The non traditional path to career success with Austin Belcak

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Kd. Thanks for having me, man. It's been, as you said, a long time coming. So I'm super happy to be here and have the opportunity to chat with you.

I don't know if I have anyone in my network where I have more circles that overlap that we still haven't connected. So this is gonna be a lot of fun to really dive in, because obviously, I've seen a lot of what you do and a lot of what you put out there. And where I want to actually start with this is why, like, where does this passion come from in terms of really trying to help people find and land their dream jobs? Because this is a lot of what you talk about, but the way you talk about it, you can tell there's a. There's a realness to it. There's a fire to it. You're not just doing it for shits and giggles. Like, where does that come from? Like, what sparked this in you?

Yeah. So I would. I would actually say it started from a bit of a selfish place, and it then moved into something a little bit larger. So for me, if, you know, we rewind all the way back, I always struggled with what you might call the system, right? So, you know, we're born, we go to school. There's a certain structure in school where you're taught things in class, then you're given a test where you're sort of expected to regurgitate those things, and you get a grade for it. And then you go through that system for a very long time, and then you're expected to go to college and get a job and all that. And that whole system just never made much sense to me. I didn't really get the whole, why am I taking this course on theology when I don't want to ever do anything related to that later on in my life? Or why am I expected to spend so many hours on this topic that just doesn't seem to be relevant? And then, you know, if I don't do it, though, the grade that I get impacts, you know, apparently all these major things where I go to college, then what kind of job I get. And that, you know, turns into the quality of life and the future that I have just so much pressure, and it didn't really make sense to me. So I really struggled with that system, I really struggled with this idea of doing sort of what I was told as the only way to be successful. So from an early age I kind of was always looking for an opportunity to buck that trend and sort of rebel against that. And actually my, my dad was an entrepreneur a pretty early age for me. He was working a full time job, I believe when I was born. And then he moved into entrepreneurship and I just kind of saw the fact he was working from home before. It was cool. He had the schedule that he kind of made himself. Not that he didn't work hard, but I saw that and I was like, okay, this is a possibility. And that's really what I had my sights set on. So growing up, I always was looking for a business idea. So in college, my first business idea was starting a music blog and that kind of flopped. I got I think 250 visitors, visitors total, and nobody came to the site. But it taught me how to build a website. Later on I tried to start an apparel company, which I think we've all tried to do, and that failed. I tried to start an app. At one point I spent a couple thousand bucks on a prototype. And then I realized that three other apps came out with venture backed funding when our prototype was in the works. So that didn't work out, so on and so forth. I had all these business ideas and my whole goal was to just get out of corporate as quickly as possible. But none of those business ideas worked. So I still needed a way to make money, to make a living. And that's when I kind of reinvested into the job search. So I was graduated from college with a biology degree, a 2.58 GPA and a job in healthcare. I was working in medical device sales, but that wasn't for me. I quickly figured that out for a whole myriad of reasons. And when I looked around, I saw tech as the place that really aligned with my values. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. All the people whose lifestyles I wanted to emulate had these online businesses where digital marketing, online marketing was the driving force of their business. So I thought, well, if I can get a job in tech, you know, I can build some experience that will help me eventually get to that goal of entrepreneurship while, you know, being able to put food on the table and do these other things at the same time. So that's exactly what I did. But it wasn't very easy to make that transition. You know, I'm applying to, I'm doing again all the things we're supposed to do. Right. That we're told to do. I'm tweaking my resume. I'm applying for jobs online. I'm writing cover letters, and none of that's working because nobody wants to take a chance on, you know, a kid who doesn't have any traditional experience in an industry. So I had to find another way in the door, and we can go deeper into this system and basically the core of my business and where it started. But eventually, I found a new way to get in the door where people would recognize my value. And I used that to land interviews and offers at Microsoft and Google and Twitter and a couple of other places. So I accepted the job at Microsoft. And as soon as I started, all these people from college came out of the woodwork, and they're like, dude, weren't you the guy with horrible grades and a bio degree? How the heck did you get this job? So after the 20th person said that, I said, well, hey, there may be something here from a business standpoint. So I wrote up a big blog post. I did some promotion. It got a massive response, way bigger than I expected. And that was kind of the start of the business. But then something changed. Then people actually started getting jobs with the advice, and they would come back to me and they would say, austin, I was struggling so much. And then I found your stuff, and something clicked. And I ended up landing this job that allowed me to bring my family over from another country or allow me to stop living with seven other roommates and eating ramen for breakfast or whatever it was. These people are increasing their quality of life. They're happier. And I was like, oh, that feels good. And so that is really the trajectory there. And now we're sort of in this place where I have a business that's making good money, and I also get to really help people at the same time. And what could be better than that?

And I love it. And there's so much that we can unpack there. And where I want to start with is. I can't remember who said it right, but, like, enthusiasm is. Or, like, what is it? Success is going from failure to failure with no loss in enthusiasm or something.

Churchill.

