Wonsulting - Jonathan Javier - S3E25

This week on the Legally Speaking Podcast, our host Rob Hanna welcomed Jonathan Javier onto the show. Jonathan is an entrepreneur and speaker based in Los Angeles, and has helped tens of thousands of jobseekers get hired at top multinational firms. 

Despite initially lacking industry connections and graduating from a non-target school, Jonathan used the power of tech and LinkedIn to land prestigious roles at the likes of Snap Inc, Google and Cisco.

Based on his experience in the tech world and as a jobseeker, he set up Wonsulting in 2019. The training and mentoring platform has since helped clients land jobs at firms including Deloitte, Goldman Sachs and Google. Its mission? To turn 'underdogs into winners!' 

As the growing company's CEO, he's spoken at 170 universities across 8 countries on how to get hired using the power of LinkedIn. He's also given corporate talks at the likes of LinkedIn, Samsung, TedX, Google and Cisco. His content currently gets 5 million views per month, and he was the youngest keynote speaker at the Mena ICT forum, GPTW summit and the LinkedIn Influencer Summit. 

In this episode, he talks about:

• His inspiring journey 
• Why he founded Wonsulting
• Some tips for prospective entrepreneurs
• How to get hired via LinkedIn 
• How you can still land your dream role amidst the COVID disruption

Out now on all major audio platforms and via our website. 

Transcript

Rob Hanna (00:00):

Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Hanna. This week. I’m delighted to be joined by Jonathan Javier, the CEO of Wonsulting a company on a mission to turn underdogs into winners and bridge the gap between non target schools slash non traditional backgrounds to top companies. His motto is just here to make an impact on the world. Jonathan’s notable highlights today include having over 80,000 followers on LinkedIn. He’s led over 170 workshops regarding all things, LinkedIn and personal brand, and is a regular speaker for corporate companies, including the likes of Google, LinkedIn, Tesla, Cisco lifts, Samsung, and TEDx to name just a few. He’s the youngest keynote speaker at the meaner ICT forum, GP TW summit, LinkedIn influencer summit, LinkedIn, local, and much, much more. And if that’s not enough, he also advises startup organizations and has featured on the likes of LinkedIn news, raw news and creates content and receives millions of breeze and views monthly. So a very warm welcome, Jonathan.

Jonathan Javier (01:10):

Rob, thanks for having me. I’m super excited for this and looking forward to it.

Rob Hanna (01:14):

It’s a real pleasure to have you on the show, but before we dive into all your amazing achievements and everything you’ve done today, we do have a customary icebreaker question here on the legally speaking podcast, which is around suits as, as our legal theme. So on the scale of one to 10, 10 being very real, how real would you rate the reality series suits and terms of it’s reality? And as a non lawyer feel free to take a wild stab in the dark.

Jonathan Javier (01:38):

Well, first off my budget, you’re talking about suits like wearing suits. I’d never wear suits that have been in tech for so long. Right. But I personally, I haven’t watched suits yet. Please. Everybody don’t hate me. Don’t turn off the podcast that I said this, but I haven’t even watched it yet, but I’ve heard such amazing things about it. So after this podcast, I’m going to go watch an episode that’s for sure.

Rob Hanna (02:00):

There we go. So we’ll put TBC on your rating. How about that? We’ll, always like to start at the beginning with all of our guests. So tell us a bit about your family background and upbringing.

Jonathan Javier (02:12):

Yeah, of course. So I’m Jonathan, I graduated from UC Riverside class of 2017. So not too long ago. Yeah. I grew up my Filipino background by mom has been working for 40 plus years, as a nurse. And she’s able to migrate here because she was a nurse and Indian nurses specifically, in Michigan, which was absolutely amazing. And then my dad is, he is what I call an awesome person, of course. And he motivates me because he took care of the family while my mom’s working. So yeah, my upper game was, you know, I was in middle school, went to high school, all boys school, high school at St. John Bosco, actually played basketball, a lot of different sports there. And then when I got to UC Riverside, I was didn’t know at first what I wanted do in my career, but just through networking, reaching out to connections, all these different things, I was able to not only get it into my group and help thousands of others do the same, which we’ll of course talk about today. And that’s how I actually came up with Wonsulting turning underdogs into winners, which is our mission. And hopefully we’ll be able to do that for everybody’s listening in today.

Rob Hanna (03:20):

Absolutely. And before I’m just keen to know a little bit more before Wonsulting. So can you tell our listeners a bit about your career history before launching Wonsulting.

