 I signed up with course careers on February 15th of this year, and I signed the offer sheet from Dunn and Bradstree on March 16th. So I'd say about a month and a day. So you literally went from zero experience in tech sales and you just learning about the career to starting a new career in 29 days. Welcome back to the channel, guys. Today I have a very special guest. Today I'm going to be interviewing Kevin and Kevin got into tech sales and he has a really cool story. And when I saw it, I had to get him on the channel. So I reached out to Troy and he was able to connect us and we got him to come on the channel. So thank you so much for coming on today, Kevin. I truly appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Shane. This is great. Couldn't be happier to do this. Awesome. So I kind of already know your story, but basically what was your professional life like before you discovered tech sales? Kind of just let's walk us through the story and like start at the beginning. So in a phrase, my career, my life before course careers was a feast or famine. So I worked in the construction industry before course careers. I was a member of it for nine, but I was probably active in it for about six. And during that six years, you know, it was a union. So they'd send you out to various jobs all over the state. Sometimes you'd be sent 30 minutes away. Other times you'd be sent two hours and 30 minutes away. And you had to do it, especially during the apprenticeship, which lasted four years. It was like, you know, they gave you the work and you had to take it. It was part of the program. You never knew how long a job was going to last. Could last two weeks, could last two months, could last two years. So there was certainly a lot of instability that came with it. But like I said, feast or famine, when it was a feast, it was a feast. Like, you know, because you were always working a lot of hours, like whether you were working 10 hour days, 12 hour days, six days a week, seven days a week. You know, you'd see some pretty paychecks rolling in. But over time, especially like right when the pandemic started to unfold, work slowed down and then pretty much came to a complete halt because of the pandemic, because of other outliers, you know, state funding, things like that. And, you know, I was kind of left out of work for two years. And it was, you know, talk about famine. And it was pretty, it was pretty scary, especially, you know, because I have a wife and daughter and, you know, benefits are lapsing. No money's coming in. Like we're riding unemployment and the extensions that came out with that and the stimulus money that came in and, you know, just trying to just trying to make every dollar stretch out and, you know, it got to a point where it was like, you know, I couldn't rely on, on, you know, my union anymore. I was like, I got to go out and find something. And so I basically just took the skills that I thought that were some of my strengths in that industry, which were like my communication skills and outgoing personality, things like that. And a simple Google search for funding up. We're talking about alternatives to education and whatnot. But I looked up jobs that had like, you know, no college, no experience really required and course careers was like at the top of the list. And and so it was a no brainer. And that's how I kind of got into that. Awesome. So basically you were kind of in a situation where you were looking for a new career and you sort of googled different types of careers you can get into with no experience because, you know, going back like doing college, for instance, that would be something where it would be like maybe four to five years and then you'd be able to get a job. And that's not really an option for a lot of different people out there. Or maybe it is an option for people out there, but they just rather not do it, rack up all that debt, go to school for that long, just for the possibility of being able to start a new career. And that's kind of what I've been talking about quite a bit on this channel recently is there are many people who are in that position where they want to transition into a new career, but they don't want to have to get a degree or they don't want to have to get, you know, a ton of experience before they can do that. So you discovered course careers, which, you know, I brought Troy on the channel, Troy is the CEO of course careers. And essentially what course careers does is it teaches people how to get a job in tech sales. So can you kind of maybe go into a little bit about what exactly tech sales is? So tech sales, at least in my limited experience over the last three months, being with Dunham Bradstreet anyhow, is in my definition is basically software as a service. So for example, like what I do at my company is I try and sell sales acceleration platforms such as D&B Hoovers or like not necessarily in sales and marketing could be in finance, could be in third party risk and compliance. We actually do cover those fields. But yeah, basically you could work in an inbound role, an outbound role right now in an inbound role where we have a web form leaves come in from people that visit our website that are interested in signing up for a free trial. I get the web form that usually has phone number, email, call them up, see if we can't, you know, see if there are solutions that fit for them. I mean, because we're not trying to force it on them. You know what I mean? It's not like that's the thing too that I think people need to understand is like that tech sales and sales in this, you know, field. It's not like, like I know me personally, I like sort of like this idea of what sales is that sort of like cutthroat, you know, got to get the deal done at all costs. It's not that at all. A lot of human or emotional intelligence involved with this, a lot of understanding your prospect and seeing if the solution that your company has is actually a fit for them because you don't want to force it. And so yeah, I mean, I just, I feel like that in a nutshell is kind of what being an SDR is like that. And if you like research, you know, because you get to do a lot of research into the companies that you're prospecting, whether it's in