Encouraging Positive Self-Esteem in Pre-Teens

As posted & published in Voxy

The pre-teen years, is arguably one of the most hardest times in a child’s life. Their age says they are expected to start acting like adults, but still have many child-like restrictions.

Although a lot of my work is based on the teen years, over the last decade, we’ve seen a great rise in pre-teens trying to copy-cat teenage behaviour. Revealing clothing, experimental phases, and conflicts with parents are all teenage-inspired actions, that pre-teens are starting to show, which have never existed before.

Let’s dissect what healthy self-esteem looks like. Healthy self-esteem shows a person is in their comfort zone as a human being. It means they take care of themselves – whether through clothing choices, a healthy diet, or how they compare themselves to their peers.

The obvious self-esteem issue for girls, and one that is starting to affect boys too is inevitably their weight, which often stems on into teenage-hood and their adult lives. Looking at the glass half-empty, I must mention things like obesity, bulimia and anorexia. These seem to be common household terms these days, which shows the need to teach girls about the value of their temple of a body is greater than ever. Of course, looking at all the Photoshopped photos of beautiful Size Minus-10 models in magazines cannot be healthy, so there’s two approaches I’ve heard of and practice when speaking to girls about weight issues.

Pamela Marker was the New Zealand Girlfriend Magazine Editor a few years back. I was never fond of girly magazines growing up, because just like any other girl, I would fall into depression after seeing the skinny models showing off what I didn’t have (i.e. a stick figure), which would motivate me enough to do a massive two hour workout, after which celebratory pizza was always in order. Obviously it was not a healthy option.
What made me look twice at Girlfriend magazine after Pamela came onto the team was her strive to help girls gain better self esteem – not destroy it. They would have the occasional model in there, but always tried to keep Photoshop to a minimum. The technique Pamela often used when speaking to girls was showing them the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Photoshop photos. No girl could feel bad after seeing how much graphical work goes into making one photo of a model. Think the famous Dove Video that went viral, which showed how a normal-looking woman was transformed into an intensified photo, to the point where if you saw the actual person on the street, you wouldn’t recognize them in a million years.

Paula Abdul, after admitting her bulimia issues in her youth suggests every girl should lie down on a large piece of paper and have a friend outline her. When you stand up, basically, you see that you’re actually not fat like you think, in fact, it gives you a newly found confidence.

Although having a healthy self-esteem is not only about weight, but it’s definitely a starting point. The hype of gym memberships (yes, pre-teens are starting to go to the gym now!!), whether you look fat in a top, whether you haven’t been kissed because you’re ‘fat’…all these first world problems derive from a healthy outlook on your physical appearance.

Eva-Maria's recently published second book 'Shush, You!' features more quick tips about, among other things, how to help your preteens and teens understand the importance of a healthy self-esteem, so make sure you check it out here.

What are some of the ways you’ve found to help your pre-teen see their physical beauty?

Conflict with Teens…Averted

Many people have a child in their lives. Whether they are a toddler, a child, pre-teen, or are on their way to adulthood, youth are everywhere! And as scary as it may sound to some, the existence of people is inevitable in this world, as is the existence of young people.

Have you ever sparked conflict with a young person? They’re quite easy to start – it can start off with a miscommunication, a bad word, a mean look. But what many people don’t realize, is the small things you can do to help build a better relationship with a young person. My second book ‘Shush, You!’ focuses on this fact in greater depth – the array of stories from people who have contact with youth in today’s world through different environments – whether it’s family at home, family living outside of home, in the workplace, at school…and all these stories are bound by the quick 5 minute tips I’ve observed that can help make a great relationship.

I won’t go into detail of these 5 minute tips – there are so many of them, but I’d like to share three specifics that can be applied to a number of small things you can do to get a young person on side right now, today, tomorrow, and in future.

When a conflict arises, and dare I say that whether it’s with your own kids or not, there is a sure three step process of how you can work towards resolving it, with the end product being a healthy relationship based on common understanding and communication.

1. Listen
My first book is called ‘You Shut Up!’. Without having to remind you that this is a common term many families hear in their household when kids are starting to turn into teenagers, there is, yet another side to reason behind the title. And that is that everyone wants to be heard. As a teenagers, we want to be heard, and whatever you say before we have a chance to speak out will be lost. So ask them for their side of the story first – over time, this will help them realize that sometimes it’s important to hear the other person out.

