Transcripts
1. Introduction and welcome: Welcome to this course on
career transition Strategies. My name is Alex Gendinik and
I'll be your instructor. In this video, I'll
tell you a little bit about what to expect
from the course, a little bit about
my background, and we'll start right away. Well, this course is designed to be taken in under one day. You can watch this
course or listen to it. You don't have to
actually watch it. But you can quickly
absorb the material. It's made to be quickly taken and for the strategies
to be applicable. So in every video, I'll give you a strategy
that you can use and apply ASAP that are going to be very
actionable strategies. Many coming from
my own experience because I've had a number of successful career strategies. I studied to be a
computer scientist, I was a software engineer. After that, I created my
own successful business, and throughout this entire time, I've also had a number of
hobbies that I took relatively serious that were also
partial career changes. So I'm actually going to share with you all the experiences through that entire journey
of the last 20 years so that you can take the industry proven and most effective
career transition practices that I used
that are also are standard and apply it to your own successful
career transition. So that's going
to be the course. Welcome, and let's begin.
2. The Unknowns Of Getting Into A New Industry Or Career: As we begin our conversation about career
transition strategies, there is a certain
truism that I want to point out that we're going to use to build our strategy for
career transition out of. And this truism is that anytime
you get into a new field, there are some things that you expect because you just know a little bit
about that field, but don't have
practical hands on experience because you're
transferring into it. But because you're transitioning
into something new, there is a whole world of
unexpected and new things and surprising things and
disappointing things even that you're
about to find out. This has nothing to do with your specific career that you're trying to
transition into. This is a truism for
anything you do that's new. For example, a few years ago, I had this dream for many years, that I was
going to do music. And a few years ago, I actually started doing music seriously. I learned guitar. I started taking
singing lessons, even, you know, at an adult age, people were like, Why
are you doing this? Well, I always had a dream. I wanted to, right? But I didn't know what I
was getting into. And I have to tell you, wow, like, you know, I have
professional experience. I have a lot of experience
doing different things, but there were so many things
that were new like music. It required a whole
new kind of editing, a whole new set of
people you would hire. And then from people
you would hire, everybody says they are great. And then you have to
try them and they say, Okay, not so great or kind
of good, but not great. And you have to go through
so many people and varying opinions
and varying levels of feedback, and
it's so confusing. And it's just a whole new world where I just wanted
to make songs, but I have to deal
with hiring people. I have to deal with
software for editing. I have to deal with, you know, other things I never thought of, and it just took way longer, but I'm still happy with it. But the level of
surprise was profound, and that's what I want
to share with you. So, in light of that, there's a lot of things
that you're about to find out that you know, our blind sides, we don't
know our blind spots. That's why they are blind spots because
we can't see them. We don't know what we don't
know, which is why we have to start with two things
getting a mentor, I'm going to talk about
in the next video and networking with your peers. That's going to be your
support network where you can always go for advice so that
if you have a question, you don't always have
to reinvent the wheel. Want to build a team of support around you,
not necessarily paid. Some people can be paid,
but mostly it's free, but you want to be able to
bounce ideas off so you don't step into every pitfall
there is, right? This is what we're going to
tackle the problem of finding out what you don't know
before it's a problem, so that you can create a plan for how to tackle
it when you see it. So in the next video,
I'm going to give you some savvy strategies
for how to find mentors.
3. How To Get A Mentor: Now let's talk about how to find good mentors who care about your success in the industry to which you're
transitioning too. And the number one requirement
for those people is that they themselves have been successful
in that industry. You can't take someone who's good in the food
industry and have them mentor you about how to get into the
aerospace industry. They'll know some things
because there may be a successful professional but there will be so many things
they have no idea about, and it will be arrogant to think that just because you
succeeded in one thing, you will succeed in another. Yes, there could be
a high correlation, but it's not the same because there's just
so many unknown. So the first thing
you want is somebody who has been successful in the
field you're getting into. And the second thing is
they have to be receptive and they have to want
to genuinely help you. Some people are genuinely
nice and helpful. Some people are just not,
and you have to find the ones that are truly
wanting to be helpful. Now, how do you make
people want to help you. For example, I want to help
a lot of people because I actually predicated my entire business
on helping people. I teach, I coach. I really am passionate
about helping people who are
struggling because before I used to struggle, and I know how stressful it is, I feel it, you know,
so I want to help. But I cannot help everybody who comes to me for mentoring. Like, I get almost daily
requests on LinkedIn in courses. Can you help me for free? Can you do this for me? I want to, but I humanly
don't have the capacity. So I help a few people.
Who are those people? How do I choose them?
There's a certain idea that I want to introduce
you, connecting the dots. And another idea I want
to introduce you to is take an inch, go a mile. These are metaphors.
I'm going to explain what they are.
Connecting the dots is. If I meet somebody
for the first time, they may ask me for some
advice. I'm happy to give it. What I want is for them to
go and take that advice, come back to me in
two weeks or a month or however long and say, Hey, I've taken your advice.
