Tag / job hunt

by Nathan Coumbe

Some ideas on hiring (Part 3 of “Same job, different pay”)

(This is part 3 in a rant on hiring, salaries, and job postings. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.)

If someone with less experience than I, who didn’t attend college like I did, started today at the company I currently work for, in the same role I hold now—do I think she should be paid the same salary as me?

Absolutely, I do.

The work is the work, and if she is doing the same work as me, to spec, she should earn the same amount I do. My years of experience and educational background do not entitle me to a higher salary if we’re doing the same work.

Can she do the work as is expected of her? That’s all that matters.

And for someone looking for a job like mine, if they can learn how to do it well, then why does it matter how they learned?

So if I’m against education as a prerequisite for entry, how should we go about hiring people?

I have two ideas, and the first is simple: more companies should adopt open hiring practices.

There’s a factory in New York that makes the brownies for Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. If you want to work at the factory, you put your name on a list.

When a job opens at the factory and you’re next on the list, you get a call asking if you’re still interested in the job. If you are, you report to training, and if you can pass the training, you’re hired.

They don’t care about education, criminal backgrounds, living situation, previous employment, or current skills. If you can learn how to do the job, you get the job at the wage they pay everyone else.

Keep a list of applicants, hire them in order when jobs open up, and train them to do the work.

Why doesn’t every restaurant, coffee shop, and retail establishment in the world already do this?

Simple: They’re scared of making a bad hire. They worry that they’ll hire someone who doesn’t show up to work, arrives late, has a bad attitude, or struggles to perform.

Well… what happens when those same people are hired through traditional (i.e., shitty) job search qualifications?

They get fired.

And if you implement open hiring practices, you spend a lot less money on the recruitment process than you otherwise would, so you lose out on a lot less if you must fire someone.

The absurdity of hiring people through traditional methods of posting job openings, soliciting hundreds of résumés, and holding interviews gives companies a sense of control over who they hire.

But it’s an illusion: either the person will work out or they won’t. And interviewing people with the “right” background on paper isn’t a guarantee that they’re a good hire.

Now, I already know that this idea is so radical for people in knowledge work that it won’t happen anytime soon, even though I firmly believe many companies can hire and train people to perform a significant percentage of the available office jobs out there.

So, what if you’re absolutely certain that you can’t use open hiring due to the nature of the work your company does? Let’s say, because you don’t have the time or resources to train a person to the level you need quickly enough to make it worthwhile.

That’s where my second solution comes into play: contingency hiring.

Time for a story: I was laid off a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic began (from a job I had held for only a few months).

My job search lasted nearly a year (no one was hiring). It was excruciating and terrifying.

But one of the best things that ever happened to me in terms of my career happened near the end: a CEO took a chance on me in an unconventional way.

I’d been studying (and, to some small extent, practicing) marketing for a couple of years before the layoff. I’d spent a lot of time during my unemployment talking to people in the field to get a sense of the jobs available. I wanted to know what skills and knowledge they required so I could make myself more appealing to employers.

A former classmate from university recommended me for her role at a marketing agency when she left to take another job. I went into the interview feeling woefully underqualified, but I knew I had a decent foundation of self-study to build on and could learn the rest of what I needed to know on the job.

The CEO agreed, but was still somewhat reluctant to fully commit to this neophyte in the marketing world (and who wouldn’t be?). So he offered me a deal:

He said that he would let me work for the agency for four weeks in exchange for a single lump-sum payment to see if I could do—or learn how to do—the work required for the role.

After that, we would reconvene, and depending on the results, either he would hire me full-time, or we would part ways with no hard feelings and gratitude for giving the company my time and skill.

It was one of the most generous and thoughtful offers I’d ever gotten.1

If I were starting my own business today, this is exactly how I would hire someone. I’d post a job opening, and then I would select an applicant to work with me on a contingency basis.

Rather than conducting an interview (which only tells me if she’s good at interviewing), I would work on a project with her that I already needed to complete for the business, and I would pay her for her time.

