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First Snow!

I just landed in Washington DC for Libertycon and I saw snow for the first time!

This experience probably doesn’t seem significant but I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life!

There aren’t enough words to describe how excited and elated I’m feeling! Snow is so incredible and beautiful!

My excitement right now is comparable to a kid let loose in a candy store. The sort of excitement that brings out pure unfiltered joy at the sight of simple things like snow.

I’m literally jumping for joy.

The only things I wasn’t expecting was the wind blowing snow into my eyes but it was still a pleasant experience.

This wondrous encounter with snow reminded me to celebrate life and be grateful for the gifts God has given us. I haven’t felt such pure joy in years.

Redesigning a Website

For this week’s project, I’ll be redesigning a website for Walkthrough.

Why am I doing this for free?

I’m doing this to get my foot in the door and gain work-related skills. The projects I’ve created demonstrates my ability to learn quickly and get things done.

The website for Walkthrough has a good set-up. It has a clean, easy to navigate website, and a simple design, all of which are necessary for a good website. But like anything, there is always room for improvement.

Continue reading Redesigning a Website

3 Quick Interview Tips to Remember

Praxis has taught me a plethora of useful career advice. Every week all the Praxis students attend a live session and occasionally they bring in a guest speaker who specializes in a particular topic, in this case, interviewing skills.

Last week’s guest was Johnny Roccia and he is the go-to guy for learning interview skills. Johnny has done thousands of interviews when he worked in HR so he was a perfect fit to teach Praxians.

Here are a few tips he gave:

  1. After the interview I follow-up with an email thanking the person for taking time out of their day. This is best done before you leave the interview location because it shows initiative. According to Johnny, 99% of people don’t bother with a follow-up email but it’s one of the easiest ways to get noticed and increase your chances of getting hired.
  2. If you receive a rejection email stating you didn’t get the job, ask what you can improve.
  3. During the interview if you’re asked something like, “Name a time…” Or “Tell me about yourself” be able to recall a specific example from past work experience and tell it like a short story.

Good luck if you’re job seeking and remember these tips. If all else fails just smile and be honest, your interviewer is also human and they want to get to know you. Think of interviews like speed dating.

Meet Me at LibertyCon

Hey everyone! I’ll be at LibertyCon this Thursday through Sunday. If you’re also going, let’s meet up and chat about economics and liberty.

I’ve been to LibertyCon two years ago but it was called International Students for Liberty Conference (ISFLC). Both LibertyCon and ISFLC are basically the same conference just rebranded.

LibertyCon is organized by Students for Liberty (SFL), a non-profit campus activism organization centered around libertarian ideas. They host this event every year in Washington, D.C. and it’s one of the most fun conferences I’ve attended.

SFL brings in well-known speakers to LibertyCon and this year is no exception. A few of the speakers are Yeonmi Park, Bryan Caplan, Patrik Schumacher, and many others.

I’m excited to see Patrik Schumacher speak again since he’s a friend of mine and is the starchitect of Zaha Hadid Architects.

Let’s meet up if you’re in the area! Hope to see you there!

Value Propositions I’ve Done so​ Far

This week I went back and revised the value props that I created last month.

Aircall
This was the first value prop I made and it was for Aircall in the marketing role. I targeted Aircall’s Instagram because it could use some improvement. Their posts haven’t generated as many likes or interest and they don’t say much about what Aircall does.

I decided to focus on just their Instagram and help them build their brand image by creating 31 Instagram posts.

Glockstore
I created a customer service training manual for Glockstore. I decided to target the customer service role because I noticed the negative customer service reviews on their Facebook page.

There was plenty of room for improvement so I did some research on how to deal with unsatisfied customers. I came across Disney and got inspired by them to create a basic guideline on how to resolve problems and maintain customer retention.

Additionally, I wrote sample responses for Glockstore to use.

Aegle Nutrition
Similar to my first value prop, Aircall, I decided to create a marketing campaign for Aegle Nutrition’s Instagram.

Aegle Nutrition had an almost nonexistent Instagram and they didn’t have as many followers as they could’ve. So I came up with a solution of creating 31 Instagram posts.

Very few people are aware of their company and what they do so I focused on building brand awareness.

FYI all the graphics I made for all my value props were done in Photoshop.

Pusheen Box
Pusheen Box was my favorite value prop and I targeted them because I love Pusheen the Cat and the merchandise they make.

Few people know about Pusheen Box, a subscription box service, compared to more popular brands like ipsy or Stitch Fix.

