The Fastest Way To Get Promoted (Career Cheat Codes)

22:55That's what I'm recording on right now, by the way. And you could be DSLR quality from your iPhone, if that's all you have. If you want to get one better, just get a light. right like a light off amazon that's 50 bucks and that app will set you in the top one percent of people at work in terms of how you look when you show up do that and have also buy a podcasting mic uh your mic can be uh you know a yeti a blue yeti microphone if you need it even better would be these like sure microphones you just just look good and sound good because like no matter how good your ideas are, if it's wrapped up in a crap sandwich, it's going to just come across poorly.

23:35And it's the digital equivalent of dressing good. And I think people really underestimate this. I think you made this like a rule at your company, right? I try to make it a rule and I'll get really tactical. I'm using a Shure and I'm traveling right now. And this is my travel kit. A Shure MV7 USB mic, that's$200, an iPhone with a$50 camo subscription and$150 Elgato Key Light. That's my setup when I travel. So if you think this looks good enough, that's what it is. Yeah, it's going to be better than most people's like up the nose shot with the crappy audio and like, you know, sitting in a closet somewhere.

24:11So try on that. Alright, I have another one for you unless you got one you want to do. Well, Furcon actually is a great example of this and a few other people really did a good job at this. I think that when you get into a group, whether it's work or any other type of group, oftentimes, the most confident person is not usually the smartest person, but the most confident person wins. And I think confidence is displayed in a way of saying things like, this is the path we're going to go down. This is what we're going to do. I have a 60 % chance certainty that this is actually going to work. My logic is this, this and this.

24:49But this is the answer. At least this is the answer for us to try. And I think that at a company, when you work with a small company like any company I've run, you work with the CEO or the owner. At a larger company, it'll go up to the owner somehow or the CEO, but it still matters with managers and VPs and shit like that. But the confident person that says, this is the way and they dictate the way and they explain their reasoning and they're confident about it and you start believing in them, you still have to be right more than you're wrong. But the most confident people, I think, typically succeed the most.

25:22I agree. I'll give you two things. One, the thing you just described is like, I think it's called the McKinsey pyramid principle. You aware of this? No. So basically, most people get communication wrong inside of a company because they bury the lead. So what they'll normally do is they'll say, beginning, middle, end, like a story. And in the end is the conclusion. The end is the takeaway of what we should do. It's what we decided, whatever. But busy people inside companies, which are most of the leaders inside companies, they don't like that format. They want the opposite. What they want is to say, my recommendation is we should do this for these three reasons.

26:03Number one, number two, and number three. And I believe those three reasons because we have evidence underneath this. This we do not have evidence for, but it's a reversible decision. And this third thing, blah, blah, blah. You stack the main conclusion first, and then you add a pyramid underneath. you support it with your supporting arguments. And that's just a simple communication thing to flip. Another communication thing to flip that I learned was if you want to become a more clear communicator, use the what, why, so what framework. Emmett from Twitch taught me this. So basically it's what happened or what's going to happen.

26:39So if it's past looking, what happened? If it's forward looking, what we're going to do? Why it happened or why we're going to do it? And the last one is so what? So let's just give an example. What happened is the metrics, let's say. Revenue is down 10 % this month. Why? Because last month we did this extra promotion, so we kind of knew it would artificially inflate last month's revenue. This month is actually normal. If you look at the overall trend line, nothing to worry about here. So what? So we're going to continue doing this, and actually we're going to consider doing those extra promotions every other month because they seem to provide a boost or whatever.

27:18You get the idea. What, why, so what is a generically useful template or outline. You can write that on your paper before you figure out what are you going to say in this email or how are you going to write this document. Just write what, why, so what, and you should be able to bullet point under that. And then that's 80 % to 90 % of the material is already done at that point. And I find what helps is if you put a confidence level in there. Because a lot of times people think, well, if you're confident, you're saying that there's a 99 or 100 % chance that whatever you say is going to happen is going to happen, you shouldn't do that.

27:50You should say, you should be really conservative and say 65%, 70%. I'm fairly certain. Or sometimes you're like, I actually think there's a 30 % chance that this works. But if it does work, the outside returns are quite huge. And if it doesn't work, it's reversible in these ways. And so I think you need a little bit of a... I don't know how you would say it. An easy landing if you fail. Superstars do three things. Number one, they think in probabilities, not certainties. That's what you just described. The second thing is that they manage expectations, which is the second thing you just said, which is you don't need to over-promise and under-deliver.