If, at the end of the project, we found it was a good fit (and she still wanted to work for me, because she would also get to try out the business), I would extend a full-time offer to her.

Why doesn’t every company do this all the time? They get work done, can assess whether the person is a good fit for the role (which isn’t always apparent from an interview), and the applicant not only gets paid but also gets to test whether it’s a role they actually want.

I can’t fix the hiring process simply by writing and ranting about it. But I do know that it’s 100% broken right now.

Social media (LinkedIn) has made it worse, not better.

AI and ridiculous job requirements for college degrees and 30 years of experience have reduced the job search to months or years of misery, frustration, and indignity.

But these simple tweaks—from removing degree requirements to contingency hiring—could go a long way to fixing a broken system.

  1. I didn’t end up accepting his offer. I asked him to give me a day or two to think about it and discuss it with my wife, which he happily agreed to.

    Literally, that same day, after I got home from the interview, I got a call from another company I’d had a few interviews with. They had a firm offer for me for full-time remote work with benefits.

    I called him that evening to let him know I was taking the other job offer, which he completely understood. But he also let me know that the offer was still on the table if it didn’t work out. ↩︎
by Nathan Coumbe

On the frivolousness of educational requirements in job postings (Part 2 of “Same job, different pay”)

I anticipated some of the pushback I’d receive from yesterday’s post, and I wanted to address it here.

Some might argue that certain jobs require graduate or other advanced education to obtain them. And I agree some should: I’d much rather have a surgeon who went to medical school operate on me than one who learned from YouTube.

And we’re all better off with engineers who went to school for the subject than relying on amateurs to build our bridges.

But doctors, engineers, nurses, and other “professional” roles all require specialized education simply to learn and carry out the basics of their jobs.1

This isn’t the reality for many knowledge or service sector jobs, which comprise a significant portion of our modern workforce. However, you might point out that many of these jobs require a college or even graduate education, as indicated in their job postings. Isn’t that at odds with what I’m saying?

No—because these jobs don’t actually need you to have a degree. It’s a tool to keep you from applying for them.

Hiring managers simply use that to make their lives easier and weed out 90% of otherwise qualified applicants without ever having to look at their applications. It reduces their workload.

For the vast majority of us working in the knowledge sector, a college education neither prepares us for specific jobs, such as those professional jobs listed previously, nor does it actually equip us with most of the skills required for knowledge work. We learn on the job and through self-education.

You don’t need a master’s degree in computer science from MIT to work as a software developer. You simply need to know how to program (and be damn good at it). You can learn on Codecademy or attend a bootcamp, gaining enough knowledge to get a job. You’ll have to learn the specifics of the role when you start working, anyway.

I work in learning and development, so I’m somewhat biased in my thinking on this. The shift in L&D now is toward skills-based training and qualifications. Essentially, we’re trying to answer this question:

Leaving aside formal education, what specific skills does a person either need to possess—or need to learn—to be qualified for this specific job?

You don’t consider their past college education (or lack thereof); you only consider what they’re capable of. This approach doesn’t harm people who attend school for specific fields because, as long as they’re qualified by their skills, they can still get the job. However, it also doesn’t prevent those who didn’t attend a formal school, but who do possess the necessary skills, from securing work for which they’re qualified.

Again, why do we need someone who is applying for a job in marketing or customer success to have a college degree? If they have the skill, or can learn it outside of a university, shouldn’t that be enough?

For most knowledge work jobs, it’s simply ridiculous to require a college degree (and I have two of them, neither of which I’ve ever used in my knowledge work jobs).

So I suppose I’m arguing two things:

  1. Eliminate degree requirements for most jobs.
  2. Pay the same wages (and good ones) for the same work, regardless of educational background or years of experience.2

Only the quality and the results of the work should matter. Not how much education someone has.

And for God’s sake, not based on how good someone is at negotiating. Not everyone is comfortable negotiating salaries or demanding raises, especially when they think their boss will just fire them and hire someone cheaper if they try.

