Poe are some of my favorites, and yes, they were tremendous. It is true also that the modern day poet does not get their due as poets of years gone by. Or do they?

When I think of the modern day poets, or at least those of the last 50 years, I think of names like Dylan, Lennon, McCartney, Chapin, Croce and many more.I like to think that the poetry is still there, the genius still is given to us…it just has music behind it. Think of some of these lines;

“Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on
And it makes me wonder”

“When this old world starts a getting me down,
and people are just too much for me to face.
I’ll climb way up to the top of the stairs and all my cares just drift right into space.
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be and there the world below don’t bother me, no, no.”

“You can bend but never break me
‘Cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer”

“Some of it’s magic
Some of it’s tragic
But I had a good life all the way”

“I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes/ You’d know what a drag it is to see you”

So those are the words of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and their Stairway To Heaven. Gerry Goffin and Carole King took us Up On The Roof. Helen Reddy had a life changing song with her hit I Am Woman. Jimmy Buffett penned one of Bob Dylan’s favorite tunes with He Went To Paris. Lastly, Mr. Dylan himself with a line from Positively 4TH Street.

Just thinking about that brings to mind one of my frustrations with people today. That is, that we tend to see what is not there anymore, rather the good that is there. Think about. We hear things like “It sure isn’t the way it USED to be”. “I remember when you could get a candy bar for a dime” or this one “They sure don’t make em like they used to”. Hey, I have been guilty of one or two of those in my lifetime too.

If you look at it from the other side, the POSITIVE side, I am writing this blog not on a machine that needs white out for every mistake (I would have used a bottle already). I can send this out into cyberspace to be read with just the push of the button. Then I can go to my phone, that has no cord, and read it myself.

There is so much good in the world today, and yet we are fed a mouthful of hate every time we look to a news source. After awhile you start believing that is all there is, hate, violence and death. The edited soundbite is the gospel today…think if we only read the parts of the Bible that had violence in it, we would look at the good book in another light. Right?

So what is the purpose of this piece? Well the title is from a Led Zeppelin song “The Song Remains The Same”. My thought on that is that we remember the more happier parts of life gone by, we say that is was slower, and more gentle. It still is, all you have to do is look in the right places, television is not the right place…find places that have words, with meaning and are there not to exploit, but to be shared. There are a lot of avenues out there to experience.

So I will close with this thought. School starts today in our county here in Florida and our youngest is starting the 11TH grade….I hope that she does not take to heart, literally, Mr. Springsteen’s song with these lyrics, “We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school” Ah yes, “No Surrender” Enjoy, and inspire someone today!

I was asked by a class member the other day if it bothers me that people on my Facebook page are copying me and starting to post inspirational messages just like I have been for years. At first I told him that I do not own a franchise on posting quotes on Facebook, then I thought the question was just a joke, but he started talking about some of the people and posts that he had seen. This took me for a little nostalgic trip, which I shared with him and now would like to share with you.

About 6 years ago I thought that I would turn my Facebook page into one that let me share what I did for work with other people. I began to write little quotes on my page on a daily basis, and continued that for a period of time. After a while, I started getting criticism from people about it, so I quit. One day talking with my former franchisee in his office, Buddy Folkner, he said to me that he missed my posts and that I should start doing them again. I explained about the criticism and he just glared at me….I got the message! Why let others dictate what we do? Especially when what we are doing is intended to lift others.

So that next day I began my current journey to put a quote every morning on my page. I search for quotes that are relatable to things that I have seen and/or heard. Most of the time, they are generated by an incident discussed inside a class or at a speaking engagement, other times they are inspired by family or friends that are going through a tough time. My message is always the same, LIFT OTHERS UP!!!

So when I see other people- family, friends, graduates and others- doing the same thing that I am doing, I absolutely LOVE IT!!!! I believe that we live in a world that has way too much hate. We live in a world that has way too much criticism. We live in a world that is desperate for people to find the good in each other instead of pointing out all of the flaws. I am not sure how many Facebook friends I have, but if every one of them started putting a positive, uplifting quote on their page every day, I would applaud it! All we have are each other, we are all connected, and helping each other get through every day with a smile is always a good endeavor to try to accomplish!!!

I love the feedback, the little notes I get, and the people who say that the post hit them in a good spot that day. I do not think of the criticism anymore, I just do it. It does not matter if I get one like, no likes, or one hundred likes, I just do it. It feels good knowing that in my heart and my head, my main focus is to lift the spirits of others and to inspire one person to a better day is well worth the effort.

A great question, can you answer it? As we enter the new year most people are trying to start fresh- to renew themselves- and I have a word of advice. Whoever you decide to become, become YOU.

You might be thinking that I was sipping a little too much of the bubbly over the weekend, yet it is something that I see in many walks of life. Salespeople who find a mentor, or a successful person, and they try to totally become them. The way they talk, dress, and sell…usually that ends up in mediocrity or worse.

Managers who read the latest and greatest book on how to engage people in the most successful way, totally abandon their own style to emulate another and then they crash and burn, making their team lost and dysfunctional. The manager is left struggling to hold on and cannot figure out why.

I am all for starting fresh, for renewing one’s lot in life, but spend your money and time looking inside and finding the BEST you! We are all unique, and we have our own special talents. One of these talents is just our personalities- the inner you that is driven to succeed. So, if you are searching for that magic formula to enhance your career and your life, look deep inside at who you are. Take the time to discover how the things that make you unique can be an asset to your company and to the world.

Believe in YOU!!!