S2Ep45: Inflation, Labor Shortage, and The Great Resignation. Changes business owners can make today.

In today’s episode, Allan welcomes back Matthew Mottola.  Matthew is the co-founder and CEO of Venture L, the leading platform for freelancers. Matthew and Allan discuss how inflation and labor shortage are affecting businesses worldwide, and why it’s important to build strong relationships with the talent and vendors in your organization.  For more information, visit The Human Cloud (humancloudbook.com)

Allan has started and grown several multi million dollar businesses. His mission is to help you do the same. Welcome to the Business Growth Pod, building the future, one entrepreneur at a time.

And when we talk about inflation, there’s actually been three forces in the background that we need to discuss before this because things weren’t exactly perfect. Before we heard about inflation. The first thing is all you out there, you’ve  been worrying about the talent shortage, or you’ve been feeling the talent shortage. Domino’s Pizza has a $500 signing bonus for new people. That’s insane. If you’ve gone around America, you see that every single street corner, there’s a hiring sign. So that’s been in your face. The second thing is we’ve seen the great resignation. So your best workers are probably going to leave. And we’ve been seeing insane stats where between 20 and 50% of workers, if they’re not given a flexibility, and exactly what they want, they’re going to be out. And so at the same time that you’re worried about finding people, your best towns. So you have these two forces that I can’t even imagine how difficult it is for you right now. We’re all feeling it. But you have those, and then now pops inflation. And when we talk about inflation, we’re talking about what it is right now, but what it can be in the next 3060 90 days.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Allan. I’m a family man and attorney and an entrepreneur. Each week, we provide resources and advice to help build your business. Are you ready? Then let’s go.

Everyone, Welcome to the Business Growth Pod. I’m your host, Allan Draper. Before we get started, I’m very excited about our topic in our guest today. Make sure to follow me or subscribe, whatever the platform is that you listen to this podcast on, make sure that you do that. So you get updated when I drop a new episode, we drop episodes every Wednesday morning. And make sure also that you leave me a review, let me know how I’m doing. And if there are any topics that you’d like me to cover, make sure to reach out to me, go to my website, Allan draper.com, if you want to schedule an appointment with me, and let’s get rolling. I actually have I believe this is for the first time. A repeat guest don’t mark my word. But I believe that’s the case. He was in Episode 12. That dropped on March 3 of this year. And we talked about traditional employees versus independent contractors. And which of the two makes the most sense for your business. My guest today is Matthew Mattola. He’s the co founder and CEO of Venture L, the leading platform for freelancers to run their business. He’s also the author of the Human Cloud, and recently started up a podcast called The Human Cloud Podcast. So we’re excited about that excited. Welcome to the show, Matthew.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thanks, again, for being so flexible. For those listening out there. What we’re going to talk about so important that literally we talked about this, what three days ago, Allan, I think it was over the weekend, or like this needs to be discussed now. So thank you so much for being flexible on this and excited to talk with you all,

ya know, this is something that I’ve been talking about quite a bit just through my social media. And that topic is inflation and how it’s affecting small businesses. One of my worries right now is that the crazy inflation and what it’s doing to labor costs and other business related expenses, is really going to destroy. And I know that sounds like a, you know, that sounds like a pretty strong word, but it’s going to destroy a lot of small businesses. So give me your take on what’s currently going on with inflation, and how that’s affecting, you know, small businesses, and what are some things they can do about that? Yeah,

