Episode Transcript
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:16
Once upon a time, there were 10s of 1000s of makers struggling every day they built for hours and hours but didn't chip and didn't earn enough income. One day, the no code wealth podcast came to help them find the way because of this, makers became founders and live the lives they deserve. Because of that founders live lives of abundance, freedom, and creativity. That's what I'm really all about. Hello, my name is Aziz and from being a poor boy born to a single mother in North Africa, with no opportunities, just sheer hard work, to failing multiple startups, yet learning a whole lot to barely escaping alive the war in Ukraine, even living as an illegal immigrant. I've lost everything twice. And now, I'm rebuilding my life one more time. 1% a day sharing the wisdom of luminaries I've interviewed on this podcast from Google executives, Goldman Sachs, the Financial Times, Forbes, Technology Council, World Economic Forum, Harvard University, and even a priest from the Vatican church. Everyone is welcome, here. So let's begin. My guest today is Johnny Walker. Johnny is the executive career and job seeking coach for six and seven figure earners. Johnny Walker is one of the few guarantees and online coaching. He is the creator of the executive Edge program and the seven steps to six figures system. These systems help executives and high earners get their ideal job faster for more money without having to sell themselves and have more fulfilling careers. Johnny, how are you today?
Johnny Walker 2:14
Abdulaziz? I'm very well. And my normal answer when people ask me how are you? is fine, because that's what British people say. But the answer is too dull for me. So I then came up with an answer, which is how are you I'm tall, dark, handsome, and loaded, which works fine. When you're on a podcast like I am right now. Not so much when all the whole world moved on to zoom and we could see each other. And everyone knew that I was none of those things. But ego, I'm fine.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 2:41
Thank you. I love how you're breaking the fatik speech. And beginning with something something creative. And therefore I'll give you even more opportunities to say something unique, which is these days, what seems to be a topic or a misconception, a myth or a problem when it comes to executive career coaching or people seeking higher paid jobs that you seem to notice and try to change their mindsets, or at least know is the wrong thing to do. And they're banging their heads against the wall again, and again. And again, the number
Johnny Walker 3:18
one problem that I help executives with is the concept of not selling yourself to an employer, but instead getting bought by them. Now Abdulaziz, you'll appreciate this, that's when you sell yourself to somebody, you don't know that they want that sales pitch. So some of the time it's not wanted, it's not desired. And in actual fact, is interrupting that person and is annoying them. And if you're a senior hiring manager, who's people, the people that work for you earn in excess of 100,000 pounds, so you're very senior, then you don't want an unsolicited sales pitch. Hi, I'm great. Hire me CV attached. It's just annoying. So it's the wrong process. If you want to hire someone, you'll go looking and you'll speak to your network, you'll get HR to look on LinkedIn for you. You might speak to an external recruiter. And at that point in time, you're engaged with that process and that no other time are you. So if you're an executive job seeker, getting bought is the process the hiring manager wants to engage. The second thing is that when you try and sell yourself, you can only sell yourself to the vacancies that you can see, because you can't see the other vacancies. Whereas if you're a hiring manager of a vacancy, and you haven't told anyone that that that you have that vacancy, that you have that job opening, then you can look at the entire marketplace and choose. And so if you're an executive job seeker selling yourself, is by definition limiting the size of the jobs market that you can access, whereas getting bought opens up all of the vacancies including the ones you can't see. And thirdly and this is The really, really big one is that when a salesperson is involved in a transaction, not just getting sold into a vacancy, but all sales, if they think that what they've got matches your needs 75% Or better, then they'll take a swing at selling it to you, because that's what they do for a living, they're a professional salesperson, that's fine. However, when you remove the salesperson from the equation, and transfer the responsibility for the transaction to the buyer, and ask them to drive the transaction, then actually they set the bar a lot higher. And that's because salespeople are trying to make money out of the transaction. So they want the bar set as low as possible. But buyers are not trying to make money out of the transaction, buyers are actually trying to solve a problem. And they would like the integrity of that problem to be as high as possible. And so if you're an executive job seeker and you see a vacancy online, you think, Well, I can do 75% of that, I'll learn the rest. I'm a talented individual, I'll give that a go. That's probably all true. But