Cashing In on the Future of Work w/ Ruben Harris

black millennials. And in his talk at afro Tech World, he focuses on the idea of building a tech product as a non technical founder and here's his thoughts and what kinds of tech products are best suited to fine success in the marketplace. If you think about the biggest companies, things that we use every day, the the Ubers of the world, social networks like Instagram, um, companies that we

know and use every day. The key thing about the the sort of tech companies that are emerging and will continue to emerge and the successful are those companies that are simplifying the collaboration between humans and technology. And that's a really really important distinction. You know, some people have the mistaken belief that the goal of technology is to

displace humans. That you know, things like artificial intelligence and machine learning are there to eliminate jobs and eliminate humans from certain UH sectors in certain things, and that's not really the case. Really, the sweet spot for technology is if you make the lives of people easier, if you allow people to be more productive, if you allow them to be more efficient, and you allow them to be happier. The secrets and technology is leveraging it to take things

that humans aren't really good at doing. Its scale right, UM, So if you think about, you know, some of the tasks that you have to do on a daily basis UM and some of the tools that you may know and use on a daily basis UH to to take repetitive tasks and make it easier to scale those up

or to scale those out. It is replacing you. And it doesn't mean that you don't have to be a part of that equation, but it simply means that you're using technology to make yourself more efficient and more productive. And going forward, that's gonna be even more important, especially as we live in a world where technology is going to be more paramount. If we're video conferencing more if we're working remotely, if we're video, video conferencing, instant messaging,

doing all those things, having virtual events. Technology is gonna be a play a big role in that. But as we see, technology is the only part of the solution. There's still that human element that we hold near and near and so that's gonna be super, super important. So as you're thinking about your vision of the world, think about how the area of technology that you're passionate about it, that you're working with, is going to make it easier for humans to be productive and more efficient. How do

you simplify that interaction between humans and technology. I'm with Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money. I'm gonna you do see to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black in building or simply using tech to secure your back, this podcast is for you. Ruben has his co founding CEO at Career Karma in the Bay Area, transplant from Atlanta, Georgia,

where he worked as an investment banker. He got bit by the tech bug early in his career and wrote a blog post that went viral called breaking in the Startups, which put him on the radar Silicon Valley a lead career karmas an app that helps job training programs, specifically coding boot camps, but also other verticals find qualified applicants.

I asked him why he wrote that blog post, which you can finally from the show notes, and how likely, at least in part it opened up his pathway to success and the reason why I wrote that blog post because I learned about the power of riding through my experience breaking into finance. So when I broke into fine I first started writing actually in college, UM, when I took a class on music history, and I learned about philosophers and social reformers and how they were great writers,

like Socrates and Aristotle and things like that. So I had a blog called The Social Reformer that turned into my own blog. And then when I graduated from banking, I mean from from college, UM, I didn't have any internships or and I didn't have any work experience either because I was just studying the whole time. And so I wrote a blog that explained all the reasons why someone wouldn't hire me as an investment banker. But I

declared that I was going to do it. Anyway, And the reason why I think that was powerful for myself is because it kind of forced me to do it, because I told people I was going to do this thing and if I didn't do what, I was gonna be embarrassed. And so that also led to thousands of people reaching out to me after I got a job, and me helping a lot of people do it. And so I just did the same playbook that worked for

me for finance for tech so um. I actually wrote this blog post that I published on LinkedIn a few years ago called Hey startups, you don't live in Silicon Valley and kind of went crazy the on LinkedIn because I was frustrated at the time because all the advice that was coming out about how to raise capital from angels and vcs was from people from Silicon Valley to Paul you know, uh, Paul Grahams and etcetera in the sam autments where you know well, and I was finding

that that advice didn't work in a place like Georgia or Ohio or etcetera, right, but it worked for Silicon Valley people. But there was nothing that related those experiences, you know, across geographies. And so how do you keep you have this amazing podcast breaking in the startups. You're avid writer and etcetera. You put out a lot of content. How did you keep that information you distribute on your podcasts and etcetera relevant to people who may be not

in Silicon Valley? Yeah, I mean I think I think Afrotech knows as well. Um this like career comminos as, I would say, keeping fresh content is the key, just staying relevant every company. A lot of people in tech talk about how every startup, every company is a media company, and I think I would take it to another level. Every human being is a media company. In order to be successful in this day and age, you have to take either an artist or a um even a model

approach like a supermodel has to be their own brand. Um. Kanye tweeted artists our founders, and somebody else said founders are artists, right. You have to promote yourself right and so um in especially in a COVID nineteen world. And if you want to work remotely, writing is a superpower, and writing fast is even better, and not just because it gives you clarity of thought, but it can greatly um increase your your your economic salary and attract people

