ai, side hustles, and the future of sourcing w/ cyrus harbin

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals. We don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it for it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, social media at tdsntdesseyn. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. All righty. All righty. What's going on y'all? Good morning. Good morning from Cyrus. Is it raining down here? is it raining down your neck was this pouring down a Nashville is this sunny outside I can't tell with you is that is a sunny is a cloudy it is it's a bit of both it's not raining but I just moved out to Miami so realizing that it does rain a lot out here in the way it looks half the time it looks like it's not raining sometimes and people say no it's raining outside and I have to like go out to the balcony and look to see I love that yeah it is it is absolutely torrential pouring here so it's a different vibe you know it's it's hard Cyrus is a, Cyrus is a content animal.

We're gonna talk about it today. And I don't know about you, Cyrus. The weather affects me. And right now, all I wanna do is take a nap. So I'm gonna try to bring the energy today. But for those of you who are slowly tuning welcome, I'm getting pings that we're going live everywhere. So it's good to see you all Mark. It's good to see you again. Comment, say, hey, let me know what you're doing for me again. The reason why I'd say that, and I say this every show, because you never know who's watching. The reason why I tell people to comment, say, hey is what I've realized over the last really six months a year especially is that this thing is a meetup.

This thing is a networking platform. You know, I had a lunch on Monday with an engineer out of the Richmond Norfolk area, Northern Virginia and he and I were talking about networking and meetups and conferences and how things were going away and a lot of the discord and slacks and I'm sure Cyrus and I are going to talk about you know the networking side of things but that's what I want this thing to be. I want this thing to be a networking platform. And so please say, Hey, let's know what you're tuning in from I've had people on this show get internships apprenticeships, mentor mentees, all that jazz.

So and a lot of people like come through like a week later and connect with people. So again, even if you watch this a week later, please comment. And then second off, I want to give a shout out to Cyrus for joining me. So Cyrus and I met at render this year. Cyrus is one of the hosts at render and he's awesome. So we're gonna we're gonna chop it up today. So if If you have any questions for SIRIS, please ask questions. Finally, I want to give a shout to that conference. So that conference is the official coffee sponsor of Guidance Council 2.0. They also, they have beans.

It's the only conference that I know of that actually has roast their own coffee beans. So check them out if you want to get a few bucks off use the code GC2, but I do have to say, I'm gonna be there, I'm keynoting next week. I'm my very first keynote ever. And so check them out. Clark Sell was on the show on Monday. but John, it's good to see you Ryan. It's good to see you as well. So I wanna go and get started. It's gonna be a lot to unpack in this conversation. So first off, Cyrus, give the people what they want, man. Who are you?

What do you do? And we'll go from there. Yes, yes. I wanted to say earlier when you say that, depending on the weather, you wanna take a nap, I wanted to say I always wanna take a nap. Okay. So you're just always in that space. I always wanna take a nap level. No, so we're cool. Yeah, y'all, so I am Cyrus Harbin. I am the founder of Tech is a new black co-founder of Optiplied.ai a little bit before that. I'm had a background. I'm speaking primarily at churches, colleges, conferences, different events, mainly on either faith based topics or topics regarding relationships, you know, life. Formally, I'm a, I'm now I guess retired, a life and relationship counselor certified life relationship.

And that wasn't really paying that much. I was getting booked to speak a lot, travel a lot, and I look pretty fancy, schmancy online, but my pockets was... I was eating McDonald's after the... Yeah, yeah, my pockets were... I was making bees, by the way. They didn't know the wrong. They didn't know the wrong. Make it bees. Right, another wrong. Make it bees. Oh, in that row, no, not at all. Not at all. And so, at some point, especially during the pandemic, we all know what happened with that. There wasn't a lot of bits going on. So it forced me to realize, hey, even when events were happening, I was really broke.

So I need to do this opportunity for me to really pivot a word that we've heard a thousand too many times. And so I was a Lyft driver and while Lyft driving, I started looking into the beautiful industry of the tech industry or the software industry. And I started looking around, poking around, seeing what will be a good fit for me. After finding a pretty good fit, I did a tech bootcamp. Fast forward a few months later, got a great job in tech. A few months later, after that, I realized, yo, this industry's dope. telling people about it started flapping my gums about it online and people really took to it.