an inbound or outbound role, it does play a part. So I'd say that's what it is in a nutshell, what you learn in course careers. Got it. Okay. So yeah, at this point in the story, basically you, you started a course careers, you decided to kind of go with Troy's training. And by the way, he does have a free training. I will link that down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. That free training will help you decide whether you want to use course careers as a service. And essentially what Troy does is he trains you and then he gets you interviews with companies, right? So he has partnerships with companies where he gets you interviews with them where you can, you know, they will essentially kind of train you and you'll actually get paid to be trained, right? So which is pretty nice, right? A lot of people are going to college paying $80,000 to be trained and you get, you get paid to be trained. So that's, that's not too bad. That's not, not a, not a bad thing at all. But essentially you started off with course careers and how long did it take you before you actually got a job? So I signed up with course careers on February 15th of this year and I signed the offer sheet from Dunn and Bradstree on March 16th. So I'd say about a month in a day. Got it. Wow. And then February is the shortest month in the year. So I believe that's about 29 days, right? So that's, that is like pretty amazing. Wow. I think that's like 29 or 30 days. So you literally went from zero experience in tech sales and you just learning about the career to starting a new career in 29 days. Is, am I, am I getting that right? Yeah, that's, that's about the summation of it. Yeah. Right. Okay. So, like, guys, I have looked at so many different ways of getting educated on this channel and I've gone over everything. You guys know I've gone over just about everything on this channel. I've talked about the traditional college. I've talked about alternative colleges like WGU, Tessu, where you can get a degree in like, you know, one to three years. A lot of the time I've talked about different ways of getting an accelerated degree. I was able to get my doctorate in about, you know, five years and nine months, for instance. So I've talked about all kinds of different ways of getting into careers on this channel. There's also boot camps. Typically boot camps are going to take you somewhere between six months to 18 months to get a job, depending on the career you go into and how good the boot camp is. I, this is the first time, guys, where I have found a service that can literally get you a job in one month. I mean, that is, and like not, we're not talking about just like a, like an entry level, like low, low type of job. We're talking about like a really good career in one month. This is the first service I've ever found that can do that. I don't think you can get much better than that. I mean, that is, that's just incredible. The results that Troy is getting, I've never seen anybody get results like that. And I've looked at just about every possible service or boot camps, online training, like all, all across the internet. And, and Troy is definitely getting the most just insane results I've ever seen. So let's kind of talk about your lifestyle kind of in, in like, I wouldn't say lifestyle, but I guess like professionally speaking, what your life is like now with your new career versus what it was like before with your old career. Oh, what's like now is a stability knowing that I'll have a job tomorrow, knowing that it is performance based. But as long as I show up and bring it every day and hit my numbers, that I'll probably have a job for some time to come. Whereas not to mention the remote factor. I mean, a lot of these jobs that you can get through course careers are fully remote. Some of them they do offer hybrid or in position or in office positions. But a lot of them are remote. And I like that myself personally, because it allows me more time to be at home with my wife and daughter who, you know, transition into my old career, my old way of life. Sometimes it would be like a ghost living in this house, like I barely get to see them. I'd be coming home late and, you know, kid would be in bed. My wife be ready to get, you know, go to sleep and whatnot. It's like hardly see anybody. And not to mention, like I had mentioned earlier, like the instability, not knowing if I'm going to have a job tomorrow. It doesn't matter how great I'm doing in the position that I have on the job, but like, you know, projects then or sometimes, you know, somebody needs to save some money somewhere. So they lay a couple of people off just so they can get a project done under budget. You know, it's it is. In fact, it is very day and night. So. Got it. And one thing I kind of want to talk about is sort of you sort of mentioned it, I think is kind of just the importance of when you have a career where you have a very in demand skill and there's just a lot of demand for for people who have experience in that career and can do that career in general. It just tends to make everything else better. So it's like that in my experience and my research, that's like the number one thing you want to look at is the demand for the career. So even if it's not that high paying, what you'll notice is if there's a ton of demand for a particular career, the pay tends to go up really quickly. How well they treat you. They just tend to treat you quite a bit better because they know that you have a skill that's, you know, it's not easy to find. They give you more benefits. They they reward you more. So you're you know, when you if you work hard, you're actually rewarded for it. You know, if you put in extra time, you're actually rewarded for it, which is really nice. It just it just tends to make everything else better. And so that's kind of one of the things like if you, you know, you guys can go on LinkedIn right now, type in, you know, look in jobs sort by entry level and then type in business developments or sales development, which by the way, I probably should have mentioned that the tech sales is kind of the easy way of saying it, but the the roles are actually called business development representative, sales development