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hunterclaringtonjoy · 3 years ago

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Hunter’s Choice

Who: Hunter Clarington & Frannie Fabray When: August 12, 2021 Where: Frannie’s Apartment What: Hunter considers what’s next for him now he’s graduated and has a proposition for Frannie.

Hunter’s Choice

Hunter had been lucky to be able to keep his apartment after graduation but the contract was coming to an end in just over a week and then he’d be forced to go home. Despite his father’s wishes, Hunter hadn’t signed up to join the army yet so it appeared as though going back to Canada would be his only option.

The wishes of Clarington Senior were more accurately demands in the form of daily phone calls or emails from Mr C’s “friends” in the US armed forces less than gently trying to persuade Hunter to join whatever training program they could pluck out of thin air for the son of a respected officer. Of course, none of this communication came directly from Mr C though as that would require him to give up his time to be part of his children’s lives, he could simply direct their paths from afar and continue to be hands on as little as possible.

Between spending time with Frannie, Ollie and Benji whenever the latter wasn’t with his new boyfriend, and working with the Eagle Scouts program mentoring the young men aiming to achieve the highest award of the Boy Scouts, the summer had flown by in a blur of joy and excitement with his family which was barely keeping his fears for the coming fall at bay.

Every time those fears threatened to overwhelm Hunter he’d go to the gym and swim lap after lap never stopping long enough to brake his concentration from his sights set on the spot on the wall at the other end of the pool and he’d only leave the water when he was in pain from either burning lungs or burning muscles from the effort he’d exerted.

The 20th was fast approaching and Hunter needed to have a plan in place for the next step in his life, he couldn’t put this off any longer. He’d actually slept in his own bed in his own apartment the night before so thankfully he wasn’t disturbing Frannie and Ollie with his pacing, which he’d been doing for at least two hours now as he twisted the box in his hand between his fingers deftly as one might do with a pen. This was Hunters’ chance to change his trajectory and make his life his own and not live in his father’s shadow.

Taking a deep breath Hunter walked up to Frannie’s apartment and by-passed knocking on the door and simply walking in. thinking on it hunter couldn’t even remember the last time he had knocked and waited for Frannie’s response. That apartment was more like grand central station these days what with Hunter coming and going as he pleased to spend time with Ollie, Sam and Nikko popping up whenever they wanted, and then Benji and Mason appearing out of thin air at all hours of the day or night. Hunter of a year ago would have laughed if someone had said this was going to be his life, and yet he wouldn’t change it for the world.

“Hey babe,” Hunter called closing the door behind himself, feeling relaxed as soon as he was on the other side. “I wanted to talk to you about something.” He tugged nervously at his button up, smoothing down the bottom hem over top of his dark wash jeans, hoping Ollie wasn’t currently a sticky mess and ruin the white shirt. Hunt scolded himself momentarily for bothering to wear white in the vicinity of their son but he wanted to look good today.

“You know it’s been embarrassingly obvious that I’ve had no idea what to do after graduation after you managed to talk me out of being my father’s carbon copy and I need to thank you for that somehow because I found something perfect for me, at least the next year. The swim team is looking for a coach for the next academic year. Ours is taking off and moving to New Zealand to coach an Olympic hopeful and I couldn’t pass up what seemed like a perfect opportunity. Yesterday I found out I got the job. So I’m staying here. I’ll be able to rent a home over at the on campus staff housing association so if you want, you and Ollie could live there with me?”

Hunter had never spoken a sentence so quickly in all his life. He wasn’t the type of person to anxiously jabber on about nothing, he was brought up to be clear and concise but it was a big ask to propose such a thing to Frannie, to someone he felt so many things he’d never felt before. Frannie’s answer would be truly life changing for them all and he was about five seconds from starting to recall every single one of the Jewish Hebrew prayers Ben had taught him for luck.

Frannie's Response

Frannie had been pulling all her classic moves to avoid talking about what was actually bothering her. Well, what had be bothering her for ages... but only now was back to the front of her mind since talking to Benji. It was ironic, really, that one of the people she was most concerned about in this whole situation was Benji, and now he was encouraging her to talk to Hunter about whatever was "weird."

And despite what Sam kept thinking, the weirdness was not from some kind of unrequited love between herself and Hunter... but Sam had gotten into her head about what living with Hunter could mean. For a while, the thought had been circling her brain to tell Hunter that he should just move in with herself and Ollie when the lease was up now that he was no longer a student. She'd just figured that would be easier for everyone, right? And she had a spare room. Nothing had to really change, right?

But with Benji living with her as of recent until the leases opened up for him to get his own place, the idea fell to the back of her brain. It would be weird to have him here and Hunter trying to move in too, or at least that's what she told herself.

The door opened and she didn't even look over, just started talking. "I got more juice boxes. Also, string cheese, animal crackers, and some more p.b. and j for sandwiches, s-" She stopped speaking when she realized it was Hunter and turned her head quickly. "Oh shit, sorry. I thought you were Benji. Hey," she smiled before turning her attention back to the laundry she was folding, honestly unsure of what articles of clothing belonged to who. "What's up?"

She nodded as she listened to him speak, glancing over every few seconds so he would know she was paying attention. She shook her head a little, her cheeks feeling a bit warmer, when he credited her with changing his mind- which seemed very unbelievable to her. But she stopped folding and turned to look at him with wide eyes when she heard his job opportunity. "Hunt! That's amazing, what the hell! You're going to be am- wait, what did you say?" She blinked, dropping the still unfolded shirt back into the basket and running her hand over her hair. "You want us to live with you? I-" She stammered a bit, letting out a small laugh. "That's- I mean, you... I was going to ask you that…"

Hunter’s Proposition

“Good to know my brother is still actually showing up here, I swear he’s at the Smythe’s more than anyone else.” Hunter laughed, “Not that I blame him after Chris…” He huffed, grabbing down the bottle of bourbon he had hidden at the back of the highest cupboard in Frannie’s kitchen and pouring a couple of ounces into a glass to calm his nerves. Hunter still felt ill-will towards Chris after he found out Ben had needed to break up with his childhood crush, making Hunter more on edge than ever about Ben entering a new relationship because clearly people felt like they could treat the youngest Clarington like garbage and Hunter wasn’t going to stand by and let that happen again.

Watching Frannie stumble a little as he continued to talk always amused Hunter. He was the type of person that had no qualms continuing to talk without letting people respond, so seeing Frannie go from joy about his job announcement to what appeared to be nerves or surprise in reaction to his invite made him chuckle but only because he found it adorable and endearing.

However, the most interesting part of Frannie’s response was she took had been getting ready to ask him the same question. “Ask me to live here? As convenient as that sounds I’m ready to stop sharing a bedroom with my son, and little brother when he feels like spending the night with his ‘Mom’.” He grinned, in the back of his mind thinking about how this could be an opportunity to get into her bed… But the little voice of restraint in his mind, which oddly enough had the voice of the Smythe’s sister, told him to take it slow.

“We can get a three bedroom over in the staff complex, they have some renovated town houses that would be perfect for the three of us so if you have exams or cases to study for I can keep Ollie occupied in a different part of the house.” Hunter explained, wandering over and picking up the discarded shirt and smiling, it was one of his that he’d often pull on first thing after waking up to bathe or change Ollie before he showered and got ready for the day himself.

“So what do you say? Think you can live that far from Jolly Green and little Prescott?” Hunter give his best sensual persuasive smile, practically batting his eyelashes.

#franniexfabs #about: frannie #para #Hunter’s Choice

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autumnslance · 4 years ago

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What was it like going from World of Warcraft to FFXIV? As someone who has never played an online RPG before FFXIV I am often :0 ?! when I hear that some people found getting into FFXIV hard because of the mandatory main quest when they just want to go to endgame content as soon as possible. Is going endgame ASAP a regular thing in most online RPGs?

Have a header image of a FFXIV version of my original WoW Main, Discipline Priest Lirriel F’sharri.

Me, a concise answer? Hahaha! Sorry. This got long, so behind a cut it goes and hopefully I answer to Nonny’s satisfaction, taking the questions and breaking them down:

Is going endgame ASAP a regular thing in most online RPGs?

In a lot of games it can be, yes. WoW doesn’t really have a linear overall storyline; each zone has its own story, and each expansion has its own story arc. Nowadays, with how long it’s been running and how big it’s gotten, WoW has revamped their questing so that you decide if you want to go through 1-50 in a specific expac (Burning Crusade, Cataclysm, Wrath of the Lich King, etc), and then catch up to the newest expac for the newest levels, since they also recently did a “level squish” as well as a stats squish, as they had gotten well over 100+ levels in the last couple expansions. Numbers are a problem for long running games (which is why experienced MMO players nodded and some even sighed in relief when the stat squish for Endwalker was announced).

I don’t think FFXIV will be able to do anything similar since their overarching story is so linear; it’s more like playing a single player traditional JRPG with some MMO features attached. I can see them perhaps scaling experience point gain with quests the way they have with the side quests in Shadowbringers, or with Beast Tribe dailies; that would work going forward I think. Unless we get the option to start with the new storyarc starting in 6.1; that could be interesting!

The only other time I had a linear story to go through similarly to FFXIV was early days of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which I played briefly at launch. Even then, each planet had its own storyline, the overall storyline was the individual class questlines. There was, I think, an overarching plot, but it didn’t really come into play until level cap? I don’t even remember and never got to cap because the grind in that game at launch was awful.

And that’s a thing about many MMOs; the leveling experience is learning about the world, introducing characters and setting, but it’s mostly filler until you get to the endgame where the raiding is--and in WoW, the story is only completed via seeing it in raids (thank goodness for Looking for Raid) and was the main focus mechanically as well. WoW didn’t really have an overarching story in Classic, it was a lot of disparate elements setting up and holdovers from the original RTS games and led to random raid content. Burning Crusade gave us an overarching plot with going to Outland to face Illidan--which honestly wasn’t all that well done storywise. BC is remembered fondly for the quality of life changes and allowing smaller groups to raid, rather than requiring wrangling 40 people. And the raids were challenging and fun--or frustrating, but mileage varies there. But the impetus for “the Dark Portal opened and Illidan’s in Outland being bad” was...pretty much it? Later expacs like Wrath had much better story setup and throughlines as they went, and my one friend described Shadowlands as having something like an MSQ. There are, however, a lot of retcons and putting necessary plot information in supplemental material, which was always frustrating. I’ve likened it before to “imagine going from defeating Tsukuyomi at the end of 4.3 and all the separations and set up there...and then the next patch picking up with getting warped to the First because everything that happened in 4.4 and 4.5 occurs in a novel.” That’s too often been WoW’s method of connecting expansion stories while players languish for a year or more in the last raid content.

I wish I was kidding. FFXIV having a set, quick release schedule, that they keep to so consistently with such good quality--and cosmetic and RP stuff added too!--is astounding to me. I worry for the devs’ health at times--then I hear things like Yoshida turning down requests for crunchy overtime to keep said devs from burning out, hence why the next Ultimate is pushed to 6.1. I appreciate that greatly. Getting anything not pertaining to endgame raid and PvP content in WoW was often impossible, coming with complaints from the raiding community that frivolous additions for sheer fun cost them whole tiers, and seriously 18 months between patches was not unheard of.

What was it like going from World of Warcraft to FFXIV?

I started FFXIV at the beginning of Heavensward...but I was still playing WoW. FFXIV was my side game, as I was still invested in roleplay and raiding with my WoW friends. So I mostly enjoyed playing through the story at a leisurely pace, but I didn’t finish ARR for like 2 years. When Stormblood came out I was hitting burnout in WoW despite mostly enjoying Legion, and the quality of life changes for StB really invigorated my interest and ability to play. The longer GCD for FFXIV was actually one of the biggest challenges for me, especially since I had primarily tanked and healed in WoW. I am not an aggressive or competitive player, nor very manually coordinated, so DPS has always been a challenge for me. I find DPS easier in FFXIV thanks to the longer GCD--I’m still not great, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by trying to hit my rotation buttons instantly. It’s taken me a while to get used to tanking, and I still don’t do it in 8man content, except once or twice with my friends. Mostly cuz I’m just enjoying my DPS jobs, really, so haven’t invested in learning.

...And some of my old fear of random roulettes as a lone tank/healer; WoW’s LFG was a toxic pit for various reasons FFXIV has mostly avoided and even my worst day in FFXIV’s roulette is better than a good day in WoW’s, which gave me anxiety and I stopped doing without friends. FFXIV has no Public Test Realm that people expect you to get on pre-patch to not only spoil story moments, but also learn all the fight mechanics ahead of time and if you don’t know them Hour 1 Day 1 of a new patch release you’re deserving of abuse.

I won’t say never, but I just haven’t found myself interested in going back to WoW or feeling invested in that story, though I do sometimes miss my RP characters (and may write more stories for them sometime). I do keep track of certain beloved NPCs and events--a friend streamed a beautiful moment in Ardenweald for me because I did play through what happened to that character in Legion, sobbing the whole time. I’m tracking what’s happening to Anduin Wrynn closely; we’ve literally watched that character grow up in real time over the years from boy prince to king of Stormwind and I’m still a bit heartbroken about his father. But I play for story and characters, and Blizzard’s way of telling those stories and handling those characters lost me, and with how the Acti-Blizz execs and higher level devs act lately (Hazzikostas keeps striking me as out of touch), they don’t give me much incentive to go back. I may not even pick up Diablo 4 at this rate.

So FFXIV’s story hits the right narrative and character focus for me, especially when I buckled in and replayed...and then replayed again...and now have NG+...Anyway, I like how they build the lore and characters and while it’s far from perfect and they have their own flaws, coming from WoW, it’s a lovely change of pace. Not to mention just how Yoshida and his team interact and communicate with the player base, and see the players’ trust as paramount post-1.x.

...I hear that some people found getting into FFXIV hard because of the mandatory main quest when they just want to go to endgame content as soon as possible.

Some people play only to raid; they like mechanics, and challenges, and feeling powerful at max level with the best gear. They don’t care about the overall story--in some cases because they don’t realize it’s so in depth and linear and sensible after/compared to the constant retcons and revamps in games like WoW!--and are just here to play with friends. Cool for them, if that’s what makes them happy! If that’s how they relax and have fun, power to ‘em so long as they aren’t being nasty to others less advanced/able/willing to put in the time and effort for gameplay. But for me, story and characters are far more important, and I raided quite a lot in WoW at various levels of difficulty and raid size. I am old and tired and want to relax and have fun with friends and write stories that get away with me when my characters get a mind of their own. So I rarely do more than Normals, avoiding Savage and Extreme cuz that grind doesn’t interest me. I’ll do stuff I can do on my own to get my progress fix for my brain (like leveling jobs).

The trouble we’re running into now is FFXIV’s linear story is well over 100 hours long. Even with the ARR revamp cutting a lot of chafe, there’s a LOT to get through to reach HW, and then a lot to get to StB, and then to ShB. And there will be a bunch to get through to EW. That’s JUST MSQ, not counting all the side content a new player may also want to catch up on, like the Alliance and Normal raids, PvP, Relics, Hildibrand, side quest stories like Mail Moogle, Beast Tribes, Crafting...the list goes on and on!

Content in a successful MMO must be varied for multiple styles and preferences for the long term health of the game. Roleplayers and story-focused folks tend to be the ones who stick between patches, farming content at a slower pace to get rewards they want for RP or to see story info, as opposed to raid-focused folks who push new content at release for the challenge and glory. Some of those folks also RP or like story though, so go back to farm between blowing up new content. There’s room for all kinds, and there has to be, and while I am sometimes annoyed by people who skip story (or outright dislike it!) while demanding to know how X works or why a character did A thing, they play their way and pay their sub to keep things running same as me and my obsessive need to know the lore and see it for myself. I can certainly understand those players who story skip that much content to get to where their friends are, if that’s the primary reason they play is to raid with pals, and with New Game+ it’s easier than ever for someone to go back and catch up the story later anyway.

#Lyn Prompts #About Me #Blogging #World of Warcraft #Final Fantasy XIV #Anonymous

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angelinyourworld · 5 years ago

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Nice and Innocent Pt.1

- Rating: PG-13 -

- 4K words -

- A blind date with Kyungsoo -

The idea was a bit ridiculous, really, going on a double date with someone I have never met. But when your friend begs you to meet this incredible guy she’s dating because she insists he’s “the one”, it’s hard to say no. It’s only until the night before does she casually mention to you that it’s also a date with this man’s lonesome friend.

“So of all the people in your life that are single, I need the most help?” I deadpan, rifling through my closet for something more inspiring for this sudden change in occasion. I hope she can hear the distaste in my voice.

