personal branding with jake and dan

full transcript

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Hey, what's going on podcast listeners very excited to bring another really really cool episode to you again These are with my dear friends Jake and Dan and Raleigh and Tampa I'm really excited about this specific episode. I think more than any other episodes again as always I know I say I'm always excited this specific episode is around personal branding a personal branding has become More of a thing in today's market a lot of people don't know what it is how to do it So Dan and I, Dan, Jake and I rather, had the opportunity to lead a seminar at our VACO conference last fall in Las Vegas around personal branding and we had a ton of great feedback and so this specific episode is gonna be us expanding on kind of what we talked about in Vegas.

I really hope you enjoy this. Any questions, obviously feel free to email me, taylor at VACO.com. I've done a lot more content on my LinkedIn in the last two weeks about the economy right now, how to navigate the economy, trying to break it down and really bite size pieces where people can understand it and it's practical. So go ahead and check out my LinkedIn, connect with me there. If you want to follow me on Twitter at tdesinted E S S E Y N is all my social media handles. Another thing to if you can take time either right now or after you listen to this specific episode to great and review this podcast, that will mean a lot to me.

I know everybody's kind about home right now. So you've slowed down a little bit. So you should have a little bit more time to review it. That would be mean the world because other people will be able to find this podcast, the more people that review it. So please do that. Hope you'll enjoy this podcast for hanging out with me for, you know, a few minutes. Um, and so the big for everybody who's listening, the, the point of this specific episode is, um, around personal branding in the market right now. specifically more for sales people, recruiters, B2B, B2C, just anybody in the sales industry. Jake, Dane, and I led a talk at VACO's company-wide conference in Vegas last year.

I think that was the last time I saw the light of the day, which was nice. And so, we kind of broke it down, what does it look like for personal brand and how do you develop personal brand? And so, That's what this talk is specifically going to be focused on. So guys, thanks again for joining me. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having us. So I guess the first question right now that most people are probably thinking about it's like, all right, I haven't developed my personal brand now. Is there even a point for me to even develop a personal brand where when there's a downturn?

So Dan, I'm going to let you kick off this question, what kind of your thoughts of somebody who's having that thought right now? Yeah, there's a common adage that I was just thinking when you were talking, it was like when was the best time to plant a tree? And it was 20 years ago. It's like, what's the second, what's the second best time to plant a tree today? Right? So when was the best time to create a brand or an image for yourself a while ago, but when's the next best time right now? Um, I think it's important to do a couple of things. I think number one is important to let people know what you're there for and how you're able to help people, right?

This is an economy where people are gonna be really relying on each other, you know, I think we've seen a lot of people really come together. And this is an opportunity for yourself, right? This opportunity to put your knowledge out there, your connections, your relationships out there. You have to start somewhere. And today is no worse or better day than a year ago. You know, right now everybody can share tidbits of information on the job search, on resumes, on local businesses that might need help, whatever it might be, you're a subject matter expert on your life and your surroundings. So start to put that information out there.

The longer you wait, the more other people are just gonna fill that gap or fill that void. You have a voice, you have relationships, you have knowledge, you share it now. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Jake, do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think that if you, depending on your message that you're trying to send to, I mean, you could be a day changer, month changer, a life changer for someone, just depending on what content you're putting out there right now, too. If you're bringing some sort of hope or some good, some sort of good news about whether different hiring or better practices or just team dynamics in general, it could lighten someone's day up from an otherwise dark time.

So right now, you don't know who you're influencing. And even if it's just one or two people today, it might be exactly what they need, right? So yeah, absolutely. So a lot of people are like, well, what do I post? You know, again, I'm going to take it from the recruiting side of things. Like, I don't know. Like, what do I need to say? Like, where should I start? And I think, you know, I'll go and start this one. I think my thing is, and I'm going to get Gary Vayner Chuck a shot here because that's all I pretty much listened to is you just have to document, right?

I mean, you know, I put a post up two days ago about finding someone job who was laid off his last day was the 31st at his job and I was able to kind of flip it around and get him an opportunity where he's only out of work for a few days. You know I didn't think anything of it and to be quite frank that that post now for me at least has gone viral right I had 23,000 views on it I've had over 300 likes and and honestly for me like I didn't think anything of it And you just don't, but again, all I was doing was documenting, right?

