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June 1, 2018

What I Learned from Steve Ballmer’s Keynote on Leadership

A few weeks ago Index Exchange, where I’m working at as a solutions engineer, held an annual executive summit in Santa Monica. Steve Ballmer was the guest speaker invited who gave a keynote on the principles of leadership.

For those who don’t know, Steve Ballmer was the CEO of Microsoft from 2000 – 2014 and is the owner of the Los Angeles Clipper. As an NBA fan, I would love to get a chance to meet one of the most passionate NBA owners and learn from his experience. I didn’t get to attend but luckily for me, I was able to learn from the recordings and share my takeaways with you!

Ideas Matter

The worst leader of all is the charismatic leader who takes you in the wrong direction

The most important quality of a leader is having the right vision and ideas. What’s the proposition around which you are trying to lead people? Your team won’t buy in if they don’t believe in the direction you are leading them. There are many great ideas, but you need to choose the idea that your organization has the capability to execute on.

Get the Team Right

Talented people are talented people but they got to love where you want to go and collaborate in the right way

Start with ideas first. The team that you will want to put together will be dependent on your ideas. When picking the team, pick great people who believe in your vision and who can work well together.

Passion, Optimism, Persistence

Optimism is a force multiplier

If you don’t have passion, optimism, and persistence, then it’s hard to be in the game for the long term. In the road to accomplish great things, there will always be obstacles along the way. You will need passion to be focused on your goal, optimism to enjoy the journey, and persistence to get through the hard times.

Own the Results

The first step to owning the results is to know what the goal is. Measure your results against the goal. Understand how and why mistakes are made and learn how to prevent it from happening again. Start with yourself, but also hold your team accountable as well. Everyone makes mistakes but enforcing accountability is a must.

Magic of Time

Deciding timeframe for what success looks like and how long you give for ideas to develop is an important part of leadership

Everything has to be in a context of a timeframe that you think is relevant to what your team is working on.

Summary

This is one of the best keynotes I’ve watched. Steve Ballmer is an amazing speaker and all his points are concise and effective. He uses a story to demonstrate each of his key messages, which is something I’m learning to do more of. Unfortunately, the keynote recording is only shared internally, but this video I came across has very similar key messages. I’ll recommend it if you want to learn more about his leadership principles as well as how he communicates on stage.

I’ll love to hear what your thoughts are. 🙂

May 21, 2018May 21, 2018

Book Review: Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Zero to One is based on a startup course Peter Thiel gave at the Stanford University in 2012. Peter is a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and an investor in startups, which includes Facebook and SpaceX.

With a commerce undergraduate degree, I have taken a few courses in economics and entrepreneurship. I’ll say a lot of the info relayed isn’t different from what can be learned in these type of courses. Rather than sharing some of the overlapping concepts, I’ll share the key insights that I took away from this book.

Image source: http://yourstory.com/2014/12/peter-thiel-startups-tips/

Competition is not good, differentiate yourself

Zero to One. It’s the idea of creating something new of value rather than improving on an existing product or service.

A market can be categorized by the characteristics of its competition. On the one extreme, there is perfect competition. This is when there are numerous buyers and sellers and all firms sell an identical product or service in a market where there is a low barrier to entry. In this case, no firm can influence the market price of a product or service. And in the long run, all companies only earn enough profit to stay in the business. If companies are enjoying a profit, other companies will enter the market and drive down the profit.

On the other extreme, there is monopoly. Monopoly happens when only one firm sells a product or service to numerous buyers. This is often due to competitive advantages, such as proprietary technologies, network effects, economies of scale, and/or branding, that the company has that prevents other companies from entering the market.

All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

We grow up in an environment that focuses on competition. Whether that’s in school through the forms of report cards or sports activities or in the workforce competing for more responsibilities or promotions, we are constantly competing with each other.

When it comes to businesses, Peter Thiel stresses the importance of escaping competition through differentiation. Be mindful that any differentiation that your business has must be relevant and significantly better in both perceived and actual value than the next best option in your market to lead a real monopolistic advantage.

