Speaker 1: 0:25

Jay Salters, founder and Executive Director of Act Now Education. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being here on this lovely Saturday. We do this every Saturday. For those who is their first Saturday joining us, just a little bit about Act Now Education before we go into it. We are a nonprofit organization. 501. I'm currently active duty.

Speaker 1: 0:46

I've been in the military for 22 years, uh, in the navy. Shout out to the navy um, and this is what we do like. This is more of a passion project. I know, um, we have a pretty big audience. We have about 77 000 members within our group, uh on facebook, and then we have a bunch of different growing groups, um, off of facebook. But but our goal and our main objective is to provide you with free resources that allow you to either upskill, reskill, find opportunities and give you tools that you can actually execute on.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Now understand, our team is a very small team. It's about I don't want to say six, but probably about eight of us that are in the day-to-day operations, but most of the folks are all volunteering. No one gets paid to do this. We just want to be able to give back to the community. So please know, if you do reach out to us. It will take us some time to get back to you, especially me. If you reach out to me, understand that me sending you a message back the same day is not a reality, but we do our best to make sure that we use this as a touch point. So, any questions, anything that you have Saturday, every Saturday, we're here to do this, to provide you with that foundation. But outside of that it's very difficult to get a hold of me.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Just know that, because I'm trying to get resources and opportunities for the military community, we're going to go over some free resources today. I'm going to provide you with some links so that those who are interested in getting some certifications they can get that. Is that me or you hear that feedback? Okay, cool, and then we're going to go over. We have Burt Forrest on the line. We have Samaya on the line, so they're going to go over. You know a little bit about job opportunities. Samaya is going to go about what she does in terms of helping people understand a particularly new career path, and then we're going to do a quick Q&A, go over a slide deck and then answer any questions you may have. So if you have any questions about you know. Hey, jay, I'm transitioning, I'm trying to figure out what's my left and right, limits, the things that I should be doing.

Speaker 1: 2:48

We have more than enough expertise on the line to be able to talk about it and please know I am not the expert in everything Me, anwar and the rest of the team at Evolve. We are just here to provide information. So if you know something that we don't, please share that. The whole goal is to be able to share knowledge and information that helps everyone level up, and I know sometimes I'm not always the deliverer of that and I have no problems sharing the platform and that's what we do. So, without going to anything else, we will switch over to.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Actually, I've changed the order a little bit. I'm gonna go over. We're gonna do Vertforce, then we're gonna go into Chris McPhee and then we're gonna go into Sumeya and then we're going to go into um samaya and then uh, and then we'll go into, uh, the powerpoint deck. So job opportunities, going into learning a little bit more about pmp and getting prepared for pmp, our next rc, and then getting into um, uh, learning about a new career field possibly that may be beneficial to you, and then getting into our pitch deck. Cool, all right, let us know. Is this your first time joining? Put a one in the chat. If this is not your first time joining, put however many times you've joined us into the chat. We got a lot of new people. Someone put six. Shout out to that person. Awesome, I love it Four times. Appreciate it. That is dope. Looks like we have a poll going. There we go.

Speaker 2: 4:10

Yeah, I just shared a poll here on the screen. Go ahead and then share what applies to you, and then I'm going to share it in a second. Looks like a lot of people are interested in PMP and job opportunities. A lot of people are interested in PMP and job opportunities, so we have. You know, chris, I'm going to bestow a new nickname on you, man, based on your T-shirt. I'm going to call you the Pimp Daddy, okay, the PMP, okay, pimp Daddy, all right.

Speaker 2: 4:43

So here's a second here Actually, not everybody. Okay, jay, put me on the big screen. Yeah, all right, so here's the second here Actually not everybody.

Speaker 2: 4:52

Okay, jay, put me on the big screen, all right, my name is Anwar. For all of you guys, the first timers here, I'm an army guy and if I, you know, if I serve as anything, I just serve as a great example of how army and Navy guys can work together. Of course I have to. You know I'm an Army retiree. Jay is active duty Navy, so I always have to remind him. You know, and let everybody know. Of course Giovanni is going to do it wrong because he's Navy, but the correct doctrinal you know saying is go Army, beat Navy Giovanni and everybody else. All right, so drop a hole in the chat for me If you agree, all right, and let me share with you guys so everybody could know. Appreciate everybody, the first timers, welcome aboard. And if you're a repeat offender, we appreciate you and all the loyal guys are here, glad to have you here. We always share new things every weekend. Sometimes some things are repeated, all right, but then you know we're going to talk, you know, with the pimp daddy here about the certification and what you require for that, okay, and Sumeya also is going to be talking about how to be, you know, a good career opportunity. Some of you guys might not have considered or know much about customs brokerage and if you've been following the news lately you can understand. I'm sure some of you guys might have heard for the first time about tariffs and for a second knew that it impacts you as a consumer and that's a good field job. But in the first place, we're going to welcome Kimber Hill from Workforce to talk about her company and some of the jobs that she offers or has in store.

Speaker 2: 6:42

One thing I have to share with everybody here just like Jay said, we're a small team. We're not one of the big players. Although we have our own weight in the community. We don't have a dedicated executive assistant or business development person to send out an email afterwards with all the links, all the information, everything. So if you see something, open up as many tabs as you want to in your browser hashtag squirrel syndrome okay, and go on about that after that and connect with people. All right, you can drop your LinkedIn in here. And also, jay has another post on LinkedIn for everybody else to connect on it. All right. Grow your network and connect with Kimber and her team. If you're looking for jobs, especially if you're a military spouse. All right, and then please take advantage of this session. This is for you All. Right Over to you, kimber and Jay Go army, anwar.

Speaker 6: 7:45

Thank you so much, anwar. Hi everybody, and to our repeat offenders we've probably met before, but if you're new today, it's lovely to meet you. My name is Kimber Hill and I'm actually the CEO of VertForce, and my team and I are. We love AgNow education. We are big supporters of what happens in Jay's groups. We very much consider ourselves a sister organization to what they're doing. Vertforce is a staffing company, a talent services provider. Our trademark slogan is military spouse talent, but we also serve service members and transitioning service members. So if you're listening, listen up for yourself. Also, listen for your spouse, if you have a significant other. I'm an active duty Navy spouse going on 10 years and I created this company to help military spouses find remote opportunities. But we are certainly a growing organization and I want to take just a moment to share my screen, if that's okay, so we can all be on the same page. The first thing that I want to tell you is we are a boutique sourcing company.

Speaker 6: 8:58

Hopefully this is the right screen, yeah, so every job that you will find on my job board, which is jobsvertforceus, is going to be, as a rule of thumb, handpicked for the military community. You are not going to find 400,000 jobs here. You're going to find anywhere from 20 to 30 at a time and they have been proven to have alignment with the military demographic. All of my employee employment partnerships military demographic alignment. This is jobsvertforceus and I invite you to head over and create your membership so that you can browse these. We use terms like no quiet office required, aka you can have a kid at home to do this. It's not going to interfere with your workday. We use terms like 1099-W-2. We try to get the salary right up front for you so you can see what opportunities are here. And this week and this month we are highlighting our clinical and non-clinical roles with CBS Health, which are remote, primarily remote, and some are in office. If you are clinical or you have a clinical degree of some form, I would love for you to come, click this link and fill out the clinical interest form with CBS Health. We've developed a special relationship with them and we're working to get our candidates reviewed. The CBSS health positions also have a remote utilization management, nurse consultant and we also have remote positions that are not clinical, like customer service, innovation and technology jobs, pharmacy jobs, corporate jobs. And then the on-site positions are going to be warehouse, fulfillment, transportation and in-store positions. And if you want to apply for CVS Health, you want to browse these. These links are actually going to take you to the CVS job board that they've curated for VertForce and our military-affiliated candidates. You will browse there, you will apply. Then you will come back to me and tell me which requisition you applied for. Give me your requisition number and the email you used to apply. We will make sure that CVS reviews your application.

Speaker 6: 11:20

Another relationship that I want to highlight for you this month is Travelers Insurance. At the very bottom of my board this month is Travelers Insurance. At the very bottom of my board, there is a position here that says Travelers Insurance multiple positions available. This will take you to every remote position that you can apply for at Travelers Insurance. It will take you to what they classify as national, and these are going to be jobs that can be done from anywhere in the United States or they're going to be flexible. If you apply to any of these positions at Travelers Insurance some of them that I think are great for veterans are like the Catastrophe Claims Manager, the Field Insurance Adjuster. They're going to start in the 70s and they're going to go up to the 1-110s as far as pay and compensation goes, but they also have the greatest benefits of all time. We call them the GOAT. I have a YouTube video on travelers being the GOAT of benefits. They have pension one of the only remaining companies that are going to offer you a pension benefits from day one, pto from day one. They're an amazing company to work for. So one of the things that's great about my job board is, if you click this and you want to read about it, here's my YouTube video where I'm talking about it, so you don't even have to leave. You can just learn while you're reading and move right along.

Speaker 6: 12:38

Okay, so I would really like to get to know you. What I am going to do is drop my link to the job board in the chat. I'm also going to drop a link to this post. Let's see, I have a post somewhere here. I must have accidentally passed it, but I have a networking post on my LinkedIn and I'm going to leave that in the chat for you as well so that you can come into the networking post. I would love for you to drop who you are in the networking post and try to connect with more than one other person who's on that thread to support one another and then, when you're done with that, send me a DM. I'd love to have a copy of your resume or just a hello. How you doing, what are you looking for? You never know if I'm going to have something in the direction that I can point you that's going to help you. Just a couple of other things and then I will yield my time back to Anwar. I appreciate you guys giving us an opportunity to share these opportunities. So this week my emphasis was CBS Health and Travelers Insurance. I also want to show you on our site if you click events on our site, if you click events, we do all of our education live, much like what Jay is doing here today.

Speaker 6: 13:53

Right now we are in the middle of a tax boot camp and if you've ever thought about creating a remote side hustle for yourself, or even potentially a remote career, I would like to be your little Jiminy Cricket right now to say consider tax if you think that you're good at numbers and you think that you could handle that, and if you want to learn more about that, we can slate you for the next boot camp that we're doing later this year, or potentially there might be an opportunity to get you caught up to participate in this one. But I could talk for an hour about why tax and finance is a great remote career to pursue, but I'm not going to. I just want you to see that we're doing that now. We're in the middle of it. The next thing we have coming up is LinkedIn Bootcamp. We're doing a three-series, three-meeting course, excuse me. We're going to meet once for three hours and in that three hour period we're going to educate you on how to use and build LinkedIn to attract recruiters to you. Then we're going to meet a week later to review your progress on your profile and then we're going to meet, finally, a third time in the third week to wrap up any pending questions that you have.

Speaker 6: 15:11

If you want to be a part of our LinkedIn bootcamp, you will come to this link, click it, rsvp. We start in like 10 days, so I would love to see you there. It will all be recorded so you can catch the replay, but you do have to be RSVP to be sent the replay. The replay, but you do have to be RSVP to be sent the replay. And let me see what else I have. That's Monarch to Cocoon. If you are a military parent, if you have kids and you're, I think this is actually for moms. Monarch to Cocoon they are doing a military mom collective for military spouses who have children, teaching them about resources that they have, and we are helping them promote that. And then VA Loan Boot Camp we are doing this is a part of. I think this will be our second installment in three series where we are teaching you about the VA loan benefit, how to use it if you are interested in investing in real estate, and that is May 13th. It'll be a live Zoom meeting. You are welcome to RSVP for that as well. I believe that's everything that I have for you.

