 All right, guys, welcome to Freelancing for Drupal. How to guide for getting and managing clients. I am Chris McGrath, CEO of Esteemz. We are the owners of Drupal contractors. That's something that is new in the past year. We formed Esteemz for those that don't know to be able to diversify from Drupal, excuse me, and form or launch our first property outside of Drupal, which is WP Contractors for WordPress. Woo-hoo. And that has 290, if not over 300 now. I'm sure I haven't checked in a couple of days. WordPress developers and under the esteemed banner, we will be addressing other areas and already do JavaScript, cloud, DevOps, security, IoT, different elements and areas, products, psychor, things of that nature that we all may be familiar with via our Drupal development careers, just hearing about competitors or other spaces that might be gaining traction that we might be seeing over the wall, if you will. So my history, why am I up here talking? I have been involved in the web since 98, started in Drupal about 2010. Friends of mine kind of had, I had asked them about what they might use for a business idea that I had and they were just throughout Drupal, WordPress, CMS type framework. I kind of did what I think of as the Pepsi challenge and Drupal stood out to me, so I never really looked back. Prior to that, I had held jobs in telecom sales, marketing, as well as been involved, progressing to being involved in the internet, just by sort of being self-taught in HTML websites. Starting around 2010, 2011, 2010, I formed another business that used Drupal extensively and then decided as traction was gaining in the marketplace for talent that I could probably do a little bit better actually in the development market than with my business. So I formed Celebrate Drupal in 2011. It's something that still exists as a small Drupal agency here in Seattle area, in the Seattle area, focuses generally on enterprise projects, state government, things of that sort, doing some bespoke hosting for various clientele. Quickly after forming Drupal contract, Celebrate Drupal, we formed Drupal contractors because like every other agency, for the most part, we would need talent. We didn't really have the certainty to be able to hire full-time. So it was like, hey, my friend, this friend, whatever, would you help me out? So effectively, I started keeping track of that in Drupal as a CRM and then claiming this domain and it was something that we all thought would work pretty well and that blown the hole that did. So let's say, today, we have over 400 Drupal developers in Drupal contractors. That is something that has helped us become the largest provider of contract Drupal talent. We have about, I'd say, 10% of our workforce deployed at this point. So we have nowhere to go but up and are always trying to make new relationships with new quality developers, as well as be a large presence in mentoring in the Drupal community. We have alliances with folks like Drupal Easy. We certainly, our own CTO, Albert Volkman, is a high up on the ladder there with Drupal contributions. We have other grandmasters in Drupal.org, co-reviewers in the mix to be able to help mentor junior and all the way up to senior architects involved in difficult projects. Esteemed, as I said, pretty much told that story. That's just a review. Moving on. Why freelance? Well, you know, I ask myself that same question and I think for a lot of people, it comes down to when they're first thinking, you know, it's not maybe a conscious decision. Maybe it's the way you got started. This is a common paradigm. You know, I used to work for Accenture and other companies, you know, like something like Slalom, large consultancies, you know, they'll come along and be like, okay, you know, so you've done some freelancing for our many years, you know, kind of got your feet wet, cut your teeth, if you will, you know, now you're ready for the big leagues kind of a deal. And little do you know that the big leagues are really just another form of the little leagues, you know, organized in many cases, depending of course, which we'll talk about, the type of contracts that you target, qualify for and are, you know, basically cultivate in your portfolio. For me personally, which is, you know, really the story that I'm telling here, I guess, you know, this is something based on experience. For me, you know, as I said, I had been around for a long time. I already had, you know, I basically had been around since sort of the beginning of the commercial internet. And so a little bit softer then, you know, where you could be in marketing and they'd be like, gosh, we got to make websites. And you're like, wow, okay. Oh, I get this, cool, I can do it. And so, you know, you might be able to put your hand up and that gave me a lot of opportunity to gain experience. However, I think that beyond that, once you start getting into a new area, like let's say HTML websites, you know, maybe you did a little bit of database stuff, but now, you know, you're in a new paradigm where maybe people have been already studying for years. And so now, you know, it's a matter of, you know, how do I operate here? And so then you start seeing opportunities. And in this case, you know, we're lucky where, you know, we'll see soon that this is a niche. So in my case, you know, I was able to jump into some projects and I think I was maybe luckier than some, which is that, you