Ep. 4 How This 26 Year Old Went From Working At Adobe To Raising $2.5M To Launch A Tech Startup!

On episode 4 of I have Leander Howard, 26 year old Chief Marketing Officer at WriteSea and founder of Spark Your Success discussing his journey from college student to a financial analyst role at Adobe, and then later on in the full episode, breaks down how he started a Resume business that evolved into partnering with his competition to launch WriteSea which has raised millions of dollars and is growing fast.  Make sure to subscribe to the IG: @bigtechenergypodcast YouTube channel to watch the episode live as well.

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Transcript

0:02

What's up, y'all? Hope all is well. You are tuning into big tech energy. My name is Jarrett Albritton. If you don't know me, my whole goal in my life right now is increasing diversity in tech through education, access to resources, and interviewing some of the people in my inner network that are killing it in the tech space. Whether they are making a ton of money as tech employees or they are changing the world as tech startup founders, I'm definitely understanding what is their energy, what is their mindset, what was their execution strategy, and what is the advice that they would give you, the listener, so that they can replicate the success that they've had. My name is Jared Albertan, and welcome to Big Tech Energy. I'm not going to steal his thunder. I'm actually going to pass the mic to Lander and let you introduce yourself. Yeah, man. Appreciate you having me, man. Jared is a beast. We met when Clubhouse first launched, man. Like, literally, I think first week, I think it might have took you maybe like, a month after that to start those tech rooms. Yeah, when we met, I was just doing tech rooms every day, and I went from, like, 80 followers to 30,000 in, like it was crazy. Two months, and I've seen it, man. It was crazy. So I'm proud of you, bro, for starting the podcast, running a tech room, just staying consistent because a lot of people don't do that. Appreciate you. No doubt, man, but yeah. I'm Leander Howard II, founder of Spark Your Resume, which is an online resume writing company that transitioned into a startup. So I co founded a startup along with Hans La, Rami, Brandon Mitchell and Ahmed Nath. They were running brand resumes at first, so we were actually competitors and know, turned into collaborators, which is crazy, but right. See is an all in one business solution, helping freelance writers, coaches, and teams pretty much streamline and automate their business. And then we're also doing something called manage career services. So this is pretty crazy. I think this is how we really raised our money. So we're going to job boards and saying, okay, you bring in 80 million visitors a month, like a Zip recruiter, why don't you offer resume writing services, LinkedIn services, cover letter services to your visitors? They're like, okay, let's talk more, and I'm, all right, cool. So we're like, okay, we spin up our own career services, white label for ZipRecruiter. So now ZipRecruiter has career services. We take a percentage, and then they keep 70 30 split, whatever, and then we manage the whole thing because we have the software to scale. That's what rights he is. It was built for resume writers and career coaches at first, but now we're scaling to more like teams, writing, editing teams, staffing agencies, even some lawyers are using rightsy right now, so it's a pretty big use case. But that's how we really raised our money, because dominating that career services market, man, a lot of people need help getting jobs. A lot of people need help positioning themselves, marketing themselves better online to recruiters using hiring platforms like ZipRecruiters. So it was a double use case to like, hey, you can generate more revenue, but also improve your client experience because as you know, job boards make money off job listings, so they'll make money by Adobe coming to ZipRecruiter, right, and coming and paying them X amount of dollars to post a job per month. But they weren't monetizing the side of the job seekers actually needing to help to put themselves out in the market and be a quality candidate. So that's where we come in. Okay, so we're definitely going to dive really deep into right sea, not only the business model and how you help solve that problem, but also the process of putting together the pitch deck and finding the investors and then landing the investors, and then the strategy of actually putting into fruition. But when it comes to your first introduction to tech, talk about that, how did you break into tech? And one thing that I like about your story is, and I try to emphasize a lot of people trying to get into tech is that you can get into tech with a non tech role and you can understand the tech space but also get the benefits of a tech company, especially a top tech company like the one you work for. Right? Talk about your break into tech. Yeah. So I graduated from Georgia State University in May of 2020 with two degrees, one in marketing and finance, had a couple of internships, like at Wells Fargo and Arthur Blanks Foundation before graduating. And then I went on my senior year looking for jobs and everything like that. And it landed a job at Adobe as a financial analyst. February of 2020, actually. And then I started August of 2020. But how I got into Adobe, man, was