 Hi, everyone. Welcome to our program this evening. It is, I'm Kath Borgman, and I am the director of the University Career Center. And behind the scenes is Colleen McGinn from the Alumni Relations Office. And I'm delighted to introduce to you our speaker tonight, Chris Chelsea. He actually is someone that I met as he arrived on campus freshman year because he was in my FYE group. Yes. Chris has always been an independent spirit and someone who liked to figure things out on his own. I used to kid him that I was going to one day find him up in the back woods of New Hampshire or something climbing trees. But, you know, that's not what he did. To say he has taken an unorthodox path in his career would be an understatement. After graduating Fairfield in 2013 with a degree in English, and I believe a minor in accounting and environmental studies, he really didn't know what he wanted to do. But he landed up in Boston working at BlackRock as an investor relationship person. And I think that experience taught him that he never wanted to do that again. So in the eight years since he graduated, he has generated over $50 million of revenue for the various organizations he's been with. And I know that he is going to have a lot to share with you tonight. And you'll all benefit greatly. A little bit of ground rules. We received great questions from you. And Chris has had a chance to look them over and he's going to be trying to answer them along the way. So thank you for that. But if you come up with some questions that you haven't said in advance, please type them into the chat and we will be happy to send them along throughout the presentation. So without any further ado, I would like to present Chris. Awesome. Kat, thank you so much. And Colin as well. I really appreciate all of you guys showing up for this. Super excited to be able to do this. And like Kat said, you guys submitted some great questions. So I'm really, really looking forward to getting into some of those. And please don't be shy. As I'm going through some of this, please leave comments or ask questions in the chat. I would love to talk with you guys. Have this be more of a dialogue than just me talking to you. But to start, I'll go through a bit of my story where I was out with Fairfield and kind of how that developed. So when I left school and even while I was at school, I really had no idea what I wanted to do. Like Kat was saying, and it always kind of felt like I was the only one. Everyone else had their career path set. They knew what they wanted to go into. I just always felt like I was floundering. I switched majors a lot of times. I was originally an accounting major. Then there was a period for about a week where I was a religious studies major. Then I switched over to English creative writing. And then in between my junior and senior year, I ended up taking a course in California to learn how to be an EMT for in the urban and wilderness EMT. So I was kind of going all over the place, trying out a bunch of different things, seeing what fit. Nothing really felt right. And then when I graduated, I didn't really have much lined up. And I tried a bunch of different things kind of almost like this Peter Pan syndrome where I didn't want to commit to any real career path because it kind of felt like if I commit to this, I'm stuck with that. And then I have to go down this route. And then that might not be a life I want to lead. And it was probably felt any type of insecurity that you could feel when going through this. So I mean, I was a dog walker, a lifeguard, a carpenter's assistant. I drove for Uber. I did house painting. I taught swim lessons, never really settling on a career for about the first six months after I graduated. And then as I was talking to friends and family, and it kind of this idea of it's better to actually be something than just potentially be anything. And you know, when you're a kid, you have all of this potential and you can you can manifest that in all these different ways. But then as you grow up, if you just keep doing that, just keep thinking of all of the potentials, but you never actually begin down any path, then you're really not getting anywhere. So that idea kind of started to emerge and develop of you need to start somewhere. And even instead of trying to figure out, you have to pick that perfect path as the first thing that you do. It's almost like working in that process of elimination. It's start somewhere, start badly, and at least check that off the list of going into something, seeing it doesn't work for you. It's like, okay, good. Now I know this doesn't work. So like Kat said, I eventually went and I got a job with BlackRock, which is the largest asset management firm in the world. They control billions or trillions of dollars or something like that, but was doing basically glorified customer service. And remember the first day that I walked in, and I'm just seeing the rows of cubicles of where people are working. And it was kind of a culture shock of just being like, wait, people sit here all day and they just answer these calls. I don't imagine myself doing this. And so very quickly, I started kind of thinking of how I could move on to the next thing. And something I had read was you don't jump off a train onto flat earth. You don't only jump off a train when there's a better train to jump on to that's going faster or in a better direction. And so I didn't want to just quit and then be back where I was before. I wanted to kind of figure out an exit strategy that put me in a better position than I was currently at. And so I had about a 50 minute train ride to and from work every day. And so I started reading a lot. I was really interested in marketing and entrepreneurship and startup. So at any given time, I had three or five books in rotation, just trying to learn as much as I could. And as I was doing this a couple months into it, I started reaching out to a couple of the authors and startups that I had read about. And one of them was in Boston. It was called Pavlock. It was kind of like Fitbit, a wearable device you'd wear on your wrist that would shock you to help you break bad habits. I reached out to them, ended up going in and meeting with them. They were a brand new company and they needed help with their marketing. And I was like, Hey, I would love to work with you guys actually went and met up with them on my lunch break from BlackRock because there were a couple, you know, blocks down, went over there, ended up working with them at nights and weekends while I was still at BlackRock. Because again, I think one of the things people get wrong or think. Yeah, one of the things people get wrong when they think about taking risks is that it's this all or nothing thing where something I've tried to do a lot in my career and in my life is figure out ways to take risks from also hedging the risk where I was able I didn't have to quit BlackRock and start with this new company just immediately. I was able to start with them nights and weekends and do it for free just to get experience. And I think I was at a conference once and somebody said that there was this tech investor in the framework he used that I've always think about for ever since I heard it probably five years ago, it's in your 20s you learn in your 30s you earn in your 40s you