Building a Thriving Workforce Through Part-Time Work

Lions & Tigers Founder, Brea Starmer, sat down recently with Adam Peddicord Founder of Customer Success by Design to talk about the future of work.  They touch on topics ranging from the maternal drain happening in the workforce today to key strategies that companies can think about as they look to the future and search for ways to build a thriving workforce. Below are video clips of just some of the things Brea and Adam discuss:

• Workforce trends today and the maternal drain
• Key themes and strategies for companies to think about
• How do you find a particular skill/talent?
• Understanding the value of PT vs FTE (“building your pit crew of skills”)
• Which skills are needed most right now?
• How do you measure success with part-time work?
• How best to present yourself and how do you find these opportunities as talent?
• How do you become flexible?
• How do you find connections as a part-time consultant?
• What does the future of work look like 5 years from now?

Watch the full video recording below:

0:01
Good day everyone and welcome to another episode of customer success by design live. I’m your host, Adam pedicured. I’m very excited today to have lions and tigers founder and president Bria Starmer on with me today because this topic is all about. It’s you. It’s how you build your business. And I think it’s so relevant to what’s going on in the marketplace today. I’m just so excited to have you here. Thank you for being here today. Hey, Adam. And and the topic just for everyone is we’re going to talk about building a thriving workforce workforce through part time, labor. And I think that’s super relevant today, just because, frankly, there is a pandemic, and everybody’s trying to juggle this work life balance thing, and it’s hard. And I think the workforce is changing, and I think you have dialed into something that’s probably going to be I need to figure out another way of saying the new norm. How about just normal? Do we even say that anymore?

0:56
Normal? Yeah, the new normal? Yeah, right. Like, it’s just like it is what it is.

1:00
There you go. So before we get digging into this conversation, just some basic blocking and tackling for everybody who’s joining us today. A reminder, this is a live stream, and we want to hear from you. So please feel free to drop in your questions or Bri awry in the chat boxes that you’re engaging with this live stream and as they pop in, I’ll make sure to float them up to us to address during the conversation. If for whatever reason we don’t get to your question during this live stream event. I’ll make sure that we follow up via email afterwards. And this live stream event will be recorded and available on my website as well as my YouTube channel. And finally, love to hear your comments and feedback whenever you provide them feel free to send them to info at CS by design calm. My name is Adam paracord. I’m the founder of customer success by design. This is a small boutique agency focused on helping organizations increase and grow their customer retention, loyalty and satisfaction efforts. I’ve been doing this for various b2b and b2c organizations for the past 15 plus years. I’m my volunteer activities include being a community emergency response team member, and I’m also a US Army combat veteran. As I mentioned earlier, my very special guest star today is the one and only Bria Starmer. He is the founder of lions and tigers, a marketing and strategy consulting agency building a bridge to the future of work. She has worked on her work has been featured on King five Puget Sound Business Journal and geek wires geek of the week, which is really cool. I want to be a GEEK OF THE WEEK does that come with a shirt? Do you get a shirt for being?

2:36
I wish just web traffic and ego validation.

2:43
A shirt for that she was also WSU’s Eighth female student body president and congratulations she’s expecting her third child any day now.

2:53
Yes, we should forewarn everyone I mean, you know, hopefully won’t happen during the next hour. But hopefully about

3:02
that would that would be quite the livestream event to just say, I have to excuse myself right now. Well, I’m really excited to hear today, because for our data leaping off point, I thought this might be an interesting place to start. So this was from the US Census study back in 2018, that looked at the percentage of people who are working part time and the reasons why. So specifically looking at the left female breakdown it it really just kind of spoke to me from the fact of women who women are just really carrying the brunt of this. And that there to me, it speaks to that that just leaves this massive talent pool that’s under it’s underutilized out there. And it’s really like a challenge for businesses to figure out how can they tap into that. So I don’t know if you are going down your journey of building out your business. This was something that was relevant to you, or you think it’s still relevant today. But I thought it might be an interesting leaping off point for us to start our conversation.

