why you should consider freelance & contracting w/ founder dan mall

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All right, Dan, I think that's enough of your mouth, man. Let's get the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. The easy questions, huh? The existential ones on a Tuesday morning. I like it. Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's those here in a second. All right, all right. I'm Dan. I'm a husband. I'm a dad. I'm a designer and a creative director. I've run my own agency. I've worked at a bunch of agencies. I'm a consultant. And I'm a teacher. I teach people how to do this tech thing, because it feels like a cheat code. It feels like just because we could push some pixels around, people will fly around the world and pay a lot of money and respect you and all these things.

And I think I want that for more people in the world. Absolutely. I love that so much. And y'all, the comments have been great. We got people all around there. We got India. We got Spain. We got Chicago. It's great. I love it. I love it. All right, Dan. So there's a lot to cover today. And you had a lot of great ideas. Again, I don't have upset questions. I literally get the guest on 50 minutes before we go live. And I go, what do you want to talk about? And so here we are. So, but first thing I want to dive into, and I think it's super important right now, is the layoffs, right?

I want to get this out of the way. I want to talk about it. Snapchat laid off people yesterday. I mean, the layoffs keep coming. Man, what are your just general thoughts on the market? Maybe some words of encouragement, some people and we'll just go from there. I'm going to start with words of discouragement right now, but let's get to the encouragement. But it sucks. Adrize first, thank goodness. I like it. Like what you're doing. It sucks right now. Like, and it's, I've been doing this for 25 years. It is the worst that I've seen right now. Because it's hard, because all of a sudden companies are laying people off by the tens of thousands, like that is bananas.

And there's a ton of people that I see that are looking for jobs, and there are a ton of people that I see that are hiring for jobs. And you would think that one fills the other, right? It's like, if a bunch of people are hiring and a bunch of people are looking for jobs, don't those two things go together? And yet, we still hear stories of people who can't get jobs and we still have still here stories of companies who just can't hire fast enough. So something is happening. This is a moment, you know, right now, something is happening and unfortunately, sometimes the thing that you do is you just let those waves go, you know, you just ride it for a while and it sucks.

So there are things that people can do, but I think one of those things is really hard is just be patient. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, I mean, I loved the job I was at for 12 years last year, right? I mean, it's caused a lot of people to either change careers, change jobs. It's wild. So damn, what would be your advice for folks, man, right now? Like maybe just some tips and tricks, whether it's, you know, preparing themselves for a layoff, if they're in a lay, you know, if they're looking for a job with this, they should do. So let's start first. Let's say someone works for a company right now and they're nervous about being laid off.

There's some whispers and stuff. What should folks do right now? build as much leverage as you can. And that can come in a bunch of different forms. So one way to build leverage is just to stockpile cash, right? Because that gives you some leverage. It's like, I'm not worried if I've got six months of emergency fund in the bank, I'm not worried as much about getting laid off because I've got some runaways. So that's one way that you can build some leverage is build, stockpile some cash if you can. Cut down your expenses, stockpile some cash. Another way that you can do it is you can build your skills up.

You can learn new skills. AI is a thing that not a lot of people know how to do well right now. Hop on that train, learn a new skill, get ahead of a curve, whatever that is. It doesn't have to be AI. It could be the newest JavaScript library that you're like, this thing is going to be a big thing. I'm going to go learn that thing before everybody else does, make a name for myself, tweet about it, LinkedIn post about it. That's another way to build leverage is to make yourself a, whatever the opposite of a commodity is. So don't be a commodity. Don't do something that everybody else can do because then you're just part of a pool of 10,000 people who are trying to do the same thing that you are, be part of a pool of one.

If you're the only person who can do a thing or all the only person who can do a thing that way, you become in demand in that way. So however you can build leverage for yourself, whether that's cash or skills or networking or knowing people that other people don't know or knowing a trade that other people don't know, those are good ways of kind of building yourself some security with whatever is coming next. Yeah, 100%. Talk to me about, I mean, so first off, You're the, there's not many people talking about, you're the first guests I've had, we're talking about layoffs that like I've said, save money.

