What have I been up to?

I've learned a lot in the past week or two. Here's a rundown of some lessons I've learned. Hopefully, they can help you as well.

I'll try to catch you up as fast as I can.

Networking:

I've written about this a few times because of just how important I'm now realizing it is. I have been posting less on LinkedIn because in-person networking is much more fun, and the experiences give me something to think about and write about, leading to even more engagement.

Here are two lessons for anyone who wants to start posting on LinkedIn.

Engaging comments gives you MUCH more traction than posting into the void.
Networking in person and using your LinkedIn as your contact card gives you much more engagement than posting when you have few followers.

Writing… A lot.

I'm up to 5 notebooks filled with notes, ideas, and plans. It's gotten to the point where I barely have anything to discuss with people because I've already "talked" about it. Then I remember I wrote about it and didn't actually speak to anyone. But writing helps solidify ideas into reality. If you're learning, I recommend writing things down.

I have ideas all the time now vs when I was grinding away at a stressful job, my mind only came up with ideas for work.

Unless our job is in some exciting field we love, it can be the same repetitive, boring loop over and over and over.

It will numb the idea-generation portion of your mind until you lose your imagination. Even though I still have no job, I wake up every morning super excited, working on ways to avoid finding myself in that 'safe' place of a bland, washed-out daily churn.

Actually being able to make things happen however, is an entirely different animal.

Lesson 2: Express your thoughts in written form, even if only to clear your mind and journal your journey.

Interviewing:

It's a strange feeling to give in to the fear of not being able to pay your bills and submit yourself willingly to the hamster wheel.

Yeah yeah, I get it; we need jobs, productive adults, an economy, responsibilities, and all that shit. But let me be negative for a bit.

A past colleague of mine reached out and said his company was hiring for a Manager position, and he thought I'd be a good fit. Being that he's a VP in the place, I figured there was a good chance I'd make it through the ridiculous interview process these places have these days.

Round 1: A monotone dude asking me questions like, 'So give me an example of the stack you utilize to quantify cross-functional organizational communication.'

In my head, I'm like, dude… what the fuck kind of question is that?? This is precisely why I'm not too fond of interviews these days.

My initial answer was, "I'm sorry. Are you asking me how I measure communication effectiveness between teams?

Him: "Yes"

Me: "At <my last job>, we never had anything to measure that, which is probably 50% of the problem. However, being who I am, I monitor my teams for lack of communication or collaboration, the fear of failure, asking questions, being seen as incompetent, lack of idea sharing, etc. Or simply just the feeling of empty, dead morale.

And these are red flags to me, which means the team's culture could be more conducive to iteration and growth. A team that feels safe amongst each other to share ideas and realizes their ideas are equally valuable gives the confidence to solve problems within the team and better support all teams that we support or depend on."

That was enough to get me to round two.

Round 2:

VP gives me a list of responsibilities I'd be accountable for, tells me what's expected, and asks me if this is what I want to do since I've worked with him before. (Network working at its finest). Easy peasy. So, I'm starting to think I've got this.

Round 3 (semi-finals)

Two super technical types asked me how I would prioritize work, what do I know about AWS and Kubernetes, how well I know Python… I'm like, 'wait, wait, wait… I thought this was a manager position. Do all of your managers know Python and AWS architecture?"

Them: "That's the person we're looking for."

I'm like, "Jeez, why aren't you guys going for the role?"

Them: "We don't want to be managers here."

Me: "aaaaaahhhh"

The only thing I focus on in interviews now is giving my vision and insight into things I've experienced and displaying confidence in my skills. I can tell if I'd love the job based on the interviewers. I'm sure I'd be the best manager on the planet. I know how to build strong teams, and know how to proxy between tech and leadership. What else is there right? 🤣

Needless to say, I needed to be more technical to surpass the end-level boss twins of round 3.

But the lesson here is on interviews: Being yourself is best if you want to find a position you love. Interview the company as they're interviewing you so you know if it's a good fit for long-term fulfillment. We all have to make sacrifices when we need income but hold out on just going for just any old job to pay the bills to avoid working at a place you might hate.

Anyway, back to filling out applications, yay.

The Hackathon

This was the highlight of the last couple of weeks.

I posted about it here

This ignited a long-lasting passion for me…

Coding. Working on something exciting with people who are passionate as well. No egos, no bureaucracy, just some people with computers trying to make something happen.

The atmosphere and the food from Yorkie's were incredible at the Assembly location in Norfolk. If you're in Norfolk for the next one, I highly recommend joining, even if you want to help support teams organize their ideas and presentations. It was a blast.

And here's my solution if you're waking up and it feels like the color is drained from your life's TV show, like a 1980s tube TV.

Find something to be passionate about. Anything.

Create a mental exercise where you develop ideas to solve problems you'd like to see solved at least once a month.

Create a folder on your phone.
Think of a problem that annoys you
Dream up an innovation to something that exists already or something new
Write out the idea
Think about how you would accomplish,
- Whom would you need?
- What would you need to know?
- How do you test if your idea would solve the problem?
Tag it as #ideas and save it to the folder. Eventually, you'll have an entire folder full of things to work on.

Do this once a month. You'll be surprised how using your imagination to solve problems, setting some simple goals with steps to achieve them, grabbing some like minds to talk about it over drinks or other party solutions, and then putting them into action will ignite the flame back into your life.

I'm not sure about you, but it's what makes me feel alive.

I've even started another project because of the hackathon. A missed connections app. You can sign up for updates and interest here: Hotmingo

Ajira

Last but not least... Why I'm doing all of this?

Well, first, the name Ajira comes from me merging my two kids' names together.

It was also the name of the airline everyone was on in Lost before they 'accidentally crashed' on that island.

Anyway, what does it do?

Initially, it was my dev studio, building apps and websites. While that's still an offering in the product suite, the focus is now my passion. Ideation, digital product development, and, most importantly, helping non-tech people create and refine their ideas into MVPs.

If you need an architectural package to deliver to a development team, we do that.
If you need 1:1 consulting and guidance to accomplish this themselves, we also can be that guide.
And lastly, if you need a dev team to take it from start to finish, we specialize in that.

The lesson:
Many people start by building what they think is a good idea. And while the MVP is a solution, there are better ways now.

The best way is to get your idea into the public eye as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Entrepreneurs and start-ups are problem solvers first. It's backward to build an MVP before seeing if you have market interest. You can test so many more ideas by doing it our way, and then we also have a unique system that should give you a functioning MVP in less than two weeks.

Don't build something before you actually know people will be interested in it!!!

We offer free initial consultations, a self-paced guidance program, and full 1:1 coaching.

The website will be updated to reflect the new structure and prices by the end of the week.

Let me know if you have an idea or know anyone who has one!

Well, that's about it for this episode.

If you've read all the way through to the end. Hearts. You're the reason why I do this.