Launch Your Salesforce Career: Everything You Need to Know with Bradley Rice (DF#84)

Ryan: Aloha folks, and welcome back to Degree Free, where we teach you how to get the work you want without a college degree. I'm your host, Ryan Maruyama. Before we get into today's episode, a couple of things. One of the biggest things that we hear is I don't have a network and I don't know where to start.

Ryan: So if you don't have a network and you don't know where to start, That's no problem. Start with me. Connect with me on LinkedIn. You can go to the show notes and find me, or you can just search Ryan Maruyama in LinkedIn. I'll show up. Just connect with me. When you do connect with me, just leave me a short note.

Ryan: Let me know that you're listening to the podcast and maybe something that you like about the podcast or something you don't like. Also, if you'd like to get a short weekly email about how to get different degree free jobs, how to transition in your. Go to degreefree.co/newsletter to sign up today. My guest is Bradley Rice, founder of Talent Stacker.

Ryan: We get into everything about how to start your Salesforce career if you've been thinking about getting a Salesforce career. As most of you know, Hannah got her start with the Salesforce admin cert. Bradley helps people get that cert and then launched their careers into Salesforce. If you've been thinking about possibly getting a Salesforce, cert and starting your career in Salesforce, this episode is for you.

Ryan: We also go over how to start networking and how to start creating content on LinkedIn. This episode is packed with actionable advice that you could use today to start. Building your LinkedIn audience or start moving to your Salesforce career. If you wanna learn more about Talent Stacker, just go to talentstacker.com.

Ryan: As usual, show notes can be found at degreefree.co/podcast. Without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Bradley Rice. 

Ryan: Aloha folks, and welcome back to Degree Free. I am super excited to have today's guest on Bradley Rice from Talent Stacker. Brad, we've been trying to make this happen for months,

Ryan: I am very excited to finally be having this conversation. 

Bradley: Yeah, I am too. This is excellent. So I definitely appreciate you having me on, Ryan. Pleasure to be here and yeah, excited to hopefully drop some knowledge on the audience that they haven't heard anywhere else.

Ryan: I kind of wanted to do something that I don't usually do, but you and I have actually met up in the real world a couple of times already, so I know a little bit of your background.

Ryan: I kind of wanted to take a stab at summarizing your background and then if you could kind of fill in the holes for me where I'm wrong and where it needs a little bit more context, I think that would be fantastic. I'm excited . Okay. Brad here runs talentstacker.com. Talent Stacker helps people get Salesforce careers for your own journey, though, you started right outta college in a Salesforce role and you really just worked your way up the ranks and you got really proficient at the software.

Ryan: Eventually moving up to senior, more senior and senior roles, and then becoming consultant, working for yourself. And you saw that you were so good at this and that there was so much demand in the market for talented Salesforce experts that you went out and you tried to, and started to train people to pass their Salesforce admin certs and help them start and launch their Salesforce careers.

Ryan: And that's kind of what you do now and that kind of what you do now. That's definitely what you do now at Talent Stacker. How? How was that in a nutshell?

Bradley: I think in a nutshell, that's it. You summarize it much better than I do. I mean, that's. That's it. Right? Like I had a really what I would consider a blessed career.

Bradley: I never, I wanted to be a high school teacher outta college like that. That's what I wanted to do. And it didn't work out. And I fell into this Salesforce career and I didn't even know what it was. And I, and that's a lot of the people we talked to, right? Like I, I grew up on a cattle farm and that's what my family did.

Bradley: They were farmers, hog farmers and cattle farmers. This idea of a tech job was, it wasn't even part of a world we knew about, right? Like when we heard about tech jobs, none of our friends, none of our family, no one that we had any relationships with. It was a distant different universe. So the fact that I ended up here and ended up in a career where by the time I was 31 I was financially independent and then able to shift over to helping other people find a similar career path.

Bradley: Like, yeah, none of this was supposed to happen. So I just wanna make sure other people know about it. Cuz the fact that I found out about it was tripping and falling. I'd rather other people not have to trip and fall to figure something out. They just hear about it on a show like this.

Ryan: So you said that when you were growing up, you didn't know anything about tech or, you know, this wasn't this whole branch of careers business, this whole side of it was kind of shrouded, it seems. What was the initial exposure to Salesforce specifically? 

Bradley: Yeah, so what I did is, like a lot of people do today, unfortunately, is I just went to college after high school because my grandparents felt, my grandparents are much older.

Bradley: They were born in the 19 teens. So they just felt, they had sent my mother and my aunt to college, and they had worked really hard to make that happen but that was back in the seventies. So the, the ROI on college was a very different conversation back in the seventies and so they were bringing that knowledge to their grandchildren.

Bradley: Right. And now we're looking at, I was going to college in the late 2008 time period. So that's a, you know, a good 30, 40 years later than the experience in the exposure they had to college 30 or 40 years ago. And as we know, The return on investment to college changed a lot, and the necessity for college changed a lot over that 30 to 40 year period.

Bradley: And so when I came outta school, outta grade school, 12th grade, all I knew was that there was no other choice but to go to college. My grandparents harped that on me. Basically it was like, look, if you have good enough grades to get accepted into a school, you just keep going to school, if you want to be successful.

Bradley: And I didn't know that there were other choices. You know, you could say 17, 18 year old me should have looked around a little bit, but I didn't. I just took the guidance of my, um, sort of the people I looked up to in life. And, I went to school, still had no idea about Salesforce, but I was going for economics and education because my dream was to be a high school economics teacher because I knew the impact of having, a quality financial structure in your life.

Bradley: And if you had that, then it could really change your life. And so, I was passionate about teaching that to younger kids. That didn't work out and I just started applying for each and every job within, I'd say, like a 50 mile radius in my house and one of those happened to be a sales force administrator job.

Bradley: Literally had no idea what that meant. Never done anything with a CRM system or the backend processes of a company. I was fortunate, I can go into that story if you want to dig in, but basically I was not their top pick. Things fell apart with their top picks and then they ended up getting me.

Bradley: So it worked out really well for me, and it turns out I was moldable. I was able to grow into the role. And then once I got my bearings and I figured out what this was. I was able to run with it. 

Ryan: Yeah. I wouldn't mind just spending a couple of seconds. Yeah. Talking about what happened to those top picks.

Ryan: How did you know that you were not that top pick? 

Bradley: Yeah, it's funny. So what happened was I didn't know I wasn't the top pick until I was hired and then, got to know my coworkers and the people who had made the decision, we'd go out to lunch together. And then finally, you know, a couple of the people I got closest with were like, Hey, you want to hear a funny story?

