The Wandering Pro | Career Podcast By SK NEXUS
The only Podcast in Pakistan diving deep into Career and Business "for you". Get real experience based mindset unlock content, helping you upskill your career or upscale your business.
Hosted by Saqib Tahir: https://bio.saqibtahir.com/
Site link: https://sknexus.com/twp
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The Wandering Pro | Career Podcast By SK NEXUS
TWP 008 - Getting Lucky - The Reason Everyone Succeeds While ‘You’ Don’t
Getting lucky is something that is in your control. Just have to understand why people get lucky before you do that. In this episode of The Wandering Pro, I cover what is luck in career, how can one game it, the best ways to build a strong foundation in today's ecosystem, and what you need to do starting today.
Hosted by Saqib Tahir
Read companion summary article: https://sknexus.com/twp008/
Further learning and references
https://sknexus.com/switch-to-freelancing-as-a-pakistani/
https://sknexus.com/how-to-improve-your-presence-online/
https://sknexus.com/your-children-have-no-shoes/
https://sknexus.com/why-professionals-fail/
https://sknexus.com/independence-of-luck/
https://sknexus.com/getting-better-at-upwork/
https://sknexus.com/setting-ideals-and-expectations/
Bsides Community: https://bsides.pk/
As always -
Thank you for listening, please send any questions or feedback to podcast@sknexus.com
See you next time.
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Welcome to another episode of The Wandering Pro. In this episode, I am trying to adopt a new format. Actually, this format has been running for a long time, but you know, I am officially solidifying it, which is basically, you'll link back to the previous episode. Cause as I said, this is a series. If you listen to all the episodes, that will be the maximum benefit to you. If you want to listen to some things out of context or understand something properly, then I always recommend listening to everything. And then basically, the structure of this, which I was saying till now, first of all, I will define what the problem at hand is. Okay. Then I will talk a bit more about the issues surrounding the problem, right? exist and what are the actual steps you can take. Cause that is the whole reason the Wandan Pro exists is give actionable advice. Right? I did blogging for a long time, which was just mindset shift content, but my effort was always to have an outcome or an output of every blog. That you just read it and understand that these things are not good, but how to do it and you get some steps about it. That being said, let's get into today's episode, which is getting lucky. or the one who is here often, the person's luck was good, he got the job, because of that person's luck, he is sitting here today, wherever he is sitting. I think it's a common pointing finger tactic, that anyone's success is said to be good, his luck was good. And sometimes they might be right, but trust me, honestly, most of the times, they are very wrong, and this episode is going to cover why that is. So the basic concept of luck is that, first of all, you need to understand that everyone is lucky, that's true. And to some extent, everyone's... success may have career progression may look plays an important part. And if you're someone who's like, I'm sorry to say, maybe you forget where you come from. Yeah. But shut up. there are fully actualized when he asked Kanye says everything. I'm not made me everything I am. So he always stopped two aspects when it comes to stuff like luck, things that are in your control and things that are out of your control. Things related to audiovisual control could be like, someone is obviously more lucky depending on where they are born. Some people are obviously lucky because of what they've studied and learned, the skill sets they have, or what industry they are in, which I often talk about IT tech. The rate of success is the highest because in Pakistan, there is a lot of growth and versatility in IT and technology fields, which is not available in other industries. And then obviously, some of them do get lucky because of where they were born in the sense that in which family they were born, how was their upbringing, which school they went to, in which environment they grew up in, and all of these things. impact on their life. That is obvious and that is true for almost everyone. And because of that, whenever a person who is not that fortunate, is not born in a good place or is not raised in a good environment or they don't have the opportunities that others have, their go to becomes an excuse, in my opinion, that I was not born here, it's the government's fault, there is no infrastructure, I don't have any resources and like, someone will definitely listen to these things if you keep getting up in the morning. But the whole purpose behind why this podcast exists and things I'm trying to teach exist is that there are always things that are in your control regardless of what upbringing you have, where you are born, or what field you are in. There are always some steps you can always take to improve your chances. And whenever I talk to people or discuss this, So, you know, here is our mentality that especially people who leave here and go to other countries, whenever they meet them back in Pakistan, they will always say, look, this is what happens in this country, this is not there in Pakistan. But then you jump onto social media and you quickly realize that actually, the problems of every country are kind of similar. Like, don't you think there are people who are sitting in the US, not being able to afford their house, not being able to afford their car, it's a problem of their money. Or don't you think there are people in Japan who work for 60-60 hours and are tired. And like, literally, if your head is down on the table, a sign of respect that the person is tired of working and sleeping. Or you don't know how much street crime is there in the UK. So the thing is like depending on what country you talk about, there are issues in every country. And it's very easy to say that this country is better than this country because of XYZ. And then yes, at the baseline, obviously there are countries that are better than others. But... When you deep dive into everything, you'll see that there are some problems in every country and people of every kind exist everywhere. There is poverty in America, there is poverty in India, there is poverty in the UK, there is