layoff to offer letter in 89 days w/ sr. dev rel, lawrence lockhart

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ave horses yet, but I'll get there one day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Horses, you know, they're great uh until they get old. So, we got we got one horse that's old and um the amount of vitamins and minerals that we got to get in that horse is just wild. It's like just basically a full-on human being. So, um uh but Dudley, the miniature donkey, he's uh he's he he's vibing as always. Uh good morning everybody. We got some people tuning in. Daniel, it's good to see you this morning. Then Jason, obviously m y my companion. It's good to see you all this morning. Um, uh, Lawrence, you posted that in private chat, by the way.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, no problem. Uh, Mark, good morning. It's good to see you. Yeah, old horses are rough and pricey. Facts. That is that is a true fact. Um, but this is not a horse podcast. Um, uh, I'm I'm really pumped to be I'm really pumped to hang out with Lawrence today. You know, I typically don't go live on Fridays. I try to do no meeting Fridays. And of course, today we got a full-on live uh slew of events. I'm going live with three CTO's at noon today um on just how to maximize uh your nearshoreing and offshoring teams. I've heard a lot of chatter about that.

So, I wanted to kind of talk to some experts. So, excited about that. I will be live um uh I will be live at noon central today. But this episode I'm excited about. I saw Lawrence. I'm going to let him do his thing. I saw Lawrence post his announcement and I was like, I got to get this guy on. and and and All righty. I'm gonna drop in the Discord. Let people know we're live. All places. Seriously. Good morning, everybody. If you're watching, if you're tuning in yet, good morning. Good morning. Uh, Lawrence, how's life, man? How are you, man? Life is grand, Taylor. Too blessed to be stressed.

How you doing? How's the family? It's good. We're good. We're good, man. We're vibing. Everything's good. Everything's good, dude. So, I don't have yet, but I'm going to get there one day. Say what? I don't h hers find a job, right, in this market." it. Um, so before we dive in and let Lawrence uh have his time, a few kind of housekeeping things as always. Shout out Appright. Um, I'm on the Hero program. Um, uh, uh, great great little company. Love them to death. Go check them out. Um, and then, uh, also too, listen, we got a lot of stuff going on in the TOR community.

If you want to know what's going on, get involved in the chit chit cchatter. We've been doing, uh, a lot of resume reviews. Uh, Jason 's been doing it. Um Dan Deani's been kind of hopping in and kind of helping us from an engineering manager perspective which been a huge help. So uh if you want your resume, LinkedIn review, drop in, throw it in one of our channels. Um we'll be glad to help you. Um and then check out obviously all of our lives we got going on. And then also if you want to be updated when I go live with guests specifically, text me.

This is actually my number. Text live. Um and I always fire off a text to to to my texting community who wants to be opted in um when I go live. Um, so I want to get to obviously a few more people this morning tuned in. Mark, it's good to see you. Mr. Ricardo, always consistent. Another Memphis JC, what up my guy? See you, brother. It's good to see you. Roxy, it's good to see you. Sebastian, love to see you as well. Um, talking with Lawrence is worth breaking the note. Yeah, I agree. I agree 100%. I totally totally agree. Eric, it's good to see you.

I'm looking forward to b well, originally I wasn't going to get you on, but then I started to message you and I was like, "Hey, like I'm always fascinated how people find jobs." I mean, I ask everybody, anybody that I know who lands a job, I'm like, "How'd you do it?" Right? yada yada yada. Um, and uh, and you started in the DMs to like tell me your tactics on how I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, we're going live. We we need to go live and chop this up because again, this show is is to to really help ot are you? What do you do now?

Yeah. Uh, and then I'll start peppering you with questions. Man, sounds great. Good morning or good afternoon, everybody. Ciao to my Italian counterparts who are watching from Italy. I am Lawrence Lockheart, currently senior developer advocate for a fascinating company called Be Free. Above and beyond that, I am a software developer, been in the tech world for seven years. Really happy to share my tech transition from food service days into tech, which was a major m ove and been a big part of my story for years now. And what I found is it's helpful to take the lessons that I gained and give them to other people.