And so that's kind of my thing is, is like, if you're in sales, no matter what industry, like I would just talk about your day and things that could either be a positive or be educational. So I don't know if you all had any thoughts on that. No, you're Jackie, right, Taylor? I would take that even further and talk about wins. about things that are happening around you that are positive, right? And this day, you know, in age that we're in over the last couple of weeks, we've seen a lot of negativity. There's a lot of negativity that's bet, you know, portrayed across all media platforms.

And so anything that you can do to provide some positive hope or, hey, this is something that, you know, we've seen that works, right? Or anything that you can do, we're in a very unique position where we talk to both clients that are hiring or unfortunately letting people go. And we talk to candidates that are either being hired or being let go or going through the interview process and what are we learning? How are things changing? Any sort of information or tidbit that you think is common sense, maybe common sense to a recruiter, maybe common sense to somebody that works in our business, but may not be common sense to everybody else.

There's a bunch of people that are unfortunately going to be looking for their first job in maybe 15 years, 20 years, and how has that changed? But anything that you can do to share your breadth and wealth of knowledge is great. But be yourself. I think that that's probably the thing that I always, you know, talk with and whenever we talk about personal branding is be yourself. Be the person that you are. Don't try to emulate somebody else. Don't try to be somebody else. You are the expert on yourself. So what are things that you're passionate about that you're going to care about? For instance, one of the things that I've been doing this past, you know, week or week and a half, I'm a big fan of South Tampa, the community that I live in.

And so every day I'm shouting out a local business that needs help, right? Because those are things that I care about. Those are places that I go and I wanna be able to share that with other people. Also, I found that baby Yoda, like four months ago, was like super cute and like people, people love me, and they would like stuff. So like now I'm creating memes and trying to add some like levity to everything, right? So be yourself, be who you are. Don't try to emulate somebody else, but you know, if you think that you know something that somebody else doesn't or if something is very common in your daily world, share that, right?

You just never know who it might affect. Absolutely, Jake, you have more thoughts on that? Dan just crushed that answer. I mean, all I would say is that it's, you know, a little bit easier to be yourself and mean life when you're as clever and awesome as Dan is, you know. I agree. But yeah, I completely agree. I mean, from a place of authenticity is really where you kind of make real connections, right? And if you, you can have the option, especially in the recruiter's seat to be, you know, transactional salesy and really take advantage in a bad way of these kind of situations, or you can be community minded and people minded first.

And finally, just to pour back in, right? Use your platform. You talk to more people than anyone else probably does on a one-on-one basis for jobs and have for anything and have more influence than you think, you know, what are you doing with it, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, from the recruiting side of things, I mean, you know, with our quote unquote metrics here at VACO, I mean, you need to meet what 10 to 15 new people a week. And for, you know, many people don't realize kind of what our, really what our jobs are, right? I mean, a lot of people are like, do you ever work, right?

You're always going to lunches and things. And I think, I think to people listening to this podcast. I think we're up to three listeners now after Dan gave a shout out on Twitter this morning. But if you run the numbers, if you run the numbers because I'm bad at math, let's just say an average of 10 people a week, that's 520 new people that you have met in a year. Extrapolate that out, right? So I've been a national for six years. I've met over 3,000 engineers or tech folks. And then Dan, you're kind of at that same level as well. And Jake, I think you meet double the amount of people a week, right?

And so I think if you're in the recruiting seat, you have to find a way where you can funnel your brand across the board, right? Because my biggest thing I tell my team is that working with the recruiter a lot of times is like going to a doctor. Like you really don't want to. And the only time that you actually, really sometimes you go to the doctor is if something's wrong, right? And so with us, is you have to be top of mind, everywhere because there is a gazillion recruiters out there, right? And the only way your voice is going to stick through and the only way that they're going to reach out to you is if you constantly are at the top of their LinkedIn feed or Twitter feed or Facebook feed.

And listen, it is a lot. It is a lot of places the post, right? What are my coworkers the other day clicked on? You know, a thing I have my email signature that shows everything that I have going on. And she goes, I don't know how you keep up with this stuff, right? I mean, it takes time, but in my opinion, I think you can meet less people and drive more social media and actually still come out on top. So I wanted to hear y'all's thoughts on that. I'll take that one. What community involvement and what digital branding has done for me has allowed me to get into rooms and conversations that frankly I would not have had any business being in previously, from the fact of, hey, this might be an interesting share if I talk to Jake, you know, because of the network or the newsletter or the meetups that I'm running, you know, and that's been really fun to be able to positively use that influence now that it's been built over the last four or five years here locally.