4:09
Yeah, I mean, I study a lot, the trends and and we hear about this term, if anyone’s, you know, sort of keyed into this theme. It’s called the maternal drain. And it’s this idea that we’re losing not only, you know, working women, but that women in the workforce are being set back and the projections are nearly a decade’s worth of progress in terms of pay and equity, etc. Forecasts look like it’ll take us 200 years to catch up with our male counterparts, our white male counterparts. And so, yeah, this is certainly a motivate motivating statistic to look at. And if you think about some of the reasons why, I mean, and we’re filming this, of course, in the middle of a pandemic, and many of us many of the people at my company included are homeschooling children, or their childcare options have been limited. And so the realities here for women are particularly acute. But really this is a this is a societal issue and a workforce issue of how do we unlock half or 51% of our workforce that could be contributing to our growth, our GDP.

5:21
So I would love to dig into that with you. Because my, my personal family follows definitely into this bucket. You know, we have, we have two working adults, yet, we also have both our kids having to be homeschooled now full time due to the pandemic. So we’ve been trying to do this who’s on who’s off thing. And unfortunately, it’s just more and more that my wife has been on. So therefore, her she’s the one making the sacrifices in the career. So it forces me to think through and this is why I was so excited to talk to you about like, okay, from a business perspective, a lot of times I just think about it as it’s just a math problem, like how can I? How can I create some of this space to find this talent? Who maybe could only work for a little bit to do this thing? How did you kind of construct that journey without giving away your secret sauce? Because I know, I know, I want to be conscious of that. But like, how did you construct that structure for your business? And how would you kind of coach anybody else out there who’s in leadership? to kind of think that through?

6:22
Hmm. I? Well, first of all, I am very happy to give away our secret sauce like to me, I have come up with the most obvious business of all time, I’ve been able to part time work. And so yes, there is some innovation in terms of how we think about this and apply this to the workforce of the future. Because we’re really at the convergence of a couple of themes. One is the rise of the gig economy and the move towards freelance, we see predictions like more than half of Americans within the next five years will be freelance half half of Americans, we see this maternal drain happening, and particularly women dropping out to take care of children primarily, there are many other reasons that people drop out of the traditional workforce. But we see that as one main driver, and then workplace health, like just the kind of mental challenges that people are having mental and emotional challenges of showing up at work at some of the exclusion that’s happening. And of course, all the layoffs like and, and insecurity in the job force that all these trends have come together to really build a vulnerable system that we’re seeing today. And so you asked where this came from, for me. And so out of you, I’d love to say that when I started this thing, I could have predicted the future. I don’t think anyone probably could have predicted 2020. But for me, what happened was, I was working at a startup in Seattle, a very big, well funded startup. And they went through a round of layoffs, and they laid off 20% of the company. And when that happened, I agreed with it, because it sounds from a business perspective. But I was seven months pregnant when that happened. And so I yeah, I personally faced a bunch of discrimination went on a bunch of job interviews. And, yeah, let’s just say that there was a, there was a lot of prejudice about my ability to achieve at work, while seven months pregnant. And so I was pretty desperate. And the only thing that I could do was freelance, like, become a consultant is, you know, what I, what I was able to do, and what I found in doing that was that the lifestyle that I was able to kind of craft for myself, was perfect for what I needed when my baby was really little and needed that kind of flexibility in my life. And so as I did that, for a couple of years, I started to realize how much it was unlocking in me, not only was I better performing, in fact, because I had gone through this motherhood journey and felt like I was actually smarter and more productive than I was pre baby. But I also felt like, you know, a bunch of my friends were like, how are you doing this, I just want to work 10 hours a week and write blog posts, and I was like, you should be able to do that. And so, so we’ve just enabled a business that, that that can broker, those kinds of those kinds of interactions. And then we teach people how to do that along the way, both organizations and consultants, we come in the middle, and we build those bridges.