poverty in any country where there are issues. And the common lesson that business people learn is that you have to deal with the cards you're dealt. So yes, it's true that the person sitting in Pakistan can't be the next Elon Musk. But the next Elon Musk should not be the goal. The goal should be to have the maximum impact in your given constraints. Success should not be the measure of who has the most, but a measure of who needs the least. Right? So it was important to give a little intro that you shouldn't read it in comparison and while luck is important, but moving on, I want to explore the issue of this episode, which is basically that we have established that there are given issues of every environment. Right? And those people whose mentality is that they will blame issues and environmental problems, they will do it everywhere, whether it's Pakistan, America, UK or whatever. Right? Doesn't matter. And this mentality, that he must have gotten lucky, or his luck was good, or he got a bump in his head, or he was born in a white country. Trust me, this exists in every country, it doesn't just exist here. Because as humans, and especially there is a lot of social media in this, we have started giving value to just the output and the result. We don't judge a person's journey. We don't see how the person who applied for a visa and went abroad, Germany, US or Australia, has been so poor. Maybe he was applying for a visa for 3 years and he is not getting it. Or he got the visa and went abroad and did odd jobs, worked hard and everything, then he got something. We don't see that. Here we don't see that the business that was successful, first 10 businesses were unsuccessful. He got successful in 11th, so now he is a very big businessman. Here we don't see that a person whose salary is high, that is because he changed 5-6 companies, he took a risk, he went to negotiations again and again. and he learned to show his value and then he got that salary. We just say that he got a good salary, he is sitting in a good company and eating a good salary. And so on and so forth. I can give you many examples of success. It's easy to judge the end result, but very hard to see that a person's journey goes. And very rarely you'll see that it's 100% luck. Maybe 5% or 10% luck comes in it. So as people, as consumers, our mentality has become, unfortunately, that we, excuse number one, we have this, that my luck is not good, so is this person's luck. And excuse number two is that he had this, so that's why it happened. I don't have that, that's why it didn't happen. And that kind of mentality will never, never help you. And that's the goal with all these episodes and all the content I create. See, the simple thing is that there are things in your control. And even when it comes to something as like, you know, random as luck. There are things you can do to always get lucky in your life as well. Also like you can improve your luck sitting down. Honestly speaking, because what happens is basically if you study luck from a objectivity perspective, it's statistics, right? At the end of the day, it happens that the person who is more persistent is more lucky. It's a simple thing. And by persistence, it's like one person, let's say, applies for one job and one person applies for 100 jobs. Who do you think will be more successful in getting a job? He has applied for 100 jobs, right? Similarly, one person writes a blog article and one person writes a thousand blog articles. Who do you think will be more successful? He has written a thousand. And it's as simple as that. Simple, not easy. With most things, even when it comes to luck. Luck is basically just about constant effort. If you want to get lucky in anything, you have to consistently try or persistently try to do certain things and set up a base. And what happens when it's time to get lucky? You have a higher chance. statistically speaking of winning. And then people say that his luck was good. And if you take this one step further or simplify it a step more, the concept is being available for luck to strike. That's the main issue. Most people who never get lucky or are unlucky in life, their problem is that they're not doing any effort into being available for luck to strike. For example, if I take a very extreme example, you are sitting in a room, as smart, intelligent and successful as you want. understand yourself. Until someone finds out, he won't hire you. It's simple. That's the reason why you go to LinkedIn and make your profiles, right? And that's why you have a resume and that's why you work on different things, even if that's not your skill set. Like you're a software developer, you're the best software developer in the world. But if you don't go work at a company or you don't work on any project or portfolio, nobody's gonna believe that you're a good software developer, right? So subconsciously or unintentionally, we are all the time doing different things in which we try to be more lucky. nobody tries to do it. I actually took some steps, because of which my chances have increased, so today I got this. And this goes back to the opening of the episode, where I said, people don't remember where they came from, right? There is always a pattern. There is a reason why they are successful and luck plays a role in that. But that luck that is generated, user generated luck is called UGL. The user generated basically luck is that you do certain actions through which your statistically speaking chances to get struck by luck are higher than anyone else. Because what happens is that a lot of people undermine themselves. And I see this in a lot of kids and in younger generation who say that they are not lucky, they are not lucky, they are not written in their fate. But most of the time the issue is not that it is not written in their fate. Most of the time you are available for the approach of your fate. Sometimes you just need to be more available to luck, which brings us to the second part of the episode. That is execution strategy. Fancy word. Now we're going to talk about the two to three favorite ways that anyone can apply. regardless of whatever your job is, whatever your field is, you do these two to three things from today, there are no excuses for you not to do it. Especially if you are in tech and IT industry, there is no excuse at all. If you have any, you come to me and tell me. I will find your solution. Like I have an open challenge, write in the comments, I will try to