Bradley: And it basically went something like, we had three people in line before you, and one of them our top pick ended up taking another job offer and then our second pig ended up transferring in from another department internally at the company but then she decided after two weeks that she didn't wanna do this anymore and transferred back to her old role.

Bradley: And then I never can remember what happened to person number three, but I know I was number four basically. There was no one else they even wanted to try to work with, but they didn't want to go back through the job description and application process and interviewing again and all that stuff. So they just said, let's take a shot on this Brad guy and see what happens.

Bradley: And it worked out. 

Ryan: I kind of wanted to comment on something that you were talking about there when you were like, you know, your grandparents were kind of just basically go to college if you can go, like that's not a unique experience that I think everybody of that time, even though maybe your grandparents, as you were said, maybe they're a little bit older than others, but even a little bit younger grandparents born in the thirties or in the forties, they have that same experience as well, right?

Ryan: Like for them, as you were saying, 30 to 40 years ago, the ROI of college was crazy and even 60 years ago, it was, the dissemination of information was at the colleges because the internet didn't exist yet. Right? Like, it was literally the place that you went with books and knowledge and labs and like, it was the only place that you could go and you're like, okay, I guess I'm gonna go.

Ryan: And so they've brought that same mindset Into this century. I think for a lot of people what we say on this podcast at least is it's one of the last things that you should do instead of the first thing that you should do at 17. As far as, I kind of wanted to switch gears and go to, you know, you were saying that you didn't know what a Salesforce admin did at the very beginning, even though you got this role for those listening, we've kind of gone over it in earlier episodes because as long time listeners know, Hannah got her career started, or at least her career in tech started with a Salesforce admin certification. But it seems like you didn't even have a certification. Uh, could you just talk about what a Salesforce admin does today? 

Bradley: Yeah. So what I'll do if it's cool with you, is I'll branch that question into what a entry level Salesforce professional does.

Bradley: Because I think when I got in, in 2010, really that entry level job was a Salesforce administrator. That was really the only one and then now fast forward. 10 plus years and entry level roles vary a little bit. Basically it's like Salesforce administrators, Salesforce business analysts, and then Salesforce consultants, whether that's like a junior consultant, associate consultant, just depends on what the company calls it.

Bradley: But there are a few different junior roles now, and still, though, still today, the Salesforce administrator certification is sort of that benchmark. Employers look forward to know that you're serious about this but, really to answer your question, what goes into it is that you're what we call declarative or point and click.

Bradley: So a lot of people think about tech jobs as coders and programmers and this kind of stuff, but very few, I mean, less than 1% of entry level Salesforce jobs are doing any coding at all. So a lot of what. Salesforce specifically is focused on, is making sure that this is doable for people who don't have a tech background and don't understand coding and maybe don't even wanna code because part of my story is working part-time, making over $200,000 is where I was when I finished my quote unquote, typical Salesforce career.

Bradley: The reason, and I never got into coding, and people always say, well, developers get paid more and this and that. And you think if I'm gonna be successful in tech, I've gotta eventually become a developer. And it's not true. There's so many other roles. The majority of roles are not developers. So what do you do?

Bradley: Really what you're doing in a nutshell is you're trying to understand the way a business works. So whatever company you work for, you need to understand how do they find new leads that they might potentially sell their product to. Once they find those leads, how do they market to them? Is it emails, is it phone calls?

Bradley: Is it billboards? Is it mailers actually coming in the mailbox? Like how do you get in front of those leads? And then from there, how do you decide who's a good lead? Who do I call? Who do I try to sell today? And then once I get them to buy a product, How do I support them and how do I make sure they get pricing that's within the negotiation of what we're allowed to do with the company and then make sure that they enjoy the product and wanna buy more of it and share it with their friends and all those kind of things.

Bradley: Right? And those are all the high level processes of basically how a business functions and it's your job as a Salesforce professional, whether that's an analyst or an admin or developer or anything else is to truly understand so that you can make those processes automated and hopefully you can improve on those processes.

Bradley: And then at the end of the day, what you're gonna do. so you might have someone who says, we had a thousand new leads this week, but we only have one sales rep. Who are they gonna call? They can only call a hundred people this week. Out of those thousand, which ones are they gonna call? How do they prioritize their time?

Bradley: How are they gonna be more efficient? How are they gonna be more productive? And you, after you're trained, and it doesn't take long, and we can talk about that, you will feel capable of running a report and saying, I looked at the thousand. These are the hundred that I think are most likely to make a purchase.

Bradley: If we only have one sales rep, then this is the sales. These are the hundred that sales rep should be calling and you take that into every part of that process, from lead to marketing, to sales, to support. And you make each process just a little bit better, a little bit more automated, and suddenly your presence at that company is making them far more profitable. It is bringing in much more revenue for the company. They love Salesforce, they love you for helping them use Salesforce, and it just makes you really a magician behind the scenes that everyone relies on and really looks to make the business a better place to work. 

Ryan: It seems like understanding business and just kind of the, where money comes from, what customers value, what you're selling, all of that really plays a crucial part in being a successful Salesforce admin.

Ryan: It kind of sounds what you're saying here, and for those laypeople listening and for myself even as well, what is the difference between Salesforce admin and a business analyst? 

Bradley: Yeah, so typically, right, each company is totally different. Sometimes if you're at a smaller company, you'll have to do both but generally speaking, the difference is a business analyst is going to do more of the conversation with a customer.

Bradley: So say a manager that uses Salesforce for their team and they don't really care about how Salesforce works, really, that's your job. But they just want to be able to communicate their requirements. Like, Hey, we have a team of five people, we have one manager and we have four reps that work under that manager.

Bradley: The manager should have access to everything. The four reps should only have access to the deals that they're working. And then we need to automate a few emails for each person to go out at certain times, and we need all these different things to happen. Now, the business analyst listens to those requirements and they document them.

Bradley: And they try to get feedback. Is that really what you want to happen or is that what you think the solution is? But really there's a better solution. So the business analyst is the communicator. They're the person who's sitting there talking with the customer, trying to understand what is it you really need, what is it you really want, what is it that Salesforce can do for you to make your team more effective and more efficient, and hopefully enjoy their jobs a little bit more.

Bradley: Now the business analyst would then take all those requirements once they understand them, and they would document them, and then they would take them to the administrator and that's where you cut over to the Salesforce administrator and they would say, hi Salesforce administrator. I've got all these requirements that I need built inside of Salesforce.

Bradley: And again, they're the communicators. So they talk to the customer, the client that's using Salesforce, and then now they're the liaison. They're gonna go talk to the Salesforce admin and say, let me make sure you understand these requirements, and then I need you to actually be the one to log into Salesforce and build all of this functionality so that the customer can use it effectively.

