mindset in the job search w/ jasmine vo

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auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

It's it's it's relatively easy to use. Um, if I can figure it out, I feel like anybody can figure it out. Yeah, I think this would be cool. I'd want to do something like this in the future. I think you should. I think everybody should. I think everybody should. I think uh I think more people need to do this stuff. Yeah. And just talking to people, learning their background, seeing their perspective on life. Yeah. Eye opening. Yeah. I mean, if you keep it consistent, it's it's it's like I tell people, you know, I've been doing this for five years now, right? And I was doing it every day for like I would say four years.

That's crazy. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And most of them were guests. And so, you know, you get to that point and you start to really kind of build this, you know, kind of networking community, which obviously I'm which I know I'm a fan of, you're a fan of like, and so I think it's just a it's just a great way to meet people. Um, and then, you know, share stories online. So, um, all right. Good morning everybody. Happy hump day. We made it. Happy Wednesday. uh excited for this episode. Um I was chatting with Jasmine backstage. Um and her story is great. So really can't wait to uh really share that.

Um and uh you know, Jasmine, I I I I I asked this question at the end of every show, but I started to do it now to kick it off. Are I know there's good coffee in the Dallas area. Are you a coffee fan or are you a tea girl? Like what like like what are we? I'm kind of weird because I just drink water for real. like like like like you don't do puts me to sleep. I do like tea to wind down the day. So drink tea. Okay. Try to get into matcha but just not my my wife's a big matcha girl. I there's like a few spots in Nashville that I actually do like one one one spot is a coffee spot in Nashville.

It closed down and I'm still upset about I'm still grieving. Um they their matcha drink tasted like the milk of Froot Loops. Oh, interesting. It was fantastic. Fantastic. I will say that for like good coffee, I think Escape 360 and um I think it's Mckini. It's along uh 121, but I go there fluffy pancakes, but my boyfriend gets the coffee. I'm a big fan of fluffy pancakes. Yeah, soule Japanese soule pancakes are my favorite dessert of all. That sounds great. That's sign me up. Sign me up. That's great. So So you're the first person You're the first person on that question that has said water.

So, that's a first. That's a first. Uh, good morning everybody. See everybody tuning in. Jeff, it's good to see you. Roxy, it's good to see you. Uh, yes, Jasmine is fantastic. Mark, it's good to see you. Ryan, Terron, it's good to see you. Heard a lot of great things about Jasmine. Jasmine, you're being circulated in the community. Look at that. Uh, Ramsey, it's good to see you. Uh, cereal milk. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. It's good. Um, her boyfriend is basically chef. Oh, sweet. Heck yeah. That's great. Uh, I'm coming over to y'all's house when I'm in Dallas. Um, all right. So, few things, housekeeping things before we dive in.

First off, please say, "Hey, would love to hear from you." Again, been doing the show, I was telling Jasmine backstage for 5 years at this point. Um, what I realize is that, you know, obviously the the guests are important. Um, don't get me wrong, that's why I have guests, but I think the chatter within the with within this live and the chatter after the live, I think, is incredibly important. Right? This is essentially a meetup is is really what I call it. This is a virtual meetup. It's it's a moderated meetup, but it's virtual. So, please say hey. I don't know if you're watching unless you don't say hey.

Um there are people in in in the Torque community that love to connect with people. Um I always tell people that connect with every guest I have, right? I mean, you know, the kind of the the mindset that me and Jason Torres have and Briana have with the Torque community is like we really want to kind of just like open up our our our network to you, right? So, connect with Jasmine afterwards. Tell it was good to see you on guidance counselor 2.0. Um and uh uh uh uh please do that. Um next thing uh AppRight, I'm a hero on the Appite team community. Go check them out.

Love them. Love that crew. I was actually messing Tessa yesterday about some things. Um so go check them out. Also, if you want to know everything we're doing in the Torque community, please check out torque.com community. Um really at the end of the day, all all of our chatter for the most part goes on in our Discord. We'd love to have you. It's very active. You know, I literally had my dear friend Kelly Von text me the other day. She goes, "It's crazy how active you guys are." Um, I I I kind of say our our Discord is is basically become a huge uh friend group chat.

