I actually chose the project two weeks ago (around the time of our five year anniversary) but this person was out of town so I wanted to wait to announce it.  Now that he’s back, I’m happy to report that I’ve chosen AJ Pape to work with on the first Successocity project.

AJ has been in my universe for some time now and it’s really exciting for me to get to work with him.  I always knew I wanted to but was never sure of the capacity.  I knew his work, his ideas and his brilliance and my “get things done” attitude needed a super special place to converge and it found it here.  So, here’s the best part…  AJ has agreed to allowing me to blog about our process while we work together.  The only thing I won’t be revealing is trade secrets and our BIG BIG ideas until they are ready for you…

The other thing we’ll be doing is posting surveys and ideas here so that we can get your feedback on different things. Your participation and involvement is not mandatory but rather something you get to be a part of if you wish.  If you know AJ at all, you know this process will be infused with brilliance and fun.

Let the blogging begin…

Day One

We had our first real call today (well, technically second but this was our first strategy call) and it was phenomenal!  We spent an hour and a half on the phone coming up with an idea for the first thing we’d begin with.  When I do work with my clients, I always recommend to them that we start in ONE place so that I can become familiar with them and their business and vice versa.

So, we discussed the first product that we’d release to the public.  During this conversation it was important to talk about the BIG ideas and the over-arching business direction but also bring it back to the minutia… The items that will get the product brought to the public.  This is something I do when I talk to every client because it really helps to focus them down on one thing and, as entrepreneurs, we often need that!

During this discussion, we came up with some really great domain names so we went ahead and secured those.  This was important too because once you own something, you almost have that built in accountability.  Otherwise… you end up sitting on it and potentially wasting that opportunity.

We talked about logistics and layout of different things, tools that we’d use, resources we had already present in our network and a wide variety of other things related to this one product.  When we felt good about where we were starting, we then wrapped up the call and I took the next step of getting everything into our system (we use Basecamp) and giving AJ some really cool templates to use / review as we move through the process.

Oh, and we scheduled our next call for Thursday.  I can’t wait!

Why I’m Blogging This

The reason I want to blog this process is because I want to show you what goes into these various projects and the creation and so that you can share your experience, expertise and ideas along the way too.  As we unveil more and more of the “actuals”, you can provide us with greater feedback and the process can move through in a united and participated way.

Learn More About AJ Pape

If you want to visit AJ on the web, you can check out his blog here or follow him on Twitter.