9:10
I very much respect your story and your journey. And it’s, I just think it’s so powerful. And the thing that makes me wonder is okay, to your point, there’s all these converging themes right now. And I think work is gonna look vastly different in the next five years. So if you if you were to sit down with a bunch of like, senior level leaders for larger, larger kind of organizations that have been around the block for a while, who are probably more, not hesitant, but maybe they need to think it through a little bit more, what would be the key themes that you would say, look, I mean, you got to be thinking about it this way, and here’s the value that you would get from it because I’m, I mean, I’m sure you’ve experienced this as well, too. There’s just a ton of bias out there. I think in habits around way, things have always been done. And this just seems to me like a point of inflection where we can now view at things, how they could be done, and could be done better.

10:11
I spent a lot of time with big brands, we spent a lot of time in tech and with, with large companies that have a lot of resources, and then also some other companies that are a little bit more agile. And there’s two really strategies to think about this from a workforce development perspective. And by the I love the role that HR is now playing. I mean, 2020 is the year of HR. But so there’s two ways to think about this. Certainly, there’s a call to brands to be very value centric. Right now everyone’s trying to go back to what are their values of inclusion, etc. So there’s there’s sort of this, this calling by both the market in terms of how people are spending money, but also staff and how in who staff wants to work for. So there’s two ways to think about this. One is offense and defense. So, from an offense perspective, you’re certainly thinking about employee retention. Because you know, the cost of replacing or replacing an employee can be upwards of $150,000 per employee that you lose, certainly by the time you have to recruit someone and new, do the training, etc. So retention is a really important idea. Also, offense wise, is you know, is your product in market using this values framework? And are your people believing in what you’re selling like there’s there can be a cognitive disconnect between what the brand is saying and bringing to market and then how they’re treating their staff. And then from a defense perspective, it’s really about boxing out competitors, it’s about seeing it in a place of, of competitive advantage. And so sometimes what you need tends to be skills that you don’t have in house. And so there’s a great skilling question that’s coming about now. And so, Adam, you know, I said, but when I started the business, I probably couldn’t have predicted where this was going to go. But now predictions look like skilling will be the great unifier and the great way currency of the future. And that means all sorts of different things. So I love this idea of freeing ourselves from thinking about this, like full time w two model to think about how do we bring in just the exact right set of skills for the next series of decisions we need to make, as opposed to these long term engagements or these these long, you know, 10 years of employees who may it may not make sense for either party, to have those kinds of relationships? So we’re encouraging brands to think about that in sort of like a virtual boardroom setting, how do you open up those doors to more talent?

12:41
I love the term. I love the term skilling. I. And I totally see that’s where everything is going. I wonder, then. How do you go find that skill? I mean, because to me, it’s it’s almost like, Well, are you to waxing the level of effort to go out and recruit and find these people because you’re only you may only be looking to fill, you may need to fill you mean need to find two part timers to fill the full plate workload that needs to get done. So can you maybe help me think that through? Because on the on the flip side of me, I’m thinking, well, now the recruiters really got to go hit it? Or how should How should companies think that through,

13:23
and there’s three solutions, you either hire you train or you outsource. And so when you it’s like which decision do you make when and you will make all three of them. You know, when you think about hiring, I mean, this is your your your longest term investment. So this is where I would apply, you know, the situations with the most risk. You know, IP you need to think about there’s like legal considerations, these might be your key employees that are part of your leadership team or driving the strategy of your business. Make sense in those cases that you would want someone long term committed. And it takes a lot of time to bring someone in and to and to give them all of those benefits, etc. skilling is a whole nother opportunity for us to think about. So there. There’s lots of wonderful ways to skill up an employee mentorship programs and courses in curriculum and fellowship programs. And there’s many organizations that are very good at skilling their people, especially with this technology revolution that we’re under. And then the last is outsourcing. This is where lions and tigers comes in. And we help train to diagnose the kinds of skills that a particular challenge needs. And then we’re just experts at being able to say, well, you need 10 hours of this and 15 hours of this and, you know, 20 hours of this and let us create the alchemy that you need to achieve that result. So that’s our role. I’m in that kind of outsource models that we’re able to figure out exactly the precise set of skills. The benefits of that is that then the brand organization doesn’t need to rely on hiring, hiring or skilling the costs of those first two buckets. That’s our job.

