Career Cheat Code
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Career Cheat Code
079 | Turning Code Into Change with Liderman Duin
Entrepreneurship becomes truly fulfilling when it transforms lives and creates opportunities for underserved communities around the world. Liderman Duin, the founder of Toucan Talent shares his journey of building a global tech academy that identifies talented individuals and equips them with skills for successful careers in technology.
• Building a mission-driven business that spans 11 countries and helps underserved communities
• Finding purpose during the pandemic by pivoting from healthcare software to global tech education
• Creating life-changing opportunities that allow team members to purchase homes and provide better education for their children
• Navigating the immigrant experience, from Venezuela to Kansas City, Italy, and Brazil
• Partnering with state governments and universities to develop apprenticeship programs and certifications
• Preparing the workforce for future jobs in AI, cybersecurity, and cloud computing
• Finding personal fulfillment through helping others achieve their potential
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The views shared on Career Cheat Code are those of the guests and don’t reflect the host or any affiliated organizations. This podcast is for inspiration and information, highlighting unique career journeys to help you define success and take your next step.
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The most rewarding thing in life is really helping others. You're helping yourself when you help others, because that fuels you and makes you find fulfillment. I do find fulfillment through helping others, and I believe everybody does, whether they want to accept it or not. That's a different story. Whether they want to accept it or not, that's a different story, but everybody finds fulfillment.
Speaker 2:On helping others. Welcome to Career Cheat Code. In this podcast, you'll hear how everyday people impact the world through their careers. Learn about their journey, career hacks and obstacles along the way. Whether you're already having the impact you want or are searching for it, this is the podcast for you. All right, Leader man, welcome to the show. You want or are searching for it? This is the podcast for you. All. Right, Liederman, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for the invitation. I appreciate you taking the time to connect today. I'm excited to have this conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is great. Thank you, I'm looking forward to it as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's dive right in. Let's tell the world what it is you do for a living.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely so. I'm an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur since I was a kid, so we focus on software development and we have a global tech academy, which basically what that means is that we find youth from underserved communities around the world and we teach them how to do tech and become great software developers or great entrepreneurs that want to use tech as becoming entrepreneurs in tech. So that's what we do.
Speaker 2:That's great. Tell me more about the name of your company and how long you've been doing this, yeah.
Speaker 1:So Toucan Talent is the name of our company. I have a second company that is Blueprint 2, which is healthcare. I've had that one for about 14, which is healthcare. I've had that one for about 14, 15 years now. And Toucan Talent, it's been three years in the market, about four years, three years since we incorporated and it's a company that was created during the pandemic. Basically, the idea started kind of evolving during the pandemic. So we operate in 11 countries. Now we have software developers mainly in latin america, and our headquarters is in kansas city. And, uh, we have a team, a small team, in europe as well. But yeah, that's what we do that's awesome.
Speaker 2:How many, how many people are in your companies now so about uh, 50 60 right now.
Speaker 1:Uh, we've grown. We've grown fast. We've gotten to about probably 70 full-time and now we're probably around 50-ish. But in the three years that we've been in business we have put probably over 100 people through our academy. Everything started just doing software development right, but then it gradually, organically grew to finding talent from underserved communities and giving them opportunities to join our team, work with our experts, and turn out that we realized that, oh my God, we're doing something really meaningful and really cool. Now, how do we scale that? And then we formalized it more. As a part of the organization is the Global Talent Academy.
Speaker 2:So this sounds really impactful, right? So how are you able to monetize something with such deep impact?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's been the million dollar question, right, because as a software development, all our clients are here in the and our clients trust us because of our expertise and our capabilities. But once we start adding you know youth that we have to go train. Then it's a huge cost for a very long time until we can get them, you know, to be more marketable and really provide more value to the team. But really the reality is that I fell in love with the mission of the Global Talent Academy, that I could not just wait for more revenue to come in through the doors in order for me to do the academy. So I just felt the calling to go do it. So I invested a lot of my own dollars to make sure that we get more youth to become part of the Global Talent Academy.