return. And it's so simple and I love that. And so I was really just in my 20s trying to rack up as much experience as I could. And I really like that model of just like don't don't be doing it for the money in your 20s. Because if you do that, you're probably going to tap out pretty early. And but if you go for the experience and you develop skills and you develop relationships that you can then leverage later on, that's going to pay itself back 10 fold in your 30s once you really amass that body of work. And so then once I had kind of proven that out that I really like to work with this company, ended up putting in my two weeks at BlackRock, went and worked with this other company did that for a while. And then that led me to a lot of really great experiences got to connect with a lot of authors and entrepreneurs that I had been reading about and now I'm working alongside them, ended up getting on a on a Times Square billboard promoting this company. We did a crowdfunding campaign that, you know, we were aiming to do $50,000. We did 280,000. Got on Jimmy Fallon and Colbert and all these different things. It was really exciting. And then after that, I ended up, you know, the next move was moving to Austin, Texas. And that was another kind of risk that I took along the way. But it felt like the right thing to do. There were some people that I was working with that were also in Austin. So I moved down here and eventually met the the founder and the CEO of a company that was a small company back then called AppSumo, which is basically a software marketplace for entrepreneurs and startup where it's kind of all the tools you need to run your business. And it was a company I had heard a lot about never really thought I would be able to work with them and just kind of met them at a chance encounter playing laser tag of all things that a friend invited me to they ended up being there and we connected stayed in touch for, you know, a year while I was doing other things. And eventually when a spot opened up, and they were kind of restructuring their company, they brought me in as the third real employee at that time. And that I've been there for about four or five years. And fast forward to I was the third now we're coming up on 100 employees. And, and things have just yeah, really dramatically changed in that time. And there were a lot of lessons learned along the way. But that was the that was kind of the high level story of where I went. And early on really did go through a lot of those, which I imagined people can relate to and you can let me know in the chat. A lot of those insecurities of thinking like I have no idea what I want to do. I'm the only one you kind of feel like you're constantly, you're wasting time, you don't know what direction you want to go in. You feel like everyone else has it figured out. And you know, it's the it's the social media syndrome where you see all of these people posting how great their life is on social media, you're sitting back and you're just wondering like, what the hell am I doing? I'm not doing anything. Everybody else is doing these things better than me. But I really think kind of, you know, embracing your, your unique curiosities and being weird in, you know, that's something that that served me really well throughout all of this. So that's where I'm going to pause on on my story. And then I'll go into a couple of the things that some of the things I wish I had known as I was going through this are things that I've learned along the way. And then I want to dive into the Q&A that you guys sent over. And if you have questions, as I'm going through this, please drop them in and we can we can circle around to that. But a couple of the things we're starting badly, where nobody really knows what they're doing when they're starting out when you get out of school and why would you you don't really have any experience. And so you're not the only one who's in that position, everyone's in that position, no one expects you to be coming out of college, you know, being able to do what someone who has 10 years of experience can do. But it's like what you do have is is you have energy and you have motivation, and you have things that you can offer. So even if it's not direct work experience for that first job, you have these other things that you can leverage. And so I think knowing that you can start badly and knowing that it's better to just take something and start getting momentum behind you because you can learn things in a role, even if it's not a job you particularly like. And so while I was at BlackRock, one of the things was, you know, like I said, it was kind of like doing customer service and you would do 40 to 60 phone calls a day of just answering calls from investors and moving money around. And you know, it was pretty monotonous. But one of the things I realized I learned while I was at that job that served me well that I didn't really notice while I was doing it. It's just how to take a phone call and how to talk to people and how to, you know, have a good conversation like that and how in and that turned out to be really valuable. That's something that I think a lot of people don't necessarily develop and they don't feel comfortable making calls and talking to people. And so there are those little things that you can learn along the way that even if it's not the perfect job, there are transferable skills that you can pick up if you're if you're open to them. Another thing is that risk. When people think of risk, they think of it as like, if I take this risk, what if I fail? But there's also the problem on the other side that a lot of people won't factor in is the opportunity cost of not taking that risk of, you know, you deciding not to move somewhere as you deciding to stay somewhere, you deciding to not leave your job as you deciding to stay at that job. So there's this balance of risk that you have to that you have to play out. And there's a framework that Tim Ferriss, who's an author entrepreneur, he talks about where he calls it fear setting, where if you're thinking through different decisions of what to do, he recommends taking a piece of paper, making three columns on it. The first column is kind of the decision or the risk that you're thinking about taking. So and I did this when I was moving to Austin from Boston, where, you know, first column is the decision. So moving to Austin, the second column is like, what's the worst case scenario if they were to come true? So if I moved to Austin, what's the worst things that could happen? And then the third column is if those worst things do happen, what can you do to reverse them? And what this exercise helps you do is realizing that a lot of decisions that you're going to be making are usually reversible or at least semi reversible. Same thing with leaving Blackrock. It's like, if I leave this job, what's the worst that could happen? Well, I could go out, I could start working for this other startup, it doesn't go well, the company fails, or I hate it, or I don't get along with those people or whatever it is. But that can be reversible. It's like, you got a job once in finance, a good company, you can probably get another similar job doing the same thing. Or if I moved to Austin, what if I hate it? What if I can't find the right people to work with? What if