Last year, I did a list of 22 things I did for the first time. 

Since I'm turning 23 next Thursday, on November 15th, here is this year's list of 23 things I've done for the first time! 
1. Made my own sushi at Johanna's place (w Redline managers) - April 27th, 2012
2. Won Division B International Speech Competition - First Place - April 26th, 2012
- got disqualified at the next level (District 21) for being 5 seconds overtime, BUT first time at District 21 as a COMPETITOR though!
3. Went to a Stand-Up Comedy Club (Yuk Yuk's) for the first time - April 27th, 2012
- which, cool enough, is owned by a finance professor I had. Went with Grace and Teresa
4. Went to Steveston Quay - April 27th, 2012, with Redline managers
5. Told a girl I loved her without knowing for sure if she loved me back - April 25th, 2012 
- AWW =P 
6. BMO 1/2 Marathon - beat Personal Best - 2:18:50 - May 6th, 2012
7. Jetskiied in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with Warut and Desi -  nov 21, 2011
8. Off road jeeping in mexico with Blake, David, Nicole, Peter, Liz, Mahsa - nov 22, 2011
9. Cooked lamb for the first time - nov 29th , 2011
10. Partied on a rooftop club - nov 24th, 2011
11. Made Panna Cotta with Teresa - Dec 3rd, 2011
12. Made a 3D wooden model of a piano/guitar with Teresa - Dec 3rd, 2011
13. Launched QTutor.ca - Dec 13, 2011
14. Tried absinthe - Dec 26th, 2011 - with Evan Birch 
15. Open Mic night - dec 19th, 2011 - with Keith and David 
16. Played squash for the first time - Dec 30th, 2011 w/ John Kerr 
17. Was Narrator for Mafia - January 1st, 2012 - w/ Andrew, Jenica, Beatrix, Kevin Yuen, Lucy&Helen, James and Dennis, David Ma
18. Played Bananagrams! - December 31st, 2011 - at Andrew's party 
19. Had a mudfight, swam rapids, jumped off a 10 foot cliff into water, and went white water rafting in Mukwah, Alberta - July 29th, 2012, with Calgary and Edmonton orgs
20. Hit Presidents Club in sales for the first time in my career - July 28th, 2012 - w/ 649 units. 
21. Became the world's youngest DTM (Distinguished Toastmaster) - Sept 23, 2012
- 5 years work finally accumulated to a milestone =D 
22. Did the Super Spartan 15km Race for the first time) - Sept 22, 2012
- included running through FIRE, army-crawling through MUD and under BARBED WIRE, and failing at throwing a javelin. 
23. Was featured in the Ubyssey - Oct 11th, 2012. 
- w00t w00t. publicity haha. 
BONUS EXTRA COOL STUFF 
24. Went to Whistler for the first time! - Nov. 2-4th, 2012
25. Launched GroundWorks - October 12th, 2012, with Jeff and James Pena.
- my dream personal development company, where I get to improve myself in speaking, coaching, sales, strategizing, consulting, and networking. WOW.  
- with Sage Narayan and James Tung as newly on-boarded!
26. Played Twister for the first time at WGTM Halloween Bash - October 26th, 2012. 
27. Graduated from University =D - November, 2012 
- no big deal haha

There are SO many more things I could have added in, but honestly, I've forgotten to over the year. 

Why procrastinate when you can LIVE life and be awesome? 
Action Step: Pick one thing you've always wanted to do. 
Do it before the end of the year! Post below with what you did! 

Written by Jay Kiew, GroundWorks strategist

Awards don’t happen overnight.

In September 2007, I joined the Walter Gage Toastmasters club at UBC, not knowing what I was getting myself into for life. I stumbled onto a small group of 10 people wanting to improve their presentation skills. I was a catastrophic jumble of nerves, my stomach dropping at the thought of standing up and speaking in front of these strangers.

The worst part came when they went around the room, asking everybody to stand up and introduce themselves to the group. I thought to myself, “Are you kidding me? I don’t want to speak! I just want to watch people speak and learn from that! It’s more comfortable.”

