Podcast: Play in new window | Download (38.5MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More
John Tarnoff – Reinvention Group
On Realizing You May Need a Change: “What often happens in mid career is that you kinda look around and go, what are you doing now? What’s the purpose of all this?”
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. That rings true even more as you think of changing your career. But how do you change your career? How do you shift your skillset to fit a new job that you feel you’d be better suited for? What job do you work at to be happy?
John Tarnoff is a career transition expert. He has been on some wild entrepreneurial journeys from Hollywood to the dot com era in the 90s. Now he is helping his clients find their dream job. This insightful conversation with career strategist and executive coach, John Tarnoff begins with his job experience and paints a picture of what he has learned to help others.
John sheds light on the ever-evolving landscape of job hunting and professional development. From the critical importance of a robust LinkedIn profile to the inherent flaws in traditional job application processes, John offers practical advice for job seekers at all career stages. We explore effective networking techniques, the power of a compelling career narrative, and strategies for tackling employment gaps.
Listen as John shares his perspectives on the unique hurdles faced by older professionals and provides actionable tips for navigating job interviews with untrained recruiters. We discuss the value of vulnerability, maintaining a positive team culture, and leveraging your “superpower” to stand out in the professional world.
Enjoy!
Visit John at: https://johntarnoff.com/
Podcast Overview:
00:00 Opted for Flash over 3D for animation.
06:18 Conversational database mimics shallow human interactions.
12:32 Entertainment relies on franchises, pre-sold material.
19:03 Adapting growth mindset crucial for career progression.
23:54 Job struggles for older professionals; interview issues.
30:32 Prepare interview team: coordination, training, focus.
36:34 Define superpower, build community, ensure thought leadership.
43:49 Consider past experiences to identify fulfilling elements.
49:06 Enhance LinkedIn to uniquely showcase your skills.
50:31 AI inflates job applications; prioritize building relationships.
01:00:50 Embrace passion; no need to force conversation.
Podcast Transcription:
John Tarnoff [00:00:00]:
Number 1, define your superpower. What is the particular set of skills, experiences, attitudes, preferences, values that you represent, and what do you deliver with it?
James Kademan [00:00:16]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle, stories, and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found on the podcast link found at draw On customers dot com. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, Calls On Call Extraordinary Answering Service, as well as The Bold Business Book. And today, we’re welcoming slash preparing to learn from John Tarnoff of the Reinvention Group, which we are gonna be talking about careers and career transition. So, John, how are you doing today?
John Tarnoff [00:00:47]:
Doing great, James. Thanks for having me on your show.
James Kademan [00:00:50]:
Yeah. You know, I’m excited to chat with you because as an entrepreneur, I get the the luxury, we’ll call it, of hiring people. And it is it’s rare that I think about what it was like on the other side to be the interviewee. And I saw your name come across, and I was like, when was the last time that I had a job interview? And I thought, when is the last time that you had to go through all these things that people that aren’t entrepreneurial have to go through. And it’s it made me kinda pause and think, like, what what do they have to go through? I don’t even know what the world’s like now on that side of the table. So let’s just start out with what is Reinvention Group, and then we’ll take it from there as far as careers go.
John Tarnoff [00:01:35]:
Great. So Reinvention Group is my career coaching and executive leadership practice, which I’ve been doing now for the past, 12 years. And it, throws out of a kind of a long and checkered career as an executive in the entertainment business here in Los Angeles, where I worked for multiple film studios, worked on my own as a producer, pitching projects, getting films made. And then I took a kind of a 8, 10 year sabbatical out of the business into technology in the nineties during that famous tech bubble. Had a start up with a partner. We kind of rode it up, raised all the money, got our product out the door, had some big deals. And then in 2001, when the market tanked, we tanked along with it, and I was fortunate enough to find myself back in the entertainment business. But in more of a people role, which is really what set up this, more consulting On approach to, career coaching and executive coaching that has led me to where I am today.
James Kademan [00:02:42]:
That is cool. John, I didn’t know I didn’t know you were involved in the tech bubble thing.
John Tarnoff [00:02:46]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I had a little startup called Talkie, and we were doing artificial intelligence before it became fashionable. We were doing little animated characters for customer service that had a natural language database, and you could design this little bot for your website and, ask it questions and get answers. And we did this so we had a big signature deal with Sprint to create a customer service character for their website. And, and then we were launching around the time that the market crashed. Sprint was going through all sorts of stuff. We launched it, and then it all it all just kinda went away.
James Kademan [00:03:30]:
Dang. So you’re talking I mean, I’m trying to think. Late nineties into 2001. Is that the the Microsoft’s paperclip guy? Is that kind of that vintage?
John Tarnoff [00:03:40]:
We used to get we used to get teased a lot, about about Clippy. And, you know, I I forgot what what our analogy was, but we were saying that, what we were doing was to Clippy, you know, the way a a supersonic jet is to the Wright brothers.
James Kademan [00:03:57]:
Alright. So, I mean, now we’re talking I’m gonna go down this rabbit hole a little bit because I’m so curious.
John Tarnoff [00:04:03]:
Sure. It’s a fun one.
James Kademan [00:04:05]:
So right now, AI chips, NVIDIA, blah blah blah blah blah. Right. Cycle. Back then,
John Tarnoff [00:04:11]:
what were
James Kademan [00:04:11]:
you using for processors back then?
John Tarnoff [00:04:13]:
Sure. So that was one of the big challenges was to do this in an economical way. The the AI was not so much the issue as the animation. And we started out doing this. We’re thinking we’re we’re gonna do a 3 d engine, and and there was a there was a technology at the time for games called 3 d FX, which was a kind of a very prominent, graphics card that was in use. And we were initially designing our graphics side for the 3 d FX card, and we had a 3 d developer working with us who was saying, you know, how am I ever gonna get this into a downloadable client that people are On be able to just put on their computers and and and run this thing? He said, why don’t you just he said, I’m I’m I’m about to fire myself. Why don’t you just do this in Flash? So you remember right? So you remember Flash was this animation engine from Macromedia that I think Adobe had wound up buying, and it was very economical. It was very small.
John Tarnoff [00:05:09]:
It would it came preloaded on pretty much every computer back in the day. So we we created a flash client that made this instantly available on most every computer, and so you could log on to our website. This is how we got the Sprint deal because we went to Kansas City to this customer service executive’s office. We plugged On to the wall with our laptop, and we got this character to have a conversation with her over dial up. Over dial up? Over dial up.
James Kademan [00:05:44]:
Talking 56 k On a lucky day.
