Season 2 – Episode 5 – Our Interview with Will Wegert, Resume and LinkedIn Expert

by Jon Dwoskin

Scott Fishman:    Today’s episode of The Seven Minute Sales Minute is brought to you by audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and 30-day free trial at www.audibletrial.com/sevenminute. That’s www.audibletrial.com/sevenminute.

On this episode of The Seven Minute Sales Minute, Jon and I talk with resume and LinkedIn expert Will Wegert. As founder and president of coldcollar.com, Will gives you the tools needed to wow prospective employers. Cold Collar’s mission is simple: They want to help you land an amazing job. Will is all about using fun, unconventional, and out of the box ideas to help clients get closer to a job they love. Listen in as we interview the one and only Will Wegert.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of The Seven Minute Sales Minute podcast, your bite-sized and easy-to-digest guide to jump-starting your sales career and putting you on the road to gaining more prospects, more clients, more business and, ultimately, more income …

To get started, why don’t you tell our listeners who might not already know who you are, get them a little familiar with who you are and what you do.

Will Wegert:    Yeah, absolutely. I’m Will Wegert, and the company I run is called Cold Collar, Working on some rebranding right now, but the gist of what I do is I help job seekers find work they love. That’s the core piece. I do resume writing, LinkedIn profiles, personal websites. I’ve worked with some entrepreneurs, I’ve done some copywriting, but the core facet of where I work and where I work really well is in personal marketing, personal selling, helping people sell themselves for jobs. That’s kind of where I’m at.

Scott Fishman:    That’s good. How many people don’t love what they do that you work with?

Will Wegert:    Almost everybody that I work with. There’s a few people that are trying to transition from one job that they feel … I would say eighty percent are fed up, are frustrated, are not fulfilled where they work, and that’s been so cool lately just to watch the way culture is going. A lot of them are saying, “Hey, I like my jobs. I get a decent income, but I want to be more fulfilled. I want to do something, I want to make a difference.” I hear that all the time now. It’s cool to be where I’m at and to be able to help people market themselves for those positions where they can make a difference.

Scott Fishman:    Walk me through that. Somebody calls you, whether it’s a salesperson, somebody who’s working for a company, somebody who’s in corporate, they’re not fulfilled, they’re not happy, they want more out of their life, they don’t necessarily know how to put it on paper, but they can articulate it and then you bring it to life. Tell us, how do you do that?

Will Wegert:    Absolutely. Fast-forwarding a little bit, there’s of course tangible tools I’m bringing to the table: It’s the resume, it’s the LinkedIn. But, what ends up happening through that process, when they first call me, maybe they got laid off. More often they’re just fed up with where they’re at and not in a good place. The sales call, if you will, that I walk someone through, I used to be a lot more salesy and I would pitch people and I would, “Here’s the benefits and comparative.” What I’ve found and I’ve landed in the last, I want to say two or three months, I’m almost at 90%. I’m hitting people who are saying yes and sometimes I’m pushing people away from me. I’m being like, “Don’t buy it from me. You don’t need it. It’s too expensive,” and the genuineness, the authenticity that comes across attracts them to me. It’s kind of this reverse psychology thing.

The process I work people through, to come back to your question, is they call in and I start out by saying, “Look. My goal for you here is to evaluate the fit. I’m not going to pitch you anything and I promise you, if I don’t feel like we’re a fit, I’m going to let you know right away and I’m going to try and direct you to someone else who is a fit and I ask that you give me the same courtesy,” and it just takes the tension, the pressure off, and instead of them feeling like, you know, I’m not cheap. I’m $500 minimum and it’s not going to change their world to spend that, but taking that pressure off is huge. Does that help answer your question?

Scott Fishman:    Anytime. I had a fortune cookie once and the fortune was, “Cheap things are of no value and valuable things aren’t cheap.”

Will Wegert:    Yes.

Scott Fishman:    There you go. That was a good fortune.

Will Wegert:    No, I like it.