And if you don't take the time to do it at any point in time, like this Dan was saying, you know, if you don't plant the tree now, you know, you're not going to have a very a tall tree to look from when you climb up it, right? So as you are thinking about doing the hard things now, it just makes your life so much easier later to where you can really focus on the stuff that you really enjoy doing. I love meeting people just for the people, not for the sales and not for the recruiting side necessarily. It's because people are awesome. And if you can have to, for lack of better phrase, meet fewer people that are of the same mindset that you are because of that reach that you're now enabled from the hard work you did years ago, then awesome.

Right? Your job just becomes that much more enjoyable. Yeah, absolutely. Daniel, I mean, I don't have a lot to add. I mean, you guys both really, you know, hit the nail on the head. And I think it goes back to what we were just talking about. And in terms of being authentically yourself and being who you are. And people are going to be, you know, attracted to certain types of people. But the more that they find the value and who you are. And it's not just about how many people do you know in the community or this or that. It's do I feel like I can trust this person and we'd go back to the podcast yesterday.

And if you didn't listen to it, listen to that. It's positive one, listen to that one, come back to this one, about being your agent for you. You want somebody that is plugged into the community, plugged into the things that you're interested in and things that you're passionate about, because those are the people that are gonna help you. And, you know, when we do have a slew of recruiters, I think there's 84 IT recruiting firms in the Tampa Bay area, what's gonna separate, you know, one person from another, and that's strictly gonna be, I feel like I can trust this person, and this person is putting themselves in a position to best help me, right?

Because if you consider yourself a.net developer, then you put your resume out on, indeed, you're gonna probably get 150 phone calls in your first day, right? And so how do you determine, you know, who's phone call should I have, you know, who's worth my time because a lot of people want you to hop onto a Zoom or a teams meeting or go into the office. And so if you're going to invest that amount of time, you want to make sure that you're investing it in the best way. And the best way that you can do that is by continuing to put your name out there so people connect it, right?

It's the same on the sales side, right? I tell my sales team all the time when you're posting, it's not just about sharing that information is my, I mean, it is, but it's also about name recognition, right? and people saying, hey, I feel like I can trust Dan over at Vaco because he's plugged in the community, understands what we're doing, understands what the market is here, that this meeting is gonna be worth my time. So the more information that you can put out, the better name you can build for yourself as somebody that understands the market, then people are gonna be attracted to you, companies are gonna be attracted to you, and you're just gonna be able to grow, you know, your book of business, but ultimately like Jake said, just grow your excitement factor of going into work and being passionate about the work that you do.

And connecting to those right people or make your day enjoyable every day? Absolutely. And I shared this when we were all in Vegas, leading up sessions. I personally had a really crashed and burned from a mental perspective at the end of 2018 to be totally frank, being clinically depressed for the first time in my entire life. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was running so hot at work and trying to meet so many people and trying to balance, you know, not only work relationships and management team with 13 people, but also, you know, you know, my home life and, and, and, you know, my marriage and building that relationship with my wife that just all came tumbling down.

And so I personally, for those of you listening to this podcast that, you know, you're like, man, like the thought of like, you know, meeting all these people, like it's stressing me out, like I will tell you if you can pivot and put about content, like really pivoting and putting out content and mental side of things. It has just absolutely allowed me to reach more people and not have to have the strain of, you know, obviously meeting all these people every single week. So for those introverts who are listening to this, who are still in sales, social media is another way where you can increase your brand and increase recognition and not have to put a strain, you know, on yourself personally.

That's a really, really great perspective on it too, especially coming from introvert and extrovert mindset too. I mean, doesn't mean you care about people any less or differently. It's just more about how do you find your niche to do what you do best? How do you find your platform? Yeah, I mean, we talked about this when we were in Vegas and you don't have to be the type of guy or gal that puts out a video every day or a long exposé or all of these articles and everything else. Do what you feel comfortable and do what you're good at. You know, challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone.

But if you're a great writer, if you're great at podcasting, if you're great at writing jokes, do all of those things, do what you do best. Just because Gary Vee does something really well, or just because, you know, a bunch of LinkedIn influencers do things really well, doesn't mean that you have to be that person. Be who you are. Be again, unapologetically you. And people are going to be attracted. And then they're gonna listen to that because it comes from a place of being real rather than a place of being fake and just trying to be another influencer or just another person that is following the same, LinkedIn guidelines of how to build your social media following, it's just, let's be it.

