Mastering Your Mind (Complete Guide) - Session 2

Session 2: Master your mind. An executive job search requires a change in mindset. Instead of viewing it as a simple quest for a job, think of it as launching a targeted sales and marketing campaign with yourself as the product, one with a value proposition that shows people the solutions that you can bring to their problems. If you can nail this mindset, effective storytelling, and intentional networking, you can position yourself as the ideal solution to the challenges your target companies are facing. All right, so what changes during your transition? So now I want to focus on the mindset a little bit. And just to— and I won't spend too much time here, but this is just to show that I understand what you're going through, right? The public perception is that you're going to have a career change. There's a title shift, there's a transition, right? Oh, you're going to— you know, David's going to land back on his feet. I have no problem with that, right? Everyone sees the best. And especially on LinkedIn, you get a highlight reel of every how frickin awesome everyone is. Humble brag capital of the world. It's like scrolling Instagram and going, wow, I can eat whatever I want, look amazing, and work from the beach all the time. Like, this is great. Why is that not happening to me? Right? That's what we see constantly. But in reality, when you lose your job, you lose your identity, especially for the types of folks that have worked hard enough to be executives. You tend to be Type A personalities where you're a little obsessive about things, at least if you're like me, and you've had to push your career that way. And then all of a sudden it's gone, right? And, you know, I double down on American society here because when we say, hey, tell me about yourself, the first thing you lead with is I'm this title, right? You don't say I'm a dad. You don't say I'm a mom. You don't say these things. You say I'm an executive, this. Right. So we, we personalize our identity with our title. We've also lost a lot of power. Our status changed. Our families can be impacted, right? We go, oh no, I only have $400,000 in the bank and can survive 5 years without a job. This is stressful, right? Or I'm eating into my, my retirement, or I've gotten— this happens all the time. Most of my clients tend to be at the age where their parents are in failing health and their kids are graduating. High school, which is statistically the most miserable period of life to be in because you're becoming an empty nester and you're paying for all that school. And then you're paying for all that medical for your parents too. It's a very tough position to be in. And that impacts your, your family. And if you lose your job during that, that only exasperates the issue. All right. So I'll talk a little bit about the power dynamic shift here. So as a leader, you set the agenda. Others are looking to take your time away. You're responsible for evaluating other people and you control the company resources. But as a candidate, others are setting the agenda for you. You're trying to get their time. Others are evaluating you and they hold the resources that you need. So this is a big leverage change and something that we need to be mindful of and also ultimately what we need to reframe, right? So We can't go into— and I call this the— this probably isn't politically correct, but it's a— I call it the Oliver Twist metaphor, right? Where you're just begging, right? Please, some more, right? Please give me a job. Like, we're in that mindset because you were making decisions. Now someone's making a decision on you. And so we need to reframe from being a job seeker, a candidate, and an applicant to more of a market player, a value driver, somebody who is an asset to a company. Like, it's good for them to talk to you because you provide value. You're not begging for their time. They're lucky to have you in the room. Right now, I don't want that to come across as arrogant. There's a difference between arrogance and confidence, just like there's a difference between being aggressive and being assertive. Right? We need to assert our leadership and our value into conversations, and we need to know that we belong in the room. Otherwise, if we have that self-doubt, we're just never going to win the job and we'll keep spinning our wheels. So I have a kind of confidence framework here on why you need to know your worth, understand your value, and own your narrative. Choose your battles wisely, set your terms, drive the process. You have a choice in the matter here. And then understand your future focus. Where do you want to be in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years? How are you? How are you planning for that and how are you building your legacy? We need to plan and think about all of those things. There's some powerful language here that I want you to adopt. So this is a good sticky note opportunity if anyone's taking notes actually physically rather than just relying on AI. The power of I choose versus I'm looking, right? So a lot of times we say I'm looking for opportunities, right? That's like most common. That's the fastest way to lose your executive presence. I'm looking, can you help me? I'm looking. Right. You're not looking, you're choosing. This is the mindset shift. It's not about finding the fit. It's about choosing the fit. Right. Which puts you in a position where no can be an answer. Right. Which increases your leverage and your power. So if you're choosing and you go through a process and you're going through the interview process and you're getting red flags, you can choose to say no. Right. Now you might say, Jacob, that's much easier said than done. Like, I won't be able to pay my