How to Deal with Freelancer and Staff Issues

This is unofficially officially episode 50 nine, 50 nine, and today we're going to talk about the employee freelancer issues that you may or may not be having, and even if you've never worked with somebody as a solo operator, I want to talk to you. I want to hear about what your hang UPS are or what kind of struggles or challenges that you're having, so I can try to help you through that. And let's dive into that. So the way we did this last time was I asked you some, I just asked you for your questions and your issues, and I type them up. And then after typing it up, we just go in and dress them one at a time and we can stack the order a little bit more intelligently. So we're not bouncing all over the place. So it's an open slate. I'd love to hear what your input is in terms of the challenges that you're facing, whether it's hiring and working with remote or somebody on site or you've not hired a single person before and you have some issues or challenges around that. And there are plenty to go around. So this is a judgment free zone. And when you feel free to just offer things up. So who wants to go first? I can't really see your screen. I guess I can, but just go ahead and say whatever. And anybody. I'm going to start I have a problem of making transfers, international transfers, let's say how do you usually. Hello yeah, what does that mean? Yeah, yeah, I can hear you. Yeah, for example, you're based in the US and then you try to transfer the money somewhere to Hong Kong. So how do you usually do that, ping? So, yeah, paying people. Yeah, OK. Paying international workers. Yeah, Yeah. Right cool. And I got the next one. Who else? How about communication barriers? I don't know. Can you be a little bit more specific? You weren't very clear in your communication. Right? I would say I'm like language barriers. Yeah like, you know, what would be the best way to communicate, you know, to make sure that you're clear with the people that you're hiring and making sure that the message comes across as clear and concise. OK OK. It's interesting you're saying that not communicate it very precisely. OK how do you deal with time zones? OK, all good. This is excellent. Let's keep going, guys. I'd say scheduling like project scheduling, can you? I love you guys are well trained now. You're so short and abbreviated. It's almost like you're too short. Can you just give me like a full sentence or a full question? Sure just how typekit how to work in the differences between how to make sure the schedule stays on track between the client and the third party contractor that you're using? Politically, how do you hit the deadlines? Yes OK. And what type of like extra time should you be patting with? Perfect oh, I got one more as well, which is bringing on new employees or new contractors up to speed on the way with the client, and/or the way you operate, like onboarding new contractors or making sure they've got the skills or the kind of personality type that works with your system. Those are two questions I'm going to write that. So they're different now. Yeah, they are. Yeah, whether or not you're going to drive, whether or not you're going to like drive and skill wise. I got I got a question for you from Bonnie saying, when you're ready, ready, she says. My question is freelancer with attitudes not interested in communication. They might seem cold or very warm towards my client. Well, it was the last part that I'm just reading it off. What she's saying, I guess for me in question, just must be with attitude. Maybe they're not interested in communication, but there was a client, something I wanted to write, but very warm towards my client. They are very warm towards their client. Most of the times your freelancer should not be speaking to your clients, so there's no problem right there. So that's a different thing. I have this question. Well, I'll give you one second. Yeah who's outside or walking around? I can hear a lot of like background noise. If you can just unmute yourself unless you're talking shit, freelancers, be talking to my client. Well, thank you, whoever muted yourself. OK, go ahead. Fire away. There was another. Oh Yeah. Hold on. Go ahead, Tony. Sorry, Yeah. So for example, you take on a project and there's a specific part of that you are not proficient in and then you don't know how to charge for that specific part. So how do you find freelancers and then you charge for the specific part in the project? Did you get my point? Mm-hmm For you, like while you communicate with your client, so there's going to be a part of the work that you have never been. Like taken, you never you don't have any experience, so you will have to find a freelancer to outsource that thing. And then you don't know how to charge for them. How you deal with this? My question? Now, I should just call things. Yeah, right, exactly. OK back to Mr Tony. Right so Austin's iPhone, he's asking about advantages, disadvantages of having an employee versus a subcontractor. And just a freelancer, ok? All right. Who else? We'll take a couple more and we're going to get going, then we can, of course, expand on any of these things. I have a question. This is Victor and Victor. Yeah, flaky freelancers. Flakey freelancers, OK. Yeah, ones that want to. Police also flaky certain EY. Very UI. Thank you. OK, one more. Last one. I'd like to try and do one that's far from the freelancer perspective. OK my experience is really limited, but the experience that I have, my question would be I'm working right now with my boss. I do things personally for her, for her company and visual things for her. And I want to get better at dissecting what she wants because she knows enough of design to kind of be troublesome. So there a way. My question would be, is there a way a really good way for me to kind of. Cut to the chase, like how do I get the information I need so I can do a good job for her? That's the best way I can think to say it right now. How's the house the way I said it? Yeah yeah, that would be good. I hate wasting time. So that's all right. We're going to get going. All right. So let's do this right now. I'm going. Ask everybody, please unmute yourself. First of all, in case I forgot to say this, I'm not in case I know our father say this. Welcome, everybody to this Wednesday's protocol. Of course I'm your host, Chris, and if this is your first time, I just want to let you know it's OK to talk. It's OK to interrupt me. It's OK to type stuff up if you want extra bonus points. If somebody is, like, really diligent at note taking, I have this page here. It's called summary. And at the end, I will copy and paste whatever high level bullet points are. So it's very easy and I can share this last slide. So that it makes some sense to somebody. I can't take the bullet points, the notes, if you will. While I'm doing this, it's impossible for me to. So somebody wants to do that at the end. Just drop it in the chat that I can share it with everybody. We learn from each other. This is an open and very generous group, as you guys heard at the very beginning. All right, let's see here. Let's deal with a lot of the issues that surround working with international workers because the talent pool can be limited to where you live, and that's a problem. We want to take advantage of the fact that I can turn this part off now. We want to take advantage of the fact that it's a globally connected community. Speak of you and that you have access to all these wonderful people that you can work with. So really, there is no point in just working with people down the street. And this way you have access to a larger pool of talent and you have. You can take advantage of the whole arbitrage thing where it costs a lot less to live somewhere else. And they're super talented people looking for work, looking to work just with you. In fact, if you're willing to give them a shot while back, I was working with an app developer and he was able to generate incredible artwork. And I said, that's not possible, given the budget you told me. He's like, no, this is what I do. I searched my country. I look at their media median income, and based on that, I then look on. I think he was looking at Behance or dribble or one of those things, and he was able to filter by city or country. Then he searched just within that, and then he would search for the kind of artist that he wanted in illustrator, graphic designer. So he was paying them decent or actually really good money for where they're at and he can afford to do it. And this is how it works. Now, some people would consider exploitation, and it can be if you do it in an ethical way. But relative to what the person makes. And like an average person makes in a month, they were making that in a week. So I think he was doing all right. And you guys can come out on either side of that scenario in terms of like, whether you want to do that or not. And I just look at it if you don't pay them. Then they're basically not going to have work at all. OK and if you want to be very egalitarian about it, you can say, well, that's comparable to this person's