#BALM
iXperience has hosted several professional development workshops covering a range of interesting topics that I thought I would share.
The first was with Donovan Muller, a director at Accenture who has spent his entire 28-year career with the firm. He is helping out with the consulting class, and talked about "Career Planning in the Consulting Environment." He went over the different types of consulting, the role of entrepreneurship, and the pros and cons of big versus small firms. He also laid out the 6 key things that, in his opinion, determine how quickly you will get promoted: Core Competency, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Personal Networks, Contribution to the Knowledge Capital, and Business Judgement. One interesting piece of advice Donovan shared on leadership is that one of the best ways to be perceived as a leader in a field is to get published and present at a conference, and he encouraged us to start writing.
Next, Aaron Fuchs, the CEO of iXeprience, hosted a workshop on "Crafting an Entrepreneurial Journey." He walked through his story, graduating from Yale in 2010 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, joining SAC Capital, Steve Cohen's hedge fund on Wall Street, and then moving on to Prodigy Finance as a Product Manager, before founding iXperience in 2014. One great piece of advice Aaron gave was not to follow your passion, but to bring passion to whatever you do.
Aaron then talked about the core things he believes are important to being a successful entrepreneur - knowing how to model in Excel, perform data analysis, design, plan projects, and execute. He also stressed the importance of setting a concrete vision for the startup, a clear purpose you can articulate and that drives you every day, working with someone of the opposite personality type (anyone want to be the ENFP to my ISTJ?), and being courageous and persistent. At the end, he added a hashtag that I really liked - #BALM (become a learning machine).
Finally, Rafi Khan, the director of education for iXperience and Pierson College '15 alum, led a session entitled, "Living an Intentional Life." A small group of about 10 attended this talk, but it was probably my favorite of the 3. We started off by reflecting on the questions, Who are you? What do you want? and sharing an aspect of our answer with each other. Rafi then talked about how he thinks about living intentionally and walked us through some lessons he has learned from books such as The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Anchor (smile, exercise, find something to look forward to, commit conscious acts of kindness, spend money on experiences, meditate, exercise a signature strength) and Give and Take by Adam Grant (join a reciprocity ring, craft your job or someone else's, be hearty in your approbation, embrace the 5 minute favor, ask for advice).
He also stressed starting small with the example of 1.01^365 = 38 versus 0.99^365 = 0.03 (if you improve by 1% every day, you will be 38 times better in 1 year than you are today, if you regress by 1% every day, you will be 3% of what you are today. Finally, he had has make a Trello Board of the things that matter to us and the habits we want to develop. I had this in a Word Doc on my Desktop, but the Trello set up is nice and really accessible as a bookmark. I have 4 lists (Cultivating Relationships, #BALM, Physical and Mental Health, and Professional Development) with cards like writing down 3 things I am grateful for each day (going well!), meditating for 10 minutes every morning (it's been tough with 2 roommates), and blogging on a topic and becoming an expert in it (I guess this counts?). We shared 1 goal we had (mine was reading for 30 minutes every night before bed), and that public sharing has been really powerful in helping me finally build that habit!
The first was with Donovan Muller, a director at Accenture who has spent his entire 28-year career with the firm. He is helping out with the consulting class, and talked about "Career Planning in the Consulting Environment." He went over the different types of consulting, the role of entrepreneurship, and the pros and cons of big versus small firms. He also laid out the 6 key things that, in his opinion, determine how quickly you will get promoted: Core Competency, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Personal Networks, Contribution to the Knowledge Capital, and Business Judgement. One interesting piece of advice Donovan shared on leadership is that one of the best ways to be perceived as a leader in a field is to get published and present at a conference, and he encouraged us to start writing.
Next, Aaron Fuchs, the CEO of iXeprience, hosted a workshop on "Crafting an Entrepreneurial Journey." He walked through his story, graduating from Yale in 2010 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, joining SAC Capital, Steve Cohen's hedge fund on Wall Street, and then moving on to Prodigy Finance as a Product Manager, before founding iXperience in 2014. One great piece of advice Aaron gave was not to follow your passion, but to bring passion to whatever you do.
Aaron then talked about the core things he believes are important to being a successful entrepreneur - knowing how to model in Excel, perform data analysis, design, plan projects, and execute. He also stressed the importance of setting a concrete vision for the startup, a clear purpose you can articulate and that drives you every day, working with someone of the opposite personality type (anyone want to be the ENFP to my ISTJ?), and being courageous and persistent. At the end, he added a hashtag that I really liked - #BALM (become a learning machine).
Finally, Rafi Khan, the director of education for iXperience and Pierson College '15 alum, led a session entitled, "Living an Intentional Life." A small group of about 10 attended this talk, but it was probably my favorite of the 3. We started off by reflecting on the questions, Who are you? What do you want? and sharing an aspect of our answer with each other. Rafi then talked about how he thinks about living intentionally and walked us through some lessons he has learned from books such as The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Anchor (smile, exercise, find something to look forward to, commit conscious acts of kindness, spend money on experiences, meditate, exercise a signature strength) and Give and Take by Adam Grant (join a reciprocity ring, craft your job or someone else's, be hearty in your approbation, embrace the 5 minute favor, ask for advice).
He also stressed starting small with the example of 1.01^365 = 38 versus 0.99^365 = 0.03 (if you improve by 1% every day, you will be 38 times better in 1 year than you are today, if you regress by 1% every day, you will be 3% of what you are today. Finally, he had has make a Trello Board of the things that matter to us and the habits we want to develop. I had this in a Word Doc on my Desktop, but the Trello set up is nice and really accessible as a bookmark. I have 4 lists (Cultivating Relationships, #BALM, Physical and Mental Health, and Professional Development) with cards like writing down 3 things I am grateful for each day (going well!), meditating for 10 minutes every morning (it's been tough with 2 roommates), and blogging on a topic and becoming an expert in it (I guess this counts?). We shared 1 goal we had (mine was reading for 30 minutes every night before bed), and that public sharing has been really powerful in helping me finally build that habit!
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