know, I was lucky in the way that Drupal targets government. And there, you know, there was a large adoption of government projects and consumers. And I had had, you know, pretty high level technical experience within the government for the state of Washington. And so that gave me the opportunity to say, yeah, government plus Drupal, sure, you know, get him in here. And that, you know, gave me the opportunity to work with the department of defense and folks. And it also gave me the confidence to see, wow, you know, there's hardly anybody out here out West, you know, due to Microsoft, we could, you know, probably form our own thing here and, you know, pick up as many jobs or projects that, you know, come along. And so, you know, for me, I didn't even have a day job at the time. You know, I was kind of like a stay at home dad that was taking a break from his first career. And got tired of that in about 10 minutes and, you know, thought, what can I do, you know, from home? And so that inevitably turned into, you know, taking on some different projects, certainly with, you know, kids around, gonna definitely need to control your own schedule. You know, having a day job, that would have been nice, but I didn't have one at the time. And, you know, that inevitably worked in my favor. And really, you know, what happened for me is I'm very entrepreneurial driven, come from a family of, you know, generations of entrepreneurs. So when I kind of try to work for other people, they're always like, hmm, maybe you should work for yourself. And so, you know, by this time in my life, I had known that and, you know, even if I was working for someone else, it was somewhat tentative, you know, as a contract. So, you know, the one thing I love about freelancing and maybe this dawn on me again, you know, as it may you, which is that, you know, here we are and we're really just kind of like trying to get work. Right? What is that? Is it full time? Is it part time? You know, I mean, many full time jobs came along in my time that, you know, maybe I wanted, maybe I didn't, you know, they sounded good at the time. And there's always that drive or inclination to think, especially as a developer, even one that's worked in sales all the more, I'll tell you, which is, you know, geez, I don't want to be a sales personal worry about, you know, when the next gig will come along, you know, the whole gig economy. And of course, this hadn't even happened. You know, there was no gig economy at the time. And so, you know, you know, that you're either going to have to be, you know, devoting some percentage of your time to what we think of as business development, if you will, or basically, you know, take a job. And be at the mercy of, you know, your boss. And I could go into various horror stories or whatever you want to think of them, you know, as, you know, office workplaces and the fact that Drupal has gravitated and allowed many, many of us to be remote. But that's definitely for me, you know, I've been working remotely since like 1999. And, you know, for major corporations that it just wasn't, you know, not something that I would like to do. You know, kind of go into an office, especially military bases and things like that, no way. So what I like about it is that no matter what the hard work might be, where, hey, you know, we need to be kind of salespeople, et cetera, things like that, is that in reality, yeah, by controlling our schedule, ultimately we most likely can make more money. You know, if we're half decent at bringing in opportunities, we definitely can make more money freelancing than we can at your typical job. Possibly double, without much effort, to be honest. And I know, you know, some of the seasoned freelancers out there would be nodding their head on that. So in any case, the next best thing here is that, you know, at a job, what do you got? You got your 401k, you know, hopefully you're disciplined at saving. And even then, most people would, you know, that's just not gonna be the end all be all for retirement. So many developers I know, many individuals of that sort would be thinking about what is it that I can do with my talent to be able to retire, right? At any given time, early, late, whatever, on time, you know, at all. And, you know, that's something that I like about freelancing, because you can, you know, put together even just a very small agency of, say, three, five people, something like that, and do quite well. And if you can get the, you know, good people in the door to believe in you and work with you, then, you know, I think you'll really be able to do that and enjoy at least a relaxed schedule, if not, you know, something where you're absent most of the time. So everybody's like, how do we get there? You know, how do we get from freelancing to like relaxing? Well, you know, it's a journey. And it can be done in a, you know, a systematic, planned-out way. But definitely first we need to get kind of set up and make sure, you know, we're protected. So what I wanted to say is that, you know, this talk is not necessarily really in-depth about these things. Doug Van and I, one of my colleagues, who you may know, did a nice talk in a few months back here at Drupal Camp Asheville. And that was more in-depth about form and, you know, the types of vehicles you might utilize, et cetera, and different tools you might use for management of tasks and so on. Gonna do a follow-up