Like listen, we've had to cut back, right? I mean, literally like my entire profession is built on the software industry. And it hasn't been great for two years. So again, I mean, we've had to make cuts in the desk and household and that's a conversation my wife and I are constantly having, but no one's talking about it. So Dan, I'm glad you brought that up. The next thing in the mobile household too, it's like we've been in a position where me running my own agency and my own company, we've made millions and millions of dollars. And we've also been in a point where it's like time to dip into savings.

And we're lucky that we've had savings and to watch those savings deplete and deplete and deplete as the industry is going through whatever it's going through, it sucks. And it's terrifying and it's scary, but what's even scary is like, man, what if we didn't have that? What other things would we have to do? Will we have to move in with our parents? Will we have to get roommates in our house? like all those kinds of things become possibilities. And we're lucky to not have to do that because we had some savings that we could rely on. Yeah, Dan, I'm coming to live with you. I'm just kidding.

So, we'll talk about, let's talk about, so somebody does get laid off, man. I mean, obviously, you know, I was even thinking about it last night, like putting myself, because I saw people on Twitter yesterday get laid off and I tried to put myself in the shoes I was in when I left my job at 12 years in June or no, May of last year, for June of last year. And I was just like, like, it gave me anxiety even looking back on myself that where I was in June. So again, what people are going through right now is legit. It's heavy. What are some like good things, like practical things that you would recommend when they get the layoff?

So I have practical things that are not popular things, right? I think I love that. I love bringing that in. I love bringing it in. One of the quotes that's been giving me life the last year or two is, I'm gonna make sure I get it right. No one can, if you chase two rabbits, you will catch neither. So it's an ancient, ancient proverb. You get to, if you chase two rabbits, you will catch neither. So what a lot of people want is they want a well-paying job doing something that they love. And it's like, hey, if you can find that awesome. Yes, please. What is it, Margaret, top and to the right, right?

One of those things, yeah. Totally. You're like, of course, of course I want that. Where it gets really tricky is like, what if you could only pick one? Which one would you pick? And a lot of people don't have an answer to that. and they get caught unaware when they get laid off and they go, oh, now I have to pick, and now I have to pick from a place of desperation. So now what do I do? So for me, like something that ever since I was a junior designer, I always had in the back of my mind, if I got to go manage a Burger King, I'm cool with that.

If I've got to go drive for UPS, I'm cool with that. I'm so glad you brought this up. Because what is important to me is providing for my family. Design does that for me right now really well. So yeah, I want to stick with that as long as I can. But the minute it doesn't, I'm going to go do something else. That's an easy decision for me because I've already made it. And now I can just follow past Dan's instructions. Past Dan's good decisions. I can just honor those decisions now. Whereas if I have to make that decision under duress, that's really, really difficult to do.

Glad you brought this up because there's a lot of people out there that really stick to their guns. And listen, I mean, the doctor patient confidentiality that I have, I've talked to so many people that are tweeting and posting and whatnot is, it's almost comical of how much I know behind the scenes. And there are a lot of people who aren't willing to compromise. And it's like, listen, we got compromised. Like we're not in the roaring two years ago that we were in. We were in a time where you have to grind and take a job and may not get, because again, I mean, full transparency, I'm all about being trained.

I took a 40% pay cut. Now, that's because of the market, again, I'm more heavily commissioned on placing engineers and jobs. But yeah, I took 40%. I've been 40% of a cut, right? And so, man, you just gotta be aware. Like, you just totally... Awareness is huge right now. Totally, yep. And for me, like, I haven't had to take pay cuts because it's always been my own company, but I shut down my agency two years ago. And what I was making then, I'm making 50% of that now, right? which is like if you're not prepared for that, that's tough to deal with. All of a sudden you gotta cut your expenses by half when you're not prepared to deal with that.

