Noob School - Episode 51: A New Sales Initiative: Upskilling Military Veterans For a Career In Cybersecurity Software Sales with Jack Sterling

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

In this episode of the Noob School podcast, John Sterling and his son and business partner Jack Sterling talk about their new initiative. Through the SkillBridge program, they will provide training and support to outgoing military personnel to help them secure a career in cybersecurity software sales. John and Jack, themselves former servicemen, talk about their goals for the program, and share the benefits of working for yourself instead of being someone else’s employee.  HIGHLIGHTSHelping military veterans get a career in cybersecurity sales  Jack and John's goals for the program The beauty of working for yourself and being your own bossWhy Jack left the military  QUOTESJohn describes their new sales initiative: "The program is called SkillBridge, and they continue to get paid by the government while they're in this training program. And our goal is to get them placed in a sales job that matches up with what they want to do."Jack talks about his goals for the program: "What we're doing here is really trying to take a small subset of people that are maybe entrepreneurial-minded and interested in sales and cybersecurity and want to maybe work for themself as opposed to being an employee of somebody else."  Follow Jack through the link below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacksterling/ Connect with Noob School and John by visiting the following links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsterling1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnsterlingsalesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnsterling_/Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_TikTok: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_Website: http://salestrainingfornoobs.com/

Welcome back to Noob School. This is where we interview sales pros that can help you get off to a great start in sales. All right, welcome back to Noob School. Today I've got Jack Sterling with me again. Jack is my oldest son, and we've got some business interests together. And today we're going to talk about a new sales initiative that we're launching as part of his cloudhound business, where we're going to be training veterans that get out of the service and want to go into sales. And in particular, we're going to be trading in SEC cybersecurity and what else?

That's pretty much it. You nailed it. We're taking members of the military as they're exiting the military. There's a program called the DoD Skillbridge program. Skillbridge? Skill bridge. So they keep getting their military paycheck. And for the last two, three, four months of their time and service, they get assigned to a private sector company.

Could be just a direct-to-hire type situation, or in our case, we're going to take them for two months, train them how to how to sell cybersecurity to businesses and then help them get jobs selling cybersecurity elsewhere. They could also get a job working with us on cybersecurity. So we're really excited about it and hoping to start our first cohort here in November. In November. So what's that? Two weeks away?

Two or three weeks, yep. And my understanding is we've got 10 people? We have 10, up to 10. We don't have 10 commits yet, but we have up to 10 for the first cohort. Okay. It's all going to be web-based. All web-based, so anybody in the world can join. It's all going to be remote.

And the idea is that you don't have to be here in person to do it. Hopefully we're going to find a job that can do the same. So you can work remotely from wherever you want to be in the world, and that can be your home base of operations. Right. Okay. And our, we kind of pay for performance, right? I mean, our business will get paid based on placing people.

They have to get jobs. Correct. So it'll be a live sales internship. So they'll be doing a left seat, right seat with us along the way. Doing live sales calls, right? We're going to ask them to start on the job, essentially. So where do you want to land when you leave the military? Pick that geographic spot first. And then start mapping out who's there. Who could be a good prospect for you? Start making contact. Start building your LinkedIn network. Really setting yourself up for success. So when you leave the military, you've already got ahead of steam in your sales career versus most people. you jump out of the military. It's like jumping out an airplane without a parachute. You've got to figure out what to do on the way down. So we're planning to equip and train these folks to sell. And we get paid if we place people, but we also get paid if they sell stuff.

And so do they. So it's really a win-win-win all around, I think. That's good. That's good. So the program's called Skill Bridge. And they continue to get paid by the government while they're in this training program. and our goal is to get them placed in a sales job that matches up kind of to what they want to do. That's right.

Okay. That's great. That's great. And as I understand it, you know, I'll be teaching some. You'll be teaching some. But we'll bring other people in that have a specialty knowledge like LinkedIn. Right. Maybe LinkedIn, Lindsay, will help us.

Yep. Or other people that will help with different things. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll have kind of our daily, weekly routines. You know, daily we'll have a huddle, team huddle weekly. We have our sales meeting. We kind of talk about opportunities

and how do we get over the hump. And then sprinkled in weekly. We'll have LinkedIn Lindsay. We'll have some of our partners from ScanSource come in to do some kind of solution-based, you know, vendor agnostic training. We'll bring in some of our vendors through ScanSourge to actually teach about, hey, this is what we do

and how we operate. What's our kind of sweet spot in the market? Because that's honestly the best hiring, a pool of potential hiring partners that we could have is we're going to use you to train these people and it potentially placed you in these companies once the internships up. And loosely isn't this based on the Honor Foundation program you went through? How so?

Well, I mean, it was before you got out, and they started to teach you things about how to get your first job and resume building. Loosely, I think that experience maybe informs us a little bit. The Honor Foundation was a once-a-week night school for six months as you're transitioning out of the military, specifically for Special Operations Community folks. And so that opened my eyes up. I saw the value of doing that versus just the kind of the basic TAPS program that everybody gets living in the military.

It's kind of a, you know, you do a two-day program, you learn about all the VA resources, and then they kind of just fin you on your way. And so it's one size of it's all. And so what we're doing here is really trying to take a small subsect of people that are maybe entrepreneurial-minded and are interested in sales and cybersecurity and want to maybe work for themselves as opposed to being an employee of somebody else. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing, right, to be able to write your own schedule every day to have your own goals. My goal is that it's X amount of month in this industry and work with this type of person and work with this type of vendor.

And you can pick all those things for yourself, kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure. And you're a perfect example of that because you set your life up where you're kind of a, you focus more on business in the mornings, and then in the afternoons you're more of working with your children. That's right. Yeah, and that's a carryover from. the early days of the pandemic when we really had kids were sent home. We didn't have a choice. And so, you know, my wife and I both worked from home already. And so I would, we just did an a.m. and PM shift. I would take the morning, work from, you know, seven to noon maybe.

And then lunch. And then my wife and I would high five and she would go work and I would go take the kids. And now that they're back in school, we've kind of maintained that same cadence. And so when I'm done for the day, you don't noon, noon one ish, then it's go pick the kids up, you know, do the carpool, do whatever we have on the agenda. Maybe it's go to the pool. Maybe it's, go to gymnastics, whatever it is. It's time with them, right? And that was my why.

That was my number one reason for getting out of the military was so that I could do those things and be there with my kids. And I work for myself. No one's going to tell me, hey, you've got to be in the office until 5 o'clock, right? No, one's going to say, if you were three minutes late, you know, we're going to do. No, I just run my own program. And that's what we're trying to help enable other veterans to do. That's correct.

Well, I'm looking forward to the first class coming through here in a few weeks and helping them all get great jobs where they can kind of control their future like you have. Yeah, I can't wait. I mean, it's somewhat daunting. But, you know, when you feel that kind of those butter. We've got plenty of time to figure out. When you feel those butterflies coming up, yeah, we've got three weeks, two and a half weeks. You know, that's a good sign. You're headed in the right direction.

All right. And I'm fired up that we have so much to offer. I mean, I've got close to five years of experience. and mistakes made that I can help people, you know, condense the cycle from when you transition to when you're successful. And you've got a, you know, career worth of teaching nubes to sell. And so just give them the book. We just got to, you know, tap into the pipeline on nubes coming out of the military and Bob's your uncle.

Well, I'm looking forward to it and thanks for including me. Yeah. Thank you. Bye, place. Bye.