Ep312: AJ Wilcox – Having a Full-Time Job in 2021 Is Risky

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. This episode is sponsored by a Stotz Academy's online course. How to start building your wealth investing in the stock market. I wrote this course. For those who want to go from feeling frustrated, intimidated or overwhelmed by the stock market to becoming confident and in control of their financial future. Go to my worst investment ever.com slash deals to claim your discount now. Fellow risk takers This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz and I'm here with featured guests. AJ Wilcox. AJ, are you ready to rock?

00:48
So ready?

Andrew Stotz 00:51
I'm excited. And I I really love your energy in your podcasts. And I'm really excited to bring that energy to the audience. So let me introduce you to the audience. AJ is a LinkedIn ads Pro, who founded B to linkedin.com. And LinkedIn ads, a specific ad agency in 2014. He's an official LinkedIn partner, host of the linked in AD show podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, stop this thing right now and go ad LinkedIn ad show podcast. You won't regret it. And he's also managed among the world's largest LinkedIn ad accounts worldwide. He's a ginger, and triathlete. He and his wife live in Utah with their four kids. And get this folks. His company car is a wicked fast Go Kart. Hey, Jay. Can you take a minute and Phil any further tidbits about your life?

Aj Wilcox 01:47
Yeah, sure. I'll dig into the go kart bit. I when I was a little kid, everything. I've always been a fan of cars, and I just wanted to drive. And as a little kid, when your driver's licenses, you know, 510 years away. The closest thing you could get is like, I don't know, maybe a four wheeler or a go kart. And so I would I longed for driving a go kart and owning one. My parents would never let us and we I grew up in Arizona in the hot hot summers. We used to deliver phone books during the summer, if anyone remembers what a phone book is, and I would do it on rollerblades weed. And I saved up all my money the entire summer for this Go Kart, it had twin five horsepower engines, it was just going to make me like the king of the neighborhood. And I go into the dealership with cash in hand, and the sales rep goes, Oh, sorry, we just discontinued that model. due to safety or I don't know something that wasn't all that important. And, and my childhood dreams were crushed. So fast forward a bunch of years, I'm gainfully employed. And I see this just, you know, a racing go kart on the classified ads. And I was like, I know I'm a grown man. But I have to have this. And so I've been dealing with speed machines ever since

Andrew Stotz 02:58
that is very cool. In fact, I saw a 1963 Lincoln Continental, which I particularly liked when I was young for sale about 10 years ago in Thailand. So I bought it at a very reasonable price. And I drove that for 10 years, I enjoyed it very much. And at the beginning of this year, actually, at the end of the 2019, the Thai government changed the regulation about importing antique cars, which basically said you couldn't The result was the value of that car went up significantly. And I had someone come along and offered to buy it at a much higher price than I paid for it. So it was one of my best investment Evers I sold it for before the pandemic hit, it must have been almost like March, you know, maybe February and brought in some cash. So yes, car stories. But I also remember, you know, the one thing the obsession I had as a kid, I you bring me back to this. And I know for the listeners out there, each of us had our little obsession when we were young about what we wanted. For me, it was a mini bike. I wanted a mini bike so bad, and there's no way my parents would let me. So I didn't get a motorcycle until I was 18. But then I felt much like you. I did a little catching up. So now I really want to talk to you just briefly about LinkedIn. Because, you know, I see the value of LinkedIn. I've talked with a lot of people on the show as well as other people. But I feel like for most people, including myself, I'm not exactly sure how to capture that value. I see it. But I'm not exactly sure how to capture the value that I see going on and LinkedIn. So maybe you could just give us a little background about why we should be paying attention number one, and what are maybe some ideas about what we could do. And then finally, for those people who really want to pursue that, how can they follow you and get your knowledge.

Aj Wilcox 04:51
Great. Well, LinkedIn is an incredible network and it's totally flown under the radar properly until recently, like My guess is you as a listener, you've probably heard a lot more about LinkedIn in the last year. You know, all the other platforms, you had Facebook that had this meteoric rise, and now it's Instagram, or Snapchat for a while, and now it's tik tok, as well. All these consumer platforms are gonna continue to rise and fall and, and, you know, grab the public eye and ear, but LinkedIn has always been this kind of quiet hum in the background, it's always done what it's done and done it well, which is connect you to to other professionals, and be that online. Like the business networking arm, for me, for the most part, it was a Rolodex like this is rather than collecting people's business cards, this is how I make sure I keep track of people.

Andrew Stotz 05:44
You know, you use an interesting word there. You refer to all those other platforms as consumer platforms. What do you mean by that?

