Mind The Gap, with Kristina Libby

Daniel Weiner

When scaling marketing, how do you know if the agency route is right for you? In this episode, Nick sits down with Daniel Weiner, Founder of YouShouldTalkTo in a LIVE episode to discuss building brand online and why it’s so hard to find good freelance and agency help

SUMMARY

Everyone talks about building your personal brand online, but who really wants to play the Linkedin “game”?

Why is finding good agency help so difficult?

Can you really record a video podcast in a kitchen?

 In our first LIVE episode, Nick sits down with Daniel to discuss:

  • The importance of building a personal brand, and ways to find a unique perspective on what’s happening in your industry and world
  • Scalable ways to produce personal content that’s relevant to your network
  • Why finding good freelance and agency work is so difficult, and the right mindset to be in when searching for agency help as a marketer.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Nick: Welcome to this episode, this live episode of Mind The Gap, Enablix’s only podcast on sales and marketing alignment. So, I’m Nick Ziech-Lopez. We are live on LinkedIn Live. I’m the host of this one. And today, joining me is Daniel Weiner. Danny, how’s it going?

Daniel: Good. Thank you so much for having me on the only Enablix podcast.

Nick: Honestly, we used to have dozens, I think.

Daniel: This is the only one that survived.

Nick: Oh, 100%. There was a great culling of podcasts. We had some like influencer podcasts. We had someone high fashion. They didn’t make it for obvious reasons. No, thank you for joining me.

Daniel: Absolutely.

Nick: Talking through scaling, sales and marketing through agencies, as well as a few other topics that are near and dear to your heart that I’d like to comment on.

Daniel: I can’t wait to hear. I don’t even know what we’re talking about, so this is even better.

Nick: I bet you 100%. So, you thought you were coming for lunch, and this is the podcast. No, but so before we get started, could you please just kind of give, for the people listening post-haste, what’s your background? How did you find your way to where we are? And how did we meet?

Daniel: How did we meet? That’s a good story. We met playing basketball together for roughly the last decade or so, through, I guess we have to shout out Firco.

Nick: We have to shout out Fran Firco.

Daniel: Fran Firco, a little bit of a basketball legend in Atlanta. He is how we got connected. But my background is agency and marketing in general. I work for a boutique agency in Atlanta for roughly 7 years. Resigned amidst the madness of COVID in 2020. And launch what I do now, it’s called You Should Talk To, officially in September 2020.

Nick: And okay, prefer like that. Question, You Should Talk To, can you give us without selling us all, can you tell us what You Should Talk To is?

Daniel: You Should Talk To pairs brands and marketers for free with vetted agencies and/or freelancers for pretty much any marketing or technology. So, take calls with typically VP of Marketing CMO, Director of Marketing, talk through needs, timeline, and budget typically like I am an agency. And then after that phone call, most of the time, we move straight into introductions. I frame up the needs to partners of mine. Once I make the intros, I’m out of the actual sales process. Agency and/or freelancer will take over and take the brand through their process, and hopefully you close the deal.

Nick: Awesome. So, something I wanted to bring up was around the time you mentioned where you resigned and COVID kind of happened, I noticed you started posting a lot more on the social network at linkedin.com, the platform where we are now. But can you tell me, so first of all, why? You post a lot, why? And then larger, more largely, how do you feel about I want to say the growing trend of growing online brand and LinkedIn brand being a thing that matters?

Daniel: Yeah. The short answer to why at the time was why not? I don’t know that I necessarily had a goal for it. I think I saw other people doing it, saw that they had developed some sort of following and thought, “I can do that,” and figured I’d give it a shot. Didn’t really have a clear goal in mind. I just knew more people were online than ever before due to COVID because we couldn’t do anything else. What was the second part of the question, how do I feel about it in general?

Nick: Yeah. Well, I mean, because I think that…

Daniel: I can only do 1 question at a time.

Nick: Well, I understand. Yeah, we are we’re in a serialized fashion. Well, so, I think that that kind of brand building of like, “Just post. Just post,” is becoming more and more of, I want to say the norm. Everybody’s trying to get their salespeople to do it. Everybody’s trying to get their marketing teams to do it. Reflecting on where it is now versus where you started, do you think people are just getting more savvy and what it can do? And how do you reflect on the difference bit of what it is today where everybody’s kind of posting?