John Tarnoff [00:05:47]:
It’s that. It’s that. And so so that was the that was the kind of the the, the the lucky accident of going and doing it in Flash. We were able to demo to anyone anywhere. The AI side of it was a lot lighter to work with, because we weren’t doing the kind of wait. This wasn’t this wasn’t real AI. This was pattern recognition. Right? This was really based on some of those early pattern recognition engines that had come out of MIT.
John Tarnoff [00:06:18]:
You may remember a a bot called Eliza, which was this therapy bot that was started, at MIT. And we were kind of piggybacking on a number of developments that come since then, to, to kind of create this, this, conversational database. And, what we brought to it, and I I don’t wanna go into too much, you know, of the rabbit hole, but what we did because my partner and I kind of came out of the media, business, and he on the computer game side and me on the film side. And we came up with this this kind of half joke of which we used to pitch, where we called our system artificial stupidity. And the the idea behind that was that it followed the patterns of cocktail party conversations where you get into a conversation with someone. If you don’t wanna talk about something, you switch the subject. Right? There are all sorts of strategies that you use to be able to keep a conversation going without necessarily getting into any depth or detail. So we programmed the system to be able to do that.
John Tarnoff [00:07:24]:
So when a character didn’t know the answer to a question, it would change the subject, and it would have multiple pathways to change the subject if it kept if it kept coming back to that topic. Eventually, the character would say, this conversation’s over. I can’t have a conversation with you. You’re an idiot, and then and log off.
James Kademan [00:07:42]:
Oh my gosh.
John Tarnoff [00:07:43]:
And that’s how we that’s how we dealt with the fact that you you that it that the system was not really intelligent. You know, we could not have passed the Turing test the way most of these systems can pass the Turing test today. It’s insane what’s been going on over the last 5, 10 years.
James Kademan [00:07:59]:
Yeah. That is surreal. And that’d be cool Call be on the cutting edge and all that jazz, but great.
John Tarnoff [00:08:03]:
Well, I mean, you know, the the downside of it is that when it all fell apart, my partner had this great line. You know, we we we we kind of got up to speed. We had this converted warehouse in Venice Beach with about 40, 50, developers working for us at the peak when we were on the Sprint deal, and we had another couple of deals that we’re working on. And and then it all just went away, and we’re we’re sitting there in this empty warehouse, you know, 3 years in, and my partner turns to me. He goes, well, I guess the future’s gone out of style.
James Kademan [00:08:37]:
I love it. I love it. So was that tell me just really quick about the the downfall of that. That wasn’t exactly like a pandemic thing where you got an email that says, hey. By the way, you’re out of business. That was a somewhat gradual thing. Right? That was a course of a career?
John Tarnoff [00:08:53]:
The gradual thing that happened over a course of a year, I would say, April of 2001 is when it all started, and our our our board members called us up and said, we have to have a meeting. You guys have gotta, you know, downsize. You gotta get resilient. You gotta work on more product, blah blah blah. So we had some strategies in place, and we kept it going for, I’d say, another 18 to 24 months after that. And which was pretty good. We kind of kept all of our investors in line. I I learned a lot about investor relations in that period.
John Tarnoff [00:09:26]:
You can you can be sure. And, you know, you you focus on leadership. This was a real test. I don’t think I had any idea what I was getting into at that point in terms of being able to lead internally and, and externally, both the the the internal stakeholders, the people that we had brought On. And downsizing that company was painful. It was painful for everyone. I think everyone understood what we were dealing with. We tried to do our best.
John Tarnoff [00:09:54]:
I think in in 98% of the cases, we were able to do well by our by our people. There were a couple people who expected more, and we had we had promised more. We couldn’t deliver it. You know, we had some we had some issues, which we tried to resolve as best we could. And then on the investor side, it it required a lot of handholding, a lot of communication. And I think in a interesting way, it taught me the power of vulnerability.
James Kademan [00:10:24]:
Oh, interesting. Tell me more about
John Tarnoff [00:10:26]:
that. Sure. Because, you know, typically, I think in our culture, we we wanna try to be strong and be tough and and, you know, never let them see a sweat. Right? That’s kind of the approach that most most of us, I I think, are kind of taught. And what I found was that when I really kind of got into the nitty gritty with people, and I would call up and I remember On key investor who who really had the ear of pretty much everyone else. It was a it was a it was a large group of interconnected career investors who had who had funded us. And this guy didn’t wanna be said the line. He wanted to know really what was going on.
John Tarnoff [00:11:14]:
And I said to him, look. You know, career here’s here’s what we’re facing. Here’s how we’re dealing with it. I’m I’m ashamed that it has come to this. We’ve done the best we could. Perhaps if we had done this before, you know, we would have been more prepared to deal with it. But the more I opened up to him, the more he trusted Kademan, and the more he continued to back us and to defend us with the rest of the investors. I don’t think any of them were looking to sue us.
John Tarnoff [00:11:52]:
But I do think that if we had handled it poorly, I think they would have. I think if they I think if they had felt shut out, I think if they had felt manipulated, then I think they would have sued us.
James Kademan [00:12:08]:
Wow. That is crazy. It’s
John Tarnoff [00:12:10]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:12:11]:
Interesting On the businesses that I run, sounds like businesses that you’ve been through, you’re trying to do something essentially perfect that you haven’t necessarily done before.
John Tarnoff [00:12:22]:
Right.
James Kademan [00:12:22]:
Right. So if here’s a basketball, make that 3 quarter court shot every single time. Yeah. Like, wait. Do I get a few practice shots? Like, nope. And we’re gonna be really mad if you don’t make it.
John Tarnoff [00:12:32]:
Yeah. And here’s the interesting thing about that because that that evokes my, entertainment business background. Because when you’re in the entertainment business, and I wanna make an analogy to the larger world that we’re living in today, the entertainment business was always a business where every time a new film, TV show, record comes out, it’s an entirely not just a new product. It’s a new product line. You really have no way of knowing whether this product line is gonna succeed. Now having said that, one of the things that the entertainment business has done, particularly the movie and TV business has done over the last 20 years, I would say, is to focus in on franchises, to focus in on pre sold material in a way that they never did before. There was always this idea that, well, if you could base a movie on a book that had been successful, well, then you had a shot. So you think of, you know, big movies like James or The Exorcist.
John Tarnoff [00:13:43]:
Those classic movies came out of books. But at the same time, you also had original movies that, you know, kind of became huge. I mean, The Godfather is another example of that. Right? One of the greatest movies of American cinema based on a bestseller book. But there are also original movies, and very often those original movies On their own major cultural shifts. Star Wars, of course, being the being the example. I mean, that was a project that was no one knew what to do with that. This was George Lucas’ little science fiction vision, and he’s, you know, he’s done 2 movies and okay.
