How Brian Landed A Digital Marketing Job At 59 Years Old

What's happening, guys? It's Shane here, and in today's video, I'm going to be interviewing someone who was actually able to get a job in digital marketing at 59 years old. I really think you're going to enjoy this interview. Definitely gently tap that like button and let's jump into it. Brian, thank you so much for coming on the channel. I am super, super excited to do this interview with you today. My pleasure, Shane. Glad that we got to chat, have our conversation. As you said, I am new to the world of digital marketing. I am 59 years old. I've had a lifetime of careers. I have worked over 40 years of my life, which is much older than probably many of your viewers have even been alive. I've had big careers. I've been in jobs over 20 years, but now I'm getting older. My kids graduated from high school. I've got an empty nest here at home. Just wanted to try and take a pivot. The job that I was in previously, I was actually a general manager of an airport here where I live, and being a general manager of an airport was a 24-7 kind of business. The planes land all day and all night. The calls could come any time of day. The texts could come any time of day. The perk of working for an airline is you can travel for free, which was a great perk, but that meant I could be in Colorado or Florida or wherever, and I'd still get the texts and the phone calls. You're just never off, truly. I wanted a change. Every time the text would come at midnight, I would say to myself, I've got to do something different. I was there for a number of years, and I just wanted to slow down. I just started looking at what is out there that I can work on my own. I can learn it online, and I can use my skills to leave this business. That's what I did. Got it. Well, first of all, the first thing I want to say is I think a lot of our viewers are going to want to know what your skincare routine is because you definitely don't look 59. You look great for your age. I just wanted to say that right off the bat. Very kind of you to say. I was telling you earlier is when I get done with my day, I go out and walk, and I probably should use more suntan lotion because this is just the sun on me, so that's my skincare routine. Just going out and living life is the skincare routine. Okay, fair enough. Hey, that helps. I think that really relieves stress, just taking a nice walk, getting out in nature, getting some exercise. That's definitely a big part of it for sure. And then the second part is you decided to pivot into a different career, digital marketing, and you didn't have to. You already had a very successful career, but you decided to go into digital marketing because you saw so much opportunity in it. Why did you make that decision, and also how did you discover digital marketing? So I actually have a friend who is very successful in the online world, and he does affiliate marketing, and he sells courses and all. I saw how successful he was doing that, and he was always suggesting that I should get into some sort of online business, but I didn't feel comfortable going into it without knowing the back end of it. So I figured my best route to being able to someday try maybe affiliate marketing or some kind of online business would be to learn digital marketing so I can at least know what's going on. I don't want to go in naively if I'm going to try and do my own business. So I started looking online for courses that might be available. I thought about a boot camp. I thought about maybe going back to school. Everything's kind of expensive when you're shopping for digital marketing classes. I'd say thousands of dollars, if not more, and if I was to go back to school, you know, could easily go into the thousands by the time I took all their courses. So I did what everybody does. I did a Google search, best online digital marketing courses, and somehow I stumbled onto one that listed, I don't know, five or ten of them, and at the top, they put Seth Jared's digital marketing boot camp. And I don't know, for some reason, the testimonial that the person gave resonated with me, so I thought, well, let me do some more research. I went onto YouTube, and I went to online and just looked for different testimonials, and everything looked pretty positive. The price of the course was very reasonable, so in January of this year, I thought, let me give it a shot. And so I was still working at the time, but I decided I'm going to try this course, and I'll do it like an hour a day. And, you know, I worked on the course maybe from January till April, so three months, give or take. But the results that I got were fantastic. The course itself, I thought, was very good. It starts with the basics. It gives you all the building blocks, you know, what is digital marketing, and then talks about the different versions of digital marketing that you can do, which are, you know, pay-per-click or search engine optimization, social media marketing, everything that you could do. But what I liked about it is it explains everything, but then there's also a learn-by-doing component. One of the reasons why I chose Seth's course was because I felt that it would take me from zero to a job. I know I can go online. I can go on YouTube. I can watch courses, how to do digital marketing, or I could go to, you know, like I said, I could take another course. But what Seth seemed to guarantee, and guarantee is probably a hard word, but I watched so many of the testimonial videos that he has on YouTube that I felt comfortable saying that, that by the time when I was done, he would help me get a job. And so the exercises that he has us do, we put together a spreadsheet, we build our own website, we run an ad campaign. All those things count as experience. And when you're eventually going for a job and talking to people who are going to hire