Speaker 1:We've reinvested our profits back into the mission of the company of the Global Talent Academy. But now we are lining up with certain foundations that want to help states that want to help, with certain foundations that want to help states that want to help, because even here in the US there is a lot that we could be doing to help underserved communities, focus on workforce development and get people from certain communities that typically don't have the opportunities to work in high tech and for us to go and train them and give them a path, a career that is enjoyable, meaningful and so forth. And sometimes what I think and I see these all over the world is opportunities are not as spread equally right, but talent is. So how do we go and find those talented people, from whatever background they may have, right and now give them an opportunity to have a career? So that's our focus needs of what that population needs, right.
Speaker 2:So if the state of Kansas or Missouri right is. Like you know, we know we need more people in these industries and they partner with you to help both find and then train those folks. And then on the other side, you also have relationships with tech companies. It sounds like that would say you know, we need to fill some of these roles, but we need to train people to do that. Is that typically how the model works?
Speaker 1:Yes, that's very similar. So it's like you build the mission and you find the foundations and the states, like you said, and agencies and government that ties to the mission and provides guidance, financials, you know and provide. Also, they already may already have certain incentives right for companies like ours to just be able to drive the mission. And then we have the ecosystem of companies tech companies.
Speaker 1:In any industry really, we have clients that are not in tech but they do require tech. They still, you know, the CFO wants to see a dashboard with numbers that are meaningful to them to be able to make decisions right. It may not be in tech, it may be in food and beverage or manufacturing, but they still have those needs of a CRM or an application or a website that allows them to collect information from their clients. Whatever it might be, and it could be very high-tech companies too, startups. They have brilliant ideas, but they don't quite have the workforce to go and really develop those ideas for them. So in some cases we're just building those MVPs right, those proof of concepts, so they can go and then be able to raise capital or at least, you know, take something to the market and let the market tell them if they're after something good or not.
Speaker 2:What made you start this company?
Speaker 1:Yeah, great question. So pandemic right. Going back to the pandemic In January 2020, we were ready to take over the world. That year or so it felt like we had a strong pipeline. We had a software that was very innovative within the healthcare market that we were going to release in 2020. We were working with many innovation departments at hospitals all around the nation and we've been working on this for years. We've been burning cash, growing organically, but all the cash that we were making through consulting and some other software that we custom software development that we've done for many hospitals we're putting into this great idea Pandemic hits, all those innovation departments are decimated, they're gone.
Speaker 1:And now I find myself that, you know, because healthcare found itself actually on like saving lives, we don't have time to go on figure out what the next big thing is right and put too much into innovation. I need to focus on treating patients. So my whole pipeline went away the clients that we had on this software that were struggling to pay. We couldn't get any appointments at any hospital at the time and then I had the idea of okay, there are certain features that we need to create and maybe now, during the pandemic, is a good time for us to go and focus on those features. If you remember, we thought we were going to be pandemic for a month or two, maybe three. Didn't think it was going to be so long.
Speaker 1:Pandemic for a month or two, maybe three, I didn't think it was going to be so long. But I thought if I can focus for the next three, six months on driving some of the features, that'd be great. So I'm going to go ahead and hire some software developers from Venezuela, which is where I'm originally from, and one or two that can help us out in the meantime, and so I hired the first one, and then it didn't take long for me to notice that we were really transforming his life and the life of his family by being employed at our company. So at that moment I just realized I had the aha moment, the mission in life type of moment. That was it for me, whatever age I was At the time 45, 46, perhaps but that's when I realized this is my mission, this is my calling, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to build a business that creates high impact on the lives of others and helps them transform their lives and open opportunities that probably they never even dreamed of.
Speaker 2:So it sounds like two things One, you're clearly a serial entrepreneur for real, and then, two, you basically stumbled upon this while trying to work on other things. It sounds like you just had that moment where you're like, wait, instead of building this other thing, I'm actually helping this person's life and their family's lives by just employing them in this sector. Maybe I should do that more often. Like that's remarkable to me that you basically pivoted in the middle of building something to something that just felt like you were going to have more impact with that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's well said. I love the way you put it. You said, yeah, that's exactly. Uh's exactly how it was. That was that eureka moment that you know.