Speaker 6: 16:14

If you have questions about our jobs or any of our events, I will answer you personally on LinkedIn. I will admit I'm about 10 days behind on my LinkedIn messages, so if you messaged me last week and I haven't gotten back to you yet, I apologize. To be candid with you, we've been so bogged down with our CBS partnership and kind of working through the cogs of getting that smooth. It's just slowed us down by about two weeks. So if you've reached out to me and I haven't gotten back to you yet, I promise I will.

Speaker 6: 16:52

And what I am doing to those people who reach out to me on LinkedIn is I'm just answering any questions you have and trying to point you in the direction of the right resources that you're looking for.

Speaker 6: 17:05

If I don't have jobs, I can tell you where to go to look for them. If you're looking for something, if I don't have jobs, I can tell you where to go to look for them. If you're looking for something specific, and if I can get you in with CVS, if I can get you in with travelers a hundred percent I will. Um, and if there's any education that you would like to attend, would love to do that. So in the chat now I'm going to drop just a couple of links, uh, the LinkedIn post for you to network on, and that is going to be sent. Now you can go drop a comment there and you are welcome to also send me a DM with who you are. I would love to get to know you and then I will put in our job board as well. Does anyone have questions like right off the bat that I can answer?

Speaker 2: 18:00

There was a DM here.

Speaker 6: 18:01

Basically how quick or how fast your CVS jobs are looking to hire people. Cvs is unique in that they are, in that they are. Their requisitions come up quickly. Everybody wants to work for CBS because they have all these incredible remote roles, so your best bet to get in with them is to apply immediately and to set up alerts. But also, when you're applying, you must select Vertforce as how you heard about the organization and then report back to us that you applied using our name, because then not only can we say, hey, cvs, we know 1,000 people applied to this position, but we know that you care about the military community and it's important to you to ensure that all military-aff, military affiliated resumes get reviewed. Go look at Hunter Smith's requisition number that he sent on April 12th. He applied for this position right? Um, I can't guarantee you a job. You know that's going to come to you on your own merit but I can guarantee that I'll get your application looked at by a recruiter.

Speaker 2: 19:10

And Scott says can his kid qualify for job? He's 25. So do you guys support military dependents? Or just the spouses.

Speaker 6: 19:20

Yeah, and I think our Intuit program is a great program to consider for dependents. We're actively working on trying to expand recruitment for the tax space. You guys, there are not. I've been doing this for 10 years and so I've learned trends, of what markets are understaffed and where we have a talent need in the economy. There are a lot of niches for talent needs, but one that's very severely overlooked is tax and finance and CPAs. So if you're thinking about what is something that's going to make me so competitive that people literally fight over me and recruiters are literally jabbing each other in the ribs to get to my resume so that they can get me in front of the employer, go into tax, go be a CPA, go get your accounting degree. You'll never not be employed.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Thank you, kimber. I think there are a few more questions in the chat. If you don't mind touching with them. We're going to switch gears real fast, do a little quick commercial breaks and then going into Chris, was it? What'd you call him? The pimp, you know? Bmp daddy, all right.

Speaker 2: 20:41

I don't know if I can call another man.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Can't say the word daddy in another man's terminology, but you knowmp daddy. All right, I don't know if I can call another man. Can't say the word daddy in another man's terminology, but you know, shout out to chris, I got you, brother. All right, let me um, I'm gonna show you a little bit stuff that we're working on. I actually got a huge, huge announcement, but, yeah, we'll cover down on this real fast, all right, if you guys can see, yes they bring it, okay, cool.

Speaker 1: 21:11

so, um, obviously you know we focused on free resources to be able to provide you that, um information, um this hire summit. I'm telling you I'm working on something ridiculous. Next year. If, for those who were able to attend our hiring fair this time around, actually you know what? I'm not going to talk about it, I'm just going to show you, just show you, show you so you guys get an idea. We can buy it. It's also like cash. Very good, you know there's opportunities for scholarships, for certifications.

Speaker 8: 22:15

I mean, there's everything that you would need as someone transitioning out of the military is here right now and free for everyone. You have some of the best companies, from CACI to Amazon to GDIT. These companies are huge, they have a lot of opportunities and they're CACI to Amazon to GDIT. These companies are huge, they have a lot of opportunities and they're willing to talk to us, which is really beneficial as well.

Speaker 9: 22:34

I would definitely recommend this event to other people in the community in IT project management education.

Speaker 10: 22:40

Nothing short of awesome. There's a lot of opportunity to have your resume reviewed, get headshots, meet employers, talk with recruiters and learn about the hiring process.

Speaker 11: 22:54

I love the Service to Success hiring there. It is an amazing event. We've had nonstop candidates come out to us and we can't wait to connect with them after the event.

Speaker 3: 23:02

Our agency is located near here, so this was a great opportunity to be able to come out and contribute to service to success.

Speaker 8: 23:08

Military veterans. We get really great resilience, a lot of really good technical expertise. I think would be great employees for us.

Speaker 11: 23:18

It's been great. It's been an easy flow. The quality of candidates have been stellar. It's up to you.

Speaker 12: 23:27

You can make a difference.

Speaker 13: 23:28

Thank all the employers that are here because they're definitely the ones that make a difference in getting you hired.

Speaker 1: 23:37

Even though that was kind of a little choppy. What I want to say to that is a lot of people got free certifications at that hiring fair. A lot of people got benefits at that hiring fair, and so this next year we are planning to go all out and I don't want to give away too much. Just know that it's not going to be like anything anyone has ever experienced before in terms of being able to have resources and employers all under the same building. We're going to make sure that if you come through the door, there is something that you get out of it and something that's beneficial and it's free, and so there's no cost to it, no cost associated with it. We did it in Maryland this year Well, last week or a week or two weeks ago and we're going to do it again next year on April, and so if you're interested in being a part of that or interested in jumping into that, here is what I would like you to do, and we'll keep it really simple and short Join this group. This is going to be a WhatsApp group and I'm just going to get people in here now, so, and then I'll talk about the announcements as they roll out, and then that way you can stay in loop of it. If you're not sure if you want to go, that's perfectly fine. But this is for people that definitely know that they want to go. And I'm talking about like getting you certifications, connecting you to employers, helping you put job applications in at that time, even if you're not looking for a job like the resources that we're providing to help you upskill is going to be ridiculous, and I'm putting a lot of pressure on all my connects.

Speaker 1: 25:15

We're expected to have that event there. We had about like 500 people, so it's supposed to be like four times bigger than that. So we already got like some things in motion and, like I said, I'm really excited. Just, I'm really excited. It's going to be unbelievable for people to be able to experience, but we really want to be able to bring something to you that you're going to get value. We had a lot of people driving in from different states and we had a lot of people flying in from different states just for that one, and so that just made me realize that, with that amount of people and we only did like marketing for maybe about three months I mean sorry, three months, three weeks and we got like close to 500 people into the space. So I worked with Live and said we need a bigger space and we need more resources. And people are rogering up and so just know, put me to the test. It's going to be crazy. I'm super, I can't. Yeah, I can't wait.

Speaker 2: 26:12

So with that being said, if you're interested, quick thing uh, jay, um, so it's going to be where the location it's going to be in maryland again.

Speaker 1: 26:21

It's going to be in maryland again, so it'll be next to in hanover okay so and then just also a quick question for the qr code.

Speaker 2: 26:29

It sends you to that video that you just played, not that whatsapp group no, it does okay.

Speaker 1: 26:35

All right, one second, let me get you that I might have, I might have fat fingered it. So we'll figure it out but I'll put the link in here so that you guys can grab it. But, like I said, if if you are definitely interested in it is, this is game time um, yeah, all right, couple of dms all right.

Speaker 2: 26:54

So again, guys, for something here. I just want to share something to just feedback here. Um, he said next april, okay, maybe a couple of you guys said I need the job now. Okay, yeah, but maybe just put that in your mind and long-term project work on yourself, upskill in something. Okay, I understand we empathize. I we cannot all, just like kimberl said, we cannot find you a job right now. It's about your own merit. Maybe you need something right now to tie you over. But those are just plans for the future. That, hey, you're looking forward to this job, fair with all these employers, and maybe it starts upskilling for whatever or improving your life all right, but hold on.

Speaker 1: 27:40

If they but let them know, and if they stay on the call, what what they're going to get, they're going to get access to how many jobs.

Speaker 2: 27:47

Yeah, 4 million jobs plus, you know, but in any case so again.

Speaker 1: 27:51

We got resources for you folks. We got resources.

Speaker 2: 27:53

One other thing here for other people just wanted to. You know he made me remember this resource. How many people drop a one in the chat? If you have an MBA, now. If you have an MBA or completing an MBA by the summer, all right. Now. If you have an MBA or completing an MBA by the summer, all right. You know, hopefully from a top 50 school, not, and don't beat me up hopefully not from University of Phoenix or something like that. Okay, or Australia or some okay. So there's this other opportunity here. All right, it's, I'm going to drop the link in the chat NBAVeteranscom. They have an upcoming career conference in Atlanta in October 17. Click on the link and you see the employer, the recruiting companies from 2024. All right, all these companies here. So put that on your calendar, all right. And Teresa, for example, yeah, if you finish up in you know, 26, maybe go there If you are able to drive to Atlanta or fly or whatever like this and connect with people. It's about also growing your network. Okay, growing your network.

Speaker 1: 29:11

Yeah, and then for those who I'll share the link, I'm sharing the link in the WhatsApp. I mean, I'm sharing the WhatsApp group in the chat right now. So, if you want to join for the next year's event, but please know that we so Service to Success brand does hiring fairs, so we have a hiring fair coming up in May. So we have one in May and August and in November, and then this is going to be like the bigger event that we do overall, like the year wide event where I'm pulling out like all the stops, and so we're also, for those who are not aware, we for our accesses well, show you with you know career compass, how to get access to roles, and then you know, tailor, make your resume to specific roles, and then we give you the ability we're going to give you like 4,000 jobs, 4 million jobs, to get access to. So, for those who are looking for jobs, either or right it's we're going to give you the resources you need. But here's one thing to keep in mind how many people just think about it how many people were at work in December and knew that they were getting laid off in February? I'm pretty sure a lot of those folks that you know were federal employees that thought that they, you know, have a long-lasting opportunity, did not know that they would have to dust off their resume. My co-workers to include, right, they was like they were told that you dust off your resume because you're most likely going to have to look for opportunities.

Speaker 1: 30:39

It's always good to have a plan. Doesn't matter if you have something lined up. It always is good to have in a plan. So we're going to give you some resources to help do that. Um, join the group. So here's the whatsapp group. I put it in the chat. So if you want to join that, please do so and then, like I said, I'll keep you in touch with what we're doing and how we got things going now and I'll make announcements in there so that you will be able to to be able to track. But that's the. That's the group link.

Speaker 11: 31:13

Go ahead.

Speaker 2: 31:17

Give it time. It just got dropped. Right now, okay.

Speaker 1: 31:25

Okay, yeah, and make sure you just, you, just, if you can, if, for those who just like that, uh, that, put like a emoji under it so people can track it, it'd be easier for people to find it, um, if you already found and clicked on it, that way people can see it, because I know a lot of people are just typing stuff in there. But we do this stuff to help you, right? We do this stuff to help the community, right? We do this stuff to help the community, and that's really what it is, and that's exactly what Chris is all here for. So, without any further ado, the man, the myth, the legend One thing, if you don't mind me.

