JohnMarty

This is a step by step guide to ensuring you get awesome LinkedIn Recommendations. The inspiration for this video came from a late-night message I received from a recent College grad in India. I'll show you an example format that I like to use, I'll explain why I like to use it, and I'll break the process of requesting and posting recommendations in LinkedIn.

Monday Motivation - Overcoming Fear: This is a cinematic motivational video about overcoming fear to reach your dream. Don't ever let anyone's self limiting beliefs, or criticism stop you from going after your dreams. Put your head down, ignore the haters, and start taking action.

The other day a perfect stranger reached out to me on LinkedIn to see if I'd be willing to meet for coffee - In this video I'll share a couple effective tactics this person used in his message, that got me to say yes to a coffee chat and ultimately made me want to help him get a job at Amazon.

In this video, I'll share my perspective as an Amazon employee on how I answer the question "Tell me about yourself." My approach is non-traditional, but can be very effective at kickstarting a quality 2-way dialog.

The Cover letter is DEAD - Don't waste your time - Here's a three step process to actually get noticed - My Amazon perspective - There's a lot of Youtube videos out there that will teach you how to write the PERFECT cover letter, but the reality is (especially in Tech) that nobody will ever take the time to read it.

In this video I'll share 8 things I noticed and then changed during a real-life resume writing exercise. These tips can be used by anyone looking to stand out. The inspiration from this video came from a Quora post I did that received 45,000 views. In my post, I shared my opinion that resumes should always be one page.

In this video I'll talk about why it's important to celebrate and appreciate small victories. It can be intimidating to start taking action towards a big dream or goal, especially because we compare ourselves to those who have already reached the top. We often don't realize that if we just start, we'll grow, and when we grow, new opportunities will come our way. Always point towards your goal, but spend 95% of your time focusing just a few steps ahead, and celebrate each small victory along your journey.

There's a lot of chatter about building a personal brand, but most people are thinking about it the wrong way. In this video, I'll break down how to think about personal branding the right way in 2018.

In this video, I'll provide 3 tips you can use to be more confident in your next interview. Interviews can be nerve wracking, but being prepared and having the right mindset go a long way to increasing your confidence. Calm your nerves with a couple practical tips and don't forget to smile! Wishing you the best of luck!

We’re told all the time to follow our passion, but should we really? Mike Rowe from the hit TV show Dirty Jobs says that following your passion is a bad idea. In this video, I’ll reveal research from Harvard that back’s up Mike Rowe’s claims, and I’ll discuss the two origins of passion as well as provide a slightly different way of looking at following passion. The phrase follow your passion has been woven into so many college commencement speaches and although it's inspiring, Mike Rowe points out that it could be a trap. Some young adults hone in one one passion and then try to find the perfect job to match that passion out of the gate without having an open mind. They set these huge expectations about how their career should be and become dissapointed when they start to struggle. If you do this and you set these types of expectations, the minute you struggle or face adversity your gonna think to yourself this can’t possibly be my passion because I should love what im passionate about...... and this is a big trap as Mike Rowe points out.

I was recently hired by Amazon as a Sr. Product Manager, but that likely wouldn't have happened if I didn't have College under my belt. I'd like to share my perspective on going to college and why, for me, I think it's still worth it in 2017 to go to College, despite the cost and investment in time. I was able to leverage my business school degree after a failed entrepreneurial venture and land a six figure job, that I used to pivot into an amazing role at Amazon. Ultimately, I like to view College as an insurance policy that you can pull from your back pocket in the event you need to course correct your life. In other news - For those of you who are subscribers, It's been a while since my last post due to my recent move to Amazon in Seattle. As you can see, I've taken a different direction with the style of my videos, and I plan to post more regularly, now that things have settled down.

We always have the best intentions to workout consistently and reach our fitness goals, but after a while we sabotage ourselves and give up. Why do we give up when we know that reaching our fitness goals is so important? In this video I'd like to take you on a journey to understand what willpower is, how to get more of it by understanding how Starbucks trains their employees to increase their willpower, and I’ll close with 5 tips on how to motivate yourself to go to the gym consistently and reach your fitness goals.

Today, I’d like to share a story of a time in 2012 when I experienced a real drop in self-esteem and tell you what I did to get it back. My goal is to break down what's going on behind the scenes with social media and share a perspective that hopefully puts you on a path to achieving a better sense of self-worth. We're constantly exposed to images of extreme wealth or people that seem to have it all on social media and when we see it enough it rewires our brain into believing we'll never be enough. That's what happened to me when I was living in Miami, but I did two things that got me back on track.