Speaker 1:We spend our lifetime sometimes looking for that passion, looking for that thing that we feel like this is the mark that I can leave on this planet, or whatever drives us right. And for me, that was it. I found that recently, you know, four or five years ago. That's when I realized this is it? So? Then, every day since then, it has been how do I make a good business out of it, business that is profitable, business that drives value to our clients and a business that is really helping transform those lives, the lives of everybody. That is part of it. And how do I scale that? See, for me it's been.
Speaker 1:You know, there's always this thing that we think that to change the world is so difficult, it's so complex. But forget about changing the world for a moment. Think about changing somebody's world right, and then you have more and more people right, and then, all of a sudden, you're making that huge impact and hundreds, thousands of lives, hopefully millions of lives, and then you know that is super cool. And what I have found out is not that difficult. It really isn't that difficult. Once we put our minds to really do something impactful and meaningful, we put our minds together and we set that well, we can do it. We can achieve it. I mean, I've seen it. I don't want to be. What I mean to say is we're doing it, we're making, we're improving the lives of many, and we love doing that, and we want to do more and more of it. We're making, we're improving the lives of many, and we love doing that, and we want to do more and more of it.
Speaker 2:And you all are not a non-profit right. You all are a for-profit tech company.
Speaker 1:We're a for-profit tech company.
Speaker 2:That is mission-driven and operates with the end impact in mind the entire time. Correct. I love that. I think that approach is remarkable and I think you know a lot of us sometimes think that in order to have impact, aligned career or business, you have to be in the nonprofit sector or you have to be in the government sector or anything, and you have found a way to dispel that right and to really really say no, I can actually lead by mission and have a profitable business along the way. Correct.
Speaker 1:Correct and our people are paid well. You know, we work, we really go after very high tech projects and we compete in the market and we don't win them all, but we do win great projects that are complex and clients are demanding and for them, you know, the quality of the product is the number one mission, and we get that, we understand it and we train our people to really become the best of the best. So, in terms of a nonprofit, I do want to create a nonprofit as well, but I couldn't wait, so I decided I'm going to do it on a for-profit because it is doable and it's a model that I hope many others replicate and do as well. I welcome the competition and what we're doing, because if more and more people are more mindful of the impact and more driven about making whatever impact it is, then we're lifting people up, we're helping people get out of poverty, we are developing the workforce of tomorrow, and so then we're all contributing to humankind.
Speaker 2:So can you speak a little to how people can join, partner and take advantage of the things that you all are offering, both from the partnership side? And if I were just in my 20s trying to figure out how does someone connect with Toucan Talent and figure out if there's a good match there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. Go to our website wwwtoucan-talentus and there's a form right there, simple form, just to be connected. So that's an easy way. Mainly we connect through the organizations, through the partners we are. We are just looking for more clients because as we get more and more clients that have software development demands, then that gives us the opportunity to be in those projects and be able to go and be able to build a bigger pool of apprentices that we have.
Speaker 1:So we're currently working with the state of Kansas and the state of Kansas has been incredible making sure that mission-driven organizations like ours find a path through the state to acquire more clients as well as programs and for them to really understand what is it that we, the entrepreneurs that are mission-driven, need. So the state can can accommodate those needs. So we're working with the uh apprenticeship model here in the state of kansas. So, which is a beautiful program that they have. They help subsidize a good portion of the cost, right, so we can go into those underserved communities and sign up apprentices to become part of our company and we put them through a training program. That training program also includes other organizations that we have aligned with universities.
