finding work in the direction you want to go w/ michael chan

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdesint. D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. So let's go. Let's go. Oh, and Christina. It's great to see you. Christina's coming on the show here soon. So I want to go and dive in. So, you know, Michael, you sent me a lot of talk.

You sent me some three great topics. And I think it's so applicable for people, especially right now, this economy where it's, you got kind of the creator economy, you know, content guys like me and you, you have people trying to trying to figure out what they want to do long term. And I think the email, if I can find the email correctly, and for those of you who are tuning in, TikTok and see my email screen, I do apologize. But you said some shit I'm on right now. Finding work in the direction you want to go, finding and making opportunities where you're showing the world where you're going and the importance of public work and double dipping on work projects.

So let's kick it off with your first thing about some shit I'm on right now. Finding work in the direction you want to go. What does that mean? And why are you so bullish on that right now? Yeah, yeah, first I'm cracking up because the next thing is I asked like what kind of language we can use on this show. Yeah, we Can let it rip it's fine Yeah, so yeah, so just and I love I love stuff like this. I love spaces I love you know like live because like I don't have to come prepared I can just you know be on my bullshit, which is my favorite place to be I love being on that.

Running miles. The hours. I'll day. I'll day running mountains. Yeah. Sorry. I totally lost the point. I'm going to find it again. So yeah. So finding and making the opportunities where you're showing the world where you're going. So this is something that is really interesting to me. And so I want to recognize that there's been about. What is it? 10, 11 years since I kind of came in officially came into tech. And so I want to recognize that for a handful of reasons. One, I don't know what people are going through right now. But then two, I do know it's been long enough now that I kind of came up the last time things were looking shitty.

And like right now, things are like not looking super great. Like I'm sure that like, and it depends from like company to company, right? because you hear the big tech companies laying people off every day, tons of people. But then you have smaller operations who have just been waiting for this opportunity to get people who are leaving those handful of gigantic companies that have been paying them almost a million dollars a year for the last two years. So it's a really interesting, I love seeing these industries switch ups and whatnot. But I think that something that's like a lesson that I've been learning the hard way is that you have to be showing what you're about even when you're happy at your work, which is really hard.

It's like, so one of the reasons that I got into full time work was because I hated that cycle of like, I'm like as a freelancer where I was like, I would work on a project, but then I'm also having to sell myself at the same time. I'm not, I can't just like sink into that project. I have to like be working on that next thing. What's the thing that I'm gonna like get next? So you're in sales and like work cycle all the time. I hated that. And it took me about like seven or eight years before I realized like that's just work. But that isn't like freelance work.

Like that's just work. Like you have to, it doesn't matter like how secure or stable you think your job is. You always have to be showing like, you have to be showing your work along the way, showing like what you're about. and what you want to be moving towards, in the case that your company decides to let you off, or they hire someone that you think's a total jackass, or the goals change and the things that you were promised are no longer important to the company anymore. Things happen. Given five years, there's gonna be some type of major shift at your company which will make you wanna leave.

And that's generous, right? It could happen a lot faster than that. And like, if you're not ready, like then you've got to build all that shit up. And it's like, it takes, you know, it takes years to do that. Yeah. Well, I'm going to ask you a blog post and now you're like, yeah, you don't get one and done and like, Oh, hey, now I have enough to like show that he show what I'm about now. Like, no. Well, so let me ask you this because because I've, you know, I've talked to a lot of people and I'm sure you have as well. And I think the word content creator and influencer gets so overused, right?

And I hate to even call myself that, which I know I am that in a way. But like, what's your advice to people right now who are like, man, you know, I see you, I see Taylor, I see Angie, I see all these folks who are just putting out basically content machines. Do I need to be at that level? What can I do to make myself more recognizable, but maybe not? Do I need to be on that level? Is there something in between? Yeah. Yeah. So it's really hard for me to say for everyone what that looks like. But I do think that everyone should try to look at themselves, see what they like, what they like historically too.

And then try to figure out what their lane is in. I don't even want to call it content, but putting stuff online, showing your work. This is great, a book by Austin Shoot. Now I have a friend named Austin Krim, and I'm not going to be able to remember this guys. Austin Cleon, Austin Cleon. He's got this great series of books, but one of them I think is the second, first to steal like an artist, second is show your work. And I recommend both of them, but show your work is really great Because it just reminds me, like, I read it like every year and it reminds me of the importance of just putting your stuff out there because like ain't nobody know what you're doing unless you're telling them.

