017: How to Build a Personal Brand and Coaching Business While in Tech

Adam Broda (00:00:00) - I try to keep everything in perspective and also try to make decisions with some element of risk management involved. If I can take a couple of years to kind of scale up those income streams and grow them over time, like that's absolutely the version of the roadmap I want to take. I'm not trying to be a mega millionaire. Very happy with the way that my lifestyle is in its current state. I'm really happy with the balance that I've struck and where my time goes day to day and week to week. I don't need a lot of things to change right now because I don't know how much additional contentment or satisfaction or quote unquote happiness it buys me.

Christopher Nelson (00:00:38) - Hello and welcome to Tech Careers and Money Talk. I am your host, Christopher Nelson. I've been in the tech industry for 20 plus years and after climbing my way to the C-suite, working for three companies that have been through an IPO and investing my way to financial independence, I'm here to share with you everything that I've learned and also introduce you to people along the way that can help you on this journey.

Christopher Nelson (00:01:01) - Figuring out career and money and how it all works together is difficult, but there's other people that have done really, really cool things. And today we're going to talk to Adam Broda. Adam is a senior product manager at a big tech firm. He also runs an established coaching company helping people in non-tech careers get into tech. He built this coaching business while working full time, and he's going to explain today how he did it, how he also got his employer involved. And to agree to this and also what are his experiences and what he's learned along the way. I'm excited to share this with you today. Let's dig in and talk to Adam. Welcome to this week's episode of Tech Careers and Money Talk. I am super excited to introduce everybody to Adam Broda. Adam Broda is a legend on LinkedIn. If you don't know him and yes, you are a legend and he's a senior product manager in big tech, works in tech like many of us, and he also has a very established coaching business, proto coaching, where he helps people, professionals in non-technical careers start working for big tech.

Christopher Nelson (00:02:13) - And so it's a great story of somebody who is building medical products by night or by day and then helping people get into tech by night. Welcome to the show, Adam.

Adam Broda (00:02:26) - Thank you. Yeah. Happy to be here. You made me sound like Batman somehow, which gets me even more excited to do this podcast, but yeah. Happy You're happy to be on.

Christopher Nelson (00:02:36) - Yeah, well, I think that you are. I think that, you know, people in, you know, tech tech employees, we work so hard and you know, having people that can give us, I think career advice to lean into us from lessons learned is so important. So, you know, you and some other people that I've interviewed, I do think that you are heroes in the community because you're leaning in and you're helping out. So thank you for that.

Adam Broda (00:03:00) - No problem. Yeah. Happy to do it.

Christopher Nelson (00:03:02) - So let's talk, though. So you started your career as an aerospace engineer, and I'm assuming that you're happy you're building airplanes, and then at some point you said, wait a second, I want to go to work for big tech.

Christopher Nelson (00:03:17) - Help us understand a little bit of that origin story.

Adam Broda (00:03:20) - Yeah. I guess, to give a full perspective. It all started with my parents, my parents and my whole family is a very technical kind of engineering problem solving type of family. My dad was a welding engineer, mom was a technical designer. Brothers are engineers and in aerospace. So yeah, I went to school. My undergraduate was in mechanical engineering. It was actually going to be an architecture. But my dad, being the wise person that he was, said, you will regret that for whatever reason. And you know, I like to work with my hands. So that made a lot of sense. But yeah, I went to Boeing. I was actually a tool engineer, which was the first job that I had. Um, and I would say that, yeah, I loved the work. The work was fantastic. Designing things, building equipment. The job at Boeing got more interesting as I went along, just working on really large robotic systems.

Adam Broda (00:04:20) - Um, there's things that that company can do that I firmly believe you can't do anywhere else in the world. And my time there was great and I loved what I did. But yeah, like 2019 hit, um, my wife and I had our first child in November and I went out on maternity leave for a couple of months. And if you know anything about that period of time. Yeah. Then, like a few months that I was out, the world basically decided to light its air on fire. And yeah, so Covid happened. Boeing had, you know some, some aerospace incidents with the 737 which was their biggest cash cow. They fired their CEO. Um, and, and yeah, by the time I came back to work, uh, you know, there was, there was some writing on the wall that, hey, there might be a downturn or a reduction in force because, you know, we're not, we're not selling these planes. Also, even if we were selling them, no one's traveling right now.

Adam Broda (00:05:14) - Um, at the time I was, I was, you know, I was a senior manager of production engineering for this, this new startup called Boeing Additive Manufacturing. So we were 3D printing, satellite parts and plane parts and doing a lot of really cool material science work. And I was down in Auburn, Washington, which is about an hour-ish south of Seattle, and I had a pretty long commute. So I had talked with my boss before the baby. I said, Hey, when I come back, I'm going to try to get a different job that allows me to move closer to my house. And they were all good with that. When I came back after the break, that option was gone. That was no longer a possibility. So everybody's job was pretty much what it was. And and again, you know, there was a reduction in force that was kind of coming. So I started, let's, let's say networking for other jobs while I was on maternity leave and then kind of made some final decisions actually when I came back and confirmed some things.

Adam Broda (00:06:13) - So yeah, started the process of kind of thinking about like, man, you know, this is a pretty major pivot for me. I've been doing this, this Boeing job for eight years. I've had really good success here. I love the work. People are great. But you know, what do I really want out of life? I've just kind of been working towards this, like, chief engineering position that I don't really even know if I want to do, just that's what people tell me to do, right? I got, you know, you build your community up and you surround yourself with mentors and other people and that's kind of what had been pumped into my head. And that three month break, especially after having a baby, you know, like your whole world is changing at that point. So that was a really good time to reflect and just kind of say like, okay, like, what do I actually want? What do I want in five years? What I want ten years out to look like, what do I want? You know, my relationships with my kids look like and even like, what? What do I want my relationship with work to look like? So I started the process of designing my own career transition strategy and, you know, tried to take it from an opposite perspective of what if I designed a career around my ideal lifestyle as opposed to designing an ideal career and then kind of letting your lifestyle be whatever the career dictates.

Adam Broda (00:07:23) - And that worked really well. That kind of led me to a pretty flexible job in a high paying industry that was working on really interesting technical problems. And that's kind of where my eyes started to shift to. Big Tech had a lot of people that I had, you know, worked for or worked with that had transitioned to tech companies in the Seattle area. Obviously, Seattle is a huge tech hub. But yeah, started some of those conversations, put a, you know, a career roadmap together for myself and then started getting the opportunity to interview for a couple of different positions. So that's kind of how the process of getting into big tech started. The other thing I'd say is that simultaneously, while that was happening and think this is a question you're going to ask, so maybe I'll just go right into it, Is it was it was that period of time where was like, hey, you know, I, I feel pretty confident about my ability to change jobs. I feel pretty confident about my ability.