“No! That’s not it at all! I really want you to meet Junmyeon. And I just think out of all the people in my life, you’ll get along with Kyungsoo the most. This was just a little add on. That’s all.” Eunji tries to placate me, but I’m still a bit put off by the whole thing. I’m not old by any means, but apparently old enough to have dates set up for me now.

“You’re very lucky that I want to meet this perfect man of yours and also happen to want to try out the restaurant we’re going to; which by the way, how on earth did we get a reservation for? It’s impossible to get into that place even if you book months in advance.” I ask incredulously.

Eunji hums thoughtfully for a few moments, “I’m not sure actually. Junmyeon said Kyungsoo set it up though.”

“Junmyeon is paying right?” I ask, half joking. Eunji giggles and affirms my inquiry. “What should I wear? I don’t think I have anything.”

“Show me your closet again.” I turn my phone to show her and we end up spending up far too much time going through my closet together.

The next evening comes quickly and I’m oddly nervous. Junmyeon was kind enough to pick me up for the evening--point to him for that. He drives a fancy car and opens the door for me as Eunji beams from the front seat.

We exchange pleasantries for the first few minutes of the ride. “Are you excited?” Eunji asks, eyebrows extra wiggly.

“Yeah, to eat.” Junmyeon and I make eye contact in the rearview mirror and he snickers.

“You’re so funny.” Eunji says flatly.

“They’ll get along just fine. Don’t worry.” Junmyeon reaches over the console to hold Eunji’s hand and it warms my cold, dead heart.

We arrive at the restaurant and I am immediately taken with the space itself. It’s beautiful to say the least. It’s styled with contemporary Japanese aesthetics--muted, natural colors with a good flow from the entrance to the interior. There is minimal decor with thoughtful sculptures and bright flowers. The maitre d' readily greets us, specifically Junmyeon, when we step through the door.

We’re ushered into the dining room and led towards the counter where the head chef is engaged in a conversation with a bespectacled man dressed in a blue sweater. His expression looks warm and eager as they talk. It’s endearing.

“Kyungsoo!” Junmyeon is incredibly enthusiastic, immediately pulling Kyungsoo into a hug when he stands. “This is my girlfriend Eunji, and this is her friend I’ve been telling you about.” Kyungsoo shakes Eunji’s hand and then reaches for mine as well. His grip is strong and his hands are a little dry, but not the worst impression ever. He looks quite handsome in his royal blue sweater and cropped hair. His voice is deep and soothing--it sends a shiver down my spine that I struggle to tamp down.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kyungsoo says. He sounds calm, but the tips of his ears are tinged pink betraying his cool demeanor. At least I’m not alone in feeling apprehensive about the date.

I’m sandwiched between Eunji and Kyungsoo at the corner of the counter, in arguably the best seat in the house with the head chef just an arm’s length away. “Chef Fujimoto is a good friend of mine and was kind enough to do this favor for us today.”

It isn’t until Kyungsoo says this that I realize the restaurant was empty save for us. Who on earth is this guy that he’s friends with a top chef?!

“I’m always happy to do what I can for you, my friend.” Chef Fujimoto greets us before excusing himself to work on the courses for this evening.

More pleasantries are exchanged while we are served tea and the first round of sake that is to be paired with the appetizers. Every time Kyungsoo speaks, it get taken aback by how wonderful his voice sounds. I’m usually one for good conversation during a meal, but watching the meal come to life before my eyes, my attention is certainly on chef and not on my companions. Chef and his sous chef flitter about the kitchen so fluidly it’s almost as if they’re dancing.

The zensai course finally appears before us in a flourish of colors and my eyes are already feasting.

“Starting with the right side we have a pumpkin rose filled with salmon ikura and on the left is a salad of maitake, toasted pumpkin seeds, and fig.”

The pumpkin rose is so gorgeous, delicate, and looks downright delicious. “Oh chef...this is just stunning.” I murmur. Utter adoration must be written all over my face because chef’s expression is just as delighted.

“Itadakimasu.” Kyungsoo smiles. The rest of us utter our thanks and sample the art in front of us. Just a bite of the first course has convinced me this restaurant deserves all the accolades it has received.

Eunji and Junmyeon continue to converse as they eat, but Kyungsoo and I are silent. I glance over at him and he looks thoughtful as he chews. “What are your thoughts, Kyungsoo?” It takes a moment for my question to register to him, he blinks with eyes wide and expression blank.

Kyungsoo looks down at the plate, scanning its details. “Autumn is my favorite season. This captures the season perfectly.”

His answer brings a smile to my face, “That’s my favorite season too.” Kyungsoo gives me a gentle smile and pushes his glasses up with a finger. It’s easy to tell already that Kyungsoo is passionate person hidden behind demure smiles, thick black frames, and concise words.

“To cleanse the palate we have a suimono of braised daikon and ankimo.” Chef Fujimoto steps back in front of us to inquire about our thoughts once we’ve had a taste.

“I love the clarity of the flavors. I’m not sure what word to use to describe it, but what comes to mind is ‘pure’?” Kyungsoo hums at my commentary and takes another bite.

“I think you’re quite right. They’re simple flavors of the cuisine, but there is a satisfying potency to it that is very filling.” I could watch Kyungsoo speak all day. There is something so pleasant about the way he speaks and the way his lips move. I am so deeply satisfied with the meal and the company; I’m actually kind of glad I agreed to come.

After we our plates are cleared and the next sake pairing is served, the next course is presented. This course is usually favorite and I’m particularly excited for this one. “For the hassun we have an A5 wagyu beef tataki, persimmon with tofu skin, grilled hamachi. The tempura is lotus root and prawn with a tentsuyu dipping sauce.” As we all eat, a chorus of crunches into the tempura is extra satisfying. It’s definitely half the reason this course is my favorite; fried food is my vice.

We cheers with our sake that warms up my whole body and changes the flavor of the wagyu beef. It’s so much fun to experiment with transformation of flavors throughout these courses. During a lull in the dinner conversation, Kyungsoo’s cell phone rings and he steps away to answer it with deep apologies on his lips.

“You two seem to be getting along famously,” Junmyeon notes. He’s hiding a satisfied smile behind his sip of sake.

I shrug, “I think we just both really enjoy food and this experience is really a one of a kind. I do have to thank you for inviting me. I’m really enjoying myself.”

“What do you think about him?” Eunji asks, eyes sparkling.

“We’re only halfway through dinner. I don’t know all that much about him to settle on anything significant. But he’s handsome. Very handsome.” I try to hide my smile as I think about his bright eyes and lovely smile. The couple beside me are satisfied with that and go back to their food.

Moments later, Kyungsoo slides back into his seat again apologizing for disturbing the meal. “No worries, it seemed important.”

“It was, otherwise I really hate using my phone during meals. It’s not very good company, especially today.”

“Kyungsoo hates his phone regardless. He’s silent in all of our group chats unless he’s addressed directly. Even then he only replies about 50% of the time.” Junmyeon leans over to chastise him, but there’s still a charming smile on his face.

“Hey, I would say it’s about 80% of the time.” Kyungsoo replies indignantly, but he doesn’t actually seem particularly bothered about the jibe.

“I’ve been telling you all this time--”

“It’s bad for networking.” Kyungsoo finishes the sentence with him along with a sigh. Poor Kyungsoo finally gets a break when chef comes back with the next course.

“I’m very excited about the tsukuri tonight. I have the freshest amaebi from Kochi, a gorgeous o-toro, octopus, salmon belly, and the hamachi from the previous course with a nori crust. The hamachi that came in today was too beautiful to use just once.” he explains with a bright smile. He looks so satisfied with his work, it must be a true masterpiece.

Sushi is one of my favorite foods. I could eat it every single day if I could. I particularly love the nori crust that makes the dish extra special--it’s not something I’ve had before! This meal has truly been a delight and I’m so pleased to cross this off my bucket list. Chef lingers around to gather our thoughts and commentary, then deep dives into a conversation with Kyungsoo in Japanese. Not going to lie, my heart fluttered when I realized the depth of their conversation.

I tried to listen in a bit and it sounded like they were discussing vegetable suppliers and options for the next menu.

Eunji leans over to me, “You’re staring.” My eyes are forced to break away and I immediately feel a flush take over my body. How embarrassing to be caught! Maybe it’s the sake, maybe it’s the lovely conversation, maybe it’s the unforgettable bucket list experience--no matter what it is I can’t deny that I’m incredibly attracted to Kyungsoo. How annoying. I didn’t want Eunji to be right.

Chef then steps away again to prepare for the next course. “You didn’t tell me you’re also fluent in Japanese.” I try my best to not sound exasperated. Kyungsoo’s ears flush red, but the rest of his face remains calm.

“No, you’re mistaken. I’m not fluent at all.” he says as he pushes up his glasses with a finger.

“You’re joking right? You literally just had an entire conversation with Chef Fujimoto in Japanese. I barely kept up with half the conversation.”

“So you speak Japanese too?” his eyes search my face and it’s my turn to blush from the attention.

“Certainly not as well as you. I understand a bit. I did a study abroad program back in college.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes light up, “Where?”

“In Tokyo. My college has a sister college there so it worked out that way. I spent a summer and fall semester with a lovely host family. It’s been a while since I’ve visited them. I don’t go back to Japan as often as I’d like in general, though.” Which is true, I only visit twice a year, three if I push it.

“I visit often, but it’s mostly for work. My responsibilities keep me from being more adventurous.” he sounds a bit wistful, the wanderlust clear in his eyes.

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to have time for both. It’s a shame to not have some time to yourself in such a lovely place.” This stirs conversation between all of us regaling our various experiences in Japan.

Before we know it, chef comes back with a new sake and course pairing. “For the takiawase, I’ll let you decide what I’ve put in.”

We take turns providing our commentary. “Like everyone else, I see daikon, cabbage, and shiitake. I think there’s also fig? The monkfish is particularly tasty, too.”

It’s really fun to talk about the ingredients and I become brave enough to ask Chef about his technique and methods. When it got too complicated and Chef reverted to Japanese, Kyungsoo translated for us. I understand a bit and made the experience all the more enjoyable to understand Chef and his craft on a more intimate level. I was able to help translate as well, providing a more flowery approach to my word choice than a very clear and concise Kyungsoo. We played off each other, complementary almost.

This course lasts for a long time with conversation continuing even though we’ve cleared our plates. Chef steps away when his sous chef comes to get him to finish off the last course--dessert.

“And lastly, the mizumono of apple cake with almond ice cream.” It’s simple, but it’s elegantly laid out. It’s even one of my favorite flavor combinations--there’s always something warm and inviting about it. The cake itself is light in texture and the apple flavor is clear and crisp. There are bits of apple in the cake, but doesn’t weigh heavy in the cake at all. The nutmeg and cinnamon spices along with almond ice cream compliment it well, make it feel homey.

We have to eat fast so the ice cream doesn’t melt into a runny mess so I’m not able to savor this last dish as much as I wanted. With one last wistful last bite, the meal comes to an end. My stomach is full and warm, and the burning in my heart isn’t just from the sake we’ve had.

“You look so forlorn,” Eunji laughs.

“It’s because I am,” I pout “This was such an amazing meal and being able to talk to Chef Fujimoto and sharing this with you guys really made this night so special. I could only dream of coming here before. I’m really happy.” I’m suddenly fired up, more passionate than I intended.

“You’ve always only looked at food so ardently. You’ve had hearts in your eyes all night.” Eunji says. There’s also a mischievous glint in her eye and I’m sure she means something else other than just our meal.

“Looks like we’ll have to come back often, don’t we Kyungsoo?” Junmyeon says, smile as bright as ever.

“I think you have overestimated the favors that result from my business relationships.” Kyungsoo says before finishing the last of his sake. I couldn’t help but notice the slight upturn of his lips against the rim of the ceramic cup. Cheeky.

“I don’t think it’s an overestimation. Perhaps consider it as a...as a seasonal favorite.” Kyungsoo humors Junmyeon with a slight chuckle.

“It’s unlikely, considering there are other favors that can be called upon at any time.” Kyungsoo’s eyebrows express something that I cannot quite put a finger to, but it feels like a secret I want to uncover. And he looks incredibly sexy with that slight smirk on his plush lips.

“Well aren’t you wicked,” Junmyeon snorts, but Kyungsoo doesn’t refute it.

After our meal, we take a quick photo with Chef Fujimoto and I almost have half a mind to ask him for an autograph but I have some sense of self respect and keep the fangirling to myself. I am quite unready to end the night, but I’m happy we decide to go to a nearby cafe as all of us are a bit buzzed from the sake and driving wouldn’t be a good idea.

We’re seated as couples and I suddenly feel very self conscious about anything I do even if we’re just talking over lattes and smoothies. The interior looks very nice and I enjoy the aesthetic so I try to take some photos as discreetly as possible to not disturb the conversation.

“Am I in the way?” Kyungsoo asks. It takes a moment for the question to register before I pull back, realizing I’m leaning in a bit close.

“Oh no you’re fine! I’m sorry I wasn’t really paying attention…” I’m a little embarrassed to be caught. I move to put away my phone, but Kyungsoo stops me.

“Show them to me?” I nod dumbly and pull up my gallery to show him what I took photos of. It was nothing special, just the wall decor, the room layout, and such. “They look like concept photos. They’re nice.” he compliments, leisurely scrolling through the images.

“I work in marketing so I guess I look out for these sorts of things.” I shrug.

“I just realized I never asked what your profession is,” Kyungsoo’s eyes grow a little wide and he looks very cute, especially with the glasses.

I wave him off, “It’s okay, it didn’t really come up during dinner. Food seems more like a topic of your job anyway.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to not show interest in you. It’s quite the opposite.” the room suddenly goes silent and I can’t hear anything at all except for the intense thumping of my heart. It’s a moment right out of the movies or dramas. Kyungsoo’s eyes are earnest and full of conviction and that’s how I know what he says is honest. His directness continues to catch me off guard, but I like it. I like it a lot.

Seconds pass before we’re awakened by the front door bells chiming and the baristas greeting the new customers. Kyungsoo clears his throat and hands my phone back which I quickly tuck away.

I try not to look at the other couple in front of us who are looking at us with curious gazes. Suddenly my smoothie is much more fascinating than anything else in this cafe.

Junmyeon finally breaks the silence, “Let’s take a picture, Eunji.” the two of them take the time taking selcas together and it makes the air less awkward.

“You two look really good. I can take photos for you. It’ll show off your outfits better.” I offer.

“You have great sense,” Junmyeon laughs and easily hands his phone over to me.

I shrug. “It’d be a waste since you two coordinated so well today.” which is true considering their outfits match well together; whether it was on purpose or not I’m not sure, but I can appreciate how good they look together. I hope they last a long time.

I lean back in my seat after handing the phone back to them. They take their time perusing the photos and there’s a lull in the conversation.

“Did you always want to be in marketing?” Kyungsoo asks. He’s leaning back casually, but he fidgets with the hem of his sleeve.

“No, not always. I wasn’t good at studying, but I liked the arts. I just wasn’t good at that either. I kind of fell into it. Somehow discovered I’m decent at creating concepts.” I’m the first to admit that I’m not exceptional at anything. I’m just glad that I found something I could do relatively well that I could make a living. “What about you? Were you always such an entrepreneur?”

Kyungsoo laughs and it makes my chest feel full. “I was awful at school and to be honest I never cared for academics. I always liked being in the kitchen with my mother and grandmother. I’m not a chef like they are, but helping people grow their restaurant dreams has been a dream in itself.”

The four of us fall into conversation after that about anything and everything. We stick around long after we’ve finished our drinks and essentially have to be kicked out as the cafe was closing. It was really lovely getting to know Junmyeon who is so charming and passionate, and kind to a fault. I can tell how much he likes Eunji by the way he makes a fool out of himself to keep her smiling.

And then there’s Kyungsoo who makes me feel like a high schooler falling in love for the first time. It’s warm and sweet, it makes my insides burn. His ambition is impressive and I love the way he seems to move forward in his goals with intention and wholeheartedness. He sincerely loves what he does and doesn’t have any complaints. I really like his expressive eyes and pretty heart-shaped smile. His impeccable Japanese skills and love for the culture matches my own. I don’t know if it’s possible to fall in love with a person in the course of a night, but I’d certainly like to see him again.

We amble back for the cars and the night finally comes to an end.

“May I drive you home?” Kyungsoo asks as the valet pulls up with his car.

Or not.

“Sure.” I have to tamp down on the excitement that bubbles in my chest. Eunji leers at me and I roll my eyes. “Thank you for dinner, Junmyeon. It was really nice to finally meet you. Eunji is a little crazy, but if you need backup I got you.” I shake hands with Junmyeon who laughs.

“Wow, that’s rude. See if I invite you anywhere else next time.” Eunji huffs. “Conspiring against me already.”