Every startup is small at the start. Every monopoly dominates a large share of the market. Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market.

Aim to dominate a niche market first and once you do, gradually move into other related or broader markets. Starting in a niche market allow you to test out your value proposition as well as not overleveraging your resources.

Invest your time wisely

When you choose a career, focus on something you’re good at doing. But before that make sure that the skills you are developing will be valuable in the future.

Even though startups is the theme of this book, Peter Thiel also cautioned about starting businesses. There are numerous ways to have a successful career and joining a great company while it’s growing is often times a better alternative.

If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well, even in purely financial terms.

This is my favorite takeaway from this book. Time is our most valuable asset, so make sure you are spending it with people who you can develop a long-term relationship with. It won’t just make you happier and more productive at work, but also enrich your lives off of work. The more bonds you create the stronger your network is.

Importance of setting a good foundation when starting a business

The founding moment of your business only happens once, so use it to build up a great foundation. First of all, make sure that that you have a history with your partners. Having great synergy is very important. Bad partnerships alone can often kill a business no matter how valuable the product or service is.

Hire people who enjoy working together and share the same vision the company has. If people aren’t aligned, there will eventually be discontent and productivity will suffer as a result.

Summary

The core theme of this book is on creating businesses that go from Zero to One. This book is very well received, however, it’s not a book I’ll recommend to my friends from commerce. It’s more valuable if you have less exposure to economics and startups concepts. If you have a different take on this book, please share it with me as well. 🙂

I’m currently reading The Outsiders by William N. Thorndike, Jr.

May 7, 2018May 7, 2018

Book Review: Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

It’s been three weeks since I last published a post. I’ve been reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris since then. It’s a 600+ pages book which took me longer to finish than the previous books I’ve read. From now on, I want to put more focus on applying what I’ve learned.

If you let your learning lead to knowledge, you become a fool. If you let your learning lead to action, you become wealthy – Jim Rohn

Knowledge itself is valuable but if you don’t apply it, you can’t improve your life for the better. I’ll go over how I applied my learnings from this book and how it has had a positive impact on me.

Setting Goals

Is that a dream or a goal? A dream is something you fantasize about that will probably never happen. A goal is something you set a plan for, work toward, and achieve – Paul Levesque (Triple H)

Most of us have heard the importance of setting goals. This is the first year which I have set resolutions for the year. It has driven me to put more focus on personal development than I had ever before. However, resolutions are things I want to accomplish for the year and don’t necessarily indicate my goals in life. I had the mindset that if I keep improving myself every day, be patient, and do the right things for me and the people around me, I’ll eventually end up where I want to be. I think this is a good mindset to have and has contributed to why I’m a positive and happy person. This previous mindset of mine will see me make improvements in life, but the improvements I made won’t necessarily lead me to become the person I want to be.

Inspired by the above quote from Paul Levesque, I have a different mindset now. If I don’t put in the work on a consistent basis for a goal of mine, then I won’t be achieving that goal. So first, I detailed the type of person I want to become:

A person who is in a position to help many people
A person who is an expert in his field of interest
A great communicator
A great leader
Spanish speaker
A person who is fit and has an active and healthy lifestyle
The founder of a successful business
A great son
A great brother
A good friend

Once I have this mindset and these goals in mind, I asked myself this question: “what am I currently doing to achieve these goals?”. This is in itself very motivating for me since for example, I wasn’t dedicating any time to become a great communicator and the thought of myself not becoming one led me to action. I did some research immediately and came across an Udemy course by TJ Walker. Since then, I have dedicated at least one hour every other day to improve my communication. I have recorded myself presenting for practice and have gotten feedback from TJ Walker which I have applied to my subsequent practices. I’m still a long way away from being a great communicator but I see the work I’m putting in and the progress I’m making.

Once you have clear goals in mind, putting in the work becomes easier as you will know the reasons behind your sacrifices.

