Career Coaching Secrets: Leadership, Growth, and Career Strategy with Anthony Harris

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Anthony Harris, a leadership and career development professional who shares practical insights on personal growth, mindset, and navigating career transitions with confidence. Anthony dives into real-world strategies for building leadership skills, making intentional career moves, and positioning yourself for long-term success in today’s evolving workplace. His experience and perspective offer valuable lessons for professionals at any stage of their career who want to level up with clarity and purpose.

You can find him on:
https://legacycareersllc.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyharrisjr/
https://www.tiktok.com/@legacycareersllc
https://www.facebook.com/legacycareersllc
https://www.youtube.com/@LegacyCareersLLC

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

So a lot of jobs we work in every day, nine to five, right? We go and we get monthly numbers, right? You get a quarterly report or a monthly report on what you did, what you successfully at, what do you need to work on. You need to do that for your business. Same thing for me. So the way I can make sure that I'm not overextending myself or stress myself is get the numbers so I can know how to scale my business. I have a coach that's a full-time coach that also assists me, that also is that skilled uh with resume reviews, just like I am. And that requires like work and coaching, making sure that they're updated, have a part-time social media manager, and making sure I can scale the business even more.

Davis Nguyen 0:37

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is David Swin, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to$100,000 years,$100,000 months, and even$100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over$100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Pedro 1:09

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today's guest is Anthony Harris, founder and CEO of Legacy Careers, a workforce strategist helping organizations and professionals navigate career transitions with clarity and precision. After more than a decade leading operations and process improvement in manufacturing, he launched Legacy Careers to bring human-centered, results-driven solutions to layoffs, career growth, and talent transitions. His work spans out placement services, career coaching, and modern job search systems that serve both companies and individuals with a focus on strategy over guest work. He helps people learn faster, transition better, and move forward with confidence at every stage of the career life cycle. Hey, welcome to the show, Anthony.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

Thank you so much for having me today, Pedro.

Pedro 2:14

Oh, it's I'm excited that you're here. Okay, and before we get into what you do now, I'm curious how this all actually started, right? So, what was going on in your life when coaching became more than just an idea?

SPEAKER_03 2:29

Thank you so much for the question. About two and a half years ago, honestly, my family started a quarterly check-in session with each other. So, what we wanted to do is bring together our resources of any kind anybody who has a special talent in my family or anybody who has something to bring in which we can offer and kind of bring resources in together. So, what they had me do, I was one of the first presenters for my family, and I was like, what can what does everybody need help with? And everybody was like, I need help with jobs and resumes and stuff like that. So I said, okay, I'll put together a presentation. And so what I end up putting together was about the ATS system and how they are like knocking out resumes. If you have all this, your format is off, and if you how your resumes are looking, and how a lot of companies are adopting that, and they're adopting a lot of uh basically AI even interviews for their first rounds and things like that. And so I gave a presentation simply to my family, and everybody at the end of it, they're like, that is amazing information. We did not know about any of this. Honestly, you can almost package that into a course, and that actually is what lit the light bulb in my head of like, I've been interviewing, training people at my corporate job for the last 12 years. Why am I not assisting even other people outside of my job? Because I've also been a hiring executive. I've been on the other side and seeing what has how the decision makers make these decisions. So, why am I not helping other people? Because that's my truly my passion to help people get into their dream roles. So that's actually what launched the uh fire in me to even start my uh actual business, our career consulting business. And it's honestly been the most rewarding thing ever in uh just starting this business.

Pedro 4:13

Wow, I need to ramp up my family gatherings, man. I mean, I I never heard something like this.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Just once a quarter, we do it, and it's been the best thing ever because everybody has a specialty in something, so whether that is in uh cooking or anything, everybody has something that they're great in, and just offering their resources to the family of like how we can pull in these resources together, that has been honestly the best thing for my family.

Pedro 4:41

Wow, that is so true. I mean, sometimes we have family members that we kind of know what they do, but we never dive into it, and it's so obvious, but at the same time, nobody does it, right? So that is so cool, man. I'm stealing that. If you allow me, I'm bringing that up.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Okay, go ahead and take it. My family, it's a southern family, so you're just gonna take that name, but other than that, you can have that.

Pedro 5:04

That's awesome. And at what point did it stop feeling like a side thing or a calling and start feeling like an actual business you were responsible for?

