When we’re young, we often bring along baggage and bad ideas about work into our first few professional opportunities. We assume the problem lies with the job, the people with whom we work, our something else outside ourselves and we rarely ask whether we are the problem. Our work becomes unfulfilling and unenjoyable, and we wonder why we aren’t progressing as fast as we thought we would. At this point we often quit, thinking the answer is in removing ourselves from a situation. We pass up on …
Actionable ideas to kickstart your career
Five for Friday | Forward Tilt Podcast
This week we are releasing five new episodes of Forward Tilt. We've got great episodes in the vault so we thought we'd release a bunch at once. This week you'll find five new doses of Forward Tilt on your favorite podcast platform (iTunes, YouTube, all major platforms) The Struggle is a Gift https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUtgNd_zqyI Direct download When things are easy, we don't grow. It is in moments of struggle when everything is going wrong that we are forced to take massive steps …
At Praxis, Commitments Are Better Than Rules
Earlier this week we held the opening seminar for our April participants. After going through Kicking Ass 101, having them meet their advisor, and getting advice from participants in later stages of the program, we reminded them of one critical component to their success: Everything in this program is optional. Nothing is mandatory here. We explain why we think each deliverable in the curriculum is important and what the benefits are, but the participants choose whether or not they follow …
What Job Seekers Can Learn from Top Sales Teams
“Do the unconventional” is one of our mottos at Praxis. No, it’s not something we do for the sake of being unconventional, but in a world where the cost of information is reaching zero, doing the unconventional is often the only way to stand out in a crowded field. Consider the fact that companies like Pricewater Cooperhouse can receive hundreds of thousands of job applications per year alone. The standard advice: get good grades, have a resume and apply for multiple positions, just won't …
3 Common Traps to Avoid when Choosing Your First Job
I remember in college just about the most stressful period of every semester was not finals. It was the time everyone had to choose their classes for the next semester. At the University of Michigan, there were literally hundreds of courses, you could enroll in, and students would become overwhelmed by options. What I noticed was that the freshman students went about choosing courses by very different standards than some of the seniors. A first-year student, for example, picked courses by …
Adopt a Value Creation Mindset
This is a written version of the video in this post by Isaac, the CEO of Praxis, about how to adopt a value creation mindset. -- Getting good grades, listening to adults, and being obedient will get you ahead in school. In the real world, only two things matter when building a career: The ability to create value. The ability to convince people that you can create value. If you can create value but nobody knows about it, then it won't matter. If you can sell your ability to …
Get Some Skin in the Game: A Guide to Better Learning
There’s a story told in Plutarch’s Lives about the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes that nicely parallels the lives of many students today. In the story, Demosthenes, desiring to become a master orator, shaves his head so that he is too embarrassed to go out in public. The thought was that he'd be able to focus all of his time on practicing and improving his speech abilities. Despite this program of self-improvement, his first speeches before the Athenian Assembly were disastrous. It would …
The 5 Mindsets that will Derail Your Success Before it Begins
For all the talk about learning new skills, studying, or getting work experience, often we don’t need more inputs to see huge returns on our career growth. What we need most is a shift in mindset. In fact, we need many mental shifts when it comes to how we're viewing the world. There’s a term we like to use at Praxis called deschooling. Deschooling is a process by which you gradually break free of certain modes of thought that most people adopt in school so that you can succeed in the …
Placement Update: March 2017 Apprenticeships
It's my favorite time of the month! Time for an update where I recap and highlight a few of the most recent placements here at Praxis. This is so exciting because every time someone starts their Praxis apprenticeship it means they're about to experience what education should be. They're getting a taste of the real world and seeing first-hand what businesses look for in an employee. HINT: it's not the credentials. It's the forward tilt. The action-bias. It's the digital paper trail. …
How College Made You Hate Learning
My friend (and Praxis CEO) Isaac Morehouse has a fun little experiment he asks people to do in his book Freedom without Permission. In the book he writes “a Google image search for the word [education] results in desks, chalkboards, letter grades, stressed kids, regimentation, classrooms, and kids sleeping or with pained looks on their faces.” He asks this of people because it’s a good reminder that most of us treat school and education as the same thing. Picture a world where this …
Your Personal Brand | Forward Tilt Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIRrW55z4tg You have a personal brand whether you like it or not. Call it a reputation if you prefer, but it is the feelings and associations that come to mind when people think of you. A lot of people feel resistant to working on their brand. They feel that it is slimy and inauthentic to work on others perceptions of you. But a good personal brand is about authenticity. It is making sure that what you share and create online communicates who you are. That …
A Quick Praxis Team Update
Meet our new CTO, Chuck Grimmett! Chuck has been advising Praxis participants and helping the team with tech problems for a few years now, and taking our curriculum and tech to the next level meant we had to get him on the team full time. Chuck is a polymath, and among his many talents are cooking and cocktail making, which you can read about on his blog about food. Chuck and Education Director TK Coleman spent a few days in Charleston earlier this month for a marathon session on the …
Why Working for Free Won’t Work for You
I’m a big fan of “free work.” No, I don’t mean doing favors or giving handouts. I mean a deliberate process of forgoing immediate earnings to gain experience, knowledge, and credibility. What sounds controversial to some was the dominant path people took to building careers for hundreds of years. An experienced professional, often in a trade or art, would take a mostly inexperienced young person who worked for free or for very cheap and through that process, learned to become successful …
You Got the Job, Now What? A Guide to Accelerating Your Career
Young people today think getting a job is hard. It’s not. As I’ve written elsewhere, I can get you a job next week, guaranteed. What is hard is keeping that job. It's hard taking charge of that job and turning it into something that you find valuable and fulfilling. What’s hard is becoming so valuable they have to pay you more, bend the rules for you, and otherwise grant you what you want because they know you could go elsewhere and have dozens of opportunities lined up. That’s what …
6 Common Questions our Business Partners Ask Us Before Taking an Apprentice
Each month, dozens of businesses from around the US inquire about partnering with Praxis to take Praxis apprentices. They're looking to fill roles ranging from sales and marketing to operations, development, and creative, as well as more generalist positions. For the partners we accept, the results have been pretty amazing. The other day we received this message from a business: "I'm convinced Praxis is the only training ground that puts participants in the right frame of mind to …