2. Show Your Side
While they’re speaking, pick up on some of their points so that like in a good debate, you will be able to answer their issues. Start with telling your side, and then ease into some of the issues they’ve raised. You will be showing them that you’re giving your side of the story, but also acknowledging what they have raised. Also remember to use the same language – if they say ‘Well you never talk to me’, don’t say ‘I always communicate with you’ – the meaning is the same, but it will have more effect if you use the same language and come back with ‘I always talk to you’, or similar. Plus, if they hear you using ‘big’ words that weren’t part of their issue, they will discard the entire sentence all together.

3. Compromise
A good conflict resolution technique is to end in compromise. Although this may not always 100% benefit everyone, it doesn’t un-benefit either side. After hearing both sides to the conflict, and deciding that you both want to resolve it, without any ego getting in the way, compromise! Let’s say it’s a matter of curfew – you have set a rule of 10pm and your teen wants it to change until 2am. Try to find a middle ground and then set some extra rules in place as your previous rule of 10pm is being compromised. How about you compromise and set the new curfew at midnight, but the extra rules will be that they have to TXT or call you at 10pm to let you know they’re OK. If this doesn’t happen, take it back to the drawing board, and address their lack of communication at 10pm. The moral is that there is always a way to compromise – you just need to find it amongst the issues from both sides.

Trust Your Future!

Benefits of Using Facebook & Twitter

Time and time again, business courses, workshops, general media and people are going on about using Social Media for business.
People are pretty much sold on the benefits of it, but are still unsure – what is my ROI? What will I get out of it? How do I know this is beneficial for my business?

Simply speaking, Social Media is merely another platform for your brand to be seen by the public. Just like newspaper and TV advertising, Social Media is a medium for promoting what you do, and letting people know of the benefits you can bring their current situation.

At the same time, Social Media also doubles as a networking tool. Think about how much time you currently spend talking on the phone, replying to e-mails, networking at events, and any other ways you use to socialize and network for your personal and business use. To really make Social Media work for you, you’d need to invest the same amount of time you currently spend networking, and do it through social networks.

Social Media gives people the opportunity to combine marketing strategies with networking into one. The nature of Social Networking helps you network, and when coupled with basic marketing principals, it can fully succeed no matter what way you need it to. The way to market on Social Media is to spend time on there. Unlike setting up a billboard and have it bring value to each person who sees it, you need to bring that value with individual comments, joining in with discussions, being forward enough to introduce yourself to potential clients, and bringing value by sharing links to articles, products and services you recommend.

So what ARE the benefits of using Social Networking Sites like Twitter and Facebook?

Engage with your target market. Through the power of Social Media, it’s all about the amount and quality of content you produce and share with your target audience. The relevance to your audience and value you produce makes sure you are positioned to be as much of an expert in your field as your words portray. The amount of content you produce gives you the advantage to make sure your audience never forget about you, but also as we all know, we all have our own lives and people just aren’t sitting at their computer waiting for your next update, so you need to make sure you catch them when they finally do get round to logging onto their social networks. So that’s where the repetition and amount of time you keep putting yourself out there will amount to valuable engagement with your target market.

Getting straight feedback. Sure it may sometimes be from the general public, but it’s very valuable information for you to obtain about how others perceive your services and benefits of doing business with you through the internet.

Instantly reaching out to your potential clients. The beauty of the internet is that the entire world, news, advice and events can be uploaded and circulated instantly. As soon as you have any new press releases, or content to share, upload it! The benefit of the internet is that it has the power to update the world about events as they happen. Once something happens and you wait until tomorrow morning to report on it, chances are it won’t be as current or someone else would have taken the space of being ‘the first reporter’ of the happenings.

Get the inside scoop about your industry. Social Media is public. And that can be a good thing. This means you can find out valuable information about your competitors, and any current events or news happening within your industry. This can also be a great opportunity to tie in popular current events with the relevance of your work. A friend of mine races Suzuki Swifts, and he loves the singer Taylor Swift, so he called his car ‘Taylor The Swift’ and made a Facebook Fan Page for it. So when the big mishap happened at the Music Awards when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech, everyone around the world of all ages were talking about how unfair this was on Taylor, people were searching the internet for the video clips, opinions, forums and pages about this event. Coincidentally, although for most people a race car driver wasn’t going to be of interest, because of the amounts of people searching the name ‘Taylor Swift’ guided their Google searches to my friend’s ‘Taylor the Swift’ Facebook Page. Almost overnight, his Fan page grew from about 100 of his friends and fans to about 700 fans. That’s a 600% increase! How would you like to increase your target, pin-pointed audience online by 600%?

