Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
It was one of those days when I seemed to be reaching out and staying connected with various clients, friends, potential employers, service providers, you name it – I had a crazy busy day, but as with so many things in business, it was all about creating, maintaining and nurturing good relationships with people.
The work I’ve done with the PNE Street Stars Program over the last five years has kicked up a gear or two as I’m looking at what I want my role in that position to evolve into… I have the sense that there’s something bigger on the horizon, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. I do think it’s important to continue to gather names of people interested in performing at the event and keep the names organized so I can successfully find those ‘connections‘ when I need them, so part of my day was spent working on the systems for that and starring at my computer screen…
Had a meeting with a performer who contacted me as we have several mutual friends and it just felt like we needed to meet face to face and ‘connect.’ It was an awesome meeting during with the conversation flowed incredibly easily and what I first thought might have been a chat that would last an hour or so ended up not being done when we absolutely had to pull the plug on it two and a half hours into the yap-fest. We talked about a huge variety of things and I felt like we had a lot to offer each other though what would very clearly become not only a business relationship, but a friendship.
Yacked on the phone for about a half hour with (and I have to admit it feels weird to say this on some levels) my new MANAGER. I originally met Corwin Hiebert through my friend David Duchemin. Corwin then asked me to be involved with the Creative Mix conference back in October and I was so impressed with the job he did running that event and with some of the work that he’s been doing with creative professionals in Vancouver that I knew this was going to be a guy who could help me stay current, revamp some of my systems and help me stay ‘connected’ to clients and friends. We’ve got a few projects in the works already, and many more floating around in the percolating stage as we like to call it. Fun stuff.
Touched base with Lee Zimmerman and Martin Ewen about writing guest blog spots for this blog and have a sneaking suspicion that I may end up migrating this blog over to it’s own web presences that is less branded by my Checkerboard Guy persona… As I wrote in an email to Lee, I’d love to morph this blog into something like the Rolling Stone Magazine for Street and Variety performers… Have guest bloggers contribute content, continue to generate content myself, but build this into more of a community so that I have a vehicle for staying ‘connected’ with the industry that I get so much from.
Sent a Facebook message back to a guy who has asked me to be an administrator for the facebook Jugglers and Magician group on Facebook. In his message to me he talked about wanting to grow the group so that we’d have a stronger presence in numbers. That all being ‘connected’ could bring some very real benefits, and as I both agree with and support this sentiment I indicated that I’d be happy to be a part of the admin team.
I think in this day and age when social networks like Facebook and Twitter have become semi-addictive, people’s need for these connections has grown and will continue to grow. Successfully finding ways to grow these connections and build relationships will mean greater success in both your personal and professional pursuit, so here’s to saying connected!
