How do you feel about networking? A lot of people are uncomfortable with networking due to the perceived transactional nature, awkward situations, and amount of time it takes. However, networking is vital for career success.
Many executives and professionals attribute a large amount of their success to networking because it is often more about WHO you know than WHAT you know. It’s common for people to know they are not putting their best foot forward when networking, so they want to learn how to improve their networking skills.
In this episode, you will learn more about the essentials of networking. Our host and CEO Porschia, alongside our guest, Simon Chou, will share their insight on the significance of networking in your career.
Simon Chou is the Founder of Marketing on Mars and the Chief Marketing Officer of BCJobs.ca. He has started 2 podcasts since 2020 that have both gained over 1 million views! Simon focuses on advising organizations on how to use podcasting and LinkedIn to build thought leaders, while running casual in-person and online Happy Hours that have connected over 1 thousand professionals.
What you’ll learn:
- Why networking skills are important, even if you are comfortable in your career right now
- The link between marketing and networking
- Tips on how to use networking for career success
- The differences between online and offline (in-person) networking
- Ways that introverts and extroverts can excel at networking
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Today we are talking about Networking 102, Networking for Career Success with Simon Chow. Simon Chow is a marketing expert, growth advisor, and seasoned podcast host with experience in multiple industries. He started two podcasts in 2020 and grew them both to over 1 million views. Simon’s most recent podcast, marketing on Mars garnered over 500,000 views in 12 months.
In [00:01:00] 2022, he started planning casual in-person and online happy hours. Simon has now connected over 1000 CXOs founders, tech professionals, and LinkedIn creators via his communities. Hi, Simon. How are you today?
Simon: Hello, Portia. How’s it going?
Porschia: It’s going great. We are excited to have you with us to discuss networking for career success.
But first we want to know a little more about you. So tell me about seven year old Simon.
Simon: Oh my goodness. Seven year old Simon. Wow. Let’s see. I was the eldest of three boys. At that time, two boys. My mom had me, my youngest brother. At that time, when I was seven, my mom was a single mother. She remarried a few years later.
And then we had a third brother. So [00:02:00] I’m the oldest of three boys. Felt really bad for my mom growing up. Yeah, what else did I say? I didn’t grow up in a really wealthy family. By all means, we were making it by. My mom was working 13 hours. A day sometimes 14, two different jobs.
Learned a lot about hard work from my mom. And loyalty. Loyalty and hard work. She stuck with us despite being a single mom. And so I just learned so much from her. But yeah, at that time, seven, seven year old, I… I was, English was my second language so I got really good at languages. I speak three different languages.
I understand four played a lot of music, did a lot of sports, right? What do you do when you’re seven, seven years old and your mom works a lot? You usually, you play a lot of sports. My brother and I, we played almost every single sport imaginable, and it continues on today. Wow.
Porschia: I loved what you said about that loyalty and hard work and getting [00:03:00] that work ethic from your mom.
I always think Simon, people that are multilingual are just so smart. So that’s up to you. For that what did you want to be when you grew up and you were playing all these sports and doing all these different
Simon: things? Oh my god, I, at the time I had no idea. I think Pokemon was really popular at the time when I was young, like nine years old, ten years old.
I just wanted to catch all the Pokemons. That’s all I wanted to do. I just wanted to catch them all. Later on, as my life progressed, I, I wanted to, I never thought I could be a really good. I never, said I wanted to be a soccer player or whatever that never crossed my mind. I just wasn’t really into games, spent a lot of time at home and grow.
And then later on in my career, I would join not career, but my life. When I was 14 years old, I joined theater company, which was onstage acting. So I did a lot of, I did four years of onstage performance. [00:04:00] And so I actually thought I was going to be an actor when I was like 16, 17 years old.
So obviously, between playing Pokemon and acting, I never thought about school. My grades were so bad. I, graduating from high school, I couldn’t get into the university I wanted. And so I was bottom of the patch there. Had to transfer multiple universities to finally get to the university I wanted.
And so by the time I graduated, guess what? I was also bottom of the pack. I couldn’t get a job, I couldn’t get an internship. I might, I don’t know if it’ll be interesting for your listeners, but it was really tough for me to get a job. And so I can talk a little bit about how I broke into the field I wanted but spoiler alert, a lot of networking.
