¶ "Why Tech Sales Isn't Just for Geeks (Misconceptions)"
All right, good. We're good. Thank you. Perfect. Yeah, let's make him bigger. You want to make that camera angle any bigger? I also have the questions too, so it's not that. So it's not as critical. I want to make sure I can see him clearly to a bigger picture. Yeah, that's good. All right, cool. Jared, how you doing, man? Doing well, and yourself? Doing well, man. Thank you for, you know, walking me, giving me a little grace through that, you know, setup.
You know how it is, because you got your own podcast, too. Yeah, yeah, no worries, man. Yeah, where are you based? So, our headquarters are out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Okay. Yeah, so, that's basically it. All right, so is that where you live, or is that where the company's based? That's where the company is based. Are we recording for the podcast? No, no, no, no. Not yet. I'm just doing intro. But I'm going to be doing back and forth between Houston and Miami. Okay. Okay. That's good to know.
All right. You ready? Yeah, I'm ready. I'll make sure I got these facts right. So some of your background, obviously the big tech energy podcast. I love that. I love that title. I definitely want to be on it too. Hire Black, crack the code and you work with, or you're, I don't know if you work with them or the writer C, I don't know what that relationship is. How do you want me to say this? So Hire Black, you can take that out of the equation.
okay hire black take out yeah um so yeah definitely hosted the big tech energy podcast I'm the vp of strategy for right c okay so you can say vp of sales and strategy at right c I didn't forget about you all right cool all right good all right um do you want me to mention crack the code or not No, I don't do that. I'll just mention Big Tech Energy Podcast is the VP of strategy at Writer C. All right, cool. Write C. Write C. Yeah. I'm going to watch it, Writer. E-S-E-A.
Yeah. So just write C. But it's spelled like write, like you're writing something. That's where I got it from. Write C. Okay, good. All right. Welcome to Disruption Now. I'm your host and moderator, Rob Richardson. As always, I love to feature people that are disrupting the industry. And with me is a big time disruptor, has been for a long time. It's always been about empowering people who don't think sales or tech is for them, but showing people the way and empowering them.
He's done it for a long time. He's got his podcast, which is a dope name of a podcast, Big Tech Energy. He's also the VP of Strategy and Sales for RightSea, which is an AI company that actually helps people get into careers, launch their careers, and gives them kind of career advice as well. So it fits very perfectly with what Jared's really been doing his entire life, disrupting the narrative by providing opportunities for all to enter into tech. Jared, it's an honor to have you on the show.
Hey, man, I appreciate you for having me. Oh, yeah, it's good to have you on. Yeah, I appreciate the introduction. And yeah, like excited to get into, you know, my career, any advice that might be helpful for other people and, you know, just talk about what we're doing in the AI space as well. Absolutely. So I want to get a little bit of understanding of kind of like how you got into this.
So when did you realize that essentially entrepreneurship and empowering people was what you wanted to do with your life? Because that's clearly your passion. Yeah, I mean, I would say around the time once I started getting really comfortable as like a leader within my tech companies and just kind of realizing like, OK, I have, for lack of a better term, made it like consistently making certain amount of money consistently and be able to afford a certain lifestyle.
I just wanted more people that looked like me and you in these spaces that I was in. Right.
enjoying enterprise software sales it's an incredible career to have there's a lot of money in it there's a lot of job opportunities there so I would say during the pandemic during the pandemic that's a lot of people made a lot of transitions during the pandemic like tell me about tell me about how the pandemic was the transition for the moment when you knew that you wanted to be uh that your life was going to be about empowering people and pursuing entrepreneurship Yeah.
So it was kind of just like a right place, right time. So, um, a friend of mine, uh, was early on this social audio app called clubhouse. And she was like, Hey, there's some really like dynamic conversations is invite only. Would you like an invite? I was like, sure. Um, and so when I got into the app, I really wasn't thinking about being on stages, talking about myself or talking about different topics. I was just really there just to be a fly on the wall.
But one day in December, it was December ninth, actually, I ran into this room. It was called a club called Blacks in Technology. And I saw hundreds of black people in that space talking about software engineering and data science and all different types of opportunities in tech. But I didn't hear anybody talking about enterprise software sales.
And I was like, you know what, this is a great opportunity to expose some people to another place that you can do well in tech that doesn't require you to be technical. So I came on stage, shared a little bit about my career, how to break in, what it looks like, what transferable skills make sense. And I looked down on my phone and I saw hundreds of people had followed me off of just this quick conversation. And then I looked on my Instagram and my LinkedIn.