Aj Wilcox 05:51
I'm more just like, as a kid, like, I break myself into two pieces. I have the consumer AJ, and I have the business man, AJ, the businessman, AJ loves to spend time on LinkedIn, it's how I find prospects. It closes me deals, it connects me to people that, you know, could be business in the future. But consumer AJ loves Twitter. He loves, you know, following deals, sites, and, and car sites and things. So if you're interested in the personal side of things, then the other networks like Facebook, Instagram, those are gonna cater very well to your interests.

Andrew Stotz 06:29
Got it? Yeah, I mean, the feeling I get when I'm scrolling through Instagram versus when I'm scrolling through LinkedIn, it's just a very, it's a different mood. It's a different mindset. So now there are listeners out there is like, Okay, I get it, I love LinkedIn, I'm on it, you know, regularly, I'm checking it, and I'm starting to work it but really, I'm not really getting much out of it. And so maybe you could just give some, some pointers about what are some of the key things that people miss? Or that they could do? And then and then we'll follow it up with kind of what's the best way that people can get in touch with you or follow you or, you know, gain from what you know, and what you're doing?

Aj Wilcox 07:05
Right? Well, there are four ways that we use LinkedIn. The first is you create a profile that represents you, well, this is really your home base. And this will allow you to be found in search. And so you can end up getting a lot of good inbound traffic, just by having a good profile. The next is you can get on and you can share content, the little known kind of dirty secret of LinkedIn, it's like, you know, back in 2013, I think everyone complained about Facebook killing organic reach, when you share stuff on Facebook, now, a few people will see it, someone will hit like, you might get a comment or two. And that's kind of all you can expect from Facebook, unless you're willing to pay. LinkedIn is the total opposite. They use the same algorithm. But whereas Facebook is trying to squash your voice, LinkedIn is trying to promote it. And so because of that, it's the easiest network in the whole world to go viral on. So those who are interested in, you know, basically becoming an influencer, sharing what they know, gaining credibility, LinkedIn is the best place to go and just share stuff, even share the same kinds of stuff that you would on Facebook, and

Andrew Stotz 08:16
you got to stop there. Yeah, just blowing my mind on that. Because, you know, I mean, obviously, everybody talks about YouTube. And I, you know, I see the power of YouTube. And I've been thinking, I really need to rev up my YouTube do more on YouTube and all that. But as you mentioned, I thought, actually, doing all that on LinkedIn is easy enough. And it's also kind of focused in my areas that, you know, people don't expect me to talk on LinkedIn about, you know, something, you know, way off topic, they expect me to be on the topic that, you know, I'm interested in whether that's my worst investment or other things, but it just made me think like, how should someone thinks they haven't really spent time making a YouTube channel and they haven't really spent time starting to share content on on LinkedIn. Of course, you could say, well do both. But you know, hey, we got a limited amount of time. So are you saying that LinkedIn may be a better place to do it, then maybe YouTube or what?

Aj Wilcox 09:13
Yeah, it depends. Because I have videos that have gone very, very well on YouTube, they still bring us tons and tons of leads all the time. So it's hard to kind of choose one or the other. But I will say that any sort of content that you create, let's say you, you create a video on for YouTube that's less than 30 minutes long, you can upload exactly the same thing to LinkedIn and just kind of play double duty there. You can live stream on both platforms. So if you pay for something like restream.io, or you know, one of those kinds of live streaming platforms, you can say I'm going live simultaneously stream to LinkedIn, and YouTube and check Facebook, Instagram, whatever, and you can double those up, but I think I would separate it into two camps. If you are if your product is Very professional focused, then it probably makes sense to spend the majority of your attention and resources on LinkedIn. But if you're in, let's say, a sector where there are very specific keywords that describe what you do, YouTube can be really good. Because when people are searching on Google or searching on YouTube, the two largest search engines in the world, your content will come up. So anyway,

Andrew Stotz 10:27
so in that, like in that way, you could say that LinkedIn is not necessarily a search place. I mean, people aren't, people aren't looking for a lot. They're not searching for things, but what they're looking for interesting things that are coming up in their feed. And Okay, so we've got number one, the profile number two, sharing content, you talked about the ability to go viral, and all that. You said there was four.

