Episode 66 – Making Education Accessible to all and Amassing a Tiktok Following Along the Way with David Paykin

Joe Quattrone (00:00):

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Katie Hankinson (00:33):

Welcome to building while flying at Sasha group podcast, where we interview business leaders about how they tackle challenges, stay resilient and navigate ever-changing skies.

Joe Quattrone (00:46):

Hey everybody, this is Joe Quattrone your host for today’s episode of building while flying. And today I have a very unique and interesting guest David Paykin. David say hello to the building while flying audience.

David Paykin (00:58):

Hello everybody.

Joe Quattrone (00:59):

David has an interesting journey. He started off at his career in insurance sales, uh, until one fateful day, about a year ago, I believe, um, where David got fired, uh, and he posted some content to social media, uh, talking about him getting fired and that he thought that it might be the best thing for him. David, walk us through that day and let us know why you had an inclination that this might have been the best thing for you.

David Paykin (01:29):

Yeah, I think that the biggest thing is, uh, understanding that, um, that, that I just needed to do something a little bit different and that in, in essence, the, you know, getting fired was gonna be a really cool way for me to essentially just guarantee that I could go and dive into what I actually wanted to do. Um, and at the time it was really just working on ideas that I had had, and that I was doing on the side while I had been working full time, but now I could dedicate my entire, uh, <laugh> the entire length of time that I had to really going into it. And, uh, when I started out, I actually did a couple of different things, um, that, uh, that, you know, didn’t pan out, which was initially I started streaming on Twitch. Um, and I was doing a little bit of, of two things, which was one I had played chess for about like 15 years, uh, beforehand, you know, a lot of those years competitively when I was younger and then, you know, play a little bit more recreationally.

David Paykin (02:22):

Uh, and then that was really blowing up as a space. And so I thought, okay, it’d be cool to see, like how can I play out here? And so I’ve got some old streams of that, where I was basically streaming for, you know, six to eight hours a day live. Um, and it gave me a lot of the understanding of like how to keep something entertaining for a long period of time. Um, and then on the, and then a couple of those sessions, I was doing some kind of young professional trying to help people with careers, sharing my perspective. Um, and I think that’s really important, you know, that, that term, which is sharing your perspective. I think that when you’re somebody who hasn’t worked a long career, the idea that you’re coming in as an expert or somebody who really, you know, understands every single nook and cranny, it’s just simply unrealistic. It’s not true. And so what I did is I just shared my perspective on what was working for me, um, and, uh, realizing that Twitch basically had no organic reach and that many of the people who had built a community on there had built it because they had, were bringing it over from YouTube or brought it over from their competitive gaming days. I realized that I couldn’t be on that platform long term to try and build a community. Um, and that’s where I started posting on TikTok. And, you know, the rest is history.

Joe Quattrone (03:29):

The rest is history you’ve grown quite a bit in just a short amount of time. I think, what is it? 1.7 million followers on TikTok?

David Paykin (03:37):

Yeah, probably less than that, uh, because I’ve been diversifying on other platforms and when you don’t post as much on a singular on one platform, especially when you already have a community on there, you start to like lose community members. And so I, and I can get into, I can get into, you know, why I realized that I needed to pivot and really, you know, built diversify where my community was. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s somewhere around over one and a half million or something like that.

Joe Quattrone (04:01):

Wow. That’s amazing. Um, and so when you decided to, uh, when you decided after you lost your job and after Twitch wasn’t necessarily working out from a organic reach perspective, you made a decision to get into TikTok and start publishing content and really offering up advice to people about how to go and fetch jobs and get interviews and get, you know, really get their stuff in order. Uh, talk to us a little bit about what was going on kind of macro, um, in, in the space. I, I recall about a year ago that would put us square in the middle of the pandemic, maybe slightly coming towards recovery. I think a vaccine was in place. I imagine there was some like interesting wrinkles to the market back then because, uh, it, the, the job market wasn’t as favorable to employees as it is today, uh, where almost all the leverages in the hands of the employees right now.