really networking, like leveraging LinkedIn, reaching out to people on LinkedIn, sending them my resume, following up scheduling interviews, being able to articulate my skill sets and values from my previous internships to land an offer. So actually my third interview at Adobe, they actually flew me out to San Jose to see the headquarters and everything, like, know, butter you up and all that. Good, right, right. And then I actually brought presentation I did at Wells Fargo. So I had like a project that I did at Wells Fargo to show like, I was able to create something from scratch. And I showed that to Adobe. I brought collateral. And most people don't bring collateral. They're just talking about their experience. But it's different when you actually show you can actually execute. And I literally got hired on the spot, bro. Like before I left, the recruiter told me I had a job. So I'm like, oh, that's a bet. That's crazy. But it worked out, man. And I would say I'm not technical at all. Like, I have a marketing and finance degree. I cannot code worth anything. I use all the no code tools right, all the AI stuff. But I have no technical background. And I think what people got to understand is that if you are working in tech, it's still a business. So they have sales, they have marketing, they have Ops, they have finance, they have HR, they have legal. All businesses have those departments. So you don't need a technical background to work at a tech company. The only thing you do need to understand is the actual product to sell it. If you're in sales or if you're in marketing, product marketing, that's the only thing that's really changed it from the beauty industry to the tech industry is the product. So as long as you understand business like you're in tech sales, it's most definitely different than retail sales, right? Like terminology and things like that. But sales is sales. At the end of the day, you either got or you don't. So I think when people understand just because you work in tech doesn't mean you have to be technically, you don't have to have a tech background to work in tech. Yeah, absolutely. And in my story, I'm not a tech as well. I wasn't technical. Don't know coding. Right. If you ask me to code something or jump off a building, I'm going to hit the ground real fast. But yeah, it's about be able to solve business problems and also adding to the bottom line and whatever skill set you have. And it could be anything. So you were, what, a financial analyst? Yes. My bad. Yeah, I was a financial analyst. I worked at Adobe for about 13 months. Got it. But while you were there, you run an entrepreneurial spirit, decided to start a business. And I think what you brought up so very kind of matter of factly and really quickly, and I don't want people to miss over it, is how strategic you were when it came to getting the job at Adobe in terms of building a brand out on LinkedIn. So when recruiters search for somebody like you, you would pop up, utilizing your network to get referrals or do informational interviews, for sure. So just talk a little bit more about your strategy and then how that motivated you to create, spark your resume. True? Most definitely. Thanks for bringing that up. So when I was searching for jobs, I applied to like 150 plus jobs when my senior year, and I thought I had really good experience. Like, I worked at a Wells Fargo, interned at Arthur Blanks. Pretty reputable companies, right? But it didn't work out that way. I was shocked. I'm like, man, I'm applying all these jobs. Why am I not getting any interviews or get any callbacks for full time opportunities? And it made me realize that you got to be somebody that people want to know, and people don't know what you want or who you are unless you tell them. Yeah. So that's when I started really vocalizing the things I've been through, the things I were doing, just documenting the process just publicly. So I'm posting content without a business, having a business on LinkedIn. I'm talking about what you can do with your resume, how you can network. And I started building the following 60 00, 10,000, things like that coming on LinkedIn. I'm like, okay, people actually need this content. Okay, cool. And then everybody, if you want to start a business, I tell people to focus on getting your first customer. Don't focus on the logo domain, all that good stuff. When I first started Sparking Resume, bro, I posted about Instagram story, hey, I'm doing resumes. Here's my cash app. Like, validating my product, right? Will people buy this? And it doesn't have to be expensive. My resumes were like, $50, $75 starting out. I'm just trying to see, will people pull out their credit card to pay me for this service? That should be your first goal period when you're starting a business. But when it came to getting a job, man, it was more so just networking, really reaching out to the right people. So reaching out to people that have the same position titles in me. So I was reaching out to financial analysts. I'm reaching out to recruiters. I'm trying to find hiring managers. And I'm pitching myself all day long like, hey, I'm Leander Howard. II. I have a double major in finance and marketing. Here are my three main attributes, and here's what I've done over my previous experience. My resume is attached to learn more about who I am. Can we schedule a call? And most people don't even ask that. Your goal should be to schedule