you, you can say that you actually did all that stuff, and it's legit. And that was what got me my first job, was when I could show the template of the ad campaign that I ran. People were very impressed, and they took a shot on me. It was, in the end, it was super easy. It was a great experience taking the course. Got it, yeah. And I'll just kind of comment on that a little bit. Most of the digital marketing courses online, you know, especially the ones that are, you know, you see on Udemy or other places like that, they teach you all this stuff. And, you know, it might even be digital marketing professionals teaching you, people who've been in it for 10 years, you know, 15 years. And so they really know their stuff. But the problem is, is they don't teach you what you need to know to get a job. And that's actually the biggest mistake I see with people making courses these days, to teach people to get a job, is they actually try to teach you too much. And when you try to teach someone everything, they'll end up learning nothing, right? Because they really, a lot of this that they know, they learned on the job. They learned by applying it. And there's no way that you're just going to be able to kind of like tell somebody how to do this. And they just like memorize everything you say without any actual reference experience. And that's why Seth's course just, that's one of the reasons for sure why Seth's course just does so much better than anything else out there. You know, and the only other ones that even claim to get you a job are typically like boot camps. And some of those costs like $15,000. So very, very expensive. And you know, Seth's course is, you know, extremely reasonably priced for what it actually offers to give you. So I'm glad you brought that up, because I kind of did want to mention that a little bit. So how long did it take you to get a job after you were able to finish the course, approximately? All right. So my experience, don't take my experience as a typical graduate from Seth's course. But so let's say Monday, May 1st, or whatever it was, I started, I had finished all my exercises. Let me go back one step, too, is I just want to say that in addition to the exercises, then he also helped me with my cover letter and my resume, too. And he, you know, he has customized templates for the resume. And I put together one that was a digital marketing resume. And it's almost kind of weird for me to see that that was, you know, wasn't my specialty, considering I have 40 years of other job experience. But, you know, I have a digital marketing resume now. So let's say the first I started looking for jobs, it's a Monday, I sent out four resumes. On Tuesday, I heard back from a company. She said, we're interested. And she sounded almost kind of desperate. And I said, well, I'm going away next week, I was leaving for Croatia for a week. So there was a sense of urgency, she said, well, can you interview right away? And I was like, well, okay. So Wednesday, I had my first interview. It went well. That was, I guess, the screening interview. She said, I talked to her afterwards, she said, that went great. Can you interview again, Thursday and Friday? And so I said, sure. Thursday, interviewed with two people. Friday, interviewed with the top boss lady. All the interviews were great. The people I interviewed were very friendly. I'll make a shout out to people in the digital marketing world. It seems to attract really nice, kind people who want to help you. And that was my total experience. So Friday, I had my last interview. Saturday, we flew off to Croatia. On Monday, I was at a hotel in Dubrovnik, and I got a phone call offering me the position. So from start to finish, it took me one week to land a job. And maybe I sent out 15 resumes because I kept on sending them, not assuming I was going to land this job. But I probably heard back from maybe two or three of the 15 that I sent out saying if I would want to interview. I never interviewed with anybody else, just this one company who now I started working for them at the end of May. I've been there for about four months. I got my first raise just today. So after four months, and I expect, the way Seth promotes the course, after six months, you're almost a veteran in digital marketing. And then maybe you look for your second job, and then you keep leveling up. I started at the bottom. But there's that saying that I'd rather be on the bottom of a ladder that I want to be on rather than the middle or top of a ladder that I don't want to be on, which the last job I was in, I really didn't want to be there anymore. So now I'm very happy at the I probably show up in maybe 20, 25 searches a week. I get hit up by recruiters maybe about once a week or so. I've only been doing this for three or four months. Would you say you're like an especially technically savvy type person? Were you like a programmer in your past who knows a lot about computers or anything like that? No, I'm, let's say, internet interested. Like I've always liked the internet. I like to surf on the internet. I like to watch videos on the internet. That's kind of where I land. You know, I've never coded before. Like I said, I wish they had, Seth had suggested to do like a Squarespace website where you just drag and drop. But, you know, we had to do, we didn't have to, but the website I put together was a WordPress website. And it was, there's a little bit of coding involved. And I had to ask a lot of questions. But, you know, you just keep pushing forward. And eventually I got it done. But I ask a lot of questions. And then with anything else that we have to do, it's like as a 59 year old, my memory isn't what it used to be. So I just don't remember stuff. But I write it down. And then, like I said, I can follow the directions. I can follow the instructions. For me, one of the biggest challenges was