Part Two of "Getting Where You Want To Go In Life"

The following post is from the client described in my post of June 26th - "Getting Where You Want To Go In Life"...

"Last week, during ny coaching session with Mark, he asked how I was proceeding toward accomplishing my #1 goal, that’s changing my job and moving to Austin TX with a job offer in hand on or before July 15th, 2009 (a specific date on the calendar). I had made all possible connections remotely by identifying and applying for number of jobs. But nothing concrete had yet happened to encourage me on this front. I told Mark that I was making progress, but it looked like I might have to move the date out because I was being told that the job market in Austin was very slow. At that point, Mark asked me a question – was I going to give up on the date (and effectively, my goal), or was I willing to change the “method” while keeping my “intention” intact. My intention is to take up a new job by 07/15, and move to Austin. As Mark teaches, Result (100%) = Intention (99%) + Method (1%).

Then Mark told me that the reason I was willing to give up on my my goal was because I was not really committed to my intention to achieve it by the date I had set. In fact, as it turns out, I was more committed to my method which was worth only 1% of my goal! Then Mark challenged me. He said that if I was really committed to my goal to take a job in Austin by July 15th (a goal is a specific, measurable objective, achieved by a specific date on the calendar, and according to Mark, “someday” is not a specific date) I would change my method,taking the following actions in the sequence listed…

1. Book a round trip airline ticket to Austin for next week.
2. Book a hotel reservation for my stay.
3. Book a rental car for use during your visit.
4. Get on the phone and set up appointments with my contacts in Austin during my trip to interview for a position there.

Mark said that by doing this I would put skin in the game, demonstrating to myself that I was serious about my intention to achieve my goal by the date I set, that I would align my actions with the fact that there was urgency… It made sense, so the next day I booked a round trip flight, hotel, and car for the following week (the week of June 28th). I also decided to take next whole week off from work to invest my time in creating my future!

Sunday (06/28) morning I flew from to Austin. During the flight I was just thinking what to do next two days, whom to meet, how to ask for help etc… When I reached Austin it was 4pm. It was a pretty hot day (temp at lower 100s). It was a strange feeling when I landed at Austin, a new city, nobody I know of, lots of things to do for next couple of days, meeting strangers etc… But I was excited to come out of my box to invest in my future!!!

After renting a car, I headed straight to my hotel to dump my luggage, then drive around Austin, especially to visit the Dell campus at Round Rock – this is where I want to go to work. After driving around Round Rock and having dinner I came back to the hotel and started working on next day’s action items:

1. Meeting confirmation with Manpower recruiter
2. Confirmed next day’s meeting with Sandu (college professor)
3. Hunt for other recruiters online
4. Call with Burnett / Sapphire / MCI staffing
5. Talked to friend at Dell for a meeting on Monday, he was busy for Monday, planned to meet him on Tuesday for a coffee.

Monday (06/29)

Met Manpower recruiter – VJ, very friendly person, willing to help even personally! Manpower provides staffing to Dell, IBM, and other prominent players in Austin. VJ is actively working on my case; he did not have any immediate openings in PM area. He provided me his home address to take a look at the neighborhood, invited me to visit his home for a coffee. According to him, IT opportunities are more in Dallas and Houston compared to Austin. Did he sound negative? No, he must be right in terms of the number of opportunities – it is his job to know this - but I need just one opportunity to get to Austin, and I am confident of coming across the right job for me soon. I thought, it’s so easy to meet people and network, I just need to focus on finding people who can help me in getting to Austin! I was all excited to meet people after this meeting, it is easy!!

Good, I got an address to drive around neighborhoods that I might want to live in! So I started driving to VJ’s neighborhood. It was little outside of Austin, a place called Pflugerville, a nice quiet place away from city traffic/population. Right away I thought “definitely I wouldn’t live in such neighborhood”, You know why? I could not find even a single person in the neighborhood, it all looked deserted!

So, I had a plan to meet my professor (Sandu) at 4pm at his office. He was not that close to me while I was studying, but he was one of my favorite instructors in my engineering program, a nice person, good at teaching and making the student comfortable with the subject. A little shy in nature, but excited to see me at his office. He was excited to show me scenic Austin through the 360 loop. Austin is beautiful indeed, it is green and warm, plain land on one side, hilly region on the other side. The Colorado river takes quite a number of turns through Austin!

So Sandu was excited to talk about Austin, comparing that with Silicon Valley in terms of greenery and natural beauty, of course I agree with him. He seemed almost obsessed with Austin, and for good reason it turns out! He bought a house in Austin in a good neighborhood couple of years back. He said it’s a small house, just 2700 sqft in size. When he said this I thought “2700 sqft living area in bay area is like living in a mansion!!” The cost of the house was $250K!! Ridiculously low isn’t it! The same house in Silicon Valley would cost anywhere between $800k and $1.2m. So the thought occurred to me that should just book one house right there and then! Should I? Why not? That would be full commitment!

We spent about 2 hours talking about Austin, Bay Area, people from our college etc… nothing much more he could help me on my mission, he is not that well connected on IT front, he works in video compression technology with a start up. I left him at his office after coffee, promising to meet him at his place the next day. Sandu gave me all positive details about Austin, which is pretty encouraging stuff for my mission!!