We are obsessed with meritocracy in this country, often to our detriment. And we obsess over it in such a way that it harms people who may be just as capable at a job as someone else, but who don’t have the courage or the skills to negotiate with someone in a position of power above them.

Does this mean that I think another L&D specialist at my company who hypothetically started today should make the same amount of money I make after nearly four years of raises?

Absolutely, I believe that. But I’ll save that rant for Part 3 tomorrow.

  1. I have a holdup about including lawyers in this list for one very specific reason: Until sometime in the 20th century, you did not have to go to law school to practice law. You simply needed to pass the bar exam for the state(s) in which you intended to practice.

    Walter Gordon, a native of my home state of Mississippi (who was one of the main characters in Band of Brothers), passed the bar exam after the war while still in law school and was allowed to practice even without his diploma.

    At some point, law schools realized they could make a lot more money if they collaborated with the American Bar Association to require would-be lawyers to attend their schools, thereby creating a somewhat arbitrary barrier to entry into the field.

    Are lawyers who attend law school objectively better off? I don’t know, nor do I feel qualified to say. However, it does seem similar to what we encounter in knowledge work job searches.

    Are all hiring managers part of some cabal to make it difficult to get jobs? No. It’s simply easier for them and also just “how things are done around here.” The status quo is the status quo for a reason. ↩︎
  2. What if someone in the same role as someone else is objectively better at the job than the other person? Personally, I believe this issue can be easily resolved with bonuses or commissions.

    I don’t mean paying people crappy wages and hoping that they’ll make it up in bonuses (looking at you, restaurants paying servers $2.13 an hour). I mean that if two people are doing the same job, but one of them has been outstanding for just one quarter or year or whatever, pay that person some sort of bonus to show your appreciation.

    But don’t punish the other person who is doing good work—to spec, doing what needs to be done and is asked of her—by paying her less for arbitrary reasons. ↩︎
by Nathan Coumbe

How Do You Get a Job in 2025?

The answer is… You might not.

At least, not through any of the methods that career experts have been recommending for decades. The entire job search ecosystem seems fundamentally broken, leaving millions of qualified people trapped in toxic jobs or endlessly unemployed despite following all the “right” advice.

The Old Methods That Used to Work

For years, Stephen Covey advocated researching companies and reaching out directly to offer to solve their problems, whether they had job openings or not. Richard Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute?, recommended informational interviews and networking conversations. Dan Miller, who wrote 48 Days to the Work You Love, championed the “direct marketing” approach of sending out bundles of résumés to companies, then following up with a phone call to ask to speak with decision-makers.

All of this advice made sense in 2006. It worked because the business and hiring infrastructures supported it.

Companies listed real phone numbers that connected you to actual humans. Public mailing addresses ensured your résumé landed on desks where people opened letters. Receptionists knew who handled what, and would transfer your call to the right person. Business publications provided genuine insights into company challenges and growth plans.

Most importantly, the volume was manageable. A hiring manager might receive a few thoughtful letters each week, not 200 LinkedIn messages per day.

What Broke the System

I believe two things destroyed this approach: digital saturation and corporate gatekeeping.

Digital Saturation

LinkedIn turned networking into spam. Everyone started sending copy-pasted connection requests and robotic “value-add” comments on posts. What began as genuine relationship-building became a numbers game where people blast hundreds of identical messages, hoping for a 2% response rate. The volume of unsolicited pitches for jobs exploded, right alongside the never-ending stream of sales pitches from SDRs and companies trying to find an “in” with decision makers.

Corporate Gatekeeping 

Companies systematically eliminated direct access points. Phone numbers now route to labyrinthine phone trees intentionally designed to prevent human contact and eliminate the need to have real people on the other end of the phone. 

Websites list only generic 1-800 customer service numbers or P.O. boxes that feed into administrative voids. The friendly receptionist who knew everyone in the company has been replaced by automated systems programmed to deflect.

