Why “Good Enough” is BULL$H!T!

I hope everyone enjoyed their Memorial Day weekend! We didn’t do a whole lot, considering that last week was (FINALLY) Rookie Camp for Marching Band for our oldest.

We spent the time contemplating the sacrifices that others have made, allowing us to enjoy what we have today. We also purchased a new pellet grill, which will be the subject of an article in the near future.

Good vs. Great

Did I ever tell y’all that I used to play in a rock band when I was younger? We weren’t very good, but played a few gigs and had some fun. Our biggest gig was getting booked as a last-minute replacement to fill a week at a bar in Memphis, Tennessee. Notified on a Saturday, to start on Monday. AND, we had to bring a sound system to play through. (Queue runon sentence…) Guitar player quit, found sound system, found guitar player, practiced 2 hours, drove to Memphis, woke up with pink eye, played the first night, got fired, went home.

The takeaway? We thought we, and our gear, (the gear was a bullet point in why we were fired), was good enough. What I realized then was that good enough is never good enough. I never thought past that, but have a history of over-building things. Shed workbench? Can probably support two thousand pounds. Rental business? Running it like I have one hundred doors. Lots of over-engineering.

Lately, the subject of Good vs. Great has come up more than three times in as many weeks, so I decided to write about it.

“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”

― Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

Jim Collins wrote about this in his book “Good to Great”. He details how his study of companies allowed him to determine a path from being a good company to being a great company.

Ultimately, my issue with being content with “Good”, is that you have no incentive to be “Great”. No incentive to grow. No incentive to learn. No incentive to achieve Mastery.

Summary

If you want to achieve more, but don’t seem to be making progress, evaluate your situation to determine if you are content with being “Good”. If you are, then you can either learn to accept that you are OK with “Good”, or make the changes needed to achieve “Great”.

And, as always, let me know what you think in the comments. Ask questions, tell your story.

If you like my posts, please share them with others and subscribe to this blog.

Remember, if you have a real estate need, whether buying or selling, give me a call or shoot me an email. It doesn’t matter if you are outside of my area, I can connect you with a Rockstar Real Estate Agent!

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® 985.647.4479

Clint C. Galliano, a native of Lafourche Parish, has lived in the Houma-Thibodaux area for over 34 years and is currently a REALTOR® with Keller Williams Realty Bayou Partners in Houma, La. He has been involved with real estate investing since 2017 and hosts the local Real Estate Investment Association. Real Estate is his passion. Clint previously worked in drilling fluids and drilling fluids automation for 28 years. He lives in Bayou Blue with his wife and two daughters.

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Some Progress…

Top 10 Agents

Hey Y’all! I’ve been busy! LOL

I really don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I have been staying highly occupied while trying to build up my new business. From establishing my name as a real estate agent to marketing, to implementing systems and processes to make it successful.

Some of that is starting to pay off. I was able to close one sale each in January, February, and March.

Then I had a friend who was planning on listing their home when school ended, but decided to list it in March. We got it under contract fairly quickly, so they went out & put a new construction home under contract.

In the same week, a neighbor asked me to show them a couple of homes in a neighborhood closer to his family. They made an offer on one of them that was accepted and listed their home, too.

So, April found us closing on my (now former) neighbor’s house and their new home. This allowed me to rank in the top 10 for April!

Now that we are in May, I have two more closings coming up, signed two listings yesterday evening, and may possibly pick up two more listings. That is on top of working with two pre-approved buyers.

I’m really enjoying it all. It’s a big shift from my former life in oil and gas.

Well, enough on this for now. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Where Has the Time Gone?

Photo by Jordan Benton on Pexels.com

Hey everybody! I’m back!

It’s been almost six months since my last post here…that kind of sounds like a confession. My penance shall be to pen more posts!

I have not been sitting idle during the intervening time. It has been spent learning the ins and outs of the local real estate market from a real estate sales perspective. In addition to learning the Keller Williams franchise’s CRM platform. The software part was easy. Go figure, right? In fact, I picked it up so well and so fast that I was asked to become the Market Center Tech Trainer.

So, I am running a real estate business as an individual agent and the training resource for all of the other agents in the office.

I am enjoying this new career immensely compared to my previous one. A lot less stress and more control over what goes on with my business.

Enough for now. More to come, soon!

Remember, if you have a real estate need, whether buying or selling, give me a call or shoot me an email. It doesn’t matter if you are outsideof my area, I can connect you with a Rockstar Real Estate Agent!

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Personal – Two Years Post-Surgery

4 days after surgery compared to 2 years. Just a little disappointed that I don’t have a “Kurgan” scar to show for the experience…LOL

I knew it was coming up. I figured Facebook would pop up a memory for me from that day. I seem to have developed the habit of letting Facebook be my reminder.

But it didn’t. And much like the surgery to remove my thyroid gland, there wasn’t much to it.

