Transcript for:
Koba Career Success Conference 2024 - Lecture Notes

e e e e e e e e e [Music] e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e [Music] e you e [Music] good morning how are we doing this morning all right well it is time for us to get started here uh at our Koba uh Career Success conference 2024 uh I am very happy for a number of reasons uh to be up here it's been a pretty hectic week personally so uh please excuse any typos you see in a slide or uh any of the bumps in the presentation as we go through uh today's event and just note we also have a lot of students joining us remotely uh so that so uh you know right now I think they ran the the math the other day we have about 65 66% of the University's enrollment is online and probably in Koba that's closer to 80% and so it's a very high number so there are are more people there and then that will also that ability will allow us to capture this for them others to watch who are working today currently and so it really is going to have a long-term impact so you this is going to be seen probably by hundreds of people eventually uh whether live or now so we appreciate it uh everyone's participation um you know I'm really happy about this event because this University is a passion of mine being a lifelong Central Texas resident I still have uh High School classmates in classes in our programs and so what it does for the University uh is important and what it does for the region and I just love seeing success stories and what you're going to see today is a lot of success stories coming out of the University a lot of the people coming back here are our alums who have had very good uh careers and they'll tell you more about that and I do title it career success success is measured a lot of different ways for some success is just getting that degree for others it's just then getting a job for some it's getting their dream job for some it's being able to work for themselves or something else a lot of people will Define that differently so we hope something today will appeal to a wider variety we have a lot of different activities that we'll go through a lot of different speakers so we hope that that resonates ultimately with you and the other deal is the business world is changing you know we want we teach a lot of stuff in the classroom I guess you could say is more Theory oriented but what the purpose of today is bringing those practitioners who are seeing it on the ground who are experiencing who are hiring people and to kind of give you a more practical perspective about what's going on you know I mean you know think about those business changes let's just stop there for a second what are some of the big changes we're seeing out in business today what are some impacts what are what are some things that that are maybe different than they were five years ago yeah okay remote work okay we got AI oh yeah hey number number one on my agenda AI yeah you know we're we're wor you know we're worried about you know every time a new change happens they can say no no no it's not it's just going to change the workforce it's not going to you know eliminate the workforce um this is one that's got me a little scared as we as we kind of start to figure it out I I full disclosure I did use AI for the very first time to help draft some of the questions that we're going to ask the panelists today and honestly it's pretty good okay I sorry if you thought I was actually creative with all those and or well if you didn't like them it's ai's fault uh ultimately but the other thing is we got an incredible lineup of people here today uh and it shows about people how they want to invest back in the University uh I think I add we've got 13 different speakers today that are scheduled appear now again things may change because we have very accomplished engaged people involved so something May pop up and not everyone May makes it but uh we I think the vast majority I've confirmed or already talked to this morning will make it but I talk I we've got 13 people here I only talked to 14 and all 13 jumped or all 13 are here jumped at it and the 14th would have but they had a long-standing uh commitment and a lot of people rearranged schedules they had meetings on the deal uh and we're we're wanting to be here so I'm I'm just so excited uh about that we do have a relatively tight schedule uh so we don't have a lot of time um in between and you can see we've we're kind of transitioning in five minute spurts here so just move about get more food more drink Etc uh in the back as we progress uh you know get up if you haven't been on campus before the restrooms are across from the elevators uh out there uh at the end of the hall uh so like I said we just want to be comfortable we're going to ask some questions of the panelists as we go I'll I'll talk more about uh these these as they come up but uh as you can see just an outstanding lineup ultimately and uh couldn't be happier to have all of you here and without further Ado let's get started uh Charlie SS come on down uh Charlie is the director of Industry education Partnerships at Workforce Solutions of Central Texas and he's another one of those who rearranged his schedule to be here with us uh today speakers we do need to use the microphone remote got it got it and everybody can hear well out here so very good no I'm always uh I always want to be in on what Dr Lan's up to so uh I will rearrange my schedule uh for that any time uh it's good to be with you this morning uh I just have a short time that I want to talk with you one of the things that I've learned is that the mind can only comprehend what the seat can endure so uh we're going to go through these fairly quickly but I do want to talk to you about uh some things that uh uh what you need to be no matter what you become but before we get into that I just want to show you a few things this is uh this is a pretty big number right here over the next five years in Central Texas now let me tell you what we're talking about when I say Central Texas your central Texas Workforce board uh has the region between milm County and Sans Saba County it's Seven Counties across the center uh so that's what the state of Texas considers Central Texas I was born and raised in Austin and we always thought we were Central Texas and it wasn't until I got here that I realized oh that's Capital Area and this is Central Texas uh so that's what we're talking about when you see these numbers so in the next uh by the next uh 10 years or so uh we're going to increase jobs by 10,000 you can see that jobs grew 3,930 over the last 5 years one of the largest problems less and less people are continuing to be in the workforce that are of Workforce age 16 to 65 is what is the people we count for that so it's kind of interesting that jobs are increasing and yet there's fewer people even in the workforce and on top of that there's even fewer people in the population to do the work one of the things that's impacting us most in Central Texas it's uh the second largest generation born in the United States Baby Boomers and now all of them are turning 65 they're all getting to retirement age and they've been in the workforce forever and now they're stepping out of it and right behind them is the largest generation born ever born in the United States and that's the Millennials and for all of you just said yeah those Millennials they don't know how to do and they're lazy they don't want to work well just a heads up the Millennials all now own homes and have kids they're not they're not 18 and 19 year olds anymore and it's not going to be very long before they're reaching retirement age and they're the largest group of workers that we've ever had so some real interesting uh future events coming our way uh but I thought something you might want to see is uh if we're talking about bachelor's degrees we're here at Texas A&M central Texas here are the fastest growing jobs that require bachelor's degree in Central Texas and how much they pay in Central Texas and you can see that we're very heavy on Health Care in education the reason why we're heavy on healthc Care Baby Boomers it's a big group and they're getting older they need a lot of pills and they've got a lot of doctor visits and so that's the that's the reason that that's driving and then you see education Elementary School teachers Secondary School teachers what's driving that is our population continues to grow and where there's rooftops there's children and where there's children there's schools and where there's schools you have to have teachers as a matter of fact from the 2020 census Central Texas was only one of the few areas of the country that actually gained population East Coast West Coast North uh Midwest all lost population as a matter of fact the city of Detroit is losing 10,000 people a year in population but they're all going to Texas Florida and Arizona and you're like I know I'm trying to drive around on the roads I know there's more people here than there used to be but very interesting but as you look at that and you look at uh maybe what kind of career you're pursuing uh understand that when we talk about these occup ation these occupations uh take on a broad stretch of Industries because you have uh general managers in healthc care you have general managers in retail you have general managers in manufacturing uh my advice to students nowadays is if you're kind of unsure about what you want to do business degrees will not hurt you that'll leave you some flexibility but healthc care and education and then what happened uh just in the last 5 years is we've had professional technical uh Services pop up in our top jobs and that's why you see software developers up there uh that's all of a sudden started to become a growing job in Central Texas with along with cyber security and uh web web management that type of stuff so there's a lot of growth in that area also but when we talk about what we want to do I thought just the short time that I had this morning I'd share with you the four things you need to be no matter what you become so first thing be careful be careful and the reason why I say that is you can see the herd of wilderbeast crossing the river here and not everything that looks like a rock is a rock as you Traverse life not everything that looks like like a rock is a rock and most of you young adults in here you have a neat little tool that uh some of us in other Generations did not have and it's called social media and your life has a way of following you around thank God they didn't have that at mallum High School in Austin not one of my parties was posted so you have to be careful because not everything that looks like a rock is a rock and sometimes we get involved in situations that follow us and they become part of our resumés and we never intended that to happen and it has a way of sticking with you and I tell younger students all the time there's decisions that you make that will not keep you from getting a job but they will keep you from getting the job that you want and sometimes it's just as simple as a drug test I know it's not fair it's dumb but it is what it is so be careful that's the first thing you need to be no matter what kind of p uh professional Pursuit uh you're planning on be careful oh sorry man that thing went crazy second one is be cheerful how many of you own a dog there there's nothing like a dog you can leave the house for 5 minutes and walk back into the house and it's like you've been gone for 2 weeks it's like oh my God you're home you're the best you're awesome no matter what you become if you be cheerful you will get more raises in your career than anything else because employers love people that have high energy and bring the crowd up no one likes a raincloud and most employers want your drama checked at the door they don't want it in the office be cheerful and you're like what are you talking about Charlie all this stuff that we're talking about you will hear it referred to as employability skills these are employability skills so be cheerful impact those around you figure out how to make their days better my favorite thing about dogs is they bring joy with them you don't have to give it to them they show up with joy so be careful and be cheerful that's two things you need to be no matter what you become good Lord be committed be committed so many of you may have never heard of John Steven aquari John Steven aquari is a marathon runner from Tanzania and you're like what's the special about him did he win something no he didn't as a matter of fact he came in last place in the marathon in the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games he was last place as a matter of fact he wasn't only last place he finished an hour and 18 minutes later than the last Runner because what happened is in the midst of the marathon John Steven aquari was running and he got into a group of Runners and he got pushed to the side of an embankment and he fell down the embankment dislocated his knee and completely scratched himself all up was bleeding could could not move his leg he was limping he climbed back up the embankment he got back onto the onto the uh race path and he started limping toward the Finish Line it was over an hour after the last place Runner crossed the finish line that the crowd be to disperse they were almost all gone the reporters were still there because they knew there was one Runner out on the on the course and kind of through the dust and the Setting Sun of Mexico City they saw John Steven aquari limping toward the finish line and when he got there all the reporters r Tred him and they were like what why what are you doing you're you're bleeding you can't walk your knees totally ruined why did you keep running and John Stephen aari said Tanzania sent me to Mexico City to finish a race not start a race be committed there will be times in your professional endeavors that you're going to feel like quitting we all do sometimes life just does that to you but be committed to your cause so you not only need to be careful and you not only need to be cheerful you need to be committed no matter what you become be committed see if we can do this without jumping yeah be conscientious everybody know who this is who we have Chris Rock The Slap heard round the [Laughter] world Chris Rock well so Chris Rock is worth just over $60 million now I don't know about y'all but in Central Texas that's some walking around money you can you can kind of do what you want to do with $60 million but as you probably know Chris Rock was not always worth $60 million as a matter of fact he tells the story that when he first started pursuing his career in entertainment he had a car that looked like this and he said it was a piece of junk windows were busted out of it it was missing hubcaps and it never ran for him as a matter of fact every time he went to an audition call or a job interview his car broke down because it was a piece of junk he said what he used to do is his car would break down on the side of the Los Angeles freeway and he would get out and he would open the hood and he would stand by his car and he would wait for some help and guess what happened exactly nothing people just drove by just another broken down car some poor soul on the side of the highway just drove buying well after two or three times he got kind of fed up with that and so what he decided to do is the next time the car broke down he's on his way to an audition he got out he got behind his car and he started pushing it up the highway and all of a sudden something amazing happened people started pulling over they started getting out they start helping Chris push one then two then three Chris Rock said he learned a v valuable lesson that day on the side of the LA freeway he said he learned that people like to help people who help themselves so the last thing you need to be no matter what you become is be conscientious people like to help people that are helping themselves and there are people in your lives no matter what our age is in this room you have support groups in your life it may be family it may be co-workers it may be a spouse but you have people that want to help you be conscientious so the four things you need to be no matter what you become going forward you need to be careful you need to be cheerful you need to be committed and be conscientious I appreciate your time this morning I hope you have a wonderful seminar today thank you Dr lman thank you so much all right let me get back over here well just as Charlie always comes help me I always look to get Charlie here you can see what an engaging uh speaker he is um so about to transition to another uh to our first panel this is we got a lot of panels of practitioners uh this is our alumni panel up first and if you all would make your way up here we have Sarah intelon uh Katie woods and Kayla Martin bring your little handy dandy deals with you you can pick your got to do the mics to pick up the outside noise all right as we're getting settled so I I guess one thing I skipped is I didn't I took for granted y'all all knew who I was probably so I'm Lucas Len I'm inter te for the College of Business here and also show uh serving as the moderator for today's conference uh I will share one Career Success tip with you since that's what this is about so this is a Starbucks screw on coffee mug okay lesson I learned heading to a meeting about a month ago you see it's it's open it's in its open position right now if you ever put an energy drink in your Starbucks Twist on coffee mug be sure it stays in the open position and not the closed position the carbonation with them will explode the lid all the way off I'm walking in into a meeting here and literally boom and the lid goes six feet up in the air and thankfully I was I was wearing one I made the choice for my leather jacket versus sport coat that day and just down the sleeve and you know thankfully there were only two or three people outside that saw it and uh so I was only mildly embarrassed but scared the Jesus out of me that thing blowing up so energy drink one vent that's probably a good idea just leave the lid off a little bit and then leave it open otherwise you could see uh quite the explosion so just lessons learn we we all share little tips that we pick up in life uh so again this is a panel of alumni uh I we're going to ask all of them you know kind of the same questions but the first part is is just their storytelling and I think that's the biggest part I want to resonate to you because they all have different backgrounds where they ended up uh where they are now uh now the interesting thing and this was planned I I was sitting there piecing this uh the slide together last night looking back at titles these are you know former students advises Etc over the years um and they'll they'll get more in their titles but all of these have vice president in their title so these are some of our Lums that have went on to very successful careers and so we're thankful for them again they all jump to the opportunity to come back uh and so our our first question is really just having each of them uh tell their story a little bit about you know what led them here uh what did you do here how's your career evolved afterwards so uh Sarah you want to take the lead for us is this one can you hear me yep okay thank you well uh same word of advice uh for airplanes which I think is probably an obvious one but not for me and um so anyways I'm Sarah Anon I'm the vice president at synex Technologies we're a local IT consulting firm uh we serve the public and private sectors um in all their it needs so we're over overall it Service Company we do cyber security uh we do Dev SEC Ops uh digital marketing and then we actually have a a lab here for forensic investigations where we partner with A&M um I started when I was 20 at Centex I'm 33 so I've been here almost 13 years so my career path is one One path um and I um I was uh initially the uh test proctor and admin assistant at our office my boss actually did not pick me first for my position but I had a friend there who vouched for me luckily um he ended up training me in project management so after about a year I went on to project management I implemented a five-phase approach to project management and our development processes um in the uh during the time that I was a project manager and then in 2021 I was promoted to vice president of synx Technologies so now I handle client strategy um client relations I'm sorry business strategy client relations and then I um currently oversee all the government division our uh business development person recently left and so I'm from uh identification of the opportunity all the way through the end of the cont contract I manage that so I'm Katie Woods I'm the vice president and director of marketing for rbank um I kind of want to tell my story a little bit later and answer a different question um for that but what led me here um I was at a point in my career I was working for rbank wearing a different hat um at that time I finished my bachelor's degree which is in Psychology and my position at the bank then I was working as um a mortgage officer and I hated my job I was miserable with my job um and I told my husband I was like I'm going to I'm going to apply for grad school and I told him after I did it and I told him if I I told him if I get accepted I'm going to quit my job and he said okay well I remember I was sitting in a Target parking lot and the email came through that I got accepted and so I went and I quit my job and then I told my husband I quit my job but why I chose to come here you know it's I was a married I had a son um the schedule of this place it you know I needed I needed a place that would accommodate me having to have a full-time job because that was something I was going to have to find um I was going to need online classes night classes you know something to that was going to support me to where I could be a mom um you know and go and and work towards getting a degree but you know you guys are here the this place has a Vibe it's supportive the professors here you know coming and talking to them before I applied here you know they're just it's a support system and so that's why I chose to come here um but right now you know with what I do for our bank I lead the marketing department that's something that they entrusted me to start we have 10 banking centers so I serve all of them we have locations in Fort Worth and Edna were concentrated here in Central Texas and so um that's something that I'm very proud to do we have 180 our bankers and so I leave that for them Kayla hi I'm Kayla Martin uh I work at First Community Services here in cleen um we're actually the data processing and support um Center for First National Bank Texas and First Convenience Bank and we have about 350 branches across four states um I arrived in Central Texas from the Dallas area um and I quit my job that that's not the theme but that's kind of where where we're headed here totally have kids that's what we should do so we decided we go ahead and have a couple of kids to um throw that into the mix but um all joking aside um Texas A&M central Texas was it it was very it was what what I needed my husband's also graduated from here um it was what we really needed as very supportive for our family uh I had a professional background to some degree so a lot of the professors at that time um again you know they were not classes so they also had job jobs and so it was able you were able to tie back what you were learning with what real life experiences um it just really worked out for us and for my family so that's that's why we're here thank you all right so now uh gonna ask our panelists here uh could you highlight some key lessons or insights