14:56
Well, I mean that that makes a lot of sense. I mean, it sounds like especially where you guys are coming in You’re coming at it from like a strategic perspective to the business around like, Hey, this is this is the value that you can drive to yourself, but also to the customers in the marketplace by you guys going down this path, which leads you my next question for you, which is, so I kind of sit in the lens of customer success, you know, very customer facing all driven all about Voice of the Customer making sure that they’re getting value, so they never want to leave, and they’re always happy and healthy. But I’m curious from your lens. So help me think that through, because I think I have a bias where, you know, this is, to me a very critical component of the business, we want to have people on who are entirely invested in the outcomes of the customers, which makes me think more towards full time fully engaged employees, how would you help me think through the opportunities that might be available to me through part time work to come in fill those gaps.

15:52
During the night, make your key Relationship Manager, your account manager or customer success manager, the one role that is fit full time long term incentivized extrinsically or intrinsically based on the success of that relationship. But on behalf of your client, you may want to draft a set of skills beyond that without per one person employees. And so it may make sense that in that case, in fact, you know, I’m talking to an exact situation like this right now, where they want to draft in an executive coach, some of our internal podcast that we do around professional development, and some content strategy thinking. And then we’re going to do all of that under the framework of objectives and key results okrs. So we have a strategic planning process that we bring in. So we’re enabling this one customer success individual to basically draft their roster to build their pit crew, have the very best skills that’s going to enable their deeper relationship. And so that forecasting of what that relationship will need is really how we make sure that your team stays that competitive advantage.

17:01
I love the thinking around build your pit crew have the skill sets, that is such a cool analogy. Have you done marketing? That is

17:10
a little.

17:13
Very cool. Well, I’m curious as well, too, as you’re talking through developing the skill, the skill set picker, if you will, which was kind of seen bubble up. Because my, what I think I see in the marketplace right now is kind of to your point, earlier specialties, but specialties around specific lines of technical acumen with regards to like tools. So let’s just say Salesforce, you know, like your Salesforce Genie, you can come in over here, or let’s say like Confluence, you’re, you’re a confluence Ninja, so you’re over here. Or like, if you’re in the marketing field, you’re like a Marketo, your Marketo godsend right here. So like, which ones do you kind of see bubbling up in your assessments that you’re working on, you kind of coach people to always keep a poke pulse on that.

17:59
So that’s been a really interesting discussion with talent lately. So I kind of go back to the teach t shaped knowledge set, like you still have this ability to have some generalist skills. And in fact, I’ve been reading a lot about the rise of the generalist lately, and like, thank goodness, because that’s probably what I would consider myself. But so there, there are definitely technical and specialty skills needed, especially in this meatspace. Seo paid. I mean, like there’s there are so many things where people are experts at that one thing, and we just grabbed them for the very specific amount that we need, then there are you know, so in my world, we do management consulting, so some of that is a little bit, it’s not quite so technical, right? Like, there’s a lot of outcomes that look like EQ driven outcomes, or some of the actual success metrics we use for our client work as to whether they’ve gotten promoted in the last year. So like, we we kind of think about that a little bit. One, by the way. That’s an awesome one. Yeah. And and that’s, you know, that’s hard to quantify, right? Like, you’re not, there’s not necessarily one PowerPoint we’ve delivered that helped them with their, you know, their executive review that landed that, but it’s a culmination of a long, long relationship. So, so yes, of course, the technical skilling. But I still think that these these soft skills remain really important. And sometimes that’s where you really can look to outside resources. So what’s been really popular for us? No surprise, last six months is professional development and mental health. We actually have a licensed psychologist on staff and she’s been very busy. So there’s been a lot of need for not only how we how we help teams outsource work, but how do we care for their employees that are that are trying to survive in today’s world of work. So we have both in one house and so that those skills have been really on the rise in the last few months.

