3 Career Secrets

Bill's career(s) have put him in more diverse work scenarios than most people can imagine.

From bodysurfing the best waves in the world, to tuning and testing Ferraris to solving "impossible" problems at Google (don't forget the first snow cameras in Tahoe) - few can match his span.
Here are three keys to his career diversity.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Okay, happy Monday. It isstill Monday, and this is Bill.
I've been obviously noticing all the postson LinkedIn and other places and comments people
are making, and kind of thinkingabout my own history of getting jobs,

(00:21):
getting promotions, switching between industries,switching roles inside of industries, inside companies,
getting promoted, all that stuff.And I've noticed that most people don't

(00:43):
follow the strategies that I followed numberone, and also that the most would
don't even know they exist. Andat the same time, I noticed there's
other people who clearly are using thesame kind of strategies that I've used,
and they're getting successes. They're earningthese successes that other people are marveling at.

(01:10):
So do a little bit of breakdownand kind of walk you through what
my approach has been over the yearsand why, and trying baby step at
a bit so that it's achievable foryou. As some background, I've spent

(01:30):
twenty five years working in tech herein Silicon Valley. I got into tech
by volunteering to help a friend witha startup and worked for him for free
for a very short amount of time. But the work that I did was
enough that he offered me a job. Now. I don't have any technical

(01:53):
background whatsoever. I'd never written aliquid code, I'd avoided computer years in
college, and all of a sudden, I'm working for a technology startup.
When I was there, I learnedhow to code and how to do anything
and everything technical that the company needed. And then I went to another company,

(02:20):
started working on their their stuff,hired my first software team, and
kind of everything went from there.Prior to that, I have been a
mechanic. I spent seven years whenI came out of college mechanic ing,
and then I spent a few yearstrying to sell real estate, and selling
real estate was interesting, but wasn'tmy cup of tea. And then that's

(02:44):
kind of how I got into thewhole tech thing. So how have I
moved in between these different places?What are the commonalities and what are the
differences? Right? So first stepis so you can understand this, I
up until very recently consider myself tobe a shy introvert, and that I

(03:05):
struggled with social anxiety. There's peoplewho know me well who have wondered about
that when I've said that, becausewhen I was with them in specific contexts,
I was comfortable speaking, But whatthey didn't know was all the other
contexts where I wasn't comfortable speaking andthe emotional struggles I had to overcome.

(03:27):
There's a whole different podcast about howI get over my social anxiety and why
I'm not a shy introvert anymore.We'll talk about that later, but note
that despite my being a shy introvert, my ability to talk with strangers,
which I know being a shy introvertand talking with strangers might sound like to

(03:47):
completely opposite end of the spectrums,but bear me hear me out. My
willingness to talk with strangers got mean ignorned number of my jobs over the
years. If you want to talkabout it being network driven, then that's
definitely the case. I My networkgot me my first job when I was

(04:12):
in high school. It got memy second job in high school. It
got me my first job after Iturned eighteen, as well as my second
and third and then fourth and fifth, and this is all during my college

(04:40):
years and high school and college.When I came out of college, I
actually moved to California, and again, talking with strangers got me my next
job, my mechanic ing job,and that one was I I was afraid
I was lost, and I sawsomebody and walked over and asked if I

(05:11):
was where I thought I was supposedto be or if I needed to go
someplace else. I knew it wasroughly in the right ballpark, and initiating
that conversation. Starting that conversation snowballeduntil all of a sudden, I was
a mechanic and with no prior experience, I was wrenching on exotic cars and

(05:43):
that was just because I was willingto talk with a stranger, and that
kind of snowballed. When I gotout of out of mechanick ing and went
into the real estate business, Ididn't have any kind of a network.

