 Today I'm going to be interviewing Kenneth Lee who decided that college wasn't the best path for him and decided to get into a career that didn't require it. Now this was especially difficult for Kenneth because his parents were very against this decision and he had to convince them. So I think this one is going to be especially useful if you're somebody who finds yourself in a situation similar to this so definitely watch this one till the end and if you appreciate this type of content, gently tap that like button and hit the subscribe button. Let's try to get this one to 500 likes. In today's video, I am going to be interviewing Kenneth and he's about three and a half years into his career as a digital marketer. So I've interviewed a few people who were, you know, a year, maybe a year and a half at most into their career and now I'm interviewing somebody who has a little bit more experience and they're a little bit further into the career. So thank you so much for coming on the channel, Kenneth. I really appreciate it. I know you're very busy. Yeah. Thanks, James. Thanks for having me today. I'm excited. Awesome. Thanks for being here at the beginning of your digital marketing career. Maybe if you could tell me about your background and what led you into getting into digital marketing. So my journey has been three and a half years. I was working as a bank teller back in the day before I got into all this. I was working for Chase Bank, just processing people's checks and cash and things like that. And you know, and then I kind of stumbled into digital marketing by accident. I was on ad and then I said, you know, how does this work? And so I wanted to learn more about paid advertising and digital marketing and how things work. And I was also, that was right around the time when e-commerce was on the rise with D to C brands and things like that. So, you know, I said, I potentially want to look into this career as a digital marketer. So I picked up Seth's course. Seth's course basically taught me to just essentially create a portfolio, get some experience, build a website and yeah, just, you know, put it on LinkedIn, get on some interviews. And that's how I really got started. That's how, that's how I really got my first job. And, you know, I had my own, you know, e-commerce website. I was running a bunch of paid traffic to the site. And I spoke about it on the interview. And that's how I landed my first job. So that's how I really got started out of curiosity. And then I just stumbled upon his course. And then, yeah, that's kind of how I got into digital marketing thing. Got it. So you stumbled upon his course. And this was about three and a half years ago or so, something like that. You decided to take the course. How long did it take you to get through the course before you got your first job offer? And how was the course? Yeah. So it took me around something like six to eight months, averaging, I think around something like seven months in. And overall, the course was really helpful. It taught me how to just take action. Just not don't procrastinate. Take action. Have something, you know, the key is really just to understand the basic fundamentals how to run paid traffic, how to set up a campaign. How do you optimize accounts and things like that. Speak about the experience through on the interview and pretty much you can start out, you know, with an entry level job and you can just work yourself work your way up from there. So yeah, overall the course is really helpful. I just took the meeting bones, the course really just have a portfolio meeting, have your own website, have your own blog, have your e-commerce site of some sort, run some basic traffic, run some paid ads to the site, and have that experience to speak of during the interview. And that's how you get your foot in the door, essentially. So overall, the course is really helpful. Just take action, you know, that's all I did. Just take action, implement the things that he taught. And yeah, that's how I landed my first job really was using this course. Got it. So six to eight months or so between starting the course and landing your first job. That's pretty good to go into a new career with, you know, no experience or anything like that. So that's pretty awesome. So by the way, guys, Seth did create a free masterclass. It kind of goes over a little bit more about digital marketing because digital marketing is sort of like, you know, this all-encompassing thing includes, you know, pay-per-click ads, social media, SEO, et cetera. So if you want to know what all those things are and if you want to know maybe if it's a good fit for your personality, do take that free masterclass. I'm going to put it down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. All right. So let's go ahead and talk about your first job after you finish the course. So if we can sort of just go over kind of like what the job was all about. And if you're comfortable, we can also talk about salary as well. Yeah. So my first job was essentially a performance marketer. Essentially, I was running Facebook ads, a little bit of PPC ads back in the day, LinkedIn, Twitter, that kind of thing a couple years back. And then I just managed campaigns, very performance-driven. Client will give you a budget. You have to generate results, ROI on the marketing dollars that you get. So yeah, we are held to a certain standard in terms of the goals that we had to hit. And the salary, my first job, my first salary was $60,000. $60,000 was my salary, my first job. So yeah. Awesome. And then after that, how many other positions have you moved into since then? So since then, two other positions. Yeah, this is the current position I'm in right now is the third one. So after my first job, I had another job and then fast forward now is my third job. Got it. And then can you maybe talk about those a little bit? And again, if you're comfortable, you can talk about salary. And if you're not, you can just say generally speaking, like what people would expect to make in those positions. Yeah. So my second position was fully remote. After I left that job was right at the height of COVID. When COVID hit, things were going remote. And so I moved into that job and that was based in Texas. So it was a boutique agency made around 65K. And yeah, there I've managed like Facebook ads, paid social ads there. And fast