to you. Um, there's a u UM, there's a great quote that one of our investor says is that inbound is what happens when outbound is your DNA. And so Career Comma like we we we produce six D seven hundred articles a month, right, so that's a company general content. I know approtype produces a ton of articles a month. But then you also have user generated content, right, you have opinion writers and then in our community, since we have over a hundred thousand users, they're all asking questions

of getting advice that gets discovered on Google. And then you also have programmatic landing pages. So our engineers create different combinations of landing pages that will pop up in Google that are relevant so that Career Comma stays in its position as the number one destination for career advice on the Internet. And when they come here and they're looking for advice, we can match them to the right

training and give them support to get his up. Oh it's it's it's so good you did that, because I mean I was gonna go there later in the interview, but since we're here now, UM, I was going to talk about this is because you know, when I learned the kind of philosophy that every business should treat themselves like a media company. Is Gay advantage Chuck said it.

I'm sure there's other people who said it, but I heard Gay Advantage talk about, you know, every company should, and every startup is for that matter, should think of

themselves as a media company. And you've done a great job at that with the podcast, the written content and news even um, how do you let's you're an early stage startup, how do you justify um or how do you even get good at doing so many forms of media when you still have to be good at what your core business is UM and you may not you know, be the best writer or if you are a great writer, you may not be great at podcasting. If you great a podcast, and you may not be great on video.

Mm hmmm. That's a good question. I mean, so we're a marketplace, like on one side, there's there's the demand, there's workers, or there's people that are looking to rescale an upskill and get a new job. And then on the other side you have training programs and hiring platforms and companies and even financiers that can help people that

are looking for these career transitions and need guidance. And so whenever you think about a marketplace, you want to pick a side, and especially in the beginning, and so decide that we chose in the beginning was workers, because if we do right by workers and students that are looking to make a transition, then all the other platforms are going to come to us. Because recruiters don't own their own supply, right, schools are always trying to compete

to get students right UM. Hiring platforms also they need to get qualified applicants from not just one school but all the schools. And so if we serve workers, then we're able to get everybody else. So you'll see in the beginning, all of the content on YouTube and on our podcast and everything was just catered towards making sure they are informed versus us just talking about all the things that the schools are offering. You don't hear us

talking too much about what the schools are offering. It's always like the struggles of the users. Now, UM, to your point. You know, there's a lot of formats that you can follow. You can follow video, you do podcasts, you can do writing. Um. We started off with the podcast, which is breaking in start us and I think it's important. But we learned quickly that podcasts are helpful in certain ways.

But you have to be mindful of how Google's algorithm works, all right, And when it comes to podcasting, it's we definitely want to put out our own account content, but don't sleep on the importance of being on other people's podcasts. Like for example, I'm on your podcast now, and when you publish it and you linked, we linked to each other. We support each other. That helps me better in Google, right, And since these podcasts aren't always transcribed, then like that's

not gonna pop up very quickly. And the reason why you to pop up very quickly and searches because people with that are searching for a career advice are going to use Google to search. And you want to be number one. And so what ranks number one on top of you know, podcasts or or programmatic landing pages and reviews.

It's gonna be written content, right or user generated content, and so um we double down heavy on creating user generated content, which that is to the point where now we have by October will be at over a million people coming to us per month. And so I'm in

the beginning. We started off with video UM after podcasts, and we still do a little bit of video, but then COVID nineteen hit and now almost all of our content is UM either user generated content, company generated content, or um A programmatic landing pages, which is kind of like what the pinterest will do, although like aggregate different content, like if you're looking for a wedding, it looks like they made that, but it was actually an aggregation of

what everybody else did together. And we will pick up our podcasts games stronger more. But I'm spending most of my time doing other people's podcasts, which allows us to grow. But you'll see more of that drops on. Yeah, and just because I'm interested as a marketer, you know, I

think about UM. I wonder what your philosophy is on the written stuff, because you know, when I think about content and specifically the types of people that career karma is targeting because you're helping people reskill is these people are consuming content while they're inline that target or while they're in line at the grocery store, while they're cooking

and their kids are making noise in the background. Is uh So I think about video a lot in that way because again, it takes very low pressure, low you know, engagement in order for them to be paying attention. They don't have to do a lot. Yeah, I think it's a good it's a good point because um, I think you want to figure a go ahead. I think you got it. I think you got it. Um, I think um. The written part is more for Google, even though they

are recognizing audio and video. But whenever you discover written content on career Comma, you'll also see audio and video inside of those pages. For the people who don't have time to that. You kind of like get the best of everything when you go to the page and so UM. To your point, a lot of people are busy, which is why we created audio and video for people to consume UM. But most of the written content programmatic landing

pages are designed to optimize for Google. But now that podcasts are blowing up and videos go blowing up, we're monitoring to see what is recognized the most by Google so that we can make sure that those podcasts and those videos rank as well and are discovered by people. Actullent um before I get too much for them. People will have regio bio and I already introduced you talk a little bit more about what career Karma actually does and forth. Yeah, so career Comma is the easiest way