So it was time for me to check emails from the recruiters I contacted in last few days, also I was waiting for couple of meeting confirmation for tomorrow. I came back to hotel and started working on finding contacts, companies and recruiters. Meanwhile during the day I had tried setting up meetings with couple of recruiters but response was not that positive (noise), they asked me to send resume so that they would take a look before planning for a meet. They did not sound positive on meeting me. I was not discouraged seeing no face-to-face meetings being setup for next day, because I thought, “let’s use a different method to meet these folks”.

As per my plan I was left with just one more day in Austin. I had booked my flight back for Wednesday morning. So, I decided, let me identify the people / companies I have to meet on Tuesday, sort them by area (close to each other) and start visiting them one-by-one. Also I called up my college-mate at Dell to fix up a time to met him next day, he was ok for meeting for a coffee.

My plan was to meet the following folks:

1. HCI International
2. Sapphire – Jay H.
3. Spherion
4. Burnett Staffing
5. Jim Smith (my friend) at Dell
6. HP
7. CISCO
8. Sun Microsystem

Tuesday (06/30)

As I said above, I had decided to meet people personally and explore the opportunites, so I started the day by driving to Sapphire and asking for Jay H., who is the technical recruiter. At the reception just I asked for Jay, next moment I was in a meeting room with Jay discussing about California, weather etc. He was very positive to work out an opportunity for me in Austin in next couple of weeks! He was impressed with my resume and he said there are number of projects starting/started at AMD / Charles Schwab / The Foundry etc. I need a regular follow up with Jay on these opportunities. It was so easy to meet Jay; I just walked in, without prior meeting setup!! I thought, this is outstanding!

Spherion was next to Sapphire suite, in the same building, just I walked in to Spherion asking for recruiting / HR manager. Nobody was available at that time, so just I dropped in my resume at receptionist. I will be following up on the opportunities here with recruiting manager.

HCI international is a career management firm that helps candidate to identify right career and opportunity, and helps you to get that opportunity. I wanted to meet one of their managers who can help me at Austin. Ashley (admin) said her VP is busy for Tuesday, so she can setup a meeting for later that week, but I could not stay back that long, I had to head back on Wednesday.

The other staffing firm I wanted to have connection was Burnett Staffing. I had made connections with a technical recruiter at Burnett (Deborah Nichols). She was busy for whole that week, so I asked if we could setup a call to discuss my requirements. She has agreed to have a call on next Wednesday (07/08) to take my case forward.
Next in my list was to meet Jim, my friend from college who is working at Dell. I had never had any personal contact with him after college. I got reconnected with him via LinkedIn a few days back while exploring opportunities in Austin.

We met that day at 2pm for a coffee, he was straight to the point on my requirements, what I looking for, how is Dell structured, where he can help me etc. Also, he mentioned that he would be quitting Dell in next 2 weeks as he has accepted an offer from a firm in Hong Kong!! So he has asked me to identify the PM openings at Dell that’s suitable to my profile and send him the job#, he would be able to connect me with respective recruiting manager at Dell. So, I have sent him few openings I found at Dell.com and have asked him to introduce me to Dell managers. I will be following up with him again early next week.

Also, while researching Austin, I found CISCO, Sun Microsystems and HP have operations at Austin. So I thought, I should visit these companies and meet their HR/Recruiting managers. Unfortunately, these companies did not have recruiting managers located at those offices, the only way they accept the applications is through their online job portal, so nothing much positive happened at these companies. But, there is a positive thing that happened! I came out of my box and visited these offices, walked straight into reception, asking for technical recruiting managers!! This was a big deal for me!!!

Now, I was exhausted with my visit list, so just headed back to hotel to check internet/email to see if anybody else has responded on my resume. But nobody had responded. I was flexible to change my return date based on any new responses from recruiters / companies, but nothing much happened that encouraged me to change my travel plans.

So, after 2 hectic days of meeting people and companies, I decided to treat myself to a drive around Austin, specifically 360 loop and a visit to Colorado river and reservoir built on this river. Tuesday was just perfect with temperature being at lower 90s, it had rained that morning; the warm weather was just perfect for me!! It just reminded of my birthplace, where 365 days are warm just like that!!! So I just felt like homecoming!!!!

While I was that location Mark called me up for checking on my mission. He asked me to feel my physical presence in Austin at that moment, stressing how it would help me in achieving my goal of moving to Austin. He asked me to plant a coin or something of my possession at Austin that would help me in connecting myself with the city, and to get some soil from Austin as a token to bring back, which is physical stuff that will remind me of the mission I took to create my future in that city!!

That night, while I was packing my luggage for early morning flight next day, I started thinking whether I accomplished my mission. I took a huge step towards achieving my main vocational goal of moving to Austin, I met quite a number of people here who all are now helping me in achieving my goal. And connected myself with Austin by planting few coins and bringing some sand from my future city!!!

Now, after my visit to Austin, my intention to move to that city is stronger than ever! I am confident that something positive will happen very soon that would help me in achieving my #1 goal!!! I have made a number of connections in Austin now, and I am working on making more connections that will lead to the landing of the job I seek there… I believe, strongly believe I can achieve this goal very soon, my deadline is 07/15, very much closer than I thought!! But as always, Mark says just believe it’s going to happen, focus on your intention, you will find a way to achieve your goal – because Intention (99%)+ Method (1%) = Result (100%), and if I hold on to my intention by date. In fact, I already possess 99% of my goal right now! After this trip, my intention of moving to Austin is stronger than ever before, so the method doesn’t matter to me, I am going to achieve my goal!!!!

Follow-up action plan... details removed for privacy…"