Churchill. I wanted to say it, but I'm like, I'm gonna get this completely wrong, but you've done that right? You know, the clothing line to a music to an app. Like, what kind of kept you going through those failures? Because I know a lot of people that do. The first part of what you talk about, I don't want to be a part of the system. I don't want to be in corporate. I want to do my own thing. And they try it and it doesn't work and they just completely throw in the towel, like, it's not for me. And then they just go down the corporate path. So what kept you going? Kind of failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

Yeah. I'm so glad you asked this, man, because I see this, and I'm sure you've seen this in other people as well, where they're unhappy with their current situation and you're like, well, change it. Like, try this, do that, let me help. And they're like, but too much work. I don't think I can insert X, Y and Z other reasons here. So for me, what it really came down to was it was pretty simple. I could continue doing what I was doing and know that I was just going to be pretty unhappy or not able to reach the level of happiness that I'd always envisioned for myself. So I could keep showing up for the 9 to 5 and working at these places that I didn't want to work at and be being paid less than I deserved. And then I could do my budget every month and I could really save up for two years to finally go on a trip and do all these things. And that didn't sound super fun to me. The alternative was that I could go and continue to just keep working to make this thing happen and I could live into that life that I had envisioned for myself in my head. And I think the biggest thing that I realized was that, you know, every day that I didn't work towards that was a day that I was basically robbing my future self of. So, you know, today I'm in an amazing place. You know, I have this awesome business that I get to run and, you know, I control my income and my time. I'm married to an amazing woman. We just had a kid like eight weeks ago. We bought a house, we got a car, we did all the life events. Like, life is so good. And I want to spend as much time in this version of life as I can. And I knew that if I did didn't start working towards this, there would be fewer days in this version of life and that there would be more days in that other version where I was miserable and depressed and unhappy. And so that's not to say that every day I woke up and I was fired up to get after this. There were periods of time where I couldn't do any work. There were periods of time where I felt totally lost. There were periods of time where I just wanted to give up, but that's okay. That's normal. And I just kind of acknowledged that. And I worked through that period, and then I kind of got back on the horse. And. And so that's really. That was the driving force for me. Like, I just couldn't. I couldn't settle for a life that was essentially more days of what I was dealing with back then. And I knew that I really wouldn't be happy unless I was able to create this life that I had thought about and envisioned for myself for so long.

And I love that. And I hope people are catching kind of an underlying theme there as having a vision of that ideal future, Because a lot of people, and especially salespeople, right, they want more money, we'll make more money, but they don't. They're not envisioning why, like, what. What future is that providing for me? How will my life be different if I have those things? Whereas it's the life that you want. Design around that. One of my earliest mentors, I'll never, ever forget this, he sat me down, and I said, do you want to be a millionaire? Would being a millionaire make you happy? I said, yes. He's like, are you sure? Like, being a millionaire would, like, make you happy? I'm like, hell, yeah. It made me happy, right? I came from nothing. I made no money. I didn't have money growing up. And he's like, okay, so if I gave you a briefcase with a million dollars in it right now and you couldn't spend it, would you be happy? I said, well, no. He's like, but you're a millionaire. You told me you'd be happy if you're a millionaire. You have a million dollars. That's literally the definition of a millionaire. Why aren't you happy? He's like, well, because I can't do anything with it. He's like, exactly. You don't want to be a millionaire. You want what you believe being a millionaire will give you. The lifestyle, the car, the house, the freedom, the travel. And, like, I wish more people spent time on why they want those things right now. You said something really subtle in here that I do want to call out because I think is important is you picked up on a pattern, right? People were asking you questions over and over and over again, and finally it clicked, like, oh, there's a pattern here. Talk about that a little bit more. Because I think people miss opportunities often because they're not paying attention to the patterns, right? Of, like, the questions that they get asked or the things that they're really good at, or the projects that get pulled into. So talk about pattern recognition there a little bit, because I think that's a really key skill set to develop.

