The Best Backyard Ideas in Florida

In the summertime in the state of Florida, there is only one thing to do: enjoy everything that is outdoors. That includes celebrating in your own backyard. But if you are looking for ways to improve your own backyard, or if you are looking for some of the best backyard ideas around, then you have found the right post. Here is a list of the best backyard ideas in Florida, with a particular emphasis on homes in the Tampa Bay area.

#5) 10628 Pontofino Cir., Trinity

5 Beds | 4 Full Baths | 1 Half Bath
5,739 inside sq. ft. | 1,751 outside sq. ft.
$1,299,000
     
Enter into a custom-built Mediterranean masterpiece home in the heart of the gated Champions Club community. Some of the best backyard ideas in Florida can be found outside of this home. There, a true paradise overlooking the 11th hole of Fox Hollow Golf Course awaits you. Relax in front of the outdoor fireplace, enjoy surround sound music with flat screen TV and built in Viking gas grill.

#4) 1422 Circle Dr., Tarpon Springs

4 Beds | 4 Full Baths | 1 Half Bath
4,177 inside sq. ft. | 1,578 outside sq. ft.
$1,300,000
    
This executive waterfront home sits on approximately 7/10 of an acre estate overlooking the Anclote River with your own private beach. Some of the best backyard ideas in Florida include a beautifully designed Pebble Tec pool with spill over spa. Nestled under large oak trees and a professionally landscaped backyard, this home sits on a peaceful, secluded street.

#3) 10031 Milano Dr., Trinity

5 Beds | 5 Full Baths | 1 Half Bath
6,373 inside sq. ft. | 1,820 outdoor sq. ft.
$2,500,000
   
This St. Tropez model embraces a relaxed elegance, re-defining how luxury feels, lives, and plays. This magnificent Tuscan-inspired estate - surrounded by towering, moss-laden oaks with picturesque grounds, overlooking the Fox Hollow Golf Club's 2nd green - has some of the best backyard ideas in Florida including a lagoon style, Pebble-Tech salt water pool. This pool also boasts a waterfall, a slide, and a gas heated grotto spa. Plus, the outdoor kitchen and fire pit are a first-class.

#2) 16104 Gulf Blvd., Redington Beach

5 Beds | 4 Full Baths | 1 Half Bath
4,781 inside sq. ft. | 2,000+ outside sq. ft.
$2,499,000
     
Upon entering through a private garden, you are greeted with the great room's soaring ceilings with skylight, fireplace and a wall of windows framing the stunning Gulf water view. The backyard feels like a private resort with an amazing pool with built-in table, spa and ample patios leading out to the beach and Gulf beyond. A large lanai transitions from the resort living outside to the elegant living inside. You can’t have a list of homes with the best backyard ideas in Florida without have a beach home on the list!

#1) 11438 Hammock Oaks Ct., Lithia

4 Beds | 5 Full Baths | 3 Half Baths
10,029 inside sq. ft. | 4,107 outside sq. ft.
$2,499,999
    
Explore this showcase residence with over 4,000 square feet of backyard space. It truly is one of the best outdoor spaces in Tampa Bay. The oversized pool deck is the entertainment centerpiece of the residence and features an outdoor kitchen, heated spa, a massive rock waterfall feature, a center island with three mature foxtail palms, a fire ring and fixed torches around the perimeter of the two-story pool enclosure. Above one of the two three-car garages, an office suite accessible by catwalk from the main residence completes the amazing range of offerings of this Mediterranean masterpiece.

I hope you enjoyed this list of the best backyard ideas in Florida. Make sure you share this post across all of the different social media outlets you have. Thanks!

Winning in Business Like Jim Furyk Wins in Golf

This weekend is The Open championship. The Open, commonly known as The British Open here in the United States, is the premier major golf tournament in Europe. It features the best players around the world competing at the oldest and most prestigious golf venue, St. Andrews.

Nearly 200 of the world’s best golfers, including Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy, and Jordan Spieth, will compete to win the top prize, the Claret Jug. The world of professional golf is cutthroat, competitive, and arduous. These players and many others will exert an extra level physical and emotional strength to win this major.

Much like in the business world, there are many players and the competition can be fierce. However, only a few businesses turn out to be winners. You can learn a lot from the style and habits of the most prominent business winners or the most rapidly expanding companies, but those traits may not be so easy to duplicate.

Instead, to truly win in business, focus on longevity, focus on consistency, and focus on character. In other words, to truly win in business, you need to win like Jim Furyk wins in golf.

Undeniably, even for those that do not follow professional golf, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are widely regard as household names. More recently, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth can be added to the list of household names as truly great and rising stars in the game of golf. But for those that do not follow golf, here’s a name you might not know: Jim Furyk.