That's when you get into like, should we sell our house territory? And those are very difficult conversations to have when you have to have them in the moment and when you have to have them fast. So the more you can think about that stuff in advance, the better off you're gonna be. And that's another example of building leverage is like preparedness is a form of leverage. If you've got money in the bank, if you've got whatever canned food in your garage, whatever that it like, all of those are versions of being prepared. Yep, absolutely. Committing to tech is great, but not working because you have illusions that tech is all the work you can do is hurting a lot of people.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. So I want to kind of get into the next thing again, Dan. You and I could probably chat about this specific topic for the rest of the 20 minutes we have together. But I want to kind of move on to a very similar topic that could really help a lot of people right now is the idea and thought of freelancing and contracting versus perm also damn by the way since we've been talking I just saw a tweet that DocuSign just laid off six percent of people an hour ago geez there you go so talk about I think when when it's when everything's good I think people want perm and then when things are bad like it is now people scroung and scrapping or open to contract freelancing but I think I think right now is somebody who's place a lot of contractors.

I work at a talent marketplace. We do a lot of freelance work, right? I think you can really make a good career out of it. But I think people are scared to go out on their own. So Dan, you've been out on your own, man. Can you give, do you got some like Dan's five tips to succeed? I don't know, something like that. I don't know about five tips. I'll try. I'll try to hit five. I don't know. One of the things that I learned in running my own agency, and I started as a freelancer. So I was always freelancing on the side while working for somebody else until one day, you know, I think 12 years later, I was like, all right, I'm going to start my own agency.

And one of the things I learned running my own agency or freelancing full time or whatever you want to call it is I thought, well, at some point you just get good enough that the leads keep coming in the whole feast or famine thing. Like that's the scary thing about freelancing. It's like, oh, it's feast or famine. So you take what you can get and, you know, in the good times and then that way you can just ride out the bad times. I thought that like if you, if I only got good enough, whatever that threshold was, you figure out the feast or famine thing.

And that has never happened for me. Maybe I just never got good enough. I don't know. But it's like, but that never happened. What I learned instead was a different lesson. And the lesson that I learned there was like, you just learn to be okay with that. Like you accept the fact that like, you know, June and July for me for my business June and July were always slow. So what do you do? You plan for June and July to be slow. You don't go. is better June and July wouldn't be slow. No June and July is when I take my family on vacation, right?

So I work hard in January when all the leads are coming in and like clockwork on September 25th, that's when leads started pouring in because a lot of our clients were corporate, you know, were corporate clients enterprises. And so that's when the buying cycle begins. So learning when your clients buying cycle begins and going like that's when they spend money, that's when they stop spending money, this is when you're not going to hear from anybody like over a couple of years I was able to identify that and go you know what you know we would we started to create policies around that at my agency in December we don't we do not start new projects period we don't you know and it was like every December it's like oh but this one might be an exit nope we have a policy around this and so like you start to learn those cycles and then you start to be comfortable with those cycles I'm chilling because you know if June and July is slow that's fine that's when we're gonna go on vacation and thank you for it being slow because otherwise I wouldn't be able to to go on vacation with my family.

But knowing that was the thing and accepting that was the thing that really helped. 100%. I do want to get to this LinkedIn user because I so I hear this all the time. The lack of health insurance scares me out contract work. Then I have thoughts on this. I want to hear your thoughts first because obviously you're the guest. I'm not. I do have simple thoughts on this. The simple thoughts are how much does health insurance cost and for different people it's very astronomically different. For some people it's like I can get a really good plan for 600 bucks a month. For other people it's like I have very specific medical conditions and I need to pay about six grand a month out of pocket.

So the question becomes, can you make an extra six grand a month working on your own or not? If the answer is no, consider not doing that or consider not doing it until you have an emergency fund that can cover your health insurance for a year or two or whatever to give you that advance. So that's my simple thing about health insurance. It's, it's a money problem. That's what it is. At least in the US, it's a money problem. So if you can make that amount of money, spend the money. It sucks because when you're a full-time employee, you don't see it come out of your check.