I saw some messages about let's host a room the next day. So the long story short of it is I hosted a space with like four or five other people and it just was organic. It was flowing. We like seven, eight, eight hours. We're just really just provided value, resources and connecting people. I looked down at my phone again and I saw hundreds of people followed me from that. So I realized amongst the people that I was doing that room with, hey, we have something here.
There's a real thirst for knowledge of tech and opportunities. And we got all these people stuck at home that have all this knowledge.
So we just started hosting spaces every day where if I would see, hey, Rob, you're at Meta and you're an engineer, I'd pull you on stage and then start just asking you questions about your career, the technical certifications you know what can people expect how can people do and it turned into you know eighty followers the day of that first room to eventually eighty thousand and through those rooms spaces connections and the whole goal of just increasing diversity in tech especially getting more
black people in the room that's when I knew like okay this is kind of my calling I'm really good at this um and then it evolved to me putting forty fifty recruiters on stage And then having recruiters give roles and the people shooting their shot directly. And that kind of evolved into everything today. Yeah. So it's, it feels as if, one of the reasons that you resonated, because a lot of people talk about opening up opportunities in tech, right?
But it feels like there's a under appreciation for the opportunity in tech sales, right? So if you had to say, like one of the biggest misconceptions, if you had to just say, what is the thing people get wrong most often when it comes to tech sales? It's really just they don't know what it even is. Like when I would say I was in tech sales, they'd always ask, oh, you work at Geek Squad for Best Buy.
So there's a literal like thinking that you're selling like laptops or you're selling like physical technology when in reality you're selling enterprise software solutions. that cost millions of dollars.
And I think another thing that's a misconception is that you need to be technical to be in tech sales where you're really a business consultant talking to business stakeholders about business problems and then kind of circling back to how the technology technology can help automate certain activities, can help decrease costs in supply chain by creating efficiencies, create employee productivity. So it's really about being a business consultant more so than selling technology.
And I think that's a huge misconception for sure. And the last misconception is that you have to love to convince people into things and talk people into things when it really is about asking really quality questions to really qualify. Like, does this business really meet the qualifications for the solution? And can we get them the results we get for others?
you're asking more questions than you're actually like trying to convince people and then when you figure out like okay we can help them increase revenue by three x that's when you kind of dig in and you kind of try to help somebody help themselves yeah exactly versus convincing them to do something Yeah, so like walk through what people struggle with the most then after you open up the opportunity for them.
Where do people kind of go wrong when it comes to entering into the field of tech sales, right? Do they struggle mostly with how to approach clients, how to actually ask the right questions? Like what have you seen when people are initially getting in the door that kind of really trips them up? Um, yeah, I mean that the first thing is that the initial phase of your time in tech sales, you're gonna have to really like fail a lot.
And that's just something you gotta be comfortable with is that you're gonna get told no, a lot. blown off a lot. And that's just because you're getting better at talking about the value proposition. You're getting better at identifying who the right ideal customer profile is. Getting better at when's the best time to contact people. So it's just really just getting through that initial failure.
And that you're going to have to work really hard initially to build up a pipeline, to get really good at your talking points. You're just going to have to fail a lot and you're going to have to fail often. And you're going to have to put in the work, cold call, cold email, cold link in. It's unavoidable. If you're going to be in this profession, you've got to get through that point where you're getting people's attention on your own.
And then eventually you'll have like an S that does that for you, but you gotta pay your dues. And although I didn't do that in tech, I did that before. You did that door to door, right? If I remember correct, you did that with IBM. I was gonna ask you about that. So let me just transition to that question. So what did that position at IBM going door to door in terms of doing sales teach you about succeeding now when it comes to tech sales at your level?
Yeah, so I did door to door educational sales during college and that allowed me to get an interview with IBM because they're like, wow, you're crazy to go door to door, eighty hours a week in some random part of the country. I did one summer in Kentucky, one summer in Minnesota. So my path wasn't necessarily the most, I guess, common, but Once I got the interview for IBM, I knew that if I could just get the job, I would crush it.