you've gained since leaving A&M central Texas uh that have contributed to your career success and we'll start with Katie this time oh man so since leaving here when I walked out the doors here and graduated I had to be ready to run working as a marketer and starting that department you wear so many hats um I learned a lot here but as a marketer you're a Content writer you have to learn to create the content you know learning um Photoshop an illustrator that's something that I wasn't taught here and so I had to stay up late at night watching different YouTube videos and trying to figure all that stuff out five years ago we didn't have ai you know I had to do all that stuff and so there's just a lot of different components that a marketer has to do that I didn't learn here and so I had to be ready to run and I had to be ready you know to come to the table with different ideas and prove myself because I they entrusted me you know to start this department and do good and I was trying to prove myself there's a story that I want to tell um and what I'm about to tell you I I don't mean it with arrogance at all um but when I go and ask things from the president of the bank or a CFO they don't tell me no a lot and I don't mean that with arrogance um there's a professor here that I took his name is Dr Ritter and I don't know if any of you have taken him but when I describe him you'll probably find a professor that's relatable so Dr Ritter is the one that you put off taking or you find another professor you know you don't you don't want to take this professor um because he's very hard and so I put him off taking him um you know at this point in my journey I had made a lot of friends along the way I built my support system and so there were several of us you know we kind of baned together and we didn't have a choice with summer school like we had to take Dr Ritter and it was for cost accounting cost accounting and I'm not good at math and I work for a bank I'm not good at math already you know and so you know we worked through that well part of Dr Ritter's class there's a paper you have to write to write an essay in a accounting class okay and so oh man it was the most rigorous paper that I have ever had right and part of it was you had to submit your proposal to him over what you were going to what industry you were going to write this paper on and if he didn't like it he would send it back to you and each time he had to send it back he would deduct more points oh yeah I was to the point that I went to my CFO he was a very SE season CFO at the time and I had to suck up my pride to even go to him and have him explain this to me I was like you know what is this this is what I think cost accounting is and he looked at it and it's our CFO and he's you know scratching his head and he's like you're right Katie that is cost accounting and I was like well you know I'm on like number three and I'm don't have any more points left like I'm almost at zero and so I changed completely what I was writing my topic about and he finally accepted my paper but then writing the paper and citing it and the attention to detail I cannot tell y'all how hard it was and you know just the correspondence with him um and one time he even offered for us to come up here in person and meet with him and at this point I had I had two kids um during my journey here I I had my daughter and so I packed up my baby and I came here and I'm expecting this big scary guy and he is the nicest little man I mean he is so sweet um I'll tell you he was the only bee that I got when I was doing my Master's here and he was very very difficult he pushed me and pushed me and pushed me and the attention to detail that he made us do and he told me he was in an email he was like you're um your employer will they'll um appreciate this one day and I just you know my employer is not going to make me write a paper like I'm not going to have to do this you know like I just I kept thinking that and so anyway we went through I graduated and we even had a hashtag that year it was we survived Ritter it was on all our pictures y'all can go find that on LinkedIn and it's a real thing and so the reason I'm telling you that is and it took me a while to understand he was right the reason that I don't get told to know a lot is because I provide the attention to detail I go to the table I have my facts I have the details behind that I do my homework and I prove myself ahead of time and so the reason that I'm telling you this and I'm sharing the story don't take the easy professors take those hard ones that are going to push you because he's right they will appreciate that so that's one of my stories that I want to share with you survive Ritter go find your r I think that speaks to Charlie's deal about commitment uh that you got you know you are going to have obstacles I had a similar one a student inv uh involved public speaking I at my last University this this student was fearful of public speaking and so we had a presentation in an HR class it was worth 10% of their grade and night of the presentation comes and I was like you're up and she's like uhuh and I was like you 10% of your grade you're losing a letter grade by just sitting there and saying nothing it's fine Well turns out this student put off their speech 1301 course until the spring semester they were graduating with their undergrad because they were so fearful of public speaking and I you know I tried to tell her all along hey it's no big deal you got to do it and then gr she graduates she comes running up to me and she goes Professor I took that class it wasn't really that hard and I was like I told you that you know it's just something you got to you got to conquer the fear and finally uh you know commit uh to to these uh Endeavors ultimately um all right Kayla what was the question uh highlighting some key lessons or insights you've gained since leaving C&M Central Texas that have contributed to your success um I would say doing things that make you uncomfortable to your point about public speaking but doing things that make you uncomfortable I worked at um like I said I worked in a support area for the bank initially and after graduating I was given opportunity to move to um First Community Services as a business analyst um I have a degree in business this was more of a technology um position I was scared I was like I don't know if I don't I don't even know who makes all the payments post everying I don't even know where that happens so um it was very uh eye openening to understand everything that's going on but I was given this opportunity um it was basically a lateral move it was something that I did um as an opportunity to uh push my limits a little bit and challenge myself um and it was incredibly uncomfortable to walk into a an or piece of the organization that you just don't know or didn't know existed and how you try to figure out how you would contribute and make that team um a better team uh I was very I've been very successful um but it definitely was because I was pushed by um a uh supervisor to take that that leap into technology and and give it a shot so i' definitely say doing something that makes you uncomfortable is is the best way to um kind of get yourself out there so S I think that's a common theme Here because that's also in my uh I'm a chronic over preparer which is actually not a good thing for me um but being putting yourself out of your comfort zone I jokingly tell jokingly tell my boss he's the leader at throwing me into the fire and making me figure it out which has been a a big growth Journey for me I mean it's I've been at my job for 13 years almost and um as much as I get uncomfortable with these tasks or anything that he throws at me um I know he does it because he is he can see that I'm I'm capable of doing it um and honestly it's helped me just to have confidence in in my ability if if not at anything um have confidence in my re research skills because um he'll say three words and I will go and write a whole paper on it um because I've been here so long long and I understand what he's looking for and I also understand um now how to kind of throw myself in the fire and figure it out and um putting yourself in in uncomfortable positions I don't know I don't know how familiar or common Toast Masters is I'm sure it's a pretty big thing still um but that's a public speaking um it helps with your public speaking skills among I'm sure many other things uh and I could never okay but I will one day but um I've met many who have attended or who have gone through those courses and and that's really um been helpful to them and and probably something um I'll try as well um my last piece that really has stuck with me I've uh I've been really fortunate to attend um leader cast so Leadercast is put on now by the cleen Chamber of Commerce it is the single largest uh leadership events in the country it is broadcast that's held in Atlanta I believe and it's broadcast across hundreds of locations uh the chamber puts on um theirs every year and I'm fortunate enough I've been able to be in a uh the planning committee for it as well as a 10 um and I I can't recall who who said it in one of their speeches but um it stuck with me and it was you don't have to be good at everything and I think often I and many of us uh in leadership positions or even new positions feel that we have to know everything or be good at everything or do everything um and I often still feel that way but you don't and um so their advice was pick what you're good at and develop your skills there be the expert in that and what you are good at because if you're good at just a few uh everything a little bit here and there for everything you're not an expert in anything and so um in fact I manage and IT company and I'm not an overly technical person um I am more of a analytical thinker a problem solver um really just a project manager um but it's really helped me grow and be I think I've been successful because I have focused on the things that I'm good at um and being proactive as well being a uh bringing something to your boss and not saying here's my problem what do I do but here's my problem and here's the three options what would you like um has really helped me well yeah I think what she just raised and is also you know why Katie doesn't get no is very important don't bring people problems bring people a problem with Solutions and when you come with good research when you when you they it's backed and it's going you you get what you want in a lot of circumstances and so that's what people like to see they don't like to see have the issues dumped on their table think through it provide some options uh and maybe they'll help they'll help you work through it a little a little bit I I Echo Leadercast I've I've participated once and it was uh a great event all right uh so this is the key we were talking about this earlier uh how do you approach networking and building professional relationships in your in your industry any tips for recent graduates looking to expand uh their networks uh Kayla you want to start with this one sure um I think there's some obvious uh networking opportunities you know some of the organizations here in the area that were um mentioned um but I also feel like um for me I will say that I have I'm a mother to children and it's busy and it's hard to sometimes put some of those events in with other things you have going on in your life and so I volunteer with things um organizations that benefit my children I think every networking is all networking is NK like all those events are networking they're not necessarily specific to banking or technology for me um it whether it's working in something with the school district my CH my children were in the coers co School District working something with the school district or with the band or volleyball and then um then other opportunities or things um just within our organization with you know the bank is a pretty large employer and there are people that I don't know all the time like Casey works at the bank um so I think getting to get groups of people in the organization that you're um networking outside of your specific area I think that's important um as well um but that's really what I have for that s s uh well I I also serve on the board for the Alumni Association here so that's your very first Avenue go there and uh check out the events also Koba um there's when I was at A&M I I think I had blinders on and I didn't even realize all the events that and the resources that Texas A&M central Texas offers um but they offer a lot I mean and they offer quite a bit of um networking opportunities and um ways for growth so start there uh I also serve on the greater clean Chamber of Commerce board so that would probably be the second you guys saw Charlie he's wonderful and he's with the workforce so uh that's another Avenue and um join the uh Chamber of Commerce has a uh organization called the Young uh greater clean young young professionals you don't even have to be that young I'm so like just go and join um but they hold and that there's also I mean there's so many opportunities around here to just go and find um events to network just like um just like what you both have or what Ka you have said is um or Kayla I'm sorry uh is my son is six he's in he's in soccer and t-ball Network I mean just fine opportunities there uh but also make a LinkedIn and connect with everybody that you see in fact um I'm going to connect with these ladies right as soon as we're done here and um I think that's probably the biggest thing my boss has taught me is to go and connect with everybody and I mean as it is appropriate uh so that's my my advice and Linkedin and Facebook is how I backtracked some of our speakers today and were able to get their con you know I remember them and find their contact information Katie both of you mentioned a lot of good ones so I don't want to be repetitive I'm trying to come up with ones um it is tough um there's a lot of good ones on social media you know link in but there's also groups if you just go and search whatever your you know your industry is that you're looking to get into women in business there's a lot of other groups lunchin the chambers there's a lot of different Chamber of Commerce that you can do um different lunchin so those are the the only additions that I would have to add to what the other ladies have already named yeah just to emphasize your whatever your profession you're looking at you know HR big one there's there's local chapters synch Sherm Wilco HR Etc and and same thing with a lot of other disciplines uh accounting uh there's a lot of of local professional organizations but going back to to Sarah too is is finding those opportunities even if you're you're maybe a little uncomfortable like I can think back you know years ago when I was department chair we had an advisory Council luncheon and you know Ronald stepp just said hey you know we're looking for people to to help us out on the kisd Education Foundation and so I was like sure that sound that sounds good and so I went up and and eventually joined the board and I made a lot of lasting connections that I still talk to people this day Abdul being one of them we serve simultaneously uh and uh Chris uh is another one he came in like the the last year but a lot of those relationships that you know you you never know when you're going to need to go back and ask that person maybe to be a speaker today or you know need their support for some other initiative uh that sometimes those small service roles that you just don't think you think okay well I'm going to go I've got these meetings I've got this they turn into so much more uh from from the network uh long term all right uh fourth question here looking back on your career journey is there anything you wish you had known or done differently uh any advice You' give recent graduates starting their own careers and I'll start back with Sarah on this H yeah yes I certainly would have done a few things differently I'm sure we all would have uh I'm certainly happy where I am now I've I think um I love my clients I love my colleagues I love working with A&M uh Central Texas so there's a lot of things I would have done differently maybe to get to this point one of the things I've been working uh for a couple of years now I I see every week a professional development coach and she worked her name is Katie she worked for the um Workforce for a very long time she oversaw that area um so I see her every week and she is just a huge resource for me and um one thing that she tells me a lot is to remember your brand remember you you have to build your brand as well of your for yourself I have been with sentex Technologies for 13 years like I said um my boss up is really heavily involved in the community and for a long time I kind of followed that path and I was in my own bubble and you know whatever sentex does I do I'm part of I'm I'm a part of sentex which I do still believe that I love where I work and I we started with f five four or five of us we're now um almost 40 we uh have been on uh Inc 5000's uh fastest growing companies in America three times now um so I mean I love my job I love what I do and I do believe I am like that's a part of me but also it's really important to build your brand outside of that and um do your own professional development and who you are and so she's put me you know giving me things like um your elevator speech your two-minute elevator speech which I think I forget every week or so um but I work on it um and I recognize that what I do outside of what I do outside of here I represent my company but I also represent the brand that I want to show um to my to my colleagues and um our partners in the community and to our clients so Katie this is the question that I was waiting for from question one okay so my career journey I started with rbank when I was 24 years old um this year I will be with the company 12 years when um so one thing that I I would have changed I wish I would have known what I wanted to be when I grew up a lot sooner because now I I love what I do um but when I started with the bank um it was supposed to be a temporary job I didn't have my bachelor's degree at that time I was working towards that I was engaged not married and I was a teller um with the bank and so during that time we were acquired by rbank and so I finished my bachelor's degree which was in Psychology I shared that earlier and I wanted to do something different and I started as a mortgage lender which I shared I did that for two years and I hated it so much um and it's when I applied here and um quit my job shared that too and so a little bit more on that quitting my job I didn't have anything else lined up um after that and so I gave a a very long notice and told them I would stay as long as I needed and so they found my replacement um it was on supposed to be my last day and it was about 1:00 on what was supposed to be my last day and I get a call from HR I'm like it's my last day and I'm getting called in the HR and back of my mind I'm like I'm going to just jet you know go to HR my last day so I went to ahr and um she offered me to stay on and help for a little bit and I kind of elbowed my way in and you know ended up staying while I finished my masters here things aren't going to be things aren't going to be handed to you it takes work and you know you need to really figure out what you want to do figure out what that path looks like um know you're going to run into some obstacles um and just really always advocate for yourself and where you what where you see yourself in your career and then be willing to change when things life throws you some curveballs thank you all right at this point we have time for questions from the audience for our panelists so has anyone got any questions I'll walk around with the mic if not I've got a backup question we can we've got about 10 minutes left in this particular session can be directed at any can be directed at all going going up you're gonna send me to my fifth question all right and I think uh Sarah might expand upon this a little bit uh but I think she's asked she started hitting this this is the key one postgraduation what ways do you continue to stay current and Rel and relevant in your career with the changing landscape that's going on around you um I think inherently our company is a big proponent of Education my boss uh is actually the computer information system departmentment is the sabani f sabani computer information systems or you might correct me computer information Department of computer information systems okay so my boss is uh is Abdul sabani uh big proponent for Education he used to be a a professor um we also have a testing center at our office uh so we do Certification testing for things like A+ um uh CompTIA exams we do um ta exams for education so um certifications are a huge thing I think um often people do one or the other um they'll they'll go and get their education and then they'll start their journey and um not do the professional development work um afterwards to to stay up to date because we just went through all this school and we have all this debt so what you know there's more um but it's it's such a huge thing for me um because especially in it everything is changing for example AI uh they can write my my strong suit used to be writing I don't know what it is anymore because AI is I mean everybody's strong suit is writing I think now um so uh I would say continuing to connect with the industries around you to understand what's still relevant and what's new um I'm attending I'm lucky enough to be able to attend uh a Hawaiian conference a national Hawaiian organization Association later this month where I get to connect with all the uh Hawaiian and Alaskan native own companies and um learn what their needs are so I mean I think that just going out and and learning more and using the resources that the university provides to you as well as the community um is really the best way to stay up to date I mean possibly also like Tik Tok news or something you know is probably the way most people get their news now but that's those are my ways Katie oh gosh um so I work in a bank nobody wants to go in a bank so we're always trying to keep up with technology um our bank you know they they encourage education they're always sending us to training and encouraging us to keep up with the trends our chief operating officer is sitting right there so I feel like I should hand her the microphone to answer this better than I can uh we sit in on a lot of calls together she is always looking for different ways efficiency and things that we can do better um sometimes I am in her office asking her questions and trying to remember different things that or different parts of calls that we're on so we're always looking to do things better and looking for ways that we can be efficient and meet the needs of our customers so is trying to stay current with times and I feel like to your point with AI That's it's changing things and if you're not getting on the wave now and trying to keep up with it you're going to get left behind kale you know I need to repeat staying up to date how do you stay up to date I'm sorry I'm sorry um well it's it's very similar to their answers uh you know conferences training um it's it's I'm me I work at a at a bank as well so there's a lot of regulatory things happening um the government controls a lot of what goes on and so um just there's a lot of information to to keep uh to stay on top of so um I mean I really don't have anything extra than what they've already said Wall Street Journal read their Wall Street Journal she's tick tocking we're listen to Journal we're listening to it I'm not reading it we're listening to it