Rahul Wadhwa shares why he started his channel: to give unconventional career advice based on his journey through sales and SDR management. He walks through his early struggles, the lessons that shaped him, and what he learned building a career in a field most people overlook.
So many things that an SDR is doing on a daily basis and it's always about the grass being greener on the other side.
Great. I think Rahul, we all had this question when we started our careers. So yeah, we all have gone through this phase and I'm sure Kaushal will also agree. You will also agree it's not the easiest when you just get into this whole organization and you're clueless what to do and where to start from.
Ideas are a commodity. Execution is not. There are companies in the US taking a stab at this problem over the last three years. It's still early in the in the game. But I think this will now post Covid. I think it's taken up a complete leaps and bounds in terms of the maturity already.
So when you're talking, when you're a salesperson reaching out to another salesperson, you should be speaking completely differently to them than you would to any other profession. If you're reaching out to directors of IT or security or. Or marketing folks, the way that you talk to a salesperson needs to be completely different.
Hi, my name is Rahul and today I'm going to talk about why did I create this channel. Before I tell you that I would like to share my story if that's okay with you. Please bear with me. I will try my best to make this interesting. I was an average student in school. Not good at sports, music, arts or anything. I actually never been captain of anything. The only reason I was a class monitor was because our school introduced this rotating system which was sort of a consolation prize if you ask me and I hated that. Then I went on to receive a number of participation prizes and I burned all the certificates when I passed schools. Believe it or not, till I was in fifth grade I did not study English as I used to study in a local board which taught English from the sixth standard only. And my mother wanted me and my sister to study in an English medium school. To enter the school I took tests and and I scored about 18 over 25 and above average in other subjects. Now principal said, and I quote, he will have a hard time coping as the students are already advanced and he has never studied English. My mother promised to get me the best tuition and the principal kind of agreed. I studied four to six hours every day after school and to my principal's surprise I stood fourth in that class where I did not speak English before that year. I think I was hungry and so was my mother. She did not let me fail. Now teachers concentrated on academics and Anyone who was good at scoring those grades was the kind of favorite typical school chair right now. One of the things I realized very early is how to succeed. Choose the road where you would want to be successful and not the ones which where you know the world tells you to. Like any school kid, I had the pressure to become an engineer. Of course, my father was an engineer, so pressure was even more. Well, I did not give into that pressure. I chose hotel management. I wanted to groom myself. To be honest, I was kind of impressed with the whole glamour, you know, story for another time though. I cleared every damn exam for hotel management I paid for and got in the best college my parents could afford. That time I didn't do great in academics. What I realized is the textbooks were 20 years old in my college, so it didn't make any sense to study those. So I skipped most of the classes and spent time in cyber cafes studying the latest processes, latest advancement, preparing for the interviews. In the first year, the end goal was eventually getting a job, right? So when I passed with the college, I had appeared in 14 job interviews and I had 14 job offers in hand, clearing each and single interview. If you're wondering which one did I join, I did not join a single one. I joined the 15th one, which was near my house, last move, right? What might appear is a natural talent. I learned early what the interviewers wanted to hear, not what I had to answer. Okay, what were they looking for? Turned out they all wanted to hear how I'd be the most loyal, hardworking, how I will think on my feet, how I'll be creative, creative, you know, all the jazz. Later, I worked in customer service for American Express for four years. I was formally trained on the accent, which you are probably hearing or seeing right now. So it's not something I'm faking. It's something which kind of just came into me while I was doing the job. So I was trained on American culture. I also trained a few batches before I moved to collecting money from hotel owners at a company called ihg, the one who owns all the Holiday Inns, Intercontinental and so on. This helped me build the confidence as I had to speak to hotel owners, CEOs, CFOs. Imagine these people own you to own like five or six hotels. And I was calling them every day, hey, where's the money? Where's the money? So I think that's what kind of gave me the whole confidence into speaking to these, you know, C level people. I luck favored. And I got into sales. Now I worked harder than anyone else, learned from the best, used my past experiences and used unconventional approaches, took calculated risk and it paid off. As of today, I have built over four SDR and VDR teams, hired over 30 SDRs after interviewing over 300 people. I published a book on getting hired as an SDR which was reviewed by over 100,000 people last year. And I don't read 52 books a year. I have read less than 20 books and I have reread them over and over. My first salary in sales was more than what SDRs get even today after 5 years. I cross my heart when I say that. I don't say that to slow people down, but to tell you the truth that you know your work is more than what people tell you or both companies tell you. My first boss told me that you know you will be able to and when I say first boss, my first boss in sales told me that you will be able to 5x your salary in 5 years if you work hard in SaaS, I can tell you with full confidence it took me less than three every year in sales I got a raise more than anyone else. Today I'm the highest paid SDR manager in India. If not the highest paid, I'm definitely in the top 1%. I've taken more than 15 international business and professional trips in the last five years covering more than 10 countries. On a personal front, I've been married for 10 years. Recently I've decided to adopt a baby. So this is my journey. Okay? I've done it from absolutely zero and succeeded by failing faster if I can do it. Some of you are way smarter and privileged than me. Trust me. I've been offering free Advice for over three years now on LinkedIn. I've gone from 500 followers to over 9,000 on LinkedIn. By sharing advice is not found elsewhere, but just by sharing my experiences. This year my content will be viewed by over 1 million people by the end of October. And now I'm trying to use video to reach a wider audience and impact even more people. What you will get if you follow My channel is unconventional advice to excel in your current job, whether you're an SDR or whatever role. How to grow in your career. How to market yourself within the organization and outside. How to have recruiters and company want you, not just like you. How to get the desired salary and raise. How to use LinkedIn to grow in your career. Get the side gigs, crack every single interview, every single time. How to read books and use those learnings. How to sell to us people how to better manage your day stress life and live a life full of possibilities. In the end, there's no magic formula. You will learn where to put your hard work. You will learn the most important skill today. Execution. Are you ready to take your career to the next level?
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