Daniel: Yeah, I think it depends. I mean, for me, the main goal that has developed over time, and is probably my main goal now, which I think makes it easier for me to do what I do is just visibility in general. When people see you more often, they think of you more often. And it’s hard to tie like a definitive, “This is what happened because I posted on LinkedIn,” but there’s just more activity in general. There’s more people viewing your profile, wondering what the hell you’re doing, and eventually, hopefully people wanting to reach out. 

The reason I said I think it makes it easier to look at it like that, for me at least is one of the things that I oftentimes loosely disagree with like a lot of the LinkedIn people who are significantly larger than myself on LinkedIn is that you always have to be providing value. The word ‘value’ is…

Nick: People love that word.

Daniel: … so much. And it’s, for some of them, if they can create something like super amazing every single day, like I’m impressed. It’s really hard to provide value every single day. Also, ‘value’ is one of those words that means something significantly different to everybody.

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: So, I make my main goal to just kind of it’s one more thing to check off. Typically, in the mornings, I wake up, it’s one of the first things I do, there’s not a huge strategy behind it, and I just write. It gets the creative juices flowing.

Nick: Well, I think that’s in… I’d say that kind of contrasts with what a lot of people say to do. I see posts of, “Sunday night, think of the topics you want to talk about. Write out your post. It’s easy,” you just kind of go spontaneous, like you wake up in the morning and you post?

Daniel: For the most part, yeah. I take screenshots and stuff that like loosely inspire me throughout the week in my phone. And I also have the Notes app, where like if something comes to me, I’ll like jot down a quick note. But I’m never… I don’t know if I’ve ever created like the actual post in advance. No.

Nick: I think the thing that drives me crazy is there’s almost like a bisection of LinkedIn as a social network, and LinkedIn is a place where you’re selling to people who can give you money. And I think LinkedIn is trying to… I think we’re all trying to figure out what it is right now. But it’s, I see a lot of people posting about… I saw something the other day, how they said, “If you want to be successful on LinkedIn, you need to be posting on the weekends, because that’s when executives are actually checking LinkedIn.” And like, yeah, but like, what’s it, what are we doing? Like, we’re waking up early to post on a business social network to like get attention. I feel like there’s a difference between what you said, creating interesting or valuable content and trying to sell. And I don’t know that the motivations are necessarily aligned. You’ve called it the game before. Is there a game to LinkedIn or to even…? You go past like the Tik Tok, whatever that is, is there something more than that?

Daniel: Yeah. I mean, I think everybody’s playing the game to a certain degree. I never post something that I don’t actually believe in. But am I like dying to go post on a Saturday or Friday morning or like coming up with something engaging? Now what I live for. It’s not like I wake up and say, “I’m like really pumped to post.” However, I do very much enjoy the reward I get from doing it, which is more activity, more things that positively affect my business and things like that. But no, I mean, the thing on the weekend, like I would argue the only thing in my opinion that matters is piquing interest. But also, you made the comment, like people are doing it ‘in order to be successful’.

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: Like, I would take it a step further and say, “Define success. Like, what is your idea of being successful on LinkedIn?” I think overall visibility anywhere, and Gary V., I think probably like patented this whole line about attention, but he did it like 5 years ago, and he was right. Like, the only things in my opinion that matter right now is attention and visibility. It’s what you do once you have it that probably matters. But there it’s so valuable for people to see you and see your name and just see your company name as much as possible.

Nick: So, then, I guess prediction. So, Gary V. that was a that was YouTube, right? That was his whole thing is posting YouTube, or YouTube clips of wine reviews, which this can turn into if you want.

Daniel: That’s what this is, right?

Nick: Yeah, I think I’ve got a cheap Pinot Noir somewhere, if you want to house that. But it’s so just, I mean, kind of as we wrap up the topic, LinkedIn, big right now, obvious reasons we’re on it. Are there places where people need to be thinking about more? Just like, let’s say you’re growing your brand. Because I see it, the way you describe it, I see in the way that people have always done this in real life, right? If you take the internet away, you’re still trying to be a person that people want to talk to, and be a thing that people find interesting or important. I don’t think many people in real life think about other people in the way of, “Does this person add value to me?” So, I think that’s kind of a veneer that LinkedIn has put on it. But outside of LinkedIn, are there places where… is this just everywhere, like your social medias need to be… your online presence should post back to whatever you’re selling? Or are there places to do it and places now to do it, like, don’t do it on Facebook, do it on Twitter? What do you think?