28:27In fact, under-promise and over-deliver is a better mindset. And I remember one time going into a meeting, and this is something I learned from my dad. We were going to a big partnership pitch meeting, and we thought they have this thing, and with our technology, they're going to get this huge yield, this huge result. And the result is like 100 times better than their current thing. So I was like, oh, slam dunk. Put that on the slide, baby. 100 times better. And we go into the meeting and my dad puts up the slide and I noticed that he's changed it. And it only says three times better. And I'm like, dude, you messed up.

29:03Like, what happened? Why did you do that? He's like, did you see their faces about three times better? They were over the moon. that other stuff is now my dry powder like I can beat if I could beat the three times even better if I said a hundred times and we came in at 80 times better it would be seen as we did not deliver on what we promised and so you know forget the exact numbers here the principle holds true which is only sell to the amount you need to sell that like gets them to agree to green light the thing or take action but don't over promise beyond that even if you think it's capable because you'd always rather beat your numbers Beating your numbers is how you exceed expectations.

29:43And it makes you trust them more. And so here's an example. So I'm looking at the deck now. So Google, whoever's listening, you guys can Google Uber Seed Deck. So in 2008, Uber was just getting started. They're raising only$200 ,000. And on slide 20, they have a deck or a slide that says potential outcomes. And they say, best case scenario becomes a market leader with over a billion dollars in annual revenue. Realistic scenario gets 5 % of the top cities. and we make around$20 or$30 million a year in profit. Worst case, we stay a 10-car, 100-client services business and just save some time for San Francisco-based executives.

30:17Versus when you see a slide deck from a pitch and everything is up to the right, you're like, dude, I don't trust you now because you are saying something outlandish like this. And you're saying it with a huge high degree of certainty. And so, yeah, anyway, I'm big on the confidence thing. On the confidence thing is people think confidence comes from answers. No, confidence comes through asking intelligent questions. Any leader knows that you could tell a person's quality of thinking by the quality of their questions. And it always stands out. If somebody asks you a question that's on point or breaks the frame of how you're thinking about things, that person always stands out in a meeting, even though they didn't deliver some very boastful, confident conclusion.

31:01And so an example of this would be, you're in a meeting and it's kind of a messy, it looks like options A and B both suck. Instead of just saying, no, we need to do A or no, we need to do B, somebody who asks a different question that's like, what would an easy solution look like here? Hey, what's the simple thing we're missing? I'm just going to ask this out loud. Let's see if there's an answer because if there is, that might be quite valuable to us right now. Or we've been saying this thing, just want to say this out loud. Is that true? Do we have the data to support that? like somebody who's questioning assumptions or breaking frames with their questions or that says, you know, we're trying to solve this problem.

31:42It feels like we're solving it from scratch. We're not the only ones who have this problem. How do other people solve this? Or how have we solved this in the past? What's worked for us? And anybody who's asking questions like that that are going to cut to the answer faster, you stand out. That's a different way of showing confidence versus just saying, me, me, me, I have the answer. Dude, the one question that I love that all my employees hate is they'll give this 12-month plan or something. I'm like, yeah. How do we do this in four weeks? That question is my favorite question. Some of the best people, they frame that question nicely.

32:15They say this guy Florian I used to work with, he would always say this. He'd be like, I'm going to say something. You can beat me up if you think this is a terrible idea. Feel free to beat me up, but I just want to say it. And then he'll say the thing. And it's such a disarming way of bringing up an idea that might be counter to the way the flow is going or whatever, because you're always like, oh, Florian, don't worry, we're not going to beat you up about this idea, but he would say that, right? Or this other guy, Dan, he would do this thing. He's now the CEO of Twitch, and he would do this thing in meetings where he'd say, he'd slow everybody down.

32:48He'd be like, you know, it's... One thing we could say is A, B, and C. He'd lay out an argument real quick. He's like, it's one thing to say this. It's another thing if we were going to say, you know, D, E, F. And he would just like frame it so slowly for everybody. Because usually it's the person who can kind of like synthesize the arguments. Like what I'm hearing you're saying is A, B, and C. I just want to make sure that it's, is it A, B, and C and not actually D, E, and F? And the person who would bring that clarity to the meeting was always like the essential person, right? They're the person who everybody thinks that they're on the way out because they actually help you, you know, figure out the solution where it felt like everybody was just talking in circles.