That's it. You can go ahead and show right there. That was it. Say that one more time. Say that one more time. Hey, nobody know what you're doing until you tell them and That's the thing is like a lot of times people like think that it's like putting content out is about engagement I think you said this at render really well, which is like I don't know I don't care about the engagement of like a certain piece of content I want my goal now is to have people be annoyed at how often they see my face and That's that's real like that is real because the thing is is that like Like when you hit that moment where you're like, you decide to leave your company, you get kicked out, like whatever happens, the industry as a whole just starts to dry up, the people with the most opportunities are the people who have the most people who can recognize their face.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's just the way it is though, right? That you have to be like a superstar. You gotta be mega on like one thing. And I don't know, I feel like that's harder than just like I learned this thing. And so like I have a blog of things that I learn or like I do want to take out. Like whatever you think is fun. You know, like watching take like, I think that that's an important thing. Like wherever you're at is probably where you should be doing your thing. If you're scrolling TikTok all day, like just throw some stuff on TikTok, right? Like if you read a lot, like write some posts.

I mean, for me, it's like one of my biggest things that I ever did is this site called react patterns. It looked like shit. It's literally just a markdown file with like, no UI is the best UI. Yeah. Yeah. It's a markdown file with like a little index at the top. And then I think I don't know, maybe 15 patterns for react. That's it. And I wrote it for me to be able to consolidate the things that I learned up to that point. It still gets, I mean not like a ton of traffic, but it gets like, I don't know, like 2000 views, I don't month or something like that.

It was like seven years later, I've done jack shit to it. Like it's just a page that sits there. And it's like those kinds of things. Like I literally, I was just putting a thing out there to help me in the future when I, like to consolidate the things that I learned. And it helped enough people. And it's something that like people like, oh, hey, like react patterns. Thanks for doing that. So like just find something that works for you. And like it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be content. It's just got to be something online that you can point people to and be like, yeah, this is what I'm about.

Yeah. And I have a quick thought on that. I want to give some shots more people tuning in. David, it's great to see you, Joanna. It's great to see you, Christian. Nick, my man left spaces to come here. It's great to see you, buddy. Trey, Trey's out here reading those books as well. Nick comes in and goes, I started streaming to learn in public, but I've also been able to meet so many people. The engagement is more secondary for me. Absolutely. I mean, I totally agree. I think too, and I've started, so I have trends. I don't know if you have trends as well, where it's like you kind of get on topics and obviously we're talking about one of your topics right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's your trend? Mine is like, hey, I don't want, you know, Because so for example, I think of like my brother, right? My brother is a product owner at Eventbrite. He's done very well for his career. There's not a lot of thing of content on the internet. Like doesn't even really post to Instagram on his own. Like he's very just off the radar and he's done extremely well. But I will tell you, so like I try to communicate to guys like my brother or my mom, right? My 61 year old mom, right? The thing I'm passionate about for those of you who are watching, build a community.

Right? Like I think, I think, you know, you know, you see Chan and I on here and it's like, you're like, Oh my gosh, these guys are like putting out a stupid amount of content. I'm never going to get there. That's fine. Start in your city, start locally, start in your friend group. Like for example, like I play ice hockey, right? And me and my brother have two ice hockey teams. And literally the amount of tech people that I have met, I'm going to lunch next week with a CISO that plays on my hockey team. I had no idea that he was a CISO until like he was like, Hey, we should grab lunch.

I may need you for some projects. I was like, what do you do? And he was like, I'm a CISO. And I was like, what? So again, right? Like, if it's a knitting community, if it's about cats, literally get your cats together, I'm a huge corgi fan, right? I I've been thinking about doing a corgi club because I love corgi so much. Me and Jason like bonded immediately because of our loves for corgis. And then finally like another thing too, I love wine. I've been thinking about having like a Tekken wine night invite people over everybody bring their favorite bottle of wine and we just talked about the current state of the tech market.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and that's what meetups used to be about, like bringing it back to the meetup thing, right? Like that's what it used to be about is like, like meetups used to be a little bit more niche down, right? And it was like a bunch of people who were like super excited about Ruby and everyone was making fun of them Right and they would get together and they would tell people the learn things that they're learning Yeah, yeah, exactly and I think that we like we just got weird about numbers for some reason right and we forgot that like that that piece of it matters more than anything else right because like the truth is is that you're gonna I I think having a big network is good, but like having a tight network is better.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, like, I mean, I'll give an anecdote, like, or anecdote, anecdote. I'm not sure what words go ahead. So like, I, so one of the things that I did, I was miserable at my previous job, right? Miserable. And so I decided I was going to take some time and I was going to just like Nick Taylor saying a second ago, like just talk with other people online. So like build an online community. And I just wanted to interview some of my heroes. I started React podcast and it was literally just the goal was not to make content. The goal was to meet people and having a podcast is a great way to meet people, right?