So it's invisible. When you're a freelancer or when you're consulting or a contractor or you run your own your own business, it becomes visible. So it hurts a little bit more. But there are ways that you can automate it so that it feels invisible again. So it becomes a question of money. I think it's worth doing the math on that. To me, the math gives me comfort to go, oh, you know, to pay for my family is $2,200 a month, you know, like to have decent health insurance. That's a lot of money, but can I make $2,200 more a month on my own? I think I can.

Here's how I think I can do that. Here's my plan to do that. Yeah. And that gave me a lot of comfort. Yeah. LinkedIn user, I want to get to this too. Again, I am not insurance expert and actually even interviewing you, Dan. I'm like, I should go out and just bring an insurance person on to talk more about this. But for me, like, so I was at a perm job for 12 years and the benefits were fine. It wasn't great. I went to a startup and the benefits weren't that great and I didn't know how long I was gonna be without work So I merely signed up with Farm Bureau.

So Farm Bureau I don't know if it's just a Nashville or like a Tennessee thing or what I know Farm Bureau is all over the place but like the benefits of that my family has now it is annoying because we had there was a we have Some pre-existing conditions and we have to like bring that that's been annoying So like they've charged us and they shouldn't have that that's been the nightmare, but as a whole though So we're gonna figure it out. But as a whole, the benefits we have now are better than what I had and cheaper by like math. And all it took was me talking to my financial advisor.

He's got a big family. He said, you need to look this up. We've had our three kids on this insurance plan. And it's great. So again, I'm not an insurance benefit person by any means, but do a little research and ask around, right? Ask me, ask Dan, ask freelancers that you know on Tech Twitter or whatever, like, hey, how do you do benefits? Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, again, Farm Bureau, I do the family, it's like 6.25 a month. Yep. There are a ton of private insurance brokers that know the private insurance industry, the public insurance industry. They know how to help you sign up for the Affordable Care Act or the open enrollments, like all of that kind of stuff.

Again, I'm not an expert, but I had to learn about it in order, you know, because I'm I'm like, oh, I don't know anything about this. And now all of a sudden it's my responsibility running my own company. So there are people out there, you're just not aware of them because they never crossed your path until you're in that situation. So before you're in that situation, if you can, start doing the research. Find out who else is out there. Who in my city does this? Who in my city has private coverage? What does that look like? How much does it cost? And like Taylor was saying, we feel like it's a cheat code to have this information and we like sharing it.

So people who have figured this out love sharing it too. They just don't know that you care about it. So you got to ask, but once you ask, for me at least the floodgates opened, tweet something, LinkedIn posts something, Instagram posts something and just be like, I need help with insurance and people will come flock to time with people. People come flying, leveraging social, we can get there's so much to break down and we're getting a ton of great. If you have questions, please ask. I want to get some questions real quick. Shradda comes in, thanks for sharing your experiences Dan. How do you approach your clients in the initial phase of your freelancing, getting the first project is really hard.

OK, so a couple of practical tips on this. When I started freelancing, the first thing that I should say is freelance with leverage as much as you can. If you have a lot of cash in the bank, you're not as scared if a client says no, if you charge them a high rate. Once you charge a client a high rate, because you're not worried about them saying no and you're projecting that confidence, a lot of times, they'll say yes, and that'll give you the confidence to keep charging that rate. What sucks is if you're like, I have no money this month, I got to put food on the table.

I got to close this client. You'll do that job for peanuts. And while it helps, because it does put on put food on the table temporarily, it doesn't help you in the long run, because now you believe that that is what you're worth, that is what your work is worth, whereas that was just the moment that you were in. And it's hard to get out of that moment once you reinforce it. So as much as you can, try to get your first client with leverage. If you're at a full time job, that's when you start looking for clients, because then you can write whatever contract you want, because you're not worried about it because you have a full-time salary.

