From Customer Service to $80k Tech Sales Role

Speaker 1: 0:00

What was so? You say you've been in tech about a year now, so what was the moment in time? He was like nah, this is it. This is the last type of role. I worked like this and I'm going to be in tech.

Speaker 2: 0:10

So going back to kind of where I was when I was living with my mom. I was literally sleeping on her living room floor for like three months trying to figure things out. The work environment was just terrible Micro managing you know, nitpicking at everything and I was one of their best reps and I just got there. One day I came into work and they pulled that stuff again where they gave me a bunch of work. I didn't have any help, you know to, because it was just something I never done before and I didn't have any help and I was like, yeah, I'm tired. I literally closed my laptop, I logged out, I packed my bags and I walked out. I called the lady who she was like the kind of, I guess, the recruiter for the role and I let her know. I said, hey, I'm not coming back. That first 90 days was just amazing because it was like man, I can sleep in a little bit more or I can actually take care of myself better and get up and go to the gym and work out, have a decent breath. I'm not like rushing because I got to beat traffic.

Speaker 1: 1:05

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Speaker 2: 1:45

It's going pretty good. How's everything for you?

Speaker 1: 1:48

Busy, as you can see. She can tell you right now, like doing this in person, hour, 30 minutes, just to get set up. So we're from that.

Speaker 2: 1:58

It's a whole different beast.

Speaker 1: 2:01

But one of my ice breakers was let me read it because I didn't memorize it. But I want to ask you if you can go to any of your favorite gospel artist concert. Who would it be?

Speaker 2: 2:11

Man. Honestly I don't know if I have a favorite gospel artist or any artist of that.

Speaker 1: 2:14

I just said that because I've seen you at your conference, so I was like I want to tie it into something.

Speaker 2: 2:20

It'll probably be probably Bruno Mars.

Speaker 1: 2:25

You know what I actually want to see Bruno. I want to see him in a concert. I want to see Bruno and then I think in sync is going on a reunion tour, so I want to see in sync. I'm going to be in there because that's what I grew up on in sync. I've seen usher, so I got to see usher. It's just all Drake. I got to see Drake. I want to see the dream I want to see. I'm supposed to see Todd Dahlis on his past Thursday and some other people. I want to see Kendrick Lamar. I've seen J Cole.

Speaker 2: 2:52

Yeah, yeah, I like, I like, you know, I like Bruno because he kind of reminds me of how things were like in the 80s, where they had actual band and everything like that, and so I like that kind of vibe and so that's why I'm like I wouldn't mind seeing Bruno in person.

Speaker 1: 3:10

I think most of the R&B guys have like killer bands live like that's one of the reasons why, outside of in sync, I want to see Justin Timberlake live too.

Speaker 2: 3:18

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:19

He's one of my favorites, so that's definitely cool. Yeah, but let's welcome everybody in. Let me get some gunshots real quick. Welcome back to the textual talk podcast. Well, I'm your host, hd. This is episode 103. And we got a lovely guest, taylor Nicole, with us today and she's going to rock out with us. But if you're listening on Apple podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a review, share it out so we can get an algorithm for the audio dialogues. And if you're on YouTube, no, do get the thumbs up button, the bell icon, select off all notifications. And, yeah, man, we ready to just go ahead and have some good conversations and, just, you know, bop out. But so we got to meet at Mixer Cloud, yeah, and I came there actually for this very purpose, just to meet people that I could possibly have on the show in person. And it was funny, I think I knew, I kind of recognized your face, but I didn't really know you. But Kenzie did. She was like, oh, that's, that's, that's. I was like who is this? That's why you probably don't remember what I asked you. I say are you famous? Because the way she was kind of fangirling out a little bit. So when I said that to you, it's like, oh, no. And then we just started talking a little bit and I believe we connected again on LinkedIn and then that's when you know made everything happen. But for our listeners and our watchers, could you just briefly introduce yourself?

Speaker 2: 4:42

Yeah, so yeah, my name is Taylor Nicole. I'm currently in in tech cells, broken to the tech field last year, almost like a year from today so I've been in tech cells for a year now. I also my content creator, and so that's probably why, where she recognized me from, probably either from my Instagram. For some reason, I've been getting a lot of people who recognize me from LinkedIn, even though I barely post on LinkedIn these days. But but yeah, so that's what I do Tech in the day, content creator at night. I also did a little bit of life coaching. I don't do it anymore, but also a little bit of life coaching as well.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Nice and we may touch on some of the content stuff and the life coaching thing just to see how it kind of ties into what you do now. But before we get into you getting into tech cells, I kind of want to talk about you. In a sense you know where you're from high school right after high school, if you did in college or kind of like those transitional periods that we have in our life before we really decide on like what we want to do. So a little bit about it, kind of like your background.

Speaker 2: 5:55

Yeah, so just a little bit by my background. So I don't have like any, I don't have a college degree or anything like that. I did go to college but I never finished. So I guess technically I'm a college dropout, but my background is really I've been mainly working professionally and like customer service roles. I did. I did spend a little bit of time in the military and from the military. After I transitioned out of the military, I actually I was running a trucking business and then that went bad and then I started kind of really trying to figure out how you know what I was going to do next and eventually, you know, I really started looking into getting into the tech industry. But yeah, I've had a few few things. I've done a lot in a short period of time. So from the trucking business to like life coaching and then ultimately deciding that I want to get into the tech field and then also deciding I also like creating content. So I got a little bit of everything in my background. It's kind of very, when I tell people everything I've done, they're like how, like how is that possible? You've done so many things, such as short period of time, but it's just, I think, just a part of me trying to figure myself out and see where I fit in the world, and you know, just you know what I ultimately, you know, would like to do for you know, for the rest of my life, or just you know how I want to leave my footprint here on the earth. So yeah, kind of kind of a kind of messy, but it's cool, I mean, you've lived life. Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Speaker 1: 7:51

And I always try to get so much background or what they've been through. I mean, come on the show, because I'm always trying to. Maybe this doesn't, maybe the show is not supposed to appeal to everybody, but there's going to be somebody out there that sees it and says this is my story.

Speaker 2: 8:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that is true, you know, I think, for for me, what ultimately got me here is just, you know, like I said, I was running a trucking business. I was, I was married at the time, got divorced, so obviously you know we were running that business together, so that kind of we kind of have to, you know, shut that down. And I mean, you know I was in a, I was in a place where I was kind of really starting my whole life over where, you know, I was just like I have anything I lost, like car got repo. I was like I don't know if I'm going to even afford to keep the place time in right now. And so ultimately, you know, I mean I was able to stay afloat for a little bit, but then it just got to a point where I end up having to like move back home and I was like, hey, mom, I don't think I can afford to stay here anymore. Rent is raising. My job ain't ain't paying me enough to, you know, keep up with the price of living out here. Um, and I think it was during that time where I was like like I have to make a move, I have to pivot, I have to do something and it has to be something that's going to, you know, like it's like this is going to be a very important decision for me to really figure out what am I going to do next, because it's going to really either make or break my situation at this point. Um, and so that's when I really got serious about getting into tech. Um, you know, I always kind of wanted to get into tech and you know, I first heard about it in high school. Um, but for whatever reason, I just never got around to really digging into getting to know what. You know, what the possibilities are in this field and really, you know, understanding it. Um, but you know, I guess it's kind of like, um, uh, a surreal moment, you know, when I kind of was kind of like at a really little point in my life where I was like, okay, I really need to get serious about this tech thing, because I think that's where that there's something to that and I think I think that's, you know, where I'm going to see some success.