to find a job training program online. So we are our core user is we serve blue collar workers between the ages of thirty five years old. Doesn't matter what age you are, but just that's the core years old that want to want to get a job in tech and we help them choose from six different career paths that are technical and non technical. So if you want to break into tech, we can help you become a sales person, an engineer, designer, data scientists, data analysts, or

in cybersecurity. And the Irish salary that we help you make is about sellars and that will usually take you between three to twelve months in order to get a job. I think what's unique about our platform is not only are we the easiest place to find the right job training for you, but we'll also match you with the people that have your shared struggle in a small group called a squad that will give you support during the program, during the job search, for the rest of your life,

all the way through the jobs. So you get access to not just the right job training programs, but you get access to a network. We have over a hundred twenty years inside a Career Comma now last year it was ten thousand, so we're growing very fast. And so these users are people that can that are currently intending these programs that can that you can always message to help you find a school, finish the school, and get

a job. So I think that's what important. So you're getting access to a network, and that's important because we are in a world where people are changing careers five or more times in their lifetime the average tenor and the job is one or two years. So anytime you want to switch jobs or or get a new skill, you can always come to Career Comma. We can manage to the right training. Currently we offer a safe career past, but we're gonna offer We're gonna launch twenty five new

career pass in the next twenty four months, so stay tuned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember when it was just just coding, and so we'll talk a little bit more about that in a bit. What I think about um, this pandemic COVID nineteen is that a lot of people without work um and and many probably I don't want to say more, but in many cases less desirable work realities, right, and for the people you target as career common users or people who would benefit from the programs was typically the makeup of

those people who might find it interesting. Yeah, and so I would say, you know, most of the people if you look at the frontline workers that are fighting hard and the essential workers that are like the heroes in this pandemic, UM, a lot of them also are are suffering too. You know, you see a lot of retail workers UM that are giving us food, that are that are affected from from restaurant closures. You see a lot of UM nurses that come to career commedies, see a

lot of UM. You see a lot of teachers that come to career COMMA because schools are shutting down as well. You see a lot of people that most of the time they went to community college or got their specialists or UM got some college and a degree, or never finished college, never tried to do college, UM that come to career COMMA. That doesn't mean that we don't have like white collar people that went to Avolie schools that

come to career come as well. But the core's people that have gone to college or had some schooling that are an adult that are looking to make a career transition in their life. I'll say that's that's the core user that comes to Career Comma when it comes to their struggles. That a lot of people don't realize is that, yes, matching you to the right training is one thing, but many people that come to us have bad credit. You know, how do you navigate that a lot of people don't

understand how to navigate that. We can help you navigate that. A lot of people come to us and their child stepped on their laptop. How you navigate that? So we can help you get access to a laptop because we're

giving away five thousand laptops right now. We're currently running this campaign called Rescale America, the Great Rehiring Initiative, and we have cool people like Colin Kaepernick and Square and get Hub and a Firm and air Table and always other people that have donated um in our campaign to raise about half a million dollars to get you all devices.

So we'll give you that for free if you're serious about this, like it's super important to obviously there's conditions, but like we want to make sure that you have all the support that you need in order to get a job. So I would just say, um, it's the core users, that blue collar worker between the needs of of of of five years old that's looking to get a skill, and I think it's important to have empathy with what's happening right, you know, jabry training is this huge, massive,

growing trend and everybody's getting at a game. And this is why there's there's over fifty five million people that have filed Americans. I filed for unemployment UM this year alone, and fifty four percent of the workforce requires reskilling about two all right. Also, you know, how are you going to pick what job training program you're gonna do. There's nine thousand boot camp and trade schools out there, sixty million people go there every year. There's over five thousand

different colleges out there. Twenty million people go to college every year. And then you have college employers launching their own boot camps, you have you know, uh, their own credentials and things like that with Google launching their credentials. So how do you pick what's going to be best

for you? And so we help people navigate that sea of options UM through our software, but also about connecting up with people that are currently doing it and they have done it before this maybe you know a mind

field for you. But I wonder how you think the educational system has to adapt the traditional education system colleges, universities, and etcetera, um forced or otherwise have to adapt because of the COVID nineteen pandemic and preparing people for actually being able to get out there and find a job versus you know, people graduating with a communication degrees and don't really have and I know not to you know down that, but you have to actually have a skill,

right yeah, yeah, I think. Um. So, the reason why we chose to start with coding book camps, that's because we felt that boot camps are the first rapid rescaling model at SKI that house blue collar workers enter high paying career fields. Right and now that bootcuts have set the example, traditional education players are not following their lead.