a meeting. Point blank, period. I'm not asking all these questions in messaging because they can leave you on Red. Never really reply. My goal is to get a yes no response. Can we meet or can we not meet? And that's it. Once you get on the meeting, then you can go into more detail about who you are and what you do, and be prepared. Like, have ten, eight to ten questions to kind of outline the conversation. Like, come in prepared and have a goal of meeting these people because everybody busy. No, that's big facts. So you got Adobe as a financial analyst. I know you weren't there for that long because your business went off, but what were some of the things that you took away from being at a tech company and things that might be helpful for the listeners? Yeah, man. So I was actually running spark your resume before I got to Adobe. So I started at April 2020. I started Adobe August of 2020. So I was running for about three, four months before I actually got there. But when I got there, Adobe is a billion dollar company. I literally have access to everything they have. I'm studying the chart. Who's the CEO, what's his exec team look like? Who's underneath them? What are the roles? What are the job titles? I still got those written down in my Google Docs. You know what I mean? Because I'm trying to get there. We're trying to build a billion dollar tech company. So why not use the blueprint in front of me? And they're a billion dollar tech company right now. Everybody knows what not everybody, probably. But most people know what Adobe is. Yeah, most people do, right? So I'm studying the game because I literally have access that other people don't have. I know what the SDRs are doing. I know how many emails the CEO may send out, how many town hall meetings, what's the outline of the town hall meetings? Why are we having them? What's the cadence? Right? What are people getting out of this? How many meetings my managers might have with me every quarter or monthly, whatever. Because now I'm a manager. I got a team now. How do I want them to execute? Right? And some things they might have did right, some things they might have did wrong. But I'm taking both and running with it. So I'm learning from the failures Adobe had and the wins and seeing, okay, don't make these mistakes when you're building a tech company, do this instead, because they already tried it and it didn't work. So that's really what I learned by working at Adobe, Bro, is, like, how to run a billion dollar company, if I'm being honest. Yeah, you're just entrepreneur 100%. I'm in all the resources, bro, trainings, development, seeing what benefits they offer, how they offering it, what companies they're using, all of that. Yeah. And the reason why I call this show big Tech Energy, besides obvious play on Words, is I'm really about when it comes to my network. The people I surround myself with, they have, like, an elite level mindset, elite level work ethic, for sure, and elite level curiosity when it comes to research. So, like, everything you just said, I could feel your energy, your conviction, how excited you were to learn about this stuff and how you're like, man, I'm going to take this and I'm going to apply it. I'm not playing no fact. And I love the fact that you said that you had, like, 150 interviews. Because I need people to understand, like, you're going to deal with a lot of rejections. Yes. You're going to deal with a lot of learning curves and experiences when it comes to how to reach out, how to position your resume, your LinkedIn, how to network your way in. But it's about persistence, and it's also about leading with value, which I think you always try to do. That's key, and that's major. That's key. Now, I will say, man, the nose just leads you to more yeses. So the quicker you can get them, the quicker you'll get to your yes man. So try to get to those no's as quick as possible. I've been rejected a thousand times, bro. 1000, probably more than that, but the yeses outweigh the nose, man, so just keep hustling. All right? That's what's up. So I really want to get into right seat, but before we do, I want to drop some gems for the folks. Since you created a business about resumes, what is some of the key things that you would outline in terms of how to make your resume super successful to get the most opportunities? Yeah, most definitely. I think making it succinct to the point is most definitely key format too, right? Because people see before they hear. Right. So if your resume just looks sloppy, I probably will never read it or not interested in reading more. So make sure it looks presentable, especially because recruiters and hiring managers look at it for how long? Like maybe a couple of seconds, 7 seconds max. Yeah, I mean, that's anything though, if I see a pretty girl on the street, right, I might double take after I see she attractive. The same rule applies. It's all marketing. So just like ads. You see an ad, you look at it for 7 seconds, probably not even that before you skip it or you're interested. Same rule applies. So make it attractive. Make it to where somebody can easily understand what you're trying to the message you're trying to convey. And then when it comes to the content, of course, first name, last name, that should be the biggest thing on the paper. It's about you and only you, right? People should know who they're reading about, contact information, have a valid email address, phone