mortgage in 6 weeks, right? Like, I'm operating under a position that you have enough money to survive for a little bit. I won't judge you if you take a position for the sake of paying your bills and taking care of your family. It kind of goes back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Survival is most important. I'm honestly not opposed to you being deceitful to get a job to pay the bills, right? At the end of the day, I'm an advocate for the candidate and not the employer. And, you know, typically the employer will do fine with or without you, right? And your kids might not, right? So I understand the position that you're in to protect that, but I still want you to come after this with a position of, I choose, I'm looking for this next. This is where I will choose to go. You don't have to abolish I'm looking from your language, but just know that you have a choice in the matter. I mean, a lot of this, the devil is in the details and words matter. And I know this, this particular session is very high level and strategic of ways of thinking about it. And it's because we need to plan for a lot of the next steps and choose every word that we have every step of the way very wisely. That's going to build up to our negotiation leverage later in the process as well. All right. So I want to focus on reframing how you search for a job. All right. So you're not. Necessarily looking. You're not a candidate, you're a product, right? I know there's a lot of marketing and sales folks here, and then there's some folks that kind of have different backgrounds as well. But you're a product going to market. For those that are in sales and marketing, this concept will be pretty easy to grok, right? You're probably very good at bringing products to market, right? You know that you need to know the market well. You need to show value in that market. You need to build relationships. In order to test that product in the market so you can develop fit. You need to create opportunities around that and then you need to sell the deal, right? So if you're marketing a software product, you get it in front of the right audience, you get feedback, you're doing your research. A couple of people close, you, you start to assess those percentages and then you try to repeat your building process around that. So for those in sales and marketing, this should be pretty easy, right? For others, we just need to think about putting yourself out there and being proactive versus reactive, right? We cannot wait for something to happen. We need to go out and test the market, right? We need to understand it. What are people looking for these days and how do I fit into that market? What messaging do I experiment with? How can I get varying perspectives to see if that message is resonating? How do I continue to expand that to increase my likelihood? Now, one of the ways this is a little bit easier than selling an enterprise product is that you really only need to do it once. There's a lot less channels to focus on versus selling a product. You have, you know, your, your traditional LinkedIn processes, your communities. You have a couple of channels like this, but it's— you don't have to run advertising. You don't have to create this big thought leadership brand. You don't need to change the category or reinvent the wheel. Right. Very, very straightforward on the channels that you can tap into and experiment with. All right. I alluded a little bit to this, this earlier of the stage that we're in right now. So we're planning the strategy on what it's going to take. So we're planning a way to go to market for your career, but we still need to understand the steps that are involved because as I mentioned earlier, words matter and they're very important. So we need to understand that as we plan this, we need to start attracting opportunities, right? We're mastering our reputation, the channels, and every effort that we do when we put out into the world. Whether we're messaging someone in this group here today or somebody in a community, whether we're messaging somebody on LinkedIn or doing some outbound or we're commenting, the word choices you use really matter. So we need to think about, am I coming across as needy? Or am I coming across as confident? Am I providing feedback or am I asking? Am I adding value to this conversation or am I just saying something? Am I differentiating my message or am I saying what everybody else is saying? Almost everyone sends the same outbound messages. Hey, I saw that you're a recruiter and you're doing this job. I'm an excellent candidate for this for XYZ reason. How about you give me a call? Okay. Recruiters get that 50 times a day. You're not going to stand out, right? So we need to think about that as we're— how do we be more attractive? Hey, I saw you're hiring for a position. I know a handful of folks that could be a good fit. How can I best show up for you? Right? I'd like to help. That's significantly stronger than just pitching somebody. So this is why we need to understand how do we attract now? And we'll go into some of those tactical details in the next session. And then as we're thinking about closing deals in an interview process, we need to take ownership of that process. We're not waiting around to be led through an interview. Most interviewers are pretty bad at interviewing. So what we can control is how we show up. And how we take control of that. And then also everything that we say in the interview process is either serving to build leverage for ourselves or it's going to eviscerate it. So we need to think very— we need to be proactive in how these conversations can go and what language we use through that process. And then ultimately, how do we elevate the compensation once we're there, or