I mean, it kind of sort of blew up. Pretty cool thing. And then eventually we launched Tech is a new black podcast where we just educate tech influencers, founders, and talk about this all cool stuff happening in the industry to educate people. That's awesome. Yeah, Cyrus got a lot going on. We're going to touch on everything he's got going on. Cyrus, I think I want to kick off with, and this is what I'm so passionate about, especially as somebody who was a recruiter. And then, you know, obviously now, kind of more in the true engineering space. One thing I talk about a lot is I think everybody thinks they have to be a software engineer, right?

Like that's like, I gotta go be a software engineer and they take the bootcamp, you did the bootcamp, right? But you kind of pivot out of it. And now, so can you talk about your journey and maybe try to tell folks like, hey, you don't always have to be a developer. There's a lot out there other than being a developer in tech. Yeah, no, great question. So first, I can say something. So the first I attention initially pursued being a software developer. And I realized I'm a person where I think I can do most things. If I really put my mind to, you know, they say that, I don't do anything for your mind to, I really try to put my mind to being a software engineer.

And I'm sure that had I given it more time, it would have developed into something. Sure. I became a bit impatient that I wasn't getting it within a certain time frame. So then I found out about the pre-sales space, whether we're talking tech sales or sales engineering. So the boot camp that I did, I actually did a, it was actually a sales engineering course that I did. So I directly got into the industry as a sales or solutions engineer, solutions consultant. You know, there's a thousand names for one job in this space. So yes, I've run into the industry as a solutions engineer, where I conduct technical demos or presentations of my company's software to a high level clients, C-suite executives, things like that.

And so that was the lane that I found, and I found was a lane that I shine in, going to the point that you mentioned, that, again, my background as a speaker, loving to talk on different topics, breaking them down in creative ways to audiences, I found that to be a solutions engineering, to be something that was really good for myself. And yeah, like you said, software engineering is a phenomenal field. I look at it as the backbone or the foundation of softwares. I mean, you don't have any, really any other jobs in this industry without the backbone of the software engineers and what it is.

Right. And so I love that, but I realized, man, there's opportunity to, one, find something that we have a bit more of a pro clemity or a bit more of a bent towards. But two, also get, you know, get a nice check, get a nice, nice bit of, bit of cheddar cheesy. Yeah. in that both tech sales or sales engineering is just a really dope route that a lot of people should look into. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, and I don't know about you. I mean, I think in the nutshell, if you have, if you like talking to people, there is a lot you can do in tech that isn't some sort of engineering, right?

You can be a recruiter, you can be a sales engineer, there's a lot of different things. So I wanna go and set the stage on that just because again, you know, Cyrus has gone through the boot camps and is doing something different. So Cyrus, I want to dive into obviously, there's so many places to dive into. Let's talk about Octoply because for me, you've been doing a huge push on it. And honestly, I just want to learn personally. So let's talk about that for a second. What is it? What caused you to develop this piece of software and we'll go from there? Yeah, so Octoply, Octoply AI is a AI stack and career assistant that essentially in short does the bulk of the work when it comes to landing you interviews.

Of course you still have to do the interviews to have the perform where during the interview. We're not there yet. Yeah, definitely. It's not going to show up for you and do the interviews for you. Maybe someday. Yeah, at some point I probably wouldn't encourage that, but I'm sure someone's going to come out with some. I mean, there are already people showing up doing interviews for people and then the person's shown. I've been here. That's what happened. So I won't be too surprised with someone develop something that'll do something like that. But anyway, it's an octopi. So, first off, if someone doesn't have a resume based on the information that they provide for it, I could find able to generate an industry standard resume.

For those that do have resumes, one of the really cool things about octopi, one of my favorite parts about it, is that it's able to reword the keyword section on each resume to be more specific to each company that it's applying to. So let me pull back a little bit. So, I'll apply when someone just selects what roles they want, I'll apply to apply to them. I'll apply Finds the Companies. Even at the lowest here, it does 10 companies a day. It finds the companies that looking at your resume or your work history, your experience that it believes that you are one of the top candidates for.

finds the companies applies to the roles, but before applying, it looks at the job description and looks at some of the keywords in the job description. Looks at your resume, looks at your work history, and then it reformats ads and or removes or exchanges the keywords in your resume. It doesn't add things that you don't have in your work history. Sure. But it includes things. It'll pick and choose what matters most specific to that company it's applying to. So it does that apply to that role, creates a generated dashboard to keep you on track of not just the companies it's applied to, which companies have denied you for an interview, which companies have said, hey, this is an interview time we want to set up for you, so it's able to have those interviews be scheduled for you as well.