For example, you know, boot cants prove that flexible financing options like income share agreements or defer tuition work and for the people that don't what an income share agreement is an income share agreement as a promise to get you a job, and if you don't get a job, you don't pay anything. But if you do get a job, then the tuition comes out of your new salary. And there's variations on the model called defer tuition and things

like that. So now that that has worked consistently, now you have UH welding schools and diesel training centers that are offering this as well. And now that traditional edification players are are copying them, this model is expanding into

other industries. Houses and universities themselves not have their own boot counts, and so as you, I think what's gonna happen now is all these traditional industries that have destroyers of workers need to understand what the needs of the employers are and match it with the right training so that you cannot just get people the job, but get people the job quickly. Because this the wrong decision has

a high cost of failure. Right, people are investing time and money into this right three to twenty four months of your time, ten of your money, whatever program that you go through, and if you choose wrong, then that could cause financial ruin for your family for generations to come. When your question was about education players, I think education players have to understand the needs of the worker and understand this high cost of failure ideally provide accessible financing um.

Maybe even the employer paying for it themselves right um, which is even better than the income share agreement. UM. Maybe the government even figuring out how to give workers some kind of reskilling stype in which would be cool if that had But in general, education players need to do things faster and make sure that they're relevant with

what employers want. Um. And honestly, I think what will be radical is like some type of uh not keeping the Department of Labor in the Department of Education separate, just like put them together. For people who are not super technical, um, but have a maybe maybe don't have a desire to be engineered, but they want to be in this industry that is obviously the future and it is today. Also, even talk about what career cerminent offers those people who have no interest in sitting in front

of a computer writing code every day. Yeah, I would say the faster way to get in outside of coding is sales. And the reason why I say sales is because you know he talks about this too. In the beginning, in the early days of startup, you want to be writing code and talking to users. The people that talk to users are the CEO of the sales guys are the people that the distribution guys, the customer support, customer success guys. Sales is the highest page job in the world.

It is, all right, It is like I have a friend who's a contract. Last year he made fos. But the reason why it pays so much is not just because it's like a walk in the park. It's hard most of the time. They say, like closing an enterprise sales, dude, is like passing a bill in Congress. Right, it's not. It's not easy. Sales cycles be long and and it's not easy to It's very easy to have that first meeting,

it's not easy to do the follow up. It's not easy to like make sure you're on it for understanding everybody's paying with multiple people in your pipeline, and you've got to be recognized that most of the things that you're gonna do are gonna fail. Right, And but well, it's nice about sales is you can get a job faster than coding. It pays well, uh, you can. You can make the same amount of money the engineers and

make and there's no cap to your upside. Obviously, you have to choose a company that has no cap, which most companies is that standard. Like you're gonna have no cap, they're gonna have a quota for you, which is a goal for you to hit and usually that's going to get you in the six figure range if you hit it, and then anything else that you cause is upside. So you are in control of your own destiny, which is

also very good experience for running a company. The other thing that's a good experience for running company is when things are going well, they're gonna acknowledge you. When things aren't going well, they're gonna holize and they can't you manage, you know, and you've gotta be comfortable with that and recognize that, Like, even if it's not directly your fault, leaders take more. In my opinion, I think it's better to take more of your share of the lame and

less of the credit even when things are going well. Right, So whenever you're going through this process, it's always like recognize that, like in order to keep the party going, you want to keep going in and acknowledge all the

people around you to help you get there. Like if I'm a sales and I'm doing well, marketing helped me, right, the research team helped me get inside, you know, like like all the engineers helped me understand, Like when I told him what the problem was, they built the feature to make sure that this person was happy. So you gotta always spread love to everybody else, you know. Also, the reason why this is important because the fort loss of power UM, you know, number one of four. The

loss of power is never outsiging the master. If you start getting too good, especially in the Dog Eat Dog team, you know, they want to cut your head off, So you always want to kind of like downplay yourself a little bit. Played again. So I would say, for the people are listening that are non technical, I would I would explore UM sales UM. Another close runner up is UM Marketing, but marketing and starting to become more technical

these days. UM. But it's great because you know, what we talked about earlier with s c O is that UM and and mark and content is that most startups don't understand how to do SCO properly. That's why forty cents of every dollar, may see dollar goes to Facebook and Google, all right, And it's hard to create content epically, especially written content, but also video and audio. Although HR and there too. We need more back people in HR. Yeah, that's how more of us get in the door, because

these compass right. Season two of the Black Tech Dreen Money Podcast is brought to you by Lexus, known for celebrating driveway moments for over thirty years, Lexus invites you to create more with exclusive offers on the most popular Lexus models at the December to Remember Sales event experience Amazing at your Alexis dealer. According to Myers Briggs, I'm an I N T P and if you like me, many jobs in tech will be a great fit, per

