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Bible Resources

This is one of those posts where people have asked a few times and thought I would just put this in a single post.  There are two types of resources: commentary and resources.  Commentary is basically someone’s exegesis, explanation, interpretation, or application of text from the Bible.  My personal belief is that Jesus is strongly warning His disciples against this.  But then He does it Himself.  So in other words, it can be good but I think (my opinion) is that we should be reading the Bible and coming to our own conclusions.  Not relying entirely on the teaching of someone else.  The second group is resources that may be like the Strong’s Concordance (a Bible dictionary) or translations or interlinear text, etc.

The Bible Project

These are great for any age.  I have heard a PhD in Theology say many Bible scholars are pretty impressed by their ability to simplify super complicated ideas.  For the most part, these videos (almost 200 now) are animated and cover a range of Biblical topics.

The Naked Bible & Unseen Realm

The Naked Bible is Michael Heiser’s podcast where he has in depth discussions on various books of the Bible.  This is technical and not for the faint of heart.  But if you like to nerd out on anything, try nerding out on the Bible.  The Unseen Realm is a book published in 2015 and covers a supernatural worldview that can help us grow in our understanding of God and explains some difficult passages and translations and in many ways challenges how some words in the Bible are translated that have a huge implication on this Unseen Realm.

Chuck Missler & Koinonia House

Chuck Missler is actually a business man that studied the Bible and then later went on to teach on a number of topics.  I am not sure to the degree that he knows Hebrew, but he clearly is not only reading the Bible but looking at and studying the original language.  He shows some of the fascinating hidden ciphers, codes, and symbolism in the Bible.

Miico Shaffier & Learn to Read Hebrew in 6 Weeks

If you want to learn Hebrew, start here!  Check out her site.  She has free classes online that cover the Alephbet in 6 weeks.  She is super patient.  She keeps the class open to as many as want to learn and is pretty good about kicking people out that are just trolling.  In fact, I think her husband does that while she teaches.  They also give tours in Israel.

Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance for King James Version

If you do not have a Concordance, think of it as a dictionary.  For each English word in the Bible, it lists each occurrence and the corresponding Hebrew or Greek word.  Very quickly you will see many of these translations are not nearly as straight forward as you would think.  The Bible is full of wordplay, double and triple entendres, a too many literary devices to list.  A good Concordance helps better understand much of these.

Bible Hub

Just a great all around resource.  Many of these resources are connected.  Bible text online, concordance, interlinear text (side by side Hebrew and English or Greek and English).

Random YouTube videos on Bible topics

  • One Minute Appologist – great apologetic topics and interviews
  • One For Israel – the conversion story of Jews and how they found Jesus the Messiah.  Over 400 videos!
  • Sergio & Rhoda – couple in Israel tour famous sites and discuss those sites from Bible with interesting little gems
  • Aleph Beta – great Bible stories and commentary from a Rabbi

 

Using Search Engine Marketing for a Job Search: Keyword Research

Recently I started looking for my next role and I decided to apply search engine marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to that search. It has been so effective that I have shared it with a few friends and decided to write a quick guide. In fact, so broad is this topic, I am going to break this up into a few topics. This is the covering the first topic: keyword research. You can see a few screenshots at the bottom of this post. Here are the other topics and as I complete this guide, I will update with links:

Results

There are really two factors I have used to gauge how well this has worked. First, I was getting about 5ish calls or emails from recruiters per month before doing this and closer to 20 calls per month after. So probably about a 4X increase in touches from recruiters. Also, LinkedIn the number of impressions your profile has received from searches on site. So this is when a recruiter is searching for a skill and you have appeared. You can find this number on your profile page just below your description in the section titled Your Dashboard. At the top there is a section that says Search Appearances (see image below…image 1 of 3). This has also increased about 3 to 4 times. In short, this is why I think this exercise is so important. It increases your exposure to recruiters that are searching for skills. And that is where we are going to start: identify the skills you have that are most relevant to the roles you are looking for. There is another benefit that is harder to quantify. I feel the roles I have been contacted about are better quality and closer to what I am looking for because I have removed a lot of skills that are no longer as relevant to what I am looking for. At one point I had several finance roles but now I am looking for marketing roles. So those skills are great, but not as relevant in what I am currently looking for.