I don't like the city? It's like, well, it doesn't take that much to move back to Boston. So getting better at making those decisions in figuring out what you can do to reverse them if they do actually go to the worst case scenario, which they rarely do. Because I would often find myself stuck in a decision. And by being able to make quicker decisions when there's that reversibility to them, it just allows you to move further down the path. Otherwise, you're just sitting at this one decision, not doing anything. And say you have 10 decisions. This is something I've been thinking about a lot more recently, because it's something I'm still working on. But say you have 10 decisions, and you're always worried you're going to make the wrong mistake. But say one of them you make the wrong mistake on. It's like, okay, that just presents you with more decisions. But you're being proactive, as opposed to just shrinking more and more into the corner and just letting that overwhelm you. And there was there was I think it was Sebastian Younger, who wrote about how the there's PTSD differences in like general infantry versus like special operations. And the reason for that is that the general infantry is often being forced to go into a combat zone, or they're being attacked by it versus the special forces are being assigned to go in, do an operation and get out. They're the ones being proactive. And so they're kind of engaging the same warfare, but it's completely different. And that same thing transfers over to your life is by being proactive and confronting the unknown voluntarily. And you choosing to do that, you choosing to make those decisions, you get better at making decisions. And decision making and risk taking is the exact same thing. Anytime you're trying to make a decision, you're trying to figure out how to balance those risks. And so I think that's a that's a really important concept. And the more you make these decisions, you get better at making them. And so I wish I spent more time doing that when I was in, you know, in college and in my 20s and it's something that I'm still working on now. And the more that I do it, the better I get at it. And it just has a really good ROI for me. Yeah, that's where that's where I'm gonna pause on that. That was a lot. Let me know in the comments where you guys are at with this. Kath, feel free to chime in. I think I'll go into some of the Q&A that people submit in now. But but how are you feeling about that? Good. All right. Okay, thank you guys for submitting these, by the way, really, really liked reading through them and thinking through them. Alright, so the first one, and I think I went through some of this, but but what were what were some of the biggest risks you took? And why do you think they were so vital in becoming successful? So the two that that I kind of laid out are one was quitting BlackRock and the other one was moving to moving to Texas. But as I was thinking through this question, what I was thinking about is that to other people, those were big risks to take. I remember I called my older sister, not the one who's on this call, the other one. And and she was saying she was like, you know, you don't want to quit this job at BlackRock, you know, it's a small world. And, you know, she was laying out the big risk for it. But I just I really knew that going to this other company was going to be better for me. It's more what I was interested in. I knew that that company was in a network of other people that I wanted to be surrounded with. So like, to me, the risk wasn't as big of a risk as it was to other people. I think that in the same thing with Austin, it's like, I knew there were a lot of companies and a lot of people I knew I liked the scene in Austin. And so and I think that's kind of an embedded lesson in there is that if something looks like a bigger risk to other people, but not for you, it probably means that some part of you is really resonating with it. And so that should kind of inspire you to take it, or at least kind of be a be a checkmark in the pro column. That's how it's been been for me anyway. And then also the what I mentioned about about hedging your wrist, you don't have to go all or nothing. If you want to, you know, I'm more in this startup entrepreneurship space. So that's kind of how I think about this stuff. But it's like somebody wants to start a company, you don't have to invest $100,000 or a million dollars and get investors and quit your job and start this company from the ground up. It's like, you can start it on the nights or weekends, you can start, you know, with just $100. There's a book called the $100 startup. And it's all about that. And it's all about these case studies of people who started businesses for $100 or less. And you can look at that for all of these different decisions. In a good way to look at risk to two books I really like or I mean, any book buying to seem to leb who wrote the black swan anti fragile skin in the game and also Neval Ravikant who's an investor. They kind of talk about how you want to take asymmetrical risks. So basically a risk that has a limited downside where like even if the worst case scenario happens, you just kind of go to zero. But the best case scenario, there's an unlimited upside. So limited downside unlimited upside. That's kind of what everybody wants. And that's how I was looking at these things where it's like if I moved to Austin, like the worst case scenario is I moved back to Boston. But the best case scenario is, you know, I'm probably living the best case scenario for me. You know, things are going better than I thought that they would, particularly when I was in, you know, graduating college and I was so anxious and I had no idea and felt like, you know, that this cycle in my head was like, you're going to be, you're going to be 40 and broke and alone and you're not going to have a job and you're not going to have any money and everything's going to go to crap. But yeah, those those asymmetrical returns of thinking, thinking in terms of that, not just what's the worst that could happen, but what's the best that could happen. What's one thing we can work on every day that will help us move forward towards a goal? How do we stay motivated on track? So the the best thing that I've done in the past year that I wish I started when I was, you know, as early as possible, that people have been telling me to do for a really long time. And I always just thought it was kind of lame and pathetic, was journaling. And I and since January 11th of last year, I've journaled for 30 minutes every single day without missing one. I have filled up over a thousand pages of journals and it has been just the absolute best thing I've done for both like my mental health, as well as my relationships and my career and my faith in my family and just like individual decisions. And I used to journal and I imagine a lot of people have at least tried journaling at some point. And, you know, half of my book shelf over there is of journals that I started and didn't finish. And I remember I got a journal once and I would try to write really good prose and I would start with like a quote at the top of it from like Heraclitus or Epictetus or something like that. And then I would try to write really good like fancy things thinking I would like