Sometimes for free, sometimes for a little money, even though my top mates turned off right now. Um, but I'm a family man, man. A churchgoing southern guy. love food and I just like helping people helping people find their wins. That brings me a lot of joy. I love it. I love it. Fellow food service. Well, I feel like, you know, I I saw I saw a post a while ago and it was like millennials don't have the world wars to say we served in. Our world wars are did you work in hotel, did you work in restaurant? And did you work in retail? Uh, no.

But I did have a retail arm when I worked in a hotel because I There you go. There you go. Yeah. So I I I did um all three chicks. Yeah. I I I served two of the three. So I did I did retail. I was Banana Republic for a bit. You know what? You know what? Oh wow. That's a lot. That's a That's a whole podcast urnout talk coming Q3. Yeah. Yeah, we won't talk about that. Devon, it's good to see you. Noah, my guys, great to see you. Chris, wonderful to see you. We got people tuning in. I, you know, I like Friday sessions.

I feel like it's a little bit more casual. People kind of in a Was about to say that. Yeah. People let the hair out if they have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People are like, "Yeah, no means. I'm gonna kind of hop in." So excited about that. All right, man. Uh, go and introduce yourself. Um, who . That's a whole another Yeah. Yeah. Your stripes and places like that gives you a certain It's a certain a certain key in your brain about how to get the urgency is unmatched. Get things done. Yes, I car into everything I do, including tech. So, I know I've seen you do the same thing with twerk and other places.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right, man. So, let's Wait, wait, wait. Tip my hat to Elliot San Jackson, Mississippi. He is Christian brother. I love that guy. I met him at the Magnolia JS inaugural conference years ago. So, big I love it. I love it. That's awesome. All right. A lot to talk about today. So, um I love it. You were organized. You kind of sent me a list of things to talk about and go anywhere because I know you you're going to just go off the rails. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I like it. I like it. It'll be good. It'll be good. No, I like it.

I like it. All right. So, so let's let's talk about the layoff, right? I mean, again, I think I want to get into the psyche of people. I think people see you online, people see me online, people see other people online like, "Oh, they don't have to deal with layoffs." I mean, even Aaron Francis's talk at Epic Web that he's been kind of doing lately is around how he got laid off from Plain of Scale and how, you know, how no one's untouchable. So, talk about just receiving the news of getting laid off. How did you process it? What were your thoughts? Let's unlock that part first.

Yeah, remind me if if it was Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali who said, "Everyone has a plan to fight until they get punched in the mouth." I have no idea. That sounds a little bit more like Ali a little bit. That seems a little bit more thoughtful than Tyson, but who knows? Yeah. Yeah. But listen, you can read about layoffs, watch video about videos about layoffs all day long. The tech layoffs, like it's just this amorphous thing. But when you're in the meeting and for me it happened on January 9th, 2025 and you're in the meeting and your mana ger and the CEO are across the table or the virtual aisle as we say it uh looking through Zoom and they told you we're sorry they're going through a reorg.

We've got some layoffs and yours is one of the positions man that hits like nothing before. Yeah. I'm asking is there anything I could have done? Is this performance? I know immediately immediately it's like what could I have done? What did I do wrong? Because I didn't see it coming. Usually I'm a pretty observant guy. I think my superpower is just being nosy. Like I'm noticing everything about everybody. And I didn't see this coming, Taylor. I promise you. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I'm thinking, what just happened? That crap hurt. It hurt a lot. I mean, I was surprised. I'm not going to lie.

I mean, listen, you've been I think a wonderful champion of your last company. I think, you know, you were you were doing the thing. You were traveling. You were going to Finland. Your whole entire series of you being in Finland was like one of my favorites. Brothers in Yeah. So it's like it's like all that being said, like again, no one's untouchable. Exactly. Exactly. And I knew that intellectually because when James Qqu one of my OG mentors was laid off from a job, I was like, "Oh, if James can get it, Yeah. anybody can get it." Because James is up here. Sure. I knew that up here.