it doesn't impress the hiring manager, the hiring manager doesn't look at your details and think, Oh, that's a 75% match, I'll waste two hours of my life interviewing someone that I'm never going to hire. Instead, they'll look at a 95% match, we go, Oh, who's this Abdulaziz guy, that's a really close match to what we want. Let's get him in for a chat. And so this, already, you're being interviewed for vacancies, you're much closer match to that whole concept of not selling yourself and getting bought. Because it's the right process for the hiring manager, it dramatically increases the size of the jobs market. And when you get the buyer to drive the transaction, the quality of the result is much higher, which all of which improves your job seeking success is something that virtually all executives look at me like, I don't get it. If I don't sell myself, how am I going to get a job, you know, it's marketing, getting bought is much, much more powerful than sales. And leveraging that to help them out is something that most of the senior people that I help out, don't understand, because they're 45 to 55 years of age, and the early part of their career, the internet did not exist. And so that intuitive understanding to market yourself to be present on a platform just wasn't there.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 7:10
Thank you. I couldn't agree with you more. I know literally, like going to sell yourself puts you in a subservient kind of role where you will get negotiated down to the smallest penny or whatever, as well as being treated as if you've been handed a favor by getting that job or compared to when people come to you. But then I will challenge a few things only to dig deeper and get to know what you're talking about more. You mentioned specifically that when you're trying to sell yourself to someone, you don't really know what's appealing to them, what they're looking for, whether they're interested, etc. So if you are marketing yourself, and rather than selling yourself, how do you know that you are saying the right things that will make those hiring senior hiring manager thing? Oh, my God, he's a perfect fit for us. because of two reasons. One, people you're too close to yourself. So basically, you don't see your skills or traits, or what makes you special in a way that makes you stand out like that, as well as when you're dealing with social media, there is a level of that all media makes you smaller, and therefore you need to aggrandize yourself a bit more. And some people are not comfortable with it. They don't know what's the limit, they think, Well, if I go too much, and you become a show man, even a little bit that will be repulsive to hiring managers. But either way, how would you know what would be most appealing to them, especially for jobs that they're not even announcing yet. So
Johnny Walker 8:49
you're when you sell yourself, you're selling yourself to a person, when you market yourself, you're marketing yourself to the whole market. So when you market yourself, you don't have to work out what it is you're marketing yourself to. Because you're not marketing yourself to anything in particular, what you do have to understand very clearly is what about yourself is marketable. So it's not about trying to fit a job. It's about announcing to the world what it is that you do well, and allowing those people who want that today to form a queue at your door and everybody else to ignore you because they're just not buying that today, which is fine. But that way you get a shortlist of qualified buyers, who have already heard the message that you may be, you know, let's say let's take a real real world example. So let's say I'm the head of it for a large company and my company wants to grow but operations aren't able to cope with more business because they just don't have enough processing capacity. And so the CIO comes to me and says, Can you help me put some it into operations so the operations can process more work and get the gain from sales and marketing and product development. And our revenues can grow. And the CEO looks to me and says this is a good idea, have some budget. And so my job isn't actually to be the CIO. That's my job title. But my job is I help businesses enable revenue growth by increasing capacity and operations. And there's normally a sum of money that that operates that I approach that maybe I'll work for a billion dollar business, and I can grow up by 100 million, maybe I'll work for a $10 million business, and I grow it by 1 million. But there's normally some sense of scale there. So if I went to market with that message and said, I help sub $20 million businesses enable revenue growth of plus or minus a million dollars by increasing operational capacity, then the market can decide for themselves whether I'm relevant to them. And the ones that do they will that's us, we're a small business that wants to increase our revenues and are constrained by operational capacity right now. And we know if the tech is an answer, and that's a tech guy that might be useful to us, then they can come to me and say, hi, we don't we've never spoken to you before. But we've got a problem that you appear to be able to solve, can you come and talk to us, please. And that makes me highly relevant to them without me even knowing who they were, without