work in the United States. I'm going to pay you $400 a day and you can do that, and that person will really forever be grateful for you. The only problem is you're not really taking advantage of the fact that there is. It cost you more to live here or wherever you are living versus there, so we can talk about that later in terms of paying international workers, something you should talk about. We we tend to use PayPal and it works out just fine if somebody has issues with that because I'm not in the accounting department, in my own company. I don't know if there are certain issues. We also do wire transfers, which is kind of a pain in the butt. But I'm hoping all this blockchain stuff will take care of a lot of the stuff where we can just transfer money back and forth in a much easier way. I don't know another way to do this. We usually use PayPal and that seems to work. So I separate. I set up a separate PayPal account just for my business. So that I'm not crossing over in my personal PayPal purchases. And I think that's good for your bookkeeping purposes. OK so they would invoice you like everybody else as an independent contractor, and then you would pay them using PayPal. I think you, if it's under a certain amount, you will have to pay an additional fee from PayPal. But I'm not certain I remember my wife telling me about this. Anybody having to have a go ahead? Go ahead. Yeah, because I have a question, how do you how do you secure yourself that you pay that sum of money. And then they were going to deliver the work and the design? Usually they get the payment, you get the deposit, and then they deliver the work, right? So how you can control it, how you get secure that basically it's pretty much OK. OK I'm going to tell you from the bosses side, not from the freelancer side. So if there are freelancers, plug your ears because it might hurt a little bit. OK, I would tell you to do very different things, depending on which side of the equation you are on. Today, I'm here to help you as a business owner to protect you and also to encourage you that giving work out to other people offsite is a good thing, and very rarely have I been burned. Honestly, I've been burned more by people coming into my studio than people who work offsite because usually they're very grateful for the opportunity. They don't want to blow it. They want to work with a studio that's got good work, has great clients, and they're generally happy to work with talented people. I would encourage you to break payment terms down as much as possible and generally let the person who you're talking to lead the money conversation is going to sound horrible. Let's not share this video outside this group, you guys. But generally speaking, freelancers are working offsite in other countries. They're very shy about asking for money. So I would not necessarily volunteer to pay them. 50 25. 25 It's I know I'm being a hypocrite here because I just want to protect you until you can get your wings underneath you here, which is they'll say, OK, so all right, I'll start on the project. And if that's how they want to work, you just let them ride that way. You want to mitigate your risk, reducing your risk basically by working with people offsite that you've never worked with before. I would generally discourage you from paying everything upfront. That's that's not a great idea because you have little to no recourse about chasing after them. It's hard to collect money or work from people in your city. Forget about it. Like in some foreign country, it's going to be impossible. Now, the good news is this if you talk to them via Skype or you chat with them and the conversation is good and they're very responsive, they're open and they're just the right amount of eager, not crazy, eager. Generally speaking, there are good people in the world. And they don't look at you as a one time kill. They look at you as a potential stream of revenue. So most likely they're going not to try to screw you over. And creative people, as you know yourself, are very guilt ridden. We want to do a good job for other people. And so it's a very rare creative person that's going to come in and do the work or not do the work and just say, you know, pay me. It's very rare. OK, so generally speaking, you could probably break it up into four payments. 25% I think those are very reasonable terms. Anywhere between 0 to 50% upfront is OK by me. I have no issues with paying people. Now you have to imagine on the other side, especially if they're talented and they've been doing a lot of work, they might have been ripped off by people just like you, and they can't tell the difference between you and a scumbag. So they might ask you for 50% up front. Here's what I do, I'm going to pay them anyways. That means then what I do is I send an email over to my bookkeeper accountant. I say, please pay this person today. And when they see that we just had a conversation, we have an agreement and payment just pops into our account like this person is legit, they're ready to go. I'm going to prioritize this person over the other people who are on the fence. And generally speaking, I'm going to get a little bit better engagement and service from them. It's just like at the bar, you tip. Early and often, and then you start to phase that out, right, so you get better service at the bar. Any other questions on this guy's? No, but I think it was actually just one question in regards to a payment from Bonnie saying she was wondering what about using venmo? And for those that don't know what Venmo is, it's more of a personal transaction system. I'm not sure if it's used internationally, and I probably don't really recommend it as a transactions only limit like $250 per week or on spending. So probably not something you should be using for business anyways. Yeah, there are a lot, you know, it surprises me and it shouldn't surprise me when I was in Japan. Their payment options were way more sophisticated, and everybody's paying with their phone and doing all kinds of near-field stuff, near-field sensor. They would just swipe something and it was like, Wow. Money was being zipped around all over place. I think in terms of financial transactions, the United States is kind of behind some countries. A lot of people are sending money through their cell phones. What I would ask them, since they're an international worker, they might know more options than you and then find one that works for both of you. Because they're probably used to this money conversation with lots of people. You have to imagine that if you're going to call somebody, they've got decent work and they probably have been working somewhere or for lots of people. And they know they know the game, they know how it works. So you can take their lead. All right. Let's keep moving on the time, difference and communication. They're really tied together because we value face to face conversation so that we can read the microexpressions on somebody's face. So when the eyebrows furrowed together, you can sit there and think, yeah, I see you don't understand. Do you have that puzzled look on their face? Then, you know, slow down or make it clear, so this is a problem, especially when you're in opposite time zones, if somebody in Australia or United States. It's kind of tough to do that you're almost going to have to set up extra work. However, there is a shortcut to all of this stuff. If you use any screen sharing technology and you have a microphone, what I would do is to brief the computer like you would brief somebody in person. You would open up whatever document that you have and you would walk them through it. OK, so this is important. I want you to do x, y and z and make these changes and you can mark it up and the screen is being recorded. Then what you do is you upload that to a place where both you guys have access to it and they can watch and listen to how you explain it, which makes a giant difference in the world and you're not busy typing things out. Now, most of us could suddenly turn off our Mike Leigh's Zdravko. Thank you very much. Now, most of us are not great writers, so trying to write that email a will take you a lot of time. And B there's a good chance that there's going to be some miscommunication. They're going to read that the same way that you intended it. Maybe because you're not a great writer, and maybe it's because English is not their first language. There's a lot more to be understood. And the way you talk in conversation that they can understand and pick up. So and then it's attached to a visual. So they're not looking at page 7 of a PDF that you send over and trying to read the email that you send to connecting those two thoughts much better for you to just do it, screen record screencast it and Jose would do this all the time and would work really well for him, he would jump on, like GoToMeeting. I think let's go to meetings and just record it as he's explaining the project to himself. And then he shares that, and then that way, the team in a kind of whatever time they wake up, they can watch it and they can rewatch it, which is awesome. So they don't have to ask you