Ami (4:36)

Company money or you're saving the company money. And if you don't do either of those things, you're probably going to get fired.

Avni Barman (4:42)

Yeah. Let alone get, like, promoted.

Ami (4:44)

Like, you wouldn't. So you said you created a guide. Is this like a guide that's available for download or purchase on your pages?

Avni Barman (4:50)

Yes, it's on my beacons and it's free. I'm all about giving it to the girlies for free. So, yeah, we can grab it.

Ami (4:57)

Okay. Love it, everyone. I'll. I'll link it in the, in the show notes too. Okay. Cheat code number two. This one is something that I feel like I am always telling my clients. And that is when you're applying to jobs, you have to apply to a ton of jobs. Like if you apply to 20 jobs and they're like, oh, why does I get any interview? It's like, because you need to apply to a thousand. And so your idea is like, you gotta start with a thousand jobs.

Avni Barman (5:22)

Yep, 100%. I couldn't agree more. I really, truly believe that you can get anything in life if you're willing to play the numbers game. That's like my core philosophy on anything I've ever done. And I, I think in today's world, and honestly, even when I was trying to get job, it's just as hard to get a job as it is to start a company, as it is to, like, be a content creator, whatever it is. All these things are really hard objectively. And so you have to play the numbers game in everything you do. So when it comes to getting a job, that means applying to thousands of jobs, because maybe 20 will get. You would interview and then maybe like five of them, you'll actually make to the second round and then maybe like one, you'll get a call back and that'll end up being your job. But if you are not if you're doing like a hundred, by the time you get down that funnel, you have zero interviews, let alone a job. And so you really have to do that. But we can't just be like monkeys out here running around spending like 10 hours a day applying to these jobs. And so I've really, like, challenged myself or like, at that point that time when I was actually looking for a job to come up with like hacks and systems and shortcuts to get that same volume of number without putting that time. And so that's like there's a bunch of ways to do this. I mean I think like one simple way is like there are so many enterprise tools built for companies to do this. Why can't you use it for yourself? Like look at yourself like a company and look at yourself as an investment like buy that subscription and leverage these SaaS tools. And all these SaaS tools, they send cold, cold emails in bulk. They now look up companies and research companies in bulk. There's so many tools you can use like Apollo I.O. is one rocket reach one. These are like ways to get like recruiters emails at a company. Or you can even do like mass applied through LinkedIn. You there's like a one click apply button where it basically you don't have to upload a resume, you don't have to upload a cover letter. All it does is like screens your information. I think you even talked about this where you can put on the back end that you're open to work and it will automatically send your application, your career. There's like so many of these, when you tack them all together you can very easily hit that thousand number without actually like totally overworking yourself and spend more of that time actually prepping for the interview, positioning yourself online, building your brand, things like that.

Ami (7:36)

Totally, yeah. And love Large numbers comes to our next cheat code which is your 32nd morning cold outreach. What is this and how does it apply to the law of large numbers?

Avni Barman (7:47)

Yes, so I have been doing this like almost for a decade. Genuinely. I've been literally doing this since high school just sending so many cold messages. This also is related to law of large numbers because a cold message is a lottery ticket and you have to think of it that way. You have to see it as likelihood of the person responding to you is slim to no chance. Why would they respond to you? What value are you giving to them? Are you really that important? Like, like you're asking them for something probably. So they're very unlikely to respond. But luck is a real thing and there are kind people in the world and there are people who want to help. So if you simply believe in that at some point if you've sent enough messages, someone will respond. And if you're truly targeting people that have leverage in the industry, that are very connected, that are in your field, they will be able to offer life changing value to your career simply through one call, simply through sending one message back. And so so much of in the insane things that have happened to my life and so many doors that have opened or opportunities that I've had that make me seem lucky or not lucky at all have literally come through a cold message. But in the moment it feels like that two second efforts and that one cold message opened this insane opportunity to me. Like I've had literally a self made billionaire like fly me to her office and have like a six hour meeting with me and she paid for everything off of a two sentence cold email. And it seems like it took two minutes to get that insane opportunity. But no, I'd sent like 5,000 cold messages across many years for that one random lottery ticket to happen. So if you really look at your yourself and your career in that way that, that they like, you can achieve exponential outcomes and you can really grow exponentially in your career. You kind of tap into these lucky moments, start creating luck for yourself and instead of sitting one day on a Saturday and be like I need to send a thousand messages today and I have this be this like ridiculously daunting task, just send a few every single day. Like make it as as important as brushing your teeth. And the way that I have hacked my mind to make sure I do it is I do not get out of bed. So instead of like doom scrolling on TikTok for like 20 minutes before getting a bed I I go to my notes app, I pull out my template, my co template. I don't tweak or personalize for people that would take away from the simplicity of it being like a few minute thing I do in the morning that's unserious and like it. If you make it complex it starts to become a negotiable habit versus a non negotiable habit. So I literally just have like this copy paste like here's two sentence about me like whatever simple thing. And I have like templates in my liquify as well that are free that if you want to see like what works you can totally grab that as well. And yeah and I, people always ask me like how do I find these people to message yo, literally anyone who's like one step ahead of you, who you're inspired by, like you can literally do this to people you like want to be friends with. Pretty much all my friends are call messages. Like it's insane. Like my best friends are literally call messages because I've always wanted to surround myself with other really ambitious women who are similarly building companies and are like investing in themselves daily and to be surrounded by that mindset and those types of people, yeah they don't just like show up at my doorstep. I don't like meet them at a club. Like, I have to intentionally go out and create that circle for myself. So like, it's just so funny that my literally my friends are even from cool messages.