So that way, essentially the main thing or the only thing you need to do is just look out for your Google calendar and or your occupied your dedicated octified dashboard to see the interviews that you have scheduled for you. There's a few other things as well but essentially at its core that's what it's doing and that's the kind of the B2C side something that's that's beneficial for the user or B2E even like employees. It's able to also scale people's careers as well. So many people already have jobs but whether they're looking to you know job hop or scale to another really great company, Optimize able to still look at your tenure look at your experience and then Completely source and find companies that would pay you more for the job that you're doing so it's kind of grading That's why it's both a career and staffing assistant.

Have you you know, I'm kind of curious Have you had um Have you guys had to do some major fixes? I mean have you guys had some mistakes? I'm just kind of curious because is talking to everybody in the software space. Everyone's like, man, I love success stories, but I wanna hear some failures. So is there been anything you guys have had to pivot already with? Oh yeah, it's definitely been a lot. So being in this space, being a sales engineer for different companies, of course there's always gonna be bugs, it doesn't matter what company, what size, there's always bugs. And again, beautiful thing, the benefit of that is that that keeps our software engineers employed even after the product is built out.

And so, but actually being at the helm of a product where there's, you know, multiple daily meetings and finding out about new bugs, I'm like, man, this is actually pretty incredible. But it's exciting as well to see every time we add something or change something, it breaks something else or it's like something else. So it's this interesting puzzle where it's like, it's almost like a moving maze or a puzzle where every time you add a piece, it rearranges or changes the puzzle ever so slightly. And so, or I guess I'm a Rubis cube. Probably more like a Rubis cube. I like that. That's cool. So, it's been pretty interesting.

So, some of the things I guess just giving some examples, I definitely have a few. So, some of the examples that we've seen is, so there was even a bug recently that we had noticed. I mean, we're constantly finding new bugs or new issues, but there was a one issue that we had noticed where users would put in multiple job titles. So they would put in maybe sales engineer, but they also want to have it applied to software engineer roles. We're going to have that rollout in the next tier in the next month, but right now I've applied, it's only applying to like one type of role per user within the current premiere tier.

And we didn't think about that. So because of people adding like multiple titles or multiple roles, it can of course confuse this. It confuse the acrobatic where acrobatic is like, so it's just kind of all over the place. And it's trying to feel its way, and it's applying to jobs where it has nothing to do with what they put in. But of course, machine learning AI, it's trying to feel things out and apply to roles. So of course, the feedback when people do that is, Hey, it's applying to these random roles that I didn't put in or I'm not interested in. And of course we look at it and we realize, oh crap, maybe instead of allowing people to just manually just type in every single role, maybe create a drop down.

That will probably be why it's there, you know, until we have that other tier. Yeah. So that being something that we had to adjust and be able to correct, as well as realizing that whenever people are putting in things, things, whether it's their first name or last name or one of the things you notice that sometimes people would not want to put in their email, like their accurate email, or they would not want to put in their accurate phone number, maybe because either by accident, because that happens, or because they're thinking, hey, I want octoply to apply to jobs for giving you interviews, but I'm not really sure that I want you guys to have my email and my phone number.

So I'm going to put this in here, but because of that, it wouldn't allow octoply again to be able to be able to like send them proper information or be able to update them on companies that are reaching out to them for those interviews. And so we've noticed things both on octopi just within within our bot or our software, but we've noticed things where we have to also think for our users and think, okay, what's the best way for us to communicate why we need specific information, not applied to the most valuable for them. So, constantly, constantly new things. And constantly, every week updating, like one of the things we love about people is that people are always saying, hey, you guys should add this, you should include that.

So one of the things that we recently just included in Optipli, and the other cool thing is before actually developing something that Optipli would do for people automatically, just kind of having that bit of like that, that kind of lean method where it's like, hey, maybe instead of having Optiplied do this right now is going to take us two months to build this out and test it out. Right. You can have, I guess, like a, I guess a poor man's version. So, for example, one of the things that we've seen is is having Optiplied be able to reach out to recruiters or hiring managers. No, interesting.