number, so people can contact you. Hyperlink your LinkedIn URL. Have an about paragraph that tells people who you are, what you do, and how you plan on bringing value to the organization. Highlight the top 15 hard skills. I like to say hard skills more than soft skills, because at the end of the day, I'm hiring you to do a job. I can learn about your soft skills more during the interview. Anybody can say they're good at leadership. That's kind of irrelevant on the resume. I want to know, do you have the technical acumen to do the job you're applying to in the discussion? And then when it comes to your experience, highlight your accomplishments. Right? So start off with a strong action verb. Identify the task or project completed, and then highlight the achievement or outcome of that task or project. You want to paint a clear picture. I call it like the XYZ formula. Paint a clear picture to the recruiter or hiring manager on how you plan on bringing value to the company based on your previous experience. Once you do that, man, I think you'll see a lot more success when it comes to getting more interviews. And then also take the next step in connecting with those people on LinkedIn if you do have their information or find the people at the company that you can connect with, recruiters, hiring managers and the people that are in the position you want to work in. So if I'm looking to apply for a financial analyst role, I'm looking up people that are financial analysts at that company I'm applying to and sending them connection requests. Hey, I'm interested in this financial analyst position. I see you're, a financial analyst, would love to learn more about what you do and who you are and how you got into this role. Would you be open to scheduling a 15 minutes call, boom, done. And run the play? Yeah. And then when it comes to LinkedIn, what is advice you have for LinkedIn? Man, LinkedIn is I think it's more important than the resume. Absolutely. Honestly and truly. It's where you can actually connect with people. Right. Your resume is only seen if you apply to a job, but your LinkedIn profile is working for you 24/7, because it's a search engine. So I have access to LinkedIn recruiter now, bro. I see it like it's over 100 million people open to work on LinkedIn. Literally. It's crazy. And that's how recruiters are finding people that are open to work, right? They're using LinkedIn recruiter to find these people. So optimize your profile, make sure it's keyword. Optimized based on the positions you're looking for. I mean, the job description is giving you free game on what keywords are looking for, what activities or what responsibilities they're looking to fulfill for this role. A job posting is literally just a cry for help. That's it. I need help. I need somebody that can do XYZ. How can I optimize my profile to fit that description on LinkedIn? So when people do come to your profile, you have a nice headline, you're telling people who you are, what you do, and how you can help them build their organization. And then you want to make sure your title is in there because people like recruiters use title, so it can be a little ambiguous, like Senior Software Engineer versus just software engineer, things like that. So I would say make sure you have the main keywords so, like Software Engineer in your headline to get recognized on LinkedIn and then skills endorsements. Your about paragraph is key because I think you can have like 2600 characters for your about paragraph. So make it about you, but also include your skills. And one hack I will say is put your skills in your about section, at least your top ten, because your skill section is at the bottom of your LinkedIn profile. So I won't really see them until I scroll all the way down to the bottom. So I would say highlight at least the top ten skills and that way it's searchable as well. Got you. Yeah. And have a good profile, headshot. Yeah, definitely. How many followers you got on LinkedIn right now? 27,000. Okay, cool. So I brought that up because how important is it to build a personal brand beyond what you're known for at your job? No, most definitely important, man. You can lose your job today and they'll probably find somebody to replace you in the next 30 days. Right. So don't think you are your job title, think more of what do I want to be known as? So for myself, for example, I want to be known as one of the best marketers in the world. That's my goal. Right. So I'm striving every day to make that happen. Now, marketing is very broad, right. So I could even niche that down to where I want to be the best lead generation person you go to on how to find your ideal customer and get them to capture their attention and get them to pay for your product or service. Right? That's what I want to be known for. But I think everybody needs to think that way, whether you're working a nine to five or you're a founder or whatever, because your job title can change. You might stop the company, right. You might sell the company, but who are you at the end of the day? What are people going to know you for? Right, so that's your personal brand. How do people talk about you when they see your face and you're not around or how they're promoting you to other people? That's your personal brand when you're not in the room. Exactly. And it's important, man, because people are going to talk regardless. It's word of mouth marketing. So you want