Ami (11:15)

It becomes such a positive, self fulfilling prophecy because the more people you're interacted with, the better your network becomes. And the better your network becomes, the more people want to join your network, which I love that it compounds, especially.

Avni Barman (11:28)

As you continue to achieve more things in your career. It used to be every hundred I'd get one message. Now it's like every other. And that creates so much like value and leverage in your life.

Ami (11:38)

Wow. So our next cheat code is something I love because I did it when I was in college and I don't think a lot of other people did. And so I felt very validated when you shared this. And I'm like, wow, I'm glad. And that is to prioritize internships over grades.

Avni Barman (11:55)

Yes. Oh my God. This one is probably the most important one of literally everything. I think I just naturally was bad at school. That's always been like something I struggled with. Like I'm very bad at sitting still in class and like taking the test. And in some ways I think I subconsciously was just doing anything but get a good grade in the class because I like, physically was so. I was so uninterested in the structure of school. And that's been like a problem my entire life. My entire life. And in college I actually went to a very unique program. So it's called the IBN Young Academy. And it was basically this four year degree. Our tech business. It was very ambiguous curriculum. It was very much of a DIY experience. All of a sudden I'm thriving, right? Like the girl who could not do the homework and the exams and the structure, now she's thriving because there's so much ambiguity and like I can create my own structure. And I think that really honed in early that, okay, the grade in the class, like, it doesn't matter because it's the whole point of the program is what you make of it. So what can I do outside of class to really actually have something to show for myself when I graduate? And I'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur. So it was like, I have like a student loan. I need to like pay my bills. I cannot realistically be an entrepreneur when I graduate. I have to have like real jobs. I just save up money before I can do that. So how do I like make sure and absolutely guarantee that I get like a really good paying job? Because If I want to quit my job one day to start something, I need like a lot of money saved up. Like I can't like I have a shitty job, so I need to like really try hard. Very quickly realized that the way that you get a job is you have a job first. It's like the ultimate like chicken and egg thing of like if you, oh, you want to go do something, well, have you done it before? So that's kind of where I started to really grind the internship game to get that skills under my belt. And I realized that to actually get internships that mattered, that gave you the right experience to actually get the good job, get the good salary. They were super competitive, of course everyone wanted that. And if I was going to go fight for these things in my 10% time, it was pretty much like impossible. Like I was just like instantly forget all my dreams. Like forget them. So at that point I was like lucky enough to have already trained myself for 20 plus years to like be okay with bad grades. So it's like pretty easy when I was like not doing well in class to not take that personally. And naturally I wasn't going to do well in class because I was spending 90% of my time like interview pupping, applying to jobs, like fixing my resume, doing extra coolers on campus so that I could have something on my resume. And I think I'm successful today.

Courtney Johnson (14:40)

And I did.

Avni Barman (14:41)

I was like one of the only people in my class to graduate with a job, and not just any job, but like a one of one at a company as like the youngest product manager and one of the most coveted roles in Silicon Valley. So it was like an above average outcome, I would say. And I know for sure that only happened because I didn't put a normal amount of time into getting it. I was literally treating it like that was my full time curriculum. And you know, you can't get like there's not infinite time in the world. You have to prioritize. And that was the cost. I had to just be like, okay, then my grades will suffer because you can, you can only do like so much, like not sleeping, not eating, right. At some point you have to like kick out something else.

Ami (15:29)

Totally.

Avni Barman (15:30)

Yeah.

Ami (15:30)

I think so many people miss that because they think like I'm following the right rules, I'm getting the good grades and that just doesn't matter. I've never asked someone their college GPA when I hired them.