SPEAKER_03 5:15

Oh, great question. Honestly, it's two phases. First phase was when my website finally launched. I feel like as a business owner, if a lot of entrepreneurs know just getting the website up is a feat in itself, especially in terms of getting a professional website, not something that's just like a quick buy, something that you can kind of AI generate overnight. If you create a full-ledged landing website, you know how much effort that goes into that. That was the first phase. And the second phase that made me realize it was a business is when I got my first business contract with the Marines Women Offshore uh program. And when I got that contract that starts actually January of this year, so it starts actually this month. Uh, that actually makes me realize I'm not just an individual one-on-one coaching. I am a business, I'm a part of a business, and I'm growing a business that is helping many people out there, and not just myself or just my even my family members. So that honestly is giving me motivation to expand my business tremendously this year. And I'm so excited to do that.

Pedro 6:18

I I love how you bring you brought up the logistics, right? Because uh when we're in talking about the coaching space, we're talking about impact, we're talking about you know, a transformational change, but for all of that to happen, we need uh the background running, right? We need a website, we need all the tools that are properly, you know, uh needed to sustain a business. So I love that you you mentioned that. Okay. And once you were out there helping people, right? Who did you naturally end up attracting? When did you realize? Okay, yeah, these are the people I work best with.

SPEAKER_03 6:57

Oh, great question. So this is where I had to figure out who my target audience was because I want to help people, but who are the people? So I really dwindled it down to really two big sectors. So it's recent college graduates, that's my first big sector of who I want to help, and then mid-career professionals who feel stuck in their career. So once I found my target two audiences of kind of who I want to market my business for, that's when I went to social media in terms of making a business TikTok page, making a business YouTube page, targeting videos to feel like they're helping the professionals who I want to help, and also targeting their mindset. A lot of recent college graduates are Gen Zers, like they're not going to look at a 10-minute video, right? They want 30 seconds, how can you help me? What are the tips and tricks I need to know going into to do a resume or an interview? What things I need to know about the market? I don't have much experience. How do I translate that to the actual hiring manager? If I've only done internships or I've only been in colleges and done these certain courses, so showing people how to make impact, even with a little experience and even the mid-career professional, showing them how their previous experience doesn't dictate your next job. What you have done in your previous job has given you the skill sets, and you need to showcase how those skill sets can translate into a new career. Because some people get very stagnant to think, oh, I've only worked in customer service, I can't go anywhere beyond that. It's like, no, you learn skills in customer service. What are you great at? And how can we translate those skills to another industry? Because we can say customer service and go into technology, we can say customer service and go into finance. It depends on what's your path and what's motivates you in order to show you how you can get there. So I think helping people get beyond that, finding my target audience and showing them how they can translate those skills have been a rewarding experience for me for sure.

Pedro 8:47

Yeah, and sometimes they're not even aware of it, right? Like they're so deep in the hamster wheel, they're just pushing, they're not like thinking about a skill set, they're just clocking in, clocking out. And I've had people I was talking with, and they're like, Oh man, you're amazing at it at this, you know, you you know so much, and they're like, Really? You know, that that type of thing that they don't even get it, how good they are. So I like that, you know, having that awareness and being able to uncover that. So yeah, that's awesome. So let's zoom out for a second, right? If if someone ends up working with you today, how do they usually find their way to you in the first place?

SPEAKER_03 9:27

Oh, great question. So, first they either find me through legacycareerslc.com or they find me through social media. Uh, what I've learned in starting a business, nobody really knows you. So your marketing has to be a one slice. So I've even hired a part-time um marketing manager that actually helps me create new posting and making sure that we're updating our LinkedIn, our YouTube pages, our TikTok page every day with uh content, making sure I'm making videos because as when you're your own entrepreneur and own business person, people want to see you and they want to see you and how you actually connect to them and how that they will feel different. So people find me through social media, through LinkedIn, through uh my uh website itself, and also even uh paying for optimization and marketing for your website to get viewed on Google, on other searches. When people look up a resume, they want to basically say, I need a new resume. You need to make sure that your website is actually uh populating in those searches, right? So you need to do great research on how to market your business because when you come out and even if you know that you're the best person, not everybody knows that. And you also need to showcase the after effects. So making sure you get I'm getting client reviews, I'm getting referrals, I'm building that database from previous clients and also capturing clients. So, what I even do now in my current uh business model, I offer free resume reviews. I give people as a hiring executive for the last 12, 10, 13 years now, I give them free resume reviews, I give them feedback, I give you a two-minute feedback on your resume, what's working, what may not be working. And if you choose to uh further work with us and help let us help craft your resume that actually can get you hired, then they can get those services. But also knowing that you have to get clients and make them feel comfortable that you're knowledgeable and you're somebody that can uh help and affix and assist them with everything that they're needing and their biggest pain points right now.