Scott Fishman:    It sounds like you’re really good at this and I like the fact that you said that you were actually able to turn people away. I think that’s great. Walk me through that a little bit. Why do you do that or why do you feel that resonates so well with people?

Will Wegert:    Yeah, why does that resonate so well with people? Great question. I think that anybody that’s in sales, they know, right? There’s an elephant in the room. The moment they call, they know that I want their money and I know I can help them. I’m invested in them purchasing. If I can make them and I can alleviate that tension, and it’s genuine, I mean, it happens to also work for sales, but it’s genuine that I’ve found that when I just care for people, when I really genuinely invest in them, it always comes back to me, whether it’s on that call, usually it is, but it might be two months later they’re like, “Hey, my mom or my sister or my uncle needs help. Will you help them?” It always comes back.

Scott Fishman:    That makes sense. That reminds me of a book I read. It’s called Non-Manipulative Selling. Because people can sell a salesperson, so if they know you care, then you’ve got ‘em. It definitely helps.

Will Wegert:    It’s counter-intuitive, especially when you’re struggling in your business and I’ve been there where it’s like I want to just drive it down their throats, but taking a big, deep break and, “Hey, I can help you and I’m going to do everything I can to help you,” in the call, they’re going to attribute that to the rest of my services. If I’m that genuine, and I’ll spend an hour with them without even mentioning money, they’re like – woah! – this guy’s going to blow me away when I actually do hire him.

Scott Fishman:    Yeah, a couple things, what would you say, when you’re working with people, the way people communicate today via text and via email, everything’s abbreviated. It’s almost like people aren’t even going to know how to talk in five years. How important are the words that we use, not only in your case, you’re doing resume writing and you’re doing things for social media. I want you to touch on that as well, how to build a personal brand, but how important are the real, old school words that we use, instead of LOL, and KUP, and all that. Can you talk about that?

Will Wegert:    Yeah.

Jon Dwoskin:    Wait, before you do that? What’s KUP?

Scott Fishman:    Keep you posted.

Jon Dwoskin:    Okay, didn’t even know.

Will Wegert:    I shouldn’t admit this, but I didn’t know. I actually Googled it when you sent it over earlier … Yeah, but abbreviations, casual text, casual language, I deal almost exclusively in the job seeker’s space and I’ve done some copywriting, so I think take this with a grain of salt that it doesn’t necessarily apply everywhere, but I think those kind of professional communication is especially important in that initial touch to somebody. Look, you’ve got to be professional. It’s incredibly important, but at the same time, I think there’s a culture switch going on where genuineness, where authenticity trumps a lot of professional language.

I think in the same way that people, they’re scared of salespeople, they’re scared of being sold to, I actually intentionally dumb down a lot of the language I use, and not just dumb it down like make it easier to read. I want to. I don’t think I have the example in front of me here, but one of my favorite cover letters I ever wrote, it worked incredibly well. I write in the cover letter, it said, and I used, “Hey, I think I’m your gal,” is one of the terms I used. That’s not professional. I said, “Hey, when I saw your job description, I’ll be honest, I got kind of giddy with excitement.” Like, you can’t use giddy in a cover letter, right? But things like that, the companies love it because just like salespeople, or people are sick of salespeople in the same way on an employer side, they’re sick of people trying to butter up, put a bunch of jargon and fluff and crap, so there’s a balance there.

There’s a lot of people that are stuffy, fluff, crap, and there’s a lot of people that are LOL, no spacing in their emails. They look incredibly unprofessional. I think being casual is good, but being very deliberate about the words you use matters a lot. Choosing every word intentionally, trying to convey a consistent message, and that message, especially in these Google-esque cultures where jeans and a t-shirt are cool to wear, you can dumb it down a little bit and that’s okay.

Jon Dwoskin:    How important is a cover letter? You talked about cover letters.