Joe Quattrone (04:51):

But, um, what was going on in your mind when, you know, you’re doing all this during, um, the middle of the pandemic, were you worried at all that, you know, Hey, maybe, maybe I’m not gonna, maybe I’m not gonna find another full-time job. Maybe I need to pursue other interests, uh, because there’s this Ima imagine or amazing thing called the internet out there. And I can, I can kind of write my own history. What was going through your head when, when all that stuff was going down and we were in the weirdest market we’ve ever been in.

David Paykin (05:20):

Yeah. So I, I think there’s a couple of different, you have a couple different questions in there, and if there, uh, I could go it down a rabbit hole on a couple of them, but I’ll just cover high level stuff, which is, I think that at the time, you know, what I was seeing on social media, the reason why I felt a need to do this is one I had actually been putting out contents around young professionals five years earlier. Right. I had like started this podcast and like, I could only do so much, but what I realized when I was interviewing people was that one, there was, they, they weren’t necessarily able to share everything that was going on because what if my boss sees this? What if my manager sees this? What if my company does something about it? And so when I was interviewing people, I was like, that was not what we were talking about 10 minutes ago.

David Paykin (05:59):

Right. But as soon as the cameras come on, you know, of course it’s gonna be a different, uh, perspective cuz, and, and understandably so you’re worried that if you say the wrong thing, it could really hurt you in your career. And so what I realized was that in doing that, it wasn’t gonna happen off of, you know, me interviewing other people. I needed to share mine and take a massive risk on my own career. Um, and share that. And so one of the big things I did early on that I didn’t see a lot of people doing in, in just social media in general in the career space was they weren’t actually sharing things for free. And what happens is that all of the people who have, uh, a reluctance or have, you know, skepticism about whether or not you’re actually there to help them, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s much easier for you to show that you are actually gonna help them by sharing the resource for free.

David Paykin (06:43):

So like all the stuff that I have as free resources are literally Google box. You don’t have to sign up for them. I don’t take people’s emails that, of course that comes at my own detriment. Cause now I don’t have like a private, you know, email list. I don’t have phone number list where I could go and reach out to them, but I felt like it was the right thing to do. And I felt like it was actually in the interest of somebody who’s coming in and they need help with their career mm-hmm <affirmative> and somebody who couldn’t necessarily afford an $800 course or a $2,000 hour coaching session, um, or all these master classes. Um, and so that was where I really started was like, how can I reverse engineer making sure that this is the best possible thing for each individual person who even comes across my content?

David Paykin (07:21):

Um, a lot of the things I did early on that a lot of other people weren’t doing was one. Um, I was following back every single person who followed me for the first a thousand community members. So if you go and look at my TikTok, you’ll see that there’s about like 1300 people aren’t following. The first thousand of that are actually all the people who decided to join the community and took a chance on me. Well, I followed them back and I would jump into DMS and literally help them step by step with whatever they were working on. Right. And then I would go and, and then the other thing is I also went live every single day. Once I hit a thousand followers, because then I was able to go and, and help people at scale in these individual more intimate settings, really helping them from a Q and a perspective. Right? Yeah. And yeah, and going live every day, the reason I was able to do that, where a lot of other people burnt out trying to even, you know, match. It was because of that experience I had with Twitch where a lot of people would look at that as a failure, but for me it was getting the reps in so that I could go and do this, um, every single day.

Joe Quattrone (08:13):

And I mean, I would imagine when you’re going live every single day and you keep a record of those lives that you have other content to pull from, if you chop it into micro content and reuse it across platforms has going live, been an interesting,

David Paykin (08:26):

You know, what’s the craziest part. I never used a single, I never chopped up a single piece of content. I literally just posted them raw footage onto instagram on I GTV cuz I just wanted the documentation that had happened because I knew got it. Nobody would believe me if, if it didn’t exist. I knew that people wouldn’t believe me unless they were the early community members. So I literally have the lives of back in December, 2020 when, you know, I think we were at like 10,000 or 12,000 community members. And I, because I assume that nobody would actually believe that like how, as things have played out now where I’ve grown a community and we’re really helping, you know, so many people that they would believe that I was doing that early on. And the same things that I’m doing today is what I was doing. You know, back then when there was, you know, just a couple of people in those live sessions versus hundreds.

