Join us as we share our journey to unlocking our personal brands. In this episode, we shed light on our identity development and the pivotal moments that helped us embrace our unique brands, forever altering our professional landscape.
Embark on this adventure with us as we navigate the road to self-awareness and personal branding in professional settings. We explore how we found comfort and confidence in our identities and used it as a compass to navigate and showcase our brands. Listen in to learn about the spectrum of opportunities to engage with including using social media, attending virtual events and workshops, and networking in order to promote your brand!
Our journey doesn't stop there. We take a deep dive into the realms of fear and action. In this episode, you'll gain practical tips to create your brand and take actionable steps to get started on this journey. Action, we discovered, is the magic key to progress, irrespective of the results. Embrace your brand, step out of your comfort zone, and make every moment count. Here, let's build, overcome, and conquer!
CareeRise: www.careerrise.org
CareerConfidence: www.mjcareerconfidence.com
Follow Us on IG!
Follow Us on LinkedIn:
Join us as we share our journey to unlocking our personal brands. In this episode, we shed light on our identity development and the pivotal moments that helped us embrace our unique brands, forever altering our professional landscape.
Embark on this adventure with us as we navigate the road to self-awareness and personal branding in professional settings. We explore how we found comfort and confidence in our identities and used it as a compass to navigate and showcase our brands. Listen in to learn about the spectrum of opportunities to engage with including using social media, attending virtual events and workshops, and networking in order to promote your brand!
Our journey doesn't stop there. We take a deep dive into the realms of fear and action. In this episode, you'll gain practical tips to create your brand and take actionable steps to get started on this journey. Action, we discovered, is the magic key to progress, irrespective of the results. Embrace your brand, step out of your comfort zone, and make every moment count. Here, let's build, overcome, and conquer!
CareeRise: www.careerrise.org
CareerConfidence: www.mjcareerconfidence.com
Follow Us on IG!
Follow Us on LinkedIn:
Hello everyone.
Speaker 2:I love how peaceful you start.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, my hands crossed and everything. I love that. Welcome back to Coffee and Career Hour. This is Armina, founder of Career Rights.
Speaker 2:This is MJ, founder of Career Confidence Wow.
Speaker 1:The reason we started off with this intro this time is because we want to talk about personal branding today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was really tough. I know I told you I wasn't ready to introduce myself like that Because I don't feel like the founder, but it's true you play multiple roles. But yeah, we're talking about branding. It's important to recognize our brands. As we are talking about branding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it takes a minute for it to kick in that you founded a brand or your own website or any of that, but the reality is that you did and we're here so we want to share with you all what it's like building a brand, some tips we have from our own experiences and hopefully to motivate you all to have your own brands, not necessarily in terms of everyone having to have a site, business or anything like that, but more so in your lives and even at your regular jobs, how you can express your brand and build your brand.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I think, a brand. Many times people go big. They think like Starbucks, Nike, Adidas, Target, right, you go big and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't manage that. But when you kind of funnel it down and you think about you like your brand is not your reputation right, but it's the image that others have of you and that's what a brand is and that's what Arminay and I have created and we are excited to kind of share and walk through with you how you can do that for yourself and the important pieces to building a brand, but also continuing it and how it's changing and how it's modified and all of the things that kind of go into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, mj, tell us, tell our listeners, how did you first kind of realize what your brand was or what you wanted to put out there into the world?
Speaker 2:Geez. Well, I will give you a sneak peek. Arminay had a lot to do with it. She had a lot to do with, I think, the second half of my story, but let me tell you a little bit about the first half, and you've all heard me share my story, depending on how far back you've gone in our podcast episodes and hopefully you've been following along.
Speaker 2:When I was an undergrad student, I was told by an academic advisor that I was being an overachiever and that kind of sucked, and ever since that moment I was like I want to be someone to help other students figure out what they want to do with their lives. And that phrase help other people figure out what they want to do with their lives is career development, is career counseling. I just didn't know that. It didn't mind of a 17 year old.