so let me step back and give you all a sort of warning, right. So I’m not an expert when it comes to the Fed. I’m an expert when it comes to even economics. I’m not a trained economist. But I’ve been a CEO myself, I’ve jumped into large companies to help them drive and sort of my background is helping product marketing leaders scale through hiring freelancers. So in this lens, we’re talking about how in the world you compete, how the world you stay ahead of the curve. And when we talk about inflation, there’s actually been three forces in the background that we need to discuss before this because things weren’t exactly perfect. Before we heard about inflation. The first thing is all you out there, you’ve been worrying about the talent shortage, or you’ve been feeling the talent shortage. Domino’s Pizza has a $500 signing bonus for new people. That’s insane. If you’ve gone around America, you see that every single street corner, there’s a hiring sign. So that’s been in your face. The second thing is we’ve seen the great resignation, so your best workers are probably going to leave. And we’ve been seeing insane stats where between 20 and 50% of workers, if they’re not given a flexibility and exactly what they want, they’re going to be out. And so at the same time that you’re worried about finding people your best talents leaving. So you have these two forces that I can’t even imagine how difficult it is for you right now. We’re all feeling it. But you have those and then now pops inflation. And when we talk about inflation, we’re talking about what it is right now, but what it can be in the next 3060 90 days. So where we stand today, the numbers that I’ve seen is that inflation has been around 5% But with gasoline it’s been upwards of 40% and in other categories as well. The net is This if you’re a startup founder, if you’re a leader, your budgets just got slashed because of inflation. And so I’ll give you a very, very relevant example of myself. So when I went out to start venture out, it was a venture backed startup. But like all of you, we know that we’re always worrying about our run, right? So I actually stashed aside, I think it was $30,000, from my time, and from what we all can feel that 30,000 turned into 25. And it might turn into 20. And so your budgets are also feeling slashed as well. So those are sort of those these three major forces that we’re all dealing with inflation is kind of the candle that broke at the straws back right in terms of Oh, my God, this has gone from painful to my knees are slashed underneath me. And the one thing I would say that we’re hyper watching, is this infrastructure bill, if all of a sudden we you know, have a $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill, it doesn’t take an economics PhD to realize inflation is going to get only worse. So I guess we’ll set the stage there. I will say good news. The Braves are up by two. Alan, I want to make sure I put that in. So it’s not all bad. But they’re sort of setting the stage of where we are right now.

Yeah, Heck, yeah. So I think when I really started getting involved in this conversation about inflation was just a couple of weeks ago, I realized that 40% of the money that’s ever been printed in the United States ever, from the beginning of time, has been printed in the last 12 months. And there’s all of these offshoot results or implications from that, things that affect me both in terms of a business owner, investor, but also as a, you know, creator of a podcast, one of those things is how it’s gonna affect my investments and how worthless cash is becoming right now, which is something that I’ll deal with at a later time. But another thing I started thinking about was, how is this going to affect the employment base that I currently have? Right, because what’s happening effectively, is that the dollar isn’t going as far. And I was listening to this real estate podcast. And it really hit me with kind of this analysis. Also, the real estate expert said something like, Hey, guys, you have to stop looking at homes, like they increase like this crazy amount. Sure, there has been some appreciation and all of that. But he said, what’s really happening is that the dollar isn’t worth as much. So you know, when we’re looking at a house, that’s, you know, half a million dollars right now, that was, you know, 300,200 50,000 a year, year and a half ago, most of that, or at least some of that is caused by the devaluation of the dollar caused by inflation caused by the, you know, the printing of cash. So, but focusing Matthew on this topic of, you know, it’s like this trifecta, right? There’s a labor shortage, there’s this great resignation going on, and inflation, that’s just hammering small business owners. So what advice do you have for, you know, in my mind, I have, you know, I help a lot of super early entrepreneurs, they’re starting to make their decision about the first one to five hires, what recommendations do you have for those that are super early on into acquiring

help? It has never been more important to build strong, deep relationships with those around you. Sounds really, really simple, right? But a tangible level. What this means is that whether it’s customers, whether it’s early employees, whether it’s sort of that 10 to 50, employees, these relationships are so, so crucial. And I think what we’ve seen is the past sort of 50 years have actually been very owner friendly, meaning if you were leadership, you generally were in power. And I think what technology has done is it slashed sort of the barriers so that the talent themselves have more power. And there’s a couple factors that we can look at for this. The first is the fact that if you look at a tech company, a 25 year old is making more than we ever, ever, ever could have dreamed of, right. And if you look at what’s happening with talent, right now, they are in the driver’s seat, there’s no other way to put it. If you are a highly talented individual, meaning you have computer science, data analytics, design talent, you are sitting pretty, and this is probably the best time in your life and probably for the next 50 150 years. What that means for you as a leader, though, is that oh my god, you better have tight relationships, because anything when we talk about change, it’s not like there’s only losers, right? There’s definitely going to be winners, and there’s definitely gonna be losers. The winners that are coming out on top right now are the ones that have the people around them that will fight to the death for them. So the leaders that are put up blunt, really shitty, and have been very good at using and abusing and delegating your app, right, you’re gone because your people are leaving, and they’re the ones that were already going to leave, but they were waiting on a good opportunity. But the leaders that are really good at inspiring, motivating and retaining those around them, you’re in the driver’s seat, because while those other ones are having to deal with retention issues, and sourcing issues, you can worry about innovating and creating good products. So the number one piece of advice that I have is if you’ve been you know a total shift in terms of your leadership, yikes, you’re kind of screwed. To be honest, I don’t feel that bad. But if you’re one of those leaders that have been on the fence in terms of do I treat my talent well or do I you know, worry about other things. Treat your talent well really dive deep into treating them. Well. The one caveat that I would like to put on though, is if you are a startup leader, your employees are probably very, very, very thinly, overstretched, meaning they’re doing more than they ever have before. So this is where sort of my background comes in with freelancers, is hiring freelancers is an ability to enable them to produce more by doing less. So for example, if someone is a, you know, we just met with a client, like literally two hours before this. And the problem was they had every single resource, they had a designer, they had a writer, you name it, but they were stretched thin. And so the newsletter hadn’t gone out in a month, the podcast hadn’t been done, but they were thinking about it. So we literally did, we said, Okay, what’s the budget look like? Do you have two to $10,000 a month, all of you probably do. And so we were able to plug freelancers into the mix, so that that employee that was stretched thin now can get more stuff done, and be a total rock star. So it really comes down to relationships. But how can you empower your current employees to be rockstars? And I would challenge you, you have over 100 million experts in the world that will work on a project basis to make your existing employees total rockstars and will stay with you for for their lifetime.

