Austin Belcak Shares His Best Strategies For Landing Your Dream Job [Podcast Ep. #18]

Transcribed from the episode audio by AI, so it may contain mistakes.

Ravi0:17Welcome to the Motivated Life podcast. I'm Ravi Raman. On today's episode, I bring you Austin Belcak. I met Austin about three years ago when he invited me to come on an online forum, an online conference he was hosting around career success. So I give a talk to his audience around how to do great in a new job. And since then, we've stayed in touch. And I've been impressed with a couple things. One is the fact that in spite of, of having a busy, busy day job working at Microsoft in the New York office, he's been devoting a significant amount of time to building a side business.

And I really sort of admire him for that given how busy working at Microsoft can be or having any full-time job could be. Also, I've appreciated his approaches to job searching. He tends to avoid some of the conventional strategies that tend to keep people stuck. And he has different ways of thinking about how to really navigate the whole job hunt process, how to avoid simply applying to jobs and hoping and praying that you're going to get a response. And instead, taking more ownership into thinking creatively about what you really want, how to demonstrate that you can do a job ahead of time, and then creatively reaching out to people to land those opportunities.

And Austin is also speaking from experience because he ended up going from medical device sales to a job in tech at Microsoft doing account management without a stellar GPA, without, you can even say sort of relevant career experience, but he did it in a way that worked and he's doing quite well there. So on today's episode, we really talk about a few things. One is what motivated Austin to start a side hustle, his own business, while working full-time. And we also go into job search strategies, both where people tend to get stuck when looking for a new job, how to avoid the spray-and-prey approach of simply applying to a bunch of jobs and hoping for a response, and also how to negotiate properly for a job and a whole lot else.

So today we really do get into a lot of tactics that can apply and be relevant for you if you are either actively looking for a job now or plan to in the future. And of course, if you enjoy the podcast or know anyone who you think might enjoy it, I'd really appreciate you sharing it with your friends or giving it a quick review in whatever app you use. Well, that's it for my introduction today. It's now time to bring you, Austin Belcak. Austin, thanks for joining me.

Austin3:16Ravi, thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure to be here.

Ravi3:19Well, why don't we get started? I'd love for you just to share a little bit about your background, both your what you do, who you are, what you do for work, and also your side business.

Austin3:30Absolutely. So who I am, my name is Austin Belcak, and I live in New York, and I currently work full-time at Microsoft, kind of following in your footsteps there, Ravi. But I work in sales there on the advertising side of things. So that's my full-time job. I'm there, you know, the 40 hours a week, maybe a little bit more. But outside of that, I run a site called Cultivated Culture, which basically aims to teach people how to leverage some unconventional strategies to to land jobs they love without traditional experience, without prior connections, and most importantly, in my opinion, without applying online.

So I started that about three years ago now. And we've grown the community to about there's 12,000 people in it now. We've had about 30,000 come through. And some of them have gone on to land jobs at places like Google and Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and a whole bunch of other industries, to name a few. So that is, that is pretty much who I am and where I'm at right now, and I'm excited to dive into all of that stuff a little bit deeper today with you.

Ravi4:34So you're working at a great company. I'm curious for you what inspired you to start a, A, start a side business and B, start a side business around helping people with their careers while still working full time.

Austin4:47Definitely. It's a great question. And I think there's, there's a couple of reasons that factor into it. The first would be that, that, I've always sort of had this, the entrepreneurial itch, if you will. And that actually stemmed from the fact that I got out of college. I didn't have the necessary credentials, the traditional credentials that most people have. When I tried to make this jump from medical device sales to tech, I graduated the biology degree at 2.5 GPA, and I had a job in the medical field.

and then I ended up hating it for many, many different reasons. And so I tried to make this transition and I found that nobody was willing to take a chance on me despite having spent all this money on university and getting this degree. Just because I simply didn't have experience in this new field, nobody would give me a shot. And so I realized that I needed to figure out a way to build some sort of experience. And the great part about marketing and the digital space is that a lot of these tools are available online.