Speaker 1: 31:51

How are you going to stop my intro to Chris?

Speaker 2: 31:53

I know Before that, sorry, one second. It's an army thing. I'm the conciliator here. I'm the conciliator here. If you join this whatsapp group or anything like this, please maintain your military bearing. Okay, it goes without saying. I just needed to say that, okay go ahead the man the legend.

Speaker 1: 32:15

The legend, you know the second best service out there. No, sir chris is. Chris has been a good friend of mine and he's been supportive the whole time and he's helped more people get the PNP through. You know he sure will. He'll tell you his story, his background, but he has some information to put out. We work with him to put out the IRC. He's part of the Act Now team and we're thankful to have somebody that really cares enough to be able to do what he does. He doesn't necessarily have to do it at all, actually, but he's dead-centered and focused on it. Obviously he's a former Green Beret, so you know how they are, the mission in front of them. They're getting it done. If you want to learn from a phenomenal person, Chris is your go-to person. Chris.

Speaker 13: 33:01

Thanks, man. Wow, wow. The intro is a day, man. You guys are on one. I hope everybody can hear me. Give me a thumbs up, jay, if you can hear me. Make sure I'm live. All right, cool Sounds like. Am I good to go on volume?

Speaker 1: 33:15

You're good to go, yes.

Speaker 13: 33:16

Yes, yes, so no, welcome everybody to the Saturday Rundown. I'm Chris McPhee. I'm one of the volunteers here at ACT NOW and my goal, my task here and my contribution to the veteran community is helping you all obtain your PNP certification. And before I start, I'm going to drop little uh note for you in the chat. So if you would just hold off for a second for chatting and i'ma drop this in there and what you will see is basically a little short outline of what I'm going to talk about, there's some links in there that I'm going to mention and then some links in there for questions if you have questions, and how to get a hold of me and the best way for us to connect. So start from the top. This is three easy steps to help you kick off your PMP exam journey.

Speaker 13: 34:14

I just want to say I've been doing helping veterans for the last, almost the last decade, helping veterans for the last, almost the last decade. I'm almost there at 10 years. I retired in 2015, obtained my certification in 2017 and saw there was a need within the government space to help contract companies acquire certified project management, so that kicked off my consultant career. I consult with companies. I met with Jay and I was like hey, jay, you know we can offer this to the veteran community. I've talked to other military bases. You know I'm retired army, so a lot of folks go through OTO and they get in there to get all the resources and and they are still having trouble understanding the information. So that's what I do I help you use your military mindset and the things you have learned as far as planning and getting things done. We call them missions, but in the civilian world they call them projects, right, so that's one way to transfer what you have done in your military service to help you start speaking that project management civilian lexicon. So the first thing you need to do which a lot of people go out and try to search everywhere is just determine your eligibility.

Speaker 13: 35:34

The best piece of information I can recommend for you to read is the PMI exam content outline. I have a link right there. If you click to it, it'd go there, download it and read it. It's only like 20 pages. Take some time to educate yourself on what it is you're trying to pursue, what are the requirements and what's the process of you actually submitting your application to be able to take this exam. So the contact online not only tells you that, but it also gives you some insight to what's actually on the exam and to help you craft your study path, figure out what topics you need to focus on, and I say that's the best piece of information you need to help you.

Speaker 13: 36:22

Ok, the second one step that you need to focus on is submitting your application, and why do I want you to do this right now? If you want to be a part of the IRC and this is where this is leading to you need to have your application already submitted. All right, we're going to help everybody, but right now, we need to help those folks who are ready to go right now, those who have taken the PMP exam and they probably failed it and they need some help to help them recalibrate and move forward, which, in the last 30 days, I've helped three veterans who have called me with one-on-ones hey, chris, I failed the exam. What do I need to do? We recalibrate it, redirect, and they passed all right. So that's my goal is to help you get this certification and do not waste your time running all over the place trying to get this resource, trying to get that resource, getting you focused on your goal and towards actually obtaining your PMP certification exam. So that's the second thing is getting your application submitted.

Speaker 13: 37:37

Document your work experience you need a Word document. You experience you need a word document. You don't need a fancy chart or nothing like that. Once you have that all documented, you can just copy and paste that right into the application. The application is really easy with PMI's dot org website. And the last thing is if you do the first two, then you'll be ready to register for the IRC.

Speaker 13: 38:02

Now we've upped the bar. Before we would just say, hey, if you have 35 hours, come on in. But what we have learned as some folks get in to this intensive review course hence the name intensive review meaning it's a review to help you refine what you know about the project management framework and get ready to test within one or two weeks after you take this IRC. At the end of the IRC we have a 90 question exam. That's two hours. It's a simulated exam and if you pass that or score high enough 70 or more then we would recommend that you test and you will probably we. We issued 10 vouchers in the last class, right, so we're only issuing vouchers to personnel that have to have shown that they are ready, they have done the work and and the the numbers show that they're ready to take the exam and pass it. So we're not just giving out vouchers to folks who just want them. We want to give them to people who will take the voucher and test and pass that are ready. You out of that paralysis by analysis mindset and start taking action to pursue your and obtain your PMP certification.

Speaker 13: 39:31

So here's some bonus items. Study guides is always a question. Which study guides should I get? Chris, you click that link in the bonus section. Those are my top three, in which the fourth one is the PMBOK guide. So you have the PMBOK guide and whatever one of the top three study guides that you want to purchase, that will be your study material. Okay, you pick any one of those three that I recommend. You're going to be good to go with a pinball guide. That's all the information you need to prepare for this exam.

Speaker 13: 40:07

Second of all, if you don't have 35 hours of training, I'm not able to provide that training at a time because I work full time for the Department of State. I'm an instructor there. There is a link to Udemy there. There's a link to udemy. Uh, andrew ramdial, his course on udemy is very popular. I co-signed for it. It's a good course. The price actually went up. It's 124 right now but if you need 35 hours of training, project management education, that's a resource for you.

Speaker 13: 40:39

And I'm going to close really quick for your questions. I see some things. Some people are already talking about Andrew in the chat study hall. We did this before the last IRC. I'm gonna open it up again, so there's a link to a form. Fill it out. There's about 10 questions if you're interested in a study hall and starting the process early, before we get into IRC in June 4th through the 28th is when we're planning the next one. So on here I see there's about 26 of you that are interested in the PMP, so I should see at least those 26 folks to sign up, connect with me on LinkedIn and then also, if you want to talk to me one-on-one, just for the community here right now, there's usually a cost for this, but I'm offering you a free one-on-one coaching session there, so get them while they last and I hope I covered everything. Any questions?

Speaker 2: 41:46

Yes, Chris. I have one question, if you can hear me Go for it, Do you do just PMP?

Speaker 13: 41:51

or CAPM as well, just PMP, ok, thank you.

Speaker 3: 42:04

I have a question.

Speaker 13: 42:08

Chris when is your next IRC? The next IRC I failed to mention because I looked at my notes here the next IRC will be starting in June 4th through the 28th 2025. 28th 2025,. We hold two sessions one on Wednesdays from 6 to that's a little bit long, but actually 6 to 8 pm, not 9, 6 to 8 pm and then on Saturdays from 12 to 1 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Speaker 2: 42:39

Okay. So for people who want to sign up, eventually you'll come on board before that and eventually share the links and things like that for them to sign up. But again, as he mentioned, before you sign up, don't assume that you're going to come here to his IRC and start learning from scratch. You should already have completed some type of course in project management, hopefully an accredited one, like Andrew Ramdayal or Joseph Phillips or, I guess, david Muhammad. He shared another instructor. In any case, go with what you feel, or learn the material and him with. Chris is going to be more of an intensive review, as you mentioned. The keywords in there keep you focused, calibrated, on passing the test.

Speaker 13: 43:32

Right, chris, yes, yes, and I'm reading Andrew. Who's David? Who's David? Muhammad? He's been putting comments in here. I just wanna see who he is. Okay, so, kapim, let me address that. If you don't have the experience, it's the best thing for you, but if you have the experience, take the time and study for the PMP. If you go and look at the job descriptions, they're not asking, hey, we need somebody with a CAPM, right, this is certified project manager. So CAPM is great for those people who have probably, you know, don't have an advanced degree like a master's or a bachelor's, and they have very little bit of a project management experience. So if you're just starting out, I would suggest that is the way for you. But if you have your degree, work and you have some experience in project management, buckle down and study and go for your PMP, right.

Speaker 2: 44:36

Daniel, you have a question, Daniel you have a question?

Speaker 7: 44:41

Go ahead, daniel. Yes, yes, hello everybody. So I have a master's degree and I signed up with O2O, starting in a couple of weeks, for a PMP.

Speaker 1: 44:54

FYI O2O is on a six-month wait for those who are trying to sign up for O2O. But go ahead, daniel.

Speaker 7: 45:02

Yeah, and so I'm just I'm doing it because I always want to learn new things, but I'm really looking more into, like, entrepreneurship and real estate investment. Am I doing even though I still want to do it and learn it? Am I doing it kind of in vain if I want to be an entrepreneur and business owner? Thanks for your time.

Speaker 13: 45:25

Yeah, yeah, daniel, I would say that's up to you. I hear what you're saying. Hey, I want to be an entrepreneur and go into real estate with project management. It would be something for me to have and and overall, it's good knowledge if you want to take a course and learn about it. And one thing I would say project management is not specific to any industry. So all of you folks in here who in cyber, if you're in nursing, if you're in construction, project management is everywhere. All right, project management is.

Speaker 13: 46:00

So I would what I have learned, why I like and I'm so passionate about the framework, because it gives you a ground to work from, from planning and getting things done, no matter what industry you're in.

Speaker 13: 46:19

So if you understand and you grasp that framework and you lock it into your brain, then you could go into any room and plan anything from start to finish. I guarantee you you'll go into any room. Those of you who spent some time in the military and you're a senior NCO or officer in special forces we're known to be as great planners. From day one we're in our head is beat into the military decision making planning process, right. So if you familiar with that, it's a long drawn out process. That's what the pmp framework is a long drawn out process to managing projects. But once you learn it, you know how to plan it, because there's a lot of people out there. We've seen them in our workspace. They're not really good planners, right. So that's what you would be bringing to the table in any industry, and not just IT, not just in nursing, not just in business, but project management is everywhere.

Speaker 10: 47:19

I mean it's up to you.

Speaker 1: 47:23

And Daniel, just Daniel, please message me and just say that line that you said. Say I'm interested in real estate and entrepreneurship and project management and I will connect you with somebody in my network that is known for that, those things. In LinkedIn or. Linkedin On.

Speaker 13: 47:42

LinkedInin I put it in the chat yeah, jay has somebody will do is that elizabeth, I'll take a couple more yes I don't want to burn up the time and go for it, elizabeth hi.

Speaker 9: 47:54

So I have a question. So I definitely am interested in project management. Um, I have an mba. I took the Google project management course from Google. Now my issue is finding opportunities to manage projects so that I can have those hours to qualify for the PMI. Do you have any suggestions for that for?

Speaker 13: 48:18

that If you're looking for ways to get some time, you can. One place you can go is PMIorg. You don't need to sign up for a membership, but they have a volunteer board there. So there's a chapter in each. There's a chapter in each city. Where are you located?

Speaker 13: 48:42

I'm located in New York so there should be a PMI chapter there in New York. Find that chapter. They're always doing stuff. They have a PMI, has a volunteer job board, so that's one option. You know your local church, any communities within, any organizations within your communities that are project based, so you can go and get hours there to help you get your project management work experience. Ok, are you a prior veteran military spouse? Veteran Veteran which service?