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, that’s a really good point. Because entrepreneurs have this tendency to put more time and effort into getting different or new help, then they put into retaining their current help. And I think part of it is because they already have someone there. A lot of times, they don’t know how they’re doing with those people, right? There’s not evaluations or regular touch points. And so they assume like, hey, everybody’s happy, everything’s going just fine. So I’m going to put my time and energy into acquiring new help. And so what are the things that which I can kind of really with a little bit, right, like, hey, somebody just left, I have to feel that person. See, that’s my number one priority, my number one priority, just because I’m putting fires out isn’t working on my relationships with my current health? So how do we kind of flip that script? What do early entrepreneurs do to kind of make this and I agree with you, 100%, I try to be very deliberate about how I tree and the programs that we have for our current staff or our current team members. But how does an early entrepreneur, how are they deliberate about focusing on the people that they have? As much or if not more than the people that they’re trying to recruit or hire? So let me

start by saying I understand the challenge. And let me sort of empathize with I know how you’re feeling because this is a common challenge of do I optimize what I already have? Or do I look for new, and it’s really, it’s really tough, right? Like one employee, you might think that they are the best they’re doing, and you need to go find somebody else. But the reality is, you might be able to three extra productivity, if they were happy and inspired and motivated, but you don’t know. So and let me empathize with the second thing. If you’re a venture backed founder or CEO, I also know how painful it is because you might have investors breathing down your neck expecting you to have 50 to 100 hires in the next six months. And they might be using that as a sign of growth and success. So the first thing I want to do is just say, if you’re stuck in a situation, that enabling your existing employees is painful. I just like to say I empathize with you. And to be honest, I don’t know what to say, besides, you might have to have a tough conversation with your investors. That’s something I personally realized early on, I do not want to be stuck sitting on the other side of the table with VCs, yanking me in terms of telling me what I have to do. So I just want to make it very clear. In that case, I understand you’re sitting in your thinking, I can’t do that, to the ones that are thinking about optimization versus new people. It’s just purely a challenge and having a conversation with those that are around you. It’s really tough as entrepreneurs, I’m sure you feel as Elon, it’s lonely as hell when you’re the CEO, because you don’t know who to trust. And you also feel like there’s not enough hours in the day for you to connect with absolutely everybody. And so this is where sort of my advice is, is pick to those five to 10 people that are close to you, and really, really talk with them. And potentially, they might be the ones to have that deep conversation. And this is very, very targeted at if your company is more than 40 or more than 20. But that’s sort of my advice, at least for me, it’s always come down to deep conversations and hard conversations. That’s it. That’s it potentially looking if there is ways to scope budget or ways to scope things, I will bring up little things, right that make a huge difference right now is everyone’s looking for flexibility. So if you are a CEO right now saying hey, do I bring everyone into the office, good luck, wake up, and that’s not going to happen? So they might want to come into the office, but over 60% of your employees don’t. And so there are little things like you can do like enabling flexibility. Other things there is if your employees have kids at home, they’re probably stressing out. It’s a really tough time. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have kids right now. So there are changes that you can enable in their workflow, like things like enabling flexibility, but my general advice is talk to him. You never know what’s going on their head.