Speaker 1:We're working this moment with few universities to build specific short-term certifications, 10, eight-week certifications on data science, ai, cybersecurity, icloud computing. So now imagine a kid, a youth, a young adult from any place in the world you name it, senegal, just just mention one, right but now he or she could have those certifications from these american universities, as well as the certification from tucan talent, the hands-on training that we provide, right also the communication and working with our clients. And then for us to be able to provide internship, either Tuken Talent or through the ecosystem of companies that we're building that can also provide and benefit from these internships, and they can go and hire those individuals, or will hire some of them and keep them full-time employees with with tucan talent. But, more importantly, now they have a path, now they have opportunities. Now they have a career ahead of them, they have the hands-on training, they have certifications.
Speaker 2:Now they're powerful and that's a mutually beneficial arrangement. Right, like the state of kansas has has its needs and they can partner with homegrown organizations to meet those needs. Right, and they don't have to, you know, look elsewhere. But the talent that is already in the backyard and knows the communities and knows how to actually uplift those, those skill sets, from people. So that's, you know, I think that's a great approach and clearly you've been able to grow it into a 50-plus employee organization that operates globally now. So that's truly exciting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, thanks, and yes, you're right organizations like mine to help them solve some of those problems, and they welcome organizations that can tap into their apprenticeship program to go and train individuals and have the workforce of the future, which is not so much of the future If you think about it on the technical side. The Global Economic Forum just came out with not too long ago. The Global Economic Forum just came out not too long ago. I think we're losing 96 million jobs in the US and we're gaining 120 million new jobs, and you may think, okay, well, we have a delta of 24 million. But no, it's not true, because we're losing a lot of manufacturing jobs.
Speaker 1:We're losing a lot of jobs that are going to be displaced with AI, and when you look at the list of the jobs of the future and the future meaning 2030, we're just talking four and a half years into the future are AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, computer literacy.
Speaker 1:I mean just the four top things that they're looking for or saying that are going to be the jobs that we are going to be meeting in just a little over four years. Are jobs that most of the people that are going to be displaced from the workforce are not trained on, so there's a bigger delta. We have to go fast and train people Now. I'm talking about the United States of America, right, the most powerful country in the history of the planet. Now imagine when we go to Africa, latin America, asia and some Asian countries that have huge struggles as well. How can we also offer an opportunity for people globally to train and get equipped and skilled up with the knowledge that is needed, right To be able to go ahead and supply this demand that is just coming? I think we have a great opportunity now to do amazing things.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. So what's? Two questions One, what is your favorite part of being an entrepreneur in this way? And then two have you had a moment where you have seen that impact directly and how it's actually changing someone's life? I know you mentioned the reason why you started. It was because of that. But in the five-year sense, have you had a moment where you're like, oh, this thing is actually working?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm sorry to your first question about what I like. I just love solving problems that are impactful, that are meaningful. You know I probably should sometimes. Solving problems that are impactful, that are meaningful, you know I probably should sometimes should focus on a little bit more trivial things, I feel like sometimes, but I just love solving complex social problems that will impact lives of others. Now to your second question.
Speaker 1:There are many, many examples, but so we have in our company, you know, primarily at the very beginning of the company, right, and I could see that, for example, somebody who built his own home with his own hands in a remote part of Venezuela, oaxacan, was able to acquire a home right, a better home in the city, was able to afford private school for their kids. And right there, you know, if you think about terms of Latin America, just the access to a private school is a life-changing event. Your future has now improved, you know, tenfold, twentyfold, just by having access to better education. So those kids, first of all, they're not poor anymore, their family is not poor anymore and those kids have great chances to achieve great things just because of having access to better education.
Speaker 1:You know, when we see youth in Latin America buying their first vehicle, buying their apartment, house, which in many places it is almost impossible to buy property right and now they can and they and they're doing it. So to me that those are, those are some of the examples, right and they can. And they'll say I mean, we have. We have one young person in our team. He, he has, uh, two properties. Now you know he got a little micro loan from the company so he could get the second one without selling the first one. But in many places in Latin America that is extremely difficult to achieve and when you see somebody who's 21, 22, 23 years old and they're able to do that, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:That's life-changing work right there. Yeah, absolutely. So I know you mentioned Venezuela, so tell me, let's go back now. Let's talk a little bit about where were you born, raised and kind of how your early childhood time were. And did you at an early age, in your teenage years, know that you were going to be an entrepreneur and all that?