but yeah but it is I think it is important there depending on where you are there there are you know again with your professional communities there may be bulletins like I get a member of the American Bar Association they send out a whole weekly email of news stories and things like that that you really can I mean sometimes it's more formal certifications and we're seeing a trend in that a lot more looks for certifications in addition to degrees or sometimes in lie thereof is one thing one Trend we're also seeing but you know those networks uh those professional organizations and paying attention to what they put out uh are good and with that I would like to thank our panelists for their time and their wisdom uh this morning uh thank you very much okay so uh as another part of this uh we've got some prizes to give away for our attendees and if you happen to be the recipient of one of the Amazon gift cards you need to talk with Iris or one of the people out there and give them a little bit of your contact information uh so we can fill out a little documentation uh so our first one is we've got do have a a Coba bag set up uh Tommy Barker and uh Amazon gift card Jason monks Ruben's got you here congratulations Jason all right well we'll kind of do a couple of these in between uh each of our sessions uh so now we'll start transitioning to our second panel of the morning uh that I'm sort of calling an HR practitioner panel whether they're pure HR roles but they're recruiters Etc uh that these are the people who are looking to fill jobs out there uh maybe from one of you uh but they have good insights into uh what's going on so I would like to welcome up I'll shift it over to our conference schedule uh Shayla sturgeon Stephanie Gonzalez Casey Coburn and Kimberly Hartman guess with this one y'all are going to have to do a little bit of pass the mic as it looks like we got three mics and four people people in this particular panel um but one of the first things uh I'm ultimately want going to do with with this particular one is you know let each of our panelists we'll just go in order start with Shayla down uh telling us a little bit about themselves how their own career has evolved how they got into this particular role um and then also tell them about your company uh because uh you know with you know some of y'all are looking for jobs some of these people are looking for employees and so also feel free to connect with them uh thereafter and and so the the the reason why you see representatives from these particular companies is these are three that have that have been very proactive in reaching out to us to try to connect that and and it's you know it's it was really refreshing in particular uh conversations that uh I have have had in the fall with Stephanie reached out um and then and then Shayla just it wasn't about like we want your people their first conversation was how can we help you and then and I said well one of the ways is hire our people uh but but it wasn't about that they wanted to help like this to talk about what it is and and and so one of the things we we were having a a chat I was having a chat with someone earlier when it comes to getting a job whether it's and and I think the focus of the question is really going to be on interviews and or res resumes and interviewing is a lot of people have the skill sets they just don't do a good job of getting that out at the right time I mean I've had someone that you know I've had people work for me that are great employees but it took them a while to get the job because of the resume organization highlighting the wrong thing I mean I I see it as a hiring manager myself I'm in Academia 101 what do I need to see when I hire someone what are your degrees you know for most of my positions I need to see a PhD and that's the very last thing at the end or it's off of there entirely well I'm not going to spend time going around and looking for that stuff it's like you gotta you got to tell it to me so um again that's what we're going to explore here through questions so um we just start with Shayla talking a little bit about yourself your background and ultimately your company uh that's what that what I do want yall to spend a few minutes on perfect um so I'm glad to be here thank you again for having us um I work for bkcw um here in Colleen we actually have a location in Colleen Austin Temple and Brownwood um we are an insurance agency so we specialize in commercial Personal Insurance PNC insurance as well as employee benefits and so a little bit about myself I graduated from Texas A&M University and College Station back in 2000 um at that time I was kind of like a sales and agriculture major didn't really have a plan of what I wanted to do didn't know exactly what I wanted to do thinking I was going to get into a sales role um took a position out of college in Dallas working um for a head hunting firm doing recruiting and so um worked for about three years doing um recruiting scientists pharmaceutical scientists um and kind of like one of the other panels said moved here for love my um my husband now we were dating at the time was from the clean area had been here grow kind of grown up here um and started looking for a job in Central Texas and so had done recruiting I was hired on at mlan company in Temple and worked in their corporate HR for almost 10 years and so in that role I did recruiting HR all kind of all functions of HR and really learn the HR um fi just Hands-On doing a lot of it um getting certified and and getting my you know PHR and some of those different certifications there um I had the opportunity I wanted to move into management um and had the opportunity to go to work for a company that was just opening in Belton called CGI um they were brand new to the area whenever um I started they were in a temporary space had about maybe 10 employees um and we were tasked with building it to about 400 employees um within the belon location within the first 3 years I think 30 and3 years I it was it was a lot so I spent um five years at CGI we um hired tens and tens of people um really kind of established that location and started kind of building that group out um within the community and getting involved in the community and it was a it was a wonderful opportunity um and then I had gotten kind of a call or recruiting call I guess you'd say um a friend of ours that owns the business here um in Colleen for bkcw they had no HR they were close to 5050 employees you know 40 something employees and really just needed help to build out their operations in their HR and so I took the opportunity and became their director of HR seven years ago um and have been working in that facility um we have grown the business we've added training and added management and I mean just kind of from like one person our owner running it to um so so much great opportunity I think that we've been able to provide and build um so it's been a a stretch goal for me to be able to kind of do that and work side by side with an owner and um have kind of a small business that we've been able to to really grow and build um over the last seven years and and added new agencies and new locations and things like that so um we are always hiring it's been nice to be kind of focused here in Central Texas and see the growth and you know see the challenges too I mean we've um you know obviously with with covid and all of the changes and hiring and and finding staff um every every business is challenged with that and I think um working for a great employer that values you know the the team and wants to grow that and has goals to continue to grow um has been really really great to partner with and so um I've you know planned to stay here until I retire hopefully I'll they'll keep me around forever but um great opportunity that you know I've been able to kind of work through my HR career and have landed with um with this job with bkcw here locally Stephanie um okay hi my name is Stephanie Gonzalez um I graduated from A&M Corpus is chrisy in 2012 um I moved to Houston Texas afterwards because I figured oil and gas that's where it's at that's where the money's at um I also joined a head hunting company um uh we recruited oil and gas Professionals for um Upstream Midstream and downstream and um did that for a couple years and got pretty pretty burnout um I had two very 80 Bitties I had a newborn and a 2-year-old and it's a very demanding field and so um took a step away from that and really kind of tried to re-evaluate what I what I wanted for my life as a work life balance and um that was really my goal in finding my next opportunity um I found CGI consequently and kind of went into the interview and said this is what I want and this is you know my family and this is what I expect and and they kind of ticked all the boxes for me I've been at CGI now um going on eight years um CGI is an IT consulting company so we provide in toin software solutions for our clients across many different Industries um some of which are oil and gas um Healthcare Finance retail uh manufacturing utilities um we are the fifth largest IT consulting company in the world actually we just hit over 93,000 members worldwide um we happen to have one of seven what we call onshore delivery centers um here in Central Texas um we're at about 330 members uh current currently kind of fluctuates um and um so I like um like he mentioned I'm here just to kind of support the university covid hit us of course for our on-campus activities and so we are um as the campus recruiter um here for Texas the Northwest and the West um my you know goal is to just really dive both feet both hands in back into um our local universities and just to gain that relationship and just I'm here really to support you um kind of hats off uh my CGI hat off on how I can support you whether it's you know hey Steph I met you I might not be interviewing with CGI but I've got an interview coming up and I'm a little nervous can you help me um can I do a mock interview with you can you review my resume um I just recently did that for a couple students yesterday here for Central Texas students and so I'm definitely here just to support you in any way I can and also consequently I do hire people but um also here just to help no I it was great you know it's my first conversation with uh Stephanie I mean she was like she was just so about connecting and helping on that side and I was and I was like no hire hire hire so no it's it's very it's a great approach and uh we really appreciate that Casey that's awesome and I think any of us who are up here we have a passion for that so it does go both ways uh my name is is Casey Coburn I'm the director of recruiting for First National Bank Texas the big building you see off Central Texas um Expressway and its divisions which is First Convenience Bank First Community Services First Heroes National Bank and First Community Mortgage we have 330 branches across four states Texas New Mexico Arizona and Arkansas along with that the mortgage division has 15 locations we've got a commercial lending division as well as eight Consolidated offices that are spread across those four states that we talked about um we do massive amounts of recruiting volume every year uh we had 98,000 applications last year um which is an amazing amount I fell backwards into HR like I think probably most of us do graduated from the University of Texas put out a thousand resumés got a call ended up working at a bridal salon worked at a bridal salon for a year it closed down ended up working as a receptionist at a jewelry manufacturing firm and sorry the watch is Siri is telling me something as well and um as the receptionist at the manufacturer I had a lot of contact with our staffing services and head hunters just made relationships with them as they came in and one day my boss was gone and one of our reps came in and shut the door and said what are you doing here I Saidi paying my bills and he saidwell what do you want to do and I saidwell I want to pay my bills and he said you know I think you might consider something in recruiting 20 years later actually 25 years later I've been with the bank for 20 um did five years of recruiting before that which was a combination of staffing service head hunting which I think we all land in at some point um in Temporary Service as well hello everyone uh my name is Kimberly Hartman uh I graduated from uh Texas A&M central Texas in 2010 or sorry 2013 and then again in 2016 with my masters um I have Bor been born and raised in this area I was born on Fort Hood now called Fort Cavazos uh fun fact I've never lived anywhere else I've lived in Copper Cove and the farthest is Harker Heights so I love to travel uh but I've never lived anywhere else Central Texas is my home and I plan to stay here until I die um so uh but yes I have I I just say that to say my love for this community runs very deep um my father and mother came here from the military and I thought I was going to be a military brat but when they came here they got out of the military so I'm a military brat that's never lived anywhere else so that's what I always start with um but I have been in HR um I actually consider myself uh an HR unicorn and I tell this to everyone that I meet uh because I actually knew I wanted to go into HR right out of high School uh my mother was an HR Manager for Sally May for 15 years and my mother is my Shiro and I was just like I want to be like her and so when I graduated high school um I immediately went to Central Texas College and then here to Texas A&M um and so I've been in HR going on 19 years um yes I'm only 15 years old as you can see um but uh yes I've been in HR going on 19 years which is crazy to say uh but I love everything about it I started working for the United States Postal Service first um and then went did a total 180 and went to the nonprofit sector and worked for uh the YMCA and then now I work in Tech I work for nd.com uh the job site um so you probably either if you're a job Seeker or you're an employer you've probably interacted with our company at some point um and I actually also teach for Texas I've taught for Texas A&M as well as an adjunct professor and then I also teach for Sherm which is the society for human resource management I teach the HR certification classes HR of one classes Dei all of those things so in my part-time job I love to teach in professional development and my full-time job I am what they call a strategy adviser which is just a souped up name for a director um but in Tech we have lots of jargon and lots of different names so it's called a strategy advisor um and I support HR for HR so I support our chief people officer and our senior vice president of environmental social and governance or ESG um and I support all things um HR and people related talent management for those two uh Executives at our our organization we have about 11,000 employees um so it's a big job but I love it uh again I love everything about HR and I just like these ladies have said uh I love being able to give back and to be able to you know help in any way and support in any way that I can thank you uh so I'm going to ask some questions here and maybe they're framed from a general but always one of the things I think it's great when you get practitioners is maybe you give the general answer but you probably got a war story there of that one person that one incident so if you got it share it that's what we when I bring in people to my law school classroom you know we're talking what's that one case that was just real riveting and so you've probably seen this one that just you know came across or you're listening it's like I can think of we were doing interviews once for um actually one of our panelists coming up was I think in that room but we were doing interviews for our original uh founding Dean uh the position that ultimately went to uh Larry Garner and we're asking a Dean it's like what do you like least about this what do you think you'd like least about this job and the person said well I'm not a big fan of administrative work I was like you're going to be the dean of a college and you're not a fan of administrative work that's quite possibly the worst first answer I mean I literally dropped my pen and I like we're done you are you are done I mean instantly no no questions so those types of deal so let's start with the resume all right and we'll just start with uh well actually start with Stephanie and then kind of rotate back through um what are the most common mistakes you see on résumés and how can applicants avoid them uh and then at you know simultaneously making theirs stand out because what what you 98,000 applications okay that's a big you're trying to fight through sometimes and it and it it's weird positions EB and flow like we have some we had one we we did two s we've had a couple searches like one I thought we'd get a ton of applicants we got like 10 we had another I thought we'd get no applicants we had 35 or 40 uh we had another one with hundred and something and so it's just all over the map so you never know how competitive it one's going to be uh but you got to stand out in the crowd so Stephanie what do you what have you run into you're not going to believe this hands down the biggest mistake I see is no phone number and no email yep no way to contact hands down and it's so a so it's a it's not so so when if you apply online it's a little different right so you upload your resume and then generally there's a box where you put your name and your email and your phone number so that's fine but if I meet you on campus and you give me your resume and I'm excited right like and I'm the one that I write notes on the back of the resume and I and you know you tell me and I I'm a visual person so I'll say like oh they talked about this and this or we had a connection with this so that I can like remember and I'll like remember your face and then I'll get back to the office and I'll start sorting normally by like intern or full-time or whatever and then I'm like you know now what do I do and then if you're not on LinkedIn and I can't even go find your name on LinkedIn to say hey I met you on campus so believe it or not hands down that's the biggest thing I see and then was was there a second part to the question yeah part two is kind of what what do you what really attracts you I mean some people have these approaches where they make them like super artsy or or you know maybe it's something organization you know straightforward I mean there's a lot of that's always one of the tough things when it comes to resumés is you know people think themselves resume experts but I think that they're a lot situational so um so I think that my answer is twofold and I think some people have differ uh differential um opinions on this for me I think picture on a resume is is a nogo just because that removes any potential bias that somebody might have reviewing your resume some people feel differently about that um and then for me just having a very clear concise resume I don't need colors I don't need a lot of I mean I I think definitely having headers and subheaders is helpful um having sections with like education skill set experience um Hobbies even I think hob I enjoy when I see Hobbies on the resume kind of gives me a frame of mind on what you're interested in but I don't want to talk too much cuz we've got three other um wonderful professionals here answer we got lots of time um I would absolutely Echo Stephanie the the no email or the no phone number or an email address that's in appropriate I can't tell you the war stories I want to so bad but um you know you you might want to consider you know sexy girl 1319 or whatever at yahooo like don't don't put it on your professional um the egregious things the typos the misspelled words I mean it just automatically is it's a tick mark against you for lack of a better way of saying it um so far as um format I agree with Stephanie I the the pictures are are scary from an HR compliance standpoint so we will take almost anybody with a picture and almost turn it over immediately so or go through and black out the picture so there can't be any you know theories that there was some bias there um but something that does stand out um a different format I love looking at something different just because we look at so many of them you know it's all the s education experience Hobbies even if you you do one part with your contact information on one side and then something on the other side looking at something different makes you stand out just make sure your phone number is on [Laughter] it um I definitely agree with everything uh the other two things that I would call out are specifically jargon the use of jargon um especially in Tech there's thousands of different words like even at my company now we have a dictionary of jargon because when I first joined I was like I would get emails and I'm like what what are they asking me I I don't know what this is right um and so you have because especially if you are in different Industries there is different industry jargon and so to assume that everyone is going to understand what an okr is or a kpi is or tldr like if you're going to assume that people understand that you might miss out on a really good opportunity so make sure that you are spelling out those words or at least including the meeting the meaning of those words um the second thing I would say is definitely remove objectives from your resumés that's I mean this might be a Kimberly personal opinion but what I'd rather see and what Hooks me when I see a resume is a professional summary and and what the difference between the two it it sounds similar but there is a different it's an objective you're telling some you're telling the recruiter or the talent manager what you are hoping to get you're hoping to get this job but with a professional summary you are telling me in 30s seconds or less why I should hire you and if you hook me with a good line it's if you want to stand out start it with something different right you know you can tell you can say you know HR Rockstar or you can say Rockstar project manager I don't care what it is just make sure that you and those first at the beginning of your resume include a good summary about you and what makes you stand out why I should hire you for this job because a recruiter a manager whoever they're not going to look at your resume for more than one or two minutes you can't 98,000 resumés in a day we get hundreds and thousands of applications every day our recruiters cannot take the there is literally not enough time in the day to thoroughly read every single resume so to stand out make sure you have a good professional summary and if you can add a line in there about something something that's going to hook that person to say ah I need to read more about them I need to learn more about them sh yeah I would Echo all of these things for sure um I have seen a lot of resumes that'll come through with errors on them um different fonts different sizes not lined up I feel like if you'll really spend time and make that look as best as you can because it makes you kind of feel like is their work going to be sloppy are they going to send stuff out to clients that doesn't have anyone proofreading it and you know having misspelled words or different things like that so keeping everything aligned um don't leave gaps and employment out I feel like there's sometimes I'll get resumes on my like what do they do for these like 5 years like even if you're a stay-at home mom or do you know like just kind of put in enough so that you can see um exactly what their career history has been um I think too keeping it in um the chronological like what are you doing the most recent going down sometimes I'll get stuff that