Yeah, I love that we do periodic evaluations. And we’re trying to get to this point where and you can’t just say, Hey, I have an open door policy, I’m a very approachable person, like you can tell me whatever you want and your job is not at stake. You can’t just say that you have to create a culture of it in order for people to feel comfortable telling you what they really think there’s this process involved. And it takes time. And they have to see that when they tell you something, even if it’s something that you don’t want to hear, like, hey, I really want to work from home. And you know, you have to thank them for the information they’re bringing to you take it under consideration, right, you have to create this culture of feedback, in order for people to tell you because being a CEO, being a business owner, you are in a lot of ways looked at as the guy that I don’t tell my thoughts and feelings to, right. And so they have to overcome this to the point where people actually feel comfortable speaking to them about things feel like they’re safe, their job safe, they’re not going to get fired, if they tell you what they think. Because it’s not until we get to that point that we can really understand what’s going on. And if we don’t understand our employees, if we don’t understand the people that are really building our companies, we are going to lose the best talent, especially right now. It’s just crazy.

Yep, and let me hear let me we’re just some stats that we’ll be releasing, and actually in a couple of minutes. So this is from our friends over at distributed who’s based in the UK. So 90% of employees want continued flexibility and where and when they work, 68% of employees would choose remote working options over in office work. This one’s crazy to me already 61% of employees would be willing to take a pay cut to remain with their remote working status. And then just 15% of workers would apply for a position that requires full time office work. So the data that everything I’ve seen very, very clear. And I will throw one more piece of data and research to support what you’re talking about. I think it was called the Aristotle project. It was a Google’s psychology study that happened. This was like early 2000s. Right? So this is nothing new. But I’m gonna ask you. So what do you think is the one variable? So if you surveyed all the teams at Google, what do you think was the one predictor slash variable of what made the best teams and you could think of smart speak could be number of people? What would you think is that one thing that as a leader, really drove that team

that made the best team, I don’t know, maybe just kind of the ability for people to control aspects of their job, I don’t know.

So your secret, I thought it was gonna be free pizza, to be honest about I know, based off the way Google expands you think was free pizza or the tech company spent, but it was psychological safety. So it was the ability for people to feel like they could take a chance, and not get ridiculed for it. And I will say, in a remote environment, this is what’s really scary, because this can be extremely amplified. Because if any out there has been in relationship, and you’ve texted something, and the person took it the total wrong way, you now amplify that in terms of the office culture. So it’s never been more important for psychological safety to be sort of there for your teams. It’s never been harder, because in a remote environment, things can be read certain ways.

Yeah, that’s interesting. And, you know, look, there have been studies, right? That say, people are more productive, right? productive, whatever that means in an office, right? But here’s the thing, here’s the kicker, there’s two things I have to say about this, and I want to get your thoughts. One, it doesn’t matter. If those people are more productive in side of an office, if you’re missing out on more talented people, that won’t consider working for you just because you’re requiring them to go into an office. Right? So that’s one thing is that, look, there’s this offset that okay, maybe they are that individual who is willing to go into an office, maybe that person will be more productive in an office than at home. But what about all these talented people that won’t even consider that job in the first place? Right? And then my second thought, is this with inflation and what’s going on in the labor market right now, you have to pay your people more, or you have to find alternative means of getting jobs done. Right. You talk a lot about independent contractors. And so you have to get super creative, but And what’s so hard for business owners because they’re like, Yeah, but they’re not more productive at home than they are in an office. Well, what you can do is you can take the overhead, right, and you just mentioned that statistic that said, hey, people will, they’ll accept less money, if they you have that flexibility, they can work from home. On top of that, if you allow them to work from home, then you don’t have that overhead of, you know, the office desks and chairs and the office building. And so you could take that hire the more talented people that want the more flexibility and pay them more to not come in the office where you don’t have, you know, electrical bill, right, all of these natural expenses.