Raise awareness of your brand. Through your involvement in Social Media, you have the power to not only connect and engage your target audience, but by doing so, you will also be raising the awareness of your brand. Of course we can’t all be McDonald’s with the yellow arches, but we can certainly try become the expert in our industry through the value of our content we produce and share with our online audience. Just make sure you’re including your website, logo, and anything else that will give your brand association with your name online, so when people say ‘Eva-Maria’ online now, if they are within my target audience and don’t necessarily know my name, they will at least be able to identify with my bestselling book’s title ‘You Shut Up!’ because I always make sure I’m consistent with my subject, brand and content.

Promote your Content. Once you write anything – a press release, article, blog post or update on your life, use your social networks to update the rest of the world. By keeping in constant touch with people online, you’re ultimately building awareness of your being, expertise and important-ness online.

What would it take to convince you to get onto those Social Networks?

Teen Suicide

It’s not news that New Zealand has one of the highest rates for teen suicide in the world. It’s a sad thought that our dear country has this kind of history that keeps repeating itself, but there are definitely some sound ways parents and relatives can make the growing up years a little easier.

Here’s my stance on it: depression is real, no doubt about it. However, at some point of our lives, we have those days when we don’t feel like getting out of bed, when we feel lonely and when we just don’t want to talk to anyone. Those feeling are normal. Like I say, if you were to quickly diagnose people generally feeling ‘sad’, should we have a tax on emotions like ‘love’ aswell?

Depression is real – I’m not saying it’s not, but we all have those days when we feel a little ‘emo’, or ‘depressed’ if you must. If this goes on for a little longer than a day, a week, month, then yes – professional help is needed. But you can actually stop this unwinding of events! Don’t let that sad stage of a teen’s life turn into ‘depression’. There are three things to remember:

Communicate
Whenever you notice something, talk to them! Even if they don’t want to, keep talking to them – even the small things count “How was your day darling?”, “What do you think about….” Get them involved in conversations, family activities – anything. Just keep that communication going, because when the time comes, they will open up about what’s bothering them. More times than never, parents seem to drift off and stop talking because they don’t want to deal with another snappy answer – this is just them taking some of their issues out little by little. Keep talking, talking, talking.

Support
Did your teen have an interesting idea? Do they need a lift from you somewhere? Do they need to talk to you? Be open to support them in their decisions. At the end of the day, if you tell them not to do something, as much as I hate to say it, psychologically that makes them want to do these things even more; to try these things to find out what all the fuss is about. Don’t let it get that far – if they hear the word ‘no’ from you often enough, that translates into ‘I don’t care about you’ to a teen sometimes, and that’s exactly what you don’t want. If you must say ‘no’ to some things – a tattoo, a party they want to go to, a business venture they might want to start up by dropping out of school, say ‘no’ as much as you want, but don’t forget the reasons behind it and tell them about this. This will automatically put them into the ‘understanding’ mindset, and just like it would be perfect for you to read their mind, give them something to work off by giving them your side of the story – what you’re thinking, and why you’re thinking it.

Love
I cannot stress this point enough. When you don’t say a happy ‘Good Morning’, ask for their opinion, say ‘no’ to anything they want to do, that all translates into ‘I don’t care or love you’. Wrong, wrong, wrong! A great book about the ‘5 Love Languages’ talks about how different people show their love for each other. With a teenager, you don’t necessarily need to study that book, unless you have the time – small things count. My parents always remember to tell me they love me, heck when I was little, after Mum had been away in another city, just her bringing back some cheap lollies from the plane as a ‘gift’ got my brother and I excited – you can express your love through so many different ways – don’t forget that it can stretch out further than a simple ‘I love you’; it can be anything from a small gift, to a gesture of love (“Would you like some tea?”), to just sitting down when they need to talk to you the most and hearing what they have to say.