That was so helpful. Here's what I did with
it. Here's what happened. Okay, so I had.in the beginning, and hopefully there's a
connecting graph that, oh, they used my suggestions. I didn't waste my
time. They used it, and it actually helped them. Great. I'm happy to
give more suggestions. So that person takes
more suggestions, comes back in two to three weeks or a month or however long. And says, Wow, that
helped a lot, too. Now I did even more,
and I'm further along. Now that person is
creating a graph. For me, the graph would look
up into the right like this. I think for you
on the screen, it would look up into
the right like this. In any case, the good
looking graph, like, they're always growing and they're taking your
advice seriously. These are the people who are connecting the dots
because they take an inch. They take a little
bit of my time, a little bit of advice, but they run with it, they
go a mile with it. This tells me. Actually,
it doesn't tell me. It shows me because
anybody can say, I'm so hardworking. And
everybody says that. I'm so good. But few
people are, right? So this is a way to show potential mentors that you're
going to take their advice, take them seriously,
respect their time. And actually, it's
delightful when people take my advice and go and do something with it and succeed and do better in their life. Feel so good about it.
I want to do more. And there are people like
that that I help for free. And there are many
people who I say, I actually cannot
even take you as a coaching client paid because I just don't
have the time. This is a big
difference. Of course, I'm a different case. Like other people
aren't like that, but this is how you
get mentors because good people who are successful in their industry are busy. Of course, because they're successful. Everybody
wants some of their time. So you have to really fight
and appreciate their time. How do you find such people? There are many
people you can find on Twitter, now X, LinkedIn. You can easily find people, thought leaders
in your industry. Obviously, if you message the top top top person
in your industry, they just really
won't have the time. But if you message people who are relatively
successful in your industry, they'll have the
right amount of time. They'll have enough time
for the right person. They won't have
time for everybody, but for the right person. And how do you
become that person? You don't ask for
everything right away. You maybe make a nice comment
on something they're doing. Maybe they wrote
an article, maybe they posted some link online, make a nice comment,
get on their radar, send them a private
message, say, thank you. You appreciate their work and their work has
benefited you. Maybe you ask them, Hey,
I really love your work. How can I help you? It's free? I just want to be involved. Make it easy for
them to engage with you and stand out that way. Because remember,
if they're good, you're one of many people
who want their advice. So you have to show that you are going to
go the extra mile. You are the one,
right, show that. And so after a few interactions, positive interactions when they start to know you a little bit, it's not cold anymore. You're not just some stranger
anymore, asking for advice. Then you ask for advice. Once that interaction has
warmed up a little bit, you ask for a little
bit of advice. And this is where
you take an inch. Use that advice, go a mile. Don't have to go a literal mile, but just show that you
use it somehow and have that cycle repeat a few
times and then maybe ask, Hey, thank you so
much for helping me. Can I do anything
for you? And then this is growing your
relationship, right? This is the right
way to network. Essentially, it boils down to give more value
than you take, because so many people,
understandably, when they're under stress,
they just want to take, take, take, ask for advice. They need help. And so
they're not takers, but they appear as
though they are takers because
they're under stress, and the only thing
they can do is whatever removes that stress. They try to remove that stress,
usually financial stress. And so they need
help right away, and they ask desperately. But it doesn't look good on the other side where you're meeting people for the first
time coming across them, and they're just
asking you for stuff. So knowing that, be the
person who provides more, who gives more value,
and this is where mentors will be more
receptive to you. Now, of course, there are
also coaches you can hire. This mentor idea that I was talking about,
this is all free. You can also hire coaches, hourly or per program. They can be a little expensive, but it's not a bad idea
if the coach is good. Sometimes you can ask for a discounted or free
initial consultation for an hour just to see if you have a good vibe and a good
chemistry with that coach. And if you do, a good
coach is invaluable. Bad coaches, there are so
many of them, they're bad. But every once in a while,
there's a great coach. It's like hiring
in any profession. You don't hire the first
person that you see, you hire the best one after
trying a number of them. So if you find the right
coach, it's okay to pay them. In fact, it's a good
idea to pay them because the idea is they will
propel you forward, and you can find coaches
paid. It's easy. You don't have to work hard like you would to
get a free mentor. You would find coaches
by searching Google. Even searching up work on
five or if you want discount, coaching, there are
some people offering that, but there's plenty. You can also ask around in your industry for
referrals, et cetera. So it's easy to find them.
They promote themselves. They advertise because
they want to get paid. But that's the idea. Now you understand how
important it is to get a mentor and how to
get them free or paid.