In this video I'll provide you 6 tips to make an unforgettable first impression that can be used for any encounter from a job interview to a date to a meeting with a potential client. All of which are backed by research. At the end of the video I’ll also reveal one thing you should never do when trying to make a great first impression.

Changing a bad habit is the cornerstone of self improvement, but most people find it incredibly difficult to do because they’ve been told to focus on the wrong things. In this video I'll break down the three parts of a habit according to science, show you how to break a bad habit and close with tips on keeping bad habits from coming back. I recently read the power of habit by Charles Duhigg and I wanted to share a couple lessons I learned about habit formation, how to break bad habits, and how to keep them from coming back once and for all. Every habit can be broken down into a three step process of cue, routine and reward. The cue is essentially a trigger that sends your brain into autopilot, this cue can be anything from a time of day to a location, to someone around you or maybe even a behavioral pattern. The second part of the habit loop is the “routine,”. And the last stage is the “reward,”. The reward stage is when your brain determines whether or not the routine is worthy of remember or not. If the routine has a strong cue and reward the routine becomes a habit.

In this video I want to teach you an unconventional 6 step approach to landing an awesome job with little competition. This approach can be used by anyone from college students to people the are currently unemployed or someone that wants to make a career transition. We're taught that we should apply online for jobs that look like a good fit, but research shows that each job get's between 100-200+ applicants making it really hard to stand out from the crowd. So what can we do? I went through some serious struggles looking for a job a few years ago. I applied to over 100 jobs and got ZERO calls. I spent a few months working out a different strategy, a strategy that flooded me with interviews and offers. It's a method of uncovering the 80% of jobs that aren’t even listed and the best part is…..You may not even need to compete with anyone!

Do you want to start your own business? A lot of people look at starting a business or entrepreneurship as the holy grail, but there are many misconceptions that people need to be aware of before they jump in. I've compiled three of the most common myths about starting a business that I hope you'll find helpful. If you truly want to start your own business I highly suggest doing something that's rooted in the core of who you are as an individual. I believe that a real passion for something is the key ingredient to your short term and long term success.

Groundhog Day is a great movie, but it also teaches us one of life's greatest lessons......that we have the power to shape our own reality. Bill Murry plays the character of a weatherman that’s sent to cover a story about phil the groundhog in Pennsylvania . Bill hates his co-workers, he’s rude,and disrespectful, but he quickly finds out that he’s forced to live the same day over and over. For a while Bill goes off the deep end, and fights his circumstances, but after a while he starts looking for deeper meaning.

In this video I’ll share 5 tips I use to increase productivity each week In Gary Keller’s book The One Thing he refers to a study that indicates “workers are interrupted every 11 minutes and then spend almost 30% of their day recovering from these distractions.” DAMN TRUE. Ok, so 30% of my day is a total waste (I’d guess more) and the average American works 40 hours… If I cut the waste, thats 2 hours of savings per day, 12 hours of savings per week, and 576 hours of savings per year!

Stop applying for jobs and praying you get calls. Instead leverage the power of LinkedIn to get recruiter calls. In this video I'll share 5 tips I've learned along my journey to get found by recruiters. Criteria to have an All-Star LinkedIn profile 1. Profile Photo 2. Industry and location 3. An up-to-date current position (with a description) 4. Two past positions 5. Education 6. Skills (at least three) 7. At least 50 connections Services to find out if your LinkedIN photo is good or bad Photofeeler Snappr It was Feb 2017, when I received a call out of the blue from Amazon. When I asked how the recruiter found me, she replied “LinkedIn”. At the time I had been working for American Express as a Senior Product Manager. I was making a nice six figure salary, but Amazon gave me an offer and role I COULDN’T refuse. Having a LinkedIn profile changed my life. I spent a lot of time the past two years refining my profile, learning how to create a compelling story, and amassing a network by going to events and reaching out to people (I now have 1,390 connections). The time was well-spent, with LinkedIn recently granting me with illustrious title of “All-Star” based on my industry, description, education, skills, profile photo, and connections. According to LinkedIn, people with completed profiles “are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn” because only 51% of members have a completed profile. LinkedIn has empowered me to flip the traditional “apply and pray” model on its head, making recruiters sell me on opportunities, as opposed to me attempting to sell myself. This creates a tremendous amount of leverage and allows me to simply say “If you want me, then show me the money” I now have recruiters reaching out to me every week (including Google two months ago). So, does being on LinkedIn help you get hired? HELL YES IT DOES