Modern Methods That Don’t Work

Online Job Applications 

The black hole of HR systems that filter out qualified candidates based on keyword algorithms. Apply to 100 jobs, hear back from zero. It’s not that you’re personally inadequate; you simply don’t line up perfectly with the job description. (And by the way, that job description doesn’t actually describe what they need, only what the person who had the job before you did or the certifications she had.)

LinkedIn Networking

The platform is saturated with desperate job seekers sending identical messages to overwhelmed professionals who’ve decided to ignore most outreach. Even thoughtful, personalized messages disappear into the noise. Part of this is the generic nature of the requests, but part of it, too, is that we’re all just exhausted from digital communication. Email, Slack, Teams, text messages, DMs on Instagram… Our brains eventually tune most of it out.

Informational Interviews

Nobody has time anymore. Everyone is drowning in their own work, managing their own career anxiety, and can’t spare 30 minutes for a stranger, no matter how politely you ask.

Social Media Engagement

The advice to “engage authentically” with LinkedIn content falls apart when half of the posts are AI-generated engagement bait and the other half are bloviating nothings designed solely to catch eyeballs, garner Likes, and generate comments. Forcing yourself to fake enthusiasm for vapid content isn’t networking—it’s performance theater.1

Trade Organizations and Professional Associations

Career experts love recommending these for “networking opportunities.” The reality? Membership fees run hundreds or thousands of dollars annually, and virtual “networking” really doesn’t work. If you actually want to benefit from these, you’ll need to go to their live, in-person events. So you need to factor in conference costs, travel expenses, and time away from work. 

And God forbid you’re out of work and worried about money! For someone already struggling financially, these are luxury expenses you can’t afford. And even if you can afford them, the promised networking often amounts to standing around awkwardly at cocktail receptions where everyone else already knows each other.

The AI Revolution Eliminates Entry Points

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is systematically destroying the entry-level positions that once served as career launching pads. Companies have discovered they can “hire” AI at a fraction of the cost to handle the exact work that new college graduates used to do: data entry, basic research, simple writing tasks, customer service, and administrative functions.

The numbers are staggering. Recent research indicates that Big Tech companies reduced their hiring of new graduates by 25% in 2024 compared to 2023. Venture capital firm SignalFire found a 50% decline in new role starts by people with less than one year of post-graduate work experience between 2019 and 2024. Nearly 80% of hiring managers predict AI could eliminate internships and entry-level positions entirely.

Just as personal connections have become more crucial for career success, AI has eliminated the stepping-stone jobs that once helped people build those connections in the first place. One CEO told the Wall Street Journal that he decided not to hire a summer intern, opting instead to run social media copy through ChatGPT. Why hire an undergraduate when AI is practically free, does a “good-enough” job, and works around the clock?

Even more perversely, the supposed “safe” STEM fields are getting hit hardest. Computer engineering majors now face a 7.5% unemployment rate, while art history majors—long mocked for their “impractical” degrees—enjoy just 3% unemployment. The technical skills that students spent years learning in college are being automated away faster than they can be applied.

What We Lost Along the Way

There’s another piece to this puzzle: the collapse of genuine community networking. Previous generations built “networks,” as we now know them, through local business associations, service clubs, and community organizations. Remember the Rotary Club, Lions Club, Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, Jaycees, Elks Lodge, or the American Legion? These groups created natural opportunities for professionals to meet and build real relationships over time.

These weren’t networking events designed for career advancement. They were community service organizations where business relationships developed organically through shared projects and regular interaction. The local banker sat next to the insurance agent and the small business owner at weekly breakfast meetings, working together on charity drives and community initiatives.

But younger generations have largely abandoned these organizations. Membership has plummeted as people have shifted social interaction online. The infrastructure that once supported genuine professional relationship-building has withered.

The Cruel Catch-22

The only thing that actually seems to work is personal connections. Having someone who already works at a company vouch for you. Getting referred by a friend of a friend who knows you’re competent.

But what if your network consists entirely of retail workers and you don’t want to work retail? What if you’re trying to transition from one field to another, where you have no existing professional connections? You feel trapped.