“It’s not conspiring if it’s true. Though if he’s stuck around this long already I think he knows what he’s getting into.”

“I do. I definitely do.” Junmyeon then excuses himself to give Kyungsoo a hug.

“He’s nice. You should keep him.” I say and Eunji stops pouting, smiling wide instead.

“I think I can say the same about you.”

“It’s way too early for that, but you did good I must say.” I acquiesce. Junmyeon’s car gets pulled around and they head to the car. Kyungsoo then takes a moment to open the door for me as well.

The drive is generally quiet save for the radio that is playing quietly and the GPS giving directions. Sometimes Kyungsoo hums along, taps the wheel with his fingers. It’s cute.

I peer over at his face every so often, trying not to get caught staring. He really does have such a handsome face and even more handsome when he’s driving. He finally catches me in the act and I quickly look out the window to hide the blush that instantly colors my face.

“Is there something on my face?” he asks, evidently amused by the teasing tone.

“No, I don’t think so.” I reply as nonchalant as possible, unwilling to be caught.

“There must be something since you keep looking my way,” he is so mean, messing with me like this.

“I just like looking at the city at night. The feeling is different.” I am a weak human being and I’m paying the price for it.

It’s quiet until we stop at a light. In my peripheral I can see him looking at me this time and he’s got the slightest hint of a smirk and it gets under my skin. “What?” I turn to face him.

“It’s okay, you can keep looking. I like it when you look at me.” there goes his heart-shaped smile again. Double-kill.

“Now I can’t look at you anymore!” I can’t take it! I cover my face with my hands and start uncontrollably giggling. Kyungsoo laughs with me too and I’m a bit less embarrassed.

We finally calm down and arrive at my apartment building shortly after. There’s a moment of hesitation before I unbuckle my seatbelt, but all good things come to an end. “Thank you for driving me home and for dinner. I had a really good time.”

“The pleasure was mine, but I’m glad you had a good time. I’ve never really done this blind date thing before.” Kyungsoo smiles, though he betrays his nervousness as he brushes a hand over the shorter sides of his hair. My eyes can’t help but linger on his perfect lips.

“Could’ve fooled me,” I tease. “But honestly, I wasn’t super into the idea of another blind date at first. I haven’t met very nice men from them. I’m glad I was wrong...for once.”

Kyungsoo smirks, eyebrow cocked. “What makes you think I’m a nice guy?” It should be illegal for him to do that. I’m at a loss of what to say. The air is electric and there’s something hanging in the air left unsaid. Just a short reach over the center console and--

“It’s okay if you’re not nice. Just this once.” I don’t know who crosses the precipice first, but the moment breaks and suddenly our lips glide over each other’s. God, his lips are just as perfect as I’d imagined. They’re pillowy soft and warm, not chapped in the slightest. He holds my face close with his thumb resting just below my ear. It’s just the tiniest bit possessive and I revel in the feeling of being wanted. Desired.

When we finally come up for real air, the windows are all fogged up just like how my head feels. “Told you I wasn’t nice.” he huffs, a little out of breath. His lips are shiny and red and I revel in the fact that I caused that.

“Well then maybe it’s a good thing I’m not a nice girl either.” it’s my turn to be a little bold. Sometimes you have to be ambitious with what you want.

“What makes you say that?” he asks with a brow quirked.

“Would a nice girl ask you to come up for a drink this late at night?” I throw a smirk his way and make my exit from the car.

I claim victory when I hear him open the door after me.

#exo scenario #fic: exo #exo #D.O.#do kyungsoo #kyungsoo #fic: kyungsoo #kyungsoo scenario

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mr-entj · 7 years ago

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MBTI Relationships: xxTJ and xxFP

Combined with the following asks:

Hi mr-entj fellow ENTJ here! I love your blog and I would like to ask you a question...What do you think a romantic relationship between an ENTJ and an ENFP would look like? What things would they argue about and how well would they get along?

By reading your blog I am curious about your opinions on a relationship between an INFP and ENTJ? Are there troubles in which they might encounter that you could share? Many thanks!~Big fan from Singapore

INFP and ENTJ pairing? Is it possible?

As an INFP, I find myself highly attracted to the ENTJ type as they embody many of the qualities I admire although I do not unfortunately have too many in my lives (maybe Te but not exactly an ENTJ). Have you been with an INFP? What has that been like? Can you share? Thank you for your blog!

Input on an INFP (f) and ENTJ (m) match? I love your blog and I’ve read it over 3 times

Would the ENTJ and INFP chemistry survive in romance? What do you think? What about INTJ and INFP?

Not answering these questions. I’d rather tell you all a tale of three relationships– you figure out the message.

First, here’s the popular and widely accepted xxTJ/xxFP romantic relationship narrative recited 1000 times over on the internet:

Story #1: The FP Perspective (INFP, ISFP, ENFP, ESFP)

An FP and TJ meet each other, there’s instant chemistry, they find the conversation flows easily, and the connection grows quickly. Inevitably, they fall in love.

The FP is free-spirited, artsy, fun-loving, and passionate, but the TJ is stern, inflexible, insensitive, and stubborn. The FP just wants to pursue their passions in life and not be forced into the suffocating confines and expectations of society. The FP has picked up odd jobs here and there to create a perfect balance of work and leisure that fits their lifestyle. After a while, the FP feels pressured and attacked by the TJ to get a “real job”; they feel misunderstood by their significant other.

“I love you,” says the FP to the TJ. “I want to spend my life with you but I feel like you don’t respect me in this relationship and that you treat me like a child. I want to do what I want with my life because what’s the point of pursuing anything if you don’t enjoy it?”

“No,” says the TJ. “Give up your immature dreams and get a miserable 9-5 job. Practicality (x10). Money money money (x100). Go be a doctor/lawyer/businessman [insert Asian parent spiel here].”

“I don’t want to,” pleads the FP. “I want to be a [insert liberal arts/humanities/creative arts pursuit here].”

“Stop whining and stop being impractical. You’re never going to succeed in that,” replies the TJ coldly. “Give up on your hopes and dreams and do what I say. You’re so delusional, you’ll never make it.”

“I can’t be happy doing something I hate,” says the FP. “You’re trying to turn me into someone I’m not.”

“Too bad. Get over it,” says the TJ. “Get your shit together.”

The FP is stressed out by the abusive TJ and flees to Tumblr where they write a post complaining about Te being mean and oppressive.

Story #2: The TJ Perspective (ENTJ, ESTJ, INTJ, ISTJ)

An FP and TJ meet each other, there’s instant chemistry, they find the conversation flows easily, and the connection grows quickly. Inevitably, they fall in love.

The TJ is confident, focused, disciplined, and charismatic, but the FP is indecisive, flaky, lazy, and overly sensitive. While the TJ’s peers were goofing off and relaxing– the TJ made huge sacrifices in blood, sweat, and tears to pull ahead in life and achieve their goals. Now, the TJ wants to finally enjoy life after all that hard work in a loving and peaceful relationship when things suddenly hit a speed bump. The TJ wants to move into the next phase of life but the FP can’t finish school, can’t hold a stable job, and shows signs of unreliability that makes the TJ question the long-term viability of this relationship. After a while, the TJ feels drained and demoralized by the FP failing to get their shit together.

“I love you,” says the TJ to the FP. “I want to spend my life with you but you’re not at a point where we can do that. You should consider getting serious about your future. How are we going to move forward if you don’t take responsibility for many factors in your life?”

“No,” snaps the FP. “Stop trying to rush me and force me into a life of meaningless pursuits and misery. I told you that I’m still trying to figure things out, not everyone is a workaholic like you.”

“I’ve been patient while waiting to see what path you choose. You have my support but I can’t wait forever,” replies the TJ. “And I’m not willing to carry the burden of life by myself– there’s rent, utilities, groceries– I need help and we need to have a partnership if we want to start a life together.”

“You’re not supportive of my goals,” the FP accuses. “You’re forcing me to get a real job and to give up on my dreams. All you care about is money money money!” [Insert FP spiel accusing the TJ of materialism]

“No, what I said was--” starts the TJ.

“–I don’t want to talk about this anymore!” the FP snaps defensively, shutting down the conversation.

The TJ finds that they can never approach this topic with the FP without triggering a meltdown. The TJ has to decide if they can live with this reality or if they need to leave the relationship.

The FP is stressed out by the “abusive” TJ and flees to Tumblr where they write a post complaining about Te being mean and oppressive.

Story #3: The Happily Ever After

An FP and TJ meet each other, there’s instant chemistry, they find the conversation flows easily, and the connection grows quickly. Inevitably, they fall in love.

The TJ is confident, focused, disciplined, and charismatic, the FP is free-spirited, artsy, fun-loving, and passionate. The TJ spent the first half of their life pushing and hustling to get to where they are today, the FP spent the first half of their life wandering and exploring all the options to them until they found a pursuit their heart and mind agree with. Eventually, the two of them meet at a point in their lives when the TJ is ready to ease off the throttle, relax, and allow love in while the FP is ready to commit to a path, grow with another person, and find stability in a partner without sacrificing the individuality they hold so dear.

The FP admires that the TJ is strong, resilient, hardworking, loyal, and fiercely protective of loved ones. At times, the FP can see stubborness and insensitivity in the TJ but is able to communicate clearly and concisely when something isn’t appropriate. Underneath the armor, the FP discovers the TJ is deeply affectionate and intensely passionate.

The TJ admires that the FP is intensely committed to causes and careers meaningful to them, relentlessly brave in their pursuit, patient, loving, and loyal to the end. At times, the TJ can see oversensitivity and impracticality in the FP but is able to communicate clearly and concisely when something needs a solution. Underneath the exterior, the TJ discovers the FP is laser focused and tough as nails.

As parents, the TJ and FP are able to give guidance to the children in developing them into productive members of society that also make meaningful and lasting contributions to humanity. The children are surprised to find that in many situations the TJ is actually the softer parent who is prone to surrendering to cute requests while the FP is the hardass and often has to lay down the law. Together, they team up to create a fine balance of logic and passion to bring out the very best in their children.

The two of them navigate their relationship like adults, expressing thoughts and emotions without throwing tantrums, supporting each other in endeavors meaningful to each other, and remaining committed to working on their relationship when issues arise. It’s not perfect, but it’s love.

The FP and TJ live happily ever after and nothing about this story is ever posted on Tumblr so no one knows about it.

The End.

#mbti #infp #enfp #intj #entj #isfp #esfp #istj #estj #mbtiq #faq #relationships #mine

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subdivisi0ns · 7 years ago

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tagged by the lovely @britneyshakespeare to answer these 10 questions & come up with 10 of my own. thank you !! 💗

psa i wrote way too much please don’t read this. just skip to the questions at the end if i tagged you

1. What are 3 songs that mean something to you, and what do they mean?

that’s hard because i don’t usually find personal meanings in songs. i’m a lot more interested in what the song means to the artist who wrote it. but let’s see if i can think of some

-um. after all by david bowie was always Highly Relatable. like. prattling on & on waxing philosophical only to suddenly realize everything i said is wrong and don’t hate me and also now i’m having an existential crisis and i shouldn’t have started talking in the first place? M e

-when i was first getting into rush i was a big fan of Self Isolating To Cope and also i had no friends and was proud of it (bc if i couldn’t find a way to take pride in my [perceivedly] unchangeable flaws my entire self image would come crashing to the ground and that just wasn’t a good time . anyway). so the lines “nothing can survive in a vacuum / no one can exist all alone” from turn the page pissed me off. but now! now i have loads of friends and i feel legitimately cared about and i feel like i can comfortably reciprocate that and now when i hear that song i think you know what neil? you’re goddamn right.

-uh i s’pose i relate to another brick in the wall pt 3 which is not a good thing but. i dunno i really love being angrily in denial of needing any help whatsoever along to this song. it’s my flaw-pride anthem (don’t worry i don’t take it literally. it’s just fun in the moment)

-shit i know this said three but the one person who i relate to EVERY FUCKING SONG he’s ever put out is bill wurtz. never have i felt so understood than when i listen to bill wurtz’s music. god it’s the most uncanny feeling, i really really understand it a lot

ok i have to stop thinking of more . turns out a lot have meaning to me ive spent like an hour on this question alone Moving On

2. What’s your ideal self like?

. this was The Worst question to ask me because i can and will ramble on for hours given the opportunity

well i’d be able to execute my ideas, for one. instead of just having a half-baked - quarter-baked - fleeting concept with no real idea of how to achieve it. more specifically i want to be able to write songs. more more specifically i want to be able to write the music aspect of songs. i can’t do it. i dont fuckin know why i just can’t. but if i could i think i just might be content with life.

but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still things to improve. i wish i was funnier. i like my weird brand of humor/abstractity online but that’s hard to replicate in real life. i wish i was better at thinking on the spot. i wish my memory didn’t only retain stuff when it feels like it. i wish i was better at putting my thoughts into words, more concisely and accurately and effectively.

um i wish i didnt have executive function issues. like i wanna just do stuff and not have it take all the energy out of me. wish i had the energy to do it to begin with. wish i could keep up with socializing and not ignore people for hours/days because i can’t get myself to maintain conversation.

ok clearly this is leading down an endless tunnel of what i’d change so . i’ll just say my ideal self is a successful musician with a good social life but also an element of mystery and intrigue. my ideal self is just david bowie

3. Who, of all your family members (immediate or extended), do you think has had the most influence on you, for better or for worse?

my mom for a lot (a looooooot) of reasons but if i go into it this is gonna push it over the line from a tag game into a therapy session (if i havent crossed that line already)

4. What’s your main outlet of expression?

writing. journalling. fuckin , social media. actually yeah that more than anything. my Self is on display here if you look at my tumblr(s) my twitter(s) and my instagram(s) you’ve got a pretty goddamn decent picture of who i am

5. What was the first album you ever bought for yourself?

uh i mean i listen to most stuff off of youtube if i don’t already have it so like,,? i dunno. does itunes count? the first vinyl i ever got was wish you were here (for forty fuckin bucks god) but i paid with my aunt’s money so does that even count. i don’t know.

6. Do you like to go shopping?

depends on a lot of things. lately i’ve been in the mood to just get out of the damn house whenever possible (love being a high school dropout !) so the answer is pretty much yes anytime. but it really depends.

7. Kind of cliche but, if you could have dinner with any person, living or dead, who would you pick?

i wanna be the fourth person at the dinner with rush table. just to observe. i’d be terrified to actually have a conversation with any of my idols. okay but if i had to get over that fear i guess i’d pick..... bowie? todd? i don’t know this is hard. alex lifeson circa 197something so he can take me back to his place afterwards you pickin up what im puttin down

8. What TV show do you watch when you’re feeling stressed or low and you need a quick feel-better fix?

i don’t watch tv like ever not even in this case but i guess full house

9. What was the last intriguing conversation you had about?

everything my girlfriend said to me today (edit: yesterday but i did this last night) was great everything my girlfriend’s ever said to me was great

oh that didn’t answer the question at all i just realized. uh they were telling me about the star wars prequels (which i have not seen) and earlier we were having a very analytical conversation about a particularly interesting rush photo

also me & @swanky-trash were discussing our plans to take down trump and all the rest of those bastards while wearing jareth from labyrinth costumes and eating mushrooms. because it’s our destiny as clones separated at birth. yknow just life stuff

10. What’s something about yourself that you don’t think comes across as painfully obvious online, but is, in fact, in person?

shit are we at the end already? damn. i was enjoying this (can you tell).

okay here’s another one i could go on for 12 years about. but uh. i probably come across as way more perky irl? like my voice is all high pitched and i talk really fast and smile and laugh at everything and i have a whatever the opposite of monotone is voice. i don’t like that. i try to combat it online with the all-lowercase typing and shortening of words and omission of punctuation and that sort of thing. i think it’s worked. also i may be terrible at typing but i am WAY worse at speaking. i’m scatterbrained as hell and if i seem at all interesting or witty online that all goes to shit irl. also i can’t fucking talk to people who i only know in person? it just doesn’t work. thank god i have you guys

haaaa okay sorry for the rambling here are the questions

1. what’s the best day/one of the best days you’ve ever had?

2. how important is your social media presence to you?

3. what achievement are you proudest of?

4. describe your sense of humor.

5. is there anything you’re good at or like to do that people who don’t know you well probably wouldn’t expect?

6. what’s your most interesting family story?

7. favorite color palette?

8. what’s something that would be very “out of character” for you to do?

9. yknow that thing on twitter that’s like “pick 1 & rt for good luck” and the options are good grades, meet your idol, money, or crush texts you? which one would/did you pick and why?