even knowing that they had a vacancy? And that's the difference in marketing and sales. So it's not about what do they want? I'm trying to work that out. It's about what do you do, and allowing the few people in the marketplace who want that, to contact you. So that's that little piece dealt with? I think the whole social media, you know, showman piece, you're right about that I would agree with, you know, senior executive wants to be a social media guru, no social, no senior executive wants to be putting on a show. And nor should they, they're too senior to professional, there's a lot of gravitas in their job, and they should stay professional. And so you don't need to be a social media guru, to use a professional platform like LinkedIn, for example, to just talk about your professional experience. Hello, there. My name is Abdulaziz. I'm a CIO. And one of the things I've helped some of my previous employers do is grow their revenues by increasing operational capacity. And some of the challenges involved in that are, you know, resistance stakeholders and winning over hearts and minds, making sure that we're not overspending and managing expectations, and also that we don't disrupt operations more than is necessary, there is going to be some change, and communicating that to them well in advance so that they implement that change effectively and get the game. And so we can grow our revenues as important that is not putting on a show, that is just professional commentary on how you did your job, no one is going to transform their business by listening to that it's a 32nd 92nd long thing on LinkedIn, and no one's going to go right, that's great. They're still there, but they aren't going to get to hear you. And that's the reason why you do the content. You're visible for who you are. And I'll talk a little bit about discrimination in a minute. But when you do content, it doesn't have to be a lot. Certainly, it doesn't have to be colossally entertaining. When you're an executive job seeker. It just has to be professional, then there is a bunch of the marketplace will say, Yeah, we don't need that right now. There'll be a bunch of marketplaces say, We don't like you. But there's a small percentage of the marketplace go, that's exactly what we need. And I quite like the way you said that, could you come in and talk to us? And those are all the people you need? You don't need anyone else
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 13:14
think you this is gonna be again, even more fun, because I'm full of questions. And I'll begin with one, which you already mentioned that you don't need a lot of content. But that could be an objection for senior executives or executives who deserve or feel at least in themselves entitled, because there is a lot of it is mindset to be highly paid. They say, Look, I don't have time to be spending on LinkedIn, on social media marketing myself, I'm already overwhelmed with overworking whatever for pennies. I want to get more but I don't know how much time I can dedicate to this. So what will be your answer to that
Johnny Walker 13:57
you put the effort in, you get the result. If you sit there and think the world's going to come to you, when they can't even see you, then you're going to be mistaken and get overtaken. And this is where it stings a bit. There are people who are less qualified, less knowledgeable, less experienced, who are going to get the better job and be better paid, because they were better marketed. So you get to choose who you are. But once you've decided you don't want to market yourself, you don't want to put the effort in even if it is just professional content with gravitas, then prepare to be overtaken by people who don't deserve it. And that's gonna sting a bit. So you get to choose.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 14:33
I agree 100% with that and to ask you then a bit more. There is this notion that when you add gravitas and status and professionalism to yourself, you're literally adding intangible value to the position and to the company. Even though as you said, someone selling themselves they could have the same skills as someone who the company is coming to but the other person is more are highly regarded. And therefore they will get paid more just for who they are or their positioning. Can you speak a bit more about that? How intangible things that don't directly affect maybe the end result. But it's your reputation somehow, that will make you get more paid. And it's I don't know, the human brain or the human psyche, or societies who, like have this tendency to pay more for people who they view as having status,
Johnny Walker 15:33