So a
Porschia: lot of networking. Got it. Got it. You sound well rounded, Simon. From the sports to the languages to the acting, you sound a little bit like a Renaissance man there. But yeah, along those lines of what you were saying with [00:05:00] school and having to navigate that when you didn’t necessarily get into your first choice universities.
Tell us about some of your biggest, career challenges or school challenges that you had, before, starting your own thing.
Simon: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge was I just always pushed it aside. I always pushed it, always pushed school second or third. And then as a result, we’re still living in a world where if you don’t have experience, they’re going to look at your school second, right?
Like obviously, ideally, if you have no school experience, but you have worked at Apple and Microsoft, no one cares what school you went to. But the reality was I didn’t have internship opportunities. I didn’t have co op opportunities. So they always looked at my schooling and I was, I never had good grades.
It was tough for me to get into a good school. So I was always bottom of the pack. Like that was my life from 20, basically from [00:06:00] 18 out of high school all the way until 26. And so I just had to grind my way out. So obviously, if there are younger listeners in your audience. Ideal is you start early, you start working hard early, and then you’ll be chosen early.
But if you’re, if not, it’s not a big deal. I still broke in. Break in. Right. And we can talk a little bit about that, about, about my career and like progression and all. But yeah, like my entire life was always like that. It was always trying to grind my way to the top and and try to get something, even though I was never, first on the list.
And the only way to do that is through networking. My very first role, if you want me to talk about that, or I can talk about yeah, my very first role. So I actually graduated with a finance degree. And the finance degree with it from a, not really good schooling not a tier one university, no, no internship opportunities.
So [00:07:00] I applied to over 1000 jobs. I remember probably even 2000 jobs. In the, in a couple of months, I thought I was working so hard. I thought I was doing it. I thought I was getting something done. I had one interview out of 2000 job applications. And so I just couldn’t break in. And so I just, after applying to that many jobs, you feel discouraged.
So I, I started networking, not because I thought I was going to get something out of it, but I felt so discouraged. I just wanted to network to meet other people in the world of finance. To ask, am I just never going to make it? Like I actually was asking those kinds of questions, how did you do it?
I just wanted to know how they did it. So I became really curious. I started studying other people that was successful in finance. And I think I went to, it was about my fifth or eighth event that I went to. I met one guy at the time he was an investment banking analyst [00:08:00] at CIBC. And I asked him like, how did you do it?
And I was just really curious. And I asked him for advice. I asked him what advice would you give me and he looked through my resume and he’s I think you should start a blog because you’re not going to break into, he gave me really honest advice. So you should start a blog because with looking at your resume, you’re never going to get chosen by CIBC or any of these big banks because you just don’t have the experience.
Number one, you don’t have the grades and you just don’t have, you don’t really have much outside of those two. So you’re never going to get chosen. That’s the reason why. So why don’t you start a blog? And at that time I was so desperate that I would try anything. And so looking at this guy that I looked up to, his name was Sean still Sean And I just looked up to him.
So I said, you know what? Everything that I’m doing the last six months has not been working. I might as well give this guy a chance. This guy wouldn’t be lying to me for no reason, right? He gets nothing out of it. [00:09:00] He’s telling me to write a blog. He’s not getting a commission out of it or anything. He wasn’t trying to sell me anything.
So I just started writing. The next time we met up for coffee, I told him that I started writing a blog. He looked at some of my content. I actually started getting like listenership. At one point at the time when he looked at my blog, I was like, number, rank number 23. In the mining and oil and gas category because I was writing about mining and oil and gas because I’m in Vancouver and so he was so so impressed he offered me an internship that he passed up.
Someone was trying to recruit him as an intern, and he said no but he said you should talk to Simon, and that’s how I got my first internship. At a boutique investment bank.
Porschia: Wow. Thank you for sharing that part of your journey, Simon, because there are a lot of times when I have clients who tell me that, they didn’t have the best grades or maybe they just didn’t really focus on that.
I’ve had clients tell me, they were working [00:10:00] three jobs in college and had a lot of other circumstances. So their grades weren’t, what they had hoped and they felt things were not going to happen for them, but, for you, it sounds like you’re just very open minded and you’re willing to try things because starting the blog and, I didn’t know you obviously back then, but to hear that you were a finance major and then started the blog, someone wouldn’t necessarily think, Hey, you’re the wordsmith.