If you're just going out on your own with no clients, that's a really tough place to be. Before you go out on your own, you know, the common wisdom is like line up a couple clients. But let's say for some of you who are like, too late though, I'm on my own now. So what do I do? There's a couple things that you can do. One is for me, I reached out to, when I first started, I made a list of 300 people that I know would trust me to do a good job. People that I've worked with before, who I was an intern when they were the creative director at the time and I wrote emails to all of those 300 people.

Personal emails, not a form letter, not copy and paste, name, personal emails, take the time to do it. And I asked for their scraps. Is there anything that you're too busy for? Is under your pay grade? Anything like that? I'll take anything you've got. Any overflow work, any pass through work, I'll take any of that stuff. You need a website built. You need some code written. You need some design. You need some print work, you need some video production, like things that I didn't know how to do. I was like, I'll take all of that. Because my, what I was trying to do was, I was trying to build leverage.

And I was trying to just go like, if I can just stockpile cash, then I can be choosier on the next couple of projects. So that's one thing. And then the second thing I'll share is, if you can't do that, or for whatever reason, that's not working for you, what you can do is do the first project for a testimonial. Now for free, right, there's, we can talk about whether or not you should work for free. I've got some opinions about that. do it for a testimonial. That's the price. I'll do this for you. Yeah. The most, Dan, I gotta get you on part two, man.

We just so much to talk about. Testimonials is so underrated, folks. Like literally if you wanna go in a freelancing career or any sort of contracting career, it's testimonials. Like it's huge. Huge, anyways, keep going, Dan. Sorry. I mean, I think testimonials, what I've learned is that they are the number one objection breaker for the next client. Because the next client is always worried about whether you can do a good job, especially if you don't have a big portfolio yet of doing that thing. Testimonials are the things that break through that. So make sure that that first gig you get, okay, I'll do this for no money.

I need it to take six weeks and no more than that. And I want you to write a testimonial for me. Even better, the power move is I'm gonna write a testimonial in advance that I want you to pre-approve if I do this work. I won't post it anywhere until you approve it, but this is a testimonial that I want from you. I wrote it, here it is, all you gotta do is sign off on it. You're doing all the work for that client. That is what will parlay you into the next project because now that free project that you did for that amazing testimonial, the next client is gonna see that testimonial and be like, I'd pay a thousand bucks for that.

I'd pay 10 grand for that. Whatever that project is, because that testimonial, what doesn't come with that testimonial is how much that client paid you. No one needs to know that part. So if a testimonial is shining, somebody might go like, wow, Like, yeah, I'd pay $10,000 for a result like that. And that's the thing that kind of parlays you into the next project after that. I love that. Robert comes in here, Dan, when you first started, how did you get your first client? It was all overflow stuff. It was all like, I was not choosy. I think that was the thing is like, I tried to earn the ability to be choosy.

So when I first started, you needed a PowerPoint done, you know, neighbor, let's do it. You know, like my neighbor who owns a landscaping company, whatever, I will, I'll design that PowerPoint deck for you. That's, that was one of my first jobs. You know, a local solar electric company whose friend played in a band with my friend, you need a one pager designed for you. Let's go. I'm down. I think everybody, a lot of people think that like, if you do a project that's got to show up in your portfolio, no, if you do a project that's got to show up in your bank account first, then you can decide whether or not it shows up in your portfolio.

So for me, I was like, all of these need to go my bank account first, and then I'll decide what of it or which of them go in my portfolio later on. I really need to feed my bank account before I feed my portfolio. I love that. Dominic comes in here. Hey, Dan, do you have any advice for building momentum with contracts or freelancing starting from zero? Is it the same system of networking you do for perm work or are there idiosyncrasies to space? There are idiosyncrasies to every space, right? Different industries or different kinds of clients, like enterprise work is very different than startup work.

all that stuff. I will say there's some commonalities between all of those things. So as an example, I think all of freelancing is based on relationships. I think all of freelancing, all of doing work for people is people wanna hire people that they trust to do good work for them, right? They want you to do a good job for them. They're not gunning to, they don't want you to do a bad job so they can say, see, see, we hired someone terrible and now we're gonna sue you. No one wants that outcome. You don't want it that your potential client doesn't want it. And so in terms of building momentum and build and contracts and all that kind of stuff.