Speaker 9: 49:24

prior veteran military spouse which you're um veteran veteran which which which service um in the army. But it was actually so. I always kind of feel a little bad coming on veteran boards because it was a brief stint, because I got hurt during basic, but I mean, nonetheless, I'm still a veteran, you know, so I qualify for these things and yeah, so I didn't have like the opportunity to have like any like leadership roles in the military to use that I understand, I understand.

Speaker 13: 49:47

Okay, yeah, those those are. Those would be some of my best recommendations for, especially here in New York. And then you know, sometimes you know, look for entry level position. You know for that entry level position somewhere with a company and that'll be a good way to get some experience. Okay, great, thank you so much. You're welcome. Anybody else, jay, I think I'm here. Yeah, I think that's it.

Speaker 11: 50:19

I have a question.

Speaker 13: 50:20

I have a question okay, I hear one coming up, jamar, I think they stopped yeah, go ahead, jamar.

Speaker 2: 50:30

I thought it was just a hot mic. I'm muted, but if you have a question, go ahead yeah, you said a question, cool.

Speaker 13: 50:42

Well, hey everybody, I will be back here. Um, like I said, if you need to get a hold of me, linkedin messenger is the best place and if you have any questions, um, I can iron those out. So we could be here all day I talked about this for hannah.

Speaker 2: 50:58

For hannah, she said if there's any skill, bridge or csp with project management, it depends on the company.

Speaker 2: 51:06

Yeah, there should be opportunities out there for you, depending on your transition timeline and things like that. I don't know what service you're in, hannah, what's your rank and things like that? So Army, what's your rank and things like that? So army. But what's your rank? I think there was like a recent memo that was published from army, reducing the time, so e6, I think. Now they give you only what? 90 days, I think 90 days or 120 days or something like that. So you have to check what your, what your command. So you have to be like first field grade yeah, they changed it now. So up to E8, first field grade and E8 and above you have to be going to a CG signature and things like that.

Speaker 2: 51:49

But you know, for Skillbridge, for example, there's a group on LinkedIn. It's called Skillbridge, community of interest, and they always post about skill bridge opportunities in there. You can check with the 50 strong. That's another organization. They have jobs for transitioning service members also. So you know, first of all you have to popularize that, or you have to talk to your unit for permission and things like that, and then start looking for your, for companies that will hire you. Okay, but in, you know, start, look, focus your search into that type of role, not just something just to get out of the unit for 90 days.

Speaker 2: 52:43

Okay, when I was transitioning, we were four block and things like that. So many people just get out just to get out. I mean, we had an O5 from the Air Force. He went to work in the warehouse with Brinks from the Air Force. He went to work in the warehouse with Brinks. He's like he was a C-130 pilot for 24 years and he's like I just don't care, I just want to get out of the unit, for example. Okay, how would that put you in good line for post-transition jobs? So you drive your own boat? Okay, to borrow a Navy analogy Okay, any questions for Chris and PMP and things like that.

Speaker 13: 53:29

No, I think I had a couple. And yeah, just contact me. Thank you all for your time and your attention and good luck to you. Look forward to seeing you at our study halls and IRC here in the future. Thanks.

Speaker 2: 53:46

Jay, maybe no worries, All right, anything. And then I guess, right now, jay, before we go to talk about everything else, let's bring in Sumeya, Hold on.

Speaker 1: 53:58

We still got some more stuff because it's almost on an hour. That's why I was trying to cut it, but it's almost on an hour. That's what I was trying to cut it, but it's almost on an hour. Let me take care of some stuff and then we'll bring in some air. So it's going to be a little bit over folks, just so you guys know. But I did want to get into some certifications real fast. All right, so if you are interested in Network Plus, Cloud Plus, Sec Plus or Tech Plus, you have until Monday sorry, Tuesday to fill out this application to get these resources. For those who don't know, on my LinkedIn I always post resources. It's also on our deck.

Speaker 1: 54:38

But this CompTIA opportunity and then you have this Microsoft opportunity. Now this Microsoft opportunity is open to anyone and everyone dependents everybody. As long as you're over 18,. You can knock out any one of these certs, but you have to complete the training that's associated with it. So Microsoft is doing this currently now, and I'll drop the link in here. And then, for this one, this is only for veterans, active duty first responders, transition service members and reservists. So you can knock out any one of these certifications, but you have to sign up before April 15th. Here's the links for them. I'm putting it in the chat right now. Find the chat. There are limited certifications available, folks, for the ones that for this one. So I think they only had like a thousand to begin with. So make sure you use this or sign up for it directly as soon as possible and select that.

Speaker 1: 55:36

So it's the bottom one is the application for this. This is through University of Louisville, Louisville University. And then for your comp no, sorry, I'm telling you, For your career, not career comp for your Coursera access. Here is the access for Coursera and so that you can get, you can knock that out and that's through VTS. They'll be able to support you. And that's for veterans, transition service members, military spouses, veteran military spouses anyone can take advantage of that. It's over 12,000 courses. You can knock out your PMP sorry project Google project, Google project management certificate to knock that out. But all this stuff is free, but make sure you take advantage of it. The first resource I sell that's like that's thousands of dollars in your pocket that you don't have to spend trying to knock out a certification. But, like I said, after April 1st they're going to start charging people, regardless of who you are. So I mean, after April 15th they're going to start charging people, so make sure you take advantage of that before they do that. Okay, All right, Enough of that, Now on to the main event.

Speaker 1: 56:50

After we get done with Samaya's aspect, we're going to just cover, you know, how to get access to Career Compass and things like that and then close off the session. But I just definitely wanted to give her her her, um, her spotlight. She's been supporting the military for a long time. Anytime she comes across an opportunity she shares with people, great person to be connected, to make sure you connect with her. She's very much an entrepreneur at heart, even though she finds different opportunities to kind of take advantage of, and she's been able to, you know, convey her abilities and helping others. That's her main goal. Once she learns something, she passes on, and this is the reason why we don't have any problems bringing on her, because she is an amazing individual to have a point of contact to. So, without further ado, I'd like to pass it over to the woman of the hour. Where's she at? She got thank you, jay. I appreciate that, that's.

Speaker 12: 57:40

That was very sweet. Hello everybody, my name is Sumaya Jabril. I'm an Army veteran. Go Army. I'm not going to say beat Navy, because he said so many sweet things, so go Navy.

Speaker 12: 57:53

I'm a licensed and permitted customs broker. That means the US Homeland Security gave me the license and the permit to clear shipments at the border. I speak four languages English, tigrinya, turkish, arabic. We have very heavy connections in the Middle East because we're in the supply chain.

Speaker 12: 58:12

I worked for Customs for about four years. I worked for a supply chain software company, descartes, for about a year, but I'm an entrepreneur at heart, like Jay said. So I was like I'm going to do my own thing. My family's deep in the import and export business. Right now my company does product sourcing from Egypt, uae, bangladesh, formerly China. Thank you, president. We source linens, towels, clothing and fashion lines and we also do manufacturing towels, clothing and fashion lines and we also do manufacturing.

Speaker 12: 58:45

So what brought us to this event and what I wanted to share is I was inspired by Jay Anwar and KP because they give so much with all their full-time job and and it's just, they're so consistent and they want to help the military community and I was like what can I do community and I was like what can I do? And I was like the customs broker, whatever is in my hand, and I decided to do that. So I'm going to give you a little bit of detail about it. So what is a customs broker? So customs brokers are licensed professionals who facilitate the import and export of goods across international borders. They ensure compliance, customs laws, tariffs and trade regulations, and they act like the middleman or middlewoman between businesses and customs authorities to streamline the movement of goods and the salary range for this. So you could do various things. You could be a customs broker, you could be a senior custom broker lead, you could be a trade specialist there's various names and based on those, your salary varies.

Speaker 12: 59:50

So it's important that, with your license, that you continue to educate yourself and you make yourself the subject matter expert in a topic, or like a. I'm a textile expert, so just textiles. Or you can be mechanical, you could be a tech, you can be it, like all the industries you can think of are being imported and exported out of outside the united states. We're doing like a act. Now education tells you cyber security, so if you already have that, you can be a broker and educate people about exporting technology outside the United States. And the salary ranges go from the lowest is like 37. If you're like living in those rural areas, $1,000, it can go to up to 170K, sometimes up to 250K, and if you have the courage to be an entrepreneur, then you can make millions and billions of dollars if you work hard for it within your own company. Because you can start as a customs broker, then you can make a company a customs brokerage, then you could get a freight forwarding license and you can get the vessel. There are so many things that it's so vast, so many things you can choose from. It's just so beautiful. You will never get bored and your mind is always engaged. So because I have ADHD, so this is really really good for me I never get bored. That's a consistent stimulation. I love it.

Speaker 12: 1:01:19

So in the current climate, customs brokers are more critical than ever due to the evolving trade policies, the frequent changes in tariff which we're going to talk about, the US-China war and trade tensions. Trade war which requires brokers to stay up to date on new regulations, date on new regulations. The supply chain disruptions. We play vital roles in mitigating delays caused by increased inspections or like regulatory bottlenecks. Just to give a live example, we were bringing products promotional products from China to the United States. Now the tariffs are up to 125% if you bring products from China. It's literally pointless to bring anything from China because you'd rather just stay in the United States and save your money and make the product here in the United States, which is the goal, I'm assuming, of this administration. So we had to halt the business in China right now because you know and we're a small company so imagine these big companies and their only resource was China. If they didn't have any other ways they can source or any other partner like Phoenix. That means it's the end for their company if they don't know how to pivot, which us service members know how to do. And that's why I believe service members make the best customs brokers, because this is challenging. We know how to pivot and we are leaders by nature and we're able to handle all these changes and with the technology, integration, with new digital tools that custom is bringing, so it's very important. So all these things that ACNA Education is providing will come really handy down the line.

Speaker 12: 1:03:10

Like when Chris was talking about the PMP, I was like I want the PMP certification because, in addition to the commercial side, I want to do the government side, government contracting. They require, like, when I look at it, like do you have PMP experience? Like what are you going to do? So I'm like, oh, I got PMP, I'm a customs broker. So you sell yourself and your company to be like, oh, I'm like a really good candidate for you to give me this contract. So these certifications you're getting are really, really beneficial.

Speaker 12: 1:03:41

Risk management that's really like the customs brokerage and risk management go hand in hand, because you help businesses and individuals avoid costly penalties and shipment holds. So US Custom does not play and they will charge you fees and penalties from thousands to millions of dollars and they could even ban you from exporting or importing. It's to that degree. So customs brokers are really, really essential and there are about 14,000 to 15,000 of us in the United States. There are millions of shipments that come in the United States and billions and billions of dollars of worth. But because this industry is so tedious to get into, people don't even try or they don't even know how to get into it. But because I worked with US Customs and Border Protection, I had more knowledge, a way to get in. And then let's see and then let's see. So I'm going to talk about the tariffs and then I'm going to tell you about the webinar that I'm hosting about how to become a licensed customs broker and the courses that I'm going.