Speaker 1: 10:13

Wow, I like that. It reminded me a lot of things I instantly went to. You're talking about moving back in home, your parents kind of reset. I thought about product sons coming back home and dad wrapping them up and going to get the fattest calf and really just saying I'm always going to be here for you, and I think that's essential for parents to do for us, Like at the end of the day, we're still their children and we're living life. They hadn't always made the best decisions, just like they know we want. And it's just, it's a part of our growth. And then I liked the fact that I was listening. I was like it's funny how every time when it comes to growth, most of the time it's come from an uncomfortable position, and that's also life. And then, if you want to make it simpler, when you're working out in the gym, it doesn't feel good, your muscles are hurting and breaking, or you're running or whatever you're doing is don't feel good, but when you get that rest in, your muscles break down and they come back stronger. So, unlike we, we come back stronger when we go through these trials and tribulations. And that's what it's about. Life ain't about. You know, if you can get his about what you do when you get up after you got hit Exactly, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2: 11:29

It definitely. It definitely toughened me up, you know, even more. You know, like I think, that just me, you know, I think also to. We go, we make decisions and we do certain things and sometimes those experiences we don't really consciously, you know, have a understanding of why we may have chose that route, but it ends up coming and play you later on in life. Like you know, me being in the military, that was my first time ever being away from home. I was the first person in my family to you know, I was the first person in my family to decide to do that and it was something. You definitely have to have thick skin, you know, going to the military, because you know there is really no excuses. You don't get to, you know, slack off and things like that and you do have to be disciplined. And so that experience, I didn't really have a clear understanding of why I chose that route, besides the fact I just didn't really know what to do and I definitely didn't want to get in debt trying to go to college. And so then you know, going through this, I'm, like you know, I kind of have that mental toughness a little bit to kind of like OK, this is a situation. It sucks, but you know, you know I'm going to, I'm going to figure this thing out and something, something is going to fall through.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Cool. Briefly, I actually want to touch on a brief part. I guess like your military background, far as I guess, maybe what branch you were in. Also, two other things is how was it being a black woman in the military and for a lot of high school graduates who feel like they don't know what to do, do you feel like that's a good route for them to go to? Because I've seen as well as black people like a lot of times. I feel like they'll real when they try to recruit. They'll try to recruit black people, especially single parent home, no money, just trying to get them out there and sell them a lot of dreams, right? Sometimes these people don't know anyone that's been in the military so they don't know how to use the military for their advantage and sometimes they leave worse than when they went in sometimes, and then sometimes it works well if they had a plan on what they want to do. So I kind of want you to briefly touch on that, because I think you've been the first person in a while that's with the military background that's been on here. That's kind of wanting to get your account of how you felt of being a woman a black woman at that in the military.

Speaker 2: 13:56

Yeah, so I was in the army, stationed out in Fort Bragg. The job that I did I was working with missiles. So basically my job was to make sure the missiles were, make sure that they were always, they were ready to work and, if anything, they need to maintenance and things like that. And so for me, as being a black woman in the military, I would say it depends on what you decide to do in the military. There's always going to be people in wherever you go, that they are just not good people. And so I don't think that me being a black woman in the military was a bad thing or that it just it really just messed up my experience or anything like that. I would say, for the most part, it depends on the unit you get stationed in, the people you're surrounded by that are mindset, Because, you know, just because one person has a bad experience doesn't mean the whole army is bad or all of the military is just a bad place to be. It does really depends, and also it is on you to make the best of it. You know, on your part as well. As far as, like my advice for people who, would you know, maybe they're thinking about going that route. I would say definitely go in with a plan, Because that is the best way to be able to leverage your experience in the military. I would say my mistake that I made in the military was not getting the exact job that I wanted in the military, just because at the time it wasn't available and I was going to have to wait a long time and I was being impatient. So I just kind of picked something right, and so I would say, you know, especially if you want to get into tech, it'll be a good thing to go and get your. Maybe you want to get a computer science degree or information technology, they're going to pay for it, it's going to be free. And then on top of that, you know, you still have your GI bills. If you want to get a master's or whatever, you still be able to do that when you get out. And then also being able to, you know, build up skills. That's going to help you transition to the civilian sector, because some people use the military as a kind of a safety net. Oh well, I don't know what I want to do in this world. I don't want to deal with the market, I don't want to deal with layoffs. So you know I'm just going to go into the military, because it's the same thing to do, but you know you can get hurt and then if you get hurt, they can kick you out involuntarily. Like you know, that's happened to a lot of people where they got injured and then they're like yeah, we can't keep you here, you have to go. So you're forced to deal with the world. And so I would say that just build up as many skills as you can, have an idea of what you want to do when you get out, so that you know it'll be a smooth transition for you and you know you can get out. And you know not be like how some people are. Some veterans are where they're, they end up being homeless or things like that, because they just didn't have that plan figured out. And so take, take advantage of every benefit that they offer you and leverage that to create the life that you want.

Speaker 1: 17:17

I know some people will be blessed by that, so thank you for that.

Speaker 2: 17:20

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:21

I went through your LinkedIn and I saw you had an extensive customer service background. So I wanted to ask you were you doing customer service in retail? Was it over the phone? What were? What type of customer service were you doing and how were you able to do it For so long?

Speaker 2: 17:38

Yeah, so for me. So I was doing customer service. It was mainly over the phone. So one of the first companies I did it for was was Cushman Wakefield. They actually I was actually working at the Toyota headquarters out in Plano, ok and so their Cushman Wakefield is a they're a commercial retail management company, so they help manage these big facilities that you know. These hit these Fortune 500 companies by and so or build, and so they had a contract with Toyota and so my job was to help to really facilitate and court coordinate facility services so that you know the people who work there on campus you know were getting everything they needed. So you know if there were things that were broken, they will report it to me and say, hey, such a bad room is broken and I would then coordinate for the maintenance person. Or if there was an issue with, you know, trash or something like that, or landscaping, or even they will have a lot of events there, and so you have a lot of, you know, executives and things like that where they're planning events and so I have to, you know, step in and make sure that they're not doing anything that's going to cause damage to the property and, you know, making sure that everything is set up in a. You know it's in compliance with, you know what's allowed to be done in the room. And so, yeah, I did that. And then my second customer service experience more recently was with Honda Financial, and basically I was just helping to make sure that I'm taking care of customers who were like trying to pay off their car loans or make payments or having issues with their accounts, and so that was, you know, mainly what I was doing there for customer service. I forgot the second half of the question.

Speaker 1: 19:50

Which is how you were able to maintain doing this alone. But from what I just gleaned from your customer service experience, it kind of wasn't just the typical customer service Like I was. Like I was like if I was doing Taylor resume and she told me about the job she had for Christian and Wakefield, I probably would have said executive program director or manager LaAsia or something. I would have finessed it because it doesn't seem like customer service. And the only reason I'm hitting at that for whoever's listening and watching is your job titles on your resume matter. So if you can spark some intrigue in your title is similar to some of the other high paying roles out there, probably fair better than using the role that sometimes they may deem like a role that doesn't take as much skill level. So I even do that with my help desk clients. Sometimes they do help desk but they're doing system administrator type of work or they're doing I didn't access management type of work. So sometimes I'll change their title because what they did in their job duties fit that. So that's why I was like I really think that was just getting over calling you customer service because it's like you did much more than that.

Speaker 2: 20:56

Yeah, I definitely did. I was, I was more than that, and that was something that we went back and forth on. When I actually worked there, I was like this, doesn't, this is not just customer service, I'm doing more, but that's the title they, they, they, they had for it and so, but yeah, I definitely changed things up on my, on my resume, to fit whatever job I'm going to or whatever job I want, because I mean, it's not for me Is I don't believe it's lying or anything, if you're, if you've actually done that and that's what you actually did, why not? You know, highlight that.

Speaker 1: 21:31

Yeah, I definitely agree. And speaking of what did roles like that pay, like customer service roles, what was like that range that they, they paid those, those type of roles?

Speaker 2: 21:44

Yeah, so for both roles, I think it was like 20. I was getting paid like $20 an hour to do it, and so that obviously, especially today's, can't really live off of that.

Speaker 1: 21:57

Right.

Speaker 2: 21:57

And so that was obviously a big motivator for me, you know, trying to figure out how to get to to a higher you know paying position where I could actually not just survive and get bills paid but, like you know, actually do things that I want to do.