at least change it and negotiate it so that it feels like the right deal for you? So that you can get ahead of your hesitations and red flags and address those. So you have your eyes wide open when you close the deal. All right. So now back to planning. That was kind of the, the overarching strategy that we're going through with PACE. We have an understanding of the market. It sucks mindset. It sucks, but it doesn't matter because you're better than that. Now let's start getting into a little bit more of the strategy here. So we want to first understand, like, what kind of companies are you targeting? Right? We need to think about the unique drivers of that, right? Large companies, deal sizes tend to be bigger. The sales cycle of what it takes to close that deal tends to be longer, more decision makers involved. Sometimes you'll have to influence 6 people, 12 people. So in a long-term sales process, it's your job to build advocates and champions in order to move the deal forward. We have to do the same thing in an interview process. And that's why you see when you already know someone at the company, you have a head start. That's where you can see that you can build your network to know people at companies you're interested in. And we'll talk through ways to do that. You also need to understand that if you're going from a smaller company to a larger company, right, their needs are different than a small company's needs and you need to adapt accordingly. Now, what we have to do is position what you do as the solution to their problem. So you might say, hey, you know, in this larger company, there might be a lot of processes. You might be having too many, you know, strategic people. I would imagine I'm in the room because I'm very hands-on and you need someone that's going to execute and do XYZ things. Is that right? So we have to have a counter-narrative depending on what their expectations are. Now, the same goes for earlier stage companies. You know, I have a lot of folks that are in let's say billion-dollar companies and they're doing pretty well with their compensation. But for whatever reason, they say, hey, Jacob, I would like to kill my career and go work for a startup and take a chance. Right. And I just a little bit. But this ultimately, it's very, very difficult to predict successful startup companies. And you can start to spin your wheels in what I call the, the startup meat grinder, where you're in a job for 12 months and then 6 months and then 18 months and you're just adding more and more. Yeah, Dan's over here going like, I've done that. I know a couple other folks here have done that too, right? I personally did that myself. I had 10 jobs in 10 years. Why do you think I'm teaching a course on how to find jobs? I know how to find jobs, right? I'd almost be concerned if you're really good at finding a job, right? So I don't expect anyone to know this kind of off the bat, but those growth companies are looking for specific expertise. And oftentimes if you're coming from a big company, they might be attracted to you from the success of the company or the brand name. But they're also worried that, are you going to be too strategic? You're not going to have the resources that you had at XYZ company. There's not the same layers of reporting. Are you going to roll up your sleeves? And so I don't know what your answer is on what type of company you want to go for yet. But the point is, I want you to think about what are all of the negatives they're going to think about you and how do we get ahead of them? How do we build narrative to get ahead of those things? Same goes for if you're going from a larger title to a smaller title, right? Like if I'm going to hire Anna and I know you're a CEO, right? My concern is, right? My concern would be, look, you've been a CEO. Are you actually going to take orders now? How are you going to collaborate with my team if you're not the one in charge anymore? At least not the ultimate decision maker, right? You don't have to answer that right now. I don't expect you to. But you need to think through what are the cons here. And this is a big pain point. We talked about this at CMO Huddles a little bit. A lot of people perceive marketing to be a cost center and not an investment center, right? It is a cost, like marketing just spends money. It's hard to justify the return. I'm just spending and I don't know where the investment's going. They also think that marketing is just this switch that you can flick on and then all of a sudden leads fall from the sky and everybody's making money. I see a lot of Like people get exhausted with that messaging. And so because we know that's a problem, and I imagine you don't want to walk into that problem again, we can use our experiences as narrative, such as you strike me as somebody who knows that marketing is not just a cost, but an investment, right? This is typically what it looks like, right? It looks like you've had 3 CMOs in the last 3 years. What have you learned from that? Right? Here's how I would do things differently. So we need to get ahead of those faults and actually verbalize them and communicate them if we don't want to repeat the same mistakes. And that can go for anybody in their different, different career fields. But I also want to talk about, since we're talking about you as a product, let's talk about kind of the different layers that you bring to the table. So at the very base level, I call these table stakes. This is actually what most people communicate on LinkedIn and what most people communicate in their resumes. This, this core skills or industry expertise, functional knowledge, you know, the access that they have, the types of people they have. This is, this is what we often communicate the most with