on that later in the month. Matt's typed some, it's at SFDoug and get a little more in-depth on that just as a review. But in general, hey, we're gonna need to bill people. We're gonna need to track our time. You know, we're gonna be faced with people wanting us to sign their contracts, things of that nature. So it's not here on the sheet, but you actually, you know, it's nice to probably have a contract of your own that you can just say, hey, you know, this is my contract. And, you know, that's gonna say something like, hey, I won't touch your stuff. You won't touch mine. You won't try to hire anybody that I bring in that, you know, without my consent and you'll pay me, you know, at this interval and, you know, get a signature on that. Not just like, yeah, sure, it'll be fine. No good. Definitely, the old get it in writing adage is, you know, one of the five fingers of freelancing, right? You can kind of expect to be marginalized to feel expendable. But, you know, you're okay with that because hopefully, again, you know, you're getting what you want out of the deal and hey, it's just really somewhat of a condition of that, you know, contractor paradigm. People are seeking temporary labor, right? And that's what you are. That means they can't get too attached. So in any case, gonna need a company probably, right? You know, like technically an accountant would tell you if you're not, and I am not by the way an accountant or a lawyer or anything like that. So this is not advice. This is just anecdotal information. You know, they'll tell you if you're making over 150,000 a year, you know, you should probably form a company. And I would say that many of us, you know, 50% plus are going to be in that range. So I say right after that, it's nice. You know, this is called limited liability company for a reason, liability, limited, very important words when you're out there giving technical advice where someone might come back on you. So we can do that all DIY at the Secretary of State or we can, you know, call up LegalZoom and I think whatever it is, like 190 bucks or something, they'll do all that stuff for you. Insurance, good to have errors and omissions insurance. You can, you know, maybe you or your family or whoever has a local agent they've been dealing with for years. Or you can go over here to this Geico affiliate, Hiscox and get a policy and, you know, it's very, very affordable, you know, something like $500 a year to get $2 million worth of errors and omissions insurance commonly for this type of work. And man, oh man, you know, that's not something that's gonna subconsciously and consciously help you sleep better at night. I don't know what it is. Let's see, so marketing, right? Like I said, we in the freelance business, we need a flow of opportunities or we are not working, not good. So, you know, I mean, we can say that we need a website but you could probably do all that with LinkedIn and like a portfolio and a resume. So I'd say there's various ways of doing that. You know, you could probably get a buy with maybe like your Google doc and a GitHub or you could, you know, again, use your Drupal.org as we do very, very often where, you know, my contributions are there, even better, it's not just GitHub. You know, we're actually involved in the community and contributing back to, you know, the product that provides our livelihoods for us or is certainly intrinsic to it. And not to mention the fact that I would say any employer that, you know, has any orientation within Drupal is going to be looking for a community contribution element and, you know, looking to be able to verify your experience in that way. So why not, you know, lead with that if you will. And I think those that do are cut, you know, are looked at as a cut above, so to speak. So understand cause and effect. As I said, you know, you're a contract worker, right? That's where you fit in. So you need to expect that number one, everything is definitely not a walk in the park, right? For the most part, when we see, you know, I'd say the majority of deals that we're seeing over at Drupal contractors are, you know, split down the middle, but we definitely are seeing quite a bit, you know, the need that we feel is primarily and often, I'm saying primarily, but often a just in time, we're behind, we need you to come in, get this over the line, you know, et cetera. So, you know, there's a few different types of common deals that would definitely be one of them. The other is, hey, we need a front end or a back end or whatever full stack for, you know, three months, six months, what have you. That's, you know, you can be like, ah, okay, okay. You know, that's a little more palatable. You can expect that to be more of a normal project rather than, you know, everything is on fire, be ready. Oh, but it's not that bad, you know, whatever it is they say to get you in the door. And so, you know, I think that it's just a matter of like a mindset, like, are you okay with that? Are you okay with that? Sometimes you're never okay with, you know, moving into a project in crisis. You know, you really need to know yourself or you can wind up, you know, it's not like taking just any job. Let's get, let's make that clear. You know, this easily can be like, you know, high pressure and if you are not, you know, ninja quality at that level, then, you know, you may be putting yourself up for a world of hurt. Hey, you