And I just explained that to them very clearly that, hey, And I have that same sort of energy. There's no reason why I shouldn't be outperforming your best reps. And they were like, wow, that's confidence. And then I asked for a role at the end, which was like unheard of. And that was something that my manager, you know, not my manager, one of my mentors told me to do is like, yeah, you got nothing to lose. You're twenty three years old. You're going to get a hires. Most mouths don't get fed.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think you say it this way, like asking boldly can change your life, right? So like, how do you give that advice to people? Like, I try to say it because I'm bold by nature, right? Because it doesn't bother me. Some people are, you know, don't think that they should do that,
¶ "How Jarrett Albritton Leveraged Clubhouse to Empower 80K People"
that maybe they're being rude. How do you get over that kind of imposter type of syndrome that some have, particularly in our community? How do you approach them when you tell them about asking boldly, when people seem hesitant? Yeah, I mean, I just say like the worst that they're going to say is no. They probably won't get to a no because you take that approach, especially in sales.
I would just say this, like for sales in particular, you will always be rewarded for being bold, for asking for the order, and they'll always respect that. So in a sales interview, I don't think there's much of a risk. But when it comes to just in general, like you said, close mouths don't get fed. You know, a no is one step closer to the next yes. So don't be afraid of getting that no, because it might not have been the right opportunity for you.
But to stand out, you have to be somebody that will ask for it. And if they, you know, have an objection, you have to be comfortable with clarifying, OK, what is the struggle or the disconnect? to see if there's a way that you can maybe connect the dots, but yeah, I'd say you don't, you don't get what you don't ask for. So to ask for it and then take it from there. My advice with sales and really with life is about the three Ps. The first one is persistence, right?
I can't tell you how many times I've got a, usually a, not even a no, just a non-answer or just sometimes ignoring for long periods of time. I've tried to explain this to some junior associates too. They said, but nobody responded after the second time. I said, they don't count until you try it fifteen times, right? So like, and they look like, well, what do you mean? If they're not responding, they gotta be immediate. I said, no. I said, in general, you can't take it personal.
So, like, the first is persistence. The second is patience on top of that, right? That's kind of the balance with this, right? Because you can do something and you're not seeing those immediate results month one, month two, month six sometimes, right? With some things, these have long cycles, but... you got to have patience to figure out like how you navigate that while you're being persistent.
And then the third is to sometimes pivot, pivot in what type of client you're talking to, how you're approaching the client, when you're approaching the client, you know, learning to pivot about how you actually do your sales pitch. I'm just now learning, honestly, because I had both the art and the science, but I just kind of had it instinctively, but not really the I had more of the art than the pure science of it, I should say.
So I didn't perfect the process part, which now I'm learning to do, which is just as important to do as well. So like, it's the balance between all those things, but getting back to you though. So you've talked about your transition. You went to, you were in sales, you went from, you were door to door education, then you went to IBM. using that experience. And that experience, I believe, probably taught you some grit, right?
When you talk about having non-traditional backgrounds, people don't understand that a lot of the things that make you successful in any type of sales you can do in tech as well. So I want to actually get into some of your strategy. So you say you have a line that says you talk about relationships are more important than technology. So what are the three most important things when it comes to building valuable long-term relationships? Yeah, the first is to lead with value.
The more you can start relationships off by leading with value and being genuinely interested in like, how can I help Rob get to his next goal? So like asking those questions and being really engaged, I find When you're dealing with high value people, they're so used to being asked for things. Can you help me with this? Can you refer me to that? Can you be my mentor? Can I pick your brain? You will be a breath of fresh air if you're like, hey, I really love all the things that you're working on.
Is there anything that I can do to help support something that's really important to you right now?
like that kind of energy just in general helps relationships but absolutely um to get like those high value relationships like do that authentically um I would say number two is to follow through on everything you say I'm all about under promising and over delivering and if you're somebody that consistently does that in every part of the relationship you are somebody that's going to be trusted and you're going to be somebody that they go to first because they also have self-interest and the
self-interest is if I connect them to jared he always over delivers they're going to see me as somebody that brings value as well. So you want to be an asset, but always over-delivering on everything you say. Which is important to measure what you say, right? And I've had to learn this because you can be wanting to satisfy your client and say, we're going to do all of these things.