Adam Broda (00:08:20) - To explain the job search process because I've been a hiring manager for at that point, you know, six, six, seven years, um, built 3 or 4 teams from the ground up and could speak to a lot of those processes and, and then, yeah, my actual personal transition, obviously I was well networked. Not everybody's going to have what I had, but um, felt like I could figure out how to teach people the processes that I used in the, you know, again, kind of this mentality of designing your lifestyle first and then let the career options kind of trickle through that. But yeah, that's, that's the same time where I started to think about coaching. So I started coaching in February.

Christopher Nelson (00:08:59) - I'm gonna pause you right there. Let me pause you right there because I want to go back and I want to tease you because there's a few turns that you made a decision to take that I don't think many people take. And I want to try and see if we can go back in the story a little bit.

Christopher Nelson (00:09:16) - Rewind, because we'll get to better coaching. Trust me, I want to get to you. You had this moment. You're at home, you're reflecting. And what I heard because I'd been in a similar situation. You're surrounded by mentors. Your mentors are saying you want to get to chief engineer, like this is the Holy Grail. And you can see it. You can feel it. Now you're at home and you have this soft, warm, beautiful baby and you're like, wait a second. Is the chief engineer going to give me more time with her or am I going to be chained to this row? Like I want to understand, where were you getting these influences that said that that was okay? Because many of us stay locked in. And I know for myself and you know, I'll show you that story in a second, but I mean, I was locked in with that, and I didn't realize that I didn't want the role until I got the role.

Adam Broda (00:10:10) - Yeah, fantastic question. Um, and again, feel free to keep pausing me and retroactively asking these details.

Adam Broda (00:10:18) - This is great. So I would say that again, like my time at Boeing was, was really good. I took a lot of, let's call it accelerated leadership development programs that were either nominated for or kind of pushed into. And I did as many of the things as I could to kind of move up the ladder very quickly. I knew in a very short period of time at Boeing that I wanted people in leadership roles. I didn't necessarily want to be the CEO. I just wanted to manage teams, right. Um, I just love working with teams and as a coach of athletics and, you know, of things of that nature, I've kind of just learned some of those skills and that's what I wanted to do. So they helped me and they, being the company, helped me find people that could teach me about how to do those jobs well and create those opportunities for myself and even how to push myself in terms of thinking bigger and broader with basically my career progression.

Adam Broda (00:11:16) - But for such a long period of time, like you said, you kind of get locked in like this, you know, I need to promote, I need to move up, I need to make more money. I need to, you know, you know, scale and essentially be a better version of myself all the time. And I think the confusion is just that you start to think about the better version of yourself as the company's version and not necessarily your own version. So, yes, it's not like that is something that I never processed, right? I typically do like my wife and I have this habit of doing, you know, like year end reflection and goals prior to going into a new year. So those are things that had come up in the past. But this was just such a unique time because, you know, November, December, January, as we were kind of doing that with a child, a lot of the focus in the discussion was like, man, how do we get more flexibility? How do we get more time freedom? You know, I'm doing this crazy long commute.

Adam Broda (00:12:18) - The job is great, but it's like a 10 to 12 hour a day job plus the drive and, wow, you know, I'm looking up and, you know, at the leadership team, you know, chain or team above me at that company and the people are fantastic. But like I wouldn't say or I wouldn't have characterized anybody as like. Overtly happy with their personal life. You know what I mean? Like. So as you start to get to that level of realization, it becomes less attractive. If it does, that's what you want.

Christopher Nelson (00:12:49) - Well, and no, I think that well, and this is one of the things that I think it's so important for people to understand is that, like, I like you was surrounded with great mentors that said, okay, here's what you want to do next. Here's what you want to do next. And I kept listening, being coached, moving forward, getting the accolades, you know, and then you know, and I love to your point, what I was doing because I was building and running teams making impact in tech companies.

Christopher Nelson (00:13:15) - But then you start looking at like you start dissecting their lives and you're like, wait a second. Like, do they get to do that? Were they at the game when their kids? No, we were in the meeting and they said they had to miss it. You start going, Wait a second, do I want that? And I think that there is more of that out there where people are trying. People are realizing like, I can make different choices. And that's one of the things that I heard from your story is that you realized, okay, wait, I actually have skills and abilities that I know are transferable to other industries. I have an intrinsic value that I can trade for money, but I want to try and figure out a way to get more flexibility, get more time freedom in trade than for somewhere else. And that was one of the big things that said go to big tech.

Adam Broda (00:14:09) - Yeah, I think so. The first thing that I kind of just described, right, like looking up and kind of realizing that maybe that's not the lifestyle you want is one component.

Adam Broda (00:14:19) - But then exactly to what you alluded to, the second component was just the financial side of the discussion. Right. Um, you know, I was making this would have been like, yeah, 2019 I think I was making something like 170 5KA year and there were some, there were some incentives on top of that in bonuses and things of that nature. But that's a fantastic salary. Like I don't, don't take this as a negative. Yeah, yeah. No, I was very, very happy with that amount of money and the lifestyle that it afforded. But at the same time, we were, you know, we were thinking about homeownership and a bunch of other things and just kind of thinking like, Man, okay, you know, I'm making this right now. This is what directors and executives make and this is what vice presidents make. And like the differences are they're subtle, but they're not massive. And the, you know, this pathway that I want to get on to the point where I'm buying my time back right through some other avenue or business venture where I'm buying assets or buying businesses.

Adam Broda (00:15:21) - And it just moves so much slower at that pace versus in some of these other industries. And I had a lot of friends and mentors, ex managers that had left and moved on and had kind of reached out retroactively and be like, Hey, Adam, like there's some serious money over here that you are missing out on, right? Like, like, like senior level people making what executives are making at other firms and. That's right. So that yeah, that's kind of the other big component of it. It was okay well you know maybe if I go there and. You know, the company performs well, but just because equity is such a big part of the total compensation packages in big tech. But, you know, at the time it was doing great. Um, maybe I can get to that time freedom roadmap or get through that roadmap a little faster. So that was another pretty large component in the decision.

Christopher Nelson (00:16:17) - And did you have did you have somebody you know, because this is, you know, personal to me personally, the podcast, right, is where I'm interested is did you have somebody who really broke down what that equity component was in relation to how it works from salary and other things, or was this something that you learned, you know, on your own? Because it's obvious.

Christopher Nelson (00:16:37) - It's more obvious, I think in big tech where you're making, you know, the restricted stock units where it's like, okay, I'm going to get a tranche here. But understanding some of the nuance of how it's taxed or thinking about how to manage it, you know, that that is a whole other, um, you know, learning that needs to happen along the way. How did you find out?

Adam Broda (00:16:58) - Yeah, I'd say yes and no. It came in a couple of different capacities. So, you know, me kind of doing my own research and investigation and talking to people that worked at those firms, learning how total compensation packages were structured. Each of the big tech firms, you know, Fortune 50 kind of companies, does their own approach, but they're all relatively the same. So if you can get a kind of a ground or foundational level understanding that you can be dangerous, Um, I was really fortunate to have. One of my guesses would be like mentors or bosses at Boeing.