The system favors people who are already part of professional networks, while excluding everyone else. It’s a closed loop that’s making career mobility nearly impossible for anyone starting from the outside.

The Psychological Toll

Meanwhile, career coaches and job search experts continue to sell the same outdated advice, blaming individuals for “not networking effectively” or “not standing out enough.” And job-seekers remain trapped in an endless cycle of resume optimization and LinkedIn engagement strategies that, statistically, don’t work.

The damage is both professional and psychological. When you follow expert advice faithfully for years and still don’t get results, you start to believe you are the problem. Your confidence erodes. You question your qualifications, your worth, and your ability to contribute anything meaningful.

But it’s not you. The gatekeeping mechanisms are broken.

What Now?

I don’t have a solution. That’s the point of this article. The people selling job search courses and career coaching services want you to believe there’s a secret method you haven’t discovered yet. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t.

The system just seems broken. It works perfectly for companies, the ones that are actually in control of the situation. It fails catastrophically for individuals trying to build careers or escape bad situations.

Maybe the answer lies in rebuilding what we lost: returning to genuine community involvement through local organizations where real professional relationships can develop naturally over time. But that’s a longer road, and probably doesn’t help you right now if you’re desperately looking for your next gig.

Recognizing this doesn’t make finding a job easier. But at least you can stop blaming yourself for the failure of methods that were never going to work in the first place.

The question isn’t “What am I doing wrong?” It’s “How do we survive in a system that’s broken?”

Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to that one either.

Notes

  1. Yes, you can argue that this is exactly what I’m doing with this article… But I can promise you that isn’t the case. I’m simply venting because of how absolutely dreadful modern job-searching is for people I care about. ↩︎
by Nathan Coumbe

The new way of getting jobs

I used to create and edit resumés as a side hustle.

I learned soon after I started that it wasn’t the best business to run. Not because I was bad at it (my resumés were gorgeous and well-made), but because no one who could hire my clients ever got the resumés I made. 

By the time I started that little business, resumé screening software had taken over the business world. And most job postings were getting anywhere from 200 to 1,000 applicants a piece. No one was seeing my clients’ resumés.

Someone would get those jobs, but it was unlikely to be the person I was helping. 

If you read books like What Color Is Your Parachute? or 48 Days to the Work (and Life) You Love, you’ll learn that sending out resumés to companies only works about 4% of the time. 

That means you’d have to apply for 25 jobs to get one response (just a response, not a hiring decision). And those are just basic statistics—you wouldn’t actually get a response 1 in 25 times. You might have to send out 100 applications and only get responses on the last 4.

So what to do?

I’ve been asked recently by numerous people if I could help them fix their resumés. And I’ve declined every time. 

“I don’t do that anymore,” I say, “because it no longer works.”

What does work is simple: connection.

The old saying is, unfortunately, true: it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And in the connection economy of the 21st Century, that really is the only thing that matters. 

By connections, I don’t mean the hundreds of people you barely know on LinkedIn. People who are creating content to (maybe) entice the platform’s algorithm in the hopes that someone will see them and say, “Let’s hire Jane.”

I mean real people that you know: friends, family, coworkers. The barista who knows your name. The husband of the banker who handles your mortgage.

If you want a to get a job in the modern economy (and 88% of those available are never posted online), you have to talk to a lot of people. 

Every job I’ve ever had, I got because I knew someone. Every. Single. One. 

Half the time I wasn’t even looking. The other half, I asked for help. I told lots of people with whom I’d built relationships that I was looking.

Now, I also know that’s probably some of my privilege showing. But it’s the advice that I’ve given everyone who’s asked me over the last couple of years. And for those who have listened—and taken ACTION—it’s worked out. 

Now, I’m no networking expert. Nor do I “network” in the slimy business sense.

I’ve just read a lot and built relationships with people.

In addition to the couple of books I recommended above, I’d also tell you to check out:

Both of these books have strategies on how to TALK to people in ways that will (eventually and without being sleazy) lead to jobs. 

Resumés don’t work. Connections do. 