Joe Quattrone (09:10):

Well, it seems like you’ve got, um, you’ve got a lot of inspiration. I’m, I’m not sure how much you follow GaryVee’s content, but uh, knowing you a little bit and having a couple conversations personally, it sounds like you’ve got at least the ethos that Gary has when it comes to providing a lot of value up front before you ask for anything in return. Has that been a seminal part of, kind of how you’ve been building audience? Uh, really that idea of don’t even worry about monetize, like figure it out later kind of thing.

David Paykin (09:38):

Yeah. So, and I don’t, again, I don’t know how much of your audience and I, I assume that most people have no idea who I am. That’s just the assumption I make when I go into any situation. But, um, the I’ve actually never monetized my community. So I’ve never taken, I’ve never sold a course. I’ve never done coaching. I’ve never done an ebook masterclass, uh, merchandise, because I fundamentally believe that, um, I, I believe that this stuff is gonna play out and that, um, and that having a reputation of having never monetized your community, if I’m able to pull it off of never monetizing individual community members is going to be something that’s a huge competitive advantage and something that where people can actually see that the actions have mapped to what I’ve been doing since the start. Right. Um, it’s it it’s that’s of course been very stressful and very difficult, right?

David Paykin (10:23):

Cause it’s very hard to not monetize. Um, you have to live very frugally and basically, you know, not spend a single dollar, um, that you don’t need to. Um, but I think that, you know, that’s, that’s definitely one of the places that, um, you know, Gary and I match a mentality in, in our mindset about this, which is that, um, people can see through the actions. Like you can tell them all day that you, you know, only care about community, but when they see you con continuing to, as he puts it right hook and continue to either, whether it’s an NFT project that, you know, you don’t believe in whether it’s taking a sponsorship over like one sponsorship after another, that you again have never posted about in the past. So clearly you weren’t like a huge fan of it before that type of stuff plays out. And I think that it’s gonna, I, I think that, you know, for what we’re doing right now, at least what I’m doing on my end, I think that there’s gonna be a very cool opportunity of like showing that you can kind of run the four minute mile of never monetizing individual community members. If you can figure out how to build business off of your, your execution on social media, right. Essentially

Joe Quattrone (11:23):

I get more into like you’re playing the extreme long game and you wanna build

David Paykin (11:28):

As long as it gets,

Joe Quattrone (11:29):

You wanna build the David reputation out to the extreme, and then I’m sure you have other career pursuits that you wanna try to go after. When, if, and when you get to the point you wanna be from a, a personal branding or a reputation perspective, what are some of those pursuits? You, you wanna write books? Do you want to, what do you wanna do with your life after you’ve become this, uh, career, uh, placement mogul <laugh>

David Paykin (11:58):

<laugh> yeah, I don’t, I mean, I don’t know about any of that. I’m, I’m honestly, at the end of the day, I’m just one guy sharing his perspective. And frankly, like, even when I was starting out to even now, you know, I’ve gotten pushback, you know, a significant amount from this industry, um, you know, career coaches don’t like that, I’m basically giving out their stuff except better for free mm-hmm <affirmative> HR, doesn’t like that. They now have a ton more candidates that they have to go through. Um, and, and, you know, I can also get into like why I’m doing this like crazy UN you know, unkept hair and unkept beard. There’s a strategy behind that in showing the authenticity with my community, that you can actually go and help people by sharing your perspective without necessarily having to dress up in a suits or a nice, you know, button down and tie, um, that you see a lot of people in the career space do.

