Finding an Internship That Doesn’t Suck
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
In this interview, Justin Nguyen, the host of Declassified College: Unlock The Cheat Codes, a top show in Apple Podcasts, and I talk about finding an internship that doesn’t suck. By the way, I translate a number of the points that Justin makes for parents to understand, too.
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So my guest today is Justin Nguyen [N G U Y E N], the founder of ‘GetchoGrindUp’, a movement to help students navigate their way through college. If you’re an adult listening to this, this show will be for you because you may have kids that we’re gonna be talking to, but we’re also attempting to speak to them. I’ll do translations along the way. Here’s the host of the iTunes, top 100 podcasts, the classified college, where each episode is bite-sized content that unlocks one sheet code, one tip, one cliff note, excuse me. I promise I do translations to thriving in college. He’s grown his podcast or his LinkedIn content where he has over 7,000 followers and received over 200,000 views each month. Justin, nice to meet you here.
Justin
It’s great, it’s a pleasure to be on the show. Thank you so much.
Jeff
You’re very welcome, so let’s go right ahead. Let’s hit it right hard. What’s the number one sheet. What’s the number one thing we have to talk about with getting an internship?
Justin
Yeah, I mean, I guess this tip could apply, right? If you’re looking for a job as well, but even if you’re a parent and your son or daughter’s looking for an internship, this is sort of the number one mindset shift that I think helps out a lot of students along the way. And what that is, is understanding that it isn’t necessarily everything on a resume that really matters, and the reason for that, especially when it comes to internships is because a lot of students lie on their resume; and because of that, from an employee standpoint, it’s very risky to hire any student, whether it’s an internship or an entry-level position.
So what I want students to start thinking, and what you can teach your student is to start thinking of what can you build to showcase the skills that are on your
resume. And what that means is, by being able to build something, whether it’s a podcast, a social media account, a project, whatever that may be, it shows that you can not just say that you have the skills, but you can actually do it. And the reason that I say that is, one of the first internships that I got one on like the second or third week, they brought us all into a room and said, “Who here knows Microsoft Excel”? And everyone raised their hand because you want to show off that you’re good at something. And then the next question was who here knows what a pivot table is? And I didn’t raise my hand because I didn’t know what a pivot table was at the time, but everyone else raised their hand. Then the third question, “Who wants to volunteer to do a pivot table”, nobody volunteered. And that’s exactly what you don’t want to do when it comes to your resume or, trying to get a job, are you want to just say what you actually know, and the best way to showcase that is by building a project on the side, and being able to show that to whoever it is that’s looking to hire you,
Jeff
That scenario that you described, Justin reminds me of a classic joke about, it’s a military scenario, they’re all into, formation lined up, “Okay, ho’s going to volunteer”? And everyone, but one person steps backward.
Justin
Yup, exactly, and it’s something that you don’t realize right? Until you actually get tested on it. I mean, I have numerous examples myself when it came to, I applied to a marketing internship. I’d never done really any legitimate marketing before, and they’re like, “Hey Justin, have you ever written a blog before”? I was like, “I mean, what’s the difference between a blog and a five-paragraph essay”? So I said, yes. And I wrote the blog, which was really just a five-paragraph essay, I never heard back. And now that I know how writing works, that’s the complete opposite of what a blog actually is.
Jeff
And it’s funny how often that happens. Now, the student has a belief in how the world works and discovers the hard way; because it’s not quite that way.
Justin
Yeah, and I want to be that person that takes all the lessons, all the hard lessons that I had to learn growing up in college and to be able to showcase it so that other students don’t have to follow in my own footsteps, they can skip through all those failures.
Jeff
And the show folks is a good show. He brings on different people to talk about their careers, he offers advice, it’s nice. How many times a week do you do this?
Justin
It’s three times a week.
Jeff
Just what I thought, three times a week show, with great information really geared to the students’ audience. So how does someone get an internship? And we’re talking about showcasing their experience, but that isn’t how you got some of your internships, is it?