John Tarnoff [00:14:22]:
So, you know, Universal passed on it. Fox gave him a small budget to go out to, you know, to go out to Morocco and wherever, Tunisia, and make this little science fiction movie. No one knew what to do with it. And here we are. Right? 50 years later, and this is still going on. It’s like, you know, major pillar of revenue for Disney. So, you just never knew. And when you’re talking about the startup world and trying to pitch a project, I kinda came into that from having that background in movies where every time out, you’ve gotta swing for the fences, and you have no idea whether it’s gonna work.
John Tarnoff [00:15:09]:
And, by the way, the fences keep getting moved back and forth. So you so you’re not really sure where that home run is gonna be.
James Kademan [00:15:18]:
Yeah. So true. So true. I am so happy to hear that I’m not alone in that.
John Tarnoff [00:15:22]:
Yeah. And let me tell you this. Good. The interesting thing that’s that’s evolved, and this is, I think, the reason why I love doing what I do now, is that this uncertainty about business, this need to be nimble to have a growth mindset to as as Michael Dell put this years ago, it’s the start of Dell when it took off. Someone said, so, you know, how do you how do you manage this this this quickly changing business? He said, every day, it’s a start up. So he he he never took his eye off of that awareness that it could change on a dime. So I think most businesses today, given the technology disruption that we’ve experienced over the last 30, 40 years, is a On. I don’t care if it is, you know, General Motors or Tesla or, you know, or any any business that’s out there, you can get disrupted tomorrow by someone coming up and changing the game.
James Kademan [00:16:30]:
Fair. Totally fair. Yeah. Even you think about entertainment industry just since Netflix came around and all that, we’re not talking 5 years.
John Tarnoff [00:16:38]:
There you go. Yeah. Change the game. Blockbuster could have bought Netflix, and they turned it they turned it down.
James Kademan [00:16:47]:
Yeah. Way back when you know, it’s so funny. I hear stories like that. You’re like, what was Blockbuster thinking? But I remember, my brother-in-law dragging me to some multilevel marketing thing. It was Amway at the time, but they didn’t call it Amway. It was some online we’re supposed to give people a website. They go to this website and then buy stuff from other websites. It was kind of a bridge thing.
John Tarnoff [00:17:09]:
Mhmm.
James Kademan [00:17:10]:
Anyways and I was like, no one’s gonna give their credit card number online. This is crazy. Right. Right. I was apparently wrong. So
John Tarnoff [00:17:19]:
Oh, shit.
James Kademan [00:17:20]:
I look at stuff like that. I’m like, you don’t know. Nobody knows.
John Tarnoff [00:17:23]:
Yeah. So I mean, the the end of in in my former business, the end of physical media. Right? The idea that there would not be a a disc or a cassette or some physical tangible thing. Right, that that people would would forego that. I I I still have all of my Itunes backup somewhere on my computer. You know? I don’t know how many thousands of tracks from that database. And every once in a while, I’m kind of doing a review. I’m kind of cleaning my my files out.
John Tarnoff [00:18:00]:
I I see that. It’s older. I go, no. I’m not gonna go to that because, you know, I mean, for better or worse, I’m I I love On, and I just, you know, and there are certain things that I can’t get on Spotify. And for that, I still have my 650 albums, in the other room and the turntable. And I’ll go in there, and I’ll I’ll listen. But for most of music and discovery, I don’t need I don’t need the physical. Right?
James Kademan [00:18:31]:
No. I’m right there
John Tarnoff [00:18:32]:
with you. Happy to pay the subscription.
James Kademan [00:18:34]:
You know, it’s interesting just in that light that there used to be a a process, kind of, I don’t know. It was fun to go to Sam Goody or Musicland or whatever.
John Tarnoff [00:18:45]:
Yeah. Tower Records. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:18:47]:
Yeah. Gets that CD or that I remember getting cassettes. My first record was Purple Rain, the single. It was a purple 45.
John Tarnoff [00:18:55]:
Right.
James Kademan [00:18:55]:
Wow. I’m just like, that was a that was a day
John Tarnoff [00:18:58]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:18:59]:
Right, to get that thing.
John Tarnoff [00:19:00]:
Sure.
James Kademan [00:19:01]:
I mean And now you’re just like click download.
John Tarnoff [00:19:03]:
Part of the social contract. Right? But I think that’s, you know, that that that that’s always changing in society. And I guess I think, again, to this conversation about leadership and entrepreneurship, that is, I think, another important part of the growth mindset, which is now more important than ever. And and and On of tuning my own horn, kind of getting it back on on on this track, that is the one of the most important things that I worked on with my clients is this idea of battling the inertia that we all tend to experience, or believe in if we’ve been in a job for 20 years. Right? Maybe you’ve done it for 1 company, which is rare, but maybe you’ve done it for 2 or 3 companies. Maybe you’re a marketing or sales executive or technology or project manager or program manager, and you’re on this track. And you’re kind of building your career up the ladder, more responsibility, better title, better money. And what often happens in mid career is that you kinda look around and go, what what what are you doing now? What what’s the what’s the purpose of all this? I’ve gone to this level.
John Tarnoff [00:20:14]:
I thought this is where I wanna be. Now I’m here. Where do I wanna go from now? And at the same time, what’s going on in businesses, people are looking at you differently. They’re going, okay. So you’re 45, 50, 55. What have you done for me lately? Mhmm. And why am I going to continue to trust you to deliver going forward when I got this 30 year old who seems to have the latest skills and is more plugged On? And what do I do about this? So I think people are looking for us to be more valuable, to provide more definitive deliverables, and results as we age in our profession. And the leadership that we need to do is the leadership for ourselves to be able to say, okay.
John Tarnoff [00:21:06]:
Here’s my value proposition. It’s not, oh, I’ve been around the block. I can do anything. What if you’ve got? Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants a generalist. They want you to be a very specific specialist, and the risk that you take is you’re gonna you’re gonna leave a lot of stuff on the table if you do that. But when you connect, you really connect with someone who needs what you can provide. So that’s a big mind shift for a lot of people.
John Tarnoff [00:21:41]:
I’m working with a guy right now, and he he put this very interestingly. He said he’s he’s he’s he’s 55, big marketing executive in New York, Right. Laid off by the former company, looking for the next gig, not really sure where he wants to go. And I said, so what’s what’s this anxiety that you’re experiencing? And he says, I I I need the next assignment. And I said, here’s the problem. No one’s gonna give you that assignment. You have to give yourself the assignment. And once you give yourself that assignment and you figure out what that is, what you love to do, what you do well, what your world needs, and what you can get paid for, those 4 so called ikigai questions, you know, the Japanese idea of life’s purpose, then you can start to develop your renewed value proposition because now you’re in the driver’s seat.