Bradley: So the business analyst is the person understanding the business, getting the requirements, and then handing those off. The Salesforce administrator is the one talking to the analyst and then actually implementing those changes into the. 

Ryan: And we are gonna jump around a lot here. You know, you kind of mentioned training, and I kind of wanted to go back to, your beginnings, but also kind of tie it in with where you're at today with helping people getting their Salesforce career started.

Ryan: One of the things that people struggle with when they're first thinking about Salesforce careers is they're thinking, okay, well I've never heard of Salesforce before. How do I get experience in it? And then do I need to get this certification in it? I just heard Bradley like, just tell his story and he just got it started in Salesforce without any experience.

Ryan: Like, is that the way to go or should I get a certification? 

Bradley: It's a great question. So, I'm happy to answer that and there's, it's really straightforward in my eyes. I was lucky in, in a lot of ways, all right. Like when the opportunity came to me, I took it and I ran with it. But the fact that the opportunity came to me at all was, I'm not sure what, whatever you wanna call it, maybe it was meant to be, but there is luck that factored in there.

Bradley: The fact that I applied for that job, no certification, no experience, no credibility in the tech space, or the ability to work as a Salesforce administrator, as I just described it, no proven ability to do that and they even called me back. That's to, to me, there's a lot of luck involved there. Okay? Now, once you get past day one, now I will take credit for leaning in and putting in the work and getting it done.

Bradley: But if you're an aspiring remote tech professional, like, I wanna land a remote job, I wanna be in tech, I wanna do some of this work. Brad's talking about I wanna get paid the wages these people get paid cuz it's insane. And how do I do that? Well, if you wanna get lucky, then sure, try to just do what I did, right?

Bradley: If you wanna just cross your fingers and pray everything works out, then do what I did. But as a, what I would consider myself like a career coach, I would say the odds are not in your favor. If you go that route, you're looking for luck again. So instead of getting lucky, why don't we go out there and demand our place in this ecosystem, in these tech roles.

Bradley: And in order to demand your place, I would say go get the Salesforce administrator certification if you want a Salesforce job. Why? Because 70% of applicants for Salesforce jobs have the administrator certification. So if you don't, you just put yourself in the bottom 30% of the rung right now. The other thing I would say is go get on LinkedIn.

Bradley: and people are like, well, I don't know what to do on LinkedIn. I'm not certified yet. Why? Why does anybody even want to talk to me? It's not like that. It's just a, it's a hangout place for professionals and there are beginners and there are experts, and there's everything in between. And you can join as a beginner and in three to six months you're gonna be a novice.

Bradley: And in a couple of years you're gonna be the expert that people look to but if you don't start, then in a couple of years, you're still not gonna be there and you'll still be the beginner. So just start and get on LinkedIn and find your place and what people are talking about. Get involved in some conversations.

Bradley: It's not that hard. What I typically tell people is just delete. One social media app off your phone and install LinkedIn and use the LinkedIn app as much as you're using what other social media app you're using and just do that for 30 days. And you'll be surprised, typically in about 30 days, you can get a following on LinkedIn, of anywhere from 500 to a thousand individuals following you just by showing up consistently and engaging.

Bradley: And the reason I say get on LinkedIn primarily is because resumes are old news. All right? Like you submitting a resume, nobody cares. The first thing they do before they even read that resume, they say applicant name Bradley Rice. Okay, he's got a resume attached. Why do I care? linkedin.com. Bradley Rice.

Bradley: Here he is. Let me see what he's up to now. Why? Because a resume is a piece of paper. It could be outdated. It doesn't tell me anything about the way you act, the way you talk, the way you engage with other people, the type of content that you put out there. Nothing tells me nothing. So when I go to LinkedIn, what I get to see is what you post about.

Bradley: I get to see how you comment on other people's post, which tells me a little bit about your culture and how you communicate in a professional environment. I can go check out, you know, maybe some featured content stuff you like. You might be putting some blogs up there, some YouTube videos that you like.

Bradley: And I can get a feel for the type of content that you're interested in. So there's a lot of, I can DM you right away, just send you a private message and say, Hey, you wanna come interview for a job we haven't posted yet. And that's the true power to this, is that with our entry level members, we found that 30% of the entry level Salesforce jobs landed, never had a job posting.

Bradley: All right? So that means if you're only going out on the job boards, on LinkedIn jobs, or Indeed or whatever else, you're only accessing 70% of the available jobs. The other 30% come from you posting, interacting, people going, oh, I like you. I like your style. You're, you seem cool. I like what you said the other day.

Bradley: You made me feel good about myself because you commented and said, you like my post. You know what? I'm gonna send you a private message and invite you to come interview for a job that's not even posted yet and you would think that's nuanced and it's isolated, but it's 30% of the entry level jobs. So if you're not Salesforce certified, you're in the bottom 30%.

Bradley: If you're not on LinkedIn, you're missing out on another 30% of job availability. Those two are the huge ones for getting yourself on the right track. 

Ryan: I love that LinkedIn piece. It's very actionable. It's definitely something somebody can do right now, but. I know one of the struggles with LinkedIn is it's a professional platform, as you were talking about.

Ryan: And so, just thinking about the other social media platforms, if they're posting it all, most people don't post it. Most people don't post. But if they are posting it all, most people are posting especially on things like Instagram or Facebook, they're posting like status updates of, here's the chai latte that I had today, right?

Ryan: And here's the gym workout that I did and so there's this transition from making that type of content to making more professional style content. Do you have any tips or ideas of how to kind of make that first transition in that first 30 days or so? 

Bradley: Yeah, definitely. So the first thing is you're gonna have to step outside of your comfort zone.

Bradley: And something we say a lot is get comfortable being uncomfortable. All right, so we didn't say stop being uncomfortable. We said, get comfortable being uncomfortable and that just means you're gonna get in that place where you feel like an imposter, where you feel like no one wants to hear what you have to say, where you feel like you don't belong in the conversation, and none of those feelings go away and you post anyway, and then you get comfortable posting when you feel that way, and suddenly you feel it.

Bradley: It's a itch. It's right behind you, but you don't really care and the truth is you're gonna be accepted because the cool thing about LinkedIn, here's the other side of LinkedIn, is that because it's a professional platform, people sort of represent their company and themselves when they're on there. So you might go on Twitter and share a personal opinion about something you might get on Twitter and say, I had a chai.

Bradley: Right. And then people are like, you know, you could get yourself into anything. We don't support Starbucks anymore. It turns out it's trending that everybody hates Starbucks because of something the CEO said on an interview, right? And you didn't know. And now you're getting roasted for supporting Starbucks.