4. Surrounding Yourself With Supportive Peers: In addition to
surrounding yourself with helpful coaches
and mentors, you also want to
surround yourself with helpful and supportive peers. There are two very easy ways to surround yourself and find great peers who
are going through the same things who
have more time for you. This is the great
thing about peers. Mentors have a limited
amount of time for you. Peers have more time. You
can meet with them more. You can brainstorm things
openly in different ways. And they understand you a little better because
they're going through the same issues at the same time because let's say
you have a mentor, maybe they succeeded ten
years ago, 15 years ago, things change and the
peers are dealing with issues that are
currently pertinent. So how do you find these peers? The simplest way is online. You go on Linktn or you go on Facebook and
you look for groups. Let's say you want to become
an online influencer. There are so many groups of how to become a
successful YouTuber. And people there are helpful. That's the idea of
the group is to help each other. You can come. You can be humble there, ask questions, and
people will help you. There are many similar
groups for many industries. Not all industries have vibrant online communities,
but many, many. The majority of industries out there, engineering,
marketing, majority of industries have at least some sort of
helpful communities online that you can join with a lot of people there
who are already successful. And at the same
time, they are also your peers, sometimes
it's the same person. Sometimes there are
different people who are some peers, some
successful people. Personally, whenever I start any new project or get
into any new field, one of the first
things I do is try to find helpful online
communities because you immediately learn what you would need to learn on day one instead of making those
mistakes on day one. It's easy, and you can do this
without leaving the house. Now, speaking of
leaving the house, the second thing
that's highly, highly, highly recommended is to find local meet ups about
your new industry. Some meet ups are plentiful on some topics like
if you want to go to an engineering meetup
or a marketing meetup or a mobile developer meetup,
there's many of those. But I admit some industries
have fewer meetups. But nevertheless, you
want to do two things. You can go meetup.com or go
to Google and search for, let's say, you want to get
into the aerospace industry. And you would look
for aerospace events. Probably, you're not
going to find any kind of aerospace events because it's a little bit of an
obscure kind of search. Out of 100 people,
I don't even know if one is in the aerospace
industry, right? It's like a very small
percentage of people. Maybe it's a 0.1% of the
population is in that industry. So it's a little
obscure and you're not going to have a vibrant
community of it, right? So that's where you have
online resources first. But there are many industries, even in, let's say,
aerospace industry. Well, the solution to that is to zoom out of that industry. So instead of just
focusing on aerospace, you would focus on what's
kind of a one step back. So maybe the defense industry. Okay, that's a
little more broad, or maybe the sciences or
maybe physics, right? You kind of take a step
back and see what are the bigger sort of venn diagrams that apply to my situation. But the idea is to
find something. You can search for, let's say
you live in United States, in New York or Boston you would search Aerospace
events in New York, and you see what
comes up or meetups, you search meet up, you
search event bright the common event websites. Wherever you live in
different parts of the world, different event websites
will be popular. So wherever you live, you go to Google and you find
you do that search, and you find what are
the sites that come up? Some sites that come up are
big event sites on their own. Some sites are just websites
by the event leader. But you just search Google
and you pretty much find the kinds of events that are going on in
your area and you go there, and you network there. When you network there, you
come professionally dressed, friendly, with a good
positive attitude of helpfulness to others. You ask people, What
do you do first? Take an interest in them. And then, of course,
some people will also appreciate that
and ask about you, and this is where you're
going to present yourself. And in the next video,
I'm going to actually give you an idea for how to effectively present yourself so that people can either refer you to jobs or help you with advice so that people know how
to help you if they can. So we'll explore that
in the next video.
5. Networking In Person At Events: When you're doing
professional networking at events in person, you may be coming there in
two kind of situations. One is, you might have your own business that you're
getting into some industry, or you might just want to start a new career
in some industry. In this video, we're going
to talk about how to pitch yourself if you're
starting a career. In the next video, we're going to talk about how
to pitch yourself, how to present yourself when
you're starting a business, because the pitch is quite different and your
needs are different. So here is how the
conversation would flow. If you're starting a career in a new industry and you want to make good career
long business contacts. Your focus is not
the short term. Your focus is the long term. What does that mean? It means you invest in the right people. How do you know if
a person is right? You ask them about themselves. So when you meet anyone
during a networking event, you ask them about themselves, ask questions, try to help them, think about how to help them. Don't offer it right away because it might
not make sense, but at least start thinking and ask questions that
are insightful and interesting for them to answer
and build report first. Once port is built, at one point or another, they will what do you do? Because they're also there networking and they
want to meet people. And here's how you answer this. I'm currently getting
into XYZ industry, and I'm looking for XYZ things
like job recommendations, career advice,
coaches, whatever it is that is currently
your challenge. So that person whom
you're talking with knows exactly which industry you're going into and what
kind of help you need. And if they can provide that they will because you've
built rapport with them. But you don't want to
necessarily explicitly ask for a lot because let's say they
know of a job in opening, they cannot recommend you yet because they don't
actually know you. They just met you for
2 minutes only, right? So you have to build a
relationship with them, strong enough and show that
you are professional enough that they can recommend you without that
backfiring on them. Imagine if they recommend you, but then you end up
not working out, then they look bad. So you want to prevent them
from being afraid of that. You want to reverse
that and actually make it seem to them that
by recommending you, it's not going to backfire, but it's going to even
improve their standing with wherever
they're recommending you because you're that good. How do you show your dad good? You show that with past
track record of success. Here's how it might
look. You might say the same things
but augment it. So you might say, I'm trying
to get into this industry. I'm very passionate about it. I've been working really
hard on learning it, and I'm looking for
job recommendations or advice. Okay,
you say that same. But you add, I have 20 years or ten or five years
in such and such industry. If you don't have a lot
of years experience, it's also okay
because you can say, I've accomplished this and this and this in that industry. And and very importantly, I'm already making a
lot of progress in this new industry by maybe you create your
own little blog, a YouTube channel or something. You want to be active already because you
don't want to say, I've done nothing because
there are many people, most people, their