Yeah, that's really the crux of success, I think, in anything that you want to do. And I don't think that people are necessarily bad at recognition, recognizing patterns. I think that people are bad at setting expectations for themselves. So what I mean by that is we currently live in a world where everybody talks about the instant gratification. So I'm not going to be another person who harps on that. But essentially for me, when I started creating content for the first time, and it took me three, four tries before I really got started on LinkedIn. And I tried everything else, Instagram, blogging, I've tried it all. At this point, the first stuff, the first articles that I would go look up is how do I go viral on LinkedIn? Let me read this article on this guy who said he got 30,000 followers in 30 days. We all gravitate to these stories of the most amount of success in the shortest period of time. I think that's actually really damaging because one, what most people don't realize is the context behind those stories. If I told you, I'm like, hey, let me tell you this strategy I use to make a million dollars in a single day, but I haven't told you that I have a business that generates $10 million a week. Okay, well, all of a sudden that's not quite as impressive as, maybe that's not the best example I could have given. But what we don't understand is all of the context behind that one blurb. And as marketers, as salespeople, we're typically trying to find that spin that sounds as, as sexy as it can be to the people who were prospecting, you know, the people who were speaking to our audience. And so the tough part is when we get caught up in that and it was just human nature. That's our psychology. So for me, what I found, you know, looking back on all of the things that I've done, there's usually like a six month period, minimum of essentially what I would call, you know, practice that needs to be done before you can get to a place where you start to see results. So with the job search I was getting out there and I was applying and applying and applying, and that wasn't working. And then I started this new system where I essentially, I mean, I took sales principles and just applied them to the Job search. So I made a list of essentially prospects, people who could refer me in. I just started sending cold emails every day. I was ab testing my templates and the first six months I got horrible results simply because I was just collecting data. Like I just hadn't gotten to the point where the data was, you know, the sample size wasn't large enough to tell me anything significant. I hadn't tried enough stuff. Same goes for LinkedIn. The first six months of my LinkedIn journey, I really didn't do a whole lot. I mean, I was putting posts out there, I was starting to get a little bit of traction, but really at the end of the day, it took me about six months. Seven to 12 is really where the massive growth started to occur. And then with the entrepreneurial thing, I had already tried to start all those businesses that I'd mentioned and all of them fell flat on their face. So the moral of the story here is that whatever you're trying to do or embark on, whether it's, you know, I want to be the absolute best salesperson on my team or I want to start this business from scratch, or I want to become, you know, a creator on LinkedIn with, you know, a five figure following or a six figure following or anything, you know, you're going to have to basically yourself. It's going to be a six month grace period where I'm going to be putting in the work every single day and I'm not going to see any results. And I'm cool with that because I know, to your point, I know what I'm working towards. I know that if I put in the work for six months and I do it every day, the amount of knowledge and data and learnings that I'm going to get from that are going to enable me to be successful in the long run and that is going to help me check all these boxes for the lifestyle that I want. So that's the biggest thing for me and the reason I'm able to do that pattern recognition thing. For that specific instance, I just trained myself to look for business opportunities because I so badly wanted to be an entrepreneur and because I'd failed so many times at being an entrepreneur, I just wanted an idea that worked. So my brain was keyed into that. When I started on LinkedIn, the first six months, and still something that I do today is when I posted, I didn't really care about what type of visibility I got for the sake of the visibility itself. What I cared about was the data. I wanted to understand, okay, what Topics resonate with my audience, what style and format of writing my post resonates, what specific deliveries and what specific call to actions. I was looking and I was testing all these different things. And my whole goal was to get data so that by the time six months or whatever rolled around, I could say, all right, I know exactly what my audience wants in terms of topics, how they want it delivered, and then how I can drive them to something specific. So when you're in it every day and you're not focused on the result per se, but you're more focused on refining your process, I think that's really where the magic starts to happen. But it's a very, very rare person that does that. And it took me a long time to get there as well. But literally every single creator I know, every business owner I know, everybody who's at the top of their game, they've invested that time and they didn't expect the results immediately. So I would say that that's really what it comes back to. To.

I love that. Right? And everyone listening, like, listen to the questions he's asking himself. He's not asking why I didn't get more views or why I didn't get more likes. It's what call to action seems to resonate. What is working with my audience, Right? Like asking yourself great questions and looking into that data is just huge, right?

Because it is.

It's that pattern recognition, which you also. You have to notice a pattern that's good and bad. So he said this, right? He's like, I'm applying to all these jobs and it's not working. That is a pattern, y'.

All.

And we do that, we'll keep doing the same thing and it doesn't work. And so he changed and paid attention to the results. So let's talk about this process a little bit. Right? Because landing the right job, not to be dramatic, but literally can be life changing. Can be life changing, whether that's income or enjoyment or the people you're around or setting the foundation where it does pay the bills so that you can do the thing on the side to go through it. So talk about as much as you can, because I know this is also what you do. But, like, talk about this process of landing these dream jobs when on paper you shouldn't have been able to. There are other people on paper that should have got those jobs, but you did. And now I've looked at your background, you're helping other people do this too. So talk about this process a little bit about landing the job that you want.