I've never worked at home before. So now this is a completely remote job. I can see the benefits to going to an office because it would probably be easier for me to learn just being with the people like sitting next to him and all. But Zoom came along and online meetings are here. You know, this is the new world we live in. It's been a great fit. And I'm really happy that I made the pivot to digital marketing. Really happy that I found the course. Awesome. And what would you say just typically what would people expect in an entry level kind of digital marketing job? So mine may not be typical because I do both SEO and PPC. Generally speaking, most people do one or the other. They tend to specialize. But so I started off with 10 accounts. They each have a budget, you know, maybe a couple hundred, couple thousand dollars each. You build ad campaigns for them. You monitor the campaigns to make sure that they're hitting the spends that the company wants to invest each month. On the SEO side, you pretty much run it through programs that tell you what's working or what's not working. They give you suggestions on how you can improve what you have written on the websites. You know, it's a lot of trying things, seeing if things will work, but not being afraid to break something. Would you say that the skills that you're learning and especially I would say maybe maybe like a younger person is watching this, like the skills that they would be learning if they got into digital marketing would be valuable for them throughout their lifetime? Absolutely. Unless the Internet somehow goes away, I think, you know, this is where we're going to be as far as marketing is concerned. I think digital really just means the Internet. So from now on, whenever you want to buy anything, whenever you want to show your products, I mean, they're always going to be online. They're always going to be on the Internet. For even somebody who wants to get into affiliate marketing or opening an online business, you know, knowing how to do the actual nuts and bolts advertising to or promoting the product that you learn when you're doing digital marketing, that would be awesome. The other thing, too, is, you know, as an older person, I'm much closer to the end of my career than the beginning, but I'm not really good at not doing anything. So I prefer, hopefully, to never retire. So I wanted to pivot into this career because I think it gives me the opportunity to work a little bit, work a lot. I can work on my laptop. I can take it anywhere I want to go. I recently was traveling. I didn't take any PTO. I just brought my laptop with me, just watched my accounts while I was out there, took a couple of Zoom meetings. But, you know, I have the complete flexibility that I'm not chained to a desk anymore. So I think I'm setting myself up for the future that, you know, I'll be able to do this. You know, it's an easy job. I'm not out in the sun. I'm not. It's not a high stress job and it pays very well. So, you know, I don't have to work at Home Depot or, you know, whatever else it is that the old people do when they quote unquote retire. Got it. And personality wise, would you say that there's a certain type of personality that does better in digital marketing or do you think that there's kind of like a lane for just about every personality type out there, whether it's introverted, extroverted, whether they're artistic or analytical? Would you say that there's kind of a, you know, some sort of digital marketing position that would fit them? For sure. Believe it or not, I consider myself an introvert. I'm not shy, but I am introverted in the sense that when I have when I'm at a party or something like that and that energy drains me, I need after I'm done, I need to go and recharge somewhere. Whereas I married an extrovert who can't wait to be around people and gets charged from that. I see digital marketing that like if you don't want to talk to anybody, you never have to. I mean, you can just stay at your laptop and be totally, perfectly comfortable. However, if you want to be an extrovert, there's plenty of opportunities to have those conversations. And then artistic wise, especially on the SEO side, there's a lot of room for creativity, even on the pay-per-click side. You know, math wise, there's plenty of opportunities to use that side of your brain because you need to deal with money and you need to work on percentages. You know, you're looking at how well things perform and, how much things cost as far as the cost per click and how quickly things are converting or how often they're converting. So you're always kind of paying attention to math that way in a dollar kind of way. But yeah, totally open to, I mean, it seems like such a general answer, but I don't think there's anybody who wouldn't do well in a digital marketing world. Like there's just so many different paths to take. And if, you know, if you wanted to pigeonhole yourself, you certainly could. They're all there for you though. There's tons, tons of opportunity. Yeah, that's exactly what I found as well, for sure, for sure. I've kind of found that. And by the way, for anybody listening, if you are interested in digital marketing and you want to learn more about the different types of digital marketing, because there's like five or six different major types, definitely check out Seth's free masterclass, which I will put down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. He really does a good job kind of breaking that down. And I think it'll help you figure out whether it's a good fit for you as well. So definitely check that out. Well, I know you're busy and I definitely do want to pick your brain more, but I think I'll let you go for now. But thank you so much for coming on the channel. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you, Shane. Best of luck to you and all your viewers.