Bradley: So anything can happen now. However, if you go on LinkedIn, no one really wants to get too political, which if you don't like getting political, that's awesome. Nobody likes to get into. religious views into anything like that. Similar to what you might expect, like HR at a company, like what you would talk about inside at a company.

Bradley: There's certain barriers where, you don't bring up politics, you don't bring up, people just like hating on each other. Um, and it, and it stays pretty professional. And so the cool thing is if you write something that's not compelling, no one's gonna comment. No one's gonna like it. Worst case scenario, no one's gonna like it, no one's gonna comment.

Bradley: You know what's really cool about social media? If you feel embarrassed cuz nobody liked it or commented on it in the first couple of days, just delete it. No big deal, delete it, write another post. It never happened. It's so cool. And so you gotta find a place for you. And what I would say is don't post anything for the first two or three days.

Bradley: just use it as an end user. Maybe comment a couple of times, like a couple of things, connect with a few people and start getting a feel for the type of content you see other people writing. And then go, Hey, you know, I could write something like that. I could see myself writing something like that. And the other thing I tell people to do is say you're looking for a Salesforce role.

Bradley: Well, a lot of times if you're looking for your first Salesforce job and maybe somebody posts and they say, I just landed my first Salesforce job and a lot of times we can go, ah man, that person sucks. Like, that was my job. That could have been me. And they took my job. So like pump the brakes on those emotions.

Bradley: Go click on that person's profile, connect with them. Maybe send them a DM and say, Hey, congratulations on the new job. I'm actually an aspiring professional too, do you have any tips? Like what helps you get across the finish line? What weren't you expecting that happened? What was way easier than what you expected?

Bradley: And just get a feel for them, right? They're actually someone who has just accomplished what you're trying to accomplish. Now go look at the kind of stuff they say in comments. Go look at what they post about. Go look at how they engage. And you can pretty much say if you reenact what they were doing, and you take from them a little bit and sort of ride their coattails, you are now posting and commenting and engaging like someone who just accomplished your goal.

Bradley: So chances are you're gonna accomplish that goal as well and you'll see that. And you'll pick, and you'll choose, and you'll learn, and you'll be influenced by 50 different people. And if you just take a little bit from everybody, you'll end up with your own original vibe. People like you because it's still you at the end of the day and you're still gonna be yourself.

Bradley: And that's where you can find yourself. I think you find yourself by leaning in, engaging on the platform, seeing what other people are doing, and finally you figure out how you communicate and how you talk and it feels good. So long story short, just get on there and play around, just poke around.

Ryan: That is a really key point that you were talking about with, as far as people posting. I just got a Salesforce job and instead of feeling those, that jealousy or envy, or pride really kind of getting outside of that. And asking for help. For me personally, I was definitely, I used to be like that in my own life.

Ryan: And when I used to see guys, especially, I went to college, I have a degree, especially right outta college. Some of my friends were like getting jobs and they were getting good jobs, and I was just like, I was like, man, that guy's an idiot. Like, you know, I'm way smart. I'm way smarter than that guy.

Ryan: Like how did he get a job? Instead, what I should have done is exactly what you said is I should have, like, I had his phone number, you know what I mean? Like, we're friends. 

Bradley: Why did you do that?

Ryan: Right? Yeah, right, exactly. You're such an idiot. How did you do it? You know what I mean? like, and then obviously skip that, the first part, but seriously asking them how they did it.

Ryan: I think what's great about that as well is especially with people that are just starting out, there's not a lot of demand usually on these people's time, and they want to share their story. They just went through it. Right? And so, you know, instead of asking somebody like you, you're successful, you're busy.

Ryan: You know what I mean? You got stuff going on but instead of asking somebody like that, you've asked somebody that just did it. They have the most up-to-date information and they're probably not as busy and they want to talk about themselves. 

Bradley: It's psychological too, because people, when you're building relationships virtually.

Bradley: And really anywhere, not even just virtually. When you're building relationships, people wanna feel good. People wanna help people that they feel positive feelings about and if you come to someone and they're kind of feeling like this sort of tension where like maybe there is some, jealousy, there, some envy, then immediately they're gonna kind of be standoffish.

Bradley: But if you're going to someone and you're putting them on a pedestal and you're showing them respect and you're letting your guard down and just being, transparent, you go, man, I'm looking for a job too. And I see you did it. You nailed it. That's awesome. Is there any, like, you did it.

Bradley: Congratulations, like, can you believe you did it? That's so cool. Can I, is there any way I can just have like a 15 minute chat with you and try to figure out and you'd be surprised how many people are just like, yeah, absolutely. I can have a 15 minute chat. And it's important not to put your guard up and just.

Bradley: Just show people you respect 'em and that you appreciate them and that you really do congratulate them for their success. I mean, it's like somebody saying, I love your beard, right? Like, Ryan's got an amazing beard. And so it's like, man, how do you, is there a certain product? Do you have a routine? Like how do you get from where I am to that?

Bradley: And you know, the initial thing, hopefully Ryan's like, Hey, nice, thanks. Like I appreciate that. Let me tell you what I'm up to. But if you come in saying like, you know, with a little bit of tension or a little bit of pushback, or it's clear that you're envious of what they've done and you're trying to bring 'em down a little bit, they're never gonna help you.

Bradley: So just let your guard down, let your pride go away, and get the help you need and then you can help somebody else. 

Ryan: And then I wanted to say also for those listening, I think, you know, when you're first posting on any platform really, but in a specific like professional setting, and you don't, and you've never done it before, you're used to posting gym photos as we talked about.

Ryan: Especially if you're trying to start in a new career transition, whether it be Salesforce admin or data analytics or anything like that, you could always document your journey. Like that's a really simple way of starting the content creation machine and just like, here's the course that I took and then you said, this is what we went over today. And then you just add, so like that's already done for you. All you have to do is like, say the rubric of what you've done and then you just say a nugget or two, a bullet point or two of your own insights. You know what I mean? I think that this has implications for this business in this way, whatever, or in my own career in this way.

Bradley: Talk about your background too, cuz it's something you, and a lot of people think it doesn't matter, but we've helped truck drivers, stay-at-home moms, mail carriers, you name it, military, transitioners coming back into the workforce. Like it just, everything. Everybody has transferrable skills and you'd be surprised how many companies wanna work.

Bradley: Like we work with one company Cloud T and they love blue collar backgrounds. They love humble hard work, zero entitlement respect for the money. Like you have some people who come from a tech background transferring into Salesforce but they might come from a different technology. They expect high pay, they expect to work remote, they expect big annual raises, and they expect that it's gonna be flexible, and they may not answer phone calls, but they're, and those are people who are a little bit entitled and that's okay.