But one of the things that we're kind of playing around with that is, okay, well, we could do that, but that's going to take a couple months for not just us to build that software out because building that out isn't too complicated but building it out in a way building that bot out in a way that it doesn't agitate linked in to where linked in was shut down that user's profile. So that's the thing we care about a lot is being very sensitive because we know LinkedIn is you know somebody said a quote one time on the podcast Instagram is for the show linked in is for the dope.

So it's like you know like yo like so we really want to be sensitive and careful with those things. So in the meantime we said hey In the meantime, instead, let's within our dedicated dashboard provide a template of what they should say when reaching out to recruiters. Just a bit of a framework of, hey, this is not necessarily copying and paste this message to them, but look at this message as an example. Maybe you do want to copy it and then reorganize some of the words specific to that right here in hiring manager for the world. Wow. And again, that's the poor man's version, just giving them a template to use.

we're working on building Octopi out to be able to send those those dedicated messages to you know to those recruiters and hiring managers. I love that. So let's go into kind of the few other topics. That's a great segue between AI and sourcing right. I mean obviously AI has been throwing around a lot. Honestly I think what you're doing is one of the better use cases of AI to be honest I'm not just saying that because you're on the show and I like you I'm saying that because it's the truth. Oh, so talk about me in 10 years, right? No wrong answers here. Hot takes only.

Where do you think AI goes? Just especially just, let's just talk staffing and sourcing. I'm not talking about taking over the world with robots or anything like that. Staffing and sourcing. When does this, so I know we're with your community right now, which is cool. And I didn't even say this earlier, but thanks for having me on, by the way, Taylor. Yeah, absolutely. for not for not yelling at me in the in the comments yet involved in so far I've been seeing like a lot of good mornings and high up and see pretty cool so I appreciate that uh so where do I so the question was you asked where do I see it in the next 10 years when it comes to staffing I see now this is where we we kind of get into more of the the dark world type of stuff so I'm talking about some of the cute things how it helps people benefit people I see in the next five to 10 years and octopi being a part of this is octopi being a staffing tool as well as there being other companies maybe similar to octopi are doing different things to where it's able to do the sourcing for talent and able to reach out to that talent to set up and schedule that interview.

So that way it does the bulk of the outreach portion for sorcerers and or recruiters to find talent. But because it's software, because certain things that it's able to do, like even some of the things that it's able to do, it can verify someone before even reaching out. So for example, let's look at this. So a company says, company A will say, says, hey, we need to hire 100 people for, let's say, 100 software engineers. We need to hire 100 software engineers. We need them to be skilled in Python and C++. Maybe a little Java would be nice. We need them to have two to three years experience or two to five years experience and Hey, we care about we care about diversity.

We care about having that diverse culture So look we want to make sure that at least at least half of that staff are Our people of color we want to make sure maybe at least half of that are might be a Make sure I want to make sure it's at least 50 50 men and women right sure that you know So, blasic blasic blaic, want to make sure that maybe they have this college education, this background. Right now, that's a pretty, that's a pretty exhaustive job for a sorcerer to do. Yeah. And then also, hey, we want to make sure they're not felling. We want to make sure that they didn't do something crazy in their background.

And those are things where not only is it hard for a sorcerer to do, it's almost impossible, you know, without doing like a background check on your person. That's why usually the background check doesn't happen. So after the person has been, you know, is being on board or the law has been seen. Whereas in the next five or 10 years, probably honestly even sooner than this, AI staffing will be able to not just find all of those people immediately, the specific talent with the specific background, able to verify their work history. Because sometimes, you know, people put some stuff on it, it's not true. Able to verify that.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Oh yeah, don't do that. Don't do none of that. All of a sudden saying, don't do that. do the opposite of this. But there are people who also might not you all, of course, no one can say there's more. No, no one in this community. But there are people that will put education history that isn't true. Yeah, I love that. You know, and so again, that's something that's like incredibly hard for a person to verify for sure, not whereas, you know, five to 10 years, we're the honestly even sooner than that, the software or AI is able to actually verify all of that information is interesting.