But it's better, like you said, to under-promise and over-deliver because Once you've set a level of expectations, those are the expectations. And I think that's one of those things that I had to learn in sales. Like you feel pressure because the client obviously has their own interests too, right? They want to get as much value for as little as possible.
uh but you know often uh that doesn't work for them because you can't deliver what they expect at the price and at the time that they expect so it's it's it's something that I think is a real tension for those who start off in sales thinking that okay yes you definitely want to add value as you said but you also want to make sure you're true to your word and you got to be you got to measure that so you said that so lead with value that's that that was number one uh uh under promise
over deliver and the third most important thing when it comes to sales are Being authentic. So it kind of goes to that second point, but just like being honest about your shortcomings, being honest about the fact that you're not going to do this overnight, but this is how we do it. And being okay with the fact that you will get told no, If it doesn't deliver the things they expect, you should really be focused on can it deliver it, period, and just be honest.
And that's super key because one, the transference of authenticity is important.
uh and then also your transfers to conviction your real conviction about what you can really do also comes across if you're always kind of bsing um one people can feel it um and then two well it just it doesn't it doesn't your conviction can't really hit the same uh so I say that because for me personally like the way that I was able to make so much money in tech sales is through referrals And so what I would do at the very beginning or right before I close the deal is like, hey,
if we're able to hit these metrics after we deploy, would you be willing to talk to other CTOs and CFOs and COOs about the impact that we had to your business? Jared, if you can hit those metrics, I will scream from a rooftop about how great your solution is. And so I tell them it's going to do two X, you know, increase in revenue. We got them to three point five X. So I said, hey, remember how I talked about two X?
We actually looked at the numbers and our impact has been three point five X. Remember how I said that you're going to talk to other people? I have the CTO of Pepsi, the CTO of Walmart and the CTO of Kroger. I wanted to tell them all the amazing things that have happened to your business. And I want you guys just to connect. They don't want to talk to me. I'm just a sales guy. They expect me to say great things. But to hear from you, somebody that's their colleague will make a huge difference.
And it's also a great networking opportunity.
you get to sound great because you know you you made the smart move about working with us like oh yeah I'll definitely talk to them because people love to talk about how great they are anyways so if you can get them in front of another executive to talk about how great they are while in turn talking about how great you and your solution are Like it took year long sales cycles and turn them into two to three months sales cycles where I'd be like, how'd the conversation go?
Man, they really loved you. And if you can do what for them, what you're going to do, you say you can do for us, what you can do for them, then let's talk, you know. This goes to your point about why your relationship are your biggest currency, not even the products that you sell, right? Your relationships and your nurturing of those relationships by making sure you follow through with what you're selling and also constantly providing value, right?
You talked like it goes, Beyond seeing it as a direct transaction, from what I'm taking from what you just said, not only do you make sure that the product overperforms what you said in terms of the straight metrics, you also look to see where can I add value in other ways, connecting them to other parts of your network, uh, that also helps you, but it also helps them. And when you do that, it wants, they want to help you more.
You know, one of my mentors, I was, uh, I'm a recovering politician, right? One of my former mentors said, uh, Rob, remember that everybody's a star in their own movie. You're just paying, you're just playing a casting role. So don't try to make yourself the star, like know that they are the star you are casting. You're just a casting role. And if you do that, you'll be very successful. Very simple advice, but it's true. Right. So because oftentimes we try to make ourselves the stars.
They think if you're convincing people in sales, instead of understanding what their issues are and listening and then working to help solve their problem. Yeah, you're putting them on a pedestal and you're talking about how can we raise your pedestal even higher? It's all about them. It's not about me. And I would say that's another huge flaw that people have in sales is they're trying so hard to get the money that people can smell the commission on your breath.
They can tell like, you're just desperate to close a deal. You don't care about my solutions. You just want that check.
And I think that's probably the biggest thing that screws over aspiring salespeople is to take your ego out of it and really care about the person you're talking to, care about their outcome, care about their promotion, of the year because they had the best solution and it was yours like if you really care like that um one you'll be picking the right solutions to sell because you'll be selling things that work and that have impact two you'll be able to grow those accounts easier because they're
actually getting value and they're talking good about you in rooms that you're not in um and three you can actually believe in what you're saying and it's just so much easier to sell when you believe that you're gonna do well for the person and you can talk about yeah we've done well for these four or five different companies and I personally worked with three of them so um and then like you said beyond the product it's about how fast you respond to emails um you know how do you navigate
you know challenges are you do you concede do you push too hard uh there's just so many different ways nuanced ways where your brand can kind of become known as, you know, Jared's product is more expensive, but it gets the job done. And the service you're going to get from him and the honesty is like something that I wouldn't give up for a less price. Like that's where you want your brand to be is like he's worth paying more for as well as employee. Like he's worth giving a higher salary to.
