 Today I have a phenomenal video for you. I am going to be interviewing James, who is a 16 year old who is able to land a part-time job in digital marketing, working around 30 hours a week and making somewhere around $40,000 a year. And this really just shows how much opportunity there is in digital marketing. Even if you're 15, 16 years old, if your country allows it, if you have the skills, companies will hire you because the skills are so in demand. So you're definitely going to want to watch this one until the end. Go ahead, gently tap that like button and let's jump right into it. What's happening, guys? Welcome back to the channel. Today I'm going to be interviewing somebody from another country. Usually I interview people from the US, but I'm going to be interviewing James. He's from Australia and he has one of the coolest stories because he was actually able to get a job in digital marketing at 16 years old. So thank you so much for coming on the channel, James. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks, Shane. Thanks for having me. Awesome. So let's go ahead and just start at the beginning for you to tell your story. So you're basically 16 years old. You can talk a little bit about your background. You discovered that maybe you want to go into digital marketing or maybe you were looking at different routes, but you ended up choosing digital marketing. So how did you do that? So yeah, great question. So essentially, I think last year around in the beginning of 2021, when I was 15 years old, I knew that I wanted to start earning as money as soon as possible and I didn't really want to go to college. And so yeah, I guess I was just like researching high-paying jobs in Australia that didn't require a degree. So I was kind of considering maybe plumbing or electrical apprenticeship and then working way up and then eventually earning six figures because I heard that I heard great things about plumbing and how you can integrate income, but you're better off getting a high-paying job without a college degree and without getting a four-year education. And he mentioned, of course, in the video how hundreds of students were able to get high-paying digital marketing jobs within three to six months. And so yeah, I was really intrigued by that and I thought digital marketing was really interesting. And so I remember watching him signing up for his webinar and then after that, like maybe three to four days after I purchased this course. And so essentially, I went through the course to a T and I followed everything exactly what he said and to exactly what he taught in the course. And so I crafted my resume. I was working on interviewing skills and obviously I was definitely learning a lot about digital marketing, more specifically in Google Ads. And so yeah, I think starting from the course to my first internship, I think it took around five to six months. And so I landed my first internship in September, 2021, and I stayed there for six months. And after leaving that company, I was job searching for two months. And then I learned for the two months, the three months actually. So I was job searching for three months and I was able to land a job this year in May. But how long did it take you to get that offer for the internship? But from the time that you started the course to the internship? It took me six months roughly. Six months. Wow. That's pretty good, especially for a 16-year-old just first looking for your job. Wait, were you 15 or were you 16 when you started the course? I was 15 at the time. So I started the course at 15 and I landed my first job, which was our first job offer that actually paid me, which was this year in May. And obviously in 2020, at the end of December 2021, I turned 16. But yeah, when I started the course, I was 15 years old. Wow. First of all, that's just awesome in general that you're already thinking about your career at 15. And then the fact you're actually able to land a job as well, that is amazing. I'm pretty sure here in the U.S., there's like labor laws and stuff where they wouldn't let anybody do that. But it's cool that they actually let you do that in Australia if you want to. But yeah, that just shows how wide open digital marketing is. I mean, if you have the skills and you go through the process that Seth lays out in his course and you really follow it to a T, companies really need people who have these skill sets. So that really just shows it right there. So you did the internship and then you were actually able to land a paid position. I kind of wanted to talk about how was Seth's course going through the course itself? How was it? Yeah. So essentially Seth's course taught everything I needed and I needed to first land my internship and to really learn the fundamentals of digital marketing. And so I really love his assignments and like, you know, building out a mini website and running Google ads to our website to get experience as well as teaching us how to get free paid clients to build our portfolio and then show that to our employees so that we can get our foot in the door and land our foot strong. And so yeah, essentially Seth's course was amazing. You know, there was a lot of guidance and support. I really love the Facebook group as well. You know, if you have any questions you can just shoot up. You can just post a question in the Facebook group and a lot of people will be happy to answer your questions as well. And so yeah, and Seth, whenever I emailed him, he would always reply to my questions as well. And so yeah, Seth's course, you know, it was more than enough to help me land my first job. And then, you know, during my six months, during the six months of the first company I worked at, I was able to leverage that experience to then land my second job. And so currently right now I'm getting paid $48,000 per year on my current job. So yes, that is awesome. And then