I went out there and I kind of taught myself digital marketing and I leveraged some of the experience through those teachings. I turned the knowledge that I learned into a freelance business. So I pitched clients and I got some monthly recurring revenue going. And so I was still working full time while this was happening. That was kind of a side hustle and it was my first side hustle. And it was cool because I was getting paid basically to learn these skills that I needed to jump.

Into a new career And then I did end up leveraging that experience to get a job in New York City and then eventually to land offers from Google and Microsoft and Twitter and a bunch of other places And then I settled down at Microsoft. So that was sort of where this got started. I've always kind of had the itch, But I've also helping people get through. This job search thing was after I went through. It was a huge priority for me. I mean, I think things are so broken today and so backwards in a lot of cases and I know that a lot of job seekers out there feel like they're spinning their wheels and it's so frustrating and it takes a toll on your mental health and your physical health and your self-esteem and all these things that factor in to your ability to be happy and feel satisfied.

And having gone through that personally myself, as soon as I got the job at Microsoft, a bunch of people started emailing me and they were like, hey, aren't you the kid that had a terrible GPA? And now you're working at this great company. Like, how did that? that happened. And after the 20th or 30th email, I figured, you know, I may as well share some of this in a more scalable fashion. So I wrote a blog post about it and I marketed it and I got a really good response.

And so the rest is kind of history. I was so happy that all these people were leveraging the stuff that I learned to go out and get the same results for themselves in their job search and their career. But I also saw this as an avenue to build my experience, a little bit more outside of my day job. So I'm learning skills. I'm building relationships with people and getting all of this new information that I would not normally get if I was just doing my full-time job coming home and hanging out.

But I'm able to make an impact and I'm able to generate additional sources of income through it. So I think a long-witted answer to your question would be all of those things kind of combined.

Ravi8:16It sounds like you you started the side business, not as a business simply reacting to requests and sharing what you knew. And then eventually it turned into a business. Or did you start out thinking, no, I want to have a separate business side income?

Austin8:32Yeah. So I'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur. You know, I'd always wanted to own my own company and make my own schedule and not be reliant on a full-time job or anything like that for a whole number of reasons. And so I've always, I'd always been looking for an idea. In college, I tried to start a fishing apparel company because I was very big into fishing back then. And that kind of fell on its face. And then I tried to start an app like I think almost everybody has thought of at some point.

And that made it through some of the planning stages. And then a whole bunch of apps all came out at once that were doing exactly what I had planned to offer. So that kind of failed. But my point is that I've kind of always been looking for this idea that I could use to start something and make it scalable. And eventually, when people started asking me about this, and given all of the frustration and pain and anxiety that I went through with my job search, I knew that there was a big problem there that needed solving.

And I kind of had this approach that was, I thought and still believe, is fairly different from what most other people are doing out there. especially most other job seekers. I know there are a lot of coaches, great coaches like yourself and other folks out there who are teaching similar strategies. But the job seekers themselves, I think the more of us that can spread this message, the better. So that was sort of my opportunity to combine this need to scratch my entrepreneurial itch along with a skill set that I already had and a topic that I could speak to and kind of build products against and actually create a brand around.

Right.

Ravi10:19And let's talk a little bit about the whole job search approach you have. I've read some of your content and you have some unconventional strategies that you teach and that you've used yourself to land job offers. What are some of the top two to three, I guess, bits of advice out there in the market for job seekers that you think are misleading or just plain wrong? and what would you recommend people do instead?

Austin10:47Definitely. I think the biggest piece of misleading advice is this vicious cycle or hamster wheel of online applications. And I think it really starts in college these days. I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine who's also in our space. And we were talking about how hard it is to get into universities to speak or even do anything. as well-intentioned as we may be, their career services departments tend to be underfunded, and they tend to view people like us, career coaches, and people who do stuff differently as threats to kind of them and their jobs and the way that they do things.