hand this down to my son one day. And I would start and I would do it every day for a couple days and then once a week and then once a month and then maybe twice a year and I would just fall off. But then when I started doing is I got this journal. It's called the Morning Pages Journal. If anybody wants to get this, which I highly recommend because it's been super, super helpful. I don't use that one anymore. But that's where I'd recommend starting. It's called the Artists Way Journal Morning Pages where when you wake up in the morning, you just write what's on your mind. Just anything. And there have been times where I've just written lyrics to songs or I've just written I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this over and over again. But as time went on and I stuck with it, like there would be times where I'd be laying in bed, it would be 1230 at night. And I'd just be like, damn it, I didn't journal and I would get out of bed and do it because I needed to do it. And that was really helpful for me. And if you're willing to be truthful with yourself and you're willing to actually ask yourself questions, you'll be amazed at how much you'll realize that you actually know, particularly when you're trying to make a decision. And there have been countless times where I have been stuck on something or haven't been sleeping because I'm you know, mulling over a decision, or I'm having an interpersonal you know, conflict that I'm trying to work through. And I will just write down to myself what the problem is. And then I'll just start writing and I have been shocked with what's come out and you really realize that there's a lot more in you than than you realize. And I think that's that's an important lesson to learn as well. So in, you know, if you're particularly when you're having a goal, it's a great way. I do this all the time where I find I'm procrastinating on something at work. And I'm like, man, why haven't I responded to that email? Or what? Why do I feel so out of control or like things are overwhelming? I'll list down like, all right, what are the things I need to get done this week and just start writing them out? And it's like, OK, if I were going to do this, what would that look like and start writing that out? And so if you have a goal and you're not moving forward on it's like, maybe the goal is too big right now. So how do you break that goal down into smaller pieces that you can tackle? So it's like, if your goal is to start a business, you're not going to start a business today, but can you can you set up a website? Can you buy the domain name? Can you talk to three people about the idea to see if that's something they'd be interested in doing? If you're trying to get a job, can you at least can you open your computer and just Google a list of companies that are in the area? And like, maybe that's enough for today because there is there's compound return on just like incremental improvement, even just doing one percent. You're there for a year, you're a lot further along. And so I think that's another thing that journaling has been really good for breaking down goals, figuring out, I mean, it's it's you're taking say, if you do it for 30 minutes, I do it for 30 minutes a day. That's the only time you're actually spending time with yourself, you know, our world is constantly buzzing and you're getting pinged and you're getting emails and texts and phone calls. And then when that's not coming in on it, you know, I'm putting in my headphones and listening to music or podcast, you're just constantly stimulated. But when you journal, at least for me, it's really the only time I'm spending one on one time with myself and communicating with myself and seeing what I need to be moving forward on. Can't recommend it enough. All right, man, we are only on the third question. Feel free to tell me to speed it up. Let's see. OK, how do we connect with a mentor and how do you keep that connection going through undergrad and professionally? Another book recommendation is recession proof graduate. So that's actually this is kind of a meta story. So the author of that is Charlie Hone, H-O-E-H-N. So he's somebody. I read his book and he graduated in, I think, like 2007 or 2008, right as the world was collapsing. And it's all about how he tried to get jobs, couldn't get jobs. And then he ended up offering like switched up his strategy, decided to just find people he wanted to work with and offer to work with them for free a couple of weeks or for a specific project to get experience, to build up a portfolio and a body of work and then try to leverage that either into a job with them or take the experience and then go work with other people. And I read his book while I was at Fairfield, actually, really loved it. And then when I was at BlackRock, he's somebody I reached out to where I got an email from him that said that he was like coming out with a new version of the book. And so I used his strategy, reached out to him and was like, hey, Charlie, know you're coming out with a new version of the book. I actually have a couple ideas on how you could market it to whatever. And he responded and I ended up working with him. And then he's the one that put me in contact, you know, years later with the company that I'm working with now. And so yeah, he is a really good strategy in that for basically how to do free work which is usually not what people recommend. But that's that's the strategy that I've done and it's worked out really well. That's what Charlie recommends. So it's worth reading. It's it's almost like a pamphlet you can you can read it in afternoon, recession proof graduate, really, really good framework for connecting with mentors. I really don't like the idea of, I mean, at least the word networking. It's a bit too like systematic for me. But but I do the whole idea of having mentors, you know, that's that's been around forever. The idea of an apprenticeship and having somebody that's teaching you and passing on their skills. But I think taking more of a rifle versus shotgun approach to it, where the way I've always approached it is if there's, you know, not just reaching out to everybody, but you're finding either a person or a company that you actually know that you've looked into that you've studied that like you're a consumer of, you know, for me, it was often like the authors books, or if it's a company, their products, and you can reach out and you're educated and you know what you're saying and you actually have value to offer them. You're not sending a templated email to 50 people hoping to get a response. So I think, you know, you need to invest in the relationship if you want to get something valuable out of it. And that's how I'd recommend doing it is in yeah, read Charlie's book. But that also that also kind of reinforces the fact that you never know who knows someone else and how meeting someone and just being nice to them and yourself could end up being the best thing that ever happened. