Planning & Creating | The Lesser-Known PPE | The Loveable SFP-10G-LR | Rhythms & Sabbaticals | News to Start Your Day
Woohoo! Its Friday!
(October 23rd is National Boston Cream Pie Day. Go enjoy one (or your favorite dessert). Calories don’t count on holidays.)
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At the beginning of 2019, Craig presented me with a Goal Planner from Cultivate What Matters.
I’m sorry to say it sat on my desk until almost September of that year. Because I hadn’t been the one who was introduced to it, I didn’t really understand how to use it, and we ended up spending half of our year selling off pieces of another business we owned, buying a house and moving. I bought the author, Lara Casey’s, audiobook (Make it Happen) at some point and really enjoyed what it had to say. Her main message: surrender your fear and live on purpose.
In 2020 I decided to buy myself the new Goal Planner and actually put in the work on the front end. What did I want this year to look like? One of the exercises in the beginning of the planner leaves a space for a word of the year. I had been praying each time I sat down to work through these exercises, and I knew immediately what my word was for 2020: create.
I imagined that my year would be spent exploring my creative side: more photography, decorating our new home, exploring painting perhaps. Little did I know that most of my creative energy would be poured into business activities. Last week when Jason wrote the daily email he mentioned that he had a phrase for this past year, and that his phrase took on new meaning during the course of the year. Needless to say, I can totally relate. When I agreed to jump in and help Craig with a few things this spring/summer, I had no idea I would find myself hiring and onboarding a fractional CMO and marketing firm.
We met the firm we’re working with through Craig’s CEO group. Initially, we reached out to their CEO for advice on building our own marketing team. (Remember that lesson we learned from selling PPE about being more intentional?) We liked what they had to say so much that we decided to hire them! It has been fun work to walk through the discovery exercises with our new CMO and Marketing Manager. (Warning: buzz words coming your way.) We’re exploring customer personas, defining what we want our voice to be in the market, and we’re looking for ways to engage and add value to our customer and potential customer interactions.
We know you all enjoy a good daily email 😉 What other ways do you like to engage with companies you know? Social media? YouTube? Educational articles? Blog posts? Forums? Perhaps we’ll send a more thorough questionnaire out at some point, but for now I would love to hear from you if you have the time for a quick reply. Help us be a better resource for you! We truly want to add value (to your IT infrastructure and beyond).
Hope you have a great weekend, guys and gals!
Christin
Today’s Product Updates from Rebecca:
Happy Friday! I hope you have something fun planned for the weekend! Why not celebrate going into the weekend with some more great PPE deals?!
One of our lesser known products that we carry is Dispenser Pumps! Our pumps have a 9” diptube and 4cc output with a neck diameter of 38mm and a neck height of 400mm! We offer these for purchase individually, as well as in packs of 10 or packs of 500!
Don’t forget to stock up on Clorox Disinfecting Wipes! We still have some pouches of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes left but they are going fast! These pouches contain 75 wipes each and come in Lemon and Fresh Scent. Take comfort in knowing that these wipes kill up to 99.99% of germs!
We also have individually wrapped 70% alcohol cleaning wipes! These are great for use on-the-go! Throw them in your purse, backpack, car, or wallet! Grab yourself a pack of 50, a pack of 100, or even a case of 2,500!
Reminder: Get free shipping on your PPE orders by using coupon code PPESHIP at checkout!
Main Safety Supplies Landing Page: https://www.cablesandkits.com/c/safety-supplies
Today’s product spotlight features a 10G transceiver that we love! The SFP-10G-LR transceiver module was designed for long range transmission. It supports 10 Gbps data transfer rates over a distance of 10 kilometers (that’s 6.2 miles!) using singlemode fiber. This hot-swappable SFP+ transceiver is a fantastic option for satisfying connectivity needs in large data centers, enterprise wiring closets, large campuses, and more!