to make sure they're saying good things and it aligns with what the brand you are actually building. And if it doesn't, then that's your brand, not what you think it is. Your brand is what people say about you, not what you think it is. Yeah. Now I'm super grateful that the Pandemic forced me into building a personal brand. No, man, for real. But just like you, it's like I didn't care about what I was known as. I really cared about how many people I could impact, for sure. But you're doing the exact same thing in the sense of like, you're showing people how to do it, but also you're providing a service that changes people's lives as well. And it's an even exchange when it comes to the resumes and the LinkedIn and all that for sure. So I would just say to the people listening this really focus on how can you add value to the most people and what can you share that you're passionate about? Because people will feel that passion that will add value to people's lives. And if you got that, you're in good shape and niche down too. You can't be the jack of all trades so for me, I could be trying to help everybody in tech, but now I want to help black people get into tech, you know what I'm saying? And that's what it is. And I have that niche. That's my focus. People know me as that, right? So if there's an opportunity for black people to get into tech, I should be probably one of the top five people they think about because of the consistency, for sure. Create that personal brand, man. And then once I get my 100 podcasts in, I'll be known as the guy at the podcast, you know what I'm saying? The black tech version of Eyl. Okay, I like that. So anyways, I got to speak it in existence. By the way. One of the mindset things is abundant mindset, obviously, but speak and think about the things that you want to happen. So I'm sure while you're at Adobe, you're at Sparky resume, you spoke this Right Sea into existence. So before we get into Right Sea, just want to talk about Sparky resume, what was the growth like and what were the things that you did that helped grow it to a place where Right Sea eventually became a thing? Yeah, man, that's a good question. So sparked your resume. Man, how I really grew it, we served over a thousand. We had 1000 customers in two and a half years, which is crazy, but what I will say is cold email, man. I wasn't trying to spend money on ads. I was trying to get customer acquisition costs as low as possible. Right? So I figured out a way to scrape emails from LinkedIn and find job seekers and get their personal email and code email them. And I'm talking about bro. We'll get 2030 replies a day. Like, yes, I'm interested. Yes, I'm job searching. I'm looking for a new opportunity, blah, blah, blah. And it will. Schedule a meeting, schedule a meeting, get them to convert. We close three out of ten people that we talk to. So 30% conversion rate, 70% show up rate. So that's how I do like my numbers. So you got booked appointments. Seven out of ten people show up. Out of those, seven out of ten, two buy, two or three buy, which is pretty solid, like industry average, probably a little bit above, but that's really how we grew, man. It was cold. Email and LinkedIn, I think that's really all you need to really grow a business, bro, because LinkedIn is the number one B, two B platform. And email is everybody got email. So if I want to get to somebody directly, I'm using email and LinkedIn to build social authority. So my LinkedIn profile is optimized. So they'll come to my profile, see who I am, and then now they see me in the email. And if I did run ads, they'll see me retargeting on Facebook and Instagram as well, which I did at one point in time. And it worked. People were booking appointments, people were replying to emails, people were connecting with us on LinkedIn and purchasing packages. And then from there, we just seen a bigger opportunity, man, like I said, for managed career services. And that's how kind of right see came about. Like, we're about to build 1000 Sparky resumes with job boards, right? So now it's like, okay, they got the traffic. Like I said, I ain't want to spend money on ads. Job boards already got the traffic, but they're not offering the services or they don't have the domain expertise to offer services. We built pretty decent resume writing and career coaching businesses over the past three years. Kind of know what we're doing. So now we go to the job boards. Hey, 70 30 split. 80 20 split. You all do no work, we spin up the whole services. You all get paid every month off the traffic you already bringing that you're not monetizing off of. Kind of illegal, ain't going to lie, but it's dope, man. Everything I built with Spark, your resume is literally transferring over to right sea. Like all the marketing strategies I have, cold emailing, lead generation. That's how we booking demos for the SaaS side enterprise deals, we reaching out to job boards. All of that stuff is just coming together, man. And it was hard to close Sparky resume, you know what I'm saying? It was like, man, first business, my baby, you know what I mean? The end of the day, man, had to check my ego and really think about, why am I here? Why am I doing this? What are my goals? Yeah, man, I'm trying to be worth 20 mil by the time I'm 35. That's the goal. Yeah. And I think honestly, it'd be worth more, bro. You know what I mean? For the people that don't know, how old are you currently? 