Pedro 11:26

Hmm. Okay. Now let's talk about the mechanics behind the scenes for a moment. Let's say they visited your website, right? They watched your videos. So when someone decides to work with you, what does that actually look like from their perspective?

SPEAKER_03 11:43

Oh, great question. So a couple of things I've enabled on my website. I have an AI chatbot enabled on my website. One to answer any kind of questions that they may have. The great thing about the AI chatbot, if you add that to your website, it only takes data that's already on your website. So it's not extrapolating anything from online or any other information. It's only data sets that you have put onto your website. So if they have any questions, they're getting every question answer of like what's all included, how much is the turnaround? Is it the standard turnaround is three, five days for your resume, but you do have expedited options, right? Making sure the clients are very clear on what they will get if they purchase any of the services and what all is included. The second thing I've kind of done behind the scenes is automate a lot of the onboarding because when you're scaling a business, if you do not automate things, it makes it more stagnant for you and make it a more manual process. So it's hard for you to scale a business if things are not automated. So I've had to automate the onboarding process. People get my clients get an intake form. What is the intake form? It gives uh lets them upload their current resume, lets me know what salary ranges that they're looking for. What type of jobs are they looking for? Are they looking to still stay in the same industry? Are they where do where do they feel like their biggest pain point is? Is it just your resume? Is it interview skills? Is it closing on your salary negotiation skills? How can I best assist you to make sure that you not only get the job, but you get the salary that you're looking for? So I make sure I include all of that even in my onboarding process. So my clients, they know what uh kind of mindset I'm going into it with, and I need them to know what kind of skill set I'm going to bring behind it to make sure that they get everything that they've paid for and more out of everything I give them.

Pedro 13:21

Right. I mean, your work seems pretty involved, right? We're talking about, even if you're and it sounds like you're trying to avoid uh having you as the bottleneck because you're talking about automations, you're talking about uh other ways to be super efficient. But even when we're creating automation, that it also goes back to you, right? You need to create them, you need to send the review on a two-minute video, even if it's a two-minute video. But what I want to understand is how do you think about managing your time and energy so the business doesn't start owning you, for example?

SPEAKER_03 13:56

Great question. And so that is you're also talking to somebody who works a corporate uh nine to five job and runs my business and wants to scale my business to a million-dollar business, right? So, what that does, or what the biggest thing is, I take away from that is figuring out your numbers and your KPIs, and that helps you scale your business. So, a lot of jobs we work in every day, nine to five, right? We go and we get monthly numbers, right? You get a quarterly report or a monthly report on what you did, what you successfully at, what do you need to work on? You need to do that for your business. Same thing for me. So the way I can make sure that I'm not overextending myself or stressing myself is get the numbers so I can know how to scale my business. I have a coach that's a full-time coach that also assists me, that also is that's skilled uh with resume reviews, just like I am. And that requires like work and coaching, making sure that they're updated, have a part-time social media manager and making sure I can scale the business even more. Like I also have flex employees, what I call flex employees, employees that work with the company but are not full-timer. So if I need them, if the business scales to a level that I need more assistance, I can get my flex employees to come in and assist on certain tasks that are needed. So I think just keeping a wide eye, open vision on your numbers for your business and making sure just because you work a nine to five doesn't mean when you start your own business that those KPIs and things disappear. It just making sure that you figure out a meaningful way to use them. So you're staying on top of your business because what you can lead uh to, especially if you're somebody who like me works a full-time job and does my own business, you can lead to burnout, and that's for yourself. And you're not going to be any good for your clients if you're uh tapped out, if you're stressed out, or you're not taking care of your full self too. So, what I would just say to any entrepreneur, know your numbers backwards and forwards, and also know your competition. If you know that, then you kind of also know how to scale your business itself and making sure that you're keeping an eye on the market because if the market gets ahead of you and you're still 10 years behind, you will never catch up or kind of be get your business to where you kind of want it to be.

Pedro 16:04

Interesting. You know, pricing and offers are things every coach evolves on since we're talking about the business side, right? Yeah, for example, sometimes we see, especially in the service-based industry, a self-worth path, right? Like, should I charge this? Am I charging enough? Am I charging too much? You know, so uh we're not talking about hard numbers here, but I would like to understand from your perspective like, how do you approach that now? And what did you have to learn? Did you have to learn in the hard way to get where you are right now?