John Tarnoff [00:22:44]:
You’re in control. You’re offering a product, a service out into the world. It’s really clear what that is. People will be able to say, okay. I know what I’m gonna get for this guy. It’s exactly what I need. Come on in. Right? And that’s how you build your career in mid career and beyond.
James Kademan [00:23:06]:
Nice. I like it. But I you know, as I hear you talking, I was like, if I had a choice between the 30 year old and the 45 year old, I’d hire the 45 year old, all things being equal.
John Tarnoff [00:23:15]:
Well, good for you, and thank you on behalf of all the 45 year olds.
James Kademan [00:23:19]:
Well, I’m right there with you. But the main reason is all they’d all they’d have to do in the interview is say, I’ll show up.
John Tarnoff [00:23:28]:
I’m
James Kademan [00:23:28]:
like, you’re hired, man. Because a lot of those 30 year olds think that showing up is, if I feel like it.
John Tarnoff [00:23:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s yeah.
James Kademan [00:23:37]:
Whatever way the wind blows as far as that goes. But tell me a story. You got this the New York marketing guy. I imagine you have other clients. They come to you because I imagine they’re lost of some kind. They can’t find what they’re looking for. Maybe they don’t even know what they’re looking for in regards to their career. Help me with that a little bit.
John Tarnoff [00:23:54]:
I think it really is it it really does center around the meaning and purpose idea for the most part. And I think, you know, one refrain that I hear a lot from people in their fifties is, why am I having such a hard time getting a job? Never used to have a hard time getting a job. And now all of a sudden, it’s like, what if I got a a bull’s eye on my forehead or something? What’s what’s going on? And I think it goes to the questions we were just talking about in terms of what’s the value that you that you’re delivering. People want older professionals to be to have it together, to to have a sense of what they do. And, you know, you’re talking about the about the job interview. One of the big problems, I think, with job interviews is that it’s the blind leading the blind. Recruiters, hiring managers, for the most part, whomever is conducting that interview, they have not been trained to interview people. They are not talent experts.
John Tarnoff [00:24:59]:
They’re trying to find someone to fit on their team. And, I mean, look. We were talking about hiring before. You’ve been in that situation. I’ve been in that situation. So one job you don’t wanna have as an entrepreneur or a manager is to write a job description. Oh, man. The worst.
John Tarnoff [00:25:17]:
Right? Am I right? So true.
James Kademan [00:25:19]:
So true.
John Tarnoff [00:25:19]:
So what happens is you’re in a company, you’ve got deadlines and deliverables, you’ve got a manager, you’ve got an open position on your team. Okay. Let HR write the job description because I just don’t have the time. I don’t know how and they’re the experts. Right? Well, wrong. Because they have no idea what you need. So it’s a broken system going in. But if you, as the candidate, have a really clear idea about what it is that you provide, what’s your secret sauce, what’s your methodology, your frameworks that you use to do the work that you do and deliver what you deliver, then you can control that interview by going in and, sorry, deflecting a lot of the stupid questions that they ask you, like, so what was the time in your in your career where you made a mistake? It’s like, come on.
John Tarnoff [00:26:14]:
You know? And by the way, if if if you don’t know what the questions are that people ask in interviews, just just ask, the Google because the lists will will pour out. And your job is to deflect those questions back to your agenda and talk about what it is that you deliver and how that relates to your sense of what the job description is. But you also wanna do your research about the company, about the hiring manager, about the department, about the products, about the investors, if if it’s a public company. Those aspects, you wanna be really, really thoroughly checked out before you get in there. So you can actually make the connections for them because they’re not necessarily going to see it. And if you can be that proactive in that interview and not feel like, oh my god. I gotta prepare for the questions that they’re gonna ask me. No.
John Tarnoff [00:27:16]:
Use your career value proposition, which, by the way, you wanna have available in your LinkedIn profile. Use that as the template. Because guess what? Once you’re done with the interview, they’re gonna look at your LinkedIn. They’re gonna go, oh, right. They talked about this on in the interview. They talked about this success that they had making this deal or they they talked about the skill set that they have and oh, right. Now I get it. So it’s one consistent package that you’re presenting James it easier for them to present you to their committee and gives them a greater sense of understanding who you are, what you’re gonna deliver, gives you the leg up if you want that job to get that job.
James Kademan [00:27:58]:
Tell me as far as interviews go, your clients, are they typically running through multiple interviews for the same position?
John Tarnoff [00:28:08]:
Oh, absolutely. I I don’t I I don’t think, I I don’t think any any job at a mid senior level today is gonna happen without multiple interviews, and without, you know, what I call the spanking machine where you’re going through multiple interviews. You’re going through team interviews, which are the worst, particularly if you’re doing it remotely, where you’ve got this person there, that person there, you know, and and and and then people are just kind of like they’re looking at their phones while they’re on the interview with you. I mean, it’s it’s murder. Right? It’s murder to kinda get your point across. So this is what we have to go through.
James Kademan [00:28:44]:
Tell me about the team’s interview because I have those when I’m interviewing. And I do those for a couple of reasons. On, it stemmed from a few years ago well, actually, quite a few years ago when we would hold interviews and the people wouldn’t show up 1 on 1. So I’m like, well, we can stop wasting time. We can just have
John Tarnoff [00:29:02]:
The group On on your on your team wouldn’t show up. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:29:06]:
Yep. First, it was in person way back then way back then. And now that we have remote team, we do we do Zoom interviews where they’re essentially multiple. And sometimes you’ll have 1 or 2 candidates. I think the most I had was 8, and that was a mess. Now we were we’re getting used to essentially about 50% showing up. But recently, that number has gone higher. The number of people that show up,
John Tarnoff [00:29:34]:
it’s supposed
James Kademan [00:29:34]:
it’s approaching a 100% now.
John Tarnoff [00:29:37]:
Right. And this is the the the 100% is on your side, the people who are showing up for to to interview someone that you’re thinking about hiring.
James Kademan [00:29:43]:
Correct. Correct.
John Tarnoff [00:29:44]:
So what kind of what kind of pre meet or training do you do for those interviews? Or do you basically say, we got this position. We got this candidate. Here’s the here’s the Zoom meeting. We’d love you to show up.
James Kademan [00:30:01]:
That before, we have, we use video ask, which essentially is just video interview.