Jim Furyk has been playing golf professional since 1992. Since then, Jim has climbed to number four on the all-time money earning list, collecting nearly $65,000,000. Mr. Furyk has won 17 tournaments, including the 2003 U.S. Open. His first tournament victory came in 1995 and he most recently won in April of this year. He also won the 2010 FedEx Cup. Since 1996, he has collected 22 top-10 finishes out of 75 major appearances. 

Yet, despite all of these accolades, you probably have not heard much of Jim Furyk outside of the golfing world. That is exactly how Jim Furyk likes to win. He focuses on longevity, consistency, and character. And that is exactly how you should plan to win in business.

In the business world, we are often caught up with the greatest of all time or the brightest stars of today. Think of the IBMs, the Coca-Cola’s, the Berkshire Hathaway’s, and the AT&T’s of the world. These companies are behemoths that have been winning in business for a very long time. Everybody knows who they are and everybody likes to talk about them. In the golfing world, you can compare them to Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Then, there are the rising stars of the business world that everyone can’t stop talking about. Think of the Ubers, Facebooks, and the Teslas of the world. These are new companies with new ideas that are out to change the world. In the golfing world, rising stars like Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth are looking to shift the conversation to the next generation of stars.

While there is nothing wrong with being a big company or a growing business, are you focusing on the right things to win in your business? Are you focusing on longevity? Are you focusing on consistency? And are you focusing on character? Jim Furyk has been playing golf professional for over 20 years, winning a tournament nearly every season, ranks number four on the all-time career earnings list, and has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars through his foundation.

If you focus on winning in your business like Jim Furyk focuses on winning in golf, you can truly be one of the great companies.

Good People & Great Questions: The 2 Things You Need to Succeed in Networking

There is a basic concept that you need to understand to succeed in business. It does not matter if you are an employee at the bottom of the corporate ladder or if you are the owner of the company, everyone can benefit from mastering this concept.

The concept is this: companies don’t do business with other companies. The people that work for companies do business with the people at other companies.

In order to truly succeed, you need to maser this concept. The best way to get better at this is to enhance your “people” skills. By enhancing your people skills, I mean:

• Getting more people to know you,
• Getting more people to like you, and
• Getting more people to trust you.

There are several hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to get people to know you. There’s a whole advertising industry dedicated to doing just that. However, the single most effective way to get people to know, like and trust you is to network.

Yes, networking.

For some people, this word conjures loathing. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some people thrive in a networking environment. I am here to say that there is a way for everyone to succeed at networking.

The first step to networking is to find the right event for you. There are several classic networking organizations like your chambers of commerce, an industry association, or a trade show that are great places to find networking opportunities. But those are just the tip of the iceberg.

The best networking events are the ones that aren’t considered networking events – or at least ones you didn’t think qualify as networking events. Think of a high school reunion, or your co-ed softball team, or perhaps your homeowners association as an opportunity to network.

You may be thinking to yourself, how can these events be considered networking events? Easy. Business gets done with direct communication between people. Where there is an event or a meeting with more than just you, you have the opportunity to do business.

Now that you are looking at everything you do as a networking event, it is easy to get people to know you. This is the easiest of the three steps. The next steps can get a little more challenging. Once you have enough people know you, you must get most of them to like you.

The easiest way to get people to like you is to ask great questions.

The best way to get other people to like you is to show that you truly care about them, their needs, and their wants. When you ask a great question it shows you care about them. A great question shows that you have taken time to either research this person and their interests, research their company, and/or research their industry. When you ask more detailed questions than “what do you do” you are setting yourself up to get a lot of people to like you.

Learn a little more about the person with whom you are talking, and they will almost certainly take more time to remember you, and ultimately, more time to like you.

Finally, the last step to mastering this important business concept of people doing business with people is to give other people a reason to trust you.

In a business sense, trust means much more than honesty and integrity. While these are certainly qualities every businessperson should posses, trust in a business sense also can mean experience, expertise, loyalty, accountability, technical knowledge, and track record.

To really master the art of getting people to trust in you and your business, you need to show the other people you can be worthy of their trust. Setting up personal one-to-one meetings and giving sales presentations are the best way to establish this trust from the beginning. In these meetings and presentations, you can focus on how you and your track record of expertise and technical knowledge will help other people solve a problem.

You have already found other business people, you have already got other people to like you, now you must close this loop by having these people trust you. With this established business relationship, there is no reason it should not continue into the future.

There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of businesses throughout the country. The only thing each of these businesses has in common is that each company is run by people. To be truly successful in business, you must master the concept of doing business with people. The best way to do business with people: get them to know you, get them to like you, and get them to trust you.