I didn't know that in my heart. when it happened to me and I'm I'm going back to my original post when I was got on with VOD. People are like, "You're the only reason I even know Voden exists." I'm like, "Yeah, Lawrence the Devril." And then it's Lawrence the bread winner who's no longer winning bread. That crap hurts. Yeah. And so it took me a minute. In fact, go ahead. So yeah, so I want to go into that. So it took you a minute. What did What did you do next? Right. Like like I'm always fascinated. You get the layoff news. How like what did like what did the next 48 hours look like for you?

Oh gosh. Crying, thinking about how to tell my wife. Yeah. Telling my wife. Yeah. Being together, getting all the emotions out. So, anything I felt, I just felt it fully. I didn't want to hold back on anything because I've learned in my old age it is good to let all of that just process otherwise it's going to show up in a worse way later. So I all the emotions went through them prayed hard tried to find some scripture for the moment couldn't find one on it and just took an entire week together after I processed all the emotions and let all that out to just sit down and figure out what's going to be next and how I didn't apply anywhere.

I didn't ask for any referrals or anything for like a week. I didn't I didn't ask for any referrals at all. We'll get to that later. But I did think job crazy. We're gonna get to that in a second. Yeah, that was a good that was good. job-wise for a solid week. Okay. So, you did nothing. Nothing at all, brother. Just sit down and eventually sat down before that week was over and mapped out strategy. What strategy do I want to use? And I went through a whole bunch of steps for that. But yeah, I took time. I had to take. So, I think a lot of people, I think in today's world, we're always like, we got to go, we got to go, we got to go.

Right. Going back to the restaurant mentality, we got to go, we got to go, we got to go. Yep. Why did you wait a week? Uh, same reason you don't grocery shop when you're hungry. You make bad decisions. You make horrible decisions. I make horrible decisions when I grocery shop hungry. And then you end up at home like, "Wait a minute. Where's the food?" Especially if you go to Costco. I went to Costco on Sunday. That was wild. Exactly. Or Sam's Club. And so I didn't want to shop for my next job when I was that emotionally hungry and not in my full capacity mentally and intellectually and thinking about my strategy that I wrote later and all my capabilities.

I wanted to come in prepared, calm. I've got two or three pennies in the bank. So, it's no t like we're on Bees and Wheatenies yet. I can wait a minute. I can wait. We're not on oodles and noodles yet. I can wait a minute until all of that settles down and I'm back to Lawrence, not emotionally strung out, Lawrence so I can make better decisions that started with the strategy. Yeah. Do you do you recommend Do you recommend I mean, that's one of the things I say a lot is take time. Um I just want to make sure I'm not crazy. Would you recommend that time?

Oh, absolutely. As long as you can afford it. But Sure. Again, for any emotional state that takes you out of your best decision mode, you need to wait, right? Because you're you're in fight or flight. And fight or flight is not a good way to approach an employer because let's just say for instance, on day one, day one after firing, I applied somewhere and day two they called me and day three I had an interview, right? Which would be the miracle scenario. That would be the worst thing possible because the desperation would come out in the voice, the you know, can y'all are y'all hiring?

Like it would be a wrong Lawrence. Not the one that inspires confidence. Not the one that that makes the company feel like we want him to represent us. We want Yeah. be the face of us in video in conferences with the public facing position. I'm focus all the best assets about me will be hidden behind emotional mask. That's good. The reason take time is for that mask to be enjoyed and and not enjoyed and fully realized, but then to go away so you're back to yourself fully. Yeah. All right. So, so, so got the news. You know, I think one of the toughest things and and maybe maybe I can bring this up to my dad's in tech virtual meetup next week, but I I Yeah, it's next week.