Here are the 3 tips I use to develop habits to achieve my goals:

Put in the work you can sustain on a consistent basis.
Start out small, if you think you can dedicate two hours per day, start with one hour or even 30 minutes. It’s more important to build up the habit first before you increase your commitment.
Dedicate a block of time just to focus on what you are trying to accomplish.
One block of time without any distractions. No TV. No phones. No youtube. Put on a timer if you have to which I do. I currently dedicate 1 hour or 2-hour blocks for things I want to accomplish for the day.
Be patient.
Don’t get frustrated if you don’t see immediate results. Setbacks are expected and the frustration of not improving is the reason why so many people gave up on their goals. See the big picture, put in the work consistently and you will see the results eventually.

Meditate

I dedicate time every day to improve myself, but procrastination, either going on youtube or catching up on NBA rumors, is taking up too much of my time. I often find myself led by my thoughts or desires. One youtube video usually turns into three or five videos. And by the end of the day, I can’t recall spending much time on what I planned to accomplish for the day.

At least 80% of the people interviewed by Tim Ferris at his podcast have some mindfulness practice.

My reward for meditating is getting 30% to 50% more done in a day with 50% less stress. Why? Because I have done a warmup in recovering from distraction: my morning sit. – Tim Ferriss

Recovering from distraction. This is exactly what I needed. I value the occasional breaks, but I want to be able to recover from distraction so it’s controlled procrastination instead.

You are starting your day by practicing focus when it doesn’t matter so that you can focus better later when it does matter – Tim Ferriss

I started to use the Headspace app every morning for meditation. You don’t need an app to meditate, it just makes the process easier for me as I was never exposed to it. I have since meditated for 23 days in a row and counting and I can already see the following benefits:

I’m more mindful and aware of my thought process.
By being mindful of my thought process and the distractions resulting from it, I am able to recover from distractions more quickly. Being distracted is often fun and relaxing and there are still times I let random thoughts lead me to procrastinate. However, distractions are taking up less and less time of my day and I’m able to recover from it much more frequently.
I have a better idea how my body is feeling.
Part of the exercise is to scan your body. The idea is to separate your mind from your body and not let one dictate the other. By clearing my mind and paying attention to my body, I’m more attuned to how my body is feeling. Often times I don’t realize my body is aching in certain areas until my meditation session. I’m more aware of how bad posture is negatively impacting me throughout the day. You might not notice it throughout the day, but if you pay close attention and examine your body, you will realize the damage bad posture is inflicting on you.
I learned how to be more effective when I work.
It is important to prime your state. Putting yourself in a positive mindset can affect the quality of the work you put out. A coworker and friend of mine asked me last week to meditate for 10 minutes near the end of the day. We have done it for the last two working days and it has helped me recharge and regain my focus for the remainder of each day.

Journaling

If you win the morning you win the day. The idea is similar to priming your state where how you start off the day can impact your actions and mindset for the rest of your day.

This is the 5 morning rituals that Tim Ferris uses:

Make your bed
Meditate or mindfulness practice (10 – 20 mins)
Do 5 to 10 reps of something
Prepare tea
Morning pages or 5-Minute Journal (5MJ)

I have added #2, #3, #5 to my morning ritual. For each morning, I’ll do the 5-Minute Journal, meditate for 10 minutes, do 25 pushups (increase week by week), and make my bed.

The 5MJ asks you to fill in the following in the morning:

I’m grateful for… 1. ____ 2. ____ 3. ____
What would make today great? 1. ____ 2. ____ 3. ____
Daily affirmations. I am… 1. ____ 2. ____

and these questions at night:

Amazing this that happened today… 1. ____ 2. ____ 3. ____
How could I have made today better? 1. ____ 2. ____

It literally only takes me 5 minutes to do the journal. It is an easy habit to build up and can improve your outlook of the day. I have the habit of praying and saying thanks to what I’m grateful for when I’m in bed every night. I enjoy doing it and it helps me be more appreciative. And doing the 5MJ further expands on it as I’m giving thanks at the end as well as the start of the day now.