Will Wegert:    Yeah, cover letters, so cover letters are fascinating. If you Google that question, you’re going to get cover letters are pretty much obsolete anymore and there’s some truth in that. When a hiring manager is looking at a resume, the resume is always going to be read first and if and only if the resume captures someone’s attention, are they going to dig into the cover letter. The cover letter, though, if used right, if the resume gets the attention, it can be the strongest part of your pitch because it’s a place that allows you to share a lot more of that personality, a lot more of that authenticity. A resume, just by its own format, has to be a lot more formalized. It has to be a lot more structured and it’s a lot about here’s what I did and here’s how well I did it, but the cover letter says, hey beyond that.

One guy I’m thinking of, for example, he had a pretty crappy work background. He had worked part-time jobs and hadn’t done a lot, but he kind of was a point where he was turning over a new leaf and you can’t say that in a resume. There’s nowhere to say, “Hey, I’ve had this mental change, this attitude change.” Another guy, a similar situation, he had just had a kid. He’s like, “Shoot, now I have to take care of my family,” and I’m able to say that right up front. A cover letter can be an absolutely crucial point if you can get past the resume.

Jon Dwoskin:    That’s great. That’s great. Do you have a question?

Scott Fishman:    Yeah, as far as a resume goes and this is a Seven Minute Sales Minute, so it’s definitely sales and in a resume, you’re definitely trying to sell yourself.

Will Wegert:    Absolutely.

Scott Fishman:    What are your three best tips you can give people for selling themselves with, kind of like we talked about, not just sounding sales here, resumes that knock ‘em dead version 2.0, you know?

Will Wegert:    Yeah. I love that. Resumes that knock ‘em dead 2.0. That’s the name of my next book, guys. Stealing that. Yeah, a couple tips. I think that there are three things that I’ll really go back through here. One is the header. It’s something that not a lot of people utilize and, actually, before I get into this, I think I’m going to share a quote that’s been attributed to Ben Franklin and several other writers, but the quote is, “If I had more time, I would’ve written you a shorter letter.”

Scott Fishman:    I love that.

Will Wegert:    People think, we’ve been trained since we were young kids that, “Hey, your paper has to four pages long,” and we fill it. We pack it with a bunch of crap. People do the same thing when they’re writing a resume. They pack it with a bunch of crap, so the biggest thing that I would say is make it clear and concise and that’s going to take a lot longer time to say the same concepts really well with less words. You’re going to have to invest in it, but making it number one, clear, concise, and short, and in that, 90% of resumes I see have the same problem and this is probably the biggest problem. It’s showing not just what you have done on the job, everybody lists, “Hey. I did sales. I swept the floor. I served food,” whatever it is, but nobody’s saying, “Hey, here’s proof. Here’s evidence. Here’s clear, concise evidence of success.” That transferable skill is so much more important in the job market than it ever was. One is that the concise evidence to success.

Two is a header, a one sentence summary. Just like there’s clickbait on Facebook, right? Get them interested in the rest. If you don’t have a good header that summarizes who you are, they’re not going to dig in. Finally, white space. Break sections. You can have the best words in the world, but if they’re in a giant paragraph, if they’re lumped together and there’s not well-done white space, nobody’s going to read it. Resumes are skimmed. All writing is skimmed. You’re trained, again when you’re young, paragraphs have to be five sentences. Bull crap. It should never be longer than two lines, in particular on web. On a computer, they’ve proven, studies have proven, not two lines, three or four, but if it gets longer than that, people just don’t read it. You’ve got to break it up.

Jon Dwoskin:    I love the white space thing. I teach people that all the time. I preach it because it drives me nuts, that big jumble of words. You can never read it.

Will Wegert:    Yeah and it doesn’t matter how good the words are. I mean, the words matter, but nobody’s going to read it if it’s in a giant. Just like you said, it’s huge. It’s huge.

Jon Dwoskin:    Let me ask you this, how did you find out that you were good at this? How did the light bulb go off that holy cow, I’m good at resumes and getting people jobs?

