What Makes Me Different

I developed many skills over the years that enabled me to perform better in my sales career, and many of these skills transfer nicely to product design. Below are a few of those skills with an example of how that skill was used.

Team Collaboration

‍Working on mortgage loans for my clients, I would have to be in constant communication with the client, my manager for approvals, the loan processor, loan underwriter, and home appraiser. It took all of us collectively working together to get each loan across the finish line, and I would write anywhere from 20 - 50 mortgage loan applications per month.

Being Coachable

Being coachable is something that I pride myself in, and something that I am always striving to get better at. Seeking the advice of others that are in the position you want, or have experience in that field has been one of the most helpful things in my life. I remember asking one of my mortgage sales managers for advice on how to submit more loan applications, and using his advice I was able to double the amount of applications I put in every month by using a simple change in verbiage when speaking with my clients.

Negotiation / Persuasion

This is a skill that took some time to develop, and it is not limited to negotiating with clients, but also with other members of my team when I was fighting for something that my client wanted. To persuade others effectively, I always made sure I had my ideas backed up with facts to prove my case and accomplish whatever the goal was for that negotiation.

Customer Centric Mindset

This was learned before I even got into my sales career. I have always had the idea of putting the customer first and that was amplified when I worked at In-N-Out Burger for several years. In-N-Out has a sterling reputation for having some of the best customer service in the food industry, and the reason why is that they train their employees to understand what the customer expects. As my sales skills developed, I became hyper aware of what the customer was experiencing from their side of the sale. I wanted to know any and all pain points they could have at any point in the sales process so that I could do my best to walk them though that experience and mitigate that pain.

Time Management

Once you finish your training at a sales job, you are dropped into a seat and given the tools to succeed, but you need to learn how to use those tools efficiently to be effective at your job. In every job I have had, I create a process for getting my work done as efficiently as possible. This is learned by trial and error, as well as by learning from those around me that have a system in place already.

Let's Solve Problems Together

I have worked my fair share of jobs over the years from cooking great food at In N Out burger, to teaching swim lessons for kiddos and adults, to writing insurance policies and home mortgage loans. The common denominator among them all is that I have worked with lots of people, and that has always been my favorite part.

The more jobs I worked, the more I realized how much I enjoy working with people to solve problems. At In N Out those problems could be as simple working together to figure out how to get orders out faster, or in my mortgage career where I could be helping people solve financial problems that could benefit them for the rest of their life.

My Transition to Product Design

I used so many different systems in my sales career that served their primary function, but they had so many small things that could be improved to better my experience and allow me to do my job better. I would make suggestions to management as to how I thought our systems could be improved to better the salespeople's experience, and even made suggestions about how some of the customer interaction experiences could be improved. But my job was to sell product, not to make changes to it, so those suggestions were never taken seriously. Due to a combination of instability with sales income, and wanting a career where I could feel fulfilled and create value in the product that I worked on, I decided to make the change to product design.

In 2021, I left my sales career to work on pursuing a career in product design. I had already taught myself some of the Adobe Suite products in the past and had done some minor graphic design work for my own little projects, so I was not as concerned with learning the necessary software for design as I knew I could learn it quickly. My focus was going to be on making sure the I understood the core fundamental knowledge of user experience design, so that I could correctly apply that knowledge to creating truly user friendly interfaces.

I knew someone that had taken the General Assembly UXDI boot camp and had success with it, so I opted for the same path as I did not have the spare time to attend school while also be able to work enough hours to afford to live on my own. I worked in a factory for 6 months doing 60 - 70 hours a week in order to save up money to pay bills once I started the boot camp full time. In April of 2023 I completed the boot camp, completed my portfolio website, and began my job search. Because I had taught myself how to develop websites on Webflow in the process of creating this portfolio, I also started taking on freelance jobs as a Webflow developer.