Absolutely. He's going to hit quota. He's going to communicate the forecast. He's not going to tell you what you want to hear. You'll have a very clear, authentic view of where the business is, but he'll also figure out ways to get the business to where it needs to be. Yeah, I think you dropped a lot of gems there, Jared. One, I want to talk about this current generation a little bit that I love. They do a lot of great things, Gen Zers.
And although we both look young, neither one of us are Gen Zers, right? You know, I've worked with quite a few of them, and I do through the time.
And I'm making some generalizations, but... you know one is that I think they are very good when it comes to raising expectations for what should be expected at the workplace right workplace work life balance and I think that has a lot of good things I think there's also some there's another side to that right because you know people have to understand right when you're first starting off like you have to work a lot more than you think because you don't know that
much and you don't know what you think, you know, just because you came out of college and you were, you know, you were it, that means nothing for this actual part of your career.
¶ "The AI Tool Helping You Land a Job Faster (Why Right C is Different)"
You have to actually like put in more work than the nine to five. If you want to succeed, you have to lead with value and don't just say, okay, I stop here at five o'clock. You can do that, but I'm going to guarantee you something like you will not, you're, you will not level up like you, like, like you think you will, right? You have to value, I believe, early on in your career, learning over money.
I didn't say all forever, but learning in relationships over money early on in your career, because those are the things that actually lead to long-term money and results, not the how much can I get paid right now to deliver the least amount in terms of how I can put up the least amount of work. Like you can do that once you actually gain relationships and actual knowledge skill set. But that's not going to happen at, you know, twenty five, ninety nine percent of the time.
I think people have that kind of mixed up. So I think I think what you're saying is very valuable. Right. When you talk about when you talk about adding value, it isn't just in sales either, per se. I mean, every life is sales, really, because everything's a negotiation, including with your boss, everybody else around you. and you need to be doing everything you can to show value, there is definitely politics and all that stuff.
But early on in your career, relationships and learning is what you need to lean into and that leads to the greatest results. I think people need to understand that applies to tech and everything else. You don't have to be an expert in tech. Let's actually go, I want to dive a little bit into that. You talked about not needing to be technical per se to get into tech sales. But how do you balance that when you have to sell a technical product? What does that look like in balance?
What should you know at the basic level and how do you go about navigating, not necessarily being all the way technical, but still selling technical products? Yeah, that's a great question. So basically, there's the account executive sales specialist called different things. But then what we have typically is a solutions engineer or a sales engineer. And the sales engineer's job is to talk to the technical counterparts at the organizations about, hey, here's how the security system works.
Here's how the storage platform duplicates tape. And they get into the weeds of the technical, and they do a lot more of the technical demonstrations, answering of RFPs, requests for proposals. Whereas my job is really focused on understanding the organizational chart, understanding the challenge or the need of the customer.
So from my perspective, what I really need to know is just what is the impact of you're not having a solution like ours like if you do nothing what is the impact we're gonna lose money we're gonna lose employees we're gonna potentially have a cyber attack so I honestly only need to know like the problem that we're solving from a business perspective And then what I need my solution engineer to do is reverse engineer how our technology achieves that business result.
And so that's where like the I.T. team at the company is going to really like scrutinize do you actually integrate with other systems you know do you have the security protocols to avoid xyz what's your uptime like those questions I don't have to answer I have a sales engineer answer those questions um and I'm really focused on like the business owners just talking about and that's where I have business owners talk to other business owners because they're like yeah I don't know what the hell the
technology does but I can tell you what it did to my bottom line And that's all I need to focus on, honestly.
And then I need to focus on driving momentum, you know, getting in front of the right stakeholders, making sure everybody's bought in, understand the procurement process, understand the technical review process, the legal process, the budget, the competition, who are we up against and what are they saying about us and what should we be saying about them and how are they pricing and what should we price?
So I'm more of a quarterback bringing in the right resources from my company to explain the things that I don't know. But ultimately, my goal is just to get the ball to the end zone. So I don't need to know everything. I just need to know when to call in the right players to get in front of the right players on their side. You don't need to know all of.
every single part of the process, but you need to have an overall kind of vision of the board, it feels like, when you're dealing with sales to do it in a correct manner. So I want to transition to what you do at Right C, and particularly this kind of transitional moment, I think, of what's really happening within not only tech, really, but the current disruption of careers, period, because of technology, right?