Yeah. So I think that there's a couple kind of phases that we can break this down into and we can take them one at a time. And obviously, if you want to dive deeper, we can totally do that. But I'd say the first phase is really getting clear on where you want to go. And again, coming back to your point of almost that lifestyle design, because a lot of people, they just say, well, I need a job. And some people may have taken the extra step of saying, I want a job in SaaS sales, let's say, all right, but most people haven't gone as deep as saying, okay, I want a job where I know that these 10. For me, having a product that makes an impact on people, being able to work from anywhere and then also traveling internationally, those three things are more important than base salary to me. Whereas somebody else might say, I don't care how many hours I work, I don't care what the travel is, I don't care what I'm selling. If I'm making 500k a year, that's where I'm going to be happy. And those are two very different people, but they know what makes them happy. And so the first phase is getting clear on that so we can talk about that. But once you're clear on where you want to go, everything else gets so much easier. Because really, at the end of the day, the job search comes down to one thing, and it's that companies want to hire the person that they know or believe will bring the most value to the role. And so when we seek to answer that question versus just going through the process that everybody else is going through, all the doors open up. Because again, sales is the same way. Right. It doesn't matter how. If you close deals, nobody cares how you close them. All that matters is the deal gets closed, obviously within ethical and moral boundaries. But if you're doing something a little bit different and you have a different process than other people, nobody cares if you're the top performer. And also, typically, the top performers usually do have a slightly different process than everybody else. They're not taking a cookie cutter approach. So the second phase is figuring out that process within the parameters of what companies meet that target criteria. And then it's a question of going on and executing it. So the key thing here to realize is that the process that I tend to teach is it's intensive, it requires a lot of work. Does it necessarily require more work? When you look at the end to end search, from day one to landing the job, probably not, but it does feel like more work, I would say to most people, however, it gives you a lot more control. And when you have control, you're able to not just settle for a job, but you're able to actually pick and choose where you land interviews. And you're able to make sure that you're getting comped at a level that's commensurate with your value. So we can kind of go through those, but first and foremost is getting clear on where you want to go. So there's a couple of things that I like to do here. We've all taken these personality tests like StrengthsFinder and all this other stuff, and I'm not really a big believer in them. But what I will say is for people who are starting from scratch, so many people, one of the most common things I hear is that people just say, I simply have no idea where I want to go. Or even if they're like, I want to work in sales. But like, you could be selling, you know, construction, like literal, like backhoes, or you could be selling SaaS products, or you could be selling medical devices. Like that's all. Those are totally different industries essentially. So you need to figure out what that looks like for you and for me the way to do that. You know, if you need to start in an absolute baseline, you know, take one of those things, strengths finders, et cetera, start there. But then think about all the things that are important to you. Like what I would challenge you to do is think five years in the future and think about what your life looks like. Not just like, okay, I'm going to be making a lot of money and I'm going to be happy. But where are you living specifically? Have you purchased a two bedroom apartment on the Upper east side of New York, or did you buy an awesome townhome in Austin, Texas? Or do you just travel every six months and you move to a different location? What does that specifically look like for you? And then, sure, how much money are you making? What does that figure look like? But then what are you doing? What does a day in your life look like? What does your schedule look like? What do you have the ability to do? What hobbies are you performing? And what this is going to do is it's basically going to give you a very clear picture of where you want to go. And this is important because some people don't think about these things where they may not want to work nine to five every day, and maybe they want to work fewer hours per day, but they need to figure out a way to do that. And so when you have those goals, take the limits off, because you can really create anything that you want. But write that down. And then the next thing I want you to do is basically write down everything that you could get out of a new job. So we're talking, obviously, you get a salary out of it, you're working with a team of people, you have a manager, you're working on a specific product, you're also working on specific projects, so on and so forth. Where's the location, all these other things. And then I want you to prioritize them from top to bottom, like, what is your number one priority? What's your number two priority? So on and so forth. And what this is going to enable you to do is go out and look at jobs and say, how does this align with my criteria? Like, is this job truly aligned with what I want to live, with, what I want my life to look like? And that's where the magic is going to happen. Because when you see a job and you know, like, in your heart, like, wow, this checks all of the boxes, it's so much easier to go, like, all in on that job. Then, you know, if you just see something that pops up and it's in SaaS, sales or whatever, and you're like, I read the company's mission. It sounds cool. Like, let me throw in this application, but I'm also going to throw in 20 more today. You know, you're not really. You're not really committed to that. So that's the big shift, mentally, is being committed to the jobs and the companies that you're. You're going after. And when you can start there, that's essentially where you begin. So that's the first phase, and I'll pause there. I don't know if you want to go deeper on any of that before we move into phase two.

So I guess whether people are watching this or not, I'm smiling, listening to this because of something that he said at the very beginning. Where to land your dream job does require work. It does require work. It does require effort. I'm smiling because it's like so many people, they're just not willing to put in the effort to do this, which also is a competitive advantage. Most people are not willing to do what Austin's talking about right now. That's your advantage, like, to even do that. But you said something that I love, that I want people to catch. Does this job fit my criteria? And I think we miss that. So Often when we're looking to a job, we think, do I fit this job's criteria? Do I have the qualifications and do I have the certifications? And do I meet their bar? Versus taking that step and designing that lifestyle and envisioning what you want to look like? And go, does this job meet my criteria? Almost putting yourself in that place of power. And so I love this, right?

And I do.

I'm smiling because it's like, I know people, they're not going to do this. Like, the majority won't. And it's such the foundation where it's starting with themselves. So then let's go to phase two, right? So, okay, I've envisioned it. I've kind of mapped this out, or I know what I'm looking for, that lifestyle, that income, then where do I go with it?

