Sunday Night Success

Friday TED Video – April 23 2010

Posted on April 23, 2010 by Jeremie

My Calculus students showed me a video of Theo Jansen’s “animals” earlier this week. They were so innovative I knew he must have presented at TED, and a quick search provided.

For me, this video gets my creative juices flowing, and I start asking the question:

What is possible?

In my life, in my business, in my dreams.

I think Theo Jansen’s work shows that the answer is: anything is possible if you are willing to try, willing to create, and willing to persevere.

Enjoy!

What idea have you been holding back on that is possible if you just try?

Posted in TED Videos | Tagged ideas, possibility, TED | Leave a comment

Keyword research and personal insights

Posted on April 21, 2010 by Jeremie

I made an interesting discovery late last week about myself while doing keyword research:

The focus of my writing on Sunday Night Success has changed more drastically over the past year than I ever imagined.

Sunday Night Success – 1.0

The original focus was to share the experience my friends and I were having in our action setting group: breaking our lives down into actions and meeting once a week to keep each other accountable.

We were all amazed at the difference it made in our lives and I wanted to share that experience.

Sunday Night Success – 2.0

Shortly after starting Sunday Night Success, I decided to train as a professional coach, and the purpose shifted a bit. I started talking more about vision, goal setting, and accountability.

Not a huge change in the topic, it all flowed together quite nicely. It was at this point I discovered the Google Ad Words keyword tool. I ran Sunday Night Success through to see if Google thought Sunday Night Success was about the same topics that I thought Sunday Night Success was about.

The results were positive. Sunday Night Success scored for keywords like goals, goal setting, vision, purpose, actions, accountability, and coaching.

Sunday Night Success – 2.5

My action group friends Jason and Vicky started writing some posts for SNS, as did Jocelyn, one of my coaching clients.

The topics of the writing started to broaden into life and lifestyle posts, but still had a focus on achieving goals through actions and working towards your dreams.

Google keywords showed no change, SNS was still about goals, goal setting, vision, purpose, actions, accountability, and coaching.

Sunday Night Success – 3.0

At this point I started working as a coach and I was undergoing some shifts in my own views on goal setting. In fact, for the most part I stopped setting goals for myself and shifted my focus to building my environments. This was a big change for SNS, but the intent of the site, I thought, was still about finding ways to be successful and achieve the things you want to achieve in life.

As the days and weeks went by I started focusing more and more on environments, and started talking about Personal Geography. I also, it seems, without fully noticing it, started talking more about business.

I didn’t realize it, but Google did!

Last week I did a new Google keyword search and to my surprise Google doesn’t think SNS is about vision, and goal setting anymore. Google now associates SNS with keywords like:

Make money, work from home, business opportunities, marketing, network marketing, and home based business.

Interesting.

Sunday Night Success – 4.0?

Now the question is what to do?

Obviously, without realizing it my writing and interests have shifted. The SNS environment, for me, is providing something completely different than it was a year ago. I can thank Google’s keyword research tool for giving some important insights into my development as a coach and a writer.

What does SNS need to change into? Can I even decide this, or does the unnoticed shift in the content show that SNS is going to develop naturally, and I am only along for the ride?

As I continue to ponder where to go with SNS I leave you with these questions for your own blog or website and its natural development:

Have you checked your Google keywords recently? What insights about yourself can you uncover from these results? Any surprises?

Posted in Environmental Design, Success Posts | Tagged Action/Goal Setting, business, Environmental Design | Leave a comment

Friday TED video – April 16 2010

Posted on April 16, 2010 by Jeremie

If you haven’t read “Tribes” by Seth Godin I strongly suggest you find a copy and give it a read. Even better, get the audio version, I find Seth Godin’s books have a greater impact when you listen to him read them.

Until you manage to get yourself a copy of Tribes, here is Seth’s TED talk on the topic, which is inspirational in its own right. Enjoy!

Sunday Night Success started out with a vision for creating a tribe of its own. That vision may have gotten a bit lost over the year, or maybe the vision has changed and just needs to be re-framed. I will be continuing a search for my own tribe, what about you?

What tribe(s) do you belong to? What tribe do you lead?

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Weekly Environment – Gold Mentorship Program

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Jeremie

Some environments end up blocking you, or holding you back.

Other environments support you.

While still other environments evolve you.