25. 25? I got ten years. Got ten years. Nah, man, you're going to get that in about half that. I hope so. That's the goal. By really 30, I say 35 or 30. Yeah. We trying to build the business to where it's scalable. It's attracted to somebody that want to come and acquire us. We own a mission, you know what I mean? It's clear as day, the whole team know it. There's no secrets. We most definitely trying to get acquired. Membership in black and HR means community and being a part of a culture of like minded individuals. You have a culture within a culture, especially in the black community. And Black and HR is that professional culture. We have fun, we laugh and joke about things that are related to us in the workplace, but we also have serious aspects as well, where we help each other grow. And it's just one of those places where I can go to any time of the day, pose a question, and I'm going to get all type of answers. But. I'm going to get support. And we all work together to give advice, to give insight, to share tips. The networking is amazing. The people that I've spoken to have allowed me to learn things about myself that I didn't know. So what does that do? When I go to my next interview, I have that confidence when I walk in to be able to explain and speak on what I've done in the past and prove that I am the person for the job. Yeah, for sure. Microsoft LinkedIn. Hey, Microsoft LinkedIn. You know what I mean? My people. Keep your eye on Ricey. Man, we better turn up. For real. Yeah. So a lot of startup founders are going to be like watching this, and they're going to be like, what were the steps to write C, acquiring funding. So just talk about that journey of saying like, spark your resume and your former competitors coming together. How did this idea come about? And then how long was the process and what was the process of building the pitch deck and taking these meetings and doing what you need to do? Yeah, man, it was crazy, man. So Brandon Mitchell is the founder and CEO, and then Hansla Rami is our co founder as well, but he's the CTO. And then Ahmed At, this is a co founder as well. He's the VP of Sales. Director of sales. So those three guys were running Brand that's that was another resume writing company. And then I was running Sparky resume. I met Brandon because he was on eyl, so he had an episode on eyl. One of my homies hit me up. I remember this day like it was yesterday. I was at La Fitness, I'm on the treadmill. My homie called me. He was like, yeah, I know. You started sparky resume. Listen to this guy, Brandon, man, he made like two hundred and fifty k first year. Okay, Bet Say less, send me the episode. Listened to him. Love the episode, bro. Was a genius. Hit him up on Instagram, connected with him, told him I was starting to spark your resume. Took me under his wing, told me everything to do. Get on LinkedIn ProFinder, which is like a marketplace, to send us leads for resume services and things like that. Do this, get this CRM, do this. This is how you attract customers. Here's some proposal templates, here's a contract template. Just give me the game. And knowing I'm competing with him, pretty much, I respected that because a lot of people wouldn't do that, you know what I mean? And then from there, bro, I'm giving them game. Yo, I got the CRM. You might need to help with marketing. He watching me doing my thing with Sparky resume. I think the first year I was working at Adobe, I'm going to make like eighty five K at Adobe. So I made 85K my first year at Sparky resume. Second year, probably we doubled that. I was like, okay, this might be something I can do on the side or make it full time. He just saw the growth. Year over year, we growing, and I ain't really got a big team. I had, like, admins, a resume writer, maybe somebody in sales, but doing like three hundred and fifty K a year. So I'm like, okay. He's like, okay, we need you for Gracie. I'm building this tech platform. It's coming out in six months, and I want you to come be our chief marketing officer. I had to think about it, man. I was like, Man, I can't even do it. And I said that probably, like, three times. I can't even do it, bro. I got my own business. I got to keep doing this. He was pissed. Yeah. Fired a couple of people already. So it was crazy, man. But everything happens for a reason, man. And then, like, three months after that, we finally signed a deal. I flew out to New Jersey, went to Bayon to meet him and Hansland in person, signed some papers, close the deal, all that good stuff, and got to work in March, man. And then that's when we started fundraising, because he had me there to kind of know, book appointments for us, do some sales calls, things like that. So he was mainly doing the fundraising. I helped out with a little bit, like the pitch decks and things like that. But what I will say, it took us nine months to raise the capital. We probably took upward 200 meetings, easy, if not more, bro. To be honest, I think we might have reached out to maybe, like 50 to 60 VCs. Collab was the first one. I called it, too. I told Brandon, I said, Bro, Collab is going to invest in us. I said that from, like, I think three months before they even invested. I said, Collab is going to invest in us. And they were in Atlanta. Justin went to my car. Me and Justin went to the same school. Both went to Georgia State. He got his degree in marketing as well. When you say Justin. Justin. Justin