So, would love to have you. Um, and then finally too, listen, uh, if if you uh want to know when I go live with guests, if you're like, "Hey, Taylor, there's a there's a lot of chatter out there. I don't know who to I don't know when you're going live." Like, just text me. I text that number every day. Um, so I will do that. Uh, so would love to have you a part of that. Uh, let's see here. some more comments on here. Ricardo, it's good to see you. Angus, good to see you. David, Chris, Nquille, we got the crew out today. Uh, y'all are uh the contact facility.

Yeah, 100%. Morning from Dallas. We got another DFW uh person tuning in. Devon, it's good to see you. Um, Roberto, it's great to see you as well. And Anthony, so Jasmine, you pulled you pulled a lot of people today. Yeah, don't mess up. Anyways, all right. So, let's get the people background. Basically, just just say what you told me backstage. So, quick background, how you started to where you're at now. Let's just kind of set the stage uh of of of you and then obviously, like I said, I'll ask you some questions. Yeah. Okay. So, basically started off same background as like most Asian people going to college for premed.

Um and then my during the summer of my first year, I wrote a line of code. Um and then that changed. What was the line of code for? Like it was C++ writing uh hello world to a file. You just you just ripped the band-aid off the coding and went C++ which is wild. Well, that's what they were teaching. So that's okay. Okay. Yeah. Didn't know anything before because I I didn't even know code existed or software engineering was a field. Like all I knew was premed and being Yeah, that's it. That's like all my parents drilled into me was lawyer and doctor. Yeah, I love it.

I love it. And so, uh, that I changed my major after that to CS. And, um, unfortunately during college, during COVID, we had some family financial situation. Couldn't finish college and so into real estate. Um, and I did a year of real estate and I really missed using that cognitive side of my brain. Like, you like real estate? That's hard. Real estate's really hard. It's mostly sales, which I didn't I thought it was I was more like, "Oh, yeah. I get to look at homes, show homes, help people find homes." But it's a lot of sales. It's a lot of Especially moving to Atlanta, being in a new city.

That's a lot of cold calls. Oh, so you were in Atlanta. You were Atlanta before. Okay. Okay. Yeah. My boyfriend was doing doctorate school at the time. So I just to like explore a new city because I was like I'm young. Why not? It just this is the time of my life to explore right now. Move to new city to pursue a new career that I thought that I was interested in. Um didn't turn out well and again like I just missed coding and using that analytical side of my brain. I didn't feel like I was fulfilled in that. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, looked up free resources online on how to code because financially, like didn't want to go back to college, was already, you know, paying off debt from tuition and stuff.

Yeah. So, I found 100 devs. I actually found a couple um free courses before that like free code camp and another one that I forgot but eventually like did 100 devs and three months later I got my first job in tech and love it. Um that was a pivotal moment for me because at that now I was making more than my parents combined. Yeah. And so, um, really just dove into my career, learning as much as I could in my first year. Kind of stopped networking, kind of stopped outside of work because I was just trying to be the best at my job. Um, and then my whole team got laid off uh, three days before I put a deposit on my home.

So, I was kind of like in in crunch mode, panic mode. Uh, reached out to my network on X or Twitter, and a couple big people retweeted my stuff, like people with big followings like Danny Thompson, James Quick, people that I've connected with over the years. Sure. Um, while I was in 100 devs, starting my journey and doing 100 days of code. Yeah. Yeah. That's what really like I guess like helped me connect with more people was daily 100 days of code. But um from there I got a lot of DMs, a lot of like job opportunities and I was interviewing. I had an offer, couple offers.

Um decided to go with the startup because I was really excited about the vision and just my startup founder talking to him was just very exciting. Um, unfortunately a startup ran out of funding, but that was another pivotal moment in my career because I learned so much being like the front-end engineering lead, leading a team of two, um, doing everything from the ground up, building the platform from zero to one, learning all the startup terminology as well. Um, doing the marketing, like hiring designers and just everything. That's awesome. Um and then yeah, the startup ran out of funding and that's when that's when I um really had to take a step back.