Luckily for me, I didn’t exactly have a choice.

As I stood up slowly, my heart jackhammered into my stomach… and my mouth suddenly became extremely dry, my lips reliving the cold brisk air of Alaska. With my knees quaking and my fingers nervously scratching the belt-loop on my jeans, I opened my mouth.

“Hi, my name is Jay.”

5 years later, I’ve completed over 40 speeches and 140 presentations, workshops and seminars. I’ve spoken to small groups of 10 to larger audiences of 500. Leadership has come not from being extremely awesome, but instead from a simple dedication to showing up every week, all 8 months of the school year, for 5 years. Several days ago, I received the Distinguished Toastmaster award. At the age of 22, I'm also the youngest in the world. 

Every single time I get up to speak, my body still freezes up, my heart still throws out a heavy tempo beat like an 808 keyboard. Practice does make perfect, and although I’ve had a lot of practice, I’m far from perfect. In fact, receiving this award has made me realize how much better I could be with more work and more practice.

To Toastmasters, thank you for acknowledging my work. To everybody wanting to get better at speaking, you’ll get better by doing it ALL THE TIME. Painfully. Don’t worry, it gets better. To all the speakers that are better than me, I’ll be in the stands, seeing you in action.

I’m REALLY young, and there is only one logical next step. The World Championship of Public Speaking in 2013 will be awarded on August 24th, 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio. They say 3rd times a charm, I’d like to make sure they’re right.

I have a long road ahead of me in terms of writing, speaking, story-telling, and learning humor. I also know that to be the best, I have to be brutally honest with myself about who I am, what I value, and what I’ve learnt.

Every time I don’t feel like writing or speaking, these words come to mind. It’s EXTREMELY humbling, knowing that I have so much to learn and I’m not anywhere close to where I want to be.

Every time I speak now, EVERYTHING is on the line, because EVERY TIME I speak, I need to get BETTER with each audience. Delivery, thought organization, flow, vocal variety, enthusiasm, and charisma all come together into one short time-frame where the minutes sync up.

I love what I do, and I love where I am, but the only way to improve is to throw myself into new situations, new audiences, and new groups where people are miles ahead of me. So that’s what I’m going to do.

To the friends that have helped me grow, thank you. To the people I’m about to meet, I can’t wait.

Awards don’t happen overnight. I guess it’s a good thing I have a lot of dedicated nights ahead of me.

Let's get ‘er done!

Wow. 

This year marks the end of my university chapter. 

5 Years that encompassed 
- Alpha Kappa Psi 
- Southwestern Redline 
- Walter Gage Toastmasters
- University degree from UBC

The past 5 years have been phenomenal and an absolute blur of AWESOMENESS. 

That being said, I want to announce that I will be working on a new album, titled "Get what you came for." 

A wise friend of mine, Alborz Massah, shared with me the following statement, 

"You get in life what you have the courage to ask for." 

I realized that the majority of people (including myself) don't always get what we want because we get to a certain level and we become satisfied with that level of performance. That's a scary thought, especially if getting what we want is just around the corner, needing just a little more persistence, dedication and commitment. 

I'm moving on, and I want to capture all the feelings I've had over the past half-decade with an album to put those thoughts together. 

I want to make sure that if you want something, you go for it. 
You don't let anybody tell you otherwise. 
You don't get to tell yourself that you can't get it, or that getting most of what you want is good enough. 

Second place isn't good enough if you know you are capable of first. 

This song was fun to do! It was also very different than what I've done, because hell, if I'm not growing, I'm dying. and I'm way too young to not be still growing. 

To everyone that's been part of my university experience, thank you. 
You've made it THAT much better <3 

Love, 

Jay Kiew

Click here to download: Jay Kiew - Get What You Came For (mp3 link) 

Today, I had a 2 year old girl named Jane hand me $100 in cash, money that she earned herself, for a set of educational kids books that she really wanted.