Like you're in it for an hour. You have their whole focus for like a whole hour. And for whatever reason, like people who should not be saying yes to pod like an hour of their time We'll say yes for a podcast. It's like a magic trick. It's the weirdest thing ever. People love to run their mouths, man. Let's just be totally honest. Yeah, yeah. Like it's, you know, okay, so here's my podcast work. This is my theory, right? Like you go to work and everyone knows what your bullshit is, right? Because they're like close to you, whatever. Like someone invites you to a podcast to talk about your bullshit.

And like they're just gonna be nodding the whole time, right? Like they're not put up balls. They're not fighting you back, whatever. And so like you just like, you just get to stand up there and like stand and deliver your ship. I just think of the Kevin Hart thing. It's like your bullshit is my bullshit and my bullshit is your bullshit. I want to get I want to get a few more people of China in the morning. We have the whole crew here. Let's see here. Christina has a great point. All you do is pick two platforms and create content for SEO. Yeah. I would definitely agree with Christina, pick two platforms, right?

Like my other podcast, Unicorn Finders, because a man can't have too many podcasts that's focused on products and companies and startups, like more on the business and product side. We were super deep just on LinkedIn and now we're getting on TikTok and Instagram, right? I mean, we're, but we were just on LinkedIn for two years. You know, Nick, you know, William Johnson's here. I love it. Will comes in. Yeah, well, community key. I mean, like I said, I will has been on the show. He's incredible. and we talked about community there, cats and knitting exactly. And then William says such a great thing here, deep is greater than wide.

And I totally agree with that. I think if you can have 10 people who you can call and they're gonna pick up the phone every time instead of 100 people and maybe one person picks up the phone, I think that's gonna help you 10-fold. And then in manual, it's great to see you this morning. So before we move on, I don't wanna move on per se, I just want to give another prompt. Find and making opportunities where you're showing the world where you're going. And then the importance of public work and double dipping. Talk about double dipping on work projects. What you mean by that?

Yeah. Oh shoot. Yeah, yeah. And we'll sort of. We'll sort of go back. You want tea this morning? You doing tea? That's like a tea. I'm doing coffee. Oh man. I'm pretty cast. So I realized not that you really care at all, but my bullshit is your share. You care. Basically, I went through like, I'm 20, 22, who's been the year of like physical, mental, spiritual health for me. Okay, good, good. I, my wife hired nutritionist, she's crushed it. I hired her for a bit and I got my blood work up done and basically my quarters all levels went through the roof. Yeah. I was like intermittent fasting, drinking a ton of caffeine and not eating enough protein.

So my body was basically like running up against the wall for like four or five years. Yeah. So now I'm more on decaf now. So this is a half-calf. This is half-calf. Okay, yeah, you got to wean off or else you're just miserable. You're just a shit to be around. All right, so circle back. I'm in the weaning phase two. I'm on T. I'm on black tea. I got to get back off coffee because the same reason that cortisol man that that's that's a killer. That's a killer. We don't know about that enough. There's there's one girl that I'm aware of. And I think from what I've been told she got a she got cancer because or quarters all levels were too high for too long.

I believe it. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So many things can go wrong. It's like, yeah, get your eight hours of sleep, stop drinking coffee. I answer 2.0 the health edition. Welcome. Yeah. Okay. So back to the back to the point. I am so bad at ever finding a point. But yeah. So I think that's we're talking about making opportunities, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So this this actually does tie into kind of like what I was gonna say before. I'm miserable at my last job, right? And I'm like trying to figure out like what can I do, right? And that idea of like double dipping.

