How Tim Madden Built a Career Coaching Company That Changes Executive Lives

In this episode of Success Leaves Clues Podcast, host Pedro welcomes Tim Madden, Founder and CEO of Executive Career Upgrades, to discuss what it really takes to land executive-level roles in today's competitive job market. Tim shares how his own struggles transitioning from the military inspired him to build one of the fastest-growing executive career coaching firms in the U.S.

The conversation explores personal branding, LinkedIn optimization, executive recruiting, salary negotiation, AI's growing role in career coaching, leadership, scaling a coaching business, and building systems that allow companies to grow beyond the founder. Tim also explains why executives often fail not because they lack talent, but because they don't have the right strategy, visibility, or interview process.

Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timmadden83/
Website: https://execupgrades.com/about-tim-madden/

Transcript

Tim Madden 0:00

How we work together bypassing that is onboarding. First thing we have to do, everyone has different career goals. We actually meet with some people that's making 250K right now, but they're working 80 hours a week, and they're like, hey, a win to them is if you could just find me a job making 175 and I could work remote from home 40 hours a week, that would be a huge win. So number one, you have to assume not everyone we work with wants to go from a director to a senior director to a VP. Like everybody has different goals for different reasons. The first thing we need to figure out is what is your goal? So we do what's called a clarity exercise. What is important to you? Where do you want to work? How much money do you make wanna make? What do you want to do? What kind of impact do you want to have? Right. So once we figure that out, we're going to send you to our branding department. Okay. And we're going to enhance your resume and your LinkedIn profile as it relates to, we're going to brand and position you strategically to say, hey, these are your goals. Here's how we're going to position you for the marketplace so that it resonates with these organizations. Once that's taken care of, really the huge value prop of us is we want to do all this for you.

Davis Nguyen 1:02

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues, the podcast where we interview business owners on how they built their businesses and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is David Swain, and I'm a business coach and a founder of Purple Circle, where we help business owners achieve their first six-figure, seven-figure, and eight-figure year, all without sacrificing their quality of life. Before becoming a business coach and before founding Purple Circle, I started to scale with several seven and eight-figure coaching businesses and have been a consultant at several businesses doing over $100 million each, including some that are publicly listed and doing over a billion dollars each. In every episode of the podcast, you're going to learn lessons that took RS years to learn, and you'll be able to learn that in minutes. No matter if you're a new business owner or an established business owner, every episode is going to give you the clues in order to elevate your business.

Pedro Stein 1:46

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by Tim Madden, the founder and CEO of Executive Career Upgrades, a recruiting and coaching firm helping directors, VPs, and C-suite executives land their next role through personal branding, interview prep, and compensation negotiation. His firm has been named to the Inc. 5000 two years running and recognized among the fastest growing veteran companies in the country. Welcome to the show, Tim. Thanks for having me. Dude, great to have you. Okay. And I am kind of a comic book nerd myself. So I love the first editions, you know? Yeah. The origin story. So let's rewind a bit because every coach has that moment where they look at their life and say, Yeah, I guess this is what I'm doing now, right? So when was that for you, Tim?

