The Inquisitive Report​ 3/52

Week ending February 16th, 2018

Content Covered: UCSC Career Center

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UCSC Career Center

My call with the career center went through *WootWoot*. I can’t tell you how happy I am to say that I will be hosting a workshop on April 17th at UCSC. But that’s not even the best part….

But first, here is how it went:

The Approach: I’d been holding off on contacting the career center for … oh 8 months or so now. Why? Well I didn’t feel ready, and then I was traveling, and then — yes, basically it didn’t happen until a few weeks ago. So, I finally mustered up the courage to write a heartfelt email explaining: who I am (an alumni), what I want to do (host a professional development workshop), and why I would like to take out my time to give back to the community (honestly, my why is pretty damn amazing), they had very little reason to not contact me back.

The Follow Up: Twiddling thumbs, anxious inbox refreshes, and two missed connections later – I finally got in touch with John, the man in charge of CC events. He was interested in what I was trying to do, and he asked me to explain the content – phew, I can do that. Then he asked me what I’d like to call the event and slience, you can imagine *cricketschirping* in the background – naming is important ok? It’s also really really hard (especially given the type of material I am discussing – I can’t just say professional skills 101 – ok I can, but that sounds so lame) – so utilizing my impressive improvisation skills I asked him – first: when is your next availability?

The Conversation: See, placement is also important. When this workshop happens is just as important as what we talk about or why I am there. I wanted to tie my material in with the next Career Fair (if there was going to be one), and for that I needed John – lovely John to tell me if there were any dates available near the next Career Fair… and there were *SilentShriek-AsIWasOnThePhone*. So then, nonchalantly I asked to be booked the day before or two days before the event since my material would directly benefit the students to prepare and engage at the event… and then I told him that I would like to call my event *DramaticDrumRoll* “Networking Insights: How to create an Impact”.

The Next Steps: Having squared away the basic information needed to get the ball rolling, John asked me if I would be representing any company – I answered no (though technically I’m not sure… more on this in a moment) and if I would be selling anything – to which I also said no (also more on this in a few months). He then said that he would send me a marketing form to fill out to get the word out – and we would go back and forth to smooth out all the details. I gracefully thanked him for his time, and the opportunity to come and give back to the community at UCSC and he said that they were most delighted to have me.

Insights & Other Details: 

I realized that there is a difference between representing myself and representing my company. I wonder how communicating with Career Center’s will change as I formalize my practice.

During our communication to set up the date, I also noticed that John wanted to make sure that we used a block of time during which students would be in class – meaning, he didn’t want to pick a time slot in between two classes (as this would cause many more people to be unavailable to attend, then say if we did it in just one block of time.) This was a good point to remember for future conversations.

I’m interested to see how this marketing part goes… John wasn’t able to give me a rough headcount (go figure – no one can tell) as to how many people might show up. I’m kind of anxious about that.

Overall, I’m excited for the next 2 months and some; I’m already itching to prepare material.. but first I have to wrap up the Workshop Series that I have going on with ISMA at the moment -oh yeah that’s happening too.. more on that next week 😉

And other news…

This week, I successfully registered Xpanse as a Sole Propritership *EeeeEeekkkk*. Things are starting to become more ‘legit’ and it feels really good.

The reason behind legalizing? Credibility.

But I’m torn. In the UCSC example, it was more beneficial for me to not have a company, and represent myself as an alumnus. Going forward, I will keep an eye on this development. Nonetheless- I now have a company branding in my back pocket if I need it… and that is always a good thing.

Bureaucracy

I have to say, there is definitely a lot of benefit in registering a company during the early hours of the day (note: always avoid lunch time for government work). Registering was a two step process for me (actually more like 3 steps, but we’ll get into that momentarily).

First and foremost, I had to look up Fremont’s rules on registering a Sole Proprietorship. That was easy enough thanks to Google Daddy; then I downloaded all the forms – and read all the rules. And the process would be as follows: before I could register the company, I had to register the name. This is where things got fun, registering the name has to happen with the county – so a different office, and I have to make sure that my company name (Xpanse) is indeed available (which it was) and then.. once all my paperwork was successfully stamped and added to the system I was told that I have 30 days to get my name in a newspaper or I will lose the rights to the name *AudibleGasp*. I had no idea about this newspaper curve ball- but I am very excited *MoreSilentShrieking*

Once Xpanse was registered as a name, I  headed over to the Fremont Office to register my business; thankfully, this was smooth sailing. I feel like such a grow up all of a sudden *tear*. What a lovely present to gift myself on Valentine’s Day ❤

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Ladies and Gentleman you are now looking at the proud owner of her first (and certainly not last) company; and now it’s time to celebrate! Cheers!