33:29What, uh, you want to do one or two or three more? Yeah. Okay. Here's an easy one. Let's say you're inside of a company today, but you want to go start a company someday. You need to start creating your own version of the minus list, which is who are the five most interesting people inside this company, the people that you would want to recruit later on. What I did was I just, I said at the beginning, I said, while I'm here at this job, here's what I want out of this. By the time I leave these doors, I want to have the following. I said, and I wrote down a list. One of them was like, I want to learn one or two things about leaving a company that I don't know today because these people have managed bigger teams and do it better than I'm sure that I do it.

34:07So I want to at least have one or two key things that I can take away as a manager. Number two, I want to have the respect of the CEO. I want him to be able to say, dude, if you leave here and you tell me you're going to go start a company, I want him to want to write the first check. I think that would just be a signal that I did well when I was here. Would Emmett do that for you? Yeah, he actually slacked me one time. He was like, hey, I was out of the blue. He basically slacked me that exact same thing. He was like, I wish we'd be able to keep you forever. I don't think that's going to happen.

34:35If you ever do decide to do something, I'd love to back you in that. And I was like, oh, man, what a compliment. Thank you. That's actually, I showed him actually. I was like, that was on my list of things. I said, I want it out of this experience. So that's a cool full circle moment. The third one is, I said, I want to walk out of here with five people, five more people in my talent Rolodex that I could reach out to if I ever needed to hire. and that's what I did. I was like, oh, this girl in data science, massively underrated. She's the real one who delivers the work. She's kind of junior here, but man, she would be somebody I would poach right away.

35:08Or this guy over here on the sales team, God, that guy was smooth. If I ever have a thing for sales, I know who to contact. And actually right now with one of our new companies, I'm trying to fill a role. And those are the people I went to first to be like, hey, I have no idea if you're available, but I made this list before of who are the five people I would love to work with someday and you were on it. And hey, that day is here. What are you up to now? And let's chat. And so that's, I think, another good thing if you ever want to start a company. Just pay attention to who are the hitters here because your talent Rolodex is what kind of becomes a limiting factor as you try to build new companies.

35:41I'm sure you have people that you'd love to speed dial and bring on board to a new thing. And I think you did this with Hampton, right? I noticed there's some people there that were at the hustle because that's the experience you had. Yeah, I think that you actually asked... Was it you who said something like a really good question to ask yourself is, if you're starting your... Let's say your thing's only going okay. If you were starting it again, you'd have to ask yourself, would I hire the same people and do it the same way? And for many cases, you say, no, I would change this, this, and this.

36:12And then your advice to them was like, well, just fucking do that right now. Yeah. But the other answer is, okay, well, when you do it again, now you have your list. I think in the mafia, they use the phrase and then succession kind of stole the phrase where they say like, oh, he's a serious person. And a serious person means you call them hitters. But in the mafia and the mob, I read all these books on it and they say, oh, he's serious. He's serious. Yeah, that guy's serious. And so they'll say, he's not a serious person. You don't want to mess with that person. So you want to find serious people.

36:44I have two other little ones, fast ones. One is find a paper cut problem. So I've noticed that a lot of people who do well in companies, they do this in the first two weeks when they join, they find something that's just been an annoyance that nobody's ever fixed or nobody's got to because it's not that important. It's never the most important thing. And they just go clean that up voluntarily. I call this the paper cut problem. Like, what's the thing that's just been giving us paper cuts? It's kind of annoying, but you're not bleeding out. You're not dying. You don't have to go to the hospital.

37:11And if somebody fixed it, you'd be like, dude, thank you for doing that. It would actually stand out a lot. I know several people that did this. They go to a company and they immediately identify like, oh, here's some annoyance that two people have referenced. I bet this annoys everybody. And actually, I think if I just spent one Saturday working on this, I could fix it. And they did that and they just boost their stock so much. When I was in seventh grade, I had a job at a bakery and I would clean the floors and wash dishes. And there was a corner or there was a shelf where we'd have to put these dry dishes.

