the power of content w/ @ykdojo

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

to all righty let's see here we're live but that doesn't mean anything yet kind of let it twiggle to interwebs Y what's going everybody good morning happy Tuesday if you are already on the live for some reason please say hey we love to hear from you um let's see here I got the notification that we're live on YouTube let me see on LinkedIn last thing we want to do YK is go ahead and get started and this thing never hits LinkedIn and I got to start all over again because that has happened multiple times so yeah LinkedIn streaming is it's a pain I know I

know let's see here still waiting still waiting all right we are live what's going on folks good morning happy Tuesday excited to hang out with YK this morning um excited for this conversation I'm excited to always talk about content um that is something I would say that there's probably two things I'm pass Super passionate about is the power of content and and what it can have in your career which is obviously what we're going to talk about today and also networking which I think both go hand inand and I'm sure we'll probably touch on that but for those of you tuning in welcome good morning

say hey would' love to hear from you excited for this episode I'm excited to hang out with YK I I I've literally known YK now for 15 minutes that's about it so um excited to hang out with him a little bit more in detail to talk about this but before we get started today I want to give just kind of a quick overview what guidance counselor is uh for those of you who are tuning in now in the future um also too I'm dealing with a cold so if you do hear me I do apologize um but so the guidance couns are 2.0 this is

my fourth year doing guidance counselor 2.0 I started four years ago this month in 2020 for covid because I for me wanted to basically create something to scale the conversations I was having day to-day when covid hit right so when when when uh developers were were getting laid off um it was one of these things where like I w as talking to developers all day and I was like well a conversation at 8 a.m.

was probably pretty applicable to conversation at 500 PM with that developer so there's got to be a better way to scale this so I started to go live every single day um I talked six to eight months into the abyss YK I'm sure we'll talk about the start of content creation and and kind of what you got to do to get over the hump but um about six months into it um a lot of folks started to ask me hey can I come on the show would love to talk with you about my story and then four years later we're here and have a wonderful

guest like YK so that that's what this Show's for um uh two things I want to give a shout out to two of my partners this morning first and foremost that conference um the call for presenters is closed um however I would still try to make it to Wisconsin for that conference it's gonna be an amazing time um uh and a fantastic um uh it's just gonna be a fantastic hang I will not be there I'll be expecting baby number two around that time um but I would highly recommend going also want to give a shout out as always to render ATL to pick up

the podcast for the second year in a row if you have not been to render um now that I've have been to South by Southwest in Austin render is very similar to South by Southwest it is a it is a tech event in Atlanta June 12th through 14th and it is going to be a heck of a time so you should be there because I will be there um we're getting people trickling in Sarat good to see you Chris it's great to see you as well again continue to comment chime in let us know where you tune in from because we get people from all

over the world tuning in and I'd love to know where youall tune in this morning um and and finally before I introduce YK here um I want to I want to celebrate you this morning right I feel like a lot of times in life in our career we're always on to the next thing right I got the raise when's my next raise I got the job title when's my next title and so now I really want to celebrate you so if you've gotten a title a title change a raise you've deployed code uh this past weekend you didn't burn the house down please throw it

up in the chat we' love to celebrate you this morning um Mark it's great to see you this morning as well buddy all right YK um Andrew it's good to see you uh YK let's give the people what they want man who are you what do you do we'll go from there who who am I that's a big question what do I do I'm YK and I'm the founder of Cs Dojo which is uh really a Content creation business but also you know computer science programming education business entertainment a little bit too and I've been running that business for about eight years um not entirely

full-time you know the first um four years of those eight years were you know full- time and then a couple years during that time you know I focus on other things like my Developer arate jobs at a few startups and here I am back on my content you know creation treadmil anyway I love it I love it all right so let's start I love a good OG story so what got you into content man like you know mine was like Hey I want to create something to give back to developers because I'm talking to so many developers day in day out what was the reason

you got into it right so first of all I love how you got into it because you know it fits your personality and who you are right the way got into you know this a story I've told multiple times but sure it's kind of something I like to say is I was watching a lot of YouTube videos okay not necessarily Tech content but just a lot of YouTube videos you know just a big fan and I was like I can do this that was pretty much it are you serious just like I can do it yeah I mean it didn't seem complicated people were making