study done by Career Kerma. For instance, as an aerospace engineer you can make it around eighty thousand dollars annually. An electrician could put in fifty k. I as ruping about the opportunity in tech and why too many people are apprehensive to get started in the industry, Ruben Harris speaks on it um lack of confidence, lack of belief in themselves. Um, it's like imposter syndrome is a very big deal for a lot of people. So, but if

you don't know what imposti syndrome is, it's um. It's when you are fully qualified to do something, but you've convinced yourself that you're not enough and that you don't belong UM, and so you know, you might be like, wow, there's no women in tech and no black people in tech, so you know, who am I to do this? Right? When you don't realize that whatever you feel as weird or you're unique about you as I will be your

superpower on what you want to double down on. And I think that we don't realize our power, like our story, like you know, the fact that we didn't grow up with the solver spoon or that we didn't grow up in certain things, is is the key part of your story that you really want to preach and you want to tell and you want to and you want to

hone in on. And I think that, UM, the reason why a lot of people don't don't take that for a step is not just because of lack of confidence UM, but also and I positive, but also because of strife around us, but also because of UM lack of familiarity with the skills that are required and what it takes in order to pass the emissions process, to survive the

program and go through the job search. Right. I think that's part of the reason why we create a career commons to be this rapid round support system that educates you on what's going on. Right, Automation is going to create and destroy jobs for ever, and that's not a

bad thing. That's just how it works, right, Um, but you need to always and most of the time when we're looking for a career advice, we're gonna talk to our friends and family, but they're probably not going to have the most up to date information about required skills and the career paths. And since we don't have a lot of friends and family that are in these roles, that's another reason why we don't go in that direction.

And that's another reason why we create a career comments so that you can have other people that look like you, and why afro Tech has afro Tech World so that you can see other people that look like you that are doing this, so that you know that you're not alone. You know. The post secondary education system, speaking of about changes with colleges, they train you for your first job and then leave you a loan to navigate forty forty years of your life by yourself. All right, Loneliness is

a big deal. Now, suicide is a very big deal now because of unemployment, depression, anxiety and UM, people are seeking community even more today. You know, speaking of Afro tech world, there's a very viral thing going on on Twitter. They're not saying I grew up here. It's a picture of video games that people played and that's where their community was. It was an escape, you know, this thing

called second life. All right. It was beautiful about tech today is that it's bridging the online of the offline world and making it fluid. All right. People say remote work is going to be there forever, and in my opinion, yes, remote work will be an option forever, but there will be some people that prefer in person, some people that prefer a hybrid to go online or offline. That's what we're going to so, UM, the story answer is imposter syndrome.

Second is lack of familiarity. And third there are struggles that people deal with as blue collar workers and that most organizations don't understand, like what I said, with credit and devices and things like that, housing and things like that. And so we'll help you figure that out if you need it. You mentioned you know your target demographic. I believe thirty five and UM, and I know that's a target. That doesn't mean you don't accept people younger and twenty

five or people older than thirty five. Specifically, for the people who are older than thirty five, let's say, you know, thirty seven and forty whatever years old, for those who you found in you know what, I'm asking you about specific cases, but you can be general. What is typical about those on the higher end of your users that I found success. What's what's typical about those cases? The people?

So we have several people that are in their fifties and sixties that have gotten jobs in the career Comma as well. The way that they get jobs is through communication and through leveraging the life experience that they have

in other spaces. Right, there's a really good movie that I watched recently called UM's called The Intern Yeah, I saw with Robert de Niro and Ann Hathaway Because for the people that don't know, it's about a senior internship program and essentially it's for people in the sixties that are that are going to get an internship at a growing tech company run by a woman that's played by Hathaway,

e commerce company. That's really dope movie because this dude was a very successful salesperson at a company that that happens to be the same building where she works in. And I'm not gonna tell the whole movie, but the point is is that um whoever is older than thirty five or has life experience in some place or work

experience in some place. So whenever you are thinking about making a career transition as an engineer or designer, data scientists or whatever, focus on building projects related to the domain that you know. Right. So, for example, you got a piano in the background, right, I say, Let's say, let's say that you are a musician. I'm a musician like that, and so like if you are building projects related to music and you have a history, like you've been playing, I say, you're a jazz musician for for

thirty years before you decided to break into tech. What you get to the job search and you're applying to companies like Spotify or SoundCloud or Title or whatever. You're

not a junior developer. You are a seasoned professional musician that happens to know how to code, right, And so you have to be able to communicate that story because at the end of the day, you are in an advantage because if you're applying for a company that's hot, everybody's gonna have the coding skills, everybody's gonna have the sales skills. There's gonna be nothing that makes like your sales and code. Let's pretend like that that will and I got the same skills and and in in coding

or sales. What's gonna make you hire him over me? It's just he's a he's a benefit personality wise, life wise, experience wise. And you might be like, well, I never worked in corporate before. Great, what's your struggle that you've been through. Bring that to the table and apply to companies that are focus on solving problems related to that struggle. Right, you might have been Yeah. I mean I could go into many different examples of this, but the point is

is that it comes down to communication. Whether you are senior or junior or mid level, like, communication at the end of the day is what's going to get you the job and your portfolio that you build. Yeah, it's this great Segle. I found this quote that you um previously stated, and I want you to expand on this.

