Dan’s Blog

MBET is quickly coming to an end, and after 9 years in KW, I will be moving back to the bright lights of the big city of Toronto. I have decided to rent out my condo, so anyone interested looking for a place to live, check out the description below:

Spacious 2-bedroom condo for rent in Kitchener!! Ideal for two MBET students with a vehicle! Overlooking Chicopee Ski Hills, this unit features a wood-burning fireplace, open-concept kitchen, large living room, 2 bedroooms and two full bathrooms – a 4-piece main bathroom and a 4-piece master ensuite. The unit has plenty of closet and storage space, as well as central air conditioning, 3 appliances, and walk-out balcony. Laundry is located on each floor of the building. Unit also includes one parking space. There is ample visitor parking, and additional permanent parking is available. The location is close to parks, skiing, Fairview Mall and shopping, and has easy access to Highway 8 and the 401. It is a 15 minute drive to the University of Waterloo or WLU. Available after August 15th. Rent is $970 / month plus hydro.

If interested, please contact me (email is preferred):
Dan Donovan
dan@dandonovan.ca
519-894-2523

Just an update… blog.dandonovan.ca is moving. I’ve re-designed my site, and will now be blogging at www.dandonovan.ca directly. The theme of my new site will be “Forward Motion”, where by sharing my own entrepreneurial and athletic stories, I will hopefully inspire others to chase their dreams. Hope to see you on the new site!!

I will also be maintaining The MBET Experience, as well as Dan’s Triathlon Blog, so feel free to check out those as well!!

Due to my site being quite popular with comment spammers, I’ve got a new policy on comments. Everything has to be reviewed before its posted. Its a bit of a headache, but in the interest of keeping the site clean, I’m going to go that route for a while.

Also, if anyone knows any good spam blockers, please let me know.

Thanks!

This is exciting. Try this link:

Google Search – Dan Donovan

Last summer, Google didn’t even know I existed, other than a few race times way down in the search results. Less than seven months after starting my blogs, a Google search now puts me at the top of the list. Fascinating.

I find this interesting because it comes back to the idea of a “Personal Brand.” I’m still refining my vision and brand, but slowly things are taking shape. It’s encouraging to see the visits to my website slowly going up, and fun to be on top of Google.

PS – I am still a long way from being a true Google “superstar”. Eric Sink shows up on Page 1 of Google with a simple search for “eric”, as he discusses in this post.

I’ll have to make showing up on Google’s first page with a search for “dan” my next goal!! 🙂

This is cool… less than five months after putting up my website and starting my blogs, a search for “dan donovan” on Google lists www.dandonovan.ca as the second item. Now I only have to knock off Dan Donovan, St. Louis Photographer for the #1 spot!!

I’m actually a little surprised, as it doesn’t appear that traffic is increasing significantly to my site. It has slowly grown, though I think I need to come up with some new strategies. Any suggestions for new material that I could post are more than welcome!!

One of the people in my class sent us a link to this movie posted on Google Video, The Secret. “The Secret” is basically that we attract into our life the things we think about. If we think of debt, we attract debt. If we think of being wealthy and successful, we attract into our life wealth and success. I don’t normally believe in this sort of thing, but when I start to think about some of the things that have happened to me in the last few months, I got a little freaked out.

First, back in May, I started saw a poster for the MBET program, and started doing some research on it. Not a month later, and totally out of the blue, my company became involved in a project with two students from the MBET program. I had the opportunity to work with the students, and met with the director of the program. Within two weeks after the first meeting, my application was in, the interview was over, and I had an acceptance letter in my hand.

More recently, I have started thinking about what I want to do next year when I am finished with MBET. I am torn between two options: getting a job with a consulting firm, or finding a researcher who is developing new technology who I can potentially partner with to build a business. In the past week alone, I have met a number of people who could help me in either of these endeavours:

1) The professor we are working with on our practicum project, who is doing some very exciting research at UW (potentially a great contact).

2) Over the weekend at the Impact conference, I had a great conversation with a woman who had worked in consulting for large companies for 16 years, and is now a VP with a large Canadian company.

3) There is also a business development organization that I think would be good for me to get in touch with. In the past three days, I have randomly been connected to two people from this organization. First, at the Impact conference, the President of the organization was a speaker at one of the sessions. Coincidence number one – I did not know this person would be at the conference. Coincidence number two happened last night. I was having what I thought was an innocent chat with a friend, during which he received a phone call from a former MBET student who was now working at the very organization I wanted to connect with. I have also met the person who called, but didn’t know he was working this particular organization. I now have an email address and a contact who I can follow up with.

So while this whole idea of “The Secret” and the Law of Attraction may sound a little crazy, I can easily come up with a few seemingly random events that may not be so random. Who knows… maybe I’ll have to start thinking about having a million dollars.

Regardless of how much “The Secret” works, it can’t hurt to think positively. I’d love to hear thoughts on this one, so feel free to leave comments!

Well, the marathon is over! Four days later, and I’m almost walking normally again. I’m in the process of writing up my report, but wanted to get my split times off my watch, and figured I’d throw them up in a post. I was shooting for 3:10, and thought I was there at the halfway point. Take a look and you can see that I was on pace up until 39km, then just couldn’t dig deep enough for that finishing kick. More to come!

My blogging has certainly increased my online profile. A search for Dan Donovan on Google now lists www.dandonovan.ca as result number 11. Maybe in a few months I can move up to the first page!! 🙂 I think it’s based partially on incoming links, so if you like what you read, feel free to link here!

Wow… back to school tomorrow!! It’s going to be my first day of the MBET program. I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. It’s sure going to be different than going to work!!University campus, classes, assignments, homework!! What have I got myself into?

This time around, I expect school to be different. I am very interested in the program I am taking, and being a little older and wiser, I will certainly appreciate the opportunity to learn new ideas and to be challenged with new projects!

To many young people, going away to university at the age of 18 or 19 is about living on your own, trying new things, being “young and stupid” – what’s this about attending class and getting an education? I know firsthand that a lot of that experience takes place outside of class. As an older student now, I have been there and done that, and am actually looking forward to classes, homework and assignments!! Wow, I am starting to sound my age, aren’t I?

It should be a great year, so be sure to check out my MBET blog to see how it’s going!

I’ve been working more on updating this site. I’m going to give blogging a fair shake this time. Last night, I migrated all my articles from www.sweatsmart.com over to the new Triathlon Journal (http://triathlonjournal.dandonovan.ca) area of this site.

For tonight’s tasks, I’m going to get started messing with the WordPress themes to personalize my site a little. I’m not looking to do anything fancy, but I’ve got to put in a little effort here to make the site my own!! You’ll see the results, and I’ll let you know how much trouble I have with it.

One last thought – I think I’m going to love using this BlogDesk tool. I discovered it while poking around in the WordPress documentation, and installed a couple nights ago. Installation was smooth, and connecting to my blogs was painless. I’ve written a couple posts using it so far, and it’s great being able to post articles from the desktop. Just open the handy editor, type away, and hit the Publish button!! Makes blogging a snap! I think this may be the key to me posting more regularly!

PS – I inserted a screenshot of BlogDesk in action, just so I could figure out how to insert images using the BlogDesk editor!!

PPS – Wow!! That was smooth!! Lets you edit the size, position relative to text, etc. Very cool! Did I mention I like this tool?

PPPS – Ok… it took me three tries and some reading of the help files, but I blame myself for not reading closely enough. I discovered some new image features along the way (adding shadows, cropping, etc). BlogDesk rocks!!