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's that's something I've been thinking about where it's kind of scary how when I when you trace back through your life, you realize how many things hinge it on the most random opportunities or most random moments. And that's why, you know, part of the title of this talk is like seizing opportunities because, you know, if I hadn't gone to that laser tag event, which I, you know, very easily could have let in just, you know, anxiety overwhelm me and not go, I wouldn't have met the people who ended up hiring me for the job that I have been at and absolutely love and change my life over the over the past couple of years. So it's like these opportunities come along and you need to be discerning about them. But you also, you know, not taking a step back, but taking a step forward and trying to seize those opportunities as you come up because you don't know what they're going to lead to. And and yeah, I mean, it's what you're taught as a kid. It's like treat treat everyone well, treat every opportunity well. And, you know, give before you try to get, I think that's the other thing that that people do wrong when it comes to networking is people are trying to get something, you're trying to get something you're trying to get a job or you're trying to get a recommendation versus if you approach it more like how can I give something? How can I, how can I offer something to this person or to this company that's going to be valuable to them that then maybe down the line it comes back and it circles around to me. All right, next one. Was it difficult to leave one job to go to another? What was the process like? It wasn't for me. I mean, the the execution of it was hard because you're quitting a job. But I like the the mindset of it. I knew that was the the right thing for me to do. At the time I was reading this book called the dip by Seth Godin. And he's like a marketer and strategist and he has this idea of like if you're as you're going through life, you have like these these dips right here that like you're going up and you're learning and then you drop down and then you go back up. And he says that kind of when you're in one of those dips, you need to you need to figure out if it's, you know, worth pursuing. And he says you want to make sure you're not stuck in a cul-de-sac and a cul-de-sac is like even if you're doing the right things, you're just kind of spinning around in circles. And when I was at Black Rock, and I was trying to decide whether or not that's where I wanted to be and I'm looking, I'm sitting right next to my manager in our in our cubicle lineup. And he wasn't somebody I wanted to be like he didn't have a life that I wanted. He didn't, you know, treat people well. And it was just kind of that that whole thing. And so why am I, you know, 22 sitting here next to this 40 something year old and he like if the best case scenario is like at this job as I become that that's not what I want to become. So like the decision became easy. Like it felt like I was in this cul-de-sac, but still at the same time, it's like not not burning bridges and trying to think of how do I leave this job gracefully, because you don't know what you're going to have to rely on in the future. And there is some type of, you know, karma or cosmic force that keeps these things in balance. And so yeah, how do you how do you do that well? Well, also knowing it's like you have a primary, you know, you have a moral responsibility to do the best you can for yourself. And that's not from a selfish standpoint, that's from you doing the best for yourself makes like assuming that you're aiming at the right thing and you turn yourself into somebody who's effective, that can then give back and make the world a better place. It's like the world, the world has problems to be solved and people to be helped and you not doing what's best for you makes it so you can't do what's best for other people. So I think you do need to, you know, you do have to pursue the things that are going to put you in the best position possible to then be able to give back to the world. So that is what I would say on that one. How to keep calm and practice effective self care when things don't go your way. So it's kind of two separate things. I will try it. So I'll go after the the second part where it's like when things don't go your way, I think the first thing is to figure out why things didn't go your way and to start with like what you did to contribute to it. And there's obviously an arbitrary nature to life and things don't go your way and not always because you're responsible. But I think that's that's usually the best place to start because if things didn't go your way because something's wrong with the world, it's like you're not going to change that. But if things didn't go your way because of something that you could have contributed, even if it was five or 10 percent, it's like if you can figure out how to fix that five or 10 percent, now you're not going to fall in this same hole the next time. And I think that's often, you know, a lot of sleepless nights can come from, you know, your brain is trying to work to figure out how to help you not fall into that hole again. So I think that's a that's a good place to start with that. Well, also having, you know, the same compassion for yourself that you would have for a friend if they were going through the same thing. I mean, you can't get beat yourself up over it constantly. But but figuring out how you could have contributed to it, how you can fix that next time. And then, you know, you know, giving yourself the mercy that you deserve as a human being among other human beings. I think that's a that's a good place to start. And that's kind of the effectiveness or the practicing effective self care. It's like, you know, they say God reigns with one hand of justice and one with mercy. And I think you need to treat yourself that way. It's got to, you know, you got to hold yourself accountable. You can't let yourself off with everything. You got to have some justice. But, you know, you also have the mercy that you're a fallible human being who makes mistakes that, you know, if you're willing to correct those and be honest with yourself, then you know, you can move forward from there and you don't have to keep, you know, whipping yourself. How to how do you get a job interview with no work experience? Yeah, I think similar to what I was saying earlier. It's if you don't have work experience that can kind of. So what are you doing when you're going to a job interview? You're trying to you're trying to show that you're someone who's going to be able to do the job and do it well enough. I mean, people understand as they're hiring that someone coming out of college doesn't have, you know, a work experience that's necessarily going to be relevant. So what do you have to offer? And if it's not a history, a work history that's going to show that it's like, well, how do you show that? You at least have the characteristics and the traits of someone who's going to do this job well. You also have, you know, you have energy, you have ambition, you spent the time to like really, you know, I didn't have any skill in personal finance or in finance when I went into that or in, you know, startups other than I had read about them a lot. So it's like, that's, that's at least something that's more than other people are doing. You can learn a lot by reading, you know, the top three to five books on any given topic, just go to Amazon and type it in and look at what's most popular. There's a million lists, you know, you can watch YouTube videos where actually