Scaling Your Business with Freelancers and Virtual Assistants

FN Intro/Outro: Welcome to the Freedom Nation podcast with Jeff Kikel. On this show, Jeff shares his expertise in financial and retirement planning from a different perspective, planning for your Freedom Day, which is the first day that you wake up and have enough income or assets and do not have to go to work that day. Learn how to calculate what you need, how to generate income sources, and listen to interviews from others who've done it themselves, get ready to experience your own Freedom Day.

Hey, Freedom Nation. It's Jeff here once again, and welcome to another edition of the Freedom nation podcast. And today, we've got Elizabeth Eiss. So I met Elizabeth a few months ago, through a networking organization online, and we just hit it off so well. And also, she really has an intriguing and interesting business that she went in, kind of a was her freedom business that helped her get out. And she's helped others in the same process. So Elizabeth, welcome to the show, my friend.

Thank you so much, Jeff. I'm thrilled to be here today. And we had a great time the first time around. So

it was one of those ones where you're like, you get done, and you go, God, I wish I'd recorded that it was great. But we'll have the same conversation again, and go even deeper. So you know, let's get started with your story. So how did you get to where you are today?

Well, you know, I think my story is probably really similar to a lot of people's, you know, I got out of college didn't know what I was going to do. Took a job. Actually, that was the reason I took my first job was because it came with an expense account. And I got to travel. That was a sophisticated as I got. And, you know, and but I happened, it happened to be the insurance industry. And that's not an industry people go, Oh, wow, I want to be in the insurance industry, universally. But I ended up on the company side. And I was in commercial risk underwriting, which was really fascinating. Every day was different. I was learning about so many different industries and businesses and what made a good one run well, and what made a bad one, HIPAA losses. And because insurance is just another way to kind of, in a sense, capitalize what's happening in your business, and protect it from risk. So to make a long story short, I spent years, you know, working in several different commercial insurance companies and became a very senior executive at the, at the end of the day, had wore every hat, you know, i Chief Operating Officer around a lot of things that a lot in technology, because I was one of those people that, hey, try this new thing out and see if we can, it helps the business and I was always Yeah, let's let's go for it. Not kind of a NIMBY kind of thing. And yeah, so I had this really broad experience and really enjoyed it. But I eventually said, you know, there's other things to do in the world. And I had an offer to join a startup. And I realized, after the fact that I was an intrapreneur. Yep. Corporate America, because I took to why we

That's why we get along so well, because I did the same thing. You were 22 years as an intrapreneur.

Yeah. And what's lopped off the same amount of time to Yeah, so I joined this startup that was focused on something that I was really interested in. And it was it was, it's, frankly, old news now, but 22 years ago, it was around what they call expertise, location, using technology, find expertise. And the idea really was to build call centers in the cloud. And to be able to through technology, tap into expertise that was in large organizations that weren't necessarily frontline people, but had great expertise that, you know, if it could be harnessed in a way that wouldn't interfere with how they did their normal jobs. It could be monetized and bring value to clients. So I was really intrigued with this. And it was an idea of frankly, that was ahead of his time today. We know, we see cut chaos, AI, all this stuff, the kind of kind of kind of a web conversation we're having. Now. All those things were possible 22 years ago. So that's how I got kicked off. And I, I was working for that firm, which didn't succeed, which often happens with early stage companies. And then I worked for others and consulted for other early stage companies. And along the way, and this is where was really the start of the idea that gave me my freedom path beyond just leaving corporate, and I started to hire freelancers, because I would get hired for a consulting gig. But maybe I didn't have expertise in a particular industry, or they needed some extra skill that you know, I was more of a generalist, an operating an execution person. So I was hiring freelancers to round myself out so I could deliver the full package to a client. And what ended up happening was my client started to say, you know, that Jeff guy on your team is just best. Can you find a suggestion? And that's really how it started. Uh, and I was a power user of the big platforms out there that you know, our public companies today. But you know, it really was hard because I was the client, it would have to have my account on those platforms too. And it it just got kind of impossible I was creating PDFs, and all these kinds of things is awkward, wasn't systematic and efficient, which you know, is kind of like not, I like to do stuff that way. And what I discovered was, I was really successful finding people on these platforms, because of my background. So organized, I run HR, even though I'm not an HR person, I know distill a lot of that stuff. So I could quickly sift through the people to find the good ones. And I and I realized that the other thing that was missing from those platforms, human interaction, now my particular passion is small business, and that and that includes solopreneurs, frankly, and what I noticed about the big platforms, it was all do it yourself. So you'd spend a ton of time looking for people. And if you weren't good at defining your needs, or interviewing and that sort of thing, it was a huge loss of time. So I basically decided I was going to build a technology platform that would insert the human into the process. And that's what I did. And it was a tad naive, it was a much bigger project than I thought. We did results. Resourcing is the platform that I designed, and I co developed it. And today, it is a matchmaking platform that is exclusively focused on freelance talent. And we are by choice focused on solopreneurs and small and midsize businesses because frankly, those are the businesses I care about that need the most help, that don't have a team behind them or expertise in HR. And I give them my background, I don't consider myself a business advisor, but I can kind of listen to what's going on to say, I think this is the result you're looking for. These are the skills you need, here's where to find it. And so I think my background was perfectly suited to really helping clients think through their needs, so they could hire freelancers that would make a difference in their business. Yeah,