Now, I am looking forward to the two-year anniversary of doing quarantine before quarantine was cool (NOT!) after receiving RAI-131 (Radio Active Iodine) treatment and the soon to follow anniversary of being declared cancer-free.

Looking back, that first year, post-surgery, was extremely tough. As I have mentioned before, just getting the medications dialed in took a while.

And while that process was going on, I had little strength or endurance. I was “worn out” by 4:30-5:00 each day. All I could do was rest and start again the next day.

Year number two was better. I built up my endurance and became stronger. Having my glucose levels under excellent control on top of exercising regularly has contributed to this. I now am able to get up at 5:00 AM just about every morning and am good until 9:00-10:00 at night. This was my normal schedule, pre-surgery.

I continue to be grateful for my many blessings and in addition to those detailed in that post, I am grateful for my new work family at Keller Williams Realty Bayou Partners. They have embraced me and are helping me to succeed in my new career.

Here’s to many more years to come! #RockAndRoll

And, as always, let me know what you think in the comments. Ask questions, tell your story.

If you like my posts, please share them with others and subscribe to this blog.

Automation: Data Observations and Interpretations from Hurricane Laura’s Landfall

Radar Image from Hurricane Laura at Landfall.

For those of you unfamiliar with where I live in relation to the path of Hurricane Laura, we are located just under the “O” in New Orleans in the map above. We are fine and so far, have only gotten wind and rain here. Very grateful that the we have been spared this time.

Now to the meat of this article…a buddy of mine, (Shawn Abney), posted a link to Facebook for the Calcasieu Pass Tide/Current/Weather sensor array run by NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services. He pointed out that the data was available for the point of impact for Hurricane Laura’s landfall. I took a look and was amazed at what I could discern from the data provided.

I’ll present the charts for the specific measurements and what I can infer from them below.

Location

“Where in the hell is this sensor array?” you might ask. It sits just inside the mouth of Calcasieu Pass, below Cameron in Cameron Parish, La. It is just “up the bayou”, as we like to say in the Houma-Thibodaux area, from the public fishing pier. See the map below:

This station collects a lot of data and is part of a network of data collection sites across the Gulf Coast that can show tidal effects for storms or be used for planning when or where to fish.

Calcasieu Pass Station

Another point I want to make before I get started is that this is raw data that has not been QC-checked. What this means is that a sensor may have been off or in the case of the maximum water depths, it is just the raw measurement, not the actual amount of surge. See the raw data statement from the site, below:

These raw data have not been subjected to the National Ocean Service’s quality control or quality assurance procedures and do not meet the criteria and standards of official National Ocean Service data. They are released for limited public use as preliminary data to be used only with appropriate caution.

NOAA CO-OPS Station Page

Tidal Height

So, based on tidal height measured, we can infer storm surge height. Based on the chart below, at landfall (+/- 01:00 or 1:00 AM), Laura showed a tidal height of 11.07 feet maximum. I believe these points are measured every six minutes, so it is a fairly high data frequency to infer from. The predicted tidal height was 2.19 feet at the maximum measured tidal height. Based on a non-scientific observation of the previous month’s data, the actual measured data can sometimes be up to 1.5 feet or so higher than the predicted tidal height. Based on this, the storm surge height inferred from this preliminary data was somewhere between 7.4 feet and 8.9 feet. (Caveat: This is just me looking at the data without knowing how NOAA actually calculates storm surge.)

Tidal Height

Wind Speed / Direction

The next chart shows sustained wind speed, gusts, and wind direction. It’s kind of a neat chart in that you can see the sustained wind was blowing in one direction as the storm approach landfall, then drops off to almost nothing as the eye passes over the measurement station, then picks up again with the wind blowing in the opposite direction as the eye departs.

The maximum sustained winds measured at landfall were 69 knots or 79.4 miles per hour with the maximum gusts measured at 110 knots or 126.8 miles per hour.

Wind Speed

Air Temperature

The air temperature is interesting in that you can see the temperature dropping as the storm gets closer to landfall, then rises a few degrees as the eye passes, then drops again as the winds pick up. As the storm passes, it gradually rises back to ambient.

Air Temperature

Water Temperature

You can observe the water temperature changes as the storm surge rolls in bringing cooler “offshore” water to the local area, dropping the temperature. I suspect the continued drop in temperature may be contributed to by rainfall and runoff/flowback from the inland flooding.

Water Temperature

Barometric Pressure

Barometric Pressure is another parameter measured by the station and it is interesting not so much for variation, but to see how far the pressure dropped. Initially, the chart only data down to about 980 millibar. Someone must have updated the chart range because as I am writing this, the chart now shows data with a lowest point of 940 millibar. That is low!

Barometric Pressure

Hopefully this provided a little insight into data interpretation and helps you to understand data and data interpretation better.

An update on where the predicted surge was actually seen…

And, as always, let me know what you think in the comments. Ask questions, tell your story.

If you like my posts, please share them with others and subscribe to this blog.