To me, that's what it's about. It's about finding someone who aligns with you, who once work done the way that you do it, and then you doing the best job that you can for them. So to me, it's like, where can you find those people? And usually it's friends of friends. That's the place that I would start. I wouldn't, and this is mostly because I haven't had good success with this. So that's not to say that you can't have good success, but I wouldn't start cold calling, or I wouldn't start putting flyers on cars at your local supermarket or anything like that. That's a hard game to play.

That's a numbers game of just pounding the pavement. So I wouldn't do that. I would call friends of friends. I would call friends first and just say, hey, do you have a friend that would need this video production service that I do, or this motion graphic thing that I do, or this social media product that I have? Do you know somebody who needs that? And you want that trust to transfer. That's hard to do when you put a flyer on somebody's windshield. I love that. Let's see here. So many questions, y'all. Thank you so much. Garrett comes in here. If you're unemployed, you may qualify for state-supported programs that are bleeding to death pain for Cobra.

100%. Let's see here. Shane comes in here. I'm a design systems lead out of agency. I can show the design work on my portfolio, but not the projects that adopted the components because of NDA. Any tip. Shane, great question, man. Great question. I know a lot of people, especially in the design system space, design system work is different than design work, because a lot of it is not about the tangible artifacts that you can show. Even if you could show those things, even if they weren't under NDA, it's actually not the story of the project anyway. So, there's a couple things that you can do about that.

Advice that I always give to people, designers, engineers who are trying to build a portfolio is a big mistake that I see, is that people always try to tell the story of the project. And it's like, don't tell the story of the project. That's the agency's job. If you're working for an agency, Your agency is gonna put that story, that case study up. Tell your story on the project, not what did we do, what did I do? I did this thing, I learned this thing, I messed up over here, I made these sketches, I read this book, like what is your story of the project?

And you can always tell your story without violating an NDA, right? There are gonna be some details in your story that have some proprietary information. Don't share that stuff, but specifically with design system stuff, talk about the stakeholders that you talked to. What conversations did you have? What did your notes look like? You can, you know, you can redact all of the proprietary or whatever in there, but that story is still interesting. If you can't do that for whatever reason, if too much of that is redacted, which most times is not the case, but let's just say extreme scenario, most of it is redacted, make up something that you can work on.

Like build a design, what's your favorite brand? You love Uniqlo? Great, make a design system for Uniqlo. Show me how you would do it. And do it in your unique way. Are you better on video than writing a case study? Well then, make a YouTube video about how you would do it. Are you great with motion graphics? Yeah, exactly. You use Loom. I've seen lots of great portfolios in Loom, which is awesome because that's what I want to hear. As a hiring manager, I want to know how people think through this stuff. So it's a lot of- It's watched my show for any extent of the time.

I keep saying that. It's how it's getting this out on paper or do voice. I had a business development used to say, just got to be smart in public. Just got to be in. I'm not smart. I'm smart in public, not smart in my house. You can my wife can attest to that same with me as my family. Yeah, exactly. As you wrap up here, Mike, some information there, folks, if you are looking at some some insurance, look at that comment. Jose comes in with the with the age old question specialist in the area. Or know everything for freelance project. I mean, the easy answer to that is like, is it better to know everything or not know everything, well it's better to know everything.

So know as close to everything as you can. As you can with taking care of yourself, right? You can spend all of your days reading books and watching YouTube videos and doing the tutorials and doing all that stuff and then your friends hate you and your family hates you and you don't talk to anybody and you stay in your house and like who's that good for? That's not good for you or for anybody else. So I would say it's good to be a generalist and it's good to be a specialist on as many as you can handle in your life. You can, you know, because I work, you know, in a talent marketplace side of things.