(06:04):
And the firm that I went towork for was local. They were their
office was just a couple of milesfrom where I lived, so that was
one of my determining factors. Sonot really network. But then when I

(06:27):
got into started in tech, thisstartup that I went to, this was
somebody I had met through the realestate business, and he also lived in
the town that I was in,and we'd kind of kept in touch,
and one day he asked me ifI would cold call. Remember I still

(06:48):
had social anxiety back then, sothis is kind of crazy that I said
yes. He asked me to coldcall a couple of sporting goods stores that
I was a client of because theysold surfing gear. At the time,
I was windsurfing a lot, andhe knew that I knew the owners of
these two shops, and I said, sure, you know, I see

(07:09):
these guys all the time both youknow, I buy gear from them and
I see them in the water,So yeah, happy to talk with him.
I called both of them. Theyboth said yes, that they actually
wanted this company's services, and thenthis guy said, hey, you know,
can you do that again. Thenext company that I went to happened

(07:39):
because again, remember I got socialanxiety. I'm a shy introvert. But
I went to a career fair andI saw this woman sitting off to the
side by herself in a booth andnobody talking to her, and I was
really curious. She was on hercomputer doing something, and I walked over
and said hi, and asked whatshe was working on, and she started

(08:01):
telling me, and I asked somemore questions, and somewhere along the line,
I said, oh, you know, that kind of sounds like a
problem. I had to solve thelast company I was at, and I
gave her a quick synopsis of whathad happened, and she said, are
you looking for a job? Isaid, well, I am, actually,

(08:22):
and that turned into be getting hiredthe next company I worked for.
After that, I stayed. Istayed with the company that that woman from
the job fair. I stayed itthere for four years. The next company
I went to was they emailed mecold. Some recruiter ran across my resume

(08:43):
somewhere and they actually hired me becauseof my industry experience. They wanted a
very specific skill set, which Ihappened to have, and they made me
an offer I couldn't refuse, anda few years later I was back on

(09:03):
the market again. I got aconsulting gig because of talking with a friend
of mine. She was curious towhat I was up to. I just
left the previous company and she askedme about the kind of work I was
doing. When I told her,she said, hey, you know you
are you looking for a new jobbecause we need somebody who can contract and
your skill set sounds like exactly whatwe need. I don't know how long

(09:28):
this will last, but you know, do you want to come and work
for us for a while, andthat I got converted to full time,
worked on more projects, did abunch of a bunch of work with them,
and then again left to go dosomething different. Next role, no

(09:54):
networking at all. Darwin was justcompletely cold. And then the next role
that I got was because of mynetwork. Somebody recommended me to a guy
who was looking for some melt,so I went there. The bottom line

(10:16):
here is talking to people, evenas a shy introvert, is incredibly valuable.
I think eighty percent of the jobsthat I've had have been because of
networking and talking to people and willingto to have conversations with people in whatever
context. Side bonus, the guythat was the VP of engineering at the

(10:45):
third company that I worked for wasso comfortable with working with me that he
has subsequently offered me roles at atleast three other companies, one of which
I said yes and worked there withhim. So again networking, right,

(11:07):
This is why you want to havea good network, is for either a
the recommendations or be straight up peoplecalling you and say hey, do you
want a job? So that's numberone is talk to people, talk to
strangers, obviously do good work,but be a problem solver. Right.

(11:28):
That's definitely my number one takeaway fromall this. The second, the second
big piece of career advice that Iwould give somebody, and I've told both
of my kids this is do tryand see how you can help any of

(11:50):
your teammates anywhere in the company.And the reason that I stress this is
that, well, first of all, early in my career, the manager
of a of a very nice restaurantthat I worked in during when I was
in college, he said, youshould always be looking to understand the responsibilities

(12:13):
and be preemptively supporting the responsibilities ofthe people that are above you in the
responsibility chain. Right. So themanager had the waiters, right that worked
there, and this was a thiswas a pretty fancy restaurant, so waiters

(12:39):
and then bus boys and then runners. Everybody started off as a runner,
and you know, it's kind ofthe bottom of the food chain, and
you support the bus boys. Thegoal of every runner was to get promoted
to become a bus boy, becausethey knew the churn rate for the bus
boys, and they knew that goodrunners could become good bus boys. Good
bus boys could then become good waiters. The advice was always to be learning

(13:05):
the skills of the folks above youin the food chain and have aspirations to
take one of their jobs when oneof them leaves. And so I was
always curious about what people did andhow I could help them, and you
tried to figure out as much aspossible how to help people in other contexts,

(13:28):
including people like the sommaier who youknow had the wine seller and the
folks that were serving cocktails from thebar. Anytime that I could ever help
them in any way, shape orform, I was happy to. When
I got out into the corporate world, into the technology world, that meant