I drew inspiration from a subscription box that I got as a kid called, PONY.

I Made the Cutest Value Proposition in Praxis

Value propositions are usually serious but I decided to have fun with my recent one. I felt bold enough to create a value prop for Pusheen Box, which is out of the Praxis network.

Typically these projects are done for a business partner within the network.

You can take a look at the updated presentation here and I created a Loom video to go along with it.

Why did I choose Pusheen Box? I adore Pusheen and I think she is the cutest cat of all time (move over Hello Kitty)! My love for Pusheen has grown ever since I discovered that she’s not just Facebook stickers. She has an entire instagram and subscription box dedicated to her!

FYI this is one of the rare moments you get to see me wear glasses!

I’m Officially a Marketer!

Praxis has officially created my talent profile for their business partners (BP) to browse through. This is exciting news for me because BPs have the opportunity to request an interview and possibly hire me!

You can check out my talent profile here.

The talent profile is similar to a resume except it’s more engaging and gives employers a good idea of who I am and what I do. Think of it as a living, breathing resume.

Praxis decided on marketing for my main role and they’ve determined this based on the value propositions I churned out.

When I was still in college, I was pursuing a business degree in management and marketing. This role came about naturally to me and I didn’t quite realize I would be a fit.

I guess spending time on social media did pay off!

How to Answer “What are you best at?”

Here’s another question that stumps many job-seekers. What are you best at? Most people underestimate themselves and think they’re not the good at anything, others have trouble figuring out what to say to an interviewer.

Trust yourself, you are the best at something and it doesn’t have to be work related. Let’s say you’re the best at reading books. Talk about how you’ve read forty books in a year and took notes.

You can even say you’re best at singing or doing makeup.

You don’t have to be the best in the world but rather best within your group of friends. If an interviewer asks “Are you the best in the nation at X?” Don’t say “yes” because that’s a straight up lie and you’ll come off as arrogant. There’s always someone better and more experienced than you, but out of all your friends and family you are best at X.

How do you figure out what you’re best at? As with any common interview question, you must prepare an answer ahead of time.

The two “I’s”

  • Identify a skill
  • Illustrate a story

Tell the interviewer what you can do and what you’ve already done.

For example, I’m the best at having infinite patience because I work at a swim school teaching young children.

So I’ve identified a skill, patience.

Now let’s illustrate my story.

One of our students, I’ll call him Sam, was very reluctant to get in the pool by himself. Sam had been with us for three weeks and he wasn’t making any progress.

At this point, I’ve already tried everything. I bribed him with stickers, toys, swim rings, none of which worked. But then I had an idea. Why not play a game? So I made a ring toss game with the toys we had and showed Sam how much fun I had. After a few games, Sam started smiling again and decided to hop into the pool.

Practice your story

Every skill needs to be sharpened and I’d suggest doing the following exercise:

  • Record yourself telling your story.
  • Transcribe it faithfully word-for-word. This includes “umms”
  • Edit it as if it were a paper.
  • Rerecord the polished version.
  • Repeat if necessary.

What I’m Listening to Right Now

I tend to gravitate towards heavy metal and currently I’ve been listening to Sabaton. I’ll also listen to prog rock bands like Dream Theater or Rush. These are a few of my favorite songs that I listen to while I work.

I love Sabaton’s style they sing mostly about war and I’ve actually learned a bit of history from listening to them. Powerful songs to jumpstart your day but at times they show the human side of war and the tragedy of it. The stories they sing get heart-wrenching at times.

Dream Theater is one of my all time favorite bands. They’re progressive metal similar to Rush and they blow me away with the epics they compose. Dream Theater tends to be more of an acquired, niche taste because active listening is required from the audience in order to truly understand their masterpieces.

What do I mean by active listening? If you have a basic understanding of the technical side of music then you would appreciate Dream Theater more than the average rock fan. They take their musical process seriously, similar to the great classical composers. Think of Dream Theater as the classical music of the metal world.

Many of their songs have these strange time signatures like 13/8. Some of their songs also have time signatures that change over 100 times! Compare that to most songs we hear which typically use 4/4 or common time.

These unusual time signatures are very tricky to pin down even for experienced musicians.

These time signature changes might be overwhelming and off-putting for someone new to Dream Theater, but once you listen deeper you’ll appreciate the dynamism it creates. I find the strange and frequent time changes refreshing and unique.

Tom Sawyer by Rush was one of the first songs I heard from this band. They’re also prog rock and they’ve inspired the style of other bands like Dream Theater.