I would think more that you were the first guy, right. But you jumped into that. So that says a lot about you.
Simon: Yeah, the reality was I was desperate at that time but when you go out to events and you just keep asking people for jobs, guess what? You’re not going to get a job when you go to events and you ask for jobs, but that’s how I was approaching whenever people said networking.
I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do. You go to all these events. You just ask people for jobs. But that’s like going to a party and asking everyone if you want to be my boyfriend. If you’re [00:11:00] dating, right? But if you go to parties and you’re just learning about other people, then maybe you can get a date out of it.
But you’re not going to get a date by asking for dates. It’s very counterintuitive, but that’s how most people start off, and that’s how I started off. I went to, actually before I started networking like that, like the way I told you, I probably went to five or six other events and I did exactly that.
I went to so many events and I asked for jobs. And I got nothing out of it. And as soon as I started becoming curious about the other person, and listening to people’s advice, that’s when everything changed for me. I live life the same way, just open minded, and just knowing that I don’t know everything.
And that that’s something I know for a fact, is that I don’t know everything. And that someone else out there knows more than me. And so I just always live that way now even all the networking events I do today. So
Porschia: you have a very interesting background with a lot of online and offline growth and marketing experience.
What [00:12:00] originally drew you to marketing?
Simon: Yeah, that’s a good question. So after The honest truth is I just hated banking. Not to rain on anyone’s parade who works in banking. When I worked in banking, I just could not find myself working in that industry. I didn’t like Vancouver is a very commodities driven market, so a lot of oil and mining oil and gas and mining companies, and I just didn’t like it I went to a couple of mining operations and saw how they would dug up, how they dug up silver and copper, and I’m sorry, I just wasn’t excited.
About that for some people. Yes, but for me, no and at that time 20 2016 was when I was in banking Oh, I saw like snapchat being valued at five billion dollars Facebook purchasing Instagram going IPO and then purchasing Instagram Yelp was just [00:13:00] growing at that time. LinkedIn was just at its early stage.
Like I was, I started my LinkedIn profile when I was, when it was just two years old, I think at that time. And so there was so much going on in tech. And I said, I want to work in tech. And I’m like, what does it take? I started so I converted my blog at the time that where I was writing mostly oil and gas and mining, I started writing about tech.
And I started writing about I remember at the time I was writing about Yahoo’s something was happening with Yahoo I think they had a new CEO, the female CEO, I can’t remember her name, just came on, so I wrote about that, I wrote about Netflix, and that was early stage, I wrote about a lot of early stage tech companies and I was just like, I started applying for jobs in marketing because I was very interested, way more interested writing about tech than I was writing about oil and gas and mining.
So I started applying and then the same thing happened. I applied to a thousand something jobs, maybe even more to be honest, because now [00:14:00] I knew how to apply. So the speed was faster. I have thousands and thousands of applications for marketing positions. And I got zero callbacks. Because I didn’t have a marketing degree.
I didn’t have a marketing internship. So why am I applying for marketing roles? I got this question all the time. And someone actually came up to me when I got actually, I got one rejection letter after 2000, applications. I got, I was a little bit upset, actually. And I asked the person please give me any feedback.
I would value any feedback. Like, why was I not chosen? I went through multiple rounds. I thought we had a good connection. And she’s you just don’t have enough experience. Maybe you can reapply when you get more experience. And I got a little upset on the phone.
I’m like, how am I ever going to get experience if. Every single company tells me the same thing that I need experience in order to work. Then I’ll never be able to work and then it [00:15:00] just don’t something nobody told me this but it dawned on me Very similar to when I was rejected Thousands of times over and over again in the finance world.
What did I do at that time? I just started my own blog. So say I got rejected thousands of times. I knew I had to do something But I didn’t want to just write a blog anymore. I was writing blogs for years and I just didn’t think it was enough. So instead I started my own business. I started my own business selling suits at the time, selling female suits, tailor made female suits.
If you can imagine I grew it to a certain size. I learned how to build a website on my own. I learned how to manage social media on my own. I learned everything that I would have learned on the job, but I learned it. On my own and 1 year in, I continue to network. So networking is a theme of this of my story.
I was networking. I went to a couple of events. [00:16:00] They saw that I had a startup and they saw that I was there was a company that saw that I had a startup and saw that I was writing about marketing and said, Hey, do you want to join my company? And it was a blockchain company, 2017 blockchain. This was before Bitcoin went up to, Bitcoin was at like 600 at that time.