Create A List of Keywords or Skills

If I was working for a brand that wanted to run some SEM campaigns, I would start by looking at keywords they are currently ranking well for and then a larger list of related keywords that they probably want to rank for. Those lists are usually have different keywords and that is why the exercise is important. If you are selling desks, you don’t want to rank for “rustic desks” if “farmhouse desks” are more frequently searched for. In the same respect, you may have skills that might be searched for in a number of ways and you want to be sure you are using the term that recruiters are searching for most often. How do you do this? The best way I have found to identify skills that recruiters are searching for is to track skills listed on roles posted on LinkedIn. I looked at over a dozen job postings on LinkedIn and copied the skills into a worksheet to see which skills were most common. Each time I applied to a role, I was sure to add that to the list which continued to grow a list of relevant keywords and skills. They are not on every job posting but on many on the right column there is a section How You Match and below that Skills and below that should be about a dozen skills that are considered most important to the role. Also, those skills will have either a blue or white check to indicate if LinkedIn believes you have that skill or not. Like me, you might be thinking, “but wait! I have that skill!” You need to make a list of those skills for about a dozen related roles that you feel are a good fit for you and identify the skills/keywords that are most common. I made a list that showed the skill, 0 for not and 1 for having that skill, the company, the title, and date posted. I then made a pivot table that showed how frequently those skills appeared. Not only does that show you the most frequently listed skills for the types or roles you are seeking, but if you are deemed to have them. The top 5 most common skills for the role I was looking for were marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), management, advertising, pay per click (PPC). More importantly, I found for I have many of the frequently listed skill but LinkedIn did not think I did. So what do you do in this case?

Optimize Your Resume, Portfolio Page, and Job Profiles

I will go into this in more detail in another post, but essentially you need to make sure you have those skills mentioned in the description of every role you have listed on LinkedIn with quantification when possible. The most important you are probably going to want to have the most important in your headline and main description. In fact, right now I have 6 skills in my headline on my LinkedIn profile. In my description section below the brief paragraph, I have listed another 30 skills. Most people do not even see this, but the text is there for LinkedIn to index. Then in the bullets of my prior roles, I tried to mention as many of those skills that I actually used in that role with quantification where I could. One thing I would add: do not feel you need to hit every skill listed, just the most relevant skills you actually possess. In the example below (image 3 of 3) the role listed “Social Media Optimization”. There can be several ways to list a skill and in this case it is also called “Content Optimization” or “Merchandising”. In looking at over a dozen roles, I created a list of about 70 skills 2/3rds of which were only listed on one role. I would focus on the skills used more frequently. Also, listing a skill that you have no experience with is going to come across as lying and get you eliminated quickly. So I would also be sure to not list a skill unless you can demonstrate how you have used that in a previous role.

Conclusion

Recruiters and job search sites are giving you some great information and making note of that is going to help you tremendously in landing your dream job. This will not only increase the number of times you appear in search results, but the number of times your profile is likely clicked on.

Geneva Trip Summer 2018

Went to Geneva to see my dad from July 29 to August 6th. Want to highlight a few things with pics below. Spent some time driving around with Bob and Lenny Pippen. Lenny is one of my dad’s partners on his new hotel on Plum Point, which is on Seneca Lake. Also went wine tasting, toured the Glenn Curtiss Museum, toured the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, and got to have a few beers with the Master Brewer at Genessee Brewery.

Glenn Curtiss

This was way cooler and more interesting than I thought it would be. Glenn Curtiss was one of the first people to commercially make motorcycles in the United States. And he was one of those guys that was only doing it because it was his hobby. He set several records and one several races. Shortly after the Wright Brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk, he was asked to make an engine for an aeroplane. He designed an eight cyllinder. A V8 engine design. It was the first V8 ever. He asked some of the guys what would happen if he put it on a motorcycle. “You’ll kill yourself.” So of course he put it on and took it out to the Carnival of Speed at Ormond Beach in January of 1907. They wouldn’t let him race the thing, but agreed to let him run a time trial. He ended up breaking the land speed record with 136 miles an hour. A record he held for several years. Not long after that he worked with 5 other men including Alexander Gram Bell to design 4 different aeroplanes, each improving on the last. The Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk was the first flight, but they had not done much after that. Meanwhile Glenn Curtiss competed for several prizes in exibition flights including one that ended in New York City. The Wright Brothers had been the first, but Glenn Curtiss was getting much of the lime light. The Wright Brothers were invited and the events had been set up for them to show people their accomplishment. For whatever reason they never came. But Glennn Curtiss pulled stunt after stunt. The Wright Brothers ended up suing Glenn for everything he had for patent infringement. Henry Ford lent Glenn his attorney to fight the issue but when World War I started, the issue was resolved when the goverment killed the patent in an effort to stimulate development of planes for the war effort. This is a really short summary but it is a really cool story.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

This was very cool, but I have to admit, it wasn’t as cool as I thought it was going to be. Lots of cool stuff but it seemed like it would be epic. It was cool to see a little of the history of baseball’s early years. I got a copy of the 2017 NBHoF Almanac, which was the year Pudge was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez was a catcher for the Texas Rangers from 1991 to 2002. A career batting average of .296 with 311 home runs and 2,427 games behind home plate and erasing 49% of basesteelers.