you said that you're working, I believe you're working part-time, so you're working about 30 hours a week or so, something like that? Correct. Yeah. Gotcha. And I kind of want to ask, what did your parents think about you, you know, going off and buying some online course instead of going to college? Were your parents supportive of this decision or were they skeptical? No, they were always supportive to the very end. And, you know, I think I owe a lot of my success to my parents because they've just been so supportive. And I'm so lucky to have supportive parents because I know a lot of Asian parents that like, you know, force the kids to, you know, spend like hours every day, you know, attending like, you know, tuition classes and everything, and, you know, spending like thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars per year in tuition to get into a good uni. And, you know, I think especially in Asian culture, like, you know, we saw it in the brain, you know, we saw like, what do you call it? We saw like, mind-washing to the fact that we have to go to college to succeed. But because my parents were able to see that, you know, there's like millions and millions of other options out there to get a high-paying job, you know, they were very supportive. And, you know, they were very supportive in everything I did. So yeah, my parents are just amazing couple. Yeah, that's really awesome that they're able to see that. And that's one of the most common complaints that I get from people that, you know, my subscribers and stuff that watch the channel is their parents think that, you know, oh, you can't do this, you can't do that, you have to go to college, you have to be a lawyer or an engineer or a doctor or else you're a failure, right? And, you know, that maybe that was true, like you did have to go to college maybe in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, but eventually what happened is everybody started going to college and now it doesn't really give you that much of an advantage anymore unless you go for like certain careers. So yeah, that's awesome that your parents were able to see that. So what would you say to somebody who is either thinking of going into digital marketing and what would you say in terms of like their personality? Are there certain personalities that do better in digital marketing? Yeah, I'd say in digital marketing, obviously number one, you have to be like, you have to have a good mindset, you have to have a positive mindset and never give up attitude as well because obviously, you know, it's not like you can land a job within a month, you know, it takes a lot of consistency and hard work to land your first job and to really progress in the career. And I'd say number two, you have to have, you have to be a really hungry learner because in order to really strive and excel within the digital marketing field, you always have to be constantly learning and because like digital marketing is changing pretty much every day, every month, every year. And so yeah, I'd say those are the two most important traits a person needs to have. If they do want to get into digital marketing because, you know, if you're just going to be a stagnant learner where you just learn and you know, you're learning just never progresses afterwards, then I'd say it's not the right career choice for you because like digital marketing, you know, is an ever-changing industry and it is very important to always be learning new things every day. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And one of the reasons why, in my opinion, digital marketing is such a good career path and it's so safe is because of the fact that it changes all the time. You know, colleges absolutely cannot keep up with digital marketing. They're teaching stuff that worked like 10, 15, 20 years ago sometimes and it just doesn't work anymore, right? Like this field is always changing and so that's really like a barrier to entry to colleges and all kinds of other different ways of getting into it because really, you know, like if you're keeping up to date on the newest trends and stuff like that, like I know a lot of digital marketers I talk to right now, they're really excited about TikTok ads. Like TikTok ads are super hot right now. They're getting really good return on investment for their TikTok ads. And yeah, so it's really valuable and that's one of the reasons why college doesn't really help you all that much if your goal is to become a digital marketer because if you look at like different marketing curriculum, I mean, you can look up the curriculum. It's available. The syllabus are available out there. They usually only teach you like, you know, two or three digital marketing classes. Whereas, you know, digital marketing is by far the best skill to learn in marketing right now. All the companies are pivoting to digital marketing because they can actually measure their return on investment. Whereas if they have like a radio ad or a TV ad, that's something you can't really measure, right? So yeah, so it's, it's, it's very valuable skill for sure. And then there's a lot of different sort of avenues you can go down with digital marketing. There's like search engine optimization, search engine marketing, you know, you got the Facebook ads, TikTok ads, Google pay per click, a lot of different routes you can go. So what route did you choose to go and why did you choose to go that route? So yeah, I'd say right now I'm heavily focusing on search ads or Google search ads. So even within Google ads, there's like multiple routes you can go. You can like only focus on search ads, or you can just, just, you know, general, you know, maybe like run all sorts of campaigns. Either way, like in digital marketing, like you said, there's like a lot of options, different options to choose from. And yeah, personally, I chose Google ads just because like, it