Aj Wilcox 10:47
Yes, so number three is the outreach. Because LinkedIn is essentially a public org chart that you can see anyone in any company, as long as it's white color, folks, they are very well represented on LinkedIn. So you're probably going to find them and makes it right for if you're looking to make certain kinds of connections, let's say you're a business that sells software to HR, HR decision makers, then you can fill your network with a whole bunch of HR people who would become your, your future customers. So be thoughtful about who you're reaching out. And connecting with. And number four, and number four is actually my specialty. This is using LinkedIn to advertise. If you've used it the other three ways. And you go, this is working great. This is a lead generation machine, then, by using LinkedIn ads platform, you can really pour gas on that fire and just, you know, really blow it up. Because on LinkedIn, we can say, hey, only show this ad to someone who is in HR with a seniority, who's higher than director at a company with at least 500 people in, you know, this country or North America or whatever. And, and then you can just show just those people ads. So you know, you're not wasting your money on anyone.

Andrew Stotz 12:06
Right, fantastic. Well, wow, I mean, that's a lot of gold. And so if people want to keep learning from you on this, where should they go?

Aj Wilcox 12:15
First of all, subscribe to the podcast. If you're interested at all in LinkedIn ads. It's the LinkedIn ads show. And but if you want to get in touch, and you're not interested in learning a lot more about LinkedIn ads, send a connection request to me on LinkedIn. But just make sure you let me know that you heard me on Andrews show. Because if it doesn't, if the connection request doesn't like, say who you are, if I don't recognize the name, then I'll just throw it away. So you heard me on Andrew show.

Andrew Stotz 12:41
There you go. All right, good. And all the links will be in the show notes, ladies and gentlemen. But now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one ever goes into their worst investment thinking it will be. Tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it. And then tell us your story. Sure, so

Aj Wilcox 12:57
this will be a little bit of a twist. I grew up in a very financially conservative home, my dad worked his entire career in banking, like at the least amount of entrepreneurial you can imagine. My mom was basically stay at home mom. And so I grew up with the concept of I'm going to leave college, I'm going to get a job. And I'm going to work my way up until I'm the CMO or the CEO of something and then worked my way into the fortune 500. That was just what I had in mind. And I've always loved entrepreneurship. In college, I would go to these meetups that were called launch up. And they were all for just talking about startups and how to start things and who's starting what and looking for partners. And I would go to these meetups and because I love the energy, these people are just like they're full of the most, most passion you can imagine. And then every time they'd asked me Okay, so what are you looking to start, I'd always go, Oh, I have a job. I'm not looking to start anything. And so I least likely person in the world to be an entrepreneur. So long story short, I'm, I'm in digital marketing, I really fell in love with search engine optimization, and then Google ads. And then at the last company I was with, on the very first day, I'm talking to the CMO, and I'm laying out all of my marketing strategies on the first day, I don't want to look stupid, and she goes, Okay, all that sounds great. Go ahead and execute it. But just see what you can do with this pilot of LinkedIn ads that we started two weeks ago. So I not wanting to disappoint. I jumped into this platform called LinkedIn ads that I'd never heard of before. And lo and behold, about two weeks later, a sales rep came up and introduced himself saying, AJ, we are fighting over your leads, whatever you're doing, keep it up. And I went, Okay, what are you talking about? I looked through the leads, looked at their source and every single one of them was from LinkedIn ads. And I was like, blown away because this is not the only marketing channel I was doing. I was doing a lot of other stuff to add So long story short, kept investing, kept investing kept growing that until it became actually Lincoln's largest spending account worldwide. And after running that, for about two and a half years, I went, this is incredible. And, you know, there's really something to this platform that no one even knows exists. And then one Friday, my boss walked me into the HR office and told me I was being let go. And this was my big loss. Because, you know, I had, at the time, a wife at home with three kids and one on the way, and I just, as someone who had no entrepreneurial imaginings at all, didn't think I had the guts for it, I was told that I don't get to be a breadwinner anymore. And so I go home and talk to my wife and I and explain what your wife say. She said, go get a job, like, go go get another job. And I went, Okay, cool. So I went and interviewed for jobs. I ended up with four offers within the first couple weeks, and two of them were for way more money than I'd ever made before. And I was like, This is amazing. So I know, this is not a religious podcast. But my wife and I weren't very religious, we pray about every big decision. And I remember getting a very specific answer. When I prayed about each one of these jobs. I got a note, turn it down. Nope, turn it down, was really painful. It turned down those ones that were offering me so much more than I thought I was worth at the time. And out of desperation in prayer, I was like, Well, what about this idea? I've had in the back of my mind, like, I know more about LinkedIn ads than anyone else on the planet from running the biggest account. I don't see people talking about that. Maybe I could start a specific consultancy or agency? And the answer I got was, yep, that's what you're supposed to be doing pursue that. And so as the least likely to become an entrepreneur, but my wife and I discussed it and said, Okay, we're big Savers, we've got 11 months of runway saved up in the bank account, we can try this. And if we get six months down the road, and it's not looking good, we can always, you know, go get another job. And so we worked through that. And there's lots of lots of additional stories of loss and scarcity and just fear when you're trying to get that going. But after about five months of running the company, we had totally recovered my salary from the previous job. And that was when I got to finally breathe a sigh of relief and say, this is gonna work, like, make a business out of this.