And I was like, okay, well, you know what? I am at a point where I'm like running circles around people anyway, right? So like whatever, like I'll just kind of like take a little bit of time to myself. Like how much time can I afford? Well, like maybe I got like a couple hours a week. What can I do in a couple hours a week? Well, I could probably like between that and then some time at night, I could probably like do a podcast. So I take on a podcast and then I start meeting some really interesting people. I did that for like about two and a half years.

I wish I was still doing it, but like life changed, like things happen. But then my next opportunity didn't, so like I end up getting pushed out of that company. It was brutal, it was vicious. And I don't even start looking. I don't even start looking. And I'm talking with people like I do on Twitter, someone's asking me like how I'm doing, we haven't talked in a while, like I had them on as a guest on my show. And they're like, hey, like I know you're in design systems, I know you know a bunch of like react folk, like why don't you come here, like work at Chromatic and hang out and do some cool stuff.

Just do what you're doing already, like over here. And I think that was the moment that I realized how powerful networking was. Because I'm one of those people who's just like, oh, networking's stupid. That's for like, you know. Because I think about it in the old ways, right? Where it's like you go to a networking event and everyone's got their business cards and dressed up in clothes that they only wear to networking events. And it's just stupid, right? But I didn't think about networking from the perspective of community building. Like I just want to get to like I want to know you I want you to see me in like higher fidelity I want to have like you know kind of like digitally shake in your hand if we can't like you know Actually like do that and have had a conversation right and I want you to think of me the next time you're thinking like Oh, you know who'd be sweet person to work with that person and Like that kind of stuff is so critical to a career and like I just didn't like I honestly like didn't And when they hit me up, I didn't even entertain any other offers.

A lot of other people were hitting me up for work, but the fact that they were like, oh, we know what you're about and we want you to come here and do the thing that you're about. How can I say no to that versus any other job which was just going to be a clean slate? Oh, yeah, we'll hire you as some kind of programmer or whatever. We know that you've been doing it for a while, so like whatever, as long as you can pass the test like we're good. Like to have someone who knows you and wants to work with like the whole you, the person, like the whole, like the person you're trying to figure out like day after day, over a month year after year, like that shit doesn't come from just putting resumes out.

And I think you said it best because I've struggled with networking for a long time. Like I'm an introvert. I think we talked about this at render like I'm an intro. Just fucking worry out. Like literally like the, so I have a whoop that kind of keeps track of like, yeah, sleep and your strain. Bro, I, so I never went out. I never went out with anybody. I went out for the first night with Palm City on the rooftop after that I didn't go out. And literally I slept like six to seven hours and my recovery was like in the trash like 18. It, it ruins me networking.

But the thing is though is, is, is they didn't teach me, I went to business school, right? They didn't, you know, just go to a networking event, a suit and tie and pass out business cards and like, what do you do? What do you do? Okay, thanks, let's stay in touch. Man, like networking is just making friends and chilling. If you go and connect and vibe with one to two people, that's it, you've done it. Yeah. And no one talks about networking in today's world, which is why I'm so passionate about how to have the show and really try to post about networking online to show everybody that, you know, I think the bare bones, I'm talking about some time that liking and commenting on people's statuses is networking.

Oh shit, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like you, everybody knows, everybody knows even if they don't know them, like the five people who always like their shit. Yeah, yeah, I think I saw this. It was a meme and it was like, like shout out to the 13 people who always liked my stuff. I'd like on Audience, the grammar, something. Shout out to my 13 people. Yeah, that is like for real that is networking right like I like that yeah, it's like it's a very like low key. It's very like introvert friendly like networking. But again, it's like the number of people who recognize your face. And if you got your face on Twitter, Twitter, Instagram, like whatever, and you're liking people's stuff and they see your avatar like it's huge, right?

It's huge. It's huge. And then replying is like the next level, Like, that's the, I feel like if we could, if I could just infuse one idea into people's minds, is that people are a lot more approachable than you think. Right? Like we're all just, especially the people who are like trying to get engagement online. Right? Yeah. Like, like just play the game with us. Like just slide in the DM's comments, we'll respond because that's our job. I think the thing is that people don't have a lot of tactics for doing it well, right? And so the thing is you slide into the DMs with a high, like no, that like you squandered your chance, right?

