Portfolio Project Outline

As promised, I have gone through all of my project ideas and have narrowed it down to the project that I am going to do. Now I want to outline this project for the whole month of December. I want to do this for several reasons:

1 – Having detailed plans ahead of time for what you want to accomplish makes each day and weeks work more organized and helps the project seem less scary. If I told you that you had to build a house in a year, that would be a bit daunting (if you weren’t a builder), you wouldn’t even know where to begin. But what if I gave you the step-by-step plans for that house and said that on day 1 of 365, all you have to do is simply order the lumber that will be used for making your batter boards and form boards? Measurements already included. All of a sudden, a seemingly impossible task becomes doable for today. Planning uses up more time in the beginning, but if done right, it will save you twice as much time (and a headache) in the long-run.

2 – It will help me stay on track and accountable. I am really wanting to put everything I can into this project, and if I am planning for every step of the way, I will clearly be able to see where my successes are and where my short-fallings are.

3 – It will also keep me realistic. I am currently working three different jobs and December is a holiday month. I want to plan for success, and it’s so much better to have a small goal and accomplish it rather than a big goal and miss by a mile. If I start with small achievable goals, then I can learn and grow from those and make bigger goals in the future from what I learned.

4 – Simply just to help you understand what I’m doing. I want to be learning out loud so that I can help others learn as well. This will be a step in communicating clearly what and why I’m doing the things I’m doing.

So, without further ado, here is an outline I have written for my portfolio project!

Praxis has 5 questions that will help make this outline 10x more concise, so I am simply just going to write this as an interview style post!

1) 1-2 sentence description of the final result you’re going to deliver by the end of the month.

I am going to have delivered a 5-part podcast series interviewing people who work in the sales areas of their companies. Probably people who have 2-5 years of experience but I will be flexible on this. I am also going to have several blog posts on my website on the subject of sales and what I have learned through my month-long process of studying it. Bonus: Sell something and document the tactics I use to sell it.

2) A few sentences explaining how this project is related to your goals.

(Before I answer this, I think it’s important to figure out what my goals actually are. While specifically, this project is to help my overall knowledge and expertise in sales, I also have several other goals throughout the process. One of the biggest of these goals is simply just to connect with others and learn to ask questions that matter. All of my grandparents passed away when I was very young, and one of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t ask more questions about their life growing up and the things that they learned. There’s nothing new under the sun and everyone has their own category of knowledge. I want to learn how to ask purposeful questions that will bring out incredible conversations and stories.

I have a couple other smaller goals concerning this project, but these two big ones will be what I focus most on.)

Since my goals are to learn about sales and ask purposeful questions, this podcast will help me greatly in learning hands-on with people who are already in the industry. I will also have to learn how to think on my feet and continue conversations that may be losing momentum. Each podcast episode, I will have to truly seek to gain insight from the topics that were talked about so that I can then communicate them clearly in my blog posts on the subject. After all, the best way to learn is to teach!

3) A breakdown of what you plan to accomplish by the end of each week.

Week 1:

• Talk to several people who have done podcasts or interviews before and pick their brains for how to ask good questions, get off to a good start with a podcast, and learn how to put the podcast online. Done.
• Send out emails or reach out via social networking to connect with people in the sales field who would be willing to be on my podcast.
• Have my first episode recorded (Or at least scheduled). Having it recorded will, of course, depend on the availability of the people I am interviewing.
• Write at least one blog post about what I have learned that week. Whether I learned it through podcast interviewing or articles I read. Can be related to sales or podcasting.

Week 2:

• Record the second episode (and record the first if unable in week one).
• Write at least one blog post about what I have learned that week. Whether I learned it through podcast interviewing or articles I read. Can be related to sales or podcasting.
• Research various outlets for podcasts (iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, etc) and put the first episode online.

Week 3:

• Record third and fourth episodes.
• Put the second episode online.
• Write at least one blog post about what I have learned that week. Whether I learned it through podcast interviewing or articles I read. Can be related to sales or podcasting.

Week 4:

• Record fifth episode.
• Put the third episode online.
• Write a summary of everything that I actually learned and accomplished during my project and what my plans are concerning future endeavors for the project. I.e. will I continue doing the podcast, will I continue with the same subject matter for the podcast, will I look into other projects, etc.
• Although not part of this outline, I will plan to put episode four and five online in week five and six, respectively.

4) A 1-2 sentence description of what you anticipate your biggest challenge to be.

I anticipate that this will change as I actually get into the project, but I think that it will be the organizational aspect of everything. Sending emails out to people to ask them to be in my podcast, figuring out good questions to ask, getting the podcast episodes online, etc. I think once I am actually interviewing people, it will be nerve-racking, but it will also be incredibly fun and come easily.

5) A 1-2 sentence description of the most important asset or skill you bring to this project.

I think my biggest skill is simply just people skills. I have spent my entire life working and talking with people of all ages and demographics. I am truly excited to meet and talk to new people, and I am hoping that my excitement will carry over into each recording!

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I will be sure to keep you updated as to the progress with each episode and where I am in this outline each week. I want this to be 100% transparent. I know I’m going to have struggles going through this project and I don’t want to hide those and say everything went smoothly. How can I expect others to learn from my mistakes if I never show what my mistakes are?

I will strive to do the very best I can, and I can’t wait to see what the results of this project will look like in another month!