Yeah, absolutely. So I know we're talking about all these things and why brand and why it's important. So let's talk about kind of what all of us do individually, because I'm sure people are like, all right, I'm 20 minutes in now. So what do y'all do? Like give me some specifics on what I can like maybe look into. So Jake, I'm gonna let you start this one and then Dan and then I'll finish it up. So Jake, take it away, man. Sure, yeah. I'll send in a little bit of an interesting predicament right now because the majority of influencing that I do is through creating face-to-face community for people who are otherwise out digitally, right?

So I've run quite a few meetups here. My group downtown tech e-c is over 5,000 members just in the Raleigh-Durham area, and we do three meetups monthly. We also do educational series, where we pull in panels from different company leaders to architects on anything from choosing a tech stack to getting funding, to working with recruiters, and to build these scalable products. It's been an interesting pivot over the last couple of weeks. We've been not scrambling, but more on the lines of how do we be more strategic with supporting our community that we've created face to face in this now new, even more digital world than it was before.

It's been fun to share some of the stories that people are doing. started out very light, you know, before layup started to happen, of just, hey, here's a, you know, funny hat day on our video chat or our office happy hour. We now get over zoom, you know, when able to kind of share some of that. And now that we're getting more serious to how are we as a group helping keep kids fed, you know, that have been mostly of most of their meals come from the public school system that they can't go to now, you know, and they're, you know, to more of the serious issues.

But so as far as digital content right now, this is that my brand is face to face community. So from a pivot, we, we always have to try to be ahead of the curve, right? So right now, we're kind of resting in the fact that we build a lot of personal relationships that allow digital ones to be a lot easier. For sure. And Jake, talk, talk about, so you came to talk about your background coming from, so you were actually the original adopter or floral shirts at Trader Joe's. So talk about your transition from Trader Joe's in the recruiting and then what clicked with you To like I mean, I mean talk about your meetups that you created right?

I mean like what clicked for you to make you realize that hey, this is what I need to do to increase my brand Yeah, so I actually I was one of the the OGs that trader chose right I'd open up stores and create create that community within the store and with customers. I actually started the first social media page that Trader Joe's ever had. That's why I didn't know that. Yeah, and it was VM-enly shut down by the owners after six months because they were like, we're a privately held company, don't do that. And now they have their own that are hundreds of thousands of followers, right?

Ten years. But basically I got kind of stuck in those walls of those stores. I was like, I got to bringing in more communities. And I was introduced to a platform of recruiting through VACO and have the ability to, wow, we can find a broader group of people with a common thread going through technology. So I was looking for a way to connect more people frequently that diversified their skill sets and their personalities. And so I made the bar kind of low that you just had to be in tech industry as a doer to be our groups, not as a salesperson, but as a doer.

And we found a way to connect people through funding, through the startup ecosystem here, through product development and diversifying their skill sets. Our goal was always when we started down to untekis was if we could introduce you to a technical co-founder, an IP lawyer, and UX designer, and funding all in one meeting, then we've done our job. So we've actually helped quite a few companies spin out. And that's just been a byproduct of the platform that they could have allowed me to have, because that just happens to benefit just technical recruiting in general, just immersing into that scene. So now I sit on the board of multiple startups here and multiple tech-driven nonprofits and helping them with fundraising and events and connectivity.

It's been a really cool ride. That was my extroverted version, Nick. I'm not necessarily good at shooting out pre-planned content and how you do so well. you can do a Tuesday Tays career advice post. And it actually means something. And you can send one of those out. I'm like, dang, I mean, I feel like I knew something that stuff, but I would have never been able to do it to a post. So like I have to be at an event and do a 12 second FaceTime video or a selfie video. And be like, yo, I'm out here. Come have a beer with me face to face.

Absolutely. You know, it's just different trends and tracks for each personality, which is just so bad. For sure. Dan, go ahead, man. Take it away. What, I guess, tell us about everything you do so well. It's a longer list than that, Dan. Come on, man. Yeah. So I think we're having a little difficulties. So I will go ahead and take this away while Daniel figures out his mic situation. But so kind of what I do specifically is I focus, you know, I kind of go off the Gary Vaynerchuk Monter, right? I mean, a lot of what I do is specifically kind of around what he has done, and I've kind of just tailored to my own kind of way of doing things.