Daniel: Yeah, I mean, depends on a lot of things. I’d say like time and resources, right? If you’re a 1… I’m a 1-person operation, LinkedIn is a low barrier of entry. I can do myself. I don’t have to pay somebody for it. If you have the resources and time to be everywhere, if this was 5 years ago, I would have said be where your audience is. I think it’s naive to say that a little bit now, just based on how the internet works. If you can be everywhere, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Doubling down on what works after that is probably a better strategy, I’d say after you’ve seen a little bit of data like what’s coming by app. But it’s really hard to ignore what’s going on on Tik Tok with just the amount of organic reach. And I think the most common thing is like, “Oh, we’re a b2b business,” or like, “Our people aren’t there.” They are there. They’re consuming content, they just may not be creating it. And that amount of organic eyeballs that you can get from Tik Tok is legitimately changing people’s lives. Like 1 viral Tik Tok makes someone their career.

Nick: Yeah. There’s a guy that just… there’s the guy in the Superbowl commercial, where he just does this, that’s this whole thing.

Daniel: Yeah.

Nick: He just does that. So, question for the live stream, how important is it… to ask you, how important is it to be unique in your personal brand, like find something that other people are doing, versus being authentic? If you can almost think like, not a lot of people that are authentic or unique. Not a lot of people that are trying to be unique are doing it to be authentic, right? You see the number of people where you’re like, “Oh, you’re doing this because it’s kind of like a Chris Walker thing.” Or, “You’re doing this because it’s kind of like you see that.” Follow up, I don’t know that using the BlackBerry on the stream helps or hurts, but we did get a call out for that.

Daniel: Did BlackBerry sponsor this?

Nick: I don’t think they sponsored it. We did get a question about it though.

Daniel: Oh. Was [inaudible]?

 

Nick: I don’t know. It’s probably the Wi Fi that you’re connected to, or that I’m hosting the event. But the question then, so let me… there we go. Let me go back to that question you had on… that we had on uniqueness. Do you… like is that a thing that like people should like, “This is my…” like, almost like a mission statement, “This is my personal brand. Here’s how I’m different.” Like and where does that go? Is it possible to be unique?

Daniel: I think the easiest way to be unique is to create a unique point of view. There’s so much content out there, which is an easy place to start as well. Like, I think that was the biggest misconception I had at the beginning. I was like, “Oh, I have to sit down and write like, all of these like crazy, unique posts.” You can just borrow what other people are saying and give your own point of view.

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: That, I think, creates the uniqueness. I think like, at least for me, like friends and people I know and people I do business with, say I have like a unique tone of voice, which like I’ve heard sometimes in it. Not that that’s like super unique, but I think that gives me a unique tone and like what you can expect. It’s more conversational. It’s how I speak versus some like different person. I would argue if you read a post and you actually knew me, you’d be like, “Yeah, that’s kind of how Danny like talks in general.”

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: All of these answers are it depends. I would say. I think the most important thing to being unique is telling a good story. If you and I told the same story, it would be different, and each would be unique and probably attract a different viewership. And somebody would say, “Danny sucks at telling a story,” and some would say, “Nick sucks at telling a story.” I think you kind of… the reason I’m so big on consistency is because you kind of end up, I think, where you’re supposed to. You do this like I have every day for 2 years almost, you meander into like the group of people that you’re probably going to interact with and like do business. And some people are going to be interested, and some are going to hate it, and some are going to like it, some are going to make fun of you. I think that makes it easier once you realize like, just start posting and see what happens, as opposed to having some grand plan.

Nick: I think that’s the thing not enough people talk about is getting roasted in the group chat for something you put on LinkedIn. Has it ever happened to you?

Daniel: Yeah.

Nick: Okay. Yeah, right? Nobody talks about this. That’s going to be my next LinkedIn post.

Daniel: Well, I still have friends a lot of times be like, “Ooh, it’s like the LinkedIn influencer.”

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: Yeah, all the time. I think the interesting thing though, is that goes from like being made fun of to then like you pique their interest, and they’re like, “Shit, maybe they’re doing something.”

Nick: Yeah. And that’s actually that’s how I view me using a BlackBerry, is people like, “Oh, what are they doing?” And then, like, in 5 years…

Daniel: That’s the most unique thing.

Nick: … Research In Motion, we’re all going to be using… yeah, that’s it. Everything LinkedIn post is about me using a touch smartphone.