Speaker 1: 22:15

Yeah, definitely. And funny thing is, most people and if we go in the black community we'll look at, like you know, our medium income. It's around that 15, 20 dollars an hour range. So sometimes if you tell somebody I'm getting 20 an hour they must say, oh, girl, where you work, you know I'm telling you the truth.

Speaker 2: 22:38

You're telling that.

Speaker 1: 22:39

And then you were like you know, and when you're doing the job, it's like, first of all, I should be in pay way more, and this is not a lot because you still have people that's making $10 an hour, $13 an hour, $15 an hour in 2023.

Speaker 2: 22:51

Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 1: 22:52

And so these jobs do their market research knowing that, hey, they're going to take this because this is the most money they made. When I worked in Bozer City I was getting 20 an hour. So, yes, that was good for the area, but I know for a fact that was making way more off of me and my job deserted at least 30, 35 an hour. All the people that was there. They was comfortable with it. I used to try to go on strike and everything because that job required a clearance. So I was like they can't just fire us, like if we say hey, we're not taking calls for an hour, all the SLA is going to be messed up. They're going to have to give us what we want.

Speaker 2: 23:29

Yeah, yeah, definitely, and I've done that. I think I think I actually had quit a job it was like a temp job and they had, you know, they were doing the same thing. They put a title on there that I'm like this is not the same, this is like I'm doing way more than what you guys are trying to call it. And they wanted to hire me on it was a contract position. They wanted to hire me on full time and I was like no, I'm like, I'm not. I need like at least a three dollar raise, which still wouldn't have been much. But you know, I'm just like if I try to push it even further, they're probably definitely going to say no. But yeah, they were like no, they came back with a counteroffer Like we give you a 50 cent raise. I was like that's like you might as well just gave me the middle finger. You might as well just gave me middle finger. So, yeah, I was like, yeah, I'm not doing that. And it sucked, because I was like I really didn't need the money. But I was just like no, I'm tired of like getting these low paying jobs and getting overworked. I'm like I want to get paid what I should be getting paid.

Speaker 1: 24:30

Yeah, funny thing that you said that. That reminded me of that same job in Bolger when I was. I started off as a contractor and then they brought me on full time for the company and I didn't sign to switch over right away Cause I was like no, I got all this and that I want to make like 40 K or whatever. So they found the cheapest way possible to make me pay me 40 K. And then that's when I realized it ain't about what you work, it's about what you negotiate. And I was like I could have played ball and asked for more and possibly got a little bit more, but because I said I wanted $40,000, they said, okay, exactly that. And I learned that. But to segue into to the good stuff, and I was thinking about and I was thinking about and that's probably a little bit of your answer to this question but I was going to say what was that moment that you were sick and tired of being sick and tired? What was that moment? He's like you know what? I'm going to go all in on this. I see everybody I'm going to be a little bit funny right here, but I see everybody there they're working from home and the hotels they're overseas, they're doing this and that they got nice cars. They have them, they want. They got a beautiful family Like cause. I know people have been seeing this over the last three, four years about people in tech. I mean, that's not type of content I do because my roles aren't that easy to get into. That takes like some work. So, that's not type of content I push, but I see it out there.

Speaker 2: 25:45

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:45

And I do know that you can do this based on having a salary that actually allows you, like you said, to live in the thriving life.

Speaker 2: 25:53

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 25:53

What was so? You say you've been in tech about a year now, so what was the moment in time? He was like nah, this is it. This is the last type of role I work like this and I'm going to be in tech. So.

Speaker 2: 26:04

Yeah, yeah, so, yeah. So, going back to kind of where I was when I was living with my mom I was literally sleeping on her living for like three months trying to figure things out the site that I was going to move back out here to Texas because I'm like you know, my mom stays in Michigan, by the way I was like I drove all the way back down here to Texas. No job, nowhere to stay. I was written out of Airbnb and I just got a job like right before I came here, like I just accepted a position like right before I came here. Soon as I got here I started. My first day Was working for about a couple of months or so but, like I said, it was one of those customer service positions where it was actually Honda. You know they weren't paying that much, like $20 an hour. They oh, you get hired in, you get $22 and they were like really acting, really snobby about that too and I'm like that's not even a lot of money, like that's not the treat. But yeah, so it. You know I at the one I was at the actual company and stuff when I was actually working. You know the work environment was just terrible, micro managing, you know, nitpicking at everything. And I was one of their best reps. And I just got there like one of their best reps and nitpicking at me about every little thing, giving me a bunch of extra work that you know I'm not even supposed to be doing. And then one day I got like I just was like I'm just like I'm tired of this, like I'm really like I don't want to work at these kind of jobs anymore, and I got like a notification on my phone about Lyft and it was like if you drive this weekend, if you sign up and complete like five rises weekend, you get $1,000 just for the weekend. And something like in my mind just clicked off like I should quit this job, do this lift, use that money to pay my bills for the month, complete this bootcamping, transfer into tech, like I was just like I played with the idea for a little while. But then one day I came into work and they pulled that stuff again where they gave me a bunch of work. I didn't have any help, you know to, because it was just something I never done before and I didn't have any help and I was like, yeah, I'm tired. I literally closed my laptop, I logged out, I packed my bags and I walked out. I called the lady who she was like the kind of, I guess, the recruiter for the role, and I let her know. I said hey, I'm not coming back. I left the laptop and everything on the desk, if you? I told her. I said, if you have something else available with flexible hours, I'll take it, but I'm like I'm not coming, I'm not working here anymore, and that was that. And so I, literally I was started at that weekend. And here's the thing too, and this was more like you know, on some spiritual stuff. But I'm literally right, before I was about to start with, I got sick. I and I haven't gotten sick. I don't really get sick like that but I got like one of the worst colds ever and I was like bed written, like I could not get out out of bed. So Friday passed and I'm like man, I really need to get out and complete these five rides. I really need that a thousand. I really need that thousand dollars I was. I couldn't get out of bed. Sunday came and I couldn't get out of bed. I mean, saturday came and I couldn't get out of bed. Sunday afternoon I got just good enough to actually get out the bed and be able to complete the five rides, so I can get the thousand dollars and have my bills covered for that month. While I was working, though, I was taking the boot camp, and so I took the boot camp while I was working for like four weeks. I quit my job and was finishing up everything while I was doing lift, and then I started doing my job hunting, and then, six weeks later, I, you know, landed my first position in the tech field.

Speaker 1: 30:09

Nice. So for y'all that's listening when she says boot camp, that was course, careers right.

Speaker 2: 30:16

Yes, that was course.

Speaker 1: 30:16

Careers yes, Right, and I wanted to say that so they could see. They see that I post about his pin to all my comments. And so, guys, I have somebody here who did the tech sales course in course careers and that's one of the main reasons that I also bought her home and I briefly want to ask you how do you think course careers actually set you up for success in your first role and how hard was the program?

Speaker 2: 30:42

So it wasn't really hard. I believe it set me up just because it it helped me to understand what, what the role was in the first place. And so by me understanding that, I was able to go into my interviews, you know, with the understanding of what these employers are going to be looking for, understanding their language when they say certain things. Like you know, they say somebody sell cycle. Well, you know, if you don't have that information about what a sale cycle is, you're going to be looking like, okay, I don't, I don't really know what that is. So, yeah, it really it really set me up to kind of just have that understanding. And also, you know if they provided a lot of good resources, like you know, email templates for you to reach out to recruiters, how to answer certain interview questions. This is, you know, stuff, that's all in the course. And then you know, I think, one of the most valuable parts of course, careers. Now, when I was there, it was just the community that they have with the discord and you. You're able to interact with other people who are taking a course and see what's working for them and ask them questions. They're able to ask you questions and you're kind of able to just help each other out in this process of trying to make that transition, and so, yeah, that's, that's. You know, I think that was the thing that really, you know, helped me out with being able to make that pivot into tech sales.

Speaker 1: 32:08

That's dope. Now you know we got to ask you this. You know I got to ask you this money because we all grown. Nobody is doing something just because they want to like it.