Linden Street

This street is just cool. It has that feeling of a little quite French street where little cafes and restaurants have tables set out in the street. During the weekend they block it off entirely. Lights cris-cross overhead and there is some graffiti on the southern wall (pictured below). Friday and Saturday night they had bands. For a little college town of 20,000, the street was pretty packed. On of the restaurants is my new Geneva favorite: Fry Bird.

Getting Things Done, Bullet Journal & Field Notes

I started to write this to a newly married friend. He had asked last minute if he could have one of my Field Notes notebooks for his honeymoon. Unfortunately all I had was one I had already started, but I tore out a few pages and it was his. I have come to find journaling as an incredibly effective tool and there are some concepts I have borrowed from others wanting to journal or keep a pocket notebook should know about.

I want to tell my own system, but first a quick story. I take a nice Moleskin notebook to meetings with me. I was meeting with a potential investor back when I was working on a startup. The potential investor had some ideas he thought I should consider. I had the notebook in front of me but it had been closed. His demeanor changed when I took the notebook, opened it, and took out a pen and jotted down some of his ideas. He sat up and excitedly elaborated on his ideas. And they were really good ideas. And I could tell he appreciated that I was listening enough to realize they were good and I was thoughtful enough to make note of them. That is part of the power of the notebook and journaling. It is a physical indication that this idea is important enough to write down. Others notice that. But more importantly I notice that. It is a small way of cementing the importance of an idea. Or the first small step towards getting something done.

Getting Things Done


This book has become something of a cult classic. I say cult classic because it is definitely not as well known as other books like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but still it is #3 on Amazon’s Time Management category. Basically you need a system that captures 4 categories of “things”. David Allen points out that people are burried in todo lists, emails, letters, bills, notices, requests, and our own barrage of ideas. David suggests putting everything in one of 4 categories:

  1. Things I need to get done today or this week
  2. Things I’d like to do one day maybe
  3. Information I might need at some future date
  4. Ideas

The last one is why I keep a Field Notes journal on me at all times. Ideas are distractions. Maybe they are potentially the winning lottery ticket of an idea. Maybe a future best selling novel. Or maybe just something you need to consider. But if you do not get them down, they will be in the back of your mind nagging at you. Getting them down tells the mind you are on it. It won’t be lost or forgotten. But most importantly you’ll be able to get work done or sleep where had you not jotted it down, it may have kept you up all night.

Bullet Journal

This is a popular topic on YouTube. There are dozens of videos on this with over one million views. This video was what turned me onto the concept. Others have taken that concept and made it their own with their own little tweaks. The thing I liked about it is it is a system of keeping your To Do list organized. It sounds like it would be easy, but it isn’t. With any day’s to do list you may have personal and work items. Events that need to be added to a calendar. Items that need to be elaborated on later. Uncompleted items that need to be carried over to the next day’s to do list. And you will find to do’s that are really, like David Allen suggested, a “one day maybe” task. The thing that I liked most was 1) having an index to quickly find meeting notes or some idea you jotted down and 2) the bullet list itself.

My Own System

I have found this so useful I have 3 notebooks. My large Moleskin notebook for work notes. And a medium notebook for personal journalism and ideas. It is very Zen. I feel a lightness to having that out of my head and on paper. So for the most point, the Field Notes is for ideas. Sometimes people will tell me of a book or something I will want to check out later. With all the notebooks, having an index in the first few pages ala Bullet Journal has been really helpful. I tried the calendar a few times, but I have found using Google Calendar works better. I have also found that putting “someday maybe” items into Evernote works great. But other than Google Calendar and Evernote, I have found paper and pen easier than a digital solution.

Why Wayfair Warrants Whopping Investment

One of our online retailers is Wayfair. I was looking at their Q4 2017 10K and surprised their price is going down. Couple points:

  • Undervalued compared to Amazon (compare market cap to annual sales). Amazon’s market cap is more than 4X revenue. Wayfair is just over 1X revenue. Wayfair has posted losses, but they are investing heavily in a growing business.
  • Getting close to top 10 online retailer and in terms of home furnishings I suspect they are actually LARGER than Amazon.
  • Year over year, sales went UP (46% in Q4 2017) while COGS and overhead were relatively consistent or decreased
  • Stock price DOWN 30% from this year’s high despite strong performance
  • Today they are launching Way Day, their answer to Amazon’s Prime Day. One customer has sold more in the last few hours than an average day. Search trends way up.

CONCLUSION: once Way Day performance is announced, stock price will see an immediate rebound. Even then I think it will be a great buy and think they will soon be getting press to push them into top 10 online retailer.

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