And so, you know, the first thing I've rolled out is my text messaging platform. So, I mean, the thing I do with my text messaging platform is, you know, I realize that texting is going to be the new email so I wanted to go ahead and start getting people on it. I mean I have 60 people on it right now and kind of three different channels and so you know I've started that up. I actually copied Jake and I created my own meetup. It's called Lunch It as in for information technology that I'm not really good at puns but that's about as close as I can really do.

That's how it's going. Yeah. So we have, hey, Dan, it's good to have you back, buddy. And so basically, so I've had two successful lunch, you know, lunch IT meetups January, February until, you know, coronavirus hit. But, you know, I took Jake's thing and kind of made it a lot more small and intimate, right? So I have a guys group that I get together and have lunch with once a month. We just kind of talk with her, right, from politics to fantasy football to, you know, marriage stuff. And I was like, man, what if I can get software developers on a more intimate basis that can have intentional conversations, right?

I think a lot of times with meetups right now, it's, hey, I'm going to show up at a meetup. I'm going to have pizza. I'm going to listen to the presentation. I'm going to look at PowerPoint slides and I'm going to leave, right? And so there's not really any networking. And so I've started that up. I really saw an opportunity to speak at Code Conferences, so how to opportunity to speak at probably 15 to 20 Code Conferences over the last two or three years, which has been amazing and meeting really top notch engineers from all across the country, which has been incredibly just an amazing experience, had the opportunity to help organize some meetups in Nashville, specifically the .NET user group, I was VP of for two years and so.

And then also I put stuff out on all forms of social media with video and written content. For those of you who think you're terrible at writing, I'm really bad at writing. My team actually makes fun of me because I'm so bad with words sometimes. But I think you just have to start putting it out. I think it's what, you know, Jake and Dan said earlier, you just never know who you're going to impact based off one single post. And that kind of came from my background with my dad being the restaurant industry for 25 years and quitting his job and not knowing where to start.

And so it's like, that kind of got me going in the regards to man, what if I can just extrapolate this out across all forms of social. So in a nutshell, that's kind of what I do from a branding perspective. And then also floral shirts and my thing as well, for those of you who do not know me, I have about 25 floral shirts and looking to add some more here in the next few weeks. So, all that being said, Dan, where are you going? I'm just going to wear them around my house. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, more of a damage.

So Dan, take the way, man. Tell us, tell all the listeners kind of what, what you do from a brand new perspective and, and your thought process behind that. Yeah, I would, I would say a couple of things in all of it is, was never intentional. It just kind of ended up that way. I would say number one is they try to add some, we talked about it before some levity to LinkedIn. I think that LinkedIn has become far too, and I don't even call it professional, it's become far too about how businessy can I one up your other comment that's on LinkedIn, right? Correct.

Or what can I do to make sure that nothing that ever happens like in an actual business world where people talk about like other things in their life ever happen on LinkedIn, it's like let's figure out a way to completely isolate the actual world and only talk about the business. It's like, that's not what you do in the business world. But anyway, so try to add some jokes, memes, videos, whatever. At the end of the day, you just never know who it's gonna impact. I try to do a bunch of different things. But I would say for me, you guys do meet up groups a little bit better than I do.

What I found for me is one of the things that I'm very passionate about is education and technology and merging. Because Tampa's a very growing city, but we still have a really big disconnect between a lot of the hiring managers and CEOs that run the companies that hire here, as well as HR with what we're actually dealing with. So I'm trying to fuse the college student, the high school students, the trade schools, to be able to get afforded opportunities. And so what can I do? It's try to modernize our tech education. So I'm involved, I'm the chairperson of all IT education curriculum for Hillsborough County Public Schools, which is where Tampa is.

I serve on the board for the Cybersecurity Certificate program at the University of South Florida. And I serve on the board of IT Education for Hillsborough kind of community college. Like I didn't grow up in Hillsborough, I didn't go to school, high school or college or community college here. But what I found is that if we can create an environment that really fosters and focuses on keeping people here in the Tampa area, rather than moving no offense to Raleigh or Nashville or Phoenix or Austin or Boston or like places that are doing a better job, right? So, you know, from there, it's now working with companies that are my clients on what do internship programs or shadow programs or entry level jobs look like.

Instead of always hiring mid and senior level people, what can we do that, you know, if we're gonna create better technology education here in Tampa, then we're gonna put out better students that are better able to help you. And selfishly, that helps build a better ecosystem that can hopefully grow my business, but more importantly, it helps Tampa grow, right? And I don't have any desire to leave Tampa in the immediate future. So what can I do to help foster growth, keep talent here? And those are things that I'm passionate about and I've been very fortunate that I've been able to serve in that capacity and it's worked for me.