I speaking from someone who hires a lot of freelancers. It is a I mean, it's a lot of work in a lot of cases, because yeah, you don't know. Yeah, it's like, do I hire somebody overseas? And is that going to end up costing me more money, than if I just spend a little bit more money for someone that may be English as their native language? Or they're a little bit more costly, upfront, but they might not be as costly over the long run? If you basically you're training somebody to do that, and English isn't their first language?

Well, you know, that's an excellent point. And, and frankly, another aspect of the platform is we were global in the beginning, okay. And we found a lot of clients just underestimated what it would take to train somebody who's not familiar with the business situation in the United States, and perhaps isn't a native speaker, or speaks English, but it's British English. And so we've ended up kind of geofencing the platform, so we focus on US and Canadian clients, and our freelancers, our US and Canadian. And it's really, because our clients want people that speak English well, and understand the business culture here, and how business is done. Because it's different around the world. And so however brilliant people are in almost every country that I've ever, you know, engaged with, they don't know what it's like here. So their ability to take on work that goes beyond thought work that goes beyond just task completion, is more challenging. And that is time differences. So I think he has raised a really good point that it may cost more, when you look at the hourly outlay, that if you really think about the time it's going to take to train somebody or monitor their work or check their work. Or if you really want somebody to take that next take the initiative to do something, say in a client outreach, or, or a research project or whatever, you know, it's sometimes it's better to spend a little bit more because you get a more capable person that can bring real thinking to the task. No, I

Totally agree with you. I mean, and like I said, I think that's the, in the end, it's you got to look past the hourly rate and look at how long is it going to take to finish that project? How much work? Am I putting myself into a situation where I'm still doing a ton of work because I'm having to teach them what I want and how I want it and what it's going to look like on the end product, everything else? Whereas I can pay more and get a little bit more, you know, talent up front?

Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting, but I in the United States, I hear a lot of people saying, Oh, I'm just gonna get an intern. And really the same issues really applied. They're, I mean, however bright and willing they are, they don't have this experience, and you're gonna teach them all this stuff. And it's probably not the career they want. So they're gonna leave. Yeah. And so while this, the cost is lower going in, all in it, but

The funny part is, so I've hired a ton of interns over the years, because we, we work with one of the local colleges. And so if you get, you know, from, if they come from a college, the College, yeah, if they're gonna get credit, and everything else, they usually will come with a list of this is what and if you read that list, you can't just let them go willy nilly do their own thing they have to be, it is required by law, that is they're supervised and everything else. So you're putting yourself in for a lot of work. For that free intern that you're getting, or that really low paid intern that you're getting you, you have to be doing a ton of work, and you can't just dump them out there and say, Okay, here's a project, get it done, or go get me coffee. No, the whole purpose of it is for them to learn.