And I had actually reached out to my alma mater to speak at one of their programs. And I have, I told them, you know, I have hundreds and hundreds of kids from your program on my email list. and they all seem to get some benefit out of the advice that I'm providing. So we'd love to come down and speak in one of your classes and see how we can collaborate to honestly get your placement rate for the program as high as it can possibly be and get you some logos and all this stuff.

And I got an email back from the guy and he said you know, this sounds great, but your advice conflicts with what we're teaching our students And so we're going to have to pass. And I've gotten that response a lot And I think it's just crazy because universities these days they require or request so much of their students monetarily or financially, but also in terms of the amount of time you put in to study all these different subjects yet there isn't a course on how to manage your credit score or necessarily how to get a job at a lot of universities.

And so when it does come time to get a job, the students are put through the same cycle. which is tweak your resume, tweak your cover letter, apply online, and cross your fingers and pray. And that's really the advice that that's given kind of across the job market in general. It's pretty wild that most levels, so 75% of people out there today is the most recent number, they use online applications as their main channel to apply for jobs. But online applications, the chance of landing an interview from one of those is about 2%.

So we have the majority of people out there going through this process that has such a very, very slim success rate. It's just crazy. And people spin their wheels And there's all these factors Like if you want to switch careers, if you want to go into something that doesn't line up with your degree or your past jobs or any of the experience that you have, you're at such a disadvantage because these applicant tracking systems or scanning your resume and looking for keywords, and all the people that do have the traditional experience are getting bubbled up to the top.

And it can feel very frustrating when you know that you can do this job or you know that you can at least learn the skills that you need to do this job, but nobody's willing to give you a chance. So I'd say that that's probably the most pervasive and damaging myth that's going on out there. But I think job seekers don't know what to do instead. And that's kind of where I hope that I come in and I know that somebody like yourself comes in with these strategies to help people find jobs without applying online.

So they skip that whole line. They find a creative way to get their foot in the door, usually through a referral. And then they're off the races. They're in the door for an interview. They've built a relationship with somebody who can be a champion for them at the company who can advocate for them throughout the hiring process and will actually be in the room where the hiring decision is made. So exactly.

Ravi14:36I mean, anyone I work with who's seeking jobs, the first conversation is about connecting to people, not about applying or definitely not cover letter resume. But I'm curious what your take is on, when you say referrals, you know, that reminds me of networking something that I've yet to meet anyone who actually enjoys doing it. And I'm pretty sure you're not talking about just going to a bunch of networking events. But when you say don't apply online, get referrals, how do people go about doing that?

Austin15:11Absolutely. So I think the answer is building relationships. We won't use the word networking. But I think when people are, they hear the word networking, they think of exactly what you mentioned, Ravi. they think of the events and shaking hands and handing out business cards. And then you show up to the event and then you realize everybody else is looking for the same thing you're looking for, like a job. And so these high-powered people who are working at Google or Microsoft or Amazon who are in a position to get you hired for a great job, they're not going to these events.

They have much, much better things to do with their time, And so I think the first thing we need to do is kind of quash the idea that that networking is this huge kind of shot in the dark, spray and prey kind of practice where you try and hit up as many people as you possibly can and hope people reply and cross your fingers and shake all these hands and hand out business cards. All that stuff is not what we're talking about here. Instead, the best thing that people can do is start by identifying the right people.

And so that's exactly the type of person we talked about before. Somebody who is who would be your colleague, they'd be sitting next to you if you got hired, or maybe they'd be your manager, somebody who works on the team that you want to be hired into, because that's the person who's going to have the most pull from end to end during the job search here. I don't typically recommend that people try to reach out to recruiters, mostly because they're sort of the human version of an online job app.

And not to demean the hard work that they do, the recruiters are a huge tool for companies. But the problem is they, like all of us, they can get bombarded with emails and they don't have time to reply and they're kind of drowning a little bit. And so it's really hard to get in touch with them. But even if you do get in touch with them, they can only refer you in for an interview. Their influence kind of ends at that point. Whereas if you get referred in by somebody who is on that team or holds that job title or would be managing you, that person can continue to advocate for you all the way up until the hiring decision is made.