John Tarnoff [00:30:08]:
Yes.
James Kademan [00:30:09]:
22 video just essentially question answer. Video number 1 is a question. They answered in a video. Video video number 2 is another question. They answer that in the video. And it offers 2 things for us. 1 is it’s one more hurdle for them to jump through for us to make sure they’re real and interested. Mhmm.
James Kademan [00:30:27]:
And 2, I’m trying to think what we ask on those questions. They’re not it’s like, what’s your biggest strength or weakness
John Tarnoff [00:30:32]:
or something like that. Well, I mean, that’s a good technology, I think, as a way of, of kind of segmenting, you know, your your your leads and and really kind of funneling your your candidates and making sure that they’re appropriate. But where I’m going with this question about the team interview is I think it’s really important to prepare the interview team, for any interviews. So if it’s if it’s kind of part of their job description to be invited to these interviews, whether they’re able to show up or not, and, obviously, if they’ve got a conflict, you understand that. But I think it’s really important, certainly, for your organization, if if I may if I may be so bold, and for all organizations to really make that a skill set that is taught, trained to individuals so that they know how to behave on these, calls. There is coordination before the meeting as to who is going to address what questions. So it’s not a free for all. There are certain protocols which which people should follow, which is if you’re gonna be on the call, don’t be distracted.
John Tarnoff [00:31:51]:
Shut everything else out. Really give the candidate the courtesy of your full attention because this is their life. Right. Right? Very true. You you know, you’re fortunate enough to have a job that you go to every day. This person, not so much. So put yourself in their situation. Be a little bit empathetic.
John Tarnoff [00:32:12]:
Really? Try to figure out how you could be supportive, not to trip them up, but to give them the best opportunity to express their value. Because think about it. You don’t wanna foster a culture of gotchas, you know, amongst your team. Right? You don’t wanna have everyone kind of trying to trip everyone else out on the team. You wanna be able to collaborate, to give themselves the benefit of the doubt, to help one another out, to mentor others. You wanna treat the candidate with the same deference and positive culture that you promote within your company. So those are some of the considerations that I think are important for team interviews and training employees who are part of these committees to perform up to par. You’ll get better results.
John Tarnoff [00:33:03]:
You’ll get a much better sense of who this person is, whether they fit on your team, by promoting positive interaction.
James Kademan [00:33:12]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Then culture goes. I mean, that’s the name of the game as far as what we do.
John Tarnoff [00:33:17]:
Yeah. Absolutely.
James Kademan [00:33:18]:
When I interview people, the way that the mindset that I like to have is that I am going to hire this person unless they prove to me that I should not.
John Tarnoff [00:33:28]:
I love that. That’s great.
James Kademan [00:33:30]:
And there’s sometimes you interview people, and after 5 minutes, you’re like, god. You proved that awfully fast. And other times, you’re like, hey. You’re hired.
John Tarnoff [00:33:39]:
The reason they’re in there in the interview is because they’ve gone through the other stages. Right? You shouldn’t be interviewing someone right off the bat. It should be because you’ve looked at their background. You’ve checked them out. Other people have looked at the profile. And the beauty of LinkedIn is that everyone can access that candidate. Right? You don’t have to email the resume around and go, I didn’t get that. You know, who is this again? What’s this for? Right? No.
John Tarnoff [00:34:08]:
It’s very easy for everyone to get on the same page about the candidate and say, okay. Should we bring this person in? You know, here here are 3 or 4 LinkedIn profiles. Go check them out, and let’s talk about this. And then we’ll all get on a Call, and we’ll say, okay. What do we think? So by the time that person comes in, to your point, you want that person to be someone that you would likely wanna hire, and now you’re gonna just see what they’re like in person. Yeah. I love it. It it it reminds me very much of the casting process in films and TV in a strange way because absolutely.
John Tarnoff [00:34:44]:
Because it is you’re you’re bringing together a team. That’s what a that’s what a that’s what a production is. You’ve got your team that’s in front of the camera, and you got your team that’s behind the camera. We’re all relying on prior work. Right? You’ve got that that that resume. But in the case of the creative fields, you also have the portfolio. Right? You have that person’s set of of, that’s their reel. Right? So an actor’s got various scenes from the different productions they’ve been in to show.
John Tarnoff [00:35:18]:
They can handle comedy. They can handle drama. They can cry on cue, whatever that might be. Similarly, the cameraman, the editor, they’ve all got prior work. So in the regular world, LinkedIn kind of becomes that opportunity for us. And I On encourage people who are working on their LinkedIn profile to not just use it as a online resume. It’s so much more. It’s such an opportunity for you to show your work, to to put up a PowerPoint that you’re really proud of.
John Tarnoff [00:35:52]:
Obviously, it has to be, you know, it has to be public facing. Right? You can’t just put up a proprietary set of figures out there and and not get dinged for it. But you wanna use the ability to include media background recommendations, to to round out the profile so people can really get to know you as a way of understanding, shouldn’t this person be right for our team? Plus
James Kademan [00:36:16]:
the value of their network. When I see people on LinkedIn that we’re looking at hiring and they got 6 connections or something like that, I’m like, alright. You don’t take that seriously, or you haven’t been on there for a long time, which isn’t necessarily bad unless you’re looking for a job. I can’t tell anything about you that way.
John Tarnoff [00:36:34]:
This gets into thought leadership. So the the three factors that I believe are important for us to create a viable career strategy. Number 1, define your superpower. What is the particular set of skills, experiences, attitudes, preferences, values that you represent, and what do you deliver with it? Use your LinkedIn profile to articulate that value proposition, that sense of you as the complete professional. Number 2, out of your network of hopefully, you know, you’re 500 plus on LinkedIn. But out of that network of many people that you’ve encountered that are On your profile on your profile, what’s your community? What is that subset of your network that has your back that really aligns with your way of thinking that can be helpful to you? And you, by the way, can be helpful to them as part of their community. Build this aligned group of people who can refer you to jobs, who can give you the feedback that you need to improve your profile, to improve your posture out in the world. And then the 3rd element is thought leadership.
John Tarnoff [00:37:47]:
This idea that you were talking about where, you know, they’ve only got 50 connections. I I don’t know what the presence is. I I I see the resume, but I don’t really have a sense of who they are. Thought leadership is your engagement in your professional world. LinkedIn is a great place to do it, but there are other real life opportunities, professional organizations, conferences, events, mentoring, teaching, anything that you can do to get out into the world with your particular philosophy of business. What’s your secret sauce? What are the topics that you think are existential threats to the future of your industry? Talk about them. Start conversations around them. Build consensus around strategies so that you can come across to your prospective employer as someone who’s engaged, who’s a strategic critical thinker, who is going to mesh with the value set that you’re promoting through your business.