How do you communicate, support and love the teen in your life? As hard as it may be, they hold so much energy and power to balance out the world; to make something out of themselves, and to make the world a better place – if not now, then definitely in future. Cherish and love them – who would want to end their life when they’re surrounded by love and understanding? No one is my guess!

Social Networking: Our Future?

From the GrownUps Column that can be found here

Social Networking has exponentially grown in popularity since I started this column. Although some of my entries are to do with the young people of today, I think there are many parallels between the online world and the way younger generations are growing up in the 21^st century; after all, they, or should I say we, are indeed the product of what technology has created. And what technology has created is a fast-paced, never-still, ever-changing world that surprises us every single day.

I remember when the iPhone first came out, and a speaker from the US was speaking at a workshop I was sitting in on. At the end of the talk, he went on to give a couple of points about why people in business need to get onto the new technologies and embrace them. I was not impressed; “Isn’t that obvious to these people in suits?” I thought. I was even less impressed when he took out his iPhone, and went on to show the audience a new app where you can tilt the phone and it makes it look like the phone is a glass with drink disappearing. A teenager at the time, I was most of all un-impressed by how easily these ‘adults’ were impressed. I had heard of this new drinking app, but there are definitely more impressive things in the world, surely.

What I’m trying to get at is not that young generations are not easily amused; it’s that the world in all its fast speed is constantly coming up with new inventions and discoveries for the potential to do something better; to amuse people more and more. It’s not impressive to have a touch-screen phone anymore. If anything, speaking from my own experience, I’m hating my new touch screen phone. I need a phone to call and TXT; I don’t want all the weird gadgets on there…necessarily, and get very restless when a TXT takes longer than a split second to open up on my screen. That’s the reality.

But here comes my biggest point:
Social Media has brought people closer. What we couldn’t do 20, 10 or even 5 years ago is available at our fingertips. I never try to be an evangelist for the online world – there are many things it cannot replace, but for what it’s worth, it has made some things attainable. Think meetings. I’m on the National Executive of the National Speakers Association. We have a meeting every month. It would take a large collective investment to fly everyone to one city, but the Association can use the pool of knowledge from people from all over the country by having a Skype conference. People have meetings from all around the world over the internet, I can coach people about relationships with their teens, or about how to use Social Media for their business over the internet; years ago, we couldn’t even dream of doing business deals without meeting someone in person, but it’s possible.
Social Media isn’t all about how many Skype conversations you can have; it can serve a higher purpose: to connect. Connect with your existing, future and potential clients, family members; anyone. It’s about starting a conversation.

Imagine you’re at one of those networking events, standing in a corner and everyone seems to have some sort of natural link, but you. Enter the online world; you can butt into any conversation, put in your two cents about a topic, or person, and it’s normal. You don’t need to be the awkward freak of nature trying to ease your way into the conversation; online, it’s a GOOD thing to butt into conversations, compliment people, and all the rest.

Of course the how-to of engaging with people online isn’t something you can break down in a few words, but when you start with the ‘why’ when you sit down at a computer, ready to take on the social media world, just keep your goal in mind – is your goal to connect and network with potential client? Is it to keep in touch with existing clients or relatives? Is it to make new friends or find a soulmate?

Just keep the end goal in mind, and everything will come from there.

My Generation - Generation SMART

The term Generation SMART is one I’ve coined over the past couple of years and it covers the 15 to 25 year olds of the world. It’s an important generation – with half of the population under the age of 25, we as a society need to listen and understand what those hooligans are all about, right. I can see people in the audience going yeah right girl, convince me they’re smart. They’re not necessarily smarter than you, they’re SMART because of the world they’re immersed in.

Think back to your teen years. What were you like as a young person? Think back to what you were going through and feeling when you were 13, 16, 18…go on – take a moment.

You know what you just felt?
You felt exactly what young people today feel. We are no different to how you used to be. The only difference between you and us is that you’ve forgotten what it’s like!
Ten feet tall and bulletproof? How about Twenty feet tall and superman! We know we can do anything! You had that attitude way back when, and look where it got you? Tell me all these years have been a waste of time? The attitudes, energy and passion of young people is something I wish I could bottle up and sell to the depressed old men out there who look angry going to work in their suits to sit in a cubicle every day. You see, our emotions and attitudes haven’t changed – the only thing that’s changed is that you grew up.