Yeah. And to ground myself. Yeah. At that point, I realized that I never took time to process the layoff. I just jumped into work a week later and um I felt like a failure. And this was hard for me to say. Yeah. felt like a failure because a startup failed because I got laid off. Like I never took the time to to process that and say these things. But I had to realize that I'm not the failure. Like the startup failed, but I didn't fail. This is just a transition in my life. Um for for growth and what I've realized over time is that the only thing in life that is constant is change.

Like if you look at nature, nature is always changing, going through seasons, evolving. And so we look at change with like a negative perspective, but it's actually just part of evolution and human evolution. Yeah. And um I got to really do the soulsearching after getting laid off, you know, had more time. Um and that's when I did 75 hard. I was reading every day, working out every day, going on walks in nature every day, and all these habits like really changed my life. And I everything that I did during 75 hard and I'm still doing it now. Maybe not to the extreme of like every single day.

Some days I give myself a little more grace, but I still do it pretty much every day. Wake up at 5:00 a.m., read, meditate, work out, walk, and then get my day started. And then um yeah, wind down for the day because it's also important to relax as much as as much as you work, you need to relax. So your body will be able to keep up with with you. So I love it. Well, now and I've been here for about six months now. It's awesome. Yeah, that's great. All right, so so lot to unpack over the next 20 minutes. So we'll do our best here.

I I I I think the first thing I I I want to get into is really you kind of pivoting into tech, right? And you joining a 100 devs. I mean, listen, I talk about community a lot. I mean, what did that community mean to you? Oh, it meant everything. I mean, when you're trying to learn online, you feel so alone because you're you are alone. Yeah. Yeah, when you have something like 100 devs where Leon at the time was, this was cohort two and he was still doing live classes. So like every Tuesday, Thursday, 7 to 9:00 p.m. he was online live with everyone and you're there with hundreds sometimes like thousands of people and it's just really big community that you can lean on for help if you get stuck and like be assigned homework.

So if you ever need questions with homework, there's people from the first cohort that are there to help you. Just people that are learning at the same time as you. That really helps like the commodery of the community. So yeah. What about what about the folks who like cuz I because so I want to kind of go into education here because you made a comment backstage that you don't think college is worth it, which I have my thoughts too. There's the college route, there's the boot camp route. Then there's like the self-paced route and I feel like 100 devs is a little bit between boot camp and self-paced.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I kind of it's kind of the vibe of that. What What would you recommend for folks who are getting into tech um around those options? That makes sense. Um I really would say like it depends on who you are. Like if you like structure and you you like you know going when you go to college you are surrounded by people like that you can lean on for help in person and if you're who needs that then that might be the route for you but if you're someone who's very like I don't want to say ambitious because like not saying going to college is not ambitious but sure very self self-driven like you can keep yourself on structure by yourself that I think like going the selfpaced boot camp route is very ideal because one save a lot of money but two like you can lean onto the community online you can you can try and meet up with people also in the community it's very big um so that's also an option but I I personally just believe that there are so many free resources online nowadays that yeah I believe that like it's necessary if you want to do it, like that's great.

And if you're going into something that's more nuanced or like AI or ML or, you know, topics like that, then you kind of do need to go to college. That's actually what I've been seeing uh a little bit. I I I do. So, when I went to All Things Open AI in Raleigh back in October of last year, a lot of folks who were speaking were heavy in the university space. So, I agree. And that's like the other thing is when you do go to college um you put yourself in an environment of really smart bright people, right and so you are who you surround yourself with and being environment is going to help you learn and excel and learn things that you didn't think were possible things not on the Yeah sense yeah it does it does I think too curious to hear your thoughts I mean I so I went to University of South Carolina and I was in their business school which they are known to have one of the better business schools um especially from an NBA perspective but I did not get my NBA but you know I I think one of the things I think you go to college in my mind outside of maybe the nuance of skill set of ML or AI or whatever I think you go because of the network the alumni network and I think one of the things I did not do is I didn't know how to network at the time.