questions the middle of night that you can't answer. I think if you work with people off site, I would build in a lot of time. So if there's an urgent pressing thing that has to be done where you're having daily deadlines, I would not use somebody in a different time zone that you've never worked with before as a person. To do that, you're going to create a lot of stress for yourself and for this person. I would only recommend working with people with tight deadlines after a couple of jobs together. I hope that makes sense. Now, there can be a lot of advantages to working with people in a different time zone. Here's typically what happens for me if I want to interact with them in real time. Basically, my night is their day and their day, or my day is their night. So at the end of the day, they're just getting up. And that allows me to get all my stuff done during the day and create whatever materials that they need or give them feedback. And so then I hit Submit at eight or nine PM at 10 PM they're getting up and they're looking at the content, they're going through it and then they do the work and then I go to sleep. And then by the time I wake up, all the work for that day has been posted with areas that I can check off, whether or not it's complete or not. And it's wonderful. This has worked really well in dev. And every once in a while, we do need you on the phone to clear things up because the process of communicating through, say, Trello didn't work out and I said, let's just schedule a meeting and then we find a time that they wake up a little earlier and I stay up a little later and it works out just fine. The advantages of doing this is that you're going to probably get maybe 3x in terms of your dollar. You're going to get 3 times as much work, it's going to be stretched at least three times, maybe sometimes five times. And it's great. OK you can get really high level people that are very talented, there's this idea that say people in India or Asia, Vietnam, whatever aren't very good, and that's not that's not true at all. There's amazing people all over the world. It's because they have learned how to use the internet and learn from places and sources that we all have access to. And they're super talented people. They just don't have opportunity. OK communication barriers, language, making sure that you are communicating clearly. OK, now this gets into art direction and project management, and it's not any different than whether or not the person is in-house staff or freelance for you. I think you need to sit down and write down what's important to you. In terms of them accomplishing it. So there's a very simple way of looking at this. You should make a five point checklist as to what you're looking for and you should use as few words as possible. Now those are you guys that are overly verbose and write too much. It's because you don't friggin know what it is you're trying to say. So you start using a lot of words. Just boil it down to its essence. Now I'm going to try to do this and coach you through this. If as if the person was in the room with you and then you have to extrapolate how you communicate that over distance and over time, because there's too many variables for me to try to answer in the short time that we have together. And today we'll have 90 minutes together. OK so when I am sitting or standing in front of a creative person. And I want them to do something, there's a couple of things I'm thinking about. What is it that I want them ultimately to deliver? And when is that due? And do they have enough time and resources to do that? You guys got that. What do they have to deliver? Not how to do it, but what do they have to deliver? How much? I forgot even what I was saying. How much time is going to take for them to do. And if they need additional resources, what is that? So let's talk about this. Let's say, for example, I want somebody to make me a style escape. This is a good job to farm out to other people because it can take a lot of work. And it's always interesting to see how other people approach it because they can bring in design influences that you're not aware of. So this is perfect. So I'm standing in front of somebody, I'm going to tell them, I'd like for you to make a style escape. I assume they have no idea what a soundscape is or even if they know the kind of soundscape that I want them to produce. So it's helpful for me to show them three examples. Three allows them to make a pattern. I say, OK, I look through the brief, I found these three words because they're in bold. Look at that, ok? And this is what we created from those three words. Here's another set of three words and here's what I did. And here's the template that we use for this. Feel free to move things around. OK, so how much time do you think it will take to do that? Historically speaking? People take about a day about 8 to 10 hours to do one of these things, and this is the level of fidelity that I'm looking for. Now you'll notice that the colors have been adjusted to match the color palette. So we didn't just find images off the internet and they just magically all have the same color palette. We isolated the colors in Photoshop, and we swung the hue to match. That's the level of detail that we want. You see this right here, this t-shirt that used to have some other logo on it, but it's distracting, so we clone that part out. So these are high fidelity images that we're putting together, and we were being very specific. So one question that you might ask yourself is. How do you propose we use this image moving forward for the client's identity system? If you can't answer that, I need you to prop that part out, clone it out or delete this image altogether, because that's the exact first question I will ask you. What do you want me to know? When you included this image in here? And if it's all just about what's on the bottle crop into that bottle, don't show me the entire room. Be very specific. You need to help me focus my eye on what is special to you. Is everybody clear about it? OK, great. Here's how we determine the color, so you have to go through this onboarding process, you have to be very clear. So I would just go through the checklist. And please be ready to tell me why these colors work for these words. Cannot be arbitrary. OK so can you do this in 8 to 10 hours? Can you do this today? And you have to give them permission at this point to say to you. I can't do it today. I've never done this before. This actually looks really magical to me, and I probably need a day to have to do this. And then you say, OK, fine. There is a day and a half worth of time for you to do this. I'm going to go talk to the client and we're going to push the schedule out a little bit, but you need to deliver in a day and a half. So that's on you now, and we pay a flat rate to do this work. So if it takes you 10 days or one hour, we don't care. In this case, you have to finish it by this deadline, by whether or not you're good, right? And they say Yes. And if you have a problem, it's upon you to reach out to me. I don't check in on my people because I assume they can do the work and I don't want to micromanage you. And now we all clear, yes, we're good. So you set that thing going now related to this thing is the deadline that I tell my staff is never the deadline that's on the schedule. That's a recipe for disaster. If it's due on Friday for the client, it's due on Wednesday for the designer. About half I'm used to half rule. And if you come out ahead. Awesome great job. But don't create unnecessary stress and tension for your team and yourself by artificially promising deadlines that are super difficult to hit. You are better off taking more time to do it right the first time than you are apologizing and scrambling to find other people to do work just because you need even give that person enough time to work through the process or time for you to coach them up. Implied in what I'm saying is that you have to art direct and coach people, you have to teach them, that's how you make your money. Ok? you can't just charge $1,000 and pay a kid $200 and collect inner bucks while you sleep. It doesn't work like that. Your ability to explain to train and to teach allows you to capture that $800 because you're getting somebody who doesn't know how to do something but has the raw skills to do it. And you're teaching them how to do it. So that's where you make the extra 800 from. It's not just magically going to appear. It's here's the analogy I'm going to try to make for you right now, if you buy a home with the intent to flip the home. So you buy a dump, a tear down practically for $100,000 and then you want to go and flip it for 800 k, which is essentially what you're trying to do, but you don't do any landscaping, you don't remodel the bathrooms, you don't improve the floor plan or fix the roof. And you expect to put it right back on the market in eight days and sell it for eight times the value. In what world does that make sense? Probably no world. So what you have to do is you have to go in, you have to look at the space plan and you have to make improvements, curb