SPEAKER_03 16:38

I'm glad you asked that question because it is the most mind-boggling thing when you first become get into this business because you start looking at everybody else's prices and you start looking at your competition, you're like, I don't know if I can charge that much. They're charging, they're charging like$500 for an executive resume and this. I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if I have the proof of concept in order enough to charge that, and things like that. So, what I realized is it doesn't matter even if you offer a service for free. If people do not believe in the value that you're going to give, then you won't get the clientele you want, if that makes sense. Even if you offer it for free. If I offer the free resume, but nobody believes that the resume that I will provide for them is beneficial, or the interview skills that I can help enable into them will be beneficial, or the salary negotiation skills I can kind of give them a background and information on is helpful. They won't even take your free service versus even a paid service. So you really do have to. When you first start off, I also did a few free resumes for my family members, right? Making sure I had proof of concept, making sure that did you get a job? How much was the salary? Did you increase in salary, getting to know that I'm going to, and then making them give reviews? Like give me honest reviews. Did I actually help you in doing this? And it makes me know my market value. If I've been able to assist people and they've gotten gone from no job to a$60,000 job overnight in the light in the in two weeks of me doing their resume, because now they're finally starting to get callbacks from no callbacks, then I know, oh, I do have proof of concept here. That's one thing. Then second thing is I need to know where my competition is. And I'm not saying I have to be below all the way below them or all the way uh ahead of them too, but I have to figure out what the right pricing is to where I'm getting and watch my numbers too, right? That goes back to revenue. If I'm increasing just because I increased the sales, but if my revenue goes down, then that wasn't a smart business decision, right? But if I right fit it, what I call right fitting, right fitting is making sure that you have the clientele that you want, right? If my clientele is recent college graduates, right, and mid-career professionals, I'm not going to be charging$500 a resume because that's not the level or access to money that the recent college graduates have, right? So even thinking about that in terms of the services you offer, think about who your clientele is. If your clientele is simply business executives or C-suite members, then maybe offering a$100 resume service is not in the right price point for that, right? But if it's a recent college graduate, maybe that's the perfect price point. But making sure you know who your target audience is, kind of the clientele that you want into your business, and making sure you have proof of concept, because I can tell you, I've seen a lot of my competition, and you also have to look at the things that they offer within it, right? Because I've seen my uh competitors offer, you get unlimited uh edits for 30 days. You get uh, if you do not receive an interview in two months, then you're we do a free resume rewrite for you, things like that. So making sure you realize what's all included in their pricing as well, to making sure that you also are matching the based on the value that you're providing in your services and making sure whatever additional extras that you offer within it makes sense for the client and for you as a business itself. And making sure that you're not putting out more work than what you're receiving back from it.

Pedro 20:05

Yeah, I think we have two keywords. First is commitment when we're talking about pricing, and the other is value, right? I always remember this meme about an old fridge on the sidewalk. You know, uh, take it if you want it, and nobody takes it. The next day you put you put in a price tag of$50 and it disappears, right? There's no perception of value, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:27

Right, because everybody thinks something free is something wrong with it, right?

Pedro 20:31

Yeah, it's worth it. Why is he not charging? Uh, if this is good, why is he not charging for it? Yeah, I got that 100%. You know, and since you you kind of browse this topic, I'm going to right now, but looking forward a bit, I mean, what's the direction you're aiming this business towards, right? Are you thinking more about growth, leverage, building a team, or refining what already works? You know, what feels most exciting right now for you?

SPEAKER_03 20:58

Oh, great question. So, growth and scale in my business are the two most exciting things for it. So, what I realized in this last year is I don't just have to do B2C clients. I think uh I thought in the beginning of starting this business, I was only going to help individuals get their dream jobs and I will move on. And that was hard to scale individually at first because that in terms of like consistency and numbers, you know, sometimes it's not hiring season, like every nobody's looking to do things in December or things like that. So also realizing how to leverage other things. So I started doing this last like six months ago, start looking for B2B clients and making sure I have a marketing phase for that, making sure because a lot of companies, they when they let go of individuals or departments, they don't every company doesn't have the uh funds available to give them uh a basically a what I call like a um a package deal that when they offset you or outplace you, that they're giving you a nice severance package or things like that. A lot of companies don't have that. There may be small to mid-sized companies or even some uh larger companies that do not have those types of service packages available to all employees. So even offering my services to those businesses, hey, if you offset people, this uh let's protect your brand because when you just let go of a department without giving them severances or things like that, that reflects poorly on your brand. They're gonna give you negative reviews on Glassdoor, right? They're not gonna refer people. It's gonna be hard for you to replace those employees if you do have to rehire in the next few months, too, because you're gonna have negative glassdoor reviews, you're gonna have negative reviews onto your business. So we figure out a ways to make sure that because it I tell this, I'll tell the THR professionals, you are the first person and the last person people see when they walk through that door. So when they leave that company, if they feel that they were supported and that you gave them a good offering in terms of assistance to help them get a new resume, help somebody to help them get a new job and a business that can act model that actually helps them make sure they don't have to take too much time off from being let go from this job to a new job, then they will still positively feed back into your business. Like I know they had to make a hard business decision, but I feel so great about working for them because they made sure I got to a new job within two months from them even letting me go, which I didn't have to even take too much time in between paychecks and making sure I got a new job. So I have made sure I market my business line even to those businesses and doing B2B clients, getting those contracts because that helps scale my business and making sure that we have consistent contracts, right? Getting consistent revenue flows into the business and making sure we're able to scale the business and then I can for and then I can even uh in the next few months, I'm looking to do a set, get a salesperson into the business, right? Somebody that who can make sure they close the deals besides it just being my face all the time, right? So making sure that we're able to scale this business into a million-dollar and multi-million dollar business and making sure that make sure I know myself that doesn't just have to be B2C clients. And I love doing B2C clients, I love making sure I help people get jobs, but that's also on the business side of it, making sure I help corporations offset the people that they're losing and making sure that they also protect their brand itself and making sure that they're helping their previous employees feel like they had a parachute on their landing when they had to get offset from the company.