I I I I think I think trying, especially if you're the main bread winner as a man, trying to tell your wife and your family that you were laid off, I think, is a whole another conversation. And it really hurts. It does. It's it's well you feel like you let yo urself down which means you let down everybody else right everybody's dependent on and that's that's just how I see Ellie mentioned how I'm wired I'm wired like everybody's dependent on me and that may or may not be all that might be a little codependency going on yeah a little bit like everybody's dependent on me to make it work whether I'm at the family and so I let myself down let them down and what their emotions are going to be like and how do I need to comfort them while I'm going through it like that's just a lot like it's like you're about to walk into a higher.

Yes. But you have to walk into it. Yeah. You have to. And whatever it freaking is, you have to deal with that. That's the first step toward towards becoming whole again. Yeah. Avoiding it in any way means you're going to deal with that thing again later and it's going to be worse. So, right off the bat, first day, babe, I was laid off. Yeah. And there's not some huge severance and there's not this and there's not that. We're have to just deal with this. I come up with a plan. We're going to be okay right now. I have no job. Yep. That's almost exactly how I sounded.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um Yeah. And again, it's like Jay said, there's a lot of monetal crap we go through when that happens. Yeah. 100%. And that's and that's I think that's a great topic actually I'm probably going to talk about on Tuesday for the Dads and Tech group. So, all right. So, waited a week, told the wife. What next? Man, I need a strategy. I need a strategy for how I'm going to get my next job. I've been preaching, Taylor, and you've probably heard me on a Twitter space or a podcast or something about the use of strategy and app job acquisition and how many times I run into people at all levels, not just junior, junior, mid-level, senior, that are just randomly applying with no thought in mind.

So, I had to sit down and figure out, hey, I've had this theory about using a strategy for job search. Now would be a goo d time to test that theory. Yep. sat down pencil and paper and wrote down what my strategic approach would be. Asking myself questions like, and I wrote a couple of notes just to make sure I brought this correctly. Where do I show up the most competitive? Right? What strengths do I have that companies are willing to pay for? And what does that role look like? Love that. What is my smart goal? Right? Okay. I want to get hired. That's not a goal, right?

That's just that's just that's just amorphice in the clouds. What is my specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timebased goal? What data do I have to make that goal around? And I end up writing a goal to be hired as a developer advocate at a senior level within 90 days. And which is super ambitious because I'm hearing about people an employee for nine months, six months, a year or more. Where did I get this from? I felt like my brand was going to stand up for me. I know we're going to talk a lot about branding because you're a branding guy and a community guy, but my honest assessment when I sat down the road strategy because you have to look at strengths and weaknesses.

It can't just be I'm great. I'm great. I'm great. Let me go apply. Where do I not show up so well? Where are my points? Like where do I need to avoid and where do I need to go allin the allin areas that I have that I thought represented my brand were sufficient enough to lock that in in 90 days. What what areas le let's unpack it a little bit more a little bit second third level in depth. What are some things that you felt like you could really bring to the table? I love being a person who can take my technical expertise and share it with anyone on the planet.

Yes, I think you're great at that. More technical than I, you could be my peer, you can be in marketing, it doesn't matter. I can translate it. And again, good old food service background, you deal with a wide variety of people. Like a very wide when I worked at Ryan Steakhouse as a general manager, I could easily have the mayor. Yes. I was I was general manager for Ryan Steakhouse in Bartlett, Tennessee. I could easily have the mayor and a janitor in neighboring tables and I need to greet and deal with both of them at their level in a way that they can respond to.

So you have to do some without even trying some quick mental switches about how to relate information. So good works in tech and it's a benefit to companies to be able to meet out audience segments and what voice needs to be used for audience segments whether we're talking like this or in socials. I'm good at that crap. Yeah, you are good at that crap. And I have a reputation for it. So that's the strength of my brand. My technical expertise by itself has been proven out multiple times both in the jobs, but also because I build in public. Not only build in public. Now, here's a phrase I've never shared with anyone.

You're going to be the first to ever hear it. My goal is to impact in public. Yeah. I don't want it because people hear building in public and they think all right I'm going to start 100 days of code today I learned a for loop tomorrow I learned a switch statement that's not getting you hired anywhere that's what you do to help you establish your own rigor for programming every day before that's what that building in public is for but now when it comes to job acquisition you want to be sharing items that show your impact in public how do you move the needle whether it's something innovative that you learned innovative that you built someone you helped that's a whole different level of building in public and it helps to build that brand that this person is capable of moving my needle.

