Billy Keels  0:01  

How to make your career capital your biggest competitive advantage. Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels Advisory Services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to make it optional.com Once again, that's make it optional.com

Speaker 1  0:19  

helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is the Going Long Podcast with Billy Keels.

Billy Keels  0:32  

How to make your career capital your biggest competitive advantage is definitely going to resonate with you if you've been already in your role for over a decade and a half, and you're trying to figure out, okay, well, what is all of this even good for? It's got to be good for something. Just give me a couple minutes, and it's going to be crystal clear. Not only is it worth something, it's worth a lot. Like people talk about gold advice, like today, in just a couple minutes, I'm going to give you double, triple platinum. I don't know if you want to call it advice, but just what I'm seeing from the outside and what I'm helping other people to be able to do today, and I actually want to take you back to a conversation that I had earlier in 2026 I have no idea when you're listening to this, or no idea when you're watching this. The thing is, is I know that you're here, and I want to be able to help you get unstuck, so that you can absolutely make sure that the career capital that you are building, the experience, the expertise that you have been living every single day, you've taken the theory and you've put it into practice for over a decade and a half, you're probably two decades, some of you may even be pushing three decades, all that work that you've done is worth something. I was in a strategy call with someone who is a senior director at a very, very, very well-known enterprise software company, and the fact that we got into this conversation was one that I think is just absolutely phenomenal. I just, I wrote a couple things down that I want to be able to read, like he specifically - he had been in the industry for 22 years, he had a very deep knowledge of the oil and gas sector, so not only did he have really deep industry knowledge, meaning that he knew a lot about oil and gas, he had also been in the enterprise software space, different levels, because he did something that was really unique, but it's a lot of experience that's walking around on his two shoulders and in between his ears, but here's the thing that I found extremely interesting about this conversation. So this guy just has a little bit of a backstory, like he has already in a very senior director position today, and but he had not just been exclusively in big large multinational enterprise software companies, like he'd taken a couple of startup opportunities, and what I found fascinating about this is that he very intentionally decided to go back to very large multinational, because the small startups, the things that he saw, those are startups that failed, quote unquote, failed, and that didn't give him exactly what what he wants, but the thing that he understood is that he learned after that experience with the failed startups that there was a lot to gain from that experience, although he said that was failed and what he could bring into the large multinational, and from the large multinational, I mean, this guy is really clear on what he wants to do, which is why I want to share this, because a lot of times people say, well, yeah, you're just all about how do you, how do you leave your job, and I'm like, for the umpteenth time, this is not what this is about, this is not optionality, is about choice, optionality is about you being able to do what you want to be able to do, and it being in alignment with your life system, your design, and your values, that's what this whole thing is about. And so you know this guy, after moving for a couple of larger multinationals in the enterprise software space, and he also was one, it was more of a social media play, and if I said the name, you'd be like, oh my god, yeah, I absolutely recognize it, and the more I tell you your story, you're probably going to guess it, but I'll leave that up to you, but the thing is, is in his last move he actually brought clients with him, not that he stole them, but the clients wanted the relationship with the individual to go to this new big large multinational, but the thing is, is when he mentioned, like, we're on the strategy call, and I'm like, okay, well, you're intentionally moved back to an enterprise software company, like, what are we even here for? Stick around, you're gonna.. it's gonna become all this is going to be really clear in a very brief episode, but he said to me, and this is why I thought it was interesting to reflect on this, because he said he went back to the large multinational because he wanted to feel safe and secure, because he had a quote unquote paycheck that he knew was coming in, and this is a multiple six figure paycheck. It's over $300,000 a year. I think he said 425 or something like that. And, and he was able to be in a position where he was going to not have to worry about, like, he doesn't also doesn't have worry about checks, because the first company that he worked for, he's got vested stocks, and they're worth a lot of money. And well, into the seven figures, just so you know, this is, but, but still, there's a problem, it's a first world problem, and this is why I'm saying, like, you, there is such an opportunity for you to understand how to make your career capital your biggest competitive advantage, because it will allow you to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, with whom you want to do it, keep listening. So, the thing is, is of course, he wants to do all this, and he got to a point where all of this corporate success he was having on paper, he still was on the on the strategy call with me, because he wants, like, right now he doesn't technically own anything that he is using, that he is controlling, that he is generating his own revenue. Does he have a portfolio? Yes. Does he have equities and other companies that are up some, up some weeks or some days down in others, like taking 30 plus percent drops in a single day? So these are the things that are weighing on his mind, our war weighing on his mind, and why he wanted to take a look at it, and why we still continue to talk to this day, but he got to a point where he started realizing that even though he left these large organizations twice, he continued to come back, and eventually he quit the smaller startups, but what he said is that when he was in the smaller startups, and I like literally wrote this down, I had to see it. He learned because he got so much closer to the action that he learned how to actually raise money when it came to working with venture capital and private equity firms. He also learned how to talk to boards because he was so close to the action that it was one of those things that was fantastic. But what he said next is the thing that really it's inspired me to do, LinkedIn posts, I've done a newsletter around this, and now I'm doing a podcast episode around it. He said, the further or the farther you get from cash or code, the more nebulous your existence becomes. And I was like, whoa, that's deep. Let me say that again, the farther you get from cash or code, the more nebulous your existence becomes. And what does that mean? If you're in the enterprise software space, you will know exactly what it means. It means that either you are on the front line selling the solutions, which is the cash, or you are in the programming part of the organization, which is the code you are creating, the code, which I thought was absolutely phenomenal, and it made me like stop it, because I wanted to get more insight from him, and as we get back to this whole point of how do you make your career capital work for you, and how do you make that become your biggest competitive advantage. Notice this person that I'm