world is like this. I want to do this. I've done nothing to get there. And it might feel
cynical that I say that. But as a longtime
business coach, I heard the same phrase
repeat the most. There's one phrase that
repeated the most is that I had this
dream my whole life. But I never really did
anything to get there. Okay, that's not a good sign because what's the
difference now? They got motivated
last 5 minutes, but they're going to
get demotivated because they've already had so many
chances to do this, right? So that's kind of
almost a yellow flag. Like, you want to support
people who have dreams. That's why coaches are in the coaching business
mostly, right? Because they want to
have people succeed. But the most heartbreaking
thing is to see that people constantly dream but
don't take action. A lot of people professionals
understand this. And so you don't want to appear
as that kind of a person, and you want to
show track record, maybe a small track record, but a track record of doing something in
the new industry. That sets you a world apart
because it paints a picture, and it takes you away, you're no longer with the
majority of people who say, I've been wanting to, I've been hoping to, but I've been sitting
on the sidelines. Don't want to sit
on the sidelines, do something even small. And that is going
to get them to see, Oh, this person is a go
getter. They're hardworking. They're learning. They're
already achieving this. Maybe there's a
greater chance that there'll be like all
these signs point that, like, you're an A
performer, right? Curious about the new field, passionate already working
hard in it, learning hard. This is the kind of
person people want to hire and want to recommend. That's what I'm suggesting that you not just paint the
picture of but first create, and then that picture will paint itself because you'll
just tell the truth. So in the next video, going to tell you
about how to do your pitch in a
networking scenario if you're starting a business. But after that, we're going
to go back to how to actually position yourself
and give yourself those little projects early
on so that you can say, Hey, I'm new in this field, but I'm already doing so much
because that's going to be a huge tipping point. It's going to tip the scales
in your favor tremendously, and it's going to do that more than degrees or certificates, doing and succeeding and making your own progress on
your own is one of the most powerful
things you can ever say at a networking event or
at a job interview, that. So that's what we're
going to focus on. But next, we're going to
talk about how to network and how to pitch your
business if you're starting a business
in a new industry.
6. Thirty Second Pitch: In this video, let's talk about
your 32nd business pitch. Some people call it your
elevator pitch. Doesn't matter. It's the shortest way you
can explain your business, and you will use
it multiple times a day every day if you're doing your job as
an entrepreneur, because anyone you talk to
potential business partners, potential investors, anyone who just asks in the conversation, you meet somebody, and they're like, Hey,
so what do you do? And you got to give them your pitch so that
it's clear and interesting because nobody
wants to hear confusing, rambling, talking about yourself
because most of the time, first time entrepreneurs, they
love to talk they're like, Well, it's going to be amazing. It's going to be
$1,000,000,000 idea. Mi me, I am so great. I'm so great. My
idea is so great. Nobody wants to be on the
receiving end of that. So you want to be clear
and have your pitch fit naturally into a conversation so it doesn't kill
the conversation. If it's not for them, let's say, your business is a
cleaning business, if they don't need it, they're not going to become your client. If it's for them and you're
clear and you're brief, you'll stop and you'll
give them a chance to ask you questions
for maybe more. Then, of course,
you can have a good conversation about
it because it's an equal conversation that
you're both enjoying. And, of course,
clarity and brevity, it's your first goal, your next level goals is
to be inspiring or funny. That just makes it
more memorable. But don't try to do
it in the beginning. Just try to be clear and brief and at least a
little bit interesting. That's actually
already very hard. So I'm going to give
you a pitch template. This is from Adero Resi, who's a very successful
entrepreneur and founder of the
Founder Institute, which is in startup incubator. And he's got this pitch that I'm going to give
you this template, and then I'm going to
give you examples. So right after this video, you'll have like maybe a ten, 15 second pitch that's even
shorter than 30 seconds, and it will be effective and
clear so here's the pitch. The first sentences, my company
is XYZ, right? That's it. I developing something
or if it's already in business has a
product or service, say what product or service it is, maybe a cleaning service. Okay. Then you say who it helps. In the case of a
cleaning business, it might be
residential cleaning, it might be offices. If the problem you're
solving isn't clear, then you say with what
problem you're solving. In this case, it's obvious
what problem you're solving. So some of these
sentences you can even at times skip then you say, with this unique approach, if you have a unique approach,
then you mention it here. If you're secretive
about this business, you don't have to give
away your secret, but really essentially
the unique approach is where you might be
secretive or private. So this is a
template you can try to use. Let's go over it. I'm going to give you two
examples of different kinds of businesses so that you
will get a feel for it, and hopefully you
will create your own. The first example is an example of my own mobile app company. My company is perblemo.com, they built a mobile app series that helps entrepreneurs
start a business, avoid pitfalls and get guidance along the way by offering
live expert help. The live expert help
is like, you know, the secret sauce, how I'm different. You see
how tight it is? Obviously, I don't know
your subjective experience to receiving this pitch, but I can say this in approximately 10
seconds or 15 seconds, and it gives a lot of clarity. Another thing I do when people
ask me, so what do you do? Literally in one
sentence, I say, I run a company that creates and sells educational
products for entrepreneurs. It's literally one sentence, so it's even less than this, and people go like, Oh, and then they
ask more questions. And so the conversation flows. So you can play around with the phrasing depending on
who you're talking to. Because if it's just a
casual conversation, you want to be more brief. If it's an investor, you really want to compel them. So let's go over another company. So
this is a mobile app. The next company will be restaurant, something
very different. Restaurant, let's
say, I'm starting a gourmet Italian restaurant that serves high
end Italian food. To people who appreciate better quality food
and can afford it, then comes the line,
who are you helping? And it's really for
people who appreciate better food and can afford it. And the reason we're
starting this is because there's lack of gourmet food in some upscale neighborhood. That's the opportunity,
and our secret sauce or our differentiation is
we have a world class chef. But I would shorten
this by literally I'm starting a gourmet
Italian restaurant in such and such neighborhood that is an upscale neighborhood but has a low number of
high end restaurants, especially Italian
restaurants, and we have a world class
head chef on staff. I mean, literally just a
couple of head and says, and you can shuffle
around the phrasing of it so it's more cadent so that it flows better
off your tongue, and you can play around with different variations
of it so that you can see responses on people's
faces when you tell them. But essentially, this
template helps you not to go wrong and stay clear and not ramble on for 5 minutes
because that's the worst.