Now, of course, we all know there is over 20k, I believe. And I got my foot in the door writing blog articles for cryptocurrency companies. Thank you. At the time in 2017, and that would change my whole life forever. That’s how I got into the marketing world.
Porschia: Wow. Wow. I think that your journey is inspiring for a lot of people.
And one of your roles now, you currently serve as Chief marketing officer at BC Jobs. Can you tell us a little more about your role and the job site?
Simon: [00:17:00] Yeah. So BC Jobs, Essentially, the job board, like Indeed or ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn, as most people know, these are the top three nowadays. It’s a two sided marketplace.
So companies come on, they post their jobs, and then recr and then candidates would apply to the jobs. And we’re in the middle, right? So we don’t help recruiters hire, we don’t help job seekers get [00:18:00] jobs, we’re just in the middle. So making sure that the technical aspects of the hiring and the applications make sense.
Very simple. And I’m currently the CMO. When I first got the position, I was a VP of Marketing. And then three years later, I would become CMO. And yeah, not much else to say there. Learned a lot about just managing teams. Right. I I manage an entire marketing budget of BC jobs.
We’re a we’re a seven figure company. And so just learned a lot over the last three or so years.
Porschia: Great. So I think you’ve started along this path, Simon. But how do you think executives and professionals can use networking for career success?
Simon: I think it’s career success is all about networking. I think I’ve never, so let me switch switch gears a little bit. [00:19:00] I’ve done, I started my first podcast. Like 20, 20, around 2020, I interviewed about 80 plus senior managers, directors, VPs but 80 something episodes of that. And then I started my second episode where I went up the ladder a little bit.
Now I only interviewed CMOs, CEOs, and founders. A little bit higher in the hierarchy of of titles, although titles don’t really matter too much nowadays, but and I’ve interviewed 70 C suites. So in total, I’ve interviewed over 150 VPs or above in titles. And there’s not a single person that I’ve interviewed on my podcast, my two podcasts, that did not do networking.
In some shape or form. And I know networking is such a broad term. There’s so many ways to network nowadays. Especially now because social media is so prevalent. You can network online, you can build a very strong profile and we can talk a [00:20:00] little bit about my LinkedIn profile that I started last November.
But, and then there’s also a lot of in person networking and then there’s like mentoring and having a mentee and having mentors and there’s community building. There’s just so many ways to network. I think network is from my 150 episodes talking to. A variety of different leaders of organizations networking is the most important thing.
I would say for anyone that’s listening that wants to scale up in their career, start networking and I would even add one more, one word further. I would say, start building your personal brand because that’s really important nowadays.
Porschia: Yeah. So you were alluding to this just a little while ago, but I’ve had clients who have had very strong feelings about networking online and networking in person.
So what [00:21:00] are your thoughts about the differences between online and offline networking?
Simon: I honestly don’t see a difference. I don’t know. Do you? Do you personally see a difference between the two? And if so, what?
Porschia: I think it can be, but it depends on the person. Sometimes I’ve had clients that feel more comfortable online as opposed to in person. For some reason, just they’re, level of maybe anxiety goes up in person.
So they feel a little more comfortable online. Sometimes people feel I’ve heard that they think they can control the conversation a little more. Think about like texting or online. If you see a message, you can wait five minutes or 10 minutes and collect your thoughts and then send a message back.
But if you’re in person, like you’re on the spot. So sometimes I’ve had clients Tell me, things like that when it comes to [00:22:00] networking. Sometimes my clients who are introverts and I’m an introvert. I, I can’t agree with this to a degree, but some of my clients who are introverts feel more comfortable networking online as opposed to offline.
You’ll they can control the group a little more. It’s not quite as overwhelming. But I think to your point about not seeing a difference. I think that if you are networking in a compelling way, online or offline, you can see benefits in either scenario.
Simon: So I want to touch on two things.
You mentioned two really good points, and it is very key to to a few people to a subset of people. And those are the introverts. I want to talk. First about the introvert, and then I want to talk a little bit about why for me there is no difference. You’re right. I would say, if you were to just put a percentage breakdown, I would say, I would go out on a limb and say 50 percent of the world is introverted, and 50 percent are extroverted.
