...so I found this exercise "What's Cool About YOU" that's going to make you WAY more interesting to talk to. Seriously. I got this from Sean Stephenson (the three-foot-tall giant, may he rest in peace)... ....and it's called "What's Cool About You?" Here's the deal... ...when we meet people in Skool communities, we do the boring stuff: "I'm a course creator" or "I run a marketing agency" or whatever. YAWN. 🥱 But what if you could share the WEIRD, COOL, RANDOM stuff about yourself that actually makes people go "Wait, WHAT? Tell me more about that!" That's what this exercise does. It helps you remember (and share) the stuff you've done or experienced that you normally wouldn't mention... but which opens the door to WAY deeper, more fun, and more intellectual conversations. ...because let's be honest... nobody remembers the person who said "I do Facebook ads." But they DEFINITELY remember the person who said "I once trained myself to become #3 in the world at footbag" or "I have a street dog in India named Scooby who's in charge of 12th Road." 😂 HERE'S THE EXERCISE: Write down everything that's COOL, WEIRD, INTERESTING, or UNIQUE about YOU. Not your business accomplishments (boring). YOUR life accomplishments. YOUR quirks. YOUR stories. Some examples to get you started: - "I was a vegetarian for 25 years" (then went back to eating meat like a savage) - "At twelve years old, I won a silver medal in sailing in the Norwegian championship" - "I became one of the biggest party promoters in San Francisco" - "I pet or talk to ALL dogs I meet on the street... because I know they need love" - "I was in the Army and became the second-best dog handler... with a BRAND NEW dog that had never been trained" (the winner had a dog that had been there for 6 years... just saying 😏) Or maybe you've got stuff like: - "I can solve a Rubik's cube in under 2 minutes" (okay, that's not impressive, but if it's under 30 seconds, NOW we're talking) - "I once ate 47 tacos in one sitting" (don't judge me) - "I taught myself to play ukulele during lockdown and now I annoy everyone at parties" - "I lived in a van for 6 months and loved every second of it" - "I can name every country in the world in under 5 minutes" (nerd alert)

Hi friends, May I ask you a question? Please post in the comments where you are from. This way, we can see where all the members live. Afterward, take a look through the comments and feel free to like or say "hi" to members who are from your area. I'm super curious to see where you're all from and will read every single comment. Let's gooooo! - Mischa 🫡

One thing I’ve learned on this journey is that sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come from the smallest shifts.For me, that shift was when someone encouraged me to apply my DevOps skills inside real e-commerce environments. I wasn’t trying to switch fields I just wanted a place to practice for real.But that experience taught me more than I expected: I learned how systems behave when real people are using them. I saw how automation and monitoring actually support a live business. I understood the difference between knowing a tool and owning a result. What surprised me most wasn’t the technical part it was how much confidence it gave me.Not because everything worked perfectly, but because I finally saw my skills making real impact. It reminded me why many of us joined this community in the first place:To grow. To build. To see our knowledge come alive. Just curious has anyone here found an unexpected place where your DevOps skills became useful? Would love to hear your experiences.

Not for the reasons you’d expect. I’m applying DevOps principles to my personal workflow: treating my workstations like Kubernetes clusters. Watch my latest video right here to find out more: https://youtu.be/gxWgceGx5Os

When I first started, I did what most beginners do: begged AI to write my “About Me.” Before that, I looked at profiles of top DevOps freelancers with 100% job success scores and gave those references to AI so it could build something similar for me. Profile looked good. I added 3–4 high-level mindset? I had that in mind that Upwork must be full of big end-to-end DevOps jobs like Blockchain-as-a-Service… but no. Most job posts were small tasks: fix Nginx, set up CI/CD, update a pipeline, restart the universe, etc. I even bought the Upwork premium plan so I could be the first to see every new job. Didn’t help. Competition was wild. I changed my keywords, edited my project catalog, and kept applying. Mostly got ghosted. Sometimes clients viewed my proposal and vanished like I had insulted their ancestors. So I started researching clients outside Upwork – LinkedIn, emails, company websites – to personalize proposals. Surprisingly, it worked. I ended up getting three calls: - One from Upwork (high bidding) - One from LinkedIn (after finding the company name) - One from email (again from company research) But none worked out. One hired someone else, one offered very low pay (I wasn’t ready to accept low budgets then) and one didn’t need DevOps anymore. Still, at least they responded. After dozens of proposals and burning 80+ connects like a ritual sacrifice, finally one client replied to my proposal. Their budget was low, and I needed work + reviews. So we made a deal. Client #1. And that’s how the journey started.