John Tarnoff [00:38:45]:
So those three elements working together, I think, provide a really strong foundation for employers to evaluate candidates and for candidates to get best jobs for them.
James Kademan [00:38:58]:
I love it. You remind me of a conversation that I had. We had a company meeting, I don’t know, couple weeks ago, and we got talking about social media and going down that little rabbit hole. And a few of my employees are all excited about the different TikTok people that they follow. And one of them was talking about following some guy who apparently, finds different sticks. And I was like, wait. What? He just walks around, finds a stick, and puts up the videos of it? And she’s like, yeah. I’m addicted.
James Kademan [00:39:29]:
Oh my gosh. It’s so amazing. And I said it out loud, and I probably shouldn’t have, but I was like, if I would’ve known that you were interested in that, I don’t know if I would’ve hired you. Because I I wanna find someone when I’m interviewing that’s in growth mode of some kind. You’re reading books that are leading you to improvement of some kind or you’re learning a skill, whether that’s public speaking or guitar. I don’t career. As long as you’re trying to grow as a person. Yes.
James Kademan [00:40:01]:
I don’t I don’t know what the stick world is like, but I feel that growth there is a little limited. And so
John Tarnoff [00:40:09]:
it’s just like I think we all we all need entertainment. Right? Fair. We all Fair. Right? We all need to buckle, but here’s the distinction. We all need to unwind, and we all need to do mindless stuff, right, as part of our day are we. I don’t know that I would mention it to my boss. Right?
James Kademan [00:40:28]:
Well, I mean, she felt comfortable enough, so I guess that’s cool.
John Tarnoff [00:40:30]:
I suppose so. I suppose so. But I I think your response is kinda telling because you’re what you’re doing is you’re kind of, thinking, well, wait a minute. What does this say about this person? Right? And, hopefully, you know her well enough to know that she is also involved in those other more constructive, development oriented practices in her life, and that, in fact, yes, this is just a, you know, fun distraction that, that and that we all we all have those. Right? So I think we all gotta come clean around that, But it is in context, I think, of this larger sense of, again, growth mindset of channeling the time that we spend constructively, and it could be fun. It should be fun. Right? Everything that we do, I would I would hope, is is is going to be fun for the most part. I I think we wanna try to angle it that way.
John Tarnoff [00:41:27]:
This is kind of the first question I ask to clients. It’s like, when was the time in your career where you had the most fun?
James Kademan [00:41:33]:
Oh, great question.
John Tarnoff [00:41:34]:
Right. Because that’s the time when you’re, most engaged, most productive. You’re feeling the sense of flow. You’re loving the people you’re working with. They’re loving you. It’s your time of kind of greatest, output, I would say. So you wanna try to recapture that in one way or another going forward to the greatest extent possible. So, you know, it’s gonna involve following someone who collects sticks or or, I don’t know, whatever that might be.
John Tarnoff [00:42:08]:
And, I mean, TikTok is a is a crazy rabbit hole.
James Kademan [00:42:13]:
It certainly is.
John Tarnoff [00:42:14]:
But, you know, at the same time, there is there is growth. There is development. There’s curiosity, which I think is a really important, a really important quality that we wanna look for both in ourselves and in other people. It’s finding that curiosity because that On a way is more important than than skills. Right? If you’re curious about something, that’s gonna drive you to learn, to master, Call set, to understand where it fits into the world. That’s really important.
James Kademan [00:42:44]:
That’s fair. That’s fair. I like that. I can imagine if you’re the stick guy, and you you’re looking online before you’re the stick guy, and you’re like, you know what? This is garbage. We can have fun with this. And you come up with this thing, and all of a sudden your channel blows up. You’re like, well, like, I guess I’m looking for sticks now.
John Tarnoff [00:43:00]:
Right. Maybe I can get a sponsorship. Right?
James Kademan [00:43:02]:
Could you imagine? You meet this guy in the bar, and you’re like, what do you do? Right? And you’re like, hey. I got a podcast Call answering service to all good. What do you do?
John Tarnoff [00:43:10]:
Oh, I
James Kademan [00:43:10]:
got this channel. I I find sticks, and you’re like, no. Seriously,
John Tarnoff [00:43:13]:
I don’t.
James Kademan [00:43:14]:
And he’s like, no. It’s amazing. I got 20,000,000,000 followers or something. And I’m like, alright, dude. You gotta tell me your secret because that is amazing. I’m gonna look at Styx in a whole different way now.
John Tarnoff [00:43:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, there’s an audience for everyone out there somewhere.
James Kademan [00:43:28]:
That oh my gosh. So true. So true. Tell me a story about, I guess I got this marketing guy, the 50 some year old marketing guy in my head. He’s been in marketing his most of his professional career. Let’s just say he’s like, you know what? I’m kinda sick of the marketing game. I wanna do something else. What do you tell that guy?
John Tarnoff [00:43:49]:
So this is a question that I get a lot about, should I just do a 180 degree pivot? And I have to say, after doing this for 12 years, I think that to just close the door on your past and go completely into something new is not the best idea. I think I think of this in a much more integrated way. I think what you wanna do is, again, back to when did you have fun, is distill from everything that you’ve done, what is it? What are the elements of that that really float your boat? Right, that really inspire you, that really satisfy you, that really give you sense of meaning. Pull those out of the equation. And it could be I love delivering presentations, but I hate writing proposals. I love going to meet clients, but I hate internal meetings. Whatever that might be, think about what are your love to haves, must haves, deal breakers, and take a more reflective On approach to understanding what you do, what you love to do. Again, those 4 ikigai questions.
John Tarnoff [00:45:15]:
And start looking around those preferred aspects of your work. Start talking about that with your community that you’re that you’re building up of like minded people who have got your back. Get their ideas on this. Have conversations around this. Look for the unexplored, unexpected outlets for this work. Don’t necessarily turn your back on your past. Maybe look for a a new way of doing what you did or finding a new audience for what you didn’t do well. Look for ways of On mixing it up so that you don’t lose the value of everything that you’ve worked for and built up as a professional over these over these years.
John Tarnoff [00:46:13]:
Find a new way of making it work, of connecting to maybe a new audience, a new employer, a new field that’s still anchoring your work in that past, in the good part of that past.
James Kademan [00:46:29]:
Nice. I love it. Tell me a story about resumes and how you help your clients stand out, because we’re approaching the point or coming up on the point, at least for in my world, where it is less of an employee game and more of an employer game. I think there’s cycles. Right?
