Thank Goodness It's Monday #446

A LUCKY RED ENVELOPE FOR YOU

(AND AT LEAST ONE IDEA

MORE VALUABLE THAN $$$)



Sculpture of Chinese zodiac Horse 
in a park in Zhejiang Province, China

Welcome to the Year of the Horse.

 

You may know that, based on an ancient system of astronomy and astrology, last Friday -- give or take a few hours depending where in the world you were/are -- the so-called Chinese New Year began.

 

So called? This New Year observance is determined by a lunar calendar. In China, the festivities are known as Spring Festival (春節) or Lunar New Year (農曆新年). From late January to mid-February, Korea, Vietnam, Japan and other countries also celebrate Lunar New Year.

 

Or maybe you know because you clicked through on the seasonal Google Doodle.

No matter how you come by the information, the Lunar Year ahead (year 4712) is designated the Year of the Horse -- particularly the Wooden Horse, incorporating a traditional Lunar New Year designated “element” into the mix.

You may also recognize some of the traditions that will be observed over the stretch of 15 days of ceremony and celebration to attract and welcome good luck and happiness.

Not surprisingly, many are customs that would fit in any cultural context at the beginning of a new year.

• People dress in finery to represent contentment and wealth.
• Homes are scrubbed clean.
• Rooms are decorated for the holiday.

Other traditions are unique.

• The room decorations are paper lanterns and flower blossoms.
• Walls are adorned with the Chinese characters for “Happy New Year” – Gung hay fa choy in Cantonese.
• Dragon-dance parades snake along streets with clashing cymbals and firecrackers exploding to ward off evil spirits.

And --

• Children and single, unemployed adults look forward to receiving red envelopes stuffed with cash from elders.

As the “elder” co-creator with my friend Eric Taylor of the Best Year Ever Program! some years (both lunar and solar) ago, I sort of feel obliged to commemorate any “New Year” observance and tie it to our message that –

Any time is the right time

to begin Your Best Year Ever!

So, although you may not be a child or an unemployed single, here’s –

A Red Envelope for you.

Sorry, no actual cash.

(Awwww …)

 But in the spirit of all these TGIM messages, I believe that “sharing an idea” is a time-proven strategy that’s –

More valuable than money. 

Think of it this way: If I have a dollar and you have a dollar, and we give our dollar to one another, we each still have only a dollar.

But, and it’s a Big BUT: If I give you an idea, and you give me an idea, then we each have two ideas that we can contemplate, be inspired by, work on with our individual talents and craft into something even greater than the original inspiration.

So, having “horsed around” with that concept some, let’s get back to this idea of astrology and universal truths.

According to the astrological aspects of the holiday, babies born in a Year of Horse are expected to have the following traits:

Strengths

People born in a Year of the Horse have ingenious communicating techniques and in their community they always want to be in the limelight. They are clever, kind to others, and like to join in a venture career. Although they sometimes talk too much, they are cheerful, perceptive, talented, earthy but stubborn. They like entertainment and large crowds. They are popular among friends, active at work and refuse to be reconciled to failure, although their endeavor cannot last indefinitely.

Weaknesses

They cannot bear too much constraint. However their interest may be only superficial and lacking real substance. They are usually impatient and hot blooded about everything other than their daily work. They are independent and rarely listen to advice. Failure may result in pessimism. They usually have strong endurance but with bad temper. Flamboyant by nature, they are wasteful since they are not good with matters of finance due to a lack of budgetary efficiency. Some of those who are born in the horse like to move in glamorous circles while pursuing high profile careers.  They tend to interfere in many things and frequently fail to finish projects of their own.

Were you born in a Year of the Horse? You probably don’t know. But you also probably felt that some of the characteristics – especially the positive ones – fit you. 

Now for me, almost any astrological stuff is –

Beyond understanding. Yet, as I’ve confessed before, I do look at my horoscope in the newspaper. I’ve got the daily Libra prognostication popping up on my computer home page.

And I read them with the fascinated knowledge that there is guidance to be gleaned in the cryptic messages (although that it is celestial and unwavering universal is highly suspect to me).