Tim Madden 2:40

Yeah. So for me, when I got out of the military, I had a hard time finding a job. And it was probably the most depressing, frustrating part of my entire life because I was really great at what I did, right? I had a track record of success in the military. I was honor grad, soldier of the year, had a degree from Purdue, working on my MBA, all of these things. I get out, start applying for jobs online, thought I had a good resume. No one's calling me back. So I applied and I applied and I applied. And just no one was calling me back. So I immediately started to do what most people probably, I think, happens to them. They say, Man, what's wrong with me? Right? Like, what's wrong with me? As opposed to what process are you following to actually have this happen? But I wasn't doing that, right? I was like, man, what's wrong with me? And I only landed two interviews in nine months, applied to hundreds of jobs. One person, the first company I ever went to was a recruiting. I was a recruiter in the military as well. So I interviewed a recruiting firm and he was like, How much did you make in the military? And I was like, 80K. And he said, They pay you that much? I can't believe we pay you that much. That was my first interview after four months of rejection. I'm like, damn, just go ahead and beat me up some more, right? And yeah, so there I was. Fortunately, you know, I'm running, I'm on unemployment at this point. I'm making $286 a week in Indianapolis, Indiana, separated from the service. Unemployment's about to run out. My buddy gets a hold of me and says, Hey, I found a job on Craigslist that pays 12 bucks an hour as a recruiter. Maybe you can go there and work your way up. And I was like, applied for the job. They didn't even call me back for 30 days. I think I was just very fortunate that they called me back, flew me out to Chicago to meet with the CEOs of this recruitment company, company of 400 people. They didn't have one military veteran working there. Okay. So there was, you know, that. And fortunately, they took a shot on me to run a region for them as one of the leaders. So I was very fortunate that I got into recruiting and retention out of the military, staffing, right? And we're recruiting. And I learned all of the things I was doing wrong. I enhanced that business for two years. Then I was like, I know how to get a job now. Okay. I know how to really be branded effectively. I know how to utilize LinkedIn. I know how to get in front of people that can actually hire me, even if they don't have a position open or not, tell them the value I can get, get their attention, know what to say, talk about money. So I wanted to move down to Florida, right, in the Miami area. I did an outreach to decision makers. Right. I lined up three interviews, flew down there, got two offers, accepted one. And then, to make a long story short, then I started helping other professionals utilize that same process. And that's how Executive Corrup Grades was born. So that was my moment where I was like, hey, a lot of people struggle with this, especially at a high level. They probably think something's wrong with them when really nothing's wrong with them. They just probably don't have the right process in place to get hired at a high level, where they might not be branded effectively. They might not know how to get on interviews, they might not know how to respond on interviews, and they might not know how to talk about money. So that's initially what birth executive prepgrades.

Pedro Stein 5:42

It's almost like you're patient zero for your own business, right?

Tim Madden 5:46

You're like, I need to find myself a job.

Pedro Stein 5:49

Eventually you get the job. And then you're like, this is how it looks like. It's almost like cracking a coat, right? Oh, nobody told me about this stuff. Love it. Okay.

Tim Madden 5:58

Well, and my mentor says too, just real quick, he was like, hey, how are you going to overcome a difficult point in your life and not share with other people how you did it? Don't be stingy. Right?

Pedro Stein 6:09

So it's serving past Tim in a way, right? Uh serving people that are in the same spot. You had skin in the game, been there, done that, love that. Okay. Now, after you got rolling, right? Restablish the open shop and all that, who are the people that kept showing up? You know, because it's been it has been a while now, 10 years in the game at least, right? And uh there's an evolution to it, I imagine. Sometimes it it has, it's sometimes it doesn't. So the ones you realized, uh, okay, this is the people I can serve best, you know? So the evolution of who you serve and who you serve now.

Tim Madden 6:43

Yeah. The evolution of who we serve has remained the same. It's been directors, VPs, and executives in corporate America. We do do business to business now. We've expanded, we have different products and services, but on the business to consumer side, they are still the same clients because they will always have the same problems. And some people have different goals. So it's kind of it's not really an evolution of customers. They just, they're so intricate. There's so many avatars we deal with. Because think about this. Some people have been unemployed for a long time and they just don't know how to get results. Some people are in a toxic workplace and they don't even know the first step they should take. Some people are in a halfway decent job, but they know they're not living up to their potential. So there's really so many different reasons why people land different jobs. What I have seen in our industry is it's the same thing as 10 years ago. And I know there's people that we're helping right now that's just like me, that's probably like, what's wrong with me? They're, they're, they're thinking that. Some people want to leave a legacy, right? So so many people are doing this for so many different reasons. And I really do think the evolution has not changed that much with our customer base.

Pedro Stein 7:46

Okay. So let's do a quick game of pretend here. Let's pretend I'm your amateur, your ideal client profile, right? I'm one of those directors, VPs, and C suite. I'm trying to get my myself in a better position and career-wise, right? So, first of all, how would I be able to find you? Okay, marketing-wise.