Speaker 2:So going through graduate school, going through undergrad that was my whole mentality was helping other people figure out what they want to do with their lives and eventually took a career counseling class and realized and interned at a career center and realized that that's what it was. A couple months, a year and a half later, started working as a career specialist at a different institution and then transitioned into an assistant director at UCLA where assistant director means career counselor where I met Armin A and I began to feel comfortable with who I am and realized how important my identities played for how my style was as a counselor and how I impacted students but also my colleagues at work. And it was Armin A who really showed me that being yourself and putting yourself out there isn't such a scary thing and that it was not something that was unattainable, but it was something practical and something you can't do. So you can also thank her for the start of career confidence.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, I did not even know that I had that impact on you. I know that we have a lot of these conversations at work behind the scenes, behind closed doors, but I didn't know that that was the impact I had on you. But I'm so happy to see that I mean you've taken it and like, taken it to another level. There's a saying in Armin, something along the lines of like the student will like outdo the teacher. So, like girl, you are on another level. I'm humbled to know that I had that impact on you, but I think that you also naturally I know for sure you have naturally, the skills and the qualities to do this work and do it well. Here we are today with career confidence Building yeah, tell us about career rise though.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, career rise Okay. So let me see.
Speaker 2:I love this story by the way, guys, that's why I'm asking her, because I love this story the start of the start of my story.
Speaker 1:I've talked a little bit about, like how I decided I wanted to go into counseling in previous episodes, and so when I was an undergrad, I loved my major in psychology but I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. But I always gravitated towards wanting to like engage in identity development and was always doing the self-assessment online wherever I could find them and just having those kind of conversations with my friends. So identity development is natural to me and when the time came to figure out what I wanted to do after I Graduated, I did my own career counseling on myself, without realizing what I was doing, because of course, I didn't go to the career center, me being first gen and not knowing what to ask and Just being intimidated by going into a center. So I didn't go. But I apparently was doing my own career counseling because I remember walking on campus at C-Sun and Thinking to myself like I really enjoy being at a college campus. So maybe I should consider working in some kind of Profession where I could work within the college system, and I loved psychology.
Speaker 1:So I started doing informational interviews again, had no idea what it like, that that was a term and that that's what it was doing. But I just started talking to faculty and peers, naturally, and found out about my grad program and from then on I went into learning counseling and in In grad school is when I realized how there was. There was academic counseling side, but also the career counseling side and I loved both, but I was always naturally gravitating towards career counseling. So I wanted to intern at the career center. I made that known and all of this was natural. I wasn't strategically planning to Work in a career center or anything like that, but because I genuinely loved the the the topics within career development.
Speaker 2:I would.
Speaker 1:I would talk about that with my faculty and with my cohort. Everybody knew I'm and it wants to, you know intern at the career center. Eventually I got to intern at a career center. Later on I worked as an academic advisor and even in my academic advising role I brought all these career counseling topics into that role and I had an amazing supervisor at one of the jobs that I've had and she allowed me to to really Bring that voice into that, into that center. Even though there's a lot of similarities between academic advising and career accounting but there are differences and I was the voice that would kind of bring it together and my supervisor allowed me to do that. So I found this space where I was allowed to kind of bring, bring those aspects of my identity to work. And that's when it really flourished and it just kind of naturally became part of my brand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you you shared something important about like having a space where you Got to feel who you were and who you are it will.
Speaker 2:I will backtrack, though. Like when I was in grad school, I think people noticed Like the fire and the energy and it's something that like, if you, if we have a conversation, I'm gonna tell you it's an MJ thing and I say that constantly because they've never and this is not me being an airhead but I've never met somebody who's like me in that sense of like Armin a has the more common term for which is workaholic Somebody like I'm somebody who can't not be productive, like even if it's self-care, like it needs to be productive, I can't just do nothing. So I think my faculty and like the people who were around me saw that and were like this girl, like Can do things and change things, and they saw the passion and the fire. So it's that helped me be who I am, but also teach me to be comfortable with who I was, and that it was okay to be like the little light brown girl who was navigating it to but also wanted to make a difference in the world.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I think it's so important to be in spaces where people recognize those things in you that you don't even recognize. Yeah, same as what happened with you was with me. I didn't even realize that I was branding myself until actually one of my faculty Used me as an example when she was teaching class to say like oh, armin a is like Really good at personal branding. And I was like, what am I like?
Speaker 2:I even know.