So finding those people and then strategically researching them and their companies and reaching out to them in a very specific way to incite a response, that's the type of thing we're talking about here. And there's definitely a science to it. There's definitely an art to it. It takes time. It takes practice. But it's so much more rewarding, I found that than the online app process, which we all hate, I think most of us hate repetitive, tedious tasks, which is tweaking your resume, applying online and all that.

But building relationships is a skill that will land you your dream job, but will also help you do pretty much anything else that you want to do in life. So if you want to write a book and get it published, building relationships to people who can help you make that happen is key. If you want to start a business, if you want to start a charity. Almost anything that you want to do in life will be accelerated by building relationships with the right people. So starting this skill now when you're looking for a job, it's not, you're investing a lot of time in it and it does take a lot of effort for sure.

But the ROI will continue well beyond that next job that you land. It's really a lifelong skill.

Ravi18:37Yeah. The ROI, one of the ROIs of networking or connecting to the people that I see is is, and I recommend this to people, is speaking to people who are not only, say, working at a company they'd like to work for, but just people who are interesting that they'd love to talk to. Because in talking to people about career and what you're looking for, it actually helps you get more clear on what you want. You might start out thinking you really want to be, say, a product manager.

But the more you talk to people, the more you realize, no, what I really want is something a little bit different, maybe data science, maybe designer. And so the conversations also drive clarity, and that's something that is, I completely agree with you, is misunderstood. If all people did was apply for jobs, they're not getting the feedback that happens when you talk to a human being. And the clarity that happens for you on just articulating what you're looking for and what you want. So I love that you focus on that.

Now, just to get to brass tax here, sorry, you recommend people just hit people up on LinkedIn or like someone who say is early in, their career and says they don't have a big network. If they hear, hey, you got to go talk to people, they'll wonder, well, where do I find them? So what do you recommend people do to actually go get the referrals and build these relationships?

Austin19:57Absolutely. So just to touch on something that you mentioned and also something that you and I talked about, great piece of advice, is that this type of networking should be done constantly. So building a habit out of it. And taking action even when you feel comfortable is so critical because I think your comment on LinkedIn was that, you know, the people who are doing this nonstop are the ones who never have to look for a new job because they have all these people who are ready to refer them into roles that are open.

And they're typically being pitched opportunities when they're happily employed. And the opportunities are endless because they continue to connect with these people who are doing awesome things and they're approaching it from the standpoint, not of, I need a job right now, so I need to connect with this person, which makes it feel very transactional. They're approaching it from, hey, this person is working at a very cool company or they're doing something very cool. They have a cool job title. They have a cool story. Let me talk to them to learn a little bit more about their perspective, where they're coming from, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, what their thoughts are about topics, X, Y, and Z.

And so it's more of a a curious exploration than a transactional relationship that's now limited by the fear of not having a job in a month or losing your job in a month or whatever it may be. So right off the bat, making a habit of this is huge. And the best way that you can start doing this and the best way you can accomplish this is to find those right people that we mentioned. If you're looking for a job, it's going to be the folks, again, who can impact the hiring decision.

But if you're comfortable with your job, it's more about finding people who are doing things that you find interesting that you'd like to talk to. And then it's doing a little bit of research about them and finding a creative way to reach out. So one of the things I've been testing with my audience that's actually worked really well for boosting response rates is this idea of warming someone up. So, Ravi, if I see one of your posts on LinkedIn and then I just send you a cold email, you're going to be nice enough to reply.

I know. But if this person, let's say, is drowning in email, if they get a random note from somebody that's going to be at the bottom of the priority list, It's going to be hard to stand out. But if this person maybe leaves a thoughtful comment on your LinkedIn post, leaves a like, sends you a message with a link to an article or something like that, not asking for anything but just trying to add value, that is that, then you're no longer an unknown quantity. You're now this person who has left that thoughtful comment, who's added value, who's reached out in a positive way.