Andrew Stotz 17:30
So can you remember the feeling you had when you walked into that office? And they, you know, like, did you know something was going to be happening? Was it completely out of the blue? And then what did they say, you know, is this like a, you know, that's it? Or how did that moment go?

Aj Wilcox 17:47
Oh, it was so disheartening, because it doesn't matter what you're being let go for. It could be you made a giant mistake, it could be the company is just in financial struggles, it doesn't matter, it still feels like the biggest slap in the face you can get, you could be an amazing performer. And getting laid off still makes you feel like garbage. And I just,

Andrew Stotz 18:07
I just feel I mean, I just had like this wave of tears hit me. Because I know the feeling. I mean, I've been fired. I've been forced to quit, I've quit. I've gone through a lot of those things over the years. And it can shake you to the core. And one of the things that's I think interesting about your story is that that's what's happening to so many people right now. Oh, they know it's coming. And sometimes they don't know it's coming. But every business is struggling to you know, try to survive, basically. And so, you know, I think that first thing I would like to say for the listeners out there is that when you go into that, you know, that meeting, when you get that news, it may feel like it's the end. But I just want to tell a particular story. In my case, where I had a great job. And I was I got my team ranked as number two in Thailand. And we were on to number one, everything was going well. And I was ranked as number two analysts in Thailand, this was many years ago. And one day, my boss came from Hong Kong sat down with me and said, I want you to resign. And as my good friend in Ohio, I grew up and said, he said you got quit. I wasn't fired. And I didn't. It wasn't like I walked in and said I want to quit I got quit. And basically he had his way of you know, getting me to do that. And I walked out of that and I thought my career's over. And it was a painful time I went to be with my best friend Dale here and, you know, he's like, you're gonna be okay. You don't worry about I'm like, No, this is you know, this is the end. You know, and I tell this story, because I know there's people out there that are facing that, but I just wanted to relate the other aspect of that story, and that is that a couple of days after that, I got a phone call. From a woman who said, Could you meet me for lunch? And I said, Sure. And so I met this woman. Turns out that, you know, she had known her son had known me through my work, he highly recommended me to her. She had a particular project that she needed something done on, I had some time. And basically, in five months, I've made more than I ever made, you know, in, in that past job, and then, in that five months, I learned so much, I made a lot of money. But I also, at the end of that five months, the number one, company, number one broker in Thailand, called me and said, Why don't you come work for us. So I got the job at the number one broker, and then I became my team became number one ranked, and I became the number one ranked analyst after that. So I think that, you know, the lesson is, is it can be very painful. And it can be also shameful. And I know, for me, I've come to kind of a conclusion that, particularly for men, I can't speak for women, because I know nothing about women. But anyways, I can speak for myself as a man is that when you lose your livelihood, it really impacts your confidence.

21:09
100%.

Andrew Stotz 21:11
So let's talk about you know, I, I want to hear you know more about the success that you had after that, but I'd love to just talk about what are the lessons that you learn, you know, during that time, and, and maybe we could just go through those so that I want to think about it in terms of that man or woman today, who has just lost their job or know what's coming.

Aj Wilcox 21:34
What I want to share with you is, like I said, No, I had no inkling of wanting to ever run my own business, I didn't think I had what it takes. And when I got laid off, I suddenly realized the path that I thought was, quote, unquote, safe, when you know, it's this, like, get a job in a company and get a steady paycheck. That's the most risky way to be, because I can't get fired from my own company, but I can sure, like, you know, we as employees are expected to give a two weeks notice, but an employer of we just cut people on the spot. And you know, it's very, very unequal that way. No, I, the biggest learning I had from it is like, hey, going out on your own, less risky than you thought. And the other one was, in my work, I just had back to back meetings, and it was just, you know, very heavy corporate kind of environment. Not fun. And when I all of a sudden got to manage my own calendar, and if I wanted to take a trip or a vacation or something, I blocked my calendar off, and I go, the freedom of managing your own calendar and your own life is the grass was so much greener on the other side. And before I took that leap, I had no idea how sweet it was.