help you out. Seriously. But if you're in tech and IT industry, these two to three things you must do from today. And one more thing, it doesn't mean that you do everything today. But slowly, in the back of your mind, start doing them slowly. Because these two to three things is your chances in any domain. Now, here, those who know me, they will immediately guess the first thing, which is like, I think everyone should have a website or a microsite. That's really important these days because till now, as I said, everyone would rely on their LinkedIn profile, which is my website, all the information is here. Everything is there on my LinkedIn page. That doesn't work anymore. And then here, on the opposite spectrum, there are those people who say that I will make a website, so in that, 20 things should be there and these 15 pages should be there and this content should be there and they keep planning all this and after 3 years, their website doesn't even have one page. So, these two mindsets you need to escape. You need to have a very basic website and the reason is that you need to have something that you control for a very long time. Okay? A domain or any platform that is under your control, you can update it in the next 10-15 years, you can put things in it, you can take them out. But that one... destination is unified, there is an online presence, SEO enabled, and there are chances that people will stumble upon it. Or what happens with me is that I will reach out to someone that the query or requirement that you have, share your portfolio. And nobody has it. Like 80-90% of people don't have a portfolio site, nothing. And then they are giving their resume, 15 files, 20 links. I am not going to share all this, right? Because no one is going to bother that so many things go through. Especially with developers, share your portfolio, they share their GitHub link. My brother, the GitHub link is relevant to the hiring manager who wants to hire. Yes, he will go to GitHub, he can understand how much contribution you have made or how much work you have done. But if I share the GitHub link with HR or any founder, he will get confused. In fact, many founders don't even know what GitHub is. Right? Because they don't have work, they don't develop, they are founders. So that's why I say that having your own website, especially with your own name on it, is really important to have as a starting point. This is the starting point. And as a starting point, what you need to have as a set, in any domain, in any industry, it doesn't have to be dev only. You have to make a basic website. It needs to have these four or five sections. First of all, learn to introduce yourself. Okay? Introduction should be something that every person should know. This introduction is important to build out because it will work on your website, it will work on your LinkedIn, it will also work on your resume. And when you are on the call, what is the first question of the interview? Tell me a bit about yourself. So learn to build an introduction for yourself. The tips I can give you is that obviously it should have your name. Sometimes. It's not necessary to name the call because you already know it, but in written format, usually what happens is, my name is Saqib Tahir, for example, that would be the first line. And then talk about your experience, passion and industry. We have to talk about these three things and not about anything else. Don't tell your sad story that I was 5 years old and I was born here, so I grew up eating Kulfi and then I graduated and I studied in the university for so many years. Nobody cares. What people care about or what your website should be about is your experiences, your passion or skill sets and then your industry. Because what happens, and especially with university students, I've seen this, they say, I haven't done any job, what will I write in the intro? Bro, define some experience of yours. I'm sure you're doing some projects, if you're not doing it, then you should do it. Or define some passion of yours. Or define some actionable thing that you're doing on the side. Don't say that I'm a university student in the 7th semester. What should I do? Learn to give a good intro of yourself. Talk about your experiences, talk about passion skills and the industry. Industry means the field or domain you want to work in. And here's an easy way you can do it. Here, tools like ChatGPD are very good. If you can give basic structure or basic information and tell them that there are two or three limitations, they can help you in a good introduction. Just tell ChatGPD, my name is Bashir. My experience is working on 3D modeling projects, if you are in university, let's say using tools like AutoCAD. and I'm seeking a career in 3D modeling industry or whatever industry you have. And some of my passion or skill set are in the list, I have put A, B, C in the list. Then ask them to craft me an introduction, taking all these elements into account, limiting it to three to five lines and give me 10 versions of it. So you will be given 10 versions, pick and choose, and you'll have a good introduction for you to use everywhere. Okay. That's the first part. Basic website introduction. That's it. The second step, which is very important, if you're building a website, learn that over time you'll need to have testimonials on there. It's not necessary on the first day, but eventually try to get endorsements or testimonials from people in your life. Okay? And the concept is very similar. When you are in high school and you have to go to university, then you don't get a recommendation letter from your teacher. It's the same thing here. When you graduate from university and you want a job, or when you have a job, you want a better job, why don't you get a recommendation letter from your teacher? remember, you forget there. So, we call the career version of recommendation testimonials. And understand that those are really important and very good if you can show it on your website. Now, if you are in the university. and you say that I am not doing a job, what should I do, where should I get my testimonials from? If you are a good student and you study and you have a professor who helps out, trust me, go to that professor, talk to him and tell him that you can give me 3-4 lines of testimonials about how good of a student I am or how I am in this subject or so on and so forth. Just use that and that's perfectly fine because you are still in university, there