taking free work

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

So let's talk about this one topic today that is very divisive. I would say taking on free work, offering your services for free is a very divisive term. I'm not a term, a thing, a topic. I tweeted about this a year or two ago. It spread like wildfire. People got angry at me. And so what I want to talk to you about today is how I think you should get the skills that you need to find a job without having a job. So the biggest complaint I get is, hey Taylor, how do I get a job without having the skills? And I've really thought a lot about this.

And I work with junior developers a lot. I volunteer my time speaking to national software school, shut out to that crew here in Nashville. I've spoken at a ton of other code boot camps across the country because of COVID, Toronto, Denver to name a few. And so what I've seen is that there's a bunch of individuals who just can't get a job because they don't have the experience. So I started to really think about this. And how do I communicate? How do I get these individuals a job? Or how can I tell them, hey, get this job, go, go get this experience. And how I came up with it is just offering your services.

And so here is what the Queen of what's going on. It's good to see you from Charlotte. The Queen city North Carolina. So my goal that I want to talk to you about and what I've seen is people have been more successful and they have volunteered their time and gained skills and they have found a job faster than those who I've not. So for example, I want to use somebody on my team. The individual Summer Leddington who designed my website, who designed my website. She volunteered her time. I was looking for people to join a team. She volunteered her time. We knew we had a mutual connection and she got this working.

Well, Summer started talking to me about, hey, I want to find a job. And I said, absolutely. I'll help you and my team help her. And lo and behold, lo and behold, we placed her in a job two weeks ago. And she volunteered her time for free for me. Now, that being said, the biggest pushback that I get about volunteering your time is I can't afford it. I am not sitting here saying you should volunteer like 40 hours a week. I'm not saying that. I think you should at least volunteer an hour day five hours a week for a specific project, right? Every church needs website help, right?

Every nonprofit needs help. Like we need help. There's a lot of people in this world that need web work, digital work. Now that now that our country is more digital, more remote than ever, companies and individuals need help with the variety of things, right? I need help putting my media, my content out for people to learn, right? Other people need that help. So why don't you ask around, volunteer your time, right? If a church needs a Shopify integration and you've always wanted to learn and Shopify, why don't you say, hey, I'll take this on. I'll volunteer my time, put it on your resume and get the job search and get the experience that you need and the job search.

Like to me, it's a no brainer. So I'm interested. TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, please let me know your thoughts on this. I'm genuinely interested. If you disagree with me, please let me know and please let me know why because I want to have this discussion with you. Carlos was going on Venezuela. We are global. We are international today. I love it. But again, the big thing is volunteering your time. And I'm not saying go around volunteer 40 hours a week, quit your day job in the industry that you don't want to be. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that the only way to really get experience is to volunteer your time.

And I have people around me, right? Alex Pooler, who's doing all my email newsletter copy, who's doing some design work. right? Alex is another guy that is really pushing this forward. He has found more work because he slid into my DMs like a year ago on Twitter. And he goes, hey, I am at a point in my career right now where I can't get a job because I don't have enough experience. So what I want to do is I just want to volunteer my time to get experience. So Alex has been with me a year and Alex has grown in his skill set and he has had the opportunity to find more work because of a simple DM volunteering his time.

We are internationally. Kim, what's going on? Netherlands. I love it. I need to go and visit Netherlands. Hasan, what's going on? Turkey. I love it. We got Turkey. Netherlands, Venezuela this morning. I love it. This is great. Devante. What's going on, man? I think things that solve a personal problem to gain experience. Yes, I'm all about this as well. Right? Like if there is a problem or you see a problem and you want to solve that problem, develop a software, develop whatever you need to develop, mark that down on your resume. But that's how you do it. But again, you need to mark, notate all this stuff.

We talk about storytelling. We talk about the job search and writing your LinkedIn and writing your resume correctly. If you volunteer work, if you volunteer your time, it is professional experience. Whether you're getting paid for it or not, it is professional experience. In my mind, the only thing that's like side projects is if you're tinkering with something that you haven't fully developed and you're giving it like an hour or a month or two hours a month. In my mind, if you're dedicated at least an hour to a day to something, that is professional experience. And you need to put that down on your resume. You need to mark that down your LinkedIn accordingly.

Let me know if that answers your question. But Queen has said, I can tell people all the time, volunteers are great way to gain hands-on experience. Cross training or shadowing. So is cross chance shadowing. I'm a product of volunteer knowledge. Yes, absolutely. Product of volunteer knowledge, I think it's so important. I think people are more willing to give you a chance to give you a chance. If you show them what you can give them, right? I was listening to a podcast again, Gary Bainerchuk. I also know him a lot of times shot at Gary V. If you're ever watching the show, love to have you on.

He talked the other day about how, no, he was talking to his executive coach. It was one of the more recent podcasts and the executive coach was talking about 16 years ago. The executive coach, he wasn't really a thing and people have a lot of doubts about him. She literally would do a free 30 minute call that she would usually charge for. She did that and she started to get business for it because she started to show her value, her worth immediately for minute one. Within those 30 minutes, she got people hooked and she did free calls for 30 minutes. It's huge. That's the way to do it.

Brian, I'm about to start working with a nonprofit boom. That's it. Brian King gets it from Alabama. Brian, yes. Volunteer in your time. Non-profit needs help. If I were you, I was Google nonprofit Nashville or nonprofit like any city that you live in and just like find and find their contact information or LinkedIn or the website and email them. Like, hey, listen, I'm an up and coming junior web developer. I'm trying to get this experience. I'm trying to get an experience in marketing, et cetera. Do you have any needs? I would love to volunteer my time. I will tell you this. If somebody DM being goes, hey, I'm a project coordinator.

I'm a data analyst. I'm a videographic editor. I love to volunteer my time. I'm talking to you immediately. I'm talking to you immediately. Again, that's the way to do it. Devontay was going on. Thanks for answering my question, boss. Absolutely, brother. I'm always here for you. Again, I'm here for every one of you. Please let me know if you have any questions. We're going to wrap up here in another minute. Again, I just want to get this across you today. If you can go in and offer your services and get comfortable asking, get comfortable asking. I've had a full entire podcast about the ask, right?

Going in for the ask, be fearless today. Ask somebody if you can help them. Hey, listen, it would love to volunteer my time to help you out on something that you're solving. That's all I got for you today. I appreciate you all turning in. Again, want this to be short and sweet when you get some tangible information to move on with your day. If you have any questions, please add me. A few more things. Visit TaylorDestin.com. I have my job board that's live. You can request obviously to work with me on that. If you want people ask me all the time, Taylor, I'd love to talk with you.

I don't have time to talk with everybody, but my way to do it at scale is my texting community. So 615-235-5650, text me 615-235-5650, I share all of the same information with this texting community as I do with everybody I talk to. It's one text message a day. You're not looped into all 200 people that's on this community. I have 200 people plus getting text messages daily for me. I can tell you at least a handful of people have landed jobs on that texting community, specifically because of things that I have texted them and they have sent me that and they have told me that specifically.

So again, join that text of community. I would love to have you tomorrow, 9.30 am central. The boys and I, the unicorn friends are going live. We're going to be talking about a topic. And then Thursday, Thursday. We're going to get into NFTs. We're going to get into a little bit of crypto, blockchain, etc. We're going to have a good episode. So Thursday, 9.30 am central. Check it out. We're going to dive into the NFT world. Non-fungible tokens, as I say. So look forward to seeing you on Thursday. Again, you need me at me. Comment me and love to work with you or slide into my DMs.

I appreciate y'all, Todd. Y'all have a good one. Peace.