Year of the Horse TGIM Takeaway: I figure, at the least, horoscopes are well-intended advice. I’m certainly open to that. So that leads me, at the auspicious new beginning of the Year of the Horse, to this –

TGIM Takeaway: “We are wiser than we know.” Ralph Waldo Emerson said that some solar years ago in 1841.

How does that relate to this New Year 4712? We all would want the positive characteristics of those born in a Year of the Horse as well as the Water Snake (last year’s creature designation) or the Dog (my Chinese astrology birth year; I looked it up) and the other nine Chinese astrological animal signs.

And who wouldn’t want to embody the best parts of Libra, Scorpio, etc., etc.

 

TGIM ACTION IDEA: If we’re wise enough to know what characteristics are desirable, then we should be wise enough to set our own course in raising our skills in those areas in order that we might become all that we might become.

 

Our fate is not in the stars. The future is in our own hands. Self-improvement is the precursor to all improvement. So --

 

Quit horsin’ around.

Gung hay fa choy!  Get started on Your Best Year Ever! NOW.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

P.S. “The horse, the horse! The symbol of surging potency and power of movement, of action, in man.” British author D. H. Lawrence (1885 -1930) made that observation in 1931 (which was a lunar calendar Year of the Sheep.)

Thank Goodness It's Monday #445

SUPER BOWL XLVIII:

THE REST STOP, THE TROPHY

AND THE MAN

The Vince Lombardi Trophy is awarded each year to the winning team of the National

Football League's championship game, the Super Bowl.

• The trophy is named in honor of legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi.
• So is the rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike nearest to the stadium where (weather permitting) Super Bowl XLVIII will be played Sunday, February 2, 2014.
• And so is a bit of streetscape nearby my company’s World Headquarters in Englewood, NJ.

From our conference room windows we can gaze across our little Depot Square Park, over the tracks and past the repurposed sort-of-Victorian-looking railroad station, at the spires of St. Cecilia Catholic Church which, for years, also offered the community a parochial high school.

 

Last June it got some special signage designating it “Vince Lombardi Way.”

The Lombardi coaching legend began there. In 1939, Vince Lombardi accepted his first football-related job as an assistant coach at St. Cecilia’s.

At age 26, he also taught Latin, chemistry, and physics for an annual salary of under $1700. And, the local story goes, as a bachelor he shared a boarding house room across the street from the school with the St. Cecilia’s head coach at the time, his old college football teammate from across-the-Hudson-River Fordham University, Andy Palau.

So, although I’m only a moderately enthusiastic or knowledgeable fan of professional football –

I’m a Vince Lombardi Fan by geographic proxy.

And also – being in the thick of the self-improvement, motivation, inspiration business – I can spout any number of bits of –

Legendary Lombardi Wisdom

You probably can, too --

• “Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.”
• “Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything.”
• “Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.”
• “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
• “If it doesn't matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?”
• “Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.”
• “If you can accept losing, you can't win.”
• “We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time.”
• “It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up”
• “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
• “If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”

Whew! Tough talk, right?

 

And while such fire-up-the-team-with-a-blowtorch locker room mentality might be effectively applied to a TGIM message in anticipation of northern climes, open stadium Super Bowl XLVIII –

 

Time has passed and attitudes have evolved in the 100+ years since Lombardi’s birth and nearly half century after his death. So I’m not so sure I’m completely comfortable in our 21^st Century with its old-school, leather-helmeted toughness.

But … But there is a perhaps-surprising Lombardi quote I’ve found insightful from the Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn-born, Jersey-boy-by proxy, Green Bay, Wisconsin tundra-tough coach. 

Lombardi also said: “Mental toughness is humility, simplicity, spartanism, and one other … love. I don’t necessarily have to like my associates but as a man, I must love them.”

And he continued –

“Love is loyalty; love is teamwork.

Love respects the dignity of the individual.

Heart and power is the strength of your cooperation.”

Interesting, right? A statement about love, obviously rooted in the man’s football coaching fundamentals, and indicative of the kind of devotion he inspired and how he made that happen.

Kinda tough love, no doubt. No pink cherubs or lovey-dovey poetic sentiments per se. But an insightful and insight-filled statement from a gruff tough guy who also never left any doubt about his intelligence, dignity and integrity.