(13:48):
talking with sales and marketing and operationsand support and understanding their worlds and learning
how to help them be more productive, how to help them do better at
their jobs. And initially I wasdoing it to design and build better software
products. But what happened was Istarted solving problems for other teams in the

(14:13):
company, and because of that,I got promotions that I didn't ask for.
I got recognition and opportunities and projectsfrom the executives because they saw what
I was doing and said, wewant more of that. That thing that

(14:35):
you're doing is valuable, nobody elseis doing it. We want to see
you do more of that. Andso in multiple contexts, I got promotions
and interesting new projects thrown at methat otherwise I would never have gotten because
I was proving an advance that Iwas worthy of the privilege of whatever promotion

(15:00):
they wanted to give me. Partof this included helping the people that I
was peers with operate more effectively.And that's the definition of leadership, whether
you have a title or not,Leadership is about helping people around you do
better at their jobs. It's notabout the title, and the title comes

(15:24):
along after you've proven yourself if you'rebeing a smart leader. And so I
started trying to help people around meto operate better. I was demonstrating my
leadership thinking, and the executives ofthe company promoted me for that because they
wanted more of that kind of mindset, more of that kind of approach to

(15:48):
helping other people. Along the way, I had to learn a lot about
effective communication. But the bottom linehere is to be thinking about helping other
people. You know. That's thesecond big career advice thing is don't just

(16:11):
think about yourself when you're working ata company, because when you're learning and
you're actually contributing to other people's success, executives notice it, and they will
want more of that, and theywill want to give you more responsibility and
more risk, which means you're gettingpromoted. The third piece is learn every

(16:41):
skill you possibly can, which youmight have guessed from me talking to all
these different kinds of people and networkinga lot, but but really, to
be to be direct about it,you want to learn as a wide variety
of skills about as a wide varietyof things as you possibly can. Because

(17:07):
skill stacking, where you have abunch of skills that are complementary, that
makes more makes you more valuable thanif you're just really, really really good
in one place. Somebody has talkedabout being a T shaped employee, where

(17:27):
you've got this broad area of competencethat's not super deep, but it's deep
enough, and then you've got oneor maybe two areas you've got a lot
more depth, but you understand awide variety of things. I understand a
wide variety of things because of thecareers that I've had and because of the

(17:49):
roles that I've had inside technology companiesand so I can comfortably talk about a
lot of different things, and Ican see patterns that show up because I
have this broader understanding. The peoplethat have a narrower focus don't recognize because
they just don't have the experience tobe able to see it. So you

(18:11):
want to learn as many different thingsas possible, you know, I've over
the years. I've obviously learned howto work on cars, but I've also
learned a lot from the construction industry. I've learned how to frame houses and
hang sheet rock and mud walls andplumbing and electrical I've even put windows in

(18:32):
and those don't seem like much.But then when you're when you're working on
something where you can use the constructionas an analogy to explain something technical to
somebody who doesn't understand the technology.It's really valuable to have when when you
can do that contact switch and explainit. Which is why I'm such a
fan of learning this broad diversity ofskills and not just being stuck in one

(18:56):
narrow area. It's a very helpfulyou have that breadth. I think that's
the that's really the top three.Talk to strangers. Help people that are
on your team help them to dobetter and learn everything you possibly can.

(19:22):
Yeah, curios to hear your thoughts, Send me a comment, send me
a note you know, social media, whatever it is, and let me
know your thoughts about this. Thankyou. Hope you having a good one.
You can learn more about the workwe do by the way at Heart

(19:44):
program dot com. H a eart program dot com. There will be
of course a link in the shownotes. And we help companies and schools
learn a skills based approach to havetheir employees be much much more successful,

(20:04):
reduce mental health challenges, and ina school context, be able to model
and train the students so that thestudents in the school themselves aren't suffering for
mental health problems. And the workwork context I think about this is in
terms of performance and how to helpteams match. I've what I've done in

(20:29):
the last twenty five years, whichis consistently deliver projects that people said were
impossible, but my teams then didthem and got done a month early.
And it's because of the skill stackthat we teach people at the Heart Program.
I hope you're having a good one, look forward to chatting with you. Thanks