In my conversation with her mom, I found out that Jane, at the age of two years old, had already earned hundreds of dollars for herself doing hard work, all sitting in three cute kid sized piggy banks. She had made so much money that she couldn't fit it all into one!

How Jane made her money was not through the traditional ways of collecting money from birthday or Christmas presents. It was very different than any other toddler.

In fact, she worked for it.

Jane would walk along the edge of a golf course with her dad once a week and collect golf balls.

She would then go home and wash and scrub the golf balls until they were good as new.

When they were all clean, her dad and her would sort the golf balls by quality and quantity.

High quality golf balls were packaged into sets of 6 in egg cartons and cheaper quality golf balls were packaged into sets of 20's. How Jane made her money would be through selling it to whoever wanted golf balls!

Her parents emphasized to Jane that with anything she wanted, she could have, as long as it came out of her own piggy bank.

This basic lesson of working for what you want is invaluable, and to teach it to your kids at such a young age is phenomenal.

Not only did Jane get to pay cash for the books, but she also realized the lesson of trade-offs. She would have to sacrifice the money she had been saving for a new swing set to buy the books that I had. She thought about it for a while, then nodded to her mom, that yes, she wanted the books and would work harder to get her swing set.

Owning your decisions at an early age put my choices as an adult to shame!

To Jane, thank you for the simple lesson that you shared about working hard for what you want. You're gonna do great kid! 

As we head into mom's week, I'm reminded of the hard work and love 
that my mother puts into our family, like the late nights of caring for us 
when we're sick, or making our meals - both for dinner and for lunch the next day. 

Not to mention the super knowledge that my mom has in knowing where everything I misplaced is.
Then you've got the awareness of knowing when the deadlines for my dentist appointments are, 
the attention and loving ability to listen when we need it most, when we're at our lowest,
contrasted by the proud acknowledgement when we excitedly tell her about our personal bests. 

Then I think about all the patience my mom has in putting up with my random ventures or my quirky pet peeves, 
and the trust and faith she has when I tell her I'm going to do something new. 

For all the moms in my sales area, 
I want you to know that I appreciate the fact that being a mom is the hardest job in the world, 
because I've experienced first hand seeing my mom work her BUTT off EVERYDAY 
for me and my brother and never expecting a thing in return. 

I want to thank you for doing an amazing job, 
because even though you may not be acknowledged every day for it, we love and appreciate you. 

You are the reason we are the people we are, because it's either good genes or good parenting, and both ways, that's a role you've played! 

This week, I will treat every mom I meet as my very own, because I know my mom will be proud that I did.

To all the moms, thank you for doing what you do. 
To my mom, this week is for you. 


Love, 
from me and SWCalgary 

I've come to realize over time that while there are several things in life that scare me, I am probably most fearful of my own success.

Over time, provided with the right environment, I know that I can learn and educate myself in a new field, yet success is a combination of hard work and talent.

My success always starts with hard work, long hours, dedication to learn and and eagerness to improve.

With hard work, we naturally gain the skills and talent necessary to excel in a job or task.

Despite this, over time we lose the dedication to continually work hard and coast off our average levels of success; we settle.

I guess this is why most people, by definition, are average. It's tough consistently doing the things we don't want to do in order to achieve the things that we want to achieve.

I want success so badly, yet when the time comes for me to rise up to the occasion, I psych myself out, and end up with decent results where I rationalize that they are 'pretty good' or 'good enough.'

Of course, other people see you (or me) as successful, yet when I look at myself in the mirror, I know I am capable of doing so much better.

I'm sick of hearing about my potential.

I can, I will, and I'm going to follow through.

'Good enough' never really is.  

I knew she was calling at 7:00 am.

Naturally, when my alarm went off at 6:45am, like a bear just being woken up while in hibernation, I growled at the clock and switched it off. My first thought was "dear alarm, please die."

This was followed by my brilliant half-asleep brain rationalizing "I'm good, I have 15 min before she calls and don't even have to get up until then."

My second alarm went off, more obnoxious than the first. It was a loud car alarm-styled noise, with honks and loud clashes included.