Justin
Yeah, no, not at all. I mean, I thought that to get an internship, right? All you needed was good grades and you joined the school clubs; because that’s sort of what you’re told growing up. So I did that, and I had a near 4.0, and I joined the student clubs on campus during my sophomore year of college. And I started to 
apply to internships because again, that’s where you’re supposed to do during your sophomore year going into your junior year. I applied to 50 plus and I didn’t even get a call back from any of them. It was just a straight-up rejection email, or it was just left unread, and I would never hear back from them ever again.
But fast forward, I ended up graduating with five internships, three at fortune, 150 companies. And the sole reason that I got all of those internships besides one was that I found someone on the inside, and I turned that person into my champion. And once you have that champion, that’s when that project really comes into play, because you can show that champion your project and they can be like, “Oh, okay, Justin actually knows what he’s doing”, and then they can go to the hiring manager or whoever it may be and say, “Hey, you need to hire Justin because he’s already shown to me that he can do XYZ”.
Jeff
And folks I’m going to just got to tell the adults in the room. Do you notice how this works? It’s not about having a great resume, and this is going to be true for you. It’s so much about, and this is my philosophy. Where you can cut the line, you cut the line to get to the front.
I had a great experience, we adopted our son from Kazakhstan in Central Asia, and when we returned, we had flown up by way of Moscow and the cultural Moscow was one were parents with very young children can walk to the front of any line.
Justin
Really?
Jeff
Amazing! And at the airport, we’ve got to get through customs because we flew in from another country. And they looked like 500 people in the airport and they’re all waving us to the front of the line. What’s so different about wanting to do that in your career?
Justin
Exactly! I mean, that’s sort of the perspective that I always take, right? Life is a game, that’s how I like to think of it. And just like any video game growing up that I played, there’s always these Cheat codes that not necessarily everyone knows about. And that’s what that’s sort of the branding behind the podcast of, here are these cheat codes that I’ve either learned from myself or that you can learn from other students from across the world and professionals from across the world. So you don’t have to necessarily do the research, you just have to find out about the podcast.
Jeff
So from there, let’s see now. the first thing is to have a representative sample of what you can do. Make a great, having looked terrific if you’re in a visual profession, but something that represents you, which would best for the field, or for the internship that you want to do, right?
Justin
Yup, exactly.
Jeff
Number two is, don’t just mass mail your resume, try and find someone to become your champion, so you can show this to them unless they can advocate for you.
Justin
Yeah, yup! It’s like the complete opposite of networking that we’re told growing up, right? I think a lot of people’s views on networking is, how many people do I know? And yes, that’s half of it, but the side that no one ever talks about is it; doesn’t actually matter how many people you know, it’s who remembers you, and that’s what is really important when it comes to networking. And I’m just trying to get that mindset shift for as many people around the world as possible; because once you learn that that’s when you can actually start getting some position under your belt.
Jeff
And this is the notion of branding that adults find so frustrating to me. To be branding is a lifelong journey. You want to create an image for yourself because it’s not just simply watching you know, but who knows about you, who’s willing to advocate for you and help you cut the line.
Again, back to the notion of networking. I’m someone who’s got the number one podcast on Apple podcasts, 1800 plus episodes as of this recording, a great YouTube channel with more than 9,000 videos on it, and OTT television, yadda, yadda, yadda. And people come to me because they’ve seen me, they have an impression of me, and there are ways that each of the visual, even the student can do the same thing.
Justin
Exactly! It’s super important when it comes to being that person that when someone thinks of a certain thing, they think of you, your name and your face. And when you get that brand recognition in someone’s brain, it’s amazing when it comes to whether it’s opportunities that they could provide you in the future, or even if it’s just being able to remember your name, when you walk by them on the street or the store, whatever it may be.
Jeff
So we’ve got two so far. What else can people do in order to get that internship, that’s going to be the launch point for them personally and professionally?
Justin
Of course, so the next one I want to talk about is going to be a LinkedIn hack. And again, you can use this on whether you’re a student or if you’re 20 years into your profession. So what most people don’t realize about LinkedIn is it’s probably the number one search engine when it comes to finding your professional network. And if you understand that and you understand how to use that search bar, it can open up numerous opportunities; because how most people connect on LinkedIn is they just send a generic connection request. So they just click the blue button and then that’s it, there’s no personalization to it. But what you can actually do is add a personalized note.