know, Lord knows, even though you are looked at as contract, temporary and extendable, every employer I know out there and we know many wants to see the best, right? They want the best. There's not like, oh, you know, we'll take just anybody because we know we're here last minute and we haven't given you any heads, you know, none of that. There's hardly any concession ever made, right? You want to continually try to improve yourself, find ways to differentiate yourself. We'll talk a little later about things like certification or, you know, I have a mentor, whoever that might be, you know, maybe some name, hopefully that maybe people within the Drupal community would recognize that would be ideal, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, we thank Webb Chick for, I forget how many people she has under her mentoring hundreds. And so that's, you know, a simple way of doing that. And again, you know, a wonderful asset to be able to go to someone with many years experience more than yourself. And of course, time is money, right? We can get into all the friendly conversations we want or, you know, hypothesize about this awesome technical aspect, et cetera, of any particular element or functionality that we're working on. But, you know, did we call back that person that came in and they said that we have a new job for us and, you know, depending on how badly we need to do that or what? One way or another, somebody that's trying to speak with you is not somebody that you should ignore if you're in this business. Once again, you're now, now you're a business owner, right? Regardless of whether it's a business of one or what. And as, you know, segue to that, now you're in sales. You know, if you were going to choose to be in freelance, you are in sales. There's no question about it. And this is not something that I was like psyched about. You know, I was like, I honed my own technical abilities to be able to not have to sell and to use strategy and technical means to be able to, you know, earn income. Then all of a sudden, wow, you know, you're in the freelance business and then wow, you get the notion that, man, you know, if I grew this just a little bit bigger, my life would be kind of, you know, easier. And, you know, indeed that's true. But I think that, you know, now that you are in sales, something that it's key to know about is definitely the Pareto principle. And that is the 80-20 rule. It is a law of nature. It's something that is really basically broken down from a sales perspective that, you know, or any perspective really, that, you know, 80% of the effect is going to come from 20% of the causes. You know, traffic is a good example. Customers are a good example. 80% of the revenue is going to come from 20% of your customers. I think if any of you have customers and have their freelance business, and you've thought about this for just a few minutes, that would hold true for you. So basically what we're looking to do here is not fool around, right? We're looking to use our limited abilities as individuals to the most effective level possible. And the way to do that is to understand, you know, who is the 20 and how can I then focus on them to forge the most deepest relationship possible, have them truly be able to build up trust within us, rely, feel that they can rely on us. And effectively, you know, I should probably have this on the slide, you know, this whole idea of becoming an extension of that company or that team, right? Because maybe they just aren't at the level, as I explained about our own agency, that they can hire. You know, they really just aren't there. They either may be too small or at a place for a larger agency, you know, 100 plus, 200 plus employees, where, you know, they just really aren't feeling confident that they can do that. Yet if they know you and they can rely on you and you can be flexible and, you know, fill in your gaps that you have with that particular entity with a couple of other entities, then effectively, you more or less have probably solved your own problems and come out of head. So the homework for the class here is definitely to get this book, it's quick, you know, a few hundred pages and it is definitely like a earmarked, you know, dog tail, a dog ear thing where, you know, books about the 80-20 rule are really compelling to me just because, you know, it's again, we can worry about the 80 to some degree, but really we are focused on the 20 to be able to, again, get our desired end result, which is to get to the point of relaxing, you know, having an easier life, if you will, more time back sooner rather than later. So that to me has kind of always been my goal and I really, I recommend this book highly to anybody that has to convince people of other, you know, of using them and selling their services. So, hey, how do we succeed here as Drupal freelancers? Definitely something I can't count how many projects I've been involved in. I don't know, you know, 50 and that's just personally, let alone, you know, the hundreds that we have been involved in as Drupal contractors. And so, you know, let's get real. I mean, nice work, you know, we're in Drupal. If you read books about starting a business, you know, kind of like, how do I make money? How do I make money from home? What's the best thing I can do? You know, starting a business number one, right? So if you're thinking about how to retire, right? Retirement