But resumés are easier—a way to hide from the difficult, but effective, work of having meaningful conversations with real people. 

Do the thing that works, not the thing that’s easy.

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by Nathan Coumbe

3 Easy Tips to Help You Get Unstuck

Being stuck is rough. It can leave you with feelings of hopelessness, frustration, or even anger.

Maybe you’re in a dead-end job you can’t stand…

Or your money situation is quickly moving from bad to worse…

Maybe you don’t even know why you’re feeling stuck. All you know is you are.

So how do you break the logjam?

The good news is there are a few things you can do now that’ll help you get unstuck:

  1. Learn Something New: This might be a new skill, a new way of doing the same thing, or just a new piece of information that helps you change your mindset. Pick up a book from the library or Amazon. Type your problem into YouTube and find 100 videos that’ll give you a new approach. Or listen to a really insightful podcast or TED talk. I wrote up an entire blog post on how you can get a free (or nearly so) education WITHOUT having to go back to school. Check it out here.
  2. Take a Break: One thing many folks do is bang their head against the problem over and over without seeing any new results. Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop and walk away from the problem. This could be as simple as going for a 20-minute walk outside. Or it could be even more extreme: a weeklong vacation to leave all your troubles behind. Regardless of how you choose to take a break, you’ll come back to the problem with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.
  3. Find a Teacher or Mentor: This tip is the one that’s helped me the most. Coaches, mentors, and teachers have a way of looking at the same problem you’re dealing with and seeing it in a whole new light. I was stuck in my career, hating every single moment I was at work, but I thought there was no other way to live. “That’s just how work is…” Then I had a coach show me that work could be a part of my life’s purpose AND enjoyable. Now I’m in a job I love and doing work that matters. All thanks to an outsider’s perspective.

Speaking of mentors, my coach Dan Miller is hosting a free masterclass today at two different times: 1pm CDT and 7pm CDT.

And the best part? The whole thing is about getting you unstuck no matter your problem.

“5 Reasons Big Dreamers Get Stuck And How To Blast Through Them To Success”

You can register for your seat here.

If you’re tired of going it alone and want an outside perspective on your problem, I strongly encourage you to sign up.

You’ll come away with fresh ideas, a renewed sense of hope, and strategies for moving forward on your most important goals.

There’s still time to register, but it’s happening TODAY. So make sure you sign up before it’s too late.

Save your spot now by clicking here!

I’ll be there too. I hope to see you this afternoon.

by Nathan Coumbe

Life lessons from the last 18 months

Cherish your loved ones – they’ll be taken from you when you least expect it.

I’ve lost three close family members in 18 months. My father-in-law dropped dead of heart failure in December 2019. He was in perfect health.

My uncle died of cancer 6 months later. I had just seen him at Thanksgiving the previous year, and he seemed to be doing just fine.

Then my dad died in May. I had just spoken with him on the phone a month before… He sounded just like his old self. By the time I got to see him, he couldn’t speak or see me. I was able to say goodbye, but I’ll never know if he heard me.

And I might be losing someone else soon.

Tell your family you love them after you finish reading this. Then do it every day from now on.

Serious illness—or even death—can strike you down no matter your age or health.

My wife and I took the COVID-19 pandemic seriously. We quarantined, wore masks, and did all we were advised to do by the CDC. And both of us still managed to catch it.

My wife had a fever for eight days. I ended up in the ICU on forced oxygen for eight days gasping for breath. Wondering if this was what it felt like to die. The doctors told me had I not come in the night that I did, I would have died in my sleep.

I spent Christmas and New Year’s in a hospital room isolated and alone—except for the occasional nurse or technician. Eight days. And there were people around me even worse off than I was.

I was 30 years old and in perfect health. And I’m still recovering.

Never chase money – you’ll always end up miserable.

I was in my sweet spot at a job I enjoyed—teaching classes all day and putting my creative skills to use on a daily basis. But I felt I wasn’t making enough money, so I took a promotion.

The money wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. And I wound up in a miserable role that stressed me out more than I could have ever imagined.