Like realistically, like if I was back in college, if I were to do college over again, I would try to just start like messaging people that w I mean I guess I could do it now, but it's on a different point in my life, but I would start messaging and try to connect with everybody that went to South Carolina because I feel like that's that's the power of the alumni Yeah. side of things. And I and I just never took advantage of that. Oh, for sure. Yeah, that is like um Texas A&M is really big here and everyone wears like their Texas A&M rings and like Oh, yeah.

They just like there's this unspoken thing that if you see another alum with the ring like that's like an instant opportunity. Yeah. You can like go up to them and like check. I mean, I tell people like if you message me about South Carolina football, I will always talk about it. or even if you're even if you go to Texas A&M and you message me and just want to talk about SEC football and how we beat Texas A&M last year, like I'll talk about it, right? So, again, like I think that's important, but it's just like like um uh right here, my undergrad degree was great for networking, but I didn't know that at the time.

Yeah, same again. Like I just like really if I had it my way, I'd probably go back and just help college kids like set themselves up better. Um uh because I I did not Let me Let me Let me ask you this, Jasmine. I know time is flying by like it always does, which I want to get to kind of the the mindset, right? And I I want to give you a public shout out. Uh Jasmine's been documenting her 75 hard challenge. If you don't know what it is, what is it? Is it It's two workouts a day, one outside, a gallon of water. There's some reading in there, right?

Read 10 pages. Read 10 pages. Is there what what else? Um, take a picture of your progress. Take a picture of progress. Is that about it? It's basically the work. It's mainly the workout in the water. It's like the big thing. Yes. Yeah, that's the main thing. Yeah. So, so, so Torque, we're rolling out a 75 hard for the job search. And I want to publicly say it's because of Jasmine because I've been just I've just been so proud of her because it's not easy. It's not easy. Say what? Follow a diet. There you go. Follow a diet. Yay. That's another big one. Uh we won't have diets on the 75 hard challenge for it.

Don't worry. Um so talk about the mindset. Right. You said you thought you were a failure. Yeah. For a company you didn't even run. Right. Right. So it's like it wasn't it wasn't even your company. You still internalized that and felt that. I feel like people when they get laid off they they have this failure kind of mindset. Even though now that I'm in upper leadership, a lot of times it's really because of no one did anything wrong. It's just unfortunately because of budgets and yada yada. What are just some other words of encouragement you can tell folks who maybe have been laid off or maybe will get laid off in the next 90 days?

I I don't I don't pray that for anybody, but just what are some words of encouragement from a mindset perspective people need to have? Um like I said, like the only thing in life that is constant is change. And so if there is change like don't be afraid of that. Kind of take that time and as an opportunity to really lean into to growth and taking time to explore yourself. Um and something that I still remember that I listened on a podcast that you said was that um with new well I don't know if you quoted this exactly. Just just give me the credit. That's fine.

Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. If it sounds smart, it definitely wasn't me. So, go ahead. Like you talking about stepping into a new position of leadership and feeling like you're failing, like starting all over again. That imposter syndrome is always there. Um the quote is with new levels there are new devils. I don't think you said that. I did not say that. That's way too good for me. Yeah. Yeah. But um I just really took the time to listen to a lot of podcasts and really understand myself, be clear of who I am as a person. Um and that really helped me find my next role.

Yeah. I mentioned it before, but I really like leaned into manifestation. Um and I can kind of talk about the seven steps of it because I think there misconceptions where manifesting is just you say positive affirmation and then it's supposed to come true. that's not stationation is um there's seven steps. One is be clear in your vision like know who you want to be, what that person looks like, how does that person show up every single day? Because if you don't know who or what your vision is, how will you know when you get there? And um that's the first step. And then the second step is really hard.

It's removing fear and doubt and self-limiting beliefs about yourself or beliefs that you've, you know, grown over time that could be from childhood trauma or things from experiences that you've had. Um, really taking the time to lean into self-love and remove that fear and doubt. I love that. Step two, step three is aligning your behavior. So the law of attraction states that the energy that you put out into the world, you get back. Really need to become aligned with the behavior of the person that you want. For example, as someone this is what I did when I was trying to find my first job in tech.