It's able to find all 100 of those people instantly make sure it's a diverse group, verify everyone's education, verify their work history, verify their tenure to make sure, okay, this person's perfectly qualified. It's able to look through their information. Okay, this person has that C++, that Python. Okay, we're gonna have a proclivity towards those that have some Java, a little bit of Java as well. And able to do a background, being able to scan on a high level, people back from your background check as well. So now those recruiters, when they're doing these interviews, they know on paper, hey, on paper, this person is fully qualified.

Yeah. And their background is clean. You know, so now it's really, it's only a culture fit interview. Yeah. It removes the four, five, six round interviews. Down to two, three, it's just where it should be, which is where it's at. it's just a culture fit. Maybe we haven't meet with one other person here on the team. And okay now maybe we have them do some type of demonstration or see if they can actually you know that see their their their knowledge stack or you know things like that. So it just cuts that work. I think I think that's fascinating you know I being being in the staffing room for 12 years and moving over to to what I do now it's still recruiting at the end of the day but just with this software company.

But there's so much manual shit. There's no way to say it. Just manual shit in the staffing industry that can be very automated. And I think I still, you know, because I've asked, I've got an ask this question, right? Do you think AI is going to take place of recruiters? No, I never think it's going to take fully place. But I think people to people is where the magic happens. But I do think there's so many administrative bullshit tasks that the the staffing world has to have automated. And I totally agree with you on that. I think AI is going to, it really honestly is going to change the staffing world for the better because there's so much administrative stuff.

I mean, everything you just said is administrative, everything. Yeah, that's true. No, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I agree with you entirely that it's definitely a lot of the administrative things, a lot of the just kind of laborious things that really is something that would benefit, be a benefit for recruiters and sorcerers. Because yeah, you always need that human element despite the advancements of technology. And I'm a person where I'm always preaching, hey, you know, every since I got an industry, hey, tech is going to replace this or AI is going to replace that. One of the things that it'll never be able to replace because of how slowly we evolve as just, you know, just as a people or as a species, it'll take thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of years before any of us how to evolve to the point that we no longer need this human touch or this human element.

I personally don't think we'll ever lose the necessity or the value of needing to touch human beings, needing to really deal with people. I believe that's the way, and you don't have to be a fence into anybody, but just my views. I believe that's the way that God created us, that we need one another. And I love that. I love that we're that way because it's all the advancements of technology, it'll never be able to replace the value that each of us have in one another, whether we recognize it immediately or not. Yeah, I love that. Man, we got to have a part two. So many things to ask you here.

Real quick, I want to highlight Tech is a new black. What is it? How can people find you? Shout out to you, just crossed a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube, which is amazing. So congrats to you, man. Talk about what that is and what your passion is behind that. Yes, so tech is a new black. I'm sure many people have heard, you know, the show Orange is the new black or you've heard, you know, 20 or 31 is the new 21, you know, things like that. So just a quick history piece. The term something being the new black comes from the fashion industry and black being the primary color, the primary base color in fashion.

So black is seen in fashion as like the sexy color, the go-to color, but in different seasons, maybe red is the new hit color. So someone coined in the fashion industry, they said, hey, this season red is the new black or this season everything's blue. So this is the thing. So essentially saying something is the new black or something is the new this is essentially saying this is the new thing or the thing that everyone should pay attention to right now. So, tech is the new black is a play on that. We're saying, hey, because when I got in the industry, and again, a few months after being in the industry, not just because of, you know, not just career-wise, because I love careers in this industry.

I love the culture in this industry, the people I've been able to meet, you know, the bag, but also realizing once I got in the industry, I started learning more. I started reading books on all of these different tech founders and their stories and advancements and technology. And I realized, yo, technology is integrated and everything, but it's also becoming more and more toward its name thing. Like every company is becoming a tech company. Every company. Yeah. Yeah. And so, sorry, I got a random call. Nobody cares about me until I'm on here with Taylor. And all these on there were Taylor, let me call him real quick.

Hey, man, if you got to close the deal, let's just go live together. That's hilarious. I'm going to show you how to close the deal by. It's from here. So when I started Tech as a New Black and I, initially, I was going live on Instagram. The whole purpose of it was to tell people, hey, guys, this is the thing that everyone should pay attention to, just like, you know, you know, red is the new black this season. Tech is the thing. It's the new black. It's the thing everyone should pay attention to. Everyone should be aware of, should be involved in. Whether you wanna work in the industry or not, you should be aware of the advancements of what's happening.