representative. And then sometimes they're referred to as software sales as well. But yeah, if you type in sales development or business development on LinkedIn at the entry level, you're going to see hundreds of thousands of results. And the reason for that is because companies really need people in these positions, even at the entry level. So, you know, there's a lot of positions out there where there is a lot of demand for it, but there's not a lot of demand at the entry level. So you'll see like, oh, there's tons of demand on BLS, for instance, but the demand is for people who already have experience. And unfortunately, with all the automation, outsourcing, streamlining, et cetera, a lot of the time those entry level roles, it's it's like very difficult to get experience. So it'll be this situation where you need three years of experience for like an entry level job, which is just totally silly. It's like like a meme, basically. But the reason for that is because of all the automation, outsourcing and streamlining that's going on. And but they still need people who are good at the job. It's just they need people who actually have experience. So I really recommend anybody watching this go on to LinkedIn and sort by entry level and then look up these different roles and you'll see that, you know, how much actual need there is for these different jobs, because really the amount of demand pretty much determines everything else at the end of the day, like supply and demand is kind of like the law of gravity at the end of the day. So let's get into if you're comfortable, Kevin, let's get into talking about salary. So you can either if you're comfortable, tell me what salary you were making or if you're not, just maybe give us a general overview of the typical salary that you would expect as in tech sales your first year. So when I was in construction, it was like I said, it was union construction. So I'm not going to go into the dollars per hour because it was an hourly thing. But I will tell you what I did make per year so that maybe that could give you a little insight. So I would probably make just about what I'm making now with Dunham Bradstreet and Tech Sales. The only caveat is in construction, I should have been making more, but because I was maybe only working three months, four months out of the year, you know, and the rest of the time I was unemployed, either on unemployment or just, you know, stolen my money away for a rainy day, like that sort of deal. It was only coming about out to what I'm making now with Dunham Bradstreet and Tech Sales, which is about on target earnings, I should say, anyway, $65,000 a year. Got it. And that's what and that's with benefits, I should say. Got it. And do you mind if I ask how old you were when you first started? Well, you just started it. So how do you mind if I ask how old you are when I started in course careers? I was 32, I'm now 33. Oh, OK. So you just had a birthday, happy, happy, late birthday to you. Thank you. Awesome. And I think I kind of forgot to ask you just in general, can you sort of tell me what course careers was like? Just kind of give like a brief overview of the program and what working with Troy was like. Yeah, absolutely. So the program was a learn at your pace program. So whether it took you like me, like a little under a month or a Tokyo three months, like you could still get it done, how it made sense to you. He had online learning modules that he personally created, you know, little videos that he made coupled with some books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People, like by Dale Carnegie, Financially Prospecting by Jeb Blunt and Spin, who the author is alluding me at the moment. But those were the three main books that you got to read and were tested on. There's a Discord channel that he set up where you can actually get some good. Well, now it's kind of set up before it was we all got FaceTime with him like every Monday and Thursday. But now since the course has gotten even bigger and there's even more students, we're all kind of split off into groups now into, you know, where we are in the course. Like right now I'm kind of like I actually help students that are in the interview phase that are about to start. Go, you know, applying for jobs and interviewing with jobs. And then some people might be lumped in with, you know, like like they're only reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, like they're in that part of the course. But Troy still will chat with you in the Discord. If you have any questions or you're confused by anything, he's still very much hands on. And the end of the course, which was probably the greatest part was that he personally interviews you, tests your knowledge and everything that you learn goes over a mock interview, mock cold call, pretty much what you'll actually go through in a real life interview when you when you finally get one with one of these tech companies. So, you know, not to speak poorly on any other program, but it's like I just I don't know too many programs like that where you get that kind of FaceTime with the creator and CEO. You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely. Troy is extremely passionate about alternative education like I am. And he is really just invested in getting amazing results for students. And I think he really does have like a special talent for bringing the best out in people as well. Because I mean, the results that he's getting, I mean, as good as the program is, I think it has something to do with the person, too, for sure, with the results he's getting. He really has, I mean, he has great sales skills. He has the great ability to to bring out the best and get people really excited about things. And and that is I think that is probably his special talent. So awesome. Thank you for going over the course and thank you for coming on the channel as well, Kevin and sharing your story. Really appreciate it. And I'll see you maybe later on. You can update me like a year from now or something like that, possibly. And we can see what what's happening at that point. Yeah, that sounds good to me, Shane. Thank you for very much. Thank you very much for having me on. All right. Have a good one. Take care.