I would just go out on a limb and say that. And so I think the [00:23:00] hardest part about networking as an introvert is not because you’re not good at networking and you’re not good at being yourself. It’s just, you don’t know how to be yourself in a situation where high energy, extroversion, networking, when people think networking is just, you’re constantly talking, shaking hands, and you’re so high energy all the time, and it’s draining for introverts, right?
And and a lot of times introverted people. And shyness goes hand in hand. And so when you’re going into an event where there’s 40, 50, 60, 70 people, how do you strike up that first conversation as an introvert? I am an intro, I am an introvert as well. I would say I would consider myself like 60 percent introverted.
Nowadays before it was more like 80%, so I’ve learned to tone down my introversion, but for me, the secret to networking as an introverted person is change. It’s it’s all about your environment. [00:24:00] Let me explain a little bit when I first started my podcast. As an introverted person, I didn’t know how to strike up conversations.
I couldn’t make things up on the spot. And I just felt so drained. During the, sometimes during the interview I would feel drained. So the way I, so my second podcast of use, if anyone has seen it it’s called Marketing on Mars. And I take shots of hot sauce with C sweets on my show. The hot sauce lowers my guard.
It makes me feel like it’s more of a conversation. And. You ever hear this introverted people are not really good in groups, but they’re really good one on one with people because it doesn’t feel so overwhelming though. I, the way I do it, I always set up my environment for success as an introverted person.
So on my podcast, I take shots of hot sauce to keep things fun and entertaining and light, and it makes me feel more comfortable. So change your environment to adapt to who you are as a person. And then in person, the way [00:25:00] I help introverted people, because I’ve run events with 40 people all the way up to 100 people, and the way I do it is I split people up into smaller groups, because introverted people do better in smaller groups.
You can’t throw an introverted person in a 100 person room and expect them to do well. But, what if you took that 100 person room and you break them up into groups of 10? Now they’re smaller groups, or even better, groups of 6 or 7. I know it’s hard to do in a 100 person room, but I do it very often with 40 50 person rooms.
I split them up into smaller groups of 6, and introverted people love that. And it works so much better because it’s a smaller group, less overwhelming. And then when your muscle is like working out, I think networking is like a muscle. The more you work it out, the stronger you’re going to get. If you talk to me eight months ago, if I came on this podcast eight months ago, I would not be talking the way I’m talking.
I wouldn’t be as comfortable. But I’ve done, I do three podcast episodes per week and I go to three networking events per week. So then I got better and better. My [00:26:00] networking muscle has gotten a lot stronger. Right? So that’s what I would say for an introverted person and then real quick reason why I don’t see a difference between in person and in real life or online networking is because I talk about all of my networking stuff online.
So my in person, Simon and, my personality in person and my online are exactly the same. And I take myself. I take my real self to every single conversation. So I never feel tired. I think it’s difficult. It’s different when real Simon and professional Simon are different and especially online Simon is different.
Now you have three different personas. You constantly have to mix between the three. Then it gets really very exhausting. That’s what that’s how I used to do networking before. Now I just bring my full self. I’m wearing a hoodie. Many times when I go to events, I’m just wearing, I’m wearing ripped jeans with a t shirt.
I never wear a blazer. And I always talk to people exactly the same, whether it’s on [00:27:00] Zoom, whether it’s in person, or whether it’s on my LinkedIn posts. And I post very frequently. And for me, that’s why I don’t see a difference, because I show up the same. It’s the same Simon that shows up everywhere. I love it.
Porschia: I love it. You said a lot of great things there, Simon. One thing, and I think you might identify with this as an introvert, and I guess this was my way of growing my networking muscle, as you would say. Prior to starting Fly High coaching, I was voluntold one day that I was going to be in sales, so I was in business development for a consulting firm when I lived in Los Angeles, and I made networking a game, so I would go to these networking events where there might be 40, 50 or more people, and At first, my limit was three.
I said, I need to make three meaningful connections with people in this room and a meaningful connection was I knew their name. They knew my name. I knew what they did. And I knew something personal or professional about them [00:28:00] enough to where. If I were to see them again, I could strike up a conversation.
And so that was my goal. Three meaningful connections. I could leave because for me as an introvert and I find different introverts are different for, but for me at about the 45 minute mark of where I’m at, especially if it’s a large group, I’m ready to go. Five minutes is my limit. So yeah. First, it was three, and then I worked it all the way up to ten.