John Tarnoff [00:46:50]:
Yep.
James Kademan [00:46:50]:
And it has been an employee game for a very long time where you’d get a handful of resumes. Most of them, people didn’t know the alphabet. And now you’re actually showing up with people that got some skills. And so you have to differentiate yourself as an employee saying you should pick me because On the end, initially, your pile of resumes On an email, maybe a cover letter. How do you help your clients distinguish themselves to get noticed?
John Tarnoff [00:47:16]:
I’m not a big believer in resumes. Oh, okay. I think I think I think the resume is a it’s a dinosaur. It is a vestigial, convention from an earlier age when we didn’t have electronics. We didn’t have digital. The, it’s a guy named Gary Bernison, who is the president of Korn Ferry, which is the big recruiting, talent agency global business. And he has a new book. I believe it’s called Bitch the Resume Gets the Job.
John Tarnoff [00:47:52]:
If a recruiting if if On of the top recruiters in the world is telling you to ditch the resume, I would pay attention to that message. And what he’s saying is, and what I believe wholeheartedly, is that the resume is a limited reflection of who you are as a professional and what you provide as a professional. It is a retrospective outline of your past accomplishments. And as they say in the financial services world, past performance is no indicator of future success. This is why I’m a big fan of the LinkedIn profile. Not as an online resume, but as an opportunity to share your value proposition, to make your about section not a bio, a classic bio where it’s basically a text version of your resume, but a mission statement about who you are, why you do what you do, and where you wanna take it. It’s a conversation starter. It’s a call to conversation.
John Tarnoff [00:49:06]:
And this is what I work on very centrally with everyone that I coach is to build a foundation in that in that LinkedIn profile, in that headline, and that about section to really give the the prospective employer, hiring manager, recruiter a sense of who you are to the point where they feel like they’ve met you before they’ve met you. Love it. And in that process of, again, defining your superpower, articulating it through your profile, that’s how you stand out. And, ideally, because the hiring system is broken through job applications and resumes, you know, you never know whether the job job you’re applying to on LinkedIn or Indeed has been filled, has maybe been filled 6 months ago, or maybe a kind of a honeypot job that doesn’t exist but is used by the company to create a presence, to attract submissions so they can sit through those resumes, put them into their database, see what’s out there. Think about the future. Think about the AI future. Right now, employers are struggling with the number of AI written resumes
James Kademan [00:50:31]:
Oh, yeah.
John Tarnoff [00:50:31]:
That are flooding in. How do you know what’s real? You know, does this person know how to put 2 words together, or do they just ask AI to write the resume for them? Imagine what happens when AI agents get into the game and start scouring the web for job openings that fit your skill set. The AI agent then rewrites your resume to fit that job description and submits it. So I envision On the very near future that we’re gonna be going from the, you know, the fabled 250 submissions per position to 25 100 position submissions to 25,000 submissions. And now employers are gonna have to use AI to verify the the the truth of the submission to find out if it was submitted by a person, whether it’s submitted by AI, written by AI. It’s a cluster blank of the most monumental proportions imaginable, and it all comes back to what I think is important. Build relationships. Stop applying to jobs.
John Tarnoff [00:51:59]:
Find your job through your network. Build trust with the people around you so that they can share your value with others and connect you to people, to opportunities, to future opportunities so that you’re always in this career building space of engaging with people in your industry, providing value, sharing your thoughts through thought leadership. I believe that if you engage in this practice on a regular basis, you will never have to search for a job again. Nice. Because opportunities the opportunities will constantly be brought to you. It will be a natural evolution of you being proactive about the value that you deliver that you wanna deliver. Yeah. Last year, I decided I was going to become an Excel master.
John Tarnoff [00:53:06]:
I took a core and I’m just I’m just, you know, imagining this statement that someone’s gonna make on their program.
James Kademan [00:53:12]:
Oh, sure. Okay. Not okay.
John Tarnoff [00:53:14]:
Not not saying it for me. I’m saying, you know, for example, right, I had this project that I started last year to become an Excel master. I have now attained that goal. You know, I, I revolutionized the the way that we do our, forecasting system, and the company. It’s been great working with my team, whatever it is. Imagine over time, accruing that kind of career narrative where you’re constantly talking about how you’re serving better. You know, you’re accomplishing more. You know, you’re making a difference.
John Tarnoff [00:53:56]:
Sooner or later, you’re gonna connect with someone who says, I want I want you to come and and help us out. Right? So long winded answer to your question about the resume, I I think it just it it just doesn’t work anymore, and and we’re spending far too much attention to it. And it it’s it goes in a circular file, basically.
James Kademan [00:54:22]:
Yeah. I can tell you when
John Tarnoff [00:54:23]:
I’m looking at it. It’s a it’s a leave behind. I I always tell people to leave behind. They always say, well, what do I do about the resume? Do you work on the resume? It’s like, yeah. The resume is important in the sense that it’s it’s part of what you need in your package, but it’s a placeholder. It goes in the folder, and that’s basically it.
James Kademan [00:54:41]:
I’ve seen so many resumes, and I imagine you’ve seen even many multiples more. And I look at them, and I’m like, I don’t know how much time you stuck into this or what’s going on where they put jobs that they’ve been at for a week or 2. They have a laundry list of things that they did at this job. Like, did you really? Anyways, the main reason that I use resumes is purely to look at dates. How long did you stay at a given job and then look for patterns. I can see you left your job every 6 Kademan. Probably not the job.
John Tarnoff [00:55:13]:
Yep. So here’s something that I tell people about that, about the duration of the John. Because you gotta remember that we are at a time in business where the the duration of a job is less and less. Oh, yeah. You know, the the average the average job tenure across the board is, I think, somewhere between 4 5 years.
James Kademan [00:55:34]:
Wow.
John Tarnoff [00:55:36]:
For younger candidates, Gen z millennials, younger millennials, it’s 2 or 3 years.
James Kademan [00:55:43]:
Alright. I was gonna say 2 years.
John Tarnoff [00:55:45]:
Right. Yeah. No. I mean, so so so so there’s this concern, this this, again, kind of a legacy concern around, oh, I don’t wanna be perceived as a job hopper. But for the candidates, I recommend that they consolidate a number of these short term positions in their LinkedIn, profile under a nested consultancy where they talk about, you know, the may maybe it’s called project management specialist. And you wanna create a portfolio. Just because you only spent 6 months at this company is not a ding against you if you were there to accomplish a particular project in 6 months and you succeeded.
James Kademan [00:56:43]:
Very true.