there are certain markets around the world that are ego driven, the Middle East is one. And connections to the royal family in the Middle East will get you ahead of other people who are better than you. But generally speaking, particularly in the western economies, which are the ones I look after, they're less concerned about your status, although, who doesn't want to hire the guy who also wrote the book about it. So maybe there's a little bit of that there. But mainly what they're looking at is something else, which is a demonstration of empathy. I don't want to get too woowoo about this. But let's say I've got a job. And I've got a job description. And I put that out, and people apply for it and their CVs match the job description. So they're worth an interview. And they all come in. And my job requires you to have a BSc in widgets, I want you to have knowledge of widget 2.0, I want you to have 10 years experience of widgets, and you are experienced as a widget manager, and everybody comes in and they all meet this criteria, which is normal for an executive interview. Yes, I've got the degree. Yes, I've got the knowledge. Yes, I've got the experience. Yes, I've got the qualifications. And so there's not much to choose between them all. And they're all going to be roughly the same cost to me, except this one candidate who comes in and sits down and matches the job description there or there abouts. Maybe not quite as qualified as everyone else. Maybe they don't have quite as much experience. Maybe they've got nine years instead of 10 years, maybe they've got knowledge or widget 1.9 Rather than widget 2.0. But you know, there are there abouts. But they're also slightly more expensive. Oddly, despite the fact they've got less experienced and less qualifications. They're also about 10% more expensive than the other candidates. And they sit in the chair and they say this, I will help enable your revenue growth by increasing operational capacity. So that you get an additional million dollars, that guy gets the job, because it's often the executive interview isn't about the job seeker. It's about the hiring manager and their problem and their pain and being able to solve that the how of it, that that's less interesting to them, but the why of it revenues. And the how much of it, in this case, a million quid. That's super interesting. And so you can if you can achieve the result, if you can solve the problem. And at the scale, that that problem exists, the pain, then you're going to get offered the job even though you're 10%, less qualified temps and less knowledgeable and 10% more expensive. So that empathy, listening to the hiring manager and asking better questions of the hiring manager, what's the big challenge faced in the business right now? How's that impacting your departmental function? How does that manifest itself in your job? How does that make, how does that make you feel? Once you've got the answer to those, then you can be a solution to that. And the hiring manager writes, I get to solve my problem, I get to be pain free, I get to be the other side of this journey and be happy. I want this candidate that Tim said more extra, I don't care, let's hire them. And at an executive level, there's a bit of flex there on the pay. But it's not about the candidate. It's about the hiring manager that is listening, which is you know, a basic component of empathy. And you find that empathy is one of those human traits that is impossible to replicate with AI. Because it requires a human input to respond to. And until you get that input, you don't know what the response is going to be. So if you can bring empathy to bear upon your job, in terms of not just getting it, but also how you perform it, you're going to be virtually irreplaceable, from a technology perspective. So it's also a defensive maneuver, as well as a very assertive way of getting what you want the job. You can be empathetic about your boss, you know what they say you're in the job. And you go to your boss, and you say, can I have $10 million to do a project of some description? And the boss is like, why do you want it? Well, you know, we're going to buy some technology to help us out. And it will make things smoother. I don't know whether I want to spend $10 million on that it's a bit nefarious, I'm sure the pitch is gonna be a bit better than that. But if you said it'll help us enable revenue growth by increasing operational capacity, and I say how much revenue growth and you say, well, it's going to be about $50 million. And I say, right, what's our margin on $50 million? We make around 40%. So let's call that $20 million of profit. And what's the sort of shelf life of that improvement and probably need to refresh in three years time? So three years time to 20 million is 60 in exchange for 10 million now. I'm sold, but it's about Solving the revenue problem rather than a technology problem. Nobody cares about the process, they care about the results. That's why you always sell sausages with the sizzle and not the ingredients, because now wants to see how sausages are made. That's disgusting. But they all love the smell. So it's about sending the result, not the not the process. Everything.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 20:20
Thank you. I really love what you're sharing right now. At the same time, some people might think look, that is more needed when they come to you, when you can ask them those questions, have the empathy, etc. And they might say, Look, I have been on LinkedIn I have been posting, I've been doing whatever, nobody contacted me, I'm not growing, I don't know what to do. So what kind of content is the most conducive to you getting approached for a job? Do you put one of those green things of open to work by which is very bad probably for your positioning? How would even people know that you're open to work, because if you're, like looking for a job, but you announced it to publicly, you're somehow selling yourself a little bit, so tell me more?