7. My Experience Being Underpaid But Working Hard: In this video, I'm
going to tell you the single most powerful way to break into a new industry, but it requires hard work. So it's the most
powerful, least popular, at least in my
experience because I recommend this kind of a
strategy too many people, few people take me up on it, but it's something
that I did multiple times throughout my career. It worked magically each
time. So how does it work? You go and you take free project or severely
underpaid project, and you don't
complain about it but appreciate because you're not there for that money anyway, you're there for
the experience so that you can tell the employer, I worked for just for example, an equivalent of $3 an hour, but I worked so hard and
I gained this experience. And you know what?
I overachieved on this project, and
here's what I did. And nobody else did that because that same opportunity
was given to 100 people, and I'm the only
one who grabbed it. This story is what
you want to create. That's an amazing Ds. Wow. Really? You were
the one out of so many who took the least bit of
opportunity and ran with it. And, wow, remember that metaphor from earlier in the course. Take an inch, run a mile, right? This is that story. You take the smallest
opportunity and you make something out of it. I'll tell you how I used it. When I just graduated
university, I got a computer science degree, and that was around 2004
or five. I don't remember. But at that time, the computer
science industry was dead. Software Engineering was dead. Now it's super popular. Then there was the industry was just recovering from
the.com crash of 2000. And there was like no jobs. It was a horrible economy. Basically, everybody
in my major, all my university schoolmates, they thought they
were going to get a job in something like marketing. They didn't even imagine
they'd get a programming job, which is from that major, you're supposed to get
a programming job, which was the dream
of all of us. But we thought just
because the economy was so bad and we didn't see any light
at the end of the tunnel, that we thought, Okay, it's
not going to happen for us. But then I did this. I found an internship online. All of us were looking for
internships that, you know, around the end of school
year, like the winter, you start looking for
internships so that you can, by the time you
graduate, show that, hey, you've gotten at least
a few months of experience, so you can get jobs easier. So I found this internship, and it was really
kind of sketchy. They were hiring
college students for some kind of
really dumb tasks, and I tried to stay there. I try to be open minded. And what I noticed
is every week, they would get new
college students because the ones from the
previous week were like, This is a horrible internship. It was for a small
company that was pretty broke and they
were almost not paying, and they were kind of
cheating people out of the paying, whatever. But instead of and it was a ridiculous place,
looking back at it. But if I thought
that, if I allowed myself to think that, I
wouldn't have succeeded. I thought, Okay, well,
I'll make the best of it. So because I was a software
engineer by trade, I was a computer science major. Whatever the dumb tasks
they made people do, they took people from
all kinds of major. College students.
I automated it. I wrote a program
that automated it. And the program
didn't even work that well because they
had some issues. It was some complexities, I only had a part time
that I was there. But I'm the only one
who did that, right? While every other intern was kind of like one week you're
here, next week you quit. Week you're here, next
week you quit, right? So I stood out. And at
one point, you know, I was doing this for, like,
a few months already, free internship, just free. They gave me some project, slightly bigger project
programming project. And they paid me some
called a stipend, which was if you count the
hours I earned was like only 20% of the
current minimum wage that was legally allowed,
but it was a stipend. So it was no money. Like, I had an actual part time job that I had throughout
my university. I was a security
guard, and sometimes was a construction worker
during university. But so that paid my bills. So this stipend that this company gave me
was nearly nothing. So it wasn't helpful. But I thought, Okay, it's
better than nothing, but also I'm doing
interesting work that they're letting
me have freedom. And I did something
successful there, and just by chance, they had a job opening for a
software engineer. And by the way,
still, at this time, zero of my classmates, the entire graduating class in my computer science
class, no jobs. And here I am working on at least a self made internship that's
getting better and better. And suddenly, this company
where I was having this ripoff stipend and
all these dump projects, they had an opening for a
software engineer position, and they realized they
can pay me three times less than a software engineer who has five years experience. So they hired me. I was
there. They knew me. They didn't have
to interview me. Was there already. I was just there,
right? And they would have had to go through
a long hiring process. It's hard to hire
engineers, et cetera. It's expensive. They hired me. I stayed there for
six more months or eight or nine more months, and I completed two projects like professional
engineering projects, and I got job, like a regular job
at the next company. I said, Thank you. And I
went on to, like, a normal, real professional company,
while most of my schoolmates, even people who were
way smarter than me, and way better students than me, and I thought,
during university, how they're going to succeed, I way outperformed them. They were still struggling
because they you know, follow the same old path, and I was like, Hey, you know, I did it through hard work. The same pattern, and
by the way, it's true. Like, people were like, Wow, how did you get this job?