Andrew Stotz 22:52
Hmm. So let me share a few things that I take away from that. The, you know, the first thing I think for the listeners out there in particular is that he left this job with a very clear skill set. And that skill set was an ability to help companies generate more revenue, through ads. And that is a skill set that's always wanted. Every company wants to get more business, and they're willing, they have an advertising budget. And so that's, you know, it just so happened that your skill was in an area. Now if your skill was wood carving, and nobody wants wood carving right now, it doesn't mean that, you know, if you go and quit your job and say I'm going to set up a wood carving business, it doesn't mean you're going to fail. But you have to accept it. Some industries, some jobs, some things are just more easy to sell than others, I would say that's my first kind of takeaway. And so when you go to start up your own company, think about it. But also, I think the other lesson from this is the critical nature of sales. If you're going to start up a business, make sure you get your customers fast. And I think most people don't do that. They think about their product, they think about the service, they think about the brand and all that get your customers. And the last takeaway is I'm gonna draw a corollary and in the course, one of the courses that I teach, which is how to start building your wealth investing in the stock market, a lot of people come to me and they say, Look, I'm low risk, I just put my money in the bank. You know, I just can't bear the risk. And what most people don't understand is there's something called shortfall risk. And that is that at the time that you want to retire, you're not gonna have enough money because the money in the bank didn't grow. So a lot of times we see it as the safest thing, but actually, there's risk involved with everything. And so you were talking about how a job these days is a, you know, is a high risk thing. And I compare that to your father and my father who worked for DuPont all of his life. One not one job, one Career Builder. career out of that. It just isn't that way anymore. So those are some of the things I would take away anything you'd add.

Aj Wilcox 25:06
The other thing I'd add is, is because you mentioned sales specifically, this is a hot button for me. When, like, I've had no sales experience, I'm terrible. I've never convinced anyone to do anything. So when I went and started my own company, I went, Okay, how do I get those customers? I don't really

Andrew Stotz 25:26
timeout, you got to explain that. Because you were creating ads and doing marketing and other people were actually selling. So now that we think about the separation of those two, now I understand what you're saying I didn't really, you know, you weren't really selling things. You were teeing up the sale?

Aj Wilcox 25:44
Yeah, yeah, I was really good at supporting sales. But being the person who calls someone up and follows up and tries to close the deal like that was never made. Every time I try to convince someone of something, I feel like I need to, like take a shower, I feel like a used car salesman that just like being Weasley. And so that was tough for me like, but when you run your own company, you are operations and finance and sales and marketing. And so what I told myself is okay, I don't know, sales, but what I do know is marketing. And I know if I just go and provide value, that value will come back, I may not be able to close those deals when they come but provide enough value to the world, someone's gonna come back and want your help. And sure enough to this day, I'm the crappiest sales guy that ever lived. But you know, I keep the team super busy. And it's, it's a well run company up to this point, you know, I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. But that was because I just stopped to add value.

Andrew Stotz 26:50
That's a great lesson. So based upon what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Aj Wilcox 27:00
If you are anything like me, and maybe you have these dreams of becoming an entrepreneur, but you don't know, if you can do it, you don't know if you should take the leap. I wouldn't have been able to do it. Like I know for sure if I wouldn't have gotten canned from somewhere that that was the motivation, I needed to actually start this thing. So I'm so glad I did. But if you're in that camp, my recommendation to you because this works so well. For me, I went and got a skill, I got paid to learn a skill and become the best in the world at it. And so don't be afraid to go and work for someone else get paid to train. But just make sure that you are hungry, and you are trying to develop some niche skill that makes you the best in the world at something. Because whatever that one thing is I guarantee it's marketable, you can build a business out of being the best in the world at whatever. Hmm.

Andrew Stotz 27:54
All right, so last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months? Oh,

Aj Wilcox 27:59
so so much. I mentioned that I'm a crappy sales guy I'm actually bringing on a sales team to help me out. And so my goal in the next 12 months is essentially get all of sales and all of operations off of my plate. So I can do the stuff that I really want to do, which is a lot of ad testing, and a lot of data analysis and publishing and speaking that's what I want to do.

Andrew Stotz 28:24
Fantastic. Well, listeners, there you have it another story of laws to keep you winning. Remember to go to my worst investment ever.com slash deals to claim your discount on my how to start building your wealth investing in the stock market course. As we conclude, AJ, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever, into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Aj Wilcox 28:52
Oh, just whatever your I don't want to say of the Oprah line that's like whatever your passion is chase it, because some passions are not going to be monetizable. But be thinking of opportunities that could take you into something that's marketable. Even if you don't have a pension to go and run your own thing, start a side hustle, find ways of continuing to grow. Because the side hustles while I was like early on in my career, those were the things that primed me for being able to run my own company. And it caused me to learn faster, so I got promoted faster. You can never go wrong with being hungry and wanting to learn.

Andrew Stotz 29:34
Beautiful, and that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and most importantly protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying I'll see you on the upside.