Yeah. And I think that that the purpose, if you have to be committed to that purpose, it's not necessarily purely to benefit your business being really want to help kids learn. And that's really valuable, too. Yeah,

that's just cheap labor for you. You know, if somebody is sitting out there, so let's talk a little bit about the Freelancer side of the business first. So if there's somebody out there, and maybe their cubicle warrior, they're getting up going to work every day, dying just a little bit every day in that cubicle. And they start looking at well, could I have a career as a freelancer? Could you talk a little bit about, you know, what it's like to be a freelancer, the types of people you're hiring, or you're helping to hire through the process?

Sure. And I think your question is really timely, especially, you know, with COVID, and work from home, I think more and more people, frankly, have at least started side hustles. Yes, running things out, which I actually think is a great first step is as a side hustle. Because what I find about and I love your phrase, cubicle warrior, what I find with cubicle warriors, particularly ones that have had more senior positions, is they decide to leave corporate America. And they think they have these amazing abilities. But they have never run a business. They have never done client development. They're used to getting an assignment from a boss. And there's just a whole, it's a whole new world. And they're used to being in corporate a corporate structure. So I think that's a big thing people need to think about. And I think the side hustle route is a great way to start because you still have your income, and you can test out your ideas. The other thing that I think is great tool for people that want to do that is to go to the platforms. There's tons of them, I mean, there's the big name ones like Upwork, and Fiverr. And you can do a lot of research just by going on those and typing in the skill you want to offer. And you'll see who else is doing it, how they describe, you know, maybe there's reviews and things like that you can see pricing, there's so much available to you to really check it out and see how people are packaging their services. So I think that's really important. And I would say I would point people probably towards platforms like Upwork, and there's many other freelancer.com guru.com. And there's a lot, and I don't give a bias. It's whatever people want. But I mean, the average project value on a fiver is like $230. Yeah. And so you're not going to get a really lucrative role there. And whether you're on that a fiver or an Upwork is really competitive. I mean, people, people who've been freelancing, a long time are working, you know, have built a business. So you're going to compete against that. So I think that this, just having your eyes open, and the more you can test it out with a side hustle. And or to partner with somebody whose skills you complement. That's a good strategy to introduce. And those are just a couple of ideas. Because at the end of the day, whether you're talking about an enterprise that's hiring through these platforms, where you're talking about small business, they don't want somebody that's trying it out, they want somebody that's got skills that they can rely on. And so that's really, there's a commitment level, when you're really hiring yourself out. I mean, if it's for a project, that's one thing that's got a start and an end, but a lot of lot of businesses are thinking about, frankly, a hybrid workforce, to solopreneur or hiring someone that's going to be their partner as a virtual assistant or an executive assistant to social media admin, stuff like that. They want that person to learn their brand, their offering and to stick around.

Yeah, I mean, I always say my main virtual assistant, Monica, I mean, her and I, it's a partnership. You know, I mean, yes, she works for me, but basically, I let her run completely the the social media side of our podcasts and everything else. And it is our podcast, not my podcast at that point. But that was, you know, that was years of trust building. I mean, we work together for almost three years now. And that's been years of trust building. And we built this brand together gal, she's obsessive about listening to podcasts. So she's always bringing ideas to the table, you don't find that always, you know, you've got to find that special person. And she had, frankly, zero experience starting with me, but she's just one of those people that actually can just get the ball going and figure it out. You know, I pay her well for where she worried where she lives. But in comparison, I would pay a fortune here. If I was hiring somebody to do that.

Yeah, well, it sounds like you've done exactly the right thing invested in a person, it took

time weeding through a lot of wheat from the chaff at that point. Let's switch gears now and talk about the business owner side of this, you know, let's say I'm a solopreneur, or I've got a small business, what, you know, what is that process for hiring a freelancer and figuring out where they fit into my organization?