My meaning the company that might be looking at you which means when they pull your resume if they pull your resume where they pull your application if they pull your application and they go to search for social proof there's this whole litany that acts up the things that we put on paper. This is the day of the AI resume. People are using AI to make perfect resumes overnight and very very often the people behind it don't back up what's on the paper. So having social proof that goes back for weeks, months, and years means I almost don't even need a resume. Yeah, you you need one, but to a certain degree they want to look at what's the history of this person?

What's the background? They claim that they are a conference speaker. If you Google my name right now and put developer within the first page, you'll find at least two conferences I spoke at. Yep. Yep. I love that. I love that. Talk about did you have a certain company profile in mind? Did you obviously I mean did you want an advocate role? Were you open to take it like talk to me about that stuff? Sure. So the 90-day thing. Let me let me let me parse that out first. Oh, and by the way, I'm going to interrupt you real quick. Do you have a hard stop in 14 minutes because I feel like we're going to go longer.

Uh uh. Yes. Okay. I'll speed up. I'll speed up. No, you're good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That That was that fast, right? I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Another 10. Yeah. 10. Crap. All right. So, first of all, the 90-day thing. The 90-day thing was my goal, my smart goal to land my ideal role. With that, as I told myself, God, and my wife, if I do not land in 90 days, I'm open to a whole assortment of things. I'm going for the best because I think I've earned it at this point. I think I've put in the put in the time. I've earned the stripes.

I've gone through the work. I've been in the trenches where I can deserve a certain type of role. And my role was and the the ideal company to your question was I want to work for best of class in their industry. Yep. Or simply a very large, highly well-known company. One of the two. It's got to be something that helps my brand. Yeah. I'm going to help them, but the company has to help me. That was my goal. So, if it's a small company, they got to be the best at what ep. I love that. All right, let's get into meat potatoes this thing. Yep.

You cold applied. Yeah. So remember what you literally went the complete opposite of what I talk about. Explain that. Yeah. So again, I'm I'm a I want to say I'm a scientist at heart, but I'm like fifth grade scientist, but we all learn fifth grade science. Yeah. More like first grade. Yeah. Then you bring it up to a theory and then you test it, you get the results, and you get a conclusion. So my theory and hypothesis was I've done the sufficient work on my assets, resume, LinkedIn projects. the suffic the sufficient work on my overall brand, how I've shown up on Twitter, how I've shown up on LinkedIn, the videos that I've done, the podcast that I've done, I feel like that brand enough is strong enough to get me hired.

Yeah. Out any help from what's usually the most important thing in the world, my network. I made a strategic decision. It was risky that I am not going to use my network in the first 90 days. That was something anybody on earth, but I wanted to prove to myself that what I've been teaching people on Twitter spaces is not just vain empty words. This stuff works if you're working it correctly. That was important to me. It was vital. Okay. So, so I mis I misunderstood. This makes a lot more sense because when you messaged me, I was like that doesn't like I didn't quite understand it.

But now, so what you're saying is what you wanted to prove is all the things you've been doing in public, imp they do. Like they're they're it the gold standard. There is no second place. Not that. It needs to be a large, you know, techforward company that's going to help my brand become. Sure. I want to be there from now till I retire, but in case this happens again, sure. I need I need those resume points. Sure. I'm thinking so, I'm think I'm beginning with the end in mind. I'm Stephen coming in this thing. If I'm not with you until retirement, I need you to do something for me even before I start.