Bradley: We're all different. We come from different backgrounds, but they enjoy working with people ex firefighters, ex-military, ex-police officers, ex oil and gas industry workers and suddenly they've got a crew of people that they just culturally align more with, right? They're a little, they're a little tougher.

Bradley: They're a little more willing to speak up for themselves when they feel like they're not getting what they need. Just all those things. And so, I say all that to say, talk about your background, like even if today, it doesn't matter what you are, whether you're a teacher or a healthcare worker, anything in between, just talk about how your background seems to be coming into the Salesforce thing.

Bradley: Like, Hey, I learned this today about Salesforce. It really reminds me of this from my current teaching career and how we do this. That's really neat that a lot of this is kind of carrying over and there is some transfer in this knowledge, and you'd be surprised at the customers, employers, other professionals that you attract, because now they have something that aligns with you.

Bradley: They used to be a teacher, they used to wanna be a teacher like me, anything. So when you find those connection points and you just be yourself, you'd be surprised that you attract to other people like you and other people who feel like they're connected with you want to help. 

Ryan: Kind of going back to the Salesforce admin and kind of the Salesforce careers, what is the normal Salesforce career progression like I see when I go to the Salesforce site and you're looking at Trailhead and you're looking at all of these different, certifications out there, right?

Ryan: There's like admin, there's a developer, there's an architect, and you're just like, wait a minute. I have to learn all of these things eventually. Like, so if you become an admin, do you have to go to developer? Like kind of what? Can we talk about the Salesforce career progression? 

Bradley: Yeah, we can.

Bradley: And to me, this is why guidance is so fundamental. You can do it yourself. You absolutely can do it yourself. If you're a DIYer, go try to do it yourself, right? And you can, there's success stories every day. What I would say is that when I started my job again, I got lucky. My pay was, $32,000 salary with benefits.

Bradley: I was happy with that. I had no clue what I was supposed to be getting paid, right? I had no guidance. Average entry level income for I will say for a talent stack. Alumni. So these are people who come through our program. We know exactly how much they got paid, how long it took, all that kind of stuff.

Bradley: We're looking at over a thousand people in the last two years. So it's not a small sample size anymore. Average entry level income 2022, just over $72,000. Okay? So I was making 32. I probably even in 2010 should have been making about 55, 60. Had no clue. No one told me, right? No one had any incentive. I was part of no community group.

Bradley: I was part of nothing. I had no guidance. I got the Salesforce admin certification after I started working. Now, there are countless resources for free study materials. You've got groups like tools like Trailhead that are totally free training sites, but to Ryan's point, it can get so overwhelming and it's, you got 13,000 different trails you can take.

Bradley: They're now, I believe it's close to 40 different certifications you can get the important thing is to know all you need for job number one. Is a Salesforce administrator certification. And I would say get a little bit of hands on experience and the cool thing, like a Talent Stacker, we guarantee you hands on experience.

Bradley: We facilitate it for you, we assign you project managers and teams, and we assign you the projects. Now, in the open world, out in the wild, you may have to do things on trail headlight, super badges or like try to get together with a couple of people from a community group and see if they wanna work on like a pet project together.

Bradley: That's not for a real company. You can volunteer, but I would say don't volunteer. You actually have experience and you know what you're doing. The worst thing you wanna do is go get out there and volunteer and then hurt a company cuz you don't know what you're doing. So I would say be weary of volunteering for real companies, cuz sometimes they'll accept you because they don't know what they need and it turns out you are not what they need cuz you don't have any experience.

Bradley: So just stick to, I would say stick to pet projects or stick to groups like, I'm biased, but like talent stacker that can help facilitate that experience for you in a controlled environment. So the experience really helps. And the reason for that, a lot of people think it's just a resume boost.

Bradley: Like, oh yeah, I get to put a line on my resume. But it's way more than that. Like you build confidence, you figure out what you know really well and you figure out what you don't know at all. If you work in groups, a lot of times those people will write you a letter of recommendation via reference for you.

Bradley: And then it gives you conversations for interviews. So if somebody says, tell me a little bit about how you've used Salesforce to xyz and you actually have a real answer from a real thing that you've done, not just. Well, I think this is how I would use it. Or, making something up that you've worked on.

Bradley: You know, like you don't have to do that anymore. You actually have experience and it builds your confidence a lot. So I think those are a lot of the things that you need but if you don't have guidance, you're not gonna know that. Right. And you can DIY it. And I would say we have a ton of free resources on our website and at, if you go to talentstacker.com, just at the top, there's a free resources tab and we've got a step-by-step how to get your LinkedIn optimized guide.

Bradley: We've got an interview guide, we've got getting your first Salesforce certification guide. Like so many different things that help facilitate this for anyone. Cuz what I know is that there's a lot of people who straight up don't wanna pay for anything and there's a lot of people who can't afford, they just truly cannot afford to pay for anything.

Bradley: And we wanna make sure we facilitate resources for those people as well. So use those guides, use those guidance, get involved in community groups. Salesforce for everyone. We have a few different channels. We have a Facebook group which is like super clean, super safe. We admin it very tightly, make sure there's no spam in there.

Bradley: We've got the Salesforce for everyone podcast where we have panels on. So you can hear from professionals across the ecosystem. Like there's just so many places to get quality guidance. Don't do this in a silo. Like you don't have to do it alone. So that would be my recommendation.

Ryan: And I will put links to everything for those listening on our show notes, degreefree.co/bradleyrice, you can go there and find everything that, Bradley was talking about for people that are thinking about getting into Salesforce. One of the things. That they've been hearing, especially recently is they've been hearing about the Salesforce layoffs and like tech layoffs and they're just like, I don't know if this is the right time to make that career transition, because it seems like the tech space is protracting, you know what I mean?

Ryan: Or contracting rather. Do I really want to hitch my career to Salesforce? How do we deal with those questions? Like how do we think through these, this career transition of ours? 

Bradley: It's a good question. And so what I would say is, ,be skeptical, be weary. Do your research and move forward. All right? So that's the thing.

Bradley: A lot of times we get immobilized by fear. We can find one or two things to latch onto and we latch onto. We are much more likely to latch onto a reason why not than to latch onto a reason why too. And that's trouble for the typical person, right? Because if we're latching on the reasons why not to do things, why not to eat better, why not to go to the gym today?