Will Wegert:    Yeah, yeah. It was kind of by accident. I was always kind of invested in my career. I was a great runner in college or in high school, rather, and then I went to college, ran in college, but wasn’t that good, so I’m like what’s my thing now? It’s not running. I started getting invested. I got some internships and I took on sales job pounding down doors selling ads and through that, I knew careers were my thing and right out of school, I mean, I studied a lot of it, read up a lot in the career playing department. Right out of school, I had five jobs in eight months and it took me that eight months to figure out I love getting jobs. That was my sale. I was done. Once I got the job, I’m like I don’t want this. This is not fun anymore. I already won. I already conquered it.

It was kind of by default. I was hating where I was working. I was mentioning it to my wife. I’m like I want to start to my own business, but I don’t know what to do, maybe resume writing, and so my wife threw me into the fire by there was a comment on Facebook. Someone said, “My sister needs a resume writer,” and she’s like, “Well, my husband does that,” and I thought oh, shoot. I guess I have to do it now. That was how I got started and I just run from there. It’s grown from a $30 first, well, I think the first one I did was free and it worked really well and I charged $30 for my second and here I am three years later and I’m actually starting a business this year where I’m consulting other resume writers because people are starting to come to me for advice. How are you getting this done or how are you doing, and so it’s been a little bit organic, but it’s been fun. It’s been fun.

Jon Dwoskin:    That’s great. You’re fortunate to have found a purpose and you can be authentic and help people. This is something that you were saying earlier is you work with a lot of people who want to feel fulfilled in their careers and it sounds like you really are. I remember years ago before I started my own business. I started my own business on June 1st of last year 2015 and a buddy had called me and said, cause I was just not happy where I was, but he called me and he said, “Hey, I got this quote I want to read you from Anthony Robbins. I think it’ll resonate with you,” and the quote was, “Success without fulfillment is failure.”

Will Wegert:    Mmm, that’s good.

Jon Dwoskin:    It really resonated with me. I think there’s a lot of people out there like you were, like I was, like I know many people have been in their jobs when they’re looking for that fulfillment, so they must call you and not know where to go, so how do you advise them to make a move and really, not only utilize your services, but jump off the cliff and make a change in their life.

Will Wegert:    Yeah. That’s a hard thing to answer. In a lot of ways, they have to want it themselves and if they’re not very clear on where they want to go, I don’t want to have them waste their money on me creating a scatter-brained resume because nobody wants that. I think one tool I like to use, I always go back to assessments, Briggs-Myers. There’s a whole bunch of them that help people just get clarity, but honestly, I think the biggest thing, and this has been true for me, I’ve looked at people, I worked in insurance for a while, it sounds like it’s true for you as well, a lot of it happens just by diving in.

Jon Dwoskin:    Yeah.

Will Wegert:    We’re trained. We have that idea that hey, you’ve got to find your dream and passion and everybody’s like, “Well, I don’t know what that is.” I feel like every single person I’ve ever talked to who has said, “I’m passionate about what I do,” didn’t know that necessarily forever. They just dove in. In the insurance world, who likes insurance? But everybody in insurance loves insurance because they started and they found out they were good at it and they stuck with it. Maybe you figure out it’s not, so just dive, just start taking steps. It took me five jobs and eight months to figure out this isn’t it, but when I found it, I knew. I had to make that commitment, a commitment to something. It doesn’t have to be the thing. Make a commitment to something and it might become the thing.

Jon Dwoskin:    Right. You got to jump in. My dad’s a dentist. My dad loves dentistry. He loves being a dentist and some people don’t understand that. Then his associate that he brought in many, many years ago asked me, “What was it like having a dentist as a dad?” I was like, “It was horrible.” Right, right. That’s great.

In summary, a little bit here, if you can give one major, what’s your biggest piece of advice you would give to someone that’s just starting to put their resume together and willing to work hard to do it right?