YouTube videos you know recording voice and making some animations and stuff I was like that seems doable you just started I love it I love it talk so so have you always been um have you alwa ys done technical content in nature or did you start doing other types of content when you started right so what I did is I I tried you know like I said a few different things you know Facebook videos travel videos and productivity videos some of those actually went viral but it turned out you know the the tech channel did the best you you know it gained the most amount

of views performed the best in terms of the work I put in so I was like okay you know there's a lot of demand there like a lot more demand there than other areas and I decided to focus on that I love that so I I think a lot of people struggle with and I'm sure you've talked to people in your journey um with content about getting started right I mean I think you know people look at you you have a ton of followers right I know I've had people come to me and they're like I can't put out all this video you do so

what like what what would you tell somebody who's maybe watching this live now in the future who really wants to get started but are overwhelmed with all these creators out there with hundreds and millions of followers okay so I I I thought about this question a lot you know even before this call you know I was like okay how how would I approach this and I can kind of look at it in a few different ways one is start with DMS that might sound kind of silly that's not content but it is in a way piece of content you know like if you s a

DM that's a piece of content yeah and then you start to you know build relationships with people on LinkedIn Twitter whatever platform you like and that's great that that's a you know practice for you to be able to communicate with one person right and in my opinion if you can't communicate with one person well how do you expect to communicate with you know hundred of people so well so start with that and the way I would see content is it's a way to send a message to multiple people at the same time instead of one person at a time yeah absolutely 100% And and so

what is it what is it done for your career man can you give me a little bit of career trajectory obviously starting out your content and kind of what it's done because because I think a lot of people um again I I think they're just so overwhelmed they're like will this benefit me do I need to start content you know even if I just have a nin to5 can can you talk a little about your journey with me yeah yeah so I I started with YouTube like I said and you know it was for me to you know just kind of try it because I

was interested in that I was you know like I said interested in YouTube content in general and I wanted to educate people and help people as well and that helped me eventually just you know by building a business but in my opinion not everyone has to do that you know content creation is helpful for building a business or expanding your business but even people with you know night five jobs for individuals it doesn't have to be a lot you know it could be like uh you know once a month H you post something that you're proud of doing on link that's cool it could be

like once every other week or you know it could be something that you built and you want to share with the world it it could be something really small and what I found is that especially on LinkedIn you know I can't emphasize this platform enough because you it's done a lot for me uh I I started to post a lot on link like a couple of years ago I I I had LinkedIn profile for for a long time but you know I've been active for I would say one to one and a half years and I've noticed that it they seem to prefer accounts that

are really active so when you know recruiters search for say developer Advocate I more likely show up than you know people who are less active just because I'm posting more Yep 100% so H how long how long did it take for things to I yes really start to change like how long did it take in the content Journey for you to start realizing oh content's played a significant part of my career now it's like one year two years like how long was it yeah so that was that was one year for me and really that's yeah I mean I started to create content you know

part-time YouTube and then a few the platforms like udem me um LinkedIn learning stuff like that and awesome like I said yeah like I said the the change that made you know that it made for me was mostly in the form of income yeah Jason um but then you know over time it it didn't it didn't stop there you know I thought okay you know I make money I make content that's cool right but I realized like I say you know link algorithm boost and just like General connections I make you know I realize it's a lot more than that it's okay okay so so

I'm I'm taking you down a little different direction here so y if if somebody's not comfortable with video content H how would you get what would be your advice to them to get started especially on LinkedIn right so I think this this is honestly perfect what we're doing yeah because um the challenge with like videos is like why why would you post like it's it's kind of a weird thing in a way to post right like unless I guess you're on Tik Tok that's specifically made for videos but on Linkin you know if if you just get on a call with someone or if you're

already planning to get on a call with someone like like you were saying you know if it's publicly sharable why not share it you know it's it's the same thing it's just like a Google meet call or Zoom call you know I I I've talked about um one of my recent talks it's a new talk I gave is is about how content Community can can really leverage your career I said something that creating content is interviewing first round at scale because it it allows people to get to know you allows hire managers to get to know you to where because let's be honest right that

first round is always kind of like you know tell me about yourself what do you do and I feel like content allows allows people to to endear themselves to you like they would on the first round what are your thoughts on that yeah I I really like that and I I resonate a lot with it because you know I've been running a community which is a you know totally separate thing but it's not quite separate so uh what I've been doing is I've been kind of gathering people in Vancouver in Tech in like a single place Cafe just to kind of get the community together

and what I've been doing is a little bit of screening process you know because most of the events have been free uh I want it to be like a selective group of people and the way I do it is is through Linkedin when yeah and mostly LinkedIn and you know when like that person's linked is really empty when they don't have a lot of content you know stuff like that it's it's really hard to know who they are but if they have like you know like a little bit of you know posts and even comments it really shows their personality and that I I found

