Forward Tilt By Praxis

That’s it folks! The 50th and final episode of the Forward Tilt podcast. Over the last 50 weeks, we covered one lesson a week. One way to get off the conveyor belt and take control of building your career and life. Now that Forward Tilt is over, Isaac gives his recommendations for more resources to check out. Links: Office Hours Podcast discoverpraxis.com Get a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth at discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

To short a stock is to sell it before you own it. You sell it today and agree to deliver in the future because you believe the cost will go down and you will be able to buy it at a cheaper price. When you put off tasks to the future, you are doing the same thing with your time. Every action you take has a cost, and when you leave for tomorrow what you could do today, you communicate a lot about the way you value your time. Topics Discussed: - Shorting your own stock - Opportunity cost - If you get better every day, the value of your time in the future goes up - Valuing future time less when you should actually value it more - If you can do it now, do it For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

We call it baby steps when you take small guarded steps forward. But babies take the exact opposite approach. They flail, take big risks, and learn as they go. When babies start crawling they don’t cautiously ease their way into it. They get up, fall down and crash into things. They’ll walk off the top of the stairs if you don’t have it blocked. Only once they take risks do they develop the skill needed to be more precious and safe. But they would never gain that skill if they didn’t take risks initially. The same is true for learning in adulthood. We want it to be safe, to ease our way in, but the best way to learn is to do what babies do and just go for it. In this episode: - Babies take risks, not guarded steps - When you start anything, don’t ease your way in - The power of taking big swings - We learn by taking “real” baby steps For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

There has been a trend recently of popular content creators online talking about how there are too many blogs, too many podcasts, and the world doesn’t need more. Apart from the obvious irony, they miss the most important value creators get from creating content. Sure there is a chance to grow an audience and monetize it, but much more powerful is the learning, signaling, and social capital value that you get from consistently creating content. Discussed in this episode: - The amount of content on the internet is doubling each year - Three values to creating and sharing content online. - Creating to learn - Creating to signal - Creating to build social capital For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

In this episode, Praxis Education Director, TK Coleman guest hosts to talk about creativity and HTML. Most people think of creativity and associate it with inspiration, living in cool neighborhoods, and eccentricity. But in reality, creativity is a lot more about hard work than it is about cool esthetics. Just like HTML is nothing without plain text, the cool and unique aspects we associate with creativity are nothing without hard work and the simple ability to get things done. Topics Covered: - The best creators are the ones who know how to get stuff - Why some “Creative” people don’t create results - Creating can be done anywhere at any time - Creativity is the HTML of handwork - Don’t ask “How can I become more creative?” For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

No one has ever been hired for their resume. At best a good resume will get someone curious to find out more about you, but it is the more about you—the background—that will get you hired.    Instead of a resume, what truly matters is your reputation. Your connections, friends, coworkers, and customers who know the type of work you do will open up new opportunities.      In This Episode:  - No one has ever been hired for their resume  - Why so many jobs go to people who know people at the company - Doing your current job exceptionally well is the best way to find new opportunities - Talking about what you love about your job - Build your reputation, don’t worry about your resume   For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt    

Statistics can be very illuminating in aggregate, but individuals are not aggregates. If you only choose a course of action when statistics are in your favor you will never get where you want to go. In this episode: - Statistics don’t do the work for you - You are special enough to not go to college - Why shooting “low-percentage” shots can make sense - Individuals are not aggregates For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt 

Whether is writing a blog post, creating a video, or making a marketing plan, if you sit around theorizing about the perfect way to do it, you won't get any closer to perfect. We like to imagine that the longer we have to do something, the more time we have to think and plan and edit the better the end result. But in reality it is almost never extra time that gets us great results, it is extra reps. In this episode: - An example from two groups of pottery students - Perfection is a byproduct - Mistaking a byproduct for a precondition - Art and Fear by Bayles and Orland (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fear-Observations-Rewards-Artmaking/dp/0961454733) For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

This week on Forward Tilt, Praxis’ COO Cameron Sorsby guest hosts to share three key traits that separate great young professionals from the pack. In this episode: What makes a great caddy Learning soft skills Confidence, hustle, judgment For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt  

The standard approach to getting a job is to go out to a business and with a resume and interview tell employers about your skills and experience. It’s the equivalent of saying “Here I am, I have skills.” It creates work for the business to figure out if those skills are relevant, legitimate, or even valuable and as a result, it doesn’t help you find the best opportunities. The better approach is to do the work yourself and come to a business with a pitch on how you will create value. Instead of writing about how you have SEO skills, send in an analysis and plan of the companies SEO. Instead of listing your excel skills, send in a spreadsheet you made that could be valuable for there work. Instead of saying that you can create value, actually create value and watch how many opportunities it will open for you. In this episode: - Product beats paper  - What a generic resume tells employers - How Brian Nuckols got his marketing role for Praxis with a value proposition - Pitching a guest blog post - Thinking from

Vague general questions get vague general answers. If you are looking for valuable information create something first and get specific.  Whether it is advice on something you are writing or a business idea, you will be able to get a lot better feedback if you ask for opinions on a rough draft instead of an idea.  In this episode: Editing a draft vs. creating from scratch The rough draft mindset Producing before seeking help Theoretical problems For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