you know it's like from high school and it's opposite and then they're just all over the place and you don't really you can't follow their actual career track to see what they've done the most recent um listing their skills list your education if you're involved in the community put those kind of things down I think it shows like leadership especially if you are coming out of college and don't really have a lot of job history like have you done really cool projects or different things at school that have given you some extra you know ump in terms of just your experience or being able to lead something or you know having a summer job or doing things like that even if it's insignificant you can still I think play to that you've got responsibility you've worked while you're in school and you've paid your own bills or you've you know those are all things I think that really um show your credibility towards you know wanting to work and being you know longterm um I honestly one thing that and I know I'm old school probably because I've worked forever but um I like to see where people have been at a company um and staying there and being loyal to a company for more than six months to a year like if I see people that have changed jobs every six months or a year I honestly I I don't I mean unless they're just something that I you know I I can't live without I usually will kind of they kind of almost go to the bottom of my pile because we spend probably I don't know $10,000 in our first two years on just Education and Training to get that person where they need to be I don't want to invest all of that and then have them leave in a year right so I look for people who have kind of a long-standing job history um is just one of my personal things is I like to see that people want to stay with an organization um and grow their career there that we can invest in yeah and and I want to throw one in uh you know sometimes when you're job searching you're trying to get a job at a time and you're sending out Mass deal but still at the same time think about the employer you're sending it to because you know you may have the same blocks for everybody but they might want to see the blocks in a different order depending on what the type of company is uh you know that they experience and that and that Echoes I the reverse history where you start with your stealth 30 years ago and then finally oh yeah that's a yeah start Recon work your way back and then at a certain point you know we don't need 35 years ago we you know recent history uh it can get too long cuz we're not going to look four five six pages it's you know what you got to hook us in in page one there ultimately uh so Shayla started started hinting at this uh and and got us down this question but you know we've got a bunch of of future recent graduates who may not have an indepth you know resume and and so we sort of look uh and sometimes I I get them and it just you know he pops up and it's oh this is just a single page um and so you know that's that's a fear that sometimes they have so so what advice do you have for recent graduates or individuals transitioning even to a new field uh regarding crafting an effective resume with that limited professional experience I didn't get I don't I don't have years of work experience uh let's start with uh Casey this time yeah there's a couple things with it and for me I can tell immediately I'm like oh this is a recent grad I don't have uh tremendous expectations that you're going to have 15 years of experience and every qualification that we're looking for so I I would Echo Kimberly and start with that professional summary recent college graduate looking for an opportunity you know and I know it's it's a little objectiv but because we all know yes you're looking for but I like seeing that you recognize that I'm a recent college grad um and and here's what I have to offer if you have something uh with if you have limited professional experience anything you can add about organizations um LED four group projects in my psych 1301 class anything that shows teamwork positivity a willingness to try new things a willingness to learn something that all matters a lot to me so yeah absolutely um wholeheartedly agree with that I would say from the transitioning aspect because especially here in Central Texas there are a lot of um recent grads but not necessarily new to the workforce you're just transitioning careers or trying to to break into a new career field I would say focus on those transferable skills um because a lot of times especially now with AI you if you apply online you're going to have a bot really reading your resume and what that bot is looking for is those keywords and if it doesn't see those keywords your resume probably won't even get in front of a human right so even if you don't have experience in the industry that you are searching for that role in there are transferable skills that you have things like collaboration things like project management things about like leadership right customer service support those are all very general and generic things and themes but can transfer to the role that you are looking for so if you are looking to let's say break into HR but you're coming from a customer service background talk about how you collaborate talk about how you lead right in those and bring those keywords to the Forefront because that is what is that's what that recruiter or that talent manager is going to be looking for CH I kind of probably sorry I jumped the gun on that and said some of that in the resume portion of that but um kind of same things that you guys echoed as well um one thing I found that I I do kind of like if I've been at a career faere or if I've you know somebody that's right out of school and maybe they applying on LinkedIn to one of my job postings um that they'll do the research and find me and like connect with me on LinkedIn or they'll email me directly because you know your email kind of just or your resume will kind of get in a mix of things sometimes people will put together a really nice email um and say how interested they are in my position and send it to me directly like find my email address online or reach out to me through Linkedin or something like that um when they're interested in my job and I feel like that kind of stands out too if you know they haven't had a lot of experience but they're just hey I'm I'm really eager I'm getting out of school I met you at a career fair you know I'd love to follow up with you and and see if I'd be a good fit for this role or something like that so just trying to kind of set yourself apart and put yourself out there even if you haven't had a lot of job experience a lot of times I think those things just having a really clear good resume um people make them on canva now like you don't have to have it super basic there's a lot of different tools that you can use to to make a really nice resume and have it look really professionally done um without having to spend any money on it so I think just spending the extra time to have a really good resume and following up and being proactive to get your resume in front of the right person I think helps a lot too I think um beat off of one thing she one of the things that that that I found interesting sometimes uh and you know I wouldn't say it's ever something that swung it but it's always that I've enjoyed when people take the time is the thank you note after the interview uh that you know it wasn't just okay I expected this but you know hey i' you thank you I value your time for for appreciating and and so you got to think about that con you know going back to Charlie conscientiousness uh and what he was talking about that that resonates as a potential colleague uh and what you want to to have Stephanie so in thinking about answering this question I'm kind of thinking about this more of like when talking to somebody like maybe you've gotten to the point where you've gotten your resume through um can I use an example of somebody that's in the room that did a really good job about this recently so I'm going to Spotlight Jay so I met Jay um like last month like 3 or four weeks ago um and he brought his resume which was very you know formatted very well and he kind of you know he's here he's doing great things on campus as a was campus Ambassador or what is it called Pier okay um and so he said you know he's talking to me about CGI of course a position was CGI and he was like this is my experience I have and and how does this relate and I was like no no timeout it totally relates because of what you're doing and the type of position that we're looking for and so all always like connecting what you're doing whether it's on paper with your resume or in person um and and that a lot of that is thinking really quick on your feet right so like okay so you ask the question of what is your company and what is the position you're looking for and as they're talking listening right active listening and think thinking about how can I answer this in a way that you hook the recruiter or talent manager or Talent director whoever it may be into saying in their brain oh yeah that they really do fit in this position and what I'm looking for uh all right uh let's let's shift to a couple of questions on interviews here uh and I guess we'll start with Kim can you provide Insight on the types of questions interviewers typically ask and how candidates can prepare compelling responses and I'll add you know some context to this because it it does you I remember oh gosh was 10 15 years ago my mom was my mom was a public school teacher and she was like I'm tired of being in the classroom I but I still want to stay in the ISD but I haven't interviewed for another job in 20 years you know what what what's going on and so I I had a little conversation with her I was like you know here's one type of here's one question they might ask you she calls me the next afternoon and she goes you're not going to believe this because they knew me they didn't ask a lot of question they asked actually one single question they asked me the question you threw out there and so so I mean I think that is something we can we can think through in advance so so let's prepare our students what what do they need to be thinking for what are those types of questions there in in preparing absolutely so I would definitely say lots of Behavioral based interview questions are probably the most common um and those are like tell me about a time when how did you handle X right um how you can prepare for those is really think about the or taking some being proactive and taking some thought about about the role that you are interviewing for right um I'm assuming you you're going to do your research about the company which I know definitely we're going to talk about that a little later um but how can you think about how you are solving a problem or how you are going to be able to come in and and immediately have an impact in this role and so when you're thinking about your answers make sure that you are thinking about how you can come in and solve the problem or how you can come in and enhance what whatever the company already has going on um there and probably all of you have heard of the star method as well situation task action result right talk about how what you did what the situation was what was the task what action you took right and what were the results and if you can make sure to add metrics to those as well talk about what tangible impacts that had and so when you think about it in that way and you frame your answers in that way you are demonstrating to the interviewer you are demonstrating to that hiring manager that I understand what this role is um because a lot of times people don't they apply for roles and they just they're sending out rums and they're sending out resumés and sometimes you just even forget like what did I even apply for especially when you're in a in a position where you just need a job so trust me I get it but take that extra 5 to 10 minutes right do a little research make sure that the role that you are applying for and that you are interviewing for that you can bring those actionable and those be those past behaviors and demonstrate how those behaviors are going to make you successful in this role Shay yeah I would um I would say probably um one of the things that we really ask a lot about um we want to understand kind of like people's goals and what they want to do long term and I think sometimes I don't want to say they fail at an interview but they'll they'll come in and kind of almost say like this is a job just for now and I really want to do this long term and so that doesn't always pass with my managers CU we really want people that want to stay with us for a long time if we're going to bring you on so even if that is your goal I probably wouldn't add that I would probably say you know I'd love to be in a role here and work here for you know a long time and learn this industry or whatever that may be but um you know kind of focusing on like they said the job itself of what you're coming in to do um I try to tell people you know avoid kind of the negative kind of responses to things you know if if they ask you questions behavioral questions or different things about you know time that you failed and what did you learn from it or you know working with difficult people or how you responded to those kind of things you know a lot of times you may have been working in fast food or working with a customer service role where you've had difficult clients or customers and how you responded to that we kind of asked a lot of that um they really want to see that you're going to be able to handle yourself professionally and be able to give good feedback on those different types of responses so I think always trying to stay away from like yeah I quit this job because I hated my manager and they were you know terrible team or whatever even if it was that I would try to come up with some specific responses of how um you kind of made a a maybe a bad situation better like Solutions like they mentioned that you brought to the table um or how you want to grow in your next role not that you're just leaving because you you know didn't like your co-workers and they made you work long hours and things like that um try to avoid asking questions about like how many hours am I going to have to work or when does my vacation start or um when am I going to get my first paycheck you know like those are all important things but they can come later I would say really focus on selling yourself and making them realize that you are there to be a team player um I tell everyone I you don't know insurance I get that we're going to teach you everything you need to know about insurance but we can't teach you work ethic and how to be a good team player and how to support your teammates and um really how to grow in the role I think that my favorite thing that our last speaker had said was being cheerful you know somebody that is going to be there and um be a support to their team and be a cheerful person on the team I think I look for that most and you know we don't want Debbie downers that we have to sit next to every day that don't want to be there um and we don't want people who are just going to sit on their phone all day at work like we want people who are engaged and want to be there and want to learn so um when you're sitting in the interview or waiting for your interview don't just stare at your phone the whole time interact with other people have conversations with the receptionist be present in your role of what you're going to do and understand the job that you're there to do and so that you can really speak to that I think is super important that I brought up the that last one I've heard several times that that that's actually something a lot of hiring managers do in the interview they go back out and talk to any staff that got interacted with and like what were your what were your interactions and and the person you know thinks that the people in the room over there asking the questions are most important but the people in the room are actually valuing what was that interaction with the other individuals outside yeah good point Stephanie um okay so one thing that I personally like to ask so CGI does a lot of reporting um and uh research on what makes candidates tick right so yes there's there's things that we're looking for but we recognize you as individuals are looking for something for yourself so a big question we like to ask is what is important to you in your next position right so is it um I want to be involved in community service events I want to be able to have um uh meaningful and impactful networking opportunities I want to get paid um I and sometimes that's the answer right I want a very clear and quick trajectory to vice president and that's okay if that's your driving Factor that's okay I'm in a position where we are a large organization and so I could say I'm hiring for Project X Y and Z I know that this is this bunch is like this and maybe you're really bubbly and really happy and and maybe that's not going to fit in the you know what I'm saying so if I ask questions and I think CGI and each and I think it depends on what level of the interview process you're in right whether it's first screening or or final interview um but really understanding what it is you're looking for and I have candidates tell me I don't know right and that's that's acceptable you could say you know I'm I'm just graduating at maybe in the and speaking to people who have not been in any industry yet I don't know but what I do know is I'm really passionate about working in a team environment I want to be able to learn the most I can to make an impactful um or or be an impactful player within my team so you're coupling I don't know with but guess what this is what I can bring to the table and this is what I want um and then for maybe professionals who have already been an IND indry or maybe who are um come uh retiring from the military for example um you can say uh you know this was my MOS and this is what I've done this is what I'm you know my my um I'm sorry this is what my major is this is what I'm graduating with the reason why I chose this is because of my MOS this is what I'm good at and this is what you know in your organization this is what I would want to do and this is what's important to me to utilize my past skills and you know I hope I answered that y okay good interviewing is a skill and practice practice practice um it's hard to predict what is going to be asked it depends a lot on the position that you're applying for in some cases it will be very behavioral based like Kimberly was talking about in some cases it may be incredibly technical where you come with all of your acronyms and all of those things but you know when you're preparing practice for everything practice for the behavioral-based interview practice for you may walk into an interview and it's you know your interviewer sitting back and she just wants to chat and you know and it's nothing qualification based I've seen that happen as well but you need to be prepared for that practice with your family practice with your significant other if you have a friend that's an assistant manager at Chick-fil-A and she gets to sit in on interviews practice on her practice in the mirror um I think that's the best way to prepare for interview questions because we all ask different things based on the role um and the more you do it the better you get at it yeah I would add to that like Google questions and go through and see what the like good responses and that whole like tell me about yourself there's so many people that are like uh like they don't know how to tell about themselves so come up with something a little bit about yourself too that you can you can say and one thing I forgot to add I was going to add to that dress professionally there's so many people now that come and they like back then they used to say wear a suit wear a jacket you know whatever wear heels and not necessarily you have to go to that extent but dress professionally and iron your clothes like come dressed nice groomed so you look professional when you get there um and they can tell that you've put some time and effort into your outfit and send the thank you note that goes the long way I think people don't send thank you notes anymore as much and so I love thank you note cuz I think they it shows like it's it keeps you standing out from the other candidates can I add something to this real quick and it's I know it's not on the questions but we do a lot of video interviews now just more efficient treat it just like a face-to-face interview dress like you would do a face-to-face interview um make sure your technology is working I mean if if the company is using Zoom or WebEx or teams make sure you already have it downloaded I mean as recruiters we all understand that technical issues happen but you have such a minimal amount of time to make an impression you don't want to spend four minutes of that trying to get your audio to work you know so sorry I so you said you wanted War Stories really fast so cuz I thought when you said that when I tell you this is a true story hand to the Bible um so I had set up this final round interview mind you this is a final round and this gentleman I'm not going to say the school but um the interviewer opens the screen and he's on camera and he's got his earphones in he's sitting in front of a pizza shop in a t-shirt eating pizza eating pizza I mean mortified like and then I get the call why did you send this and I was like I don't know what happened the third time but the first two times he was I don't know if he thought he had it in the bag or what true story I tell that story all the time no and I think that's that's a you you know we we're running into that now is the transition you used to have the the personal but you know the video aspects and and it and it is you know you get to control that environment on your end so you better have a good environment I I'll say you know I try to get students practicing just doing a short presentation on either recorded video or WebEx in my grad classes for that very reason you know some some simple things like don't have your ceiling fan running because that ceiling fan hits against the light and I mean if someone you know got triggers you know it's very distracting uh you know just posters that are on the wall you know have the little screen filter in behind that you know it just some of the environments and some of the things you know I I know people are going to record these in your home but I don't want to get that personal with what I'm seeing on that screen you know in in behind you uh yeah it is had a one of those you know those fire alarms that chirp oh I had a phone interview last week that was for 45 minutes and every second all it did was chirp the whole time and a dog was barking the whole time I'm like I can't even really like concentrate cuz it was so loud it was like right by her phone or something I'm like go outside I didn't tell her that of course but like think of through all those stuff before you get on your Zoom or your phone call so I I'll I'll Circle so my Dean candidate who didn't like administrative work the other thing that that they led the interview with was apologies in advance if if my dogs go off and start barking we had a moose walk through the backyard so they're a little on edge and so we're like like dogs and moose you know or I don't know what's the what me I don't know uh mooses uh it was you know awkward deal so okay I did I did have one scheduled question but given the time I think this is group in particular questions might come up so let's let's just go let's turn to questions I