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Chris Ming

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career

Add Freelancing to Your Career Management Arsenal

Takeaways

If you only have a minute, here are the takeaways:

  • Remote work is here to stay. With your next role is unbound by geography and time zone, the job marketplace is functionally limitless. This changes how you manage your career. 
  • Transactional relationships between employee and employer, e.g. “tours of duty” will become more common, and the quality of “gig-work” will continue to improve.
  • This future isn’t some panacea. Like everything else, there are tradeoffs. For example, more autonomy but less security.
  • If you’re curious, an easy way to sample a “tour of duty” is switching from an employee to a freelancer within the company. 
  • This can be great for your career if you see yourself as CEO someday, or you’ve worked at the same company for a long time. If your current priority is work/life balance, however, then stick with your employer until you’re ready to focus on your career.
  • As a freelancer, your hourly rate will likely go up, but you’ll likely owe more in taxes and they’ll get more complicated. You’ll also have less job security with each client.
  • If you’re a freelancer in the US, expect health insurance to get much more expensive. If you become a resident abroad, chances are you’ll be entitled to some public health services covered by the government.

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Remote work is here for good.[efn_note]https://buildremote.co/companies/companies-going-remote-permanently/[/efn_note]  This changes how we manage our careers.

When your next role is unbound from geography and time zone, the marketplace is functionally limitless. This accelerates the changing employer <> employee relationship, away from one based on stability and loyalty, towards a transactional exchange.

In other words, less monogamy, more swiping.

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career

Start Earning Your Second Revenue Stream

Takeaways

If you only have a minute, here are the takeaways:

  • Moments in time (like a global pandemic) show us how fragile our futures are if we rely on a single source of income.
  • Earning multiple sources of income is a superpower. Consulting is the best way to start.
  • Consulting has two advantages over other business models: leverage and speed. Leverage = apply lessons learned from your 9-5, and vice versa. Speed = test, launch, and operate your business quickly.
  • How to find your first client? Get good at something and have 10 people know. Email them and ask for referrals. Without your first paying client, building a website or email list is just procrastination.
  • How to land your first gig? Give them a presentation. Show you understand their business, their challenges, and how to address those challenges.
  • Offer a number of packages, anywhere from an audit of their existing work, to a full Done-for-you service.
  • You can charge an upfront fee or a percentage of sales. I’d recommend both ($X upfront and Y% on the backend).
  • If you’re consulting AND working your 9-5, avoid burnout. Choose your niche strategically, manage your client, and get advice if you’re stuck.

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I did the math as Zoom loaded. The answer was 7.

If we did layoffs, 7 colleagues would be let go before me. I was Chinese lucky number 8.

Like most people, I lived in this fantasy where my future was secure. Moments in time (like a global pandemic) tug at this facade. Behind the curtain is nothing more than a harried man peddling away at his Rube Goldberg machine.

Moments like this are the best thing that can happen to you.

It’s the Inciting Incident in your Hero’s Journey. Your opportunity to re-examine the fragility of having a single source of income (your job) and explore building multiple revenue streams.

For me, it nudged me towards landing my first consulting gig.

Why consulting?

Earning side income is a vast universe. You can teach online courses, start a food blog, sell ads against your content, and much more.

I choose to consult, trading my time to work on someone else’s education company/products, in exchange for money.

Consulting is the best way to start earning additional income for two reasons: 

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How to find your next tech job
career

How to Find Your Next Tech Job

Do you start your retail career at the Gap or Abercrombie? Your marketing career in-house or a digital agency?

It doesn’t matter because you can always adjust your trajectory. 

But when you’re mid-career, finding your next tech job, each decision carries more weight. You have a finite number of career moves left. 

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Why I moved to Dublin Ireland
career

I Moved to Dublin, Ireland

The hardest part of selling a home and moving a family of 5 overseas wasn’t the machinations or logistical Jenga:

  • “What about your house?” Sold it to my brother
  • “What about the kids?” Enrolled in daycare
  • “What about work? Taxes?” The work situation was negotiated at the hiring phase. Taxes were… confusing. And expensive. I bought an hour from a tax consultant, so now it’s less confusing (still expensive though)

The hardest part was answering: why move in the first place? 

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career

How to Build an Incredible Career: Lessons from Arnold Schwarzenegger

Young[efn_note]Image is from Maggie (2015) a post-apocalyptic horror drama film Arnold stars in. It’s a dramatic turn for the action star. I love that he continues to push himself in his roles.[/efn_note] Arnold Schwarzenegger plastered his childhood bedroom with pictures of the greats: Steve Reeves, Bill Pearl, Jack Dellinger, Tommy Sansome, Paul Winter. All were influential in Arnold’s life, but none more so than the winner of Mr. Universe in 1974, Reg Park.[efn_note]Source for all things Arnold: Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009G3MSC0/[/efn_note]

Reg Park provided Arnold with the blueprint for his own career:

  • Become a world-class bodybuilder
  • Win Mr. Universe
  • Leverage that success into Hollywood
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online education

Should you beta test or do a full course launch?

Summary:

  • When building an online learning experience, you can decide whether to beta test or go straight into a full product launch.
  • Both options have high stakes tradeoffs. You can use the Beta Test Spectrum to help you analyze your market and product.
  • The Beta Test Spectrum looks at five vectors: demand, competition, brand moat, price, and promise.
  • Use the Beta Test Spectrum to maximize the value you add to your students’ lives and value to your business.

Six months after the Writer’s Strike, HBO placed a $60 million bet on a pair of TV neophytes. Neither had worked as a series staff writer, let alone run a show.

In November 2008, actors were cast, sets built, and principal photography of the pilot began.

Later, the writers screened the pilot for a few colleagues. Consensus was quickly reached: that screening was one of the most painful experiences of their lives.

The plot lost itself like a bad alibi. The costumes felt like a medieval Dolly Parton cosplay. On a legal pad, someone wrote, in all caps: “MASSIVE PROBLEM”.

In a stroke of extreme foresight or extreme oversight, HBO gave them a mulligan (foreign pre-sales, so the hypothesis goes).

Do it again, the executives told them. You got this.

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The surface is just the surface: Online learning methods, promises and surfaces
online education

“The surface is just the surface:” Online learning methods, promises and surfaces

Summary:

  • Online learning products and experiences follow a structure with three components: methods, value promises, and surfaces.
  • Methods describe how we teach.
  • Value promises are what the user gets from the product.
  • Surfaces are the pieces of the product or experience the user interacts with.
  • By mixing and matching methods, value promises, and surfaces, you can strategically build a “sticky” online learning experience
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early-stage Reforge
career

Should You Join An Early Stage Startup? Lessons Learned At Reforge

On February 22, 2021 Reforge raised a $20 million Series A, led by Andreesen Horowitz. It was a big win. A huge milestone after 4 years.

Six weeks later on a Friday afternoon, I clicked Zoom’s “End Meeting” button and completed my last day at the startup.

I am a founding member of the team, and there hasn’t been much time to reflect on the journey until now. I wanted to share lessons learned in getting an early-stage company to its Series A, from someone who didn’t know what a Series A was when he started.

In this post I’ll explain:

  1. What is Reforge and where it fits in the online education ecosystem
  2. Why you should join an early-stage company
  3. Lessons learned over the last 4 years

What is Reforge and where does it fit in the online education ecosystem?

Reforge is an online education platform for mid-career technology professionals who want to do great work and keep leveling up their careers. We started with growth marketing and expanded from there.

We’re solving the need for career development in that gap between entry-level roles (college or boot camps) and executive roles (networking and executive coaching).

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