Adam Broda (00:17:33) - A year or two before I left, they moved on to a different job. But. He was what I would call a not a financial savant, but, you know, just a very economics and finance minded leader. He was a senior director at the time and we had a really good relationship. But he is a big part of what started me thinking about again, like how to think about restricted stock units and equity investing and leveraging some of those tools, um, at the very beginning. So I, it wasn't entirely me. I had a little bit of help. Sure. So it was a good mix.

Christopher Nelson (00:18:11) - Yeah. Well, I do think, you know, it's so interesting that finding those leaders that are financially minded that start giving you the insights of here's, you know, unlocking it and saying, here's how everything works behind the curtain is critical. I mean, I think to all of us in our learning, I mean, I, you know, found those bread crumbs along the way, too.

Christopher Nelson (00:18:32) - And I think then the more you lean into that and you consume it, all of a sudden your eyes open up and you realize, okay, if I'm trading my time and talent for not just money, but also for equity that has this upside, it also has risks too, right? There can go through times where the stocks are depressed, but for most equity plans, they try and make adjustments for that to make sure they can hold on to great talent. Um, that's a game changer. And so the other thing that I think was interesting in your transition is. I have definitely heard people creating objections for themselves, saying, well, I'm I'm you know, I'm over here working on airplane parts. How am I going to now go to work for big tech? Like they don't, they see the differences. They don't see the similarities. But there was something where and again, I don't know whether it was a coach or a person, but you it sounds like you had some clarity that said, oh, here's what I'm doing here.

Christopher Nelson (00:19:29) - Here's a job description over here. Let me line myself up to the similarities and start leaning into that versus opting myself out for the differences. How did that work for you?

Adam Broda (00:19:39) - Yeah. Again, another really good question. I'd say that this wasn't necessarily a coach who didn't hire any help. I didn't necessarily even seek any mentors on this. It was just this is really where my expertise as a hiring manager and team builder came in. You know, even in the aerospace world, I'd say the aerospace world is definitely different, right? The degrees in education and your background tend to matter a little bit more than they do in the big tech world, where honestly, results matter more than anything. You can be a dentist and if you know how to run, you know, business programs, no one really cares. That's right. Just get in there and do a good job. So, yeah, yeah, it doesn't necessarily work exactly the same way in the aerospace world, but it's close. But so yeah, like I went through a pretty, you know, detail oriented process of identifying transferable skills.

Adam Broda (00:20:31) - And I started by kind of saying, okay, you know, these are the companies I want to work for. This is what lines up with my kind of career and lifestyle goals. I'm going to do some research. I'm going to try to get to a list of like 3 to 5 job roles that I could do in tech. There's lots of non-technical positions in tech, there's lots of technical positions in tech. So kind of went from that approach to see if my engineering experience would line up with any of the technical ones versus the non-technical. But yeah, kind of landed on like 2 to 3 job roles that fit my transferable skills or I guess just skill base in general very well. And then kind of dialed in on specific roles, specific company specific levels and would just read job requisitions. Spent a lot of time while I was off reading job requisitions to understand, you know, hey, this is the description for this senior program manager. What percentage of this, you know, have I done already versus what would be a stretch versus, you know, where would I need to fill a gap and did that for lots of different positions until I had a pretty good idea of, you know, what made the most sense.

Adam Broda (00:21:35) - And that is exactly where I kind of came in. I came in as a principal or senior manager, program manager, you know, in kind of a new greenfield space that was responsible for building a technology oriented team. So it was a great fit. And yeah, you know, no, no, nobody, nobody's ever questioned my background or my education after the point where I interviewed. So at that point it just becomes results oriented, right? What can you deliver, really?

Christopher Nelson (00:22:07) - It really does. And then and then that's where I mean, I think the fun begins, right, is then it's this deliverable and you're only as good as your latest delivery. Then it's okay. On to the next one. On to the next one. Like they tech.

Adam Broda (00:22:21) - Has a short one for me lately. Oh, yeah.

Christopher Nelson (00:22:23) - Oh, yeah. Um, a couple of things here I want to tease out is and this is, this is just to help educate people is I think that there's a lens that many people again opt themselves out of working for tech because there's a false belief that everything is a technical role when there could be nothing further from the truth.

Christopher Nelson (00:22:44) - Like and I'm just curious what you've seen from the other side of, you know, does that belief hold true? Do you think a lot of people opt out because they don't understand the non-technical roles that are available in tech?

Adam Broda (00:22:58) - Absolutely. I mean, as a career coach, you know, on the side that deals a lot in this field, I can absolutely confirm that. I don't know if I could put a percentage on it, but it's probably somewhere in the range of like 20 to 30% of the people that I talk to kind of have some version of that belief. Yeah. Um, you know, I'm not technical enough. I think most people understand that there are roles that don't require software degrees, right? Like, okay, you know, I could, I could work at a tech company and not code. They get that. But in terms of what those roles are or the level of technical, you know, exposure that you need, the level of technical work you'd be doing, there's a pretty good knowledge gap.

Adam Broda (00:23:40) - Um, you know, the thing that I say is that in most cases there's more non-technical positions than there are technical ones. There's more people not coding than there are coding. Um, that's not always the case for specific businesses, but it's the case in a lot of cases. So, you know, your chances of finding a, you know, a position that doesn't require you to do software engineering or have a computer science background are very, very high. The level of tech exposure from that point on, again, can can. Very heavily. Right. You could, you could move into h.r. Right. And have their own tech exposure and no one cares. You got to hire people that are technical, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be. But yeah, there's tons and tons of jobs. I would just say that, yeah, you do see the knowledge gap. Even in 2023, you see the knowledge gap fairly frequently.

Christopher Nelson (00:24:33) - The other thing that you did that I think is is a critical tactic that people need to execute is I call it marking yourself to market when you're getting ready to apply for a specific tech role at a specific level or you're getting into tech marketing yourself to market.

Christopher Nelson (00:24:52) - You know, my definition is you start looking across all the different companies that are hiring for a role or a set of roles, and you're literally printing out those job descriptions and it may not printing them out, but you're lining up and saying, what are the what are the skills there? Where do I rank myself so that you can then understand, okay, where what level am I at the market? And then how developed are my skill sets? And you can actually then even talk to other people in those roles in formal informational interviews to try and understand where you are. And I think that exercise builds confidence. People don't want to do that work, but I would argue that if you're doing that work, you walked into those interviews saying, okay, I understand, you know, now what kind of questions, what kind of capabilities, how to really speak about the results I delivered previously and sort of make that bridge for people.

Adam Broda (00:25:48) - It's a common misconception, maybe just as much as the non-tech versus tech thing that we just talked about, that that your title is going to carry some kind of weight when you interview or apply, you know, to a to a big tech company.

