FYI, I’ve made a few changes. I would like to make sure you know that I decided to move my blog to a hosted domain, but I didn’t want to leave you behind so from now on you can visit me at http://www.stephaniepeay.com.

I hope to see you there soon.

Stephanie

I have a twitter.com account and I’ve had so much fun engaging in the ongoing conversation there, and on several other social network sites. I felt a bit awkward on the site at first, but over time I learned so much about it, I met so many amazing people, and I became aware of some really amazing company’s products and services. Padmapper.com is one such service.

I’ve stated it in a tweet (a tweet is a message posted by a user on twitter.com) once, and it has become the title of this post now… I Heart Padmapper! I don’t know if there are other sites out there that do the same thing, but even if there are I love this site. If you don’t know about the service:

PadMapper is a web application that aims to make searching online for an apartment to rent less painful by letting you see where the apartments are on a big Google map, and using the filters located in the box on the lower left to eliminate listings that you’re not interested in.

With PadMapper, you can rule out every place on Craigslist and PadMapper’s other sources (Apartments.com, and tons of sources via Oodle) that doesn’t match your location criteria at a glance. After that, PadMapper tries to put most of the relevant information in front of you so you can quickly decide whether you want to investigate further.

(Source: http://www.padmapper.com)

This site isn’t just great if you’re looking for your next apartment or house rental. It’s a great source of local rental information for real estate investing market research. Thanks to this site you don’t have to scour through a bunch of classified ad sites to get this information. You can quickly see what the rental market is like by searching this site alone.

I’ve used it recently to do just that and it was SO helpful. At a glance, I was able to see how much the rents are in an area for a house I was looking at, just by entering the property’s address. Plus you have to admit they have a catchy name.

If you heart Padmapper, or you know of another site like it, please leave a comment on this post.

You could also show Padmapper some love by following them on twitter at @Padmapper. Tell them I sent you!

The biggest thing I learned was that I shouldn’t take on too many new projects at once. I managed to get some results with my weight loss efforts and with my relationship with God, but I didn’t make it to my goals in those areas or make progress with my family & friends goal.

I also realized that it doesn’t take much for me to lose laser focus. That is something that I will work on this year. I have to find some way of keeping my goals, as well as the reason I’m trying to accomplish them,  in front of me so I decrease my chances of getting sidetracked. It’s so easy to get distracted by something else, discouraged, or to lose focus. That’s not news to me, but I think from now on I’m going to remind myself more often of what I want to do, and why, so that I don’t lose the chance I have to achieve my goals. Or, get frustrated while doing so.

I still believe that New Years resolutions are a bit of a waste. I can set goals all year long, I can make changes in my life every day, why wait to do so just once a year??? So here’s to laser focused goals, and to implementing them in 2010.

Week 3 & 4 (of 6)

Goals

• Health – lose 15 pounds
• Family & Friends – Finally send thank you cards to everyone who attended my birthday party in April (I know – it’s horrible)
• Relationship with God – attend church every Sunday for the rest of the year

Update #3 & #4

Okay, I soo wasn’t ready for laser focused action… I had mixed results the last two weeks.

Health

I lost 5 pounds. (Three pounds in week 3 and two pounds in week 4) That brings me to a total loss of 5.2.

It’s progress, but I feel bad because I know I’m not going to make it anywhere near my goal of losing 15 pounds by the end of the year. Plus, it’s kind of a drop in the bucket toward my larger goal.

However, I’m going to brush that off my shoulders and keep it movin’…

Family &  Friends

OMG, I’m doing the worst in this area… I still haven’t done anything here! It’s sad, but true. Maybe I should take Shae Bynes advice, from her comment on my last post, to heart and just roll the thanks into a christmas message.

To answer your question Shae, I’ve been procrastinating because I kind of feel like a card just won’t show everyone how thankful I am for them, their being at my party and the gifts they gave me.