Speaker 1:Great question. So yeah, so I'm from Venezuela. I'm from a small town in the middle of the country it's more like a farming town very far away from any type of entrepreneur ecosystem or VCs or any tech innovation at all. So grew up full of you know, very. I don't want, I don't want to say that my family was poor because we were not. We were actually very rich because we had so much love and care, and that is the real richness. Now we're very limited financially and my grandmother helped raise me so my mom could go to college. My mom was 19 when I was born, but not just my grandmother helped raise me so my mom could go to college. My mom was 19 when I was born, but not just my grandmother. My mom is one of the youngest out of seven and all my uncles and my aunts they were also my parents, so they everybody pitched in to make sure that my mom could go to college and have a better future and be able to get out of where we were Not that it wasn't safe, not that it was bad, but, you know just to be able to have a better future. So we were very rich. Because of that, I mean, I have an incredible amount of support from my family. The love has always been just hard to describe and sometimes difficult for many people to understand how somebody can have so much love for the whole extended family.
Speaker 1:My mom graduated from college and we moved to another, moved to another city, a bigger city with more opportunities, so I was able to go to private schools and have, you know, more access. My mom was very successful. I was raised by, also by two parents, so my biological dad, as well as another stepdad that I had when my mom graduated from high school and who was an incredible force in my life perhaps Force is a word you know very successful individual who just really gave me a lot of opportunities to see the world from a different, different lens. And he passed in front of me when I was 11 and he had an aneurysm so he died. That was very traumatic. But then a little after that, about a year later, my mom and my biological dad met again and decided they were going to get married. So they got married and then, you know, I had my siblings from my dad's side of the family, my siblings and then more kids. So you know, we've grown like just one big family and by the age of 20, I left venezuela and came to the united states.
Speaker 1:The drive for me to leave venezuela was my dad was a politician and I felt like maybe politics was the easiest thing for me to do and what I should have. That was the path for me, right? But I did not want to be a politician, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I had been an entrepreneur since I was a kid. Jews stand on one of the biggest squares in Minnesota with my best friend and you know we were always figuring out how to open more stands and hire more people and build something bigger, right? So, very entrepreneurial since we were kids, and that was my path. That's what I wanted. My passion was that was not politics, and so I was kind of running away from politics and I thought at the time, the best way for me to really, you know, live out my dreams is I need to learn English as a second language, which is what brought me to the United States at the age of 20.
Speaker 2:So at 20, you come here. Did you come here by yourself at that time, or like was the rest of your family like, yeah, let's all go? How did that go?
Speaker 1:Oh, it was just by myself. It was by myself, a friend of a friend. So a guy, a good friend of the family that worked for my dad at the time, just had a friend in Kansas City and he said, hey, you know, know, I have a friend that can maybe help you a little bit. You know, get situated when you are, when you go to school, and all that. And at first, for me, first of all, I wanted to go to California, I wanted to go to New York, I wanted to go somewhere cool and big and never thought of Kansas City until I understood how expensive it is for an international student to be able to support himself at an American college to learn English as a second language. So then you know the numbers basically presented to me Kansas City and yeah, maybe the help from that friend of yours, maybe I'll take it. So that's how I ended up here.
Speaker 2:Wow, Okay, so from Venezuela. Then you end up in Kansas City as a 20-year-old going to college, start building your life there. So you graduate college. With what type of degree? And what did you think you were going to do when you graduated? And then what actually happened?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, do we have three more hours of this? So yeah, so at the end I came over to learn English as a second language and I did that, and then I took some college classes. I went to college in Venezuela, first advertising and marketing, and I didn't finish there, but I came here and after I was able to, you know, I had to pass a test it's called the TOEFL test which is, you know, proficiency in English in order for you to be able to take classes at a college level. Then I took some business classes at a community college and then I moved some business classes at a community college in um and then I moved to Italy. So I was here in the US for a couple years maybe yeah, a couple of years and then I decided I'm gonna do it all over again, but in Italy right now. So I ended up moving to Florence, italy, and learning Italian as a second language and taking some business classes, more business classes there.