Speaker 2: 32:20

We got to have money.

Speaker 1: 32:22

So you stated you're pretty much making around like 20 hour at Honda Financial. What was that first offer for your first tech sales role?

Speaker 2: 32:31

The first offer so for this role it's so for this role is around 75,000 OT for my, for my first role for now, I did have an interview offer Not it would didn't offer was an interview. So my first company that I ever interviewed with, the, the offer was like 90 KLT. So for anybody who doesn't know, OTE is on target earnings, witness, split by your base pay and then your commission. And so I believe the first one was like a 60 40 split and then for this role it's like a 70 30 split and so, yeah, I mean it's more than what I was making obviously with with Honda Financial or any of my other roles, because $20 an hour was that like just under 40,000 a year. So you know, to get a like a $35,000 pay bump in six weeks is, I mean, it's significant change. And then to be able to have the potential to go on to six figure roles, that's even better, especially, you know, in such a short period of time.

Speaker 1: 33:51

Yeah, I agree. And actually these questions because a lot of times sometimes people need a little bit of pump and prime to convince themselves to invest in themselves. Yeah we have so much of. Oh you can, I'm for like you can use free stuff, but sometimes whatever you invest in is kind of what your results are. A lot of people can't do this stuff for free. A lot of people need something structured or a mentor or coach to help them learn what they need to learn, because you don't know if you don't know, like you just said. Of course I don't know what a sales cycle is because I'm not in sales, but someone could just try to think they read something and go interview. They're not going to know either. They don't have the luxury of the people who've come through course careers or the people that's behind who's put it together that you can reach out to those instructors, maybe an excellent and deaf questions, and sometimes you can't. Actually saw YouTube Right Exactly.

Speaker 2: 34:44

So how'd you're?

Speaker 1: 34:45

paying for that access, like you said, the discord.

Speaker 2: 34:48

Exactly, that's that's key.

Speaker 1: 34:49

Like the network part is crazy Anytime. Like I said, now that you, you're now in my network, but people who are my clients are now my network, your network is important. So what is your? I know you're in like tech sales, but what is your like? I guess official title, because I see you guys say like all these different acronyms, sometimes BDR and all these other things. I don't know what they talking about.

Speaker 2: 35:16

I just know that this over sales, so what's your official title? Yeah, so I'm. So BDR stands for business development representative and basically, and SDR stands for sales development representative they're used interchangeably. But yeah, basically what I do is I'm I'm doing lead generation, I'm doing cold calling, outreach, emailing, prospecting, I'm researching, you know, companies and researching people to see if they'll be a good fit for our, what we, what we have to offer, and then I'm actually calling these people or emailing them to see if I can get them to have a meeting with our account executives, which are the people who close the deal. So, basically, that's, that's basically what I do in a nutshell is just basically trying to get them to get a meeting with our account executive so that they can actually close the deal and sign up with us.

Speaker 1: 36:18

Got it. I get some of those sometimes because I think sometimes people may think my title is more than what it is that work. That's like I don't know what you.

Speaker 2: 36:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:26

Sometimes I can direct them to somebody if I think what they have is worth like a company's time maybe, but I say I'm not the one that make those decisions.

Speaker 2: 36:35

If I was I like it would be.

Speaker 1: 36:36

A lot of stuff would be changed here and you actually gave me a good rundown of, like, like, what your job consists of. So are you remote or hybrid?

Speaker 2: 36:48

So right now I'm fully remote, but you know I'm still like I'm open to hybrid. I don't think I ever want to go to office like five days a week again, but I think there is value in having a hybrid work model.

Speaker 1: 37:04

Cool, so you've been there a year, pretty much.

Speaker 2: 37:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:09

How was it like your? How was it getting a great? She did with everything in your first 90 days. How was that?

Speaker 2: 37:17

Man, it was great because, like I was working with, like I said, I was working at Honda, the Honda Financial, as customer service. That's way out. And Irving, which is on, you know, it's kind of far away from me, so driving an hour yeah you're in the bulldogs. Yeah, driving an hour to get there, then hour to maybe an hour and a half to get home because of traffic. I was just like I was so done, because I was just like I don't have no time to do anything, you know, on the week days, just work, work, work, get ready for the next day, and so that that first 90 days was just amazing because it was like, man, I can sleep in a little bit more or I can actually take care of myself better and get up and go to the gym and work out, have a decent breath fix. I'm not like rushing because I got to beat traffic and so like that. That on that side of it that was really good. And then just actually getting incorporated with the company. It was a good experience. You know, obviously you know your first 90 days it's not you're not gonna be hitting the ground running, but they're just trying to get you acclimated to everything. You're learning the product, you're learning your, you know what you're gonna be doing, you're learning the people you're working with, and so you know it was a. It was really really easy and a really gracious transition.

Speaker 1: 38:37

It's nice, that's nice I was just thinking about. It's just crazy when you take a step back, when you think about, like who was I listening to? Somebody else listening to either someone on YouTube or something. They're saying. A very few people have careers. Most people have jobs. I think that's true because what you describe with Honda was a job. The company pays you not enough. You come in every day, five days a week, and you're tired after worth, even chase your dreams. You don't even make enough to stay close enough to your actual workplace.

Speaker 2: 39:13

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 39:14

A lot of companies do that. I just remember I stay in Aubrey now, so I used to have to, right before I started working at JP Morgan, go. My sex was trying to have me come down here like three days a week. I'll say no, no way possible. I have to wake up too early, get on 380 and get on the tow way which is packed, to come down there. No, I'm not doing it, I'll go somewhere else, because it's like it was bad sometimes. Like man, listen, I'm just gonna. I need to eat, shower, then get like go to sleep so I can wake up or like five or something like this I can go to work.

Speaker 2: 39:48

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, working from home definitely gives you that that work life balance. I would say, like, like for my role specifically, it depends on the role you do as well, because you know, for my role specifically, you know I wouldn't encourage anybody to if you're trying to break in to turn a roll away just because, oh, it's not work.

Speaker 1: 40:09

I agree like you.

Speaker 2: 40:11

Maybe you want to reconsider that because you know we are in a tough competitive job market right now and plus, you get that in-person training. You get to kind of you know, get, get that in-person training, get to feed off of people who've been doing it, and so that helps you better when you are ready to work from home and the opportunity comes again. Now you, you know what you're doing, you know and so you know. But yeah, I like, I do like working from home because of that. You know the the hassle of trying to beat traffic every day. It's just this isn't no for me, yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:47

I do agree, though I tell young people they're earlier into the career. I say now you don't like, you say you don't want to. Just always say I'm trying to learn some remote, because some of you don't have enough skills to compete with the other people that's looking for remote. But some of us don't want to go in the office either. So you can get a hybrid road based off people that don't want to come in the office. So don't discount it. Also, I'm not gonna lie, I think it is fun going into the office a little bit if you got a nice dope office. I didn't like government sex office. Like I'm thinking a new building built out here, but the other place not the building is in is nice things on where Ross have, or something like that yeah the building is in is nice, but how their seat is like you don't have any privacy. Pretty much you will be our seats and we have. We want you to have a little thing for this be our table, so we don't have a divider, so it's kind of like no personal space. I don't like that yeah now JP Morgan was a little bit better. You had like sometimes you have like a big table where you go divider, so you got your own space, they own space, and then you had a lot of comforts. When we're like a big you you know where it's at, because you're working plain. Oh, so it's like right there like so it's pretty cool to have restaurants on there, starbucks, a daycare for your kids. Now I will say, a place like that is pretty cool because we know people hey, I can't make it works, nobody watch my kids. Well, you got X amount of days that you can bring your kid to the daycare for free up there. So they do do stuff around employees and try to do diverse things. So that's that's pretty cool. What I asked you this too, and one of things why I started this podcast, also bringing women on here like yourself is diversity exposure. How was that been in your environment? Are you the only one, is a couple of you? How was that?