Pedro 24:26

Oh, interesting. Yeah, it's like damage control. I like that. It's like you're gonna have a layoff eventually, that's gonna happen. You can it is what it is, it happens, and sometimes it's nobody's fault. Sometimes we're talking about circumstances, uh, industry shifts. So, yeah, I get it. That's that's pretty cool. And and sometimes that that will put them on a on a place where they might even reconsider the layoff because you're you're giving them brand awareness. Like, hey, did you know X, Y, and Z could happen and could, you know, prevent you from replacing this person? Are you sure you want to do this? This is it goes back to uh real coaching, right? To root causes. That's what this is all about to understand what's happening behind curtain. Yeah, that's cool. I never thought it that way. That's awesome. Yeah. So, you know, even when things are going well, you know, Anthony, there's always something under construction. What's the main thing you're actively working on or trying to improve in the business right now?

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Great question. So one already talked about the automation, right? Of kind of where I want the business to in terms of the onboarding process and making sure. One thing I'm kind of working on now is additional resources for my clients in between sessions. So when I do career uh coaching, right? I've just helped a client recently land a job at Deloitte. So, right, he had to do four rounds of interviews. So he had four different coaching sessions we've had to prep them for the interview. We did his resume, LinkedIn profile. But what I want to uh now enable is make sure I have an ecosystem that my clients feel supported, even in between uh those career consulting sessions, whether that's uh offering free additional resources, making sure I make maybe a Facebook page where they can just uh talk to other people who are in the same kind of predicament that they are, or looking for whatever kind of resources I need for my clients in terms of things in between my coaching sessions. I kind of want to make more of an ecosystem around it. So that's why I'm trying to focus on as well, making sure that they feel supported even in between those sessions. Like, yes, they were able to get a job. Yes, they were able to move up to a six-figure salary, which is amazing. But I also want to make sure that they feel supported and making sure that they have every resource they need in between, whether that's uh salary negotiation cheat sheets or things like that, they can just use without having to feel like they have to book a coaching session necessarily or use one of their sessions for some smaller things or just asking questions in between sessions. So I want to make sure I work on that this year and making sure I build an ecosystem, even when people clients book with me, making sure that they feel supported. That's why I tell uh even other entrepreneurs, once you get your client list protected and making sure that you're offering your other resources and things like that to your clients, even in between trying to sell them something, right? Whether that's a a monthly newsletter just with uh market information, what's going on the market, who's hiring right now? Is it uh is it uh tech or is it sales or is it customer service or is it healthcare or little things like that? Like I said, nuances that clients need to know, kind of market information or free resources that they can have and use uh to their advantage in between client sessions. So I'm working on scaling that part of the business as well because I want my clients to feel supported not only from when they purchase a service, but even when they're not purchasing with me, I want them to feel supported in between and after they use my services. So that's kind of what I'm working on building an ecosystem around just full support, whether it's a paid service or not a paid service, just to make sure that they feel supported in the entire job market.