our companies creating a video right now and basically how to learn anything for free online. And there are so many ways to do that. I just downloaded this app. It's called Libby. If people don't know that it's awesome. It's L I B B Y and it's basically if you get a public library card, which you can do and it's free and you hook up Libby, you can get audio books and ebooks for free. And so, you know, you can listen to them and you can put them on to X speed and so you can you can do that in a week, read the top, you know, three to five books on any given topic. That's usually what I do when I'm when I'm getting into something. And then, you know, that's a pretty solid place to start. So regardless of what field you're going into, you know, you're not you don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are people a lot smarter than you that have that have thought these things true. And so if you get that basic framework down, you know, you're in it, you're excuse me, you're in a good spot to start going down that path. Plus you mentioned transferable skills before. Yeah. So you have you cannot dismiss that transferable skills can come from anywhere. 100%. Yeah, I mean, as long as you know you're worth. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's that's another thing, too, is like, no, like learning the things that don't change. So there's learning like the the domain specific expertise. So for me, it would be like marketing, but then there's, you know, you can go a level higher than that and there's business principles. And I think. This seems to lead talks about this idea. It's called the the Lindy effect. And what it is is basically the longer something has been around, the higher likelihood it's going to be around for at least that long. So if a book has been famous, like if a book has been on the New York Times list for a week, then you can only really assume it's going to be on for another week. But if people have been reading a book for 100 years, they're probably going to read it for 100 more years. And he traces this through a bunch of different things where this is proven to be true. So I think learning the things that don't change is also something that's really going to going to help set you up well. Negotiation is a really big one. I love the book Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. I got to do an interview with him last year for for a podcast that we're doing. And that's a that's a great book on negotiation. Negotiation is something that comes into play with just about everything you do. It's not just about negotiating your salary or, you know, negotiating car, although those are very important, but negotiating in relationships and while you're at work in negotiating with yourself and with kids and with your parents and all of that. I mean, you're constantly negotiating. You're in, I think he says you're in like 15 or 30 negotiations every day. Negotiation is an incredibly powerful skill to learn. And his book does it in a way where if you're turned off by the idea of negotiation, he kind of flips the whole idea on its head where it's a lot less adversarial than you think it would. And I think people who are who are averse to conflict. This is a really good book for that. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. And so that's that's a talk about transferable skills that that transfers to every domain of your life for the rest of your life. I assume, I don't know. I'm only 30, but let's see. What's next? Kat, how are we doing? How are the comments? Is there anything else that should be should be doing? Keep going down the list. What would have people want to do the most? Actually, we do have a question here. Yeah, what would you say to a friend or a family member that doesn't think you should take a risk and start a business? I think part of growing up and being an adult is knowing that no one knows better than you in terms of what's right for you. And that doesn't mean that you stubbornly pursue things or you like you got to be realistic. I think similar I said, starting a business. I mean, most businesses fail. And you don't have to go all in. I think there's a lot of ways to I mean, depending on the business, but I think there's I don't think I could be wrong here and I'm sure people would disagree. But I don't think if you're starting your first business, it should be a business that you need to go all in on immediately. I think there's a lot of ways. I mean, there's the book The Lean Startup where it's all about the MVP model of the minimum viable product. So how do you come up with just like the latest weight version of what your business is and see if people will buy that? Because if they won't buy that, then why throw a bunch of design and a bunch of features on top of that to try to sell it. It's like you need to make sure the core product is good and there's so much you'll learn along the way of doing that. And I think people will invest in the wrong things early on where they'll go and they'll print up their business cards and they'll hire someone to build them a website and they'll do all of the things to prevent them from having to do the hard part of a business and a business is getting somebody to buy a product or service. So how do you get your first five customers, your first three customers? And so if you can do that and you've proven the viability of the business, now you again, it's like you've hedged your bets. You've proven that at least there's a small market here and then you can scale that up. But I think if your business is like Theranos and you're going to come up with a device that's going to take a drop of blood and do all this and you've never done a business before, it's like that's probably not the right business. I would I would find a smaller version of the business that you can start with. And it depends on why people are giving you a safe route. Some of my family wasn't super thought it was a great idea for me to go into startup startups are a lot riskier. It's a it seems like a solid career path to like, you know, work at a prestigious financial firm, but you got to do what's right for you. And if you're not going to be happy doing something, then then that's that's an important piece. But yeah, I would. You got it. You got to be realistic about things, but you also need to need to you. You don't want to regret not doing it, but you need to be realistic with what you're doing. And I'm happy to talk to this person further if they want to hit me up on LinkedIn and we can we can go deeper and more specifics. Yeah, here we have another one. What is the best piece of advice you have ever received? And I don't know if I can pull that out. I would say. This is a piece of advice that it sounds really meta. And it's something that we're all taught as children that took me a long time to start to put into practice. But the idea of telling the truth, which sounds so woo-woo and kind of vague. But as I was saying with journaling, like the more that I've been able to tell the truth to myself and not let myself get away with just more like innocuous lies, the better things are. And I think particularly when it comes to kind of getting what you want in life, it's like. What makes you think that you know what you want in life or what would be good for you? And so