19:49
for hiring on your a team, a mental health I, I love the forward thinking and the care that you’re putting into your staff with that, so congratulations to you. That’s fantastic. So my next question was going to be an incredible one. And of course, it slipped my mind. So I’m going to flip over to this one right now. Why, right? Just this robot? So I am wondering though, I am wondering how you do measure success with part time? Because it is I think, is it as simple as you just cut the metrics in half? Or? Or do you think about it through a different lens, because you know, as, as in business, we have to measure everything. We want to progress and move forward. And we want to learn new things. And that’s all done through data. So like, how, how are you thinking through helping companies think through like measurements of success with the part time workforce,

20:40
there’s so many layers to that, when we go back to even how we structure engagements, you know, so much of the way that this has been done is either agency of record, or milestone based contracts, or hourly based contracts, like that’s what we’re usually given, what we tend to do is I tend to go into those situations, and I actually tend to break those apart as much as I can, we tend to try as much as we can to advocate for a term that we call impact over hours. And so at the end of the day, if the Statement of Work is fulfilled, if the needs are met, if we’re exceeding our customers expectations, that the hours themselves don’t make that big of a difference, not all clients agree with that a lot of clients, you know, potentially still want to stick with an hourly model. And in that case, yes, we say like, we’ll dedicate 30% of our time to you, or 20 hours a week, or whatever that looks like. We have some, we’ve been really testing. And we think of this as a flexibility lab, you know, lions and tigers, we’ve been testing feedback for the last quarter, really deeply into different kinds of feedback iterations. So we’ve tried, you know, we’re doing surveying, we’re doing a one to 10, like NPS scale, every single Friday, every time we meet with our clients, like we’re trying a number of different things, to turn qualitative into quantitative so that we can at least better the relationship helps. Because that really is what this comes down to Adam like, of course, there’s the business outputs. And we tend to come alongside our clients and help them quantify in their monthly business reviews or quarterly business reviews, how their programs are performing. So we often are the architects of what their business KPIs are. But in terms of the relationship, KPIs, that’s that tends to be a lot more fluid, I mean, tends to be a lot more about how the dynamics of a relationship is being built over time, which you know, in the customer success, world, like is very critical to whether you’re going to get renewed or not project continues. And sometimes projects are short term, sometimes they are intended to end. And then of course, we want to do I don’t love the term post mortem. But we always want to do some sort of conclusionary on how did it go and and asking for feedback is a big part of our culture.

22:52
Well, I appreciate that. And I, I too, struggled with the post mortem term, I kind of flipped mind a capstone Capstone that. So there because and then then don’t forget, like to celebrate with balloons and things like that. I always thought that was always fun. But so part time work. In your opinion, does it come we talked a little about this earlier? Does it come with this bit of a stigma? And then if so, how would you coach people who want to kind of explore becoming this type of the labor force to kind of put on their iframe is put put on, like put on, put on the frame that shows that the confidence if you will, that this is the path? And this works? And this is why I’m the right person with the skills that you talked about? Because I think that i think i think there’s the there’s the market need, there’s kind of the business recognizing the strategy, and then Okay, then Then who’s actually the, the workforce out there who wants that? So kind of, can you maybe talk to the workforce now on like, how best to present themselves and how to even go find these opportunities, if you will.