Speaker 12: 1:05:02

They cross the national borders, typically on imports, occasionally on exports. So they serve multiple purposes for revenue generation, to protect domestic industries, to influence trade policies, to practice unfair practices like dumping or subsidies. So in China, the Chinese government subsidized their people. So when they bring it in the United States, it can harm our domestic industry. That's why when we were charging China 25% tariff, they were like, oh, that makes sense. Or when we were charging the 45% anti-dumping fees, like that was like, oh, that's fair. Or when you were charging the 45% anti-dumping fees like that was like, oh, that's fair, but 125, that's just outright, it's too much.

Speaker 12: 1:05:49

But this tariffs can be used as a way of trade war to impact policies. So who is responsible for paying them? Who pays tariffs? Domestic companies and individuals who import goods are responsible for paying for tariffs, for the tariffs to the government at the designated port of entry, at the border, such as ports or airports. These costs are often passed to consumers through high prices. So the current administration, our president. We've seen many videos. He thinks that the tariff is paid by the foreign government. It is not. It's paid by the consumer.

Speaker 12: 1:06:32

So you might think what is this tariff? I don't know what's going on. You are impacted in every industry. Let's say you're like, oh, I'm not worried about it. In every industry. Let's say you're like, oh, I'm not worried about it, I only purchase domestic anyway. I'm like, okay, no problem. Let's say, this water bottle is made here in the United States, but the irrigation system could be imported from overseas. No-transcript.

Speaker 12: 1:07:30

While foreign exporters may lower their prices to absorb part of the tariff, the economic burden typically falls on domestic businesses and consumers. There's always, like this, confusion between duties and tariffs. So duties are specific, target, targeted on particular goods, and they can apply both imports and domestic products. Yes, now, recently. So with all these tariff talks, I'm just going to recent update from all the tweets and all the final like official paper on the CSMS website. Here's what's happening Effective April 10th 2025, so two days ago tariff for goods imported from China, including Hong Kong and Macau, has been increased 125%.

Speaker 12: 1:08:06

This is a significant rise from the previous 84% that they mentioned on April 9th 2025. This tariff applies to all goods from China. Please mute your microphone. Thank you. This tariff applies to all goods from China, unless explicitly excluded under prior guidelines. And then the tariff from other countries is really important, the reciprocal tariffs. He's like if you're charging a tariff, we're going to charge you tariffs. So those are 83 other countries which are set to take effect on April 9th have been paused for a period of 90 days. To take effect on April 9th, have been paused for a period of 90 days. During this pause, from April 10 to July 9, 2025, imports from these countries will be subject to the baseline of 10% tariff instead of a higher country-specific rates. So that's just the universal 10%. And then further guidance will be provided through CSMS, and I'm going to shortly share my screen, like what that looks like, so you could see how is China retaliating? So China retaliated again by saying oh, you're going to charge us 125%, we're going to charge you 125%. So there's just so many things happening and then, like the US and Canada, still remains, it's just on pause right now. So that's what's happening right now, and then I'm going to go to the course.

Speaker 12: 1:09:34

So, like I mentioned, I'm inspired by this community and right now I'm also getting my master's degree in global commerce and policy and so I decided to create a course, a customs broker course.

Speaker 12: 1:09:49

It costs about $2,800 generally and I just it costs. At the time it cost me $2,500 and now they increased the value, so I decided to make the course for free for the veterans and their spouses, for those who are committed to take the course. It takes about three to four months to complete it, so the exam is April and October, twice a year, and I'll talk about it in the webinar about what is it to be a customs broker just more in detail and how to get the license, how to get the and how to get the license, how to get the permit, how to get the certifications if you don't want to get the license or you don't want to wait for it. And I will include the links to the Eventbrite, to the YouTube channel where I post my videos, and then the link to the CSMS. I don't know if I could share my screen so I could show it to them. Let me see.

Speaker 2: 1:10:47

Yeah, you should be able to share your screen. Thank you, while she's trying to share, put a two in the chat if this potential you know career opportunity is inspiring to you and want to look into it further with Sumeya. Awesome, yeah, glad, love the feedback. All right, sumeya, go ahead and talk about this.

Speaker 12: 1:11:18

Yes, sure, so thank you so much for listening. I got a little bit nerdy on this topic and anwar was like you know, tone it. You know less. You know less details. Save it for your course. So I did that. Thank you for that. You know notification.

Speaker 12: 1:11:33

And then this is the event, right, uh, how to become a licensed broker admission. So you just reserve your spot and, like I said, april 24th at 10 am Eastern Standard Time, and then you can connect with me on my LinkedIn Samaya Jabril. This is where I post Phoenix Global Shipping. This is where I post my videos, my brand videos. It's a simoneal any webinar that I do, and if you want to stay up to date, because there's a lot of noise and people try to scare you with so many things, this is where you're going to get the most updated information of what's actually happening is when it's like pen to paper at cbpgov trade cargo system messaging service. So if you have any questions you want to connect with me, let me put you put the Eventbrite. Let me put the other information in the chat as well. Let me stop sharing. Give me one second. I'm going to put this in the chat.

Speaker 12: 1:12:41

One of the things like when I was getting licensed and permitted I had a hard time was because the other customs brokers were not as helpful, because I was their competitor, so it took me a little bit longer to get my license and permit. So now I'm going to tell you everything. I'm like does I get your license? Does I get your license? Does I get your permit? No gatekeeping or anything. Just try to get it as fast as you can so that you could also get in the career. You know everybody gets a seat on the table. Whatever is meant for me will be for me. So you know it's all good. Um, like I said, connect with me and let me know if you have any other questions.

Speaker 2: 1:13:17

Thank you, awesome, uh, sumaya. So, just so, just to reiterate what she's. You know one thing you know for chat, the course itself that she took other company might charge $2,500 or something like this. She's not charging $2,500, all right. She's doing her course to help whoever is committed to learn and to learn more about it. You know, just connect with her on again. You know she posted the links in here. I'm going to copy and paste it again.

Speaker 2: 1:13:56

She has that webinar coming up on April 24th. Sign up for it, attend with her, talk to her. That's your opportunity to ask questions again during that separate webinar. Okay, and yeah, okay, questions. Anybody else has any other questions for this? For Sumeya, no worries, no questions.

Speaker 2: 1:14:22

I guess you were nerdy enough just to whet their appetite. So, lawrence, I think you know from my gathering I'm not a customs broker. You know I stayed at a Holiday Inn a couple of times but I'm not smart enough. So, remote job or not, she said that it's more entrepreneurial, right, you can either work with somebody or do your own and launch your company and whatnot. But again, all those questions will be answered on that webinar. For that, okay, we don't want to take a little too long because people are chomping at the bit to get that code to get access to career compass, so they can log off and move on. No, we invite you to stay. So Jay can actually go over what the Career Compass is all about. We're going to provide the code. Hold on, guys, please. All right over to you, jay.

Speaker 1: 1:15:12

All right, all right. So let me show you what you guys have won. This is what you got access to, or this is what you will get access to. And, for those who go through the process, please make sure you check your emails. We have a lot of accounts that not a lot of accounts, but a few people who don't receive get access, even though their emails that counts has been sent out to your emails. So this has a resume builder in it as job trackers, organizations, and improves your LinkedIn. It has all these different tools in here that you can kind of use and it's incorporated with LinkedIn. They'll give you an extension to kind of incorporate with LinkedIn. We try to give you an all-in-one. So resources, tools, opportunities all-in-one. If you had to figure it out, how would you best do this? And so this is what this is. Our career compass is a breakdown of that, so I'm just gonna go over some of the tabs and then I'm gonna show you actually how to get access to this.

Speaker 1: 1:16:07

So if you come here to jobs, let me just click on the word jobs here. This is under organization and they just recently updated this, so you'll see that. But you'll see this number here. Everyone sees that number four million jobs. Now these jobs are not all on, you know. Indeed, they're not all on some of the sites. They actually come from the employers they work with. We work with National Labor Exchange and we pretty much got all the jobs listed here. So if there's a particular job that you're interested in, you can just type it in here, say what the job is, and it will come up. It'll say the location and then it'll provide you with the information you can apply to it directly. And here's a good thing, right, it takes you directly to the site. So this one is a tech systems job and if I click on that, it's going to take me to the tech systems website, to where I can apply. It says no job found. This was two days ago, so let me see if we can find another one and this gets updated. There it goes, so that other job might have been taken away. But um, just go through here and you can click through it, or you can add it to your actual um, your profile, and this is just like save, add this to profile and it'll put it on your job tracker. So when you look at your job tracker, you can actually track this. And so you go like oh, I applied to this job, I'm interviewing for this job. I either got an offer from this job or I got rejected from this job. And that way you can keep better tasks of who you're applying to, what the role is and what that looks like.

Speaker 1: 1:17:37

The resume builder allows you to build your resume specifically to these jobs or you can, you know, use it as a tool to build it to whatever job that you're coming across. I'm not going to go into great detail about this, but you're going to start from scratch using LinkedIn or select your resume. If you start from, like LinkedIn, they'll say these are all ATS friendly resumes, meaning that there's not any tables or anything that will block any of your information when you do submit for an application, so you get all your information in here. So let me close out of that, I want to quit. And it uses ai to help refine. And it also shows you how much of your description of your resume matches the job and what percentage that looks like. And then the words that you would need to add to make sure that you are a good fit or show good promise. Like you see here, the when it's like dark green, meaning that it's a good fit for the job that you're applying for. When it's orange like this means you need a little bit of work. You have your LinkedIn stuff in here, but let's click on this resource real fast. So these are all the resources, and if you come in here, you come to titles and click on resources. Anytime we tell people this is going to give you access to, like I said, over 4 million jobs.

Speaker 1: 1:18:57

There's almost 80 certifications for veterans, military spouses, veteran military spouses, transition service members. There's opportunities galore on here, and so all I did was click on resources and you can come down here. You can either go to the Act Now tab that has stuff specific to Act Now. You can go to the apprenticeship tab. You can go to certifications. If you scroll to the right, you'll see it says certifications, it, cyber. There's 80 different certifications offered between these organizations that are all for free. So I do take great offense when people have to pay money for certifications, knowing that these programs are out there and just people just don't know about them.

Speaker 1: 1:19:34

Entrepreneurs, for all entrepreneurs out there there are a bunch of entrepreneurship programs out there that can help you all for free. Use them. Use them to your benefit. Use them so that you can level up and get to where you need to be. We got financial certifications, job boards. There's a bunch of job boards, so it's not just one job board. Like I said, you don't necessarily have to even use this job board. That's on the site, but it's going to be extremely helpful. But you have other opportunities to use other job boards as well. We made this a place where, if you were looking for a resource and you don't know where to start, this is a good place to start.

Speaker 1: 1:20:11

Mental health, military spouse opportunities, nursing programs, real estate, certifications, resume resume assistance, resume optimization, salary negotiations, salary negotiations, scholarships, service animals the list goes on. Special forces, transition assistance programs, travel, disability, va, and, like I said, none of these cost any money. These are all free, and so if you're interested in utilizing that, take advantage of it. If you do have to pay for a cert, let us know. We do have a partnership with comptia and we do have a partnership with PMP, pmi, and so we can get you those vouchers at our rate, which is nonprofit rate, which is way discounted in comparison, and so I think we only have on here, we have the CompTIA ones. That's on here, but I'll put the PMI ones up here once we renew our contract with them. We're currently waiting to get it renewed, but this is what this is meant for, and so when people reach out to me, we created this because I can't answer every single question, but we created this so that you can find the answer. So this is everything that you would need to find. As long as you have access to this, you'll be good to go in terms of that. There's a find recruiter button in here. There's a lot of different things.