This is another area where I need to stop being so hard on myself and just give it another try this week, which is exactly what I’ll do. Hopefully…

Relationship w/ God

I didn’t go to church the last two weeks. Here’s a preview of next weeks update - I didn’t go today either… surprise, surprise.  I’ve been hybernating the last few weeks on saturday and sunday morning. Crashing is more like it, totally dead to the world!

I feel the worst about my lack of follow through in this area, but that’s not going to stop me from going to church next week. I plan to go to church on New Years Eve too, that will be a first for me and I’m looking forward to that. No Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years Eve alone at home this year!!!

Observations

I totally botched up everything the last two weeks, and I haven’t done alot as a whole for the last four weeks in general. However, it has been a learning experience. I do think it’s important to be ready for change when you embark on something new.

Also Shae was right… It’s better to work on one thing at a time. I orginally had a list of 7 items to work on and I’m struggling with the three that were left from the original list. I lived and learned…

It’s also important to remind yourself about your goals often, it really is a lot easier than I thought to get off track. If you have a list, pictures, or a blog post , to remind yourself about your goals, you may not find yourself too far from your intended path and target at any given time.

I’m glad this is at the end of the year as opposed to New Year Resolutions at the beginning of a year. I think I know that what I’ve learned over the last month will help me in the last two weeks of the year, and with planning my goals for next year!

Week 2 (of 6)

I’ve been M.I.A from all things social media for the last week, so this update for this week is late, but I’ve still been making progress…

Goals

• Health – lose 15 pounds
• Family & Friends – Finally send thank you cards to everyone who attended my birthday party in April (I know – it’s horrible)
• Relationship with God – attend church every Sunday for the rest of the year

Update #2

Health

I only lost 0.2 pounds this week. Then again, it was two days after Thanksgivings day so that was almost like losing 2 pounds.

Family & Friends

Unfortunately, I haven’t done anything here…

Relationship with God

Even after hanging out with my one of  my homies/sorors the night before, I went to church again this week. (By the way, everyone should go see the movie “The Blind Side”)

However, my sister did have to come by to help nudge me out of bed… I was going to get up and go, or hear her sing “Ladies Night” over and over, and over again. Thanks sister!

Week 1 (of 6)

I received a comment from Shae Bynes, the author of the article that inspired this project, about my original post. Part of the comment made me question the number of goals I was focusing on:

You have a LOT of things written down here to accomplish by end of the year. I don’t know how much of this is NEW activity/habits vs. continuing what you’re already doing (e.g. the personal finance, service, health items) but it seems like a lot of new habits and stuff to focus on in a mere 6 weeks.

I re-thought my list and I think Shae’s comment about trying to do too much in a short period of time is true in this case. So, I decided to cut back on the number of goals I will work on the rest of this year. Here is the new list of goals I have for the last 5 weeks of the year.

• Health – lose 15 pounds
• Family & Friends – Finally send thank you cards to everyone who attended my birthday party in April (I know – it’s horrible)
• Relationship with God – attend church every Sunday for the rest of the year

Update #1

Health

No Comment. (I had a few small victories, they just weren’t on the scale) 

Family & Friends

No progress yet

Relationship with God

I actually went to church this past Sunday!!! It was a great day to return, the church just had a Men’s Encounter. It was encouraging hearing the testimony of so many men who took a few days out of their life to have an encounter with God.

Overeating during one meal turns into a week of bad food choices, and I’m always telling myself I’ll start my diet again next week. I silently promise myself that I’m going to go back to church, every week, but I stay up uber late sunday morning. I want to track my spending and most of the time I’m unsuccessful, but sometimes I don’t record a few cash purchases. I convice myself that I’ll figure it out later. And the list goes on.

It’s so easy to get distracted and off course, especially when you don’t know what you want to accomplish. It’s even eaiser to tell yourself that there’s still time to get the desired result later, always later. However, I really want to end 2009 with a bang! There’s still enough time to achieve some of my short-term goals and make significant progress toward some of my long-term goals.