that there's it's very like I I can pretty accurately tell what that person will be like in person just by looking at you know their LinkedIn I love that so so you think there's a lot of social proofing in today's world that people aren't even aware of yeah I think so so um even like you just said you're like I go to LinkedIn to basically see if they're real and to see how active they are right okay so this this might be a controvers controversial hey I love controversial takes on a Tuesday morning I'll do this so say I I go to someone's LinkedIn profile

okay they they have a good you know about section they have they seem to have you know like pretty decent experience okay cool you know pretty decent like School whatever and then I go to their comments and most of the comments are like oh you know I want this job you know give me give me this thing you're asking for or you're asking about you know let me put in this email address that that you're asking about so I can get something and that's that's totally fine right it's totally fine to go for something tha t you want but at the same time if if

it's all of that you know and thatone of like oh congrats oh you're doing well like supporting others always taking exactly I'm like when this person is at this event or I guess you know at a company right like when this person's hired Are You Gonna Act Like That interesting kind of a fascina I I haven't thought of it that way that's interesting why I think it might be hot take yeah yeah yeah I love that I love that what are you what are your thoughts man like all right let me ask you this do you think people who work nine to5 let's just again

not like full-time creators nine to fives do you think people work nine to fives need to have a presence online yes okay why okay so LinkedIn LinkedIn LinkedIn it all comes down to this I me I'm gonna which is great I've never had anybody on the show that's really talked about LinkedIn as much as you have that's good because I'm a huge fan of it yeah and you know it might sound kind of funny because I am a YouTube guy I'm not getting paid by LinkedIn at all yet um but it it just works you know like so when you say online presence so the

bare minimum I would have is you know a solid profile on LinkedIn you don't even have to post necessarily correct a solid profile so people can find you so people can you know check out your profile make sure it's publicly visible that's very important right uh so do that and then on top of that if you post a little bit you know that's going to help with the LinkedIn algorithm search algorithm all of that if you post more if you have more connections more you know a bit more active then that's even better that's awesome yeah I totally agree you know I I compare it

to I compare it to kind of two things I'm interest hear your thoughts on this one uh comparing it to well not really two things really the main thing is like so if you go to a restaurant or you Google a reviews like that's weird right like if you go to if you Google a restaurant and you go to the reviews and there's no reviews that is a red flag right and so so so so for me like I I would say it's a same equivalent as hey if you don't even have your LinkedIn profile set up with like pictures and stuff and just like

a good profile that's the equivalent of me researching a restaurant and them not having a website Andor any Google reviews thoughts on that yeah I think there's something to it and I I got another hot take that that you might like I love it go ahead so I I I was like I used to think okay LinkedIn profiles doesn't matter like you know just online thing you know like use it if you want but I I started to realize you know through my community work that people who have like a full LinkedIn profile you know people who are kind of more forward in their kind

of presence they're probably more likely to be easy to talk to than people who are like really kind of yeah not showing much only I don't know what it is and I think what it is is when they're in person you know if if they interact uh with people in a way that's like friendly that's open you know I'm not saying everyone has to be like that but if they are like that then they will present themselves kind of the same way only thing even in their profile section you might not think that way but you know they they'll be like okay you know when

they I think what it is is when they're thinking about let's say the about section they say okay uh I'm kind of presenting myself to people you know virtually but still you know it's a it's a way to inter interact with people right so they they kind of write it in a friendly way in a in a way that's open on all of that yeah and it really shows in my opinion 100% I totally agree with you I totally agree with you um we're getting a little bit of the psyche of this stuff which I really really like um uh wait Jason what are you

talking about YK where do I find your PIN tweet with your steps in here I don't understand yeah I think he he's he's talking about how I have t weets about everything and I probably do have gotta got got I love it Jeremy comes in here if I post some that LinkedIn it gets a ton of Engagement post the same thing on Twitter nothing LinkedIn is a Hidden Gem for people without I love that Jeremy brought this up I think I think LinkedIn I've talked about this in some in some conference talks that I really truly think LinkedIn favors people and really boosts people just

getting started like like if um like I I've seen multiple people start their content journey in posting and their post engagement is like way more than my stuff which I've been doing it for like four years every single day now and so I agree with you Jeremy Twitter Twitter Twitter is it's a hard thing um YK you're you're on Twitter a fair amount too right yeah I I I'm personally a fan of Twitter but I don't recommend it to most people why why I'm curious why is that because I have my thoughts too yeah so part of it is you know the recent change it