Speaker 1: 1:21:29

Now to a little disclosure. Everything that I showed you is free. Now, if you want to level it up, like, if you want the premium, because they have premium, this is not our platform. This is a platform that we work with with career, career flow. They create the platform, we put the information and we labeled it under us so that we can share all these resources for free. But if you go to career flow, they're going to charge you.

Speaker 1: 1:21:52

But if you want premium access to like, career flow, um things in terms of like, if you want multiple resumes, um, if you want to be able to do that, I think they're building like a interviewer um tool that's out there for free. I mean that interview tool that interview you for a job opportunity. Um, some of these other functions may cost. Then you would have to do the premium one. Now, don't quote me on the price, but I think it's $8 for the premium and depending on what that is. But understandably, this is a great resource to have and, like I said, you'll get a lot of benefits out of just the free version. But if you feel like you want to level up and you really want to get after it and find opportunities, then use it and feel free to do so.

Speaker 1: 1:22:37

Like I said, our focus is being able to provide you with resources that have no cost to them so that you can be able to do what you need to do and land a job. Now that you have 4 million jobs in your back pocket, I hope that you're able to find roles and opportunities, but if you're not, then I said we put on events and opportunities to also do that and support. How do you get access to this? Good question Come to the Act Now Education website. You go to where it says career accomplice application. You only can get this if you attend the weekly rundown, which is this what you guys are attending. Now You'll come in here and he says have I attended a weekly rundown? You say yes, and then there's a code requirement. And so what is that code for today? Do we have a code Rani?

Speaker 2: 1:23:23

Give me a second here, the code yeah it's. It's 343.

Speaker 12: 1:23:29

343-1133.

Speaker 1: 1:23:34

All right, this is the code 343-1133. This is the code you need for this week. I urge you, I implore you, that it does require you to put your resume in here, because we need to make sure you're a real person, a real human being, because obviously we've had issues with people trying to get access to our resources and not being a part of the military community in any shape or fashion and just trying to see what they can take from our community, which we don't play that. Make sure you get this done within, like by tuesday. I'll actually get it done by monday. That way I can create your accounts and if there's any issues with your accounts and we, you know, if you give it to me on thursday or friday or tuesday or wednesday, I most likely not will get to it. I'm just just to be honest, is gonna have to wait till the next week, but you put this code in, you press submit and if it comes to this, don't worry about it. Sometimes it's just the fact that a lot of people are logging on or a lot of people are jumping on right now. So, like anytime, I try to do this. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Typically, what I do have to do is I have to switch up my browser, and that allows it to work. Nothing special about it, just more so like switching up your browser works because everyone's trying to access it at the same time.

Speaker 1: 1:24:53

Like I said, our site is a great site, but you know, there's limited capabilities because we're not funded by anybody. We just do everything on our own. So that's kind of how we do things. Let me see if I can log on to it from here. Okay, so let me switch real fast so you can see what it actually looks like. And all I did was I just switched it to my Safari browser and it came up. So this is what it looks like. This is the form that you need to fill out. You fill this form out, you put in the code first, you fill this form out and you do this by Monday. I will have your account completed by Monday night Done, so the information that it adds is in here.

Speaker 1: 1:25:37

We don't sell your information. I don't want my information out there, so I'm not going to put your information out there. I don't care how much money people want for us. I don't want my information out there, so I'm not going to put your information out there. I don't care how much money people want. For us this information is mainly to be able to say what our makeup of our community is, so that if I'm working with a potential company that wants to either give us certifications or give us opportunities, I can say you know, majority of our folks are from this service, they have this type of background, they're interested in these roles and these jobs. I won't ever directly give anybody's information directly to any company.

Speaker 1: 1:26:14

So you fill this information out, you put what you're interested in. If you're interested in any roles, you put it in here. If you're not looking for a job, just say you're not looking for a job and you put your resume in here. And then you say which resources you want. If you're interested in the success cohort which leads into the hiring fairs, the virtual hiring fairs, click on this. If you want spunk, you can click on that. For Coursera I already dropped the link so you don't have to click on that.

Speaker 1: 1:26:35

If you want to donate, you can feel free to. We're not going to twist your arm. Just know that all the donations go back to the military community and so if someone is in dire need of a certification and they cannot afford it, nor do they have the resources to do so, and we can't think of a resource that can give them. We like to give them a scholarship, and that scholarship is directly from the military community. So we like to say, on behalf of the military community, we will support you in the certification, and that's what we do. And it has to make sense. It can't be someone that you know driving a BMW, you know making seven, seven figures, and talk about I want a certification. That's not. That's not what this is for. This is to support the community and, like I said, a hundred percent of our funds go back to the military community. So just so you know that.

Speaker 1: 1:27:19

So if you feel like you know God has touched your heart in that way, or whichever you believe in, whatever your religious beliefs are, yeah, please feel free to share and you know, support, um, and then you click on this, click that and then you submit and once you submit, you should be good to go. There's not going to be a follow-up email that you get directly, because I have to go through this manually. Meaning we have 237 people on here. I'm assuming half probably have not submitted this before before, so that's over 100 different applications I have to go through manually just to verify you are who you are and, um, you're looking for what you're looking for, so please feel free to do that, and then you have to submit your application. Um, other than that, that's really how you get access to our career compass.

Speaker 1: 1:28:06

Like said, this is a, this is a labor of love, folks, because it has to be, because no one's willing to do all this work. If, if it wasn't, you know, for the right reasons and for intentions, like said, we're not trying to sell you anything. We don't want to you make things harder for you. We just know that there's a lot of opportunity out there and a lot of times, you know, people just don't know where to find those resources. And I could tell you what the right information that you can turn into intelligence, that you can apply and execute to your life, can change things dramatically. A few clicks can mean the world, a difference in what you're looking for and your objectives and your goals, and so our focus is to be able to provide that with no red tape. Just give you the resources and information as best as we can, and that's how we do it.

Speaker 1: 1:28:58

Now I will say there are some down aspects, right, because, like I said, we're not a full-fledged team and we're not full-time. No one on our team is full-time. So if you hit me up, I know Kimber says she's about a week out. I am six months behind. So that's how many people hit me up. It happens a lot. I'm sometimes able to reach out to some people, but on most of the times I'm not really even focused on the one-on-one, even focused on the one-on-one. I'm focused on how to get resources for the community. So if you feel like you know you want to reach out, just know I will get to you eventually. But I am so far behind in messages and DMs and emails. Yeah, I retire in 2027. So hopefully I can get it done by then, folks. But other than that, that's really my goal and my objective. Oh, and one other goal I have, so people know my personal goal is by 2027, before I retire is to get 1,000 people jobs. That's within the military community, and that's why I'm doing all these events.

Speaker 1: 1:29:59

That's why we're trying to really give you these opportunities. So if you do land a job and I don't know about it, please tell me so I can count that, so I can get closer to my goal. But there's, like I said, there's no big corporation behind this. It's just really just me trying to get after it as an active duty member, trying to give back. That's what we're about, and shout out to the chiefs out there former chiefs, so you guys know how it is.

Speaker 2: 1:30:28

For those who are signing up right now on Career Compass okay, yes, you have to verify your email address. You will get a code during the process to validate your email address. Okay, to sign up for it. Okay, try to do it within the next two days. All right, so he could go about filling up these applications I provided to you. Some people say they attended two weeks ago, three weeks ago. They haven't got the code just yet, or something like that. You know, do you want to share that contact page, jay? Oh, yeah, yeah, we can do that yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:31:10

Okay.

Speaker 1: 1:31:10

Thank you for that. Yeah, happy Chief's birthday yeah. So if you.

Speaker 2: 1:31:19

So I think somebody you know, jay, you said that chiefs make things go around at work. I think somebody you know, jay, you said that chiefs make things go around at work.

Speaker 1: 1:31:30

But I think it's more warrant officers that make things go around as well. Everyone knows in the Navy chiefs is everything. I'm a Mustang and I know that you are not getting anything done without a chief.

Speaker 13: 1:31:42

That's right. I mean, I don't know about y'all, but nco's rule the world, so I'm gonna leave that, hey, but the warrants make it happen.

Speaker 1: 1:31:49

You don't even see us, but there you go that's okay and that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 1:31:52

I'm a different kind of warrant, so I can tell you this, though, strangely enough, I've used my chief mess connection more than I've used my officer connection, because the officer, the ward ward room, is just too many. Everyone comes from a different background, nothing wrong with it. But we have people who get commissioned, people who do OCS, people who go through the academy, and there's no common other than the fact that you're in the military and you're an officer. There's no common thread, whereas in the Chiefs mess everyone went through boot camp, everyone has a similar experience and everyone knows what it is to deal with, like you know shitty situations.

Speaker 1: 1:32:27

Not saying everyone has that experience, but for the most part, and I just know, like, if I tell somebody, then the chief's mess hey, I need this thing done, it's gonna get half, it's gonna get, it's gonna get done. If I tell someone in the ward room like, hey, I'm trying to get this done, like really, that's interesting, jay, that's all, that's all. I thought I was like all right, oh, yeah, I got to figure it out. Maybe it's just the wardrooms I've been a part of, but yeah, it's definitely. But that's why I'm on this side. I'm on this side so I can help cultivate that aspect.

Speaker 5: 1:33:07

And then got to love it. Rebecca is bringing you guys all back into the right mindset.

Speaker 2: 1:33:09

Spouses are getting it done, otherwise getting it done okay a thousand percent.

Speaker 1: 1:33:13

So the one thing was and so for the just so I can cover down is, if you are having any issue with accident asset ass access and you know the account, just go to contact us on our page and then fill us out and I'll get to it and I'll help you out. I'll send you a direct message or this is the easiest way to kind of help us out and that way it's documented, and then my board can beat me up when I'm not doing things I need to do. They'd be like, jay, you're behind, need to get this done, so I can do so. But yeah, one thing I would say about military spouses, and people know this yes, I have a preference. If I have to do a certification course, I most likely will.

Speaker 1: 1:33:53

I lean heavily on spouses and anything else, because spouses just get it done. No complaints, no bitching, no moaning, just Jay, what is it that we got to get done? All right, I'm going to get it. It's time and time again, it's proven, it's proven, folks, it's proven. So I shout out to the spouses that you know they put in the work and you know the veterans and active duty members oh, my big toe, I stubbed it, you know, trying to log online. So I was like, look, I got like five kids I'm juggling they just make it happen.

Speaker 2: 1:34:28

So shout out to the spouses Awesome, so everybody get again. Just to reiterate, let me start the chat here so we can see everybody's beautiful faces here. All right, a couple of things. I always say this, can I, you know, especially for the first timers if you haven't seen, if you haven't noticed how we roll around this zoom, okay, we're trying to provide the straight. I'm gonna keep it clean, I'm gonna straight information. Okay for you to action upon. Everybody is in a different stage in your life Transitioning service member, retiring, transitioning jobs, corporate America, whatever. Okay, there's a lot of resources out there. People will always say this and we say it every week. Measure your bandwidth. Okay, we shared like two, two, three different things already for it certifications from louisville, from other places. All right, the questions always, always come up can we sign up for both? Can we sign up for five of them? Can we sign up for 20 of them? You absolutely can. Is it worth it? You make this, this decision, okay, you make the decision, all right.