Tim Madden 8:05

Yeah, we do every possible thing you can think of to get known, right? So we spend a lot of money on online advertising on every channel, right? We have, you know, I do social media every single day. So we're building a social media following for myself and for the organization. You can go to our website, execupgrades.com. You can email me at Tim at execupgrades.com. You can find me on Facebook, Tim Madden at executive career upgrades. You can find me on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on TikTok, on YouTube. Because here's why. When you're on a mission to help people, right, and you you know what the company stands for, right? You want to get it out so that every single person can find you, right? So I never want to do one marketing channel. Our things is like just doing this podcast here. We have a podcast as well, right? We are in online publications. I'm writing a book. So really, when you think about what is any way we could we're sponsoring events, right? Like mini events. So it's really like I want to be everywhere because I do know someone might find me because of reading a book. They might find me because we help someone else, and then the person we help, we stay in contact with, or it could be all of the other mediums that we use online, but we're very passionate about getting our message out there.

Pedro Stein 9:15

Okay. So you cast a white net, as it sounds like, right? Multiple channels. Let's say I'm still that guy in the game of pretend. I'm still your avatar. I'm like looking at your social media, what you got out there resonates with me. I'm like, this sounds cool. It sounds like this guy can really help me. And I reach out, right? We can speed up the sales process a little bit. We can say there's alignment. You guys know you can help me. I know you guys can help me. So, what I would love for us to to talk about is like for you to give me like a peek behind a curtain, an idea of how does it look like to work with you guys and the outcomes I can expect.

Tim Madden 9:50

Yeah. So, how we work together bypassing that is onboarding. First thing we have to do, everyone has different career goals. We actually meet with some people that's making 250K right now, but they're working 80 hours a week, and they're like, hey, a win to them is if you could just find me a job making 175 and I could work remote from home 40 hours a week, that would be a huge win. So, number one, you have to assume not everyone we work with wants to go from a director to a senior director to a VP. Like everybody has different goals for different reasons. The first thing we need to figure out is what is your goal? So we do what's called a clarity exercise. What is important to you? Where do you want to work? How much money do you make, want to make? What do you want to do? What kind of impact do you want to have? Right. So once we figure that out, we're gonna send you to our branding department. Okay, and we're gonna enhance your resume and your LinkedIn profile as it relates to, we're gonna brand and position you strategically to say, hey, these are your goals. Here's how we're gonna position you for the marketplace so that it resonates with these organizations. Once that's taken care of, really the huge value prop of us is we wanna do all this for you. Okay. We want to get you on interviews now. So we need the clarity, we need to ask you questions to develop your resume in LinkedIn, your strategic visibility plan branding package. Then we're gonna get on interviews for you. We're gonna go out and figure out the opportunities that are out there. Our team is gonna generate opportunities from you. Okay, so we're gonna take care of that. You're gonna be able to monitor that. Okay, there are a couple of things that you can do as well, but we're gonna do the bulk of that. Then you're gonna go through our interview networking and salary negotiation certification programs. Because when those interviews are being approached, we want to make sure that you are mission ready. You know what, how do you prepare, how do you train, go through mock sessions, and you are certified green, green, go, go, go, so that when we get you on a potential dream job opportunity, you know exactly how to facilitate it. Then we're also here when your offer comes in and we help you negotiate it. Customers, on average, get hired between director to multinational CEO. The average, when the last time I looked, was 132 days. We work with some people making seven, eight, you know, a million dollars. So the average person that's kind of targeting maybe up to 300K, the goal is 90 days. On average, people who work with us get 27.2% increase in annual compensation. 31% of professionals, the last time I checked, right, received a sign-on bonus. So those are those are what individuals can expect. So essentially on the B2C side, we do a done for you career search. We also have a community and different things. You can meet with advisors whenever you you want, but those are kind of the different stages of clarity. We're gonna brand you effectively, we're gonna help, you know, generate the majority of the interviews, we're gonna make sure you're prepared, we're gonna help negotiate your salary. Kind of how the client journey works.

Pedro Stein 12:38

Love it. Okay, I got I have some curveballs for you. Okay, first of all, I'm a career coach here in Brazil, okay? And there is this trend about AI versus career coaching. People are in a way replacing, I'm not saying 100% replacing, right? But it's almost like some people consider it a threat or not, or even if it's gonna help the career coach or not. But I would love to see your point of view on AI and impact in your business or even the industry itself on career coaching. And how do you see that? Do you see that as an opportunity, a threat? Or how would you phrase it to someone who's like, oh, I'm just gonna try to do it uh through AI? And what is the the you know, the leverage you feel like career coaches can, you know, actually deliver?