You don't respond. I don't know. Yeah, I don't respond to those either. And I really try hard to respond to everything. But like if someone just says hi, doesn't give me anything to respond to, not happening. So like, and then other times like someone just way too long, right? like you get this like paragraphs of things and it's like I don't even have time to read this. Like little like answer all the questions that you like did. But replies and like quote to eats, like positive replies and quote to eats like fuck. Like that goes, that goes far, right? Like that's networking. That's like that's hardcore networking.

Like lifting somebody up like shit. I want to give a shout out. I don't know her name. I would have to go search Barrett. Hey Barrett. But I have to find her name on Twitter and what she did. And this is a great example. If you're watching this now in the future and you're like, I wanna do what Michael and Taylor do, how do I get started? I tell you what, tweet thread, all the things you learned in the show. Because someone did that on an episode with me and Danny Thompson. And she did a tweet thread of all the things she learned on our episode and it went fucking viral like a thousand likes a thousand retweets.

And the thing is though is she was just doing it to help people because she thought it was a good piece of content. Literally, if you want to blow up, go to all the top tech people on Twitter and just recap something they've done. Yeah, tag them in it and it will blow up. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, yeah No, that is a huge cheat code and Like the thing is is that like you're doing this thing right and like you're gonna leave you're gonna leave and I mean a you're gonna have stuff to do right like you got your job to do right and then And be you're gonna be like tired because you know you're an introvert right like I'm the same way right like you can be done You're like oh that's fun Like I'm tired like I guess I'm just gonna like stay offline and like do all that stuff But someone someone comes up starts hitting you with a bunch of at's because they're like Summarizing this piece of content that you did you don't have to do it.

Dude. You're you're retweeting that shit all day, right? Like that's it like if you want to get on somebody's timeline just just say what they said like it's not like it's it Sounds so stupid. It sounds so stupid so stupid But just say what they said in a concise way, you know, and then like this is what I learned from this person Right in the book report if we're gonna get really weird. You're right in the book report of Something that was already written. Yeah. Yeah, I School it's a book report except yeah And dude, I mean you're gonna get a huge dopamine hit from that right?

I mean like you're gonna be like Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I do it. That's one of the reasons why I do it I People exhaust me, but I love being able to help people and if people send me good vibes on the internet that it continues to fuel that, continues to fuel that. Yeah, I mean, that's legitimately how I broke into, like kind of broken and networking for myself was, I went to my first conference, it was like in 2013 maybe, so man, almost like 10 years ago now. But yeah, it was at AmberConf in Portland, and I just wanted to go.

Like I'd been following a lot of these people for a really long time, I wanted to go, paid my own way to get up there, go to the conference, didn't know anybody. And I was playing with this new sketch noting thing, this sketch noting technique, just for me. I was like, ah, I'm gonna like do this thing to kind of like, you know, burn some of these concepts into my brain. And just that first one that I did, I was like, oh man, this is shit, but I should probably, I should probably share it, right? Like it's only useful to me if it's in my notebook, but like maybe somebody else will get value out of it.

And shit dude, it was like I got to meet everybody because like you know Everybody that I wanted to meet was talking and so like I taught I do my notes I share them the total garbage But like at the same time like someone else now has a piece of content that like from all of their hard work I'm making that talk that they didn't have to do anything for and then they can share that and then people like Dude programmers love drawings like no matter how bad they are like programmers love drawings and so like I mean, I mean, content literally the guy following me around at bread render Brandon with brand in 78 James quick, Anthony May's and Brandon Bayer all hired him on the spot and I'm a few hundred bucks to record their talk.

So that have content. It's kind of like this is the whole thing that like the whole arc of the things that we want to talk about today is like is just like show people what you're about. like if you're like if you're if you want to be doing more like a camera work or whatever be out and about Pretend to be taking pictures of stuff go to an event I pretend I told here's all right. You want to know fun the fun little thing here here's a hack for you all right now to tell The networking I I love where we're going with this right now and So I think there's a huge business business for this within tech conferences.

But if you want to network in a way to where you do not have to say anything, take your phone, buy a ticket to a conference you always want to go to and go to every session and take pictures and ask that speaker what their cell number is afterwards and send them their pictures. Oh, crazy. That's a hustle. That's a hustle. Now, you could say, I'll charge you, but don't, but don't. Because here's the deal. You do that. You take three pictures for every speaker that you see and you get close to stage and make them good, right? Yeah, yeah. Get a good Android phone, ideally iPhone, ideally new one.