So then the next question is, what do you put in that personalized note? So for any student out there, this is what you do. Let’s say you’ve gotten one internship, or maybe you’ve worked a part-time job while you’re in college. You’re going to put past companies that someone has worked for, there’s that filter for that. And you click whatever internship or company that you’ve worked for, click that, and then you put your school, so you can find alumni.
So once you’ve got those two connection points, now LinkedIn is going to populate with five, or tens or hundreds of people that have had a similar career path as you. And you just send them a connection request saying, “Hey, my name is Justin Nguyen, I saw that you worked at Lockheed Martin, I interned there. I would love to understand more about how you transitioned from UCF to Lockheed Martin”. And your acceptance rate for LinkedIn requests are going to skyrocket. If you just add a two-minute research process to that, and that’s all it takes, and you’ll be able to hop on 10, 15, 20-minute phone calls with people, and you’ll actually get an understanding of what a job actually looks like and what they actually do.
Jeff
And for a lot of adults, you know, the non-student population, the same strategy works beautifully as well. Connecting with people who have a similar background to you always works; because they’ll go back and look at the profile, confirm that what you told them is true; because as you said, I know this is a shock, people lie.
Justin
Exactly. I mean, just take, for instance, this relationship, right? I probably could have just tried to connect with you on LinkedIn and said, “Hey, Hey, Jeff”, like connect with me and press that blue button; but because I took the time to do a little bit of research and I reached out to you via email and said, “Hey, we’re both sort of in the same industry in the career space, I would assume that’s probably why you were a little bit more open to answering that email rather, than if I just said, Hey, let’s connect on LinkedIn or something like that.
Jeff
Right! Unlike the people who contact me now, and here we are, and it’s always the, “Hi, would you like to build your coaching practice”?
Justin
Exactly!
Jeff
Something that is relatable for the individual, something that there’s a common identity for always works better.
Justin
100%, I couldn’t agree more.
Jeff
Well, you could, but let’s not go overboard. So what else can someone do?
Are All Internships Created Equal?
Justin
Hmm, let’s see the next sort of hack. This one is specifically for students is understanding that your student email can unlock so many doors for you. And I didn’t understand this until it was sort of too late in my college career. I thought that having justin@getchellgrindup.com was the coolest email in the world.
But this is what actually happens when you walk across that stage. When you walk across that stage, your senior year, and you’ve graduated and you no longer use your student email, and you try to reach out to Jeff, or you try to reach out to Justin, we immediately think that you’re trying to sell us on something, immediately. Because you don’t have a student email, but if you have a student email, we have sort of this like a little message in the back of our heads saying, Hmm, maybe we should try to help the student out and we’ll take the time to read it, right? And understanding that will increase your open rates for your emails, as well as you have the chance to meet some really influential people because people are always looking to give back when it comes to helping other college students out.
Jeff
Interesting. You have the preference of emailing rather than in mailing through LinkedIn.
Justin
Great! Yeah, I’ve had terrible success with InMail. So I had the fortunate chance to be able to be of LinkedIn’s like campus editors. I believe that’s what they called when I was a junior in college. And what that allowed me to do was have premiums, so I was able to test out inmail. I probably sent out, I don’t know, 50 to a hundred inmail, and don’t remember one meaningful conversation that came out through there. I had better responses from literally just sending a personalized invite or a personalized connection request, or a personalized email.
Jeff
Got it! And it doesn’t surprise me because the fact is, this is one of the dirty little secrets of LinkedIn, not everyone’s on the platform all the time.
Justin
Exactly!
Jeff
There may be 650 million people plus on LinkedIn right now. But you know, the fact of the matter is no one’s checking their emails unless they’re looking for a job, not because they’re trying to help someone
Justin
And most InMail too, when it comes to the stereotype that LinkedIn is trying to overcome, most people got InMail before because someone was trying to sell them on something, whether it was like that person reaching out to grow your coaching or your someone reaching out to me like, I can help you grow your social media. There’s that sort of the spamming of InMail that LinkedIn has to overcome, and because of that, most people don’t even open their Inmails from my understanding.
