ALPSaguado.com
I’m not a (big) Harry Potter fan but its engaging brand and its influence on pop culture have been giving an interesting sting on my marketing mind. The last installment of the series gave a pretty loud climax to fans and readers and to silent spectators as well. A long-lasting, if not perpetual, denouement is expected in this generation of muggles who are having a good time in a media-driven world. For the sake of leaving my foot print on this historical timeline, I decided to follow the fantasy and seek the incantation that made Harry Potter a successful brand.
Maggots are eating my emotional cheese right now but it’s business as usual here at my online quarters. While I’m waiting to recover from this heartbreak vexation and for a stronger-scented emotional cheese delicatessen, I shall spill my excess energy into my professional pail. For this blog entry, I want to talk about “accountability” and how such concept became a business buzzing bee whenever I am working and how it needs to be homogeneous in a specific bureaucratic level.
Continue reading »
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy offered to us the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. Yes, “42″ is the answer. If the answer to everything is this easy to remember, then humanity can take advantage of this pocket panacea. However, reality is made or perceived to be complex so carrying just a 42 in our life luggage is useless. The intricate patterns woven on the knowledge society is hard to understand. Explaining it is even harder. Thanks to people like Albert Einstein who believe that everything is simple. And to Albert Gray too. He claimed that he found the common denominator of success.
Continue reading »
Every time we have a Customer Development Conference, my boss asks me to mingle with higher bosses. He told me that a small talk will do. I understand that this kind of initiative will build my rapport with them and, in the long term, will be a criterion for my professional advancement. However, I believe I took this for granted. In between sessions, I get gallons of tea and several pieces of Sofitel’s Chocolate Pistachio Cookies (the best, btw) and talk with my immediate colleagues instead. After some months of building relationships in the company I work for, I realized how important my boss’s advice to me is. Moreover, reading John Maxwell’s Everyone Communicates, Few Connect nailed that advise to the unassailable forces of modern business principles.
Self Improvement might be the cheesiest topic about career and leadership but no one can really talk about “general happiness” or “life in general” without stepping on this platitude. Being listed on the Grand List of Clichés, Self Improvement is either taken for granted or overlooked as a default human experience. I recently received a book from a colleague before leaving my first area of assignment. The book is John Maxwell’s Self-Improvement 101. This book is a part of Maxwell’s “What Every Leader Needs to Know” series. I’ll be sharing my insights and/or reflections about this book because I promised to do so. Haha. Well, I actually want to have a ”public self reflection” and to be an “inspiration”–if applicable, LOL.
When I was in first year high school, my Values Education teacher asked the class to read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. The book itself is actually integrated in our curriculum that our exams will include some questions based on the book. Being a devotee of the Iskol Bukol philosophy, I didn’t read the whole book and survived the subject by using the ever-reliable book summaries and outlines found on the internet. Almost 7 years later, a company I worked for as an intern conducted a 7 Habits seminar for us interns. Being the Nah I Already Know That Student, I listened as if it’s just a repetition of things I already know. Now, almost a decade has passed after my first encounter with that book and I decided to read its entirety. I can now say this—I should have followed the instruction of my Values Education teacher.
I had double cheese burger for dinner. That means a double-the-fun yet double-the-cholesterol meal. Weirdly, every time I eat one, the urge to write comes as a divine force. Divinity, for me, is all about accepting something you don’t really expect at all. It is something that you know you don’t deserve but accepts it anyway because you feel it gives a burden on your name. I pull my inspiration to write from this elysian force so that all my brains would work. Amen to you, dear cheeseburger. Anyway, I already have a job–but I won’t talk about it here because I believe that this matter deserves a separate entry. What I want to write about is a crystallization of all the learnings I imbibed during the painfully long process of job hunting.
I have attended several job interviews already and I realized that the most recurring question is: “What’s your weakness?”. Before I go to my interview appointment, I rehearse my answers to the most common interview questions–and I do it in our house’s comfort room. There’s something in the CR that makes me more eloquent and that conditions my mind to deliver kick-ass answers. If there’s a company that holds their interviews in such sacred room, I’ll come out as a highly revered saint.
About
Professional Everything who swags like a boss in his plaid boxers.
If you like an About Me like that of a matinée, go here to feel how I play with the grey.Treat me to coffee and doughnuts!
Subscribe or Subscribe by email
