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What job gives you the ability to earn $200,000 per year at a young age without an advanced or technical degree?
Dandan is an immigrant who was motivated to achieve early retirement at a young age. She got into sales and absolutely kicked butt to the point that she could walk away from her employer and start her own business in her late twenties. She bought 5 properties and hit her retirement point at age 28.
We absolutely love her story.
We also chat about…
- Headhunting as a career path
- Real estate
- Personal line of credit
- Changing your voice to talk to executives
- Women at work real talk
Enjoy this chat with Dandan and please subscribe to us in iTunes if you enjoyed it!
Show notes and links from today’s episode
- Dandan Global – her company
- dandan@dandanglobal.com <- email Dandan!
- contact@dgrecruit.com <- if you want to be a headhunter
- Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands – https://amzn.to/2rfQWvi
- Dandan’s Instagram
- The Trifecta to Retiring Young – by Dandan
- The Mastermind Within podcast episode feat. Gwen & Erik’s story!
Key takeaways from our chat with Dandan Global
1 – Sales is a great career path, especially headhunting
Dandan talks about how sales is an incredible career path with no/limited income ceiling and yet no one talks about it in school. Students are encouraged to go get expensive professional degrees when perhaps they would be better served learning sales strategies.
Dandan discovered headhunting which means that she recruited talent for other companies. If someone she found was hired, she received a commission on their first year salary. Since she recruited for technical positions, the first year salaries were high and her cuts were huge (often tens of thousands of dollars).
She later moved into Executive search where her cut was 40% of a CEO salary. She was making nearly $200,000 per year by her mid twenties.
2 – You need to put your dollars to work for you
Dandan made a killing in sales but didn’t spend it! She bought five properties, lived with roommates and budgeted.
Dandan believes that all of her money should be put into real estate or investments. Literally, all of it.
She uses personal lines of credit versus her cash for day to day costs, since she would rather deploy her cash into real estate or growing her business.
3 – Getting a great mentor early in your career predicts career success
Dandan was lucky to have a great boss early in her career who taught her the ways of the business. She talks about how critical to a young person’s career success it can be to have a great first mentor.
She believes having a great mentor is more important than the company where you work. You can work at a top company but if you have a bad boss or mentor, it can be less beneficial than having a great manager at a less prestigious company.
4 – You can’t always be top dog
Dandan crushed it three years in a row and was the top biller for the company. In year three, she made $215,000. She dropped her income in her fourth year however down to $90,000 which was just $3k more than year one.
That was a huge ego check for her and taught her that being top dog is not the most important thing.
She also learned that chasing cash every year is not fruitful and that one should focus on building assets and longevity instead. Chasing cash isn’t the answer!
5 – Mirror your audience
Dandan was twenty six years old when she started calling Executives for headhunting.
She recommends:
- Having a bit of ego
- Talking down instead of up when talking to them (by up we mean upspeak where your voice rises at the end of the phrase). Talking down means your voice goes lower at the end of your phrase. Going lower with your voice comes across more serious.
- Talk up when conveying excitement though and really playing it up
- Be an actor and mirror your audience to get the best result
Dandan does what it takes to close the deal and it’s hella impressive.
Questions? Like or dislike? Leave us a comment!
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Camille A says
Excellent podcast! I loved Dandan’s forthright manner of speaking and her willingness to share her thoughts about commonly-held beliefs about emergency funds, investing and real estate. She gave me many new ideas to ponder and I’m grateful for that.
David says
I am completely confused. Her story about the government raiding her bank account would seem to support the case for having an emergency fund. She then goes on to say that you should borrow money when an emergency arises. But, isn’t avoiding debt the whole reason to have an emergency fund? Maybe I misunderstood the story. Am I missing something? Maybe I am just close minded, but I just can’t get on board with constant leverage.
Greg says
Line of credit for living expenses?
Make no sense at all. She is destined to fail. All talk
Eli says
Sounds like a case of projecting your limitations onto someone else. Especially when that someone is doing better than most of us. Fail? LOL. Doesn’t sound like she’s on that path. You could be spending your time and energy bettering your own situation rather than scoffing at others.
Sundevil says
Typically I enjoy the podcast and the guests generally have interesting tactics. However, this guest turned my attention off quickly. Reject tax protected retirement accounts that generally have company matches like 401k’s? Use debt to pay living expenses? It also sounds like she is a horrible real estate manager. Multiple homes that are vacant or in eviction proceedings? Yikes! She needs a good dose of Dave Ramsey.
firedrillpodcast@gmail.com says
We figure she’ll be ok as it seems to be working for her! We don’t endorse what she’s doing but it sure is different!