Y acting in public, which I love. I'm going to start using that. You wanted for that to speak for yourself. Yes. Without any help from a person saying yes, give them a shot. Here's a referral link. I had referral links that I denied. And let me shout out my network. I don't know who's watching this or who will see it. I have so many people that didn't ask to be named. So many people reach out to me via DM dropping me links. Dropping Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you you had an outpouring all over the place. Talk about individuals. Yeah. in addition to actual recruiters who don't know me but turn on my open to work I had hits and that's because I built up the SEO of my LinkedIn pre my LinkedIn page I had people got it please apply and I'm like who are you like like a lot of companies and some met the mark and some didn't but the point is my brand was doing what I wanted it to do my theory was proving out well unbelievable I'm getting goosebumps it's getting interviews and even before applying having recruiters reach out and say, "Hey, have you considered XYZ company?

Hey, are you interested in doing this kind of tech that kind of thing?" And that happened multiple times. I meant to pull the numbers before I got here and I didn't. But there were multiple interviews and multiple uh recruiters and hiring managers reaching out uh before I even knew who they were from, you know, Adam or Eve. So, the open to work actually does work. It 100% worked. within the same week I had people reaching out to me. But it only works if you have a reason to be called. See, when you have the analytics in LinkedIn, it shows the number of search results. If you have like search results is like 10, you know, 10 in a week and you're have open work turned on, you feel like you have a good LinkedIn profile, you do not have a LinkedIn good LinkedIn profile for being found.

The purpose of your LinkedIn profile from an SEO, search engine optimization point of view is to be found. When people if if you if y ou're a software engineer, when random Joe or Jane types software engineer as a recruiter, you want to show up in their list and LinkedIn gives you some measure of how often you're showing up. I have hundreds of times I was showing up in search and I didn't get called hundreds of times, but I did get called enough to know open to work actually works. So, this is again you have a lot of theories like does this work? Does that work?

I was seeing these things work play out in timeout. Unbelievable. I'm going to fast forward. We're in the last nine minutes. Um, as you know, uh, the goal was 90 days. January 9th, I was laid off. 90 days would have been April the 9th. Uh, I started my first day at Bree on day 89. Crazy. One day prior. And I do believe in speaking those things. And I did pray about this. And I am a man of faith. Doesn't offend anybody. If it does, sorry, not sorry. But I put this out there. I put this out there to my God that this is what I want to be hired by.

Here's how I want it to look. and it happened. And I signed the papers on day 78, but I started on one day before and I think that was a sign that I still got you, son. You don't right, but I still got you. Oh my god, there's so much to talk about. Um, uh, what else you got? I'm just going to keep you talking. Anything else? Anything else you want to talk about? Anything else? I throw in Bree. We might have a second or two for questions. So, I got hired by Bree. What the heck is Bree? be free. First of all, I applied to be I can't everything that I talk.

Listen, this is why I bring on Listen, I this is why I bring on different guests. We apply and like like a LinkedIn thing, right? Like a LinkedIn easy apply. Click click click. It took maybe 30 seconds tops and no cover letter. But, and I found this out later from different sources, they were able to go and look at my videos and look at my blog posts and see a conference talk or two. So, the social proof was there. So, what they were looking for, wh ich in this case was going to be their first ever developer advocate, at least one of the committee members or the person who had some say in it said, "He's going to be all we want and more because we've got the evidence right here.

this is what we want and this is more than we expected. Get that guy on board and I'm happy to do what I do for them because this is a first class company. Be free is the company was a business unit out of Growins. It's an Italian company that does multiple things in tech but they are the company that is the goto solution for email design and content creation. They are it. Like there's competitors but there's no competition. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. They're it. Many people who have enterprise level email. I'm not talking about the email you send to your boss. Looks good to me.

Sign tailor. I'm talking about when you need scale. When scale just means a whole bunch of them. So you're sending out thousands, millions of emails. They need to be designed well. They need to be designed for conversion because not every email actually converts and they can be done by your marketing department inhouse. We are the go-to solution above and beyond all others. Integrate with so many platforms. And the cool thing, here's where I come into play, is we offer it in two different ways. There's the app. You can go use the app right now. You can buy Taylor's subscription to the app and just drag and drop, make beautiful, amazing, responsive emails, start sending them out to tons and tons of customers.