Well, I think the most important thing for the business owner solopreneurs small business is probably two things. One is recognizing the value of time, every hour, I mean, if you say your hourly rate is for just sake of conversation, $150 an hour that every hour you spend, if it's on a client thing, or something that generates value for the business is well spent, that if you're spending it, entering information into your CRM, you know, or doing your own tech support work or whatever it might be, you know, that's, that's an opportunity cost. That's, that's costing you $150, that that isn't generating revenue for your business. So I think I really like clients to think about what the value of time is, because it's going to help them better decide what the work they should do. And then the second part of that is, and I say this, often every business has a back room. Well, a printer small business, there is stuff that you need to do that no client is going to pay pay you to do. But it's necessary to run a business. And that's really where to look. Because if you start tackling that stuff that starts the freedom path. And whether I mean, we've done this little value of time ROI of time survey that we send out to people that are inquire about working with us. And it's really simple. It starts with what's an hour of your time worth, how many hours a week do you work, and then what percentage of that work week is spent delivering client value. And it calculates a number. And of all the people that have taken the survey, the average is 47% of the work week is spent on client generating that revenue generating client work. So the majority is on the back end. But people don't realize it because it's a couple hours here or there. And you know, so the second part of the survey is Well, alright, how many hours you spend on invoicing on frankly, writing copy, if you're not a copywriter, that's not that's not core to your business. It's a support task. So we go through a bunch of things, and it calculates another number. And that's, that's when people say, Oh, I can't afford it. They're not thinking about the value of their time, because that the hourly rate times hours, they're spending on the non core work of their firm, if they can convert even a portion of those hours, to value generating work that's pays for that freelancer and of course, there's a leap of faith. And it takes a long time to get up and running. But yeah, it's proven time and time again that you know, look at that back room. And, and that's probably also the stuff you don't really like to do in the coalpit love freelancers is you find the Freelancer that loves to do what you don't love, you are actually

Markedly better at it than you'll ever be in your life. We entrepreneurs always seem to think the worst, we could do anything and we're good at it. Yeah. We suck at most of that stuff. I look at it for my own podcast, you know, I mean, for the longest time, the podcasts didn't make any money. But you know, and so okay, I'm spending my time doing this. And the beginning. It was like, Okay, well, I'll just do the podcast, and then I'll do the editing. And then I'll have I'll do the social media stuff and all that. And the best thing that I ever did was hire Monica. First off, who really took charge of the podcast. I have a team that does the social media side of it on part of it. I have a team that actually goes in does the editing of the audio podcasts and they post those and all that stuff and I look at it and I'm like, okay, maybe I spend 1000 bucks a month total across the board. But all I have to be is the dancing monkey out in front. I mean, that's the one thing that I can't do, and maybe AI will do it for me is I can, you know, pay a concrete AI to do the interviews to. But I mean, this is the one thing I have to do. And it's the one thing I love about it, and I despise every other piece of it, when it comes to it. So I totally agree with you. Any advice for choosing that right person?

Well, I think what it boils down to in terms of picking the right person is being really clear about what you need and your expectations. As you need to start, that's kind of your baseline, if you haven't done that, you're going to be swayed by whoever you're talking to. So I think it's really important to have that baseline built. And I think that's going to point you in the right direction. And then, you know, it's hard to define workstyle or culture, but you need to like the person. And you know, there's got to be some chemistry there, too. But it's got to start with the skills. I mean, I think a lot of people actually start because they mentioned to their buddies, I need a VA. And they say, Oh, well, I know this person, and what the operate on is the trust between the two buddies, as opposed to me, your buddy doesn't know what your business needs, unless they're equally involved in it. So it's, you know, that's another fishing expedition, frankly, and it's it's a lot of time spent interviewing people that you're friends with the best of intentions, point your way. But I think that that's actually another drain, you know, on the time you spend, they may very well attention but you know, it's often doesn't work out.