So this is the part that's going to be familiar to most salespeople. So essentially, the way that my whole system is structured and the piece that I figured out worked best for me was when I was at Microsoft, they come to me with a quota for the half for the year, and they're basically saying, austin, you got to sell this much stuff, or after a while, you could probably look for another job. So I had to figure out how to do that, right? So I do what I think most salespeople do where, you know, I go back and I look at my average deal size, and I say, all right, here's how many deals I need to close in order to hit this quota. So let me start there. Here's how many deals I need to close. And then let me look at my success rates through every step in the sales funnel and let me work my way backwards based on those success rates to basically an input like, how many of the first step do I need to take for all of those percentages to cascade into, you know, the amount of deals I need to hit my quota. Because I can't just rely on, you know, the white whale every quarter, every half. I can't rely on getting lucky if I want to be a top performer, if I want to win a job that. That most other people don't have. And so the same thing goes for the job search. You know, I would start with the offer, and I would work my way back. So there's the final round interview before that, and then there's the first round interview, and then there's getting in the door via referral, because that's essentially how the system works. And then there's having enough conversations, land enough referrals. And then there's emailing enough people to land enough conversations to get referrals, first round, final round offer. So that's basically how I thought about it and I mapped it out. And the coolest part was I just kept track of my success rates at each of those steps. So I could see one, where things were breaking. But also two, in the future, if I wanted to go on another job search, I can see, here are my rates. Okay, how many inputs do I need at the top of the funnel in order to get the outcomes that I want? So that's kind of the crux of the system and essentially just to give some numbers that we see and recommend. So I always recommend that people have 10 to 15 target companies when they start. And these target companies should fit the criteria that we just talked about from phase one. They should be places that you're really, really pumped to work at. Now, we can break them out into a couple tiers. So first you want to have a stretch company. Like if you want to work at, Google's always the one that comes up, right? But that could be different for anybody. But let's say Google's your North Star company. You want to have two or three of those just so they're on the map. The bulk of this 10 to 15 list is going to be middle of the road companies, companies that would basically be a stepping stone into that dream company. And then we want to have what I call sandbox companies, maybe two or three of these. And these are companies that you actually really, you don't necessarily want a job at, you don't necessarily care about too much. And the reason you have them on the list is because this is a totally brand new approach. So we're going to make mistakes, we're going to need to experiment, we're going to need to have the freedom to try different things. And if we put ourselves in an environment where the stakes are higher, where we're emotionally invested, we're going to be far less willing to do that. Whereas if I email some people at a company and I'm like, I don't care if I get a job here or not. Let me try doing this totally off the wall thing and see if it lands, you're going to be much more likely to do that. Or let me send this email. Oh, crap, I had three typos in it. Okay, I'm going to fix that. So when I send it to the VP at my dream company, it's grammatically correct. So that's kind of the setup and Then basically I go out and I find 10 to 15 people who can essentially have an influence on the hiring decision. So that's your manager, if you were hired. That's people who might be a peer or colleague who have the same job title on the same team. That's people who are working sort of tangentially with the team, alongside the team. I'm just trying to find as many people that are as close to the role as I possibly can. And that math essentially backs out. We have 10 to 15 companies, 10 to 15 people at those companies. That's a minimum of 100 people. And there's a specific reason for that number based on all of the percentages and the cascading funnel that we talked about. So that's where I'm going to start. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to essentially do this in waves. So I'm going to start with my bottom three companies and I'm going to start with the people at those bottom three companies. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to research the heck out of the company. What I'm looking to understand is where are they at? Are they in a good place or a bad place? Where are they looking to go over the next six to 12 months? What initiatives are they driving? What goals do they have? What challenges are they potentially facing when it comes to achieving those goals or rolling out those initiatives? I want to basically learn as much about these companies as I can without being an employee there. I'm talking about putting in anywhere from 10 to 15 hours of research for the dream companies that can be scaled back as you get lower on the list. I don't want you to put 15 hours in on a sandbox company. But truly, for like when I was interviewing at Microsoft and Google, I put in about 50 hours of prep at each individual company of those three. So 150 hours total. So there is a sliding scale, but the more research you do, the more prepared you're going to be. And then I research the people. So I'm trying to understand what's my angle here? How can I get in the door with this person? Because I don't just want to show up and say, hey, kd, you work at this company and I want to work there, too. Can you refer me in? Because, one, you probably get emails like that all the time. You also are a busy man and you're asking me to basically vouch for a stranger and say, hey, you're worth five to six figures. And I can vouch for your work when we've really never talked before. So instead what I'm going to try to do is find a way to make the outreach about you, make it valuable to you. And I'm going to look for all these different angles. I'm going to look at your LinkedIn profile, I'm going to run a Google search for your, your name. I'm going to look through everything that I can find about you to try and understand who you are, what you care about and the best way that I can engage with you. And then I'm going to run it in cycles. So I'm going to reach out to all the people from my first three companies after I've done the research on those three companies. And then when I get through that, I'm going to research the next three companies and reach out to people from the next three companies. Rinse and repeat. And basically what I'm looking to do is hit up five people a day or so. And the goal here is to pace out the conversations that I have. And what I found is that when you are able to connect with these people one on one, you're much better able to sell yourself, your story and your value, even if you're coming from a non traditional background. But then we also are capitalizing on referrals, which is the crux of this system. Because at the end of the day, when we look at the data, referrals make up roughly 40 to 80% of hires. Whereas when you apply for a job online, you basically have a 2% chance of getting in the door. And then when we look at where the apps are coming from, 75% of people are applying online and only about 10% are coming in the door via referral. So if you focus on referrals, you're competing with 10% of the pool for 40 to 80% of the jobs, essentially. So that's why we're so focused on referrals. And then we basically just work to get those referrals. Now there is one additional piece to this that I call a value validation project. We can jump into that, but we've covered a lot of ground so far. So I'm going to pause there and see what you think.