David Paykin (12:39):

And I think that long term, my plan is to try and do this across every niche and every industry mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, so, you know, a big thing that, you know, I grew up with was like, education was the way out mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, because my parents are immigrants and I’m, you know, uh, the, you know, kind of the first generation that grew up in the us, but I go and see all the stuff that they had to go through. And for me, it gives me a lot of like gratitude in knowing that, you know, what they had to go through in, in the former Soviet union, what they went through as specifically, you know, their, their, um, you know, their background, um, in the Soviet union. And so for, for me, you know, the ability to make education that is actually helpful to people completely free and be able to do that across all the different segments of education, whether it’s going, whether it’s entrepreneurship, whether it’s, uh, you know, understanding venture capital, whether it’s, uh, careers, whether it’s going and understanding, you know, navigating corporate life, whatever that might be. Um, it’s basically the idea is making is, is doing this across all other niches and, um, and industries that I can’t.

Joe Quattrone (13:40):

Yeah, it sounds like also to some extent, you’ve got a lot of challenger brand in you. You’ve got a lot of this. Um, I wouldn’t say, I wanna say fight the system mentality, but, um, I’ve seen a lot of your posts. Uh, actually one you’re one of my favorite follows on TikTok. Um, and it reminds me a lot of like my perspective as like a parent, right? I I’m, I’m a parent of three kids. And for the most part for the past 20 years, I’ve lived in major cities like New York and Los Angeles in an era with the internet. And I, I tell people frequently, like I love my mom and dad. I love my mother-in-law. I love these people. They didn’t, they didn’t raise kids in the same environment that I I’m raising kids currently. So I have to kind of take their, their per opinions and perspectives with a grain of salt, uh, right.

Joe Quattrone (14:26):

They didn’t have the internet back when, when I was growing up. Um, you know, like we didn’t know as much about how crazy society was outside of your little bubble that you existed within. So I imagine career advice is very similar when you talk to people like, and, and a good one was I, I kind of went back through some of your old content today, and I remember seeing one post that could have stood to be slightly controversial. And I I’d love to hear how the community management of this post went, but it was the idea of, uh, you bringing up the fact that a two week notice is completely irrelevant or not completely irrelevant, but needs to be addressed at a more, you know, you know, in a, in a more open playing field, cuz maybe that advice is a little bit tired and cliche and doesn’t apply to everybody in 2022. Um, you don’t have to necessarily go into that piece in particular, but how has it been with some of your hot takes or some of your opinions, uh, that go against the grain of what society tells you that you need to be doing from a, a career, uh, perspective?

David Paykin (15:27):

Yeah, I think that, uh, again, you know, you brought up earlier Gary’s mentality and being in the weeds and, and, and like I, so I, it’s tough to cover like everything that I’ve done, but essentially like on Instagram I answer every single DM. So I’ve gotten thousands of DMS at this point. I answer all of them. Um, I’ve also got a private LinkedIn community and from there people are sharing the different experiences that they’re having and what I’ve started to realize. And just looking at the two weeks notice thing is one, the, the expectation from employers comes from an, uh, an old, a little bit more of an old school mentality that isn’t necessarily wrong. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t put in a two weeks if you feel like that’s right, but not every situation requires you to do that. Um, and I think that oftentimes it almost can be a disadvantage.

David Paykin (16:11):

Cause if you put in your two weeks before you’re ready and a lot of people, um, might do that, um, then you can create a strategic, uh, not a strategically ideal situation as somebody who’s trying to find a different opportunity. Right. Um, but, um, I think that one of the biggest things is that I I’m actually in the weeds and talking to a lot of the people who are going through it versus I think that a majority of the people in the career tips and, and, and job search space usually are hoping on to one to three kind of like pillar, um, uh, beliefs, right? And they’re not going and challenging their own beliefs by going and talking to the people who are going through it. If we were talking to somebody who is, uh, launching a, a product or service and they were saying, well, we’re just only going to go and listen to all the people who designed these systems or who are only on one side of the, of the, of the situation.