had it seems to have more spams and things like that it's a little bit kind of a tougher environment I feel like and the other part is just I don't know to me LinkedIn people are pretty normal like everyone uses LinkedIn not everyone uses like you know Twitter like I I one of one of the more active users right and I'm kind of weird in that way because not not everyone uses Twitter right like if you look at Instagram a lot of people use Instagram YouTube same thing Twitter is a special place like it's good for some people I don't think it's for everyone you

know you know it's you know I think I I tweeted this a while back I said I wonder if there's like any communities like Tech Twitter out there on Twitter that's like as Niche and as like passion as Tech Twitter like is there like a I don't know like monster truck fan I don't know you know what I'm saying like I wonder if there's like this side of Twitter that we don't even know about which is a whole another Community because the way Twitter works and I think Jeremy to to kind of talk about Twitter a little bit I also tell people why I'm curious

to hear your thoughts on this I tell people to not use Twitter a lot especially getting started because it's a lot of work it's a lot of like to really get engagement and to really move the needle you kind of got to be on it all day like like I have it up all day on tweet deck or whatever the version of it is now right and it's like if you're new to Twitter like it is a huge hill to climb to start getting any sort of traction thoughts on that yeah yeah that's that's entirely true and if I was new to Twitter I mean

Twitter is an entirely separate Beast I would say it is and if you're getting started the only thing I would do is spaces honestly really just just just show up to spaces and be engaged and all that stuff that's sh to spaces uh I I would even start hosting spaces but you know again I don't want to spend too much time here on Twitter I about to spend more time with LinkedIn sure I I love that I love that um Jason comes in here as with anything you're putting out to the public that will represent you you should always be done well showing people how

you want to be seen no effort there's no value yeah and and so I mean I tell people like man if I go your LinkedIn profile going back to LinkedIn um if if if I go your LinkedIn profile and and your profile picture is like you're not smiling you look grumpy you maybe look a little disheveled like that's my first impression of you whether you like it or not so like brand is truly built online and when we and when I say brand I just mean reputation right like because people get so caught up with like what's brand what's content like all these things like

at the end of the day your reputation as a person can be and for the most part is built online that's on that yeah okay so I I like where you're going with it okay though you know I like what you said about the grumpy picture thing but again I I you know third hot TI right of the day I love it man my C coming hot this morning I know I don't know maybe I'm just sping it this morning I love it I love it um so a grumpy picture that my actually be a representation of who they are okay so here hear me

out right right sometimes I look grumpy sometimes everyone looks grumpy that's sure I look grumpy this morning fighting his head cold exactly exactly but I don't have a grumpy picture on my profile why is that because that's that's not how I interact with people so I found that I think again you know it's it's a representation of who you are and if someone is like a friendly person they might look grumpy sometimes but they'll say okay how do I want to represent myself how do I want to interact with people in a friendly way so I'm gonna you know choose a friendly picture and that's

that's that's really true and you know I think continuing on this a little bit more it it really comes down to who you are you know if you're if you're a citt person maybe I should Cur here but if you're not a good person that's that's hard to kind of it's hard to lie honestly online and try to kind of misrepresent yourself in a positive way you you got to be a good person like if you're not you know try try to be better it might sound kind of silly but that's really how I think about it I so this thought just came in my

head um especially coming from you when it comes to education stuff the reason why I think everybody should post online is because it's essentially every time you post online it's like essentially giving a mini talk in front of hundreds if not thousands of people y like people don't understand like the way I view con so all right this this is going to go this is going to go completely off the rails here don't get me wrong but you know Wales like what the hell is this guy talking about so whales like big whales like humpback whales so what they do is is they open up

their mouths in the water I can't believe I'm I'm tying in whales to content creation but here we are so what they do is is is they Co the water to get the plank in right and and all the sea and enemies right they they they do that and then they like they you know close their mouths and all of it right I think that's kind of what content is at scale is okay you are your mouth again this is a very weird analogy so bear with me here maybe Med at this point but your mouth is open yeah and you're trying to collect as

many viewers as many people as many eyeballs as you feasibly can right and then what happens after you do it enough you could then start going for the ask right so again I I want to encourage folks today do you like that um I I want to encourage folks today that like literally posting one thought piece a day on LinkedIn and you don't even have to post something you could take an article and just give your thoughts on it and and and that one post could get a thousand 2,000 impressions well arguably that's that argu it depends on how you look at it could be

