1st Draft of my About Page

• Peter’s About Page
• Hi there, I’m Peter James and I help overwhelmed small business owners (home business owners, solopreneurs?) Struggling with stress from being overwhelmed, by getting them a clear blueprint of exactly what actions they need to take to finally get focused and move forward to their long awaited success.
• I too struggled with sticking to a schedule (if I even made one some days!) and making time for daily tasks. Jeez, I even had a to-do list that never really shrunk and I was busy all day!
• You've probably been in a similar situation and tried taking different courses on managing your time, purchased books to help you get more done in your day (and there are some great books out there) like Hal Elrod's book The Miracle Morning, joined a support group or even hired a personal coach,($$$) yet afterwards nothing much changed.
• You still feel scared about meeting current and future financial obligations, still get a feeling of not being enough and sometimes just want to cry (yup, although they won’t admit it, guys feel the same way) from the frustration and overwhelm of it all. If only you could stop the questions flooding through your brain or get things done!.
• I used to be unsure and insecure all the time and would struggle to understand why I could not be as knowledgeable and confident as others around me.
• I’d like to share a little story about how I got around to delegating more than I used to. I loved teaching the sophomores at Culinary college and was really impressed with their creativity. I did so well teaching, that after three years I was offered a position as Department Chairperson for Advanced Kitchens. Fantastic! I worked so hard with such enthusiasm as I really wanted to be the best department in the college.
• I really believed I was doing fabulously well in spite of my heavy footed instructors. I worked hard for the department and did whatever it took in terms of extra work to be successful. I was looking forward to yet another great year-end performance review, after all, I had worked really hard and even done most of the department work myself.
• Review time came around and I got the shock of my life.!
• Apparently, my department was one of the lowest rated in the college. The students and faculty were not happy with my leadership.
• I was floored, deflated, flabbergasted.
• The Director of Education, a wonderful lady by the name of Arlene Chorney, took me aside and spent some time talking to me and coaching me. It took me two weeks to climb back out of the dumps.
• Two weeks of misery for my family, two weeks of experiencing varying emotions from deep self-reflection, disbelief, self-blame, anger and finally responsibility. I even had thoughts of going somewhere like Australia just to get away from it all.
• Once I took responsibility for my performance I was somehow energized to take action and make sure this never happened again. On the advice of the Director of Education, I attended many leadership development training courses over that summer of 1986 starting with "How to Deal with Difficult People". It was during that course I discovered that I was probably the most difficult person I had to deal with!!!
• What a breakthrough!
• I started to network with other professionals who were into developing themselves and started to develop a whole new set of friends. I attended Tony Robbins seminars and participated in Dennis Waitley Coaching, listened to Bob Proctor and Zig Ziglar and many others. I felt like I was starting back in school again and I have never stopped taking courses, listening to CD's and reading books on being effective and happy.
• When I got back together with the department faculty at the beginning of the New School Year in September, I decided to take a vulnerable approach and apologized for the previous school year and shared with them what I had gone through.
• I asked them what they looked for in the department and how they wanted to participate in the responsibilities. Once they told me I stopped trying to do everything myself and instead put together a plan where most of the work and responsibilities were taken care of by the team. Turns out that they were happier with some added responsibility and input to the department.
• We then followed the plan with me as a flag waver and cheerleader for the department. We won an award that year for best team! So, running around, keeping busy and justifying my business as well as trying to do everything myself did not work for me at all, however, once I had put a plan together with shared tasks, and followed that plan, things started to fall into place. The culinary instructors loved it and my family loved the extra time I spent with them and I enjoyed being a more participative and happy family member.
• I’ve spent tens of thousands on self improvement and learning how to live each day filled with fun and achievement. There are numerous articles about focus and productivity out there for all to find, but I’ve done the heavy lifting for you.
• My personal mission statement since 1991 “I am the possibility of all people reaching their full potential, through listen, caring, and sharing, and believing the smallest input can make the biggest difference.
• I’ve been sharing these successful ideas for over 25 years in training rooms of large companies.
• Then Covid hit!
• I still wanted to help people reach their potential so I used the quarantine time to find a way to do this online.
• What I’ve created is a workshop or course of work that is like a GPS system.
• You know that if you want to visit a friend's house and you’ve never been there, then you put their address into the GPS system on your phone or in your car. Just like magic, the GPS will take you to where you want to go using the best route available.
• So to be able to do that the GPS needs three things: Where you are now, where you want to go, and what are the available routes to get there as well as any traffic info such as detours or accidents etc.
• My approach uses the same three things: Where you are now as a complete person, where you want to go specifically, and what are the best actions to suit YOU, to get you to your destination.
• The program is called Manage My Mojo.
• The meaning of Mojo being a quality that attracts people to you and makes you successful and full of energy and enthusiasm.
• He’s definitely lost his mojo.
• She needs to get her mojo working if she’s going to win the promotion.
• The three parts of the Manage My Mojo program are:
• Critical Position Plan, you will eagerly determine exactly where you are in all life areas, so that you have a clear and accurate starting point for your journey to success.
• Design Your Destination, after completing this step you will be energized to decide clearly where you want for success in all areas of your life.
• Daily Action Blueprint, where you find your get-up-and-go to follow your step by step plan to guide you to your chosen success.

I was a culinary educator and wanted my students to learn so much. I found that one of their biggest challenges to learning was their own confidence and self belief.

In the examples below, the success was not so much on the cooking as it was in understanding where people were at with their current level of skills and finding dynamic ways and non traditional techniques to help them master the knowledge.

I worked with developing ways to help the students, and was so successful I was promoted with two years of applying these techniques. I learned (the hard way) how to apply the same techniques to faculty when I was Department Chair.

I worked as executive chef in a large resort in St Maarten for two years while my immigration status was being processed. At this resort I changed the whole mentality of the Chefs and managers to one of confidence, self belief and being enough. Many of them cried when my status came through and we had wonderful yet emotional partings.

As Assistant Dean I applied the same techniques to the administration team at the Culinary College and we hit all of our Key Result Areas year after year.

I trained Carnival sous chefs and using the techniques totally transformed the performance of the chefs such that Carnival wanted me to train all of their managers in the same technique.

I still get challenges that give me some form of anxiety, but now I handle them so well that the anxiety does not last long.

The other benefit is that my state of happiness is way more constant than it used to be. I smile so much more, am comfortable greeting strangers, I interact with people positively and often make their day wherever I go.

The feeling of confidence in just being and having the ability to “let go” of nonsense and not let other people's drama affect me in the least is so refreshing and uplifting.

I am excited to be alive. On a scale of 1-10 I am regularly running at 300+ ( who said we had to stay on the scale?)

I love a good joke. I'm a Dad so don’t expect too much in the joke department LOL!

(horse walks into a bar, bartender says “why the long face?”)

I’m an avid reader

I’m old fashioned in many ways, always carry a hanky, hold doors open and such.

I love good tasty food, and I love cooking it too!

Learn more about this program by going to this link. To be added.

In the video I explain exactly what the program is about, how it runs, the challenges it could bring and how to apply it in your life.

No salesy techniques, no high pressure, just the facts.

At the end I’ll explain how you could work with me if you so choose.