is no problem. But it is important to take that step, it is important to go and ask for testimonials. And trust me, there are teachers and professors who are very good and they will help you out. Professor University, 15-20 students who come and go every semester, I will be the only one who gets angry. Someone will help you out. And similarly, if you're in job, same thing, go talk to your managers, line managers, your peers, try to get as many endorsements as possible, hand pick some and show it on your website. So this section is really important for the website to have there eventually, if it's not there from the first day. Then obviously, the most important part, which people forget, is contact information. So your website should have an easy to contact way for you. Please, stop using fancy emails. Use simple Gmail or Outlook emails because the uptime of those services is 99.999%. The fancy domain you created, hello at Bashir Samaj.com, it doesn't work half the time. Half the time you will say that the domain hasn't been rebuyed. Don't use that. Forget about it. Use a standard email address which works. Which... whitelist, it won't go into spam. And if you get an email from it, you will be notified that it has apps. I see a lot of people, again, in tech IT, who think they are more technical, they put a custom email with their name. Half the time it doesn't work, half the time the email is bouncing. And then it creates a point of frustration if someone is trying to reach out to them. Then another important thing you can have on your starter website, have a link to your resume, go to Google Drive, upload your resume PDF version, make a shareable link, take that link as it is and put it on your website. Very easy to do. few people do it. And when it's time to ask for the resume, they don't know where they are looking for it. So again, everyone has a Google account, everyone gets 15 GB storage. Abuse it for this purpose. And apart from the resume, here comes the same point that if you have other links to put, put those on your website. Like I gave an example of the get thing, developers often share their get link. Never share the get link, share the link of your website. because it is more important for HR. And mention in that this is my Git link. Or this is a screenshot of my Git. Or these are my Git achievements. If you want to learn more, then this is the Git link. Then... people who want to bother will do it. And again, as I said, the link to the Git will change tomorrow, your account will change, it will be closed, something will happen, but your website will always be your website. So the one you shared your website with someone six months ago, he will be seeing it after six months, he will get up to date latest information. Right? That's the whole point of this exercise, to make your website is control. Social media is not in your control, other platforms are not in your control, but your website is in your control, your domain is in your control. So you update things, put new stuff, take out old stuff, But the people you have shared your website with, they will always have up-to-date information. But the people you are sharing your resume link with, or your portfolio links with, they may not work tomorrow, their portfolio may be deleted tomorrow, they may not open social media tomorrow, they may not log in to your account, etc. To avoid these issues, it is very important to have your own website. So these basic 3-4 things that I have just told you, can be made by anyone. As I said, if you are in university, think about it from a different perspective, from an experience learning perspective. for you to do an intro, testimonial, contact information, resume and links to your portfolio, right? But then a very important thing comes, look, you are in any industry or domain, regardless of whether you are in dev, IT or design, you need to work on projects and there is no way around it. If you are in university, from now on, this is my advice to you and this is back to the same thing, learning how to learn episode, we covered that start working on projects. Any small projects, work on your field or the field you want to enter, related to that, because That is going to be the biggest differentiator between you and the next applicant. And this doesn't matter that you are in the university or you have been working for 10 years. Because if someone has an experience of 10 years, I have two candidates in front of me. The candidate's projects, I will value them more over the experience of the candidate. Projects and actual work and highlighting them is really, really important. Coming back to the website thing, as I said, the first thing to make a website is control. That's the number one reason you should have a website. Don't think that if I make a website, my SEO will be so good. because the whole world will start approaching that this won't happen. Nobody will care about your website. And don't even think that if you make a website, I'll become very famous. This won't happen either. The purpose of making a website is that you have a place to share something that is in your control. Okay? Here are some tips and tricks. But if you are making a website, then you are definitely avoiding these things. Because I see a lot of people make their website and then this happens. First of all, don't just throw a list of links on the website. Learn to structure it properly, like I said, learn to make small intro sections or different boxes and then you can like, you know, structure it that way. Just don't throw a list of links on your page. Nobody likes clicking on too many links. Then, as I mentioned in the email, try to avoid anything that is unreliable. Okay, custom links or custom domains, avoid things like that. Use stuff that is standard and will work for a very long time. Let's talk a little technical. So if you're hosting your own website, like you're making a website on WordPress or something, then host it on a reliable platform. And what I mean by that is that you can buy your own hosting. Go to Namecheap and you get a $20 hosting for a year. Okay, $20 is what?