Speaker 1:But it's because it was so natural, and I think the same for you as naturally. Or you like to work hard and you like to produce, and so you do that without, without any Secret agenda, right? Yeah absolutely, and then people, and it's that part of it I would say is kind of a little bit of a. If you have good luck, hopefully you will find yourself in a space where somebody will recognize that and allow you to actually enhance that further in that space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ultimately, you know what we're trying to get at is you have to learn to be comfortable with who you are. And this interns right that that strong sense of self, knowing who you are, that self-awareness of not not the name, title and what your goal is right, but it's who are you Like, what are your values, knowing who you stand for and what you stand for and your identity and all of these different. You know intersectionality of these different identities of who you are, but also you know being grounded in that too, and that really does come through in your brand with when you're producing and when you're showcasing what that looks like. Right, like, very obviously, I always talk about being Latina. I always talk about being first-gen because it makes me, it's just who I am. And I always say tell my students and my clients, the people, the professionals that I work with, I was first-gen in Latina before I was educated. That's why I introduced myself that way and that's important to me and that's my brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you do that really well and that's allowed you to connect with professionals and students and more people than it had. You kept that to yourself or kept that like a separate part of your identity. I think what this reminds me of a question we get from students sometimes, too, when we talk about, like you have to be authentic in interviews and you have to be authentic at work, and sometimes students kind of wonder what that actually looks like. But I think you're a prime example of that because I appreciate that, yeah, being authentic has allowed you to be a better professional.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I freaking love that. You said that and I lit up because I go around talking about this term authentic professionalism all the time and I tell students you, yes, be clean cut, be ready to answer their questions, know your skills and all this stuff. But guess what? There's also that person and you don't want that. You want the person to shine as well as your skills and accomplishments and education, and they're ultimately they're hiring the person, right?
Speaker 2:People are looking to connect with people, not with skills. You have to think about that and you have to be you at the end of the day. And, yes, in spaces of networking and interviewing and job searching and all of these different things, yes, you want to have a professional mindset, but you also want to bring the you, because the you is going to be the unforgettable, the unforgettable right. That's the piece that's going to be unforgettable. And I think I appreciate what you said, armin, and because I agree that I've been able to do that, but it wasn't until I had to figure out, like, like, what my space was and where my space was, and I was able to be authentically professional myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. So, essentially, finding yourself in spaces where you can express these aspects of your identity, express your brand. So let's say you know you know yourself. Let's say you go through that process, you find the things that you're passionate about, you find the things that are authentic to you and your personality. Then how do you express that? So one one way, one tip we have is find a place for yourself in the world, a platform where you can share that, whether that's at your current job, which ended up happening for the two of us right in our regular nine to five jobs, that's. We were lucky enough to be able to bring our, our brands into those spaces, but that could, if that's not a possibility for you, finding other platforms where you can bring that identity and that brand to.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and I think for sure, within your workspace, right, depending on what that is as well as finding, you know, a community, and communities happen, naturally, whether that be internally, in your inner environments and your personal lives, or externally, and this could be with individuals, you know, but also in an online forum, right, and there are platforms like linked in, and Instagram and threads and X, formerly known as Twitter all of these different spaces in which you can create and build a community. Right to showcase your brand and to impact others, ultimately to get your name out there. Right, create a platform for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean honestly. And social media has evolved so much, as you all know. I'm sure that when you're following these spaces, these platforms, you're also exposed to events, workshops, things like that that are happening and, with you know, post pandemic, with people being more comfortable with like, zoom and other online platforms, a lot of workshops and events are happening virtually now. Then they were pre pandemic days, so I can't tell you how many times I found relevant workshops for for topics that I'm interested in just by following a page on Instagram. Heck yeah, and they'll put a post and they'll say link in bio. You go to the link and there's like a list of events that are happening and I'm like, oh my gosh, how did I not know about this platform before?