Speaker 2: 1:35:47

Secondly, understand what you are trying to work with. Okay, who's sharing? I'm going to? No, don't. Okay, all right. So understand what you're working with here. What's your purpose? Find out your why Okay, find out your why Okay, find out your why You're trying to discover customers brokerage Okay, go sign up for it. But but don't sign up for customers brokerage webinar. And go to University of Louisville, try to get your SEC plus and sign up with Chris McPhee to get to get PMP and Coursera. And try to learn Lean Six Sigma okay, and apply. You know, spray and pray for 500 jobs, you know through that. Apply now with LinkedIn. Please measure your bandwidth. Understand what you want to do okay. Understand what you want to do okay.

Speaker 1: 1:36:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:36:41

And don't get me wrong.

Speaker 1: 1:36:43

If you go through just so we can put this out there if you go through a program for us and you successfully complete it, there's a higher chance of you getting selected for another program. We have multiple people who earn multiple certifications through us, but they're not doing it like all at once, right. They're doing it one after like. They're doing it not consecutively, but like right after each other, so it's not to where they're spread thin, so just keep that in mind, if you have to do anything right now, if you have to do anything right now, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 1:37:12

I'm going to post the code again for today's session, because you're here. That's what you're here for, right? Sign up for Career Compass this weekend. Give Jay some work to do, okay, all right, give Jay some work to do, okay. All right, give Jay some work to do. Sign up for this Afterwards. Start looking at opportunities and connect with people and network and do whatever you want to do. All right, but please measure your bandwidth Now, without further ado, let's grab some questions here. Okay, sometimes me and Jay vow not to have marathon sessions of three hours. Sometimes we end up doing it because we just try to support everybody, but we're not going to do it too much long. But go ahead. I have Debra and Shima and Tom and yeah, go ahead, debra.

Speaker 11: 1:38:07

Thank you. You know it takes a while to find the unmute button, for some reason, and it's always in the same place, go figure. But I'm asking about my application. Can you hear me?

Speaker 2: 1:38:22

Yes.

Speaker 11: 1:38:24

Can you hear me, hello. Yes, can you hear me. Yes, can you hear me, hello.

Speaker 2: 1:38:27

Yes, can you hear? Hello, yeah, I guess she's in a bad spot.

Speaker 1: 1:38:40

But I think I got the gist of what she's looking for. I'll look on to that and then we can move on to the next one. I'll follow up with her.

Speaker 11: 1:38:46

Can you hear me?

Speaker 1: 1:38:47

Yeah, there you go Hello. Yes, we can hear you.

Speaker 11: 1:38:51

Can you hear me?

Speaker 1: 1:38:53

I don't think you can hear us.

Speaker 11: 1:38:54

Hello, hello, hello.

Speaker 1: 1:38:58

We can hear you.

Speaker 11: 1:38:59

I don't hear anybody, okay. It's all right, okay, or anybody Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:39:02

It's all right. Okay, check your chat here. All right, you might want to disconnect and connect back again.

Speaker 11: 1:39:09

Okay, forget about it, I guess.

Speaker 2: 1:39:17

All right. Next person is oh, can you hear me now? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. I'm going to start. I'm going to get a job with Verizon, you know. So I can hear me now, ok.

Speaker 11: 1:39:37

I just have a brief question about my application. I've tried like twice for sure, but maybe three times. I did just submit the contact us and I am a card carrying member of the Act, now non-profit recurring member. Not that I deserve special privileges, but can someone please help me out? Thank you so much. It's been wonderful being here today, by the way. Thank you, man member.

Speaker 1: 1:40:06

I will. I will definitely make sure that gets done today. That will be. I will throw that on my plate, no problem awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:40:19

uh, shima go ahead Hello.

Speaker 4: 1:40:23

Hello. So I have a question. So last week I applied for the Coursera application and also Act Now education, but I have not received any email. How should I know if my profile was checked, rejected? I mean, what should I do now?

Speaker 2: 1:40:46

Coursera is with Veterans Transition Support. That's a separate organization. Okay, so they have their own onboarding process. I don't know. It depends on your background If you have to submit a DD-214 or if you're a spouse, they might have something else for spouses and whatnot. Go ahead and check it out with with them, okay. And what about? Now, like last week, now we just mentioned about this. You know like jay tries to figure to fulfill all these requests.

Speaker 1: 1:41:19

All right, so if oh, your, your name is it does. It is your last name. Start with the R-A-H. Yeah, yes. Yeah, so you have an account. You just have to go activate it. So you have to go check your email and you should have an email reminder. I just sent it to you. You have an account, it's corrected. Ok, I didn't. Ok, I will check my email.

Speaker 1: 1:41:41

No, I just sent it. I just sent it to you just now. I sent you the reminder. We already have your account. It says it was created April 8th. Uh, so I just sent you a reminder.

Speaker 4: 1:41:52

Okay, I will check it. And another question um in the agenda of today's uh uh, how to get um free master, am I right?

Speaker 1: 1:42:04

no, that's just I mean. So all right, um, are you? Were you a military spouse? Yes, all right. So currently there are no programs for free masters for military spouses that I am tracking. Um, the program that provided that was american college of financial services. They provided free that provided that was American College of Financial Services, they provided free masters, and that was like probably a year and a half ago. But for service members and federal employees, yeah, there are free master opportunities that are not connected to your GI Bill and I can always go over that. So anyone is active duty that is looking for it. Go over that. So anyone is active duty that is looking for it.

Speaker 1: 1:42:49

Niu diu are both schools that will pay for your master's for free, their actual tours. Um, uh, if you, depending on where you're stationed at, where you're located at, if you're in virginia, um, northern virginia area, virginia tech is actually a free master's program and then Maryland has a program. Maryland University of Maryland has a free program, but it just depends on where you're located at, but there are a bunch of free master's programs. I should probably do a session on that. But, yeah, for military spouses, that one program, they're no longer offering the free master's. Actually I take that back. I would go to American College of Financial Services and then, but the degree is only in finance, just to let you know. So if you're not interested in finance then it's probably not. But I would go there and then reach out to their veterans coordinator and then tell them that you want a free master's degree or you're interested in a free master's degree. They may not advertise it, but I do know they have scholarships.

Speaker 12: 1:43:46

Thank you so much Does that include if it's a second master's degree I don't think they cared.

Speaker 1: 1:43:55

To be honest with you, I don't think that was an issue Cause I know I considered it and if I can, I already have a master's degree. I mean two master's degrees, but I know I considered it and if I can, I already have a master's degree. I mean two master's degrees, but I know I considered it. I was like I don't have time for this, but that makes sense. Can you say the? Name of the college again.

Speaker 1: 1:44:13

American College of Financial Services. They used to have a project manager, they used to have a project management degree and they used to have a financial degree. They got rid of the project management degree because of ActNow. We just sent them too many people. That's what happens. They just kept the finance degree.

Speaker 2: 1:44:34

Thanks, I keep getting these DMs here about that verification email for your code. When you are on the Career Compass website, okay, and you put in the orientation code and you submit your email, you have to validate your email. It will send you a code to your email, a six-digit PIN, I think. Right, jay, six-digit PIN, and you use it in the application. There's no separate URL, right, you use it just to validate your email. Okay, I keep getting all these emails like this.

Speaker 1: 1:45:17

I mean, that's just part of the registration process, that's just a verification aspect is to make sure that we're not sending the email to the wrong email, because people always bad finger their emails.

Speaker 2: 1:45:29

Please do not use a throwaway email. No trash email, no temporary email, none of those. You know ones, and literally there's a service that's called trash email. So don't use any of those temporary ones.

Speaker 1: 1:45:44

Use a valid email address, okay deborah, if you can look into the chat, I just sent you a message. I need to know your last name so I can look up your information. Um, okay, tom, what do we got the time drop off, you're muted man.

Speaker 3: 1:46:07

I must have clicked the unmute button too fast to double click it. So I'm kind of returning. I was kind of part of the group back in June and then I got fully engaged and now I'm unemployed again. So I figured I'd come back and offer my services to you guys and try to figure out what I'm going to be doing to try to get a future. Jay, I'm an automation engineer. Your 230 can be done in 20 minutes for me if you show me how to do it or show me what needs to be done or show me approval and I'll automate it, because I just got a project automating testing for the uh dod health care system.

Speaker 1: 1:46:52

So oh yeah, and we're definitely not as difficult as the health care system. We know that.

Speaker 3: 1:46:55

So yeah, absolutely this is a new theater theater theater system for uh going out in the field. So a service member gets injured in the field all the way to check it out in CONUS. So and I was jumping across all those applications. But if you need help, I can. I can make that easy for you. I'm not saying I'm going to auto approve it, I'm just I know you have several applications you need to transpose. I can do that for you.

Speaker 1: 1:47:23

I'll definitely get in touch with you. I will find you, because this is about a good portion of my weekend is going through and sorting through people's, especially when people just put like this crap in their stuff, it's like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 3: 1:47:41

Crap in, crap out. That's all I can tell you, but I can turn around and move data across fields and across websites, across applications and stuff like that for you. So make your life more easier, also for everybody else listening, linkedin and joining. Making your network is very important. Network is very important. I quickly joined a facility working and I found some other people that were actually part of the Act Now group, that were with the different customers, and I had job offers rolling in after that. So this Act Now group that you have here and building stuff and making your network is very important. So we need to make sure you make connections with people and keep them up. So it doesn't sound like it's very exciting but, believe it or not, it can help out in the long run. That's all I got, jay.

Speaker 1: 1:48:38

I appreciate it Tom.

Speaker 2: 1:48:40

See, this is what we talk about sometimes. You know, come up with if you're trying to support the community, you know, just have actionable mindset and thank you for offering your services to Jay. I'm sure he likes it, especially if he. Let me guess you're an army guy, right?

Speaker 3: 1:48:58

No, I'm a bubble head. Let's figure that one out. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:49:04

All right, are you subs, subs, bubble, head, let's figure that one out yeah.

Speaker 11: 1:49:08

Subs.

Speaker 1: 1:49:08

Subs All right Are you subs, subs, bubble head. Yeah, see, sub guys, we rock, we rock.

Speaker 3: 1:49:12

Oh, you're a sub guy too.

Speaker 1: 1:49:13

Yes, okay, uss Cheyenne, that's where I got my fish. Oh, atlanta, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:49:21

All right For everybody else. Again, if you have not picked up on it, if you sign up for Career Compass, acceptance is not automatic. Just because you hit submit does not mean you can go straight away into appcareerflow and start playing around. Please give it time for the process to be good. Hopefully, once this bubblehead starts helping Jay eventually, it might make it a little bit better in the future. We'll see. All right, Okay Again. Please be patient. For everybody who submits, click submit button. Okay, Tom, you had something to say.

Speaker 3: 1:50:12

No, the only other thing is I support 700 basket weavers at the same time.

Speaker 2: 1:50:20

So I'm not a basket weaving group.

Speaker 3: 1:50:22

So I don't weave baskets. It's my mother. She's 82 years old and she she's part of a group, so I volunteer there. So but I run, I run their website, the google their, their conventions and stuff like that. For them.

Speaker 2: 1:50:37

Yeah, I don't see. A basket weaving is not as easy as it's made out to be. I mean, this is very, very. I was watching a documentary the other day, just to veer off topic for a second here, the Washington documentary. For example, in Morocco, three people in the whole country do the traditional basket weaving and the ladies are like 70 years old, 80 years old, all right, all right. There was another guy with a raised hand Channing something, whatever. I forgot.

Speaker 11: 1:51:07

Where are you at?

Speaker 1: 1:51:09

You lost him with the basketball even.

Speaker 2: 1:51:11

Oh my goodness, yes, it's real. Okay, any other questions here, chris? Chris has got a green shirt. Are you a Marine or something like that?