a th to 2,000 eyeballs people seeing your content which is essentially like giv a really big conference talk right uh so that's that's thought on the whale analogy YK okay uh look we we'll do one last hot take number four here okay um so you you know the the whale analogy I I don't know I don't want to me if it works for you that's cool I was thinking of like boxing analogy like you know jab jab jab yes and then 10 Jabs one strap but I you know maybe people don't want to be beat too so that works analogy is hard so the hot

take is you know you set post your thought piece I think that works for some people you know it it does work for me to you know to some extent but I would say don't for most people okay so that that's a hard take part right okay instead post about what you did like not about your thoughts about your action so what I what I would recommend you know going back to your original question about like how do you get started with content well it's actually really easy on LinkedI n go to a conference or go to an event with like you know 100 tech

people who you know or whichever industry you're in and then post away your experience tag those people tag those 10 people you met you know talk about how how they impacted you Etc you might have zero followers but you still get you know a couple of interactions couple of engagements because you're tagging those specific people so that's like one example of like posting about what you did you know not necessarily what you what you think obviously your thoughts are valuable you know share them if you want but I don't necessarily recommend it for like beginners that makes sense that makes sense I agree I agree

um uh all right so YK as we wrap up here any last final words of wisdom's thoughts uh for folks getting started with content any any words of encouragement okay uh I I'll do one step further with what I what I just said okay with like posting about what you did so again going to a conference going to event that's probably the easiest thing for most people and if you're shy do it you know you can do it any anyone can do it even if you're sh just talk to one person at a time basically um and then on top of that if you can

share about what you've built that's also a good way to share about what you did again you know you can put a little bit of thoughts in that but mostly your action first and then if you wanna you know if you want to go into like more of the community stuff then you can get people together you know like uh like Taylor is doing here right now you know just uh talking to one person at a time on a live stream that's that's a cool way to go about it or you can get multiple people together yeah on you know at an event you know

it could be just like a few people it could even be just two people having coffee and then talk about that experience you know what you learn from that person you know those posts actually tend to seem they they tend to do really well on LinkedIn particular I thi nk there's something about LinkedIn that that prefers that kind of content so I would do that I love that I love that all right YK I I do a little bit of Rapid Fire questions here so four questions sure um it we'll wrap it up here first question um what do you do outside of work for

fun yeah this might sound kind of funny but I like to watch YouTube videos I love it more work um uh any any genre of YouTube videos that is your favorite uh yeah I I like to watch like political videos and sometimes like I I like one piece review videos because I I like one piece I love it that's awesome um second question uh if if if money was the same what would what would you do outside of tech and creating entirely so you have to like you have to leave what you're doing now yeah but money would be the same what would it be

um some something with people probably like you know like you know what we're doing kind of thing like talk show or interviews stuff like that I love is that content yeah still content not what I was looking for but it's fine right I love it well I can tell YK just loves content YouTube content in LinkedIn I love it um uh the third question is is anything that you're reading right now Co in with tinkering with anything that you know from a technical side that you're tinkering with that you're you want to share uh sure so I've been creating a you know a set of

Open Source tools for streamers mostly twitch streamers to begin with and one of them is like a CRM for twitch you know twitch streamers like instead of client you know relationship management it's chatter relationship management I love that that's really cool that's really cool I think I think there's a whole Suite of tools that could that could be built for streamers for sure in this kind of this next Generation Um all right last question YK and I'll let you uh have the rest of your morning um this show is called guidance counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors middle school high school and college but

now as adult so we don't really have a guidance counselor to turn to so I asked this question what would be the biggest piece of career advice you would give your younger self my younger self yeah so if you could talk to YK 10 years ago five years ago what would it be yeah I thought about this question it's kind of triy because I wouldn't necessarily change anything oh but what one thing I would say if I could go back like 15 years is like to practice communication skills more and that that might sound kind of silly like people know how to communicate no they

don't and I didn't either it takes practice that makes sense that makes sense all right y'all well again thank You' all for tuning in this morning we appreciate it YK thank you my friend stay on so I can say bye to you backstage um and again thank You' all for everybody in the comments uh Jason um I appreciate you Chris Jeremy Andrew thank you'all so much youall have a great one tomorrow morning 9:30 a.m.

Central with my dear friend Matt Dolson Matt is a senior project manager at deoe and he's a big on change management how do you get entire organization from going to doing one thing to another thing H how do you unlock that mindset so we're going to talk about that tomorrow so again YK thank you my friend for joining us today um and uh we'll see youall tomorrow at