I mean, this is sales, this is prospecting, and I love it. And people generally don't do this. And you can stand out because funny enough, I don't get that many of these types of emails ever, right? I have been cold prospected for a job at my own company, right in my own Co. Maybe four or five times, maybe where someone's like, hey, I want to work there. Right. And, like. And that's someone. You know, I'm visible, I'm easy to find.

Right. You can go.

It still doesn't happen nearly as much as people think it would. But you did something, because I do.

Get some of that.

Hey, kd, would you be willing to refer me to this company? And I've never worked with them before.

Right.

And I'm like, well, I mean, I know, like, I want. I want you to succeed, but I don't know you. I can't put my name behind you. Right. So talk about that just briefly before we kind of move, like, to the last phase of this. Right. But, like, so you are reaching out to people for referrals. They don't know you. How do you kind of have that conversation to make it seem like, hey, I'd be willing to refer this person in, or I'd be willing to give this person some insight on how to land this job?

Yeah. So it really comes down to building the relationship first and turning this person into an advocate. Because when we think about referrals, there are two types. So there's like, the one and done and the advocate. So one and done is what most people end up getting, and that's where they actually do get a bite on that E email, hey, Katie, refer me to this job. You're like, yeah, you know what?

Screw it.

I said no to last hundred people. Let me say yes to this person. And you do that. But to your point, you know, how can you. You can't go to bat for this person. You can't tell their story. You can't sell them because you don't know them. And so the referral that you get is pretty weak. And what ends up happening there is people don't even get interviews in some cases. Or they do, and then they don't end up making it to the next round. And then they say, well, referrals don't seem to work either. I don't get it. What's the deal? But the reason is because that referral is super weak. That's not an advocate. Whereas if you build a relationship with somebody and they become an advocate for you, they know your background, they know your value, There's a preexisting relationship there. Then they can go to the hiring manager and say, hey, I've been talking to Austin for about a month now, and he's coming from medical device sales. He's trying to work his way into Tech. But listen to this. He has not only taught himself digital marketing, but he's actually been freelancing his services on the side for companies that are actually in your target space. So I think he'd bring a fresh perspective to your team. I know you probably have a lot of great candidates, but I think he's worth interviewing. That's going to be a strong referral. That's going to be an interview pretty much 100% of the time. And so that's what you're looking for. The big mistake that people make is they don't view relationships the right way. So the best kind of analogy or metaphor that I have is viewing relationship building like a bank account. So let's say I want that referral and that's going to cost me $20 and I have my checking account. If I try to swipe my debit card on that $20 transaction, my account's going to overdrop. I just don't have enough funds for it to go through. And there are a lot of consequences of that. Right? On the banking side, you overdraft your account, you get hit with that fee, your bank's like, don't do this again. It doesn't feel good. Right. And that's really true with the relationship building side too. Right. If I send an email and I try to make that transaction, that withdrawal, and I don't have any deposits made into this relationship, there are consequences. Right. That person probably is going to say no or ignore me or they're going to be rubbed the wrong way. So, same type of deal. But if I work to slowly make some small deposits, $2 here, $5 there, and I work my way up to that $20 mark, then I can confidently ask for that referral. I can make that withdrawal and feel good about getting it. So the thing comes back to you. Deposits, right? How do we do that? And we could literally talk about this for hours and hours. So I'll give two different ways that you can do this that are actionable. So one, finding people like yourself, Katie, that are active online. One of the easiest ways to do is if you go to LinkedIn and you type in SaaS or sales or whatever aligns with the roles that you're targeting, and you run that search, you're going to see a sub tab that allows you to filter for posts. So this is going to pull up all the posts that have to do with the keywords that you search for. So then if you go under all filters, there's a filter for company author, I believe it is. And if you select that, you can put all of your target companies in. So what you're going to find are people who are actively posting about the job or the industry that you're looking for at your target company. So now that you're going to find all these people who are active on LinkedIn, what you can do is kind of warm them up. So rather than just sending you a cold email, what I might do is bookmark your post feed and show up every day and see, hey, has Katie posted something new? And if you have, I'm going to leave a thoughtful comment that's supportive of your work. I'm going to tell you, like, I love this post. Here's why. Let me add a little bit of my own experience. Let me add a little bit of value. And I'm going to do that for a week, two weeks, three weeks, and then I'm going to message you and at that point you're probably going to say, hey, I've seen this guy. I recognize that profile picture. I recognize that name. Like, this dude has been supporting my content in a positive way. Oh, he's asking me for a quick question. All right, I'm going to take the time to DM him back. I'm going to take the time to reply because he supported me. So we're building up that reciprocity almost there. So that's one way to do it and get in the door with people. Another way, especially if you're coming from a non traditional background, is something that I call the advice triangle. So one of the big issues people have when they're networking is they have one conversation and they're like, I asked all my questions, I talked to this person. Like, hell yeah, I'm feeling good. And then the realization hits them that they have nowhere to go with this relationship. Like, what do I say next? What do I do next? I have no idea. So we need to proactively build that into our strategy. So what I like to do is reach out to somebody or if I have a conversation with them, build this in. I like to ask them for advice in a specific way. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tee up two things that I can ask for and then I'm basically going to say to the person, hey, I'm looking to strengthen my position as a candidate in this space. Would you recommend that I do A or B? So maybe something like, hey, KD, I'm thinking about making the jump into SaaS sales, but I'm coming From a bit of a non traditional background, you have a ton of experience. I've been following along with your content. I love the stuff you share. If you have literally 10 seconds to answer this question, it'd mean a lot to me. If I want to become a better candidate for SaaS sales, would you recommend that I take this 10 week program on SaaS sales or would you recommend that I take this course on SaaS sales? And so my hope is that you come back and you just say take the course. It's faster and you'll get more value out of it. So now what I can do is I can go take that course and then I can report back to you and I can say, kd, I took that course, man. Thank you so much. Like, I learned X, Y and Z. I'm feeling so good. If you don't mind me asking, what's the next step here? And so we've done a couple things. First, we've shown this person that their advice is worth taking. We care about what they have to say and we've illustrated that by taking action on it. Second, we've shown them that we're somebody that's worth investing in because of that. And then third, we've opened the door for more advice, right? We've opened the door for another cycle of that triangle where or ask for advice, take action, report back, ask for more. That's basically the triangle. And now what we're doing is we're kind of making them a part of our success story, right? So we're bringing them in and we're saying, hey, all of the success from here on out, you're having a big impact on it and that feels good for people. So what's going to happen naturally when I ask you for a referral, one, you're going to see all of the work that I've done, which is basically a result of your advice. And there's no way that you're not going to be excited to refer somebody who's literally grown because of the advice you've given. Like, there's no way that you're going to go to a hiring manager and be like, hey, this guy Austin's busted his butt for two months, you know, building this experience based off of all of my advice. But he still sucks. Like you're going to want this person to succeed because you've invested in them, right? So if you do that, if you kind of position yourself as the student of this person and you actually go take action on their advice and report back to Them. That's one of the easiest ways to establish a rapport. And then once you do that a couple of times you've made your deposits, you can then ask for that withdrawal.