just really clicked to me. And I was just like, I was just most familiar with it. And it was the most enjoyable to learn as well. And so, yeah, that's why I chose Google ads. But in my current job, I'm, I am managing a little bit of Facebook ads as well. But yeah, I'm definitely 90% of my focus right now is on Google ads. So what would you say to the people who are watching this video right now? They're thinking about getting into digital marketing. They're really interested in it. And they're wondering whether or not they should take Seth's course, right? They're maybe on their fence. They're like, I don't know if I want to buy this course or not, and take the course. What would you say to those people? So if you, let's say like, maybe you've watched a lot of Seth's YouTube videos and watched his success stories, but you're still on the fence. And, but you really want to, you know, get your foot into digital marketing. I'd say the first step is to just get started, you know. At the end of the day, it's just that taking that first step and that leap of courage. And so that would be my best advice is just to get started. And I can promise you that if you do follow Seth's course or team, and if you follow everything he says, then you'll land a job in the time and you just have to be consistent and constantly on growing. So yeah, I'll say my number one advice just need to get started. Take that first step. Yeah. And one thing I kind of wanted to mention is, you know, like a lot of boot camps out there, right? This is actually something I'm researching right now because I got a bunch of requests to do videos on boot camps. So, you know, you've got these like digital marketing boot camps out there. And first of all, a lot of them charge like $15,000 plus. And then I went to research these boot camps and I'm looking for testimonials and reviews. And there's like no testimonials. There's no actual like interviews with people. I'm like, you have a $15,000 product and there's no testimonials. And then you go ahead and testimonials that they do have are just like a picture of the person's head with their first name and a quote. I mean, that could have literally been an exit survey. That could have just been an exit survey, right? Like, it's not even somebody saying like, I really like this. It's just like an exit survey like, oh, what did you like about our boot camp? And what did you not like, right? So it's like, there's no really good reviews and testimonials. Then you go and look at Seth's Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and his YouTube channel. And he's literally got thousands of reviews and testimonials. And these are people you can, you know, there's a bunch of videos you can actually watch where he goes back and forth, ask them a bunch of questions. They're also people you can usually look them up on LinkedIn and most of them are very happy to talk to you. I mean, it's just, it's very obvious that this course just works, right? There's like an abundance of evidence that it works. And like a lot of these boot camps that are $15,000, like way more expensive than Seth's course, there's like no evidence that they're actually getting people jobs, which just blows my mind. I can't believe that. I really, I don't know if the boot camps either aren't getting people jobs or they're just really bad at marketing themselves, which is a little bit ironic since it's a digital marketing boot camp. But yeah, it's really funny. Did you actually, did you look into any of the boot camps when you were looking into your options? No, I didn't really look into boot camps. I just thought they're like a waste of time and really a waste of money as well. And, you know, like you said, you know, Seth's course has thousands of testimonials and reviews, and these are actual legit testimonials, people that actually got jobs and it's like so many success stories. And, you know, it's just been, it's been working for like, you know, for many years. And, you know, none of the boot camps and colleges have as have that many success stories as Seth's course. And so, yeah, I did actually look at some, you know, marketing degrees, but like they were like not only were they like over 30 grand, but they have like literally zero to no testimonials. And, you know, it's just a lot of BS overall. And I think, yeah, boot camps and marketing degrees are just not worth it. Yeah, I would have to agree with you there for sure, for sure. I was talking to Seth the other day and I told him he might be the single human being on the planet that's created more digital marketers than any other person, because he's probably created like thousands and thousands of digital marketers at this point. So he's probably responsible for getting more people digital marketing jobs than any other human being on the planet, which is pretty cool to think about. So, you know, yeah, it's a great option. If digital marketing is for you, if you decide that's a career for you, highly recommend Seth's course. He does have a free masterclass. James was just talking about that. It's about three hours or so. I went through the masterclass. It was super helpful. I know digital marketing can be a little bit confusing because there's a lot of different avenues you can go and some of them are better for some people and some of them are better for others. So if you're confused about that or you just want to check out what the course entails, I will link that down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. So definitely check that out. And James, thank you so much for coming on the channel. I really appreciate it. You are an absolute rock star to be able to get a job at 16. Super, super awesome story. I'm sure a lot of people are going to be inspired by it. So thank you so much for coming on again. Yeah, Shane. Yeah, thanks so much, Shane, for having me today. Really appreciate it.