Jeff
It’s fascinating. It makes sense because you know, I’m a former head, Hunter. And LinkedIn sells this product called LinkedIn recruiter to head hunters, both corporate and third party. And what the idea is, you get a hundred InMails a month. If you get a response to the InMail is credited back to you. If you don’t bye, bye and worse than that, if there are too many of those, their analytics have you, they’ll suspend your ability to send InMails for a period of time if you don’t get responses. because they want people to do this and they blame the message as being the issue as opposed to the people being on the platform.
So where you from again, SERP invent the systems and connect with someone personally.
Justin
And actually, you have no limit.
Jeff
As long as they’re personalized messages, you can’t send 125 emails that are identical in the same mass email, because then you get identified as a spammer and your stuff gets redirected to the spam folder.
Justin
Of course, of course, yeah. I mean, there are limitations, but for the most part, there are no limits when it comes to taking a little bit of time to personalize things,
Jeff
Right! And with a text expanders, you can have a generalized thing and do a little bit of a tweak to it each time, so it’s not identical, it’s similar, customized for the individual. These are cool stuff, Justin!
Justin
I mean, it’s all about these little quick hacks that I learned in college. Like for instance, if you use that search filter correctly, and you came up with 15 results, you technically could just copy and paste the same personalized connection requests because they all have the same experience, and then just change the name. So you’ve just saved yourself a ton of time, but also still personalized like 15 connection requests as well.
Jeff
So just to kind of walk through the search, let’s say you’re searching for using your example, Lockheed Martin, and then it shows you everyone at Lockheed Martin. I’m not sure if this is a free account feature or this is a paid account feature, but you go to all filters to get to where the school is.
Justin
Yep, no it’s free.
Jeff
Okay, that’s part of the free one as well; because I’ve had a paid version now for years. I don’t remember what’s in paid versus free, but you’re going to all filters then checking off the school, and then from there being able to identify anyone who hits those two data points.
Justin
Yep, exactly! You can do that or the other way that you can use your school as a connection point is if you look up your university on LinkedIn, and you go to their company page on LinkedIn, they have what is called the alumni tool. And it literally has every alumni from your university there, and all you have to do is type in, there’s a search bar type in whatever keyword that you want. Let’s just say you want to talk to someone that works at Google or you want to try to talk to someone that works at Goldman Sachs. You just type in those keywords, and then it’ll populate anyone from your school that’s an alumni that works at that company, and then you can just reach out and say, Hey, for me, it would be like, “Hey, my name’s Justin Nyguen, I am also a fellow Knight and I love to connect with successful alumni. I would love to connect and learn more about what you’re doing at Google or whatever it is”.
Jeff
Cool. And I think one of the fun, extra things is once you’ve exhausted the school and the employer with those people in the right-hand column, there’s this fun little feature called that headline is, people who looked at this profile also looked at these profiles as well. So you have other people that you might be able to connect with. It’s a stretch because you don’t have the same necessarily common interest, but I know people who found work that way
Justin
A hundred percent. And then just building off of that exact point, for your personal page, you don’t want to have that turned on. You can turn it off by going to like your private privacy settings and turning like people also viewed off. And the reason that I say that you don’t want people, or you don’t want that featured on your own personal page is that you imagine it from a recruiting standpoint, and you land on Justin Nyguen’s profile, right? But then you’re scrolling down and someone on the right-hand side has a better photo, or a better headline or whatever it may be, now you’ve just clicked off of my profile and you’ve gone to a competitor. So that’s why you want to turn that feature off if you’re looking for an internship or a job.
Jeff
Gotcha! This is fun stuff. I’m really enjoying this.
Why You Should Consider Finding an Internship After Graduation
Justin
I love these men. It’s things that I didn’t get taught in school that I wish that they taught in school, but I’m always looking to share this knowledge with whoever’s
willing to listen to it honestly.
Jeff
I think you’ve got a business model there.
Justin
We’ll see, we’ll see schools are still around after everything going on right now.