Pedro 28:03

Yeah, that's pretty cool because you uh if you if you see it the the career as a journey, it's a long one, right? Yes, and for example, what should I do if I got an offer? People don't know how to navigate that. For example, should they use it as leverage? Should they it sometimes they bluff, you know, and they don't have one, they got ended up firing themselves, you know. So that stuff kind of really happens, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:29

Other things that you can negotiate besides salary. A lot of people don't realize there's other things you can use vacation time off, PTO. It's also sign-on bonuses that you can extract maybe a position title change you can negotiate in that. It's a lot of other things people need to think outside of even this the scope of salary, but the full package itself that you need to make sure that you're thinking about in your offer. And a lot of people, they I can tell you when I took my first job out of college, I took the offer, but I can tell you I regretted that for years because I did negotiate into it. I didn't think about the full benefit package, I didn't think about the I just thought about the number and I didn't want to be without a job, right? So making sure that they don't make any hasty decisions or making sure they feel confident when they do say yes to uh positions and things like that.

Pedro 29:16

Yeah, that's that's a good one. I like that, and there's so much potential I can see because it is what is said, it's an ecosystem, right? Okay, you know, Anthony, I want to do something a little lighter for a moment. I got a quick, rapid fire game if you're up for it.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Awesome, I'm up for it.

Pedro 29:34

Okay, think about investments you've made into the business, coaching, programs, hires, tools, marketing, any of it. Okay, I'll throw out a prompt and you answer with whatever comes to mind first. Stories are welcome.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

Okay, awesome.

Pedro 29:50

Okay, what was the for the very first investment you ever made into your business?

SPEAKER_03 29:56

My website. Website, yes, which was a pretty painting, let's just say it. I took I had to make my own self-investment, and it was the biggest investment I made into myself and my business.

Pedro 30:09

That's cool. That's uh actually a leap of faith. And and and it's it looks like you're a legitimate business, right? Yes. Feeling you have like that. Okay. Next one. What's the most recent investment you've put money into?

SPEAKER_03 30:26

Marketing. So marketing for sure, in terms of making sure I do, it's just not about virality either. It's making sure that I'm marketing and giving substance behind what I'm doing and making sure I'm giving the stories. Uh, I'm also about to start a new series, actually, uh, behind the coaching, a little bit of a series of like what actually goes into career coaching, right? People, a lot of people don't realize or like what information I'm giving to clients. I want to kind of create a uh YouTube series and a TikTok series surrounding that. So, but that's also gonna be uh also a part of my marketing budget. So also make I can tell you the biggest part of getting a new business out there is marketing for sure.

Pedro 31:05

Okay. And looking back, what investment paid off the most and why?

SPEAKER_03 31:11

Uh, the investment that paid off the most really was uh into my website, just because it gave me the infrastructure because I've changed it. The funniest thing is I paid for a service for my website and I ended up changing it completely six months later that fit more into my business and got more clients. But my website, just the infrastructure of the actual website itself helped me because then it let me uh do different things off suits of it, like adding the AI chat by adding pop-ups, getting my free uh resume review services pop up in there to get client email intake. So honestly, the investment of the website was the biggest thing that paid off because it helped give me not only brand identity, but it also helped me uh luring clients just based off of uh how a website runs itself.

Pedro 31:57

Okay, nice. And what's one investment you'd think twice about if you could rewind?

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Oh, okay, this is a great question. I think making sure that I had a marketing manager before I started investing into marketing, what I was doing at first was literally just any YouTube video or TikTok video that I thought was great, would just invest an insurmountable amount of money into it, thinking that all this is gonna get 10,000 views and it's gonna get engagement and it's gonna get so many clients off of it. And no, it's not knowing, knowing my strengths and weaknesses and knowing marketing was not one. So, me getting a marketing manager to help me know when real-time investment is needed and when it's not, and what platforms to use, whether it's LinkedIn or TikTok or YouTube or things like that, that kind of was needed within my business. But I can tell you, I spent a crazy amount on marketing at first. I was not going anywhere, not return on revenue was not there.

Pedro 32:56

No, that's it's good at your being so authentic about it and upfront about it, you know. I really like that, you know, and and hearing those, yeah, side by side. How has your mindset around investing in the business changed over time?

SPEAKER_03 33:09

If it has, yeah, it has because I think when you're first running and uh doing your business, starting a bad business, you don't know if it's gonna be payoff, right? You think that all of these investments are going nowhere, or you think that I'm not getting the return immediately of what I needed to. And so it wasn't until probably six, eight months after doing all of these investments where you're like, okay, when is it gonna get uh come back to you? But you have to have full confidence in self and self-conf and uh proof of concept into your business, and knowing that every investment is gonna come tenfold back as long as you put that intention out there and as long as you're being authentic and making sure that you give your clients a great product. Because I have so many clients that refer so many other people that I would never even thought of, or I got even business referrals from other business clients that I never thought of just because of the confidence I've done into my service and the proof of concept I've given and giving them quality products and getting people actual jobs, right? So that word of mouth I feel like is insurmountable, even on the business side, that I didn't I never even thought of, to be honest.

