Category: 2014

2014 Awesome Bucket Results

A recap of my top goals and accomplishments from 2014

Two years ago I decided to get organized, methodical and passionate about my New Year’s resolutions by creating an Awesome Bucket and laying out my goals for the year. That inaugural Awesome Bucket helped make 2013 a wild success by keeping me focused and driven to develop habits, strengthen skills and cross epic finish lines.

And by publishing the list and posting status updates throughout the year, the Awesome Bucket holds me accountable. At the same time, I hope this exercise inspires others to add some Awesome Bucket Sauce to their New Year’s Resolutions. More importantly, I hope this exercise gives you ideas for how to stay motivated and make those dreams realities.

This year, my sophomore Awesome Bucket effort, the goals fell into four categories: Creative, Fitness, Travel and Awesome. In addition, my top priority for the year focused on applying and getting in to grad school at the W.P. Carey School of Business.

I’m happy to report I knocked this bucket out of the park, accomplishing 10 of the 11 goals on the list in another exciting and memorable year. I completed my first semester of grad school (more on that later), fabricated walkability in a city of sprawl, wrote and played guitar every day and hiked to the highest point in Arizona. Plus, I can now do a handstand – nbd – just another drop in the Awesome Bucket.

Here’s a breakdown of my 2014 Awesome Bucket and how I made it happen.

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Awesome Bucket 2014: Status Update

A domination progress report for my 2014 goals

Nine months ago, with an overflowing passion bucket, I laid out my second annual Awesome Bucket – a brimming list of goals I hoped to accomplish in 2014.

Posting those goals publicly and revisiting them throughout the year is a big part of the process. It helps me stay accountable, and see the whole board.

This year has been a whirlwind of goal domination so far, with eight of the 13 goals not only accomplished – but accomplished with authority.

Read on for a complete breakdown and status update to see which ones were crossed off the list, and how the rest of the year is looking for the ones that remain.

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The real MVP

In a world smothered by scripted interviews, entitled stars and vanilla soundbites, Kevin Durant – the 2014 NBA Most Valuable Player – delivers a slam dunk speech that pulls back the curtain, transcends sports and inspires leadership, humility and perspective.

These days, I don’t expect much from post-game press conferences, sideline reports, superstar interviews and other sports speeches. Why? Because we rarely get more than a quick thank you to God, followed by a litany of canned sports cliches.

If we expand the scope, the same low expectations can often be applied to other arenas, with force-fed agendas, rhetoric and scripted remarks clouding our glimpses at the true character and opinions of our leaders, influencers and role models.

But every now and then, we’re treated to something genuine, something thoughtful, something inspirational.

Kevin Durant’s exceptional acceptance speech for the 2014 NBA Most Valuable Player Award was one of those times.

Judged in a vacuum (in my amateur opinion), the speech stands strong as an organized address with a heartfelt and well-delivered story.

However, in the vanilla, lay-up context we’ve grown accustomed to in sports speeches, Durant’s MVP remarks deliver a posterizing slam dunk.

In this post, I’m going to break down why the speech is so special, and list a some of the lessons I took away after watching it a few times.

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Navigating the social media seas at #SMMW14

Top takeaways from Social Media Marketing World

Attending a conference is a lot like managing a business’s social media initiative:

You need to have a content strategy by planning which sessions to attend, engage your audience by chatting with other attendees, and gather feedback by asking the speakers specific questions that will add value to the conversation.

I kept these principles in mind when I attended Social Media Marketing World (#SMMW14), presented by Social Media Examiner in San Diego, March 27-28.

On the plane to San Diego, I highlighted the top three sessions from each time slot to help me manage my time efficiently and give me quick-reference safety valves should I need to switch day-of. I also talked with as many other attendees as possible, and joined in the the #SMMW14 Twitter conversations to share my notes and get an idea of what was going on in the sessions I didn’t attend.

Most importantly, I outlined in advance the main topics to investigate at the conference: corporate blog strategies, social media customer service training examples, trends in the creep factor and the declining News Feed reach for Facebook pages.

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Road to the MBA

Lessons learned from the application process.

Last time we chatted – back in January – you learned about my Awesome Bucket 2014 and the big plans I lined up to take down this year.

As excited as I was (and am) about those goals, there was something glaringly absent from that list: my one thing. It’s the most important goal of the year and takes priority over pretty much everything else on the plate.

Last year my one thing was to become an Ironman, and I sacrificed sleeping in, Filibertos, nearly all my free time outside of work and many a happy hour to make that dream a reality. (Read all about that glorious day in my IMAZ race report.)

When you get to the top of a mountain you have two options: head back down satisfied and keep reliving the moment; or quickly celebrate, learn from the experience and start looking for the next peak.

Continue reading Road to the MBA