speaking to, he went in and out of large multinationals into startups, startups, he learned a certain language, he took that back to multinational, and then he's very intentional about being in the multinational today, because even though he knows he's just one reorg away or one change from somebody who's 1000s or 10s of 1000s of kilometers away, he wants to be able to keep to count on this paycheck, because he's being very intentional about the action that he's doing, he knows what type of role, senior director role, he's going in, he's getting his, he's leverage, he's used the leverage from his 20 years of experience and his deep industry knowledge around oil and gas, and he has relationships. Right, this is the whole thing. It's your career capital. It is, what do you actually know? Who do you know? What networks do you have? All of those things are really, really important. And so he got to a point where, like, he realized that the network, the industry knowledge, the ecosystems - none of that information was something that was living inside of his CRM system, which is kind of like even more ironic, given I'm not going to give it all away, but where this industry was right, none of that is in your customer relationship management, meaning that you're keeping it all in the system. Well, it can be in the system, but that's not the only thing. The system can't actually develop the relationships with you. It can give you information, data points, but you've got to do that part yourself. That's why understanding how much your career capital is your biggest competitive advantage, because it's the thing that sets you apart, it makes you different, it differentiates you from the rest of everyone out there. So, in this particular person, as I mentioned, 22 years, so over 20 years of relationships, different recognition of of partners of patterns, also to because you start to recognize patterns in certain cycles. This person, he's in sales, and so none of this actually happens in a very, very simple way, like I said, all of this was a part of and is a part of his capital that he has generated, that he has created through trial and error, a lot more success than than air, but he got to a point as well, and this is where, where I want to really just highlight this is, remember, he's intentionally gone back into corporate life, and that's fine, right? I was in corporate life for 26 years, and it was only, it was 22 of the 26 years that. I wanted the paycheck. I needed the paycheck, but guess what? The last four, I didn't need the paycheck anymore. Didn't need it, but I was still going there, and I knew that the.. I didn't have the language for it, I didn't have the wording for it, but I knew what I had was something special, something that was different. It was something that allowed me to differentiate myself from every single other person who was in the enterprise software space, that was in the largest accounts that was in the Catalyst program or in the in the top talent program always looking what was made making me and now sharing with others, other leaders what is making you different. So because he was back in the corporate role and he did that by design, he found the right company for him, right? he found the right software because he was in the software space. He found the right role, meaning the title, and he realized that all of these different benefits, because he was extremely intentional about it and leaning into it, it was the right thing for his family. Even made a comment to me that, like, his spouse, his wife, was in the happiest place that she'd been in a really long time. Heck, he's in a really good place, like he's super happy about where he is right now. So, please stop saying it's an anti-corporate thing, because it's not. That's load of crap. This is about what are you doing, and are you being intentional about the time that you're investing to be able to get the benefits that are right for you and for your family, he found his corporate dream job, believe it or not, like, and so you're thinking, why in the world are you guys on the phone? It's like I said, he also wants this desire to own something that is generated, that is created by himself, that he controls, that's going to truly give him more time to be able to do the things that he wants to do when he wants to do them, so he's going through still, there's there's some issues with identity, there's some challenges that he's going through, but it doesn't stop him from being intentional, from taking the career capital that he has to put himself in the best situation, and even as he's in his corporate role, he's still looking for opportunities to be able to, in parallel, like on a parallel path, be able to generate his to create something first, and then be able to use that to generate income, more confidence, new, new, new experiences, so that he's actually able to truly own his time, and even though he's now starting a new journey, or he's been in this new journey, he's been over that over time now, and he is able to do the things that he wants to be able to do. He's just getting started, so he's far from where he wants to be in terms of his own personal ownership path, but he's made a lot of right decisions up until now, so he's taken all of the career capital to do the good, the bad, the things that were happening that he didn't like at the time, with the small startups, he's been able to get himself, position himself into large enterprise software company, he's had some equities that are still performing for him, but now he wants to be able to have something that he is truly owning that is coming from assets that are still available to have even greater growth, like invest in other things, and also build around his personal brand. Of course, he knows he doesn't want to do corporate forever. He said he doesn't want to do another 15 or 20 quarters, he and at this point in time he enjoys what he's doing, and so that at the same time, he enjoys being able to, you know, as he's starting this path, he's not there, but he's clear on what he wants to be able to do. He wants to continue to work with those clients who have come with him to this new company, and at the same time, he is looking to access more of his own personal brand to be able to do that, so he can control the income, the type of clients that he's working with, and it's also something that he knows will predict will be and create a very predictable stream of income in the future. So, please, as I mentioned to you today, as and I think about this, and I think about the specific person that I'm talking about, and I'm sharing it with you today. It's about being able to own, create, and control assets that you are responsible for. That's how you can make your career capital your biggest competitive advantage, because you can use that to be in a corporate environment alongside the corporate environment that you're in, building in parallel something that you will create, something that you will own, something that you will control over time, right. So, don't worry if you're stuck and you're feeling like, "Oh, man, I've done all this experience, but I can know it, only works with inside the corporate walls. That's the biggest fallacy on earth. That's your biggest advantage. Take all that, that, that experience, that corporate, that company, that career capital, and use it. Make it your, your biggest advantage. Okay. And if that's not you, if you know somebody who's struggling with this right now, share today's episode with them, because you're going to share, you're going to care, going to get on the phone, you're. Gonna talk to him, maybe you go out, you meet him for coffee, meet him for a cold beverage, whatever it is that's gonna help you help that person go from theory to practice, and while you're doing that, guess what, I'll be doing, I'll be right here preparing for the next episode, so until then, go out and make it a great day, and thank you very, very much,

‍