And so now, when you send the cold email, you're going to be more of a friendly face than a total stranger. And then the content of the email is important too. So doing research on the person and the company and finding a way to add value is probably the best thing that you can do. The more research, the more time you put in, the better. And the more you do this, the faster you'll be able to identify those areas of opportunity And then reaching out to them and basically saying something along the lines of hey, I came across your profile on LinkedIn when I was looking for whatever it is, when I was looking for people who are building out AI algorithms for health care in the New York area, whatever it may be And then making it about them.

So too many people these days reach out and they make it about themselves. I'm interested in your field, tell me about it, read my resume. Um, I want a job at your company. There's a lot of eyes, there's a lot of it. Whether people mean to or not, it comes off as sort of selfish, for lack of a better word. But if you spin it a little bit and say your background is very impressive, um, the work that you're doing is very interesting, and I'd love to learn more about you and how you were able to accomplish these things.

Now we're spinning it to be more about the other person. And that's really what's going to get us that response. And then after you get the response, the rest is, it's fairly straightforward. You hop on the phone with them. You have that conversation. You plan ahead. You come up with questions you're going to ask. And then while you're having the conversation, the best thing that you can do is ask these questions to tease out information around areas where you can add value. So some of my favorites are asking the person about their biggest challenge.

The biggest challenge their team is facing. What new initiatives or projects are coming up with them, with their team? What are they focused on in the next couple of months? You can even ask them about their personal goals. You know, you work at Google now. You have this amazing job, but what's next? Like, do you want to continue at Google? Are you looking to start your own thing? And answers to all these questions are going to give you ways you can add value. And then it's your job to kind of go back in, and build something out, create a deliverable.

I like to call it a value validation project, but something that is tangible evidence of the value that you bring to the table and the reason that they should continue a relationship with you or give you that job referral. And if that value validation project is on point and high quality and aligns with the conversation you had in their needs, that's going to be an immediate in with that person, whether you're looking for a job or whether you're looking to just build a deeper a relationship with that person.

Yeah. Yeah, that is, that's your ticket in. So that's pretty much the process and the strategy that I recommend and that I teach the people in my community. And it's been really, really effective.

Ravi25:39And, you know, I'm not surprised it's effective because, you know, in part what I'm hearing you say is genuinely care about people, be genuinely curious about what they're up to, and be genuinely curious about how you can actually help them, not what you can get from them. And if I think about just human beings coming together, you know, if you're genuinely curious, you genuinely care and you're genuinely trying to be of service and help, then things generally happen. And what's interesting is what you're sharing is is not what most of the job search, you know, advice out there is teaching people.

But there's also something just natural about it too. Humans, you know, we like to care about people. We like to help other people, hiring managers as well. And it can be a really helpful way of having the conversation just to ask yourself, how can I really help someone? And also, it seems that if a candidate can't help someone, then maybe that job isn't the right move right now if they can't think of how they can be of service in the role. Would you agree with that?

Definitely.

Austin26:46Definitely. I think one of the insights that I've come across and starting my business is that there are, there are some leaps and bounds that, that are a little bit too wide. And so you kind of have to take an intermediary step. And I think that's a great way to gauge whether or not that the next step is the right one. So one of the, one of the things I see is that people come to me and they're like, hey, I, you know, I'm, I'm an executive assistant and I want to be a project manager at Google in the next three months.

Let's do it. And that's not always, super feasible. So the best thing, and the way that I ended up making my transition was working backwards. So thinking, okay, let me, let me create my dream job with no holds barred. There's no forget qualifications, forget experience, forget connections, forget anything else. If I was working in my dream job, here's what it would look like. And then working backward from that. So, okay, if my dream job is to work in digital advertising sales at Microsoft and I'm in medical device sales, what's the step before Microsoft, probably working for maybe a mid-tier startup in the tech space that's focused on advertising?