Well. And would you recommend? I mean, I remember reading The Four Hour Workweek. And you know, one of the things that Tim Ferriss recommended in there is even just running a small test. Yeah, okay, here's a task or a thing that needs to get done, run that small test and see how that person performs. Yeah, I did that with some short term, I did some short videos for YouTube. And I basically put a job out on Upwork and said, Hey, I need a good video editor. And I gave each of them a separate video, so I knew I would get all these videos done. And I wanted them to see okay, did they go in? And did they look at, like my style and everything else. And you know, some of them completed the task, like super fast, and it was complete garbage. And then some of them took forever. And it was like the most beautiful video ever. But it's like, okay, I we do, we do like video a day here. So I do need somebody that can be a volume person. And that was how I found my video editor was that she was like kind of the the perfect in between of all that she got the project done quickly, and good enough that it looked professional, but it wasn't, you know, oh, my god, three, edit six hour project that it took her 10 hour project for a four minute video?

Well, I think that's a superb idea. And what emerged, as you told the story was the fact that probably requirements that you didn't even know you had emerged. Yep. And the thing with the Freelancers is, is they're going to do the best job they can based on their skill set in their orientation. So if you have someone that's geared towards perfection, that's they're not going to be let go of that project until it's perfect. But it's, you know, that's the kind of thing of setting expectations that so this needs to be volume, you want quality, but you don't want. You don't want it to take too many hours, that kind of thing. So I think that I think the test idea is good. And the only thing I would say and it didn't wasn't obvious from what you said, but I suspect that you paid each one of these people. Oh, yeah, people go into this thinking, oh, I want a free trial yet no, well, that person's earning a living feeding a family, whatever it is, and and they don't feel they don't feel valued when you expect them to put work in to see if they're going to get the job. But there are people actually that that do that

And it's I just I'm sure there is and I just started, you know, one, if you're not willing to put money up, I'm sorry, you shouldn't be trying to hire somebody. Yeah. And you know, you need to value their time. Just as much as you value your time. You should value their time and their business person as well. Yeah. And no, I don't I don't fall for that at all. But you know, one of those things where I basically said, Okay, here's the, here's the project scope, here's the amount of time allotted for that. If you need more reach out to me, and then here's, you know, whatever price they came at me with of their proposal of, you know, it was $10 an hour $12 An hour or $15 an hour. Okay, fine. I mean, that's your that's your price. I'm willing to try it and like I said, I thought it was a I've done this three or four times and I thought it worked really well. So, in those cases, you know, and that, yeah, what else perfect. What else is new in your world that you're working on?

Well, you know, I wouldn't say anything's brand new. But, you know, within the last year, we've rolled out a bunch of jobs that we call on demand jobs. So when we first launched our platform, I was really doing what we called Custom recruiting. So we would work with a client to build a job description, and then we would go find vet interview and curate choices for them. So they would get a talent pool of three freelancers that we felt were really good match for what they needed. And it took probably a minimum of three weeks. And in that, not that it took us that long that it took time for the word to get out. Because we're we not only have jobs on our platform that we post, we also post to LinkedIn, we are LinkedIn recruiters. So we have access to pretty much anyone in the world, even though we're focused on the US, Canada that's interested in contract work. So we have a huge supply chain, depending on who they're looking for. But you know, they don't apply right away, the busy, the good ones are busy. So you know, it takes a little time for us to we have methods for reaching out and getting people to respond. But so, so people like that, but they basically came back for jobs, like a virtual assistant and executive assistant, social media support bookkeeping, some project management, handful of with like a jobs like that, that they said, you know, we don't really need custom. It's a very well defined role. But we need somebody that's competent, reliable, nice. And I want it now. Yeah, so I'm kinda Okay. Well, actually, well, yesterday. Yeah. Because we guarantee our matches for the first 30 days, he had a why and good conscious, you know, give them somebody that I'm going to guarantee is a good match. With without the whole process we go through, you know, which is both automation algorithms automate AI, you know, as in the human intervention. So, essentially, the way we solve that problem was preventing a bunch of people that we have, they're all contractors, they're not our temp workers or anything like that. But we've prevented virtual assistant teams, and frankly, they're small companies. They okay, you know, they, I mean, probably the largest one is a VA that has a team of 12. Some are employees, and some are other contractors that she regularly works with. But we have a bunch of people like that we built relationships with. So we have basically a collaboration agreement that if I basically say, Hey, Jeff wants this work done, and they are work tends to be ongoing that project. But here's a project from Jeff, and they see who you are, you're the your LinkedIn profile, whatever it is, you have a job description. And basically, I basically put it out to the people that I think are best suited to do your job. One will say or multiple say, Okay, I'm in I've got the capacity, the skills to do that. It but they've agreed, basically a to a certain rate structure. So I am ever predictable structure to the client. And they're great, they've agreed to be up and running with a first phone call with the client within 24 to 48 hours.