Speaker 1:Now, since I was a kid, everybody would tell me that my career should be in tech, because I love computers and I could figure out computers easily. Now, I grew up back in the 80s, right, growing up computers was a new thing personal computer. And in my hometown I was one of the first ones that had a personal computer. So I was always creating something on the computer. So everybody would tell me that that should be my career, and to me it was like no, I'm too cool for that, I'm going to be a businessman, I'm not going to be a tanking person. So anyway, I moved to Italy, learned Italian, took some business classes and went to Brazil for a short period of time Sao Paulo, brazil and then came back to Kansas City, got a job, met a girl, two kids. I was later, you know, I stayed here so and then I started my. When I came back I went for it's called MCSC, which is a I don't know if you remember this, but back in the 90s and early 2000s Microsoft and Cisco were building. They have these certifications that you know. You will go to school to get prepared for these certifications, but it is just technical certifications, to prepare for these certifications, but it is just technical certifications. So I got the MCSE, which is a Microsoft Computer System Engineering certification. It was called a degree, but it's a certification, and that is what gave me my access to my first tech job at a company here in Kansas City Because in a way I feel like what I'm doing now is very similar. It's almost replicating in a way. I feel like what I'm doing now is very similar. It's almost replicating in a way. Life is so interesting. Back in the early 2000s you could go to college for four years but the demand was we have a ton of computers and we're building networks. We need people who understand how to build networks for Microsoft, which was the main product, as well as Cisco on telecom. Microsoft, as well as Cisco, built these programs to be able to train narrowly focus, train people narrowly focused on what matters of the jobs and work needed at the time. So that path was sometimes even more important than a four-year college degree in computer science. So I feel like what I'm building now is very similar to it. Sometimes I'm going that path as well. Nothing wrong with the universities, nothing wrong with higher ed. No, it's just like we have demands and we don't have enough people to go and cover those demands. How can we get some people that maybe choose a different route, don't want, you know, four-year degree route, and still we give them skills to be productive and transform their lives?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. First, I definitely want to say kudos to you, because I always look at people like you that have the audacity to leave their country, where they were born, where they have their friends, their family, their support, cast everything and go to a place where they don't know the language and say I'm going to start this over. And then you did that again. After that, right, like you went to the United States and then you're like, ah, let's try it again in Italy. Oh, let's go to Brazil for a little bit. And then to come back to Kansas City, you know, I think that's to me remarkable, right, I was also an immigrant, right, so I came from Dominican Republic, but I came as a child. Right, like the one with the audacity, there was my mom. It's like, oh snap, you really did that.
Speaker 2:And then, like, I really look at people like that as like beyond superhero status. It's like you all just like do it boldly, fearlessly, and then you do it with a smile on your face at the end of it and it's, like, you know, remarkable. And even, to add to that, you know, I think what brings me joy is also seeing people like you that are immigrants, that are doing such remarkable things right. So you are employing people in the United States, you are employing people worldwide, you are helping to shape communities right and you are uplifting and upskilling people here. And to me that is great because that also changes the narrative of immigration and it changes the narrative of like, oh, people come here to take jobs or people come here to do bad. You're here building jobs, you're here educating people, you're here, you know, breaking all of those stereotypes. So I just appreciate and commend you for just doing the great work.
Speaker 1:Thanks, raleigh, for saying that. You're almost about to bring tears to my eyes with your words. It is incredible. We're living weird times.
