Category: How to’s

Feeling Burnt Out? Try These Tips

I’m halfway through Praxis and no lie it’s been a difficult but rewarding journey. The curriculum is only difficult if I don’t adapt to it but so far I’ve been doing great.

However, I occasionally get tired and burnt out. I have to recognize my limits and that I can’t churn out work constantly like a machine. Here’s what I do.

Continue reading Feeling Burnt Out? Try These Tips

How to Create Inbound Leads in HubSpot

I created a short tutorial on how to capture inbound leads using HubSpot. I used Remine as an example for the pop-up form.

While I was learning to use HubSpot, I decided to document what I learned and help others by filming a step-by-step tutorial. HubSpot provided an inbound leads certification course, which was included in my account for free. I decided to break down the HubSpot inbound leads lesson and condense it into a short tutorial.

Professional Advice About Follow-ups and Public Speaking

Today I video chatted with Johnny Roccia, my career coach, about value proposition follow-ups and public speaking.

Here’s some notes I took during the call.

Value prop follow-ups

  • If you emailed a value prop but don’t hear back from a business then email a follow-up.
  • Add something of value in the follow-up email.
  • Ask unrelated professional questions such as common interests you have with the person you emailed, or share an interesting article. Stalk their LinkedIn and Facebook.
  • Limit yourself to just three follow-up emails. Anything more would make you seem annoying. Plus it shows proof that you really tried to reach out and maybe they’ll consider responding.

Public speaking

  • If you mess up the audience doesn’t know, like if you meant to say one thing but say something else.
  • Don’t overdo practice because it’ll become scripted and flow unnaturally.
  • Roll your shoulders back to straighten your posture.
  • If it’s a Ted Talk style then just write down bullet points on a card and let it flow like storytelling.

How to Answer “What are Your Weaknesses?”

“What are your weaknesses?” is a very common interview question and according to my professional career coach, Johnny Roccia, it’s actually a terrible question recruiters ask.

Johnny was a hiring manager for ten years and he’s conducted thousands of interviews. Here’s what he had to say about this particular question. 

“I hate that question. It’s a horrible, stupid question that nobody should ask. Only old school people that don’t know what they’re doing ask that question…because the answers are complete bullshit.” Continue reading How to Answer “What are Your Weaknesses?”

How I’m Redesigning a Website

For last week’s work project I redesigned a website for Walkthrough, a startup for real estate agents to find services like photographers.

Ideally, I wanted to learn how to properly build a website through HTML or CSS.

However, it’s unrealistic to learn a coding language in under a week so I used Wix to build a website.

Wix is user friendly and builds beautiful websites which is why I chose them.

I looked at another company website called VocaWorks for inspiration and took some design cues.

VocaWorks has a beautiful and colorful landing page versus Walkthrough which is very plain.

I’ll update my progress and post the finished website soon.

How I Survived My First Real Winter

This past weekend I experienced a real winter and saw snow for the first time!

For reference, I lived and grew up in Florida my entire life so snow is almost never seen. And if you’ve also lived in the South your entire life you’ll need to know how to properly dress for a real winter.

I spent the weekend in Washington, DC for LibertyCon, a libertarian and economics conference, and the weather was a high of around 37 to 41 degrees and a low of thirty.

Here’s what you need to survive the cold.

Continue reading How I Survived My First Real Winter

How I Network

LibertyCon just concluded and it was an action packed weekend.

Yesterday I mentioned the importance of networking and why it should be utilized as often as possible.

LibertyCon is one of the biggest economics and libertarian conferences with important sponsors. These sponsors have booths at the conference which means many chances for networking.

Making meaningful connections can lead to job opportunities or internships.

So how does one network?

Continue reading How I Network

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.