mode methods, starting a business is going to be high on the list, right? You know, like you, again, career in the hands of others then, you know, you're gonna get what they give you, not what you want. And so, I think that's very important to keep in mind. And so, you know, lucky that we are all Drupal developers or, you know, technologists within the Drupal framework and that demand outpaces supply. So, you know, it is a happy medium, right? Price and pricing is always a key thing, right? Are we, you know, the marquee highest price? Are we the lowest price or are we somewhere in the middle of that medium, of that spectrum? I'm sorry. And so I find, you know, the people that are the most hungry that want, you know, whether they have work or not, that they just know that they want to take on more work and sort of, you know, figure it out from there, whether they're engaging a partner or like esteemed or they have a network of friends themselves or whatever the case may be, you know, they're set up to be very digestible, right? So, you know, backend developer at $75 an hour. You know, I'm sure there's a lot, you know, some number of folks out there laughing. But I know backend developers that could be CTOs of any major, you know, billion dollar company that do that because they want to see deal flow, right? And they'll figure out the rest later on in the conversation. Basically it's a foot in the door. So, you know, I would say be very careful about what your rate is. And maybe, you know, whatever you feel is sort of like, you know, the rate you should get, that's the common market rate that you're looking at the bills, you know, I would think that, you know, add 10 bucks on top of that. And, you know, that's my recommendation. Other people, you know, they want to, they have enough network, you know, they've done enough contrib work, whatever, you know, let's take that same back and developer and they're in the 120, 150 range, you know, bless their souls. Hopefully you can find them as a mentor and, you know, again, take some of their overflow work. For example, another reason to be out there making relationships all the time. So, hey, you know, I mean, if you're, you know, we have a prized resource and this individual has a computer science degree, but generally most of the time they've spent in the workplace has been on front-end work. So we could say, you know, this person's a full-stack developer, they definitely do know PHP, et cetera, et cetera. But I mean, you know, that kind of makes him nervous. So it's best to just say he's a front-end developer and I recommend the same, you know, even if you could fudge that, we all know a lot of full-stack roles, you know, we should come out. And, you know, if you're not that, then I would heavily vet that opportunity, you know, ask quite a lot of questions about, you know, what's important actually within that title from a functional perspective? Is it front? Is it back? You know, and where do you land on that spectrum? That's gonna, you know, make you a happy camper and be able to deliver on that job. Timing, right? We're contractors. We got a contract for six months, three months. We know that as that's coming up, we're gonna be polling our employer for the likelihood of extension or not. You know, we hear that it's maybe, then I think we'd be out looking, right? And seeing what comes along. Also, you know, in Drupal, it's not quite like many other disciplines where, you know, many, many of us, especially those sort of in that attractive range are gonna be seeing and being contacted by, you know, many recruiters a week. But, you know, pre-pandemic, I don't know, 10 recruiters a week for my own personal profile. And so, you know, that's a whole nother animal. I know a lot of devs that are, you know, serious folks that, you know, turn off LinkedIn and they're not in on LinkedIn. They never would be in until, you know, they might need a job or something like that. And that's fine. You know, like, again, if you have a job, that makes sense. If you don't, then LinkedIn is probably one of your best opportunities to actually find work. I'd say it's the best website you could have as a freelancer. In fact, you know, your own website, fancy, fun, awesome, whatever. You don't really get a lot of weight out of what you've done for yourself. You know, this is my portfolio. It's awesome, like hire me. That's not really gonna happen for the most part. LinkedIn, however, is where everyone is looking, right? And there are certain features. That's sort of another, you know, little breakout session that basically set up LinkedIn as a search engine. You can enter search terms. You can let recruiters know that you're available. You then are coming up in refined searches for people that, you know, might fit this particular job rec along with being available. So they know, heck, you know, we're definitely contacting that person, et cetera, et cetera, right? So even recently, as many years and as much flow, you know, I have like 15,000 contacts on LinkedIn or something like that. I had somebody come to me and be like, yeah, you know, you're not really even, you're not really even taking advantage of it to the level that you could. And so, you know, I listened and tried to refine and, you know, not get too crazy because then you start not looking, you know, technical and more like something else, which we're not. So in any case, job