24:01
I mean, this is why I named the business lions and tigers. This is a courage brand. I mean, this, this is a calling. We have a manifesto, we’ve written for our talent that calls on them to be fearless. And I get that fearlessness is not a destination. For me, it has always been a journey. There’s these moments where I have lots of confidence, and then lots of fear. And those things usually come together. So of course, we all feel that way. But for for me, and the reason that we get to meet these beautiful clients who are willing to think about this non traditional way of accruing talent, is that we all know and agree that flexibility is a strategic advantage, for many reasons for their own team or their outsource team. And so I think once we agree on that, and we and we consider that we’re able to keep talent in the workforce that we would otherwise lose. Then it becomes incumbent upon all of us to start to take the steps forward to try to pull in those courage moments that help Ask for what we need. And I do a ton of coaching with people on that, like this idea that you’re worth a lot. And you should be able to be well compensated for your contributions, no matter how big or small. And so yes, I really encourage that’s why I say this is not a secret sauce for lions and tigers. People should do this in their life, no matter how they want to pursue a career or a life that feels authentically theirs. For us, we’ve enabled that work here, lions and tigers, we’re hiring. So apply. But but there are many ways that you can go about finding part time work. There’s many marketplaces that exist. I love the mom project. I think there’s, you know, flex jobs, there’s mom core, there’s swing shift. Of course, there’s like Fiverr and Upwork, there’s tons of these marketplaces, we just specifically curated a little bit a little bit higher, higher level in terms of them hands on, but those marketplaces are a great place to go and start testing and saying yes to projects, figuring out your rate, understanding your value proposition as a consultant. This is this is a time this is the time in America, especially where this trend has exploded, you know, there, and truly for especially for women, you know, 43% of working women are considering leaving the workforce within the next two years. So I mean, this, this isn’t necessarily something that people may have been drawn to originally this may be just out of need. And so in that case, how can they best get ready for that? How can they best put like present themselves as a viable candidate who can make a ton of impact? Even part time like, I shouldn’t have to, like have a have an Asterix on that, like, we can just be really impactful?

26:43
Well, I appreciate that. Because again, I think, I think we’ve come through this generation where kind of the culture of the darling tech startup is that you, you create an environment that’s a little bit like college, so you never want to go home? Yeah, all the time. And then you hope that you get your exit over here. And then you can go buy your Tesla. And then this dual dual existence of like, how much sacrifice do you make to make that happen? And I think a lot of companies struggle with thinking about it through a different way. You know, we’ve got Julie chiming in here who’s saying flexibility is a strategic advantage. And I couldn’t agree more. So how do we? How do we, how do we become flexible? Is it as hard as I think it is, in my mind? Or is it just literally like? No, you just kind of structure it. So you got two hours here, two hours here, two hours here? Or isn’t even just less of that. It’s just like, Hey, here’s what we got to get done. Here’s me to done by you, you kind of take ownership over how much effort you’re going to work on it. Here’s how here’s the budgets that I can fulfill for you go, like, how did you think about it, or how helped me become flexible?

28:02
I will say both, it is not that hard. And there’s a learning curve to it, of course. So, you know, when I started, I started with 125 hour a week contract. And luckily, I had a very small infant. So I was like, That was all I could give the world. So my boundaries were really well set. But I’ll tell you how to like, here’s a good example of, of how fear shows up and how that changes over time. In my very first contract, I remember we shared calendars, and I had to pump three times a day, like, you know, the kid needs milk. So I would block out on my calendar these like blocks, and I wouldn’t say what it was I just had like block. And my second kid, I was like, Oh, no, like, it’s different. We’re different now. And so, I mean, I would show up, like on kit, like I’m gonna just be like this. But then like, I would like put it It didn’t matter because like, I’m You are lucky that I’m here with you, I have lots to say I have lots of opinions, my brain is with you right now. But I also have to care for my babies. And so like, it’s just like, it’s a journey that everyone goes on in a different pace in a different way. And this is the beauty of it is that you can show up in the way that is most authentic to you. Some people like time blocking, some people like to dedicate days, some people like only work mornings, or early work nights. And so of course, you have to find the client, the right client for you. And if if the organization that you’re partnered with, doesn’t understand that, that those kind of boundaries need to be established, then they’re not the right client for you. And there but there are there are many, many clients who understand the value of making these kinds of arrangements work and that’s who we love to work with is the folks that totally get that so there’s some like sort of predestined stuff and then there’s a stuff you can manufacture.