if you if you confront the world with like a facade in with lies and pretending like you're interested in things when you're not, it's like. Now you're creating a world where you're you're getting the wrong feedback. If you tell people the wrong thing, you're creating this feedback loop or say you say you tell people you're interested in one thing. Now they start, you know, everyone's done that where you've been polite and you've said you like something and then people start sending you text messages about that thing or emailing you things that you're not interested in. And it's like that's that's kind of an innocuous version of this. But but that's how it plays out. And so if you set your aim right and you don't let yourself get away with that stuff, like that's where the kind of that element of faith comes in where it's like I am willing to bet that if I tell the truth, then the best thing that could happen will happen because otherwise like it's this idea when you tell a lie that you can just kind of bend reality in that that's not going to snap back on you at some point down the road. Just it it can't work like that. And I think as I've said a lot, this is this is something that's come out a lot in journaling where it's I've had a truth that I haven't wanted to tell. And when I have and I've actually put it out there afterwards, I have just, you know, the weight is off your shoulders and you don't realize it's like you just have all of these anchors hanging off of you. And the more that you'll just let go of them, you don't realize how how heavy the burden is until you start to unburden yourself and you got to be smart about it and you have to be tactful about it. But but yeah, I think you don't really know what you want in how could you because there there's so little of you and there's so much of the world and so much of reality. But if you're willing to lead with the truth, then you're kind of putting your faith that that's the best thing and then that's probably going to give you what's right for you because now you know, you're you're vibrating with reality as as as that sounds. So here's another what is the current career goal that you have and how do you plan to achieve it? Or is it secret? No, no. So we're writing a book for our company. So I actually had the kickoff call for that. Luckily, we're doing it with a with a company that's helping us write it. But yeah, that's that's a career goal that we have for this year. And I would say I mean, I'll go I'll go a bit more general because I think that's going to be more helpful for people. But something I did this year that's been incredibly helpful is this framework that that a friend of mine has where for goal setting and he kind of put out this video for the year where he calls it the what is it? It's going to be the AQMWD framework. And the way it starts is I have my journal right here. And what you do is you basically take one page and you list out all of your goals. And that's what I did for the year for 2021 just listed out anything I wanted to accomplish, whether it's career or whether it's personal or physical or relationships or family or whatever, just anything you'd like to if you're looking back on the year, what would be really cool to see that you had done? And so you do that. That's the annual part. You just list that out. It can be a brainstorm. It doesn't have to be perfect. And then you go into the quarterly. And so you do Q1. So January, February, March, you pick say three to five of those things that you had on your annual that you start chipping away at this quarter. And then you to the monthly and then it's like the March one right now. So it's for March. What of the things that I want to accomplish this quarter? Where do I need to be on them this month? And then you go into the weekly and it's just the same thing. And so you're nesting it down and down and down. Then you have your monthly priorities. And then for the week, what do you need to do to accomplish the things that roll up to the month? And then every day putting down, you know, starting the day with one to three things that you need to get done that then roll up to what you need to do for the week. And then as you get those done throughout the day, you can then add more things and do more that day. Or if you don't get something done, it rolls over from Monday to Tuesday. And then you're just kind of crossing things off. And what I think is really cool about this and it's been kind of the best productivity framework. I've used and there's this line. I think it's in Matthew and it's sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. And kind of the idea is that like if you if you set things up properly that what you do in the day is enough and you don't have to worry about tomorrow because, you know, if you do the right things today, that's going to do the right things for the week. That's going to do the right things for the month, the quarter and the year. And it's so it's been a really good stress relief for me because now I don't have to worry about my yearly goals. If I set this up properly, just the things I have to do today, I know those are already nested into the things I'm trying to get done for the year. And so I can just focus on that. And I don't have to worry about the future. I just need to do today. And if I do today right, then I can sleep well. And then, you know, tomorrow has has its own evils. And if I can deal with them well, then, you know, all the better. That's great. I have to have to redo my life right now. Okay, here's one. Do you have any advice on things to do before going to grad school? And actually, I'll combine that with another question that came in. Yeah. Do you believe that grad school is absolutely necessary for the finance industry or an entrepreneurial route? I can't speak to finance. I would say absolutely not for for entrepreneurship. There are a lot of companies that, again, speaking from my own experience, there are a lot of companies that see that as a as a negative. People would much rather see, at least in, you know, the companies that I work with, they want to see experience. They don't want to see theoretics. And that was kind of the pitch that my boss gave me when I when I went to work for AppSumo where I met up at a coffee shop. And I was considering going to going to business school. And he was like, you could either go to business school and spend however many years kind of learning case studies that have previously happened. Or you can come and work with us and just actually be a part of things that would be case studies and actually see what those look like in the real world. And that was really helpful for me. And I know a lot of people get can get pressured into that by family. I have had that. My my girlfriend has had that as well. But, you know, it depends on the person. And I think if you're trying to go work for like a bigger company like my brother-in-law went to went to grad school and it really helped him go and work at like, you know, larger Fortune 500 companies. But I think if you're trying to work in startups and entrepreneurship, I mean, a great book for that is The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg or Ellsbury. And he basically goes through all of these entrepreneurs who never went to college and how they got their