That's awesome. Well, I think that's the E two is working with, I've started to learn that more, you know, you've got the individual freelancers that are out there, and then you've got these little small VA companies. And you know, I think the difference there is now you have a team, so that if you're one VA flakes on you, or decides that they got a job someplace else, you know, boom, all of a sudden, they're gone. Versus having a team that understands, okay, this is the client, and we're here to support them. And if somebody goes on vacation, you've always got that person that's

In their business owners, so they know what it's like to be a small business owner. And I mean, people do they get COVID Somebody gets cancer, their family, I mean, things are can be unpredictable in life. And so you've, you've got redundancy by by having having that person so and I just think that that entrepreneurial spirit of running a business is they can relate to the small business clients that they're serving. Yeah. And the other thing I like about these firms is they're committed to a business, they're not looking to be your employee. They don't want to get another job, they want to run their business. And I think that's a big difference. Because sometimes you you hire an individual and then six months later, you know, somebody offers them a little bit more money or, you know, they decided they don't really like being an independent worker anymore, and they go back to work, and then you're left in the lurch. And so those are ways to kind of protect against that.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, and like I said, they're a small business owner too. So they're getting to understand the need to be more efficient in the long Yep.

One of the thing I would mention Ever, since you're talking about the small firms is a lot of them come and expect you to sign a subscription or retainer a certain amount of time a month. And they do that, frankly, because they don't have automation. And so we don't have to do that. So there's, there's no minimum retainer to working with our on demand resources, we basically charge a one hour job deposit, and then you use the time you need. And to me, it just boils down to courtesy and communication. Like, you know, if if you hired me, Jeff, I would you and I would be talking about what is next week look like, and maybe you don't need me next week, you're going on vacation? Fine, I can plan I can work with other clients. So you know, because a lot of people, they don't know how many hours they need. And it's, it's claustrophobic to have to commit to a $1,500 retainer or X hours a week. And then then you end up filling the time just like you wouldn't employee. And it's like, you lost the flexibility,

I think of it is, you know, you're starting to dump a bunch of crap that you probably should have just taken off your plate period. Example, I use an acronym of idea. So identify what needs to be done, Delegate what you can eliminate, what you can automate what you can, and then anything else that's leftover you should be doing at that point. And that's, that's what I've worked off of for years. You know, it's like, why are you doing this task? Well, because we've always done it. Why? What's the purpose of doing this? Yeah, I had a great boss when I was with fidelity that you would come to them and say, well, we need to get this done. Okay, well, why aren't you getting it done? Well, because they told us we couldn't do it. Who's they? Let's go talk today. And let's get that out of here. Because we don't need to be doing that.

Yeah, the own good story. And I liked the acronym idea. That's good. Yeah. Well, great. Well,

let's change gears here and talk about the Fast Five questions. Now. You're ready. All right. All right. So first question, you wake up in the morning business is totally gone. Yep. 500 bucks in your pocket? Laptop Computer place to live? Food and drink? What are you gonna do first?

Oh, let's see. First, I'm going to feed my cats. Good answer. Yeah, they are not going to allow much to happen without feeding.

If yours are like mine, is he pretty much does it let us get out of the house? Without feeding? For sure.

