15 days since my last post

-

I think this may be the longest amount of time since I started blogging that I haven't blogged. I have to say I've missed it, but the last couple of weeks with all the work on our newest rental property made it really hard to keep going with a post every morning. It was also hard to decide to start doing this again over the last few days back home with tons of emails to get caught up on and just getting back into life at home.

We did it though. It took us about a week longer than expected, but we finished The Little Lady in Gulf Shores, Alabama. My brother-in-law, sister, and I had a lot of long days last week getting everything pulled together. Some days we were working 16 to 17 hours. We had things like the wrong size appliances that we had to return and purchase new ones. We had appliances that were badly scratched that had to be returned. We had the challenge of not having a truck and needing to have our maintenance guy run these appliances around for us. We had to go to Pensacola, Florida multiple times for windows and appliances because they didn't have anything in Gulf Shores. We forgot things and had to make multiple trips. We ended up having another brother-in-law come back down to help do electrical work. We had crappy weather at the beginning of the 2 weeks. We didn't plan to replace the siding on the house but needed to do that. Plus, we had to replace all the screws in the roof of the house. We also found out our queen mattresses didn't get delivered towards the end of the project so we had to find a place to purchase those. It was one thing after another and many times I was feeling pretty exhausted and emotional. 

Then at the end of our first week down there (we only planned to be there 1 week), my daughter back home was having pain in her stomach and we found out that she had appendicitis and needed her appendix removed. My wife was home with the kids and none of our family was around to help. So, my sister-in-law came in from Indiana to help my wife with our kids while my daughter recovered.

It's been a real learning experience going through all of this. With tons of help from lots of people to pull it off. We had a bunch of guys helping us the first week, and we had others that volunteered some time the second week. We couldn't have done it without everyone pulling together. I'm thankful it's over. Now, hopefully we can start renting it!

Popular posts from this blog

Are you thankful?

-
Are you thankful? How do you show it? Do you write a note? Do you tell someone? Do you make a list? How do you express thankfulness? It always is good for me to think about and express thankfulness to others and God. Never have I gone through the practice of giving thanks and been disappointed. Thankfulness gets the focus off of me and onto others and God. Having meals brought to us in the past week after our new baby has brought the idea of expressing thankfulness to others into focus for me again. I wrote a few thank you notes to those that brought meals and it just feels good to do that. Plus, the act of receiving thanks is good for others as well. I ask our kids quite often when they're whining, "Are you having a thankful heart?" And sometimes I ask them to tell me one thing they're thankful for. It's good to get in the habit of being thankful.
Read more

Sending notes

-
I haven't been big on new year's resolutions lately, but I do like the idea of challenging myself in areas where I'd like to get better and setting goals for myself. Something that I've been thinking about doing is sending a note to someone different every week of the year just to say thanks or I'm thinking of you or praying for you. It wouldn't be hard to do and I know it's good for me as well as I think most people appreciate a little note. The other thing I've been thinking about along those lines is sending video notes. I heard this on a podcast recently. Since we don't see people as much these days it's easy to just record a video on your phone and email it or use a service like Loom to record your video and send a link or use an app like Marco Polo. It seems like this would feel even more personal than a note... though I haven't done it yet. So maybe send a note today to someone that's helped you out recently or maybe to someone who
Read more

Choose your own adventure

-
Do you remember the "Choose your own adventure" books? You would start the book and then as the story progresses the characters face forks in the road and you get to choose which way they go... which results in going to a specific page and continuing to read. I've been spending a considerable amount of time on marketing automation in the last month and these books from my childhood remind me of how marketing automation works. The big difference though is the customer doesn't realize he's choosing his own adventure as he navigates the communications we set out before him. He's simply making choices based on the marketing that we're putting out there and then based off of what he chooses we choose for him the next communication he receives. As I'm building this out I'm starting out with a pretty blank slate. There's a lot we don't know, but as we get more information from prospects and customers it will become clear who they are and what
Read more