The Armenian Texan

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My Personal Value Proposition

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

To whom it may concern,

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Peter Seferian. As you may have surmised by the name of this blog, I am a fourth generation Armenian-American living in Texas. I am currently a senior at St. Edwards University pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in philosophy.

Being a philosophy major, I have a wide-range of skills that would make me a suitable candidate for your organization. I am a critical thinker, a good writer, and can work well with others.

As a writer, I have written several philosophy papers that analyze complex concepts and deconstructs them in a way that is digestible for those largely unfamiliar with philosophy. One of the skills I have been working on lately as far as writing goes is copywriting. I love the idea of taking products and marketing them through emails and social media. I love the idea of using creative, engaging language that pulls the reader in and makes them actually want to buy the product. In fact, I actually worked as a marketing intern for a small startup company that created educational products, doing that very same thing.

In 2018, I worked as a policy intern at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. I helped my center director with his research on a daily basis. I created lists of relevant items that I sent out to various partner organizations, I delivered mail to fellow employees and superiors, and I worked at the front desk. At the front desk, I learned how to take calls from people and direct them to the extensions that were relevant to their queries. I plan to utilize the skills that I learned from my work at the Foundation to help you with your team.

As a Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu instructor, I know how to be a leader and I can organize groups of people in completing a task. I enjoy helping people learn knew things and how to think through problems. But just because I am a leader that does not mean that I can’t be a follower. Every teacher and coach I’ve ever had can attest to how coachable a student I am. If you have something you need me to learn, I will give you my undivided attention and devote one hundred percent of myself to learning that skill as best I can.

I am also good at talking to people and connecting with them on a level that goes beyond the common customer/salesman relationship. As someone who has worked with teams before, I know how to work in a group where personalities clash and people disagree. In fact, I have led groups like that during my time in college. There have been times when things have gone wrong, but each time I have been able to steer the ship back in the right direction and get us back to where we needed to be.

I hope you found this post informative and will consider adding me to your team.

Best wishes,

Peter

What I Have Learned

Before starting this blogging project, I didn’t know that you could start a WordPress blog for free. I had always thought that you needed to pay for it, as I did when I started a WordPress blog two years ago. I thought it was worth it when I compared it to having a free, but less advanced blog from Blogger.com. Although I purchased it as a discount from a guru I followed, I still didn’t have the money to sustain it after a few months. I didn’t realize how much money it would cost to purchase an email list builder, as well as the other features that make for a successful blog. It is a shame because I really enjoyed writing on that blog and if I perhaps had the money to pay for it, I could’ve made quite a bit of money back as well.

Now that I know that I can start a WordPress blog for free, I see new opportunities emerging for me. The main reason for having a WordPress blog in the first place is for marketing purposes. You want to engage with your audience so that they have more incentive to purchase your products. In order to do this, you should probably purchase a WordPress blog to fully optimize all of it’s features to ensure you are maximizing it to its full potential. But if you just want to share your random thoughts or just write about something that is only of interest to you and a niche group of people, then a free blog is probably the way to go, especially if you don’t wanna lose any money doing it.

During the first two months of this course, I have learned how effective certain social media networks can be for marketing my personal brand. Hootsuite is great for organizing all of your different social media profiles and keeping track of your posts all in one place. Rather than posting something to your social media profiles individually, you can post something on all of them at the same time. Twitter is great for quickly getting information out to a large amount of people. It also allows for instant messaging between the business and the consumer. Facebook ads are also effective at getting attention for your brand. You can create events for people to attend, who can then invite their friends to attend the event, notifiying more people about you and your brand. Instagram is a popular social networking site among young people that allows you to share photos. Linkedin is good for connecting with other professionals in your field, as well as looking for job opportunities. I plan to utilize all of these outlets for my personal brand. If you want to be successful at marketing or running an online business, you need to get acquainted with these outlets.

Profiles in Marketing: Jocko Willink

He is a retired U.S. Navy Seal. The commander of an elite unit of battle-hardened commandos. An author of two New York Times Bestselling books. And the host of one of the most popular podcasts in the nation. These are the credentials Jocko Willink uses to market himself and his company, Echelon Front.

Jocko was the commander of Seal Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, which heroically served during the Battle of Ramadi in 2004 during the Iraqi Insurgency. The operations he led helped the U.S. Army’s First Armored Division bring stability to the violent, war-torn city. Jocko was awarded some of the highest honors a member of the U.S. Military could earn; including the Bronze Star and the Silver Star.

After leaving Iraq, Jocko became the head instructor in charge of training new Navy Seals at Camp Coronado in California. Jocko eventually retired from the U.S. Navy and founded a company called Echelon Front, a leadership consulting company that utilizes his experience on the battlefield to help people with business and life.

In 2015, Jocko and fellow Task Unit Bruiser veteran, Leif Babin, published a book called “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win”. In it, Jocko and Leaf tell some of their most impactful war stories and show how the lessons they learned in combat are easily applicable to leadership in the workplace and in life.

Of course, running a successful company as Jocko has requires solid marketing. On his podcast (called “Jocko Podcast”), Jocko and his co-host, Echo Charles, will talk about the products they sell on their website, whether it is the “Jocko Super Krill” CBD oil, the “Jocko Joint Warfare” workout supplement, the “Jocko Molk Protein Powder”, or the “Jocko White Tea.” They will also promote Jocko’s latest books, such as “The Dichotomy of Leadership” (also with Leif Babin) and his first children’s book, “Way of The Warrior Kid.” This type of marketing helps to let his followers know when they can expect these products to release and where to find them if they are interested in purchasing them. Jocko’s online store has an option to subscribe to his newsletter to recieve updates about his activity and the store’s new releases.

Jocko is also very much engaged with his audience. For one thing, he is very responsive on Twitter. At the end of each of his podcast episodes, Jocko will answer questions from his followers about business, being in the military, Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu, and numerous other topics. On Instagram and Facebook, he posts short, thirty-second clips of himself giving motivational advice. And, since he wakes up everyday at 4:00 am, he takes a picture of his watch displaying the time he got up, before hitting the gym to work out.

Utilizing a podcast, an email newsletter, and social media, Jocko Willink has been able to bring millions of followers to his website so that they can be inspired and benefit from his products. Jocko has shown not only how effective translating combat experience into the business world, he has also become the model for what a successful American Military veteran can accomplish.

Welcome to Armenian Texan

Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
What topics do you think you’ll write about?
Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.