Maybe because of everything you just described? I might. I might exercise, or golf. I go for a walk to get a bagel in New York City bagel. Sure. There you go. But then honestly, at this point, given what's happened, I'd start again. Okay. I mean, I love what I do. I mean, I It's really fulfilling. I often say that my purpose is to empower the purpose of others. I mean, I like deploying everything that I've done in my professional life, to help other people move ahead faster, and and scale their businesses. And so they have freedom. And they have the impact they want in their families, services community. They're just general community. So I would probably just start again, maybe I wouldn't build a plant floor this time, because that was a big endeavor, but it started again.

I love it. Alright, what's the biggest business mistake you've ever made?

You know, this, I don't want this to sound smug, because it's not. But I don't think of them as making big business mistakes. I mean, certainly, I've made mistakes. Yet, I've also learned a lot. Every single time. I misjudge something, or, you know, I could have done a better job or something like that. I'd prefer to think about it as you know, it's all part of the evolution of, of leadership and thinking about operations and running things, working with clients, whatever it is. So I think the biggest thing is to be humble and admits when something didn't work. But the end end of the day, you know, don't beat yourself up on it, you did the best you could have, presuming you didn't do the best you could, and just move on from there. You know, just put that in your backpack and say, okay, you know, I'm gonna do it differently next time. So, yeah, I just think if you don't make mistakes, you try to be be trying to be purpose is a mistake, purpose. Perfect is the mistake. I mean, it just, it isn't real. I mean, and, you know, life is all about context and what's going on not not even just for you, but in your life. Jeff, you know, it's like, I've been thinking about your life if we're talking about working together. And yeah, so I just think that it's important just to think about things that don't go wrong is you know, alright, how do I use that to do something different have a better impact? Next time?

Great answer. What's a good book that you'd recommend for our audience?

Well, I've got one that many people probably haven't heard of. It's called, thank you for being late. And the subtitle is is an optimist guide to thinking in the age of acceleration. So it's a mouthful. Yeah, it was written in 2016. Have you heard of it? No. First time? Well, it's written by Thomas L. Friedman. And he's actually a columnist in in probably a few newspapers. And he's also a Middle East and politics expert. And it's just a really interesting story, the title came about because somebody was late to lunch. And he had an extra half hour and a napkin and a pen in front of them. And he started to jot ideas down and out of luck. But what I really like about it, and why I think it's good for the freedom audience is the first of all the book talks about entrepreneurship. And he ultimately says, the ideal Well, ideal, sir onward, but the best entrepreneurs, Mother Nature, because Mother Nature is constantly just dealing with life in what's happening, no judgment. I mean, whatever you think about whatever's going on in the world, Mother Nature just adjusts. We may not like the adjustments that mother nature makes. But you know, Mother, nature's just doing what Mother Nature needs to do. So there's a number of chapters that talk about that, which I think is just a really just a good lesson about entrepreneurship, you can't control things that are happening around you, but what can you do about it and move forward? And the second thing I really like about it, and this is really particular to my business, is there's a chapter in there here, he's interviewing this guy called Astro Teller of Google. And there's a chart that I love. And basically, it shows he's talking about technology. And it's a chart where it shows the, the rate of acceleration of technology. Yeah, which he talks about is artificial intelligence. So this is so timely to what's happening today. And it's it's a really hockey stick kind of line. And over the over the years, it's just been have this really steep curve, and then it shows and what's the ability of human beings to adapt to technology to adopt it? It's not a flatline, but it's, you know, it's a much lower