Tim Madden 13:23

I wouldn't, I don't think it's mainstream socially acceptable right now. Here's what I mean by that. People still want the human interaction. Okay. This is the biggest thing that I found right now. So, first, to answer your question, we have to say younger individuals, I do believe, I don't have stats to back this, but I think younger individuals are utilizing AI more than corporate executives. Okay. Now, I don't have that data to back that, but I would say this individuals that are not using AI, whether it's to help them get a job or be more successful at their job, they're gonna get smoked in the marketplace. Businesses that do not integrate AI to enhance all of their products and services are gonna get smoked in the marketplace. This is one of our biggest initiatives right now of how can we leverage AI just to get you faster, a faster outcome. And we have brilliant things we've developed for the sake of time, right? That really have helped our customer journey. But I would say there's so many different components to a job search, right? But I would say, hey, if you are sharp, savvy, you know the questions to ask AI, hey, it could freaking tremendously help you. Could it replace the whole process? If you were an expert AI user, I think so. But when you look at the data, I think the last time I looked, 46% of people in the technology field aren't even utilizing AI right now. Okay. When you look at the total marketplace that's actually using AI, it's less than 3%. So I feel like most people are not using it. But for the small amount that's are, hey, if you know, they they they can leverage that. But I would say it's not it's not just mainstream enough right now.

Pedro Stein 15:00

Interesting. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. Now, I have a different question for you. We established prior to recording of the podcast that you were running the business as a CEO, right? You have coaches under you that are that are doing the delivery, the operation, the execution. Now, let me ask you this, man, because uh there's a lot of coaches out there listening, and I think this could be helpful, which is the fact that, first of all, was it scary to bring in the first coach, right? Because you had you hit a ceiling eventually that brought you there because you're doing everything, you're doing the delivery, and then you bring in the first and the second and the third, however that looks like. First, was it scary? And second, the handoff, right? Because sometimes people are like, hey, I want to talk with Tim, you know, you're the guy. I want to talk with you, man. You know, so can can you walk me through those two questions?

Tim Madden 15:45

Sure. Was it scary? No. And it should only be scary if you don't have processes in place. That's what's scary is, you know. I'm writing a book right now called Mission Ready, how to get people, teams, and organizations mission ready, just like they're going to a battlefield. And one of those things are it's many things, as you can imagine, but one of them is just processes, right? People should be able to come in and get the same level of service as if it was Tim Madden than anyone else. So everyone needs to say what I say. And then the military, they do a great job at this, right? Because it's like when you're, if you go to become a mechanic, right, at the military school, right? They're like, day one, they're like, this is a wrench. This is how a wrench works, right? All the way to, and then you have you go through a series of assessments, and then you are either, from my mission ready book, effective or ineffective. So once you are trained and certified, you are effective. So I feel very confident, all of my advisors that are underneath our advising department, that they know exactly right, they are certified, right? So they're gonna get the same level of service. Right. And how do I combat that now? Is I joke with people. They're like, Tim, I want you to be my coach. And I'm like, hey, I haven't been a coach for five years. But Alexa, she's helped the last 4,000 people negotiate their salary. So I'll give you the option, man. You want me or you want Alexa? Right. So, you know, I've just made sure that my team is trained. You cannot, a business cannot be dependent on me. You are, if you're the coach right now, the solo coach, you are the bottleneck. Okay. So how can you put the right processes in place so that sales can sell? You can bring in people that can sell the product, you can bring in people that can fulfill on the product, you can bring in marketing professionals, right? But that just goes to the goals of your business. So I would say, you know, when you bring people in and they're trained the right way, you know, you're gonna get emails saying, Alexa's amazing, Megan's amazing, right? But if they're not trained and you just bring in some random career coach that doesn't match your training, it's going to be horrible. It's going to be horrible.

Pedro Stein 17:46

So quality control, making sure all everything is dialed in. And I uh I'm not sure about it. It sounds like being part of the military helped you have that understanding of the cog and a machine, right? It's just like you're it it empowers you in a way.