Pedro 34:16

That's cool. I mean, you've been in long enough to see trends come and go, right? People give business advice non-stop, especially online. And I I like to use my example uh as a personal showcase. It's like I'm scrolling, I was I think that was last Sunday, and I'm like, AI is that, and the next post is AI is gonna take her job. Okay, so which one, guys? You know, let's give it a break. Okay. So what's something you hear repeated a lot that you think, you know, people misunderstand or overvalue?

SPEAKER_03 34:52

I think everybody overvalues the little quick uh tips that they get a lot from online, especially from a lot of these recruiters or different things like that. They overvalue, I think, everything people say and undervalue their self-worth and kind of the work that they put into. Um, so what I mean by that is a lot of times I hear people that say, Oh, uh, I talked to a recruiter and they said, you know, my three-page resume was okay, or they basically, I've seen some resumes where they've had work with some resume writers and they've basically put it in paragraph form for three pages of their resume and things like that. And I'm like, you're overvaluing that and you're basically lessening yourself and you're not going to get an interview because you need to have confidence in yourself to know that you've already done everything you need to do to get to your dream job, to be honest. Or you maybe have the steps at least to get there, right? You just need to know that you may just need a little bit of tweaking, you may not have to throw away the full thing and making sure that you're not listening to every piece of advice, but be discerning in the advice you get. Because some advice may be it may be transformational, right? Somebody can tell you, hey, you can do a two-re-page resume, and if you add these few elements, that is going to transform uh how you get interviews, right? And it can actually do that. But if you go into every little detail of what somebody says without having confidence of saying yes to some things and no to some things, then you're going to be uh showcasing their dream of what you are versus your dream of what you know you can be, in that instance.

Pedro 36:36

Yeah, I mean, overexplaining is actually a signal of lack of confidence. You you nailed it. And and sometimes I'm I'm also a career coach, so sometimes I'm talking I talk with HR people and they're like they hate when someone starts with a timeline, right? So when I met my mom, and I'm like, and they're like, oh my god, here we go. You know, a 20-minute ride of uh everything that ran down their own career path. No, it's not about that. It's the the the relevance to the interview, right? Is what important the most. Okay, I get it. Okay, and on the flip side, like what's something boring or not as hyped that you wish more people actually paid attention to?

SPEAKER_03 37:20

Um I want people to pay more attention, uh, attention to detail on the nuances of their resumes and their interviews. What I mean by that is a lot of people in their resumes, I'm seeing even small misspellings, or they think that the one thing I kind of want to give everybody out here right now, on your resume, it's supposed to sell you. I want you to take out your resume, look at it for 10 seconds, and then flip it over. Tell me what job you're targeting and tell me your top two skill sets that you're offering to that job. And if you can't answer that question within those 10 seconds, then your resume is not working for you. Okay. So, what my clients I like to tell them is at the top of the resume, even let's say I'm going for uh a project manager role, at the top of your resume, if it says project management specialist, and then it has a divider and it says handled$100 million plus in projects uh right under your name, you're instantly selling yourself within half a second of some of a hire manager opening your resume. And a lot of people try to make the resume do more work than it needs to, which what I mean by that is you want the hire manager to read every bullet point in your resume to know your value. And you need to make it what I call skimmable, then make sure it shows your value immediately, and they should know that within 10 seconds, it has to be skimmable. And kind of that's kind of how I've made my resumes for all my clients. I make it skimmable. You know your impact within 10 seconds of viewing it because if you don't realize that hiring managers are getting batches of resumes at a time, not one at a time, then you will know that it needs to have impact immediately when you're reading through a batch of 25 of them. That makes sense, and also I say the same thing in your interviews. Make sure you know the nuances of the interview, making sure that you know what you want out of the interview because it is a co-equal thing, it's not just the hiring manager has all the power, you have the power too. So it's a lot of people get into jobs where they feel like they're overworked and undervalued because they didn't ask the right questions at the end of the interview, right? How do you have if you are somebody who values promotions and making sure that you're scaling within a company, did you ask those relevant questions in the interview? Can you give me examples of how somebody has been promoted from this position? Can you give me examples of how other roles that somebody can take from this current role I'm moving into? Can you give me an example of how you've helped train somebody and how they have moved up within the company? Because if they have no examples of that, then they have nothing to show for it, then you have not got yourself into A job that is not it doesn't have an end goal to it and make is making it uh value less for you. So make sure that you just think about nuances and think about what you truly want out of it. That goes for your resume and that goes for your interview, too.