That's doing its own thing on its own. But I come in for the other half of the world, which is the SDK, software development kit. I know you know like you like to know acronyms software development kit which means you can get the benefit of the s of the bree email technology and bring it inhouse in your own systems in your own SAS and there's a couple of ways that that plays out. You can say say you are you are a marketing company. You have Taylor's ma rketing company and you have tons of products that you offer your customers. You can embed our first class email solution via white label.

Put your branding on it and now it's part of your suite of products that you push out. We have tons of customers that do that. They have the best email builder and designer in the world and people don't even know it's be free because they put their own thing up. We have a market for that. But we also have other customers that say we want to do it in-house. We have a marketing team. We have developer time and and availability in our marketing team, but we want the completely own our email provider solution in term not provider but design and content creation. And it's got to be responsive.

It's got to be beautiful and it's got to return actual results. It's got to convert. Can we embed what you have into our systems inhouse? 100%. That's the SDK. That's what I'll be talking about, videoing about, writing about, and going crazy about. And of course, I'll be doing this on social and everywhere else. Um, it's just a lot a lot of fun, man. So, man, if you're if you're open to it, I want to get you on for part two. I want to dive into a little bit more tactical strategy stuff, but obviously like, you know, we're we're we're at the pretty much at the end of time.

Any last pieces of advice for people who are struggling looking for a job right now? I've said it for two years now. This was my theme of last year. It's still my theme this year. You have to have a strategy. If you don't know where you fit in the market, you don't know where you can position yourself the best. It'll be like two football teams going against each other, but the defense has never watched tape. So, you have no idea what plays are coming, where you need to put your people. You have no clue because you've never watched the tape of the competition. You are in a competition.

When you are applying for a job, you are in a competition. People say you're competing against your better self or your old self. That's hogwash. You're competing against other people who want your job. So, you need to know where are my strengths. Where do I show up? Well, you have to be able. This happened on Squarespace two weeks ago. I asked someone who's been struggling, what are you capable of doing very well? And they unfortunately struggled and stuttered with that for about the next two minutes. And I shared with them as kindly as I could. If you can't state to me concisely and confidently what you are great at, no other company will know either.

And they have no reason to hire you because you haven't inspired confidence in them. Have a strategy. Know where you show up well. Figure out where you can place yourself, what job role speaks to your strengths, and then lock the freak in. My schedule was military regiment. Well, and I want to that's a part two. If you're open to it, I want to I want to dive into that. Locking in. Locking in. All right. Well, let me here. You know what? And listen, I've already bumped up our social media following by 3.2% in four days. So, everybody who's watching here, if you're not following Bree, go follow Bree on Twitter, on LinkedIn.

Uh, yeah, we were at 1697, now we're well over 1,700. So, I did the numbers earlier, 3.2%. Um, because I bring impact. I move the needle. That's what I do. But I believe in something and I really believe in what Brief Ree's got going on. It's pretty amazing. Not even to mention community. Do you know the the you know the most trusted community in all of email? Really good emails. Guess who has a one-year anniversary of acquiring really good emails in four days. Be free. There you go. All right, Lawrence, are you free? We're gonna do this right now because people want people want it.

Are you free? Lock the freak in. That's right, Will. Lock the freak in. I love it. Uh, are you free? It'll be a little I'll be coming in hot, but are you free Monday? Uh, absolutely not. No. Okay. Send me some st uff on the DM, man. Yeah, I'll send you stuff on DM. Okay, cool. Well, we'll get a part two scheduled. Go connect with Lawrence and we'll be talking locking locking in and community in that part in that part. Yes. And and and your actual like schedule. Yeah. Yeah, that's part of the lock in. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Awesome. All right, y'all. Go connect with Lawrence.

Lawrence, you're a gem. I love you, brother. For real. I'm I'm I'm I'm so Yeah, everybody said this needs to be an hour episode. Yeah, 100%. Um, all right. Go connect with Lawrence. Y'all have a great one. I'll see y'all at noon central for my uh panel on the Torque LinkedIn. I'll share that. Um, y'all have a great one. Appreciate you, Lawrence. Stay on real quick so I can