Jeff
I think they’re going to come back but different conversations. So what else can a student do in order to find that internship or even that job after graduation?
Justin
Yeah, I would say like, this might sound like a lot of stuff that we’re talking about, but it really breaks down into two things, create a project and then get started on LinkedIn, right?
The last thing that you want to do is sort of set up what I like to call the January 1st conundrum, where everyone says that they want to work out this year, right? And then by January 15th, everything they’ve never worked out ever, so they’ve just stopped. You want to stop that and you don’t want to do that by taking baby steps. So what that might mean first is setting up a basic schedule of, okay, I wake up at, let’s say eight 30 every morning, right? From nine to 10, every single day, I will spend an hour on LinkedIn. Now do that every single day. You don’t necessarily know what you want to do, but start doing it, spend that time.
And then you can say from after dinner from eight to 9:30 PM, I’m going to work on a project, and that’s the project that you work on. So as long as you have it in your schedule, you hold yourself accountable. And that will be way better than let’s say again, going back out to the working out example. Most people will say, “I’m going to get fit this year, starting January 1st. I’m going to go to the gym every single day”, but what ends up happening on the second day? You’re a little sore so you don’t want to go, that’s the exact opposite that you want to do with this. So maybe two to three times a week, put LinkedIn and put your project into your schedule, and then every two or three weeks or so add in another day and then add in another day. Being able to go at it slowly and getting better 1%, every single day is much better than trying to start off quickly, and then ending up at 0% because you gave up after two weeks. So take that approach, that’s what I would say is the next sort of cheat code that I would share.
Jeff
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. If by some chance in running the marathon, you’re able to get an internship, fabulous, fabulous, but the probability is it’s a marathon. And having run New York one year and having seen all these people out there on the Verrazano bridge, spring thing to the front, and you could see they haven’t trained, that they have got no conditioning. And by the time they get to the other side of the bridge, which is two and a half, three miles later, they’re walking already, you know, they’re in trouble.
Justin
Exactly.
Jeff
And the idea is small incremental steps taken over time, works wonders; and that’s not just simply for this job, for this internship, it’s for the rest of your career or building a reputation or brand for yourself so that this way you’re able to land and people are reaching out to you. So you got the line.
Justin
Exactly! And it’s managing expectations too, right? I mean, for most people the day that you start looking for a job, you probably aren’t going to find a job, even though that is sort of your goal, right? It’s a longterm play for the most time, and that’s what I think a lot of people don’t understand especially students; because they’re used to, Okay, take a test on Friday, I’m going to get my results back on Tuesday. That’s not how finding a job works, it’s a longterm process and we’re taught the complete opposite of that in school.
Jeff
It’s awful! So going back to school for a Mama.
Justin
Of course!
Jeff
what were you told in school about how you’d find that internship or graduate, or find a job after graduation? What was the lie that they told you?
Justin
Well, it’s a lot of High-level stuff. So they say, “Oh, to get an internship, you need to get good grades, and you need to join student clubs, and you need to network, and you need to get on LinkedIn”. And yes, on surface value correct, right? You need to get good grades, you need to join the clubs, you need to do all those things, but what they don’t tell you is they don’t tell you how to use LinkedIn. They don’t tell you how to send a personalized connection request, they don’t tell you how to add keywords to your profile.
When it comes to why you need to have good grades? It’s not to have a high GPA, it’s so that you can actually understand and develop the skills that you need for that job. And once you have those skills building out something to show those skills.
So they tell you very high-level things when they need to start specifying a little bit more by actually showing some students how to do it. And now some people might say, “Oh, so you just want to spoon, feed all the kids in the world”? Yes, a little bit, but you want to help them get a leg up in society, right? That’s the whole point of going to college is to get to the next step in your life.
And just by giving someone that first step, it would help so many students out there because they just literally believe, I’ve talked to students, even myself of like, “Okay, if I get good grades, I’m going to end up with a job”. But then you get to your junior year and you’re sitting there with a 4.0, and the kid next to you has a 3.2, and he’s interning at Goldman Sachs, and you’re still working as a cashier at Chilies. And you’re like, what the heck is going on? And then you get to this downward downward spiral. So it’s a very high level when they need to start doing a little bit more tactical stuff.