I haven’t seen data around at scale employees being more productive in the office. I haven’t seen that. I would love to see it. I’ve seen a lot of data. The reverse. And I will say the devil’s advocate to the data about productivity is output doesn’t necessarily equal impact. So a lot of those studies as well. I think the data can be skewed and not exactly the right areas should be shooting out. Yeah, like,

what are they measuring in the first place? And

measuring like, oh, cool, you’re 20 emails that a 15? Well, 10 of those emails were meaningless. What I will say is a lot of the data of even this data, one of the biggest things I feel with with right now, what’s going on, we have these discussions is that people are looking at everybody as the same, meaning all your employees are the same. That’s cute, right? And publicly, it’s cute to say that, but the reality is, they’re not 20% of your employees equal 80% of the impact. So we’ve kind of seen this with a lot of companies now who have rejected a lot of the common notion of we’re all equal and all that stuff. It’s, it’s total crap. I mean, the reality is in your company, you have needle movers, and you don’t, and everyone has a place, but you’re neglecting reality, if you think that everyone is the same, and the ones that I know who have been the 20s, right, those 20% of employees, they’ve not want to work in the office, they’ve wanted to work on their own time, because they’re generally disciplined, they generally don’t need your direction. And so that’s what I’ve seen. I can’t say I’ve seen enough data both ways. But from my anecdotal experience, the really good employees, they don’t need an office. Same thing as like, they don’t need micromanagers. Yeah,

no, I think you’re right. I think it’s kind of this old school philosophy of, you know, for some reason, they’re productive, they’re around other people. And I think there are going to be some instances where somebody is more productive at work, maybe fewer distractions, maybe they don’t have the setup at home that they might have at work. And yeah,

let me add to that, because that is a great point. So when we say like working remote, right, I actually do not mean working at home in any way, shape, and form I work best from a coffee shop, I just don’t work best when someone says you have to fit in this box that every 30 minutes, someone’s gonna walk in and try to tell me a joke that’s gonna throw me off my flow. So that is one major myth is that it’s not someone’s working at home or working at the office. So there is still a place for the office like this is one major thing to call out. So if you do have a bunch of office space, don’t just get rid of it immediately. Instead, what there’s ways to repurpose it. So like you said, on some of your best employees, they actually probably have families. And a lot of the data from entrepreneurship skews this way. I think we fell in love with the 21 year olds, you know, genius hacker, but the reality is the best CEOs are actually what is it on 38 years old, based off the data. And so likewise, with your employees, your best employees are not the ones that are asking for free food and all that kind of stuff, they actually might be the 35 to 55 year olds that have a lot of experience and wisdom. And they might need a quiet place. That quiet place might be you getting them a subscription to work, or it might be you giving them an office and they say they come in for two days a week, and they or they come in for a couple hours. It’s about flexibility, not necessarily having to be at home. And one other thing I would add is that there’s also been this myth that was just crazy to me when I went from freelancing into a corporate view is that the amount of money companies spent on fringe expenses, things like free lunches, all these things. To me, I was like, either give me more money, or give me more resources. And so all that money that you’re putting towards treehouses and food and stuff that in reality has nothing to do with actual work. What if you put that money back into them? For value driving activities, like hiring freelancers? A lot of times when talking with leaders, your question will be okay, well, how do I actually empower my employees? Give them two to $5,000 a month. And so you can use that money to hire other people watch the real heroes Shine?

Yeah, no, I think this idea is great. Because what I’ve noticed is that with talented and motivated people who are doing their job, because they enjoy it, and they’re passionate about it, those people do better. With fewer restrictions, they make better decisions. When you say, this is the job, I want you to do do it however, or from wherever or whatever time that you want to do it, they do better in that scenario. So I think these studies that are saying, hey, people are more productive at work, I think, usually those are going to be the bottom tier people. Frankly, I think those are the people that they need to have their handheld, they need to be told what to do. They need to be supervised on a physical basis in order to perform at all. And those aren’t the people you really want working for you in the first place.

I couldn’t agree more. And one other thing I’d add to this for you leaders out there, in terms of how do you start to shift the mindset or shift the culture to enable this, it comes down to outcomes. So in an office, it’s really easy to say this person came in eight hours a week for five days a week. And I remember I think I was watching the Bill Gates documentary. And he mentioned something like he memorized every license plate so we could see who went home. I mean, that’s a rendus. And that’s just so outdated and dinosaurs. So instead of focusing on someone’s but being in the seat, what outcomes do they deliver, if they’re in marketing? How much collateral creation did they make? Nothing to do even deeper, but what was the actual impact of that? And so I will call out to you, if you don’t have an outcomes based mindset and you shift to remote, you actually might be really exposing yourself because a lot of people are having multiple remote jobs. So I have heard and there is some data on it. We did have on one of our newsletters. People had one to two to three full time remote jobs. Now my answer to that is if they’re getting all the work done, that’s fine. Write who really cares? But you better be shifting to an outcome based mindset, or else you’re going to get hosed. Because how do you tell if someone is kind of hosing you? They’re not delivering?