Even if you're a business owner, you can leverage this technology, or if you're looking for a better career, you're looking to pivot, maybe you can use your high, you can use your transferable skills. Either way, this is the industry everyone should pay attention to. Other, because I love like word play and double-life time. The other meaning of tech is the new black is just growing up. So, so me, I don't know if y'all can tell or not. It's not a filter, I'm black. So, you know, the filters are getting pretty crazy right now. So, you go, it goes, I don't know if you tell, but I'm black.

Yeah, I don't know if you're gonna tell or not. So, no, but one of the things that I've dealt with all my life, growing up in basic pretty life hood or pretty ghetto areas, I've always been very articulate. I don't know why. I've always been very articulate. I never sounded, you know, growing up in a lot of, I'm really a lot of people deal with this in general again being in this industry I realized this isn't just something that black people deal with but one of the things I've dealt with is people saying Hey, you don't talk black. Hey, you don't dress like hey You know, you just and of course we're not gonna break down like the psycho analyze that power Nevertheless, one of the things that I experienced was being told okay there are certain things that white people do or certain things black people are And it's like okay first off that's not true But if we're associating black with being cool, it's like, hey, this is the new cool thing.

Hey, this is like, okay, people say, okay, that's a black thing, that's a white thing. It's like, no, for black, hey, this is the new black. You know, yeah, basketball's cool, wrapping's cool, all that stuff is cool, but this is the new thing that really, again, everyone should pay attention to, but those that are black and brown, they might not think this is for us. It's I know this is the new black. This is a new cool thing that black people do. Yeah So that everyone should pay attention to so again, I love my double on times I love things having like a couple different meanings to them.

So yeah, so that's a tech is the new black and so Hit the hundred thousand subscriber mark. We just signed a network deal as well That was another reason we're celebrating had a party recently. So I legit was thinking about driving down I Man, I would have been crazy, but I would have been crazy. I mean it's I mean, it's kind of good you didn't come. If you can't wear that shirt, I probably would have tried to steal it from you. Listen, I'm gonna be honest with you, I wore my best floral for you today. What? I wore, I said Cyrus's got that drip. I said, I need to make sure that I show up with my best floral on and then you over here wearing tan.

Man, you got the sexy chest out too. The 80s chest hair, man. Bringing it back. Bringing it back. I want to give a shout to Ryan. and Ryan wants to give you props. The interview's a fire over takes me black. I get a lot from these interviews. That's awesome. Yeah, we have great guests. Yo, and bro, we have to get you on, man. We have to get you on. Oh, you know what? I'm gonna let you know after, I'm gonna say I'm gonna let your community know about this. We actually are going to be having an event here in Miami. And it's gonna be when it's gonna be.

So we did a podcast in the sky in December. It was an amazing event. It was a podcast on a rooftop. it was a live audience event. So people were able to ask the recruiters, able to ask the founders different questions during the podcast interviews. We're gonna do something similar, but much larger out here in Miami. We're looking at different megayots and or different mansions right by the ocean. But of course we have to find rooms that we can have breakout sessions have. Don't bring my crew. All that cool stuff. So but it will be so dope, like to have you one. I mean, we'll talk about this.

I'm gonna interview you. I know there's so many nuggets you'll be able to drop to our audience. Yeah, that'll be tight. Yeah, let's definitely talk about that. All right, as you wrap up here, we're at time. There's so much to still talk about. I do wanna talk about the power of putting yourself out there. Right? You know, one of the reasons why I wanted Cyrus on the show is there's very few people who are doing, who are double triple quadruple down and on content like Cyrus is. And so Cyrus, talk about the importance of putting yourself out there, especially in today's world where I think a lot of people are still scared to press publish on their first post.

Man, that's so real. So Sean Cannell, who is the CEO of Think Media on YouTube, huge media, huge media podcasting platform, definitely check them out. He has a quote and it's at the beginning of all of their videos where it says, you've got to just press record. like you gotta just press record. And I truly believe that the power of it is that honestly, all of us, and I say this even myself, because despite how much content I put out, I still have a lot of hesitations and complacency sometimes before putting content out that we have to get over ourselves. We have to get over ourselves.