Adam Broda (00:26:02) - And the short answer is that in almost all cases, let's call it 90% of the time, they really don't. You know, and I've hired a bunch of people now at the tech firm that I work at, Yeah. Can just say that we've looked at people with titles multiple levels above what we're hiring in multiple levels below what we're hiring. And it does not the universe is just so diverse that, you know, your title really doesn't say much. Sometimes your title progression can say something, right? If you've been promoted internally that says way more than what your current state title is. But you're exactly right. Nobody is, you know, giving you credit because you're a director of marketing, number one, that, you know, I don't know what that means because every company is different. I have no idea how you got that title. What I'm going to care way more about is, you know, roles, responsibilities, authority, accountability and then accomplishments, results, business impact, value, all that good stuff.

Adam Broda (00:26:59) - So I'm going to spend way, way more time on that side. So you're absolutely right. You know, if you're marking yourself or trying to identify what level should I come in, at what level should I apply at, you should never, in my opinion, use title as a barometer because. Right. It's virtually irrelevant.

Christopher Nelson (00:27:17) - It is. You have to look at the work. And I think one of the things I know I was jamming on one of your LinkedIn posts recently, we're sort of going back and forth because I also think that people need to be able to articulate what they've done in their results, in their impact that they make to the business like because it's really I found as a hiring manager, a lot of times people would come in and they would want to start almost drowning me in what they did, like the minutiae of what they were executing. When it's Wait a second. I get the fact that you did that. You can do that. Great.

Christopher Nelson (00:27:54) - But help me understand the impact of what you did. Because if they don't, you know that that can be a risk as a hiring manager because they may not get the bigger picture. They may not understand and be able to prioritize. Well, so what I'd love to get sort of your, you know, two minute drill for people thinking about, you know, what is the best way to really present themselves in this type of environment.

Adam Broda (00:28:19) - Yeah, I'll take your question maybe to an extremely specific level, right? Like, yeah, because this question comes up so frequently in our coaching sessions. It's, you know, how do I build a, you know, an experienced section on my resume to do exactly what we're talking about. And, and I think it's important that some job description context is necessary, right? I don't ever encourage people that work with me to go right into, you know, accomplishment, accomplishment, accomplishment, accomplishment and then be done because it doesn't doesn't tell the whole story.

Adam Broda (00:28:55) - In fact, it potentially could tell two too small of a story. Right. Especially with higher level leaders of teams and people like you got to be a little bit more diverse than that. So the way we do it is typically the first bullet. They don't need a ton of information. You don't need pages and pages or sentences and sentences, but give them some borderlines to kind of identify why your role is important and kind of the parameters that it exists in. And then you move into some of those, you know, value driven, impact driven, results driven accomplishment bullets. And then we also again, it kind of depends on the level and the type of job that you're applying for. But we would sometimes throw in what we call diversity bullets that would be meant to show outside of just results for a business, right? What did you do for people? How did you make people better? Right? How did you think about bettering other individuals or other teams and how was that a strategic part of what you did on a day to day basis or, you know, week to week, month to month basis? You really do need to kind of paint a more colorful picture than just, you know, I'm the guy that delivers financial impact and did it here, here, here and here.

Adam Broda (00:30:02) - Well, that's great. But, you know, how does that tell me if you can manage 15 people, you have to be a little bit diverse. But that's really how we try to frame it up is given the context first that they need, then give them the business value and the impact and then try to cover any other, you know, components of the narrative that you want to tell.

Christopher Nelson (00:30:21) - That's great. And I mean, I think it's so important to be succinct. And I think one of the things that I always advocate that I would always coach people to is then write that down in a story. And then you need to figure out how you get a two minute version, maybe a five minute version. Because if somebody asks you, tell me about yourself, that should be an instant home run. That's just like them serving up a softball over the plate. That should be right down the middle. Because all that stuff, if we can tell our own story effectively in a compressed amount of time and I advocate for literally, you know, almost like you're prepping for a speech, like rehearse it, practice it, get it down, understand what are the the key moments, Because that will that will serve you well.

Adam Broda (00:31:04) - Yeah, the verbal version of what I described is what we would call a personal branding statement. Right? And it's not going to be nearly as detailed as a number of bullets on a resume. But we typically like to cover three areas, right? We like to cover what you are passionate about and motivated by and how that connects to a potential job or an audience member or a company? What are your top skills and abilities? What are the things they need to know about you right away? Yeah. And then typically the third component is some aspect of quantifiable deliverables. So tell them what you're excited about. Tell them what you're good at and give them some sort of an anchor point for what you've delivered in the past. And that's typically the formula that we use in a number of spaces and places like a professional summary on a resume or maybe an intro on a LinkedIn profile or even potentially a networking, you know, message where you're meeting new people. But you're exactly right. You have to have some form of an elevator pitch ready to go.

Adam Broda (00:32:01) - That puts the best stuff up front.

Christopher Nelson (00:32:04) - Ultimately, nobody is going to tell your story for you, right? Unless you are of some caliber that biographer's following you around and editing that for you. Nobody is going to. And again, I think it's a high value thing. So thanks for sharing that. That was like a bullet coaching session. So we are transitioning from the conversation of what got you from aerospace to big tech and now you do have a coaching business. I want to take a quick break right here. We're going to come back and I know a lot of our listeners are very interested in, you know, how do you think about setting up a side hustle while you're in big tech? Be right back. Okay. Welcome back. We're here with Adam Broda in this half of the show. We want to really tease out and understand you've built a very established consulting business, a coaching business that helps people transition from outside of tech to inside a tech. I mean, essentially your journey that we heard in the first half, I think so many people are interested in how you got started doing this and where where was the idea and what made you think that it was a viable idea given the fact that you had you'd been changing into big tech to begin with and you also having kids?

Adam Broda (00:33:23) - Yeah, it's not an idea that I like waking up with one night.

Adam Broda (00:33:30) - Guess I'd start by saying that I didn't, my head didn't pop off the pillow and I knew what to do. Um, a lot of it started again, like we've already talked about, right? Like just thinking about the lifestyle I wanted and how to get there and how to buy more of my time back. And obviously there's lots of strategies for buying businesses, starting businesses, doing real estate, doing all kinds of things. And it was really a point where I just kind of sat down and said, okay, you know, I could lose my job at Boeing. You know, I should start thinking about other jobs, but I should also start thinking about what would it look like to go work for myself, which is something I've always wanted to do. Um, so yeah, it's as simple as it possibly could be if I just wrote a list of stuff down. I mean, that's how it started, right? I got a piece of paper and wrote some things that I could do on my own, um, prioritize that list.

Adam Broda (00:34:21) - And then, um, kind of said, okay, you know what, what fits into a side business model, right? As opposed to like a full time model, because I think that's an important consideration. There's things you need to kind of jump full time into and there's things that you can start slowly. And coaching career coaching kind of felt actually, I guess should clarify. I didn't know it was career coaching at first. Oh, it was just general, a number of different types of coaching. But yeah, that was the one that kind of made its way to the top of the list. It felt like I could do it in a few hours a week. Not too hard to set up a resume or a website, you know, use something like LinkedIn as a landing page. And it aligned with my interest in my skill sets. Again, like I was very comfortable after hiring people and building teams for, for, you know, 6 to 7 years talking and teaching that kind of stuff.