37:44and the shelf was broken. And we hired another janitor to work with me. And I remember I had worked there for like eight months and this fucking shelf was always broken. It was a pain in the ass. And within the first week, this guy fixed that shelf. And I immediately thought, that's the way to do things. You did it right. You did it right. And by the way, you get rewarded for doing the things you didn't have to do. If you just do your job, that's called your job. You do not get extra recognition or reward or any kind of bonus points for doing your job. So by definition, you have to find something that is beyond your job or doing your job beyond what was asked if you really want to get this to stand out.

38:22It's a very simple, obvious principle. But take that and make it actionable by like, go look for it, right? As soon as you start looking for it, you'll see it, right? It's a thing that the guy who's been there for eight months has been ignoring. He's become, he's just accepted it. It's become a blind spot for them. But for a new person, if you're noticing, you'll see it right away and you just go fix that thing and you get so much. Yeah, this guy's head janitor now. I mean, it worked out. I could be you. But honestly, if you're going to be a janitor, be the head janitor. Be the best janitor. Be the best goddamn janitor anybody's ever seen.

38:57I got one practical one and then one fun one. The practical one is the other problem you want to find is the A-plus problem. At any given time, in any company, there is the A-plus problem. It is the thing that's keeping the exec team up at night. They're worried about it. what I did was I just found the A plus problem and I would only work on that. I would just work on that. You know, I would do my, my main job kind of like, you know, 70 % is good or 50 % is good or sometimes 0 % is good. I would just put it on pause because honestly it didn't even matter relative to the A plus problem. And, uh, you know, I took a little more risk than most people cause I didn't care if I ever got fired.

39:31Like it was, you know, thank you, please fire me, invest my shares. That would be a dream. by the way we had a friend who is at a company and he goes there was layoffs this week at our company and sadly I was not impacted

39:48exactly so find the 8 plus problem and work on it I remember I think I've told this story before I was at a company and basically a competitor was like attacking them and like stealing their top customer basically and I figured well that's probably the A plus problem is probably the thing everybody's thinking about. And so I just did some analysis, wrote up a two-page doc, and I sent it to the CEO. I was like, hey, I have no idea who's working on this, but I was curious. So I dug in and here's what I found. It immediately got like text introed into a group chat. I was like, hey, Sean's in on this now.

40:21And I think that that's really what you want, right? You want to be working on the interesting thing because that's what the highest caliber people are doing. It's where the highest impact is. You might as well. You only have so many hours in the day. You might as well work on the higher impact stuff with the most interesting high caliber people, that's how you get better. What's your last fun one? The last fun one is you got to create a brand for yourself. So like you have a little story, right? There's all these moments inside companies where it's like you do introductions or you're at some team off site.

40:49And you have two choices. You're either going to blend in or you're going to stand out. The best way to stand out is to be yourself. But the way to be yourself is to just remove the filter. What was your brand? So I think there's been a couple. Like when I was at Monkey Inferno, just to give you a sense of this, right? I'm 24 years old. I'm the youngest person in the company. I'm the newest hire in the company. And six months later, I got named CEO. Prodigy. That's pretty good. Pretty good, right? And the way to do that is you actually, you know, you make an impact, but you also got to build some sort of brand for yourself.

41:21And so mine was, I was going to be sort of like, the action, like basically just like take massive action on everything. So whatever the thing was, I would be like, all right, cool. I'm going to take action on it. A, immediately. B, I'm going to do the shit that nobody else wants to do. I'm going to go further. Oh, we got to do this or we don't know if people will like this. Cool, give me the prototype. I'm going to go talk to some people. I would go to the mall and I would talk to people and I'd get feedback and I'd come back with written feedback. It was just the shit that nobody else really wanted to do and it just built this thing.

41:49I'm going to consistently take action. I'm going to have a higher bias for action than anybody else. And I would talk about that. I'd be like, yeah, I don't really know. I remember this one guy did this intro and he said this thing, this guy stood up and he goes, I don't know anything about art or politics. I don't know anything. He goes, I don't know anything about art. I don't know anything about politics. Hell, I don't even know where the remote is in my house. The remote for the TV is in my house. But the one thing I know is how to structure deals. And today I'm going to tell you about how to structure deals.

