Jan 31, 2008
posted by Shelley
The forecast for the burg starting this evening is ice and snow. No matter where you get your information — predictions range from 1/2 inch of ice with 6 inches of snow, and then more ice… to merely freezing rain — it’s likely that the South Central Office of McKain Performance Group will be inside working for the next few days. Our favorite form of tension relief? We transform into Sparrowcat and Tiea and battle evil forces, defeating foes with frost bolts and faerie fire until we dream about it at night. (I do sometimes anyway!)
During a conversation last night with our leader, (who is working on a book deadline in the southern states), I suggested that he too might join us. He indicated that his stress level was just fine, thank you very much, and he would continue to work against his writing deadline.
Jan 29, 2008
Erwin Appeals Judge’s Decision is the headline in this week’s local newspaper…
Jan 27, 2008
Today I celebrated a birthday with my Grandmother. Born in 1911, she turned 97 today. My Nanny still looks fabulous doesn’t she?
Jan 26, 2008
posted by Shelley
I receive daily CNN updates via email, and each morning their ‘Quick News’ edition contains 20 headlines with a brief explanation of the stories therein. This morning, one of the top 20 things that CNN felt newsworthy was that a woman lost 110 pounds. Ok…so she lost 110 pounds, it transformed her life, and that is fabulous. Her starting weight was 250, and now (per my calculations), she’s weighing in at 140.
Here’s what always makes me shake my head. She boasts that her 5’9″ frame is now wearing a size 4. Huh? I don’t think so. Same with all the television commercials touting the most recent diet drug — you’ve seen them. There’s a beautiful and fit woman smiling and posing beside a ‘fat photo’ taken at an earlier time. At one point during every single one of those commercials the woman will say, “I’ve lost ‘x number’ of pounds and I went from a size ‘whatever’ to a size 4!”
Is size 4 the goal? I could go into the fact that I watched Intervention the other night where a woman threw up in baggies throughout the entire segment to wear a size 4 — but that’s another issue entirely. My whole rant is that no matter how tall you are and how much you weigh — if you’ve lost weight, you’re automatically wearing the magic size 4. At Chico’s, size 3.5 is as big as it gets, so we know all these beautiful and thin chicks aren’t shopping there. So where?
At my heaviest, I weighed 237 pounds. Right now, at 5’9″, I weigh 146 — same height and 6 pounds heavier than CNN’s size 4 life-transformed headline. I wear a size 10. By losing a mere 6 pounds, I too can wear a size 4! I’m just waiting on someone to tell me where to shop.
Jan 25, 2008
Posted by Shelley
Since taking the position of Senior VP of Marketing with McKain Performance Group, I’ve found that I am consumed with attempts to afford everyone I connect with an ‘ultimate client experience’. It’s my job to make certain that Scott McKain provides to his clients the very thing he tells them to provide to theirs. Just when I think that this hectic schedule is going to kill me, I take comfort in knowing that I’ve booked Scott so solid that he thinks I’m killing him. 🙂
Last night, I received an email that made me think about how so many businesses (and individuals too) do the same thing — day in and day out — and never really consider how little things are what make the big differences. This gentleman took time from his busy day to tell his story to Scott, even when he mentioned that he assumed his email would be “stacked among a pile of kudos”. Isn’t it funny how so many times we have plenty of time to complain about all the bad things going on around us — but rarely find time to share the good things?
But this message contained something else — and I’m sure it was either something Scott said directly during his presentation, or maybe the email’s author summarized it — but here’s the line: “Success is never measured by how “efficient” your customer service skills are.” Think about it. The way you treat your customers (or the way you treat your friends) is absolutely a determining factor of how successful you are — whether it be a business or personal relationship. So why would any business (or again, any individual) even consider being efficient in that regard?
An event attendee wrote a kind message to Scott thinking it was simply a “little thing”. What a “big difference” it would make if we could all learn to be just a little more like him.