So compared to some of the downtown techies or some of the meetup groups that you guys are doing, you guys have met some awesome people. I've been able to meet some awesome people my way, but I think the biggest lesson that you can learn there's no one way to do it to be able to be successful. It's just where we found our homes and things that we're passionate about. And like obviously this is the underlying and overarching theme of this whole discussion is do what you are interested in and passionate about and the business will follow out. Man, that's so good. That's so good, go ahead, Jack.

That's that I read this on a Snapple Cash like, Eight years ago, so you're welcome, but it says it said don't chase money provide value money will chase you That was on a sample bottle that was actually a Snapple is like a little Confucius of our time Snapple exactly we are and Yeah for real it'll even in just But yeah, that's something that I've quoted many times. Now I haven't always been honest on where I found it, like I am right now, or as a laberniv, anyway. And that's something that's streaming right now. I mean, if you're just creating some sort of value by just doing what you love being authentic, you know, giving of yourself towards people and finding a way to make just your community in the world better place, then everything else kind of just falls into place.

Just be, you know, like you gotta keep pressing play and you gotta, you know, do the hard work at the same time. But if you're thinking about it, simply just to get another placement or close another deal, you know, it just shows. And you'll burn out a lot faster than if you're just being a general good person that has to be excellent at what you do. I totally agree. I mean, I think for those of you who are listening who are trying to figure out, like, man, where do I get started? I think figure out what your passions are, right? I mean, I know there's some people out there that are honestly just talking about their favorite beer.

And, you know, or talking about their favorite wine. I mean, it doesn't, you don't always have to think in the box, like, oh man, like, is this business related? Like, like, oh, this is box on the head. Listen, there's some good box wine out there. That boater box. There's no there's no Joe's. Stop, stop wine. That is a whole another episode we can get into wine. I know that would be a good conversation. But I think the big thing is it's like, you know, for me, I, so like with the floral shirts, right? You know, people were like, where did the floral shirt thing come from?

I was going to these tech conferences and every single software developer was wearing a black t-shirt. I mean, and so I was like, all right, how can I stand out and develop a name for myself? And so people know who I am. And after a year on the quote unquote speaker circuit, AKA just a handful of conferences in the Southeast of year, I started to be known as the Flawell shirt guy. You know, I think Jake, I think, you know, I ran in a Tracy at All Things Open in Columbia, South Carolina and she recognized me from my floral shirts. And I had never met her before, right?

And so, you know, it doesn't have to be this groundbreaking, like, you know, super cutting edge, like business idea, like you could just be wearing different shirts. I mean, that's literally it. And so, for those of you who are listening, you know, and you hear Jake talking about creating meetups and you hear Dan volunteering for boards You're like, I don't have time for boards, you know, volunteer on boards. I don't have time to create meetups. Maybe wear a different style of shirt, right? I mean, you don't have to over engineer, no pun intended, kind of the way you do personal branding. I don't want to overshadow that it takes time, right?

You have to put in a concerted effort and we're all busy. We all have a lot of other things to do, but you have to make time. Taylor, you do it every day with your LinkedIn post, right? You take some time. You may never, you know, you may write a hundred of them and nobody will respond, but your 101st one, people might, you'll be like, wow, that really spoke to me or that meant a lot to me, right? So a couple of things that I've learned, you know, having a podcast outside of work and then doing stuff with work is number one is consistency. And number two is it has to be purpose driven, right?

You have to dedicate the time. You have to put forth the effort to do it. And it's okay to try and fail a bunch of times to figure out what works for you. It may be floral shirts and it may not be. Don't be a floral shirt person. Or don't wear a floral shirt and think that that's your identity if that's not who you are. Be who you are, find what that is. And don't let somebody else dictate who you are. There's gonna be a group for you. there's gonna be people that listen and follow because that's who you are. And if you continue to try to follow somebody else or if you're like, hey, like that person's wearing, you know, Steve Jobs wore a turtleneck every day.

Therefore I need to wear a turtleneck every day. It's like, no, like if that's not who you are then don't be that, right? Yeah. I literally, yeah, you're laying in Florida. It doesn't have to happen. Cut the sleeves off at least, right? So, but you know, it's gonna take time. Like you're not gonna have time. That's the point. The point is for you to make the time. And if you don't make the time, you're never gonna create a brand. It's like, I wanna create a company, but I don't have time to create a company. Well, it's like, okay, well, then you're never gonna create that company, right?