Whereas “I’m grateful for…” and “Amazing things that happened today…” impacts my mindset, “What would make today great?” and “How could I have made today better?” impacts my actions throughout the day. It’s amazing how simply stating out “what would make today great” will make you conscious throughout the day on what you want to achieve and prioritize. This has helped me become more productive and often times one of the things I’ll write down is “Dedicate X hours to do _____”.

“How could I have made today better?” on the other hand helps me reflect on the day. I’ll see which of the to-do that I set out for the day is not accomplished and what is the reason behind it. Sometimes I’ll write down things such as “Spend more time with a friend or family” if I feel like I’m too focused on improving myself and not spending enough time for the people I care about.

Workout

When in doubt, train your grip and your core. Strengthening your midsection and your grip will automatically increase your strength in any lift. With the abs, the effect is partly due to greater abdominal pressure and partly to improved stability. With the grip, you are taking advantage of the neurological phenomenon of irradiation – tension ‘radiates’ from the gripping muscles into other muscles – Pavel Tsatsouline

I consider myself as having a healthy lifestyle but I’m not a fitness person. I workout twice a week on the weekend and play basketball once a week but that’s the extent of it. I skimmed over most of the health/fitness section of the book, but the one thing that I took away is to train your grip.

Pavel is a former physical training instructor for Spetsnaz, the Soviet special forces, and is currently a subject matter expert to the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Navy SEALs. I took the advice mainly based on his track record and minimal research online. I don’t understand the full benefit of it but that’s enough information for me to give it a try. I have since gotten myself a set of IronMind’s Captains of Crush Grippers and have built up to doing 3 x 10 reps every day. I find it easier for me to do pull-ups and lifting weights now. I’m aware of how it coincides with me doing pushups every morning. However, I do believe it is helpful and will recommend you to give it a try if training your grip strength isn’t part of your workout routine.

Summary

I’ll say this is by far the most impactful book I’ve read so far. I’ll strongly recommend it to anyone. The book is about the summary of the learnings Tim Ferris has by interviewing the “Titans” of the world. It is broken down into 3 sections: Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise. It is unique in a way where people will likely get very different takeaways. Tim Ferris started out by outlining a guide on how to use this book, which basically says to skip the parts which aren’t applicable to you. I’ll most likely revisit this book sometime in the future. If you have a different takeaway, I’ll love to hear about it as well!

The book I’m currently reading is Zero to One by Peter Thiel.

April 15, 2018April 16, 2018

Book Review: Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham

Jay Abraham is the Founder and CEO of Abraham Group, Inc, a marketing consulting firm that provides strategies to businesses. He has helped many businesses including IBM, Microsoft, and Citibank and is a well-respected voice in the marketing field. Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got details the strategies one can use to grow its business and provides advice on how to reach your personal goal.

Fall in love with your customers

A common theme that reoccurs is to value your customers. There are numerous marketing resources that talk about the value of being customer-oriented. However, Jay Abraham takes it to another level.

One of the biggest mistakes, probably the biggest mistake, people make in any business is they fall in love with the wrong thing. They fall in love with their product, service or company. You should believe passionately in your product, service, or company. But you should fall in love with your clients. By client, I mean several groups. Not only the people and businesses who pay you for your goods or services. But also your employees, bosses, team members, and vendors. … Fall in love with your clients means taking responsibility for their well being.

Being customer-oriented is not enough. You have to fall in love with your customers and treat them as your valued friend. Having this change in mindset is crucial and will change the way you market and interact with your customers.

A successful business starts with the desire to provide a solution to another’s problem. Put your clients’ need ahead of your own. And rather than asking “What do I have to say to get people to buy?”, ask “What do I have to give?”. See your product as a way to improve your customers’ lives. Once you treat your customers as your valued friend, you will think about ways to improve their lives, which as a result will give you ideas on how to increase your business’ value to your customers.

Growth Strategies

Identify the businesses that are selling to your target market that aren’t competing with you. These businesses tend to be selling something that will complement your product or service. Contact these companies and discuss ways where you can leverage each others’ customer base.

Breakthroughs are unconventionally fresh, superior, more exciting ways of doing something.