Speaker 2: 42:28

yeah. So I would say in my current company that the diversity is pretty good. There is. I've seen other black women who are, you know, they're in sales positions. I've just seen other women general there in sales positions and so you know, I would say one of my company is one of those companies where, you know, it's pretty diverse across the board, is not, like you know, dominate by, dominated by one demographic of people and everybody else is, you know, the same. So I was saying, where I'm at right now it is diverse. But I will say that that's obviously not the case with every company. There has been companies that I have interviewed with and I just go in the office and you know they invite me to like an in-person interview and I'm like there's nobody here that looks like me. And even in an interview there's like this energy where I'm just like I feel like they're asking me certain questions just because of you know me being who I? You know I'm a black woman and so it is like you know. I remember one company specifically. It was just like the interview was horrible and I just kind of just felt like there is just somewhere energy going on because you know I wasn't the the white college guy graduate, and so some of their questions kind of indicated like that's what we want. You know, I mean we're not, we don't want, we want that. And so you know, even though they didn't say that, you can read between the lines and they kind of tell. And so I mean there is that. But you know, when you experience those things, you just got to really let it roll off your shoulder because I mean, do you really want to work for a company? That's, that's their attitude anyway. And so, you know, I just let it roll off my shoulder and say, okay, whatever, you know that's, that's their loss. I know I know what value I bring and you just, you know, keep, keep going on to the other opportunities definitely you can.

Speaker 1: 44:29

I've talked about there before. Just being an interview is feeling like they just interviewed me, just saying we interview like some black people yeah, yeah, I felt like they had no intention of bringing me on. I definitely know how that feels and it sucks, I think, but it's life, but it's like. One of things I tell people is, like you're gonna realize it's not a lot of you like I primarily have had more women on the show, because I don't typically work with women specifically in cybersecurity is it's not a lot of women in there. I don't think a lot of women choose them like type of careers right which they are. The funny thing is you know this about black women. You're already good at investigating. You can find anything on social media exactly and I tell my time come. Get on the blue team, and for the people don't know what the blue team is. We are the defensive part of cybersecurity, especially in the sock environment, the ones that respond to the incidents and we investigate everything before it either turns into a full-blown security incident or it's not, as if it's possible.

Speaker 2: 45:26

But they definitely can do all that yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely done a lot of investigating, just a bit, you know my personal life. Just let me, let me find this out. And so, yeah, you know, if you, if you want to find some stuff out, you know, leave it to leave it to a woman to become the FBI agent for.

Speaker 1: 45:45

I'm gonna say FBI. If y'all watching y'all prom candidates are in the hood somewhere yeah, definitely matter of fact, they probably work at a call center or something oh, yeah, and they know how to find out everything on everybody, or they know somebody, know somebody. That's what y'all need to be targeting, because one of the things I talk about in cybersecurity and as well as why I bring it up, is we talk about this all the time. On teams diversity, there could be blunders. We have based on bias or based on we grew up, so we have a diverse team. You're able to not have as many gaps or process gaps or weaknesses that you would have.

Speaker 2: 46:19

You only hire the specific one type of individual like you were referring to with the other company and that's why they probably trash anyway yeah, yeah, which I'm glad I didn't go to that company because literally like the next month or so, they were doing mass layoffs and so I was like I thought should a bullet, so yeah cool.

Speaker 1: 46:37

So I want to ask you about being like a BDR. Do you have like projects that you have to work on?

Speaker 2: 46:49

Sometimes it depends. So I have my main role, which is, you know, obviously getting qualified leads to my account executives. But sometimes we collaborate with marketing because marketing may do a campaign and they may get all these leads that come in from this marketing campaign and so they're like hey, we don't know if we hit the mark with this. So we need somebody, or a few people, to kind of go through these leads and see if they're qualified, tell us to you know, give us feedback on the quality of the leads you know, so that we can, you know, next time we do this marketing campaign, we have a better idea of who we're targeting or what we need to change to get to the people that we actually want to target. So those are like the projects I work on as a BDR.

Speaker 1: 47:45

Let me give my interview question back real quick. Can you tell us about a time that you had to deal with something that was challenging and how did you overcome it? Specifically when it comes to, I guess, your new role within this last year has anything been like challenging that you had to really kind of figure out?

Speaker 2: 48:01

Yeah. So I would say my, my new role. You know, when you, when you transfer over to sales, you know you deal with a lot of rejection and there's a lot of, there's a lot of psychology that goes into to sales and so overcome a rejection or overcome up objections, you know you got something valuable to give, give this company, but they're like you know they're coming up with basically these kind of excuses to not want to move forward with the sales process. Because that's just natural human response, right? Anybody tries to sell you something like no, I don't want to be bothered, and even even if you actually need it, you just don't sales people just get a bad rep, right, and so our natural response is to object and reject. And so learning how to overcome that because that's not something I I really dealt with in my past roles is objections or rejections. So that was a challenge for me in the beginning of my role. Like, okay, how do I get past these different objections there? They're bringing up competitors and I don't even know about these people. So I just how do I overcome this? How do I keep the conversation going to? You know, get them to move forward with, with actually giving us a chance. And so for me, the way I overcome it is just studying and also leaning on my, my co-workers, so reaching out to my account executives and saying, hey, you know, I had a client that's or prospect that said X, y and Z, and this is they said they don't want to move forward because X, y and Z. You know what should I say to this? How do I respond to this? And you know, usually they'll hop on a call with me and they'll go over. You can respond to it this way. And if they say this, you can respond to it this way. And if they actually this question, and so really leaning on that collaboration to act to overcome those things so that you know I'll be able to move forward.

Speaker 1: 50:04

You know, when those conversations okay, I think everybody has challenges and the way we get through I know. For me, technically, being a business owner, I never really looked at it like somebody telling me no, I kind of really don't even sell. When people even meet me, I kind of just be honest with them and what you can expect. You go with your move or you don't, you know.

Speaker 2: 50:27

I think that's.

Speaker 1: 50:28

That's probably why I don't know if I would ever be able to be somebody so much to get into marketing just because what I've been able to do my YouTube and everything else but I don't know if I'll be able to do like sales consistently because I don't know. I don't think I have that type of personality. Put like this, I can sell you something I believe in yeah so if I work with a great product, like I got, like some of the security products I use, and if I work for the company doing sales, I probably can sell that because I use it as an analyst. And if I was on the sales side, I say, listen, I know your team's gonna be able to use this because this is what it helped me do at a older company and the metrics of what it helped us, how much money we have saved the company. If you're gonna lay it out like that sometimes and they try to bring up a competitor yeah, I know what they say, this but this is what we have that the competitor don't have. I think that's when you start getting your sales back, when you know yeah when it's a term that is probably using. I'm not a professional debater but I'm pretty sure it's a term used to know what type of arguments will be presented against you. That's typically how I go to any debate with the sports life men versus women. What you bring to the table, type of stupid stuff I'm already ready for what you're gonna bring to me. So I believe anyone who knows what the opposition is gonna say you can already have your counter ready and you can sound a little bit more confident, I think.

Speaker 2: 51:44

I think that's how that works yeah, absolutely, that's definitely a big part of just being just preparing for, you know, really sales is really preparing for what you believe the next person is gonna say, because you know, I mean obviously listening to their pain points and their problems and stuff like that, but also preparing for when they say this or when they say that and being able to navigate that conversation so here's a good one, and I'm gonna see what you're gonna say like.

Speaker 1: 52:15

So, who or what has been the biggest influence on your work and your journey so far?