Yeah. And I think you’re right. I think business owners and managers, sometimes we fall into this trap of, as opposed to going through laying the groundwork, laying the foundation of really finding out what the KPIs are, what the metrics are, that actually produce, you know, that produce results that create a difference in our companies, because that’s more difficult, right? It’s more difficult for us to say, you know, this project that he or she did over the last week, that’s an A plus project is more subjective than saying, what time did they clock in at? And what time did they clock out. And so we kind of get lazy, but at the end of the day, it’s much more important, what their level of quality was with that project than it is when they worked on it. And for how long?

Yeah, and I’ll add to that, too, it’s so funny, like us as business owners, by the way, and as entrepreneurs, we’re in the driver’s seat at this, like we are way better than probably your competitors if they’re larger, because we ourselves are held to outcomes. So our outcomes are their revenue, or some sort of metric that is quantified and more quantitative. It’s to learn company managers, that ooh, I would not want to be that because those cultures are ingrained over 150 years to be based off of output, not the actual impact. So first off, everyone out there, we’re sitting in the driver’s seat. So I want to make sure you know, if you’re listening to this, this is not doom and gloom, y’all are ahead of the curve.

Yeah, no. And that’s, I mean, that’s 100%. Correct. Because you don’t have all of this culture. And these habits set in stone. And it’s so much easier for small companies, and early entrepreneurs, early companies to make changes. The longer you’re in business, the more policies that you have, the more habits that you have the you know, the deeper your culture is, with good or bad, the tougher it is to change. And so the company’s I’m really worried about small businesses in the next couple of years because of inflation, because of how much labor is costing, but I’m only worried about them, if they don’t do something about it. If they start listening to experts and seeing what very successful entrepreneurs are doing. We’re taking this on right now, I am already talking to our senior leadership about what we have to do to pay our people more and to give them more flexibility. And these large corporations, it just takes him a lot longer to move. And so I think part of the great resignation is there’s gonna be this movement from these larger companies that aren’t able, they’re not agile, they’re not able to pivot as quickly as a small companies. And so I think they’re in a position those smaller companies where they can get this great talent that is kind of making this mass exodus from these old fashioned companies that don’t want to move, they don’t want to change what they’re doing. And they don’t want to, you know, give this accountability and this decision making to their people.

Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more, I think, listen, inflation is a fire under your butt. And it’s a spark clip. And if you were going to last, let’s say nine months of cash flow, it’s now six months, and that sucks, right? But there’s no changing that. And so the process stays the same, you’re going to have to adapt. And you know, what I would say is you’re gonna have to adapt even cloud, you’re gonna learn to learn how to how to innovate faster, specifically, by getting the right resources, the right time, and looking outside just full time employees. So that’s the silver lining. Now the one thing I will say on that in terms of if you’re a leader out there, the one thing I’m very worried about, and let me call you out this by saying I did live in Asia the past year. So this is a very, very, like, targeted at you, US leaders, is we’re allowed to hold people accountable, right? Like, we’re allowed to say that we want to hire the best people for the job. And if you don’t do a good job, you’re out. That sounds cold hearted. But when you’re talking about a freelance workforce, these people are the best in the world at their skill. So instead of hiring someone giving them a checklist, and having six months of onboarding, hiring freelancers comes down to what value are you going to add? At what cost? And how long is it going to take? If they don’t hit that they’re gone? It’s as simple as that. And it’s not this cold hearted, like, you know, old white guy, capitalist type, you know, Disney cartoon of this evil person, it’s actually very mutual. And so that’s one thing I will call out for leaders out there, especially us leaders, I think we’ve, we’ve had fun talking about other things. But the end of the day, we got to drive business impact. And the way drive business impact is hitting your results right and actually moving the needle. So that is one call out is when working with freelancers don’t feel bad. It really comes down to what impact can you make and actually hitting that impact?