42:19And I was like, wow, what an intro. What a fantastic intro. It always stood out to me. And I thought, you know what? As much as your brand is going to be that you're good at X, Y, and Z, you could say how bad you are or how little you know about you know these other three things and just be honest about it and almost poke fun at yourself so i would tell people like look i have the least experience of anybody in this room that's obvious i have never worked on any of this stuff before i don't know how to code i don't know how to design but i'm gonna make myself useful the way the way i'm gonna do that is it seems like what you guys need is help actually getting your product into people's hands and getting feedback quickly and actually iterating from there.

42:54So I'm going to go crazy on that. What you guys are going to get in the next six weeks is me going crazy on that. Sound good? And they're like, great. It's like Warren Buffett says, look for partners who have a high IQ who are ethical and have a lot of energy. And I did the same thing where I was like, well, I actually don't know if I'm high IQ. Two out of three, ain't bad. Yeah. I don't know. I definitely am ethical and I have a shit ton of energy. So my wheels are spinning fast. If you guys just want to put me in the right direction, I'll go ahead and the car will run and it'll run quickly and I'll get you what you need.

43:25I had the exact same brand as you. And when we got acquired, I was like, hey, I'm a startup guy inside this big company. I'm a startup guy. I've only ever worked in startups. I don't know anything about a big company. Honestly, I'm going to probably make some mistakes that are things that are obvious that you should do in a big company. But the thing I hope to bring to the table is I'm just going to keep working the way I know how as an entrepreneur. I'm just going to just do that here. And you guys tell me what parts of that are working for you guys or what are not, right? That's part of the brand.

43:51But the other part is like stand out a little bit. I remember sitting in an offsite and it's like, how about everybody just share how things are going? And it was like person one said this boring thing about they just immediately went into work mode. They were like, here's what I'm doing. Here's the problem I'm having. Here's what I'm doing. Here's the problem I'm having. I have this employee who's doing this. And everybody was just kind of bitching and moaning and telling a very bland story. And I just decided when it's going to come my term, I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth, but it's not going to be that.

44:19And so I just told a story that was more funny. It was poking fun at myself about something that I had done recently and a mistake that I had made. So instead of blaming my team or whatever, I was like, here's where my head's at. Because they weren't saying, give us a team update. They were just saying, let's all be present. Just share what's on our mind, how you're feeling right now. And so I did that. And that stood out. At the break, everybody was like, dude, I love that story. And the lesson there is really take a bit of a risk and don't take yourself too seriously inside companies. because I think there's a tendency to try to button up and blend in.

44:54And I would say that's not what the best people do. I don't think that's how the best people act. We have this guy at Hampton named Doug. And Doug is a very stereotypical engineer. So he's very black and white. And because of that, he's done a very good job of just being honest constantly. And so if someone's trying to bullshit me, I'll just be like, what's Doug think? Doug, what do you think? And he'll just be like, that's stupid. He won't say it that way. He'll be like, I don't think that's the right way. I think this is the right way for these reasons. Or he'll be like, I don't exactly understand branding.

45:28But I think that a lot of people like this, this, this, and this. And they like it for these reasons. Therefore, that way is or is not the right way. And I just always want to know, what's Doug think about this? He's very analytical. And he's very honest. And he doesn't... Because he's like a normal engineer. He doesn't exactly understand what's hurting my feelings or what isn't hurting my feelings. And I love that about him. I love that. I always want Doug's in my life. People who just don't bullshit me and they'll say something like, that's stupid. That's not stupid. And I appreciate that. That's his brand.

45:57Is that the pod? That's the pod. So those are our tips. How to become, I don't know, a superstar inside of a company. How to stand out. How to make a name for yourself inside of a company. And if you're listening on iTunes or Spotify, go to the YouTube and A, subscribe because we're about to cross 400 ,000. And B, comment other questions that you have for the new segment Questionable Advice. If we get any good questions, we'll do it. Like you said, the YouTube. That's how my dad says it too. That's cool. Go to the YouTube. When I hold my phone and take a picture, I use two hands as well.

46:36I'm trying to post a TikTok a day and I love doing it. I saw what you said. That was great. Every time I post a TikTok, I feel like I reverse my age by one month. I'm just getting younger. just by TikTok by TikTok. If you want to be young, you do as the young people do. You got to like, and you're squinting your eyes. You're going to hold your phone with two hands and you're going to like look down on it. That's how it feels right now. Turn the damn thing off.

47:03All right, that's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

47:19Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

47:49If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.