10. what’s a song you either wish you’d written or feel like you could’ve written?

i tag @thetemplesofrush @thumbnailoak3 @swanky-trash @lavender-layne @realalexlifeson @davies-jones @goallines-and-musicrhymes @fruitthemed @graveyarding @cosmikdebris99 and anyone else who wants to do it and dont feel pressured to do it etc etc god i hope none of you actually read this whole thing i am so sorry

#diana i loved your questions esp the last one that was a good one #long post

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thi5mu5tb3th3pl4ce · 6 years ago

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🍌5.04 beware of a lil sadness

I could feel my eyes glistening as I read your descriptions of the films you just watched. I would have enjoyed watching every minute of both films, even more so with you beside me. I’m really glad you enjoyed them and were able to pick up great insights. I definitely agree on what you said about Filipinos vs. Filipino-Americans—there is, also figuratively, a world of difference. I was reminded of the problem I had with “Crazy Rich Asians”. The portrayal of Asians there will always horrifyingly unrealistic, because the writer was Asian-American and no matter how much they want to fight for visibility, at the end of the day, they did not work hard enough to achieve authenticity. Probably a result of innate entitlement brought by their American half. Or maybe I’m just a hater.

This day was not great. It does not come naturally for me to speak accurately about how I feel whenever the feeling is anything sad. I am realizing now that in the past few years, I have lost the ability to allow myself to be that comfortable around people. I wanted to talk about it with you on the phone, but all I could do was tear up several times, tell you how much I missed you, and change the topic. I would be on the brink of saying something about it, but a voice in my head would go, “Don’t ruin a nice trip.” But I know you, you are always so ready to be there for me and protect me from my own irrational, anxiety-driven thoughts. Still, at least through typing this, you have the option of reading this at a better time, maybe at the end of the day when you are home and resting and not first thing in the morning.

Nothing terrible happened, I just felt like I was covered in a blanket of mild depression as I woke up. Maybe it was the fever, maybe it was the mood swings brought by my period. But I know now that it is because of something deeper. Talking to you for a bit and seeing you gave me ease in that moment.

I went out for a jog because I thought it could bring my temperature down. Subconsciously, though, it may have been for a different reason. My Tita was having breakfast with my mom when I went downstairs. The last time I saw her was in 2017. She pointed out how I was much thinner back then. Although she didn’t mean it in a bad way, nor is that generally supposed to be a true insult, for some reason I found myself sprinting around the UP oval despite having a 38.2 degree fever. I hate it. Why did I let her do that to me? Why would I let anyone do that to me? It reminded me of a time a few years ago when I overheard a bunch of actors “ranking” the women in the crew, and when someone mentioned my name, one of them said “hindi talaga siya maganda, eh” and I pretended not to care. If I really didn’t care, why did I completely change my hair and start to wear more makeup soon after that day? I hate this. At the end of the day, the way I look should be the least of my problems. I don’t even know why I devoted a whole paragraph to this. Maybe it’s my super-secret, very deep insecurity (which I shared with you) of not being ____ enough. This goes beyond my appearance. I should stop worrying about that.

I realized the true reason for my sadness when we drove past the gates of the cemetery. It’s that time of the year....a year ago, I was in grief. What’s fucked up is that maybe I actually wasn’t, I was burying it deep down under a pile of work and a responsibility to be the one consoling my mother and my brother (who was my Lola’s favorite).

My Lola died first, then Nana died a few months later in July. Two mother figures I have lived with since birth died in one year, and I feel like I haven’t cried about it enough to this day.

I had a vision as a drove into the cemetery. About a year ago on the morning of my Lola’s funeral, my mom told me she couldn’t bring herself to do the eulogy. My brother can never be bothered to do anything like that. I had to do it. I did not want to fucking do it, I was not prepared. But I had to.

While everyone was preparing for the mass, I went out of the chapel (which was by the entrance of the cemetery) and walked around the entire park out of nervousness. I was walking around and pacing like an idiot. I was trying to memorize the speech I had typed in my phone in bullet points. My feet were taking me somewhere but my mind was in panic mode, trying to make sure I would be concise in whatever I had to say. I was looking down at my feet the whole time I was walking and thinking. I eventually looked up and found myself at the other end of the park, at my Lolo’s grave. My Lola was to be buried beside him there.

I walked back, gave the speech, it went okay. I was not satisfied but I was definitely glad it was over.

Just a month later, Nana went from a strong, feisty old lady to being weak and immobile. She started going in and out of the hospital, and I would be the one driving. She took care of my mom since birth, and she took care of my brother and I the same way. When my parents split up and times were hard, we didn’t need to spend on maids to take care of us and the house because we had Nana. Our family was indebted to her in ways that can be too painful to grasp now that she is gone.

She saw me through different phases of my life, especially the worst ones. She would open the gate for me at 4am, either drunk or wired. She would ask me where I had been and I would lie to her every single time.

I remember when we were asking each other those questions when you slept over one time, and one of them was “What was the saddest day of your life?” I answered my suicide attempt, but honestly, that was only second. The saddest moment of my life has yet to uncover and process fully. These memories of last year are still buried deep, and I haven’t been able to talk about any of this with any friend (except for Celest, but even with her, everything I told her was just at surface-level).

On the last day Nana came home from the hospital, we thought she would be okay. We were already somewhat relieved, as we were on our toes the past few weeks. I came over to where she was staying (just right beside our house, at her sister’s apartment). I knocked on the door and her sister answered. I told her I was gonna come by to see her before I left for work, and her sister told me not to go upstairs and just come back tomorrow because she looked tired (after work, I had plans to go to Fete with Sel). I didn’t bother insisting, I just immediately ran to work.

At Fete, an hour in to my 1/4acid trip, I got a call from my mom. Nana had died. I could have seen her for one last time that morning, but I chose not to.

I am confident that getting my heart broken in any form will never hurt as bad as this. My heart was broken, and it will always be.

I couldn’t cry during Fete. Things never process immediately for me. We left and just spent the rest of the night at our friend’s house in Antipolo. I cried like a baby when I got home, and woke up with my eyes thrice its size.

I wrote and posted an entry that night (I took it down right away).

Lost 2 moms already this year, my lola died a few months ago, and in the middle of Fete tonight I got a call that Nana was gone too. She took care of me since literally the day I was born. From every day that I was playing in her room when I was a kid, to my pissy pre-pubescent days, to my fucked up college days, to whoever the fuck I am right now. I still aint fuckin shit and she didn’t even live to see me in a nice version of myself, and a nice version of myself would have been the most proper way to say thank you to her for her literal blood, sweat and tears for me and my family. Hating yourself or obsessing over how inadequate you are isn’t an excuse to just sit there. You have to do better. It’s not for yourself anymore. It’s so you can present yourself to the people who raised you and those who love and care for you in a way that reflects how good they were to you. It’s for them. Just do better.

Most of my regrets come from my grief. I feel stuck in a limbo of grieving and feeling numb. So today, yes, it must have been the fever or the PMS, but more than either of that, it is the fact that it is only after a year that I am realizing that I am not okay.

If I knew you at the time, I’m sure I would have behaved differently. I would have allowed myself to feel because you would bug me to. Instead, I was tied to a now-irrelevant man who not only failed to help, but made everything worse.

I’m sorry for the length and the tone. All of this was basically a summary of my day—my brain getting lost in painful memories I refused to go back to, on top of other relatively trivial matters, like future unemployment and just not being satisfied with myself at all. I genuinely thought it was PMS, though. Its effects on my mood can get to horrible lengths. My suicide attempt was on the third day of my period. Not that I will kill myself, it’s just that I am at my most unstable at this time of the month. But I promise I try my hardest to make it out alive, no matter how deep I am buried in darkness.

My crewmates will be invading my house in a few hours. I guess this could be a good thing. After all, they were there for me last year more than my ex was. We shot a lot of sequences at my Lola’s house when we couldn’t find any other location. They appreciated her, and they also were able to meet Nana several times. Perhaps they are who I need to be with tonight, instead of getting drunk on my own.

I hope the beauty of being in a festival celebrating my favorite medium (*CINEMAAAAHHHH*) and the pride of seeing your music videos screen in front of an audience will lift you up from this very pensive entry. I know it will for me. I am extremely proud of you. If I were there, my eyes would be filled with stars watching your video play, and watching you watch it play.

The only thing reeling me out of my terrible memories is the present moment of being in love with you. A day will never me completely terrible for me because I have you in my life. And with that, I am a much cheesier cloth than you are.

Anna

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entj-werewolf · 7 years ago

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ISFJ, INFJ, ISFP, ESTJ

1. ISFJ: What's a memory that you look back on often?

I’m not sure what memories I look back on often, so I don’t quite know what one to pick. But, hmmm... I think in general, I’ll look back on lots of my days that I had been pretty physically crippled from my anxiety. It comes back to mind a lot because I’m in such a better state, that I can’t help but realize how much better I really got after that. It doesn’t always fully hit me until I’m doing something I hadn’t been able to do for 4 years, y’know? But at the same time, I missed out on a lot during those years and got very behind in some of my own pursuits/passions (like programming). I want to “catch up” somehow and make up for that lost time, but I probably can’t. I can still dream though... And keep trying.

Related to those general memories of that rough patch in my life, the bigger memories that stick out are the times I ended up in the hospital from horrifying panic attacks (which shot my heart rate too high and needed monitoring and serious calming down). Stuff like that?

2. INFJ: Is there something that people tend to misunderstand about you?

Definitely depends on the person, but there have been times I was misunderstood as being neglectful and/or not caring at all about someone - this usually coming from friends who haven’t known me for too long yet or are in defensive/skeptical states of mind. I’m not blaming them, of course, as I did do things that probably came off wrong despite not having any ill intentions. It’s just one of those strange matters of different perspectives that everyone deals with in other people at some point. I have mostly Feeling type friends who do want to feel absolutely loved, valued, etc., so I have times that I screw up in my wording and the context bursts into flames at them.

I mean, one time I made some off-handed jokes to some friends about how I wasn’t sure what caused lots of people I know (including one of these friends) to have crushes on me and so on. And I talked about how idk what crushes feel like, and joked that it’s kinda a “waste” for people to have said feelings for me and they should try to “stop” the feelings. Then, I accidentally remarked something in the midst of it (can’t fully remember what anymore now though).

I was mostly intending its harsher tone toward the people I had left from my life since they were being too creepy/manipulative with their crushes, but one of the friends with this crush thought it was directed at ‘em too. That friend didn’t really react hurt at first, but later in a private conversation brought it up and thought I was treating those feelings as a joke or something. Didn’t help that I was telling these people how I find such feelings as things that can be stopped out of sheer will (which is something I’ve done and continue to do for some other emotion things). Ughhh... Whoops.

There’s also the weird misunderstanding my different family members have toward me, buuut I won’t get into those here, really. It’s messy and would make this answer too long!

3. ISFP: How do you express yourself?

Usually my artwork, since that’s where I can draw anything I enjoy and have interest in. Sometimes, I also express myself through the clothes I wear, but that’s if I have reason for using those clothes at all. (Like when I was having fun with the Pokemon Go craze, I had a blast wearing my Pokemon clothes to go with it!)

4. ESTJ: How would you describe your work ethic?

Okay, so... Let’s see how to explain my work ethics... I will quickly disclaim too, however, that I cannot consider myself an outright expert on this who knows everything. This is just what I’ve figured out at this point in my life at 22 years old, mixed with some things I find ideal for the best kind of workplace in general. There’s also some stuff I observe in a “how to improve or use to best potential” kind of way, so I might have a few views that aren’t “fully practiced” or “tried and true.” I cannot claim either that my views on this are perfect, blahblah. This just goes on ‘cause I don’t know if to expect anything explosive or just a-okay to come from this, pfffft.

(This got really long and probably seems boring, so I have it under a read more only for those who really are curious and have time to read a near-essay on this crud. -coughs-)

People need to be respectful to each other and not be whiny about stuff (they’re allowed to have complaints, but those have to be reasonable and legitimate). Overall, constructive criticism is much more preferred over people just complaining all the time for the sake of complaining. I sortaaa see this as a general “interact with anyone” rule too, though....

Don’t underpay, and don’t overpay either. Really know how to measure monetary value in things and/or employees. But, also take advantage of “deals” in value changes. Supply and demand is cool and should be used for good reason when it comes to making product prices! Position and purpose that each person has in a job, plus the amount of quality work they actually do (not just the time spent doing it), is also important to measuring their paycheck’s worth. No favoritism, just fair observations and analyses of all of these values.

Speaking of favoritism, really avoid that too. It can screw things up, shake things out of balance, and put too many others at a disadvantage. Then, they likely are the type of people to think you’re being stupid with such actions. (This is more of a strict case to people working as employers or have this higher position, though... Doesn’t matter too much if regular employees have “favoritism” out of being friends. It just has to not distract them too much while they’re clocked in, and it’s all okay!)

Another issue with favoritism is an employer that clings too much to the work one of their employees brings to the business/job/whatever. This can be a huge hinderance on this favored employee, but also hinder the employer and their business in the long term. It’s like one of those obsessive girlfriends/boyfriends that never leave you alone and leech off your work! Avoid at all freaking costs! Teach the employer to let go if you’re one of these favored employees and you want to do something else with your life. Quitting is a free option, but you do have to balance the consequences of it. Don’t quit if you don’t have the next job to join, but also make sure your leave is on a good note so you don’t obliterate your reputation as someone people want to hire. Also, if that employer is rich with a tantrum, maybe avoid upsetting them with any dramatic quitting or anything. Idk if a person can seriously be sued just for quitting, but hey, I’ve seen people get sued for dumber reasons. It’s just a form of caution you have to learn, ‘cause there are ridiculous people out there even in professional positions, man.

(I may or may not also be this favored employee and hate it because I want to move on, the job is bad for my carpal tunnel and respitory health, and the boss doesn’t seem interested in hiring anyone else or able to find another person to take my place.... Help.)

Don’t be too pushy. This is coming from someone who’s seen as pushy sometimes (or lots of times), but there’s a time and place for everything no matter what position you have in a job. Often times, people are less likely to listen to you or value your opinions (whether reasonable or not), because instead they just see you as someone wanting everything to go your own way, and not open to anything else. Just, be wary of this. I’ve made mistakes on it (out of stress) and it probably diminished a bit of how my own parents view my ability to be an employee. It produces frustrating results - believe me. Wording is also important. If you’re careful with your wording and its timing, and how frequently you bring up the same reasonable or unreasonable criticism/complaint, then you won’t be seen as pushy quite that easily. You just increase your odds of seeming too pushy if you really are, y’know, lacking tact in your wording and constantly emphasizing stuff. It’s a bad habit of mine that I’m working on, but it’s something that all people gotta work on too in their own ways.

Clear communication is the most important thing in a job! No matter your position, status, role, whatever in a job.... This is key and can prevent so many future problems. If there’s a completely decided change in a schedule, policy, or anything else that affects the job, you need to make it clear ASAP. Don’t wait on it, don’t bounce around it, and don’t even try to be vague on this stuff to others. Make it clear, concise, and don’t screw up the information. Have it prepared as quick as possible, and then share it with others as quick as possible. It’s like the whole “rip off the bandage” thing. Slowly peeling it and delaying its removal is only going to hurt more, man. Comminucation is a bit of a problem in my current job, and it’s absolutely frustrating and exhausting. Not to complete fault of my boss, but that’s a whole other topic and again - not what I’ll get into here. Just saying, I definitely know how cruddy it can be for bad comminucation skills/tactics in a workplace (or anything involving cooperative efforts). I’m also saying this as someone who is still very socially awkward and is a bit shy, but if it’s something serious like this with vital consequences, I do try and step out of my awkwardness and hope to initiate this communication well. (I’m usually okay with responding to communication, but yeah, I try to force myself into the initiative parts for the sake of things like this.)

-DEEP BREATH- I think that’s the most I can write on this here. It’s as brief as I can keep this while also making sure the ethics are clear - in case this is actually decent advice for people. I’m not too sure myself, so who knows.

Thanks for the questions as always!

#my rambles #mbti fun #questions #my replies #work ethic #job stuff #etc.etc.#Anonymous #reply

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seatsbythepit · 8 years ago

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hey, fellow arsenal fan here. I was just wondering, after yesterdays match + the match against everton and the lucky escape against burnely. What do you think the team need to actually compete/been seen as proper title challengers. I know it's not over yet and I'm not going to be dramatic yet but I felt that this season the squad was the strongest its been in a long time yet we still can't seem to iron out the typical arsenal slip ups that have stopped us winning in the past.

Hey!

A very good question/topic, and one I could really spend a lot of spaceanswering. But I’ll try my best to keep it concise to things that seem to be apresent issue. Because people have different opinions, team picks, preferencesetc and to them that could all play into what’s needed for a title challenge.