So, like Shae, I’m going to “focus [my] self-discipline on a single purpose.” (Quote from Dan Kennedy’s book “No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs“) I’m actually going to choose a few single purposes to work on:

• Real Estate  -  Close my first real estate deal!!!
• Social Media/Web 2.0 - Write at least 1 blog post per week
• Health – lose 15 pounds
• Family & Friends – Finally send thank you cards to everyone who attended my bday party in April (I know – it’s horrible)
• Relationship with God – attend church every sunday for the rest of the year
• Personal Finance – track all spending, create new personal financial statements
• Service – volunteer at Open Hand for at least 20 hours

I’m sure these goals will keep me busy for the next six weeks and will help me move toward my long term goals. Thank you Shae, for the inspiration to pursue my goals with a laser-like focus.  I hope you will take the opportunity to map out the things you want to achieve over the next six weeks too.

Don’t forget to tell me how it goes, okay!?

SIMS STOCK is the annual training seminar conducted by real estate investor and marketer Greg Clement and internet marketer Jeff Walker. The inaugural seminar was held at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, California from November 6 – 9, 2009. In attendence were 400 real estate investors and marketers from all over the country. There were even a few attendees who came to the event from Canada.

The training centered on the topics of internet marketing and real estate. More specifically, they talked about everything from commercial real estate to how to use the online real estate database Realeflow. The topics that centered around internet marketing were especially valuable as the SIMS program is about just that.

The areas of internet marketing that were covered included video marketing, squeeze pages, blogs and article marketing, among other topics. Greg Clement also covered the property launch formula, which is a real estate specific adaptation of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula. Both topics were covered during SIMS STOCK.

The guest speakers included Than Merrill, of A & E’s Flip This House, Jeff Watson, Josh Cantwell, Scott Scheel and Don Fowler. Another well known real estate investor, Preston Ely, showed up just for kicks and giggles. Josh Cantwell and Than Merrill were both awesome! Don Fowler offered a lot of great information about using virtual assistants in our businesses and Jeff Watson blew us away with his legal knowledge.

It was a great event. The staff of Realeflow did an outstanding job putting the event together. They gave away a free t-shirt and notebook, both with the SIMS STOCK logo on it, to all attendees. They provided free Starbucks coffee, Vitamin Water, and snacks all weekend long. (I think I gained a few pounds, sadly) There were giveaways and karaoke contests everyday. The hotel was awesome and San Diego is beautiful. There was plenty to do in the Gas Light District where the hotel was located.

The only downside of the events was there wasn’t enough content from Jeff Walker and Greg Clement. It was great hearing the other speakers, however it would have been nice to learn more about internet marketing from the two of them. However, when they did speak everyone listened because they were offering so much great information.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m happy to be home, but it was a great weekend. I’m ready to implement the things that I learned and I can’t wait to connect with all of the amazing people I met while I was there.

The seminar is 60′s/70′s themed so all the songs were from that time. I sang  These Boots Were Made For Walking by Nancy Sinatra. I stumbled a bit in the beginning of the song, but I finished. I even won a cool prize!

Disclaimer: Side effects of viewing this video include ear aches, nightmares, and having the song stuck in your head. If you experience any of these symptoms, suck it up! Just Kidding.

Stephanie Peay Singing Karaoke at SIM STOCK

* Started business ventures at the age of 12
* Made first million by 16
* Youngest Black CEO of a Publicly Traded Company
* Oversees over 250 Million in Assets
* Diverse client list ranges from Stock Market Day Traders to Hip Hop Icons

If you won’t be in the Atlanta area tomorrow or you can’t make it to New Birth, you can view everything on the site Streaming Faith. In either case it will begin at 7pm.

By the way… I’ll be attending, so if you do get the opportunity to go, and you see me, please say hello!!!

- Stephanie Peay

Sources:

http://ephren.typepad.com/about.html

http://www.youtube.com/user/ephrentaylor