High School Dropout To Harvard

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I spoke at Harvard yesterday. That was cool.

And today, the official Chief Swag Officer website launched! In less than 14 days, my small but mighty team pulled together a sick website where you can even visualize your logo on the product. It’s so cool!! If you love the site, it’s because the designer Yassir brought my vision to life. The website is SO good I had to message him and ask if I could plug him in this newsletter. Even cooler is that he replied to a tweet I posted where I needed a Shopify website designer, which just shows how being ballsy and replying to people online can get you hired.

Finding good freelancers or web designers is incredibly difficult so when you find a good one, tell other people.

Interested in hiring Yassir? Contact him through his website Craftt below or connect with him on LinkedIn here.

https://craftt.design

Little old me, who barely graduated high school, spoke to a room full of students at the Harvard Women in Business conference in Boston. I did graduate high school with a diploma from online school which I spoke about last week on the Stride podcast here.

I presented a keynote on being fearless and then I sat on a panel with Angelina Lawton, CEO & Founder of Sportsdigita and Binta Brown, partner at Manatt. During my keynote, I expressed how important it is for people to do the below:

1. Never direct message your dream boss or dream mentor. Always send them a thorough email. Binta touched on this following my speech which was cool because I’m a huge fan of hers, but it proved my point: direct messaging people who you dream of working for isn’t viewed as professional. If you want to set yourself apart, you can certainly direct message someone but proceed with asking for their email to send a thorough pitch to.

2. If you are building a personal brand, you don’t need your boss to know that. Angelina chimed in on that during the video I just posted on Instagram (message me and let’s be IG friends!) where she goes into detail about reasons why she rejects people who ask her for a job. The main one? If you’re a fan of one of the teams she works with (like the Yankees or Dolphins) more than the opportunity to work on the business side with her, she isn’t going to hire you. When I’m hiring, I do look for people who are equal fans of me and equally a fan of the business behind a personal brand or running a business, but this varies depending on your business. When I’m hiring for Chief Swag Officer as the company grows, I’m only interested in hiring people who have experience with e-commerce and NOT people who are influencers or have a personal brand.

3. The moral of the story…know your audience. Know who you’re presenting to and for. This doesn’t mean NOT to have a personal brand: of course you should. But if you’re looking to still have a traditional job, you need to at least be primarily focused on that.

Another takeaway: after speaking with Angelina and Binta, I realized there’s a huge opportunity in the world of sports. Whether that means sports marketing agencies, tech companies in the sports industry or recruiting…if I needed a job right now, I’d start looking at sports companies. Even better if you’re a female because they need more females in the world of sports! I know if you message Angelina or Binta on LinkedIn and tell them you read this post they’ll have a conversation with you, too.

Enjoy the Harvard photos below!

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So, do you need a personal brand? Let’s find out on the Saturday rendition of Stay Fearless or Die Trying.

I do one-on-one coaching for clients about personal branding, building a business and social media. Interested? Reply to this email and we can set up an intro call.

Stay fearless or die trying,

Alexa

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