So, like you, I believe our current squad is very strong, and I do havefaith that they can win the league. But obviously our hopes are running thingiven Ch*lsea’s current momentum, and our…lack of it.

However, I would say it currently boils down to some main factors in noparticular order:

· availability (aka injuries)

· correct use of personnel

· mentality/communication

Okay, so currently availability is directed at our midfield. Because boy howdy is that a gaping wound atthe moment. Cazorla (OUT), Xhaka (ban, returns soon, but not always the desiredoption anyway), Elneny (Away at AFCON, and picked up a slight injury), Ramsey(Calf strain), Coquelin (working on a strain), Jeff (just a wee boy, can’t layit all on him) and Ox (in and out of the team like a damn yo yo). Mesut is theonly player right now who isn’t suffering from something or not playinginconsistently. He absolutely cannot, no matter how talented, do it on hisown.

Some of this is down to bad luck, some of this isdown to (arguably) bad choice, and some down to circumstances either thathappen within the game (aka mentality/communication), or ones that simply can’tbe controlled (aka a player at AFCON). Ultimately we need players to befit/come back in order for the right midfield partnerships to form. This isalso in relation to players being out of position (Ramsey), or not in theirbest position. (Ox finding a niche in the centre.) We’ve lost creativity in nothaving Cazorla, but we may well find it if Ox can harness what he showed atSouthamtpon, and be given a chance to.

I briefly mentioned personnel use above, and I’lltouch on it again now, don’t get me wrong, I find that Gabi can function okayenough at right back, often scarier things happen when he plays at CB, but alsoI do wonder if he should be playing at all at the moment. Now, at this junctureI will say that I definitely do not know what is going on behind the scenes,and therefore cannot explain truthfully why any decision is made for match daytimes, barring the obvious necessity like because of injuries etc.

I ask about players like Jenkinson, who hasreportedly suffered a severe lack of confidence since returning from his injury(due to abuse from fans), and I think surely he should still be granted thechance? He is a RB, therefore let him be a RB.

Ramsey is a strange case right now because we arethin on the ground like I said, not that it matters now because calf strain, but he isforced into a position he has said he doesn’t want to be in and ultimately,with the exception of some games, appears to not have found the potential hepossessed in the 2013/2014 season. But it should also be said he is not as bad aspeople have scapegoated him to be, people have not always given thought to the fact thathe keeps having to jump back in after injuries, and he certainly cannot beaccused of not working hard.

And there are some other things here and there, Ithink Kieran Gibbs could be given more chances, for the sake of his sharpnessand Nacho’s.

As I said, we could really be here all day pickingapart the nitty gritty. In summary: The right people, if we are to take what wesee at face value, aren’t always picked to play. (Of course, there is going tobe data/information we are not privy to!)

And finally the big one, I think, ismentality / communication / attitude / behaviour / performance. And also you caninclude poor officiating but that cannot be an excuse for some of the things we’vewitnessed.

Basically, we’re talking about the game itself.

Sloppy passes, poor communication, not coveringteammates, not tracking back, miscommunication altogether, silly challenges,poor discipline, keepers coming for balls they shouldn’t, players not chasingballs they should, no fight, no energy, the too little too late syndrome, wholefirst halves going wasted… it’s all there. And you know what? I flat out refuseto believe that professional footballers, and a manager of AW’s stature, do notdiscuss, plan and implement strategies to make all of these issues go away. Youcan talk about the manager til you are blue in the face, but ultimately those11 men, in basic terms, should know what and what not do the second they step on the pitch tothe last second they leave it.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT THE REAL KICKER IS? THEY KNOW HOWTO DO IT, BECAUSE WE SEE SOME BLOODY AMAZING PERFORMANCES – AND WE SAY “THAT’S!!!! HOW YOU DO IT!!!!! ARSENAL, THE GREATEST EVER.” AND THEY SAY, MORE OR LESS, “FUCK YEAH, WECAN DO IT!!! WE FEEL GOOD! TEAM! TEAM! TEEEEAAAM!” and then we go to somewhere likeEverton and we get f u c k e d up. Bitch, what the fuck?

Please fix it, Arsenal. Love, all of us.

(This doesn’t cover everything, or maybe even anything, but I hope it helped somehow. And apologies for it just being a stream of thoughts, some developed, some not, lmfao. I will try and fix grammar/spelling now… Thanks for the ask! :D)

#this is escalated i hope i helped somehow??????#prettywildthings #arsenal #football #lmfao this is extra #long post

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ncmagroup · 4 years ago

Text

Written by Jason Richman

From where I stand — as the manager of an inside sales team — one thing about sales development has become increasingly clear.

The standard process for SDRs or BDRs (whatever your organization calls them) of sending out sequenced emails, calling, leaving voicemails, rinse and repeat? It no longer works well.

SDR Sales

SDR stands for sales development representative, a role commonly held on inside sales teams. Individuals in this role focus on outbound prospecting.

Before we discuss how to develop critical skills for SDRs, let’s review how the SDR position differs from other sales roles.

What does a sales development representative do?

Many sales reps are focused on closing deals to meet or exceed their quota for a given time period, and their performance is measured by their ability to meet targets. In a sales development role, reps are focused on moving leads through the sales pipeline emphasizing quality lead generation over closing individual deals.

For SDRs, successful performance is measured by how effective they are at moving leads through the sales pipeline. With this team structure, SDRs often receive lead information from their marketing team and are responsible for qualifying and nurturing leads before introducing them to account managers or sales reps to land the sale.

So if you’re an SDR, here are the top 10 skills to focus on gaining or honing. And if you’re a manager, here’s what you should be teaching to your team.

SDR Skills

Video prospecting

Highly customized outreach

Active listening and adaptability

Great voicemails

Resilience

Coachability

Self-awareness

Organization

Curious learner

Relationship-building

1. Video Prospecting

“Video prospecting” is a buzzword, but at HubSpot, we’ve seen great results. My team uses Vidyard — an easy-to-use tool that lets you quickly create videos using your webcam and screengrabs. But there are several options out there, including Loom and Soapbox by Wistia.

SDRs don’t need to be technical masters or Oscar-worthy movie stars to create effective videos. They do need to be comfortable on screen. Practice creating short, engaging clips (no more than two minutes) during which you introduce yourself, deliver value with a quick tip, and ask to schedule a call.

The more videos you make, the more efficient you’ll become. In time, you should be able to whip up customized videos like they’re emails.

2. Highly Customized Outreach

It’s always been tricky for SDRs to balance quantity and quality when prospecting. I’m seeing that balance shift — the most successful reps are actually slowing down, spending more time on outreach and connecting with fewer prospects.

Brandon Kirsch, an Inbound Growth Specialist at HubSpot, is a fantastic example of someone doing this right. His emails are really personal and hinge around a triggering event. Here’s an example:

Hi Michael,

I hope this email finds you well! I wanted to reach out to you because based on my research on LinkedIn, it seems like you are heading any marketing initiatives and focused on the overall growth strategy for Dunder Mifflin.

After doing some research on Dunder Mifflin, a bunch of things stood out to me as reasons to have a timely conversation about how inbound marketing & HubSpot could help:

Employees at Dunder Mifflin have explored our all in one solution before, however, the timing wasn’t right.

You’re currently using a few different tools for your marketing — A, B, C, D, and E. I’m curious how things are going with them & if you’d be open to a conversation re HubSpot and using an all-in-one marketing automation platform?

It looks like you understand the importance of content marketing/inbound marketing based on the blogs, white papers, & testimonials — but there’s a huge missed opportunity because it doesn’t seem to be gated.

You’ve got buy now and order options on the site but you’re missing out on converting at least 90% of your total website traffic to the site.

Any interest in connecting sometime this week? Feel free to book 15 minutes with me here.

Thanks in advance,

Brandon

I don’t want to suggest quantity no longer matters in the SDR world. During my weekly one-on-ones with SDRs, I do a pipeline review. I often find they’re spending too much time qualifying before picking up the phone.

Connect calls are a lot like voicemails — to get good at them, SDRs have to do a lot of them until they’ve developed “muscle memory.” Allocating time wisely based on lead quality is very important, but SDRs need to get on the phones as much as they can to hone their skills.

New SDRs will benefit from hearing their prospects’ most common objections, begin to understand which soundbites resonate best with target personas and start to sound much more confident on the phone if they make a lot of calls upfront.

So with that in mind, I’d recommend developing a scalable process for writing customized emails and doing prospect research. LinkedIn Sales Navigator can be a big help; you can save leads and accounts, learn important information in one glance, and get notifications when they’ve had a notable change.

3. Active listening and adaptability

How can SDRs continue to add value to a sales process that’s increasingly run by automation — especially in the prospecting stages?

To me, one of the answers is the combination of good questioning skills and active listening. A chatbot might be able to qualify you, but no one asks and listens to information like a human (at least not yet).

A connect call should be like a game of catch — a genuine conversation between a prospect and an SDR.

No matter what your company sells, you must be highly attuned to phrases that indicate a prospect could be a good fit for your product. It’s more important to focus the conversation on gathering valuable information than to check qualification boxes.

For example, during our weekly SDR “film club,” we listen to a seasoned SDR’s recorded call. In a recent call review, the SDR discovered the prospect’s company offered a freemium version of its product. The prospect confirmed the annual value of an average new customer, and the SDR immediately moved on to the next topic.

HubSpot has lead nurturing tools baked into our software, so any sign of a freemium model begs to be explored further. The SDR should have explored the following with his prospect:

How many new freemium users a month do you generate?

How do you nurture freemium users? Customers?

What percentage of freemium users convert to paid users?

What are common triggers for freemium users to upgrade?

How do you re-engage users who used the free product once several months ago and then went dark?

The answers to these questions are crucial to understanding how HubSpot’s marketing platform could help this prospect improve lead conversion rates.

Practicing active listening means being adaptable — pivoting away from a prepared checklist and recognizing when an opportunity to dig deeper presents itself. All SDRs need to learn to be present and have a real conversation.

4. Great voicemails

It’s ideal to get a prospect live on the phone, but sometimes you’ll have to leave a voicemail.

I participated in a sales training several years ago, and one of the trainers made a simple comment that stuck with me. If you leave 25 quality voicemails, you at least have a chance to receive a callback. But if you leave no voicemails, your probability of getting a callback diminishes significantly.

It’s harder to leave a good voicemail than it sounds. You have to, in a reasonably short amount of time, entice a prospect you’ve never spoken with to call you back. Some people like to be concise — “Hi, I’m [Salesperson] from [Company]. I would love to speak with you about X strategy. Give me a call back at XXX-XXX-XXXX.”

Personally, I like to add a snippet of value to this equation. For example, “I saw X on your site. Here are a few best practices I’m hoping to share with you.”

I have the new SDRs on my team leave a voicemail for seasoned sales reps every night at 7:00 pm during their first month. The rep then sends back a quick email with feedback and a probability that they would call back.

Leaving a good voicemail is an indispensable skill for an SDR, and thus requires practice. Don’t simply go through the motions so you can log activity in your CRM — be committed to quality touchpoints across all activities.

5. Resilience

There’s no doubt that SDRs have a tough job. Unlike closing salespeople, they don’t get much glory. They’re also usually spending all day sending emails and making calls. It can be exhausting.

That’s why in addition to these hard skills, it’s important to learn to keep your energy up and stay positive. If you’re flat or discouraged, it will translate over the phone and your prospect will pick up on your low energy.

It’s also critical to learn to bounce back quickly from a bad call. Whether a prospect was rude or you made a mistake, it doesn’t do any good to allow emotion to prevent you from picking up the phone for the rest of the day or negatively impact your next 15 calls. Resilience is crucial to keeping your head in the game. Developing this ability now will also be invaluable down the road when you have to recover from losing a big deal without skipping a beat.

6. Coachability

One of the most important skillsets we evaluate when interviewing SDR candidates is coachability. Confidence is important, but the ego can cloud an SDR’s ability to receive and implement candid feedback. The best SDRs proactively seek out coaching from high-performing peers and crave honest feedback from their managers. Getting real-time feedback is best, but you can also build out a list of all the questions or challenges you faced in a given week and debrief with your manager during a scheduled one-on-one.

7. Self-awareness

Self-awareness plays into resilience and coachability. SDRs need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. This will help them create strategies for dealing with a bad call or rejection. And they’ll be able to analyze their performance, both the wins and setbacks and reflect on what went well and what didn’t.

Self-aware SDRs will ask for feedback from managers and colleagues. Rather than taking negative or constructive feedback personally, they’ll have a deeper understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for growth.

8. Organization

Processes can vary from person to person, but they’re key to staying organized. Schedule management allows SDRs to manage their days and prioritize the tasks that are key to their success (e.g., email outreach, calls, meetings.)

Whether they choose to write out their to-do list or use a calendar management tool to create their schedule, maintaining a solid schedule will help them master the cadence for their outreach and interactions with prospects.

9. Curious learner

Successful SDRs are curious and eager to learn. Not only will new products, industry, or organizational knowledge help them in their current role, but it will also help them as they grow in their career.

They need to know their product or service inside and out and have a clear understanding of their customer profile, and challenges prospects face. SDRs can gather new information through internal resources, online research, training sessions, industry events, and meeting with their colleagues. Learning is a continual process and it will set the SDR up for success in the short-term and long-term.

10. Relationship-building

As an SDR, your job is to prime prospects for the sale before turning them over to your account managers to close. Effective SDRs are able to build genuine relationships with prospects to foster trust.

To be a successful relationship-builder, you must be able to communicate with a wide variety of people across multiple channels. Whether you are connecting with a contact over email, presenting to a prospect in a virtual meeting, or tagging up face-to-face, you must be able to clearly communicate your points and ideas to connect with prospects to keep them engaged.

Go to our website: www.ncmalliance.com

10 Skills Every Sales Development Rep Needs to Master in 2020 Written by Jason Richman From where I stand — as the manager of an inside sales team — one thing about sales development has become increasingly clear.

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sovindep · 5 years ago

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How to post an Argumentative Dissertation Stage through Step

Therefore, you can also make a person’s publishing logically-structured and even more clear. Just what must a girl within a situation having a baby conduct? That you are primarily trying to dispute for the heart flooring. This occurs when your research concerning the etymology of an term can be found in hassle-free. Create your point perhaps stronger simply by declaring opponent opinions and also refuting those things. i feel creating a great argumentative paper concerning really should animals remain with zoos this specific worthwhile! The search term is “introduce.Inches State the details of which copy your own controversy as well as end the idea at this time there.

References. Discover the best suited references.

You could distinct “return” directly into “re-” along with “turn.” The saying “friendship” is usually separated into “friend” and “ship.”

Support all these factors by using judgement, examples, statistics, experts, as well as tales.

The foundation or perhaps etymology on the phrase features a number of traditional grounds for is the contour it is.

Happiness

Can an individual track a design or even partnership between meanings?

How will character have you feeling?

Them generalizes the actual paying attention concerning the term plus the supporting facts that you have got provided in your body passage. You have completed your homework and possess internet pages regarding records. Here are a few samples using the issue regarding diet along with weight problems: The majority of the fairy tales as well as other Disney world musicals or plays focus on the actual subject since made in the fictional heroes. When people imagine strength, they generally understand becoming some thing unfavorable because it’s in connection with envy, tyranny, dictatorship, withdrawal, in addition to command. Create https://www.admissions.txstate.edu/future-students/other-admission-types/visiting.html a number of essay sentences to conclude the writing.

Easy Ways to Generate a new Thesis Statement

Explain the niche, the talk, as well as conclusion together with your thesis. But can you want tutorial myself regarding creating to talk about questions in Western world Camera Qualification Evaluation (WACE)? Within your body within your do the job, it is best to involve points to secure the dissertation affirmation resented from the arrival. Hi Sofia, political strength is a superb topic however, you have to have a problem to target the essay all over.

Do we have to alter abortion legal guidelines, and if so, how if it is improved? How do I begin the argumentative composition on the subject, вЂњShould an individual responsibility lecturers to generate you really feel bored to tears in school?” Should you be executing a research papers, after that you can start out meeting details depending on the questions you have. Start with a report of a situation which would cause that you inquire of which dilemma.

How significant will it be for people to avoid separation and divorce? (Value)

Make certain you do have a crystal clear dissertation in which answers the issue. A thesis should really point out your position and it is usually the previous sentence in your essay of your intro.

Sources. Understand that methods manage the particular paper . This means, never select wrong methods, therefore, the audience doesn’t misread your cardstock.

Sources. Understand that sources regulate your paper . Significance, never select unsuitable methods, therefore, the audience doesn’t misread a newspaper.