And so I don’t do a ton of online, offline or in person networking at like events anymore, but I worked it all the way up to ten. So it was ten meaningful connections, and then I could go home. So that’s how I rewired my brain or worked my networking muscle, as Simon might say.
Simon: Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s a good. That’s a very good way. I think game of gamification of anything always makes things better, especially when you start tracking the numbers then because we’re all majority of us, especially if you’re in business, you’re competitive. [00:29:00] And if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably ambitious and you want more in life and people that want more in life are always going to be a little more competitive.
And when you start tracking numbers, I think that’s a very good way. For me I don’t know, I never did that. But what I do, is I always make sure that no one is standing alone at events. Whether I’m a host, and nowadays I host a lot more, so it’s way easier as a host. I always make sure no one is standing alone.
When I’m talking, if I’m talking to you and I notice that, Bob over there is in the corner, standing alone, I would wave Bob over and now and then connect. And now you guys are talking and I’ll just make sure I’ve worked a room a lot to nowadays. I do attend as a guest. For a handful of events, probably 30 percent of the events I attend are me as a guest.
But when I go there, I do the same thing. I know, I always know that there are introverted [00:30:00] people in the room, and I remember. When I was that introvert, standing alone, holding a drink on my own, and didn’t know how to strike a conversation, didn’t know how to get into the groups. I remember that feeling, and I just told myself, I never want to do that again, and so I don’t want other people to feel the same way.
So whenever I go to events and I notice someone is talking alone, I always bring them into the conversation. So that’s just like my rule, and there’s always going to be people like that. And even if someone is standing alone, just taking a breather, because they’re tired. As, like you said, the 45 minute mark, you’re tired, you might go for a breather in the corner.
And I’ll just come up and just casually just sit, just drink and eat next to you. And just be like, how’s everything going? And more like in a casual way. Right. And just make sure everyone, no one is feeling left out. And I do that and that has helped a lot. For me, whenever I go to an event, same thing.
It’s 8 or 10 meaningful connections would be solid. But as a host, I don’t have to think about that as [00:31:00] much because I know all the 40 people in the room so to speak. So I don’t have to do as much. I just want to make sure that everyone is talking. Yeah.
Porschia: Yeah. I love it. And you’re so thoughtful to go and, proactively, strike up conversations with people who might be standing by themselves.
I think this comes up for some of our clients who are introverted and some of our extroverted clients. And I know this. used to come up for me a lot networking, you would think I don’t know, feeling awkward about starting that conversation. I don’t want to bother that person. I don’t know what’s going on for them.
And then my mental reframe that I told myself is I said, Hey, this is a networking event. If they’re here to network. So I’m just going to go ahead and start the conversation about something, and that kind of helps me get over that awkwardness of starting a conversation. Simon, tell us about tech happy hour events that you host for different communities.[00:32:00]
Simon: Yeah, this is interesting. I was just actually talking to someone earlier. Where do I start? What do you want to know? Maybe ask me a question, and then I’ll, and then I’ll, yeah,
Porschia: I want to know about the events, and I thought it was really interesting how you have those different kind of I guess from a marketing perspective, I’m going to say target markets, right?
The CXOs, the founders, tech professionals, and LinkedIn creators. Tell us about the communities and how you decided to focus on those groups of people.
Simon: Good question. Okay. I Every single community that I created, the founder community, the LinkedIn creators, and the recruiters community, all those three communities are just communities that I wish existed.
I’ll start with the founders community first, because that’s how it all started. I’m a founder myself. I’m a three time founder. One of my companies was acquired back in 2019. As a founder, one of the keys to success is surrounding yourself with other [00:33:00] founders who are in your level, in your lane, walking down the same path, because you can talk about challenges.
You can talk about things that are working, things that are not working, and you can be honest and open. Sometimes more open than you can be with your friends, because your friends sometimes don’t understand. And I went to a lot of networking events, Especially in Vancouver. I don’t know about your area.
I don’t know what it’s like out there, but in Vancouver, a lot of networking events is just it’s just a way for the host to sell you something. They bring you into a room and then suddenly, boom, there’s a pitch for 30 minutes.