appeal, fix the bathrooms, change whatever it is that you need the fixtures, the roof and then you flip that sucker. You have to put work time, talent and energy into it in order for it to be worth more. And that's what you're trying to do. OK typically speaking, if you have a hard time communicating to human beings in real life, you're going to have an exponentially harder time communicating, communicating to people online communication. I can't just sweep that one under the rug. I mean, that's a multi our conversation about how to articulate the things that you're thinking more clearly to other people. We don't have the time to do that, unfortunately, but there are some milestones, so assuming you had to speak and talk about what it is that you want, I just want to share techniques about how to capture that, to make sure it's super clear to other people. I have a question. Go ahead, Tony. This comes from victor, and I think you answered it. But he asked, how do you navigate and screen freelancers that work remotely to make sure what you are seeing is what you get in their portfolio? And I believe you answered that. Well, no, I haven't answered it, but there's a question already here for that. I guess I need to share my screen again. Where are you, screen? Somebody did ask that question, so there was a vetting thing here, so we answered this managing milestones and deadlines, right? How much time should iPad a lot? Onboarding new contractors with your process. OK it's something like in here determining the skill, culture fit, right? How do I vet freelancers? This is pretty straightforward. I think there's a fear and it's a natural fear to feel that. There are people out there to get you in to cheat you, that there's a bunch of I'm sorry this sounds racist or anything like Nigerian scandals out there, like an amazing designers who actually don't do any of that work, generally speaking, in my own experience, most people that are putting work out there, most are actually credible people who are actually doing the work. But here's the vetting process. So when you go through portfolios, whether you're on Behance or whatever other side you're on dribble. What are some other websites that you guys go to find talent? Nobody well, we've created a whole Facebook group around the idea of connecting freelancers with people who have work, and that's on Facebook, right? You guys can join that group. It's called a freelance. What is it called the future network, the future of work or something like that? You guys can join that. It's free to join. It's open to anybody and they're categorized by title. OK, so me saying something. Yeah, I was saying Instagram is very helpful. OK, Instagram's great yeah, totally. Instagram's great. I mean, there's this arc where they won't work, and then there's this arc when they get too much work and they're just hotshot, they don't want work anymore. Finding them on the rise is where you want to find them, because once they hit the peak and they're like a million followers, there's something very likely you can hire them at that point. Ok? usually, people who have K followers, it's really difficult to hire them, actually. They're busy working at K. Yeah, this is what I was faced like. I really like a couple of K and I'm like, guys, I'm busy like until June, July, like, you're finding what everybody else has found. And that's the problem. I've had success hiring people off of Instagram as long as they have, like less than a couple thousand people. OK OK. Yeah so it's a good tip. Yeah everybody has different experiences and that's OK. All right. So how do you how do you get these people the way I'm going to recommend his first? I mean, you're looking at the work that looks, the work looks great and consistent. I'm going to ask you to look for at least three samples in their portfolio. Hopefully almost all their portfolio lines around like a very similar style or aesthetic. And this is the dangerous thing if you don't see what you're looking for in their portfolio today, I would hold off on bringing them in. Not everybody is as versatile as you are. Not everybody understands that the client brief supersedes their style and their aesthetic. I think they also make the assumption. I think they're kind of right in this that if you've called them, you want what you saw. And so they give you what you saw. So somebody has really flat graphic things. And you want to do photo compositing photocopying. I would not hire that person for that. Conversely, if somebody is photocopying and you want that flat graphic style, that's super cool. I would not hire them to do that either. This is the beauty of hiring a specialist. And this is why on the other end, when you're a freelancer, I strongly recommend you focusing on your skill and making sure it's easy to let other people know the kind of work that you do. You definitely want to do that, so when you see enough examples of the work and style that you want, so if it's editorial layouts, hire somebody who's got a lot of editorial layouts, don't assume. But the logo designer. Knows how to create. I do like book design. It's usually not the same human being. And if somebody does a really corporate cool logo work, which is very hard to find and you want something a lot more expressive and experimental, those are not the same people. So most of this and we talked about before, like, we have happy ears. This one, we have happy eyes, right, that we look at the work and we just Zoom. Yep, that's kind of close. That means that you're not very discerning and you're being a little bit lazy in curating the work. And that's your job again. That's how you create value for somebody. I mean, in terms of your client, because it's your discerning eye, your ability to spot the right talent, to be able to dig through the internet and find that gem that is on the cusp on the rise, if you will, and you're able to pull them out from the woods and say, look, this is my gal, this is my dude. That's how you make that work. Now I will shoot off an email to them if they make it easy to contact them. Sometimes they make it difficult for whatever reason, and that's not because they're trying not to work with you. They're just not that sophisticated and marketing themselves. So I would try to hit them up in multiple channels because they're always looking in the same place like I don't live on behance, so when people message me urgent things like New job opportunities. That's a crazy thing because I'm not really on Behance that often. I don't even check it, and I even tell people, you know, if you shoot me an email, I'm not going to check it here. So what I would do is make that same assumption. Reach out to them on Behance. Go to the website. Hit up their contact form. Send them an email. It's like I just reach out to you on Behance. Just want to talk to you about potentially working together. Nothing urgent. Looking forward to chatting. If possible, I would try and schedule a Skype conversation with them and have your list of questions to ask them, and I'm going to give you those lists in a second. And you can just ask them those questions, and depending on their response, you're going to get a good feeling or a bad feeling. And I'm going to tell you, just trust your feeling. The generally will not screw you over. So I'll tell you about a good feeling and a bad feeling when you ask a question, there's a lot of pauses in thinking when it should just be Yes or no, or it should be a really straightforward answer. It's because stuff is being made up. It's very easy to tell the truth. It's a little bit more difficult to lie, so those hesitations like if you ask somebody, are we clear? And they're like. Yeah you know, we're not clear. And don't lie to yourself because you have another appointment you've got to get to. You can say, you know what, I think we need to spend a little bit more time. I mean a time crunch right now. So I want to circle back with you in two hours. We need to do that because I just don't feel like I did a good job communicating everything that needs to be said. So that's what you do. So we're going to talk to these people. So what kind of questions would you ask them? Anybody ever interview or ask people either online via text message or email? What are some of your questions? What kinds have you worked with? What kind of projects have you completed? What was like, what was your success point? Like something? OK anybody else? Or I might throw one out at you, and it's an open one, I like open ended questions, allows me to understand and listen to how they communicate is. Tell me about your process. How do you like to work with clients? And they're going to tell you. And it's that time that you're like trying to map to your mind. This is how I like to work or can I work like this? So when I ask them that, they're like, OK, so here's how I like to work at the beginning. If you tell me what it is you want, I will do 15 to 20 sketches for you. We can have five rounds, three rounds or two rounds of review and each stage and we it works like in four stages or two stages. I want to know that. And then I ask