You said, it's easy to think that the way you're doing you're going to rise is through your skills technically, but the way that you rise is actually through your non technical skills and understanding how to communicate and be creative and manage your perception, which is also your story. I want you to go deeper on that whole thing, because you just started there. I'm pushing you to go further. I love it, I love it. I love that you

bring this up. So and in addition to communication, you have to realize that building company is as a team sport. And using the music analogy, it's like playing in the band. Right when you're playing in a band or you're doing chamber music, you can't always play loud do. You have to figure out how to play in a way that blends well with everybody else. But you gotta know when

to rest. You gotta know when to fall black. You don't know when to lean it, and you gotta know when to just this is not your this is not your turn. Like maybe sit on the bench, you know, ask the right questions, watch the plays like so I think that, Um, something that people don't understand is people aren't just looking for hires that they like. They want to understand how you work with others, how you work

with us. That's why things like pair programming are very important. Um, if you're in sales, like, how do you talk for people who don't know program? Pair program Pair programming is when, Um, if you're a developer, you're gonna be coding with somebody else in order to get something else, like somebody being in the driver's seat and you're in the passenger seat and somebody like you're doing the steering wheel, somebody else's like pushing the pedal. It's kind of like it's like

Batman and Robin. So it's it's a way to get things done. And there's a lot of a lot of other things that developers do on a team. Um, I'm not an engineer. I'm in sales, so I'll use a sales analogy which is similar, right, and sales you have sales development representatives that you have account executives. Sales development representatives are going to take all the leads that marketing is giving you, or they're gonna hunt their own leads

that are coming to get those sponsorships from airports site. Right, They're gonna qualify them to see if they budget is big enough, and if they are, then they're going to pass them on to the account executive like an alley and then the context of supposed to slam dockhead. Right. So this team collaboration is really important. And when you think about these non technical skills, it's not just communication

team dynamic is it's time management? Right. So the time management that it took you to figure out how to manage your own skill it is important. But how do you coordinate schedules for people all over the world in a remote COVID world nineteen world. You gotta understand time zones, you gotta understand calendar advice, you gotta understand things like that. Um, how do you speak EMOHI and givet right? It's different level of communication. You know, it's not just verbal, it's

not just video. It's like how do you talk slang? Written wise? So you understand I'm down for the culture? How do you do it? You know, it's a different it's a different level of thing, and so that takes practice. Um,

I think um. Understanding when to delegate it is probably one of the biggest challenges, Like if you're someone that's used to doing things yourself and getting everything done, understanding when to if you want to be a leader give it to somebody else to do it, because you can actually be more effective by passing it on to multiple

people and the verse as you're doing it yourself. A right, That's something that has been a big challenge for me in the beginning, Like it took me a long time and additional communication to be like, all right, you handle this. You handle this because I want to make sure that it gets done right. You know, I think all of those things are are important. Um, outside of that, I would say, make sure you get an outside of perspective

on yourself. So when we talk about perception, right, um, you can be perfect at doing everything that you feel you need to do to make your own brand, but what you may not realize is the way that you think that you're being perceived. It's not how you actually right. So you always want to ask people how they feel that you're doing right or like if it's your manager or your colleagues, like or your roommates or whatever, like how do you feel things like like how's your week been?

Like have a reflection time. That's why like Sunday Sunday. Success on Monday starts on Sunday, Like reflect on your week, talk to your girl talk to your your people, be like, am I being like how you like? You may not even know they might have penta frustration, you know, and so you've got to understand how to get better and

based off of that feedback. You need to be open to the feedback because they might tell you something that hurts or that you didn't intend, and if you don't respond to it, then you're not gonna be able to do better. Right, And so that is all relevant to your work, also relevant to your company and your brand. So make sure you're constantly checking, asking for feedback, understanding your perception, working on your perception, working on your brand. Um.