And I mean, if you know, I'm pulling out the word, Elm, I don't even know what Elm is. I know it's like a code or framework or something. If you know Elm, you can find lots of jobs using Elm, right? And so like, even if you're super niche, especially down if you see, I was saying, Especially right now, I mean, honestly, I think more niche is even better sometimes. I don't know. I mean, it's an age old question. But I think niche is right now because there's so many generalists I feel like. I think going back to the niche side of things could really carve out a substantial amount of work for you.

So I can be more specific than my last answer of like everything is everything. I think that being a specialist draws people to you initially. And then once you are in their employee or they're hired by them or whatever, then they want you to be a generalist. So that's the catch 22 is like, if you're like developer, then and somebody is looking for an Elm developer or an Elm specialist, you're not going to be the person that they consider because you're too much of a generalist at that moment for them in that part of the process. They want someone who has done Elm for 10 years.

They want someone who's done React for five years for six years. They want someone who has used React Router for that amount of time. So the way that you draw people to you is much better if you have a niche, if you have a specific positioning. But once you get in there, you're going to need to be a generalist about things. So that's the thing that's tough about it is if you're only a specialist, you actually can't serve the back half of that relationship. If you're only a generalist, you can't serve the front half of that relationship. So that's how I think that both of those two things work together.

Okay. Dan, I want to be respectful of you. Can you go five more minutes? I can. All right, sweet. All right. Let's get to another question down here. Colton, it's good to see you buddy. Colton's a frequent viewer of the show. do you think that there's a risk in freelancing with a type non-tech business that isn't a set of super business? I'm a photographer on the side. Colton, my wife is a commercial photographer freelance. But at Blockers for making money long-term in business versus, yeah. 100%. I think that there is a massive risk to being in a business that is seen as a cost center or seen as a bonus, even worse, to whoever your client is.

If a client is like, oh, that's a thing that I do when I have a lot of money, It's gonna be the first thing that goes in a recession or in an economic downturn or something like that. So I think that's a really tough place to be. If some, I'm not suggesting that you find a different line of business, although if you can do that, that's great. But is there a way that you can frame your business as crucial? Is there a way that you can, so as an example, I specialize in design systems. And one of the things in design systems is design systems in big enterprises, they get funded by a different bucket than other work does.

they get funded generally by the operational expense bucket. And a lot of my work is actually convincing a lot of organizations to fund it from the capital expense budget because it's written off differently, it's funded differently, it's talked about differently. So a lot of your work in whatever business you're in, it behooves you to actually convince your clients ahead of time that they should be thinking about your work differently. They should be thinking about it as crucial to their business, not like a nice to have it. Like, oh yeah, photography, for example, photographer on the side that has blockage for making money long term if you're a photographer that offers services that are like I Do make something up like I do luxury resort photography Well when a client if a client sees that as extra you're gonna be the first thing to be cut In an economic downturn.

So how can you make that a crucial part of their business? It can you incorporate that into their business strategy? Could you make it could you make your work or frame your work as a strategic endeavor as opposed to a a bonus endeavor? The more successful you are with that kind of stuff the the more your clients. I think we'll see you differently. I love that Real quick I want to get to one more question Dan. I think we're gonna have to have a part two Okay, LinkedIn user comes in here. How is he how it easy is it to market oneself? And where do the channels one can follow?

I'm gonna chime in real fast marketing is difficult Most of y'all suck at it. It's fine though. It's fine If you if your skills are not marketing look up recruiting agencies and talent marketplaces So if you want to get to the contract world, but you know that you just don't like marketing, I have placed developers, designers, five, six, seven times throughout their career on a contract basis, while I was at my last company as a recruiter. Now I'm on the talent marketplace side, we can place the same person so many dang times because there's a lot of part time stuff and we can move you around and give you a bunch of work.

But if you want to go out on your own, it's content. putting things on the internet, I talk a lot about this on my show, social proofing your careers is an necessity. Dan, I know if you have more thoughts on this. 100%. I'll just add a quick thing to that, which is that I started as a developer and then I became a designer. The way that I did that was I took down my development portfolio for a year and I just took design projects and then remarket to myself as a designer a year later. So it's possible. You know, that was in 2004, you know, so like times have changed.