because there's usually justifiable metrics. Like it looks a little sexier when we talk about it, but the reality is you're not going to be interviewing for a senior executive role if you don't have those at all. And that starts to become table stakes. Like, we know you're a functional expert. If you've been a VP of marketing for 15 years, we know you probably know how to do marketing. Otherwise you wouldn't be in that career for as long as you have. Right? So we don't need to spend time trying to be impressive with all this, that crap that we used to do. We instead need to focus on more about what the top executives care about. So the next layer, layer up, also, if you didn't have this, you wouldn't be in the room. How do you feel about building teams? How are you optimizing processes? How do you control budgets and P&Ls and EBITDA? Depending on whether you're in VC or private equity, what are the metrics that you do right now? This could be— operational excellence is really important for especially senior director and VP roles. Are you a little bit more hands-on? You have to be in the nitty-gritty here. But if we start to move to C-suite, we need to really care about what's the revenue impact? What's our position in the market? How are we innovating and staying ahead of the competition and building pipeline? How are we managing risks? Right? How are we controlling this piece? So the more senior you go, the more you need to focus on closer to the top of the pyramid here. You'll notice that I put a little star here, right? The star is what I call kind of the X factors here. And these are the soft skills that you need to show, you don't always need to say. This is where the soft skills are. Wow. Matt's a really confident leader. Carol is courageous and can speak up for others. Like these, these, these traits that need to be shown. You know, Yulia is not afraid to be confrontational, but I like it when she does it because of the way she does it. We should never underestimate a lot of the soft skills, like being a likable person and not an asshole. Now, I'm sure plenty of you have worked for assholes and you know that it probably affects your performance, right, as you work for those types of folks. So these stronger jobs, the ones that are more fulfilling, are ways that you get to show up as your most authentic self and you can be comfortable and you don't have to put a mask on for the sake of getting the job, right? Oftentimes we put a mask on, we overlook things that we think are gonna be challenges because we just need the money. And ultimately that's what tears a lot of our companies apart, right? Because that's perpetuated and then it's exhausting to keep up that face for a long time. And then you lead to burnout, and then it's kind of a self-destructive process from there. So these X factors, we want to be as authentic as possible and as honest as possible and confident along the way, being able to do that. And oftentimes what's missing is just the tactical— how exactly do I say what I need to say, right? So instead of hiding from it, we need to address it. And if you don't know how to address it, then we have a different problem, which is, okay, how do I address that? Let's think about different ways to bring this up. All right. So now I want to think about some of the key relationships that you need to develop in your inner circle, right? And this is what we're, this is what we're planning to develop here. So your inner circle is someone like former colleagues, mentors that you have, industry peers. I know a lot of you are from similar organizations or have met each other before, right? I know there's a couple of folks from CMO Huddles as an example. That would be an example of an industry peer. We both work in marketing. We kind of like each other. We share tips with each other. They're in your inner circle. Oftentimes these are the folks that show up for you best. We also have network connectors. These might be the, uh, association or community leaders. Like if you're in Pavilion, as an example, this might be your chapter head that knows everybody, right? It's good to have those people on your side. Could also be private equity and venture capital context. You should have some relationships there, especially if you're in executive position to focus on growth opportunities and you're kind of avoiding the public sector as an example. I added this section called Growth Insight. Now, this doesn't have to be somebody who is an industry peer or even a functional peer, but somebody— let's say you're a— I'll use marketing again, and you're having difficulty explaining the cost of marketing and the investment of marketing, and you're just constantly getting your ass kicked with that question. Wouldn't it make sense to build some thought partners that are in finance, like some CFOs to connect with? Right? Who are the best marketers you've ever worked with? You know, what is it? How do you know a marketer is going to work out? Like, what do you want marketers to bring to you to make your job easier versus difficult? Like, you need to have partners that you can spar with that can help you understand different perspectives around the entire org, right? So I like growth experts for their growth insights for that. You also have subject matter experts, right? So if AI is an important part, Who are some leaders in AI that you can start to build relationships with? How can you learn from that? Use that as a growth lever for yourself. Then there are also market experts, right, that understand all of enterprise software or all of CPG or all of healthcare or one subsegment of healthcare. And those are folks that you're also going to want to build as part of your network. So we don't just want to focus on which recruiters