Although there are many similarities between younger and older generations today, the current young generation comes down to five simple things.
Generation SMART can be broken down into five simple words:
Swift, Mobile, Accessible, Ready, Transparent...get it...acronym for SMART!

Swift
Young people are fast. They always have been. Perhaps not THE fastest, but definitely fast-ER. And in many respects, they have no way of channelling this speed at which they can achieve and do things.

Mobile
This generation is more likely to travel, change jobs and houses more regularly than any other generation. A longitudinal study in Auckland concluded that the under 25-year old newlyweds are more likely to move houses within the first year of getting married. How’s that for the big dream of owning one and only house for the rest of your married life? Generation SMART have more access to travel, cars…they can travel halfway across the country in a night if they wanted to. Back in the day, it was a big deal to have a car…these days more than half of teenagers out there own one!

Accessible
Generation SMART are more accessible – with the advances in technology, you can make contact with them whenever you need. This generation is easier to reach than other young generations have been, only because of the technology that’s out there…and it doesn’t only extend to cell phones – GPS systems, security systems and everything else can help keep track to increase accessibility to youth.

Ready
We’re ready…ready to take action! Coupled with our speed, want to help, and thinking we’re invincible, we’re ready for the challenges you set in front of us…we won’t always succeed, but the main this is we’re ready.

Transparent
With the age of Facebook, young people are now becoming more transparent – with their thoughts, feelings, and everything in between. Some have no shame putting up intricate details of their lives, while some hide certain facts, knowing these may been seen by any one on the web. Generation SMART are transparent because they understand that their lives are an open book…should they choose to narrate it through some of the new means.

As you can see, there are some aspects that relate to when you were younger, but some that may be a bit new, but realistically, the only thing that different in today’s world is the environment we live in.

There is no miracle cure to make Generation SMART see things the way you do, but there are definitely ways to understand them – how they think and perceive the world because of the environment they were immersed in from Day 1. We can always learn to understand, so why not start today…all you need to do is perhaps something as simple as…strike a conversation.

Keeping Youth Safe Online

Many people out there are scared of the internet. They’re scared of its power, but hey, if Superman hid his powers from the world, he wouldn’t be able to help anyone at all!

The key is to contain and protect your youth from what they might come across online, and with some extra knowledge about what to do and what not to do, can help go a long way.

So here we go, three key points to keep youth safe online…

1. Don’t give our personal information. It’s kind of simple…in real life, if you don’t want someone to go use your credit card, don’t give out your details to people. Same with the online world; if you don’t want randoms calling your cell phone, don’t give out your personal information. Re-iterate to youth that whatever you put online will stay there forever, regardless of whether they take it off, it will always be stored somewhere online in a little box, and hackers have ways of retrieving this information. Don’t let them be a victim to this, so just a gentle reminder to not put out their address, contact phone numbers, or any type of details they don’t need on there. Many people are scared to set up profiles on social networks, because they believe their identity may get stolen. The way I see it, living in real life is way more dangerous – if someone really wanted to steal your identity, they can stalk you to your house, get close-up shots of your face, and steal your credit cards out of your wallet. Online, you hold a certain amount of authority over what information you want to make available for the public; heck, you don’t even need to put up a real photo of you – put up a photo of a cartoon, or a nice sunset…you are allowed to be in control, so stay in control.

2. Invest in security software. Just like parents put parental locks on certain channels, you can do the same to prevent any viruses, or to block unwanted websites online. It’s fantastic that you have the option to protect your online use so much, so don’t overlook a few tens of dollars.

3. Limit their time on the internet. Research is coming up with horrific figures about how much time young people are spending online…help contribute to minimize this in your household by limiting the amount of time your young people are spending online. It will ensure they are most productive during the time they do have, and also have time to do other things in the REAL world. A great tip many parents are talking about, is to not let young people…probably more the pre-teens, be online past their bed time. Apart from the corneas getting damaged, it will disrupt their sleeping patterns, which is not recommended for growing, evolving bodies of adolescents.

They may be simple, but definitely effective to help keep your youth stay safer and healthier. You can put all these in practice, starting today, and if matters are getting really out of hand, how about an online/computer-use set of rules to make sure everyone knows the rules they can stick to. It doesn’t have to be a big Super Nanny poster, but a good 5 points that you can brainstorm with the whole family can make online use fun, productive, and staying safe, effective in your household.