Speaker 1:So the reality is like putting yourself in those spaces to even just with simply following pages on on social media and then taking the step to attend. I think that is following and like liking a post is one thing, but taking a step to attend those workshops and events and sometimes they'll be even posted on Eventbrite. You could actually take the initiative to look on Eventbrite and see what's coming up, but whatever it is, it's taking that step to say, okay, I'm actually interested in this topic. There's a community around this topic, so I got to make myself visible in that community. So attending those spaces and speaking, starting to speak up over time in those events and workshops is going to help you with building your brand, because now people start to see you regularly in those spaces and posting about it or going to physically these events is also going to be really valuable over time. Right, this doesn't happen overnight, obviously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to also say, like, if you don't already follow career rise and career confidence, you post, like I would say, tips and resources and all of these different things that we share, and then, exactly what I'm saying, you need to engage and you need to attend and take that extra step. One step is following and getting informed. The next step is engagement and attending these events and also looking at what tips are there, but also implementing them. I know it's really easy to be a how do I say this? Because I'm this.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I'm like, yeah, I listened to self care podcasts and I listened to, like other things that do for self development and I'm like it's so cute to listen to it, but I'm like to actually take the steps to put in the work and do that is something that's huge and I can tell you I'm somebody who is a good listener, I'm a good, I'm a good counselor. I'm not a good client, and I've said that before and here in this way, this is what Armin is talking about is you want to be a good, you want to be an active follower as well and engage with these things, because they're people put them out there to support, right. It's all for the benefit of others and to impact others as well, like that's why we do what we do every day, and it's to help and to serve. So definitely look on Instagram, follow us, if you don't already.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and honestly. Another step to take that to the next step is create your own platform.
Speaker 1:Heck, yeah, yeah on LinkedIn or on Instagram or whatever platform or social media you want to use, but there are so many opportunities for people to create their own platform and have their voice be heard these days, so why not take advantage of that right Not just be a consumer of these social media platforms, but be a creator on there? That's something that you know, it might not be for everybody, it might not even interest everybody, but if it is something that maybe you've thought about and it's, you haven't taken the step to do it, but it has been something that has interested you. We'll be talking about how we manage our own platforms, along with the full-time job, in our next episode, so stay tuned for that, but it truly. There is a lot of opportunity for you to be able to express your brand by having your own platform.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I was also going to say you were talking about creating your own platform, sorry, creating your own. That's where my mind is. I wasn't somebody, so when I created Career Confidence, I failed before with a fitness platform.
Speaker 2:That's so off-topic, that's right, you did have a fitness one. I did, and it grew and it was during COVID and I think that was my way of seeking out community and it had nothing to do with career, but that wasn't my niche, that was more of like a hobby thing. But when I started, career Confidence and this is why Armin is such a big part is because I am the one who's like oh, my God, I want to be like this person.
Speaker 2:And that's so cool, like they can post videos and share content, and I have so much knowledge to share. But it took me to one recognize that. It took me one to say like, hey, dude, you have a lot of knowledge to share and a lot of things to say, and you can't do this. And it doesn't have to look perfect. That's the other thing, too, is I put so much pressure on what it looks like and all the silly little things that nobody thinks about except for you. And that's why, when I met Armin and I saw what she was doing, I was like, holy crap, I can do this and this is something that's possible and attainable. And I can get it wrong the first time. Not that she got it wrong the first time, but it's a growing process.
Speaker 1:No, I did. I changed my website count number of times since I've launched it. I launched it in 2019, right before the pandemic. I started my Instagram and then the website around that same time. It's evolved so much since then. So, if any of you out there are listening who saw me in the early stages, my Instagram didn't look what it looks like now. My website didn't look what it looks like now. Even my like intentions for my platform were different. So I did get it wrong plenty of times, and I know that it's still going to evolve, because I've learned that that's really the nature of the beast. You can't wait until it's perfect, absolutely. We've had that conversation behind the scenes too. If you wait until it's perfect one, it's never going to be perfect, and two, you're going to lose your momentum, and then when you do finally get around to posting it or making it happen, it's not even like exciting anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, yes, I felt that because, if you've been following me recently, I think that's the bump I've been getting over and that's why this week, for me, has been so interesting, because I felt that very hard I this morning I was listening to something that was saying like, hey, like just put it out there, right, like nobody's thinking about it the way you are, and if it goes great, then cool, and if it doesn't go great, then good. You still got it out there, which is what gave me motivation today to publish two pages on my website, which I've been building for a little close to a year, but it's something that I had built. And Arminne asked me she's like, if you had a bill, why did you publish it? And it was me not thinking it was ready, but like, if it's not, out there, that doesn't really matter unless it's out there.