The reason why is because our content is not for us, it's for the world. All of us, all of us have a voice, we have a background, have an experience where only our story or only our content can touch a specific person or specific people. And so there are people that Taylor and just specifically the way that Taylor communicates things, his knowledge, his experience, his background, his delivery, all of that is valuable in a unique way to specific people that the way that I communicate what irritates them. This is 100%. 100%. And so understand that your content, it's bigger than you. It's significantly bigger than you.

You know, it's for the other person. The other thing I will say, look at, and I've been a social media influencer for years before I was even in tech. Like you have to like honestly get to the point where you stop trying to check and see how many likes and how many comments and stuff you're getting really just put the content out there because one thing I can tell you, I've had content, most of the content that I've had this going viral because you know, that's usually the apex that we all look for. It's never been content that I immediately put out. It's always been content either one.

It was the content that I thought was the dumbest. I've known you all the time. I'm like, it's going to hit three likes and I post something and it like blows up and it's just like, what? Yeah. So either they're sleeper content where you put it out and then way later it just starts doing numbers because one person saw that they touched them and they shared it and then it touched another person and they shared it. So one, don't ever put content out there expecting a certain number or whatever. Just put it out there so it can bless, you know, whoever's going to see that part.

And also, again, don't like kind of keep up looking at the likes or trying to keep up those things. Really just put it out there so it can help people so it can bless and educate people and just allow it to do its thing and really just just look at it like anything else like hey I'm not just like going to the gym okay I can stand in the mirror after I did this workout I might sit a little bit of a pump but I know this pump is gonna go down and tomorrow I'm gonna look the exact same there's so much that comes into play with content creation and like your fitness journey yes a lot about that yes it's but it's about that compound it's about you being consistent and then that consists that growth over time that just how a compounds and compounds and grows and really snowballs with time.

So really focus more on a schedule or more on, hey, I'm gonna do this not because I'm expecting a specific outcome. But because I know that I know that the outcome will be that this is going to help somebody not how many somebody is going to help somebody and I'm going to be specific again. It's not for you. It's not forget the dopamine hits that we get. Forget the, oh man, I look cool. Also forget the comparison, you know, you know, comparing yourself to others. I promise you, I have between all of my platforms, I have roughly 300,000 so people. And I promise you, the comparison never goes away.

I see people with 10,000 followers and they get all these likes and all this attention. And if you look at that long enough, you can start to be like, man, they're getting as much attention as me, but their audience is much smaller. Wow, why don't people like me as much compared to my audience? Or you'll see people that are significantly larger. And you will think that, man, I know more than this person, or I feel that I'm doing things better, why am I not at this person's size? Again, don't look at those things. Really just look at the flock that you've been given using kind of like a church reference.

Look at your flock, your community, those that are showing up and truly add value to them. When you add value to people, when people see you adding value, take us in the black, we have never did any paid ads or paid marketing. We're gonna do so, but us hitting 100,000 subscribers and under a year, it's entirely organic. So, because we focus on giving value to our audience and our audience feels that, so they support us back by sharing our content. And so likewise, understand that your community, your tribe that you're speaking to, they will feel that value and with time, you will grow and you will scale.

Focus more on being consistent and adding value over everything else. Well, in there, that was good. Actually, no. Last two questions I always ask. First question, any tools, technology, trends, I know you're really heavy with the AI side of things. Is there anything else you're kind of doing right now that you want to talk about, or is it just all AI all the time right now? Oh, no, no, I mean, I guess other tools, oh man, we actually have replaced a lot of these tools that we use. I would say, so would this be for content creators? It can be for anything. This is a grab bag.

I mean, you could say like, I'm working on like barbecue, barbecue techniques. I don't know, just like whatever you're messing with right now, that's you're really interested in. Okay, you know what? I'll actually pull back and talk about something that is not as, so one thing batch record, I would say. So again, for content creators, batch record. So it looks like I'm just making content every single day. I lay out like I choose like one day of the week or sometimes every other week. I lay out five different shirts. So it doesn't look like I'm wearing the same shirt for two or three weeks. And I make a bunch of content.