I love that. And it's something I talk about a lot with my own team and people that I mentor. Is the long game slowing down to speed up? So many of us are. I love the bank account analogy. We just go to someone and we try to make withdrawal we haven't deposited in. It's like, hey, connect, hey Katie, could you refer me right. And like, and that's just it versus like that. Slowing down, building that value. Be patient. I think Gary Vee said it right. Be patient in the macro, impatient in the micro. It's like, take action daily, but be patient on the big thing that you're trying to accomplish and let things line up to set you up for success. Because each one of these things takes some time, it takes some effort, it takes some intention. That's my favorite word right now. It's just intention on every single step. But God, like, obviously if you do this, anyone listening? I'm telling you, like, you are going to stand out so much better than, you know, trying to send a resume through a greenhouse on an online portal and hope that it ever. I don't even look at resumes. Like, I don't even look at resumes. I don't have time for that.

Right.

And so this is awesome. So I just looked up at the clock, like we've already been riffing for 45 minutes on this. So we're gonna, we're gonna wrap this up here with the last two questions, which is first, like we call it the big three, right? Because people remember the beginning and then they tend to remember what happens at the end. Of all the things that you've covered so far, what would be the three key takeaways that you would want people to walk away with?

So first, I would say you can never. Alright, so first I would actually say when you're committing to this process, whether it's finding a job or whether it's starting a side hustle or growing a brand on LinkedIn, just give yourself that six month expectation of I'm going to put in work daily and I'm not going to expect any results for the next six months. I know that's much. We can say that on the podcast here. Sounds cool, sounds sexy. Way harder to do in practice. But if you can commit to that and you can see it through, I promise you you're going to be successful. In whatever venture that is. So that's the first thing that I would say. The second is you should get very, very clear on where you're looking to go. So doing kind of that visualization exercise we talked about, where you're looking ahead into the future and you're thinking about where, living, how am I spending my time, how much money am I making? What are the things that make me happy right now that's going to allow you to play the long game and work towards that. That doesn't mean the next job or the next dig or the next deal or whatever it is is going to get you there. But you know that, you know, okay, this is what I'm working towards. So every decision you make moving forward is going to be a step towards that goal. And you're eventually going to get there when you have that intention. Right. Versus your point earlier. I want to make a million dollars. Well, there's a lot of ways that you can or cannot do that. And it's going to be very confusing to know what direction is, the right direction if your only goal is to just make a lot of money. Whereas if you have a very clear vision on where you want to be, what you want to do, how you're spending your time, those decisions become much more clear and everything compounds on itself. And then the third thing I would say is just get in the daily practice for whatever your goal is. So I, I sort of preach systems over goals. And this is something that I've innately done for my whole career since it started clicking. But I can attribute kind of that, that quote to James Clear. I don't know if you've read Atomic Habits, but it was one of my favorite books recently. Yeah, so he basically, you know, his, his whole thing is like, goals are important, but they're also, you know, they're kind of. He says they're kind of for losers. And the reason he says that is because, like, everybody who approaches something has the same goal. Right. Every job seeker wants to get the job, but only one gets hired. So it's not the goal that sets that person apart, it's the system that they use to get there that does. Every salesperson wants to close the deal, but usually only one person closes it. So it's the system that sets them apart. So what is your system? So if you're a job seeker and you want to implement this process, everything we've Talked about, spend one hour a day researching a target company and one hour a day reaching out to five people. If you want to become a creator on LinkedIn, spend 30 minutes a day writing a new post, and spend 30 minutes a day engaging with people who are in your target space. This is highly oversimplified, but if you want to start a side hustle, get out there and find the one or two actions that you can perform in 30 to 60 minutes every day that's going to build up and compound over time and just invest that. And this number three combined with number one investing, taking those small steps every day for six months, that is really where the success is going to come from. So that's really what I would preach. I would say if you take three things away, those are them, and if you do them, I think you're going to have a hard time not achieving the things that you set out to achieve.