them, like, what's been the most successful project for you? Tell me about how that worked out. Well, the client said this, and then they gave me feedback. So some people want a lot of feedback. Some people want a little bit of feedback. And then you ask them, how do you share files? How do you deal with the time differences? And has there ever been an issue where you weren't able to hit a deadline, tell me why. So these are all the predating questions that you would normally kind of ask somebody, and I just want to know, I'm not here to interview you, I just want to learn how you work. They're not applying for a job with me. I just want to make sure and you could say this, I want to make sure that your style of working is compatible with mine. And my here to interview you, I just want to make sure that we both can be natural and comfortable in the way we like to work, and that we create a win-win scenario for both of us. And sometimes I tell people I'm very direct, I'm super precise and clear, but and I don't have time to micromanage, so I'm going to be the best, worst client you've ever had the best client in that, I'm super clear. But I know what I want. OK and so you're not going to be wasting a lot of time. And generally speaking, if you put your best work forward, you can hear very little from me because I don't like to micromanage people. And the reason why I say that is because it puts the burden upon them to do the best work that they can, knowing that I'm not going to be walking around with the work. Now, some people over time build in the assumption that somebody is going to pixel off them. So they put in 70% worth of their work and their energy, only to be art directed to wherever you want to go. If you like to do that, tell them, I really like to get my hands in there with you or just can't. And this is how I like to work. But that, to me, is a recipe for disaster. It's like you're trying to slip into their fingers and move their mouse hand for them, and it's not good of use of your time in their time. Now there's a rule that I live by when somebody asks something of me, I say, you can tell me how to do it. You can tell me what you want, but you can't tell me both. You guys understand that. Tell me what you want or tell me how to do it, but you can't do both. And this is what we run into problems. I bring my wife in here as an example. So honey, I need you to fix the air conditioner. I don't know how to fix the air conditioner. I'm just saying that neither does she, obviously. And I'm like, OK, I'll fix the air conditioner. So I get my tools out. I take it apart. I'm doing my thing. She's like, and she comes over and she's like, oh, are you sure that's the right way? And shouldn't you put this in and unplug that? I'm like, you know what? If you know how to do it? Tell me how to do it. I'll just be your hands here. Otherwise, you need to leave because I'm not doing it this way. And that's how I think you need to operate on both sides, right? So if you're working with somebody, tell them what you want. Don't tell them how to get there. The reason why is you don't want them to feel like you're going to spoon feed them every single step. First of all, it's kind of your infantilizing them, treating them like an infant, like, do this now, Johnny, and then do that. Oh, OK. So what happens is they shut off their brain and they're just going to wait for you to tell them the next steps. So now you're not getting all their creativity, and perhaps you're going to find something from over here and introduce new concepts to you to elevate the project beyond what both of you are capable of doing. That's the true spirit of collaboration. So they just intellectually, creatively just shut down and wait for you to tell them the next step. If that's what you want to do, you're better off just doing the work yourself. You only tell them, oh, I saw the work, and here's a tip on how you might improve this part at the point in which they need it and then disappear again. That's it. OK, any questions around how to work on that, people? So you have the money conversation, you have the process conversation. How are you going to share assets? I'm trying to imagine working with you in the very near future. And so you're trying to fill all those gaps in your mind. Don't go leaving something unspoken and just assuming that it's going to happen that way, that's another recipe for disaster. Don't give your freelancers or first time people super strict deadlines. You're setting yourself up for disaster. The only time you can do that is if they're working next to you. You've got a warrant, bud and you have a crunch period that you're going through and you tell them up front, you're jumping into the middle of the hurricane, the eye of the storm here, guys. And we're going to need to be all hands down. We have to be super focused. It's not always going to be like that, but for the next two weeks, this is what's expected. Are you in for the challenge or are you not? Yes, great. No OK, great, I understand. We'll catch you on the next one. Totally OK. All this is about being very clear, direct up front and not hiding what it is that you're thinking. All right. well, I searched for the next question here. You guys let me know. Thanks for that. That's actually really poignant for my current situation right now, relationship that I'm trying to sort out kind of in. Vice versa, actually. You're the freelancer. Yeah, right now, I'm just taking in some work from another agency to fill the void in cash flow. And it's someone I've worked with in the past extensively, but he's accustomed to me working on site in house briefly and now he's trying to apply that same pace process. Oh, it only takes me five days when you are weak, when you're here in house. Why is it going to take you three to four weeks now? And he comes to me with the same sort of price tags, the same kind of timeline expectation when I'm off site or working from like a freelancer situation as opposed to an in-house freelancer, right? So Yeah. And as a result, it's costing a lot of friction because he's got this expectation that I'm prepared to operate at this budget and operate at this pace. Five days in a row. Whereas here I'm actually in the position where I'm operating. I've got other obligations and other contracts on the go, not to mention the fact that it's not as simple as being able to five days and in and out. And I'm going, I don't have to set anything up. I'm not responsible for other things, right? So So seeing both sides of the fence is interesting. I'm going to jump now to Rachel's question about being a freelancer and working with her boss, so let me share the screen on that right here because it's related. So scroll down. I think it's this one. Yeah all right. So here's the problem. Most people that are in positions of power in management or the executive level, they don't have a lot of time and they have a lot to do and they have a lot of people to manage and they're probably pretty stressed out. So the amount of time they have to sit down and share what it is that they want is short. And the byproduct of that is incomplete briefs that are not clear to you, and they're not being very careful with the words that they choose. So you're going to walk away with half the information of what you need and probably half of that half is wrong, like they didn't mean to choose those words. We're not as careful with choosing our words as we might think we are. So that in Russia, if you're in that freelance position, what I'm going to ask you to do is to write down three things that you need to know in order to do your job well. One of those three things you need to know. It could be five, but three seems to be OK. Just write down three things I need to know what? What do you need to know? So, Rachel, if you want to come back on the line in a typical scenario where you're working with your boss? What are the three things you need to know? I need to know who she's trying to communicate with the visuals, so audience. Who is she talking to? Hussey trying to think of like, maybe a recent experience. So I can be short and brief. I didn't know how much time like she wants me to spend on it. Sometimes that's not clear. OK so like maybe the priority. They're having trouble thinking of the third. I won't take too much time. No, no. OK, so you can stay on the line. Maybe just mute and we can work on this together as a community. So it's very easy. Go ahead. Somebody I was going to say art direction examples. OK all right. Visual examples would be helpful. Mm-hmm anybody else? OK, so I'm going to change some of this, ok? I'm just going to add one thing here. So we want to have a shared vision of. The outcome. It is ways to get to that. So they start talking and they run away, and you don't think we have a shared vision of the outcome. You're totally screwed. It doesn't matter if you're the world's best lettering artist. If they wanted a package design, you have zero chance of success. OK and and you have to ask yourself the expectation, identify that right? Matches your skill. Like, is that an alignment? If I ask you to build a