Jonathan Javier (03:30):

Yeah, so I wanted to work in big tech specifically in operation space for the longest time, but I was thought that I could never get there because of my background specifically coming from a non-for-profit school or non-traditional background. But I realized that the system doesn’t teach us that it tells us to go apply the rules and you’ll expect responses back. When in fact you really don’t sometimes. And that’s when I utilize LinkedIn as best as I could in order to get into companies after work at them like Snapchat, Google, and Cisco just use LinkedIn for all of them. It didn’t really apply to them. It was just all through LinkedIn. So the power of LinkedIn is definitely real. And that’s what actually got me the speaking engagements separate we spoke about in the beginning, there’s all through LinkedIn etc.

Rob Hanna (04:21):

Yeah, anyone who listens to the podcast knows week in, week out. I’m a massive fan of LinkedIn and a lot of the guests we’ve had on the show have come as a result of that. Um, so it’s something we’re gonna talk a little bit more later on, but let let’s tell us more about Wonsulting. What does it do and why did you decide to launch the business?

Jonathan Javier (04:38):

Yeah, so, like I said before, Wonsulting mission, is it turn underdogs into winners. So helping those who come from these non-traditional backgrounds and then help people get into the true careers, how it started was when I was at Google, I remember I was surrounded by people that didn’t come from similar backgrounds as me. And I realized like, I was like, wow, like it was so hard against these big name companies. Why can’t I make a simplified process for others to do the same just as I, and that’s when I started Wonsulting when I was there and then kept scaling and kept growing, it was this first idea. So it was my birthday and I was just like, okay, let me just go make something to help people because I was doing workshops, but I was like, maybe, maybe I’ll build a business out of it. And so that idea into a business and then into a full-time job this past July, and I’ve been loving it ever since.

Rob Hanna (05:32):

Brilliant. And so give us, an insight into what a day looks like for Jonathan. Talk us through what the role of the CEO at Wonsulting looks like and all the other initiatives, what do you get up to?

Jonathan Javier (05:44):

Yeah. So what I usually do, and this is why I love the life of an entrepreneur is before, when I was working in corporate, I work super early. I still wake up early, but you know, I try to not have that many meetings before 10:00 AM. Reason being is because I just try to read a book. I try to learn some Tagalog, which is some Filipino, which I’ve been learning. I just try to be like wholesome as they say. And what I’ll do is I’ll actually work out in the morning. That’s the first thing I do is workout because that’s like a jolt to my day. So I’ll work out and then I’ll go check some emails in regards to our teams, how the team is doing with xyz. I love my team. My team is absolutely amazing. We have, I think, 12 people now, and they crush it, they crush it murals.

Jonathan Javier (06:29):

And I just checked on all that and make sure that they’re doing okay. I leave them and I guide them in regards to what needs to be done. And then I have some meetings with different clients that work with them. One-on-one and then sometimes also have podcasts like these and workshops too. So it’s a lot in a day and I love it. And another thing as well, fun fact, I do intermittent fasting because people always wonder, how do you eat? I do intermittent fasting. So I don’t eat till like 12. And then I’ll stop eating at like seven. And that’s what actually lost me 30 pounds in the past year.

Rob Hanna (07:06):

And, I love that. Do you know what, I’m similar in some respects with the intermittent fasting, because I actually find sometimes, you know, when I’m so busy and having things on the go, it actually worked really well for me. And yeah, because I don’t get to train as much as I’d like to, I still train it’s actually helped me in terms of kind of not putting on too much weight, particularly during this whole lockdown experience.

Jonathan Javier (07:27):

I was going to say just sometimes accidentally do it. It’s 1:00 PM. I have to go eat now.

Rob Hanna (07:34):

Yeah, It’s a blurred a day in the life of an entrepreneur, but tell us more about the mentoring work for, one to one Wonsulting mentees.

Jonathan Javier (07:43):

Yeah. So in the beginning, I mentor students who I believe came from not, of course they came from non-traditional backgrounds, non-market schools. And as they say to you as well, and I brought people under my wing that I thought had amazing potential. They just need some guidance in the varsity getting into their careers. And so I helped them throughout all the different processes, which I talk a lot about in our course, but like it’s just called the recruiting cycle because there’s so many parts of recruiting, whether it’s in regards to, what do you want to do? Finding a job. It’s how do you create your resume? How do you crush your interviews? How do you proactively and reactively network? How do you negotiate salary? So I walked them all through in regards to how the process works and we’ll be able to get each and every one of them into your company that they aspire to get into, whether it was Google, Amazon, Facebook, you name it, they’ve been there. And it’s all just by utilizing LinkedIn, but like that personal brand. And most of all, just being your authentic self, I think a lot of people will go and reach out to others and try to be something different when fact each of the others provide value to them instead of you trying to be transactional. Right. So I taught them the ways and that mentorship program has been growing and we’re going to be launching a new program soon. Hopefully, it’ll be launched though, once this is released.