And how do I get from where I am to there? Well, probably some sort of startup that will allow me to make the transition from medical device sales into the tech world to start building. some of this experience that I can then leverage to get that mid-tier startup job and then move to Microsoft. So if you kind of reverse engineer the process from your end goal to the immediate next step that you can take, that's a very easy way for you to take the correct next step, but then also create a roadmap so that you're always moving forward towards this end goal.

But I love that advice. I've never thought about it that way, and I think that's a fantastic way for people to approach the next step and make sure that it's feasible and it's the right one.

Ravi28:49And so the next step, I guess, once people have gone through the interview process, is the whole offer process. And I know you have some interesting perspectives when it comes to job offers. And so I'm curious from what you've seen in your community, is everything really negotiable when it comes to offers? And where are you seeing people not necessarily maybe leaving money on the table or maybe just tripping up in the whole negotiation process?

Austin29:17Definitely. That's a great question. So first, not everything is negotiable. I got my job at Microsoft. The lady gave it to me and she said this is a generous offer. There will be no negotiation. And I said, yes, you're right. Accepted. Good to go. Fine. So there are situations like that. And when that does, if that is presented to you, then your choice is clear. You either like what you see and you take it or you don't and you don't take it. But there are definitely mistakes that people make when leading up to the moment of the offer that can help put them in a better position.

So right off the bat, I have some of these stats in an article. If people search for salary negotiation on my site, they'll be able to find it. But the large majority of people don't even negotiate or talk about their salary. And the problem is that most companies these days do. So the companies will lead off at some point during the interview process, they'll ask the candidate, what are you making right now? Or what salary are you hoping for? Give us a range. And people typically just divulge their salary, which puts them in a really bad position leverage-wise for the negotiation.

because as soon as you give a number, a couple of things could happen. First, your number could be way too high and then you're just booted out of the out of contention, out of the interview process, or your number could be way too low. And so you may be the best candidate that they have by far, but they know that they can get you for slightly higher than the number you gave when maybe they were prepared to offer $20, $40,000, $40,000 more. And so you're putting yourself in a whole either way.

But the problem is they're going to ask and you have to give an answer, right? So what I always recommend is when people run into that question, their response should be, my salary is negotiable. What I'm looking for is negotiable. My number one priority is finding the right fit and I'd like to focus on that. So basically what you're saying is that we can talk salary, but I don't want to do that before we're both certain, me and you, the company, that we're both certain that this is a good fit because that's what should be the most important thing anyways for both people.

If you're getting paid a ton of money at a job that's a terrible fit, you're going to want to leave. You're not going to be able to stick it out. It's not going to be sustainable. And especially if you're getting paid poorly at a job that's not a great fit, then that's like the worst of every world. So the number one thing you should be focused on is the right fit. And you should make that very clear to companies. If the company comes back and says that's nice, but we still need a number from you and we won't let you move forward until you give us you always need to do as much research as you can for the salaries around the job that you're targeting.

So go look up what their competitors are paying people for the same job title. Go look up the average for the city that you're applying in. Glassdoor is a great, a great site for this Pesa, pay scale, salarycom These are all great sites that have this type of information. And so you do your research and basically try to find the range, the lowest and the highest and highest salary, and then when you give a number, try to give a number that's in the 75 to 90 percentile range, or salary in that range.

So if we're talking about um, the lowest salary is zero dollars and the highest salary is 100k. Say that you're being considered for offers in the 75k and 90k range, because that will still be feasible. It's not like you'll be tripling what they expected, um, but it still puts you in a good place and give you some wiggle room to negotiate down if you have to. So that's the best way to respond to that question at the very beginning. And then when you are offered the job, I always recommend asking if there's something else that they can do.

So you can say, and the best thing you can do here is when they give you the salary, you can say this is very generous, but I've done the calculations and I need X, Y, or Z dollars to be comfortable. Now, Columbia did a study on negotiation, and they basically found that if you give like a highly specific number without getting too crazy, but instead of saying, I need 90K, if you said I need 92,350 bucks, those people are likely to get, they were shown to get higher salaries than the people who just gave a round number.

