motivateyourself.net

Yesterday morning I had the opportunity to speak at Annette Street Public School in Toronto, Ontario. I live about 10 minutes outside of the city of Toronto, but amazingly over the course of the last 9 years, this was my 1st speech at a Toronto public school!! For some reason over the years it has been easier to be booked in California, the North West Territories or even China than into a Toronto public school, so this was a really big treat for me. I’m not sure what has caused the delay, but my best guess is a lack of funds within the School Board.

The task yesterday was a keynote speech to kick off Career Day for the grade 7’s and 8’s, followed by 2 workshops on public speaking. During the second public speaking workshop I had one of the coolest experiences of my speaking career. As a speaker, I’m used to students chatting with their friends in the audience from time to time. You just use a few different techniques to try to silence them and regain their focus. Yesterday, one of the students in the workshop was trying to talk to his friend, but his friend actually kept shushing him and telling him to stop talking. Normally, I would have stepped in, but I was so fascinated by this other students response that I was curious to see what would happen. After about 15 minutes of on and off attempts to engage his friend in conversation, the student being harassed actually got up from his seat and sat in a seat away from his friend and the distraction. This was unbelievable to me, but exactly what my speech that morning was all about. My speech discusses the ideas of Motivating Yourself to make the right decision and pushing yourself to do so. I can only imagine that this was a diffuclt decision to walk away from his friend, but he did the right thing and for the betterment of himself as well as the workshop as a whole.

Never in my 9 years of speaking, have I seen someone walk away from a chatter, but at Annette Street Public School, I got to see intelligent decision making from a 13 or 14 year old. After the workshop I took him aside and commended him for his actions and he said he just did what he thought was right. Bravo!

So why didn’t anyone tell me how bad my program info pages looked? Before I sent out my mass mailing to some 40,000 schools this summer and let them know about my 10 for 10 special–see previous post–I decided to take a quick peek at my web-site to make sure that all of my program info was current and made sense. As the first sentence of this paragraph would suggest…it certainly was not!

I realized that half the info pages were actually missing info!!! Every page has/had a downloadable flyer, but some pages were missing pictures (good pictures at that) and only contained a general, brief description. I’m pretty happy with how they look now. Much better formatting with a few pretty pictures of my mug! One I get a bit more video on my hands during the next few weeks, I’ll certainly post it, but all in all, I am MUCH happier with my web-site now that it’s finally gotten a massive program info overhaul.

This has been a very productive week as I try to gear up for a busy summer of promotions and bookings. I’m trying to clear out all the clutter that has piled up while I’ve been on the road and it’s great to be able to “Motivate Myself” to accomplish these tasks. Now that they’re out of the way, expect a lot of E-Mails coming your way. Next year is my 10th anniversary of giving Motivational Speeches and I’m looking forward to making it my biggest, best and most successful year of all! Of course…I’m counting on all of you to make that happen!

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting back. Somehow and as crazy as it seems, I’ve been on the road speaking for youth for 9 full years now. Beginning in August, I will be kicking off my 10th year! INSANITY! When I first got started, it was to help out the High School Leadership Conference I was planning and to help out some friends in their schools. Who woulda thought that I’d not only still be speaking to youth today, but doing it fulltime?? It may have been you, but it definitely was not me!

I was trying to think of a way to celebrate and decided that instead of asking all of my previous clients to give me presents, that I’d just give everyone else a present. In my attempt to be a witty marketer, I’ve decided to offer a 10 for 10 special! It’s a 10% discount off all bookings for the next school year. Will this mean more business? Less business? Not sure. I just decided it would be fun to give something back for all of the support I’ve been given over the years.

I love what I do and love having the chance to work with some INCREDIBLE students and staff, so I figure why not try to give a bit more incentive to make that happen more during the 2009-2010 school year. I’ve got some of the literature up on my site…now I just have to figure out how to get the banner/images up as well!

Next step? Letting YOU know about it!