We offer 3 versions of this module:
- Cisco Original – Factory Sealed
- Cisco Original – Refurbished
- CK Branded (Cisco Compatible) – Factory Sealed
Rhythms & Sabbaticals – by Gary our Chief Administrative Officer
Why haven’t you taken a sabbatical? I know. I know. You only wish you could take a multi-month break and return to find your job awaiting you. However, you not only should but can take a sabbatical (it’s not what you think). Read on…
My friend, Gary Christopher of The Jholdas Group, took a sabbatical from his consulting practice several years ago that included a bicycle ride across the continental United States with two friends. An undertaking of that magnitude requires no small amount of planning, and the consultant in Christopher clearly researched and planned his trip thoroughly.
Christopher noted that an effective sabbatical has four distinct phases:
- Releasing of present responsibilities for the duration of the sabbatical
- Resting from our regular labors; An arduous transcontinental bike ride hardly sounds like rest, but this respite from his profession is more about intellectual and emotional rest
- Reflection on the past, present and future
- Recalibration, or taking an inventory of one’s own life before returning to our daily routines and related responsibilities
Very few of us will ever take a multi-month sabbatical before retirement. However, it struck me that those same sabbatical phases can and probably should conjoin other rhythms in our lives. For example, every day we should release the day just concluded (we cannot change the past), reflect and learn from what transpired that day, rest to recharge for the coming day and recalibrate to establish a plan and priorities for tomorrow.
Depending on the speed or scope of our present lifestyles and obligations, we each should also apply these four sabbatical disciplines to some of the longer frequency rhythms of our lives; namely, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. God designed rhythms into nature, and we ignore them at our own peril.
If we desire to leave a powerful legacy, the process of these mini-sabbaticals will arrest aimless wandering and give our lives greater purpose and productivity.
News to Start Your Day With:
- Right at 42,088,200 cases worldwide, with 31,232,800 people who have recovered, with 1,144,258 deaths AND 8,664,360 cases in the US with over 5,656,200 people have recovered, with 228,423 deaths.
- Gilead’s antiviral drug remdesivir received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration to treat covid-19, the drugmaker announced Thursday.
- Holiday shopping will look a lot different during the pandemic: Macy’s will pause its nearly 160-year tradition of hosting Santa at its stores, while Target is allowing shoppers to make reservations to avoid crowds.
- PayPal Holdings, Inc. announced Thursday the launch of a new service enabling its customers to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal account, and signaled its plans to significantly increase cryptocurrency’s utility by making it available as a funding source for purchases at its 26 million merchants worldwide.
- Russian hackers infiltrated state and local government networks, officials say. Hackers stole information about how governments secure their systems and which vendors they buy products from, according to the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
- Facebook’s Carolyn Everson said she was “thankful” for a push for the company to make changes, prompted by a boycott that caused a slew of advertisers to temporarily pause spending on the platform in July. More than 1,000 advertisers announced various degrees of pauses to their social media advertising budgets in June to pressure Facebook into taking more stringent steps to stop the spread of hate speech and misinformation.
- Gap shared plans Thursday to close numerous Gap and Banana Republic stores across North America over the next few years. The retailer said by the end of fiscal year 2023, about 80% of its revenue will come from e-commerce and off-mall locations. The company has aimed to revive its brand and weather the pandemic by making face masks and striking a deal with Kanye West. Its athletic wear has also performed well.
- Mattel reported a surprise rise in quarterly sales on Thursday and forecast more growth in the holiday season, as retailers rushed to restock their shelves of Barbie dolls and other toys in high demand from stuck-at-home kids. With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing schools in many parts of the United States to hold classes online and limiting social entertainment options, parents have turned to playsets and games to keep children’s boredom at bay.
- Southwest Airlines, which has been limiting the number of seats sold on its flights since May, announced in its third-quarter earnings report Thursday that it will halt the practice beginning Dec. 1.
- A 24-year-old software engineer launched McBroken, a website that aims to end such incidents once and for all. The site displays a map of every McDonald’s location in the US, denoted by clusters of dots. Locations with a working ice-cream machine get a green dot; locations without one, a red dot. A column on the right compiles statistics — currently, 7.54 percent of McDonald’s ice-cream machines in the US are broken, as are 15.22 percent of those in New York.