Keep an eye on the possible breakthroughs that can be applied to your business. Breakthrough ideas can often be taken from other industries so keep continual access to successful, creative breakthrough developments and achievements. This can come from online resources such as Inc. and Forbes or from networking and brainstorming sessions with success-driven people outside your industry.

USP: The factor or consideration presented by a seller as the reason that one product or service is different from and better than that of the competition.

Determine and communicate your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) through all your marketing channels. Consider the obstacles, which can be financial, emotional, or measurability, that might prevent your prospects from dealing with your business. Some obstacles to consider are listed below:

Financial: what is the potential financial loss if the transaction doesn’t work out?
Emotional: how bad would the customer feel or look if his/her purchase fails to perform?
Measurability: can the impact your product or service has on the customer’s life, business, or career be measured and evaluated?

The examples above are only meant to get you thinking. The point is to have a holistic view of the different aspects that can prevent a prospect from dealing with your business. Once you have identified these obstacles you can make risk reversal become an important part of your USP (ex. providing guarantees).

You don’t have the right to determine what the market wants, but you have the duty to find out.

There are always ways you can improve your marketing strategy, so make sure you are constantly A/B testing every marketing component, including price.

Jay Abraham said that the single most important strategy you can use to maximize the value of all your strategies is to communicate on a regular basis with everyone who contributes or ever will contribute, in any way to your business success. This goes hand in hand with his belief that you should treat your customers as your valued friend. You should keep in touch and look after your friends and you should do the same for your customers as well. Don’t be bashful, ask for referrals and provide your customers info on how to locate the referrals for you. Customers from referrals usually end up being your best and most loyal customers.

Besides focusing on your active customers also look into your inactive customers and identify the reasons they stop doing business with you. Often times inactive customers just forgot about your business and can be brought back when reached out.

Summary

Jay Abraham talked about goal setting and how a clear destination and precise road map for getting where you want to be is needed to maximize your potential income or success. However, as mentioned, this book is not a personal development book and the emphasis is on the growth strategies one can adopt to improve one’s business. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a business. It can provide you value no matter how successful your business is and will be a book I’ll revisit when I start my own company.

I’m currently reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss and I look forward to sharing with you the insights I learned from this book as well. For more frequent updates on my learnings, you can follow me on Twitter.

April 1, 2018April 1, 2018

Book Review: The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau

The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau is a compilation of insights from studying and interviewing people who have built successful microbusinesses. Chris is an author and a traveler who has visited every country in the world. He identified 1,500 people who have built businesses with modest investments, on average less than $600, that have made at least $50,000 per year to identify the common factors of their business success. These business cases show that people with no special skills can build up successful businesses when they merge their passion with a skill that other people value.

Basics of starting a business

Convergence is the overlapping space between what you care about and what other people are willing to spend money on

Having a viable business idea is about finding that convergence. Chris broke down the basics of starting a business into these 3 points:

You need a product or service
People who are willing to pay for it
A way to get paid

When I think about the basics of starting a business, I think about needing to write a business plan, registering a business, having to understand the rules and regulations of the industry, hiring necessary help, and managing the financials just to name a few. These 3 points that Chris boiled down to forces you to think about the minimum that you need to start your business.

Don’t create invisible barriers for yourself and don’t get bogged down in writing the perfect business plan. Focus on what is required to get your first sale and start doing.

Here is Chris’ one-page business plan that shows what you need to plan out to start your business.

Focus on your customers

Offer is a combination of product or service plus the messaging that makes a case to potential buyers

Having a product or service that people are willing to pay for is simply the first step. You’ll also need to have an offer that will garner the attention of your potential customers. Survey and understand what your customers need and your marketing should emphasize the benefits customers receive rather than the features your product or service have.

Think clearly about the people you plan to serve not only in terms of demographics like age, location, gender, race, income but on interests, passions, skills, beliefs, and values as well. You must learn to think about values the way your customers do and not necessarily the way you would like them to.

