 Hello, hi everyone. So first let me introduce a bit about myself. My name is Tu and I'm 27 years old and I graduated from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Hoshiming City and I majored in Chinese. My early career after my graduation was in customer service. I worked for a furniture exporting and inspection company. So my job then involved managing different customer accounts and products and also handle customer queries and also complaints. So a typical workday for me involved handling different products and and handling customer inquiries and also complaints. I talked about that. This was a job that I realized initially but then working for this company kind of warmed me down a bit. That's why I decided to quit my job and start something different. I didn't start a new career until over a year later. After I got back from seeing a bit of the world, all pumped and fired up and ready to start something new, that's when I met my friend who was a web designer and he worked on his own as a freelancer. I was so impressed and it was strange to me that he quit his corporate job and decided to learn web design on his own and now working as a web designer. So I was intrigued and I asked him to show me how he did it and that's how I learned web design. Initially I was just trying to learn and to have fun with it. It was just a way for me to create a new challenge for me and create something exciting on the side of my office job. So while I went back to my office job for a few months after my travel but the first book that I learned was an HTML and CSS book. It was one of the head first series and it was easy to learn and was fun to go through. So after finishing the book I started to use Photoshop to create graphics such as logos and flyers and a markup of a website. The next thing it was JavaScript. I kept getting into new things very quickly because I wanted my goal was to grasp the basic knowledge of a few things so I could be ready to start creating the first website. So I wasn't an expert in anything but I knew multiple things. Little had I known the little nerd in me. I who had never used a computer more than a complicated reason than downloading YouTube videos. I didn't know what kept me going but I was really passionate about learning. It was a lot of fun for me and I learned strictly for the fun. I just didn't know if one day I could make money with it. But every day I came back to my dorm room from my day job and started to drink my coffee at 6 p.m. and learned web design until midnight. This was something that completely drew me in and I was actually excited to learn how to create an image gruesome or a logo or a website markup. Then I found out about a content management system called WordPress. Not too long after. Has anyone known about WordPress? Maybe someone? Okay. Sounds familiar, right? So I quickly realized that I stumbled upon something good because I could easily create a website within a few minutes and there is so much help online that whenever I got stuck in something I could always find out the solution. So after a few months of getting to know WordPress I created a profile on a site called Upwork. It's a website for people who work digitally, can find work. I didn't have the courage to apply for any jobs on there because I felt like I wasn't ready. This was like less than a year when I started learning about the digital stuff. Then one day I was lucky enough to have two clients approach me on there. So my first project was to create a color palette for a brand and it was a rather quick and easy task. So I created two selections of a color palette for my client and I also thought that it would be helpful for my client that I could show like the demonstration of the color palette on a website or on a flyer. So that's what I did. I created a website mock-up and a brochure just to show like how the color palette would look like. So it was a good chance for me to practice design as well and I was surprised. My client turned out loved it and she was so surprised that I also created the mock-ups that go along with the color palette and she picked out the palette and she liked and job completely successfully. And for the next one my mission was to create my first WordPress website and this would be my first website in WordPress ever and I was so thrilled that I got the project. I was learning a lot while creating this first website and it was a rather simple website now looking back on it. But everything was so new to me because I was creating the scroll like scroll down button for the first time or like create a custom home page especially working with my client on a web project was so different because there was it was I think it's a skill to have to because I had to learn what questions and things I had to ask them and what to provide them. So coming from a customer service background my goal is to create a great website apparently but also to deliver the best customer service I could. So I aim to be responsive and honest and being myself and personable with my clients and I could see that they appreciated that. They appreciated my work even though that was like my second website ever but I was learning quick and adapting and I didn't I wasn't afraid to try our new things too so I can serve my clients needs better. So fast forward it's now been two years since I've been working as a web designer and what drives me the most is that how happy my clients would be at the end of the project and I was I'm really enjoying serving my clients. My motto is to always go the extra mile and I do think that isn't necessarily required but if I find it helpful to my clients and I would do it such as creating a logo for my client who is in need of a website design just because I see that he's struggling with finding a good logo for his for his brand and I created one for him and he was happy with it so we could move forward with the web project and we both were happy so I created the design demonstration for the color palette client even though I didn't have to but it helped my client easier to choose the right palette so why not. So I realized that I'm still doing customer service but on my own terms serving clients where my passion lies and where they get to do something that I also love now which is creating website. So from the date when I decided to start learning digital stuff until such as coding and design until the day I got the first project it was about 11 months and a few days so it was coding and design in less than a year. Of course I'm still learning things every day and I never stopped learning less but less than a year was the time for me to to learn the basic stuff and get me ready for real working experience. So I'm just a normal person and not smart and not particularly good at you know learning stuff but I have a passion and I go 100 percent into that. So if you like me and you love WordPress and you love figuring stuff out online you can do it too. My advice to you is to not be afraid to have fun and to enjoy learning and always be a student in life and just don't worry about making money yet because you're just starting out and just having fun learning and lastly one day if you decide to make a living with it. Be a designer or developer that is great at customer service as well. So thank you WordPress for making it all possible and creating a community that I can always rely on. So I'm grateful for that. Thank you. Thank you too. That was an amazing story. I hope some of you were here because you don't know how to get started. You want to get some inspiration. Some of you are already like well-established experts. So I hope this was an interesting story to know from two. So if you have any questions that you want to ask her we are open for a Q&A. Yes. Can you just wait for a second. I want to give you a mic please. Yes. All the way back there. No problem. All right. Press the power button please. Just press it for a second. Yeah. Okay. Go there. Two I was just wondering how do you get your clients now? So most of my clients to this day is was also from Upwork and they give me contracts or projects consistently. My first client that I did the website for was yeah it's still my client nowadays and I'm lucky to have been keeping most of them and so yeah based on that and also they introduce like new clients to me. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Does anyone else have any questions? Yes please. Yes can we have the mic? Yes. Thank you. Hey dude thanks for sharing your experience with us. Welcome. If you have any advice for you know people who want to be budding web designers now looking back if there was any mistake you would recommend them to maybe kickstart their career what would you recommend? I think if you want to be a web designer I think getting into WordPress as soon as possible is it would be my advice because it's just something that you can learn very easily and very quickly and also also work on design skills at the same time. Yeah. All right. Do we have any more questions? Yes. No. All right. So thank you Zoo. Thank you again. It was a very interesting and inspiring story.