 

The kind of guy they name trophies after.

 

TGIM SUPER BOWL XLVIII TAKEAWAY: In this season of hyped up and over-commercialized enthusiasm for an event that, when it’s over, will not likely have changed the course of our business, family or community lives, isn’t it a pleasant surprise to find a simply stated universal standard that we might all be well advised to live by.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: If we approached every day like we look forward to Super Bowl Game Day, how exciting might every day be? If we worked at our relationships with the single-mindedness that Lombardi brought to his devotion to football, perhaps we, like Lombardi, would never suffer a “losing season.”

One final note about Lombardi’s personal relationships: He was preoccupied with football and his family life in particular had exceedingly stormy passages Still, he lived his “love is loyalty” philosophy. Vince Lombardi is buried next to Marie, his wife since his St. Cecilia coaching days, in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Middletown Township, New Jersey.

 

Good luck to you and your team on Sunday. Perhaps I’ll see you in the traffic jam at the Vince Lombardi Service Area, mile marker 111 on the Eastern Spur of the NJ Turnpike near Exit 16W.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

 

P.S. More New Jersey/Lombardi Trophy/Super Bowl connections:




The made-in-Newark-NJ
(and now on exhibition there)
original
Vince Lombardi Trophy

In 1966, during a lunch with NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Tiffany & Co. vice president Oscar Riedner made a sketch on a cocktail napkin of what would become the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The original trophy was produced by Tiffany & Co. in Newark, New Jersey.  And it’s back here NOW – for a limited time -- at my favorite Newark Museum.

Others have since been handcrafted by the company in Parsippany, New Jersey. The trophy was first awarded to the Green Bay Packers in 1967 (Lombardi’s last year as head coach) when the Super Bowl's official designation was the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.

Initially inscribed with the words "World Professional Football Championship," it was officially renamed in 1970 in memory of Lombardi after his sudden death from cancer and to commemorate his time as a defensive coordinator with the New York (ahem, now “at  home” in New Jersey) Giants. In 1971, it was presented for the first time as the Vince Lombardi Trophy at Super Bowl V.

A new Lombardi Trophy is made every year and the winning team maintains permanent possession of that trophy, unlike many other team championship trophies. 

One notable exception: The first “Lombardi” Trophy for Super Bowl V. It was won by the then-Baltimore Colts and the city of Baltimore retained that trophy as part of the legal settlement after the Colts' move to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1984.

 

The contemporary seven-pound, 22-inch-tall trophies are cast entirely of sterling silver and have an extrinsic value of more than $25,000 each. After the on-field post-game presentation, the trophy is sent back to Tiffany & Co. to be engraved with the date and final score of the game, as well as the winning team's roster.

Thank Goodness It's Monday #391

30 SUPER BOWL SECONDS

FOR $4 MILLION!

 

CAN YOU SPARE A MINUTE OF YOUR TIME?
 



 

The “official” SuperBowl logo

 has been a bit derivative

over the past three outings.

 

Take a trip down Memory Lane
and see each of the primary logos
going back to the
“First World
Championship
Game AFL vs NFL”
HERE.

Put away your checkbooks.
I’ve got bad news:

All the commercials for the NFL Championship on February 3 in New Orleans are --

 

SOLD OUT! 

And, according to Associated Press reporting, some of those ads have sold for more than $4 million for a 30-second spot. 

Talk about “Time is money.”  More than $4 million for a half minute is –

►   an hourly rate of about Half-A-Billion – “B” BILLION -- bucks

►   an 8-hour workday of $4 Billion

►   a weekly payday (before taxes) equal to the Facebook IPO

►   an annual wage of …

Enough of that nonsense. The primary reason some advertisers are willing to pony up that much moola for such a fleeting bit of time is, of course, exposure. 

Well over 50 Super Bowl commercials aired in 2012. Companies paid an average of $3.5 million for a 30-second spot at TV’s biggest event. And that event averaged more than 111.3 million viewers, peaking at 117.7 million late in the final quarter of the Giants dramatic win over the Patriots.
 

Point is: How do YOU value 30-seconds?

Too often too cheaply, I bet. 