Exceptions: This further limitations this lay claim by simply expounding on circumstances the creator would banish. Example: Wherever students are never involved with pornography, legislations is probably not important.

Conclusion: Sum it up your main factors, talk about its effects, and state the key reason why your role is the foremost place.

I am gonna bring an evaluation for any 1 high school throughout De. Vincent Hazat And PhotoAlto Bureau Radio wave Collections / Getty Images Each of these papers framework in addition to composing platforms usually are solely distinctive. Rephrase the dissertation in addition to the primary areas of madness as well as sum it up anything you explained within the body of the article. Don’t come up with your best imagine or even pick out one more subject matter except if ones educator won’t assign a selected one. I’ve found your title allows me personally target, however i constantly evaluation acquire any time Now i’m accomplished to make sure that it does not take more effective it is usually.

What is actually a explanation essay?

The aim of such cardstock should be to examine just how well the scholar can reveal madness of text applying diverse options and also cases. How do you generate a thesis statement within the argumentative composition? Will the You actually.Azines. A few things i like in relation to her work is that they will take the situation in a unique route by means of meeting with some women who may have had abortions to determine what they have to truly imagined during the time that they were experiencing this important selection and how their particular determination affected these individuals subsequently. ecigarette cigarettes?

What forms of rights should really folks have if they are terminally ill? Just after researching the idea of on the web, you locate a proper definition that seems sensible adequate. You start using a dialog in between an old person and also a young human being. How can a college college student around Nigeria achieve success?

Example: Even though persons think just isn’t possible to divorce-proof your current matrimony, studies have shown that there are fewer divorce cases whenever people carefully plan that responsibility. The thing the following is to pick out the most beneficial distinction paper subject matter which to be a undergraduate you sense comfy outlining and representing. What is the 6 ways to give up smoking? As well, it could be an explanation of the things a definite name really means. Do you you need to provide a little gem? Many thanks.

Take a look at virtually any papers and you will probably observe that every single title contains a verb. Men and girls with firm. New york city, New york city: BasicBooks. Some words which might be selected as being a topic for your distinction dissertation are highlighted below: In addition talk about a straightforward concise explaination the idea of and a case in point that you just know already, or maybe look into the initially classification that you simply get in a thesaurus. Prevent plagiarism by means of examining the word using anti-plagiarism programms.

Your most effective documents are going to be in regards to the stuff that light your current flames. This kind of the main article shouldn’t be as well vast or even small. Moreover, whenever your professor designates that you produce an paper, they assume by you to demonstrate a few diagnostic or important contemplating knowledge, chance to construction the papers practically, as well as your awareness in addition to knowledge in a variety of aspects of living. Additionally, reading labels (when they are written properly) permits you to view the principal point of this article speedily as well as find the part you happen to be the majority of thinking about studying. Cause and Effect: Just what is the cause? Exactly what are the consequences? How I truly do My partner and i start off a strong argumentative essay or dissertation upon the reason why gals need to be part of calmness discussions?

Easy Ways to Generate a new Thesis Statement

Some sort of final result with the meaning composition is brief. If you are seriously serious about your own subject matter, you’ll make an effort http://essaywriter.org/nursing-essay-writing-service to write a very good report, along with your essay or dissertation will be actually unexpected. Causes along with support Let’s improve your scores collectively! Obtain your current report at the moment, and that means you would probably report great tomorrow!

Don’t duplicate the characterized period in the bounds with the classification themselves. Not one person will thanks for prose in case you compose along the lines of “Swine swine flu is really a winter flu that people might hook coming from swines.”

Include a call to be able to measures. Really encourage the reader in order to go along with your current debate. Let them know their ambitions to consider, carry out, come to feel, or even consider.

Body Passage Three or more: Personalized distinction manufactured from practical experience.

What could you caused by design your matrimony divorce-proof? (Offer)

What will it indicate being culturally uneasy?

What is definitely web 2 . 0?

Keep the definition in your thesis short and also standard. You may elaborate upon it additional within your body of the papers.

It’s likely that, you might hear someone endeavoring to sway somebody else to trust of their state concerning: A few of the teachers that I use currently have individuals generate some sort of paper inside a specific type, but I choose to watch all of the argumentative strategies within your “bag associated with hints.” And so, I do think in which to influence, it is essential should be to, to begin with, think about your current visitors cautiously. Before credit card debt negotiation ones producing, be certain that the term you selected to write down with regards to is definitely worth currently talking about. Perform marker control legislation perform? Terms for instance trustworthiness, respect, and also adore are usually abstract and also hinge more about an individual’s viewpoint. Just what exactly what exactly is begin with? What are the health risks connected with using tobacco?

State a person’s details. You simply will not have to make an announcement why you will be correctвЂ”just that you have likewise conditions wherein a person’s issues might be valid.

Always start out with research

What could be the total Respect? Clarify the key reason why.

Conclusion: Instructors should consider whether desire its students to create swiftly and best thesis help for students also effectively after they provide composition jobs. After that keep on by simply stating this dictionary’s meanings as well as other comprehensive reasons of the instance. That has to be a superb lead-in to your query. Exactly how should we best enable women who possess dilemma pregnancies? Those three good reasons right after the ‘because” include the first step toward your whole debate.

Bài viết How to post an Argumentative Dissertation Stage through Step đã xuất hiện đầu tiên vào ngày SmartUnderwear.

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taz-writes · 6 years ago

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thanks for your answer, im always interested in mbti of other people's ocs! although ive been wondering, did you check the functions for the types, or only the descriptions? because my ocs (and me) not ever fitting into mbti boxes was also my problem until i discovered functions which kinda give a brand new light to the whole thing; for example, ENFJ and ENFP are actually two very different types (the whole function set changes completely depending on the last letter)(1/2)

so if you are ever interested and/or bored you can check it out!! also, Aelia and Sayara are love interests?? i didn’t know, i love it!! and do tell about the Hogwarts houses if you feel like it, you made me curious!!(2/2)

(referencing this post)

I’ve been kinda lowkey about Sayara/Aelia being a future Thing, because they don’t become canon until book 4 out of 4, but it does happen eventually! I’ve thought about letting them be gay earlier, but they both need a lot of character development before a relationship would actually work. Aelia and Sayara getting together in book 4 is a cute romance with potential to last! Aelia and Sayara getting together in book 1 is a messy breakup waiting to happen. So they can wait. And now for something entirely different...

I did read the descriptions! I actually took the tests in character (I had nothing else to do yesterday oops), and then picked through the results and descriptions of how each letter is assigned to judge how accurate they were. A lot of my characters were assigned with a 51%/49% split or something nearly that close. I think Aelia’s quiz result was, like, 55/45 towards F, but the resulting description just didn’t feel accurate to the way I write her. The other one was a little closer but still off.

Aelia’s a weird case because I’m still feeling out how her characterization works. She’s a pretty hypocritical judgy person, but at the same time she’s flexible and fairly chill. I think I confused her types on this because I’ve been referencing multiple websites and they all disagree on what the J and P actually mean in a personality. P is probably closer, but ENFP doesn’t fit quite right on Aelia. She doesn’t want to be sorted.

There are also a lot of characters in Feilan who appear extroverted because they’re princesses who are trained from birth to be comfortable around other people, but that’s not where their actual instincts lie. They’ve just learned the skills necessary to fake it. Violet’s the best example of that! She’s very very good at leading social dynamics and talking to people, she values those skills and puts effort into them, but if left to her own devices she will lurk in the corner avoiding everyone. She hates being around other people, especially people who want something from her, which is most of them. But because she values duty and responsibility, she makes herself a social entity anyway, because that’s literally her job. Hence why she came out with an E when I took the test for her. Vi also tends towards being an objective thinker, but she balances that really well with her emotions, and when she does find something to care about she makes it a huge priority. I don’t know which side of the T/F she should fall on. When I took the test in character she came up with T, but I’m not convinced that’s wholly accurate.

Plus, character development makes things complicated, and there are a few traits that I just don’t know how to quantify if that makes sense? If I pin my characters’ behaviors down too tightly then it’s hard to see how they grow, and I’ll inevitably sound like a hypocrite because they’re dynamic individuals who don’t always act the same way. MBTI results are like a lot of other personality sorting systems, the overarching categories they produce can be useful but there has to be bleedover in the middle. I don’t buy that all of humanity can be classified into just 16 categories.

You also might find it amusing that every single individual whom I tested in-character came up with -T as their suffix on 16personalities. All of them. That might have some sway on the situation, I don’t really know, the website isn’t too clear about how that works!

I’m putting the Hogwarts house tirade under a cut because I wouldn’t know concise writing if it kicked me out of workshop class.

The reason I say I can write essays about Hogwarts houses is because there are only four of them, so it should be easy to find one big category for each character to fit in, right? Wrong. They’re so... weird.

I’ve always looked at Sorting as a measurement for equal parts traits and values--it’s not just about what you are, but also what you want to be, and what you consider important. Hence why Neville is a Gryffindor, and Crabbe and Goyle are in Slytherin. It also explains why entire families often end up in the same House, despite having varied personalities, because parents will (at least try to) raise their kids with the same core values and beliefs.

Gryffindor beliefs are courage, chivalry, and nerve. Slytherins like ambition, cunning, and... racism? I guess?? I generally choose to ignore that part because it’s stupid and pointless but whatever. Ravenclaw values wisdom, wit, and desire to learn. Hufflepuff values loyalty and hard work, but will also accept anyone who doesn’t fit the above three because inclusion is a big theme for them. I wanted to clarify how I understand the categories because people really like to argue about Hufflepuff, for whatever reason.

So Sayara’s a Slytherin. This is probably the easiest one to choose. She’s ambitious, she’s clever, she isn’t very sneaky but she thinks she is and she wants to be. She feels that power exists to be used, and she wants to be the one using it. Although she demonstrates other houses’ traits too, namely Ravenclaw desire to learn and Gryffindor selflessness, the Slytherin traits are strongest by far. Aelia’s a Gryffindor because she’s a reckless dumbass, no further elucidation necessary.

But people (looking at you, old rp friends) love to argue with me about the Ravenhart twins. Apparently it’s “obvious” that Violet is a Slytherin, and I am a fool for not recognizing this in my own original character. I think that’s stupid. Violet is clearly and obviously a true Hufflepuff, and here is why:

Violet is cunning, yes. And she’s mean. I get that being mean is a Slytherin trait to a lot of people. But Vi’s defining characteristic, in my eyes, is her devotion bordering on obsession to her family. Everything she does, throughout this entire series, is either in defense of or in revenge for her family. She spirals downward in book 1 because of her drive to get revenge for her mother and keep her sisters safe from anything threatening to hurt them. Sayara only gains her vague loyalty in book 2 by befriending and defending Aelia, and her trust by convincing Violet that they share that sense of responsibility.

Violet Ravenhart is a natural follower. She takes on a leadership role because she has the skills for it and she feels she has to, but deep down, written in her instincts, she’s a team player and can’t reach full potential when she’s in charge. Her true powers and skills shine in tandem with other people! This never shows in book 1 because she deliberately isolates herself and won’t let other people tell her what to do, but later in the series, she teams up with other characters and it brings her to new heights. She and Sayara are designed to work well together when they can ignore their own egos.

And Vi is loyal as FUCK. It takes a lot of effort to earn her allegiance, because she doesn’t listen to emotion when meeting new people, and she’s highly analytical and distrustful of anyone she doesn’t know. She automatically assumes everyone’s out to get her. But once you prove to her that you’re a friend, she will follow you to the ends of the earth, she will die for you if it proves necessary, she’s all or nothing. She can’t even convince herself to try breaking out of prison, but if someone she loves needs her help? she will TEAR THIS BUILDING DOWN. Like, I’d read Violet as a Gryffindor before I could see her in Slytherin, but people automatically assume she belongs to the Mean House because she’s kind of a jerk to people she doesn’t trust. She’s such a deeply and sincerely caring person! She just has depression and PTSD and doesn’t know how to express it in any kind of healthy way.

Lavender’s also a tricky one. I feel like she’s a Hatstall, between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and even I don’t know 100% where she falls. She has all the Ravenclaw traits. She’s very smart, and in private she’s quite snarky, she has a love of knowledge, but that love of knowledge is always for other people’s sake. She’s dedicated to becoming a healer in canon because she has the aptitude and she wants to help people. I’m inclined to slant Hufflepuff because her motivations are like Violet’s, but Ravenclaw would be better for her as a person. She’d grow more there because being in a different House means she can’t rely on Violet to supplement her personality. But the reason she’s ~controversial~ is because a lot of my friends who’ve guessed her House haven’t even thought of Ravenclaw as a possibility.

Dusk is a Ravenclaw, which shouldn’t take much explaining given her personality. She’s wicked smart and always wants to know more and more and more. She borderlines Slytherin with her ambitions and cleverness, but she lands on the Ravenclaw side for me because she’s just so freaking smart. If given the choice, she’d rather be a research professor than a politician. She’s a politician in canon because the former isn’t an option.

Kyrina’s a Gryffindor because she’s loud and annoying and totally fearless, and she thinks the idea of chivalry is cool even though she genuinely doesn’t know what it means.

But yeah, that’s the Hogwarts Essay(tm). It gets complicated because there are so few options that everyone overlaps, and weighing the values vs traits vs which are more important is more effort than it should be.

#taz talks #feilan #hghghgngng sorting hgng #obsessedwithwriting

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connecticut-seo-adwords · 7 years ago

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The best ways to Run an SEO Project in 6 Steps-- SitePoint

This article is part of an SEO series from WooRank. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

So you’ve decided to start an SEO campaign for your website. Congrats! Unfortunately, you don’t know where to start. Or maybe you know where to start, but don’t know how to continue.

With Facebook, retargeting, AdWords and other PPC channels, setting up a campaign is pretty easy to understand. You build landing pages, create ad creative and then bid on your keywords/impressions. However, with SEO, maybe it isn’t quite as straightforward.

The good news is that it’s actually not too complicated, even for digital marketing novices and newbies. The even better news is that we’re about to tell you how to plan and execute an SEO campaign for your website.

1. Define Your Goals and Strategy

As the saying goes (and as college me learned first-hand), if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. The same goes for your SEO campaigns. The first major thing you need to decide is how you’re going to define success and how you’ll measure progress toward those goals.

When it comes to SEO, your first thought might be “This is obvious. I want the top ranking in Google. That’s what SEO is all about!”

Unfortunately, you need to dig deeper than just ranking in Google, or even website vanity metrics like traffic, bounce rate and engagement. What you really need to do is ask yourself three questions:

Who am I trying to reach by ranking at the top of Google? Answering this question will define your target audience and create your marketing personas. Just saying “digital marketers” isn’t going to be very helpful because that’s a very diverse group of people. Here at WooRank, we’ve got at least six different personas with their goals, challenges, wants and needs along with what messaging we will use to reach them.

Why am I trying to bring these people onto my website? What is the overall goal you are trying to achieve with this campaign? Again, don’t get sucked into focusing solely on vanity metrics like website traffic or engagement rates. Instead, decide what business goal you’re trying to achieve. Lead generation? Sales? List building? Be specific and concrete.

How will I measure progress/achievement related to my goals? These are hard numbers used to calculate how successful your efforts are. Common metrics here are conversion rate, or email and retargeting list membership. If you can’t come up with a metric here to measure goal progress, you probably need to pick a better-defined goal.

You might be tempted to skip this first step and move right to the nuts and bolts of an SEO campaign, but the importance of this part can’t be overstated. It will be really, really hard for you to succeed if you don’t even know what success will look like. If you need more help coming up with your SEO, we’ve got a handy guide for you.

2. Keyword Research

Keywords are still really important parts of search marketing and SEO. However, the way you go about researching and optimizing around them has changed. You can thank Google’s Hummingbird and RankBrain for that. These two algorithms are focused on interpreting the context of words used in a search query and what the purpose behind a query is. It’s how Google figures out if your search involving “apple” is about computers, records or a fruit.

In SEO, this context is known as search intent. There are three main categories of search intent:

To learn more about a topic: As you probably guessed, these people want to find more information on a topic, the answer to a question or the solution to/cause of a problem. Long tail informational keywords usually include words like “how to”, “do I need” or “what is”. Head keywords are typically informational keywords.

To evaluate their options: These people already know something about the topic those first searchers were looking for and are now weighing their options. They’re deciding which product or solution is right for them. These keywords typically use phrases like “review”, “top 10”, “best” or “comparison”. They also use words like “cheap” and “deals”, which are great indicators that they’re about to flip from this category to the next.

To complete an action: Whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a service or creating an account, these people know what they want and are ready to make it happen. They expect to achieve their goal directly on the landing page. They typically have lower volume but higher conversion rates.

The great thing about this development in keyword research is that search intent helps inform you where the searcher is in the conversion funnel.