I was like someone who works a 9 to5 in job or 9 to5 in tech is going to be working from 9 to5. So I took my time from 9 to5 to learn to network and just use that as like work time and put myself in that schedule before it even happened so that when it happened I was I love that. I love that. And then step four is overcome tests from the universe. There's always going to be people, things, experiences, obstacles that show up. Um, this is your time to lean into your faith muscle and really believe in yourself. Yeah. Have faith that it's going to work out and that you're going to overcome any tests that happened to you.

Just like with my layoff, like I just had to believe that this was an opportunity and everything in life happens for a reason. So whether it's a win or just a lesson that you learn along the way, everything happens for a reason. Um and then step five is embracing gratitude. Gratitude is so important because as as you, you know, get to your dream, you might want to like keep pushing forward. And that's where you can kind of like overwork yourself if you don't take that step to just really be mindful of like I'm so grateful that like I'm here and I should be present in the moment.

Um, putting 100% into the things that you're doing at the time that you're doing it. So, like for example, this podcast, like I'm putting 100% of myself into this moment and being mindful of like how I show up. Um, and then step six is turning envy into inspiration. I think I like that too. social media. There's, you know, so much online that you can find yourself comparing yourself to people or where people are at in their life, but you really just need to use that as inspiration to to see like that is where I could get one day. So, it's not like like um you know, I'm being jealous of that life.

Being jealous is actually a good thing because it shows you that that's something that you want. So usually when you're envious, it's because it's something that you want in your own life. So you can turn that into inspiration and surround yourself with more of those people. Yeah. So you can believe yourself to get to that point one day. Um and then the last step is trusting in the universe. I think we all want to control the narratives that happen in our lives. We want to control like I used to have a 10 10 year plan like mapped out. Yeah. Never gone according that's thrown out the window.

Yeah. And people like what your five year plan I was like I'm just trying to get to tomorrow if we're just being honest. Yeah. And so that's one thing that you know when I was doing my soul searching I realized is my plans have never worked out. Um, and what's more important is just being very present in the moment and aligning your behavior with, you know, your vision of where you want to go, but not being so stuck in like you have to get to this point by this point and if you don't, you're going to feel like a failure. So really just letting go and having full trust that you'll get to where you need to go at the time that you are ready for it.

I love that. I love that. Is there any of these stages because there's been a few people like Seth goes, I think I'm stuck on step two. Yeah. Is there any steps that you struggle with more than others? Um, I struggled with step two for a while actually when I was that transition period from my from the startup ending to now being at this job when I was doing all this soulsearching like removing the fear and the doubt was really really hard for me and that's when I started meditating every day um and one exercise that I read in in this book called manifestation by Roxy Nuosi uh she talks about like meditation is another thing that is very misconceived.

It's you think meditation you just sit there and you just don't think about anything for however long but meditation is more about being mindful and being present of how you're feeling and you can use it as a tool to likeize but you can also use it as a tool to remove fear and doubt and so what I would do is I would sit there and think of every limiting fear or belief as a cloud and with every breath like I the cloud disappears. And so I still do this on a regular basis when I do feel this way. Um which is, you know, I still feel it from time to time.

I'm still not perfect, but um I do think that in the past six months, my mindset has grown a lot. Um and so I struggle less with these steps. Yeah. And easier than they were for me back then. But yeah, it's it's a daily practice that's as as you progress in life, as you evolve in life, like with new levels comes new devils. And so, you're constantly going to be feeling like this. And that's normal. You just have to embrace it. I love it. I love it. All right. So, we're almost at time. That was great. I have a few rapid fire questions for you, but before we go rapid fire, any last words of encouragements?

Maybe some things that popped into your brain while while you were talking? Um, I would say just like do the hard thing. That's also one thing that I love that leaned into is like doing the hard thing because your your brain is not going to like it at first. That's just a natural feeling. It would be crazy to think that you'd feel confident doing something that you've never done before. Sure. Sure. just do the hard thing and you know one day maybe you'll like it, one day you won't you'll you'll have tried it. Yeah. So yeah, push life challenging yourself. Do the hard things. I love that.