Pedro 40:15

Yeah, that makes sense, and sometimes uh you know, the one who's applying for the job. And I I always come back to this question, it's like, and I've did that uh for my clients as well. It's like walk me through a day of a general general manager of an X, Y, and Z so you can have that feeling of what it looks like working there, right? It's not just about stacking tasks, and because at the end of the day, you don't know if you're gonna end up six, five hours or half an hour working on a KPI, they don't even care, you know. Right. So walk me through it. I think that's pretty neutral and pretty, you know, to the point.

SPEAKER_03 40:50

I can tell you from a hiring manager, that's great advice because we've said no to people, they've had amazing interviews, but then if they never asked any information about the job itself, they became an automatic no after the interview. And I can tell you the reason why is because some people they showcase more desperation for a job than actual leadership and basically being able to handle a job because you don't even know. We've you didn't even ask anything about the role. What if we told you how to clean the toilets twice a day? You didn't even ask any information about it, you're just willing to accept the job because you want a job, and it's not just about wanting a job, it's showing every company that you're the perfect fit for that role and that company, and that's how that's what sets you apart, not just wanting a job.

Pedro 41:34

Awesome. So before we close this out, Anthony, if someone resonated with what you shared and wants to follow your work, where do they where should they go?

SPEAKER_03 41:43

Yes, they should go to legacycareerslc.com. That's my official website. That's also my official handle for all social medias, whether it's TikTok or YouTube or LinkedIn, you can go to LegacyCareers LLC, uh, making sure that you, if you need any help or assistance out there, whether you're, like I said, a recent college graduate who needs that uh shining star of figuring out how to basically showcase your internships and showcase your experience into how to get your first job, or you're a mere career professional who feels lost and you just feel like I'm ready to start a new job or a new career, and I don't know how to translate these experiences I've done to something else, then make sure you go to legacycareerslc.com today. I would love to help and assist everybody out there who's needed, even businesses that who are need that assistance and offsetting teams or offloading teams to make sure you also protect your company brand, right? And that is a big thing moving forward. A lot of people are making sure they do their research before they ever even some people won't even show up to an interview. They looked at the glass door reviews and say, Oh no, you know, a lot of negative reviews, they won't even show up to those interviews. So making sure you protect your company and the brand itself as well for companies.

Pedro 42:55

Okay, you know, there were a few moments from this conversation that really stood out to me. First, I would start with the family quarterly, right? The in session that started this all. Yeah, I I'm just picturing myself when I met my wife and their family, and I'm like going there to some barbecue, and I'm coming home with my resume review. You know, this was unexpected. Also, yeah, that's awesome. And also, you know, how you mentioned and highlighted the fact that you need to showcase your skill sets, right? And and that could pivot into a new career, new path. And that's something that people don't don't think as much as they should. That's one thing that I also would like love to highlight. Um, I I have to say something like when you mentioned that nobody really really knows you on marketing, uh, that brand brought me back to one of my clients, and and he was like, Yeah, I was kind of because that was an in-person client. He was like, I was kind of unsure if I should reach out for you because there was there once one time I kind of tripped myself and hurt and you were there, and blah blah blah, and the and the the kids play, you know, something like that. And I'm like, what's this guy talking about? I don't even remember what I have for breakfast. So it's like it's not that nobody really knows it. People are so into their own stuff, yeah, and that and and they they don't care, you know. And I'm like, I don't even remember that, bro. And it's like, yeah, so I was like second guessing myself to to approach you and talk with you. I'm like, dude, come on, you know, so just get that out of your head. And and I had too certain moments, I'm like, oh, so the the entire world's gonna watch this and what they're gonna think about me, and it really they're not, you know.

SPEAKER_03 44:46

Same thing yourself, putting myself in videos. You know how long it took me for to like yeah, taping yourself to do promotion videos. It it takes a time, it takes a loop on you because you think, oh my gosh, everybody's gonna judge me.

Pedro 44:58

And it's like sometimes yeah, it's like you're an American Idol the next day when you put it out there, like, oh my god, everything so everything changes now. It's not really like that. Take it as a video, you know. And uh the damage control idea, I really like that. I mean, that's that has so much potential to create that awareness in companies. I really like that. So, Anthony, I really appreciate you taking the time and being open with this. It was great having you on, man.

SPEAKER_03 45:24

Thank you so much, Pedro, for having me. It was great uh being on the podcast today, and I hope everybody took something out of it too, for sure.

Davis Nguyen 45:32

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This conversation was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. To learn more about Purple Circle, our community, and how we can help you grow your business, visit joinpurplecircle.com.