David Paykin (17:01):

AKA, if you’re only talking to people in HR and only talking to people who are, um, hiring managers, you’re missing the whole piece of it, which are the people who are actually going through the job search process and something that I, I think that I’ve, you know, really, uh, uh, narrowed in on is going in and actually focusing on the people who are going through it. And that has given me way more insight than listening to somebody who’s been in HR for 15 plus years and thinks that they know everything that’s going on when literally two years ago, the job search market is different from what it was the year after it, and is different, is completely different from the last six months, right. Where there’s been a lot more of an employee market. And so I think that one people are holding onto kind of old world beliefs or like, um, kind of resting on the laurels instead of continuing to challenge their own, um, assumptions and also going in and actually doing the work.

David Paykin (17:48):

Um, that’s the number one thing that I’m seeing is that a lot of people is like, they’re just not going and doing the work. They’re not gonna go and talk to a dozen plus people every single day to go and understand what is actually going on on the ground level. And if you’re not doing that, then of course it’s not gonna seem. And, and most people aren’t gonna do that. And so if most people aren’t gonna do that, of course, the tips that I give are going to go against the grain, because you’re one of the few people who’s going and putting in the work and you have the actual first party data, because you’re talking directly to the actual sources versus going and reading a headline, which I know a lot of people do. Like, they’ll go and look at a survey that’s like a hundred people. And that is, you know, uh, I forget what the word is, but basically like those a hundred people now represent a hundred million and that makes absolutely no sense, right? Like it’s just the numbers, aren’t there to justify a bad assumption.

Joe Quattrone (18:31):

Yeah. And it’s interesting that you’ve got the data to back it up, right. You’re building groups and communities that give you the data firsthand. So while somebody can, uh, cite a survey that, you know, was kind of rolled up into an article that they had nothing to do with, you’ve got, uh, thousands and thousands of person audience that you can go talk to on a daily basis and really feel like you’ve got your finger on the pulse. That’s pretty cool. Uh, that brings me to a thought that, uh, or just a curiosity that I have, uh, it seems like universities might be interested in having you come to their campuses. Have you ever been reached out to, by, uh, certain college campuses or maybe student unions or student groups that to have you come speak at their campus?

David Paykin (19:12):

Yeah. I’ve been reached out to, uh, I think that, you know, one of the biggest things is that if I were to it’s, it’s, uh, kind of a trade off, right. Like if I go and, and do that, well, one, I, I don’t know if necessarily they’re gonna like that. I’m gonna say some of the things I’m gonna say, because I have some thoughts of like, as somebody who went to college and did my master’s, I have some thoughts about the actual ROI of a college degree right now, me too. Um, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily what they wanna hear. Um, and then secondly, um, I think that, you know, if I have the choice between going and, and building out what I’m doing right now versus going and talking to 20 people, why can help those 20 people plus, you know, don’t more,

Joe Quattrone (19:49):

They can just do it on DM

David Paykin (19:50):

Online. Yeah. So, so it’s like, I, and, and it’s one of those things where it’s like, okay, am I going to limit this to the 20 people who just happen to be in a privileged position to be able to pay for it, or be at a school where they could bring me in or do I wanna make this accessible to everybody? You know, that’s, that’s one of the biggest things for me is like in this, in this quest for me to try and make sure that all this education resources are available to everybody, like I’m sitting here trying to make sure that literally everybody, regardless of your race, regardless of your background, regardless of where you come from, that you have access to it. And thankfully we live in a society where a lot of people have phones, even people who are in some of the toughest situations. And so I can reach them and I can really try to provide them the tools that are gonna help them to break out of that situation. So that’s why I’m, I’m always gonna lean towards putting out content versus going and helping 20 people in this, you know, in this little workshop session at, at a college.