Speaker 2: 52:20

yeah, so I will say that the, the person who's been the biggest influence on me is definitely my, my career mentor, antoine, which you, I'm sure you know. But yeah, you know, I used to, you know, watch a lot of his videos and I still do sometimes. You know if he, you know if I see he's posting, but yeah, he's. He's definitely helped me a lot with being able to kind of just shift my mind about, you know, getting rid of some, some toxic mindset that has been, you know, just promoted it seems like too predominantly black people which it irritates me and annoys me when I, you know, see, see those things and people bashing nine to five. So you know you don't want to have a nine to five, you're gonna be a slave, somebody else, it's like you're already a slave, you're, you're in your 20s and you're 30 and you're broke, so it's like it doesn't really get much worse than that. And so, yeah, you know, being able to get rid of that and realizing that you know having to having a good, paying job is something to leverage, to take you where you want to go, and you shouldn't be ashamed about it and you shouldn't let people you know who don't have what you have and aren't going where you're going, talk you out of getting into a lucrative career that can set you and your family up for life. And so, yeah, you know he's definitely, he's definitely helped, like, impacted me in that way and you know, I definitely, you know, will say that he's probably the most influential person, and also Cyrus too, because Cyrus initially introduced me to two course careers okay, cool, shout out to Cyrus that K the tickets to the new black.

Speaker 1: 54:06

And you know, my god, antoine Wade actually commented on one of in-person videos. Other that's like, yeah, now we gotta get you down to Dallas so we can do our episode in person. I don't want to be remote and what you said is important and is like people like you find out as you start your career now and keep on starting the people you meet. You know they ain't got to sound like a church that, remember, we know everybody can't go with you to the mount top they just can't those people that have those lack mindsets, someone telling you, think about it. You'll tell somebody yeah, you know, I make three hundred thousand dollars like I kid you, not my last episode, I did my god take, you know, sitting right over there and this was. We weren't even including his money that he gets from other places. We just talking about his job and it was tied up to 500k security engineer and people was like, oh, that's cap. As I was like just cuz, you don't got the skills to make it, don't mean I don't know. I was like what you think about my platform. I don't bring people on here, that's not who they say they are, and this person's also a friend of me is like and but one of the things that's helped me always be able to expand my new, I can get more. It's because I have friends like that. I get compact just like that, or other friends that have like lambos or stuff or have their own other companies yeah that's how you expand your mind, as you keep on expanding your network and just be with different people. But if you, as you grow in your career, and then you don't continue to grow your network, you may find yourself being complacent and you may find yourself being underpaid that's why it's good to have and this is something to force me in the black community. Since some people have jobs instead of careers, it's hard to talk about money with them, but it's good to have friends that do the similar things as you so you can have some honest conversations about money. So I have friends like yeah, apple, they offer me a base of 230, something like that. They offer me a hundred thousand hundred fifty thousand dollars sign-off bonus, or so on. So offer me three hundred thousand dollars base and whatever like this is. Stuff is okay, I got that similar skill set. I can go find them somewhere. But if you take a person and this is also this is no offense, because I come from a blue collar background I don't think my parents probably ever made over a 50k together a year. I think maybe. I don't know so I come from that, so I always respect people's money to is why I don't waste their time. But you know, talking to my parents, a mom or a tell them hey, I know I just started here, but this company talking about this. Oh well, you need to show loyalty and wait and I said that no, you always take the money. That money not guaranteed to be here next year, take the money always exactly.

Speaker 2: 56:45

Yeah, I don't. I don't, you know, believe in the whole loyalty thing. You gotta be loyal to the. I say this you know I did make a point to stay at least my first company, at least the first year. Just get the solid year in with your first company, just because it is a bad look when you're like three months here, three months there. You don't want to do that unless, like I said, you get a significant pay raise. Then go ahead and do it. But I did make it a point to try to stay a stick out with my first company at least one year and see if I can at least get a promotion under my belt. But you know I'm like, hey, you know, now with with September is here, all these companies are reaching out to me. I'm like listen, whoever the highest bidder is, that's what I'm going with, that's what I'm going with. So, yeah, definitely. You know, like I said, I respect anybody who's a hard worker and you have good work at it. But it's unfortunate that a lot of hard workers are working on things that aren't working for them, and so you got a lot of people who are like, how I was. You know, I'm a hard worker, I do good work, but I'm working at a job that only want to pays me $20 an hour and God forbid. If I ask for a pay raise, you know it's like no, like we don't, we don't do that, you know. And so, yeah, you know like if you're a hard worker and you're gonna be working anyway, because it ain't like you have a million dollars right now to start that business you want, you might as well get into a good paying career right.

Speaker 1: 58:14

Yeah, not only that, stuff is expensive. And we talk about people starting businesses. A lot of people should have worked somewhere before they started business, because they don't have any type of management skills, no business acumen, they don't know how to do certain things. They still tell you a DME for the price all type of silly stuff yeah, imagine you tell them somebody like y'all don't have your prices on, oh yeah, just email me for the price. No, they're gonna figure out at least base level, what this is. The offering is right here and then it has to be customized. That's when you sell for me like this stuff is. It's crazy ghetto. It's just ghetto.

Speaker 2: 58:47

It's very ghetto and yeah, I, that's one of reasons why I picked sales, because I'm like sales is business. You're learning how to run a business. When you're selling, people will get you know sales is hard, like business is hard. So if you want to be owner and you can't do any type of sales, you're not gonna have a business. So you know, I think it's the perfect foundation for you to kind of leverage it and then, okay, maybe you don't want to do sales or anything like that, but at least you have the money to pay other people to help you what you're not good at bingo, that part.

Speaker 1: 59:25

And while you were talking I thought about a question and I'm trying to see if it comes back to me. I think I was about to ask you do you think your transferable skills from doing customer service roles are helping you now your your current career?

Speaker 2: 59:45

yeah, it definitely is, because when you're in customer service you have to have a lot of for one. You're up, you're doing a lot of problem solving because people are calling you literally because they have a problem that they need your help with, and then you're also you have to exercise a lot of empathy, you have to be a good listener, and so those are transfer good into sales, and then a good communicator. So all all those things they transfer into sales. There's just a few things that are you know, that are added on, that you have to develop. You know, like actually you know, being able to show the value of something you know and actually being able to amplify their pain points. Right, so you know you're not just knowing their pain points now. Now you got to amplify them and show the value in your product and how their pain points in your product connects. So customer service is a good role to transfer into sales. You but you, you're going to be adding on to what you already know. So all of those empathy, communication, listening, problem-solving are all good transfers, transferable skills that are going to do well with with you being able to transfer into the sales space got it.

Speaker 1: 1:01:00

So here's a question. That's on the flip. The script shout out the Queen's flip anyway, so I was. I'm a lurking over there, but they see your story though. They're on IG, so I know you don't watch a lot of TV. However, I did have a question as far as Will be like your, your top three favorite movies.

Speaker 2: 1:01:21

Top three favorite movies. Yes, so want to be kill Bill. Watch out for you. I'd like, actually, I really like. I just really like all of well, most of Quentin Tarantino movies is one of my favorite movie directors. The second would be Sweeney Todd. It's one of my favorite musicals. I know every song on sweetie Todd and it's embarrassing. And then I'm trying to think what will be my third one? Oh, boomerang. It's just one of those 90 classics that you know. You just got a Just just enjoy and just kind of just. I just like everything about it. It just, it just kind of takes me back, even though I was still a baby back then.

Speaker 1: 1:02:03

But I just like that movie that just made me think about Johnny Giel. Did there you go for that movie? Yeah, yeah, the music and and all that. This what I get from what I watch the old stuff and listen to the old music is definitely different. Being a former musician, I'm able to tell why people put in the work they had to, because it wasn't easy to create content back then. Yeah, it's much easier now. So that's why you've seen a little bit of the quality go down. But the, the shows or the movie franchises that stand the test of time is because they took the time to make something great, like I was. Whatever reason, I bought up last night my girl. How's my mom? You know how interesting a Movie of John Q is like nothing like John Q has been done since John Q. No, hasn't, it hasn't and that's like the cool part of like why I was just like like movies or different things, like I don't for whatever reason. Every like when I'm talking to you right now is like I'm gonna see, gonna like Mention some like Wolf on Wall Street or whatever. Like they were selling like crazy on Wolf on Wall Street.

Speaker 2: 1:03:09

Yeah, I like Wolf on Wall Street. It's not my one of my favorite movies, but I mean it's a good film you know to watch, as very Jordan Belfort or how he says it, his axis, jordan Belfort, he, he's a funny, he's a character. I watch him in his YouTube videos sometimes on sales and stuff. He's, he's definitely a funny dude.

