(upbeat music) All right, so it's day two. Well, it's not technically day two. It's a few days since my last video. So I decided that to make this podcast real, I need to have a Jerry Maguire-like mission statement or manifesto or something. And so I decided, I just started writing things that matter to me, like unemployment is one, developing skills is another.

And then I realized that I need to find people as I'm interviewing them who have the same passion as I do about this topic. And I want my vision to be easily understood as I'm kind of conveying what the scope is. And so I decided to write a letter to my future guests-to-be and the idea is kind of like cold call.

I've got my Rolodex of people that I would love to speak to and as a part of my outreach, I want to send them this letter so they know what I'm trying to do, right? And they want to be a part of it. Awesome, and then we're on the same page.

They don't, no harm, no foul. And so I probably wrote this letter, like rewrote it like probably 15 or 20 different times, starting from like a three pager down to like a paragraph, realizing that's too short and then expand a little bit and finally landing at a happy place.

And I'm really proud of it. I wanted to read it to you 'cause I think this is gonna be the foundation, like my source of truth where if I'm having a rough day or I find myself veering off course, I can always go back to this letter to reground myself on why I'm doing this and to not deviate from the true or honest nature of what I'm trying to solve for.

So let me read it to you. A letter to my guest speakers. When I graduated from high school, my impressions of my career options were pretty limited or heavily influenced by perceptions impressed upon me by my family, peers, and in many cases, my culture. And their intention was to set me on a course to achieve maximum job security or income through what was popular at the time, medicine, law, engineering.

However, when lack of college academic success closed the door on all of them, it left me floundering and ashamed. Pride annihilated. As I picked up the pieces and took on any job that I could find, I leaned on the one thing that does not distinguish me on the resume, relationship building.

If I could go back in time and give myself one piece of advice, it would be simply this, keep your head up, explore all your options, intentionally learn something from each job experience, and one day, your experience will catch up and relationship building will become your greatest asset. That in a sense is what I want our viewers to take away from these videos.

There is hope and there is a path to get there. There are a lot of people in the job market today who have had their sense of self-identity crushed through layoffs and closed opportunities. They're looking at the job that has left them and wondering what they should have or could have done differently.

They are wondering what their options are but are frightened about change. For early career individuals, they may not know all the options available to them or they may have misconceptions about what any particular job function is. The purpose of these videos is to help them understand what their options are to get a true, unbiased, and genuine perspective from seasoned experts like you on what it takes to succeed in your role.

To help them understand what skill sets are needed should they decide to transition to your field or learn from you so they can grow further in the role you are representing. Thank you for joining me on this mission to create more economic opportunity for our global community. Humbly yours, Tim Chen.

I thought I would share that. That's as far as I've gotten. Next up is the Rolodex conversation. I have my list of people I want to speak to. What I've done is I've looked at all of the job functions. Again, starting in high tech. So like digital marketing, search and optimization, market research, operations, sales, comms, demand generation, insight sales, design.

Categorically, I'm just making sure that I have all of those identified so I don't miss anything. So there's obviously more than that. Product management is one I added last night. And so I have names now to each of those. And each of those functions, I have around two to three names.

Hopefully at least one of those names will take me up on it. And we'll see where it goes. I created a rough outline on what our conversation flow would be. So I created a little quick video details spreadsheet that I sent to them where I talk about my primary audience, my secondary audience, give them some advice on what attire they would want to wear, how we're recording.

We'll be using Zoom. And then more importantly, the content outline. And it's pretty straightforward, again, because I want these to be as organic as possible. So broadly, the first topic will be, tell us about your job function, how to do it, and why it matters. The second one will be around skill sets or experience or education required.

And then the third category would be around what you should know if you're considering a new career in this field. And I think I'm gonna ask a lot of questions around understanding their own career journey. Was it linear? Was it choose your own adventure, right? And did it do this like mine did?

And then what did they learn along the way? And then the last one is like, what are the career growth path for people who are currently practicing that function? So again, I'm trying to cover the spectrum of early career, mid, and senior. And so that's generally kind of how I'm gonna be doing this.

We'll see how it goes. Wish me luck.