$6000 currently speaking. You have to spend$6000 a year to have something in your control. is worth it for everyone, whether you are a student or in a career, taking out 6000 rupees a year should not be a hard thing for someone who's listening to this podcast. And lastly, most importantly, once you have your website, you don't have to work on it every day. Working every day is pointless, it has no benefit, you will burn out and then you will forget your website. Instead, a better way to think about it is that see, the website has been launched, basically, now gather thoughts and ideas in it and update it once or twice a month. Or check it again, click all the links and do everything, or not. calendar and just check every month if this is working or not. Right? That being said, I want to talk about portfolio a little bit differently. On one side, when you're building a portfolio, it's very easy to do if your role, your domain or field interest is a task based role. Okay. What that means is that whatever you are doing, it has a visible output. If you are a designer, you are making designs. If you are a developer, you are making apps or websites. If you are a writer, you are writing articles. Making a portfolio of these things, relatively speaking, is pretty easy. All you need to think about is how to package it. My recommendation is that you take 3-4 screenshots of anything like this. Give an explanation of 5-6 lines below that. that this is a portfolio, this is its name, I did this for this purpose and these steps were involved in it. And that becomes your portfolio page or piece. If you find it very complicated, make a Google Doc on Google Drive, make a shareable link of it and put it on your website, under the portfolio section. Okay? With an image. So it's very easy to do for task-based roles, design, dev, writer, so on and so forth. But then on the other side, there are strategy type roles. Now obviously, if you are in university, your strategy role will not look good as you are leaving the university. Because it's a little bit... higher level roles, but there are some roles in which visible output is a bit difficult or difficult to show. For example, as you might have heard in the previous episode, I spend a lot of time in the cyber security community these days. More on that later. In that, people often ask how to document the work that I do. There is no visible output or outcome. So my answer to that is to learn how to make a case study. Case study is a fancy word that companies used to use to show their impact to the world. That we have seen this big arrow. But now I think in the digital world and because of the democratization of information, I think you can use it at the personal level of case studies. Don't call it a case study. but adopt its structure. Basically what it is that there is a format of case study, which is called impact case study format. You identify a problem in it, then you write about the steps you use to solve it. And then you show its impact or results. And the whole exercise is basically that you are showing your process in a written format. So as I said, this is not as easy as showing the work of dev and design, but it is a very good alternative for people who are struggling with making something for their portfolio. So, adopt this case study thought, google what impact case study is, thousands of examples will come. And you can fit that format for your work, right? Like I gave the example of cybersecurity, you are a bug bounty hunter. Okay, what are you doing? You are doing a bug bounty. The thing you can show in a case study is that this was a tough problem that I am exploring. What were the problems? How did I solve it when I successfully completed the boundary? And show in its results that the company did something, your bug got some value, you won because of it or there was an impact. Right. And in a shareable non-NDA, confidentiality, you can show it easily. And when you do four to five important bug bounty tasks you did in your career as a side hobby, it becomes a good portfolio piece for you when you apply for cybersec roles tomorrow. Right. Instead of sharing that this is my profile, go and see how much bug bounty I have done. You can say that these four or five are my top bug bounty examples. You can judge me from these. And if you want to learn more, this is my profile link. You can only do this on your own website. That's why having your own website is so important. You can control the experience the person has, who is visiting your website. So here we have the same thing, part one, website. Start making it. Then when you add these things slowly, it will improve. Then the next step comes that, okay, I made the website basic. I have put my portfolio on it, I have put in my case studies, now what? Now a little bit of the same thing, the difficulty is to increase it a little bit. That is, start a blog and listen to the blogs of everyone. Your ears get hot and your head starts to burst. And I've seen people who are very motivated to start a blog, but then they write one or two and then they don't write for two years. And that's because the intention of everyone, like many things we talk about, is wrong with the blog. Look, by writing a blog, you are not becoming a world famous hacker or world famous developer. The purpose of writing a blog is simple, that you are sharing... your learning and experiences and that practice of writing it down, you improve it over time also. Because what happens is that when you are learning something, you will try to write an article on it, you will go and do research on it, then you will gather your thoughts. When you write and publish it and next week you will read that blog again or review it, you will see the gaps in everything. And then you will be like, okay, I did this thing wrong, here, information is missing, so on and so forth. It becomes a feedback loop on your personal level or professional level certain domain. This should be the purpose of writing a blog. If you are writing a blog with any other purpose, like I have to abuse GSEO or I will become famous or I will start coming to Google, I am telling you, you will not even reach 50 blogs. But if your purpose is that the purpose is that I have to learn or I have to share my experience, trust me, you will be able to write for way longer if you fully actualize that motive. And the common pain point I have seen people have is that I don't know what to write about. So my simple solution to that is this. There is a basic template. You have to write down the project or task or whatever your overarching activity was the whole week. What was that? What you have done for whatever you want to write about. Let's say you are working on a project or you are working on a client's project in your job. Or you are working on a task of