Evolving environments

Environments that pull you forward, out of your comfort zone, and into new territory in a really big way end up evolving you. By putting yourself in an environment which is radically different from what you are used to you change, the environment impacts you, and you end up becoming something new by the end of the interaction.

Evolving environments could be a person or a group of people you start associating with. It could be taking a course in an area you know nothing about. It could be taking on a project or client that you aren’t sure you can handle.

Anything that is radically different, or challenges you beyond your limits has the possibility of evolving you.

Wealthy Thought Leader Gold Mentorship Program

I recently decided to join Andrea Lee and 11 other entrepreneurs in a group coaching environment for the next six months. Most of the other people in the group have well developed businesses and are getting ready to start working on the next big thing. I am starting out my coaching business from scratch.

I am definitely out of my league. This group and their businesses are at a completely different level than where I am at with my business. Being a part of this group makes me feel very uncomfortable, and worried that I will not be able to “keep up”. I feel a great deal of resistance and excitement when thinking about what I will accomplish over the next six months.

This environment will evolve me. In six months I am going to be a completely different person with a completely different business. It is going to be challenging. It is going to be exhausting at times. I am going to have doubts.

It is a perfect environment for where I am right now. I can’t wait to see what happens.

What environment can you introduce into your life or business that will help evolve you?

Posted in Environmental Design | Tagged Andrea Lee, environments, mentorship, personal evolution, personal geography, Wealthy Thought Leader | Leave a comment

Weekly Environment – Wealthy Thought Leader Event

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Jeremie

This week’s environment is huge, and something I have been looking forward to for a long time. It is also an example of a “one-time” environment instead of a continuing environment like all of my other examples.

Continuing environments

Continuing environments are those spaces that are always there supporting you in the activities that make up your life. Your family, your home, your computer, your car, your exercise routine, magazine subscriptions, etc. These are the environments that hang around all the time and are always there to offer support or spark new ideas. They are consistent environments in your life.

Continuing environments are a constant part of your personal geography, and the pull of these spaces is always active and determining your overall location. By studying your continuing environments you can get an idea of where you are in your current personal geography and what you need to change in order to shift your location.

One-time environments

One-time environments happen, provide a surge of support, and are gone. The benefits from a one-time environment can be huge and the support can be long lasting, but the actual environment lasts only a short period of time. A class, workshop, meeting, television show, etc.

One-time environments give your current location within your personal geography a big jolt, shifting where you are. After this shift you quickly find yourself in a new place and may need to start adjusting all of your continuing environments in order to recalibrate after the change.

Wealthy Thought Leader

This is a three day event I will be attending in Vancouver, British Columbia focusing on thought leadership, creating content, pricing and marketing content, and sustaining a business model. The event is being presented by Andrea Lee and includes guest speakers Janet Goldstein, Alexis Neely, Todd Kashdan, Pamela Slim, Tina Forsyth, and Mark Silver.

Redrawing my map

Not only will I be exposed to all of these great thought leaders I will be attending the event with over 100 entrepreneurs, each one of them providing me with a different environment to learn from. I have no doubt that by the time these three days are complete my personal geography will have undergone such a huge shift that I will be spending the next few weeks/months rebuilding my various spaces to fit the new person I will have become.

What one-time environment have you experienced that completed shifted your personal geography? How long did it take you to redraw your map?

Want to know more about personal geography? Sign up for the personal geography newsletter.

Posted in Environmental Design, Success Posts | Tagged Andrea Lee, Environmental Design, personal geography, Wealthy Thougth Leader | Leave a comment

SNS changes and the virtual assistant environment

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Jeremie

Just a quick post today to let you know that Sunday Night Success may disappear for a bit this week.

I am switching the registration of the domain name and switching my hosting services. I have mixed stories: some telling me this is an easy switch with nothing to worry about, other people telling horrible tales of broken links and general chaos. I am hoping the SNS switch will follow the plot line of the former and not the latter stories.

Sticking to what I do well.

Generally when toying around with technology I inevitably make a mistake and mess things up. I actually, for the most part, enjoy learning new tech-tricks and figuring things out for myself. However, more often than not, I miss one little step, or click on one wrong option, and it all goes wrong. Then I spend countless hours trying to troubleshoot my mistake and getting stressed out. I always fix the problem, eventually.