Ideas and Opportunities

The hard way to start a business is to fumble along, uncertain whether your big idea will resonate with customers. The easy way is to find out what people want and then find a way to give it to them

Focus on what people want. A product or service that removes pain points is often more powerful than one that fulfills a desire.

An industry with lots of lovers and haters present a good business opportunity. Another sign of good business opportunity is when lots of people are interested in something but have a hard time implementing it in their daily lives.

Get feedback on any ideas you have from your potential target market early on and make sure there is enough demand for your product or service before you invest all your time into it.

Marketing

Hustling is how to get the word out about a project

Developing a product or service is the easy part. The hard part is informing your target market your business value. Leverage any resource you have and ask everyone you know to help spread the word.

Give strategically. You can target influential people who are in need of your product or service and offer it to them for free. It may or may not generate good word of mouth for you but you’ll have helped improve someone’s life. Always think about what your customers need. An additional service like free delivery or an extra coupon can make your customers feel valued and make your business stand out among your competitors.

Having a good product or service is just half the battle, so make sure you are always connecting and looking for ways to attract more customers.

Summary

This book contains numerous small business cases which you can draw ideas from. It shows you how different people are able to transform part of their skills to bring value to their customers.

The emphasis of this book is on starting microbusinesses, so if you are planning to start a resource intensive/high investment business this book might not be for you. However, if you have a passion you will like to monetize, I’ll definitely recommend this book to you.

March 19, 2018April 1, 2018

Book Review: Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

This is the first of many book reviews that I’ll do. For each of the 20 books I aim to read this year, I plan to write a corresponding book review to document my learnings as well as how it relates to me.

The first book I decided to read is Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. For those who don’t know, Gary is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of VaynerMedia. He is well known for his work in social media and digital marketing.

Love your family. Work super hard. Live your passion.

Gary started out by stating the 3 rules he lives by: “Love your family. Work super hard. Live your passion.”. Although the majority of the book highlights hustling and living your passion, Gary stresses love your family as the top priority. This is something I resonate with strongly as happiness starts with loving and appreciating those dear to you.

What’s your passion? If you are currently living your passion, you would do whatever it is you are doing for free. I graduated with a commerce degree so passion is a word I heard tossed around often. However, I didn’t grasp what it means and even to this day can’t say for sure what my passion is. Back in my university days, we had to choose a specialization from finance, accounting, and management. I went with marketing, a concentration of management because I see it as a field that is less rigid and more creative in terms of problem-solving. With marketing being my clear choice among all the available specializations, I thought and somehow along the way convinced myself that marketing is my passion.

I started taking marketing courses and doing marketing internships. It was great to get experience in the field, but I never looked for ways to get better at marketing in my spare time. It was when I started working on my mobile app that I clearly realized marketing is not my passion. I spent a majority of my time working on my app and would skip hangouts with friends just so I can find more time to improve my programming skills and the app itself.

I’m still figuring out what my passion is, but I know I love to problem solve, learn, and build up and lead teams. In my view, having an industry-centric passion like technology or marketing, for example, is not critical, it’s having interests that you enjoy and want to dedicate the time and effort to get better at. And that I do have.

Develop your personal brand

Gary talks about how developing your personal brand is key to monetizing your passion online. You have to deliver great content, which should revolve around what you are most passionate about. One thing that Gary mentions that most people don’t realize is that your business and your personal brand need to be one and the same. Your messaging across different medium needs to be consistent and authentic.

Even though Gary does not consider himself good at writing, he will not delegate writing blog contents to someone else. This is to allow his messages to be unfiltered and authentic. So if you are not good at writing, find the medium that works for you. Another alternative that Gary mentions is to partner up with someone who complements you. So for this book, he teamed up with someone who knows how to write, but he dictates everything.

As Gary discusses, it’s crucial to develop your personal brand even if you aren’t planning to monetize it. Developing your personal brand is the same thing as living and breathing your resume. And through your content, you’re making sure that people can get to know you personally and professionally. This is my biggest takeaway and the reason I started blogging.