Bradley: Why not to learn an instrument that I've been trying to learn all those things, right? Why not to ask for a race? Why not to attack a new career? These are all things we can come up with. A lot of reasons why not to and then we'll look up and we'll be 40, 50, 60 years old. We never accomplished the goals that we wanted to accomplish because we were always latching onto fear instead of latching onto trying something new and going after it because we find one reason we wanna do it.

Bradley: Now, for this particular occasion, like I said, be skeptical. Be skeptical. If I see that a company like Salesforce has layoffs and then I hear a podcast about Salesforce careers, my initial reaction might be, what are they selling? Right? Well, forget it. They clearly don't know what they're talking about.

Bradley: Well, odds are, they probably know more about it than you do. You probably saw a headline, and if you're letting the general news media direct how you have goals in your life, I've like really bad news, like you're gonna think you're getting attacked by a nuke tomorrow and that the economy is crashing and it has been for the last 20 years, and you're never gonna invest in anything.

Bradley: You're gonna put all your money under your mattress. You're gonna think we're going to war with six different countries starting next week. It's gonna be awful. You're never gonna do anything if you rely on news headlines to direct your life. What I will say is that right now in the tech space, people are a little weary, and I would refer to it as fearful.

Bradley: And if you've ever heard Warren Buffet talk, who's like this incredible long-term investor finance space and go look him up if you don't know who that is. But he said basically the context is when others are fearful, be greedy. And when others are greedy, be fearful. So in reality, what I've seen people do is when everybody says that they're landing tech jobs and everything's amazing, people tend to wanna jump in.

Bradley: But that's contrary to what he said. He said, when everyone's greedy, be fearful. That's when you should be going. Hmm, everybody's jumping in, this seems too easy. There might be something to this. Now what we're seeing, check this out. So here's some stats. November, December of 2022, and January of 2023 are probably three of the months that were the most unstable from a media coverage perspective.

Bradley: So that's when you're seeing tech layoffs at all these companies. All the stuff happening with Twitter, Salesforce, Amazon, Carvana, like you name it, ev. It's just, it's horrible, right? And those were the three highest rates of entry level jobs being landed in the Salesforce ecosystem period. You know who was landing those jobs?

Bradley: Those who were greedy while everybody else was fearful, while everybody else was pressing pause and looking around and reading another article, they were focused and they were getting that certification, and they were applying for jobs, and they were saying yes to offers while everyone else was looking around.

Bradley: Immobilized by fear. So when others are fearful, lean in while everybody else is standing still trying to figure out what the loud noise is. Stay focused and knock it down, and you're going to drive success and you're gonna jog right past everybody else who's getting distracted. Now, the other thing I'll say is that Salesforce is not where we work, right?

Bradley: It's a platform we used. It's like saying you wanna be a professional YouTuber, all right? You want to be a YouTube creator. Did you say you want to work for YouTube? No. You're not taking a job at YouTube. You're using the YouTube platform. to boost your career. Same thing with Salesforce. We've had over a thousand people land entry level Salesforce jobs through Talent Stacker.

Bradley: Three of those worked at Salesforce. Okay? Three of those landed jobs at Salesforce. Salesforce does not hire a lot of Salesforce talent. They create the platform, and sure they use it internally, but when you look at the 70,000 employees that they have, very few of those actually have Salesforce skills.

Bradley: They're in accounting, they're in legal, they're in research and development, they're in marketing, they're in sales. They're not using Salesforce. They're not the ones taking these jobs and I think what happens is from an outsider perspective, it makes sense. It's very easy to say, well, I don't know much about Salesforce.

Bradley: So if Salesforce the company is laying people off, then that must mean it's bad to be in a Salesforce career. It's just not true. And we've actually seen more hiring than in the last three years. right now when the headlines seem to be the worst. So I would just be aware of that. You know, I use the YouTube sort of analogy there.

Bradley: Also think of it like if you heard Home Depot or Lowe's were laying off 10% of their staff, right? So now when you walk in a store instead of 40 associates being in there to help, there's 36. Think of that. There's 36 associates inside of Home Depot ready to help you. Instead of 40. You don't even notice.

Bradley: You're never gonna notice it doesn't matter. And so you wouldn't say, man, I wanted to be a home builder. I wanted to be a plumber. I wanted to be an electrician. But Home Depot laid off some four people at the local store. So now I'm gonna give up on my home building dreams. It has nothing to do with your ability to be successful, it's just the place you go to get your supplies.

Bradley: It's cool. So that's my long-winded what you should be thinking about, uh, when you're looking at those headlines. I would just say ignore 'em and keep moving. 

Ryan: Yeah. A lot of people don't know it, as I'm sure you know this, but a lot of people when they say like, oh, Salesforce layoffs and everything, a lot of people don't realize that like, yeah, you don't.

Ryan: You're all of these jobs that you're gonna be applying for, you're not gonna be applying for to work at Salesforce, the company, right? You're gonna be working with the software which they sell and distribute to many. 

Bradley: Was it Amazon laid off like 15% of their staff? Something like that. Did you stop buying from Amazon?

Bradley: No. You didn't. Did that bend your buying habits from Amazon at all? Absolutely not. You're still all in on. What Amazon offers as a tool, businesses do business stuff. They restructure. It sucks for the people who get laid off. We hope that they land on their feet. The reality of it is, this is how cyclical business works.

Bradley: And these are norms. Just look back over history. This is very normal. 

Ryan: And I think for those listening too, to kind of all lay fears even more, the thing with the Salesforce is that it's an extremely sticky relationship. Like when a business decides to use Salesforce and then they load it all with it with its data and they keep doing it, especially if they've been doing it for years.

Ryan: The migration to another platform costs, if it's a small business, could cost tens of thousands. If it's big business, it could cost millions, right, to transition over. So it's a very sticky relationship that Salesforce has with these companies and where that affects you is that's recurring revenue, which, Salesforce, hopefully they're gonna continue to make money and continue to make money.

Ryan: If they continue to make money, they'll keep their devs on and keep updating the platform. And that means that you will still have a job as far as hitching your career to one platform as well. I kind of did wanna say this, and you might have a different opinion on this because you're in the Salesforce ecosystem, but for those, initially thinking like, is the Salesforce admin cert, right?

Ryan: For me, I just don't think I wanna be a developer. I don't think I want to do this in 10 years or x amount of years. I think when with a lot of people that have that mindset, you're kind of solving for the problem that doesn't exist yet. Like you're thinking it's good to think about your career and being a Salesforce admin and walking that road, but the Salesforce admin cert or even just experience in Salesforce administration can open up a lot of doors in a lot of different roles.

Ryan: It could just be the entry point. It could just be the transition point into other. Roles out there. You could become in five years, you could be a pm, you could be a product manager or a project manager, right? You don't have to stay in Salesforce if you don't want to. 