Take some good pictures, send them to those speakers. And here's what happens. One, they know you now. Two, your number is in their phone book and vice versa. Three, you could get paid, because if someone said that, I mean, I was like, hey, I'll send you 75 bucks for like three pictures. And then all of a sudden, you are networking with people by giving them something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, yep. Yeah, that giving something away thing is huge. I mean, it's just like, sketch notes is the same thing for me, right? It was just that kind of like, Hey, like I'm just doing this thing.

Like I appreciate what you did. And I'm going to kind of like in kind respond with like, I don't know, in a sense it is a gift, right? Like, you know, making, reducing someone's content into something that's like edible, edible, I guess. It's digestible, the words you're looking for. It's digestible. I'm obviously thinking about other things right now. I hear you. I hear you. digestible for other people, like turning it into, like turning into this big thing and breaking it down into content for them. Like that's huge, right? And then yeah, like the same thing. It's like you can't take pictures of yourself when you're on stage, right?

And so like, yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah, all that kind of stuff where it's like, like kind of like speaking. We're making conversation right now. And so like, you know, it's definitely a thing, right? I would say what's conferences basically like May, March until October. Yeah. Basically like that is conference season. And I'm heading obviously to one two weeks. And so my brain's always thinking of like people who go to conferences. And I think too, if you have to foot your own bill, like it's tough, right? Like these conferences are not cheap. And you wanna try to get the most out of them.

Yep. And I think for me, I think the two options. I think if you're not a good phone taker, photographer like my dad don't offer to do that. But the other thing is go to sessions, jot down notes, and then go back to Twitter LinkedIn and summarize them on Twitter and LinkedIn and tag the speaker. Those, those are kind of my two, my two suggestions. Yeah, I think that I think that's huge. And, uh, yeah, giving people an opportunity to kind of respect you by like showing them respect is huge. Yeah. Admiration flatter is what I always say when my strategy to DM people. People love to know that you are interested in them.

Yes. And the way you do that is obviously given them props. One more thing on that line, like back to the DM's thing, like kind of like not being too short, not being too long. That is the perfect type of thing to like DM someone about, right? Like, hey, I watched your talk. I loved it. I thought it was amazing. like you're an incredible speaker, like whatever. You start high and then get into like, there was one thing I didn't understand. Do you have like, do you have gonna have like an article or something that could like point me in the right direction? And like asking for a link is great.

There are so many people who have asked me for a link and then I write them a book, right? Because I just feel so good about the fact that I connected with somebody, right? Like ask for something small and like, and you'll be amazed like what you get back sometimes. 100%. We want to give some shout outs to a few people and then and then wrap it up. Chris Jarvis goes dropping cheat codes and the nit comes in and up, down, down, left, right, left by BMA. I wish I knew that because that would have helped me. Jericho absolutely invests in your career is the most important part of what defines your career 100%.

Cheatra, hey I want to give a cheatra shout out. She was recently promoted to dev manager. So cheatra super excited for you in your career and and thankful that could be a part of it. And obviously be friends with you outside of work. Casey comes in, big mistake. I made it hacker house my man. Can there be a lot of people on social, but didn't make any content of what I learned and didn't take pictures. Listen, I'm gonna be honest with you, selfies with people, another great way to do content. It is crazy. It is super cheesy. You know, it's funny, my wife, my wife's a commercial photographer.

And she actually got, she was hired to do an influencer event. event and it was like a bunch of country music stars and like Ashley Furniture is trying to get into the influencer space. So Ashley furniture like I don't know if you know Ashley furniture it's maybe not the best furniture but like they basically set up these things and yeah and basically my wife told me what it was and I said oh that's basically a tech conference like people taking pictures with each other and like in front of things like that's what the tech conferences Casey comes in conferences and events are a great place to make personal content and help other people, giving other people something that may help them.

Agreed. Carla loves it. Barrett goes, best conferences. I have attended the ones I've paid for myself in my own time. I will tell you this. I think there's some gliding here. And this one that I've been really blindfolded lately is not taking advantage of the company dime. So I think so many times, you'll be like, hey, hey, manager, I want to go to the conference. And you're down there and you're like, oh, yeah, it's a free vacation. I'm going to be honest with you. You need to treat every conference like you're paying for it. And, and, and listen, I've, I've, I've been, I, I unfortunately have, have not approached every conference that way, but I'm, I'm getting much more intentional now.