I cannot get a new job. And I had a software
engineering job, like, right out of college in economic time where it was
impossible. It was impossible. And I did it through
this hard work where just about everybody would have quit a long time ago. Same thing happened when
I started working online. In the early days of
FR, very early days, I started providing services for like $5, coaching services, marketing services,
business planning services, all kinds of services, $5. By the way, on FR, fiver.com. You may be familiar. Some
people are familiar, some not. It's $5, but you
don't even keep $5. You keep $4 because the $1 20% goes to the company
five for their commission. So essentially $4
severely underpaid. Yes, it's severely underpaid. Most people will see it
as a turn off and it is. But there's a silver lining
that's smarter to notice. The silver linings
are like this. You get an incredible amount of experience without
having a job. So if you want to break into an industry, you need experience. This is how you get experience and still getting paid
a little bit for it, just like that earlier uh, internship that stipend, the horrible stipend
they gave me. Okay, I took it, okay? Most people would say, This is beneath me or they
would feel that. And it might I might be. But sometimes in life,
you got to be scrappy, and this is what it was. So I did all these projects. Then, by the way, I
learned to upsell. So it wasn't actually my order size was way more
than $504 in the end. I learned to upsell, and I learned how to do all these things in
different industries. Remember, imagine if
you had experience with 100 projects in
different industries in your main like let's say I
was providing SEO services. That's search engine
optimization, basically, Google marketing. But imagine if you had 100
little projects in it, you would get so many
perspectives and so many ideas that you wouldn't get if you had just one
major project, right? So I got all of these ideas and all of this little by little,
all these experiences. And not only I
started to be able to charge higher prices,
to learn to upsell, to retain clients longer, and some clients turn into
very high paying ones because this is actually
the key to that fiber site. Nobody there wants to make
three or four, $5, right? People want to upsell
and make a lot of money, and successful sellers
actually make over $1 million, but they have to be good and
get that experience, right? You know, you kind
of got to build up. Most people just want to start on day one
and be successful, but the successful people are who work hard for a long time, persevere through the failures, you know, just like
in any industry, and then they succeed. Same thing was for me. Now I stopped fiber because I
just don't have the time. But over time, I completed over 2000 jobs there, big,
small, whatever. So much experience,
right? So now, when I teach search
engine optimization, it's from a ton of experience
when I do it for clients, when I coach clients,
and they say, Hey, do you know how do you have
experience in this industry? Well, yeah, I've talked to
five people who started the business in
your exact industry in your exact situation, right? And few people can say that. So now, people say, how did you make so
many courses online? How do you get this experience? Well, it's because every day, I'm still working
with entrepreneurs, not necessarily from fiber, but still working all the
time through hard work, but those freelancing sites
give you plenty of paid, not well paid in the beginning, but at least they're
paid projects where the most important thing
is that you learn and gain experience and invest
in yourself because that self is going to go to job interviews and
say, You know what? Instead of doing nothing, I
have a blog on this subject. I have a thriving
YouTube channel and a podcast, and by the way, I've had over 100 clients
in this industry, and I've seen this perspective, this perspective,
this perspective, and I have 99% five star
ratings or something like that. Now, that's so much more
impressive than same candidate, you know, Oh, I got a
certificate or I didn't do much. I'm just looking
for an opportunity. This is a non go getter
versus a go getter. And the more go getter you are, I know it's hard. I
know it's frustrating. But the one saving
thought is that you're investing in your future.
This is really it. Imagine if you got a degree, a master's degree,
it would cost you, at least in the United
States, like way over $100,000 plus two years during which you're probably
not working much at all. So it's like 200,000 or 300,000 depending on how good the school is
and what you do, but it's super expensive, right? You're investing in your future. This way, you're investing in
your future by getting paid and by having your learnings
be way more practical. Business, school,
students are in school. They're sitting
in the classroom. They don't have the
real world experience. Maybe they'll get an
internship at the end, but you'll get one
faster and you'll get dozens of them
that are smaller that you choose that
are interesting for you, you'll get paid for it. So you won't be
quarter million dollar in debt at least by
United States prices. So this is what I
would recommend, and it works way better than
degrees in most fields. Doing the work, being a hungry, greedy go getter, it's way more effective than
you should if you can get certificates that
are cheap or fast, sure. But a lot of
certificate programs, they're just rip off, right? Like, pay us $15,000 for this
piece of paper certificate, but learn not so much and gain, not so much experience, whereas you can be
getting so much more. So this path that I
outlined, in my opinion, and in my practice, in my real experience
is profoundly better. It's not just a little better. It's incredibly better. And the results
are wildly better. The jobs you get, the amount of money
you ultimately make, which is, you know, the whole purpose of this
in the first place, right? You don't want to go in debt,
you want to make money. That this is the
most fruitful thing. And employers, they're going to see this, and
they're going to say, Wow, imagine if we gave this
person a small opportunity. How far can they go with
a small opportunity? Employers look for. This is a thing in hiring. Good employers, leaders, look for other employees
who can become leaders. So they take a small
opportunity and grow into something
bigger promotions. That's what employers really want is to hire these A players, and that's exactly what you're not telling them you'll
be but showing them.