boards, hey, you know, Drupal, it couldn't be any, see here, I think I jumped the gun on that. I'm not really sure how to get back. Oh, here we go. Couldn't be any more of a small world, right? You know, we have a very, very small tight-knit community. So if we're keeping an eye on Drupal.org, you know, jobs.drupal.org, we're keeping an eye on the LinkedIn Drupal jobs. I mean, for me, that's more than enough. More than enough. That's more than enough for myself and to start, you know, like a seven-figure company, which is what we have. So, you know, I would say you'd be fine with those. So client career pages, hey, you know what I mean? If you used to work for Canopy, used to work for ImageX, whatever the agency or the employer, you know, keeping an eye on what they have and then maybe getting in touch with, I mean, you know, maybe, I'm sure obviously you left in this scenario on, you know, terms. But hey, you know, what's up? I'm available. Do you need me? You know, many people do go out on their own, you know, for freelance and just want to have a more flexible life than their former employer gave them. And so, you know, you never know when they might need you again. Good thing to do. Kind of like your warm leads. So, you know, back to 80, 20, you know, how do we, once we get clients, like how do we keep clients and what do we want to do with those clients, right? It's not like we just want them to give us that three month contract or that six month contract or that two year even, you know, which would be great. I mean, I think the best contracts I've ever seen by the way are five years and that's federal government. That's a common federal government vehicle, by the way. So, you know, if you're into that security, you know, less turbulence in your opportunity flow and your allocation, then, you know, target those guys, target the federal government integrators. So, you know, we want to focus on the best relationships. And in order to do that, like any relationship for anybody that's, you know, partnered up in their personal relationship, hey, you know, if we're not communicating, forget it, it's done, right? It's breaking down, clients are off, partners off, whoever it is, they're thinking about whatever they're thinking, making whatever assumptions they make, you know, they don't know you want to work for them and you're available and you cost X, right? That's very, very important. It's another form of, you know, all advertising, marketing, et cetera, you know, this is communication, the communication department. So it goes from that kind of broad spectrum all the way to one-to-one communication. Definitely your best clients are often your existing ones. They already know you, they already trust you, let's hope. And, you know, therefore your barrier to obtaining more work from them is far lower, I believe statistically something like 80% lower than it would be to obtain a new client and actually convince them to give you work. Get rid of everybody. I was reading something recently where one of the individuals that brought General Electric to, you know, it's pinnacle would fire the bottom performing 10% of the workforce like every year, I think something like that. And, you know, so in this case, I mean, basically figure out who your 20 is, fire your, you know, bottom performing clients and you would not believe how quickly it is so reallocate that 10%, 20% up to the top 20 and, you know, yield new revenue out of that more easily. So, you know, contracting, normally freelancing, we are working per hour, right? Hands to keyboard, we talked about 75 an hour, 150 an hour or whatever, all that's great. And I know, you know, I have I know my partner and other people, you know, they're clocking, you know, 250, 300 a year, you know, from billable hours, it's certainly possible to make, you know, sort of lawyer money and expand, you know, your ability to deliver and have a pretty high dollar value, you know, for those that have that kind of track record and experience on projects. So, all I can say is that, you know, you wanna look into things like monthly maintenance, audits, content strategy and production. I mean, you know, I know what, you know, I'm a developer. Well, you know, find somebody else through a network, through your own network that can help you and be somebody that you can offer there because, you know, adding a markup is not a difficult thing to do. And it is something where, you know, really what you're looking for is, well, I built this, what will you need to maintain it and have it thrive, you know, somewhat of the Pantheon web ops methodology, you know, what all will be required to make this project a success on going and why not, since you trust me, have me help you ascertain what that is and fill those seats, right? And if that's something you're interested in doing, you know, that's a good way to make MRR and, you know, back to creating your small agency concern. Analyze your time. We're analysts, right? We're business analysts. We can analyze the needs of a business, understand what that project's gonna require, what we might be able to do with Drupal to facilitate productivity there. Well, you know, what about our own time? What are we doing? Are we spending a bunch of time over here doing tasks that have low value or are we doing tasks, are we spending our time performing tasks that have high value? In the 80-20 book, for example, you