And so if you combine that with a story like, you know, I ran through my budget. I spoke to my wife. And this is the number. I need to be comfortable to make sure that I can 100% focus on my job. That is a much more compelling ads than just saying, thanks, but I need 90K. So coming up with that story and then providing value against it. So the one great way to do this is that value validation project we talked about earlier, some tangible illustration or showcase of exactly what you're going to bring to the table, why you're worth the extra money.

Make your case. And then if they say no to the salary, don't be afraid to go into other areas. There's tons of other places where you can basically get the equivalent of cash and sometimes it's even worth more. So if the company pays for your cell phone bill or the company pays for your commute in, you're getting sticker value for that stuff, but you're not paying taxes on it. The company is paying for it 100%. So that's basically tax-free dollars that you're saving every month. So you can go for stuff like that.

You can go for more PTO. You could go for a continuing education budget that will allow you to take courses or join a mastermind or do something that will help you build skills. Pay for a coach. Pay for Ravi. And then really accelerate your career. But stuff like that that will help you build that experience that will make you more marketable and more valuable. So when you take the next step, you can request that much more money. So if they say no to salary, don't give up right away.

See if they are open to other avenues. And 90% of the time they'll find something that will make it work for you unless they straight up come out and tell you this is a non-negotiable offer, take it or leave it, then your choices are pretty clear.

Ravi35:38Right. So I just want to shift gears a little bit. And thank you for sharing those tips. And I know you're going to point the listeners to some resources at the end of this that they can go to dive even deeper into some of these strategies. But I want to shift gears and talk about your online business, your side business, because I think building an online business is a dream for many people. And I've gotten to know you a bit in your work over the past couple years.

And you seem to be one of the few who's actually doing it successfully. And you also have a busy full-time job. I'm curious what you now know that you wish you knew when you first started cultivated culture

Austin36:17a few years ago. Definitely. I think there's two pieces of advice that have had the most impact on my business and would probably have caused it to grow much faster from the very beginning. And the first is, I think we live in an age where, you know, the passive income phrase gets thrown around a lot and scalability and all this stuff. But starting your own business is very manual. And sometimes at the beginning manual is the best thing that you can do. So reaching out and speaking to people.

I recently just did a, I just offered a free 30 minute call to people in my audience. And I ended up having several hundred people reply back and requested. So I had to whittle it down. But I got on the phone for about 30 total hours talking to people. And I learned a ton. I learned way more about what keeps them up at night and what they're struggling with and the way that they perceive the content that I put out there and why they may or may not be buying some of the products I have.

And then I built a ton of goodwill with those people. So now, like, some of those conversations translated directly into sales and some of those conversations translated into introductions or some other type of valuable thing that I wouldn't have gotten if I had just been blasting out emails through my auto responder. So I think in the age of passive income, I think something a lot of people aren't doing is taking the time to get the know of the people in their audience or their customers and really building relationships with them.

It goes back to there's a concept of like a thousand true fans. And essentially, the idea is that if you have a thousand true fans who are willing to pay $100 minimum a year, then you basically have funded your life for the foreseeable future. You have 100K a year. You can live off that. You can make it work. And so the way you build those fans is by getting deep into the weeds with people and help themselves. solve their problems and be a friend and be interested in them.

And like you said before, Ravi, just genuinely care about other people. And so I think that that's number one. And then when you're building out products, start small and start manual, offer coaching. Offer to, if you're going to build out a course, offer to walk people through the course for cheaper than you might sell the course for and get people on board, get them paying for things, learn about what could be better. And then once you've gone through that process a whole bunch, then you can build out the scalable thing because you'll know exactly what language to use to sell it and what content to include to make it valuable and all that good stuff.

So I would say that that's number one. And number two is when you're when you're marketing or building your, when you're marketing your site and your brand or building your following and you're starting out, the best thing that you can do is pick one channel and focus on it. So I'm sure you're familiar, Ravi, but When you're building your own business and you're searching for ways to build your audience and get more customers, there are like a million silver, shiny objects flying around your head. And it's so hard because one person over here is telling you that Facebook ads help this guy generate 60,000 bucks in the first two months of his business.