Dawkins. My bad. Okay. Justin Dawkins. He's a partner at Collab. Yeah. So he went to Georgia State with me, got the same degree. So we chopping it up, walking the same stumping, grounds building rapport. But I was like, Man, Collab is going to invest in us. And they invested in us, I think, like 30 to 45 days after the first initial meeting. That was our first lead because we had, like, visible hands, expert dozo, which are like the accelerators, 100K there, 25K here, things like that, but not a lead investor. Collab came in. I think this was May or like, June. They came in and then a Tensor Capital. Brandon had went to, like, Tulsa with visible hands, and that's when he got introduced to a Tenso Capital, which is the investor in Tulsa. They gave us one meal and they went out there, he built rapport with them, came back, we had a couple of follow up meetings, and the pitch deck, we switched the pitch deck from talking about the SaaS to more so unlocking revenue for job boards. And when we said that done. Yeah, people, everybody wanted in. Everybody wanted in. They're like, oh yeah, this is genius because it makes sense. And that's why I said it feel illegal. They got auto traffic, but not monetizing. And it's going to improve the client experience because now they're getting better resumes submitted on their job board. So now companies are happy because now they have quality talent. They can hire from job boards. Happy because they're making more money and they're improving their client experience. For both parties, a marketplace, they got a buyer and a seller. The buyer right now is the job. I mean the companies, right? Well, no, the buyer will be the job seekers. The seller will be the companies. Yeah, that's fire. That's fire. Fire. So now that everybody wants in, you got to be smart for sure. About how much money you take. For sure. And all that good stuff. For sure. But you guys are pretty lean. Pretty lean, for sure. Man. I think we're like 15 deep max. And it's summer contractors too, so I think FTE full time employees are like 910 people. Yeah, but other than that, man, we run this pretty lean team. Yeah. So we talked about Tulsa earlier. How does Tulsa fit into your strategy? Yeah, so a part of our deal with a tento, since they're headquartered out there, we have to move to Tulsa, I think for at least a year. And Tulsa is doing some amazing things right now. I was just out there for about twelve days and I thought it was going to be like dead. It's actually pretty straight in my opinion. Of course it's not like in Atlanta or Miami, but I could see it being the next Austin, Texas within the next 510 years. Man, real estate is very cheap out there. I'm trying to buy a crib. You're not finding nothing for $250,000.05 minutes from the city, I don't think anywhere else for real that has a thriving city like it's people out there. Nightlife was led black. Wall street is out there. They're trying to put more black people in Tulsa, get more people to move out there. They have a program called Tulsa Remote. So anybody working remote that sees this, you can go to think it's Tulsa Remote. You'll get $10,000 to move out to Tulsa, which is probably a year's worth of rent in Tulsa right now, which is crazy for a one bedroom. Yeah, but yeah, man. Tulsa, I think, is going to be a phenomenal place for us to just really focus. Atlanta has a lot of distractions. New York has a lot of distractions. So us being there and then everybody there want to see us win. You know what I mean? The energy is just crazy, bro. Like ricey boys in town. You know what, that's how that's the energy right now, man. You're walking with the drip. They know what it is, man. But yeah, man, tulsa is a good vibe. Everybody want to see us win, man. And it's just a part of our deal that we got to move out there. So we're looking forward to it, man. And just building a tech startup. Awesome, man. So when it comes to the next steps of the tech startup ride, what are you most excited about? Yeah, man. Launching these deal with managed career services. So we got our first deal launching actually by the end of February. So I got a lot of work to do in next two weeks. But yeah man. First deal. Launching Managed Career Services. So we partnered with a job board. Not can't disclose the job board or anything like that, but yeah, we got a big job board that we partner with and they're looking to go crazy, man. So looking to launch that and testing out the waters and making sure that we can deliver on the things we promise to our investors. But we got the team in place, everybody in place, everybody doing a thing. So I'm very excited to see it go crazy. Yeah, man. So there's so much that we could talk about. We could talk for another two or 3 hours. We're going to have to probably do this over again. But like I said, mindset is something that I really want people to understand that you didn't get here by mistake. And you've said a lot of the things throughout this interview. But when it comes to startup founders, specifically, what is some of the biggest advice you can give people in terms of how you show up and then how you execute? Yeah, man. I think just being a man of your word I think is very key. And then having a story at the end of the day, investors are people. Everybody buys in the stories, man. Of course, people make decisions off emotions, then back it up with logic. Right. So that's where you put the story