But yeah, and there's a lot of other things. It's fantastic, it's real, it's really good. UM. Segue and just a little bit because and you've talked about this before, like your first application of y Combinator wasn't successful. Um in almost every starter founder has been through that, you know, hard when God, when you get that email right and this um why y see has been its regale like like you know, criminal of criminal boot camps, accelerators right

for startups. Um. A lot of people who will be watching this or listening to this will be thinking about applying, will have been denied and upset about that, or will be interested after this conversation? Right? And so, um, you guys didn't get in the first time you applied, But what did you learn about that experience that helped you get in in the nineteen cohord Um? That may help

other people. But what was the difference between that first application in that second that or maybe the second third I'm not sure which one it was, but I know you applied before didn't get in, but you did get in in nineteen. What was different? Definitely it was the

second application that we got in. So they the reason we didn't get in the first time was first because we didn't communicate well what they has important UM in the beginning of the C stage is very important to talk about what you're doing today, UM, versus like your vision UM. And we talked about the vision. And even when we talked about this vision, it was like all over the place that we talked about a bunch of stuff,

just like it's sounds scattered bang. Like when you talk to people, it has to be a clarity of thought, like what do you do? It should be very easy and say we're the easiest way to find a job

training program online, like I think. I think the beginning, like our thing was like I don't know, um, the like the largest social network for blue collar workers to get a job or something like that, which sounds like marketing was I it could sound okay, I get a large social network collar workers get a job, but it doesn't clearly say what I do. You know it's big, but it's like, okay, so how do you do that? Like how do you create a social network? Things like that?

So I think that's important. I think the other the thing that we did is we didn't wait. So as soon as as soon as we got rejected um I got the feedback from the White combinated people, we took the rejection letter, we printed it out, we framed it, we put it on our wall, and we raised the small seed round, which was the bare minimum amount that we needed in order to live, which was about a hundred fifty three people to live on. We ended up raising a little over three hundred thousand and a couple

of weeks UM. And what we did was we made sure that we followed up on what we said we were going to do, all right, so we lost, we executed, We built we generated revenue and then the platt again. But when we planted again, this time we spent a lot of time talking to otherwise the founders about the interview and got a lot of practice for the white interview because the interviews only ten minutes and the interview they they're gonna end if you interrupted the whole time.

And the first time they they interrupted us a lot, but I let them carry the conversation. But this time when they interrupted me, I would acknowledge their point and then bring it back to my main three points. Okay, So anytime somebody would say something that would try to send me on a tangent, I would say, um no, that's a great point, and I could see how you came to that conclusion. But the way that I actually think about it is boom. Well that we think about

it's like boom. So you always want to bring it back to your points because they want to see how you align. They also want to see how you work with your co founders. So we also like made sure that the banter was right between all of us and that we're all aligned, that we all had the same answer for the same type of things. So it looks like so it's it's clear that we are aligned. So practice, launch, execute, communicate. Um yeah, practice, find other people, find out the peers

that can help you. And if you if you want, if you feel like you're ready, and I'm happy to give you a back interview and his emails right on his LinkedIn too, by the way, and so yeah. Season two of the Black Tech, Green Money Podcast is brought to you by Lexus, who's been celebrating driveway moments for over thirty years with the Lexus December to Remember sales event, where you can find exclusive offers on the most popular

Lexus models experience amazing at your Alexis dealer. I remember Paul Judge, who I love, you know, he's the Michael Jordan poster on my wall of black startup guys or black technologists. Um and I remember him saying something in the talk that he gave several years ago, and he said, you can't get great talent to come and help you build a small idea because great talent wants to work on big ideas. I love that, loved it. Change you know,

change about that about stuff. And in the early days of career car books, I've heard you talk about you know, the mission. You know, we're gonna help a billion people in ten years, you know, but against your y see things like okay, but how right? And so how did you get those early people who believe in your vision who aren't the co founders to come along and say, you know what I believe in you know, and and Reuben and Damn and like, how do you how do

you get them early? That's a great question, UM, and I love that quote. I would say it goes back to our earlier thing that we're talking about with Personal Brand. I think the fact that we have a podcast that has powerful people on it, that our venture capitalists and founders and two years that have done big things and they have billion dollars like success, I think helps us UM attract the right talent in addition to our writing

and stuff like that. OULD also say what I learned in UM in Atlanta, UM throwing parties and showing that I like I'm tied to celebrities and I know that sounds kind of like, but like having the celebrities like a fel technologist, right, having access to celebrities in addition to the Top V Season, the Top Founders House, because like things like these are these like larger life characters. How are they like on a friend basis with these people, right,

And so I think I think that's important. I also think, um, doubling down on your unique qualities about you helps a lot um a lot of um a lot. There's not a lot of black chillis that played a lot of black people that played the cello. And I've been playing the cello for almost thirty years. And so a lot of times when people talk about team, they'll they'll pump their chests about what school that they went to. They'll pump themselves about how they went to banking, they worked

at these cool companies. But then when you look at the things that the outside of professional credentials, like they might be like, all right, I was an Olympic athlete, or I was chest grand master and like all these things, or I played golf tennis, like those are all like great things. Skiing, snowballing, snowmobilings. Those are all great things.