Tim Madden 18:03

Yeah, absolutely. I'm very fortunate because I was in the military, that I know that I mean they have the best business practices known to man. And I've just implemented those and invested in myself with with other mentors, but I couldn't imagine being 30 years old, 40 years old, not being through the military. You know, and I just couldn't imagine that. So I'm very fortunate that I learned about teams. I learned about you're only as, you know, effective as the worst person on your team, right? And really how to build that culture. It's not easy. And that is the struggle and the ultimate curse of the entrepreneur. The curse of the entrepreneur is you can be the best career coach in Brazil. You can be the best. Being the best career coach has nothing to do with building a business. Of course, you need to be a great career coach, but what do you need to build a business? You need sales, marketing, fulfillment, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You need those things. You can be the best career coach in the whole world. If you don't know how to market and sell, you're gonna be struggling. Just no different than the plumber in the local community. You can be the best plumber. The best plumber doesn't get all the jobs. The most visible plumber does. And it's also the curse of the executive. The confusing part about the job search is, hey, listen, we're not talking about how great you are. If you're going to be a C-suite executive, every person you're competing with is great. We're not talking about that. What is a job search really about? It's about being branded effectively, sure, in the best light possible, but it's about getting in front of people that can hire you. It's about communicating effectively on these interviews and knowing how to talk about money, right? So that's the confusing thing, right? Remember back to my story, I was like, man, I'm really great at what I do. A job search is not, it's a very small amount of that's like that's the word I'm looking for. That's like a no-brainer. Like, that's what, of course, you need to be great at what you do. That has nothing to do with the job search. A job search is about branding and strategic visibility and those things. And just one more thing: beat beat the dead horse, right? It's no different than a product. You can have the best widget at the cheapest price if no one knows about your product. It doesn't matter. You could actually have a really mediocre product with mediocre reviews at kind of overpriced. But here's the thing, man. If everyone knows about it, they're gonna buy it, right? So that's what a lot of people don't understand.

Pedro Stein 20:18

Love that. Okay. Now let's shift gears for a second here. You mentioned a word that I picked up on, which is legacy, right? And I'm curious about where you're taking all this, you know, looking ahead, where do you see the business going? Are you thinking about scaling even more, hiring more people? Is there or is there a next step you're excited about, Tim?

Tim Madden 20:35

Yeah, we have strategic plans and goals. The current goal right now, which may change, right? Our six-year plan is to exit to private equity. So every single person who helped build this, we exit and we basically all get paid. And in that instance, we've also helped a tremendous amount of people. And we already have. We literally helped thousands of people here, right? But the other thing is that's what we're working towards because you need to have a vision inside of an organization to get people excited about. But I've also said, hey, we're getting pretty big right now. So I said, who knows? Maybe we go public, maybe we IPO, maybe we get really big, maybe we acquire other organizations, right? So the goal right now is to building up that private equity to basically have a liquidity event. But really, you know, it could be going public one day. Because with what we're instilling in AI, our products and services, all of this team, our elite team that we've been able to build here. I'm like, these Fortune 500 companies better watch out, man, because we're freaking coming for you. And you're still operating like the 1980s. I'm telling you, we're gonna smoke you. And even Corn Fairy, which is predominantly, if you've heard of them, billions and billions and billions of dollars. Ron Stodd, billions and billions, adeco manpower, billions of billions. What's crazy is even Cornferry only has when you talk about total market cap, four percent. Okay. So we're not selling cell phones here and competing with Apple at 60% and whoever the other 40%, Google or whoever. Their competitor is right, Android, right? It's not like that. In our industry, it's you know, the biggest players really have a small market share. So it just goes to show you like you could really come in and just disrupt this whole market and smoke everybody with the right strategic planning.

Pedro Stein 22:16

Interesting. Wow, that's exciting, man. Just by hearing you, I'm thinking out loud right now. I'm like, wow, that's insane. And and and I think you you nailed it. There is a lot of room for improvement here and a lot of room, especially in the industry, you know. No, of course. Whenever we're aiming towards something new, next chapter, whatever, there's always something we're refining in the present, right? So, what are you currently trying to improve or tighten up in your business right now?