I already see one person ready ready to roll here let me roll in with the mic so our at home audience can so um with this like we have a lot of online stuff and like turning in your resumé online so what's like the the difference between online resume versus like an inperson going to the company and turning that in so I I really really quickly so I had a personal experience with this my husband and I were both laid off in 2016 with the oil and gas recession and so I printed out like dozens of resumes and I was going in Houston to these giant business parks and just passing him out and they were looking at me like I was crazy crazy now that was 8 years ago I have had several people drop off um resumés at CGI uh maybe it's people who couldn't make it to a career fair and they knew I was there or whatever I can tell you from a personal standpoint I 100% look at those because nobody's doing that and so you're really setting yourself apart um it's not an imposition to me it's not an imposition to the admin assistant who sits at the front door um so I will say I look at those I don't know about you ladies I would say do both just in case that one doesn't get to the right person you still have the online one as well but it's like the extra step of walking in and introducing yourself and putting it especially if it's a local company that you want to but a lot of people have like applicant tracking and they want that you know the electronic one that's in their system as well so that they can go back and pull it and it makes sure it gets to the actual recruiter if that recruiter is maybe not on site like I do all the recruiting in HR I kind of one man show but a lot of these people have like hundreds of locations and it might not be for that job and it's in another spot but they can get it to the right person so I think both of them would be great I completely agree with both like in our situation um I have 12 Recruiters on the team so there's a chance that maybe you applied or interested in in one location that a recruiter is responsible for that position but her counterpart may want to look at you for something you haven't even considered you may want so I would definitely say get it into the system but man and the Personal Touch of showing up is great yeah I another question here um so I've heard there's a great deal of value in like receiving hand handwritten letters so um have you all ever received a handwritten letter from an applicant and what was that effect you had um I will definitely say Yes um actually there was um uh cuz we have Headquarters in Austin and so that's the closest Office that I go into sometimes times um there was someone after they interviewed they sent like a cookie crumble box with a thank you note to the office and it was just it was very nice it was very generous um it left a lasting impression so I would definitely say yes thank you notes handwritten notes I'm not saying go and bribe your your your recruiters or your talent managers keep it under $20 there you go like keep it very very lowkey but yes that to answer your question the handwritten note is because it's it's so rare now it does stand out so I would I would definitely encourage that I like a handwritten note as well and one time we had one of our our owner had interviewed somebody on a marketing role and they were talking about just different business books and he always asked like what are you reading and what's you know and they talked about different things the next day he came and dropped off of the receptionist like the book that they had he went and bought got the book and left it for him with a thank you note and that guy got the job like he was like that was really impressive that he went out of his way to find the book that we discussed and brought it to him so I mean you don't have to do that but I think just standing out like the handwritten not is great drum hi my name is Dr Richardson and I want to know about the telephone interviews you know like uh that part as far as what what do you mean well you know like sometimes uh when they need a person really fast or whatever like that they'll call on the phone and say hey let me talk to you for about five minutes or something like that I well so I my process ISS everybody that I that we bring in for an interview I phone screen and I interview them personally over the phone I usually spend 30 to 45 minutes with them I scheduled in advance and I set up a time with them um I go through all of the questions that I have to almost vet to see if they would be a fit for our organization first so I I always do a phone interview before I ever bring them in front of the director and the owner um and so I I think you bring your aame to those phone interviews and you're is just as prepared for the phone interview as you are for the face Toof face even almost more so so that you don't sound like you don't know what you're doing cuz that's kind of what gets you into the door to do the face Toof face in most cases I don't know if everybody does phone interviews or not but I do on every single candidate I never bring somebody in without phone interviewing them me too and Drome I was going to say in a lot of cases if it's a quick one like you're talking about they probably have a really deep applicant pool so maybe they've got 30 that they're trying to whittle down to 10 so that phone interview is incredibly important because it's probably a stepping stone to The Next Step yeah maybe a second phone interview or something you know like there might be multiple levels of that yeah okay thank you so much yeah and phone interviews I I mean they are a part of it because of their quickness uh that's one of the things I've struggled with I've had some of my worst interviews ever because of the lack of context sometimes because you can't get that verbal connection so it's just like the email so you got to really I mean unfortunately choose your words very carefully uh I I remember the the last one I did I I finished it and it was so bad that I was like I really hope y'all don't call me back you know and and temp me and temp me with a job offer this is this is I guess when I was interviewing for this uh position to move here like 16 years ago at another Texas institution but oh my gosh it was they we just had a complete disconnect all right one more through would you mind giving some advice on our students who are writing their resume you know of course you'll write specifically for if you're applying directly for a job but when they go to a career fair and there's 30 recruiters there what would be the best advice for them to have a more of a generic resume okay so what I've seen and just and I I don't because I go to Career Affairs all semester all across the United States um what I see happening when you don't do a general resume and you try to do like engineering it healthare especially if you're like a business administration major or something like that you get confused and you get flustered maybe you have one folder and you've got two pockets and so then you end up giving me uh a healthcare related one and IM it I I'm going to say for me I don't care just general again to the objective versus um professional summary if you've got that professional summary then you're not honing in specifically on I want to be an IT professional because XYZ so I think it's perfectly acceptable to have that General um statement so that you're not kind of putting your foot in your mouth because then you know like for example um I went to um Colorado to University of Boulder and I pulled I was by myself we didn't think there was going to be that many people so nobody came with me and I pulled 212 resumés um and so I had to go back and like sort them and there was some that were completely unrelated and so I just kind of R pushed them to the side versus if it was maybe more General because if you give me a resume that says I want to be a mechanical engineer well I don't have a mechanic engineer position for you right so yes I just I just want to go back just a second because I just want to be very especially in the age of Technology it it happens but when you're in the phone interviews when you're on Zoom make sure that you hang up okay I I cannot tell you how many stories where you think that you have pushed the end button on your phone or you think you have pressed it on Zoom or teams and someone has continued a conversation outside and and talked about the interviewer talked about how the company was trash and I just just need a job for two seconds and all of these things like make sure it happens more often than you think so I just want when I thought about it I was like no I need to I need to let you know please make sure you hang up make make sure that it is end and the call has ended okay so really really quickly so it wasn't necessarily after they hung up but I had a person who their wife was telling them the answers and I mean like I was on tell me a little bit a little bit you're about yourself you know it's just like tell her that you like to go hunting and tell her that you're a really good father and that you enjoy learning and I'm hearing this one and I'm like like trying to get I mean the whole interview I mean and but it was so awkward because it was like 20 25 second pauses and then he'd be like and then and he would say what she said so just I'm telling you I would rather you have a lack of confidence and try your best than have your wife or your husband or your seriously microp he didn't get another chance yeah microphones are really good now so they pick up background noise very well and better than you think so be very very careful all right this is our last one here yeah you made it just under the wire hi my name is uh Tatiana Ward um my question is is there a difference between I know earlier it was spoken about how you can do a resume on canva and you know there's also you can do it on word there's different ways where you can create a resume if I'm submitting that um virtually or online and there's the ATS that is tracking it does it make a difference as far as picking up those keywords if I structure it on canva and it's not structured you know section by section by section and I have it set up differently so that it appeals to the eye um although still in a professional manner but it does appeal to the eye differently will the ATS pick that up to be able to pick up on those keywords so I will definitely answer that um because my company that's pretty much we are an ATS as well so I can tell you for sure yes it does make a difference um every ATS is not the same so I won't say this as an absolute right but what I will say is be very careful on if you're going to use canva and make like a really visually pleasing resume make sure that those Graphics are not too close to the text because when you upload it the all ats's are not going to process them the same way so where the way you it looks to you and it may look wonderful and it's uploaded and it gets to the other side and to the recruiter or the talent manager your picture or the graphics can be at the top or cut off at the bottom and then the words are splayed out and things like that so yes while RS are super visual appealing online I would definitely recommend use a more simpler resume so that way you know all of the information the pertinent information is getting through correctly and correctly formatted and I personally don't like getting resumes just in word I like it if they save it as a PDF because I feel like when I send it to people it's kind of got you know how word shows you all the squigglies of like not errors but you know like paragraph stuff or different things or whatever it catches and sometimes it's a little bit off where PDF it's like locked and you you know it looks it looks good of how it's supposed to look look and it doesn't get distorted or anything too in my system anyway hi my name is CCE Thomas just a quick question what is ATS see there we go jargon my bad um so it is an applicant tracking system is what an ATS so if anyone uses like indeed or ADP or Workforce Now or a workday things like that those are the systems that most companies use to track and house applications as they come in for recruiting purposes going to add a quick thing too if you guys are using a link um in some way for your resume may maybe you created one on indeed or something like that be careful because if you attach the link in the ATS sometimes it won't open in the applicant tracking system so I highly recommend use a PDF or a word as an actual attachment to your application versus sending a link and if you use the template like on indeed which are great to build it out um they have like space that'll say your job here or whatever I've seen so many resumes that come through and they don't write something and they leave that text in there and it's like terrible so make sure go in and yeah go in and take out like this the template portions of it don't write next to it or beside it like take all that out and fill it in so that it's your information not the template pieces like look for that as you go through it so that you don't leave any of those template pieces on there well this was one that certainly resonated we can see from the the level of we could have maybe made the whole conference with on this very topic alone but the good news news is I know all four of these people would welcome questions at a later point in time so you can find them follow up and they would happily answer questions at another time and we will be bringing these same individuals back uh in the future uh for connect like we're going to do some resumé practice at some point we'll do some interviewing you know we're trying to restructure things a little bit but uh thank you so much for coming on all right so a couple more drawings here uh Koba prize pack Rose and Amazon [Applause] [Music] [Applause] GMO all right well we have our final panel of the day we still got one more speaker after during lunch uh so this is focused on Career we've been talking a lot about getting a job what jobs what you do there's another aspect of what you do in life and that's the life of an entrepreneur some people don't want to work for someone else some people want to work for themselves sometimes in this day and age it becomes a part of it you know we one of the things that I've been listening to a lot of economic data is we talk about there's there's more jobs growing but so many of those jobs are part time jobs and they're jobs that are getting stacked that someone's doing this and they're adding this also and they they do two or three things well one of those side things could be an entrepreneur you know years ago I would have never thought I would have ever been an entrepreneur at any point in my lifetime uh but I think I've technically had five or six different small Soul proprietorships nothing wildly successful uh in fact Kayla just left one of the things I used to do I was a fishing guide and her and her husband went out with me a couple times uh years go um but you know that that aspect that entrepreneurial aspect may be something uh that you're interested so that's the focus of our next panel and panelists please come on up uh so I'll I'll just you know identify them as they're coming up taking their seats and then they're going to tell you a little bit more about uh themselves uh gentlemen I I've just met recently but had some fantastic conversations and done some really impressive work uh down in in south of us here root gani uh with blueacre development Heather nusom uh Heather and I go way back she was an MBA student of mine uh uh well couple years ago well see that was that we were talking about I don't think you were quite in the room yet um you were on when we did the first Dean you were on that P that interview and we talked about the disastrous interview with that guy in Alaska or something with the moose and then said he didn't like administrative work and all that it was just yeah um then Miriam barza is joining us she's on Alum also uh with the central Texas business resource center and then our own uh Dr Angela Patrick so uh just leading off this particular session I just want each of you I I gave you name only but I want you to tell the audience a little bit about yourself uh and what led you to be an entrepreneur or involved in entrepreneurial efforts uh and uh just kind of you know talk about that aspect a little bit what's your story in with entrepreneurship uh start with rot yeah yeah use your microphone so they can pick you up on the on the audience please going first is always uh scary um so uh thank you for having me I'm really excited to be here and speak in front of all of you uh as Lucas mentioned my name is rup gani and I'm the founder and CEO of blueacre development blueacre is a real estate investment company focused on developing commercial real estate and residential subdivisions across central Texas growing up uh I always wanted to be an entrepreneur my parents were entrepreneurs my grandparents were entrepreneurs I even had aunts and uncles who were business owners so it was something business was something I was always surrounded by and naturally I was interested in being an entrepreneur myself I just didn't know how when what because of my interest in business I decided to go to business school um I attended the NYU Stern School of Business up in New York City where I majored in finance and economics and while I was in college I did a number of internships to explore my various interests and gain experience to see what I might be interested in pursuing one day as an entrepreneur I worked at a startup in Silicon Valley I worked in the wealth management division at MetLife I even did an internship at a hedge fund in New York after those four years and all of those experiences I still wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to pursue I wasn't ready to take that leap as an entrepreneur start my own Venture so I decided to take a job on Wall Street and I became an analyst at Barkley's two years goes by I've got a great career on Wall Street I'm living a great life in New York City and around the same time my parents had recently moved to Austin it was March South by Southwest was happening and so I decided to to visit my parents see our new house and go South by Southwest it was during that trip on one of those days that my dad asked me if I wanted to visit the landsite with him he was going to have a meeting there with with the entire team and I I thought hell why not you know I didn't I had a I had a free afternoon I can remember this day like it was yesterday I I get out of the car and I instantly just sink into this grass that's about waist high I'm wearing khaki pants and suede shoes and the guy in front of me is telling me to watch out for rattlesnakes now you have to imagine I'm coming from New York and I'm wearing a suit and tie every day and this guy is telling me to watch out for rattlesnakes was complete Fish Out of Water but it didn't matter I was really just captivated by what I was hearing in that meeting the vision the creativity for how these developers wanted to build these this retail Center and these Office Buildings where they were going to place them why they were going to place them there what the what the design was going to be who they were going to serve in the community I knew right then and there that this was something I was interested in so I um I have a great trip fly back to New York and after thinking it over for a few more days I decide this is something I want to jump into so I quit my job on Wall Street I moved from New York to Georgetown Texas and shortly after I started blueacre fast forward 5 years to the present uh blueacre is developing industrial parks Office Buildings retail centers residential communities um All Over Texas we currently have over hund million do in in development in the pipeline and we're continuing to grow I got to visit some of it it's pretty impressive hi as Luca said I'm Dr Angela Patrick I am a faculty member here at tamuct and one of the courses I teach as entrepreneurship I grew up in a family-owned business also known as free labor to my parents so but I I feel that I always had an entrepreneurial mindset and constantly looking for that next opportunity my current company is drawn Aviation I had a very interesting conversation with a pilot who was working with a similar company up in Dallas and I recognized that there was going to be an influx of highlevel businesses in this areas and Executives that needed to get to remote areas very quickly and efficiently without having to deal with flight delays schedules and securities so I did understand that there's an elevated price that comes with this and that the most important thing that I'm selling is time because time is a very valuable resource for these individuals U also the city of Temple just spent $10 million on a brand new FBO thank you hi good morning everybody my name is Mariam barasa I work for the central Texas business res Resource Center we are house in the Workforce Solutions I am a business counselor and also an entrepreneur and um it's funny because I was hired for my current position by Heather um so familiar faces uh but yeah networking we talked about Network absolutely and now I send referrals to her for her business so but yeah um very happy to be here thank you so much for having me and I just take a minute I would like you to expand on the business resource center because that's an that's an a resource for entrepreneurs that honestly as much as i' been here I didn't know a lot about and I've I've been I visited uh with Lisa and run again one of those things you run into her at people at another event and you kind of go oh I didn't know this is there and then I went and met with Lisa and and so that's for those people thinking about it talk talk a couple minutes about that aspect absolutely so the central Texas business resource center we are funded um we're a nonprofit we're funded by the greater clean chamber of s um were funded by the Workforce Solutions of course or house in their building and we're um also funded by Central Texas College so the three entities together form the partnership and um they fully fund our department so that we can provide our services free of charge to our customers um what we do on a daily basis is that we assist individuals who are thinking of starting a business or even if they already have a business we help them um as far as like application assist we're all information and um education resources so everything business you know we talk business every day all day so when it comes to explaining if somebody wants to start an LLC what are the benefits the pros and cons of an LLC versus a soul proprietor we kind of go in depth as to explain hey you know maybe the LLC is not right for you right now maybe let's start small as a so propri to see how things go later on you can transition to an LLC so we provide that um education to the customer there is a lot of information out on the internet but what we try to do is kind of narrow down that information because there is just so much out there and um we can't tell you like how many times we've heard um oh um I heard that there's a free LLC um so I went and registered my business in California my LLC in California so I don't have to pay anything for it but I can still you know operate here in Texas unfortunately that's not how it works um because it may be free um somehow you got a special you got to register for free but it is an $800 renewal fee on a yearly basis so it is really good to be you know informed to make the best decision for you as an entrepreneur so that's basically a little bit of what we do we talk about grants we talk about um you know business loans um we