There's been multiple studies that have shown that by twenty thirty, eighty five percent of the jobs in twenty thirty don't exist yet. Right. Whether that's completely accurate or not, we do know that many jobs in terms of how they function and what's what's what's to be expected of you is changing. Right. So with with right. See, you obviously help. You know, you guys are helping people get into careers and be prepared, you know, using A.I.
So before we get into the technical product and what it does, I want to just really talk about how you feel at this moment, like what are the most important skill sets one needs to have to be successful, not only in tech, but really in most positions, given the nature of AI and this emerging technology, what would you say is the most important one or two skill sets you need to be successful?
Yeah, I mean, I would say for AI, it's prompt engineering and just constantly understanding, you know, the different ways you can, you know, nuance the type of inputs and requests you put into ChatGPT or Google Gemini or Anthropic or Cloud and just understanding what the outputs could look like. And also just doing like a top ten of like, what are the things I spend the most time on that bring me the most impact?
And then identifying AI tools that can help you do it faster, more accurately or more organized or more effectively. And it's just really just like analyzing the things that you do that make you successful and how can you implement AI into those different platforms or those different activities and just being really curious with AI. I think that's just a super important skill set.
And then, yeah, I mean, there's other things, but I would just say like really diving deep into the fact that there's not just ChatGPT, there's hundreds of thousands of AI platforms that can do some amazing things. So just identify like what do you really either struggle with from a time perspective? What are the things you find are tedious or what are the things that make you the most money and then see how AI can help make those stronger.
And then putting in the work, honestly, just learning it. Yeah, I completely agree. I talk to people about the real AI is artistic intelligence, really learning to understand that you are a creator, you are a visionary. How do you use this tool as a dance partner to help amplify what you do? But it's an important point that, you know, I think you're making, but I want to make clearly that AI cannot completely replace authentic human thinking, right?
And it can amplify it, it can reduce a lot of tedious tasks. But what I say is you still, I think one of the most important skills to have is is to be able to see, is to be a critical thinker and be able to connect patterns. Because I think if you understand that, AI can help you become a master at so many things. And I break it down in three different phases. Like number one, what are you really, really good at? What are the one or two things that you're absolutely excellent at?
you need to go hard to use ai to amplify that because then you can go from that and being in the top point zero one percent if you're really thoughtful about that but you got to think about what you're good at and then the process for how you will amplify that because uh ai won't tell you all of that you have to think about that first number two like what are you medium skilled at right in the forty or fifty percentile uh but but are still important skill sets Whatever that is,
you can do that and take yourself to the upper ten or five percent using AI, especially right now, because still a lot of people aren't using it. The number three, to your point, what are you not good at? Right. And you need to use AI to help solve those pain points. I'll give one example about something that, you know, I'm a person that even though I'm an electrical engineer, like processes is something that I've had to just get better at.
But I've learned to understand how to at least frame processes, think about processes, obviously, not only being an engineer, but thinking about the processes I want to solve. Like I had to learn about process ontology. Like that's just something I had to understand the basic terms. It didn't take me a long time. But once I understood that, I can then begin to come up with my own instruction using ChatGPT that every single time I have a sale call, I use Otter or I use Gemini, whatever I'm using.
I take that, I have a process for the type of questions I need to ask that needs to come out of that and to know what has to happen. Then it gives me my recap, making my deck proposals time that normally would have taken hours, probably take five minutes. Same thing for my prep for my research. I didn't always love doing the prep for the research, I got a process for how I do it every single time. And I got a GPT that would normally take a long time to find this to really cut that down.
So I think it's really understanding, like I said, how to think in patterns, what you authentically are good at, and where you struggle. And then coming up with, you need to come up with basic kind of thoughts about how you would do it. And then continually nuance and dance with the algorithm. It's not going to be one answer. It's not going to be two. But once you go through that process, it's going to save you an infinite amount of time, right?
I just think there's so much there, which is part of what RightSea is doing with your career. Let's talk a little bit about that. You're the VP of sales and strategy there. So what is RightSea doing and how is it helping people in their careers right now as they transition through this moment in time? Yeah, so right now the job market is extremely tough. It's extremely competitive.