very clear website, you know, it's like, boom, we know that the website is there, but it's out of your wheelhouse of skill. So expectations, the outcome matches your skill kind of in your wheelhouse. Then we're good. And if you don't have a code, but you know how to design it, you need to like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. I actually can design this for you, but I don't know the first thing about coding or I've only taken one coding class, and I'm not comfortable with this. So here's what I can do. Here's what I can't do. So the shared vision of the outcome is like, I need you to write three lines A copy for tomorrow and each to sound like this has to be as good as the advertising done for Nike. Here's three examples, but. Who? well, I think I can do it, boss. OK, so then we just need to have a timeline, and we're good to go, so I won't put that up here. When is this dubai? OK so we're going to talk about timeline deadline. Also, milestones. How often do you want to check in? Shall I come to you or are you going to come to me? So between now and when the deadline happens, I need check in periods when also is the ideal time to check in. This is a very, very important. Some bosses like, you know what you mean, email like me, shoot me an email at the end of day, show me your progress. I'm good. If you don't hear from me, just keep charging forward if you have to hear from me. Put in bold letters. Please respond to this in the subject line. So what you do is you have a clear definition of what done looks like you have a roadmap on how to get there. And you're checking in from time to time that you're actually heading in the correct direction. Now, if you're on staff, you might have conflicting deadlines like two people told you what to do and you need to talk about that. So I'm going to do prioritize multiple requests. Sometimes that happens. OK, so I'm going to remove the word example of this thing. Examples of what you want because that should be in the shared vision of the outcome. And the audience is sometimes not that important, believe it or not, because I'm telling you, it's women from this age to this stage that live in this city. It doesn't tell me, Jack. But if they tell me what the takeaway is, that helps me. So I want to know what the key. Take away his. Like what you want people to feel or to read or to know, oh, that there's a sale for 33% Great So I'm going to add in your demographic information here at the very bottom kind of in priority, like we need to know what the outcome is. Can I do this is in my wheelhouse. Let's talk about the time that we have to do this deadline. Is it realistic milestones and when's the ideal time to check in before you walk away? Tell me what the key takeaway is. In these last two, I'm going to grade these two, ok? O'grady's, too, because. If you just focus on the top floor, you're a superstar already. Is a help, you guys. Yes yes, that's very helpful. OK the clearer you are as to what you need, the more likely you are going to be able to hit the target, right? Yeah, now and that's better language than like demographic and audience. Really, what I was, what I needed to say is what you said. And that's a much clearer language. So what I actually need. So thank you. Thank you, because you just helped me help everybody else that's hiring people. Tell them what their shared vision of the outcome is. Make sure that their skill level matches what it is that you're asking. Make sure you tell them what the deadline the milestones are and how often you want them to check in with you. And if all else fails, tell me that this is the story. It's a love story. Whatever it is and the girl saves the guy. That's what I want. So remember, before I was telling you, make sure you have the three things that you want to be able to communicate or the goals. This is it. All right, we got that done. OK let's see what else we got. I guess we're here now. Well, I'll just quickly answer this part, because we've kind of touched on this. Whatever people tell you to do, double it, triple it, if you can, in terms of the timeline. So they're like, I could do this in three days. Tell the clients a week and a half. Yes nothing is more stressful than trying to invent more time. Because it's impossible. So when it's two days in and you told the client three days and it's looking like but. What are you going to do? You're going to have to spend all night. You'll be cursing that person. You're cursing yourself for hiring that person, and you're just going to make life miserable for yourself. You're going to be falling asleep at your computer, working out something that had you just spend a little bit smarter and paid at a time. You would have been much better off. So 2x three x, if you can. Good rule of thumb, 2 and 1/2 facts are good to go. So your project, I mean, your job is to manage the project, such that the team has enough time and resources to do the work and that your clients aren't left wondering what the heck is going on. Like, why is it it's done already? Easiest way I know how to do that is push out the deadlines and you'll be fine. And that also means you have to charge more so if you're going to charge, if you're going to say that it's going to take 2 and 1/2 times longer, you have to charge 2 and 1/2 times that person's rate at minimum. And how do you do that, so if somebody is working for you and effectively they're free to say, $300 a day? You're going to have to somehow get. OK, so let's do the simple math. Let me get my piece of paper right here, so don't mess up. All right. Four simple math, guys, I'm going to use round numbers, so many costs you $100 a day. And they tell you it's going to take four days to get the job done. So in theory, you're going to owe them $400. Everybody's good with that and you use Christmas 2 and 1/2 times metric, so you're going to have to come up with 2 and 1/2 times with 800 and 1/2 of that is 200. Is that 1,000. Yeah, I think it's 1,000 so you're going to have to somehow put into the budget $1,000 to do work that you're going to pay $400 to do. That minimum. But you can't show on your estimate. Something outrageous in terms of their day rate. So it's a combination of fudging the time a little bit and changing the rate a little bit, so you could probably say it's going to be $200 a day. When you know you're paying out 100. It's going to take five days. Or you can say to people are going to work on it. At $200 a day, and they're going to get done in 2 and 1/2 days, whatever you need to do to get to that $1,000 to cover your butt. You're going to do that across every person that's working on the job. At least multiply it out 2x 3x of possible. Any questions on that, you guys? As I sound crazy. Oh, good. All right. OK, onboarding new contractors with your process. I'm going to share my screen so that you guys can have that slide up. OK this is assuming you actually have a legitimate process that's been documented, which I highly doubt. Now, if you are used to working with a bunch of freelancers, you might. Say, preserve your own sanity if you actually created a piece of paper and showed them how things work. You can have a diagram, you can make it look beautiful so that you don't have to explain this over and over again, you want to do something better. Record that diagram and talk about it. It's like orientation at Tony's. Design shop Tony's design emporium. Here's what happens. Once you're signed on to work on this, we have a Trello board set up. Here's how you use Trello. These are the things that you need to do. We will send you a recorded video explaining to you what it is that we expect of you. And there are four or five things that we want to make sure it's clear to you. Are you sure and are you clear of the outcome? And do you have the required skill set to make this happen? Is that the same as. And that question the same or similar to the idea of how your preferred quality standards are or, you know, let's say what your standard of. I would say code tidiness and yeah, they're called best practices. You let them know what your best practices are. OK, best practice. That's what I. And you can do this in a super warm and friendly way. You could have a lot of fun with it. If you want. You guys know when you get on an airplane. They all have that safety instruction stuff, right? And virgin has a lot of fun with it. Other companies do some fun videos with it and they explain to you the safety protocol. So the boring way to do is like, please look at the marked exit before and after this, and it's how you do the seatbelt. The mask puts on just a strap. And this is how you put on the vest and you do all that kind of stuff. Well, you can turn into a wrap. You can do it in any kind of style and. Manner that you feel like is reflective of your company's culture and personality. You can say, hey, team member, welcome aboard, we chose you specifically because you're a frigging bad ass. We want to work with you, so we want to make sure that this is super successful for both of us. Right by now, you've already gotten your first paycheck. We've sent you x percentage up front because