talk about do you need a tax ID for your business do you need the Ein right now make sure you don't pay for an EIN or a tax ID it's always free unfortunately if you Google um you know apply for Ein you're probably going to click on one of those sponsor links they're going to charge you a fee um to apply for the Ein on your behalf when you know if you're on the irs.gov website it's completely free it's just a number kind of like the business social to identify your business um should never pay for that but yeah we try to narrow down the information as much as we can um my coworker likes to call it you know people get information from Tik Tok Central and YouTube University which I always laugh when she says that but there's a lot of information out there but keep in mind some of those individuals are in a different state um the type of business that they're in may be different from you know what you want to do so some of the things may not apply um we hear a lot about um you know talk to your um government officials and stuff like that to ask for funding um 99% time they're going to rout you back to our office or you know the Small Business Development Center um but yeah not to go too much into length I just want to kind of give you an overview of what we do um and our services are free of charge 3.99 mine is a 99 and that's a key yeah it's a free resource and and there's just I was amazed at how much information we talked earlier about jargon sitting down with Alicia you know I'm I'm jotting notes as fast as I can and there's so much jargon with all the different programs and things like that but they'll walk you through it all Heather uh my name is Heather nusom and I it's kind of funny because we're kind of opposite ends of the spectrum here so I grew up and the main thing I never wanted to be was My Own Boss never wanted to be my own boss so I joke because I also never wanted to be in politics and I was in um politics adjacent for 15 years on top of that so as an adult I kind of failed at what my childhood expectations were um I have worked in the accounting field uh for 30 years plus um I got into that because I figured someone was always going to need someone to count their pennies so I was always going to have a job uh I dumb lucked into I actually really like accounting I also like tax I'm a little crazy but that's okay um I started my first business uh while I was working full-time um as a vice president of five nonprofits and it was nutree Fitness and at the time that I did it it was a hobby that's all I was doing it for I had been in pain my entire life uh due to some knee issues and I accidentally fixed my problem and completely got myself out of pain and I thought well that was kind of crazy like I'm an accountant I how did I do that I have no idea what I did but I was late to learn so I'm like I bet I could figure out how to do this and then I could help other people um I created a new modality um of K9 Fitness that I integrated into helping people get out of pain and I started the business um I started it because it was a hobby we didn't have brick and mortar or anything like that um after a summer outside in the Heat and in places that didn't have AC I told my husband I don't care if it's a hobby I'm going to get a brick and mortar location so we got a brick and mor location and now I'm like okay I kind of have a like a business now like this is no longer just a hobby um I went from that to the middle of that year that we decided to go brick-and mortar um a good friend of mine had been very very ill for multiple years who owned the local massage school here in Colleen and at the time um I was over the business resource center and I was talking with my friend and I was like you you really need to like close the business or sell the business like healthwise it's not good for you to still be doing this so I went to one of my counselors at that time and said hey I I need you to go talk to him and help him close the business sell the business whatever works for him but I need you to go at him sideways not telling him what to do but I need you just to help him figure out what he's going to do and he did and my employee came back to my office and said yeah I went I talked to Ted um you and Eric should buy the business I'm like that is not why I sent you over there I said business 101 I literally just went Bri mortar with a brand new business that nobody understands in January and this is June I'm like business 101 you don't buy a second business in the same year that's crazy uh my husband was in Korea at the time uh in the military and I called him and I said you will never believe what Marty said and I tell him and my husband goes oh well should we buy it I'm like okay so apparently this is a testosterone issue I said are you crazy and in December we owned the massage Co so it the massage call was kind of by accident um but I decided that if we were going to do that my husband was going to be retiring from the military shortly and he was going to need something to do in retirement that gave him flexibility that he didn't have to go to if he was having a bad day and couldn't go to the office that he had that option that he could go to the office and he could manage that and he could still do stuff and not lock himself in the house and never leave his computer in office again uh so we did that and about 6 months later I convinced him it was his idea to get a massage therapy license and I also decided uh that same year uh to start the bookkeeping accounting and tax company because that's what my background was in that's what I really enjoyed doing I like doing the other stuff but if I was going to have a business I felt I probably should have an accounting business so then I now have three businesses and I never intended to have a business um so that was kind of interesting and uh about two years later made the decision that there wasn't enough Heather to go around when I was sitting in an airport in Austin and I went from a full-time employee um running three businesses that I owned on the side to retiring everyone tells me you retired I'm like I don't think I feel like I retired um but I no longer work for somebody else I now have the three businesses all right so you know I think you know getting into business you know sometimes people do have it by accident but you know others very much a plan but as we as you get into it as you got became entrepreneurs uh what were some of your biggest challenges uh when you got started off and and how did you overcome them R yeah I I faced a lot of challenges when I first started my business um one of the the simplest challenges was just learning to drive again you know I was living in Manhattan for six years I hadn't driven a car and uh let me tell you Northeast driving is very different from Texas driving I would get on the highway in my sedan I'd be going 65 miles hour and a pickup truck would just fly by me at 90 M hour I didn't know if the car was trembling or I was shaking you know it so I was scared every time I hit the road first two months um actual business challenges I uh you know I think one of the biggest challenges I faced was just learning an entirely new industry I had a great background in finance and investing but I knew little about the development process specifically civil engineering and construction so in order to learn I really just threw myself into the deep end it was really initiation by fire um I would meet with civil engineers contractors Architects every week for those first few months and I would just listen and I would ask them questions and through that process over the span of a few months I would start to pick up the jargon I would pick up the language and eventually I started to get it and so that was that was a learning curve another another obstacle for me was just my age you know in in real estate development people often refer to you as being young when you're in your early 40s I was in my mid 20s when I started my business so I was always the youngest person in the room and I would often leading meetings where everyone around me was twice my age and that could be intimidating but over time I learned that it's it's really not about your age age is irrelevant it's really about knowledge if you're knowledgeable about your subject matter people will listen to you they will follow your lead they will give you the respect that you deserve and so knowledge is knowledge is very important Angela sure so I have had businesses in the past that have failed and so I was able to bring many of those Lessons Learned into this new Venture but I I really had three main challenges uh uh for drawing and one similar to you I I had to learn as much as possible about an industry I knew nothing about and so and I had to do it in a short amount of time to make good decisions and so I know more about FAA regulations than I ever wanted to at this point in my life you know uh another thing was I had a ton of questions and finding the right people to actually answer those questions and and getting people to call me back I will say persistence is key especially in that um and probably the the third thing the numbers had to make sense you know making those numbers work from the financing to the depreciation schedule to pricing just remember that Excel is your friend and not your enemy so my Exel spreadsheets were crazy thank you um I would say from my personal perspective being an entrepreneur I do have a business uh currently um one of the um most challenging things was marketing because I had no idea how to start where to start I mean I I I had some form of idea but not really um I was really trying to find those strategies to build our clientele and you know it's it's hard not to get discouraged the first couple of months but then it is also very rewarding once you see that you are starting to get customers that it may have taken them two months to call you after you handed them your card or your flyer whatever it is um but those customers will come it's just a matter of learning which strategies you need to use for your marketing um people do get discouraged pretty quickly it's like what's going on I've delivered um you know 500 flyers and I'm not getting any calls or maybe one or two inquiries is just not enough just keep in mind that they those customers will come to you it's just a matter of time but don't forget that every day you should be doing something for as far as your marketing every day you should be doing something whether it's Word of Mouth just telling someone hey I have a business this is what I do maybe you're not interested but you know someone that's interested so really word of mouth is the best advertisement but every day you should be doing something to promote your business um from our customers perspective I would say funding seems to be one of the biggest issues a lot of people start or think of starting businesses when they're going through a life transition so let's say they got you know laid off for example and they are like well what if I was to start my own business what if I work for myself and I don't have to you know deal with a 825 and you're a minute late and you know getting in trouble all that kind of stuff um but is it really the right time that's really the question you have to ask yourself this the right time because you know um we get a lot of customers um and no offense but there are customers who are like unemployment benefits and they want to use you know some of that money to set aside or something like that again is this the right time is it going to cut off your benefits once you start your business so that's something to to think about is that really you know the route you want to go you know again this is it is the right time but as far as marketing was one of personally our one of our biggest Bigg challenges so because I have the three companies each company had its own unique challenges for me um uh nut tree Fitness the biggest challenge for me there was I intentionally went into that with the idea that I was going to be starting a business with an idea that most people didn't even understand you know I would tell people like we do K9 Fitness and they would be like I don't understand like you train dogs and I'm like no um I'm I'm like actually I don't train dogs at all it's not one of the things we offer um but I Network you know and I'd give them the list of people but the education the marketing of being able to teach people like what does it mean to have a k9 fitness facility um what does it mean that our primary focus is exercise therapy no I'm not a personal trainer um okay so technically I am a personal trainer but but that's not what we do um that we work towards helping people to improve their quality of life whatever that looks like to them and that was a really hard thing to get across to people because they understood physical therapy and they understood dog training and they understood a personal trainer but they didn't understand that other that we were and so we even to this day I mean the the fitness facility has been in existence for 10 years and we still have to explain to people like what does that mean like I don't understand I don't have a perspective to apply that to we've just gotten really good at explaining it uh the massage school because Ted had been sick for so long one of our very first challenges was the rebranding um so we had to go in and basically Rebrand so people understood that the problems that had occurred in those last two years when he was really ill and the management of the facility had been kind of bouncing around to different people that those didn't exist anymore that we were a new organization um and ironically I literally just had to explain that last week to a company because they don't allow massage schools to get this special discount if they're affiliated with another company and so they kept saying well but this Phoenix Awakening massage I'm like that's the school's name they're like no the school's name is a new beginning School of Massage Colleen I'm like they're both their names it's a branding thing I'm like we we go by both but we primarily go by A New Beginning school of massage now um and then the other was similar like I had to learn the industry I was I did not have a background in massage therapy like I understood it because I had received it I had no idea what it meant to like actually do the action of a massage so I am coming into this and I had a background in education and so I'm looking at the curriculum going oh this is bad like that's not how the brain works that's not how you learn things like the I had a big history in um neurological study and things to that effect and I'm like so that's the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to try to figure out how to fix this but I couldn't fix it because I didn't understand 3/4s of the curriculum I didn't understand that half the curriculum was massage Theory and I didn't even know what half these words meant so I have I had to go into it trusting the instructors that I was either had on staff that I inherited or that I hired once I went on to be straight with me when I was asking them questions and not just give me answers that I wanted to hear um so that I could build it um it was one of the reasons I convinced my husband that he needed to become a massage therapist and that it was his idea because it's a lot harder than you think to convince somebody of that um because we we' also run into the problems of I would have an employee that I wanted to discipline okay well guess what if they turn in their mintion right there as I'm disciplining them I wasn't a massage therapist by the state rules I had to be a massage therapy instructor in order to go in and teach this class well that makes disciplining employees really challenging so you know there was all of those extras that we had to do um and the by the time I got to the bookkeeping accounting and tax uh nutree nut tree bookkeeping Accounting in tax that was there just wasn't enough Heather anymore uh I had I was way beyond my limitation of how many hours in a day there were um I by that point I was literally doing the whole okay I've got an hour at lunch today I'm going to run to my other business and see a client and then I'm going to change clothes run to my other business and see a client over here you know fix a problem the toilet's backed up and somehow that's my problem versus somebody who's at the office because I'm the owner and then I would have to change clothes again to run someplace else to have an executive meeting and it was just getting to the point where there wasn't enough Heather anymore and that's one of the things I hear from a lot and I've heard for years and years of people saying you know you do the full-time job so you can still cover the bills but you need to make sure that when you decide that you want to be an entrepreneur you have to cut bait and move forward and it's scary and I know very few entrepreneurs that will say I did it when I should have most of them will say I should have done it sooner I I held on to the full-time job too long it affected my day-to-day operations of my company this I want to interject this question it wasn't one I gave yall beforehand uh but one of the things they talk about is the life of an entrepreneur and you know sometimes people go oh it's great I get to work for myself uh and so I just talk a little bit about the that aspect of it that sometimes people think that that flexibility is is a positive maybe it is you got flexibility but it's not less hours is it R you say that's all that was uh no um it's definitely not as sexy as it as people would make you make you think it is um yes you have flexible hours but you don't really have flexibility because you're trying to move your business forward constantly you're trying to move projects forward you're trying to lead it team and if you're not leading the team then they're not working you know they're not they're not executing on your mission or your vision so you're constantly I I mean I I joke with some of my friends you know they'll say hey rup do you want to go on vacation let's go let's go on spring break or let's go on let's go on summer vacation let's go do this let's go to let's go to Mexico and I'll tell them guys I don't know if I can take off you know I need to I need to be here this is my first priority I need to make sure I have all these I'm not only responsible for myself but I'm responsible for all of my employees and all my external employees um if I'm not here you know driving driving the boat or driving the car you know who is so it's it sometimes it's misleading when people say that you have flexible hours and it's this amazing lifestyle you're going to become a billionaire in a few years uh no it's it's you know it's it it's a little bit more involved than that it does take a lot of time a lot of effort and your priority tend to shift as an entrepreneur you know you really do kind of put your business first over your over your sort of vacation schedule or some of your personal Endeavors I will say no one is going to care as much about your business as you do and so I have been on the side of the road trying to fix scheduling issues and especially in the beginning you're all the O's right the CEO the CFO coo I mean you're you're putting out fires left and right um especially working here full-time and then trying to manage this this business it it's definitely uh been a feat still trying to figure that out I would say finally some people that I can relate to that go through all the multitasking the long hours um it it can be exhausting you can feel drained um but at the end of the day you just got to remember why you're doing it um the fact that you want you know the financial Rewards from this um the additional workload that you're taking on you know um I guess the Legacy that you want to leave for your family um just make sure your kids are on the same boat though cuz they don't always want to take over your business maybe that's not what they want to do and we see it a lot we we get customers um at the business resource center and they're like well um I'm starting uh six businesses for my kids and um one of them's going to be photography the other one's going to be this the other one's going to be that I'm like like um and is that what your child wants to do you know got to make sure that they that is you know one of their passions that they want to take over the the family business um one of my um examples that I can use is restaurants my mother opened the restaurant when I was about 16 I was stilling high school um and ever since I worked as a waitress cashier uh going to the bank uh doing whatever they needed me to do you know wearing all the different hats um in the business I still have nightmares um about you know I have a lot of people and I can't manage and I'm over here sweating and I'm like I do not want to own a restaurant that is not what I want to do so if they would have left me a restaurant for me to take over I would kindly decline um but it is it is a lot of work it is long hours um my colleague Alisia says um well I I like my freedom on the weekends I don't want to you know take on another business at this time because I want to travel that's just not what I want to do so it's you know one of the the things you have to think about is this are you willing to take on the additional workload on top of everything else you already have is that are you willing to sacrifice family time you know like R you said like going out to vacations with your friends and things like that I mean it's something to really think about is that what you really want to do yeah this is a funny one for me because the number of you know commentary that I've had over the years basically everything everybody here has said um I also I did not come from a background of anybody in my family being Their Own Boss um or doing anything like that everybody worked the I worked for the company from the time I was 18 until I you know retired or whatever so I ran into a challenge that I would have never foreseen and that was uh when covid hit so the State closed down on March 17th and on the evening of March 17th my dad called me and saidwell you should file a bankruptcy and close the businesses I me um could we wait 24 hours at least give it a second and it wasn't because he wasn't being supportive he didn't understand and all he knew was there was this really bad thing that happened and everybody was telling you close the business so that's the direction I should go I should just close the business and it was really challenging because that created an entire conversation that if I called my dad for the I just need to vent I had to be really careful about what I was venting about because his solution was close the business and I'm like that's really not the the help I need I just need you to grunt okay let's try grunting um I still to this day have friends that will uh call me and we'll be talking and I I'll be like oh well you should come down like there's this or that going on or we can go do this and they're like well are you going to leave and go do that I be like what do you mean like I'm saying do you want to go do this they're like well you're just going to work the whole time I'm like well when I visit you and you're on call like you work it's no different but it is because you don't go to an office where somebody else owns it in their eyes so it's different for them they don't they don't see it as a 9-to-5 job they see the glory ideas of you set your schedule you do this you do that and I will say there there is an aspect of that like there is an aspect of you know I'm officially done for my day and I have no meetings for the rest of the day or I'm going to reschedule