Tim Madden 22:41

Yeah, we're building an all-inclusive AI client dashboard right now that can track the customer journey. So, one of my things that we're building right now is hey, how can Pedro come into our system and there's no way he can mess this up, right? There's like, there's no way, right? We make it so like your phone, your app, your dashboard just tells you exactly what you need to do. If you need help at any time, you click here. It is just the customer journey is like a kid could log in and do it and gamify it, right? We're injecting AI to it as well because here's the main goal, right? These Fortune 500 companies, they have all the big outplacement contracts. So outplacement is Amazon lays off 10,000 people, right? Right management gets that contract. They do it old school from the 1980s, the way they're servicing those customers. And us, imagine we go to We Get Bigger, right? We have this AI client dashboard, if you will. And then we show Amazon, hey, when you inject this, let us show you what happens. Here's how their resume and LinkedIn is gonna be optimized. Here's the AI system that's gonna apply for jobs on their behalf. Here's the AI screener that's literally going to show them how to prepare for the interview. Here's the grading criteria they're gonna get. I mean, simply in a dashboard. So, hey, if you care about your people that you're letting go, do business with us because literally we're gonna have statistical data here soon that we will smoke all of these people. And I know that's the main goal, right? When Amazon writes a big check for these people for these outplacement services, they want to know that their people are taken care of, right? So, how can we? So that's one big thing that we're creating right now is just a dashboard that literally says, hey, here's your weekly recap, here's the jobs we applied for you, here's the interviews you went on, interview trackers. I mean, I could go on and on and on, but this dashboard is really amazing that that that we're building, and it's gonna just help a tremendous amount of people land new roles. So that's probably one of the the biggest initiatives right now.

Pedro Stein 24:34

I love how that is tied to delivery, you know, to fulfillment. I love that. Now you mentioned a couple a couple different times, the 80s, the 90s, that people are doing sort of uh in a in a an old school way. Do you have like a top of mind example? You could tell me like people you see people in the industry doing X, Y, and Z, and this is backwards and they shouldn't be doing that.

Tim Madden 24:58

I think the biggest thing, the biggest thing most people don't realize, even career coaches, uh, is the amount of volume that actually needs to happen just to generate one interview in 2026 is crazy. We have a program here where we use AI and we have a project manager essentially apply for every single position on the internet. We have statistical data that you have to apply. We have to apply on a client's behalf with an optimized resume with a good ATS score, 150 to 300 times just to land one executive interview. Yep. This is just, it is what it is. We have the data. We know the resumes are optimized. Again, we're not talking about a 50K, 60k job. We're saying serious jobs in corporate America. Because here's why after COVID in Tampa, Florida, you were just competing with Tampa, Florida. When COVID happened, people went remote. Now there's a lot more people working remote. So guess what? You ain't competing with Tampa, Florida. You're competing with America. And then if you make four, five, six hundred K, guess what? You're competing with South America, North America, and potentially Europe. Because Verizon, who's about to pay someone 600K for a key role, they'll relocate someone from Europe and pay them 50 grand, 100 grand to relocate their family. Because what's most important for them is getting the right person. So really, the more you go up now, the just more tremendous, you know, competition there is in the marketplace. So I would say the biggest thing is in the 80s or 90s, you could apply for a couple jobs, get some interviews. You're it's local. It's not that big of a deal. Now you already know too, a job post goes live within 24 hours, there's hundreds of people who've applied, right? So just people just don't understand, you know, just look at ads. Look at just marketing one-on-one right now. They're saying you need to see the same ad what? 20 times to purchase the Nike shoe you wanted, you know? Average person's on their phone seven hours a day, and you're applying to five positions last month, and you're wondering why no one's calling you back. Yeah. They just have no idea.

Pedro Stein 26:54

It's a numbers game, as it sounds like. Okay, love that. Now, let me ask you this actually, not a question. I want to do a little bit of a sci-fi thing real quick with you. Okay, let's pretend we have a time machine in front of us. We're gonna have two stops. Okay, Tim. First stop, you can go back in time when you opened shop, when you started your business, and you can give yourself past him one piece of business advice you knew you you wish you knew back then that you know now.

Tim Madden 27:20

The biggest one.

Pedro Stein 27:21

Yeah. What would that be?

Tim Madden 27:22

Figure out a way to double or triple your price and make it irresistible for people to take it where they just can't say no. That's something that transformed our business recently. Primarily before we were a coaching organization, coaching advising. And then I realized not our marketplaces doesn't want to do this. So let's double the price and figure out a way to do it for them. 99% of the people that partner with us have both of those options and choose the more important the more expensive option. So basically, create a premium offering would be my number one piece of advice to my younger self. You know, if I could just go to them and say, hey, I know you're gonna start with this, but figure out how you can do everything with everything for this person possible, besides go on the interview for them, right? And how could you charge a premium price for that?