All right, rapid fire here as we wrap up. And again, for those of you who watch this or or listen to this in the future when I drop on the podcast apps, please go connect with Jasmine. She's wonderful. She's wonderful. All right, rapid fire here. What's one tech tool app that you can't live without right now? Um, tech cursor for sure. Cursor. Cool. I love this. Awesome. Vibe coding all day. Um, granola. Cornella records your meetings and transcribes it. So you know if you listen to podcasts like you know it's good to just have it transcribe everything so you can look back on even though you can listen to it.

It's nice to have it. Absolutely. I love that. Uh I I I I use Amy for that. Um yeah but I use granola for a bit. That's great too. Um all right. Next question. What's the very very first job you ever had that you got paid for? Oh, this one's easy. I was a started off as a cashier at Papa John's and then I a week later like our team lead quit and so I became the team lead and it was really fun for leadership. Destined for leadership. At the time we could still flip pizzas in the air. You can't do it now because it's not sanitary, but we were doing that.

It's pretty fun. Yeah. Uh I hot take here. I think Papa John's still is is goated. I I love Papa John's. I think it's great. I'm actually a Domino's fan now. I think Yeah, Domino's is too. Domino's is too for me. Domino's, but also I'm gluten-free, so they hurt my tummy, but I'll still eat it there. Um all right, next question. Uh remote, hybrid, or back in the office? If if if I was your manager and I would say, "Hey, you can pick your schedule on what you want to do. What like what type of setup would you have weekly?" Um, my ideal setup is remote with like one inoff meeting a month.

One office meeting a month. Is it a full day or just for like a few hours? A full day. Yeah. I still like seeing people and interacting with people in person. It's just remote obviously gives you more flexibility and the ability to have more focus time, but I do love to connect with people. I love that. I love that. Next thing, what's a career mistake you're weirdly grateful for? Um, real estate for sure because yeah, I learned so much while doing real estate. I really had to push myself out of my comfort zone like door knocking and cold calling and yeah, it taught me a lot of soft skills and all of my weird jobs that I've had before like working at a call center or retail or working at a snow cone shop like all those taught me soft skills that I use today.

Yeah. That I I wouldn't have without. So I love it. I love it. Last uh uh second to last question. If you weren't in tech, what totally different career would you try? Uh this is hard because I have so many interests. Like I I love to travel. I love I would love to try woodworking. That's something that's woodworking. Yeah. Like building furniture. Um I love doing things with my hands and so I I love the thought of it. I don't know if I'll love it once I actually do it, but that's something that I will eventually try. Um, and I love cooking, too. I love to eat if that's a career.

It sounds like you just want to be an influencer if we're if we're being honest. Yeah. So, online personality. I love it. I love it. All right, last question as we wrap up here. Again, thanks for everybody tuning in. The comment section's been great today. Um, the show's called Guidance Counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, and college. And you've kind of said some stuff, so I'm going to challenge you to say something different. What would be your, if you could go back in time to Jasmine, young Jasmine, working at Papa John's, Jasmine? Yeah. What would be your biggest piece of career advice?

Um, I would say to find like a mentor or a mentor. Yes. because back then I was living in a very small town. Like my graduating class was about 200 and so I just didn't know of other career opportunities that were out there. I think if you know this was around back then and I actually knew about it, I could learn about the different careers that are out there that peak my interest sooner um than just following a path that my parents wanted me to be on. So to just like talk to more people, find a mentor to have guidance on the path that I want to pursue.

Yeah, I love that. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. And Luke, give us a shot. We launched, we soft launched our ambassador, our mentor program last week, so I'm pretty pumped. Um all right, cool. Again, Jasmine, thank you. You are wonderful. Um uh please go connect with her. Uh, and then, um, uh, to everybody who's still in the chat, Jason and I are doing resume LinkedIn reviews in our Discord at 1:30 central today. So, I'd love to see you there if uh, just to get some We already have some people picked out, but it's still a good time to to hang out with us and and see how to edit your resume.

So, see you there 1:30 1:30 p.m. Central, not AM. U,, but y'all have a great one. Jasmine, stay on so I can say bye to you backstage. It's the last guidance counselor 2.0 of the week. We'll see