John Tarnoff [00:56:47]:
You could have been there for 6 months and the company got sold, everyone got laid off. It’s important to know that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Right? So there is a way of using this portfolio concept to create the understanding that you are on a growth pattern as a professional. Every one of those Call, short duration gigs taught you something. And
James Kademan [00:57:14]:
you Hopefully. Call,
John Tarnoff [00:57:16]:
hopefully. And I think that’s what we all have to kinda try to be conscious of as we’re as we’re putting these things together. It’s like, well, what did I learn, and and am I better for it? That gives you the opportunity to really share this with the world and say, I’m actually a lot more capable and valuable to you as a professional because I was in 5 short duration gigs in succession. I would never have had this level of experience if I had been in one company for that period of time.
James Kademan [00:57:53]:
Yeah. Law of diminishing returns. Right.
John Tarnoff [00:57:55]:
There’s there’s there’s there’s different ways of slicing and dicing this for the individual who is afraid of being perceived as a job hopper.
James Kademan [00:58:06]:
So what
John Tarnoff [00:58:06]:
do I do about about these short term gigs? What do I do about this gap here where it took me a year to find a job? And I said, well, were you did you continue to search for a job? Keep up on what was going on in your industry. Network around this. Go to conferences. Learn new skills. If the answer is yes to all those questions, the gap served a purpose while you were looking for a job. You were not idle. You continue to to work, essentially, as a professional to keep your skills up, to learn new skills, to communicate with other people in your industry. That’s valuable.
John Tarnoff [00:58:44]:
Represents that. People will understand that. Everyone goes through a dry period, man. We’re all we all have dry periods. Like, no one’s perfect. No one is this kind of robot ideal worker. Right? Again, vulnerability can work in your favor if you say, hey. I I was very active, getting a job, but wasn’t anything out there.
John Tarnoff [00:59:04]:
And I will say I actually turned a few things down because they didn’t really measure up for me. It really wasn’t what I wanted to do. Now because of this time that I’ve had out in the wilderness, I have a career sense of what value I provide. And when I land, I am gonna be gangbusters, loyal, devoted because I now know more than ever that this is what I wanna do. It’s like, why wouldn’t you hire that person?
James Kademan [00:59:31]:
Right. Right. I know we don’t have a ton of time left here, John, but I did wanna ask you something that just I got it just running through my brain here. You come up with someone or someone reaches out to you, I should say. They can’t find their job. They got laid off. For whatever reason, they got disconnected from their last position. They come to you, and maybe on paper, they seem alright.
James Kademan [00:59:52]:
But when you’re chatting with them, they are just dry as a bone. And sooner or later, they’re gonna have to go through that interview. And sooner or later, that interviewee is gonna say, I don’t care how cool you are. You are just it’s rough. How do you work with people that are just that limited personality wise?
John Tarnoff [01:00:17]:
Yeah. There are times where I find someone, and it’s rare, where I find someone who is just that dry that I can’t help them.
James Kademan [01:00:30]:
Oh, wow. Okay. Fair.
John Tarnoff [01:00:32]:
Fair. Totally fair. It’s rare. A lot of times people will say, I’m terrible at selling myself. I I clam up in an interview. I’m terrible. I hate going to networking events. I don’t know what to say.
John Tarnoff [01:00:50]:
I’m an introvert. I I really would rather stay home. I you know, so many times, I’ve I’ve gotten dressed and gotten ready to go, and and I and I don’t go out the door. And my response to that is, if you know what it is that you love to do, and you’ve done it, you have experience, your goal is not to force yourself into a conversation. Call you’re doing is sharing what you love. And if you can really center in that core, enthusiasm from all the work that you’ve done and identify those experiences, skills, whatever that might be, then you don’t have to sell yourself a day On day in your life. You don’t have to clam up On that interview. You don’t have to be intimidated or afraid.
John Tarnoff [01:02:02]:
You can just talk about what fills you up with energy and enthusiasm for the work that you do. And that will, for the most part, get the engine moving and help people rediscover their connection to the work that they do and the meaning of that work and the purpose of that work. There was a there James a, graduation commencement address that was delivered a number of years ago at Columbia, a guy named Ben Horowitz, who’s a, venture capitalist, And he James up with this great little story. And he said, you know, I’m up here talking about the future for you graduates, and there’s this old idea that, from Joseph Campbell, follow your bliss and the money will follow. He said, I hate that idea. He said, if follow your bliss was a prescription for success, then every contestant on American Idol would be a zillionaire. There. He said, so don’t Call your bliss.
John Tarnoff [01:03:11]:
But what I suggest you do is follow your usefulness. Figure out what it is that you do that can move the needle or someone else. You know, how can you use what you’ve learned? He’s talking to graduates in in in 4 years at Columbia. How can you use all of that knowledge to make someone’s business better, someone’s life better, and just focus on that. And that’s what’s gonna get you going. And what you may find over time because if the more useful you are, that becomes your bliss. Because you identify strongly with that usefulness, that utility, that the results of what you do. That’s really what human connection is all about.
John Tarnoff [01:04:00]:
Right? How can I make your life better through what you do?
James Kademan [01:04:05]:
The value that you provide, and then there’s there’s value to you in offering value just like you’re helping anyone, whether it’s a as a job or anything like that.
John Tarnoff [01:04:16]:
Exactly.
James Kademan [01:04:16]:
I get that. I love it. John, where can people find you?
John Tarnoff [01:04:20]:
They can find me on LinkedIn. I’m the only, to my knowledge, John Tarnoff on LinkedIn, j o h n t a r n o f f. You can find me on my website, johntarnoff.com. And, that’s a great start. Nice. Communicate with me there and ask a question, or let’s have a conversation.
James Kademan [01:04:38]:
And just to be clear, are you’re working with people all over the country. Right?
John Tarnoff [01:04:41]:
Yeah. On the world. Yeah. I work in the world.
James Kademan [01:04:43]:
Alright. Sweet. I love it. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, John.
John Tarnoff [01:04:48]:
My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on.
James Kademan [01:04:51]:
Yeah. This has been Authentic Business Adventures. The business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumph and successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country on the web at callsoncall.com. And, of course, The Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. If you’re listening to this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a big old thumbs up, subscribe, and of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends and those friends that you know that may be looking for a new John, and they’re just having a little bit of a hard time finding that that perfect position. We’d love to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, John Tarnoff of Reinvention Group. Jon, can you tell us that website one more time?
John Tarnoff [01:05:39]:
Sure. It’s Johntarnoff.com.
James Kademan [01:05:41]:
Well, that doesn’t get any easier, does it? I love it. Past episodes can be fun morning, noon, and night at the podcast link fun at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.