Also, I would say if you're scrolling on social media and you're every, every time you hear a real or hear audio that you think it's funny or interesting, save it. Even if you don't know, don't try to think of what you could use it for. Just save it every time. Scroll. You hear something that's funny. You see something funny. Save it. Save them, save them, save them. So that way, the day that you sit down to make the content, just it only take you one to two hours. Sit down, put your phone up on a tripod, and then go through all the audios you have saved.

And then I will also say it's gonna be crazy. Make the kind of skit without even knowing what the text is gonna be or what it's gonna be about. I actually record all of my content. I'll say the words of whatever audio, I'll say it, and won't even know what it's gonna be about until after I've done all my batch recording of like 20 pieces of content. And when it's time for me to upload, that's when I sit down and I'm like, okay, what am I gonna have this be about now? It's significantly better doing that than you just trying to think through in the moment because that'll slow you down to where it'll take you four or five hours to make content versus you making 10 times as much content in just one hour and it's just a significantly smoother, much more fun process.

So again, we talk about all this technology stuff, but I wanna share something that where it's like, yo, doing something where it's just relaxing, it's fun, you're just kind of able to let your brain go, wow. When you're doing things, so that way you don't have to think too much on that. But yeah, and I would say, I'm a huge fan of BitIQ, kind of random, but huge fan of BitIQ. I know there's other tools that are out there, but BitIQ being something that we use a lot for YouTube that kind of helps us optimize our YouTube a lot better, that I found out a lot of people that are building out content don't really know about.

I love that. All right, last question as you wrap up here. There's those guys called guidance counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselor middle school high school in college, but really now as adults, we don't really have a true guidance counselor. And so what would be your biggest piece of career advice to your younger self? These career advice to my younger self. My biggest career advice, I would say to my younger self, I would say to miss more parties. Really talk about that. Yeah, yeah, because I was a person, you know, I'm 33, which is still young. Yeah, but for I look at so I look at like just my age or age and I look at man how much I've been able to accomplish and I'm like really excited and grateful But I also think back to I was a person where I would definitely when I was younger would put like having fun Way before putting those reps in so I don't try to think of it as much as putting my putting my work or my career before fun, but I think of it more as like a mamba mentality like Kobe.

Yeah. Where it's like, hey, you know, if you want to be Kobe, if you want to be compared to Michael Jordan, man, it's better for you to put those extra reps in. So the advice that I will give to my younger self, and it sounds please shake as we all, we all, you know, here, it's like, man, there's never going to be a shortage of parties. There's never going to be a shortage of hangouts. But look, if you actually focus more on your career, if you have more of that mamba mentality, where it's about like you accomplishing things and you doing dope stuff. It's like you'll be cooler at the parties because now you have things to talk about.

Now you're able to again educate and help other people that are at the parties whether it's get into your field or something they can do with their other fields. So the advice that I would give to my younger self really would be to find more value, find more value in having like a mama mentality, find more valuable in that instead of the whole fomol. I just, the fear of missing out from every party, every hangout, every mixture. Like I live in Miami now, moved here four or five months ago. There is no shortage of things happening. All the time, last night, music was still bumping out here 2, 3 a.m.

in the morning. And I can definitely say that carrying that mentality now has really allowed me to just kind of buckle down in my office, the spite of music, despite all those things and be like, no, I'm gonna sit here, buckle down, get some work done, you know, go to bed on time so that way I can hit the gym. And so that way I'm looking sexy when I'm on here with Taylor. There you go. I love it. I love it. Well, you all thanks again for hanging out with us today. Cyrus, thank you, my friends. Stay on real quick so I can stay body backstage.

But you all have a good one. Please go connect with Cyrus. Check out Octoply. Check out Tech as the new black. Go follow Cyrus on all platforms. But again, Cyrus, thank you for joining me, man. I appreciate it. Um, tomorrow, unicorn Finders. I'm sorry, I just may need to get you on that. Other podcasts, because the man can't have too many podcasts where we meet startups doing really cool shit that most people haven't heard of yet. So tomorrow we are meeting with no commerce in the founder. They're doing really, really cool stuff for customer insight. So after the sale is made, what type of data are you collecting?

And they've been growing like crazy. So we're hanging out with Jeremiah, the founder tomorrow. So anyway, y'all have a great one. We'll see you all tomorrow. Unicorn founders, 930 AM Central. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listen to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finish an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it.

So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me at Tdaston on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.