Speaker 1:The most difficult decision I've ever made in my life was to leave my family, leave my country, leave my people, leave my friends to go to a foreign place and learn the language to be able to communicate with others. That was definitely the biggest, the most scariest and the most difficult decision I ever made. I remember the day that I had to leave my two youngest sisters, the day I said goodbye to them because I'm 16 or 14 years older than the two youngest, one and um. So at the time I felt like another dad to them. Right, they were, I was there every day with them and and anyway, just living, living them. It just broke my heart, as well as living my mom, my dad and the and the rest of the family, my sister I have a sister that is we're the closest in age and we are best friends leaving her and my brother leaving everybody. Anyway, it was extremely difficult, but we do that, immigrants. We do that because we're looking for better opportunities, opportunities that are not naturally in our country, and sometimes it's worse than that. Sometimes it's more important. Sometimes it's security safety.
Speaker 1:I did not grow up in a hostile environment and I was not in a endangered zone by any means, but I could tell at the age of 20 that there was a scarcity of opportunities In Venezuela. This is 1995. This is pre-Shabbes and I could sense it back then and it turned out to be a great decision. Right At the time, most people would tell me in Venezuela you're crazy, why are you leaving everything behind? Things are fine here in Venezuela, but I didn't think so because I wanted to become an entrepreneur and I wanted to do big things and the American dream is a real thing. The United States of America is the most innovative country on the planet and I felt like I need to take my chances and that is where I will find the environment that I need to be able to fulfill my dreams. But yeah, it was tough. It was rough to do that, like your mom did. I don't know how to describe it other than a very, very difficult decision.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Now. You did become that entrepreneur decision. Absolutely Now. You did become that entrepreneur. You have since started different businesses and you're, you know, continuing to grow your business and employ other people. At what point did you realize you needed to hire your first person, and what was that role?
Speaker 1:The first one was a software developer for for Toucan Talent, when it was a software developer. In same thing for Blueprint 2, which I got it for over a decade, it was a software developer. Same thing for Blueprint 2, which I've had it for over a decade. It was a software developer, because usually that's where I need the help, right, because it's a tech company. But for Token Talent, it was software development. And the first I don't know probably five to ten people were software developers.
Speaker 1:And then is when we started doing a little bit more. Okay, maybe we needed a part-time accountant or different roles that are not necessarily billable, right? Because that's part of the challenge for startups too, and primarily like startup, like mine, we don't have investors. We haven't had investors, so we grew organically. So so you gotta go secure the contract, get paid some money to go hire some people to the low, deliver the contract, get the profit, and then you go and hire another person and you go find another contract and you know. So it takes time. It takes time, but it has been so. It was a software developer, was the first person that I needed to hire that makes sense, are there any?
Speaker 2:I like to call these forms of media right, so they can be books, podcasts, movies, right, um, that you have consumed, that have shaped you personally or professionally yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 1:I mean, there are so many stories, but I think for me, more than books, more than anything else, has been mentors. You know, people that have taken the time to learn about me, to guide me and help me somehow, and that's universal. And what I love about that is that it doesn't matter where you go in the world, you will find people that will lend you a hand, that will want to know from you and will want to contribute positively to your life, to contribute positively to your life, and you can find that universally. So for me, it has been more than anything else. It has been that it's just the mentors, the people along the journey in my life that have encouraged me, that have helped me and have given me the fuel to go do something, as well as when I'm doing something wrong, have said, hey, I think you're on the wrong path, you know, kind of you know and guided me.
Speaker 2:So for me, it's more more of that the mentors is there anything else that we haven't discussed that the world should know about liederman?
Speaker 1:um, well, just want more people to join me and let's you know, let's, let's do, let's do incredible work. I think it is the most rewarding thing in life is really helping others. You're helping yourself when you help others, but you know, because, because that fuels you and makes you find fulfillment. I do find fulfillment through helping others and I believe everybody does, whether they want to accept it or not. That's a different story, but everybody finds fulfillment on helping others. So, yeah, I just want more organizations, more people, more companies to help us keep growing and keep making a positive contribution to the world.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, Liederman, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, brady, I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did and believe on the mission we're on, please like, rate and subscribe to this podcast on whatever platform you're using, and share this podcast with your friends and your networks. Make sure you follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn at Career Cheat Code and tell us people or careers you would like to see highlighted. See you next week with some more cheat codes. Peace.