And so what RightSee is doing with our platform, Job Search Genius, is giving job seekers a twenty four seven on demand kind of like AI career assistant.
to help with all the activities that are important in your job search so resumes cover letters preparing for interviews managing the people in your network that can give you referrals or opportunities managing the jobs that you're applying to and then also helping with your negotiation of your salary and benefits we have an end-to-end ai platform where people can put in their resume and update the templates, update the bullets with AI rewrites that will also ask probing questions that if
you answer them authentically will give you some really dynamic bullets that will help you compete against everybody else that's using ChatGPT or something else, right?
And then cover letter wise, cover letters can take like a seriously long time because by the way let's let's let's stick on that point a little bit because people ask well why don't I just use chat gpt right what uh why should why should I pay or be a part of a platform like right c when I can just use chat gpt from their perspective to do the same thing what would be your answer to that Yeah, I mean, so ChatGPT, number one, the outputs are very robotic. Ours are a lot more human sounding.
But two, our platform is a combination of, you know, Meta's Lama OpenAI, Lama's, you know, open source AI and our own learning language model that's focused specifically on these activities. But I would say the biggest thing, because when it comes to resumes or cover letters, honestly, yeah, you can utilize ChatGPT or us. And it's kind of similar. What's different with ours is our interview prep. So you put in a job description. We put together really detailed interview questions.
But you can't get on camera with ChatGPT go through the interview questions where an avatar based off of the type of role that they are within the company, giving you different type of questions based off of behavioral,
¶ "Mastering Interviews with AI: The Future of Job Search"
situational, technical. So the nuance of our interview part of the platform is what makes us significantly different than a chat GPT because you're on camera, everything's transcribed, you're getting detailed feedback that's categorized, you're getting told what things you can improve. And then you can do that same interview multiple times and see your score improve. Watch yourself improve. Share that video with your mentors or career coaches or professors.
And then from a school standpoint, because we sell business to business, they have the visibility of all the analytics and data of where our students applying. Where are they getting hired? How are they practicing their interviews? What kind of resumes are they creating? The ability to standardize templates across students. So our big focus as a company is selling to higher education, K through twelve workforce development and professional organizations like MLT or SEO or En-ROADS.
that help job seekers. But we do have a business to consumer website, jobsearchgenius.ai. And I would just say do a free trial at seven days, you know, create some resumes, create some cover letters, put in a job listing URL and practice some of those interviews. and see how that experience is compared to a cloud, anthropic or chat GPT. And I think you'll see that holistically, it's just a much more uniform platform where everything can be saved.
Your reservation cover letters, the jobs you're focused on that will help you get to the outcome that you care about, which is getting more interviews and then turn those interviews in the job offers. You know, yeah, comparing both, you're going to get a job way quicker with our platform. Yeah, Jared, I would say, you know, when people think about AI and LLMs, large language models, those are just the data set that trains behind all of the generative AI because, you know, AI gets thrown out.
There's a lot of different AIs. I'm just going to say that it's, you know, they're like a child that never grows up.
So if you, it's not going to be able to give you the, all the best answers for what you need to do on an interview, because you need to know some of the background questions and things that have happened over the years and you need to be able to ask those things and you know Jared through his experience and and the company have built in those those those really type of inputs so it's already trained the child to be really really good at this right uh so I would say that's that's that's
that's one of the biggest differences and I love the I love the avatar uh interview it's a great concept and idea and I think it's one of the missing kind of ingredients when it comes to a lot of a uh things with ai training in general because a lot of them tend to be non-interactive And the fact that that you guys have seen that is really, I think, revolutionary and definitely excited to see the progress with that. And I want to say that we're proud to have you as a partner with Midwest Con.
We have Midwest Con coming up September tenth and eleventh. And we're going to be working with Jared and right. See some, too. And so before we get ready to conclude with some other questions, I love to just hear, like, you know, what are you most excited about coming to Midwest Con this year? Twenty twenty five. You've muted your mic, bro. Yeah, sorry about that. I'm really just excited about being around like-minded people that are disruptive in the AI space.
There's so much I can learn from being in these type of rooms, not even just from the speakers or the sponsors, but just from the attendees. We all have a passion for taking technology and creating incredible results.
um incredible work-life balance um and innovation so um I'm just excited for the you know panels the content the networking events and the friendships that can be formed in rooms like this because if you are really laser focused on ai you're somebody I want to be around so to be in a room of hundreds of people that are laser focused on ai cyber software engineering and how we can create some incredible solutions and results um in business but in our personal lives as well um that's the type of
energy that I like to be around that's that big tech energy that's that big tech energy that was good It's all right. So a couple of kind of closing questions. If the last five years of your life was was a chapter in a book, what would that chapter be about? That'd be the chapter would be about enlightenment and like aligning my purpose to something that is bigger than myself. So, yeah, twenty twenty is a chapter of being a public figure.
figure to lack of a better term and seeing how much impact can I bring to my community that I care a lot about. And I've been excited to see the results of relationships and the evergreen content that will hopefully inspire future generations. All right. If we meet a year from now, what are we going to be celebrating? We meet a year from now, we'll be celebrating. I'm trying to think if I should go personal or professional. Let's go professional.