8. Possible Projects You Can Do To Stand Out: In this video, I want to
talk about how to build up your online personal
brand and do your online reputation
management so that it's very impressive and looks like you're making inroads and success
in your new industry, even if you are new
because when you're networking or if you're
going to a job interview, this is going to be your
biggest resume piece that you're doing something
and succeeding on your own. You're a go getter.
That's leadership skills, all those good qualities
employers want. So the options are that
are easy, easiest. Your blog can be as simple
as taking daily news in your industry and commenting on those
news with your opinion, or it can be interviewing other successful people
in your industry, which actually transitions
really well into a blog. But if you don't mind
appearing on video, you can create interviews. That would be either
YouTube interviews or podcast right or right away. Very easily without a tremendous amount of effort, some effort, but it's a good effort because this effort
is actually going to help you learn a lot about the industry which
you're getting into. Just being in it and
looking at the news and even interviewing
successful people in it. This is actually
great for networking, for establishing long term
relationships with people. But all those moments that
you're going to be in that, you're going to be
learning the industry. So it's great for you. You're building experience,
real experience. But also, you're building up
something you can show. You can show a blog. You can show a YouTube channel. You can show a podcast
and you can really say, Hey, I'm being really active. I'm a go getter in this field. Those kind of three things and additional social
media posting. Like, if you're doing already
content like this, YouTube, you can make TikToks and
Instagram and Twitter, you can post everywhere
on social media, and suddenly you
have a presence. Now, imagine a month, three months passes,
six months passes. Your audience suddenly grows. You don't have to be
a big influencer, like giant influencers you see
there around the Internet, but you can be what's
called a micro influencer with 1,000 followers, 1,000 subscribers on YouTube, maybe 500 subscribers
on YouTube, even relatively small numbers. But now this employer thinks we can actually get
promotion from this person. Now, that's not their main
reason for hiring you, but it's certainly a good
benefit because now you actually have promotional
benefits that they want you on their
team a little more. But more importantly,
they are seeing, Oh, you're doing
a lot of things. Remember when we talked
about connecting the dots earlier in this course, when we talked about
getting mentors, here, when you're
creating a blog or a podcast or YouTube
channel on the interview, you can explain that in a
way that connects the dots. First, you started a blog, then a YouTube channel, then a podcast, then it grew. Then there was a challenge. Then you overcame
that challenge. This answers so much your potential employer in a way that doesn't say,
like, I'm great. It shows that you're great, which is so much more powerful because everybody who's
interviewing is going to say, I'm great, and then the interviewer is going
to ask them questions. Tell me about the greatest
challenge you face. Well, actually,
that was already in your story when you
were struggling. How did you overcome the
initial blog post failures or YouTube videos that got maybe three views. And how
did you overcome that? It's in your story of
working in this industry. And by the way, working
in the industry, having a project shows
something you can't buy. Passion. It shows
curiosity and passion. Employers want you to be
genuinely interested in their industry because
they know that's going to naturally give you
the right kind of motivation. So you're already answering so many questions that
they would have for you without saying
a single word. That's the power of doing
your own online work. Now, the other benefit
of all this online work, imagine if you have
a YouTube channel, a podcast, a blog, all
that stuff, right? You don't know this, but just about every employer
who's going to be interviewing you and
even people who are just networking with
if they're interested, they're going to research you online by typing in your name. Like, my name is a
very unique name. There's only one of
my name in the world. But let's say you
have a common name, they'll still find you, but they'll just have
to put, you know, John Smith in the industry. Okay? So they can easily
still find you or sometimes they'll type your website
or something about you. So they'll find you online. And what you don't want is random nothingness
about you online. And you'll replace that with
imagine how good it will be. If people search your name, they find a professionally
created LinkedIn that talks about this industry and what you're already doing. Okay, next search result. They find your website that
talks about, you know, that actually contains
your blog as well and talks about all these things you're doing in the industry. Then they go and next, they find your maybe
Facebook group community that you made, maybe
your Instagram, maybe your YouTube channel, and they think to
themselves, Oh, wow, this is more
impressive candidate than a candidate
who had nothing. Which is most of your competitors for
the same job, right? So it's a leg up, and it shows without you even saying
a words that powerful. Now, there's another
really, really, really powerful
thing you can do, and it requires a
lot of hard work, but it's something
I did early on, and I'm going to
tell you about it in the next video, but
that really, really, really sets you
apart and creates an incredible
personal brand story for yourself for your
potential employer. So I'll tell you how
to create such a story and build that picture
in the next video.