are going to have jobs for me. I also added coaches on this list, but in reality, I don't recommend having too many coaches in your corner, uh, just because you have to really, as with everyone, do your due diligence and find somebody who's going to click with you. Um, and you want to make sure that you put everyone through the fire before you hire anybody in that regard. Um, then there's also company insiders. Let's say you have a list of 20 target companies. May— it would be a dream to work at Anthropic, or it'd be a dream to work at Mount Sinai Health, or it would be a dream for X, right? You want to start to build, develop relationships with those folks, right? And we, we will talk about a couple of strategies to do that. So you're not just blindly outreaching everywhere, but you need to start to establish connections with the types of companies that'll be interesting for you. All right. So I just wanted to share another way of looking at what process you're in right now. This again, I guess most of these folks are marketers though, so not a lot of sales folks here, but this is a sales funnel. This is how we're going to go through the next sessions throughout this course. So on Thursday, we're going to talk more about getting noticed, right? This is our attraction layer. We need to attract more people. That is our marketing assets like resume and LinkedIn, right? How do we activate our network more specifically and tactically than what I just went over now? How do we manage our outbound efforts? As we start to attract more of an audience, then we're, we're actually focusing on closing a deal. We're not just interviewing. And I think a lot of, I think this is an important mindset shift to make because in an interview you're trying to be worthy, you're trying to be impressive, but what we're actually doing is closing. We want alignment with the people that we will be working with. We're gonna have to work with these people. I'd, I'd joke and say 40 hours a week, but we know for everyone in here, that's like 80 hours a week. You're often spending more time with these folks than your families. So we need to focus on alignment. So we want to find their pains and sell them the solutions that we're comfortable doing to prove our fit. So different way of thinking about your interview process. And then as we elevate, we think about the negotiation. This is the structure of which we're going to work under. This is our contract. Oftentimes we're so focused on just getting the offer that we forget about the actual negotiation itself. We might say, oh, I can move this deal. I might ask for a little bit money, a little bit more money. But what happens is we'll go through this 3-month validation process. They'll say, hey, Tara, I'm going to get you a job. Here's the offer. You have 48 hours to accept. Right. You spent 3 months trying to prove that I'm the right person. You only give me 2 days. Like, that's bullshit. So in the Elevate, we want to focus on the structure, how we're capturing that value for our career, and then optimizing the terms. It's a better fit. I just wanted to visualize this in a funnel way as well to show you that this is a process that will repeat over and over. So now we're going to focus on some tactical aspects to get started here. This is where we'll spend kind of the majority of the rest of our session today on how to actually get started telling your story and ways to think about it. All right. So the big, big takeaway of today's session, and it's where I see probably the most mistakes. Is that we're not selling your history. We're selling the future. This is very difficult, especially when our first instinct is to fix our resume, which is a chronological list of things we've done in the past. We fix our LinkedIn, which is a chronological list of things we've done in the past. Right? Everything is so focused on what we've done in the past that we forget about where we're going. And so we're focused on how do I explain this thing I did 5 years ago? How do I perfect? What are they going to ask me about this? Right. And so we're often on the back foot just trying to rewrite history, share it in the best light, and we forget that we're actually selling the future of what we're going to solve next. And this is a, this is an important distinction to make because everyone here has probably been in an interview where the other person doesn't really let you talk and they're just saying, well, Dan, tell me about yourself. You know, David, what did you do here? Karen, 5 years ago you led this charge and this is what it looked like, right? What value is that providing to the future conversation other than keeping you what I call on the back foot? So what happens is if you're waiting for them to ask the questions, they're typically asking questions about the past first to see if you're a good fit to continue the conversation moving forward. And when you're on the back foot, you're less confident because you don't know what they're going to ask you. They can ask you just about anything and it can throw you off. But the key takeaway is stop selling the history, start selling the future. Experience is a commodity, and the impact that you're going to have is the product that we're selling here. And so there's a couple of ways to do this. Oftentimes we lead with, I've had 20 years of experience doing this, and I led teams of 500, and I managed $100 million, and I implemented these systems and those types of things. That's how the average folks interview. I'm not saying that's not going to get you a job, but that's not necessarily going to help you create opportunities in the same way. That's going to help you be judged versus being in a more confident and proactive position that's confident. So the new model is more like, in my— I accelerated revenue, tripled revenue in the last 24 months. I accelerated revenue 3 times in the last 2 years, or I tripled revenue in the last 24 months. I transformed the cost structure, which saved us $45 million. This is a much more direct way of saying what happened. I built an acquisition engine that, that drove $2 billion in value. Here's how I did that as an example. So it's not I have experience, it's I did this thing, but we need to move it kind of to the next step here, which is that we need to make it matter to them. So we have this achievement. I built this global engineering team from 50 to 500, or I 10xed it, or think about however you want to say that. What exactly did that do for the company? Right. Well, it accelerated the product development, reduced the time to market. It helped us scale revenue. It created enterprise value, all of those things. And then what are you illustrating to them when you share your story that way? Oh, you've proven like you've scaled before. Like that box is ticked. This is typically what you see in the job description here. Like, do you have global strategy? Do you have you know, a scaling playbook? Do you have these? When you tell a story like this, you show that you have it. You don't say that you have it, right? So you're eliciting the feelings that you're the right person for this. So we need to make it matter to them. And so as we look at a job description, every point that they have, we should have some type of story to get ahead of it to make sure we're showing we're the right person for that. So let's get a little bit more specific now. So I'm, I'm coming up with a narrative. This is closer to your 90-second pitch. Because we focused on this model right here, which is your role, your achievement, their need, right? So you'll say something like, I'm an enterprise marketer. I'm best known for doing X thing. I suspect that's what you're looking for. I wouldn't be here today. Right. I think Beth's was, you know, I'm a performance growth marketer. I've had 5 exits. I suspect you're trying to do the same. I can help you get there. Where do we start? That's the whole tell me about yourself story. And it's 5 seconds, right? The key here is that we're shifting the conversation from, let's like, we could talk about my past all day and wax poetic on that, but let's instead start solving problems for the future. Let's instead focus there. It also shifts your own confidence dynamic to say, hey, these are friendly waters for me. Let's talk about these areas. I think they're most relevant to you. You shift the conversation and that gives you a sense of control. You start to interview back. You get to meet, be more confident and curious. The hack that I have for this is that if you go into that first interview, just pretend you already have the job and they hired you as a consultant. Consult them on what needs to be done. Don't prove that you need to be there. Consult them on what needs to be done. You'll ask smarter questions like, if I were in your shoes, I would be thinking about hiring an executive like this. What do you know? What are some of the things you've gone through the last 6 months that would indicate otherwise? You're not saying like, I'm the right person for you. I'm consulting you on, on the hire that you should make. So now let's do it for everyone here. Don't— everyone's going to have their own unique area that they want to dive into, right? It might be that people typically call me because I'm the guy or the gal that you call when you're at this growth problem, right? I know this better than the back of my hand. Or you could say that if you're going into a position where— and this happens all the time— you're doing something, but you're not technically qualified for it on paper. You instead say, I suspect someone is, someone like you is looking for someone like me because I'm thinking about things differently. And this is in, this is an area where we can be really innovative and, and kind of change the mold for how you grow through this period or, or something like that. So here's an example of a pitch template, and you're welcome to take a screenshot if you'd like. This is, I am a role best known for this. You're likely interested in me because of connection to their needs. And then end with a probing open-ended question to confirm why you're there. This works with networking too. And I'd say, Paul, you know, I see that you're in marketing, right? You likely want to talk to me because I've helped a lot of marketers land roles and move their compensation forward. Is that right? And you're saying, yes, I want to talk to you for that. And I might add. Did I miss anything? What about my background is interesting to you? And now Paul is saying, Jacob, I like this about you. I like this. I'm actually unsure about this and this. And I think, you know, I saw this other thing you did and you're an asshole. Like, let's talk about all those things. Great. You've given me an agenda and I know exactly how to sell you if I wanted to. Right? That's what we're doing in an interview process too. So you're saying something like. I am a go-to-market executive best known for helping 5 companies exit. Most recently, you probably saw the one where we had $1.8 billion. I would imagine, or you're likely speaking with me because it sounds like you're also interested in what it takes to create that hypergrowth operation process or whatever. Is that right? Would you like me to dive deep into how we made that happen? What are some of the things that are working or not working for you on that vision right now? What are the gaps that you're seeing? If I'm walking into this company for the first time, where's the dirty laundry I'm going to step