that's how we like to do it, because we're snappy like that. We make things happen. And then you just go on and on and explain your entire process. But that requires you to sit down and document your own freaking process. And if you're a code shop. Yeah, make sure all the language that's marked up is in English and not in Russian or Chinese or whatever, because our clients will look through it. And we always do x, y and z Now in design. We don't have those hard and fast rules. We do know that we want to keep your layers tidy and we want you to do it while you're working on it, and we will accept that. That they're labeled. And that you save versions. As opposed to just building on top of the same file. So that there's 600 layers in there. So when you feel like there's a change being made a new iteration, duplicate the file, save it as and then do underscore or dash zero 1 or 0, 1 b, there's a naming protocol that we have that includes a job number. And your initials, so we know later on years from now, it's who created this file. We expect you to keep your files tidy, organized and labeled correctly. And that's going to ensure something from not happening, which is me calling you in the middle of the night to fix your files because I can't figure out your file. So you're going to sign up right now, we're going have this agreement that if you don't follow our protocol, when I call you at 2:00 in the morning, fix your file screaming mad because the clients need something and there's a typo and I can't figure out your file, you're going to have to do it. going to have to do it. With a smile on your face. Otherwise, adhere to the protocol, so in case we catch something and we respect that your workday ended, we can fix it. OK, so it's what Matthew calls like good digital hygiene. We want to make sure we're brushing and flossing in the right places, so definitely have those naming protocols. Now I'm going to ask you guys unofficially, you don't have to say but just type in the chat window. How many of you guys have a naming protocol? And then those of you that have it, how many follow it religiously? Then, you know, perhaps you don't even do what you're supposed to do. So it's time to formalize some of your process. And this is a good time to start. All right. How are we doing, you guys, do you guys need to take a break? His is a brain melting. I want to read the chat here a little bit. File naming Nazi. OK, you. I was going to ask a question, Yeah. Hey, so. So I'm trying to build a database online database right now. Yeah so I use I know if you're familiar with every table, so I use that. Yeah so what I do is I put all the fonts I have licensed to use and all the graphic assets that I have that we can use. And then I plan to share that with graphic designer I'm working with. So he can, like, search the database and then he can go to my Dropbox and get those files for himself. So my question is with that system, since it's licensed to me, not to him, I'm kind of like little afraid, where is he just going to take it? You know, like, how do I secure myself with that? You cannot. OK, not share all your assets with somebody if you're afraid they're going to take it from you. I don't share all my assets with my entire team, one because I have tens of thousands of assets to share. And I have my own system of organizing it and I don't want them going there, mucking it up. So what I would do is, and this is what we do when we use dropbox, we create separate project folders, not even team folders, project folders which can be shared with freelancers, staff, and we're not exposing our client to any unnecessary eyes. Just looking at the work, we give them the assets that they need. Here's the typeface. Here are the logos. Here's the brief. Beyond that, not much else. Now, if we're working on a project that requires a lot of texturing and I have a bunch of texture files, I'll copy those over and put them in the folder. You should assume if you put a valuable asset on there that can be used that they will definitely save it and use it for something else. You cannot stop people from doing that. You yourself may have been guilty of that because where the heck did you get your files from? I bought them. Well, then you can say these were purchased according to the agreement that I signed their digital, copyrighted intellectual property that cannot be used by other people except for specifically for this project. If you use it for something else that's on you and you're liable, not me. OK and probably there is a employee freelance or contract agreement that you have had them signed. That'll be part of the legal kit, guys, by the way, so that they can assign it. Got it for right now, I had him sign an NDA. That's the non-disclosure agreement. Yes to keep everything confidential. But I do not have a freelancer employer agreement so well. The freelancer employee agreement should have the non-disclosure part within it. So it's a multiple page document. It should have something that says this is a work for hire, meaning I own the sole copyright of all the materials that are created from this, not you. So you as an independent contractor, assigning that over to me? OK, so it's like a revised contractor document, but I have to go in there and revise the terms. Hold on a second, there's something scaring me that's popped up on my screen. Please assign it to their host. I'm not leaving this meeting. All right, just call me and abruptly pretty soon, we're OK, sorry, you're going to have either an employee or an independent contractor agreement, independent contractor agreement that we're going to prepare for you in the next couple of weeks is going to outline all these parts and pieces. I'm just telling you conceptually what has to be in there? You're going to have potentially a non-compete, a non disclose, a portfolio usage clause in there. You're going to have a work for hire agreement that's part of it so that you own everything and you have to unlearn everything because you ultimately will sign. What you create over to your clients, so don't give me any grief on that, if that's what they say to you, right? The clients own the product, not me, but I need to own it. So I give it to them. There's probably one or two other things I'm forgetting here. An arbitration clause in case things go wrong, we're not going to go and start getting crazy with attorneys. We're just going to arbitration. And it's going to be held in the court, in the city that you live in and not the city that they live in. So they live in Bogota, Colombia. You're not going to go and pay for an attorney and appearing in Colombian court. It's going to be under the jurisdiction of US laws, and it's going to be settled in Los Angeles County. Those are the things you're going to want to have in there, things that I've learned. OK, got it. Can't wait for this legal stuff. Yeah, those are you guys. I know there's a couple of people in here that are joining me as part of the business boot camp. We will have a done and completed for the business boot camp so that you will have these documents and they're included in that, but we will create it and sell it separately. So you don't have to do the business boot camp, but rest assured those guys are in the business boot camp. We're taking care of you. All right. Thanks, Chris. Yeah and it would also tell you about like, I can't remember the other stuff. What is that called non solicitation? They're not allowed to solicit your clients. They're not allowed to solicit your employees to steal them from you. And if they do, they'll be sued. OK OK. All right, guys, I have another 15 minutes because I have another live stream I've got to do later today, so let's power through the rest of this. A freelancer with attitude, man. When you're talking to them on Skype. And you chat with him in the email. You know, they have attitude. But yet you choose to hire them anyways. This is when you didn't listen to your gut, and it will come back to bite you in the foot. So if somebody has attitude, maybe you have attitude, you like people with attitude and you falsely read that as, yeah, they're confident. I don't have room to work with people with attitude, generally speaking, I just fire them. And I usually feel horrible about firing people, but people with attitude, I have no guilt whatsoever. And two comes in many forms. Attitude comes in like, I'm too good for this like and it's kind of passive like I remember one time there was an intern and she wasn't even that good. And I notice she was very selective about the projects that she worked on. So while all the other interns and her peers basically were grinding away in all kinds of projects, keeping themselves super busy, she was very lackadaisical working on like one little thing. And I pulled her aside and said, hey, I know this. You have a very distinct position and perspective on the kinds of projects you work on as an intern. She goes, do I? I'm like, yes, you see how everybody has to work under 14 different things. You're kind of just working on 1 and 1/2 things. Are you aware of that? It's like, oh, I guess you're right. I