BLOG ARTICLES

Explore My IDEAS

Close the Deal

Close the Deal

Life is tough.
.
It’s not good enough to try. You must finish, be it with your body and the 16-week challenge you signed up for or be it with you marriage or your job.
.
CLOSE THE DEAL.
.
The good news is that it’s never too late to become a CLOSER. It’s more of a MINDSET.
.
I know because I was one of those people who always had an idea, and often started but then never closed. After you’ve done that to yourself enough times, it gets old and you go one of two ways. I chose forward.
.
Finishing becomes a habit. So much so that I’ve given my daughters two simple rules to follow in life.
.
Never be late.
.
Never quit.
.
Case in point, my six year old begged to be a cheerleader earlier this year. I cringed, but she wanted it, so I agreed. With just three weeks to go in the year she is telling me she doesn’t want to go anymore. As much as that thrills me, I said “absolutely not”. You will close it out and finish. I want her to have that mindset from an early age.
.
If you’ve seen the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, you know in addition to the coffee comment, Alex Baldwin spouts his mantra; A.B.C. Always Be Closing. While he said it in the context of sales, I say it’s not a bad mantra to adopt for life. Start something…follow through and finish. Because we all know what third prize is right?

Sometimes the Better Comes After the Worse

Sometimes the Better Comes After the Worse

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.”
.
Words of true wisdom from Doug Larson, who was a columnist and editor for the Door County Advocate and wrote a daily column, “Doug’s Dugout,” for the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
.
It was a rough week in the Norrie house with 2 visits to the ER and a whole bunch of fear over a mysterious illness that overcame my wife Angelike.
.
While we still don’t have a solid answer for what it is, the good news is that all her tests came back normal.
.
We’ve been extremely blessed in life but have also had some major challenges peppered throughout our 7 years of marriage. This week was definitely not the better in terms of those famous vows a couple takes, but it made us all the more grateful for the little things we take for granted.

We prayed with so many friends and those prayers were POWERFUL! And we also recognized through this season that there are other couples we know out there going through a very rough season in life of their own, some minor, some major.
.
One thing is for sure, a marriage will never be smooth sailing, it will always be tested. But that’s why it’s great, because it just gets stronger and stronger the more it’s challenged..
.
Thank you to those who prayed with us and for us and may God bless all of you who are in the midst of a battle. May he use your LOVE to get you to a “better” place again.

Connecting 101: Don’t Be A Loner, Get Out There And Make Friends

Connecting 101: Don’t Be A Loner, Get Out There And Make Friends

So you want to meet people and expand your network? I did a presentation this weekend on connecting and the premise was; it’s not like we don’t know how, it’s just that we aren’t

As convenient as online friendships can be, they are no substitute for the real deal and the inability to make new and meaningful relationships is sadly becoming a reality for many of us in this technology age whether we admit it or not

In the movie Wall-E the future looks bleak as we all float around on lounge chairs, sipping sodas and playing virtual golf. It’s frightening because we see it happening little by little.

My friend Chris Harder once said “David Norrie is a guy who can make friends with a tree” and that’s not too far from the truth, I met a wonderful Douglas Fir  last week on a walk and we’re having coffee Tuesday to discuss going paperlessBut seriously, what can we do to expand our social or business network?

3 suggestions on how to grow your friends list outside of social media.

Fall in love with yourself again.
When you’re working on yourself you feel more confident in your words and posture. Health clubs, salons and coffee shops are great places to meet new people if you’re intentional and put down the smart phones and take off the ear buds.

I got this from an article by Margaret Manning and it’s brilliant. Chase Your Passions, Not People
When people tell you to “get out there and make friends,” they are telling you to chase people but there’s several problems with this approach. First, it puts other people on a pedestal. They are the prize to be won. Second, chasing other people simply doesn’t work. By this point in our lives, we know that the best way to push someone away is to follow them. The alternative is to approach relationship building from a position of strength. Chase your passions!

Get your church on! Congregations of faith are quickly becoming one of the last true bastions for human interaction of the look, hear, touch and smell variety. Meaning they’re not friendships you make over a router. Don’t have God in your life? Well, making new friends is a great excuse to find him.

Destroying The Yoke Of Delay

Destroying The Yoke Of Delay

Destiny is a function of time. And it is the devils target. Satan does not attack you because of your past, he troubles you because of your future – that is his primary  target!! For most of the time, when Satan sees that he cannot derail you in destiny, he delays you; for when you are delayed long enough, you are destroyed!!

~Bishop Sola Adetunji.

How about NOW? What a great philosophy to adopt?  In other words, why not now? What are you waiting for?

Express Yourself

Express Yourself

When it comes to expressing yourself, I have two simple rules.

.

No. 1 “Go with what you know”.

No. 2 “Don’t be vanilla”.

 

Do you know who rode that philosophy to success way before I did?

 

O’Shea Jackson.

 

Well, you may know him better as Ice Cube. When he burst on the scene with N.W.A. in 1986 with a type of rap that was anything but mainstream, the world took notice.

 

Yea, people freaked out a bit with talk of street gangs, police brutality and drugs but that was reality for Ice Cube growing up, that’s what he knew best, so that’s what he spoke about with the most conviction and passion.

 

Unconventional yes. But you know what it wasn’t? BORING!!

 

When the song “Express Yourself” was released in 1989 let’s just say it was one of N.W.A.’s tamer songs, as it’s devoid of profanity. Still it was so from the heart and so straight forward that it reached across the country and permeated “the burbs”. I had the cassette tape and knew every single lyric by heart. Still do.

 

Aren’t we all just tying to express ourselves? My point is not for you all to pick up and start dropping F-bombs and rapping but rather to illustrate that when you “express yourself with your full capabilities” it works best because you know it best.

 

Ask yourself, what are you most passionate and know best. Then ask yourself, “how can I capitalize on that and capture my audiences imagination in the short-attention-span world of social media?

You see, there have been many times in my career when I strayed from those two simple rules. I either stepped outside my sphere of knowledge or I became too scripted and tried to imitate somebody else and it became boring.

 

The beautiful thing about the social media world we live in today is that it welcomes all types, there’s a space and a platform for everybody. That is as long as you are authentic and don’t bore your audience.

 

Engage in learning the skills to get where you want to go and trust in the process, that whatever you’re doing right now, whatever you’re training at, will lead to bigger things that you never imagine.