an internal company in your job. You have to give your heading to that task. You have to write down its technical details. What action items were there in that task? Right? That you had to do this, you had to do that, you had to do this, you had to do that. And then in the next 4-5 lines, you just have to explain what you have done. Okay, I have adopted this format, which is a very common standard format. Companies, those who know, you can adopt that in your documentation. You can make a micro blog of 7-8 lines. Every week on, this was to do, this I did, these were blocker issues. As simple as that. And you can upload it to the blog format on the website. No need to worry. Cause as I said, We have to make a habit of documenting ourselves. We don't want to write the next book or the next novel. No, we just have to make a habit of documenting ourselves and being comfortable with that documentation. Because as I said, let's suppose you start doing this, listen to me and understand, and say that at the end of every week, I am starting to document my work experience or my university experience in 7-8 lines. When a year passes, you will have 52 pieces of context which you can use to bring improvement. Right? If I give my example, when I started blogging, so I made the mistake of filling 5-10 blogs that I started. No, there should be a post of 1,500-2,000 words, there should be well-restressed, what will people see if they read it? What will they think? Funny thing is, no one reads, no one sees, no one thinks. Then I realized, okay, I'm interested in tech, so I'll just write whatever comes to my mind. I started blogging on Instagram. Yes, I used to take a picture on Instagram. You can still see it now. And I started making mini blog posts of 200-300 words. And from there, my writing evolved. It didn't start like, okay, it doesn't have to be that I have to write an article of 1500-2000 words. It can be as small as writing an article of 200 words. But the end goal is that I need to learn how to share my experiences and knowledge in a digestible and understandable manner. Right? And you're always constantly improving. I'm doing this might not be the best medium for everyone. Maybe I'll do something else tomorrow. But that will be something else when I did this. You can't reach there without this. Okay? So don't jump. You need persistent effort. So as long as you're trying your best, given the constraints I've given you, that it's not too long, not too short, something manageable that you can do every week, it is very easy to document your journey. And it's very easy to start on it also. And let's say, if you feel very shy, I don't want to put it online, I don't want to put it on the website, you can start it privately. Okay? Don't make excuses for that. You can... go and start documenting the app you use every week. Because doing that only will eventually give you the confidence that I have studied so much, I have started putting it online. So when it comes to portfolio, case study, documenting your work, some of the best practices that I want to say is that the time has come when you just show photos and it's done. Designers often say that show my portfolio well, what will happen in the portfolio, I have put 12 pictures, this is my design. that doesn't matter anymore. You need to show that how did you make your design? Why did you make it? What was the problem? You have to show the process, right? As I said earlier, so just putting up an empty screenshot is no longer enough. That's why we were talking about how to show it now. Four to five lines of explanation is very important. Okay? Explanation of working is very important when it comes to your portfolio. Then the second thing that I have seen is that people focus a lot on quantity. So even though as I said, the quantity is important in blogging, you have to work every week, but its purpose is different. When it comes to your portfolio, which I have already talked about, quality is more important and especially selection is more important. Let me give you a common example. I met a guy who had written 30-40 blogs on network security and all that. So he was like, when someone asks me to share my portfolio, I pick it up and send the whole blog, which has 40 posts. And the website structure was also a bit bad and dirty. And I was like, brother, why? Highlight 4-5 of these on your main page. Just share those. Or share the links of the relevant situations. But this whole thing, like I said, the habit of picking up the dead man and killing him, the thing that Pakistanis do, that is never gonna work. Because then it comes to the other side of the extreme. So on one side, there are those people whose resume is ready to share. But on the other side, there are people who sell their website, sell resumes, sell 20 links, sell 40 images. That is also bad. You need to be somewhere in between. That's why we were talking about this whole thing, that make your website, control it, take it in a single pager, easy to understand manner, and then evolve it slowly. Don't jump to either extremes. This is a best practice when it comes to portfolio making also, that focus on quality, where impact matters. And focus on quantity, where you have to make habits, where you have to create your own habits, put effort, do documentation, so on and so forth. So learn the difference between these two things. Very important. So we covered why it's important to have a website, why it's important to have a portfolio, how to make it, how to document it, how to write a blog, so on and so forth. The other part that is really important to increase your chances of luck is networking. Okay. There is a common concept in business that a successful business has a sign that they get a lot of work from referrals. Referral means that A person buys their service or product and then the person likes it so much that he tells 10 people in the future. If you take that concept and apply it on yourself as a professional, as an individual, networking is the same thing. What happens in networking? That a person knows you, knows your work, respects you, professionally speaking. And then he goes ahead and tells 10 people that this person has done a great job, keep him on the job or keep him on the project. So on and so forth. The word of mouth that is and will always be your best chance at getting opportunities. Now what happens when we talk about networking? Many people do understand what networking is, but what are they