I graduated college a month ago
Updated: May 19, 2020
How's it going family and friends. If you don't know me, Hunter Weiss here. As the title states, I graduated from The University of Arizona a month ago with a Marketing degree from The Eller College of Management. My time at the University of Arizona was filled with many learning experiences and opportunities I am very grateful for.
My marketing classes emphasized personal brand throughout all of them, I am active on all social media platforms but haven't been into a blog. I have told myself I am going to write more and share those thoughts here on my site. You can expect everything from life updates, running, eating healthy, to marketing insights and content creation. I often find myself seeing great marketing campaigns that I would like to analyze and share why they are so captivating and well done. So you can think of this as a wall of thoughts depending on how I am feeling when I sit down to write!
College
My last semester of college was one of the best periods of my life. I had my favorite classes, best teachers and most of all I enjoyed every second with friends before we would all go our own direction. I finished my last semester with the best grades I've had in all my years of learning.
The last two months of college, I created a grad photo business through social media. I spent countless hours learning Google Adwords and Facebook Ad manager as digital marketing has continued to interest me more and more. With the use of good ole' word of mouth marketing and with the help of facebook/instagram ads, In 2 months, between individual and group photo sessions I took over 5,000 photos for 100+ clients. This was a great business to end my time at the U of A and who knows, I might have to come back next year for a few weekends and do it again.
Grad Photo Business
To every student with a camera in college - spend a few hours on Youtube, learn a few portrait angles, and get after it. There is good money to be made in 2019 with grad photos - everyone wants to post them on their social media and show off that they graduated (free marketing if the tag you)! We are the generation hooked on social media and having digital memories which in theory grad photos will only increase in value. So don't be afraid to charge per hour the value of your time! Take some time to figure out your value an hour and what will get you out of bed at 5:30 am to get the best lighting. Your time is valuable and it will take reprioritizing your life to deliver for multiple clients a week.
I used this lens for every photo and loved it
How I got to Asia
Now back to life and what is up.
Back in December, I bought a roundtrip ticket to Singapore for $580. I wrote on my whiteboard in my room in Tucson $50 x 53 = $2,650. This was my daily budget x the number of days I would be in Asia, the amount minimum I needed to make before graduation to fund my grad trip. Fast forward six months, many early mornings and hours of grad photos later, I have enjoyed my first three weeks here in three different countries (Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand) while staying within my new budget of $65 a day.
Marathon
As I'm writing this, I am in an Airbnb in Phuket, Thailand, its 9am on Saturday morning, my first marathon is tomorrow at 4:30am and I'm having a lazy productive day. What exactly is that? First of all, I am drinking mass amounts of water, eating fruit till noon than I will start carb loading from 12-3, followed by dinner at 6 and to bed by 7:30. The only time I plan on leaving is to eat pasta. I have salmon with rice waiting for me in the fridge for dinner.
During the time I am not eating, I sit inside on my computer and work (it's also been raining 90% of the time I've been here). I have found increased productivity in waking up early and going straight onto my computer to start the day. Currently, I am learning about targeting certain niches with Facebook Ads to have stronger campaigns with better ROI's (return on investment) so I can seek out a few more clients to run their digital marketing.
Networking
As I've traveled, I've met and networked with some ridiculously smart individuals. When I was in Singapore, I met the founders of www.ronin.cloud in a coffee shop and chatted with them for an hour about their product. I asked the simple question before you started your company, what were you doing? They both answered that they were working in corporate Australia for 10 years, not so happy about their jobs. The biggest takeaway from this conversation was the founder talking about how every single day doesn't feel like he is working - he found what he loves and he is doing it well (Amazon is going to buy them one day, that is doing pretty well in my eyes).
The End
As I reflect on my time in Singapore, I had a great time exploring the beauty of the city. I met up with a few friends, ate some great food, and even ran the city a few times seeing it in a different perspective than walking it!
If you want to see more, I made a vlog while in Singapore:
Asia Travel Essentials:
Runners' Small but powerful Camelback
The Drone I use is the DJI MAVIC 2 Pro