Will Wegert:    Yeah. I think the biggest thing, and I think you guys will like this in the sales world and I think anybody can apply this, and this may be backwards because I’m a resume writer, that’s how I earn my income, but the biggest thing you can do is knock on doors or use LinkedIn connections or mail your resume. When you can get your resume, no matter how crappy it is, in front of real people, not relying so much on job boards or hiding behind the email all the time, stand physically in front of real people and develop real relationships, that’s the biggest thing that’s going to make a difference in your job.

Yes, you want to have great tools around that process and a lot of times what I’ve found is, the tools give people the confidence they need to actually walk in front of people and I’m able to give them a plan. That’s incredibly valuable, but if you’re going to do one thing, it’s do the hard stuff and talk to real people. Build real relationships with real people. That’s the biggest thing and you know that’s authentic, because that’s coming from a guy who earns money by doing the writing.

Jon Dwoskin:    Yeah. I just posted today on my company Facebook page, The Jon Dwoskin Experience, I think you’re on it.

Will Wegert:    Yeah.

Jon Dwoskin:    Check out the video I posted today by Steve Harvey. It’s a six- minute clip that he does at the end as they’re cleaning up Family Feud and it’s all he does is motivate. It’s like a six-minute motivational thing and it’s all about taking the jump. We all have responsibility in life to do what we love. Take the jump. Check it out.

Will Wegert:    Yeah, I’m excited. I’ll do that. I’ll do that right after this call. That’s awesome.

Jon Dwoskin:    Hey, in closing, I have one question …

Will Wegert:    Yeah, hit me.

Jon Dwoskin:    We’re doing this podcast interview via Google Hangouts, so I see the Tough Mudder thing. End with the mindset of Tough Mudder, cause I know those are pretty tough.

Will Wegert:    Yeah, mindset of Tough Mudder, that’s good. I shouldn’t admit this, but I did that Tough Mudder on 0 training. It was 12 miles. It was awful, grueling, mud. It took six hours because it was literally so muddy, we had to crawl up. But, man, you know what? Whether it’s that, whether it’s jumping into a job search, whether it’s jumping into a new sales job, you’re always going to be uncomfortable with it, but the people who are successful are the ones who dive in and deal with the pain. I think it’s called a Tough Mudder for a reason. It’s going to be tough no matter what it is, but no matter how much you’re passionate about what you do, there’s going to be the daily grind, but when you do that, you’re going to find that 50% or that 30% where you’re just empowered and that’s where it’s at.

Jon Dwoskin:    Right. Tell people your website, how to get ahold of you, who your perfect client is and tell the world.

Will Wegert:    Cool. Yeah, so I probably direct most people to my LinkedIn right now because I’m doing a major overhaul on my personal website and my business website and maybe you can post some of those under the podcast. Link’s up there, but willwegert.com and Coldcollar.com. Cold as in not hot, collar like a shirt collar, coldcollar.com.

Jon Dwoskin:    All right, great. Listen, I’ve known you for a bit. You’re inspiring. You’re changing people’s lives. You’re giving them the vehicle to get themselves a better life. You’re exceptional at what you do and hopefully people listening will reach out to you and I know they’ll benefit from your wisdom that you shared today, so thank you for sharing that.

Will Wegert:    Hey, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on guys. It’s been a lot of fun and I’m excited about listening in. I know that you guys got a lot of cool stuff going on, so I’ve been watching and I’m excited to see more.

Jon Dwoskin:    Great.

Scott Fishman:    Thanks, Will.

Jon Dwoskin:    Thanks, Will.

Will Wegert:    All right. Thanks guys. Take care.

Jon Dwoskin:    Take care.

Scott Fishman:    Yep.

Will Wegert:    Bye bye.

Jon Dwoskin:    Bye … Thank you for listening to this episode of The Seven Minute Sales Minute. For show notes and worksheets pertaining to this week’s show, check us out at thesevenminutesalesminute.com. Take today’s strategies and run with them. Increase your sales and increase your income.