Author: Mike Balof

A retired Air Force Master Sergeant, Mike used to lay in bed at night and worry about what would happen if his plant closed or found himself without a job. One day his plant closed. Rather than panic and hysteria (OK, maybe a little) Mike found himself carried away on the adventure of his life. Mike started with the best job he ever had working at Home Depot. He spent 8 years working with job seekers at a local workforce center, helping them to find employment. He then started his own company developing courses, writing books and urging others to follow their own paths into the future. Mike holds a Master of Arts in Adult Education and Training and a Bachelor of Business Management, earned through the University of Phoenix and an AAS degree in Electronics Systems Technology from the Community College of the Air Force. Mike is a member of the Delta Mu Delta Business Honor Society.

Fix or Buy New

I now face the ‘time that tries men’s souls.’ With a laptop this slow, is it more cost-effective to replace it or keep spending the time and aggravation to nurse it along. When Shakespeare wrote our first sentence, I think he was thinking the same thing about his writing nib that probably kept breaking or running out of ink.

It is a dilemma that has plagued us all for millennia. What is our hourly rate? How much do we drain from our schedule, trying on an endless quest to drag another six months out of something that continuously frustrates us?

There is a tipping point. I must consider my aggravation and what it does to my body. I have to consider my delay of work, And what’s that costs me. I have to consider the cost of my time and whether there is a fair price to charge for my time or if it is just something that I am wishing.

What I believe is we should think wisely and sanely. A new machine would last longer. My old laptop, then donated to a charity, would clean it up, fix it and give it to a school kid who does not have a computer.

I may shock those who read my blogs, presenting the articles in a timely and sane manner. It would help me focus on other problems without frustration.

Have you ever faced a dilemma over whether to repair or replace something?

Own It

If you are going to work at something, do it. Not just work at it, work it. Whatever you do is an extension of yourself. Your work is something you put out for others to see. When others look at your work, they’re actually looking at you. Your output is what you can accomplish.

If your work looks good, you look good. If your accomplishment is of lesser quality, that is what you become seen as. You must know this upfront.

There is something else you should know upfront. It is the law of motion. When you put something into motion, it will tend to stay in motion until acted on by outside influences. Suppose you accidentally put out work that looks as though your builds are of less than sound quality. In that case, the idea becomes stuck to you, and although hard to change minds, if you work toward the better, people will notice.

What we have to do is own our work. The best possible is the goal; just remember none of us are really perfect. Do your best, check your work, and edit thoroughly. And, don’t forget to publish. Even though it’s probably not ideal if it is the best you do at the moment, publish. It is your best, and you will not get better until you are seen by others and get feedback.

We all get feedback we like, and some we don’t. What do you do with feedback that is less than stellar?

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Correct Power Is Knowledge

It’s essential that as we grow, we keep learning. The more we know, the better we can react to everything else around us. If we don’t have the knowledge to act correctly, we are forced to go with the flow of whatever is happening. This can often leave us in a precarious position.

Just because we knew something 20 or 30 years ago does not mean that we know what we need to know today. We keep learning more about various subjects, and therefore the knowledge and the actions required constantly change. We actually double the understanding of our world at a much higher rate than any time in history. Now, what we knew last year or the year before may be outdated. If it’s important enough, you want to check it out before making a statement that some may consider foolish.

Next time someone tells you about something, and you really believe they’re wrong, you may want to check a few sources before saying anything. You want to do this before you disagree with something; it could have just come out last year and the other person has the correct change.

Have you ever disagreed with somebody over a subject and then found out the other person was correct?

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Failing Has a Good Side

There is an absolute fact that Nothing in life is free. We know a candy bar costs about a dollar. A nice car is easily $30,000. And the cost of success is usually a failure. If you don’t know failure, you will most likely never know success.

We do not set out to have a failure; that would be ludicrous. Nor do we like the idea of failure. Yet failures can happen anyway. You hold a class that no one shows up to learn at. You go sailing in the winds slow halfway through the trip, or worse, you run into squaws. You bet against the Cubs, and they finally won the World Series. Failures happen, and yet they’re not the worst thing to happen to you in life. 

There are many things far more severe and debilitating than failure. When you have a failure, you were trying to do something, and what you learned from the failure will help you do whatever you are doing be better next time around. Think of all the things you do that take you nowhere, and you never learn anything from them.

Think of the person who lives their life in fear, never wanting to try anything because they might fail. They may be living a mediocre life, always staying in line with everyone else who is living in fear of getting out of step. Even sadder, when they leave this earth, their natural talents were never shared, so they were never propagated or left behind.

What’s the worst if you do fail? You get to join the 7 billion-plus of us who have done so already and will continue to do so as we stretch and learn.

Do not be afraid of failure. When you do fail, it means that you’re learning, growing, and are probably on your way to something great.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Go Do Good

I am sure you are considering whether I am as far gone as people think. Here it is, near the end of a week, and I am talking about getting excited and making things happen. I’m sure somebody is trying to find the phone number so they can call Mrs. Balof and ask her to please take my temperature.

I want to assure everyone that I’m fine, and yes, I do believe it is time to get excited. We are barely into three months of the new year. I am still looking for the party to start. I believe in parties and revelry. They are a positive influence on the soul. However, it gives us little time to do great things of wonder.

If you have ideas and new items that you want to share with others, now is the time to do it. Look at today as the first of a thirty-day month.  Get out a sheet of paper and divide it into thirty blocks. Five rows and seven columns should do good.  Now you have a brand-new calendar for thirty days. It may not be enough time to build Rome, yet, still enough time to do some good things. If we want a win, starting now, we have a new day and a better way. Think of all the positive actions you could take with this.

