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Chris Ming

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Career Habits: How To Control Your Destiny at Work and Life

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:57 am

Recently, I spoke to three different students from my alma mater.

They wanted advice on getting started in filmmaking, developing online courses, and marketing.

They asked good questions, and most of it centered around a central theme: “what skills should I focus on?”

Skill development is crucial, no doubt. You must have the chops. However, looking back at my career thus far, in the 3-4 industries where I’ve done well, I focused a lot less on skills and more on habits.

I like to think this served me well, despite a scattered career trajectory, for a few reasons:

  1. Skill sets change but the ingredients to build skills — your habits — remain the same.
  2. Habits are always under your control. Control your habits, control your destiny.
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career

3 High Leverage Life Changes You Should Make

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:28 am

My friend Michael Alexis keeps a running list of life lessons, the way others might keep a list of half-baked business ideas or ex-lovers. He started compiling this list 3 years ago.

The entire list is worth a deep read. Here’s one I’ve been thinking about a lot:

“I am constantly blown away by how little I know.

If you roll back to any ‘six months ago,’ I thought I knew a lot, but in hindsight I’m surprised I was even functional.

I expect this cycle to continue indefinitely into the future.”

I find this inextricably true in my life as well. I’m confused about how I got anything done six months ago. That’s doubly true if we rewind to a full year.

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career

How to Get Better At Your Job This Year

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:55 am

Ever think you’re not very good at your job?

You’re not bad per se. You’re not incompetent or lazy.

You put in the hours. You don’t drop the ball. You check off your to-do list.

But perhaps when you look at your peers, you notice them stacking promotion after promotion on their LinkedIn profile. Or at drinks, they casually mention receiving a second raise this year.

Maybe it’s politics or luck. Perhaps they “play the game” better than you do. Sometimes that is why people get ahead.

But what if you suspect they’re just better at their job than you?

If that’s the case, how would you uplevel your skills? What skills do you improve, and how would you do it?

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marketing

Our Japanese & Sushi Restaurant Ran Its First Instagram Ads

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:54 am

On January 6, 2019, I ran the first of two tests on our Shogun Albany Instagram account, as part of my efforts to run marketing for one of the family restaurants.

Test 1 : An Instagram contest where participants had to follow the Shogun account, tag 2 friends, and guess the type of fish in a photo. One winner would win a $10 gift card to Shogun.

Test 2 : I ran 2 ads to drive people to this contest, against two different Audiences: Mothers living in Albany and surrounding areas and Students living in Albany and surrounding areas.

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Marketing Lessons From A Small Family-Owned Restaurant

Last updated on January 15th, 2022 at 06:19 am

I thought if I sold more sushi, I’d earn my dad’s respect.

On paper, offering to help with marketing for one of the family restaurants made sense: I knew the food. I knew marketing. And I was a millennial, so obviously I knew Instagram, #natch.

The upside potential was high. It was also a good way to give back to the family.

However, if I peel back all the layers of resume speak, the naked truth was much simpler:

I wanted to impress my dad. I wanted his approval. So I spent a lot of 2019 working on this, on the side.

If you have a family business, you can learn from my approach to marketing our family restaurant, what I experimented with, and why I failed.

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The Passion Economy, The Gig Economy, and The Difference

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:45 am

The future of work is here. And it’s neither the golden age, nor the Hunger Games of our generation.

Li Jin of a16z thoroughly broke down the future of work here. Some highlight reel stats:

  • The top-earning writer on newsletter platform Substack earns $500,000+ a year from reader subscriptions
  • The top creator on video course platform Podiaa earns $100,000+ a month
  • One of the top creators on artist platform Patreon earns $95,000+ a month (source)
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What Will You Accomplish This Year? A 2019 Recap

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 02:58 am

At the end of 2018, I decided there was a large “skill-gap” that I wanted to bridge. Some skills I wanted to improve were more technical:

  • Excel
  • SEO
  • SQL

Other skills were softer, but equally important to me:

  • Email automation
  • Food photography
  • Instagram marketing

I didn’t see a way to work on these skills without making certain sacrifices. So I made a decision: I’d give up blogging for a year.1

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2019: The Year of Becoming a Practitioner

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:56 am

My every career opportunity came because of my writing habit.

I wrote my way into my first Hollywood internship, covering entire book manuscripts in a day — that’d take others a week. I wrote a cold email that landed my job with Dennis. An article on how to get health insurance opened the door to working with Ramit for 2 years.

The quality of that writing fluctuated over the last 10 years, but the work ethic never wavered.

Until now.

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