It's like with my podcast, right? It's like, okay, well, we wanna increase listeners, what are we gonna do? Well, we have to put out good content. Well, what's good content? Asking people, researching, if we want people to interview, taking that time, right? I mean, to create a two-hour podcast probably takes 10, 12 hours worth of work, in terms of just arranging everything and everything else. So like take that time and if you're not going to do it, then don't get mad at other people that do take time to do it. 100%. I love that. I think, I think that I think we should end on that.

I think that was very good. Well, boys, I mean, do you have any other last final thoughts on kind of personal brain right now? I just just want one, one for me on the, uh, when you're, when you're just getting started and you don't really, you don't know the content, or you don't know what your voice is yet. It's okay to... Oh, Jake, I think we lost the name. And I thought, say that one more time you cut out. It's okay to follow and comment and share people that you admire or agree with on those other social media platforms. That's such a great way for you to get some lower level recognition, especially if it's people that you ultimately want to follow you as well.

You can find some like-minded people if you see, Gary Vee for example, I mean everybody likes that stuff I guess but if you find if you find someone that's also commenting and you reply right below Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Here's what I found with this isn't this, you know It's just a good starting point a low hang fruit But you know won't put you as out there as doing a podcast day one, you know for a video cast day one Yeah, I think that's so true. I mean that's pretty much all I do on Twitter people like I don't know how to do Twitter I don't know how to tweet like I never I never really do a bunch of tweets.

I just retweet everybody. I mean, it doesn't, you don't have to always come up with your own content. I mean, at the end of the day, everything's recycled anyways. I'm recycling Gary Banderchuk stuff, right? I mean, everything is kind of it's, you know, Dan's recycling baby Yoda. Like what we're doing is not necessarily original, but what we're doing is being consistent and we're just tailoring it to us. And so don't feel like, I don't know what to post on Twitter. I don't know what to post on LinkedIn. Just start sharing people stuff and going, I agree or this is good stuff, check out this person because then that'll obviously start to give you street cred with all these other individuals that you're sharing their posts for.

Well, and I would say on top of that, like you don't know what you're gonna share and that's okay, I have not flexing on anybody but I've got a podcast that has 25 to 40,000 listens a week and 7,000 Twitter followers. And I still don't know what I'm doing, but people have found, because a lot of what I put out there is just my thoughts, right? A lot of it's about the Florida Gators, but a lot of it is just my thoughts on wine, politics, economics, like nonsense, right? So like people will find value in, people go and seek out value. And so whether you think what you have is gonna change the world or not, it doesn't matter.

It couldn't potentially, is this a thought that I think is worth putting out there, right? Because you never know who that might affect. You never know who might retweet it or like it or share it or comment or whatever it might be. You're not trying to communicate to 7 billion people. Put your thoughts out there. And people will find, you know, the people that want to find them and that you need to share that content with will find them. How do you percent? No, I totally agree. That's such good stuff. That's such good stuff. Well guys, thanks again for hanging out. You know, love you all dearly.

Stay safe. And maybe we should do this again. I think we may be on some. Sounds good, man. Appreciate you. Thanks guys. Thanks guys. Bye. All right. What's going on, podcast listeners? Really excited to bring another episode to you all. I hope you are enjoying these episodes to get you through your quarantine time at home. And also, I really hope that you can use these specific episodes as a tool for you to navigate the job search right now if you are really on the job search. So I really ask right now, if you can take a few moments, either after or before you listen to rate and review, my podcast, this will allow it to be more discoverable to others.

And so others can use it as a tool during this time, really of need for obviously many individuals across the country. So please go ahead and take a listen. I hope you enjoy. My dear friends, Jake and Dan, we break down the economy, the job search, how to differentiate yourself, how to work with your recruiters. We kind of cover a lot here. It's more of a general type of podcast. I hope you all enjoy. As always, if you need anything, feel free to shoot me an email, Taylor at vaco.com. And if you need to follow me on social media, which I really think you need to, my social me to handle on Instagram, Twitter is at T D S N T D E S S E Y N.

Uh, definitely follow me on LinkedIn. I'm putting out a ton more videos. I'm putting out a ton more video content and uploading it to my YouTube. So check out my YouTube channel and hope you all enjoy this podcast.