Avni Barman (15:41)

It's literally not relevant. I literally actually encourage people. Even if you got an insane gpa, don't put it on your resume because you're creating a new reason for someone to judge you. Like why they are. They're not asking for that information. It doesn't tell you if you do the job better. Don't provide additional things and give them more reasons to have an opinion on you other than the ones that they actually need to make a decision.

Ami (16:02)

Totally. Yeah. My favorite hire ever. I hired her at one of my corporate jobs and she just had a really great Taylor Swift fan page and the fan page was so good that she got invited to Taylor Swift's secret sessions. And I'm like if you can get the most famous woman in the world, you can go to her apartment via social media. Like yeah, I can hire you for this social media tech job.

Avni Barman (16:22)

Oh my God.

Ami (16:23)

She didn't even put it on her resume. She didn't think it was relevant.

Avni Barman (16:27)

Wow. I might mouth dropping like literally. Wow. That's insane. That is so like real life street smart actually relevant skill to like moving shit forward in the real world. People don't realize how hard that actually is outside of school.

Courtney Johnson (16:44)

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Ami (20:14)

That's who who I want to hire and that's who I hired at my chaotic startup. Which brings us to the next cheat code and that is sneak your way into a role by working at a chaotic startup first. And oh my God I have done this. I started out my career as like a director of marketing because I went.

Avni Barman (20:32)

The chaotic startup route hundred percent. There is so much hierarchy and bureaucracy and like just so many random hoops you have to go through at a big company. A lot of the concept of like being a certain role and being a specific position on a specific team is and being so like stickler about it at these big companies is how they keep order and like run the system. So naturally it's going to be that much harder to pivot out into another career or like explore other interests. At a startup there's like literally no such thing. And so as long as you're Constantly exercising different skill sets and providing like additional value at your job and your, you know, working on your skills to prove that you could potentially be someone else. That company is gonna like have space and going to be able to easily adapt to that because they don't have all those specific structures in place. And so if you're someone who wants to like pivot into something, someone who's like more on the exploratory side of their career, wants more flexibility in terms of things that they do on a day to day basis, startups are definitely the way to go. And naturally a startup is like a smaller company with less people. You're more on the ground doing like the hard shit that's like very real world versus like the corporate bullshit. And so you're going to also just learn way faster and you're going to actually like up level yourself so much faster where you know, completely like up loving yourself and you know, being promoted to a senior role or even like going completely to like a much more technical role or like going to their industry is so reasonable and feasible at that point because you're actually dealing with like very hard problems and owning a lot of stuff at the startup in a way that at a big company when there's like literally 10,000 employees, it is that much harder to get work like that put on your desk.

Ami (22:23)

Yeah, I love that that was, I feel like that's not talked about as much because people look at the company as like the stamp that makes them whatever rather than the actual role, but it's the actual role you're looking for. Like great. You can get clout from working at different org, but if you want to rocket ship your way there, start at the chaotic for sure.

Avni Barman (22:44)

And cloud is good. 100% cloud is good. That's how the world works. The world runs on cloud. There are other places. If cloud is important to you, there are other ways you can get cloud. It doesn't have to be the brand name of your company. And also you have to think about what are your personal goals. If your personal goals is truly pivot into an industry, cloud is not going to get you there. Right. But if your goal is, let's say it was like more my goal which was, oh, I want to, you know, start a company one day and I want to like raise a bunch of money for investors and I'm going to these people asking for money without a product, without like really much to show for myself. I have to lean on that clout in that conversation. And then the brand name, I Worked at starts to matter in that, but that's a very different goal. And so you really have to be honest and self aware. Like what are you trying to get from your career right now? There is a very different answer for where you should go. There's not like a one right answer which is like, go work. That is not the one sure shot answer for everyone.

Ami (23:43)

Totally. Yeah, totally. Depends on your goals and the trajectory you want and the roles you want and all of that. Okay, our next cheat code is spend as much time talking about the work as you're doing the work.

