 Can you guys hear me? Oh my God, I hear myself. Hi guys. So first of all, welcome. Thank you so much for having me here. Before we get started, I want to get an idea of who's in the room. So please raise your hand if you're a freelancer. OK. Raise your hand if you're a business owner. OK, fantastic. So if you're a business owner and a freelancer, raise your hand if you have a dedicated person working with you to develop opportunities for you. And this is why you're all in this room right now. Right? OK. So for those of you, which is all of you that didn't raise your hands, that are freelancers and business owners, can you just tell me why you don't have a dedicated person working alongside you? Yes. I don't have unlimited resources. OK, unlimited, which means what? Money and other stuff. OK. Money is definitely one of the reasons people don't get anyone. Any other reasons? Hard to find people. OK. Lack of experience from you or other people? OK, lack of experience? Yeah, that's definitely a big thing. A lot of freelancers and business owners are like, no one could do it better than me. Or no one could do it as good as me, right? So this is a perfect segue into creating your hives. And one of the biggest things I've noticed with my clients, whether they're freelancers or business owners, and don't get offended by this, but there's a syndrome that has actually been developed because of Google and YouTube. And it's called the I Got This Syndrome. OK? And basically, it means like, oh, I don't need to really worry about getting the money or developing anything else or figuring out how to hire the right people because I got this. I just go to Google. Data overload my brain, right? Or I go to YouTube. I'm not going to be an expert on it, right? I just replicate whatever everybody else is doing. So the big misconception, and I'm sorry because the clicker, there's no clicker here. So a big misconception is that getting help is very expensive. So that's the number one issue with the mentality when it comes to being a freelancer or small business owner. But in reality, that's not the case. If you actually change your perspective about getting help and realize that help is actually very efficient, now you're going to start changing the conversation. So slowly start getting out of the I Got This Syndrome and no one's going to be able to do this better than me. So what I'm going to teach you today is four steps to be able to get the talent that you need for free. Yeah, right? It's awesome, right? OK. Who's ready to figure that out, right? Come on, are you guys ready to figure out how to get free talent? All right, come on. Awesome. OK, so the very first step to getting over your I Got This Syndrome and everything else that we discussed is going to be creating a clear vision. So before you start thinking about who you know what, you're right, I'm empowered. I shouldn't be doing stuff that I don't know how to do. Forget Google, forget YouTube. I'm just going to hire people. No, that is not what I'm telling you, OK? The first step, you have to get a clear vision. You cannot get anyone on board if they don't know how to help you. You have to make it easy for me to either A, want to help you, or B, know how to help you, OK? If you don't know what your business is, if you don't know how to deliver your message, then how is anyone else going to come on board, right? So that's going to be very important. And when I say clear, make sure it's a clear vision, it consists of your mission for your business, your brand as well for that. You also want to have goals. What are the goals that you want for your business? Because we're all in different phases, right? I could be in the, you know, I'm just discovering what this means or what I'm going to do. Get people on board with that, like to have the different skillset so that you're able to kind of brainstorm together what those goals should be. Get someone that's done it already so that you know what did they go through. Why should we go through anything painful if someone else already did? So if I know you already went through so much pain, I'm going to go to you and be like, hey, talk to me about those pain points, and how can I avoid them? The lessons learned from others is what's going to really be a key to your success. So being able to identify the goals, where you're at, and where you're going, is going to be really important. Your abilities, be honest with yourself. Don't say I need a website, and then just go and get Wix or Squarespace, and then just start doing it on your own. Don't say I need a contract for my clients and then go to legal Zoom, you know? Don't say all these things, and then just go up there and do just whatever. Be honest with yourself in terms of your abilities. Then be honest with yourself about your likes and your dislikes. Who wants to do something they hate, right? Or I can love something and not be good at it. Being honest with ourselves so that we're able to know who we need to bring on board is going to be really important. Now that you know all those things and you have a clear vision, you go into creating a profile. What does that mean? Why you? Why should I want to work for you? Or with you? What is it about you that's going to be such a big thing for me to want to join you? The skills. What are the skills that person needs? So we already said I've identified what I don't like to do and what I'm good at or whatever the scenario is and then being able to take that. Goals. Again, goals is important for everything. What are going to be the goals for that person? What are their metrics? How are you going to measure their success? What are the perks? You have to include perks, right? How many of us are working by ourselves because we didn't like wherever the big companies or corporations, right? Look at that. Duties. What is it going to look like? Exactly their jobs, their responsibilities and their schedule and this is huge if you're dealing with like VA's or international people because I'm sorry, I am up by seven o'clock and I need certain reports by seven o'clock in the morning so you waking up at midnight doesn't work for me but if they work internationally and they really want your job they're going to work their schedule and their lifestyle around the hours that you need. Time zone, whatever it is. The next step is set up a process. Break it down. Break it down to what it is that you need them to do if you have your own quirky way of doing things if you have a database they have to go into create a packet with all the how-tos so that they're able to hit the ground running don't make them guess because they'll be frustrated and leave. Hello, we're talking about work for free, right? So make it