Adam Broda (00:35:15) - And I wouldn't have called myself an expert in that. I had a lot of work to do to get to maybe like an expert level. I still don't even know if I would fully clarify as an expert, but, um. It fit my transferable skill set, let's put it that way. Like I felt good enough and confident enough to get on phone calls with strangers and tell them how to do things. And that's a big leap for me to get to that point. And then additionally, like, I just love I love people, I love coaching, love teaching, and those are things that I've done in different capacities my whole life. You know, I was coaching high school wrestling at the time. I was a Bible study leader at our church for high school kids. My wife and I both did that for years. And it's just a vein that has been tapped many times and I'm happy to continue doing it. So it was a good fit. And like I said, I started with more of a general idea of how to do things as opposed to a specific one.

Adam Broda (00:36:11) - And as a product manager, I realized that that's dumb. Like, say, wait a second, you shouldn't.

Christopher Nelson (00:36:16) - You should look in all my roles. Yeah.

Adam Broda (00:36:18) - Yeah. I was breaking a lot of my own rules, but. But it felt like it was more of an experiment at first as weird as it is to say that, I went in with like, three different versions of coaching. So a lot of people don't know this, but I started with career coaching, lifestyle coaching. And then there was one other kind that I can't remember. I shut it off almost immediately. It was like organizational and life management coaching and ran for like a A33 month period. And in my mind, I, you know, I kind of said, okay, I'm going to try this for a little bit and see what I like and see how it goes. And I took some calls for free. You know, I was charging a pretty low amount of money. I think it was like, think I was charging $50 for an hour at the time and.

Adam Broda (00:37:09) - I can tell you that I've learned a lot in that three month period. I learned very quickly that I didn't want to do life coaching, that the people that came through the door and maybe it was the price point right at $50 an hour that I worked with. They were great people. But there were just some things I was not qualified for.

Christopher Nelson (00:37:28) - To help with. It turned into therapy, right? Real fast. I was like.

Adam Broda (00:37:32) - Well, it did. And it's not that everyone was like that, but yeah, you really kind of walked this line between like therapy and coaching and, you know, I'm the type of person where I'm not going to dabble into the therapy range. I think the other thing I learned about myself was that in the in the live coaching and like the lifestyle management and organizational coaching, I would often get like two caught up in what the people were dealing with to the point where I was going above and beyond those hour calls or those emails and things on the side to like help them.

Adam Broda (00:38:05) - And if someone was having like a legitimate issue, like I worked with this one guy that had he had ADHD and was like really struggling to try and put calendars and stuff together and we came up with a really solid plan of what to do, but like, he just couldn't get to the point where he could execute on it unless was being way, way more supportive. And again, it just the things kind of reveal themselves, like you get burned out on different things or you realize where your skill sets are at. And yeah, I'd say within three months I kind of shut off some of those other avenues of coaching and said, okay, like it's career coaching. Like that's the one. It's the one I enjoyed the most. I feel the most comfortable talking about it. I have the best material on it. It aligns with my personal experience. It aligns with what I'm doing now. And yeah, it didn't take long for that to work itself out. But that's in a nutshell how it all started.

Adam Broda (00:38:56) - It was a bit of an experiment at first that I set up on purpose just to see if there was something there that I was missing. But no, it was career coaching pretty quick.

Christopher Nelson (00:39:08) - And from a timeline perspective, where did you start this when you were at Boeing?

Adam Broda (00:39:14) - Um, no. Well, I guess that's a good point. I technically launched the business, like, in terms of website and branding it on LinkedIn in February. So almost right around the time where I was walking out the door. Okay. I planned for it. You know, I was writing plans and creating things about a month in advance. So yeah, the first time I actually took a client would have been like March of that year. And that's really, I guess, where I would say that the journey began with trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

Christopher Nelson (00:39:51) - I think many people who want to start side businesses working in big tech, they want to know, okay, how do I get how do I get my company to agree or how do I make sure that they realize that it's not a conflict of interest? How did you address that?

Adam Broda (00:40:11) - Yeah, I'd say, number one, there's a lot of ways to address it.

Adam Broda (00:40:15) - And the other thing I'd say is that how to address it, in my opinion, can change. Companies tend to take different stances on this, and sometimes they even take different stances on it depending upon what you're talking about or how the business is set up. So you really do need to like to do your due diligence here. Don't just assume everything is fine, don't hide it. You need to figure out how the two things can coexist. Because if you don't figure that out ahead of time, you're just setting yourself up for massive failure, either on one end or another. And you don't want that, right? Yeah. You know, your side business really does need to coexist with whatever else you want to do. But yeah, the way I addressed it basically made it a very clear and upfront thing with the hiring team that was bringing me on at the tech firm and saying, Hey, you know, this entity exists. I intend to continue doing this. And they referred me to some legal folks and some policies and I went through them again and again, like there's some stipulations that I had to be careful of.

Adam Broda (00:41:13) - The biggest one is just being like, I can't. I can't use a corporate brand, you know, in a way that would make it seem like I'm somehow profiting from the brand and not from my own brand, not from my own skill. So sometimes walking that tightrope is a little difficult. But yeah, the short version is, I just try to be transparent with whoever I'm working with, working for, um, you know, do the conflict of interest assessments on a yearly basis. I make sure that I'm, you know, I'm not there's nothing I need to disclose. But the short version is, is, you know, I'm not using company time. I'm not using company property, I'm not using company logos or really anything related to the corporation to run my side business. Right? And I would make the argument that if all that if that component of my life went away, murder coaching would be totally fine and virtually no one would know. So yeah, you kind of have to set it up in a way that makes sense.

Adam Broda (00:42:10) - But I've talked to a lot of other creators about this. I mean, this is actually one of the more common questions I get from other people creating and building. Not a surprise. And I'd say that I've learned that different companies have different approaches. And I'd even say that different businesses inside of those companies have different approaches where, you know, Boeing is a fantastic example. They very, very recently started looking at some of the people that were working at their company as potential tools. And I mean that in a good way, right? Like originally it would have been there's no way you can run a career coaching side business at a company like that because someone would have interpreted that as a conflict of interest. And again, maybe a year ago they started to shift over towards, okay, well, hey, if we have these people that have large followings online and share positive information or in our, you know, established experts in their community and have positive reputations, why wouldn't we want that? Why wouldn't we want to be associated with that? And some of those things have changed in a relatively short period of time.

Adam Broda (00:43:12) - So it depends on where you're, where you are and what you're doing. But I would always recommend it, be transparent, do the due diligence, go figure out who needs to know and who you need to tell. But there's lots of ways to make side misses work in a corporate environment. Right. And yeah don't get me wrong, there's there's people that don't do it the right way and have been burned, but there's way more people that do do it the right way and it's not overly complicated.