Joe Quattrone (20:40):

One last thing I have for you in terms of advice for our audience. So our audience, uh, as you may or may not be, uh, able to expect, um, you know, coming from the Sasha group is full of business owners, first generation business owners. So entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, things of that nature. So it’s not necessarily a comp for people that are trying to go out and find a job, but in, in your experience as somebody that’s kind of branched out and no longer is kind of thinking about like a W2 lifestyle and working for another company, um, you probably share a lot of DNA with people that are watching or listening to this episode right now what’s some advice that you have for an emerging entrepreneur or so entrepreneur, uh, on trying to, you know, obviously there’s a tough, tough, tough things going on outside of, of these walls. We’ve got inflation, we’ve got weird job markets, we’ve got, uh, a lot of different things going on. What’s your advice to those people that maybe struggling right now, um, cuz I’m sure you’ve gone through your own struggles. How would you, um, encourage them to keep going?

David Paykin (21:45):

Uh, I think that the biggest thing is making sure that one, what you’re actually doing is something that you believe in. Um, and I know that that’s cliche, but there’s a lot of people who are doing the next trendy thing. Um, when I was doing the career tips and, and stuff like that, it was far from trendy. I, I actually didn’t know anybody who was doing it personally. Um, it was just something I fundamentally believed needed to exist. And if you don’t feel that way about whatever you’re working on, whether it’s a business or it’s a, you know, putting out contents around what you believe in, uh, it’s not gonna work out because for example, I mean like I’m legitimately even now, right? Especially now, cause now I’m on other platforms, but you know, I’m putting in 12 to 16 hour days every day, like seven days a week for the last two years.

David Paykin (22:28):

And, and I don’t think that I could possibly do that without burning out. If I didn’t fundamentally believe in what my vision is and what I’m doing to try and help people. And I think that no matter what you end up doing with your business, if you’re not, if you don’t love it, you’re not gonna be able to get past those really tough points. Um, and then two, you know, the biggest unlock for any small business owner right now is going hard at, at content specifically TikTok and LinkedIn. Um, and I know that, you know, probably your audience here that a lot, but the, like there is no amount of performance marketing you will ever do in your life that will ever compete with orga organic content around the thing that you’re trying to promote, everything you’re trying to sell.

Joe Quattrone (23:06):

And they do hear that a lot. That’s just the, the challenge is it’s, it’s really difficult, right? So like actually, like you said, spending 12 to 16 hours a day, like that’s the reality. If you wanna make this work and you’ve got, if you’ve got time, if you can figure out how to do it, that’s the effort you gotta put in. It’s not gonna come easy. Nobody’s gonna give it to you. Um, so anyway, thank you so much for being with us. How can people reach you? I mean, obviously I know how to reach you, but what are, uh, some social media handles you wanna throw out there so our audience can get familiar with you?

David Paykin (23:35):

Yeah. It’s, it’s literally at David Paykin D a V I D and then P a Y K I N. So Paykin so at David Paykin on all platforms. Um, so thankfully it’s, it’s fairly consistent. Um, and, uh, and it’s been a, it’s been a real honor.

Joe Quattrone (23:50):

All right, folks, you’re gonna wanna go out and give this guy a follow. Uh he’s. Like I said before, he is one of my favorite followers in TikTok. Uh, but I’m gonna have to branch out and follow him him on other platforms. I’ve also really eager to, to join that LinkedIn group. Uh, anyway, thank you so much, David, for joining us. We really appreciate it

David Paykin (24:06):

Thank you.

Katie Hankinson (24:09):

Thanks for joining us for building while flying today. I hope you learned as much as we did. We’ll meet you right back here next time for another flight.

Mickey Cloud (24:20):

If you’d like to hear more about how business owners and brands are navigating these times tune into the next episode. And if you’re so kind, please rate and review us, plus we’d love feedback. So let us know what you think, what you’d like us to dig into next on building while flying across brands, businesses, marketing, and more

Katie Hankinson (24:35):

Original music by Fulton street music group.