Jeff
Yeah. I’m wondering using that example, was it Northwestern mutual that you got an internship?
Justin
Yeah, that was my first one. And it literally came from asking a friend for ice cream. So like, I mean, we can dive into that story.
Jeff
I love that story
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Justin
So this was my first internship after I’d been rejected by 50 plus, Northwestern mutual probably being one of them, if we’re being honest, but I was trying to get an internship in finance because I knew that that’s what I wanted to do. And when I couldn’t find an internship, I went back up to Connecticut because that’s where I was originally from. And I was like, okay, I’ll spend the summer up here, hanging out with some friends and maybe I’ll find something, I don’t know. But then I’m scrolling through my Instagram, and I see that one of the kids that I used to play soccer with, he was a senior when I was a freshman in high school, he was talking about how he was like the number one intern for Northwestern mutual. So I was like, “Oh wow! That’s, that’s really cool”. Like, let me hit him up and see if he’d be open to asking or answering some questions that I had.
So this is where I differentiate because most people will say, we’ll probably ask them like, Hey, can I get 15 minutes of your time to like dissect your brain? And like, who wants to waste 15 to 20 minutes? There are not many people that would want to do that. So what I did was like, Hey B, I really love what you’re doing. Saw your Instagram posts. I’d love to grab some ice cream with you. Who says no to ice cream? No one, no one says no to ice cream, right? So we met up, got some ice cream. I asked him a few questions about how he’s been doing, how the internship went, and then yada, yada, yada, one thing led to another.
I found out that he was a college unit director at Northwestern mutual. So literally the person in charge of hiring me and he’s like, do you want an internship? And at this point, I was probably two or three weeks late into the internship. And I was like, “Yeah, I would love one”. He’s like, “Okay, sure, you got it. Let me just set a meeting up with the one person that you need to interview, and we’ll make it happen”.
Went into the interview, and she was like, well, we’re just doing this sorta for formalities since B recommended you, we know that you’re going to do really well. So we’re just wanting to get to know you a little bit more before we gave you the offer. And I was like, “wow”! So this is how the game works, and I’ve taken that strategy and literally implemented it for like the majority of every single internship that I’ve gotten.
Jeff
And I want to translate this story for adults, you know, the non-student population, the parents. And the story basically says, I was out of luck at this point, I’m doing crap work and I’m doing nothing that interests me. I go home, start living with my parents. Didn’t say parents at that time, but I’ll assume parents and I’m sucking wind right now. And I’m trying to figure out some way I can network my way. And instead of using LinkedIn, he goes that Instagram, you know, age-appropriate location.
And he started to scroll through the feed and he sees someone he grew up with as a number one intern at Northwestern. So instead of saying like, you would say, “Hey, can I get 15 minutes? I’ll buy you a cup of coffee”. He goes for something that’s more appropriate. “Hi want to get some ice cream”? And they sit down talk and he gets off of the internship on the spot. A confirmation has to come from a real interview, but he got the line and he did it in his way. Doing the same thing you do, but in an appropriate place for his age group. So if you see your son or daughter online, looking at Instagram, just have them redirect the thinking a little bit to see if there’s someone that they’re connected with, who they can reach to. How’s that flow translation?
Justin
There you go. I mean, that’s perfect. And I think what I didn’t realize is how close the college network is. I mean, I went to one of the largest universe or the second-largest university in the world or the US. We have like 70,000 students or something crazy like that. And one of my friends he’s very high up in higher education and he works specifically with UCF on some things. And he was saying, even at UCF, the average touchpoint that it takes to for any pretty much any student is two. So if you take one of my friends and a friend of his, basically I know someone, or I know every single person at UCF. And once I realized that, and you realize that networking effect from there, you can start to really open up a lot of doors if you’re strategic about it, because everyone knows everyone, especially on a college campus.
Jeff
So true. Hey, what haven’t we covered yet that we should, that I haven’t asked you about?