Johnny Walker 21:09
Okay, first of all, you know, there are two kinds of job seekers, one are in work one out of work. So, if you're out of work, you can be a little bit more transparent about that. If you're in work, then you need to be a little bit more discreet with your language. That's all but people aren't buying you because you're out of work. That's not interesting to them. That's your problem. The hiring managers buying you because you can solve their problem. And you can talk about that as an employee of another firm. Hello there. My name is Johnny, I'm the operations manager or widget company. And some of the challenges we've overcome this year, are increasing operational capacity by 10%. And enables leveling seven figure revenue growth, which is delighted our customers who want more of our product and delighted our shareholders. So it can be a PR message on behalf of your own firm. But of course, there's a very clear underlying messages that you absolutely rocket growing revenues. So it doesn't have to be as blunt as I'm looking for work at all. Having said that, if you are looking for work, then you can add that call to action. And if you would like that done for your business, then by all means contact me as below. Now, you mentioned something, the green swish around your profile picture on LinkedIn. And if you'll allow me to indulge myself for a couple of minutes, I'm going to now absolutely blow this out of the water. The green swish that LinkedIn allowed jobseekers to put around their profile picture saying open to work is one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen happen. And I'm an executive job seeking coach, I help people get into where you think it'd be a helpful thing. It was virtue signaling of the worst kind. And this is why I don't put this out on my LinkedIn live show, because they would be absolutely aghast if I did it. But all of the private interviews I do, I say this, the hiring manager doesn't care whether you are in work, or out of work, if you are the best candidate for the job, they will hire you. And if they've got to wait until you've served your notice, then they'll wait and putting a green swish around saying that you're more immediately available is neither here nor there to the hiring manager, they don't care. It's not relevant. All right, and you being available isn't a significant criteria for them. Why do it? Well, LinkedIn is a membership site, 90% of people have a free account 10% of the membership pay to have an advanced account. And that is a lot of where LinkedIn revenues come from. And a big constituent of the paid membership accounts are the recruitment industry. And so if you can appear to be kind to job seekers, by giving them a green swoosh to hang around their neck, on their profile picture, then what you've actually done is served your membership who pay you because now they can see all the people that they can place in work who have no notice period whatsoever, which means they get their recruitment fees faster. Now, if you want to attract the attention of a recruiter who is only interested in getting their recruitment fee faster, by all means, hang your career with the green switch. But if you don't, and you want to attract the attention of a hiring manager who wants the solution that you deliver, then lose the green swoosh and replace it with I help you achieve this or solve this problem by this scale, which is much more interesting to them. So I think LinkedIn, whoever did that was a genius, but not a very nice one. Because it was it appears to help out the the job seeker but it didn't do anything for them whatsoever, because the hiring manager didn't care. But it really did help out the people who paid the money, which is the recruitment industry. And often it wasn't the nice end of the recruitment strategy. It was the it was the gradient and I just thought do not ever do that.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 24:49
Thank you. I really notice and believe in the wisdom, experience and insights you have and if any listener is interested to join In one of your programs to learn about your systems, can you share exactly what you do the levels you offer? And where can people go to learn more about that?
Johnny Walker 25:11
Sure, I help people get their ideal job, you get to define what that is, I'm not a recruiter, I don't have employers, I don't have vacancies, I have no vested interest in where you end up. As long as it's where you want to end up, and you're happy and you get paid really well. So my entire focus is on the job seeker and no one else. And for that, we have several programs, depending on how much money you earn, and how much attention that I need to apply to you. If you are on 80,000. Sterling, or dollars, and less, that we have a program called Johnny does job seeking. If you're on between 80 and 150,000. And the consequences of screwing that up are a bit greater, then you might need the Get Found get hired program. And if you're above 150,000 pounds, and it's critical, you nail it, and you want a lot of my involvement, then we have the executive Edge program. And regardless of what level you're at, all of those programs are guaranteed to get a result for you. As long as you put the work in, of course, because we've been running them for years and years and years. And we have a zero failure rate. So they're incredibly high powered coaching programs. But of course, the less involvement you need from me, the cheaper it gets. And if you want to talk about that with me, then you can just direct message me on LinkedIn and my LinkedIn addresses my just my name Johnny M Walker, J o HNNY. M Walker. So linkedin.com/in/john M Walker, or, if you're in the latter two groups, and you want a conversation with me, you can just go to my exec job.com m y exe, C, J, ob my exact job.com. And you get direct access to my diary there. It's not a sales call, I don't do sales. Plus, you're all grown ups anyway, you know what, you know, if this is right for you, you'll know and if it's not, you'll know that too. You don't need me twisting your arm, but at least you can have a proper conversation about whether it'll benefit you which almost certainly will. And but also how, and you can make an informed decision for yourself.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 27:13
Thank you so much. I'll make sure to write the link in the description. This was my honor, my privilege. Thank you, Johnny Walker, and I wish you a great day
Johnny Walker 27:23
Abdulaziz. It's an absolute privilege to come on and share that with everybody. And I wish everybody success and their job seeking. And even if you never speak to me, by all means, just stalk me on LinkedIn because we give away a lot of free stuff. And if you get help from that, then it doesn't have to involve me making money out of things. I just like to help people so feel free to do that too. But appreciated. I really thank you. Thank you