I love that. And it's the same. It's one of my favorite quotes from that book. Winners and losers have the same goals, and it's just. Because it just cuts just right to the heart. It's so true. But the systems, and that's what you've described and what I really love about this is it's a system, it's a process, and your attention to detail. You're a tester and a tweaker, and I love it. Like, you test and you tweak and you test and you tweak and you pay attention. Like, my brain works the same way. And so I really, really resonate with that. And so. All right, last question for you, man. Right. So the name of the podcast is Live Better, Sell Better. I have this weird idea, right, that if we lived better lives, if we had more joy, more energy, more fulfillment, more happiness, right, that the sales would improve. And you've kind of been hinting at it a lot through this as well, around, like, this lifestyle kind of design. So what would your live better advice be for people listening?

So I would say it really comes down to mindset for me across the board. Our mutual friend Justin Welsh, he had a great post the other day or the other month or something where he basically said, all the people I know that are successful believe in themselves and all the other people think life is unfair, more or less. And I really, I see that with the job seekers that I work with. I've seen that myself too, where when the mindset is, you know, nobody will give me a chance or, you know, this process is so unfair, it's broken, or how could I ever do that? Like, I don't have X, Y or Z. When we start to get into this place, of blaming others and focusing on the negative. That's sort of the energy that we bring to the table. And so that's what.

What.

What other people are going to see, that's what they're going to take in. But when you shift out of that and you start to take accountability and be responsible for the outcomes, that's when things start to happen for you. Because instead of saying, you know, I could never do that, you start to say, well, how can I do that? So I don't have any. I don't have any experience. How could I get in this area? I could never get into SaaS sales. Well, what if that becomes. How could I get into SaaS sales despite not having experience or, you know, nobody that I talk to sees my value becomes how can I get the people I talk to to see my value? And when we start to view things in this lens of let me ask a question to challenge myself, we start to bet on ourselves and we start to believe in ourselves. Once the results roll in and once you see that, pretty much anything that you're upset about is sort of an obstacle to overcome, it's essentially a challenge that's going to allow you to grow. It's a growth opportunity. That's when everything changes for me. And that's the biggest difference that I see between the people that are successful in whatever they have or venture that they're undertaking and the people who kind of stay stagnant and end up, you know, they're the people who keep spending those days in the life that they're not happy with, right? Versus the people who are working to create that life or are already living that life that they mapped out, you know, when they listened to this podcast five years from now or five years ago or whatever it is.

I love it, and I hope to hear those stories. And I know you get to hear some of these stories right as they come back, right? It's like, hey, remember that? Or I heard you here, I saw that post and I did it, and I love this, man. Like, this is so, so tr. And so valuable because that belief, that belief needs to be there, right? And there's a difference between, you know, believing in yourself and not having fear, right? Like, I mean, I literally have it tattooed on my chest. Courage is not the absence of fear, right? Like, fear is everywhere, but that belief can still be there. And you push through that and so awesome. My man. This was just amazing. Like, where can people find more of you? Get more of you, download your stuff? Like, where can they get more of kind of what you're putting out there.

Yeah, 100%. So I also have my own podcast. It's called the Dream Job System podcast. It's more focused on the job search, so if people are into getting more tactics and tips, they can find that on Apple. The episodes are like five to ten minutes a couple times a week, and they're super actionable. Obviously, you can follow along on LinkedIn. If you're following KD, you can find me on there as well. And my website's cultivatedculture.com so we got a lot of great stuff there. But I would say those are the three main spots. But, dude, thank you so much for having me. This was a blast. I'm so glad that we finally got the chance to chat face to face face. So I just want to say I appreciate you. I'm grateful for the time.

Hell, yeah, my man. And I think this will lead to many more conversations for sure down the line. So I appreciate you, my man. Good shit. And we will be in touch.

Sounds good.