If you’re struggling to come up with good keyword ideas in any phase of the funnel, there are lots of great tools out there that will help you find the right keywords. Here are some of my favorites:

3. Audit, Audit, Audit

Ok, you’ve come up with your personas and goals, and done your keyword research to find the best ones for your audience and funnel. The foundation of your SEO campaign has been laid. So now it’s time to build. That first building block? SEO audits.

Technical Audit

Technical SEO is the process of building a website in a way that makes it crawlable to search engines. If it’s not right, a website could struggle, or even fail, to get indexed. That means no search results for you!

When starting your SEO campaign, you need to get off on the right step by making sure your site is setup correctly. When auditing your website, check the following technical SEO elements:

XML sitemap: Search engines use a website’s sitemap to find and prioritize your URLs, an important SEO function (even if it’s not a ranking factor).

Robots.txt: Like sitemaps, robots.txt isn’t a ranking factor, but it will help you influence how your site is crawled. Prevent unimportant, duplicate or otherwise less valuable pages from being indexed so search engines can spend more of their crawl budget on what matters. Plus, you can put a link to your sitemap here to make that easier to find.

Page speed: Load time is a crucial part of user experience and, therefore, SEO. No search engine wants to recommend a slow site. There’s a lot of reasons your site could be slow. With WooRank’s technical SEO audit, we’ll alert you to slow page speed and possible causes.

URL structure: Make sure you’re following URL best practices for SEO. Make them concise and accurate to the page content, and avoid using underscores to separate words. Use hyphens instead. If you use parameters in your URLs, use Google’s URL Parameters Tool in Google Search Console to help Google deal with potential duplicate content issues.

Meta tags: Page titles and descriptions are super important to your on-page optimization. Even though only titles work as a ranking factor, descriptions can still convince users to click on your link in search results and keep them engaged on your site. These are two very important parts of maintaining relevance to your target keywords.

Crawl Your Site

For bigger, more complicated sites that have lots of pages, it’s worth it to use a crawler to audit your website. Crawlers work by accessing every URL on a website and collecting information about those URLs. Which is how Google’s crawlers work.

With an SEO crawler such as WooRank’s Site Crawl tool, you can analyze the URLs on your website and receive an analysis of the issues that will impact how Google indexes your site. Use the crawler to uncover issues with:

On-page SEO: Issues with HTML can cause Google to see duplicate and/or empty pages. Having a large number of these pages on your domain will impact your whole site’s ability to rank.

HTTP status: Search engines can’t crawl pages that can’t load or sites on servers that don’t respond. These pages also disrupt your site’s flow of link juice and provide a bad user experience. This step should also uncover any issues you have with broken redirects, redirect chains or redirect loops. These are all bad for SEO.

Non-indexable pages: Having a properly written robots.txt file is just as important as having the file at all. Crawling your website will find URLs that are disallowed via robots.txt and meta robots tags. Incorrect, outdated or inadvertent meta robots tags are one of the leading causes of unindexable pages.

Canonical issues: Canonical URLs are your “main” URLs. They’re the ones you want humans to access and where you want things like link juice and authority to collect. However, if you mess up your canonical tags, or the URLs in your tags don’t match your sitemap, you can run into problems.

Once you’ve fixed the potholes you’ve found in your website’s technical infrastructure, you can move on to some of the more “traditional” SEO stuff in your campaign.

4. Create Content

In the next step of your SEO campaign, it’s time to put to use all that work you did creating your strategy and researching keywords. That means it’s time to create some content.

When creating your content, think about the user first. Who is the target audience for this piece of content and what stage are they in the conversion funnel? Those two factors will help you decide which keyword you uncovered in your keyword research to optimize around.

When optimizing your on-page content for SEO, focus on:

Keyword consistency: Thanks to advances in how Google reads content, the days of keyword density are over. Instead, make sure you’re using your keywords (and related words) throughout the page, and at every level. That means the body copy, but also the headers and subheads.

Value: Everyone’s talking about producing quality content as an SEO tactic. I’m sure many of you hear “killer content” and “content is king” in your sleep by now. How can you measure “content”? By focusing on the value you’re offering the user. This ties back to the intent of your keyword. Make sure your content solves the problem, explains the information or answers the question of the user.

Links: We’re not talking about backlinks here, we mean your internal and outbound links. Internal links are a great way to distribute link juice around your site by adding them to high-authority pages. And while it’s not certain, there has been some evidence that linking out to quality resources can also help your SEO. So take advantage of this by linking out to high authority websites when appropriate.

Images: Images are vital to user experience (no one likes huge blocks of text). But you can also use them as part of your SEO campaign. This is done by the HTML alt parameter in the image tag. Google uses the alt tag to “see” the image, so describe what’s going on in it. Only use relevant images and you’ll have another place to use your keyword. Alt text is also an important part of usability for people using screen readers or with slow internet connections.

5. Build Links

Just like you’ve probably heard all about content quality, you’ve probably heard about “link earning” replacing “link building.” Do not believe this. Most content doesn’t receive any shares or links without some sort of promotion, so just trusting in your great writing isn’t enough.

The key to successful link building is to, yet again, go back to your marketing personas and SEO strategy. If your content is useful for them, people catering to the same audience will be much more likely to link to it.

Use a link building platform such as BlogDash, or curate a list of influencers in your niche and collect as much information about them as you can. Then, start your outreach.

You can automate your blogger outreach if you want, but you won’t succeed. People can sense a form email a mile away, and you’ll likely get caught in spam filters anyways. Instead, send emails manually, using a basic outline or template to guide you. Focus on optimizing:

Value: If you aren’t saying something new, or providing a unique outlook on an existing issue, people probably won’t want to link to your content. Start off your email with a brief (one or two sentences) outline of what value your content will bring readers. Show that you know their audience.

Links: Don’t paste URLs directly into your email. It makes it look like a form letter. Instead, use hyperlinks in the text of the email. You’ll look less spammy that way.

Subject line: Everyone gets a ton of emails, and for bloggers, a large percentage of them will be for link building. What I’m saying here is that it’s hard to stand out. Make sure your subject line is attention-grabbing and specific enough that the recipient knows what you’re talking about, but vague enough they’ll be compelled to open the email.

Contact info: Sign off with real, accurate contact information. That means your individual contact info, not just business website and email address. Include name, your email, website, social media and even phone number to prove that you’re legitimate.

Don’t get too discouraged by low conversion rates. This step in your SEO campaign is as much about building a relationship for future links as it is about any one particular link. Plus, you should be targeting the big names in your niche, so even a few links should go a long way.

6. ABC – Always Be Checking

Alright, so you’ve set up the foundation of your campaign with a great strategy to reach your personas, you’ve got a great group of keywords on your topic, you’ve fixed the technical issues on your site, created some fantastic articles and built some links. Great job! But you’re not done yet.

First of all, there’s no guarantee that anything you’ve done so far has really worked. You need to be constantly checking to make sure any changes have a positive impact. Track your bounce rates to make sure your personas, keywords and funnel strategy are matching. Watch your rankings and website traffic to see how well your pages are optimized. Keep an eye on crawl errors and indexed pages to make sure the technical aspect of your site isn’t broken somewhere. And measure your link building efforts and tweak your subject lines, email body and recipient lists accordingly.

SEO, like most digital marketing channels, is a continuous process of testing, optimizing and testing again. Which is why you need to set up your campaigns correctly based on solid strategy, keyword research, website construction and content. If you combine these six steps correctly, you’ll see positive returns on your SEO campaign.

Source

https://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-run-an-seo-campaign-in-6-steps/

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years ago

Text

I'VE BEEN PONDERING COURSE

There are a handful of people who could have succeeded if they'd taken the leap and done it full-time, but didn't. The evolution of technology is one of the most powerful forces in history. You'd expect that if the founders at one end were distinguished by the presence of quality x, at the other extreme fund managers exploit loopholes to cut their income taxes in half. Presumably it killed just about 100% of the startups who believed that.1 I'm still not entirely sure. Silicon Valley and Boston, and for the first 3 years we ran alternating batches in Boston and Silicon Valley.2 Obviously it has to double: if you trade half your company for anything, whether it's money or an employee or a deal with another company, the test for whether to do it. Part of the reason I laughed so much at the talk by the good speaker at that conference was that everyone else did.

If there are any laws regulating businesses, you can turn that into a recipe for succeeding just by negating. Immigration policy is one area where a competitor could do better. US is disorganized about routing people into careers. This test is also useful to individuals. If you keep pursuing such threads it would be possible to reproduce Silicon Valley in another country, it's clear the US is a particularly humid environment. The stick-to-your-vision approach works for something like winning an Olympic gold medal, where the problem is important enough to build a solid prototype.3 Indeed, a good number are merely being sloppy by speaking of decreasing economic inequality when what they mean is decreasing poverty. What weaknesses could you exploit?4 Putting undergraduates' profiles online wouldn't have seemed too far off as a description of how to be successful in general?5 And in particular, the rich have gotten a lot richer.6 Most successful startups end up doing something different than they originally intended—often so different that it doesn't even seem like the most important thing is to quit your day job?7 The course of people's lives in the US are auto workers, schoolteachers, and civil servants happier than actors, professors, and professional athletes?

Just be concise. I tried to imagine what a transcript of the other guy's talk would be like, and you'll probably also do a better job of presenting that aspect of your startup. The lower the rate, the cheaper it is to buy stock in growing companies as opposed to real estate, or bonds, or stocks bought for the dividends they pay. So here's the recipe for success in writing or painting, for example. So another advantage of private universities is that a university can make legacy status have as much or as little weight as they want, by adjusting the size of the bucket that straddles the cutoff. The low points in a startup are so low that few could bear them alone. You'll depart from sincere, but never arrive at convincing. One reason is that variation in productivity is accelerating. Make something worth investing in, rather than whether it's going to succeed. It's hard to beat this phenomenon, because the light is better there.8 One of the things the equity equation shows us is that, financially at least, taking money from a top firm would generally be a bargain. I have to pause when I lose my train of thought.

I had to explain what to look for in founders.9 How do you pick the right platforms? Just as a speaker ad libbing can only spend as long thinking about each sentence as you want. I'm not too worried yet. A round from Sequoia. In return the company would go out of business, you have to identify some specific trend you'll benefit from.10 Another drawback of large investments is the time they take. But I don't think there's an answer.11 And all too many startups go into fundraising in the same spirit. Fortunately it's usually the least committed founder who leaves. In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail. Whereas if you keep restarting from scratch, that's a bad sign.

Surely that sort of environment is to join one and climb to the top. So don't get too attached to your original plan, because it's probably wrong. Maybe this would have been a mistake. And the hardest part of that is often discarding your old idea.12 Yes and no. Ultimately you always have to guess. The big successes are so big they dwarf the rest.13 If you get an offer from a reputable firm at a reasonable valuation with no unusually onerous terms, just take it and get on with building the company. Many more startups, including ours, were initially run out of money, your company moves to the suburbs and has kids. But that test is not as common as it used to be that way in America too.14 And even within the startup world, there has been an additional admixture of paranoia. When you see your career as a series of different types of work, instead of assuming you can rely on your intuitions as you ordinarily would, and b look at the origins of successful startups, few were started in imitation of some other startup.15

Notes

What you learn via users anyway. This is not a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of Explorer.

Another approach would be a product company. People only tend to be spread out geographically.

The second biggest regret was caring so much to say now.

The way universities teach students how to value potential dividends. Not surprisingly, these are even worth thinking about for the firm in the general manager of a liberal education than past generations have. If you actually started acting like adults, it may not be formally definable, but they were taken back in a cubicle except late at night.

If the Mac was so widespread and so on? Some VCs seem to have to preserve optionality.

MSFT, having spent much of the War on Drugs.

To use this question as a percentage of startups where the second.

The Department of English. To the extent we see incumbents suppressing competitors via regulations or patent suits, we met Rajat Suri. For example, being offered large bribes by the high-fiber diet is to create a great thing in itself, not an efficient market in this article used the term literally.

All languages are equally powerful in the 1960s, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but some do. Till then they had to write great software in Lisp, Wiley, 1985, p. No.

The most striking example I know it didn't to undergraduates on the East Coast. If he's bad at it he'll work very hard to say now.

Not even being Genghis Khan is probably part of creating an agreement from scratch, rather than insufficient effort to be obscure; they just don't make users register to read this to be good. The revenue estimate is based on their own itinerary through no-land, while the more corrupt the rulers.

Something similar has been decreasing globally. But if you conflate them you're aiming at.

These points don't apply to the prevalence of systems of seniority. Surely no one can ever say it again. The US News list? The key to wasting time is distraction.

A smart student at a regularly increasing rate. To get a false positive, this would probably only improve filtering rates early on when you ad lib you end up with only a few actual winners emerge with hyperlinear certainty. There's a sort of things you want to start a startup to sell your company right now.

Daniels, Robert V.

Thanks to Aaron Iba, Patrick Collison, James Bracy, Sam Altman, Fred Wilson, Anton van Straaten, Geoff Ralston, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell for reading a previous draft.

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adamgdooley · 7 years ago

Text

ERP in Space

When one talks of ‘future compression’, perhaps the reader recalls Moore’s law or maybe you imagine the future drawing exponentially nearer. If you’re in the latter group, you’re close to the mark. The widespread deployment of AI, Saudi Arabia granting citizenship to a robot(?!) and Davos’s asteroid mining executive (?!?!) suggests the future is now- the 4th Industrial Revolution is upon us. Peter Diamandis, co-founder of Planetary Resources, and Davos’s aforementioned asteroid mining executive is adamant that space mining will be part of this future. Larry Page and Richard Branson, both investors in Planetary Resources, apparently share this vision. But, before we make it to the great beyond, our space-savvy entrepreneurs need an ERP to get them off-the-ground and traditional systems might not be up to the challenge.

A very brief introduction to space mining

Space mining does what it says on the tin. Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, resident to the wider space industry, are trail-blazers in the industry that plans to, as J.S. Lewis eloquently put it, ‘mine the sky’. The rewards are certainly impressive: in July, an asteroid with a $3.5 trillion platinum core passed near earth. Jakhu, Pelton and Nyampong’s seminal text, ‘Space Mining and Its Regulation’ outlines the three criteria asteroids need to meet to be considered. They must: (i) be reasonably large, being more than 100 meters in diameter, (ii) be traveling along an approachable orbital path, (iii) have a high percentage of high-value natural resources. These near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are then ear-marked as candidate asteroids.

Simple right?

Not so fast. Whilst, Goldman Sachs has highlighted that “financial and technological barriers” to asteroid mining are “far lower” than the psychological hurdles we will need to clear, space mining is not easy. In fact, it is rocket science, and then some.

The major challenges facing space mining ventures

Space mining companies need to get off the ground- first financially and then literally.Google’s LunarX challenge offers companies the opportunity to pick-up $20 million if their robot can complete a series of tasks on the moon. There are other ways to raise funds also. Ingeniously, Planetary Resources planned to raise money for their ARKYD satellite by enabling backers on Kickstarter to have their ‘space selfie’ taken. Unfortunately, the campaign came to nothing. Currently, these ventures mainly rely on capital raised from investors but they are beginning to hold their own. Insofar, it is apparent that these canny companies can raise significant capital through winning satellite-focused commercial contracts where they can boost the bottom-line and learn at the same time. In early 2016, HawkEye360 chose Deep Space Industries as “the satellite provider for its Pathfinder small satellite mini-constellation” which will collect information to monitor global transport. Insofar, I have assumed that our companies have been operating on fairly standard ERP system, either built by themselves or imported from a software company. As these enterprises expand into the great beyond, ERP is going to get messy and might not be needed at all. In the following paragraphs, I will outline the basic space mining process (excluding manufacturing and return to Earth for the sake of brevity), and then consider whether ERP is suitable for space mining at all.

Identifying candidate asteroids

AsteroidZoo, the result of the combined efforts of Zooniverse and Planetary Resources, is a citizen-based project that has identified thousands of asteroids. Planetary Resources can then classify these asteroids by their diameter, time to reach, type of orbit and the velocity needed to reach from Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Public databases and private databases will be vital when these companies come to decide which asteroids to target.

Reviewing candidate asteroids

Planetary Resources suggest that as early as 2020 they will be touching down on the candidate asteroids. Before we proceed it must be noted that Planetary Resources (and other space mining companies) plan to proceed with their operations in two stages: (i) targetting water-rich asteroids, and extracting the resource, (ii) targetting metal-rich asteroids, and extracting the resource.