Pedro Stein 28:08

Got it. So it's it's not just about teaching and guiding them. It's almost like get to the get them in front of the goal so they just can score. Like it's almost like a done for you as done for you, possible as possible.

Tim Madden 28:23

Yes.

Pedro Stein 28:24

Okay, interesting. Love deck. Okay. Now, second stop Tim, you can go back in time and you may have multiple uh situations that come up to mind. I want the top of mind, okay? That you felt the most fulfilled, you know, the in in those 10 years, and or how long have you opened shop? Like you you realize, okay, this is why I started this. Yeah, you know, definitely a great moment. What would that be?

Tim Madden 28:48

Just actually last Q4, there was uh my mom and dad split up, and I live with my mom. So my mom was a single mom and she worked really hard, right, her whole life. And we had two single moms come to us at the same time that essentially invested into our program to help them land a new position. One was unemployed for eight months. Here's why I said Q4. They're both approaching Christmas. They're both single moms, three kids here, two kids here. One worked at her company since she graduated college. She made it up to the executive level, worked at the same company 25 years, then was let go. Never had to search for a job in her whole life, not even sure where to start. Christmas is approaching. The other one as well, unemployed for eight months. Money's running out, savings she had. We got both of them hired inside like 90 days. One got a six-figure increase, the other got like a six-figure sign-on bonus. Money aside, though, just being able to make sure they were freaking in a role before Thanksgiving. Because I tell you what, imagine being a single parent, right? At any income level, approaching Thanksgiving. How am I gonna get my kids Christmas? How am I gonna buy my kids Christmas presents? So that was by far the most fulfilling ever, probably that I felt that we were able to help those people and get them back to work before the holidays. That was like the best feeling I ever had. I was so jacked up for so long, like so excited for them, you know.

Pedro Stein 30:13

So yeah, that's pretty cool, man. Yeah. Now, if someone listening wants to connect with you or follow your work. And Tim, we're gonna have all the links in the description, okay? But where can people find you guys best in connecting?

Tim Madden 30:25

The best place, if you ding execupgrades.com, there is at the bottom, right? There is requesting information. We do a lot of different things here. We do recruiting for organizations, we help people through the done for you job search. We have leadership and development classes, we have a program called Mastering Your First Hundred Days, but it would be to go to execupgrades.com. You ping the website, request information, someone's gonna get with you very, very quickly. That is the easiest way. But all of our social media channels are, you know, you DM us on Instagram, you DM us on Facebook, on LinkedIn. Hey, someone's are managing those through business hours as well. Okay.

Pedro Stein 31:00

You know, there were um certain parts of this chat today that really stood out to me, Tim. I'll highlight them really quick. Okay. First of all, when we were talking about the origin story and you told me you had a hard time finding a job, you know, and you're like asking yourself, what's wrong with me? And then the lens is not really what it should be, right? You're not, it's not about what's wrong with you, it's about the systems, the process, the game that is being played here, you're not even aware of, okay? So that's pretty cool to watch the way you framed it. Also, when we were talking about career goals, right? And you told me everyone has different career goals. So, what is your goal when I was being on boarded? So it's not necessarily a cookie cutter. Yes, there is a system, there is a process, but we need clarity first, yes so we can make a decision and which route we want to take, right? That is very important. I love the fact that you remind me of that. And also, last but not least, I would say is like the reminder when we were talking about AI, you're like, people still still want the human interaction, right? That's still part of the game. It's not just about pressing numbers, sending emails, blah, blah, blah, and doing an agent doing some certain things. It's just you still have to have a conversation with a human being the other side of the screen. You're gonna have to prep yourself to have that conversation, and it just so happens you guys can help them with that, right? And all the clients. So, this is just my long-winded way of saying, Tim, that I appreciate what you do, and I appreciate you being here and sharing so openly today. Okay, it was great having you on. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Davis Nguyen 32:38

That's it for this episode. This episode, as well as this podcast, was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help business owners elevate their business to six, seven, and eight-figure years, all without burning out. If you're looking to grow your business as well as get the time freedom that you are looking for, visit us at join purplecircle.com and see what we can do to help you.