Speaker 2:So put it out there, put your work out there. You know, like start the blog, start the podcast, start the Instagram. It doesn't have to be perfect. You can go back and edit, you can go back and delete whatever that is, put it on your LinkedIn, publish it, tell people about it. If it's important to you, you will find time to do it, yeah 100% Doesn't have to follow any kind of formula either.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Everyone's process is different. But you know what, even if you are maybe thinking to yourself like I'm not necessarily wanting to have a side business or anything like that, Know that having your brand doesn't necessarily and having a platform doesn't necessarily need to mean you are going to become an entrepreneur or have your own business. It could literally just be a page where you express your skills and your knowledge.
Speaker 1:And you can use that in interviews. You can link your platforms on your resume We've talked about this before on your LinkedIn, and that could be a way for you to show your knowledge and your skills, and for anybody out there who's in the creative fields you best believe. They want to see a portfolio. So these platforms are a great way for you to showcase those creative skills as well and link them on your portfolio documents when you're applying to jobs. So having a brand can really be your own process, absolutely Whatever you want to make of it. You can do that. But the first step is, no, who you are and know what you offer and know your niche, your expertise. Right, you have to have a particular also either population or a particular aspect of that industry that you're really passionate about to be able to express your brand in a very clear way to a very clear like population that's gonna be interested in the Message that you're trying to share absolutely, and let's add, this doesn't doesn't always have to align with the work you do.
Speaker 2:Yes, because that's very important. A lot of people think that whatever they do on the side or out from the five to nine Right, so like after the nine to five has to be aligned with their career, their work. Remember your career and what you do on the side. Your career is is the culmination of your work's life. I'm sorry, yeah, I said that correctly your life's work.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's what I made, clearly, because wrong with me today have your life's work and what you do on the side. Your brand doesn't necessarily have to a lot like if you're an accountant, if you are a teacher, and your brand has nothing to do with that. Dude, that's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's just like how you had your fitness page. Yeah, had nothing to do, that was your stuff where you were at in your life At that time and that was something you wanted to express. So those part of it.
Speaker 2:You know, you know I kind of actually regret like getting rid of it. But it gave me the confidence to know that I did something before to do this. But this is what I'm actually excited and passionate about, but that was actually really cool and I had nothing to do with career. Absolutely great example.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. Let's say, mj, someone is like okay, I know what I'm, what, what I have to offer, I know what my niche is. I I have some platforms. I'm thinking of maybe creating an online platform or so, for it, what else? What else would you recommend to our fellow listeners in terms of how to build their brand?
Speaker 2:Okay, this is huge and this has to do with the capital N word Networking. It's networking, but also the capital C, which is connecting, which is included into networking. But this is really looking for opportunities to right find those groups and again, that community right of different individuals, of professionals in the workspace and in different areas of that, such which can include professional associations. You looking for communities in different areas, whether that be within your career, without your, with Outside of your career as well. So you don't want to forget that that's also a piece of the puzzle is, yes, you start with you and what you have to offer, but remember that there's others in this space as well that can help you build upward 100%.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I don't know how, if we can emphasize networking anymore then we we always do, and every year I feel like it comes up almost in every episode, because it's really a huge part of its relationship.
Speaker 2:It is, yeah, and I mean honestly, life and success are all about relationships and in your brand, remember, yes, it's networking, but it's also supporting one another. Like right, like every time we do this podcast, we support our many business, we support my business, but we also like refer to other people who we've chatted with or have shared different things with us, and it's it's a support of who you are and it's growing all together. So connecting with others isn't Again, it's not networking, is doesn't have one purpose.
Speaker 2:There's so many more purposes to networking than what we generally think it is 100% and it's more authentic than what we generally think it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Perfect. Another thing we want to, we want to share in terms of building your brand is there's a huge fear of rejection. Yeah, that comes with building a brand. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's scary. It's scary to put your stuff out there and it's scary to to brand yourself as an expert or as like the person who can tell you about this topic, knowing that there's 50 other people or more, right, thousands, millions of other people who are also doing the same thing. Like I'm a career counselor, but our men is also career counselor, like that's, that's freaky for me, and to know that we're in the same space and other people are like doing that too. And there's this like knowing who you are does give you a sense of confidence Absolutely. If it's whether you're knowing yourself for your brand or knowing yourself for the next job, you're gonna have a hundred percent, your confidence is boosted. But then there's that fear of rejection, or maybe not fear of yes, fear of rejection, but also that disappointment and that's that heavy emotion that kind of keeps you down and keeps you from moving upward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, rejection and the fear of it can really keep us, keep us in the same place, yeah, it can keep you to, and like a plateau, yeah. Yeah, so sometimes like if listeners, if you think about the people in your life, people that you know, think about people that maybe really don't really hate what they're doing, but also don't take any steps to change it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, that's such a good way to explain it. People are stuck. Yeah, sometimes it's we Armin, and I see this all the time with individuals who come see us and they're like okay.