easy. The how-tos, the metrics, the reporting how are they going to report how are they going to do the communication? Rewards again, really important and reviews what's going to be the process so that you're holding each other accountable. Finally, recruiting talent. Once you have all that you could finally go into recruiting talent. What is that going to look like? Barter exchange. Talking to people about exchanging services with you. Interns. Interns are always either getting paid by university by credit or money. You have partners. You can establish partnerships which is called SWEA equity. SWEA equity is where people get together to be able to build a business and then you make money based on the work you put in. If you are not detailed about what you do with this, you will get screwed over. They are partnerships where the person does nothing but you sign the contract and now they get everything. Virtual support. This could be VA. This could be an intern from another country. Whatever it is, someone from Michigan. There's people that want to work with people in big cities like Miami, New York City and LA. Leverage that. Then you have freelancers as well as volunteers. So with that said, the biggest thing that I work with my clients is the no policy. The no out-of-pocket expense policy. Working with you guys to make sure that you're able to leverage this, what you have to offer your talents and everything at no expense. So with that said, I'm open to helping answer anything to help you with your quest to success. We have the slides so we could go over that afterwards in case we have other questions just because we're a time limit. Yeah. We just said the three steps, right? And then you go into bartering. So once you have those three steps, now you actually have a negotiation package, right? Now you're able to go in there and say, okay, this is my packet. This is what I have to offer and I know that I can help you with this. You know, if I hear your passion, because sometimes you can be passionate about something but if you don't know how to express it, that's a problem, right? But, and then if you're able to tell me, listen, I need a graphic designer for X, Y, Z, and specifically what it's for versus I need a graphic designer for just like my marketing. And what does that mean, right? Like, no, be very specific and all those details that you create, the profile that you create, the structure, the set of processes, makes it easy for you to have a conversation. Then you take that because now you created a profile which is also job description, create job descriptions. You're able to post it onto Indeed and other platforms and let them know what it's exchanged for. Because when you post for job descriptions, the biggest misconception people believe is that they have to be able to say that there's a salary, but that's not the case. We post it in all different platforms, including Craigslist, and we get amazing talent. Any other questions? Yes. So for bartering, that's right here in this room. Conferences, freelancers groups, meetups. When you're able to have that detailed stuff that we spoke about and you broke it down, like we said, you're changing the conversations. So you're able to go into a room and you'll be able to say, you know, yeah, like, what are you doing here? Why are you attending this event? I'm looking for someone really expert in this with this kind of experience and for this amount of time in exchange of this. Having those details makes that conversation possible. Yes. Oh, so one of the biggest things is I also run a nonprofit because we don't own it, boards own it, right? When it becomes an official nonprofit. So we run a nonprofit in New York City. So people said, oh, it's easy for you to get a free talent because it's a nonprofit, right? Nonprofit always gets volunteers, correct? So when I transitioned, so I came from a corporate background so I had a higher lot of like really high talent. So that's where I learned about the process of getting the best people. Because we could get money and get the worst talent. How many of you have not seen people working and saying, how did you have this job, right? Seriously, like how does this person work here? You could still have the worst thing, why? Because they skip the whole process, okay? And that's really important for you not to do. So with that, with Barter, when I started going into my own business, people were like, you're never gonna get free services. But that's not true. You'd be amazed how much when I got lawyer services for free people, like how the hell did you get lawyer services for free being a for profit business? Why? Because I had details. And because I had details I said, what can a lawyer want from me, right? Well, I'm not a web developer, I'm a business strategist. So I'm something everybody wants, right? Because I am the person that will help you clear your vision and help you come up with a strategy to be able to execute it. And hello, a note policy? Who doesn't love a note policy, right? That you pay me and then I help you not spend on anyone else? Or anything else, whether it's resources or anything of that sort? So, any other questions? Yes. Yeah, and that's where people are totally shocked with our nonprofit, our nonprofit on Wall Street. We treat it like a business, which is why we have major organizations working with us. Any other questions? Yes. Yeah, I'm gonna be at the happiness bar so we could go into more of that. Yes. Internships, that, and again, this is why this really helps that four step because the more details you have, the more official you become. And depending on the state, you might require a space to work at. So if you have a coworking space or anything else, I suggest don't do the work from home because there's a whole insurance thing where you have to make sure you have insurance in the space that you're calling your work from home space. But you do virtual, like I said, if you have a virtual intern, you could get someone from Michigan working with you here, you're just working with schools. So like what we look for is I look for schools that have graphic designers or schools that have the specific talent. Yeah. And then you ask them and they post a job for you. I think there was someone around here, no? Yes. I say be in person. Get away from your computers. Everyone's too busy being behind the laptop and thinking that that's gonna work. People wanna work with personalities. I mean think about it. Work is where we spend most of our time. We don't spend it as much with our loved ones. So we have to make whoever we're working with fun and amazing to gel with us. You know? Anyone else? Okay, that's it. All right guys, I'll be at the happiness bar.