But it's possible. To the second half of that question, how easy to market oneself? What are the channels? one can follow. I agree with what Taylor is saying. Any channel, like, yeah, don't worry too much about where people are. It's where can you be consistent? If you can post YouTube videos once a week, once a month, once a day, whatever that is, do that thing. If you can't do that, don't be on YouTube. If you can post Instagram content once a day, once a week, once a month, be on Instagram. If you can do it on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever, I think the common wisdom is you can make a million dollars on any one channel.

If you want to make more than a million dollars than a multi-channel strategy is probably better for you. But if you're like a million, it sounds great. I'll make a million bucks. One channel will get you that if you can do that consistently probably for two or three years. So it's not a short game kind of thing. It's a long game kind of thing, but it's also not like 30 years. It's like, you know, in three years, five years, a year of consistently posting on LinkedIn and Twitter before getting business. And the year I've talked to a lot of other content, content careers, aka marketers around content and it's about a year of every day of something.

So all right, Dan, rapid fire for questions. I didn't tell you about them because I want them on the spot. First question, what outside of work brings you joy? playing basketball? I look, I follow you in a school. You play a lot of basketball, dude. You play last night. I'm hurt. That's awesome. Do you have like a position you typically play? Like is it I'm a true point guard a true point guard? Here we go. I like it. I like it. Second question, if money was this, if money was not the issue, what would you do outside of tech? Oh, outside of tech. I would teach parents how to be intentional about raising their kids.

Damn, man, maybe I need to hang out with you a little bit, learn from you. I love that, I love that so much. Third question, tools, technologies, frameworks, books, trends that you've read, you've watched your tinkering with that you're pretty stoked about right now. I love all the no-code stuff right now, the web flows, the framers, all that kind of stuff. I think it's going to be the future. AI is super exciting to me. It's early days, but I think that stuff is super cool. I'm really into productivity stuff right now because I feel very unproductive. So I'm reading all the productivity books and things like that.

And that's usually what's up. Anything you picked up lately that is a little bit of a secret sauce you want to share. Buy Back Your Time is a book by Dan Martel. It's convinced me to hire a full-time assistant and that is a power up. Like, and it's one of those things that I'm like, I can't afford a full-time assistant. That's for like big wigs and CEO. Like that book proved me entirely wrong. It said like, this is how much money you should spend, but this is how you can do it. This is how you make it all back. It's been a game changer. Yeah, I wanna shout out to Jason.

Jason is my part-time project coordinator. So Jason, you the man, appreciate you buddy. Last question, Dan, and we'll get you on your way again. Thank y'all for hanging out with us today. We'll try to step apart too here soon, because this was a lot of fun. Dan the show's called guidance counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors in middle school high school in college But now as adults we don't really have a guidance counselor to turn to per se What would be your biggest piece of career advice to young Dan? Keep going dude like don't You're doing it. It'll take a it'll take a while to show up, but keep going This is the advice that I'm telling myself right now There's the advice that my mentors are telling me right now to as a 40 year old that I think is the same thing for a 22 year old.

That's awesome, I love that. All right, y'all, well thank you again for hanging out with us, Dan, stay on the Real Quick Circus, about you backstage. Y'all have a great one, go connect with Dan, Dan, where can people find you on Twitter? Twitter, I'm Dan Mall, Dan Mall dot com is my website, Dan Mall on LinkedIn, so basically any of your social platforms, search Dan Mall or Dan Mall teachers and you'll find me there, please connect with me. I love it. All right, y'all, y'all, you guys have a great one tomorrow. We have Joe Pravet back on the show. He got he got laid off three times last year and he found his all of his jobs through content creation.

So we're going to talk about it tomorrow. Imagine that. Y'all have a good one. See you on tomorrow morning. Everybody's thanks, daily. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store. I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it.

Please, like, right now. Unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again if you need to reach out to me at T.S. and on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.