Grade, invasive and more Herky jerky in that process. Yeah, exactly. And,

And what he says is that if that steep line is artificial intelligence or and technology, then the gap is what he says that's the opposite, when you need Intelligent Assistance, which can only be provided by human beings. And I think it's so timely for these days, because when you hear about Chet GPT, and how people are using it blindly. That's, that's, that's really ignoring the power of of AI, but it still requires its human to look at and assessment, does it pass the reasonable blood test? You know, are the facts right? Yeah. And so I think it sets humans up for success faster, because you can get a ton of data, you don't have to do a Google search, it's gonna put it all together for you. Now a human needs to apply it. So I just love that analysis, because frankly, it inspired my platform. That's what we do. By inserting humans into the process, we provide intelligent assistance to people that need to build a job description, and hire freelancers. So we're using technology to automate it, make it efficient, make sure that we've found all the best candidates for things but at the end of the day, because we're human, it's just better to have a human interaction to to make a good match, because you need that human interaction and that chemistry to help you really utilize a freelancer effectively,

Grayed out, love, love that. And that's an new book on our list of books. So thank you, what's a good tool that you use in your business that you might recommend?

So, probably my favorite tool is a mind map. And I happen to be familiar with one that's offered by mind jet. But I know there's there's plenty out there. But, you know, I basically, I don't want to say run my life in a bureaucratic way. But I organize my life, whether it's who I have to send birthday cards to or what my schedule is for the week, or frankly, I designed my entire technology platform using it because I was able to kind of think about slick flowcharts in a way, you know, basically I was able to like I mean, I'm fairly organized thinker, you know, and I I would just kind of list out all right, what are all the components to my platform or whatever. I'm doing a mailing campaign or something, you know, out there or I'm thinking about my interview or my podcast was chess, you know, one of the things I want to be thinking about and I you just Here's my map to capture all that. And what's cool about my map is, it's not static. So you can move the, the cone bubbles or, you know, a little word phrases around. So you're constantly able to kind of reorganize your thinking about things. So I don't know if that does a great job of describing it. But it's really, really useful tool that I think can, it can be in, you can out export these mind maps to Word documents, PowerPoint to spreadsheets to project management software. So I you know, I just think it's a great tool.

Well, I use them when I'm launching a product, I'll have that core product or core brand or whatever. And then I start breaking it out into Okay, well, what can I do? How can I? This is the core. Okay, how can I then take that core and use it for bits and pieces and parts? And how can you turn that into monetization and everything else? Yeah, exactly. Right. Huge, huge fan. That's that's a new tool, though. I hadn't seen that one before. Yeah, no, I had that. I was just quickly downloading it.

Man, huge fan.

I'm like, Yeah, well, usually I have whiteboards all over my office where I've got all these written out on the whiteboards, but it's nice to have an electronic to Yeah, for sure. Well, fantastic. Last question, what is your definition of freedom? Hmm,

You know, this, I'm afraid this is gonna sound like really Pollyanna ish. But I want financial freedom, you know, and I want I mean, basically the wherewithal to do what I want to do, you know, and not be kind of locked into a schedule of corporate priorities, things like that. I love the freedom of having my own business. But I also accept that freedom comes with responsibility. Yeah, and the only reason I have freedom is because I work hard at my business and work hard at serving people. And so freedom comes with responsibility. But I want basically the freedom to continue to help people do I mean, I, as I said before, too, I like to empower the purpose of others, that gives great meaning to me in life. And, and so I would say that I want the freedom to keep doing that, whether it's volunteering, you know, teaching entrepreneurship, you know, or working with my clients, you know, both the clients that hire through us as well as the freelancers. That freelance through us. I mean, it's really meaningful. Awesome,

Great answer. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for being on today. It was, yeah, you came as as advertised, after our first conversation, and thank you for sharing with the audience. I mean, I think people that are interested in freelancing got something out of this. And I think people have painted themselves into a corner like I used to be, it's nice to have that person that can come rescue you out of the corner at times when you got that. So thank you for sharing that with our audience. Oh, my

Pleasure was really fun, just like the first time we met. Absolutely. Well, folks,

Thank you for joining us. Once again, we do these twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays for you. So you get to meet all kinds of cool folks like Elizabeth and learn from them, and their journeys that they've been on. Make sure wherever you're at that you're hitting that the subscription button and make sure that you are sharing with us your thoughts and giving us that little up up vote or or five star vote when it comes to that. So thanks a lot and we will see you guys back here the very next time.

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