Speaker 1: 1:03:32

Yeah, that's another thing too. For me is like, also, like you said, we just getting to other stuff, like what you want to listen to or different things. I listen to like a whole bunch of different stuff. Even when it comes like podcasts, people be surprised. It's like it comes from learning about how to get better at pod and then I have my podcast I listen to. I may listen, like, to some current events, I may listen to some Some stuff from different people like Jordan Peterson or Thomas soul or I've the other day who was it? It was a Huey Newton and I forgot the other guy but it's like just different things that just I pull in to say let me put it out here like this yes, this is a tech, career, business, focus, money Podcast, but it's also gonna be real and I'm gonna do it in a way that my people resonate with it and that's been my goal, and that's what I always strive to do every time I sit down here.

Speaker 2: 1:04:30

Yeah, absolutely Definitely. I think it's good to have a well-rounded Input, and then for me personally, it also depends on what I'm doing in that season. Yeah, you know, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna be doing this, then my input is gonna be mainly focused on things that's feeding that. So, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1: 1:04:50

Cool. So this is another funny question I thought about asking you how would your mom describe what you do for a living? How does she describe it?

Speaker 2: 1:04:59

Oh, I don't know how she would describe it. I don't think she fully understands what I do. I know she, she understands that I do sales. I don't think she understands what it entails and what exactly you know Be to be and stuff. Like she, I don't think she understands that. She just knows that I, I'm in tech and I sell stuff in tech, like so she, she, I think she has an understanding of it but, like like most people who are in the industry, she just know I sell stuff I. She probably thinks it's very techie because I think the last time I explained it to her she was like I don't know if I could do that. That's, I'm not a very technical person. I'm like you don't, you don't have to be it, I don't, I'm not a technical person either, and you don't, you don't have to be, and so you know, maybe she thinks it's more, more complicated than it actually is, but I think she just thinks that you know, I sell stuff in tech. That's probably how she would describe it.

Speaker 1: 1:06:01

Yeah, definitely I got you. I got you on that one. Um. So Now to move away, some of the other tech topics kind of get a little bit more back in the Taylor. So what type of content do you create?

Speaker 2: 1:06:13

Yeah, so I created a lot of personal development content for women when I was doing live coaching. I was my, my niche what has toxic relationships? And helping women to come out of toxic relationships, you know, basically helping them to identify things within you know toxic relationships and also, more so, identified things within themselves that is Maybe toxic and that they need to work on. Just based off my own experience as a woman who's who's been through that. But yeah, now you know, I'm kind of shifting things where y'all still talk about personal fulfillment stuff, but I'm like birthed out on. I'm like for the next five years, I do not want to talk about toxic relationships. I just don't. And then Everybody's talking about it now. So I'm just like I just don't feel like there needs to be another channel about toxic relationships. I just I don't feel like it needs that. We need that right now. And so you know I probably be switching up the content I've been thinking about. You know exactly which direction I wanted to go. Do I want to go just fully tech, you know like, or do I want to have it kind of a more open, like yeah, we could do personal development, but we also are going to talk about Tech and finances and stuff like that, and so it's definitely gonna be some different content coming from me in the future. Right now I'm just kind of figuring out which angle I want to go with it.

Speaker 1: 1:07:37

Yeah, I could. I could see that like for me and I started sound like three years ago, right when the pandemic happened. All you saw was everyone get stream yard and web cams and I got.

Speaker 2: 1:07:47

That's all joking about earlier.

Speaker 1: 1:07:48

Tell me some what. What is the one rings at the table? Was the man one? And? All the nonsense of the copycats of the late Great. You know Kevin Samuels and you know it's been a mess, but a lot of people are finding out like you need substance to last long in the channel, so a lot of those guys are burning out. They don't, they're one trick ponies. They don't really have any good content, so it it doesn't matter. So that's one of the things, too is like you could play to get the views, or you can play the long game and just keep on Getting better at the content and you're gonna find. You know, I'd rather have a thousand people that rock with me every month versus 200,000 people, and only 50 people of those 200,000 rock with me.

Speaker 2: 1:08:30

Exactly, yeah, and that's one of the things I found, even in my content creation, even though I, you know, I do have a genuine, a genuine, I Guess passion for it to help these women. You know, I've actually went through training for it. I'm not I didn't just hop online and was like, oh guys, this is what I want to talk about. But At the end of the day, you know, I think that we go through different stages in our lives and so, as you're going through your journey, sometimes what you started five years ago was like I'm not even that person. No more, that's not. I don't even care for that anymore, not, not on that type of level. And so, for me personally, I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm in tech now. I don't. I'm not saying I don't care about toxic relationships anymore or women who are going through those things or the men who are going through it, but I don't think my voice is needed in that area anymore. And you know, now I kind of want to just shift things and really speak from a place where I'm actually at and using what I've learned in this season to help other people who may want to get into this space or, or you know, whatever it is that I believe that that you know my content would be more beneficial for people Right, and that's why I said, when we start off, like they're gonna be people that watch this that resonate Just with what you said about your journey and they're probably gonna start reaching out to you about that too, just because it's like, oh man, like you live my life, I have people that do that all the time and yeah, that's why, also, I've been just talking to different people.

Speaker 1: 1:10:06

That's the thing about starting their YouTube or their pies or whatever I say. You can bring it up to me, you can bring guests on, but Do your solo episodes, let your let your audience get to know who you are, let them feel you every so often remind the new people where you started from or things you're going through like. Those are the stories. This is similar to a while. A Lot of times you, if you look at like churches, like a lot of times the more popular preachers are the preachers that had a life before preaching. Yeah like because it's interesting, they can tell you different things you can't. If you've never been through anything, how you gonna tell me through it? And it's also one of the things that I think a lot of you ran into with the life coaches. Yeah, you had people like no offense to them, but the roommates, Fees and those like I think they might be younger than me. So I was like you can't really coast these dudes on nothing. Maybe some young guys but nobody else you haven't been through enough. You're too young. You don't have enough skin in the game. Yeah, absolutely it's similar to when people try to Well, you can share your journey with, sometimes when you take, but then if you try to come off as, like you know too much, and I don't even try to come off that y'all been in a decade but it's still things I learned. Yeah but if you have enough skin again, you can't really talk a lot of different things. I've seen it a couple times. Some people go live and I'm looking at the questions they're being asked in their chat and they can't answer it. Why they can't answer it? Because you haven't experienced it, you haven't did enough.

Speaker 2: 1:11:31

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's the better off to go as well, and that's one of the things I felt too. You know, I'm like you know, even though I've been through talks, relationship, I've been married, I've been divorced, I've gotten through the process and so I can help people in that area, but at the same time, I'm like there's still so much more I have to experience. And even with my clients, I was like I can only take them here. This is where it stops, because I can't take them any further than that, because this is where I'm at. So I want to take people further than this, but I got to first get further than that to be able to do it, and so that was another thing. I was like I think I want to pivot, even though I still. That's why I didn't hop into Immediately career coaching people. You know, people break in and then the first thing they do is this is how I got into tech and I'm gonna do your resume, and I'm just like, no, I don't want to do that because I'm still learning, and I want to get a little bit more experience and learn this game a little bit more before I put myself in a position to, you know, not come off as an expert, because I don't think I would never call myself an expert, but to you know, put myself in that position where of authority, where I'm like, hey, you know, I know exactly what I'm doing and I can help you get here, there and or there. And so, you know, my first year I just been focusing on developing myself first, you know, getting myself right first, before I put myself in a position to Try to help other people as you should.

Speaker 1: 1:12:59

As you should because I Fortunate thing about this Grammy game. It's like I said, everybody should be compensated, everybody should make money. But, as just sometimes you know, when it's a money play for people, I don't get me wrong. Yeah, I get paid back. I'm also get paid for my time. I don't really charge people what it should cost to work with me. If I'm helping them with something, yeah so. But you can tell like tell everybody if everything that glitters is, and go like just kind of be mindful and pay attention. Look at somebody's resume, look at what they did. That's one of the biggest things to do. Just look at that, because it's too much kind of fugezy stuff going on out here now.