forward to now work at mute six, which is a big digital agency owned by Densu. And so right now I'm averaging around base and base compensation with bonus. You're probably looking at 90K, everything combined. Yeah, but I manage a lot bigger budgets now. The budgets I touch the clients I work with a lot bigger, a lot more scale to those types of clients. So there's a lot more growth opportunities from both compensation standpoint. Also your ability to move up in the company. So yeah, that's currently my sort of journey in the past couple years. Awesome. That's really exciting. And I've spoken to other digital marketers and say that the growth is kind of their goal at some point because that's where, you know, a lot of the challenges and that's where you learn the most. So that's really exciting that you're doing that for sure. What would you say to somebody who is thinking about getting into digital marketing and they're thinking about using Seth's course in order to learn how to do digital marketing and get their first entry level job. But they're maybe on the fence. What would you say to them in terms of making the decision of whether they should do it or not? Yeah, I think we do it because it's going to give you real practical tips on how to actually land the first job. Right. Now, granted, you need to take action. You need to be implementing the things he's teaching. Not just and the biggest tip I would give you is don't just read, read, read, learn, learn, learn, make sure you're learning, but also implementing the things you're learning. Take initiative, actually generate your own experience, maybe have your own website, open a Google ads account, Facebook ads account, run some traffic to it. Just get your feet wet and make sure you're taking action, the things he's saying. And maybe you're setting up your LinkedIn profile a certain way. Yeah, the biggest thing is just take action. I mean, in an interview process, you've got to go through failure. You've got to have rejections. You've got to have people that don't like you, that feel you're inexperienced. But you have to get through a lot of interviews, get to a point where someone does like you and find that you're a good fit and you're going to land your first job. So don't be afraid of failure. Make sure you're taking action to implement things you're learning. I think you will be very successful if you pull the trigger and really take the course. So yeah, those are things I would say for someone getting into this. All right. And then I also just wanted to ask, you know, let's compare Seth's course to college. So do you need college to become a digital marketer? What is your return on investment of Seth's course versus, you know, going to college to become a digital marketer and just your thoughts in general on that? Yeah, I think the thing with college nowadays, it's not very practical, right? The things that you're learning college is like 30, 40, 50 years behind. And it's really just, you know, you're just memorizing a bunch of stuff. And then when the next semester comes, you pretty much forget everything. So it's not nothing tangible in terms of getting a real practical skill that you can go in a marketplace and actually get a job with. So I think, you know, myself personally, I took out 20, 25K debt and I can't really, you know, didn't really help me in terms of getting a job. The thing with Seth's course is it's definitely far cheaper than 25K. And he gives you real practical tips on how to actually get a job. And it's very specific and it's very niche. So in that, and it's a high demand skill, right? Like digital marketing is a high demand skill that any business can use and leverage any small business or any medium sized business can use your skill set to generate more revenue. So you're always going to be in demand. So I think to sum it up how college compares to this course, you get a bigger bang for your buck. But again, of course, as opposed to getting a piece of paper, a degree that really doesn't help you now in today's in 2020, 2022, it doesn't really help you in today's marketplace. So yeah, that's what I would say about college. I would say it's definitely antiquated. So yeah. Yeah, and I just want to mention one thing. Hey, if you don't believe me or Kenneth, you know, some college degrees, I think are actually worth it, right? Some college degrees for certain careers, you should definitely get a degree. But if you don't believe me or Kenneth, all you have to do is think of the university. You're going to look up the marketing curriculum. And I can almost guarantee you what you're going to see is there's maybe one to two classes on digital marketing. And digital marketing is by far the most valuable skill in marketing right now. Everything is heading towards digital. So when you see that there's only one to two classes on digital marketing, which is the most valuable skill by far. And these are fairly surface level classes as well. There's no like specialized classes. That's really all you need to know about a marketing degree. Yes. The skill set of marketing is really valuable. Yes. Companies are still hiring people with marketing degrees, but they're knowing that a lot of these people don't have any experience and they're going to have to train them from basically square one. So, you know, all you have to do is look that up. It's no secret colleges don't even hide it anymore that they're not keeping up with things. They truly don't care because they just have a monopoly, essentially. So that is a really good point. And, you know, learning these in-demand skills can be incredibly valuable and they can give you a huge leg up. And then set scores, not only does it teach you the in-demand skills, but it teaches you how to signal that you actually have those skills, how to prove to somebody that you have those skills. So that's how you get your foot in the door, get your first job. Once you get that first year of experience, you're good from there. Nobody cares about college beyond that point. So thanks for coming on the channel, Kenneth. I really appreciate you coming on and giving your insight to somebody who has a wealth of experience and you're coming along in your career as a digital marketer. So I think a lot of people are going to get some real value out of this. So thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Jim. Thank you.