Beginning the process, Arkyd-6, a broadband imager, will identify candidate asteroid’s with a high water content. In space, water is useful as-as propellant, a life-support and for hydroponics. Being able to covert super-heated water into fuel is useful- it means that craft can spend extended periods away from Earth. Once the candidate asteroids have been identified, the start-up’s Arkyd-301 probes. The data collection “will include global hydration mapping and subsurface extraction … to determine the quantity of water and the value of water resources available.” At a later date, space mining companies will target asteroids rich in metal.

Reaching the asteroid

There are a number of transport technologies that can be deployed to reach the candidate NEA. These are concisely outlined in ‘Space Mining and Its Regulation’. Solid and liquid chemical-fueled launchers are standard space-flight fuel. For example, Space X’s Merlin engine utilises a combination of refined kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen. This tech is very useful for getting out of LEO, but less so for delivering significant thrust over a long period of time.

Ion propulsion systems are used to provide thrust over a longer period of time. Planetary Resource’s information page on Arkyd-301 suggests the probes will be launched into space with chemical fuel rockets and then continue their journey to the asteroids using ion propulsion systems. NASA’s Dawn craft used ion propulsion to visit the dwarf planets Vesta and Ceres. Dawn has a fuel efficiency 10-12 greater than chemical thrusters. But, it does take 10 000 hours to accelerate the spacecraft so speed necessary to reach the asteroid belt. However, one can only envision that this time will be reduced in the future.

Other more long-term options for transportation include nuclear-fuelled propulsion (in some instances, engines could be powered by helium-3 mined from the Moon), mass-driver systems (electromagnetic cannons for launching materials off low-gravity bodies) and space elevator systems. The later is becoming increasingly unlikely thanks to SpaceX and Blue Origin’s efforts to build reusable rockets.

Prospecting

After overcoming the logistical nightmare of getting to the asteroid itself, it seems expedient that one would then set about mining it. Minning an asteroid requires the successful deployment of Space Robotic Mining Systems (SRMS), and Jakhu, Pelton, and Nyampong have identified challenges faced by these systems. With our focus on ERP, some are of note to us:

Using less energy when mining

Improved software and AI to allow for teleoperation and automation

Using smart 3D printers to manufacture using locally acquired materials

Upgradability and modularity so broke or obsolete tech can be replaced

They point towards futuristic space mining techniques, with electromagnetic weapons and “large amplitude sonic frequency generators” not crossed-off the roster just yet.

Are ERP systems suitable for space mining?

ERP is the “central nervous system” of a business, giving corporations the mans to become self-aware as to their activities.

In a recent Reddit AMA, a SpaceX employee provided a lucid insight into how SpaceX’s Enterprise Information System (EIS) functions. The EIS team have developed their own internal web application. It is used by all employees, including those who are “creating purchase orders… filling our part inventory, engineers creating designs and work orders with those parts, technicians on the floor clocking in and seeing what today’s work will be per those designs… and literally everything in between.” Not only is the system hyper-efficient, but because the system is produced by talent within the firm, the TCO is lower and the system can be adapted to meet the firm’s needs exactly.

One feels that space mining ventures should, if costs permit, develop their own ERP as opposed to relying on systems such as SAP Business One or SAP ERP. SAP systems are no flexible enough to deal with the complexities of a space mining operation. And, as is highlighted above, the TCO is just too high for companies having to devote the majority of their resources to developing their SRMS and transportation technologies.

Space mining companies could use their own ERP whilst there operations are Earth-based, but one feels that ERP systems will have limited application in space. If space mining companies don’t use traditional ERP methods, what will they use? Since we are yet to actually begin mining in space, the answer to this question will be largely theoretical. As outlined above, there are four major hurdles that need to be overcome if we are to mine the sky: identifying candidate asteroids, reviewing candidate asteroids, reaching the candidate asteroid and excavating the candidate asteroid.

In producing the following outline, I have assumed that for efficiency the undertaking will be as automated as possible. On a side note, If you’re interested in learning about the role of AI and robotics in space mining then offworld.ai is a great place to start.

AI is not only the future of ERP, but will go beyond ERP. Man Group, a $96bn hedge fund, allows AI to manage some of its portfolios. Could AI manage a space mining operation? Let’s not kid ourselves. Whilst managing a hedge fund is certainly complex, it is not comparable to the labyrinthine details of a space mining operation. But, this does not exclude the possibility that AI will be managing future space mining operations.

Put simply, AI is better than ERP because it can teach itself. The effectiveness of an ERP system is limited by the capacity of the humans using the system: ERP sets-out the rules, and the workers play by those rules. For AI, this is not the case- it is, as far as its operator allows, the player and referee both setting the rules and playing by them. Moreover, ERP systems need have updates rolled-out as the system adapts to a general change. Conversely, AI will most likely be able to update itself with a near instantaneous quality. Beneficially, the update will be specific to the company’s needs as opposed to a general update covering many companies and industries.

Now, let us examine how, with an advanced AI, Planetary Resoucrces Inc. might manage their space mining operations. Our hypothetical AI would receive information from observatories

—perhaps automated— to help it select candidate asteroids. The AI would then direct the Arkyd-6 model(s) to review these asteroids, with the candidate asteroids be listed by the most profitable to the least profitable (with data from future global market trends and the actual costs of the mining process taken into account). In a matter of minutes, the launch order for the appropriately positioned Arkyd-301 probes would then be executed and the mining process would begin. All these tasks above could be performed by a human, albeit in a much less efficient manner.

Of course, my conception of such an operation is limited by my own imagination and lack of data. It is likely that the AI will account for the data of all asteroids and all operations when making operational decisions. For example, the AI might go right on ahead and completely redesign the system and the technologies used by our entrepreneur’s companies. The AI might discover a more cost-efficient way to manufacture fuels in space or invent an entirely new fuel which would cut R&D and engineers on the ground out of the equation entirely.

I foresee that some might rail against me- what if profitability is not the outcome we desire? If it is not, then there is no problem. Unlike ERP systems, AI can run inside simulations that account for all the real world data. The company would then run simulations focused on their desired end, let us say sustainable space mining for example. This module could then be deployed in the real world.

In last analysis, the future is here now- or at worse, just around the corner. In the space mining industry, at least, I foresee that ERP will be of little use in managing the involuted intricacies of commercial space mining operations. The foreseeable transformation in the space mining industry is part of the larger, long-term, alteration from ERP to AI.

Go to Source

The post ERP in Space appeared first on Statii News.

from Statii News http://news.statii.co.uk/erp-in-space/ from Statii News https://statiicouk.tumblr.com/post/167583935287

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clarityanimations · 7 years ago

Text

How to Hire a Rockstar Project Manager Online

Let’s flash back to this time last year. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t in a good place. I was working 12 hours a day trying to get my business off the ground. I had zero time for a social life and my health was declining pretty fast…

This problem was multiplied when Clarity started to gain more clients, and I found myself trapped in my own business, struggling to keep it together.

Fast-forward to today, and we have a dedicated Project Manager who handles everything from customer experience to production. This ONE hire has freed 4 hours a day, allowing me to focus on marketing and growth.

Now if this sounds familiar, I suggest reading on to learn my hiring process for remote staff as a way to free up your time, and take control of your business.

I write my exact steps and provide templates below, but first, let’s look into the advantages and risks of hiring online.

Advantages:

More staff handling the work IN the business allows you to work ON the business, which is where your time should be spent

You gain access to a wide talent pool

You can take advantage of time zone differences for those that run an international company

Risks:

It’s hard to really know what the candidate is like in a work environment

There’s less accountability for their time and work output

You have less control of the employee

You can potentially get burned e.g. non-responsive staff member goes AWOL

With anything in business, there will always be risks involved. However, hiring online doesn’t have to be scary or risky. In fact – you can guarantee successful hires IF you do the necessary screening beforehand.

Let’s get into the steps!

NOTE: I hired a project manager, but this process works for any role. I followed these steps when hiring my Marketing Assistant too. In another post I’ll elaborate on how I train and systemise a business too.

1. Create a VERY detailed job posting

You need to know EXACTLY what you require of your new staff member, arguably more than you would for a physical employee. The communication structure shifts to virtual, and thus there’s more chance for miscommunication. Spend a few hours outlining the role, down to the finer details. Then make sure to sell you, and your company well online.

You’ll be listing this role on sites like UpWork, and need to attract the high talent that you NEED to get the job done.

Must-haves for your listing:

Descriptive listing title that covers $$, hours required, job description

Listing content

Role description

Company description

Working hours

Take into consideration time zones, and requirements that align with your company/clients

Wage/payment

Payment terms

Detailed list of tasks

Your values in an employee

Details about you/the manager so the applicant can get to know who they’ll be working with

Training/onboarding process

Screening questions (pick 5 based off your needs or create your own)

Do you already have another job? If so, where are you working and how many hours are you working?

What relevant past experience do you have?

Do you have your own computer and Internet access from home? If you have access, how fast is your connection?

Will you work from home or from an Internet cafe?

Do you have any questions about the job description?

Have you worked with foreign employers before?

What past project or job have you had that is most like this one and why?

You want applicants to explicitly admire the job listing, and apply because they know you mean business.

Goal: Attract the best talent available

2. Shortlist the massive influx of candidates – be harsh when screening

If you wrote a detailed application, you’ll likely get over 50 applicants. To save your time, screen each applicant harshly.

To do this, review each applicant one-by-one. If the answers to your questions are generic, reject them. If their answers are one or two words and typically look lazy, reject them.

On the other hand, if the applicant showed genuine interest and meets your ideal criteria, shortlist them.

Repeat this for all applicants to weed out the obvious rejections.

Next, you’ll want to skim through your shortlist again to see if anyone else could be removed. I do this by finding my best applicant, and then comparing some people I wasn’t so sold on to see if their application still holds merit.

Sometimes applicants don’t shine at this stage, so if you’re on the fence for 1 or 2, maybe it’s best to review their questionnaire answers before cutting them.

To shortlist your applicants, adapt the following email as needed (the questionnaire is explained below):

‘Hi,

Firstly, yes this is a templated response. It’s not my style, but I’m overwhelmed by the positive response so this is the only efficient way to respond.

Good news, I like what you offer and have shortlisted you.

There were over [number of applicants] applicants and I’ve shortlisted [number shortlisted] (including you – congrats)!

If you’re still interested in this role, can you please fill out this questionnaire linked here:

[Questionnaire link goes here]

Once I’ve reviewed your responses, I’ll be interviewing 5 of you. Then I’ll likely run a trial/test with 3 applicants to make my final decision.

This may be intense or too thorough for some of you, so if you’re not interested in this screening process please respond with a ‘No’.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to reviewing your response.

Cheers,

[Your name goes here]’

Goal: Shortlist to a maximum of 15 applicants

3. The questionnaire – an interest hoop

Now we really test the applicant’s interest in your role. Create a questionnaire using Google Forms or another free software to further screen your shortlist. To speed up your hiring process, simply adapt my questionnaire to suit your role.

Remember we’re trying to weed out the lazy applicants to find the true gems.

The questionnaire should take 15-20 minutes and will give you further material to axe some applicants.

Ask yourself the following questions when reading the responses:

Is their written English adequate for the role?

Have they put in effort to answer questions?

Do the answers intrigue/interest you?

Do the responses reflect your company values?

Does their personality match your ideal candidate?

Do you relate to their answers?

Go through each response, and separate the answers into ‘interviewees’ and ‘rejections’. I create separate sheets in a Google Sheet and sort them that way.

If you view my questionnaire, you’ll notice I ask if they have any questions about the role. I received a number of questions so addressed them in a PDF, using the following template:

‘Hi,

If you’re reading this then your questionnaire answers were great.

I’ve shortlisted applicants down to the final 10, however before we continue I’d like to address the responses to the question ‘Do you have any questions about the expectations/requirements?’ 

I’ve created a PDF which can be found here:

[PDF link goes here]

Please read this document and simply reply ‘yes’ to the email if you’re still interested. If I haven’t heard back from you within 48 hours I’ll assume that you’re not interested.

Once I know who is still interested, I will choose the interviewees. 

I hope these answers clarify any concerns you have about the role and I thank you for your patience during this process.

Thanks,

[Your name goes here]’

Then, once I’ve received my ‘Yes’ responses, I decide on my interviewees. I also order the candidates from best to worst, so I know exactly where each applicant stands in the process.

Goal: Shortlist to a maximum of 5 applicants

4. Interview time

Congrats, you’ve screened the applicants further and found your top 5. I’d recommend notifying the applicants via email or UpWork that they’re through to the next stage, and then send out a generic message to all rejected applicants to notify them of your decision (you don’t have to do this but I think it’s only fair if they take the time to fill out a questionnaire).

Here’s my template to successful interviewees:

‘Hi,

After reviewing the remaining applicants I’ve chosen my interviewees and you’re one of them

Apologies for the long hiring process so far, it hasn’t been easy with the number of qualified applicants – I’m seriously impressed with the standard so far.

I’ll be conducting my interviews this Monday/Tuesday [substitute for your preferred days], you can schedule a call here via Calendly [link Calendly].

I look forward to talking to you and learning more about how we can work together.

Cheers,’

Here’s my template to rejected applicants:

‘Hi,

Firstly, thank you for filling out the questionnaire, I really appreciate it.

However, I’ve decided to proceed with someone else for the role.

I will keep your contact details on file in case it doesn’t work out.

I wish you the best of luck in your hunt for another role.

Thanks,’

I get the interviewees to schedule their interviews via Calendly to avoid the back and forth time-suck that is email. I tweak the Calendly link to complete all interviews across 2 days, in suitable times for me. This keeps the hiring process moving forward efficiently.

Now you should have 5 scheduled interviews.

Prepare your interview questions prior to the call, and then enjoy the interviews.

When interviewing, look for the following things:

What’s their spoken English like – is it suitable for the role?

Are they concise?

Do they actually answer the question?

Do they ramble on or go off-topic?

Can I see myself working with this person?

Do we connect on a conversational level i.e. could you hold a conversation with this person in a social setting?

Note: I’m no expert on interviewing by any means, the above is from personal experience. There will be better resources on the internet for this specific part.

I like to take notes during the interview, and add these to the Google Sheet, next to the shortlist answers.

This makes it easier to review the applicants when hiring.

Goal: Shortlist again to 3 final applicants

Cats optional for interviews

5. Test

Not every role requires this, and I personally didn’t do this when I was hiring because I was already sold on the applicant after the interview.

However, if you’d like to go one step further, create a small 1-2 hour test for the applicant (paid, of course).

This could include creating a scenario that mimics a typical project/stage, and then getting the applicant to complete it.

Ideally you’d provide guided steps, and it’s a matter of reviewing their competence, attention to detail and speed.

Go a step further and create some sort of ‘issue’ in the scenario too, to test their initiative and quick thinking (vital for a Project Manager as unexpected issues do occur).

Once finished, review their work and go over the scenario with them to understand their thinking.

Goal: Find the successful applicant

6. Hire

By this stage it should be very clear who your golden star is. Review the applicants again via your Google Sheet, and then contact the successful applicant for a quick 5 minute chat on Skype.

These calls are usually relaxed, and are designed to discuss the next steps e.g. starting date, training schedule.

The unsuccessful applicants should receive an email or UpWork message to notify them of the outcome, here’s my template:

‘Hi [Name],

Firstly thank you for your patience during this hiring process, I understand it’s taken a while but it’s been very difficult to choose from such a qualified pool of applicants.

However, after reviewing all applicants in detail I’ve decided to proceed with another applicant.

I will keep your contact details on file in case it doesn’t work out and I wish you the best of luck in your pursuit for another PM role.

Thanks,’

Goal: Hire the applicant and celebrate

It looks like this, but through a computer screen

So who did we hire?

You may be wondering who I chose after this lengthy process.

Let me introduce you to our project manager Francheska, from the Dominican Republic.

I hired Francheska because we clicked from the start of the interview. She had previous experience as a remote Project Manager, understood the role well, and showed exactly how her skillset will benefit Clarity Animations.

She’s creative, loves music and reading, and when she’s not working she enjoys spending time with her family and friends.

I was looking for someone who’s more organised than me and has attention to detail which Francheska shines in. Her intense amount of lists makes her the perfect weapon to ensure projects run smoothly, and on time.

Francheska is now handling all projects, and gauging from client feedback, she’s doing a great job.

The craziest part is, we’ve never met! Hiring overseas over the internet has a bad reputation but it can be effective. Hopefully the above guide will put you on the right path to making the perfect hire, every time.

P.S. I wrote this blog post because online work and changing workforces are something I have a personal interest in. This blog may not help the company sell more videos, but if you found it useful please let me know via email or a comment below.

The post How to Hire a Rockstar Project Manager Online appeared first on Clarity Animations.

from Clarity Animations https://www.clarityanimations.com/uncategorized/hire-rockstar-project-manager-online/

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