education. So the education of millionaires. And that's a really great book, particularly when you're starting out. I really liked that one. But yeah, for for entrepreneurship, I absolutely don't think. So I think getting experience is going to teach you so much more. I mean, it's the idea of having skin in the game. It's like, if you're in if you're in grad school, you don't necessarily or business school, you don't have skin in the game of the companies that you're, you know, you're doing these case study projects on. If you're actually in it and like you have to make this decision and you need to see how those results play out not just tomorrow, but three, six, nine months down the road and then not just how that one decision turned out, but how that one decision is in a network of other decisions across the business and across the organization. And you actually have to deal with not just like the rational decision making, but the like emotional affect that it has on all of the other people in the organization. It's like, it's a much, much, much more complex, you know, decision making framework that by building that up in the real world, you become a lot more effective at making those versus, you know, it's like, it's like reading a book versus first living it and you can learn a lot from, from reading, but you're going to get a lot more out of the actual hands on experience of it. And I guess that then that would segue to the very first question where by working and getting experience and doing these different things. If you decide that's the route you want to go eventually to go to grad school, at least you're going in with a whole education that you've put yourself through in terms of experience. For sure. You can apply that in the classroom. Yeah. And I think if you, if you did decide to do that, you're going to be 10 times more potent than anyone else in that classroom who just went from, you know, undergrad to grad if you have it like, hey, actually when I was doing this, that didn't play out in the real world. And I think, you know, that's, that's incredibly valuable to be, you know, it helps you know what's BS and what's legitimate. And I think that's a really important skill set to develop. And I think it helps you build up confidence because there can be things in, you know, there's the idea of like the man, what do they call them in economics? I don't know. It's like the the prototypical like rational consumer. And it's like, but that's something that's been taught a lot. But then when you look at it in the real world, there's this whole there's this whole like field of study about how irrational people are. People don't just line up all of the pro like when they're buying a car, they line up every single detail about a car and then make the most rational decisions. Like people make rational decisions all the time. And but if you're never in the real world, you're never actually putting your ideas to the test and getting feedback from the real world. Who knows if those are the right ideas? So I think, you know, that real world experience is incredibly valuable. Here's a good one. How do you balance job satisfaction and financial success when choosing a career path? The way I've looked at it is kind of that that aphorism that I said in your 20s you learn in your 30s you earn in your 40s you return. I like it. It's a great model. But, you know, you have to decide what's important for you in life. And if you, you know, want to take a job in a field that doesn't pay well, you have to be OK with that. And it doesn't mean you can't transition into something else. But then on the flip side is like, if you want to get as wealthy as possible and you're OK working, you know, 80, 100 hours a week in finance in New York, it's like good for you. But but the problem comes when, you know, you want to be doing this type of job that you're really passionate about that doesn't pay well. But you also want to get paid well. Maybe there's a way for you to make that happen. But I think you do have to. So I wouldn't focus on making money really in your 20s. I do think everybody could use a lot more understanding of personal finance. A book I strongly recommend here for personal finance. I'm just trying to give like the number one books in each category that I've read is I Will Teach You to Be Rich. It's a very scammy title, but it's a great book. I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi, which is all about personal finance. Most people know absolutely nothing about personal finance. And it's it's a travesty, I would say. Strongly recommend that. It's super easy to read. It's designed to be read by people who are 20 years old that have no idea what any of those terms are. So that's a great one. So that will help you basically set up your financial system. Again, you can read it really easily. And then once you understand that, I think it'll also help you make those decisions better. But I wouldn't focus on money. I think if you focus on money too early and you do that at the expense of building up skill, you might make money quicker than somebody else, but you're going to plateau sooner versus if you kind of do this kind of your your earnings are lower, but you're building up skill and then you're going to far surpass other people down the road. And it's like, or at least you could, you know, nothing, nothing's a guarantee, but you're already all in in life. So so why not, you know, do the best you can. Now, someone here is commending you for your great book recommendations and is asking for a list of your favorite books. But I think what we'd like to do is gather those and send them out with the follow-up email that we'll send to all of our attendees. Sure, well, as I was saying to you before the call, so this is my actual library downstairs, but this row, where is it right here are my life-changing books. I already organized them. So I will go through and summarize those for you. That would be great. Yeah. I think that we're winding down now. We want to be cognizant of your time. You've been so generous with it. And this has been so interesting. So Chris, we really thank you for taking the time tonight and sharing all of this. It's been fascinating. And as I said, I think I'm going to relive my life. I'm going to do it over. It's a lot messier than it sounds. I by no means have any of this stuff locked down, but thank you so much for having me and thank you Colleen as well for helping get this set up. And for all of you guys showing up in all of these questions. I'm sorry I didn't get through all of them, but this was great. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much to both of you and to all of you on here. Well, thank you so much. And we hope that everyone here will join us again for future presentations. And if you're a current student, consider joining the Student Alumni Association and participating in creating some of these programs. So thank you. And I'll let everybody is thanking you in the chat. Oh, thank you guys. And please, anybody hit me up on LinkedIn. I am happy to talk further with anyone. If there's anything I can help out with. Chris Chelsea on LinkedIn, AppSumo is the company, A-P-P-S-U-M-O if that helps you find me. But yeah, happy to help anyone. Thank you, Chris. Thank you guys. Have a great night, y'all.