Bradley: Not at all. I mean, imagine, it's basically like having a tech background, right?

Bradley: As soon as you get your first Salesforce job, you technically have a tech background now. So if you ever want another tech job in the future, you are now better leveraged to get that job. Whether that's Salesforce or HubSpot or Amazon or Google or you name it. Like if you wanna work for a top tech company, get some tech experience.

Bradley: The same thing, like if you want a Salesforce job and you have a chance to go get a job working for Amazon today, and they're giving you an offer, go work that job for six months, then you're gonna have a much easier time finding a Salesforce job. Cause now you have a tech background. So, no, I think time in is extremely important.

Bradley: Like the experience is far more valuable than any. Certification than any particular background or degree or anything in between. That experience is really fundamental to opening those doors. 

Ryan: For a lot of people listening to this podcast, they want to be entrepreneurs. They want to start a business, they wanna be their own boss because we don't have a lot of entrepreneurs on this podcast, I kind of wanted to talk about your entrepreneurial journey and how the transition was from being a Salesforce professional to kind of running your own business and kind of being responsible for keeping your own lights on. And if you could kind of talk about like, how that initially happened.

Bradley: The catalyst for moving into entrepreneurship was definitely my daughter. So my wife and I before, we were pregnant, I was very much just excited about climbing the ladder, just getting the next promotion, getting the next pay raise. Whatever else. I was already working fully remote, so that was cool, but I didn't mind traveling at least two or three times a month, going to different client offices and things like that.

Bradley: A lot of that's shifted with Covid, post pandemic. There's not as much travel as there used to be, honestly, not because of Covid, but because businesses realized it was unnecessary and it's a lot less expensive just to talk to people on a Zoom meeting. So, all that being said, my, when my daughter was born, or right when we were getting close, I'd say about three months out from her being born, it started becoming really real to me.

Bradley: That each parent, I think each parent is gonna have their own comforts. For me, I was very anxious. It felt like impending doom. Like I have got to try to figure something. I do not wanna work until five, six o'clock. I want to have more control over my life. And even, I mean, with a tech career already, I didn't have to be at work perfectly on time.

Bradley: If I didn't have a meeting, I could make up for a few hours in the evening, this and that. But for me, I wanted like intense flexibility. I wanted to like, take a day off unannounced because I thought my daughter might walk that day, and I did not wanna miss a moment, right? I said, you know what, I'm gonna try it and if it works, awesome.

Bradley: So I saved up enough money. I'd say I had a good six months to a year of my minimum expenses. Like if I lost my job and had no income, obviously we, that'd be no eating out, no luxury, you know, vacations, no add-ons to the house, probably deferring maintenance on the house, like all that kind of stuff but I had six months to a year and I was ready, said, here we go. So what I did is I took. I quit in a nutshell. I quit my job where I was making at the time, about $125,000 working 40 hours a week and I quit that job. And I had one client, and it was a good one. And they paid me about $45,000 a year on a managed services agreement.

Bradley: So I had that managed services agreement in place, made about $45,000. And I said, all right, that's the foundation of my freelance independent consulting career. Got a little bit of money that puts food on the table, gets the mortgage paid, and nothing more. There's nothing sexy about it. That's all we got, and I need to find another client fast, but my daughter's on the way and I wanna spend time with her and.

Bradley: That's what we did, and it worked out way better than I expected. I talk about mental bandwidth a lot. When I wasn't working 40, 50, 60 hours a week anymore, my mental bandwidth opened up and I promise you, I got smarter. I just got smarter. Like I had more time to think. I had more time to process. How am I working?

Bradley: How do I wanna spend my free time? What do I value in life? How can I design a life where instead of having a career, where my career dictates what I'm allowed to do because I'm limited to this town, or I'm limited to this schedule, or I'm limited to this location, whatever it is now I had time to think about designing a life and finding a career that fit well with my lifestyle, not building a lifestyle that fit well with my career.

Bradley: Building a career that fit well with my lifestyle. And I did that. And before I knew it, I was, long story short, I started adding more clients. I got better at what I did. I got more thoughtful about the types of clients I accepted. Got more thoughtful about the types of projects I accepted. I was making double six figures working 20, 25 hours a week and never dreamed that would be a reality.

Bradley: And so on that track, I was able to effectively be in a position to retire by the time I was like 31, 32 and I wasn't done working, I still had so much energy, still so excited about the tech space and the opportunities and the possibility. And so I turned around and said like, Hey, I don't really wanna work clients anymore.

Bradley: If I had a choice, I don't wanna work clients anymore. And now I truly have a choice. And I decided to start talent stacker as a way. Help other people follow in those footsteps and just design more flexibility and freedom into their life. That was really what it was all about. 

Ryan: With starting talent stacker, when you were transitioning from, client work to now helping people get Salesforce careers and kind of model your career or, start their own careers in Salesforce, were you doing it part-time or did you go full into talent Stacker? How did it first start? 

Bradley: Yeah. That, that transition period's rough.

Bradley: Whether you're going from independent consultant or W-2 full-time employee into anytime you're transition, just transitioning. It's interesting, especially as an entrepreneur, because I had my clients, right, and I think I, at time I had about four or five different clients that made up that $200,000, annual pay.

Bradley: And what I did is as talent stackers started to grow, I had to spend a lot of extra hours, right? Like I spent those days staying up until 3:00 AM creating content and publishing the content, and getting the copy written, and building the website, and the email marketing and all the stuff that goes into it.

Bradley: There's a lot, but I knew how to do that all because I had 10 years of Salesforce career behind me helping companies build better businesses, right? So I knew a lot of the ins and outs of building a good business, and I said, all right, I'm gonna do this for myself, and I'm gonna use all this knowledge that I've gained over the last 10 years.

Bradley: I'm gonna build my own business. And taking that into talent stacker, what I did is I would let one client go at a time and I would transition them and I would find someone to help them. I wouldn't leave 'em high and dry. I'd find someone to help 'em, transition them on, and then I'd let them go, and that would free up maybe an extra.

Bradley: You five, six hours a week for me to let that client go and it eventually occurred to me. It was about six months into Talent Stacker. I was scared, right? We all operate from fear like I talked about earlier. And I was scared that people weren't gonna land jobs through the program. I was scared that I'd miss something that I didn't understand that this was all gonna fall apart.

Bradley: I was afraid that the sales we had been getting for a couple of months were just lucky and we were never gonna maintain it and all that kind of stuff. But after it happened for a while and I realized we could lose half our sales and I'm still gonna be fine for paying the bills, that's when it occurred to me.