Then another offer came my way, a chance to escape that misery, and it came with a decent bump in pay. But I had an uneasy feeling about it during the interviews.

I took it anyway, and it left me just as miserable as I was before, but for different reasons.

It might be a cliche, but find something that makes you happy. Then find a way to make a living doing it. Don’t take jobs you know don’t fit you simply because they offer you more money.

Take any or all of these lessons to heart. Let them guide your actions for the last half of 2021 and beyond.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Why I’ve Been Quiet for a Few Weeks

 Hello to all my loyal readers!

I’m sorry that I’ve been quiet for the past few weeks: I’ve been in the midst of a very intensive job hunt. After multiple interviews and offers from three different companies, I started my new job at Lurn Inc. this past Monday.

As a content developer, I’ll be creating all sorts of amazing educational content to help aspiring entrepreneurs succeed in life and business. I’ve been going through a lot of the content myself this past week, learning how they teach and do things. It’s felt like drinking from a firehose of knowledge.

I am part of a great team: a small group of former (and current) freelance writers who love to teach. It’s the perfect application of my skills, passions, and knowledge areas. I’m working with, and helping, people I want to be around, and I have an ideal workplace—home. 😀

If you’re interested in what Lurn has to offer, I encourage you to go to https://lurn.com and get a free account. There are lots of courses you can start immediately (for free). You might come away with new business ideas or new strategies and tactics if you already have a business.

Here’s to regular posting once again!

Yours truly,

Nathan

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by Nathan Coumbe

Is This Book Better Than an MBA?

Colleges don’t teach you how to succeed in the business world. Business schools teach theory, case studies, and lots of accounting and finance. But what they don’t teach you is how to run a profitable, cash-positive business. 

Sadly, they don’t even teach you how to work in a business. At least not in a way that makes money for your employer.

That’s a problem. Why? Because that’s what business owners, managers, and leaders want: value-driven professionals who generate cash.

Here’s the Solution

Donald Miller has done it. He’s created a book and podcast that teach you exactly what you need to know to run a profitable business. If you haven’t yet checked out Business Made Simple, do it today!

Buy the book. For just $20 bucks, you can get a better business education in 60 days than you would spending $50,000 on an MBA. And listen to the podcast—it’s absolutely free!

Learn practical skills you need to succeed like:

  • How to write a mission statement that drives and inspires you and your team.
  • How to create a clear message that drives customers to your products and services.
  • Sales processes that actually work.
  • Execution strategies that grow your business exponentially.

What If You’re Not A Business Owner?

Maybe you’re not an entrepreneur. Maybe you just want to have a successful career as a team member or employee. That’s okay!

Business Made Simple is for anyone who’s job it is to generate cash for a business. And guess what? That’s you! Whether you’re a salesperson, marketer, customer service agent, or a janitor, this book will help you succeed at work. 

If you’re looking to stand out in your job search, get promoted, or just contribute more in your work, you need check this stuff out. Get a business education that actually pays off.

Get a copy today!

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by Nathan Coumbe

Are You Buying What You’re Selling?

Zig Ziglar, the great motivator and sales trainer, found a mantra in the word “enthusiasm.” To him, the last four letters stood for “I am sold myself.”

Zig was a master salesman. He knew if you didn’t believe in what you were selling, that lack of enthusiasm would come across to the prospect.

But what about when you’re not selling a product? What if the thing you’re selling is yourself, and your customer is a potential employer?

This same idea holds true in the job hunt. If you’re trying to persuade an employer to hire you, you have to believe in the product. 

If you’re a freelancer trying to convince a company to use your freelance services, you’re selling a product you must believe in. 

If you’re not enthusiastic about what you have to offer, they won’t be either.

If you don’t believe in yourself, they won’t want to buy your product. And make no mistake: you are the product. 

Grow your enthusiasm. Know what you have to offer; understand what you do best; determine how you can best serve others. And believe that it will benefit another person.

Sell yourself on you.

“You can have everything in life you want, if you just help enough people get what they want.”—Zig Ziglar

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