Christopher Nelson (00:43:40) - And so then how do you, you know, do you have some Vas and people that help you out or do you run very, very lean? How do you, you know, operate it behind the scenes? If you could open up the.

Adam Broda (00:43:52) - Yeah, yeah. This is a good question. I'll be as detailed in a specific as, as you want me to be. I'm pretty much an open book on this. So I say this on like our discovery calls when people call in and like to know about better coaching and how to be a client.

Adam Broda (00:44:08) - This is a side business for me and I love my job in corporate. I really do. I love the people I work with. I love the type of work I get to do. And I really, for the next couple of years at least, I don't have an intention to leave. So Broda coaching is not to make as much money as I possibly can and squish as many clients through this tube as I can and do these big program situations. It's very much a quality over quantity. So everything for me fits in like a 5 to 10 hour box a week. So I only take so many one on one calls. I only do many. I only do so many things like this. I only spend so much time on LinkedIn and I'm totally fine with whatever growth rate comes out of that. I'm totally fine. Whatever, you know, whatever income rate comes out of that. You know, the first year I coached, I thought I made $6,000 after taking like 40 people.

Adam Broda (00:45:05) - The second year I coached I think I made about 13,000 after taking. Maybe 60 or 70 people. The third year we expanded, we did a lot more calls and, um, things looked a little bit different. But I think I made something like 22 or 23,000. So that's me being an open book right there. Like those are great numbers and I'm happy that those existed, but those are not numbers that I'm going to go retire on and, you know, buy a Bugatti and it's a side business. So. The way I would answer your question is. Broda Coaching for me is an outlet for me to help people. It's also an outlet for me to create some additional income if I wanted to. I know the formula too. To turn it into a full time thing, but it's just not a desire for me in my current state. So yeah, like it's pretty simple. It's a business completely run and operated by me. I do have some support. I'm in mastermind communities with other creators that do this full time and are really skilled at running their businesses.

Adam Broda (00:46:15) - And I use resources from those people that are in other countries or that are in the US that helped me with things like uh, course design and website development and you know, copywriting help when I produce a document, right? I write all my own posts, I write all, all the stuff on my website, I write all the material, all my courses, I do all the one on ones myself. I do all the discovery calls myself. But the infrastructure typically will, you know, get others to help me. I've worked with some fantastic people in Spain and Colombia and the U.S that have helped me with those things over the years and have a lot of contacts that I've met through LinkedIn that, you know, if I need help or need freelance, I just go find it in my network. So it's a relatively small operation. And like I said, I am perfectly happy. And, you know, with, with the way that it works and I intend to keep it that way, at least for some time.

Adam Broda (00:47:10) - I will say that, you know, recently, I have started working with a business coach just because I want to understand what some of those alternative scalable options look like. That again, you know, I love the way it runs. I love the number of people that I work with. I like the format. You know, we do a lot of one-on-one coaching, that's most of our business. But it would be cool to think about, you know, the one downside of the one on one model. Obviously there's pros and cons to everything, but the downside of the one on one model is that it worked really well when I had like 15,000 followers on LinkedIn. Um, the number of people that would come to me week to week that needed help or wanted to do coaching, it doesn't necessarily work as well when you have 300,000 followers on LinkedIn because the volume of people that I'm getting obviously I cannot handle, you know, in 2 to 3 calls a week. So that has been a thing on my mind.

Adam Broda (00:48:08) - The past, let's call it like six months. Um, and the thought has been what would it look like if there was. A more scalable approach that still lets me coach people in person, but I could do it in more of a group setting. Um, you know, charge a lower price point for that, of course. But, but that is something that I would say I will probably launch in the next couple of months is some version of a program where I can help more people in a more direct capacity, but not completely limited by one on one environment. Um, so yeah, we, you know, I constantly look to look for ways to iterate. I constantly look for ways to learn. Like I said, I work with coaches and pay coaches to teach me about how to do different things in the business space and the career space. And I think it's all part of the process. But yeah, the journey has been fun and exciting at a very minimum. Um, I think.

Adam Broda (00:49:06) - I didn't necessarily plan it to go this way, but the way that it's worked out has been just great. So yeah it's better to coach.

Christopher Nelson (00:49:16) - Yeah. So that is Broda coaching. And one of the things that I heard you say that again I'm going to rewind I'm going to go double click on this because I think this is interesting is it sounds to me that you have built in a failover switch if something happens with the day job. So to your point, you're keeping it scaled. You love your day job. You know, you're learning a lot from corporate. And I know plenty of us including myself, like I got so much value that corporate help makes me an entrepreneur. The aim today, hands down, right. However, corporate is fickle, right? There can be regime changes. There can be, you know, rifts, there can be all sorts of things. And what I think I heard is, oh, I'm keeping it here because my focus is here, but I want to have this.

Christopher Nelson (00:50:03) - But if you hit a scenario where something happens and there's a forced exit or there's a desire to transition, you could flip that switch and all of a sudden that could be full income.

Adam Broda (00:50:17) - I'd love to think that it is as simple as flipping a switch and probably oversimplified.

Christopher Nelson (00:50:25) - No.

Adam Broda (00:50:26) - I totally get what you're saying. I think I'm working to get to the point where it is. That's probably the way I should answer. It is. Like I said, I've been around long enough. I've talked to enough people. I'm in mastermind groups. I've done research. I again, it's the product manager nature of me, if I know how to build that. It's not a question of that. I couldn't it's it's just a question of, number one, do I have the, you know, do you have the time? And then number two, do I want to be a person that runs a business like that? And because I know the time that it requires up until a point where you kind of reach certain scalability milestones which we could talk about.

Adam Broda (00:51:07) - But yeah, I'd say that. In the current state if a meteor hit planet Earth and, you know, I lost my job and everything went upside down, um, which is kind of what happened with Covid, I guess, if you think about it. There you go. Uh, it's definitely possible. Um, if that happened, yes, I'd say that within a month or maybe even two months. Yeah, I could get to the point where I would feel pretty confident in, you know, potentially living off of the income that I'm making from that business in, in addition to maybe some of what I am doing in other side businesses that I also understand how to, you know, run or operate. So yeah, it's not a it's not a flip switch yet. I think I want to build to the point where it's much faster. You know, I could do it in a couple of days, if not a couple of weeks, but I'd say I'm months away from that point and that seems to be a good spot at the moment because like I said, I like what I do in corporate and it's a great gig.

Adam Broda (00:52:07) - I'm learning a ton and I don't really want to walk away from that in my current state. I also have real little kids and.

Christopher Nelson (00:52:15) - That's.

Adam Broda (00:52:15) - That's a complexity in of itself to try and manage. So yeah. Keep keeping an eye on all that.