Yeah, no, I love that. And I guess, you know, as we’re wrapping this up here, Matthew, as an entrepreneur, you know, we get stuck in habits and things and we do things sometimes, because that’s just the way they’ve always been done. How do certain industries that have never been known to use contractors or part time labor or alternative forms of labor? How do they kind of mentally break that mold and disrupt the system because I think it’s going to have to be done. by smaller businesses, because we’re the more agile ones, but how do we do it? How do we create this environment where we can use more contractors

start small, first thing, start small, then focus on outcomes, then really don’t worry about what’s outside, just focus on what’s internal. So when I say start small, I mean, do not worry about having to set up an MSA and an approved partner. And all those things, start with something that’s literally burning on fire, I’m sure there’s a million things that are on the shelf of your business that you’ve been wanting to do might be a newsletter, it might be an SEO audit, it might be actual SEM, there’s millions of things that I’m sure between the zero to $5,000 Mark, that you just haven’t done, because you don’t know how to do it yourself. So start small and even to get more tangible there, don’t go straight into hiring someone for $15,000 For definitely don’t go to your agency that’s asking for 50 to 50 store with a freelancer that’s willing to do it for say 500 to $1,500. So that’s my first advice is really, really, really just get out there and start small. The second thing is focusing on the outcomes. So I think there’s a tendency, like we talked about before, to really worry about things that are traditional, in the end of the day, it comes down to what outcome are they producing your business, you need to be first on Google, go hire a freelancer right now to do an SEO audit, based off of that, hire them to get you on the first page of Google. So that’s the second thing. The third thing, why I say focus internally is because as a business owner, it’s really tough to know what to prioritize. And this is the time that we really need to just dig deep and focus on what’s working. It’s cute to look at a lot of the leadership books and a lot of the innovation books and say, Okay, what is my h three, right, my five to 10 disruptions. I think at times like this, we really got to bear down and just get shit done. So that’s sort of my tactical advice for you out there is start small, you don’t need to go hire a big agency, you can start at 500 to $1,500. And think about what’s been on the shelf, I will add as a caveat is that a lot of the companies that you wouldn’t expect to really, really embrace this and tap into it. It’s purely out of necessity. And so what we have in the book, we have a story of one of the largest motorcycle manufacturers built out their digital experience their digital rider experience. Did they want to do that? Probably not. But there’s no way they’re going to be able to hire a bunch of developers, data scientists and designers to come move to the Midwest. So what do they do, they had to tap into the human cloud for freelancers. That’s generally the story. And I will say for those out there, the people really leaning into this, they’re not the quote unquote, tech companies, they actually are a lot more brick and mortar and old school than you’d think one of my favorite, favorite favorite clients is actually a domestic coffee brand. That is badass in terms of the coffee they make and the process they have. And they take pride in this sort of traditional age old wisdom of how they produce that coffee. But they’ve had opportunities abroad and multiple things. And instead of saying, Okay, how do we get this full time employee? Or how do we get this agency, they tapped into freelancers, so instead of just sitting on the shelf, they’ve been able to spin up things like leadership decks, presentation decks, investment decks, animation videos that have that hurrah, all this usually for under $5,000 In terms of the project size, because they needed to write it was purely for survival. So that’s my advice. Start small look at that shelf, figure out what hasn’t been done. Because you think you can’t do it. The reality is, there’s someone out there that can help you with it.

Love it, man, it sounds like you, you know, know your stuff. Matthew, where can people find out more about all the things that you are accomplishing working on right now?

Yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn directly more than happy to talk if you’re going to sell me something go connect with me. As you know, Alan, things are filled with LinkedIn is bad. Oh, man, it’s there to get but I’d say what, if you connect with me personally, and you don’t say I’m looking to sell or some audit, you’re looking to sell? I’m totally going to connect with you. We’re gonna talk further, also, with the book search the human cloud book, and we had some secrets coming up. But Alan, I’ll make sure I tell you so you can explicitly tell your listeners and yeah, it’s all about getting you to scale, right? I mean, we have a very, very exciting time ahead of us. And I think the message that I want you all to hear is listen, inflation sucks, and it’s not going to get any better. But it’s putting our backs against the wall. And for those us innovators, right, this is the time that we thrive.

Love it. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Well, best of luck with everything that you’re doing and look forward to speaking with you in the future. I can’t

wait. I can’t wait. Thanks, man. All right. Thanks, brother.

If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, please leave us a rating and for daily inspiration and business tips. Follow Allan on Instagram. Until next time, remember, we build the future one entrepreneur at a time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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