doing? They will go to LinkedIn, they will send other connection requests, they will join Facebook groups and start posting looking for work. Or the same thing is that if you are a freelancer, you will take your profile and start throwing links everywhere. That is not how you network, unfortunately. That is just how you spam. And this is the same thing that yes, maybe someone got hit by a knife while doing this, but 99.99% chance is that this strategy will not work for you. So here is a better approach to network with people. There are two approaches. The first approach is to find relevant companies that are working on your field, role or passion. And then open their employee list. And those who are creating content or interacting with you, who are more active on LinkedIn, follow them. And if there is a person you want to talk to, just send them a connection request. Don't send a connection request to everyone. You just have to send your friend to the person you think you can talk to or make a relationship with. So, to follow, you just have to press the button. Let's say that I want to send a connection request. I want to talk to this person or do a little bit of ILO. So, again, it's a very simple solution. ChatGPT, long live! Go to that. Say, this is the name of the company, this is my name. I want to send a connection request. So, I craft a small message that I send with my invite. And it will make you templates of small messages. You can make 10, 20, pick and choose, whichever you like. What I've seen works the most for me is that, just be honest. That look, I've been following your company, your content for a while. And I really appreciate all you're doing. I would love to connect and learn more from you at your convenience. Usually, these templates or messages work. I haven't had it fail a lot and I have added CEOs and CFOs and CTOs in the connection as well. I just wrote a small message and talked to them because I had put it at the end at your convenience. So, such people are open to engage willingly and it helps a lot if you can pick a few people, as I said, not everyone, few people, with whom you can talk, take guidance, take mentorship, take them on coffee chat, so on and so forth. So, that is one way you should network. Like we said in learning how to learn, you have to curate knowledge feeds, you have to curate social media, in the same way, you have to do a lot of curation in networking too, that will be beneficial, otherwise, there will be no benefit of killing other blind shots. The second way that I have recently started and am actively working on, is networking via engaging in communities. As I often say that I have Discord servers, I have my own Discord server, we put a link if you want to join. And there are other Discord servers where I interact. And then there are other groups also where I'm trying to interact. Just to find a nice balance of like what works, what doesn't work for me personally. I've seen a really good value in contributing to these communities. Because what happens is that if these communities are good communities, they usually have events and calls and... something is going on which can increase your learning. Right? If you want to be a part of that, just go into these communities and, you know, engage with other like-minded people. And when you do this step, after all the things I've said before, you'll have a significant advantage because you have a good intro ready because you have worked on your website intro. Right? Akba testimonials are ready, so if you sell it to someone on your website, it will give a good impression. Your portfolio case study is ready. So all that material, all the hard work you are doing, that will give you a significant advantage over any other random member who joins the community, right? So talk to people, interact with people and then over time you'll build your value in those communities. And what will happen tomorrow, which I have seen that when there is a problem, let's say a new community member comes who needs help in a specific thing, he has come, he is not coming to make a website. So, they tagged me and said, you know how to make a website, you made it yourself, you can guide it too. And that gives you an opportunity to help someone else. Plus, along with that, your network is getting better. And trust me, in such communities, I have been sitting for a year. I have seen people getting jobs, people getting projects, and overall people have grown just because they were in that community. actively engaging and talking to the right people at the right time. And when we talk about networking, there are some best practices here also. Don't beg for a job for the sake of God. Leave the messages of give me job. If there is such mentality, I would honestly say that don't even bother networking. Okay. Then understand that if you are engaging with people, whether on LinkedIn, in the community or anywhere else, always value their time. If someone is taking time out of their busy schedule and teaching you, please learn to value that. Here I have seen that we... Generally speaking, we don't value anything, we don't value time at all. So if someone is being nice enough to be educative towards you or explaining something to you, learn to value that because people are more busy than you. Just don't take this into consideration that you are busy and everyone else is busy. Whether you are busy or not, just keep a perspective in your mind. Then obviously, the maximum advantage of networking that I have seen, is that people pick up who learn to give and then take. As I said, they will say, give me a job, give me a job, no one will give me. But if you engage in a community, get active, contribute, your social image becomes, then opportunities come that, this person is already being taught by everyone, so approach him, this thing can be helpful. And lastly, I have seen that the wrong things people do in the community, once again it's fine as an introduction, but they start spamming. These are my links, this is my website, Facebook profile or whatever, here is my Fiverr profile, there is no benefit to that. You are in a community and people like you are in the community. These people are most probably not interested in your services. So instead, share your expertise, share your experiences and tomorrow, maybe some person has an opportunity to approach you and they can refer you again. Going back to the referral terminology. But these are not the people