them and I'm going to go home for the rest of the day I don't need anybody's approval to do that that took me a few years to get through my brain after being in Corporate America for a really long time but it was challenging um working with my husband that's fun um working with your spouse is an entirely different idea than just going into business by yourself or with a partner um I work with businesses across the Spectrum in the um in my bookkeeping accounting and tax company and I do a lot of business counseling for them because of my history and it's funny because if you partner with somebody then it's one relationship you may spend more time with that partner than you do with your spouse but if it's your spouse that is your business partner one you're never apart again nobody loves their spouse that much I don't care what they say it takes practice one of the very first things I did before we officially took nutree Fitness from a hobby to an actual business was to re well technically I didn't read the article I read the highlighted sections but I gave it to my husband and made him read it um there was like a six-page um uh write up about all of these couples who had gone into business together and now they were divorced and and that's not uncommon think about just the normal stressors of life and now you add an entrepreneurship you own a business that has you are now responsible for every single employee you now have Financial Obligations that are above and beyond what even a traditional marriage has and you still have all of those normal family stressors but it it's been very intentional like we very intentionally do things like I have to train my staff especially when we get new staff on the fact that if you tell my husband something don't assume he told me like we do not go home and compare notes very frequently we go home and go but we're not at work business owners sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves because we're financially invested we're emotionally invested obviously our careers are tied to this and we think oh this email has to be perfect or my website has to be perfect before I launch it or this post on social media has to be perfect before I before I you know post it um you know it's it's important to act and just realize sometimes speed is is more important than having that sort of having having everything be perfect on day one um another thing was I think networking you know networking is extremely important in business building relationships is extremely important um so take advantage of of networking events take advantage of going to conferences like this one take advantage of going to meetups you never know who you're going to meet you're NE you never know who you're going to connect with um and you never know what opportunities might arise from some of those meetings um the other thing I would just say quickly is you know as as an entrepreneur I think it's really important to trust your gut and trust your intuition you know Listen to Everybody collect input and advice from everyone but when it comes time to make a decision and it's not clearcut trust your gut trust your intuition because at the end of the day that's that's really your compass um and believe in yourself you know Believe in Your Vision believe your believe in your intuition if you believe in yourself and you have that confidence you'll be more likely to act so my advice would be to to you know take those small steps those small iterations can make the biggest difference and uh also understanding that an idea does not necessarily translate into a business opportunity so due diligence is really really important do your research seek mentorships Le leverage your resources there's so many free resources available uh either with the SBA sbdc the business resource center they will help you develop your your business plan I mean those are great resources that are out there but they're so underutilized you know and I was going to say the same thing above all else you have to believe in yourself um kind of my lessons learned it's okay to fail you know but fail early I I look at success and failure as the same thing right if you step on they're both Stepping Stones if you step on success you keep going forward but if you step on failure you can't stop that roadblock you have to Pivot you have to keep going I think that's really really important um and I I'm going to bring up Partnerships if you go into a partnership just understand it's like a marriage and it can end in bitter divorce so make sure your partnership Agreements are there there's clear communication and uh those expectations are there all right well my advice to um aspiring entrepreneurs would be to um do your research the more you know you know you can make a a better informed decision um there will always be some risk that you're willing to take um but ultimately you have to be willing to to take the risk but of course you know if you do your research and you're better prepared um to launch your business even if you fail um you know like she said early on um it it's better than you know not even trying so I think that if you educate yourself and it's okay to want to um you know kind of learn from other entrepreneurs um ask them you know what are some of the um challenges you've had what tips would you give me and you know it could be different for everyone because you know someone may have this type of business it may not necessarily apply to what you want to do but um at the end there are a lot of resources like Dr Patrick said um there is the Small Business Development Center in Temple Mr Jason aor he's pretty good with business plans um he helps us out as far as like the market analysis the financial projections um we don't have that kind of software but we can definitely we do have a business plan template that we can um walk you through um and you know the market analysis Financial projections that be more for like um if you're seeking uh lending so they're going to want to see okay how viable is this business is this something that I want to fund 80% % off so they're going to need that information but there are resources out there um for veterans too like we there is a veteran waiver for the LCC um if you're honorably discharged veteran not a lot of people know that but you know we have those resources in our office and we want to share them with people we want to help you through the application processes we're there for you so um and like I said free of charge so come on and see us and I mean don't don't get discouraged it's easy to get discouraged early on but just just keep going and just move on learn from your mistakes so minor again similar to what everybody else said uh networking like I can't say it enough networking is so important and it's not just networking events um I had an instance where I was on a plane and a dear friend of mine who's wildly successful professional had once said he always gets first class plan tickets because he's always going to sit next to somebody who is important and I'm like that's great I can't afford first class tickets every place I fly but that's a really great idea but I took the the sentiment from it and said everyone you sit next to could be somebody important to you and so anytime I get on a plane and I'm sitting next to somebody I always talk to them where are you going is it business or pleasure blah blah blah blah blah and there was one time that I was sitting next to somebody and a lot of you have probably taken the Colleen flight that goes from here to Dallas it goes up it comes down that's about how long it is and I was sitting next to this woman and we chatted and she was in the fitness industry and I talked about nutree Fitness and we exchanged numbers and it was a really great conversation and then that was it three years later I am graduating my very first class at the massage school after we purchased it and this woman like is rushing to the front of the room and I am in my thank God the event went successfully nobody died and everyone's gonna leave soon okay and this woman is like rushing towards me and I'm thinking oh what is she going to complain about I thought everything went well and she goes oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh she's like do you remember me we sat on the plane next to each other and she started talking and she's like when my niece said that she was gonna come to this school and she told me what your name was she's like oh my gosh I know her she is so nice and I'm like well that's nice but it could have gone totally differently I could have been a total like inappropriate person and she could have Associated that to my name and so when her niece went to her and said hey I'm thinking about going to this massage school these are the people that owned it it would not have been they oh she's so nice it would have gone a different way um and in that note don't burn bridg Bridges there are a lot of people that like to burn Bridges because they like to put the spotlight on themselves but once that bridge is burned you you can't rebuild it it doesn't matter how much people say yeah you just you just got to work harder next time if you burn that bridge it's down and so just assume every single interaction you have with anybody is a potential client a potential referral How would would you want to be treated would you want them to come back and do business with you yeah and i' I'd add investor because you know if you've ever read that there's a book that published many years ago The Millionaire Next Door most of the people who have the money you don't know they have the money uh and you don't again you don't know who you're sitting to till you have a conversation and you know it may come up I mean a lot of the people I I run into that I know are major investors and a lot of small businesses in this area if you saw them you would never think that they're major investors in small businesses in the area I had one other thing that I actually didn't comment on um business coaches they're they're pricey like I'm not going to kid you good ones good business coaches are expensive anybody can call themselves a coach there's you know a life coach around every corner but it is really worth it like I teach business that's that's one of the things that I do for a living even now is I teach people how to run businesses how to start business how to grow businesses that's part of what I do I still have a business coach because when you are in business it is so easy to lose focus on working in your business instead of on your business and a good business coach can he keep you directed and my kind of like my personal like how do you determine who's a good business coach is finding someone who has been successful in business themselves you know that doesn't mean that they haven't you know had businesses that have failed because again you fail up that's that's how you do it but it's important to remember if you're someone is coaching you and they have never successfully done what they're trying to coach you to do is that really the coach that you want all right questions open it up to questions for either a particular panelist the panel as a whole come on someone we got a brave volunteer all right uh hi my name is Tommy Barker um I really just had uh really just like tips on like rebranding marketing and stuff like that uh like for example there's a there's a business that uh oh well there you you're already ready um there's an older couple who's uh looking to give up their business soon and uh I mean also like guess little subass so that like investing like to get a loan out for that where you would go about that to buy that said business um so yeah that's basically my question I'll start uh just for the rebranding side of it um you figure out what the business has done historically well and what the business has historically done not well and you focus on how you're going to move forward you know whether or not that so for us like one of the very first things I did for rebranding was like I changed our logo 100% like the name remained the same it has been a new beginning School massage Colleen since 2009 when it was started but it is now Phoenix Awakening massage A New Beginning School massage Colleen and for the first probably three years we were um owners it remained Phoenix Awakening massage A New Beginning School of Massage Colleen because I wanted to differentiate that because although Ted had been a m a phen phal therapist and he originally had a phenomenal program there were things that had happened in the last few years because of his illness that had just tarnished that image and so we really focused on like what where do we want to go you know we wanted to create a program that was outstanding and that created massage therapists that were above what you would recruit create any place else from other schools that was our goal um and so we just focused on that and we were very very intentional about not taking it back to where it was and when people would bring up we even to this day I had somebody I was there four years ago and this was would have been like 2020 maybe even 2019 and they were like I was there three years ago and it was a horrible experience I'm like it's three years later and you are putting a Google review are you kidding me um but you can't say that you know but you can go on and say you know I appreciate that we're under new ownership now we would love for you to come and you know experience what we are now and I will leave financing does someone else want to touch on financing um in terms of financing you know obviously just speak to lenders uh be prepared be organized have a have a marketing presentation uh show show some numbers show a cash flow projection your plan for the business you know a lot of times when I approach lenders people are all impressed by how organized I am and to me I don't think much of it because that's how I was always taught to do it but apparently not everyone is organized with their pitch organized with their vision for the business why are you acquiring this why are you acquiring it at X price okay what do you see the business doing 5 years out from now where are you going to spend this money that you're asking me to loan to you you know simple questions like that so be prepared to address questions have an organized pitch deck have a vision for your business business and and definitely have some numbers there because you're asking for a loan at the end of the day so they will want to see some numbers and I'll just add to that so if you are developing a business plan it doesn't have to be 50 pages right I mean you can have a very successful 20page business plan but most lenders that they're going to want to focus on the financial so that's going to be one of the most important aspects and also knowing that you have some skin in the game as well so and I will kind of close that out from the finance accounting side of the house um look at the financials of the business that you are looking to acquire um 3 years you want to look at at least three years uh obviously we've got you know the co hump and things like that so they may not you you may even if it's been a long-standing business you may even go back pre-co to look at financials what were they before because there are still businesses that are still recovering from covid that are still struggling but you want to look at them um I had a friend who was looking to buy a business and he looked at their financials and he thought it was an extremely successful business and then he looked at their financials and went so for payroll you have $7,000 he's like yeah that's how much I pay he's like yeah but this is for your whole year he's like you're open six days a week and how how do you only have $7,000 in payroll he's like well this one guy he just lives with his mom he just does this as a hobby so he just takes product home periodically and and he started going through this whole list and we're like okay so outside of the fact that this is all illegal um when you start looking at that and when he actually started projecting how much he would pay for employees that really pretty profit margin at the bottom got real small real fast yeah and I've seen to her Point I've seen this with some small businesses that they even if you dive into the numbers and you look at their employees and what they do they don't do it right you know they it should be uh this person should be employee but they treat him as an independent contractor or they're just paying them cash under the table and when your go to run the business correctly your expenses are going to be way higher than theirs are uh because they just do it differently it's not necessarily that they're trying well some are trying to skirt the law but some it's just out of ignorance and it's like oh this is way we've done it and all this it's like yeah but you can't do that you know the the tax man doesn't like that uh and so you're going to have uh trouble any any other questions all right well thank you very much and uh they're getting ready for lunch we'll eat lunch here in just a [Applause] sec thanks so much R all right we got to do while we're waiting for lunch we do have a few more drawings uh let's see coob Coba bag uh we got a Shawn Marshall still in the room Sean Johan going going no Sean uh Jamie Basera hey you were in line for an Amazon so we'll go with that uh CC Thomas hey I got you so y'all have a conne [Music] it is it still is to this day I would agree with that it is that's awesome thank you so much I appreciate that congratulations what [Music] today I'm doing now and that's crazy I know your like the midle [Music] and they see they see theark Wonder [Music] CTS C [Music] one see make sure it's really many well what are youres really don't want to compare my rates toates all right we are ready to eat we've got a nice spread uh in the back uh it's a chicken parm or uh vegetarian is cauliflower parm uh so uh got a plenty back there salad uh some nice grilled vegetables bread and drinks it looks like some yummy desserts over there on the far side so go ahead and help yourself uh we'll probably do our next we've got a our lunch keynote will probably go in the 12:30ish hour so spend some time talking a couple of our panelists are still around uh ask questions and and enjoy lunch so but and talking and I'm talking how to do it how to use this program and all this like but why would I you I'm like you Bas it's the make or buy iach buy now or you have somebody else figure out right what makes more sense to like however I know my hour and if I use my I can make more my regular and that's exactly it really good at assing that and going all this realiz isue what do I see asue anding ev just Rec they're like what did you get out for this last quarter like what was your success and I'm like did things like you know and they're like and because in room entrepreneurs everybody understood how what they're [Music] ly yeah send me a message let me know what you would like me to talk than you're you're this I so I was here originally um I I didn't even know that it [Music] day [Applause] [Music] [Music] know [Music] [Music] go hey you have he's been there for a whole minute I like oh my gosh I know your general comp or do you guys you guys you guys basically your own yeah basketb away [Music] fin [Music] restaurant experience retail experience um so like I said aside from [Music] industrial [Music] manufacturer ret a lot of Restaurant Indiana gas station yes absolutely absolutely [Music] I really like restaurant but initially I love admin still work progress res right but most universities are he had so much and keep his [Music] [Music] [Music] I 2 no yeah it was just still [Music] also my firster year [Music] I Lar inial no [Music] but I don't know I was just so happy with the quality of ouren why [Music] you 29 is p is behind are we say yeah exactly good friends all right um welcome back we're now time for our final speaker of the day uh and I'm incredibly proud uh to introduce this one I'm not going to do it a big bio I hope she actually gets her bio herself a little bit because that's part of the uniqueness of of Jennifer's background uh as a former student here U and I will end with where she is now positionally uh she's risen the ranks and she can talk more about that uh to now being the chief operating officer at ourbank uh so uh Jennifer take it away so K Katie's our marketing director from the panel this morning she is our brand cheerleader so if you're in the marketing area you need to be a cheerleader for your brand and for your company she definitely is one um so a little bit about me yes I am a proud warrior class of 16 um I was asked to talk about success being a student here and I think part of that path for me is honestly my journey um I my first job was 16 I've had three jobs in my life they've all been for a bank and uh I was part of my high school work program I grew up in a very small town about an hour east of Austin the thing that I'm that that town is most popular for is Snow's barbecue people line up that sells out by lunch and they're only open one day a week so I am from that town they made the Texas monthly list if you will so I grew up there um I was a good student uh I was accepted into ANM College Station and when I graduated I I I did not understand the financial burden that that would take on my family all I knew was I want to be an Aggie I want that I want that Aggie Ring that I can wear forever right I want to dunk it I mean let's get real I want to dunk the ring so we go get into A&M do well in my classes but I also see the impact it had on my family um that was when I grew up a lot I I couldn't do that and that was my choice um so I I chose to leave because I didn't want to do that to my parents I said I'll I'll I'll make a sacrifice and put put what I want aside so that my parents didn't have to bear that burden of paying for that I still worked for the bank through those those years at A&M college station um became I was a teller and then I became a new accounts representative so if you ever needed a new checking account you would come see me in Brian Texas and when I left A&M I asked for a transfer the bank I worked for uh had locations closer to home in the Austin area so I was fortunate to stay with my employer and I moved to Austin continued there start kept learning about uh banking how a bank Works what happens when you write a check how does it get to where it needs to go right um and ultimately became a branch manager stayed there for a while that bank was acquired it was a heartbreaking heartbreaking transaction uh because I had been there for about seven years and so life changes and sometimes companies aren't a good fit for who you are as a person so again I made a choice I went to another uh very large Regional uh financial institution called Frost Bank they're huge in the state of Texas they are the Bank of Texas um they bleed they ooze Texas Spirit right so I was like I'm a Texan this is going to fit and they did they're F they're a fantastic organization uh kept learning I was challenged I dealt with a different customer base and spent five years there and then I got a phone call from a man that I respect so much he's our CEO today his name is Steve stap he knew me when I was 16 so my story is very unique he knew me when I was in the work program in high school he was a manager at that bank that I worked for he said Jennifer we started a bank about a year ago and I want you to come work here he said you know how I like Banks to to be run you know the culture I believe in and I think you can be valuable here if Steve stap calls you you say okay so I made another choice and that's when I came to our bank our bank was little it