Speaker 2:I'm looking for X, y and Z and we're like, okay, let's outline some of the steps we need to take. And then they're like, oh, it's not what I expected and you know, we may see them in two weeks and nothing is done. And it's kind of it's hard. It's hard to support others. I mean support yourself too. It's huge. And when you're doing this alone, it's tough on the person.
Speaker 1:It is. It's hard to take a step towards take action right Towards your next step. But a lot of that, when people aren't taking action, is because of fear of being rejected. What if I do this action? What if I reach out to this person to try to network with them and they don't respond? What if?
Speaker 2:I interview and I don't get that job.
Speaker 1:What if, what if, what if? And then, before you know what, the years have gone by, nothing has changed and the person is not fulfilled or hasn't grown as a professional. So how do we overcome that? Because clearly that is not going to help us in any way. So we got overcome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think this is this is going to sound very straightforward, but it's. It's true. You just have to. You just have to do it. You just have to take the stuff. You just have to create the post. You just have to post it. For God's sake, it's not just created. That happens to me all the damn time. I create stuff and never post it because I don't think it's good enough. You have to just reach out to the person. If that person doesn't reach out to you, reach out to the next person and the next person, and you have to keep going right, Because you no matter. If it feels like you're walking straight, trust me, you're still walking upward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, a hundred percent. If you post it and you get zero, zero engagement on that post, or you reach out and they don't respond to you, or you interview and you don't get back, you don't get the job, you don't hear back, that's still moving you forward because you took action. Absolutely, the next time you interview or the next time you reach out to somebody, it will be a little bit easier, just a little bit easier, and each time you do it it gets a little bit easier. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I mean 100%. We'll talk more about this when we talk about managing our online platforms and businesses with our full-time jobs. We'll get it a little bit more into the nitty-gritty of, like how we do our posts and things like that.
Speaker 1:But honestly, every single time, like whoa, so I've had my Instagram, what about three years now? Again, every single time I'm posting, every single time I'm going to meet with a client, I'm like there's always that little voice in my head where I'm second-guessing myself and I'm like am I really doing this? Absolutely, but it's just doing the same thing. When I posted, published my website, I was like you know who am I to have a website? Little old Arminay with the website.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that. No, you're now little old, you're little young, arminay, that's how I felt. I'm like who am I to have a website? Dude me too, but you know what. And then I saw you. Yeah, I saw you and I was like oh hell, no, like if not. Oh hell, no, no competition.
Speaker 1:No, yeah.
Speaker 2:But in a motivation wave. If Arminay can do this and she's kicking ass from nine to five and she has her own business I can totally do this as two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we can do it together, and that's really what we're trying to say too. Is she truly like I cannot stress this enough how I wanted to do this for so, not for so long, because I'm still new. I don't know when I'll stop being new, but you know what I mean. I just it wasn't until I saw Arminay when I was like this is attainable.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think that's when I started to be recognized and I started to be noticed by others, right Like my old faculty came back and asked me to teach. My peers asked me to come and teach to like gear up programs for high schoolers to talk about resume development and guest speakers on podcasts. Like that's when MJ started to fly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, 100%. People will see our platforms and will reach out to us To go speak to their class or something like that. I've had, like old faculty reach out and say, can you come speak to one of our grad classes, and so forth. Had I not had this platform, people don't won't know one what you know and they won't know that you're even interested in in these kinds of opportunities, because you know they don't know what you're up to. So it's really about putting yourself out there.
Speaker 1:So I think our main message today is oh so, how do you, how do you build a brand? Right, we talked about knowing who you are, finding your niche and expertise and then putting yourself in spaces where you can express that and then, last but not least, overcoming that fear of rejection. And with all of that, the message here is that you, if you want to find, like, new opportunities and you want to be recognized for the knowledge and skills that you have, you have to put yourself out there, because people are not going to know what you have to offer unless you share it with them.