"Stop extending the length of time and pain you have in getting up. GET UP! 30 push-ups!"

Rolling over and in a brief, but defiant struggle, I threw my blanket to the side.

My self-talk got me out of bed and onto the floor. I started doing push-ups, counting up one by one.

Around push-up #15, I felt extremely weak and started thinking I've gotten old.

Around push-up #26, I was focused on finishing with proper form,

I was up.

Hitting the usual bathroom routine, I even had time to cut my nails before 7:00am.

RING RING!

(Actually, my ringtone is Kid Cudi - Day N Nite)

"Good morning!!!" came the light-hearted voice on the other end.

Leticia and I were ready for the day, both cheerful and pumped.

Three days earlier, we were talking about how scared we were about the fact that the summer was coming. We decided together to keep each other accountable, calling the other person on alternating days at 7:00am sharp to do three things:
1. Verbally go through our sales talk once (20 minutes)
2. Get up earlier to study for finals
3. Get into the habit of waking up earlier and earlier as the summer approached, but starting with a decent time (vs. going at it 6:00am for the next month)

By being accountable to somebody else, I knew I didn't have a choice in getting up, I had to do it.

We all know that once we're up for a while, we are awake. This has helped me so much in getting up!

In addition, I also feel more prepared for the upcoming summer, even though in the midst of exams, I'm spending 20 minutes to read over my sales talk once.

When finals are over, I'm kicking it into even higher gear with memorization, but for now - remember: baby steps are still moving you forward. 

Jay Kiew –27 for '12

(mp3 download LINK)

[Verse 1 ]
Here we are, Summer 2012 is a go,
And there's nothing stopping us from working it out as we hoped,
Because every day, like Tommy, We’re hittin’ em numbers gunnin’
And may I say, ladies and gentlemen, you look stunning
Mister McDermott asserted that we’d earn it if we served it
well on a platter, we deserve it,
if we hungry enough to never dessert (desert) it,
Courage with purpose, dedicated and work it – UGH, ugh ugh
We see Arash is scribbling GROWTH up on the car dash,
I always saw that bookman be running far
How could we get blue lights, when Ronnie is the Law
and yeah we do it right, so now we want it all (DIR)
Mostofi's, mostly, swaggin' it with families
Marta’s droppin' bags before she goes for groceries
So please before you give up on anything,
I hope you remember this melody.  

[Verse 2]
I hop out my car, I gotta lotta books,
Mommas love me and it's not just cause of my good looks
El say "you want some?" They're sayin’ "Ask me!"
Desi explores and learns, how to catch me!
And we “much in “D-mand”, channel 23,
And we the top ten, consisten-cy
Julien, JuJu's in, Sarah’s back to win,
like Emily, all they do is Lin, Lin, Lin
Lin, Lin, no matter what
TLee like a library, she books it til  it's dark
Joke, just for fun, I’ma rhyme Boonyaleephun,
We got Joy like Kong, we crazy caught it
Anna CANADA Hoang, patriotic, fought to be on it,
And when it's closing time, they say I'm SemiSonic
You know we finish strong, man, we already done it, we
Simply fall back on this melody

[Verse 3]
We watched our whole life change, in a couple of years
Who woulda ever thought we woulda caught the world by the ears
It’s like, people only see it, the way it appears
But they never see the ropes and the pulleys and the gears, (ha)
Since results don't Ly, we know that Jenny's fly,
Action Jackson sayin'  Chao-ZI, how's my s’mile?, ‘hi’gh’,  (mile high)
Pena prancin’ a lot, made Addy dance,  BAP, Pecarsky’s like, ‘man, hot’
Munoz is musing over how that ever ‘Tran’-sitioned, Liz is in, (vreeh) tran’s-mission,
With JQ times 2, KKu's like Kay cool,
man, we ready to do it up,
I live and die for my team, these guys are more than my homies
We put it all on the line, we gave up all our belongings for this
Cause at the end of the day, it ain't just for us
Call it Making a way, yeah, hit the chorus