Justin
I would say the last Cheat code that I think can also apply to your audience listening, whether they’re college students or adults in the working world, is the greatest way to have these conversations with individuals, these 15-minute coffee meetings basically start your own podcast. And here’s the reason why, if you have a YouTube channel, right? And you reached out to someone and you said, “Hey, Justin, I would love to collaborate with you on my YouTube channel”. And I went to go check out your YouTube channel, and I saw that you had 50 views. I would probably be a little hesitant to work with you just because like, is it worth my time? But if you’re looking at it from a job-seeking perspective, right? Let’s say you want a job in marketing, you start a podcast that is, I’m talking about interviewing marketing experts one time every single week.
So what you do is you find a list, you create a list of 10 companies that you would love to work for. Find 10 people that work at each of those 10 companies in the marketing space, and you send out a message to them saying, “Hey, John, or, Hey, Justin, I saw that you’re doing a lot of marketing for Get your grind up. I would love to interview you on my podcast, where I interview other marketing experts to gain their insights on the industry”. You don’t have to say that you don’t have a job, you don’t have to say any of that, you just say that you want to have a conversation with them. They will be way more receptive to being able to talk about themselves on a podcast than they will if you ask them for a 15-minute coffee meeting; because they feel like they’re getting something out of it, and again, they love to talk about themselves.
The only thing that you need to have a very reputable podcast is to make sure that your cover art looks nice, and you can literally pay someone $5 on Fiverr to create that for you if you would like that, or you can create it yourself on Canva.
And then the second thing is you need a few reviews on there, so anywhere between 10 to 20, if you can get that. All you have to do is just ask all your friends and families to leave a review, and there you go, you have a legitimately looking podcasts and you could theoretically interview anyone that you reached out to that responded. And that’s how you start to open doors into that marketing world if you wanted a job in marketing, and that can be applied to IT, engineering, whatever industry that you’d like, as long as you have it, and that niche sort of category that you want to speak to experts in that industry.
Jeff
Super and a slightly different version of this for the very experienced person, is writing the book. You want to interview someone for the book and more often than not, you’ll need to have a conversation with them or multiple conversations with them.
I’ve been working with someone who’s in risk analytics and we’re working on the book and he’s gotten to some of the very experienced risk people and is able to demonstrate his capabilities and knowledge in the course of conversation. It’s like the consulting work from them and material for his book. It all works folks. You just have to have the guts to try it.
Justin
Exactly!
Jeff
And which service do you use for podcasting?
Justin
I use anchor and it’s all free. So literally the startup costs from my podcast was, I want to say a hundred to $150, but you can do it for legitimately free if you wanted to by using anchor, zoom, and then your Apple headphones if you wanted to do that.
So the startup cost is less than $50 and even free if you want to be that savvy when it comes to finding free stuff.
Jeff
Exactly right! Hey, this has been fun. How can people find out more about you, your show, your business, the whole kitt 35:33 [Inaudible]?
Justin
Of course, my number one platform is LinkedIn. So if you want to check me out on LinkedIn, it’s LinkedIn forward slash I N forward-slash Justin GCGU. And if you want to check out our website, it’s www, getchogrindup.com and that’s G E T C H O G R I N D Up.com. Those are sort of the two main places that I’m at right now, and then that website will lead you to the newsletter, which you’ll get our Chicos delivered to you once a week. And if you want the podcast, it’s declassified college on any podcasting platform,
Jeff
Justin, this has been fabulous and folks we’ll be back soon with more of this is Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. If you’re interested in my coaching you, if you have questions, visit TheBigGameHunter.us. There’s a button there where you can schedule a time for a free discovery call. We schedule a time for coaching. I would love to help you.
And on LinkedIn, you can reach me @linkedin.com forward slash, forward slash the big game hunter. Mentioned that you saw the interview. I just like knowing where people are coming to me from. Once we’re connected, if you’re interested in coaching, you could message me that way, but you can actually get on the schedule directly through the website.
Lastly, I just want to encourage you. Don’t be passive, go out, be great. Have a terrific day. Hope to be back in touch with you soon.
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The Billion-Dollar Staffing Mistake
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The Billion Dollar Mistake in Hiring Part II
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