And then there’s another panel for an hour and a half. Where’s the networking? There’s, it’s so rare to find a group that is just straight networking. So I missed that in Vancouver, and so I went to a several events, and I couldn’t find any event that like, networking events that were truly pure networking.
And so I started my own. It was purely selfish out of my own reasons. So I created the, I created this [00:34:00] founder group, and I bring founders together in a room. You have to be C to series A. So you have to have raised money or currently revenue generating speed to series a, the room the last one we did at Amazon’s office in Vancouver, we had about 65 tech founders, all seed to fear a day or successful founders that have exited before or in the past and VCs.
So that’s a good group of people because they’re going to get find a lot of value with each other. So I started that. And then, that I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, and so I also was trying to look for a group. Of LinkedIn creators, where we can just meet and talk and just make friends. But every single time I went to a group that I always thought had some value, suddenly you just get slapped in the face with a pitch.
There’s always a pitch. There’s always something that they want out of it. And I’m like, as a host, you get so much value already as a host. Why do you [00:35:00] need to sell something? Why do you need to have a platform? Let people network. People are here because they want to network. Especially post covid world, right?
We all want to network. And so I created these 3 communities out of. Purely selfish reasons because I wanted them to exist and now many of them exist on their own without me. And so that’s that’s always a goal of any community is let the community run itself without you. Wow. I
Porschia: love that. I love that.
So as we close, I want you to just tell us a little bit more podcasts.
Simon: Yeah, marketing on Mars. It’s my second podcast. It’s we’ve been pretty fortunate. We’re a year and two months in. So 14 months in, we just surpassed 650, 000 views on the show. We’ve recorded 76 episodes now. We only we interviewed C suites, so CMOs and CEOs, and also founders of companies ranging [00:36:00] between.
As, as small as, 10, $15 million in revenue all the way up to billion dollar companies. We’ve had Microsoft on the show. We’ve had Mattel Barbie the owners of Barbie like X C M O came on the show. We’ve had like emr aura Peloton lot of different companies on the show.
And I think, what makes it really fun is. That it’s educational, everything’s educational, like this is educational, but then I always like to add a spin of fun and entertainment to it, which is why we do hot sauce shots whenever they cannot answer a question accurately or whenever they can’t answer a question one of the questions that I ask the GMOs all the time is how much money do you make or how much money do you get paid?
And if you can’t answer that question, you take a shot of hot sauce. So far. Only two C suites have answered that question, so that has got a lot of hot sauce shots out of that. Yeah. But yeah, it’s been fun.
Porschia: Very cool. We’ll be providing a link to [00:37:00] your website and other social channels in our show notes, so people can find you online.
Now I want to ask you our final question, Simon, that we ask all of our guests. How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
Simon: Start working on your personal brand and by personal brand, Portia, for example, if you reach out to me and you asked me to come on a podcast, what’s the first thing I will do? I’m probably going to search you up, right? And whatever I can find online, if you’re not focusing on that online presence.
You’re probably not gonna win as much as you would, maybe you are winning, but you won’t win as much as compared to if you did have a strong brand. I’ll give you an example. Like when I first started my podcast and reaching out to a guest, my success rate for cold outreach was like 10%, one in 10 [00:38:00] people that I reach out to would say yes, because I didn’t have a strong presence the last November.
I started really investing in my personal brand. I like if you go on my if you go on my LinkedIn, I’m posting every single week almost and tons of engagement. I’m very active on there. I never leave a comment unanswered and I’m and I spent a lot of time. I invest a lot into it and I write a lot of content.
Now, my success rate is about 1 in 5, 1 in 4. It’s about 20, 25 percent success rate in outreach. Of course, you still don’t get. Answers back right away, especially when you’re reaching out to 600, 000, 000 companies, you’re not going to get an answer back right away, but through follow up, your numbers should be around 20 percent if you have a really strong personal brand.
So I would highly suggest anyone listening, especially if your exact level, if you don’t have a personal brand in the exact level, you’re probably hurting not yourself, not even just yourself, but your company as well, because your company is paying you, they’re paying you as an exact and you don’t have a strong [00:39:00] personal brand.
I would highly suggest people to invest in that.
Porschia: Simon, you have shared a lot of tips and insights with us today, and I’m sure that our listeners can use it to be more confident in their careers. We appreciate you being with us.
Simon: Thank you, Portia, for having me on. Appreciate it. [00:40:00]