29:49
So I love that you kind of kept coming back around to finding I think I heard two themes from you. And please call me out if you think I got this wrong. But one just You keep coming back around to this own personal self worth self confidence, which I love. And I think, and I agree with you that it’s a journey that everybody kind of has to go on. And then to, it’s it’s finding that connection or that right partner to go work with, to go bring that to fruition. So, my question to you is, well, one, Did I get it? Right?

30:22
Yes.

30:23
Awesome. I’m a good, I’m a good, I’m a good learner. And then to help help me find those connections, how do I find those connections? I feel like we’ve kind of talked about it throughout. But can you really like give me just like, three things, give me three things to go find those connections out there for people who will value me my contributions as a part time expert, and getting stuff done for you.

30:52
Okay, let me tell you the process, we actually call it highest and best use. So it’s a this for us, it’s actually a real estate term that you apply to a plot of land. And it’s what developers consider, like, how do you make that land into the highest potential given the square footage. So we use that same concept for how we help consultants, but also clients think about how to spend their time and how to sort of forge those boundaries. Okay, so the process is this one, you go through a process of actually analyzing your time, most people are really bad at counting their hours and how much they actually worked. They’ll say I had an 80 Hour Work Week, and it was actually 60. Or the other way around. They’re really, they often underestimate. So we actually have people go through and track their time, put it into some buckets, I tend to like to have them think about it in terms of the buckets are, you know, like, this is work that I’m great at, and I can get compensated well for this is work that I know that I need to do, but I don’t really like you know, so they kind of actually go through a sentiment analysis on their time. So step one, step two is really to spend time and I’m going to get to the client side on step three. But step two is really around doing this deep discovery about your why. And I don’t mean this in like the sort of like, Simon Sinek, like, ethereal idea of why but I mean, like practically, why do you want to do this? And what story do you want to tell during your sort of like solicitation and selling process? And so, you know, for me, my why is that I feel very strongly about advocating for a future of work that looks different than what we have today. That really, really motivates me. And I’m willing to do X, Y, and Z to make that that mission come true for for myself in the world. So once you get clear on that, that shows up in terms of LinkedIn shows up in terms of your personal brand, maybe you have a resume or a portfolio, but I want that y to be really, really obvious. Some people go so far as to say, you know, like, they might list these are my hours or my availability, you can be really thoughtful about what your package includes in that second step. And the third one, of course, is finding the clients that want to buy this from you. In my past, I’ve had a lot of success in going back to the network of folks that I’ve worked with before. They know my performance, you know, I don’t have to convince them that I’m a top performer. And I can say, here’s what I have available. Would you be interested in one of the two client spots that I have? Can I can I contribute to a problem that you have right now. And to tell you the truth that has been the most successful business development strategy I’ve used, the other is to partner with some sort of staffing or talent agency who may have a broader network than what you have. So if you are particularly talented in technical capability, or in our case management, consulting, or marketing, or coaching, like an organization like mine is a good one to partner with. Because we constantly have people coming to us to inquire about this kind of talent model. So you can kind of go by yourself and go out into the world and do that kind of the hustle the biz dev, or you can choose to align with one or two or multiple organizations depending on your on your model as a 1099 or w two with any of those organizations. So that’s the practicality of the client site acquisition.

33:56
Thank you very much, because I do appreciate getting in out of I liked how you framed up the assignments emek ethereal and bringing it back down to reality. I think that’s really important for a lot of people right now. So I’m, I’d like I’d like to have some fun. And because this is all that’s what this is supposed to be. So I’m I’m curious as as someone who is a thought leader and a driver within the future of work, five years from now, what is the future of work look like? Well, I will I be rolling out of bed at 7am. Again, right next to my laptop so I can jump on another call or or will it be better?