But then this other guy did content marketing and now he's getting paid 20 grand to speak as a keynote speaker at all these events. But then this other guy over here did this other thing. And you just get blasted with these case studies that makes you feel like you need to be doing everything. You need to be on Instagram. You need to be on YouTube. You need to be writing blog posts. And when you're working 40 plus hours a week, it's just not feasible because, sure, you can be present on all those platforms, but you're going to do a terrible job because you're stretched so thin.

And I was guilty of this 100% when I started my business. I was trying to write blog posts and do YouTube videos and be on LinkedIn and start on Instagram. And last year, I basically decided to wipe the slate clean and I just focused on one thing. And that thing for me was, I guess two things, but content marketing and search engine optimization. So search engine optimization SEO is my background. So I have a lot of experience in it. And I knew that I knew that I could make that happen for myself.

and writing content is something that I really enjoy doing. So I stopped everything else. I had a following of like 20,000 people on Instagram. I completely stopped posting there. I had a bunch of YouTube videos that I created. I stopped posting there. I just wiped the slate clean and I dialed into content marketing and SEO. And my audience grew about 400% this year and the site traffic went from, I think it was about 8,000 people a month back in January. to today. I think we're getting closer to 50,000 people a month.

So the results kind of speak for themselves, but it's so much easier to scale your business when you just get really, really good. You find one thing that works. Definitely feel free to test things out. But once you find that thing that starts to build traction, just drill into it, dive in, headfirst, immerse yourself in it and become an expert because you're going to outperform the competition. that is trying to spread themselves thin, you're going to build that audience and it's going to happen so much faster.

And you're not going to be nearly as stressed out trying to juggle all these balls.

Ravi41:52Makes sense. And the tools, even something as simple as managing a Facebook page or running Facebook ads, it can get pretty complicated. So I can definitely see how dabbling in, even just running ads in a bunch of platforms couldn't be a full-time job.

Austin42:07That is my full-time job at Microsoft. So I mean, I am with you on that. It's crazy. I mean, there are people at our organization that have been there for 15 years and there's still the products changing. They're learning new things like we're teaching other people new things. It's crazy. And so there's no way you can expect yourself to see this amazing ROI from five different platforms at once because they're all that complex.

Ravi42:32Great. Well, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing some really valuable tips. If people want to connect with you and learn more, where should they go?

Austin42:42Definitely. So anybody listening is totally free and I encourage them to email me at Austin at cultivated culture.com. I think that's the best way to connect with people. But if people want some more info on the resources that we talked about and some of these strategies so they can implement them themselves, I have a whole bunch of free stuff at cultivatedculture.com forward slash Motivated Life. So I have, basically, I've tested out a bunch of strategies with my audience and I don't recommend things that haven't worked with data behind them.

So I took the five most effective strategies and I kind of packaged them up. So those are available for free. And I also have a free resume course that will basically help people build the resume that actually gets results, actually gets them interviews and job offers and have helped people in my community to get hired at Microsoft and Google and the Facebooks of the world. So that's available. for free as well. So again, that's cultivatedculture.com forward slash Motivated Life.

Ravi43:41Awesome. Thanks, Austin. Appreciate it.

Austin43:44No problem, Ravi. Thank you so much for having me on. And to everybody out there, good luck with your career and your job search.

Ravi43:50That's it for today's episode. To grab the free strategies that Austin has pulled together for all of us regarding finding a great new job, go ahead and visit cultivatedculture.com forward slash Motivated Life. It's one word. And he has, all you have to do is enter your email, and he'll send you a couple different free strategy guides, and also free access to his resume revamp course. And of course, if you like the podcast, would appreciate a review. You can easily do that in whatever app you're using.

And if you know of someone who would benefit, feel free to share it along with your friends. That's all I got this week. Stay tuned for our next episode. I'll see you later. Bye-bye.