Christopher Nelson (00:52:21) - Well I think that many people think this is again this is we've painted you know, you and I, we've painted this vision of our future that says, okay, I want to have a lifestyle by design. I want to design it, and I want to look at how work can work for me. It's not me working for a company for 50 years, but how do I make it work for me? And many people today are creating what I call a career portfolio lifestyle, where they have some different things that we're doing. And it sounds like you've now anchored that intro to coaching and Broda coaching will be a part of your portfolio moving forward and can be something that grows scales, you know, maybe even fits into a tighter box depending on what else you have going on.

Christopher Nelson (00:53:09) - But I think ultimately that is what many people are trying to understand how to do and have that so that they can have a hot failover or something because of, you know, some economic uncertainty and just changes in the market.

Adam Broda (00:53:25) - Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think the future of work is probably diversified income streams and a lot more side hustles I think. I couldn't say with confidence that that will happen in the next year or two, but think it will happen eventually, that employers will just have to become more okay with that kind of thing and think it's good for people to to not have all their eggs in one basket which which the reality is, is that so many people, especially in the older generations, do mean everything is tied up in that one job. Right. Or that one income stream. And yeah, my goal is to try and get to the point where I've got 3 or 4, you know, kind of separate income streams just so that, yeah, if 1 or 2 take a hit or something fails in a given year that I'm, I'm not, you know, stranded out on an island and that the time that it takes to get there again I think is an important call out right like it's it's not.

Adam Broda (00:54:20) - It's not this scenario that I think you see on Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat where you're going from 0 to 100 in weeks, you know, in months. In some cases, it's you're trying to balance lots of different components of your life. Right. Your full time job, your family, you know, whatever hobbies and interests you have that obviously you get, you're the one that gets to decide how the recipe is written. Right? But, you know, I try to keep everything in perspective. And I also try to do, you know, make decisions with some element of risk management involved in that. Again, like I'm a dad. I'm a husband. I have people that depend on me. So I'm not going to jump two feet into the high risk option unless I absolutely have to. So if I can take a couple of years to kind of scale up those income streams and grow them over time, like that's absolutely the version of the the roadmap I want to take. And that's that's essentially what I've been doing is I'm not in a rush.

Adam Broda (00:55:18) - I'm not I'm not trying to be, you know, a mega millionaire tomorrow. I'm very happy with the way that my lifestyle is in its current state. I'm really happy with the balance that I've struck and where my time goes day to day and week to week. And I would say that there's just such incredible value in contentment. Um, you know, like me, I don't, I don't need a lot of things to change right now because I don't know how much additional contentment or satisfaction or, or quote unquote, happiness it buys me. So it's kind of one of those, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it kind of mentality is like I, I really enjoy the way that life works again, especially with little kids and the amount of time I get to spend with him. So I don't have a huge interest in trying to risk everything on a, you know, a big bet from a business perspective that potentially could harm the amount of time I have with them. Right.

Adam Broda (00:56:14) - Or how other aspects of my life look. So yeah, again, that's just me, right? It doesn't necessarily mean my formula is somebody else's formula. Sure. You know, as a 34 year old dad with two kids that, you know, has a lot of interest in things, I would just say you got to figure out what that success criteria is for yourself. That's the most important thing. We try to start with every single person that comes through Broda coaching. Your definition of success is unique to you, right? And the thing at the end of the day is you get to define it, but then you also have to own it. So yeah, I'm, I'm trying to own it, but yeah, happy with how things have worked out so far for sure.

Christopher Nelson (00:56:51) - Yeah. There's power in the word, enough power in it. Yeah. I mean, and I love the way that you, you rolled that up. I think that's going to make a phenomenal reel, by the way.

Christopher Nelson (00:57:03) - But, but no, but it is like it's so true that you know and I didn't. I had to actually get to the top of the ladder. I literally was falling. All my mentors' advice got to the moment where I was a chief information officer sitting at this, you know, startup in New York City and thought I had everything. And then when I saw the time I didn't have with my small kids and everything, like after six months, like I had to go, I had to go say, no, thank you. And it was one of the best. Humiliating. The heartbreaking things that I did just from, you know, wanting to be a person of my word, wanting to come in and make an impact, make a difference. But I realized that I hadn't said enough. I learned that lesson right then, but I hadn't. And tipped over.

Adam Broda (00:57:52) - Yeah. Yeah. I think that's awesome. I mean, it's really cool to hear that you had, you know, the gumption to draw the line even retroactively because it can be harder to draw it, you know, in reverse than it can be to draw it kind of in preparation.

Adam Broda (00:58:09) - But yeah. Think it hits different people at different places in spaces, you know, even this is a common conversation with other creators. You know, they're building businesses and they're making money. And there's always going to be like the next business venture and the next scalable thing. And I could always launch another course and I can always sell another product. But I've heard that so many times, even from people in the LinkedIn camp of like, I didn't say enough when I should have, right. And you know, my time invested in these businesses went from 20 hours a week to 40 to 60 to 80 to 100. And, you know, I looked around and I was making, you know, $3 million a year, but I didn't like I wasn't happy. I didn't like who I was. My family didn't didn't know me or maybe they don't have a family, but just. Like I said, it comes down to priorities and what you want, but it's such a powerful thing to be content and to understand what that looks like and and like the balance.

Adam Broda (00:59:14) - And I think the other thing, too, is that it's also okay for, you know, what defines contentment or success to change. Yes. Right. How I would have defined what success is at the age of 25 is not how I would define it right now at the age of 34 and probably not how old? Define it. When I'm 40 or 50 or 60 or dead or whatever it is, life doesn't work that linearly, right? It's not at all. It's constant, constant moving, constant changing. And you kind of have to be up for the challenge. You got to change with it.

Christopher Nelson (00:59:45) - But well, if you're up for the challenge, I'm ready to take this thing to the fire round. Let's put a bow on this thing, man. So we got five questions. You give us your answers. Super value pack number one, what do you do to recharge?

Adam Broda (01:00:05) - What do I do to recharge? I think I will give you three answers. Number one is the recharge window for me pretty much starts with like.

Adam Broda (01:00:16) - I'm a very faith driven, religious kind of driven person. And, you know, there's lots of advice out there about meditation and self-care. And I think that's all good. My, you know, my avenue into that is just like time with Jesus in the morning that is uninterrupted. So I will wake up early. I will sit down with, you know, a drink or coffee and I'll do some reading, I'll do some journaling, I'll do some prayer, and then I'll get on with my day. And if I can do that, you know, five, six days a week, that's a win. It's not always guaranteed with your kids, but like, yeah, that's, that's probably the biggest thing is just, you know, that that time where I kind of root myself in my priorities and what is foundationally important and again, like maybe you're not, you know, maybe you're not religious, maybe you're not a faith driven person. That's cool. But I think it's super important to.

Adam Broda (01:01:08) - Get your feet under you before you jump into a very, very busy life or very, very busy day. So that's a big one for me. And the second one is just exercise, which is a constant juggle. But um, you know, I try to do some kind of exercise 3 to 4 times a week. It just makes everything else in my life better when I can really.