Me, too. So let’s take the complete sellout of the available SuperBowl ad time as a clue to reevaluate how we use even the minutest segments of our time.

Here’s a very obvious one:

● How’s your personal 30-second “commercial” … elevator speech … whatever you call it, however briefly you get to deliver it. 

Can you trace $4 million in business to it? Do you expect to? 

No doubt, if you’re a friend of TGIM, you’ve got a 30-second commercial down cold.

But only one? 

This is not a one-size-fits-all world. Your 30-second opportunity to pitch in the elevator at the annual 3-day industry conference in Vegas requires something entirely different from … 

… what you’ll say at the weekly Friday morning pancake house meet-up

… the pitch to the formal, structured business referral group you pay to belong to

… the cocktail party response to “Nice to meet you. What is it you do?”

… the small talk with the new golfing partner assigned to round out the foursome when Charlie’s a no show. 

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Give each version of your 30-second presentation $4 million potential.

Most SuperBowl ads are created especially for SuperBowl Sunday. Then, often, the season of commercials that follow key off that $4 million best effort.

Follow that lead. Plan ahead and at least think through how you’ll tweak your best at-your-fingertips 30-second pitch to make the most of the various opportunities you’ll have to make an impressive impression.

● Got a minute? By SuperBowl standards investing a minute should yield $8 million, at least. I suppose, unless you’re Warren Buffett, that level of payback for a minute of your attention is unlikely. Still, that kind of millions/billions thinking suggests you --

Get your money’s worth. People talk about time in ways they don’t mean. They say they want “a minute” but they really want much more. So “just a minute” never is. Likewise, “a 15-minute meeting” never is. “Over lunch” = Kiss half the afternoon goodbye.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: When you are consistently aware of this you won’t be fooled into letting them apply their standards to your time. Set a SuperBowl standard. Value your time like a billionaire.

And the same base thinking applies to requests to --

● Wait a minute. Similarly -- by SuperBowl standards -- waiting a minute should also yield $8 million, at least. But inconsiderate people or unavoidable incidents that make you wait seldom value your time at all. So realize waiting inevitably happens and become Buffett-like and apply billionaire thinking. 

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Allow for it. Don’t sit idly by while the seconds tick away (unless the “doing nothing” break is very valuable or invigorating for you). Be prepared for time-consuming “waits” with worthwhile time fillers. Today’s easily connected, digital world can keep you actively and gainfully engaged.

In a related vein, one minute-savvy way to reduce and maybe eliminate time-sucking low-return waits can be to –

● Shift time by the minute. If you want to be more aware of where your valuable minutes go, and want to raise awareness of others in the process, try thinking slightly off center.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Schedule a meeting to begin at 9:05 and end at 9:20. That’s the same quarter hour gathering alluded to above but, with off-center timing, people intrinsically understand that you’ll begin at 9:05 precisely and bring things to a close at 9:20 because that’s precisely what you said.

● Think, “Half a mo’…” That kinda Cockney Brit sounding expression suggests a momentary pause – let’s say no longer than a minute -- when you reconsider something potentially major that you’re about to undertake.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Before you leap, count to 10 (or 30 or 60) and decide what NOT to do. One of the worst ways to waste your time is to very efficiently decide to do that which does not need to be done by you at all. Use “half a mo …” to sort the wheat from the chaff. Choose the path that leads to the dough (or bread).

 

Is time up? In the headline I asked for a minute of your valuable time and, even if you read this at the “High Level Executive” reading speed I would guesstimate TGIM readers are capable of achieving, I’ve exceeded my request. 

So here’s a wrap-up –

Q: Would you invest $4 million of your enterprise’s hard-gained treasure in a 30-second SuperBowl commercial?

A: Not without some pretty carefully projected and tracked ROI, I hope. 

TGIM Challenge: Although time is not actual money, act as if you are the Chief Financial Officer of your time. Be the strategic business manager rather than passive caretaker of the minutes in your day. Approach your clock with an eye toward producing the best outcomes with the prudent investment of even the most piddling time resources.

Until next time.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

P.S. I recommend to you that you take care of the minutes; for the hours will take care of themselves. Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) advised that, long before the idea of Super Bowl.