No eventually this time

The plan is to skip the stressed out problem solving step this time and have someone else do it for me. I am going to investigate the world of virtual assistants and see what it will cost me to have an expert help me with the switch. My business is now making money, not a lot, but it is making money, and I think my time can be used better with other business building tasks.

I am intrigued by using a virtual assistant as one of my support environments and this seems like a perfect opportunity to test the waters.

Wish me luck!

Have you ever used a virtual assistant before? Do you have any recommendations for an awesome WordPress virtual assistant?

Posted in Environmental Design, Success Posts | Tagged environment, personal geography, spaces, virtual assistant, wordpress | Leave a comment

Weekly Environment – Visiting friends

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Jeremie

When my wife and I moved to Rossland three years ago we left behind a lot of really incredible friends in Calgary. We have made new friends in Rossland, which has been great, but that isn’t a replacement for the long term friends we have in Calgary.

Two of my best friends, Mat and Jon, we have known each other since grade seven, recently brought their families out for ski vacations and a visit. It is amazing how much energy seeing my friends provided. Spending time with friends who love you unconditionally and are willing to support you in whatever you are doing is priceless. Friends who have seen you at your best and your worst. Friends you know you can still count on to be there, to catch you when you stumble or fall.

I don’t think I would be able to be doing the things I am doing right now if I didn’t have these types of friends in my life. My courage to experiment and try new things is powered by having these people in my life. Mat and Jon’s recent visit recharged my reserves and helped prepare me for all of my upcoming challenges and successes.

The friendships you have and the friendships you are developing have a huge impact on your personal geography. If you are currently experiencing success or facing challenges scan the relationship space of your personal geography and ask yourself:

What good friends do you have filling up the relationship space of your personal geography? How can these important friendships help support you in what you are doing? How can you help support them in what they are doing? What new friendships can you develop to help pull yourself forward?

You can read about how my Sunday Night Success group helps define my relationship space here.

Posted in Environmental Design | Tagged Environmental Design, friends, personal geography, relationships, support | Leave a comment

Friday TED video – March 5

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Jeremie

While working through my own personal geography I have been spending a lot of time thinking about my home, one of the most important spaces in my life. As I have studied the environment of my home I have begun to realize the huge impact it has on all of the different spaces in my life. My home space affects my work, my business, my family, my health, my ideas, and my overall mood.

This work around my home space drew my attention to this TED video on architecture. As I experience my own perspective shift on the importance of my home, this TED video provides an exciting perspective shift on how we build.

The scifi geek side of me finds this whole idea very cool.

Posted in Environmental Design, TED Videos | Tagged Environmental Design, home, personal geography, perspective, space, TED | Leave a comment

Filling in the empty minutes

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Jeremie

I was sitting in the doctor’s office a couple of weeks ago waiting for my appointment and reading a crumpled magazine from the waiting room collection.

Later, I was sitting in the dentist’s office, waiting again, tapping my fingers on my knee with nothing to do.

I was driving to pick up some groceries, 15 minutes each way, and listening to the horrible local radio station.

Every day I walk ten minutes each way, in silence, to the local high school to teach my math classes.

Empty minutes

What do all of these different events have in common?

In a world were time management is a constant struggle, and you are trying to fit more into the same amount of time, these are empty minutes. Valuable minutes that pass with nothing valuable being accomplished. Valuable minutes that will have to be added to another part of your day so you can get everything done.

Please don’t misunderstand. Downtime, relaxing, and just being in the moment are all important. But, there seems to be a lot of minutes in my day that I could be multitasking and getting something else done.

Filling the empty minutes

I have started to fill up some of these empty minutes by making sure I have something to do whenever I am faced with these small chunks of free time. My main tool for filling my empty minutes: my iPod touch.

Doctor’s and dentist’s office? I have a document application so I can read eBooks or white papers, as well as using the note application to write my blog posts and newsletters, or just capture stray ideas.

Driving and walking in silence? I have a huge list of coaching, business, and marketing books on my reading list. I have started downloading audiobooks and listening to them during this down time.

Fewer empty minutes, more family minutes

By filling all of these empty minutes I have been able to spend more time with my wife and son. I have managed to “read” two of the books on my list while walking and driving, and written entire articles while waiting. All of this time translates directly into time I can put into other priorities.

Small amounts of empty minutes add up. How different would your time management challenges be if you started filling up your empty minutes?

Posted in Success Posts | Tagged family, iPod, multitasking, priorities, time management | 2 Comments