Bradley: We, we had a fire at one of the clients, like there was a issue. They needed me right away. I had to work on a Saturday and I was like, this is an exorbitant waste of my time. Like I should be focused on Talent Stacker and the members and creating better content, talking to employers, helping them hire our members, all that kind of stuff.

Bradley: Like I do not need to be putting out a fire with a client and within the month, I transitioned my remaining clients off and leaned fully into Talent Stocker. And fortunately that has been a, it's been a good decision and definitely, I've enjoyed that. You know, I did enjoy Salesforce consulting. I enjoyed helping businesses build their ROI and become more productive.

Bradley: But there's one story, there's a lot of stories, but there's one that sticks out to me and it's when I got a phone call from one of our members who said he's gonna be able to buy Christmas presents for his kids this year without sitting down and budgeting every penny and figuring out where the rent's gonna come from in order to buy kids the gifts that they want for Christmas.

Bradley: And it changed his life forever and. that was way more rewarding than any efficiency or productivity or process improvement for a company to help an individual buy Christmas gifts for their kids. I wanted more of that, so I knew I gotta go chase that feeling and get that again and again. So that's what I've been doing for the last few years now, 

Ryan: As a former firefighter, I completely understand that gratification that you get when you help people on an individual level.

Ryan: For sure. And then that's honestly the reason why I do this podcast and everything that we do at Degree Free as well, it's just, it feels good to get those, I mean, A little aside, degree free. We get a lot of hate, like a lot of people hate. We talked about this offline a little bits.

Ryan: Get a lot of hate. People really have a take, issue with, being successful without a college degree. It's all worth it because those few messages that we got, that we get, and we actually, like, we just got a DM the other day that was pretty similar, and they were just like, I first heard you guys podcast last year.

Ryan: I listened to every one of 'em, some of 'em twice, and I got a $50,000 raise and it transitioned outta my career and I changed my life. And it was like, Thank you guys. And I was like, that's crazy. 

Bradley: And that's all that matters. And as you know, like you guys are degree free. Like you're on the forefront of a movement right now.

Bradley: And anytime you're at the beginning of a movement, you're gonna get pushback because you're having to enlighten people to something that they haven't seen before. They haven't heard before. It challenges the norms that they understood. And I obviously nothing you guys are doing is hurting anyone, right?

Bradley: So why challenge it? It's not hurting anyone. 

Ryan: I definitely don't wanna take all of your day. Brad, thank you so much for joining us. For people wanting to learn more about Talent Stacker, they, they heard this podcast and they're just like, yep, Salesforce careers for me. I don't know how to get started, but I really wanted to learn more about Talent Stacker.

Ryan: Where should I send them? Talentstacker.com? 

Bradley: Yeah, so what I would do is I would just head over to talentstacker.com/now. What that's gonna do is it's gonna give you a five day challenge. It's gonna take about three to five hours, depending on how long it takes you. That's gonna walk you through getting started with your first certification, getting started on LinkedIn, and sort of some of the obstacles you're gonna be up against when you're trying to transition into a Salesforce career.

Bradley: And really the goal in this is to get you some exposure to what this transition's gonna look like. And hopefully by the end of that, you're gonna have a feel. Do I really wanna move forward with this? Or does this maybe not feel right? And I think I might just try to, stick with what I'm doing or transition to something else but Salesforce doesn't feel good. That's the goal. So the goal is not to convince you that a Salesforce career is perfect for you, cuz it's not perfect right for everyone. Not everyone's gonna be interested in it but if you take that five day challenge, at talentstacker.com/now, you're gonna have a much better feel for, this is something I really wanna do. The other thing I would recommend is just head over. Obviously you're a podcast listener. If you're here, head over to the Salesforce for Everyone podcast. And I would just say start with episodes one through eight. If you don't make it all the way through, then you probably know this doesn't interest you enough to spend your career doing it.

Bradley: Okay? But if you listen to the first one through eight and you feel inspired and you're like, whoa, like this could be so cool. I think I could do this. Then this probably is something that you wanna spend a little more time with.

Ryan: And I'll have links to all of that in the show notes for everybody. Degree free.co/bradley Rice.

Ryan: And Brad, finally, is there anything, any last sayings or message rather to the audience that you'd like to get out there? Anything else that we haven't covered? Yeah, 

Bradley: I think what I would say, this is personal to me. I would say Salesforce and financial independence are the two biggest life hacks that I've found in my life.

Bradley: If you are not aware of what financial independence is, I would highly recommend two things. Number one, the Choose Fi podcast. So that's choose, and then the letters fi, check out that podcast. I think if you start with episode 100, they purposely made that episode like a Back to the Basics episode about financial independence.

Bradley: And then I would recommend Googling the shockingly simple math to early retirement. Read that article. You can't miss it. Check it out. It basically, the idea is that, We don't all just have to work and work and work until we're 60 years old. There are alternatives and in reality, you could probably retire in the next 10 to 15 years if you make some bold choices and adjust some things in your life.

Bradley: So if that sounds intriguing to you and finances really, stress you out, then financial independence and some of these concepts would probably really benefit you in your life, cuz I know they did for me and that's what gave me a lot of the opportunity to become an entrepreneur and spend more time with my daughter and be more thoughtful about the decisions I made with my career because my finances weren't always basically tying me down.

Bradley: So that would be my, my advice. 

Ryan: I'm very excited because, we've talked about this a little bit before offline. I've definitely, been into financial independence. FIRE, financial independence, retire early for a long time myself. So I definitely suggest, people check out those resources. And like I said, I'll link to everything in the show notes.

Ryan: Once again, Bradley. Thank you very much for taking the time to do this. Really, really appreciate it. 

Bradley: I appreciate you having me on, Ryan, and yeah, I hope everybody out there just like swarms to your show because I think the message you guys are sharing about degree free and about opportunities outside of going to college Is extremely meaningful for the future of really the workforce in North America especially.

Bradley: So I appreciate what you guys are doing. 

Ryan: All right, thank you. Have a good one. Bye-bye.

Ryan: Hope you guys like that episode. As I said before, show notes could be found at degreefree.co/bradleyrice. If you haven't already, then connect with me on LinkedIn. Just go to LinkedIn and search Ryan Maruyama.

Ryan: I'll also put a link to everything in today's show notes. I'll also put a link to my LinkedIn in today's show notes. When you connect. Let me know what you liked about the podcast and let me know what we could be doing better. If you wanna learn more about how to transition your career every week, go to degree free.co/newsletter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Ryan: It's a short email that provides actionable advice to get you the work you want without a college degree. And that's it. Until next time, guys, Aloha.