know, it's just one way to look at things. But, you know, basically, if you analyze your time and you break each thing down by task, you know, you could imagine that, like, your lowest-value tasks, even though maybe you earn $80 an hour, are actually worth, like, $4 an hour, where these highest-value tasks are gonna be worth more like $1,200 an hour. So this is something that's important. And I think, you know, maybe people overlook it because they're just like, you know, they gotta get in there, they gotta set up their vehicle, you know, the company, the insurance, all that, and then get to work. Great. Once you do that, and you have that flow happening to do it well, you wanna definitely make sure that you spend the time on the task that you must do, right? You cannot hire someone else to do that. You have to do it yourself. So, devising a matrix like that is really gonna benefit you. How many more slides we have here? I wanna look close. All right, so, hey, you can find these guys yourself by out there, you know, looking around, talking to people, going to bad camp, whatever, ever. And, you know, the SF Doug and all that stuff, you know, and run into people. You can also employ, you know, channel partners, right? That's what these would be for a business. A recruiter is really a channel partner, right? They're gonna bring you opportunities. They're gonna bring you, you know, jobs potentially not only for yourself, maybe you can continue to, you know, sell them on the C to C for your friends, et cetera, et cetera. And the same thing for Drupal contractors or somebody like that, like TopTal, you know, we're gonna truly dig in to understand exactly who you are. You know, we understand what, you know, like a Drupal developer that, you know, needs headless experience or, you know, static or whatever the case may be, right? So that's gonna be a bit of a cut above, you know, just a recruiter. So, hey, you know, create a great resume. Two pages max, I don't care if you have 20 years experience, have a marketing summary about yourself. Hey, I'm Chris, front-end architect, Drupal developer, 10 plus years, you know, that's what I do, you know, this is what I did at my last job, you know, my last project I was able to do this, this and this, I cost X. Also, you know, have a little notepad ready to go that is gonna say, hey, Mr. Recruiter, this is what I want, so I need, can you do this, can you work this way? Great, you know, if not, not, right? This is our simple qualification and certainly use CRM. You cannot keep all this stuff or any of this stuff in your head, I'm sure. You know, you really wanna have something like HubSpot, I like HubSpot after using and creating a CRM in Drupal for one reason alone is that it integrates with Gmail and captures everything automatically. It's a huge time saver, so super awesome. I think we pretty much covered this, you know, expect a lot of this stuff not to pan out from the recruiters, it's a time game, you know, you sleep for three minutes, they found somebody else. Definitely, you know, racking the shotgun is like a quality, a qualification term. We wanna ask and find out, you know, in the first like two and a half minutes, whether or not this is something that we should entertain or not, and basically move on. I would say that, you know, one other thing is, is that we have folks like Esteemed and Pathrise, you know, that help people get jobs. And, you know, at this time, Esteemed does not take anything for that from you, whereas Pathrise does, where they'll actually, you know, they want a piece of your first year, but they claim to be able to get you in with Google or somebody like that. Let me see, so I mean, obviously we have like two minutes. I can open this up for a couple of questions and, you know, go from there and so on. Yeah, and we're also doing a coffee break and that 145 in the triple contract. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not a coffee break. Nice. All good. Mario asks though, what are your recommendations for business banking 100% online? Well, you know, I don't do that because I'm like really old and all that. I'm sure a lot of that stuff is out there. And I'll tell you, Mario, you know, personally my opinion is yes, probably, you know, if you could find someone you felt reputable, that was reputable, that could be online entirely. It's probably a good thing personally for me because I know, you know, after many years of contracting and starting a company, all this, you know, I want to go where, you know, Matthew right now is in Portugal. I want to go hang out with Matthew, you know, as soon as this stuff's all over and we can get on a plane. I mean, he did it anyway, but you know what I mean, I'm headed to Bahamas. So like wherever, you know, you can bank and access your money from different locations. I think it's a great benefit. If not, then, you know, I mean, I use Wells Fargo and use the US bank, you know, traditional banks for many years. We switched to Wells just due to, you know, different partners in different locations and things like that. So I have good things to say about the, both those banks and I also think that being able to go anywhere and, you know, access your money is a great thing. So. And then so in asked, where can we find market prices if we've never freelanced for Drupal before? Where can we find market prices if we've never freelanced for Drupal before? Drupal contractors, baby. That's where Luke McCormick will tell you, you know, we're here to help you guys with Drupal contractors. I mean, for the most part, you know, we are a distribution channel, right? So we're a distributor, you make drinks, you know, we bring it to the store and we'll take a piece. So, you know, rates, I mean, you could come have a conversation with any one of us, you know, hit me up on LinkedIn. I mean, I'm happy to help you out selling, you know, anytime and, you know, maybe you'll need me someday in the future. I see Mario has another question. You want to take that one? Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna post your LinkedIn in the chat, cool. So how do you get paid, right? Well, that's a great question. I mean, I don't know who, you know, if you're saying you don't do online banking, I have heard of a couple of folks like this. I'm not gonna, you know, pass judgment on that. I would say that would be difficult. Yeah, here he is. I know, I know. You know, I mean, PayPal, I mean, is another form of online banking. So I really don't know, you know, like people will mail, we would mail you a check, right? If you wanted. So I would say most agencies would too. And in fact, it's actually an issue where it's becoming less of one now, but you know, we've had to routinely fight and fight and fight and fight to say, don't send us checks, don't send us paper checks, send it, you know, pay electronically, pay electronically. So, you know, I think it's a double-edged sword for me. I don't want to go to the bank. I don't have time to go to the bank. I don't have time to be on the highway, come to your office because time is money. And I could be, you know, pursuing a new deal or writing lines of code that make me money. And he also asked, do you have fixed fees regardless of the project? Did you change them based on the project? Well, you know, everything is a negotiation. And so let me answer that question from a freelancer perspective, because I think it's an important one. And, you know, I alluded to it, but I don't know that I actually stated this. So, you know, hey, when it comes to contracting, you're timing, right? You're doing timing, right? And we both know, you know, I mean, we all know that in many cases, you know, maybe not the less initiated than us, but those that, once you start getting a little more value and experience underneath you, you may be able to handle more than this full-time contract or this contract for 30 hours or 20 hours. So you're layering, right? So the first contract to you, when you were completely vacant, right? You were probably willing, let's just pick a spectrum here. You were probably willing to take 75 an hour, right? Now, once you're busier and you really don't wanna work all that hard, but you know, you think you can do it, you know, next one's gonna be 90, right? So everything's a negotiation as a person, you know, a personal individual, or as an individual, I'm sorry. And then everything is a negotiation for us as well, right, where, you know, some entities will be more tolerant of pricing than other entities, right? Their rates are higher, they have more margin, they have more things to work with, whatever that may be. And again, that's all gonna tie to how badly you need work at the moment, how hard up you are, right? And or how much you feel you truly can demand for your skill set, as opposed to the next person that comes along, you know, how good are you? If you know you're that good, then, you know, stick to your guns. If the one on the line does not take that, you know, bait from you, then, you know, most likely pretty darn soon in the Drupal world, someone will. So, project management tools. Well, you know, we've done a lot, we use Jira at Celebrate Drupal, which is very nice, but we also, we've switched over to Trello because, you know, you can do so much with it for free. And my God, I got tired of like worrying about what Jira was gonna charge us, you know? And with esteemed everything, you know, we look at everything as a very variable, just in time, you know, we're really trying to build that kind of business that's hyper efficient. So, you know, when we start paying for things, people are, whoa, this better be really important. Trello is a great tool. You can get like 10 boards for free. So. Chris, I'm gonna head over to the coffee break. Cool. You wanna stay here? We've got about 30 people here too. So, I don't know if they wanna come over to us or do you wanna keep talking to them? We're gonna go to the coffee break, y'all. I need a coffee break. So, our coffee break, I'll post the link here. I was in the main chat. Of course. And pop that in there or what? Yeah, I am pop that in there. Take me there, Matthew. All right, I'll get you there. Well, join us for the coffee break, everybody. Thanks everybody. Yeah, there's my LinkedIn. Anybody ever needs anything, you know? We're here to help and really, really, really important to us to help nurture the Drupal community and, hey, increase the talent pool, man, because that's what we're all about. So, you know, even if you have a ways to go, we have Mike and Ella and Drupal Easy on our slack esteem. We've got a lot of other mentors, you know, 600 plus people there, 250 more Drupal developers all helping each other, you know, in various ways. So, come on over and join us. Cool, cool. All right, I'll get you there, guys. So long, everyone.