Professional Life Crisis

This week I chatted with Bo Abrams Ex-Hedge Fund Analyst, ULCA MBA and Co-Founder of Kommu, an app to swap homes with people in your network. In this episode: 🟣 Bo opened up about his personal health experiences that heavily influenced his career choices at various points in his life, including a debilitating illness during college and the story of his HS friend Mallory, who unfortunately passed as a result of Cystic Fibrosis (CF). These experiences led him toward business school to pursue a career in Venture Health. 🟣 Getting to business school and realizing that Venture Health wasn’t actually his strong suit, and he wasn’t going to be one of the top contributors to the space, and that he should instead focus on a problem that he feels well equipped to solve. 🟣 Bo talks about the financial pressures of business school, including spending heavily on GMAT tutors and application fees, which led to accumulating credit card debt just to keep up with his peers and the expenses related to traveling. 🟣 So… Bo and his co-founder started Kommu, a platform for finding short-term places to stay based on your network, rather than paying for Airbnb or a hotel. 🟣 To wrap it up, Bo gave some advice for your early career- rip the bandaid off if you’re going for a goal (like studying for the GMAT to get into business school)- commit to it for a set period of time, and give it 100%. Don’t prolong the suffering, spread it out too much or half ass it. 🎧 Listen now on: Apple, Spotify, and YouTube: https://lnkd.in/evPj6X_b https://lnkd.in/e4EQ6UT7 https://lnkd.in/eby_k6-b 🔔 And if you want to get an email each time a new episode of Professional Life Crisis drops, subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/eF6BX5hq

Introducing: The Brute Force Method 🔩 Curious? Read more below ⬇️ The amount you need to learn at a new startup job can feel insurmountable. 💡 My advice? Start by figuring out the level of depth you need to learn the subject matter to be successful at each new task. ❓ Questions you should ask yourself to get there: ∙ Is this something my founder or company has taken a profound interest in? ∙ Is this a one off task? or will I need to do this task over and over again? ∙ Is this an experiment, or an ongoing project/initiative? Then, you'll know whether you need to come up with a 🔃 repeatable and salable system, or whether you should use The Brute Force Method 🔩 What does this mean? 🔃 Repeatable and scalable: taking the time to build a process or automation that will make your life easier the next 10x you do this same task. 🔩 Brute Force Method: surface level learnings to figure out the basics, understand the key terms, and figure out a manual process to complete the task. My friend who works for a *very popular* at home bike company gave me a great example: Her manager asked her to test a possible issue with the bike. She’s then faced with a decision: Should she: 1️⃣ Ride the bike for 1 hour herself, to test this feature? or 2️⃣ Spend 12 hours to build a robot to ride the bike for her, which can then complete the test in 5 minutes? If this task is going to come up over and over again, it's probably worth the upfront investment to build out the automation. In the case of a one off test, it’s likely not a good use of your precious time to learn/build the fancy automations that will take you 12 hours, even if the automation will then be able to complete your task in 5 minutes. It can be frustrating to do things manually when you know there must be a better way, but you have to remember that your time is a precious, limited resource. I give you full permission to use The Brute Force method 🔩 #startups #podcast #professionaldevelopment #scalablesolutions

Have you ever gone through a period of depression or personal challenges that affect your ability to show up at work? 😔 I think we all have. ALL you can think about is how you want to feel yourself again. and have the motivation to talk to your job 💼 about taking needed time off to focus on your mental health. But if you have no frame of reference for your own window of tolerance, how will you know when it's time to make a change? 🎧 Episode 11: "Do I need a new job, a new city, or both" out now: Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g2cdVYgs Apple: https://lnkd.in/g5qtjPYM Want to get notified of new content?: https://lnkd.in/gxkUpwpe