34:40
Gosh, I hope it will be better or punch dropouts. You know, with the rise of social media with the rise of access to people’s individuals like thought leadership now are like lowercase t and L. So the I think that the the full Cast that I see is that every human, Adam and Breanna and everybody else has their own sort of personal brand. And now there’s a lot of opposition to this idea of personal brand. But there will be a skilling package that you own, that you can treat as currency, Bitcoin talent Bitcoin, I don’t know. But the idea that you could take a piece out however you’d like. And that I, you know, my hope is that we unshackle ourselves from some of the systems of oppression and of course, power dynamics that we’ve seen in the past things like even like 401, K’s or health care, that being aligned to the to an employer relationship holds people in positions that they may not otherwise choose for their life. And so as we start to unshackle some of those arrangements, even the tax codes that we have returned 99 versus w two and how those things are architected are fairly archaic, if you think about the gig economy. And so some of those things will need to be taken apart for this to come to full fruition. So maybe I’m thinking more than five years in advance. But I love this idea that we’re all free agents. And it’s a draft, it’s a talent draft. Because then can you imagine how much power we would all have with these employers that need us?

36:16
I like that. I like that. And then the flip side of me goes, that means we’re living in a constant hustle. But I guess that maybe that’s not. But maybe that’s no different than where we’re at today.

36:32
Well, this has been so much fun. I’m curious if before we get to our takeaway section, if you were just to kind of, again, kind of just to go back to the topic of the value and building out part of workforce, a strategy around part time labor. So anything that you’d have people be mindful of before we kind of get to our summary and takeaways.

36:54
I would just have everyone, anyone who’s in a position of power in a position of hiring or spending, think about how you’re using those dollars. Are you are you doing it with inclusion in mind? Are you trying to think about what accessibility to this work looks like? Or are you going back to the way that it’s always been done? Because it’s the way it’s always been done? Like, is there an opportunity or there’s some cracks or some sunlight in there, where you might open those doors up a bit wider? And what could your organization look like? If perhaps you had a few more folks in there that had a little bit different looking background or different lived experiences than what you currently have today?

37:30
I love that last part. I love that last part. And with that, we’re gonna move on to takeaways, because I feel like I don’t, I’m going to miss a moment here. So we talked a lot and unpacked a lot, but I really appreciated how you talk through just understanding what the workforce the future really means your organization today. I think you just crystallized it right there. Thank you so much for that. Learning about the critical role of identifying your highest and best use, can you maybe unpack that one a little bit for me? Brea? Yeah,

37:59
yeah, the highest and best use is this is kind of an energy management statement is where where are you best serving the people who most need you? And then how do you craft work? That’s right in that wheelhouse and delegate the rest, get it out of there, outsource delegate it, or re scope your work so that you’re operating in the in the work that is best suited for you your zone of genius.

38:22
Oh, your zone of genius. I like it. That’s great. Develop a gig worker strategy by focusing on impact over hours. I think we talked a lot about that I’m totally aligned with you. It’s really we are really now a results driven economy. You know, and I don’t your point, I think everything shifting to some type of way of just making it happen. And then you can kind of control how it happens. And then learn what it takes to create a flexible workplace culture to part time work and other models. Other other any other models that you’d have people be mindful of? I know we’ve been thinking about through part time, but are there any other models that you’d have people be mindful of?

39:04
Certainly, I mean, you can have full time employees with flexible schedules. And with job shares. I mean, you can certainly think about your own talent and offering more grace and flexibility through all sorts of different HR policies with with the team that you have today. Of course,

39:19
that’s outstanding. Thank you. So this is the part where we remind people we’ve talked about it half jokingly throughout this conversation that there is a pandemic still going on. I feel like I’ve been saying this for months. Now. That’s because I have And as a reminder to everybody who wants to give out more than just financial contributions, but make blood sweat and tears donations to the cause you can and these are some great organizations that allow you to do so whether it’s through blood donation, pp creation or helping out with food donation, I highly encourage you to find a way to contribute, and I know Brea that you are involved in a lot of volunteer activities as well too. And I’d like to pause and just give you an opportunity to shout out Anyone that you’d like to make the community aware of.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai