How to Break Into VC (My Crazy Journey)

In this video, I'm going to tell you how I went from being a personal trainer to landing a role at a venture capital firm. And at the end, I'll tell you more about my number one strategy for getting a role in any career, something I've done repeatedly, something I've used over and over again in the last 7 to 8 years. Stick around to the end to find out. Hey, I'm Justin Gordon. Welcome to the channel. I'm the director of marketing and community at Vitalize Venture Group, and I started my career as a personal trainer in 2013. I had trained for a year or two before then, was working at the Wisconsin Athletic a club back in my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I used that experience to learn more about the industry. And also I started a company called Just Go Fitness at that same point in time where I was writing blog posts, training clients in their homes, training clients at their parks or any other place I could find. And I used that experience to understand how to write, how to create content on the internet, something I would leverage again and again throughout my career to find career opportunities. From that experience of personal training, I found this company called Clark Toys, and it was an opportunity to go from Milwaukee to Las Vegas, a huge jump, something I wasn't really sure I wanted to do. But I knew that ultimately I wanted to end up in California. I figured more things were happening there. Eventually I would get into the startup and business world, and I'd experienced from training clients what business could be, how you could impact people's lives, and also what creating on the internet really could do for you, where you had these opportunities where people would come to you, find me through SEO, through search engine optimization, and find my website, want to work with me. And I saw how building content and creating on the internet then made you an expert. It gave you this expertise, it gave you this credibility that you could leverage later on again and again and again. And then talking to my cousin about the businesses I was working on with Just Go Fitness, I was training clients, you know, in their homes, and I was making as much on the side as I was with my main gig at the Wisconsin Athletic Club. And he wanted a business person to help him out with his company. So in e-commerce, selling kind of bobbleheads and sports figures. And I was really intrigued by that. I was intrigued by what he was doing. It was an opportunity to work with an entrepreneur who'd, you know, build a multi-seven-figure business. And I figured I couldn't really pass that opportunity up. It's like the ultimate mentorship, working hand in hand with someone who had the experience of running a company, started it from scratch years ago, and now wanted help growing it. And really, that level of experience, I don't think I would get anywhere else. And so I ended up moving from Milwaukee to Las Vegas, something that took a little bit of soul searching and deciding if I really wanted to make that jump being from Wisconsin the whole entire time and never really leaving there for any other career opportunities previously. Went to college in Wisconsin. And so this was a big jump for me. But in that experience, then working at Clark Toys, understood more of what business looked like, especially at an e-commerce company, but understanding that, oh, okay, I like the business world. I like making deals and trying to acquire customers and marketing, all these different things that I didn't really know from my previous role as a personal trainer. And that experience for 2 years was fantastic. And I learned along the way that I wanted more. I wanted to keep growing, wanted to keep evolving, which is why I decided from that position to get an MBA. And that was another question where I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it, but I was talking to my cousin about the decision. I think a year before, you said, you know, don't really need an MBA if you're gonna be an entrepreneur eventually. And I understood that, but then as time went on, I realized having a network in the place you're gonna be is so incredibly valuable. These people are gonna be with you for years and years to come, and any venture you wanna get into, any role you wanna get into, at the end of the day, it's all about people. And so once I figured that out from Clark Toys and understanding that, okay, if I get an MBA, I'll meet all these different people, interesting people, that could help in my career, that we could collaborate with, that could be potential customers. So much value from that. I decided that I had to go. I had to leave Las Vegas. I had a girlfriend at the time. We had to decide that, you know, was I going to go somewhere far away, somewhere close by? And at the end of the day, it came down to me going to NYU or USC. I picked USC on the West Coast where I always kind of wanted to live. And I really thought it was closer to being even in Silicon Valley where you look at all the startup and tech scene was. I knew that was something I wanted to get into in terms of startups and in terms of building companies. And LA's startup scene on the rise was growing, things were happening. I figured it'd be a great spot for me to be for the next number of years at least. And in that process, along the way of deciding to go to USC, I started Just Go Grind. It's currently 4:49 AM. The site Just Go Grind launched last night, and on my mind all I could think of is how you You just need to put in the work to get really anything you want out of life. And I started the podcast, Just Go Grind Podcast, in June of 2018. I knew I was gonna be meeting a lot of people. I knew it'd be interesting people I'd be meeting on a day-to-day basis that I could then have on the show and share their experiences and share what they had learned from building companies or being in different careers. And I did the podcast the entire time I was in the NBA. So the whole time, every week, putting out podcast episodes. Talking to entrepreneurs, talking to operators, and eventually talking to investors. And so when I graduated with the MBA, I ended up taking a role at Coefficient Labs a little bit before then, customer acquisition company. Again, being around startups, I figured that was a great idea to meet more people. And after I ended up parting ways with them, I went full-time into my own thing. So just the podcast, we're looking at sponsors and growing the show. And I started a daily podcast August 1st. 2020, I wanted to go all out on this. I wanted to really build this and see what it could become. And so I went daily on the show. And I decided in that process to really reach out to as many entrepreneurs as I could, and then more venture capitalists. And along the way, episode 240, I interviewed Gail Wilkinson, who is the founder of Violize Venture Group. She had started Irish Angels in 2012, and had launched a fund in 2018. And was looking for someone in this role of marketing and community while also having a little bit of a hand on the venture side and kind of bringing in more and more deals. And as I've been talking to people on the show, I'd done 200+ episodes, had met so many entrepreneurs and so many venture capitalists along the way, it made complete sense for me to then hop in and know that like this was a team led by women, which is a very, very small amount of venture capital firms are, which is unique. And what they were also doing was unique in terms of the direction they were headed. And everything about that made me want to say yes. After a few different conversations with both Gayle and like a number of my friends talking about big decisions, any career decisions, you always have these long conversations like, is this the next move? Is this the next step? And I decided to take that. How that came about though was through a cold DM. I DM'd Gayle on Twitter, asked her to come on the show, and just so happened that A few weeks later, she had a position open that I think I was perfect for. I think I am perfect for, and I've been rolling for the last number of months at Vylise Venture Group since then. And that's how I got into the world of venture capital. So if you want to break into venture capital, creating content on the internet, blogs, podcasts, videos, especially in the industries or in the stages that you're interested in with getting into venture, can be incredibly helpful. And you never know what opportunities will come with that. There's people who have done cold outreach to land roles in venture. There are people who went the MBA route, maybe started as a senior associate at a venture firm. There's people who are in the investor role only, where you're just investing, just sourcing deals. There's people who are on the platform side of things, so supporting companies, maybe doing marketing or community building, maybe helping on the talent side, so helping the startups at portfolio companies hire people. There's a lot of different roles within venture, and there's some that are a mix. So some roles are a mix of multiple different hats that you'll be wearing. There's the size of the venture firm. So some companies are a lot smaller, looking at, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 people. Then you have the Andreessen Horowitz of the world that have a couple hundred employees, very much so supporting companies on the platform side. Those are some of the things you can look at is what type of firms you want to join. But by creating, by doing outreach, You engineer opportunities for yourself moving forward, whether it be at the first firm, the second firm, etc. And that's just going to help you in your career moving forward. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. Remember to subscribe down below, click that like button, and I'll see you in the next video.