in? How assertive do you want the leadership profile to be? What kind of pressure are you under from the board? You see how this starts to catapult into here, all these questions I'm asking. It starts to put you in control. And this is also going back to that point where you're not trying to earn it. You're choosing. Is this the type of person I want to work with? Right. As Dan was vehemently shaking his head at marketing being a cost, I might ask a question. Do you see marketing as a cost or an investment? Why? As you're now interviewing them. So this process should be at least 50/50, especially as an executive leader, because you're also illustrating the traits necessary to be assertive. Through the process, right? You can't just wait because then you're, you're eliciting passive behavior. You're waiting for things to happen. Instead, if you're a consultant, start solving problems and, and providing value right away. So I have one final slide here as a consideration. As you think about right now, we have a very generic script, right? I'm this thing, best known for this, This is why it matters to you, right? Now we need to adapt that every single time, depending on what somebody's interested in. The first two might not matter that much, but maybe it does need to change. I might say I've worked with folks that have been at one company for a long time. I suspect that's why we're here today. Or I know that Paul's in marketing and I know common pains for marketing, so I'll change my pitch to how I've supported marketers. Or I'll change my pitch to how I've supported CEOs, right? As we have some CEOs on the call. And so what I mean by adapting your message, everybody has different drivers and different things that they care about. So if you're talking to the board, right, the board, first of all, a lot of board members are on multiple boards. They have multiple portfolio companies. So you might say, you know, from your experience, As we get to the question part, hey, I'm, I'm Jason. I'm best known for being the operational jack of all trades who solves these growth problems, right? From your perspective at a board, right, what companies in your portfolio have the strongest operational processes and why? Changes the question, right? If I'm networking and I know that somebody's out of work, how do I best show up for you? What are the roles that you're looking for and what's getting in the way of you getting there? If I'm talking to a recruiter, How do I help you fill this position, whether I'm the person or not? And can I make your life easier? Because if I can reduce that friction for you, they're more likely to get back to you. If we're thinking about how to talk to a direct report, or we're interviewing with somebody that's a direct report, let's put ourselves in their shoes for a second. They might have been vying for that position that you're interviewing for and didn't get it, right? You've probably all been there. That kind of sucks. Who, what asshole are they going to hire over me where I, like, they're not going to know nearly as much. I've been here for 3 years. Right? So instead, as you go into that interview, instead of saying, this is how I'm going to change your life, you say, I suspect I can learn a lot from you given your experience here. What are the types of leaders you admire and how can I be that person for you? Like, what do you care about most in your career and how do I help you get there? So it's a very empathetic approach. I know we talk about all the time, like it's very important to have empathy. This is how you show it. And we think about that with vendors. What are the best companies you work with? Like, how do I make sure I'm your most excited client? Right? How do I make sure that when you go back to your sales leader, you say, you know, Jacob is, you know, he's our advocate. He's one of our best clients. And he's going to stay retained forever. And he's never going to churn. How do I make sure I become that person for you? Like, that's how you talk to your vendors. With the investors, what are you most interested in, in the growth metrics? What gets you nervous? What do you hope to avoid when you're hiring someone like this? And so we think about all those different things, and it ultimately does boil down to the generic, how do I best show up for you? The you is just always different. So One of the things I have a big problem with, with career coaches is that they have you master your elevator pitch and it stays the same. And then you repeat it verbatim and it's full of so many damn buzzwords that I don't actually know what you said. Right. That's why it has to be so simple. We really clean it up and then we just focus more instead of trying to focus on remembering the perfect thing to say, instead, try to focus on what does the other person care about most? And if you don't have the answer to that, it's an indication you need to ask better questions. So it's kind of like my final takeaway here is to personalize your story. Anyone here in marketing knows that personalized marketing is significantly more effective than broad marketing. Even if, you know, in Jason's case, you are a broad leader, you can still personalize the approach to the individual and think about exactly how to position yourself for that. Session 2 workbook. This week, you'll lay the groundwork for a marketing-based job search campaign by focusing on what makes you a valuable product and aligning it with your ideal roles. You'll start by reflecting on the strength and experiences that set you apart, then turn them into stories that you can use in key scenarios. You'll also create a simple persona to better understand one of your target audiences and research companies that will help you define your next moves.