Avni Barman (23:57)

Yes. Oh my God, this is. So much of that learning came from being in a corporate company because I had to deal with all the corporate bullshit and being like a new product manager, just graduated, running a giant team and then having to get them to respect me and listen to me. Having so much stake on the line because I owned that team. But then I was also this like 22 year girl that no one wanted to listen to. Yeah. I really learned the hard way of like how to advocate for yourself and get your voice heard. And it literally comes down to just like bragging and screaming from the rooftop like how sick you are and how much you've, how much, how valuable. I was like people are not going to do the mental math in their head of like how important are you? Just like literally just have to tell them. And I feel like, because I learned that pretty early in my career when I quit my job and went on to go build my own things. And I'm navigating so much ambiguity and I'm in all these new rooms where I have crazy imposter syndrome and I'm just trying to get my voice heard, my idea heard and get things moving. I felt really comfortable like talking about myself and where I'm add value and why I'm the right person for this role, why I'm the right person to build this company. Whether I'm like seeking money, I'm onboarding customers, I'm making content and convincing people to like listen to my yapping. I felt comfortable with advocating myself. And people think that to advocate for yourself, like it comes for free and it comes in conversation and passively. No, this is like active work I have to do every single day, like spend hours on it. Like it doesn't come for free. And so what I like to say is a good way to think about is equal amount of time doing the work as you are talking by yourself. So that could be like making content online. It also doesn't have to Be that right? Like I would say like content is the easiest frictionless way because you can control how far it goes and you can control when you do it. And you can reach who you want to reach. Which is why I think content's like an insane superpower. But there are other ways too, right? Like you can go pitch yourself to go speak at conferences, you can, you go to more networking events, you can host your own. Like what I did and when I was kind of starting out and I didn't really like fully understand exactly the company I wanted to build and I was like way more in the exploratory phase. I would host these like weekly happy hours when I was living in New York City. And I would just invite like a few friends and a few like super connectors. And I'd be like, everyone bring a plus one. And I would just get a like 20 person reservation on a wine board. Like I'm not paying for anything, I'm really just getting a reservation. And people would come because people like community, they want to meet other people and they know that they're probably going to meet someone that's going to help them in their career in there. And I like hyper expanded my network. I increase massively increase the service area of people knowing that one, I am building something. Two, I need like all these tools, resources, network like advice, everything. So I'm getting all that. And three, I was learning from them. So like every happy hour I did, I was like that much closer to like figuring out and 10 plus more people knew about what I was building and what I was up to. And so when they're at a random event or they're like talking to a random person and it's relevant to me, they immediately think of me. And then they text me like, oh, I thought of you. I knew, I know you were struggling with this or you were looking for that person like here connected and they're not going to do this in their sleep. I'm like reminding them every Friday, by the way guys, this is what I'm working on. And I'm like continuously like shoving that down their ear so that when it comes down to the person that can actually be relevant to me, I'm the first person to think up because I'm top of mind. That's like one example. There are so many ways to continuously put yourself out there and share about what you're working on. But if you are not sharing, if you are not telling people, nothing's happening for you. Like no one is going to give you Things that are going to move your business forward, move your job forward, whatever it is you're working on. It's like completely relevant to like pretty much any career.

Ami (27:54)

Yeah. There's a quote from Austin Kleon that says if your work is not online, it doesn't exist. And I totally think that could be content, but also just like sharing it in Slack and making sure you're emailing it and making sure you're shouting out your team and like almost bragging about yourself at any chance you can.

Avni Barman (28:11)

100%. I actually have a corporate hack that I would do is I created a Slack channel for me, my manager, my manager's manager, my manager's manager's manager. So it was like, it was like a four or five person like Slack. And every Friday I would be like, these were, these were like my wins and I would like write out the wins that my team was doing. Things that I was working on. And first like 16 times I did this. This Slack channel was dead silent. Like I was yapping to a black wall. Like no one like gave a shit about what I was working on. And Loki, they're both. Why is she like volunteers information? What ended up starting to happen is they started inviting like their team members to the Slack was like, oh, you want to, you want to know what she's working on? I don't, I don't have the time or honestly, I don't even know. Why don't I just invite you to Slack Channel? You can ask her yourself or you can see her updates. The Slack channel kept getting bigger and better and it started getting like super vocal where people were like, come there to ask me questions about what I was working on. And like anytime they wanted to know what I was doing, they like had like this billboard in front of them. And I started to get like so much visibility with the leadership team because I was so top of mind with them as like whenever they were making big decisions, they would invite me to start inviting the meetings or they would start like scheduling meetings to be like, oh, like I feel like I was really interested in that thing you were working on. Like, I'd actually love to know more about it. I just threw 20 minutes on your calendar so you can show like what you know are the updates to this project. All of a sudden I'm getting time with the VP of like a billion dollar company. 20 minutes of their time to share my like itty bitty like work. Because I created and like inseminated like curiosity in his brain, just making it a habit Every Friday took me like, Truly, like, not more than 10 minutes. Three bullet points. That's it.

Ami (29:54)

Dude, that is so powerful and such a great way to like transcend levels and get visibility in the higher levels of your organization. Because that is really hard to do. That's amazing. Yeah, amazing. Well, we have one last cheat code and this is what I think your Internet famous for, and that is getting free conference tickets. So Avni, how. How are you getting free conference tickets?