Daniel: Yeah.

Nick: No, no, it’s not. Just wrapping up this point. Do you know how you catch a unique dog?

Daniel: I can’t wait to hear the answer.

Nick: Unique up on it.

Daniel: Alright.

Nick: Transition to… I really thought there would be like rocket…

Daniel: This is bad. This is bad for my branding.

Nick: You be like, “Yeah, like, I like my brand pinned down, but this ain’t it.”

Daniel: Yeah.

Nick: No, I always I think about the… as silly as it is, and I know that I’m going to get roasted if anybody… then I’m very sure that nobody that I know is watching this. But if I am going to compare to something, it’s that Kanye quote of like 3 beats a day for 5 summers, or 5 beats a day for 3 summers of just like, just keep going. Just keep going. And some of its going to get good. And some of it, you might write a book. Or some of it, you might get…

Daniel: It’s also I find like, there’s another reason I say like I’m so big on consistency, there’s no rhyme or reason, I have found. Which used to be like maddening. I was like, “Oh, eventually I’ll find like some sort of trend like if I post about this.” There are posts where I’m like, “Oh, this is brilliant,” and I push enter, and like 3 people comment on it. And then I post something that I think I’m like, “Oh, this is dumb. I just wanted to get something out today,” and like people go crazy in… people go crazy? In comparison to the [inaudible]

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: There are still people… it’s amazing. There’s… trying to think of his name. He just became head of social for… who was for?

Nick: If you’re going name drop, you’ve got to name them.

Daniel: For morning brew. Can’t think of his name but shout out to him.

Nick: Joe coffee.

Daniel: He posted something on Instagram the other day about how LinkedIn was wild. And one of his posts had 6 million views I want to say in like a day and a half or something.

Nick: Wow.

Daniel: I have a post that gets like 10,000 and I’m super excited. So, like there definitely levels to the posting game, I would say.

Nick: No, that’s like super…

Daniel: Jack Appleby.

Nick: Jack Appleby. There we go. There we go. Well, we got the name, so let’s move on to another topic. So, let’s talk a little bit about what you’ve pivoted your career towards, because I think it’s really important in sales and marketing. So, the whole idea of using agencies, I understand the agent, especially when you’re a small company, agencies can be a great way to scale. But in my experience, and to what you’ve seen, it kind of sucks to get an agency, or can start to get the right agency. Can you tell me just traditionally, why… like pick like a growth marketing agency or something in that wheelhouse, why is it so difficult, or why historically was it so hard to like get a good pairing, or find someone that you’re happy with?

Daniel: Yeah. I think, in general, there’s just still not the best spot. If you’re busy VP of marketing, call it typically… and you probably did this as well, before I helped you out, you do one of the few things if you’re looking for an agency. You can like post on LinkedIn. You can post in a community. You can ask your friends. The thing I find when that happens is rarely does anybody ask any questions. You say like, “Hey, does anybody know a growth marketing agency?” and somebody goes, “Yeah, talk to these people.” They didn’t ask you any questions, “What’s your budget? Like, what are you looking for? Do you need creative? How much are you hoping to spend? Is there a particular fee model you’re hoping to pay?” They’re just not a great spot for that. There are several different like platforms that do it. There’s things like Clutch. But again, I think it still puts a lot of work on the marketer, and also doesn’t give you a truly objective view. Which I like to think I do, just harder to scale. But does that answer the…?

Nick: No, it absolutely did. And I mean, you see all kinds, right? You interact with small outfits that less than 10 people to 100,000-person companies… not 100,000, 200,000-person companies. When I guess do you have any advice or any thoughts on like, when is it right to seek agency to help scale versus making a headcount, or kind of staying put because maybe you don’t have the resources, or maybe you’re not in the right space to try to scale?

Daniel: I don’t think there’s… a lot of people will answer that, I think, from what I’ve heard, with like a revenue marker. Like, “Oh, once you reach this or like, reach a particular headcount, your marketing budget is x.” I think it’s harder to do that and have it translate across like a vast majority of businesses, because everything is so largely situational. I think a lot of times, you probably drop it into a few buckets of like, “What are we trying to accomplish? What’s the outcome of that work? And what do we hope to spend?” It’s funny, like when I ask, I have to know someone’s budget to make a good pairing, because agencies work with different budgets. A lot of people say, “I don’t know.” And then typically, the question they are able, I say, “What are you hoping to spend?” Like, that’s typically an easier way of saying that. But I don’t know that there’s like a universal or uniform answer to that question. It’s usually based on that. Like, there are plenty of times where I talk to a brand, and my answer is, “I don’t think you’re ready for an agency.” Like, if you don’t have the time and resources to manage the agency, it’s really hard to make them successful. A lot of people think like, “Oh, I’m a 1-person marketing department. I’m just going to hire an agency.”

