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Written by: Laura Alomía

Inspired by the idea of serving others, Brian Golod created a revolutionary entrepreneurship that has changed the life of 300 professional from over 89 countries: Next Badge. Along with Giuseppe Sarmiento, Career Advisor of the company, both have demonstrated that an entrepreneur’s road can only be traveled successfully with passion as its fuel.

A business that was born out of passion and service

Brian Golod and Giuseppe Sarmiento have two things in common: They are both Latin Americans and were born to be entrepreneurs. However, what really brought them together to build a successful entrepreneurship, was the passion to help others achieve a common dream: landing a job in the competitive professional world.

It all started back in 2018, when Brian used to spend hours mentoring professionals worldwide to help them land their dream job. As a family man, he empathized with people that also had a family to feed and protect but, unlike him, were having trouble doing so because of their unemployment situation.

Out of his heart, Brian mentored people so that they could get a job offer, have a successful interview, and finally land the job of their dreams. “Although Next Badge is now a company, it all started with helping others to get back on their feet and advance in their careers.  More than money, it has always been fulfilling to see others progress in their professional and financial lives, which also leads them to move forward in a personal way”; explains Brian. 

The possibility of not only serving a community but serving humanity

The high-rate unemployment situation is not only experienced by Argentinians like Brian around Latin America; it is a worldwide problem that affects thousands of professionals that cannot land their jobs successfully in a short period of time. This is how Robert, a man from California living in South Korea, appeared in Brian’s life after nine months of being unemployed.

At this moment, Brian realized his strategy not only worked but also had the potential of trespassing the boundaries of space and helping people from all around the world. Brian states how incredible it was to “be residing in Toronto, counseling someone living in Seoul, and helping him get a job in Australia”.

By creating accessible videos, he started to offer courses that people could access at any time from any place on the planet. “This is how I learned that I could empower humans from all over the world by sharing my knowledge. It was amazing how, even while I was sleeping, someone in another continent could be learning at that moment how to land interviews and transform them into job offers”, he concluded.

Brian & Giuseppe: a new formula, a new beginning for Next Badge

Although Next Badge was advancing well, Brian still needed to transform his knowledge into a consumer-friendly format that could impact people’s minds and hearts. That is how two years ago Giuseppe Sarmiento, a Peruvian living in Canada since 2016, came into his life and helped with putting everything together in an intuitive format. What started as four-hour video courses, were transformed into bite-size videos that could be easily understood and watched.

Both entrepreneurs remember humorously how Giuseppe’s approach to Brian was very similar to the one 80% of their clients have with them: a cautious forehanded one. “When Giuseppe first reached out to me on LinkedIn, he was not sure of investing in my services. I did not push him, because that is what scammers typically do, and in a couple of months he got in touch again and we started working together”.

From this point on, Brian and Giuseppe began a process of building trust in each other, just the way they do with their clients. “Most of our LinkedIn contacts have been following us for months or even years before deciding to invest in Next Badge. However, I know how important is to build trust with our clients, I was in their shoes when I met Brian, so I can totally connect with their feelings”, states Giuseppe.

Changing the lives of unemployed professionals

Besides empathizing with their clients from a customer-view perspective, Giuseppe and Brian also share the same background with them: one where migration and seeking job opportunities abroad are involved. “We also come from a country with a difficult social and economical context and decided to eventually leave in search of job opportunities. We always tell our clients, who are 80% work immigrants: If we made it, you can also do it”.

No matter if Next Badge’s clients come from America, Asia, Africa, or Europe; Brian and Giuseppe understand their feelings: the one of uncertainty, of leaving everything behind and coming to another country without knowing what to encounter. Through this human connection, the entrepreneurs have led Next Badge to be perceived as an inspirational option that helps professionals get offers and have successful interviews that can eventually land a job.

How? Well, Next Badge as an Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) is incredibly detailed and has been tested with hundreds of job seekers showing amazing results: 98% of them get their offer at their very next interview, and the remaining 2% within their next three interviews. With this tool, Brian and Giuseppe successfully mentor executives, managers, and professionals at every level and across dozens of industries around the world that have one of these problems:

1.       They cannot get job interviews.

2.       They do not get job offers.

    In other words, Next Badge is an end-to-end program or solution where you can acquire the tools you need to advance in your career. Moreover, the idea is to identify people’s strengths as professionals and expose them enough to jobseekers to negotiate and choose the best job, the one that brings more happiness and fulfillment.