Avni Barman (30:18)

Oh my God. It's like, you never know it's going to go viral, Truly. It's always just like the random thing that you spent like 30 seconds on making unseriously in your bedroom in like a troll way that ends up going the most viral, of course. But yeah, like, I've. This has been a thing I've been doing since I was literally like freshman year in college. I just. I don't know what it is. I just love conferences. I think it's like just the most magical place in the world. You have like thousands of people who all care about what you want to do, like you care about. And everyone's in the same industry and everyone can help each other, like move their goals forward and they're just like, literally right in front of you, like, completely to your access. So, like, I was very obsessed with conferences, literally since freshman year of college. And also like, it was a great excuse to like not attend school. So I loved that. So between the two, I was like made in my entire personality to like go to as many conferences as possible. And obviously I'm like a broke kid in freshman year of college. I'm like, I can't pay fifteen hundred dollars for a ticket and like then get a flight and get to the city. So I really got good at, you know, getting free tickets. And it was never more complex than just like asking the conference host. I think the hard part is like knowing who to email. And a lot of people ask me, like, who do I email? I don't know. Like, I never know. I just email a lot of people. Like, everything is a numbers game at some point. You just find enough emails, you get enough intros, like someone's gonna like have the power to give you a ticket. And so I kept doing that and now I'm like, I don't know. I think I'm like six years, graduated from college, and I'm like literally six still doing the exact same thing because I'm still emailing, I'm still going to conferences. I'm just leveraging those spaces in a completely different way that I did then. But conferences is like my bread and butter. Like every job I've gotten is through a conference. Like I've literally run like six figure customer pipelines at conferences where like I entered the conference with no money and I'm leaving with like multiple six figure like Lois and like deals signed because I'm just going booth to booth or I'm going to a conference and I'm making like a ton of content and I'm like summarizing takeaways so that like people in my community audience can learn stuff that I Learned at this 3 day event that they maybe didn't have the access to. And I'm getting millions of views and I'm growing like thousands of followers because I'm able to like share this because I was there and I had the privilege to be there. So like there's like infinite value that conferences have really provided in my lives. I'm like extremely, extremely bullish on it and I will like be grinding conferences to my grave. So. And I will not be paying for any of them because I, I add value when I go to that event. So they should be paid for me.

Ami (33:02)

Except we'll, we'll all be, we'll all be paying for the Genshi conference.

Avni Barman (33:06)

Oh, that needs to happen, genuinely. Side note.

Ami (33:10)

Yeah, is that happening?

Avni Barman (33:11)

Dude, I think it needs to happen. So I don't know if you know the lore, but Genshi started off as a conference. Did you know this?

Ami (33:17)

Oh really? I didn't know that.

Avni Barman (33:18)

So literally like 2019, I was in college. I hosted my first conference at SNAP headquarters and we invited like 300 entrepreneurs and we had like tons of incredible speakers. And then six months later we did a second one of Lyft hq. Then the pandemic happened and I did a virtual version of this conference. We had 17,000 people come all around the world and I kind of just realized that like they're, the IRL magic was just gone. So I actually paused Geni for several years and when I quit my job, I brought it back, but I brought it back through media and social media, then IRL conferences. But at the core of what it was and should be in the future honestly is like, it is a space for like really ambitious women to like come together and like fuck shit up, change the world.

Ami (34:11)

I love that. Well, I would definitely love to attend an in person event. And for people that want to attend in person or connect with your community online, where can they find you? Where can they follow you?

Avni Barman (34:23)

Yes. So I have a newsletter and I actually post a lot of events I'm either speaking at or hosting out there. So if you actually do want to meet me IRL or meet other people, agent community irl, definitely subscribe to my newsletter. And again, it's like in my link in bio and so I'm sure you'll like that there. So. So, like, they can easily find that. And then if you want to just, like, follow along my journey and like, get more of these cheat codes, follow me on Instagram and TikTok and there often. And I'm also dropping a bunch of the stuff on LinkedIn recently as well. So yeah, it's vnee barman underscore everywhere.

Ami (34:58)

Beautiful. Well, thank you, Avni.

Avni Barman (35:01)

Thank you for having me. I'm so, like, honored and grateful that the ultimate chico girly is leveraging my insights. So this is so exciting.

Courtney Johnson (35:12)

Okay, y' all, if you like this episode, you would love, love my Patreon, okay? You get exclusive access to me, exclusive content, tons of other resources, and a lot of juicy shit.

Ami (35:26)

Okay?

Courtney Johnson (35:26)

So I hope to see you on my Patreon, Sam.