Remember, if your first thought is going back into bed and pulling the covers over your head, once the day is over and you have done great things, you can do so. Until you have gotten something underway, it is time to figure out what you will do and how you will complete that mission.

It would be wrong for me to tell you how you had to do something because this is your dream. Look at me as the cheerleader urging you on, encouraging you to find your path and take it. There are plenty of things that could come up and try to deter you from your work, and some of them are important. However, please don’t let the minutia get between you and your victory.

Do not think that I am pushing you out the door towards a day’s work and then trying to sneak back to the La-Z-Boy lounger myself. I am knee-deep in launching my new course and am building a good surprise or two for everyone.  I need all this working and in the field in 60 days.  Am I a mean old master sergeant? I don’t even cut myself any slack.

Brain Block

I had a terrible time yesterday trying to get things done. It seems that sometimes the more I work at something, the less productive I am. Yet I notice another time when I feel squeezed for time; ideas tend to just flow with ease and no problems whatsoever.

What this type of problem causes me is a need for last-minute rushes. When I had initially had time set out to do the job efficiently, not worrying about deadlines.  I’d much rather leave the stress and anxiety of at the last minute work behind and execute plans under better control. Unfortunately, to say that I’m getting 50% of this would be generous.

I’m not really sure why my mind likes to play these tricks on me. I seem to get the majority of everything done by the due date. I just miss the date that I wanted to have it prepared by.

I know that imagination is actually the mind at play; Albert Einstein taught us that. I just think that sometimes when my mind plays these tricks on me, there is a somewhat malevolent action behind it. I keep asking myself what I may have done to my mind to cause it to work like this on me?

Have you ever worked to get something accomplished and ended up with a brain block?

Growing and Shedding

I learned something fundamental today. I saw that plants truly need a lot of attention. Plants grow new leaves and stems, and older leaves tend to whither and stop being productive. These plants require someone to work with them to help prune out what is old and no longer fertile and encourage the new growths to be healthy and become a productive part of the plant as a whole.

I realized there was a metaphor in there as to what coaches do in life. We help people to grow in the direction they desire. We help them to find what is productive and allows them to grow. We also help them figure out what has fallen by the wayside and not provide that much help anymore. 

I thought over this for a little while, and I realize that this was an allegory about me. I do help people, and I am also the one who requires help. I find it interesting to see such ideas in action, and we become reminded of them through nature.

Do you ever find yourself in growth? A place where there are things you no longer do because they’re not as valuable as the new things that you are active with now? Think about it, and please let me know.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Knowledge

With all that is happened in the last 90 days, I feel it is essential that I touch on a subject that I have in the past. Many articles, reports, and rumors circulate these days, blaming and pointing fingers at each other. Therefore I would just like to go over a few things I have learned in the past.

Just because someone writes, it does not ensure that it is accurate or factual. When you have a country with the first amendment, what you really have Is a license to say whatever you want, whether actual, false, or somewhere in between. When many people write, it is not always for the good of the masses, rather the paycheck’s healthiness.

Sometimes skewed writing happens out of misunderstanding, sometimes out of greed, and sometimes to persuade others to another ideal, whether truth or not. There is one way you can figure it out, though. What you have to do is, rather than look at the words themselves as the whole meaning, ask a question or two.

Some of my questions are who is writing The article? Where did they get their research from? Where is their money to write this coming from?

Sometimes, the most exciting articles that can easily sway you have much darker and more sinister actions. Once you ask your questions and take a look behind the curtain.

I am not encouraging anyone to be a cynic. I am suggesting that you know where ideas come from and how they were formed.  Never accept opinion as knowledge.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to write again soon.

Caring for the Inner You

It is time for me to get my inner-Mike on. No one else will or can do it for me. If I don’t take care of my inner-Mike, no one else is going to. And if my inner-Mike goes unintended, I know that I will be running amok.

I need to start sleeping at regular hours. Eating sensible meals in a timely fashion would help a lot. Finding the time and the desire to exercise correctly and taking the time to take care of the things around me would be tremendous. After all, that which we ignore or don’t use correctly will eventually go away. I hope that’s not my inner-Mike.

The one thing I have learned is nothing happens by ignoring it. If you want something, you need to make time for it. Schedule it, so other things don’t get in the way. And you need to ensure that you are following the schedule you set up. Not doing the things you’re supposed to do is often pretty easy. Facing the consequences of not doing what you’re supposed to be doing is usually pretty hard.

Do you ever have problems scheduling what you should be doing for yourself and end up with the inner-you going without the things you really need? Please tell me about it.

Process Control

I am tired of needing to fight so hard for each thing I accomplish. If it is not the computer acting up and taking out half my day while I fix it, it is the shock that something or someone has been billing me for something that I did not know I owed. It seems as though every workday brings a new surprise in a new adventure. I like good surprises and fun adventures, but I’m out to curtail what I have been facing lately.

A Wise person informed me that I need to control and manage my systems and my processes as a business. It was pointed out that any company is not about driving people. It is about controlling and managing systems and processes. Business is made of systems and processes which will work every time, just as the time before if we are managing them right.

My new goal is to verify each of my processes and ensure each of the systems has viable processes needed in place. If I can do this, I can see how I could save half the time or more by not having to chase my tail everywhere as various problems reoccur.

If you find yourself surprised in your day-to-day business, and it happens regularly, please consider joining me in a process overhaul of your systems.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.