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: “Outsource to them.” Which I’ve seen is usually a recipe for disaster, because you don’t have the time or resources to make them successful and give them what they need to be successful. So, not willing to put an answer to that out into the universe, because I don’t think it exists strictly. It’s so situational.

Nick: So, I have a question that came in that I don’t have a great answer to, so I’m wondering what you think. Tips for onboarding an agency when you don’t even really have employee onboarding down, right? Because you’re getting agencies to get up and running to scale to all this. Thoughts on how you… where everything’s kind of in a jumble, how do you figure out onboarding for this group of people that are trying to help you?

Daniel: I’d argue you should get your employee onboarding down first before you work on that. I put it back on the agency truthfully. I think they should onboard you. Then you should necessarily… if you’re paying them large sums of money presumably, they should have a good onboarding process for bringing you on and getting what they need to make themselves successful. I think you should be able to figure it… you should need to figure out how you devote enough time and energy to giving them exactly what they need to do.

Nick: It is if there is an onboard, or if the onboarding isn’t seamless, it’s not… the agency is not.

Daniel: There has to be some sort of onboarding, but the agency should have their process of what gives them the best chance of success.

Nick: Okay. That’s interesting. Something you just mentioned before in your previous answer about when you weren’t ready to give one was the amount of time it takes. You said, “Oh, I’m a 1-person marketing team. So, obviously, I’ll just get agencies and scale.” But effort, I mean, it’s not like agency is free, you pay the money, and they just they give you… they need a lot of effort.

Daniel: Yeah.

Nick: Can you talk about the kinds of high-touch effort to like… what should a person expect? They’re going to want to bring on… even to the onboarding question, but like you’re going to bring on a growth marketing agency, you’re going to bring on demand agency, creative design, all kinds, how do you gauge how much of your time that’s going to be? Because the agency is probably going to downplay that. They’re going to say, “Oh, no, we will take care of a lot of it.” How do you read through that to figure out what that’s going to be for you?

Daniel: Probably depends on the service and the business a ton. But I would put that back on to, like those are questions I think brands should be asking agencies when they’re vetting them like during the scoping process and contract processes. Like, especially if there’s a deadline, I’ll use like a website example. Because typically, there’s some date in the distance that you’re hoping to launch by, even if it’s not like a firm thing. There’s going to be a million different milestones and a website project. And there’s different pieces of information that an agency is most likely going to need at certain points of time. That’s an easy way of thinking of it of how much time it’s going to take me to get these things to you.

Nick: And the inputs to get that output.

Daniel: Yeah. And also feedback. Like, oftentimes, like, a common thing is, “Hey, like, this timeline is based on you giving us feedback on these designs, for example, in 72 hours.” If that’s not a realistic thing, you should talk about that prior to putting the timeline together. And a brand should be very honest about that of, “There is 0% chance we’re going to get your feedback in 72 hours.” And then the agency should say, “Well, great, we’ll spread it out.” There has to be give and take. You can’t say, “We’re not going to get you feedback in 72 hours, but we still need that timeline, or that date for launch,” and stuff like that. So, there is a give and take. But I encourage everybody to have very open-ended and honest conversations at the beginning, especially about timing and resources and stuff like that.

Nick: And so, a question, my impression has always been, once you pick the agency route, that’s the route you’re taking, right? Like you are. But I mean, I don’t think that’s realistically how it works, right? You could go back and forth. You can pause work on an agency and pick it up. Especially as you’re scaling and sales and marketing, you’re going to have different problems at different times. Like things are, things are going to be picking up. Thoughts on, like, the kinds of relationships and how someone should kind of plan for, “Hey, I’m doing a website, I’m going to need this for X months, like 3 or 4 months, but I might come back to it.” Or like, what’s that ecosystem like for a marker who’s trying to grow kind of their presence just, “Hey, I want to get these team members. I don’t know when I’m going to be hiring headcount, but I’m just trying to grow the people that can help me,” and how does a person manage that?