Creating community

Creating community is where the bulk of your hustle is going to go and where the bulk of your success will be determined. It’s about starting and joining conversations about your topic. You need to be deeply entrenched in communities surrounding your topic and better yet be a leading voice in those communities. Remember to always provide a way for people who are interested to get connected with you, which can be a way to contact you or a link back to your blog. Creating community should also be a never-ending task so make sure it’s on a topic you are passionate about.

Summary

I summarized the learnings that are most relevant to me so you might have different takeaways from reading it. It’s concise and provides clear examples and steps on how to monetize your passion that I didn’t detail here. I’ll definitely recommend this book to anyone especially if you have a passion you want to pursue. As Gary sums it up, “Know yourself. Choose the right medium, choose the right topic, create awesome content, and you can make a lot of money being happy.“.

March 3, 2018March 5, 2018

My 2018 New Year’s Resolution

Yes… I know… you are probably thinking that nobody makes their New Year’s resolutions nearly 3 months into the year. In my defense, most of my resolutions were decided a while ago but it was just recently that I committed to blogging. For 2017, my spare time off of work was spent mostly on developing my flashcard mobile application. And for 2018, I have a few goals that I want to focus on to have an even more productive year.

Resolution #1: Be conversational in Spanish

My father has always stressed the importance of learning a 3rd language which has always stuck with me. Being able to travel to Spanish speaking countries and to communicate fluently is something I want to accomplish. I have taken a few Spanish courses in university along with reading books and watching Netflix shows in Spanish. This has greatly improved my reading and writing. However, speaking and listening are areas I struggle with, especially when the conversations aren’t slowed down for me. To be conversational in Spanish, I want to push myself to communicate in Spanish 3 days a week.

Resolution #2: Complete and promote my flashcards mobile app project, My Vocab

Whether it’s going to Spanish classes, reading Spanish books, or watching animes in Spanish, it’s common for me to come across words that I don’t understand. Whenever this happens, I jot down the words on my notebook so I can review it later. However as time goes on, this process becomes more and more infeasible. I read Spanish books during my commute to work and watch Netflix shows in Spanish during dinner, so having a notebook wherever I go is not practical. And secondly, as I jot down more vocab, organizing and reviewing the vocab gets more and more difficult. With my interest in programming, I decided to develop a flashcards mobile app, My Vocab, that allows me to record, translate, and review words I want to learn. With the main features developed, I want to promote it to see how far I can take it and get as much feedback as possible.

Resolution #3: Read 20 books

I have always enjoyed reading and have been reading on and off throughout the years. With a stronger emphasis on improving my Spanish, I have spent the past year reading Spanish books during my commute to work. However, that’s where it stopped and I had never thought about dedicating more time to read. That is, until the following conversation I had with my girlfriend, Grace:

The conversation was simple, but it got me thinking. I can be more productive, I can read more, and I can do more. I searched up books I want to read immediately and established my book list within a few hours. The following day, I went on Indigo and purchased all the books on my book list that are available. I have dedicated time slots to read since then and have decided to read at least one chapter every day. I can already feel the impact it has on my thought process and is definitely one of the best decisions I have made this year so far. All it takes is one push or one inspiration and I’m thankful to Grace for that.

Resolution #4: Develop my personal brand

The first English book I decided to read this year is Crush it! by Gary Vaynerchuk. Throughout the book, Gary stresses the importance of developing your own personal brand. A personal brand to me is the way people remember you. Developing my personal brand can help me connect and build trust with a bigger audience and also for my case, document my growth and learnings over time which I find invaluable. To start it off, I’ll write a summary of every book I read and share the learnings that I take away from it.

Resolution #5: Start a new project

With My Vocab mobile app project coming to a close, I want to challenge myself to start a new project that can potentially be a business. I haven’t decided on the idea yet, but I’ll share it with you here once it’s decided.

So here are my 2018 resolutions as well as my first blog post. I’m excited about what this year brings and I’m looking forward to reaching my resolutions! Thank you for spending the time to read what I have to share. Feel free to leave me a comment on your 2018 resolutions as well and we can keep tabs on how each other is progressing throughout the year!