first in the pitch deck and then you got the forecasted and revenue at the end. Right. It's all marketing at the end of the day. Like, how can you draw somebody in? I probably won't get your attention unless I put in a story format. I got to make you feel away first. I got to get you, I got to wrap you in. And once I do that, then I can go down to what the business is, how we generate revenue, what's the forecasting, projections. But first you got to care about it. If you don't care about it, it's not going to work. So focus on crafting that story, mastering your craft with your story. As a founder co founder, whatever the case may be, have a good pitch deck, don't make it too long, get to the point. Everybody's time is limited and people don't like to read no more anyway, right? So make it to the point. Share your numbers, share your traction, tell them where you're going, why should they invest in you? Talk about the team. Because at the end of the day, business is people, systems and processes and that's the three components that all investors are looking at when they're looking at your business. So dial in your people because those people are going to be building the systems and documenting the processes to help you all build a billion dollar empire. That's a mic drop right there boy. You feel me? All right. Yes, sir. Well man, that's that big tech energy, bro. You're electric? Yes, sir, man. I feel it, brother. I'm excited for you, bro. I'm excited for you. And your team are good people too. At the end of the day, surround yourself with good people. The fact that your competitor was willing to give you the keys to his success and vice versa, facts. The fact you all collaborating now and you all going to make life changing money, it makes sense. So before we go, I want people to know how they can get in touch with you and then also share more about rightsy and how your potential clients can get in touch with you with that. Most definitely. So yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn. Just leander Howard II, so it's leanderhoward and then two eyes. So the suffix is two eyes and then instagram is leanderhardt II as well. Right. C can go to rightc.com. It's writesea.com and we're all in one business solution for freelance writers, coaches and teams. So we do have a SaaS component as well. So we have a customer relationship management tool. So think of everything, sales marketing, email marketing, text message marketing, hosting your courses, building a website, landing pages, funnels, all that good stuff. And then we also have an order management system so you can manage your customers once they purchase. So we integrate with stripe. So you have like custom checkout links, you can upload download documents, we got a chat feature, contracts, embedded, questionnaires are in there, forms, all that good stuff. And it's white label so nobody will ever know using rightsy, which is pretty dope nice. But yeah, check us out and follow us on Instagram at I think it's the rightsy. And then connect with us on LinkedIn. All right, I appreciate you brother. No doubt, man. And thank you to all the listeners that have been tuning in today. Again, this is big tech energy, all right? And one thing that I'm partnered with is a company called Blackhire.com. So I want to make sure that Black freelancers have an abundance and overwhelming amount of opportunities to make significant money in the freelance space. So if you are a freelancer, put your profile on Blackhire.com. And if you are someone looking for talent and especially looking to support black freelancers, go to Upwork, go to Fiver, but throw your stuff on Blackhire.com. You're going to have a lot of quality talent out there and you can increase the diversity on your team. Also, if you want to connect with me on social media, you can go to BigTech Energy and where you can find my LinkedIn, my Twitter, my TikTok, my Instagram, and definitely make sure you subscribe to the YouTube like comment share. And yeah, Big tech Energy website coming soon too. Put in the email, get a free ebook. But I'll have all that information in the caption and Spotify, Apple. Please subscribe as well. So with that being said, I appreciate Leander, I appreciate you, the listener. Definitely share this podcast with your people. Let them know that we got some real inspiration and more importantly, real tactical knowledge to provide on this podcast and we will see you in the next episode. Big tech standard energy. We're out. Let's get it. Membership in Black and HR means community and being a part of a culture of like minded individuals, you have a culture within a culture, especially in the black community. And black and HR is that professional culture. We have fun, we laugh and joke about things that are related to us in the workplace, but we also have serious aspects as well, where we help each other grow. And it's just one of those places where I can go to any time of the day, pose a question, and I'm going to get all type of answers, but I'm going to get support. And we all work together to give advice, to give insight, to share tips. The networking is amazing. The people that I've spoken to have allowed me to learn things about myself that I didn't know. So what does that do? When I go to my next interview, I have that confidence when I walk in to be able to explain and speak on what I've done in the past and prove that I am the person for the job.