The recommendations of two entrepreneurs

Besides, empathizing with their clients’ desires, hopes, and dreams; Brian and Giuseppe share what has been fundamental for them to build such a successful company:

1.       Put all your efforts into trying to understand your client

You must see yourself as a doctor, if you don’t know what your patient is having an issue with, you cannot help them accurately. For this reason, it’s so important to care about your clients and perceive them as human beings and not just as transactions, understanding what they are going through so that the right help can be provided.

2.       Do something that makes you feel passionate and serves the world

Brian remembers how when he was not trying to start a business in the beginning, He was just counseling professionals out of his heart to give back to the community. Therefore, first, it is important to connect with your idea through human values and emotions. Afterward, skills and knowledge will come as a compliment so that everything together can be transformed into a successful business.

3.       Trust others & know your limits

     As the founder of Next Badge, Brian knows delegating work to others can be very difficult. However, he also knows that trusting Giuseppe and German has been essential to achieving the goals of the company. Knowing your own limits and weaknesses, as well as the ones of your teammates, is important to know how to complement each other and invest in external experts that can advise you on how to develop your project correctly.

A last reflection

As entrepreneurs of a company that has over 250.000 followers, Briand and Giuseppe agree on what’s the most important thing on the entrepreneurship road: learning from mistakes.
“Without our errors, we wouldn’t have wasted a lot of time, that’s true, but would that have been worth it?” reflects Giuseppe.

Entrepreneurship is a process of discovering how to perfect your product or service while being in tune with your clients’ needs and desires.  For this reason, both Giuseppe and Brian state that if they could back in time, they would still do the same to gain all the valuable learning that has enabled them to create such an effective service.

“Once you have gone a certain path on entrepreneurship, you can either blame it or thank it. It’s easy to blame each other on your team, to blame the decisions you have made and the circumstances. But in this blaming game, you will only lose time and opportunities. You cannot rewind time, so, make the most of the time you have and learn from it until you succeed”, concludes Brian. 

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Andrea Welling

Regional Director, BC

CANADA

Tell us something about you:

Helping entrepreneurs connect with valuable resources in the entrepreneurship community is one of my passions. In addition, I strongly believe in the power of mentorship to support new ventures to be able to build confidence to go to their next level. For existing businesses struggling to scale, mentorship provides another invaluable perspective and a way to broaden the entrepreneur’s skillset.

For more information about Futurpreneur Canada or to learn more about entrepreneurship, please contact Andrea at awelling@futurpreneur.ca.

Testimony about your experience at LBCN:

As a guest speaker with LBCN, I felt supported to create a presentation around pivoting your business that would directly speak to the entrepreneurial mindset which I feel is a key aspect of being a successful business owner. LBCN was very professional in creating a colorful advertisement for the event and I was so pleased to share this through my network. The event itself was well attended and participants felt comfortable to share and ask questions which made the experience interactive and engaging. LBCN staff were organized, efficient and friendly and I felt look after every step of the way.

Manuel Banales

Entrepreneur

México

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I was born and raised in Mexico, where I studied law in Guadalajara, Jalisco. This permitted me to become aware of the fact that business relationships are what makes up most of organized society. My passion is to create businesses catered to the current demand of society. However, my biggest passion is to create healthy and diverse businesses by always maintaining the customer as my number one priority.

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Being an active member of LCBN has permitted me to have access to a large data base of other entrepreneurs and a vast amount of companies which each specialize in different mercantile niches. This has enabled our company (Western Canada Education Services) to become well-known amongst the Latin community in Canada. This, in effect, has given us the opportunity to position ourselves effectively in Latin America.

Rosa Maria Delgado

Financial Planner

CANADA

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Rosa has been in Canada since 1999, and previous to her current business as an Insurance and Mutual Fund agent, had a successful career in Corporate Finance in the Tech Industry.

Rosa’s mission is to teach new Canadians the ABCs of personal finances and help them implement a financial plan to achieve their goals. Rosa truly believes all new Canadians from Latin America and elsewhere have the skills, knowledge, and dedication to succeed professionally in Canada. Rosa’s job is to guide them to make the most of their finances, following the premise: “It does not matter how much you make, but how much you keep”

Testimony about your experience at LBCN:

LCBN was a great platform to launch my business. When I first decided to turn my part-time business into my new mission and long-term career path, I started attending LCBN’s monthly breakfasts. These networking events were paramount in helping me meet other professional members in the Latin community and create a brand for myself.

I would highly recommend you become part of LCBN to fast-start your business, and become part of the Latin-American business community.

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