But it's not like super different, all right. So like if you are a I don't know, a lion tamer on the side, like or something just something, it's like it's something that's like it's like something that's different, just like it has to stand out to be like not not just like not just um something that shows that you work hard, but just like that you you do think big, and you can face danger and you can

like be calm in that situation. You can be controlled in that situation in the face you can you can have courage. And and I think that, Like my my middle name is linea guy, so I guess and I had a big line. I thought about it so and as I also saw this like a crazy clip on Twitter, this like alligator eating this like twitoise like it like

jumped out and it was like running away. But anyway, like the point is this, like you have to have these like check boxes that get people to feel like you are someone that they can follow onto the promise line. And I think for for us, we've always made big claims about what we're gonna do, and we did it.

Like going back to that original blog post, I told people I was going to be an investment banker even though I had a two point energy Yeah, and I went to a school that nobody's ever heard of, that had no interest, work, experience, and people's home. It was impossible, but I did it. I told people I was gonna work and moved to West Coast. I did it. I told people I was gonna get into our commentator. I didn't get in the first time. I told some of

my peer mentors that I didn't get in. They told me their stories about how they didn't get in into forget about it. I did it again. We got in from the people that I thought were gonna give me our seed dround money. They didn't, didn't hurt me. Did tears come out? Yes? I had to like scrap to get like forty seven plus people to get at one point five, we got it right. Shout out to guy like it was. It was amazing. Now next fit same type of things. So you just gotta, like you have to.

You have to consistently have wins historically or like claim that you're gonna do something or proclaim that you're gonna do something and be able to prove that you're gonna do it, and people people will see that and get behind it. They'll say something special about will something special about this person you know? And finally, Um, I read

this quote another quote from you which I loved. Um. I'll tell you what I thought about when I read the quote first and then I read you the quote is when I when I read this quote, I thought about people who may not necessarily be dissatisfied with their current job, maybe comfortable, um in etcetera, and maybe not thinking about the future that it may be disrupted. And the quote was if you feel comfortable, that's your body telling you that you're ready to push harder. You're not growing.

Challenges give you growth and growth is life. And I want you to just close this conversation on what about those people who maybe quite comfortable and living the life that they live right now and perhaps see the change coming, perhaps don't more likely see that you know it changes come. We didn't see COVID happening, right, and so people who were making great money, designed for the future, and like all indicators, they were doing all right, and then COVID

happened and changed everything. Right. UM, talk to me about comfort and its relationship to growth. Yeah. Yeah, I retweeted something this morning that I really I saw something that said, UM, it's okay not to know what you want in your career at any age. The pressure to be a certain is a capitalist strut. The fuel of your productivity, which can be exploited. But productivity is not the goal. Becoming the fullest version of yourself and enjoying a life well

lived is. So I agree with what you're saying about, like choosing, like being fully comfortable doing what you're currently doing right now. If you do that, you're winning. I'm proud of you. You should double down on them. So let's focus on that. But even if you are doing what you love, I do feel like if you aren't

pushing yourself in that space, you're not fully living. And what I mean by that, Like, what I mean by that is if you've you've identified what you love and that you feel like you will put on this earth

to do. I'm I believe in God, So like this is versus I talking about airing your talent, burying your talent, Like we shouldn't bury our talent, right we might die tomorrow, right, you working hard and doing what you love and putting that out it's not for you, it's for legacy, and your legacy might not be directed to your family, right might it might be a spark for somebody else, all right, And similar to working out right, you can have a perfect body right now, So let's let's use the knowledge

of Like you chose your job the perfect body right now, but if you're not at least maintaining your workout routine, you can slip right even if you even if you have all the resources that you need, So you gotta still do some level of exercise, some level of challenge, some level of like pushing yourself in some kind of way doesn't always have to be a workout or a

meal prep type of thing. It might be now you're gonna get into yoga or meditation or something like that, but something that's like pushing you because it's like it's like a car that never that you never turned on, Like sometimes it could be a perfectly a car just won't start right. You have to use it. And I and I and I feel like, especially with people from underestimated backgrounds, it's super important for not just one person

to win, but for all of us to win. So if you are fully comfortable in your own life and you don't want to put yourself into your job, help somebody else get to where you are right apply some of your time towards that I'm not saying work of the time, but like we gotta get rid of the tropic debuokan mentality. We gotta put our our our do what we were put on this earth to do, and

figure out how we can support each other. So I would just say, it's it's it's it's less of let's become work of holics and more of let's figure out how to make this world a better place. As corny as that sounds. Black Tech Green Money is a production of Black of the afro Tech is produced by Morgan Dubon and me Well Lucas, with additional production support by Love Beach, Engraven Neerboard. Special thank you to Michael Davis and some carsavan Yan you know like the wine and

yes that's his real name. Learn more about my guests and other tech disruptors and innovators at afro tech dot com. I'm gonna get your money. Peace and love,