Yeah, we'll be celebrating the success of my speaker agency. So we're doing two different things. One, we connect subject matter experts to tech stages. And so shout out to Ty, who connected us. He has a great website, Black Tech Global. And a lot of those people are in my network. So we've been getting some really dynamic people placed on stages to amplify their brand, create opportunities.
And I think what me and Ty are doing is going to revolutionize conferences and their ability to have dynamic speakers, sponsors, community partners.
¶ "3 P's to Succeed in Tech Sales (Persistence, Patience, Pivot)"
But it's also going to impact a lot of great people in the space that just haven't had their voice amplified on podcasts or stages and what kind of impact that will have for them. So Big Stage Energy is the name of the speaker agency. So we'll be celebrating some extreme growth and partners there. Well, good. MidwestCon, we hope to be a part of it too, getting people on the podcast. I'd obviously like to be a part of it as well in terms of getting on stages as well.
So I look forward to figuring out ways we can support that. And we'll talk a little bit more offline about that. All right. So final question. What advice would you give to your younger self with your knowledge now? And what advice would you ignore? Yeah, so my biggest advice is to, for my younger self would be never lend out money that you actually need back. Pretty good advice I've learned.
Yeah, because they will gaslight you to death about that money they owe you and make you look like the bad guy. So invest that money in a Bitcoin young self or something else, real estate. So, yeah, that's advice that I would definitely give my younger self. Yeah. And if you do get money, just don't expect to give it back. That's really what it comes down to. Like if you do it, do it out of because you don't have expectations of that because, yeah, you'll just get frustrated.
thousand percent thousand percent that's a lesson that has kicked my butt but the you know god the universe whatever you believe in has definitely uh reimbursed me in different ways so it's fine um and then advice that I would ignore um I'm honestly pretty good at listening advice but if uh advice that I would ignore is um uh Dang, that's a great question.
That's like, I would, I mean, I would just, I would ignore the thought that like, you have to put off fun and life to when you're like you've made it like enjoy life throughout your entire process make sure that you do have balance and you're not all absolutely work and stress and all that like uh just have a lot of gratitude and um enjoy enjoy uh the hard work that you put in so Yeah, because this moment will never happen again.
The moment we're having is the only thing that's actually true to us. Right. The past is gone and it's not usually we're not always accurate. Actually, we're hardly ever accurate. And what we remember in the future hasn't even hasn't happened yet. I think there are opportunities to enjoy the moment like college was great. I'd have I'd have a dollar in college, but I had a great time. Right.
um and I had a real I it was an experience that I can't do right now like time is the only thing we can't get back I can't be and nor am I trying to be a college student right but when I was a college student it was great right and I and I had fun and so I think it's being present is something that we lose you know worrying about the past or focusing on it or focusing on the future just doesn't allow us to enjoy the present and there are some things You know, when we're sixty,
hopefully we have a lot more money than we have now. But there's no guarantee we'll be able to travel like we can in your thirties and forties. So I think you got to take advantage of where you are in life because time is the only thing you can't get back. You can get back money. you can't get back time. It's just, it's just the truth of it. So I think that, I think that's really great advice. Jared, Jared, Jared Alberton, appreciate you on the show.
Look forward to collaborating with you on Midwest con as well as a right. See, and many others and really appreciate all the work that you've done to empower others. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Appreciate it, man. Appreciate it. And yeah, if you are watching this and you'd like to see more of my content, check me on Instagram, Dr. J, D-O-C-T-A-J. And then my name below, connect with me on LinkedIn.
And then YouTube, check out my podcast, Big Tech Energy, and make sure that you and you share and you comment on Disrupt Now and make sure you're spreading this episode as well as this entire channel and make sure you're at MidwestCon. Look forward to meeting you in person at that event. So I appreciate you having me. Thank you so much. All right, stay on. I got to get the recording, so hold on. I got to end it, then hold on. No problem.