9. My App Projet Story: Now I want to tell you
a personal anecdote from my own career
of how I try to transition industries
and then turns into my business that
I actually run now, which I totally didn't expect. It just happened that
way. So in about 200910, 2011, I was a software engineer, and I tried some
projects on my own. I had a dream of starting
my own business, but those haven't worked out really well
at that time yet. And I needed to make money. So I was working as
a software engineer. And at this time,
the hot industry in software engineering was
mobile app development. It was just starting out the smartest people were
getting into that. And so I had to get
into that because in the software industry,
you're like this. You can be a programmer, but if you're not learning
the next thing, you're very quickly
becoming a dinosaur, and you cannot be a dinosaur
in software engineering. It's just like death
of your career. So I had to learn mobile app development so I can get mobile up development jobs. And learning mobile app
development is okay, but just turning theoretically
doesn't get you very far. So you had to or at least I thought that I had to
create a small project. Like I talked about earlier, you can create a small project as small as a blog
or YouTube channel. In my case, because I
was a software engineer, I was able to, you
know, actually start to program some apps. And you can create other
things in other industries. In some industries, it's
easier or more difficult, but you can always think creatively about
what you can make. So I made an app. So basically
just so that I can show up potential employer
at a job interview that I made an app
instead of just saying, like, I have no experience
and I'm learning, right? Here's my app. So I
was making this app, and when you make an app, you have to put it in, you know, iPhone and Android
app stores naturally. And I put it into those
app stores Version one, the worst version of
it that was possible. Most things were broken. You know, I was just playing
around in my own project. But I put it in the app store so that some friends
can download it. And then I noticed
that actual users are downloading this thing
from the app stores. And so I quickly created a feature in this app just
to chat with those users. They can chat with
me, create chat. And I was the next
day, I was like, chatting with people
or the next week, and they were telling me
about all these features that they wanted to add
that they were looking for. And so I built
them a week later, a couple of weeks later. And then this app started
becoming successful because the people who were asking for these
features are users. The features that I was building came right from the
needs of the users. So next users and future users really
found this app helpful. And actually, they asked
for a certain kind of it was a business
app initially, and they asked for some kind
of business planning help. And so I made a business
planning app in the end, and because it was
satisfying their needs, it became actually the number one business planning
app on Android. And for a number of
years, it became like, really successful in
the business category. Overall, at the end, I had like 2 million downloads, which is a lot and all free
or like 99% free download. I experimented with some ads, but the main point is
that free download. And this app was like my living. I actually was making a living. I stopped looking for a job. I wasn't making, like,
a good living at that. But I was making a living enough that I no longer
needed to get a job. It actually became like
I entered this field, and my project that
I wanted to show to an employer became my business. And then people were asking me there was still
chat on that app, and people were asking me
all kinds of questions, and I started answering them. At first, I was just
answering questions through chat on that
app, but very quickly, I realized that many of the
people who were asking me questions are asking me the
same questions all the time, like, how do I start a business? How do I register a business? How do I protect my
intellectual property? Those kinds of questions. So I thought, instead of
answering for the 20th time, the same question, I'll
make a YouTube video. I started making YouTube videos, answering those questions once, and then all I had to do when people asked me that
question again, I would just point them
to the YouTube link. And that actually was the beginning of my YouTube channel. Now, I was horrible at
YouTube and videos, but at least it was a start. And that YouTube channel
actually a year later, led me to creating
full online courses, which here we are, right? My, many years later, I'm still doing a lot
of online courses. So that project that I just wanted to start to
show an employer to say, Hey, I know app development actually morphed
into what I do now, which is so amazing
because it came out way better than
I ever dreamed. I just dreamed of
having a job where I actually now have my
own business, right? A from the hard
work and trying and trying and trying and trying and working on
your own projects. And, of course, a
blog can become a business because you can
sell products from your blog. Your products that you make or other products from other
brands for a commission. Same thing on YouTube. You can make money with ads or buy ads, sponsorships or
selling products. If you start working on your
things that you build up, those things can turn into
something bigger than a job, which is something that
actually happened to me, which is the anecdote that
I really wanted to share because I lived this for
the last 15 years or so. So that's just an anecdote, that real thing that
happened that you know, I wanted to share because
it's it can happen. At least for me, it was
the best possible scenario because my dream was to be on my own and pursue my own
ideas and curiosities, which that's what I'm doing now. So, yes, you can transition to a new
industry and get a job, but you can actually
create something for yourself that's totally
unique in your own, as well. All by doing your
own little projects, not being afraid of
investing your time and mental effort and
passion because when you start building something
like that app, now it's defunct because I just don't have enough
time to update it. The app stores have all kinds of requirements and have
to keep updating it. I stopped updating
it because now the course business ended
up my main business. But I didn't know
that then, right? By just instead of sitting on
the sidelines and waiting, maybe getting a
certificate or degree, if you do little project
that maybe fail, but go get into something bigger or even if
they don't fail, maybe they only have
mediocre success, but they lead to
something bigger, they lead to something bigger. This is one thing that
can sometimes happen and really unlock
opportunity that would otherwise never present itself, because if I just asked
for a job and got a job, I would never be doing this. And this is, for me, worked out way better. So don't be afraid
of doing things. It will pay for itself, investing in your own future through your own hard work and spending time and the sweat equity that you build pays for it pays for itself
many times over.
Alex Genadinik