Rob Hanna (09:03):

Yeah. Exciting. We can’t wait for it. And it’s great. You touched on that point because you’ve helped job seekers secure across a whole range of different industries from tech, accounting banking. I’m assuming some legal in there as well. So, you know, it’s great that, you’re able to do that and yeah. Some of the firms and companies, you mentioned Google, Facebook, LinkedIn. Absolutely fantastic. You know, what would you say to people maybe from a more legal or accounting banking background? Is there any themes for those sort of up and coming individuals that you would give us some key pieces of advice?

Jonathan Javier (09:35):

Yeah. What I’d say is of course people always just networking is key, but I’m not going to just say that super basic advice. But I would say is go on LinkedIn, especially if you’re in banking kind of needle. And what I would do is there’s three different ways. You can do it. Number one, you can reach out to alumni, which most people say, but then sometimes people are like, Oh, there’s no alumni that go to my school. Or that comes from my school over to these companies. Right? So another thing you have to do is finding common ground with these people. So what I say is finding organizations that you are part of that school or in the university that you’re attending, etc, and reaching out to those people and how you can do that is really just search whatever organization as a second part.

Jonathan Javier (10:17):

And then the third part is very silly. I mentioned, this alot, but I did this when I was trying to network with people at Snapchat, Google, Cisco, I would search my first name or my last name, search their company, whatever company I was interested in. And there would be a bunch of people pop up and literally reach out to them saying, Hey, I saw you have the same name as me kind of serious. It works. And it works because like, for example, Robert is probably a bunch of people at Facebook and Robert and no one’s ever going to probably get that message. But I imagine you being that one person, but just do what it means. So it’s the moral of the story is building that common ground at the end of the day, all of us have common ground and just specifically we’re all human beings. Would you just go a little bit deeper and be able to do that and reach out to someone to make a genuine connection rather than just getting a job, you’ll see that it truly changes your perspective and how you conversating.

Rob Hanna (11:12):

Yeah. And, I love everything that you’re saying. There, it mirrors a lot of things that we talk about here on the show, particularly around that authenticity, always being authentic. And then also flipping that, you know, I have the expression, rapport wins the war. You’ve got to find that commonality with people to kind of spark that conversation, build that relationship. And there’s so much advice and so much information out there. There’s no excuse for being lazy. You can find all of this and then you can go out there and execute it. I want to kind of put you back onto your, your entrepreneurial kind of advisory hat, because you are a strategic advisor to lots of startups. There’ll be a lot of people listening to this, particularly interested in legal tech startups. That’s an emerging market and it’s becoming fast paced out there. What sort of things or advice would you give to people maybe looking to try and start a start up, particularly in those types of industries?

Jonathan Javier (11:58):

Yeah. I’d say two things. Number one of being an entrepreneur I think is awesome because what I did was like when I worked at snap, Google and Cisco, I just thought about, how are these companies successful and how can I get into my own company? So if you are trying to start your own tech startup or whatever it is, joining a company that is successful and think about how you can apply to your own company, because if you mirror it in your own unique and niche way, it’ll of course be successful as long as you keep it going. So that’s what I’d recommend for the first part, because like they say 90% of businesses fail, but I think I need to set a business failed because we just go into entrepreneurship and then I’m like, okay, let me just try it out and see how it works.

Jonathan Javier (12:40):

You know, people are out there willing to help and resources are out there. But usually to my second part, go reach out to people who are in your fields, who are in your niche that are doing what you want to do in the future, reach out to them and be like, Hey, Robert, I’d love to chat sometime. I love your story of how you started your own company. I’m thinking of starting my own. I’d love to learn from you. I’m telling you if people are more willing to respond to you back nowadays, especially during these times when there’s a lot of physicians being furloughed and laid off. So, what I always say is just ask people for help. If you never ask, you never know. And if you never ask the answer’s always no. So the best thing that you can do is ask, and the worst thing that can happen is you don’t respond. What the best thing that can happen of course, is you get a response and you’re able to start your own company and derive off it. Yeah.

Rob Hanna (13:34):

I love that. And yeah, exactly. You know, rejection is just one step closer to another, you know, positive opportunity that’s going to happen. So yeah. I love everything that you say around that, I guess just on the theme of authenticity, you know, myself as an entrepreneur, yourself as an entrepreneur, it’s not straightforward. And I think it’s always good for our listeners to kind of maybe hear a little bit about maybe some of the biggest challenges you’ve had in your career today and what was maybe the biggest mistake that you’ve made or some of the biggest mistakes you’ve made, that’s enabled you to learn from those and actually ended up benefiting you in the long run from those bad experiences.

