A bit about me
I'm Echo.
I was only 5 years into my career, and wondering how I would ever reach my financial goals with the 5% raises I was receiving and constantly being overlooked for promotions.
I heard about a PMP certification that would increase my marketability and help me get a raise.
I scoured the internet, reading every article and forum I could find about the PMP certification and how to prepare. I had to read what everyone else before me did to pass.
So, I ordered my prep material. Then I made a plan for how I was going to read over 1000 pages, at least 3 times, because that was recommended.
How the heck was I supposed to memorize all this material? What should I focus on?
I was lost. I didn't know.
So I spent 8 months continuing to read forums, and as soon as I finished my first pass through my prep book, I started another pass.
And…after 8 months, I still didn't feel ready. So I invested in a bootcamp, which was useless. At this point I had invested so much time and money, and I had to do something.
I decided enough was enough, and I was going to take the exam anyway.
On exam day, I was only 20 minutes into this exhaustingly long and difficult 3.5 hour exam. I was skipping every question, hoping to know the answer to the next one. Or the next one.
The whole time, thinking to myself, “what am I going to say to everyone when they ask how the exam went?”
I thought about how embarrassed I would be if I failed and had to share that failure with everyone who believed in me. People are going to be disappointed in me. What did I get myself into?
Yet somehow I passed. With sheer luck. I knew that if I guessed incorrectly on just a few of those questions, I would have failed, and my worst nightmare would have come true.
My journey sucked.
Two years after I got my PMP, my husband decided he wanted to do so as well. After seeing the financial success I had received within months of getting my PMP, and everything it had done for our family, he wanted the same.
Unfortunately, all the struggles and frustrations I felt, he started feeling too. I hated seeing someone that I loved go through what I went through.
I knew there had to be a better way. I was determined to figure out what that would look like.
I started asking myself questions about the process. Started wondering why it’s so difficult and frustrating. And what could make passing this exam (that 50% of people seem to fail on the first try) easier, quicker, and less painful.
Through countless interviews, endless research, and sleepless nights, I learned a lot. The way people learn and consume information. Their motivations. Their mindsets. And more.
I used that, and I developed a system. The system came down to understanding how people learn best, tailoring a plan to the individual, having a roadmap to follow, and understanding that the test requires a specific mindset to help you answer the questions, because knowing information just wasn't enough.
After months of creating this system...
After months of creating this system, my husband used it to study for the exam. I watched as he spent half the time I did to study, and walked away with a wayyy higher score.
Not only was I excited for him, but I felt extremely validated that all of the thoughts, reflections, and ideas I put together, based on my learnings, ended up being successful.
So, as good of a guinea pig my husband was, I decided that I wanted to do some more test runs on others.
They experienced the same results he did.
They started getting $40,000+ raises. And new jobs with fortune 500 companies, and brought home thousands of dollars more a month to their families for vacations, new homes, cars, whatever.
The system worked.