What is the best piece of advice you can give, or have been given about staying safe online?
Also, check out the video about the topic here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l8vo0_HUtY

Annoying Youth Habits in your Workforce

Day in and day out, more and more youth are coming into the workforce. And no wonder – half the world’s population is under 25 years old, and the new generation’s work habits are following them into the workforce. Bad attitudes, scruffy work clothes, turning up late and in general, disregard for not understanding when the business doesn’t do well, they may be out of a job.

Sure, that sounds like the generic youth job of a bartender, or coffee-maker, but it extends way into the corporate and SME world too.

The twisted youth minds are a hard one to understand, but when it comes to it, unless your generation wants to be blamed for the bad habits instilled in today’s youth, it may be good to pay some attention to what they react to, and what will help them achieve more in your business.

Many attitudes come down to the parenting young people have received. Do they respect you as an employer, comes down to: do they respect adults in their lives? Showing up in scruffy clothes, comes down to: were values instilled about respecting the people around them?

Having asked around, some of the most common problems with youth come down to the same answer:

The issues are: coming in with scruffy clothes, Bad attitudes, and showing up late for work
Why do they do that? They know when their shift starts…do they not own an alarm clock??!

If only things were that simple. When a young person’s shift starts at 9am, they’re likely to show up at 9am on the dot. Coming in scruffy clothes…perhaps that’s how they actually dress. Bad attitudes aren’t kept in check unless someone complains. So why not just tell them! Picking up on turning to work late, older generations understand that a 9am start time means coming into work 10, 15, minutes before start-time so they’re dressed and ready for work. Well, not in this world – youth will show up when they’re expected, sometimes later. The warning for being late will be obvious, but not when they show up on time, even if they spend 10 minutes to get into ‘work mode’, thinking they’re paid for the time they’re on the premises.
What’s the way out of it? Tell them what you expect and why – whether it’s about the dress code, attitude or time management. What may seem very obvious to you about workforce attitudes will be different to today’s youth due to their parenting they received. If you expect to run your business in a particular way, don’t let it to their common sense to decide what’s right and wrong – tell them. Come up with a Code of Conduct with all the rules written out so if they come to work ‘on time’ instead of 10 minutes earlier or are wearing a ripped shirt, you can point them back to ‘the rules’. No if’s or but’s there….

How do you/how would you keep your young workers in check?

Engaging Us as a Generation...

It's been a while since I blogged on here, but I have something I'd love your feedback on, as I wrote on the Emergen ygenclub Blog...

An article I wrote got published in last month's Speaker Magazine that goes out to all members of associations run by the Global Speakers Federation around the world. I've put it up linking back to the magazine on HERE.

I tried to focus on key myths that I've heard go around teachers and speakers, breaking myths like...

• You have to be young to engage youth.
• You need to be cool.
• Textbook content is good.
• I’m an adult, so young people need to hear my funny stories about my life.
• You must be inspiring and positive.

What's been amazing is getting gazillions of e-mails and calls since the article came out, from people wanting to know more tips, more insights into how to engage us, young people as an audience.

So I'm here to get your feedback...what other myths should we bust?

What advice would you give an older speaker who completely missed the target of engaging an audience you were part of?

What tips can you share, perhaps even from your experiences?

27 Degrees With Rain

So my latest trip was out to the big cities...Melbourne and Brisbane!

Lovely Australia, never lets us down - the weather was close to perfect, even when it was raining - the hottest it got to was 27 degrees which was heaven on Earth, on the count of me missing out on the full on Kiwi summer, due to my absence in the cold wintery Russia in December and January this year!

I am promising myself that I will make up for the lack of Vitamin D in my body by spending the next New Zealand winter somewhere warm....France maybe?

So to keep everyone in the loop, a couple of pics I took while over there...

Beautiful Melbourne...





Relaxing in the Sun...



Author Talks at the Brisbane Libraries...

Professional Speakers Ignite Wellington!

With my latest appointment of youngest Chapter President in the History of NSA History (BIG news internationally, let me tell you that much!!), the Wellington Chapter of the National Speakers Association of New Zealand is finally in action!

I am very, very pleased to say that the third-time-lucky Wellington NSANZ Chapter has officially started up with a bang on the last Thursday of January! And this time, I am sure it will stay this way!