Speaker 1: 1:51:29

Stephanie, you look like you got a question what's your question, stephanie?

Speaker 5: 1:51:35

yes, no, I just I forgot. I actually have an alarm that goes off every single day at 11 55, because I forgot to set it for just saturdays. Um, and I've been trying to get on weekly just to see if there's anything new. But I joined Act Now about eight months ago and then kind of was really pumped up and motivated and then life just kind of took over and now my husband and I are actually getting ready to PCS to Fort Meade and so in the last few weeks it has really lit a fire in me to be serious and lock down a plan of attack.

Speaker 5: 1:52:09

I think I was very overwhelmed which is not a bad thing with the amount of opportunities. I'm coming from healthcare and I'm an Air Force veteran. I have a master's degree in nursing. I want to get into cyber and I'm learning that there are hurdles to get over. I'm a great self-learner and self-starter. So I'm doing the UofL cybersecurity workforce program right now and just working my way through that. I did a ISC squared CC course on Coursera. I'm testing for that on May 1st. So I'm just I'm trying to pave out my process and hoping that when we get to Fort Meade I'll be able to network a little bit more in person and find that, you know, first step in the door I don't have a question. I've just really been blown away by what you've created, and so I was like I have a minute to sit down while my children are sleeping, or so I don't have any specific question.

Speaker 5: 1:53:09

Just really happy and um thankful for what you have created here. And I have told everyone about it. I separated in 2017. After five years, my husband is still active duty, um, and there are people who have separated within the last few years who just have no idea or are getting ready to, and all they know is SkillBridge and that all of what you have compiled and created is here. So I share it with everyone that I can to help get the word out.

Speaker 2: 1:53:37

So you don't have a question, but I'll give you a solicited resource too questions. But I'll give you unsolicited resource too, since you're a veteran and you're trying to transition into cyber and IT cyber. So VETSEC is another community out there. Okay, a veteran community with a slack channel, an active slack channel. There's like about another 8,000 people out there who all do every type of thing about cloud and cyber and things like that. So look up veteranssecorg or vetsec and join their slack and things like that. Okay, um, well, thanks. So all right, but then please, please, please, don't you know again. As you're learning about cyber, just don't just say I want to get into cyber. That's what I, if I have, you know, I know again I think that was where my mindset was was eight months ago.

Speaker 5: 1:54:30

I was like, yeah, I'm gonna get into cyber. And then it's kind of like when people say they want to get into health care or nursing, there's so much, it is a. It's very vast, just so. I'm learning what those channels are and I'm trying to find those people like what is your job? Do you like where you're at? And then look at their path backwards to kind of map my steps. I feel like a little tiny tadpole in a big ocean, but I'm getting there. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 1:55:00

That's good and this is some information I can share with everybody that applies to everybody. So here are some resources that will directly help you and also help other folks as well. So the first one I would recommend is going to Mill Mentor and finding people who have that cyber background. I just typed it in there. Once you find someone that has that type of background, the next program that you want to tap into is american corporate partners, um, acp. It's a 12-month mentorship with someone. Make sure that they live in the same location as you, um, and they have the background that you want to kind of focus on and that way you'll have one is no.

Speaker 1: 1:55:43

Mentor is like um informational interviews. I just touch base with people and like 30 second, 40, I mean 30 minute, 40 minute calls for free. And then ACP is a longer engaged relationship with a mentor um at an organization, um that you kind of work with. So I'm trying to find out the link here on ACP. We're ready to drop them in the chat, jay that you kind of work with. So I'm trying to find out the link here on ACPorg. I'm ready to drop them in the chat, jay, okay, awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:56:07

And then the last thing that I will share with you and this is kind of like just specifically for you, stephanie, when you come to Fort Meade, this program, the AAWDC program, is going to provide you with. They have a full service opportunity. So you'll speak to them, you'll tell them what you want to do and they will not only give you a certification, not only review your resume, not only connect you with employers, but identify, like, what fields that you want to get into. So they'll actually walk you through the steps. Awesome, but you have to, you have, you have to be stationed at four mean. So, since you're stationed at four mean and yeah, this is my stopping ground, so you already know awesome.

Speaker 5: 1:56:48

We'll be there in june. We're really excited.

Speaker 2: 1:56:50

So, yeah, thank you so much, no worries awesome, uh, ryan, the ryan and randy, and then I guess we'll just close it off for this weekend. All right, right, ryan?

Speaker 8: 1:57:02

Yeah, I know you would have talked a little bit about the email issue that was going on. This is going from the application, from the ActNow website to put in all that information. It's not me submitting. What it is is asking to verify and then that code not coming through. So I was wondering if that's a common issue for everybody else, because I'm just not getting an email to verify that code. I'm not getting a code coming in.

Speaker 2: 1:57:35

Yeah, some people always tell us, you know, it might take like 10, 15 minutes to show up in your spam folder. And we'll check your spam folder, man, okay, or?

Speaker 1: 1:57:45

you can also just try another email if you have one, just to verify. But um, it should be like direct, it should be. Oh, somebody says mine came in within 15 minutes.

Speaker 2: 1:57:55

Okay, and check your spam and check your spam, man okay yeah, I've been.

Speaker 8: 1:57:58

I've been checking my spam, but I'll keep an eye on the time, since that's seems to be the issue, but I just wanted to make sure I didn't close out of the whole application for no reason if it was gonna send it.

Speaker 2: 1:58:08

So thank you thank you randy, what you got, man all right.

Speaker 1: 1:58:21

See, like every time you call somebody like I'm dropping off.

Speaker 11: 1:58:24

I'm here.

Speaker 10: 1:58:25

How are you doing?

Speaker 2: 1:58:27

Oh, this is Randy. All right, what's going on? Good to see you again, man.

Speaker 10: 1:58:32

It's always good seeing y'all. I hope everyone's having a good time. So I also got another opportunity as well. I am constantly searching for stuff as well as research, because, honestly, my honest opinion, you should never take the education or go in debt for making yourself better as you make your community better. So one of the opportunities I have is called Salesforce. Who has ever heard of Salesforce?

Speaker 2: 1:58:56

It's a small little company right out there in California that's making only about like $50 billion or something like that right.

Speaker 10: 1:59:03

Something like that but anyway, it is a CRM tool. The reason why I bring that up? Because the previous people I used to work with, which was Cat Gemini GS, was looking for people who had Salesforce, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't have that. So I'm here today to tell you how to get those search for free if you are a veteran. So, like I said, I'm about to drop the link in chat. Go ahead and read through it. Pretty much the customer relationship management tool, in other words, the tool that you're going to use to talk to most of your customers Even me, as a cloud administrator, had to use it, was forced to use it, don't get me wrong.

Speaker 10: 1:59:38

It didn't make my life a lot easier, but at times I still miss that. Let's talk face-to-face, let's shake hands, let's break bread and so on and so forth. Last supper is what we did, so I'm going to drop that in chat for anyone who's interested. Pretty much, they have a boot camp. It is at your own pace and once you finish up the boot camp, they will give you a voucher for you to actually test. At the end of the day, I'll go drop in chat in a few Also.

Speaker 10: 2:00:06

Finally, with the AI IT thing from Microsoft. I would strongly recommend you actually take the challenges and also sign up for it. I have so many free Microsoft vouchers just from doing our challenges alone. Let's see. Do they have an automation course? That I don't know. I know they have an admin course. I know they have a Gats that I don't know. I know they have an admin course. I know they have a got to what I took. And they have a few other courses that I go look and see. And if you can hear that, it's my rug rat running around for today's my birthday, so that's even out this hanging out.

Speaker 1: 2:00:35

Happy birthday.

Speaker 10: 2:00:37

Yeah, happy birthday to myself. Thank you, god, for bringing me to this world. Thank God, let me hang out with y'all, so I'm going to drop that in there as well. Also, finally, I know there was a young lady in her family that was about to PCS over at Fort Meade and is interested in cybersecurity. I will strongly recommend that you actually sign up for pre-scholars as well. Like I said, once you actually get your cybersecurity, so on and so forth, the next thing they're going to ask you to do is get a cloud server. This cloud is very big around here. That's part of the reason why I'm actually in the cloud, because it pays the bills. I'm just going to keep it 100. It pays the bills, especially around here. Thank you so much for the birthday wishes and finally, again thank you so much for hosting this. Any AWS recommendations? Yes, they actually do have an AWS bootcamp at 20 hours. Rj, can you go back in the room please, because I'm actually talking on the phone? Appreciate you and I love you.

Speaker 2: 2:01:34

Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen. And also Did he give you the knife handle? Tell him to go back to-. He did not.

Speaker 10: 2:01:40

No, that's like I said. I like to use my words instead of barking at him and screaming and spitting at him. Like I said, I think times have changed so, like I said, I'm going to go ahead and drop those links in chat as well for anybody who's actually interested in it. And again, it's free. You do boot camp and you do the courses and then afterwards, even when you actually pass the test, you can keep going for higher certs as well with service, I mean with Salesforce. Do you have any other questions? Also, I'll drop my LinkedIn as well for anybody who wants to talk about it or explain more. So sorry to take up your time again. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 2:02:23

It's always good to hear from other people, man. It's always good to hear from y'all Like.

Speaker 10: 2:02:27

Y'all are the ones that actually support the community. Y'all are the ones that are actually putting in the love and sweat and the blood and tears for us. So again, I appreciate y'all. Honestly. Like I didn't even have a job until places like this actually opened up for me, I'm keeping a buck Like I didn't even. I couldn't even finish up my college, honestly, until places like this came and helped me with resources and actually giving people the ability to actually transfer from military all the way up to like. I ain't gonna lie, I make over 150. Like, and it's all thanks to services like this so again, thank you, thank you so much um, but anyways, I'm gonna go ahead and drop these things off.

Speaker 10: 2:03:10

I'm stopping running my mouth again. Thank y'all so much.

Speaker 2: 2:03:13

Y'all have a blessing awesome one last one, last resource I just remembered myself. I wanted to share with you guys here another certification opportunity. This one here is with Okta. For anybody who does not know what Okta is, they do IAM stuff, identity and access management. So this one here is three-month program, they said. You get access to the coursework, and then they provide you with the voucher to take the test. All right, so go ahead and look into it 90 days.

Speaker 1: 2:03:56

This will be the last thing. I shared this in the link and I'll share it again. I actually dropped the PowerPoint in here, but these are all the certifications. If you're interested in cybersecurity, the organizations that have certifications that's under them. So if you're looking for it, check out this, look at the organizations, touch base with them.

Speaker 1: 2:04:14

I know Boots to Books is actually giving away a $1,000 scholarship now for any certification, so make sure you take advantage of it. And it's broken down from transition service members, veterans, active duty to military spouses, what programs are applicable and what's available, and if you want access to that. Obviously we talked about it the weekly rundown but yeah, and so I'll share this again so that you guys have that. And then the last thing before we forget, please write a review. Let people know whether or not this information has been helpful. Let other people know what we do.

Speaker 1: 2:04:46

Animal is going to drop that link in there. This is what we do every Saturday. We come across new programs, resources and stuff like that. We want to share them with you, like I said, with no other goal but to really help each other figure this out, and so I'll share that one last time, but please write a review. It means the world to us, and it also allows us to get more programs under our belts so that we can be able to support. I'm trying to get PMP to pay for like 50 scholarships right now, and so that is my goal, but I know I need to have a large demand for that, so please help us out.