Jeff's Blahg

This might make you cry

Wow, the last 5 days have sure flown by. SafeTrax made a number of great contacts and continues to strengthen its position as an IARW Service Partner. There were literally hundreds of vendors at the expo, and I was surprised to see, once again, that no other company offers anything even similar to SafeTrax Online. The preventative maintenance integration we have done sparked a lot of interest as well. We are in a great position and offer a unique, much needed, product / service.

Sandie used some Mark Twain quotes as the basis for our focus session:

“If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be wonderful.”
“If you have to eat a frog, don’t look at it for too long.”

Your frog – looking all ugly and nasty on your plate – is the most important, most challenging, the biggest and hardest task you could possibly do. Now that you have eaten that ugly annoying frog you can focus on other tasks knowing you have finished the hardest part first. We have learned in this industry that the ‘frogs’ for many of these companies happen to be safety / regulation items. These are frogs that just don’t ever go away and must be managed regularly. Our spin was that we can really help by reducing the size of that frog through the use of better tools / services. I think it was well received as we had several people approach us after the presentation and comment on the effectiveness of the analogy, and how it relates to them.

The days here have been quite relaxing even with all the activities that we have been involved with. Most of the days started very early but we were finished by noon, which provided plenty of time to get sunburnt to a crisp (my chest took a scolding). The beaches here are beautiful with pure white sands and blue water. There are nice restaurants at the resort as well, so you really don’t have to leave if you don’t want to.

We ventured out a bit and found a great little restaurant called Snooks. We heard about it from the locals so we knew it must be good… and it didn’t disappoint. The food was good and hot and the scenery was even better. And if you like pickles, they have a 50 gallon barrel full of them. If you ever visit Marco Island, be sure to stop by.

I am heading out tomorrow morning for the 2008 IARW-WFLO-IRTA Annual Convention & Expo. SafeTrax will have a booth as well as teaching a focus session titled: Altogether Now: Consolidating Your Maintenance and Safety Programs. If it is like all the other IARW events it should be a great time!

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