you are selling your services to. These are just a midpoint, right? So at the end of the day, these are three to four things that you should have to start a solid foundation. As I said, if you want to get more lucky, it's all about persistence. But persistence should be for the right things. Right? In my experience, those three to four things are, as I said, having a website that is in your control. Okay. Having a good portfolio, having case studies or documentation on it, blogs, etc. for your learning and then being active in a good networking skills. These are three to four things that if you keep on making persistent efforts on them, 15 minutes every day, 20 minutes, 5-6 hours a week. So over time, after a year, two years, you'll have the maximum ROI out of any other thing you do, professionally speaking. And then what happens is that those people who do things and do them right, after three or four years, they say that they have a good job, or after three or four years, their business has been successful. And then the rest of the people say that this person's luck was good. My question for you is that, do you have a website or portfolio or network, currently speaking, at this point? And if yes, Are there some common mistakes that I have highlighted that you were doing and you should fix them? Or there are things that were missing that you want to add as per what I've discussed today. And I would like to say that see the episodes that are like this. especially the one about learning how to learn and this one. These are really complicated topics and it's very difficult to cover everything in one episode. I've tried my best to segregate it into an introduction, an issue statement and a solution strategy, but it's not necessary that this is enough for everyone. So I will work harder to bring more topic areas under this format, but I would highly suggest this episode is a combination or accumulation of a lot of writing work I did. There will be 5-6 articles in this episode's notes, links will be posted. Please go read those in your spare time and hopefully they will give you a good reference material with audio to understand that these things can be understood from such different perspectives. As I have mentioned earlier, this content is for the maximum amount of audience. But you are the kind of person who has a unique issue that can only be solved one on one. And that's why my Discord server exists at discord.sknexus.com. You can visit that link and learn more about it. Lastly, I didn't forget, because this episode was a bit heavy, so I have found a heavy quote for you, which is, Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not. unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. At the end of the day, persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. This quote was by Raek Rock and you can google it if you want to know more about him. As always, thank you for listening. Please send any questions or feedback to podcast at sknexus.com. Okay, in today's after show, I want to talk about something that is an extension of the topic of networking, which is that I am a cyber security community actively engage. It's called B-Sides Pakistan. I'll put the link in the description. So they try to have These events where they call successful or accomplished individuals for like a gulp shop session, like sitting for 2-3 hours, 40-50 people listen to the audience and talk about their journey or their experiences, especially because they have started from Pakistan and they have problems and pain here. And now they are usually in a better place. So the explanation of the whole journey sounds very fascinating to me. Because time and time again, a lot of what they talk about overlaps with what I am trying to teach here. And that just makes me very happy. Because when you are making content like this, and even though you've done stuff which works for you, there is always that uncertainty or a little bit of imposter syndrome that all these things worked for me, but not for anyone else. But then when you... join such events, see other successful people talking about stuff and you draw out those similarities, then you get a little reassurance that no, a lot of what I'm trying to teach here actually works. And it's not just working for me, it's work for other people also. And when I talk to them, that this should be done, that should be done, they typically seem to agree with a lot of what I have to say. Like I recently joined an event, in this He was a big cyber security employee. I'm not going to reveal the name and stuff because I'm not sure if he's confidential or not, but if you join the community, you can join the next team and see it yourself. So he started like, he took it from Pakistan and now he's working in a big cyber security company and working in a very good position. Very humble person. He didn't say that I'm coming to the show or something. But in a three-hour conversation, what felt like his biggest regret was that he tried to emphasize the thing again and again, that I didn't blog. Like... I thought to myself, a person who has 10-15 years of experience and is in a good position, what is his biggest regret? I didn't do blogging. And the reason for that was that since I have made this Eastern to Western transition, I used to work in Pakistan first, then in the Middle East, then international. So I saw that the people from the West, one thing they do really well is they know how to show their work and show their worth. Work and worth. And that's the number one thing he was trying to teach to others. That you don't need to have a fancy job. You don't need to work at a fancy company. You can be working anywhere, doing anything and still learn to show your work and worth. in a manner that is easy and blog is the best way to do that, especially in that community, which is a cybersecurity community. So they were urging everyone that whatever project you do, whatever task you do, learn to document it, learn to make small blog posts on it. After 5-6 years, you will have so much stuff that ideas will never be an issue for you. You will be at a significant level advantage than people who are not doing that. And I was preparing for this episode in those days. And it clicked a lot of things that I told here also. getting lucky, right? And the number one way you can get more lucky is to be more available to luck. And to be more available to luck is learning how to show your work and showing your worth.
