Break Into a New Industry: Career Transition Strategies That Work

Welcome to the TJ Walker Success Podcast. In today's episode, you'll hear exclusive insights from my course, Career Transition Strategies Breaking into a new industry. If you're ready to pivot your career, build credibility and stand out, this episode is for you. Want the full course? Click the link in the description to get started.

Now, let's start off with a quick tip. Don't be afraid to simply tell people, hey, I'm brand new. I don't know anything about your industry. Can you tell me about and then the name of the industry. Most people love sharing expertise. They might not want you saying, hey, can you give me a job? But if you say, hey, I don't know anything, you appear to be wise, can you help me? Most people actually will do that. Remember, you're only new once. If you move to a new town, people are often very friendly with you. They may invite you over to their home if you say, hey, I've just moved in. If you are the new freshman on campus, you're new. People are friendlier. It's exactly the same thing if you are new in a particular industry. Quite often people want to feel like they're mentoring, they're providing a service. And frankly, when it comes to people's ego, they love talking about what they do. They're in their industry because they have some kind of a passion for it it some kind of an industry. And deep down, everybody thinks they know more than a lot of other people in their industry and they love to tell you about it. Use that to your advantage. But the key is don't be afraid to ask and to tell them, hey, I'm new to this industry. I don't know anything. What can you tell me about or ask particular question? You'll be amazed at how much great information people will share with you freely. So I believe in learning through positive examples and really learning in a positive environment. We're going to get to all that in just a moment. But I do want to spend just a few seconds on helping you avoid the two biggest mistakes people make when they're trying to transition their career from one industry to another. The first one is spending all your time sending out resumes. Do not, I beg you, do not spend more than 5% of your time sending out a resume. You need to spend your time researching. You need to spend your time meeting people. You need to spend your time really learning insights and building relationships with people in your industry. Because ultimately that's how you're going to get hired anyway. Too many people convince themselves, well, I'M working hard. I spent 10 hours in front of the computer and Yesterday sending out 10,000 resumes. It's all a waste of time. So please do not spend more than 5% of your time sending out resumes, no matter where you are in your career transition, but especially at the beginning. Next big mistake. Do not simply say, oh, that's a hot industry. Let me hop on the bandwagon. Because I've seen people hop on to the metaverse and hop on to crypto and hop on to AI, and these things can go up and down, become hot and cold. You need to have some enduring interest and passion for a subject. I'm not saying fashion's the only thing that matters, but don't pick a new industry just because you think, oh, crypto's hot. Let me go all into crypto. That is usually a prescription for disaster. We're going to go into a lot more depth on how to pick industries, how to do research and industries. But please, let's develop the mindset right now. Don't just hop into something simply because it's the flavor of the month. Let's step back for a moment and focus on our short term goals and our long term goals. If you are trying to transition out of one particular industry, one particular career path, into another, your short term goal should simply be to learn more about a lot of industries, meet people, see what interests you, see what opportunities are there. That's the short term goal. Now the longer term goal should be, I believe not. How do I get a job? How do I get the highest paying job? How do I get the best benefits? Not that those things aren't important, but I want you to position your goals a little more broadly. Really, your goal is to use your talents in a way to help people where you feel fulfilled and challenged, and for you to have the income you need to meet your short term needs and your long term financial goals. Now that may sound like the same thing, but for many, many industries and many people at different stages of their career, it's going to be much easier to get a consulting gig with a company than it is to be hired full time. You may be in an industry where you may have a specialized skill from another industry that might make it easy for you to get, say five consulting clients where you're doing some particular specific small task and you put the income together and it gives you more than what a full time salary and benefits would. I've been there before, so I want you to think more broadly. I understand there are times in Your life when you're thinking, tj this all sounds great, but I got to figure out how to pay rent this month. I got family to feed. I got to do something quickly. I feel for you, I've been there. But I do want you to realize sometimes things don't happen just like that. And it may seem easier. Well, if I could just get a job this week and get paid next Friday, all my problems will be solved. I don't have two months. Well, sometimes you're going to have to take the two or three or four, even six months, build a consulting practice, build a freelance business, and then maybe after a year and a half, one of your clients loves you so much and you love them so much they make you a full time offer and you shut down your consulting or your freelance business. I find that model works much more effectively for a lot of people, especially if they are mid career. They already have 10, 15 or certainly 20 years work experience. Quite often it's easier to work your way in to a company, an organization as a consultant. Let's take some baby steps. Let's date before we get married. That's often the easiest way of doing it. The other thing you'll find, and this was true in my own case, is you may think you want a job when the stability of, oh, the benefits, that's great. But you start a freelance business, you start a consulting business, all of a sudden you're in the new industry, you're working. And if you work the right way and build out and grow, you actually make more money than you would if you were a full time employee. And you can't be fired. If you have 10 clients and one of them fires you, you can pick up another one. It doesn't destroy your revenue for the month or the year. So ultimately, again, every industry is different. The particular niche area might not work this way, but it might. So I want you to keep open the idea of maybe long term, you have your own business and that way you have much more control over your destiny. Where you live, where you work, how you work. Keep that in mind as an option. Even if you've told yourself, I'm not a business person, I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm not one of these networkers. Time out and relax. Don't start positioning yourself in all these little boxes that make it impossible for you to have your own business. I'm not talking about you becoming the next Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. I'm not talking about you going out and raising a billion dollars. What I am talking about is there may be a way for you to be in this new industry work, but instead of getting one paycheck every Friday or once a month, you get a handful of paychecks, paychecks from different organizations. And it works out even better than the original plan. So please keep an open mind to that. In this section, we're going to go into more depth on networking, particular tips, tricks, tactics and strategies for networking more effectively in your new industry, the industry you're trying to get a toehold in and perhaps have a long, thriving career in. So I'm going to give you a lot of particular tips, but I want to start off with just one overriding concept, that if you get that right, all the other things will happen naturally and much more easily. And here it is. Position yourself as some expert within this industry. If you can, position.