Level playing fields are important on a societal level, but when you are looking for places to invest your time and money, it's better to go where the field is tilted. This is obvious when you have the advantage, you maximize your chances for success and large returns, but even having the field titled against you can be better than a level playing field. In this week's Forward Tilt Isaac explains why an unlevel playing field is a great place to invest, no matter if you have the advantage or the disadvantage. In this episode: - Why level playing fields are good society-wide, but not on an individual level - The unlevel playing field for Praxis - When the field is tilted against you, it’s going to be a lot less crowded For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

Lot's of people are afraid of sales jobs because they don't come with a guaranteed monthly salary. The uncertainty of working for commission makes them nervous so they opt for the security of a salaried role.    But the job security they think exists in marketing, operations, or other jobs is a myth. No matter what role you are in, your job only exists so long as you create more than you earn. You need to create value regularly, or else that salary will disappear.    This isn’t a scary insight, it is empowering. It is the insight that allows you to view yourself as a company no matter what role you are in.   Even if you are working for only one employer, you are selling a service to a customer. The more valuable that service compared to the price, the more secure you will be.    In this episode: Terror of working in sales There is no such thing as a secure job Every job demands value creation every day Contractor vs. employee The post-job era You are your own company Link:  The End of Jobs For a free copy

Often we overlook our potentially valuable skills because we don’t know we have them. We don’t realize that the thing we find easy, others find hard. Or the activity we do as a hobby has a high market value. Finding out what you are good at and you can create value doing isn’t easy. It is a process that takes time and feedback. But the most common ways we expect to learn about ourselves are removed from real sources of feedback. To find out what we do best we need to get out into the market and start getting feedback. In this weeks episode, Isaac shares a story about a Canadian bagpiper who didn’t realize he had developed an incredibly valuable skill while pursuing his hobby. In this episode: - A Canadian bagpiper who stumbled onto a big business. - Tacit knowledge - Practice, practice, theory - The market doesn’t just help you discover what other people value, but also what you have. - Why do kids always do lemonade stands? For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth, go to discoverpraxis

Too many new employees are eager to get out of grunt work. They are right to want to focus on creating more value, but they miss the opportunity that grunt work provides.    On this episode, Isaac shares a story from a conversation with a CEO about a young employee asking for a raise.    He did everything well but made it clear he didn’t like grunt work. As a result, he didn’t make himself indispensable and didn’t get a raise. He was replaceable.    As you gain experience and make yourself more valuable, you will naturally have less grunt work to do. But by always remaining open to doing the work no one else wants to do will make you an incredibly valuable employee no matter where you work.    In this episode:  - Making yourself irreplaceable  - Founders are never to good for grunt work - Overlooking the opportunity that grunt work can provide - Everyone will see you getting coffee or watering plants - If you feel like you do too much grunt work, it’s on you to make yourself more valuable. It’s on you to prov

Tiny daily acts of creation have an immense compounding power. For Isaac, daily blogging started as a way to break out of a point of dissatisfaction. But the small decision led to a massive change and directly to the idea for Praxis. In this episode: Succeeding, but feeling dissatisfied. Feeling like something is missing. Taking on a daily blogging challenge. Creating leads to creativity Turning creativity into a discipline Why you should challenge yourself with small daily acts of creation. For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth, go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

What people say they want is different from what they will actually go out and do. Economists call this the difference between stated and revealed preferences. Your opinions don’t come with a cost. But when you have to pay it shows what you truly value. For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth, go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt 

Whether you're building a business, writing a blog, or creating anything new, it can be easy to think about your customer or audience in aggregate. To work with your market in mind, instead of a particular person. One of the biggest inflection points in the growth of Praxis came when Isaac choose to focus on one particular customer. Not all the entrepreneurial young people, not a specific demographic, just sell and create a solution for one specific person. From a focus on one customer, you build a solid foundation for growth because you are focused on solving a real problem for a real person and not a vague aggregate. From focusing on one customer Praxis now can create value for hundreds of participants.  For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth, go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

When creating something it is easy to focus on perfecting the small details. Whether it’s production value on a podcast, body positioning as a public speaker, or style as a writer, there are lots of small details to obsess over. But when you are starting a new project you can never lose sight of the most important aspect of anything you create, the content of the ideas. In this episode: - Handling imperfections as a creator - The content of the ideas matter more than perfect delivery - Lessons from running public speaking workshops For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth go to discoverpraxis.com/forwardtilt

When something goes wrong in a customer service situation, some people will seize the opportunity to berate their server or make an employee feel bad. They use the moment to grab a tiny amount of power. But by using this opportunity to feel powerful, they are giving up what is best for them in the long term. They are giving up opportunities to get a better long term solution to momentarily feel important. In the case of restaurants, they are forgetting the free meal. In this episode: - Why people get mad at customer service employees - Don’t trade your power for attention - Don’t forget the free meal For a free copy of Forward Tilt: An Almanac for Personal Growth, go to discoverpraxis.com/forward tilt