Jonathan Javier (14:06):

Yeah. So I would say, well, for those who are applying the rules, like if you apply to roles, that’s fine. But the thing is, guess who else is applying to rules everybody else. Right. She got to make sure, especially when you’re going into a recruiting cycle or you’re, or you’re going for a role you are ultimately standing out and being different. So what I tell people all the times, think of this question, how am I going to be different than everybody else? I think that is very, very important, especially when you’re going through that recruiting cycle. Another thing as well is I would say that, especially when you’re entrepreneurs, you’re going to have your ups and downs. When you have your downs, there’s always going to be an upside to it. So what I say all the time is rejection is the direction and we have one step back.

Jonathan Javier (14:52):

There’s always nine steps. Forward, An example is () 4% under 30, for Wonsulting. I don’t know how, we made it. We have no VC funding at all. I don’t know how he made it. We didn’t get it just totally fine was about two weeks ago. And then after that I got, just got super motivated. I was like, okay, let me just go do something out there and make more impact on the world. And yeah, it just motivated me to be even better than I was not only for myself, both for others. So use that intrinsic motivation you have in your life to keep on going, remember that you never failed, If you’ve never stopped trying.

Rob Hanna (15:26):

Yeah. And I, I can’t agree more with, with everything that you’re saying once again, it’s, it’s, it’s really killer advice that I would accept, you know, get people, to listen to that and really deeply think about it because it’s so, so true. You can’t fail. If you keep, keep going with the current climate, you know, we’re in COVID times, it’s a different world. We’ve had to adjust this year and you know, into next year as well. You know what, is the one key piece of advice that maybe you wouldn’t have given before, but you would give now in light of the current kind of COVID world to a job seeker. Um, yeah.

Jonathan Javier (15:59):

Currently, Yeah. What I’d say is people think that there are not opportunities out there, but there are opportunities out there. You just have to go find them. So what I’d say is of course, be networking with professionals who you specifically want to network with, but then work at companies you’re interested in try to get on coffee chats with them a lot more are willing to get on coffee chats because they’re sitting at home like me on a chair, looking at a computer all day. They want to get out of that work environment and just speak to someone sometimes. And you give them the opportunity to give back, which is basically mentoring you and helping you in your career. So I’d say, is that part number one, number two, remember that everything’s virtual attend virtual events look up virtual events on Google, check them out, go see what exactly you want to attend. There’s events in regards to legal there’s events in regards to tech. There’s so many virtual events out there that you can now attend that you wouldn’t be able to before because they were in person, attend them, go network with people and find people that could be great mentors and ultimately champions.

Rob Hanna (17:09):

Yeah, couldn’t agree more once, once again, that’s really good advice. And we’ve talked, briefly throughout, around LinkedIn because LinkedIn is massive and I believe it’s a great social media platform, particularly for lawyers in our sort of world. It can give real benefit and they can get real benefit from it. But what tips would you offer, in your talks to people around LinkedIn or, or personal branding? What are some of your top tips for that? Because I think in the legal sector, there’s a real hesitation to embrace the platform. And I think they’re missing a trick.

Jonathan Javier (17:39):

Yeah. So what I’d say is for LinkedIn builds your brand off other people’s brand. Why I say this is, I personally do this, but I noticed for some people who have grown a lot, they do this. So what you’ll do is you’ll go by people specifically in your niche or in your field, let’s just say legal. And then we’ll find the top people in that field and you’ll go engage with their stuff. You’ll go comment on their thing. So comment something super insightful. It’s kind of like the Gary V strategy, but with dollar 80 strategy comment on those things, because then you build a personal brand around them and they’re like, who’s this person, Robert, who’s this person, Jonathan. And then they’re like, Oh, this person’s in legal too. Let me go connect with them. That is how you build your brand potentially, especially on LinkedIn. Another part is being content. Creating content is so important. I talk about this in my course, but we active proofreading occurs when you create content. It’s how I got my Job at Cisco, if you’re creating content tailored towards for niche or the field, you’re interested in, imagine the recruiter already knowing who you are, based off your posts and based on those and make an educated decision on whether or not to hire. You always think of that because like I said before, how are you going to be different than everybody else? And that difference is that personal defend.