Daniel: I’d say you probably think of it in terms of is something a project versus a retainer/ongoing me. Like a website is a living, breathing thing that you may add to, but at the onset, there’s typically a start and an end point. That’s one way to look at something. For typically, like ongoing marketing, a lot depends on contracting. Some agencies will do like a month-to-month contract. Some want a 6-month or a year, month minimum and stuff like that. Typically, there’s a lot of work on an agency side to bring on a new client. So, starting and stopping isn’t something that most agencies are going to be thrilled about, depending on who the client a million different factors. 

But the starting and stopping and resource is why freelancers are a great option sometimes. If you have an initiative and your agency is working on something else, and you just need a writer or designer or something, you can go find a freelancer, or ask me to help you with a freelancer and plug and play like that. But yeah, the starting and stopping is hard. Because if you do that enough times, no one’s going to want to work with you.

Nick: It’s also bad on your knees. I know.

Daniel: That’s very true. Yeah.

Nick: As long as I think I’m funny, that’s what important. No. So, from where you sit, you kind of work with sales and marketing teams of all kinds, all industry, all of that. So, you see a lot of it, especially marketing. I want to pivot now to I would say next, what you see coming up is effectively how you see what marketing is doing and the future going. Give us a few thoughts you have on like, what is effective marketing, and where do you think the sales and marketing, either through agency or in house, like do you have any predictions for the next 5 years are going to hold? Whether it be we talked about brand building, we talked about scaling through agency, what are your thoughts?

Daniel: I think I’ve never seen a better time to be a freelancer actually.

Nick: Really?

Daniel: It’s super difficult to hire right now. And a lot of 1 perspective and 1 point of view, but especially in the marketing and like creative space, a lot of people just don’t want full-time jobs. And they can go be their own boss and be a freelancer and take on those clients and stuff like that.

Nick: I’m going to pause right there. So, let’s say I’m a successful dimension marker at a b2b company, what would I do? How do I start being a free…? Like, how do I start that process? Is it do I really talk to somebody like you?

Daniel: You quit.

Nick: You just quit?

Daniel: That’s the first thing.

Nick: That’s it? If you set fire to the ships, is there a way to see if it could work out for you?

Daniel: I think I was talking to the writer about this recently. I think it’s really hard to give it a fair shake and know what working for yourself as a full-time freelancer will be like unless you do go full steam ahead. That is obviously significantly easier for me to say when it’s not my own financial situation and life. Yeah, I would dip my toes and I would pick up a client or 2 and see how it goes and stuff like that. It’s a lot of the times, the economics work out better for a freelancer where you can take on a couple clients and make more than you do as a full-time hire. You get to write off a bunch of stuff. Taxes are typically more beneficial in that scenario. But yeah, it’s not for everyone, truthfully, like not having a steady paycheck. Having to deal with collections. I mean, there’s a million things that go into it.

Nick: So, speaking of freelance, a thing that I think is more and more popular is everybody and their brother saying, “How should I know if my freelancer content creator or my writer or my designer is doing well?” And they say, “Oh, well, you should see does it bring in revenue?” I don’t know, that’s an opinion I see a lot on linkedin.com. But I don’t think that’s really realistic for a lot of cases. I don’t think like you can tell revenue in the next 30, 60, 90 days. What’s a way to know if it’s work…? Is it literally just person-to-freelancer fit? Like, what do you think about a freelancer saying, “Hey, I help drive revenue, and that’s what you should measure me to,”? But is that realistic?

Daniel: No. I mean, I think like ‘attribution’ is a muddy word that everyone strives for, that you waste time trying to get it. Depends on the service too. Like, if you’re in a creative space, so you’re a writer or a designer, can you tie a blog post to revenue? Probably not.

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: Are they doing well? I’d say did they do what you asked in the time you asked them to do it for the amount they said they’re going to do? For like, to me, that’s the measurement of success in that scenario. You can’t put too much onto a freelancer in that scenario. If somebody is running like performance marketing for you and Google ads and things like that, easier to tie to revenue, of course.

Nick: Right.

Daniel: But no, I mean, I think success is, it depends what you define success as. But truthfully, like, on the creative side, I’m typically telling people to find somebody that they mesh with. As a writer, as a designer, you’re asking somebody to sit and have a conversation. You spit out a bunch of information, and they go, “I know exactly what you’re talking about,” and then create something that doesn’t exist, hand it back to you, and you say, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I want.” Like, when you think of it like that, that sounds really hard.