I must say, this time, I truly understood the power of networking - it truly brought us all together, and we had so many different ages and people working on inviting people to the night, and let me tell you – the power of networking is the same, whether you’re 19 or 99! We had a successful amount of over 60 people come along to enjoy our very first evening of 2010!

MC-ed by well-known Toastmaster Dave Stonyer, opening the night was Mark Blumsky. Being heavily involved with the business community, he genuinely acknowledged the starting of this chapter, and shared some insights into the necessity and value of professional speaking from his experiences of being Mayor of Wellington – how this was a key skill to getting things done, and the huge difference between reading a speech (especially one written for you), and telling a speech (straight from the heart!).

Following Mark, we had Wellington Chapter’s NSANZ veteran John Faisandier, who shared his journey into professional speaking, and the great benefits NSANZ had in store for him, just from being a member which gave guests a fantastic insight into an association, some of them, had never heard of before!

And wrapping up the evening, we had the lively Billy Graham. As said in one of the feedback forms: “It’s been said before ‘He’s in a league of his own’” and it was absolutely true. Billy is one of those people who are truly ‘On Platform, On Purpose and On Fire’ absolutely 500% of their time, and it was an absolute pleasure seeing him in action, but to learn about the entertaining tips to be the best speaker (one of them is actually to always believe you’re an entertainer, no matter what your subject!)


We had a fantastic response and an overwhelming amount of feedback (over and week onwards and I’m still receiving e-mails every day), so with more people excited about the future of the chapter, our next meeting will concentrate on branding. Which we figured will be the perfect starting point for our current and future members in Wellington (I’m sure you’ll tell all your friends in Wellington about this one!), presented by NSANZ member Mike Handcock, called ‘Rock Your Personal Brand’ on the 24th February, and the only way to find more information about it, will be HERE!

See you there!

19 Year Old President of NSANZ appointed

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0911/S00049.htm

Social Networking 101 - Teen's View

So I thought I'd try out my knack for the camera in little informative videos to celebrate the e-book that people have been begging for me to release for a while....all about social networking, why teens love it so much, whether there's any point in it, and most importantly, how to market using social media!

Since this post, we've actually put some of the info into a 7 Day Social Media Course...check it out at www.socialnetworkingnz.co.nz and sign up to receive a lesson a day for the next week in the right hand column!


And you can click on the picture to see the video!...

This isn't the Ego Talking...

Reading my own book has been on my To-Do list since mid 2008.

I must admit, shamelessly, that the last time I read it was the final edit on A4 paper, a week before it went to print in December 2007.
Still haven't read the finished-finished printed product.
I have been procrastinating this job for a while.
I'm a perfectionist at times.
If my end-work shows any sign of flaw, I WILL set off a nuclear bomb inside of me, filled with regret, depression, and negativity.
Not to feel like I'm not good enough for the rest of my life, but it is because at any point I can go back to past work, and even if it felt like 110% right back then, now, it may feel like 70%. And 70% is 40% off what it needs to be.

Tis the way it is.

But guess what.
Today - out of all the busy days, I actually sat down to read it.
WOW
Amazing isn't it.
Jokes aside though, I'm about halfway through it.
I actually laughed in some parts. How crazy.
And yes, the dreaded happened - I found a couple of places that would now need changing, but hey I was 16 when I wrote it, 17 when it was last edited, and now 18, I still strongly agree with everything. I don't think I took too wrong of a path.

Actually about 15 minutes ago, my friend came round to drop off some books he borrowed off me.
Needless to say you can imagine his reaction when he saw me sitting on my bed, cracking up while I was reading this book with my name on it.

There's one part that got us both laughing...just because we're at a loss where my train of thought was when I wrote this (actually a similar situation happened, so there)...

So I'm talking about how saying 'No' to the little things will mean it's an automatic 'No' for the bigger things, etc. And I'm talking about what if there was a real cool gig happening 3 hours away, your teenager wanted to go to it, and they remember last time they asked you to drve them to the mall, and you said 'NO!', so this is how they'd find transport with their friends to this gig.....

This means your teenager and their friends may go to the extremes and somehow find their mate's girlfriend's heroin addict dad who doesn't have a driver's license to drive them there.

Hey man, it happens in real life alright....
If you wanna read more, or make sure it's really in the book, check it on page 17.

Click the photo below and get the book - it's REALLY good.
And ask my friends - I wouldn't say this if I didn't believe it.