Rob Hanna (18:53):

Yeah. And again, I think that’s really Sage advice and what I’m gleaning from that is as well as around the ecosystem, the more you put into the ecosystem and your networks, the more you’ll get out from it. So if you positively, go and engage and really insightful, because I think certain people, you know, on the second point around content creation, they may think I’ve got brain fleas. It doesn’t come to me naturally. Well, the great first step is comment. You know, you can jump in with some really killer comments that can make you stand out. So yeah, absolutely love everything about that. And we were saying just a off-air before we jumped on as well about other social media platforms and another one that I’ve been watching closely for some time now, Tik TOK. So do you want to just talk about the, brief Tik Tok experience you’ve had within the last 24 hours?

Jonathan Javier (19:34):

Yeah, it’s been great. So talking about the [inaudible] so I was like, all right, let me just get onto TikTok and see what we can do. Crazy. But we actually hit 64,000 – 65,000 followers on Tik Tok in six days, which is absolutely insane. So that’s about a 10-11 K per day and it’s been insane growth because we just been trying to grow audio as best as we can. And yesterday got featured on Yahoo news super randomly because there’s a Tiktok, that I made that people were talking about, arguing about in the comments, whether or not they would do this or not is, is about resumes and people were arguing and then Yahoo news picked it up and just kind of funny. So the power of TikTok is definitely real. It gets you a segment of users specifically in gen Z that you wouldn’t get. Uh, I think it’s great to grow your personal brand and grow content. That’s very quick get satisfying and I’ve just been able to grow immensely on it and just thankful, just honestly, thankful to buy value. It’ll do some help.

Rob Hanna (20:41):

Yeah, Absolutely. And is there any, any sort of final comments you would say to people who might be struggling at the moment with regards to, you know, finding that role or pushing on in their career? Is there any sort of final comments you would say to maybe give them an uplifted more positive outlook?

Jonathan Javier (20:59):

Yeah. Three things. Number one, positivity comes from people you associate with and friends. So make sure your five closest friends really knew who you are and have a positive manner. I think what happened when my career on the beginning, I was also, people would be negative and Oh be like, I don’t like my job, whatever. Right. But if you’re with people who are very positive, that in turn makes you very positive too, as well. So I’d see that first part. The second part is don’t be afraid to reach out to people. Worst thing that can happen is they don’t respond. But the thing is, do you focus on the people who don’t respond or do you focus on that one person who does it’s the latter? So make sure you’re focused on that. And last but not least, you only need one. Yes. The power one. Yes. I think it’s very important in life. You only need one job. You only need one career. You only need one person to believe in you. You only need one specific person can mentor you to get you into your career. Always remember there’s going to be, maybe there’ll be 99, 99 failures. Maybe there’ll be 99 people who don’t message you back. There’ll be that one person will message you back. And hopefully one of those people will be myself or Robert here. So I’d say that is my last piece of advice.

Rob Hanna (22:14):

Well, thanks. So, so much for that, Jonathan, I’m sure you will inspire a lot more new followers off the back of our discussion today. But if people do want to follow or get in touch with you about anything that we’ve discussed today, what’s the, I’m pretty much sure I can guess, but what’s the best way for them to do that and feel free to shout out any website or relevant social media links. I will also share them with this episode as well.

Jonathan Javier (22:35):

Yeah, so definitely, John Javier on my Instagram is Jonathan Edwards of wisdom. I’ve been utilizing that more. I check chats on Instagram, I get a lot of LinkedIn messages. So Wonsulting, of course, check us out on LinkedIn and take talk a lot of amazing videos that are free resources too. Um, we also have a course that we have that specifically talks about the recruiting cycle. It’s basically what I say. It’s all you need to get a job. And at the end of the day, you usually will get a job from there. I haven’t seen anybody not get a job. So I’d say that. And then last but not least definitely stay in touch with me. I’m super happy to help in any way. And what I say is if you make a LinkedIn post, maybe it’s your first post, maybe it’s your 20th post. I don’t know if making a LinkedIn post about our conversation, tag her up and talk about your coming to work. And what’s going to happen is when like it comment on it, see it, then you can be able to demo followers too as well. So that’s tight group, personal brand.

Rob Hanna (23:38):

Yeah, love that. Thank you so so much, Jonathan, it’s been a real pleasure having you on the legally speaking., but from all of us on the show, wish you lots of continued success with your career and various initiatives, but for now over and out.

Jonathan Javier (23:53):

Thanks, Rob.

Rob Hanna (23:53):

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Legally Speaking Podcast. If you enjoyed the show and want to help support us, remember to leave us a rating and review on Apple iTunes, you can also support the show and gain exclusive benefits, bonus content, and much more by signing up to our Patrion page, which is www.patreon.com/legallyspeakingpodcast. Thanks for listening.