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: And especially if they get it on like the first or second try, like what’s the value in that? Saves you a bunch of time and energy, but I can’t tie a dollar amount to it.

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: So, there are certain things that are probably tied to revenue. And then there are certain things that are just make your life easier, which is harder to equate like a physical dollar amount to.

Nick: So, going back to your point about becoming a freelancer, or whatever that is, you burn the ships, and I think the pandemic made that easier for you.

Daniel: COVID burned them.

Nick: Yeah, COVID burned your ships, right? But what if you kind of like your job and you like the idea of freelancing? How do you break into that? Because I think people look for freelancers, they don’t necessarily go to people with full-time jobs and say, “Hey, can you do this for me?” Right? They look for freelancers, but you’re not a freelancer, because you don’t know that that’s what you want to do. Is there any…? I would say, you’re going to say it depends. But are there any like commonplace steps of like, “The first few things you should do. You should go to Upwork. You should go to Fiverr.” Like, how do you even get a start?

Daniel: I’d say like a good first step is, if you’re employed and you don’t want to quit as talking to your employer like to make sure that they’re not going to freak out. Because you don’t want to lose that right away if they’re like, “We saw you doing this. You’re fired.”

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: Having an honest conversation, I’d argue any good employer that actually cares about you, your mental health, your success, anything, will be happy for you, as long as it doesn’t infringe on what you’re doing for them, or compete with it. It depends. To me, like Upwork and Fiverr are not the best spot. I would say the best first step, which goes back to posting on LinkedIn, could be to legitimately tell every person you know what you’re doing. And I’d be super specific and brief. I’d send it to your network, can be an email. It can be whatever. It’s, “Hey, I’m doing this. If you know anybody who needs X, Y, and Z, I would love to chat. And I’d be so If we’re appreciative if you can make those introductions.” Your network and people… my entire business is built on my network. The people who actually like and care about you will want you to be successful and will be willing to do that type of stuff. And the people who are not probably don’t care about you anyways.

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: And if you don’t ask, the answer is always no.

Nick: That’s right, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Wayne Gretzky.

Daniel: Michael Scott.

Nick: Michael Scott. Yeah, you get it. Okay. So, before we wrap up here, is there anything that you have coming up that you want to point people to? Anything in general that that you think people should be checking out right now? This is your time [inaudible]

Daniel: I was going to say…

Nick: You really didn’t think you’d plug anything. You think we would just like that would be it?

Daniel: I mean, you can check out youshouldtalkto.com. But no, check out my LinkedIn. That’s what I would say. I’m more approachable there.

Nick: What’s your URL? Do you know? linkedin.com/…?

Daniel: /danielweiner.

Nick: There we go. Is there a dash, daniel-weiner?

Daniel: I don’t know. I’m pretty easy to find. [inaudible] It’s a quirky name. You’ve got to find it. Anything I’m excited about?

Nick: Yeah.

Daniel: Oh, my parents are taking their first flight in 2 years in like a week and a half to come visit me.

Nick: Okay.

Daniel: So, that’s exciting. That’s not to do with work, but…

Nick: Did you make an event page for that?

Daniel: I think those are the only 2 people who are… I think my parents are probably watching this LinkedIn live.

Nick: Oh, that’s right. 2 of 10 million.Daniel: Yeah, that’s even better. What are you excited about?

Nick: What am I excited about? So, coming up, not this Thursday, but the next Thursday, we have an episode of Mind The Gap, Danny Weiner. It’s going to be that episode.

Daniel: Oh, that’s actually launching?

Nick: Yeah. You could find it on Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, wherever you find your podcast.

Daniel: Awesome.

Nick: I’d say other episodes of Mind The Gap. Realistically, we’ve got a lot going on here. But when I think about the next few months, my mind goes to like… oh, I’ve got my daughter. Oh, my daughter is learning to walk. So, check out that footage at some point. That’s going to be hot.

Daniel: Maybe you’ll get phone service.

Nick: And that is our episode. You come for the Blackberry, we got to wrap up. No, no, no. Thank you very much for coming on today.

Daniel: Thank you for having me.

Nick: Thank you everybody for the questions and the comments. And hope to do this again soon.

Daniel: Likewise.

Nick: This has been Mind The Gap, a podcast about sales and marketing alignment put on by an Enablix. My name is Nick Ziech-Lopez. Thanks for listening.