Christopher Nelson (01:01:31) - Does have.

Adam Broda (01:01:31) - Some level of fitness and. That's probably all that needs to be said. So yeah, I do some biking, I do some running, I like to swim. Um, yeah, that's great.

Christopher Nelson (01:01:43) - What's the advice that you give your younger self working in tech?

Adam Broda (01:01:49) - Man, this is a good one. I had so much advice, so much I probably had to. I'll go with two. The first one is really easy, but it's just detail oriented. Be detail oriented. Um, I think the bar for detail orientation elevated itself a lot, moving from aerospace. To tech where I just had way more time for the details in aerospace because things just moved at a much faster pace.

Adam Broda (01:02:19) - I things move so, so much quicker in the tech world that I constantly have to like remind myself of like I need to do the due diligence, I need to read these things, I need to review these things, and I need to call out the little stuff because it makes a big difference, especially when you're developing software or hardware. So that's a big one. The other one that I'd say is more generic, it probably isn't specific to tech, but. I. I really struggled in my first management job at Boeing. Like, I really struggled within the first six months. I didn't like it. I wanted to quit for a lot of reasons that I won't get into. But I would say the biggest piece of advice looking back that I would have given myself is like, you need to manage, you need to lead. In your own way. Don't try to be a people manager in someone else's management style, or don't try to fit your style into someone else's box. And I really did that for the first, I'm going to say six months to a year, to the point where it just burned me out so fast.

Adam Broda (01:03:18) - And when I kind of woke up from that and said, Look, I'm just going to lead people and run my team the way that I think I should do it in my own personality. And that just changed everything. I was so much happier with how things function. So yeah, don't don't be afraid to be yourself in every aspect of your work. Push. Push that boundary as hard as you can.

Christopher Nelson (01:03:38) - What soft skill would you say has helped your career the most?

Adam Broda (01:03:43) - Mm. I think. I think it's confidence. It's probably communication or confidence, but I'd say that, yeah, you know, growing up in, again, kind of a technical house, going to engineering school, doing my master's in engineering and, you know, being in this state of like continued learning. Um, I would tell you that. Hmm. Those things are all great. You know, having all that head knowledge is fantastic and being able to solve problems is a really good thing. But if you can't effectively communicate it to the people that matter, you will be hampered by that for the rest of your life.

Adam Broda (01:04:21) - And that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to speak with a perfect accent, right? Or like being the most amazing writer in the room. Really, what it means is you need to be able to communicate intent. And a lot of people in the engineering, even the tech space, miss that, right? That they get way too caught up in the details, way too caught up in the science, way too caught up in the, you know, whatever minutia of the project where they're not good communicators because they cannot communicate intent and think I've worked hard to be good at that. And that's helped a lot. And then of course, as I was kind of saying, like that's fed my confidence, which I think is kind of the ultimate soft skill. I'm confident in what I'm saying. I'm confident in what I'm writing. I'm confident in the decisions that I'm making. And man, confidence just it's such a mental, you know, power boost that, yes, I'm able to kick down barriers so much faster because I believe in myself or believe in the people around me.

Adam Broda (01:05:20) - And yeah, there's nothing that replaces good confidence. So I'll stick with that.

Christopher Nelson (01:05:26) - What has been your best return on time? So best return on time invested.

Adam Broda (01:05:32) - Mm I'm going to say the obvious, one of just switching industries, you know, going from the aerospace industry that required me to be on site in a building with people every day. Not that those jobs are bad, those. That job was fantastic and I loved it. It's just moving to a job that's more flexible in terms of where I work and when I work and how I work has been a massive life changing thing for me, especially as a new dad, that level of flexibility. Number one, it gave me a big chunk of my life back. But number two, maybe more importantly, it opened up my eyes to what's possible. Right? Well, seeing like, oh, hey, this is what flexibility in my work does for my life.

Christopher Nelson (01:06:23) - Yes.

Adam Broda (01:06:24) - Is something that really kind of started that process of like, okay, what if I double down on this? What if I, you know, went even further into this and I, you know, worked for myself and worked for, you know, my own business and yeah, that's been the biggest return on time is that that industry changed that job change that allowed me to buy time or get time back or control my time.

Christopher Nelson (01:06:45) - That's great. And what is the worst money or investing advice you've ever received?

Adam Broda (01:06:53) - There's been a lot. I'm not a financial expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I do spend a decent amount of time trying to learn the space. Um, I would say that. You really need to be careful of the get rich quick schemes. I. I can't stress this enough, but with the advent of the Internet and platforms like Twitter and Instagram, there's just so many people out there that are looking to take advantage of someone that is uneducated or unaware or just generally gullible. And it doesn't necessarily mean that a business scheme can't be a get rich quick scheme like those do exist. I believe that they're possible. I'm not saying that that are not possible. What I am saying though, is be careful of the people selling them to you. I've definitely learned that in the last few years that, you know, even a good idea like cryptocurrency, right, or nfts can be twisted and manipulated into this thing, that someone is trying to make a bunch of money off of a bunch of people that have no idea what's going on and you really don't want to be one of the people that's that's not going it has no idea what's going on.

Adam Broda (01:08:03) - So that's right. Worst career advice definitely falls into that vein of like, yeah, friends saying like, Hey, let's go buy some NFT because everybody else is. And you know, let's let's jump into this this discord room with with these total strangers and we're all going to, you know list and I got a little bit tied up into that I never bought anything but I would say that, you know, halfway into those those progressions, you realize like what the what is happening, like buying an image of a drunken cat and I don't. Right. Why are we here? Yeah. Sometimes it pays to just be a little cautious.

Christopher Nelson (01:08:40) - That's great. That's a great note. And on to. And do not buy nfts of drunken cats. That's a life lesson from Adam Broda right there. Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate all of your time. I appreciate all of your wisdom and your transparency, too. I mean, I think I get so excited when we're able to communicate to other technology employees that are trying to figure out, you know, this career, this money, how it all works together.

Christopher Nelson (01:09:06) - I appreciate you so much, man. Thank you.

Adam Broda (01:09:08) - Yeah, thanks for having me on again. Happy to share. Hopefully this helps some people in a similar space, figure out what they want to do, and that's what I'm all about. So appreciate you having me.

Christopher Nelson (01:09:18) - Yeah, and I'm going to make sure that in the show notes we're going to have where you can follow Adam on LinkedIn. He puts great information out on LinkedIn and then also grows into coaching so you can reach out to him there as well. And so thank you everyone, everyone for joining today. We are a small podcast growing, so I would ask, please subscribe to Apple, Google, Spotify, you name it, we're there. Please subscribe. Number two, please leave a review. We want to know what you find valuable to the podcast. And number three, tell somebody we know there's so many people in tech trying to figure this out. We just want people to know so that we can help them.

Christopher Nelson (01:09:56) - Thank you so much.