Speaker 2: 1:13:39

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1: 1:13:41

And I just want everybody. I want everybody to come in, but I also want you to be able to come in and thrive. I don't want you to come in, I fall off.

Speaker 2: 1:13:48

Oh yeah, yeah, cause that's out there. Yeah, I gotta tell you right now, if you don't come in with an expectation, you know cause. You know everybody sells. You know this tech is this cush life and you're just gonna get here and kick your feet up and make your six figures and it's like no. You may eventually get to that point when you put in the, but there's upfront costs for that. So you have to put in some sweat equity. You need to master your skill set, like my first year. Like I said, in tech sells. One of the reasons why I'm not watching TV or why I'm like I'm studying, I'm trying to learn, I'm trying to learn stuff. You know I'm trying to better myself because I want to get to that position and I'm not in a rush to get to six figures position, but I do want to get there. I want to make sure I'm developed so that I can sustain being in that space. And so you know, don't get discouraged. Your first offer is not six figures. It's okay, work your way up. This is one of the fastest career fields where you can get to six figures pretty fast. There's not a lot of jobs I know where you can even get to six figures in six years. Like in other industries, people are getting promoted so slow and I'm like I can't believe you. Like, for example, like my ex-husband, his father has been in a trucking industry for years, like probably like 20 plus years. He was just hitting six figures like five years ago. I'm like, nah, I'm not waiting that long to get to six figures.

Speaker 1: 1:15:25

Yeah especially for a job like that. That's needed and a lot of stress on your body and relationships. No, you gotta pay me for my time.

Speaker 2: 1:15:30

Yeah, so you know tech is a space where you can get. You know you can get there pretty fast, quicker than usual but don't like let social media influencers make you feel bad if you don't get. That. You know in your first year or so.

Speaker 1: 1:15:46

Cool. So here I got some closing questions for you. First one would be who would be like two or three people that you would recommend? People who are interested in getting into tech sales or maybe even being like a sales engineer? Who should they listen or watch on social media so they could get a really good grasp of what that is?

Speaker 2: 1:16:09

There's not a whole lot of people that I watch because I don't trust everybody. So I would say, okay, of course you know tuning in to you because you're one of the people that I've had watched a few of your videos and I'm like he's given pretty solid advice. I would say definitely, Antoine, because he's one of the people who are like actually real, giving you the real spill on everything. He's not selling a bunch of fluff. I'm trying to think, if there's, I think that's you, Antoine. And I would say also Cyrus, because he has a lot of good guests on this show that it diversifies the perspective, so it gives, because I didn't know, like I didn't know, what a scrum master was until he had he recently had a guest and I'm like, oh, that's like that sounds like a pretty dope role that maybe eventually I can transfer into if I get tired of doing sales, and so those are the main people I listen to right now as far as in the tech space, and those are the main people I will probably encourage. There's probably better people out there who has better I don't wanna say better, but there's probably people out there who has other types of content as well, but I just I don't listen to everybody, and so yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:17:30

No, I feel you. I mean, honestly, I have friends in the tech industry, like they got channels like I go through my support, but I really don't just even listen to them like that, because I try to keep how I do things how I do things and not be influenced by what they do. I typically people would be surprised like all the other stuff I actually get inspiration from, like. In a matter of fact, last night I'm watching the R&B Money podcast with Tank and Jay Valentine and I was like Tank and Jay Valentine are me and my God E, but in the music industry Cause I don't really go after who has like a big following I'll find if you do a dope job some of you do, as dope and Rihwan I know the episode will be good and that's what they did. They brought on what's the guy name? Jasper Big Love I got his last name is, but he worked with, like Lloyd Sierra and some other people and it was just like the stories he was talking about was like dope and like how they came up with like body party and everything else, like one of my favorite. Listen y'all. One of my favorite songs all time is body party and it's 10 years old now. That's my jam right there. I might put it on the car when I get in the car.

Speaker 2: 1:18:33

No lie.

Speaker 1: 1:18:35

But no, that's kind of like what I do, like I get inspiration from everything else, because if I came in here and we just had an interview, like he was interviewing for a job, people would not watch this show. It has to be entertaining, like I know one person was like the other day. He was like man, I'm trying to hear this, like get into the show. No, it was my show, bro, wait until I get into the contest, because I was breaking down what I had just did last week about going to the concert and stuff. I was like no. But I also ask you, you have to leave the guests with three things on either bettering themselves or like trying to get into tech sales, or trying to make a career pivot. What would be those three things that you would leave them with?

Speaker 2: 1:19:21

I would say to think about what you want in the next five years. Before you make the pivot or put in effort to make the pivot, ask yourself about what you want to do in these next five years. Are you in this for the long call or do you think you're going to get in here and it's going to? You know you're going to get your money and go, because I think that's going to be something you want to think about, because it's definitely something that you know, because I'm not going to lie. When I first heard about it, that was my initial thought. Like oh, I get my tech money and I'm and I dip and I'm like no, actually this is more of a long game. And then I would say to also think about your why. You know why you're wanting to get into this industry, just because it's the thing that's going to keep you going when things get hard, because, at the end of the day, we are depending on other people to give us an opportunity. Sometimes that can get hard. Sometimes you got to play their game and in those moments you know you want to have something to fall back on and remember why you even started this journey in the first place and I will also say don't make things hard on yourself. Then what it has to be Like. I don't know, maybe it's me, but I definitely have found myself in a habit of picking struggle, like there was obviously an easier way to do things, but I'm just like I don't know. It's just, I think we've been programmed to pick struggle when we don't have to and so like if there's an easier way to do something, like do it. Like don't try to. Just because something is more struggling and harder to do, it doesn't mean it doesn't really mean anything. Like so don't unnecessarily stress yourself or pick struggle when you don't have to. I think that's the three things I'll leave people with.

Speaker 1: 1:21:26

Cool and also I forgot to do this in the beginning. Where can our listeners and our watchers, where can they follow you at what's your socials?

Speaker 2: 1:21:35

Yeah, so you can follow me on. You can connect with me on LinkedIn Just Taylor Taylor Jones, I think it's Taylor Jones on there. And then I do have my YouTube channel, which is Taylor Nicole, and then I have my. I have my Instagram as well, which is Coach Taylor Nicole. But I will say probably do YouTube, because I'm probably gonna be changing stuff only Instagram soon. So I will say, linkedin and YouTube will be the best places to be able to connect with me.

Speaker 1: 1:22:07

Yeah, that's gonna say also, like she's famous, they make fake pages of her. So you're gonna follow her.

Speaker 2: 1:22:13

I'm not famous by any means.

Speaker 1: 1:22:15

You are. They made a fake page of you. You made it. They made one of me like a couple of months ago. So I was like if you get a fake page, maybe I'll do it.

Speaker 2: 1:22:22

Yeah, I guess that's your stamp of approval, I think so.

Speaker 1: 1:22:26

That's why I gotta go ahead and just pay for the blue check mark so people know what it's mean. I was just. I thought about like I'm naturally like a silly person as much as I try to be serious on here, and I thought about drumline, when you're talking about the three things, and you're talking about something like it being an easy way and being struggling, and I just thought about like hey, remember the last, what's the last rule of the rule. But yeah, he was like stay ahead, stay ahead of the game. They're like you don't read this rule but your head will be shaved. Yeah, but that's just a silly way of telling y'all. Like to really put the work in. Know what you're doing, know what you're getting yourself into. Ask questions, have coffee meetings. Do your own due diligence before you get into a role. Don't just chase a role cause you think the salary's high, see if it fits your personality type. A lot of people do roles that do not fit their personality type and that's one of the reasons why they have issues. But this has been another episode of the textual talk Wyoming Hills HD. We always keep it real, we always keep it 4K HD and until next time let's stay textual and we out.