said, is there a reason why you're not working on other things? Well, they don't really interest me. I said, well, here's the problem is you don't get to make that decision. You're going to create a problem for yourself, because I'm noticing nobody wants to work with you right now. When nobody wants to work with you, I can't pay you to sit here and do nothing. Do you understand that? Because, yeah, so something you can do about that? Yeah, I can work on the projects then. That's great. Nothing changed. Had to call her back in. You remember the last conversation we had about this attitude that you have? Well, I'm not seeing enough change and I'm uncomfortable doing this, but I have to let you go. Then she started crying on me right then and there. I try to tell you, I mean, I'm not saying this like I said to her at this point. So that was the end of that right. I try to tell you, I tried to help you. I'm not in the business of babysitting adults, right? This is not an adult daycare center. So you take care of your work or we're just going to move on. I have one clear conversation with you. I'm cutting my losses after that. I don't have room for that because in management, it turns out we spend more time dealing with the trouble employees than we do, helping the superstar people in our organization rather than propping them up. Doing additional training for them. We're just trying to fix all the bad apples. So my thing is, in my experience, very rarely have I ever been able to turn somebody around through coaching. So when you realize you have a bad apple, as they say, one bad Apple spoils the bunch, just cut them because other people who are working really hard become disincentivized. And morale and motivation goes down because I oh, I see. That person is getting preferential treatment because they're doing nothing and nobody seems to be aware of this. Why am I working so hard? Why am I trying to meet all the deadlines, why am I doing everything with a great attitude? Maybe I don't need to do this. I'll come in late to. Or I won't work as hard. OK, so that's how you fix it. You stem that problem by addressing it head on. Talk to them like an adult. Be very clear. And you say, look, if we have another conversation about this, it'll be the last day you're here. You understand. Great please work on this because you have a lot of talent. And we brought you in for a reason. And we'd hate for this to get in the way. I have a question quick. This is from rags as well, so I was wondering if it also deals with egos when you're hiring someone for your project as well, besides someone being, you know, decent? Well, it's exactly the same. I brought in a guy who was $700 a day to work on a project. He started like hemming and hawing about everything. This is stupid. Why are your teams the, you know, everybody here is trying to make it work? All I hear is complaints from you. I can't have this. It's poison to the team. Can you improve on this or not? Yeah, I will. Nothing changed. They just mysteriously disappeared. It happens all the time. My business coach would say something, you're not good enough to have an attitude. Generally speaking. There are a few people on the planet that are just savants. Yeah, OK, I'll bend over backwards. I'll accommodate you. I'll firewall you off everybody else. So that you just do your work in isolation. And we know you're a genius. Yeah, you just feed their ego and they just do it and you get amazing product and you just isolate them from everybody else. There are very few people on planet Earth like that. I probably know of, too. That I would tolerate that otherwise, I'm just getting rid of people because there's such bad energy. Should the freelancers be talking to my client? Hells no. What are you doing, putting a freelancer that has no allegiance to you and you're offshoring that, I mean, basically you're saying, go ahead and win my client over or say completely inappropriate things and burn this whole relationship, you have to think about this. Your client at this point is your most valuable asset. You don't let wolves hang out with your client. Just doesn't work that way. So if you're thinking about doing that, you're crazy. Your most valuable position is to be in front of the client, not behind the screen. So if you're hiring freelancers to do that for you, we have to have a longer discussion with you as to why that's happening. OK let's see what else here. We'll have a duplicate card. OK OK, this one is a really important one. Let me share the screen so that there is a visual for this one. How should you scope and charge for things you are not an expert in? This is an excellent question. I'm going to answer this. There's a video that we produced on this, on how we lost a million job as a four part series, I believe four or five part series where we go in depth about how you're supposed to do this. But I'm explaining to you in the most succinct way that I can. And I think it was Alexander who asked this question. And if you have additional questions for me, just please feel free to say it. OK here's Howard. Let's say give me something that's really difficult like I shouldn't know how to do. Or something you don't know how to do. Kim, give me something to work with here. Looks like, let's say, videography. Oh, but I know how to do that. OK, I tell you what, I know what it is. OK, let's say it's like some complex particle simulation, you know, like people turn into water and dust and like the Sandman effect, all that kind of stuff. I don't know how to do that. So here's what I do. Now, if you have a team, this is fantastic, if you don't have a team, you're going to do this, but typically what I do is I tell my team, I need you to scour planet Earth and find me the best particle simulation. People, companies, independent contractors find me somebody in the next two days. Come up with a bunch of people and say, I need you to vet those people that they have time to do this and they can do it for the money that we're thinking about spending that great right? So it usually comes down to two names. I have a conversation with both of them. So, so here's the situation I got this very difficult shot. I need you to produce this thing. And I go through like, this is what the end goal looks like. There's a timeline and all this kind of stuff that great. I can do this. So can you show me a couple of examples of where you've done this boom? How did it work? I asked them lots of questions. How did it work? How how could it fail? And what were the tricky challenges that you were able to overcome? Great OK, so so I'm hearing from you now that it's going to take two weeks to do this and it's going to cost 20k. Is that right? So would there be any reason why you would need more money than that? They're going to tell me and say, I'm going to go talk to the client, I'm going to try and sell this idea through. Is there anything that they need to know? I mean that you need to know in order for you to be able to do this? Yeah, OK. I need to know how many millions of particles or how big the how wide is the camera is, what's a frame rate and all this kind of stuff? Great great. Let me just ask this question is there anything that I can ask them that if you were in the room with me, you would ask? Yep, OK, right? Got it. OK, thank you very much. I go have the conversation with a client, and I would have this conversation with both of them, both vendors. And that way, I can have a composite of how two people approach it because they have different approaches, obviously. And then I can have a conversation with the client. OK, so we're going to bring on a specialist to do the particle for the rest of this. We got this covered, and here's what we need to know from you. We need to know how many. How big is this world? How many particles do we need? What's the frame rate? And if you can keep it tight to the storyboard that you showed us, we should be able to do this for anywhere between 50 60k is that going to work for you? Yep, great. Super awesome. So I still take that 20k and I still use the 2 and 1/2 times rate. I did the price bracketing thing. And I also tell them that this can happen in a month, we'll build a timeline, schedule all that good. Yep, great. So that gives me the same flexibility as it would with a freelancer. So I use the expert to tell me how to scope the project to outline how it should work. What are the pitfalls? What are the smart questions that they ask? so that I can ask them? So in the process, I become educated in it. And I'm just going to go out and sell it. I'm not going to do the work so I can sell it, but I need to know the right language, what, what to look for, et cetera. Give you another example real quick. We were talking to a client about doing 3D stereoscopic work, and I didn't know the first thing about 3D stereoscopic work. You know, back when there was a second phase when avatar was coming out that everybody wanted to do 3D. There's still a bunch of 3D movies that are being produced today. Well, I didn't know anything about it, so I had a call and found out, OK. I chatted with some guys and they told me everything I.