Um, any, any thoughts on that? Oh, sorry. Yeah. I was just agreeing emphatically. I didn't know if you had like an other thought on top of that. No, I completely agree. I think that is an area where I kind of diverged pretty quickly, quickly with a lot of my coworkers is like, you know, they went to a conference and it was kind of like a free vacation, like, you know, away from their family time, you know, like, it just alone. Yeah, and like, and they, and like, I didn't get it. I mean, because like, my dad was a hustler, right? Like, he, like, he immigrated here from, you know, Vietnam, like, he, like, you know, import and export.

Like, he was, the man was always working, right? Yeah. And so, he was like, I didn't understand that these people were like taking this opportunity with all these killer people that they got to meet and like shake their hands and like actually like have a conversation with and like they're just golfing with each other like didn't make any fuck. I thought it was better than not even at the event. Yeah, like just do that at home right like you're just wasting your time and so yeah no I totally agree like like every conference is not a chance for you to hang out with the people you already know like that's that's network building time like you already know those people like and I I'm rude about it too.

I like, I'll tell people like, hey, look, I'm not here for you. Like if you wanna hang on, like, we'll go for a ride. Like me to much people, but like, I'm not just having drinks with you. I have to be admired by you. I mean, you were hustling and, you know, obviously we kind of, which I love it, I loved it. We kind of cultivated a little crowd together and kind of networking at render, but yeah, I mean, it's what you have to do. I think it's incredibly intentional. I will say this, if you're not tired by the end of the day, you're doing it wrong.

They're doing it wrong. All right. So, Chan, this is the last question I asked people because this guidance counselor 2.0. Yeah. Yeah. Guidance counselors in middle school. Guidance counselors in high school. We don't really have them now. They're called therapists now. What advice would you give your younger self? Oh, I career wise. I mean, there's a lot of advice you would probably give outside. But career wise, what would you tell your younger self? To share your work, share your work, like just get the fuck over it. Right? Like, I spent so much time thinking that like my best work was in my head and it's taken me all of my 39 years.

I'm still learning it every day, which is like my worst work in the world is better than the best work in my head. And so like just get it out there, right? You can always iterate on it, right? And like I think it took me a lot of time like to figure this out, right? And like man, I wasted so many hours. Like I mean, I still spend a lot of time doing a talk, right? Like so I spoke at Rinder, I talked to a lot about career and you know, once those videos go live, I definitely like if you like anything that I said here, I kind of go a little bit more like personal, a little bit more depth in that talk.

But like the best things in my life, the things that were those step changes in my career were when I when I sat at that Crossroads of like okay, do I keep this just for me or do I share it right and like it's not you know Nobody bats a thousand right like you know you put something out there and there's duds all the time Host yesterday get like three likes It doesn't unlinked in Yeah, there's some shit nobody's ever going to see, right? But you just never know what that thing's going to be. And every inflection point in my career was directly after that point where I was like, I don't feel great about this, but I should share it.

And when I decided to do that, those were just huge unlocks for me, right? like really set that path but I was gonna like walk for the next like year or next two years or whatever like all this all the good things that have happened to me were because like I wasn't afraid to share something that I thought was kind of shitty. I love that. Alright y'all well that was a blast. Chan stay on real quick as you guys are doing this up but y'all thank you again for hanging out with us please go connect with Chantastic on Twitter, Twitter spaces thanks for hanging out.

We kept a pretty solid crew the entire time, which is great. He's usually like me and one other person and then the other person bales because they're awkward. And then everybody who tuned in today on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, thank you so much. This was a blast. Y'all have a great Wednesday tomorrow morning, unicorn finders, my guys, we're going live, just us three, we're going to chop it up on some hot takes. And it's always a fun one because we just say things that we believe that sometimes are usually wrong. So see you all tomorrow morning, 9 30 a.m. Central. And then Friday, I'm going to be live just me And honestly, I'm probably gonna go into a little bit more about conferences and how to maximize it just because I just don't want you to miss out on a conference and especially because some of y'all can only go to one a year because your company kind of is like just will sponsor you for one a year.

So I really wanna make that count. So that will be me solo show on Friday. So y'all have a great one. Fantastic. Appreciate you, buddy. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes, and I myself rarely finish an entire episode, so I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others, and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it.

Please, like, right now. Unless you're driving, then don't do it. So, thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T. S. and on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.