was one branch it was a startup it's called denovo in our industry um and at this time I had decided I said I really I mean it's been probably years since I left A&M at this point I thought I'm not a quitter by nature and it always bothered me that I couldn't finish my degree I had made enough professional accomplishments if anyone out from the outside looking at my career they would say you've done well like you you're in a stable job you're making a decent living why go back you don't have to but for me I did cuz I knew I walked away from something that was very important to me and so single at the time just me and uh so a very small circle so Dr rhods uh he I believe was the president of ACC at the time and I went to ACC I'm a product of Austin Community College and at the time um I had two degree plans in front of me I would always make sure that the courses I took aligned with A&M college station again and then it would also align with UT Austin so no matter what I knew one of those two schools were going to take me and so I chugged along I was a part-time student working full-time at the bank helping build the bank and the time came for me to to make a choice again I had done everything I could at ACC so for many of you that that choice may have been you've done everything you could at CTC it's time to go to the next place right and so that was me I applied a 40 it was I mean I studied hard I did what I needed to do um my calculus teacher was that was my Ritter oh it was brutal if I never have to see a derivative in my life I'll be happy oh I still don't really know what they're for not in banking but anyway um so I applied to both A&M college station and UT Austin UT Austin turned me down immediately talk about a sucker punch for a I'm a product of two Texas X's so when you're a Texan and your parents go to a certain school you want to carry on the family name you know I still bleed burn orange I do I love my Long Horns I know I know I know but um they turn me down and I called them because it didn't make sense on paper I was I mean I'm biased but I was a really good candidate and the unfortunate part is it's a money game I was there to get my job done I want my degree but they want to farm them in and farm them out right so it was unfortunate but I got it it is what it is A&M called me they said Jennifer you're awesome we want you but are you willing to make a drive from Roundrock because that's where the bank is are you willing to drive to College Station every day every day for two years and I had I had to think about that for a while because it's a lot and so I talked to my employer about it I again I was not I was dating at the time um I wasn't married yet uh I went to my parents you know kind of how we all do we lean on our parents for wisdom I also went to my CEO and I said here's the deal he's an Aggie that man does bleed maroon and his Aggy ring is so worn out it's bald like he is that kind of Aggy he wear he probably wears it in the shower so I went to him and I said here's here's the thing I got in but they want me to drive every day and he gave me very practical advice very much like any other parent would give a child and he said Jennifer I'm an Aggie I want you to go but you have enough practical realworld experience that that the drive may not be worth it for you anymore because now your professional resume outweighs your educational resume and that was very meaningful so I started looking at different options here in Central Texas well my boyfriend now husband uh he he taught at CT CC uh he was in their culinary arts program he he taught culinary arts over there and so he was passing the campus every day he said did you know there was a school there no and so I looked into it they had the the degree that I was I'm an accountant everything has to balance you finance guys that net everything out I don't understand you I have to have a debit and a credit I have to um so I looked and and most of my courses would transfer I I took minimal losses because I'd never planned on this institution I applied got in once I got in I thought okay now I have to drive to Colleen which is still an hour and what is that going to do to my full-time job talk to Mr sta again and I what I will say and encourage you about this is my my journey is not like everyone else's and I've been very fortunate and very blessed to have leaders in my path that understand what's important to you makes it important to them and they push you forward and so I was working I have full-time job okay he told me when I sat with him he said if you need two days during the week if you can stack your calendar your e your academic schedule to where you do a Monday Wednesday or a Tuesday Thursday you can backfill your hours on the weekend for as long as you need if that's what you want and it's important to you schedule your classes the best you can and we've got you we won't change your status we will handle it and he met that he he met his promise and two years later I dug in Dr lfan was my business law Professor what was the one that you taught in hudo princi manag management yes so was closer it was very much closer to me that was a 15minute drive so we had I took night classes at e um and then as I got closer to my degree the time on campus was more and more demanding which rightfully so I understand that um and I had mentioned I was the class of 16 and I'll tell you my time here on campus it was and y'all are all business students so I think this is a safe place when we come to school we come to work this is not touchy feely 101 there's no psych Majors or anything in here um so I had my I had some friends in every single class and as we matured in our journey here we all started you know cramming into the same classes and that last semester of your senior year where you're just you're right there and you're so tired um trying to survive Ritter all the things um in my experience here and I genuinely hope that this is your experience too you start to have your your friends surround you that work truly do work alongside you and you pull each other across the finish line and I still have a picture I'm going to get emotional I still have a picture of the three ladies that we graduated we all had our honors on and it it's just a very proud moment when you can pull each other and you can be each other's strength and something that's very exhausting the demographic of this campus I feel is very unique in that when you come here to come you do come to work but you're not generally speaking the fresh kids out of high school we're working parents we're moms we're dads we're vets you're not in your pajama pants so you're good that would happen at ACC and I just like why why put pants on so I I I just think that that's a very special thing about this campus is that we're all grownups here we have a job to do we support each other that was my personal experience I know Katie when she was here she shared very similar stories with some of her uh contacts here um so I graduated was my bachelor's um and honestly I went back to work on Monday I know that's not normal but I did I went back to my normal job and again for for me it was about knowing that I finished it um something else that I kind of got razed on even by some of my classmates at the time it was pretty new when the class rings had started coming out and I had been saving you know I wasn't my Aggie Ring right but if you're contemplating whether or not spend that money on the ring spend the money on the ring you fought for it and I wear mine all the time it's not bald like Mr staps maybe it will be one day but it's always a reminder of me finishing something that was very hard right um so that was 2016 got married um I made a choice okay I think I was talking to Jay about sacrifice earlier this whole time I'm dating right I I did get married while I was in college but I was very open with my husband and I said listen this is important it's important to me and I think for any of you who are married who are young families young parents it's a sacrifice to come to school Katie came to school with babies I was just a young professional that was a newlywed I would have classmates that would have babies drop just drop their babies off to come here for two hours and go back and get their babies again I was shocked at the lift I thought my lift was Heavy that lift now knowing what Mommy hood is all about those ladies were awesome like I don't know how they did it so it is a sacrifice my husband made a choice to take a back seat NE you know our relationship so I could focus on my degree because he understood that it was important I graduate go back to work on Monday same job same D duties nothing changes for a while I just keep my head down um I've always been raise keep your head down do the right thing work your butt off and it'll pay off I'm a testimony to that I have my first baby I was in the accounting department of the bank at the time and I prepped everything I'm a prepper not in the way that you have eight months of food in your pantry I'm not like that but um no judgment if you are I'm coming to you when everything burns down but um I was on maternity leave and Mr stap calls again I'm literally holding a two- week old baby he says Jennifer I'm like yes I know that tone I need you to do something for me I said okay what is it now remember I left in the accounting department I came back a senior operations officer he said somebody left and I need you to do this you know how I like things you know the culture I want it was the same speech that I had gotten when he first called me it was the same won only this time I have my degree and I have a baby and I'm looking down at the baby thinking uh I just started my maternity leave he goes no no no in in 10 weeks when you come back you will handle the accounting department don't worry about it you're going to come back and run operations so some of you may not know what operations is anything that's not aan in a bank that's operation if it's not generating a loan I'm responsible for it I take your deposits I pay your checks I make sure your debit card works I make sure the tellers at the front line know what they're talking about which is sometimes a challenge um but I get to work with a lot of really good people so at the time when I came back from having a baby I had a staff of five and I had to learn a lot I was drinking from a fire hose but I did have a lot of background so remember I started as a bank teller so I knew how checks worked I had opened new accounts I know what people on the front line face so I I mean I know how a bank operates and so I rode that wave I kept my head down I did my job I made the decisions that I instinctively knew from 10 plus years of already being in banking at the time and then I think I don't know Katie 30 people now is in operations at least so I I had a lot of reports plus all of the banking centers so I had all the infrastructure the the people that make sure the bank really works behind that magical curtain and then I had all of the banking centers responsible they were my direct reports so I was challenged I I was so fulfilled in that job I was learning things every day I had been in that job for seven years okay I had my baby came back I'm in the same job for seven years and I feel fulfilled challenged content every day it's a good place to be and I get a phone call Again Jennifer yes I need to talk to you for a minute and I said okay this is the same conversation every time I should probably tell him this he probably doesn't realize it's been the same conversation so he calls me we have two buildings where where we work at I I work in Roundrock over by the ballpark Kalahari if any of you have been there it's very overpriced but it's a lot of fun the stairs the stairs kill you if you go get ready and your legs are going to hurt um but that's where I work so I go across the street and it is Steve the CEO and then my boss who was at the time the COO they sat me down and they said hey we we think you'd be good to take this job get a promotion to become the CEO of the bank it was the most awkward unexpected conversation like I figured they wanted me to go just to other to another arm of the bank like a lateral move I never thought that I was ready for that and I asked him one question both of both of them is and and it was very to the point I the older I've gotten the less filter I have does that happen to y'all you just don't care anymore and I mean they've known me long long enough that they know the filter has disintegrated over time so I said my question is while I'm very grateful is am I am I ready am I ready CU that's a big leap it's a scary leap and I let the silence speak for itself my boss was my direct boss the chief operating officer at the time he was very supportive he said Jennifer You' you've been doing this job you know this Bank inside and out you're ready said okay you're my boss you're supposed to that and I I think because I've always respected Steve and he's been part of my personal life for so long I really wanted him him to say yeah you're ready and so I waited for him to speak and his head's down the whole time he said Jennifer you have surpassed every expectation that I've had for somebody who's worked for me as long as they have you're ready and you can do this and that type of validation for someone who has he hasn't we talk about mentorship a lot and sometimes when I was in college and I would learn about mentoring I thought about this awkward one-on-one all the time okay it's going to me we're going to have Mentor time now that's not me that's not reality filter I'm sorry in the in Corporate America mentoring my experience is yes there are some one-on-one coaching experiences but it's I'm going to let you fall on your face and then we're going to talk about why you fell on your face and how not to fall on your face again that's my experience with mentoring somebody who can kind of help you up and say yeah that was a that was a bad mistake but I had to make it I had to let you make it so that that was Steve to me um so talked about it with my husband had another choice to make here's my other little tid tidbit of wisdom if you want to call it that for every rung you climb you give them something it's a reality it just is if you want Total work life balance and a highlevel executive job may not be it for you and that's okay I'm not saying that's wrong I'm not saying that's wrong I'm just saying it takes a toll on you on your stress level it is a Time demand the entrepreneur panel it was phenomenal because it's true it demands parts of your life that a traditional staff person won't have to deal with so I had I knew it would impact my marriage somehow time mostly time my children I'm a mommy I think all the mommies and daddies in the group that really care about their kids and and want their it's time away from your kids quality time away from your kids impacts them so we had to have that conversation and ultimately for our family we felt like it was something that I could still balance being a mom being an executive doing all the things that I have to do now I am not joking this morning my husband said I'm out of socks I don't have time and so those little things that are annoying you know I need socks I need undershirts I need other under things you don't have time for everything so when I say that for every rung you climb something you lose something that is true and I would just encourage you to talk to your family about it when you're presented with that and understand it could be a great opportunity with a lot of money but there's always something that you got to give up I I mean I that's just the cold heart truth of corporate America um so anyway that's how I that's how I got here now um I I love this place um it's very special place before I was a student here I was telling Dr lfan my stepdad was very involved in the in the college so it just the the success of this place is very meaningful to me because I'm a product of it and I look back and I'm like I I accomplished that I did that I have a lot of good friends because of that place um um so I feel very blessed and I hope that as you all are on your Journeys you identify those friends who can drag you across the finish line and also be cheerleaders for you so Katie she got her Masters after I graduated right but now we have this connection here and we didn't even know that we were both interview asked to come here until after the fact where we said I got to be gone this day and both of us perked up why are you gone that day now we're going to the same thing so for what it's worth um that's my story I've been the COO for about six months but I've been doing the job for a while my story do you have anything for me or I don't does anyone got any questions go for it yeah oh that one came in December I can't talk about it yet but yes that one that one came in December but he uh he's a good man I hope that you all are blessed with good leaders yes sir learn habits keep your head down keep your head down and work your butt off I I so I'm a hiring manager and if I could encourage you when you guys get out of here and you get your jobs please don't walk in thinking right out of the gate I'm going to be a manager earning X amen say it in the back there's a lot of what you were saying earlier I was like the other thing that I'll caution you on is if you don't like people don't be a leader I've had somebody who flat out told me I want your paycheck but I don't like the people and so while I appreciate the fact that she knew that people drove her absolutely insane another sacrifice if you want this glamorous job you got to realize you got to deal with people and people are messy they just are in no in every industry some worse than others hospitality my husband's a chef I know this but if you don't like people management and Leadership is not for you because you're going to lose your patience with people in about 2.2 seconds and they're going to only frustrate you does that make sense what I'm saying so I think that if you want this big glorious title with a lot more responsibilities in a yes the the the salary is helpful but it comes with a lot too so when I say for every rung you climb you give something up you have to realize it's a give and take in every Avenue does that make sense crickets yes ma'am so you said you're a mom so how do you know like how to balance your personal life and say no I'm not doing this like how do you my mommy boundaries yes yeah I've gotten really good at saying no it's a sentence it's one word sentence no yeah day yeah yeah yeah they're really good at that sentence um so again I understand my experience professionally may not be what everyone else gets the pleasure of walking I I fully understand that and I am blessed to say that I have the the people in my path that I have 100% however this is when getting older and losing your filter I feel becomes more and more beneficial because when I was promoted when I was in brand new baby right he made that phone call to me I said Steve I'm holding the baby I I understood every rung right cost something said are you okay with that are you okay with me if I got to go sit kid in daycare I got to go I was very blessed to have that say yeah go I H I work for a company who believes in their fabric that Parenthood the family unit it's very important and if you got to go you got to go the doors are going to open the doors are going to close so I'm supported that way I'll give you a great example so I was invited if you Google our institution you'll you'll find that there is a prominent family that is very uh uh involved in our ownership okay that's I'm that's all I'm going to say there I was invited to a private dinner for all of the executives of all of the companies that they own very nice dinner privately held at simmeron Hills Country Club in Georgetown my daughter got the flu on the night of the dinner and I was raised my dad is a very successful person in the Aerospace industry he said if you get invited to a dinner like that you go got a kid with the flu so I called them and I said I'm really sorry I can't go I have the flu and their response to me was we have grandkids we know so I understand that not everybody has that journey and that their companies don't believe in that as much but I just was very honest and I said if you can't handle my commitment to my my family this isn't going to work and it's I think that transparency is always good you know where you stand on either side of it so does that answer your question okay yes ma'am yeah mhm yeah it's intense it's intense yeah so her question is work life balance specifically in an operational space um and that's kind of the choice that you and your family have to make and and I say that because I I live that every day I live at a certain level of intensity of stress and of pressure because ultimately if we're not processing teller transactions right if we can't accept your mobile deposit when you put it on your phone if something's wrong they call me to fix it and so it's a level of pressure that you as a person and your family need to be willing to take and I will also encourage you I don't know what what type of operations if it's Bank operations or just any other type of uh operational unit but I will encourage you and say that it es and flows in my experience it hasn't always been push push push push push you know high pressure high pressure I will tell you though in those Seasons That's when I find what I'm really made of and then you kind of e down again and you're like oh a little bit of a relief and then ramps up again more pressure um and I think that's what made me pretty resilient is that I see a lot of people and Katie can probably vouch for this is that there's not a lot of people that can respond well to high levels of pressure for a very long amount of time they crack but the people that can in my opinion those are the ones that you want on your team because you know they're going to last longer another cold hard truth of corporate America all right we have come to the end of our time uh I want to to thank Jennifer so much for coming up and sharing with us um and again it goes back to what I talked about in the beginning success is relative okay that there are there are personal achievements with titles and there are personal achievements with different levels fillment I agree wholeheartedly she's speaking to me that for every level you go up there's there's a cost and you got to figure out where that is and so you know some people may view success as getting that executive title but you may view your success as something here because that's where you find the work life balance and everything and the same thing with the family when I came into this role I sort of also laid out and discussed what my family situation is I will be dropping off my kids at school in the morning and if they have something I need to be flexible to go pick them up and I'll probably be leaving at X time you know in a given day and that's just the way to do this I need to to operate and like I said some part of it is finding that company that appreciates that and so if you if you need that and that company doesn't appreciate that which there are a bunch that don't okay you may have to find another company eventually but thank you so much for your participation today if you if you missed anything there is the our YouTube channel will actually have this uh posted on it so you can revisit any portions again we still got several of our panelists here uh and like I said they're they're willing to to communicate with you further uh and anything you need to continue to support you on your educational Journey please don't hesitate to let us know thank you thank youie [Music] wasure the