Layoff to Offer Letter in 89 Days w/Sr. Dev Rel, Lawrence Lockhart

All righty, I'm gonna drop in the Discord, let people know we're live.

Places, all the things.

Oh, I know, dude, seriously. Good morning everybody, if you're watching, if you're tuning in yet, good morning, good morning. Uh, Lawrence, how's life, man?

How are you, man? Life is grand, Taylor. Too blessed to be stressed. How are you doing?

It's good. We're good. We're good, man. We're vibing. Everything's good. Everything's good, dude.

So I don't have it yet, but I'm gonna get there one day.

Say what?

I don't have horses yet, but I'll get there one day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Horses, you know, they're great, uh, until they get old. So we got, we got one horse that's old and Um, the amount of vitamins and minerals that we gotta get in that horse is just wild. It's like just a basically a full-on human being. So, um, uh, but Dudley the miniature donkey, he's, uh, he's, he's bobbing as always. Uh, good morning everybody, we got some people tuning in. Daniel, it's good to see you this morning. And Jason, obviously my, my companion, it's good to see y'all this morning.

Great.

Um, uh, Lawrence, you posted that in private chat, by the way.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, no problem. Uh, Mark, good morning. It's good to see you. Yeah, old horses are rough and pricey. Facts. That is, that is a true fact. Um, but this is not a horse podcast. Um, uh, I'm really pumped to be— I'm really pumped to hang out with Lawrence today. You know, typically don't go live on Fridays. I try to do no meeting Fridays, and of course today we got a full-on live Uh, slew of events. I'm going live with 3 CTOs at noon today.

Oh.

Um, on just how to maximize, uh, your nearshoring and offshoring teams. I've heard a lot of chatter about that, so I wanted to kind of talk to some experts. So excited about that. I will be live, um, uh, I will be live at noon Central today. But this episode I'm excited about. I saw Lawrence, I'm gonna let him do his thing. I saw Lawrence post his announcement. And I was like, I got to get this guy on. And, and, and, well, originally I wasn't going to get you on, but then I started to message you and I was like, hey, like, I'm always fascinated how people find jobs. I mean, I ask everybody, anybody that I know who lands a job, I'm like, how'd you do it?

Right.

Yada, yada, yada. Um, and, uh, and you started in the DMs to like tell me your tactics on how— I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, we're going live. We need to go live and chop this up because again, This show is is to to really help others find a job right in this market. So before we dive in and let Lawrence have his time, a few kind of housekeeping things as always. Shout out Apprite. I'm on the Hero Program. Great great little company. Love them to death. Go check them out. And then also too, because we got a lot of stuff going on in the Torque community. If you want to know what's going on, get involved in the chit chatter. We've been doing. A lot of resume reviews. Jason's been doing it. Dan DeGangi's been kind of hopping in and kind of helping us from an engineering manager perspective, which has been a huge help. So if you want your resume, LinkedIn review, drop in, throw it in one of our channels. We'll be glad to help you. And then check out obviously all of our lives we got going on. And then also, if you wanna be updated when I go live with guests specifically, text me. This is actually my number. Text LIVE. And I always fire off a text to my texting community. Who wants to be opted in, um, when I go live. Um, so I want to get to obviously a few more people this morning tuned in. Mark, it's good to see you. Mr. Ricardo, always consistent. Another Memphis. JC, what up, my guy?

Hey, brother.

It's good to see you. Roxy, it's good to see you. Sebastian, love to see you as well. Um, talking with Lawrence is worth breaking the note. Yeah, I agree, I agree 100%. I totally, totally agree. Eric, it's good to see you. I'm looking forward to burnout talk coming in Q3. Yeah, yeah, we won't talk about that, but Devon, it's good to see you. Noah, my God, it's great to see you. Chris, wonderful to see you. We got people tuning in. I, you know, I like Friday sessions. I feel like it's a little bit more casual. People kind of in a—

I was about to say that. Yeah. People let their hair out if they have it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. People are like, yeah, no meetings. I'm gonna kind of hop in. So excited about this. All right, man. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you do now?

Yeah.

And then I'll start peppering you with questions.

Man, sounds great. Good morning or good afternoon, everybody. Ciao to my Italian counterparts who are watching from Italy. I am Lawrence Lockhart, currently senior developer advocate for a fascinating company called BeFree. Above and beyond that, I am a software developer. I've been in the tech world for 7 years. Really happy to share my tech transition from food service days into tech, which was a major move and been a big part of my story for years now. And what I found is it's helpful to, like, take the lessons that I gained and give them to other people, sometimes for free, sometimes for a little money, even though my top needs turned off right now. But I'm a family man, man, a churchgoing Southern guy. Love—

Same, brother.

I just like helping people, helping people find their wins. That brings me a lot of joy.

I love it. I love it. Fellow food service as well. I feel like, you know, I saw a post a while ago and it was like, millennials don't have the world wars to say we served in. Our world wars are, did you work in hotel? Did you work in restaurant? And did you work in retail?

No, but I did have a retail arm when I worked in a hotel because I—

There you go. There you go. Yeah. So I, I, I did, uh, all 3 chicks. Yeah, I, I, I served 2 of the 3. So I did, I did retail. I was Banana Republic for a bit.

You know what? You know what? Oh, wow. That's a lot.

That's a lot.

That's a whole podcast.

That's a whole nother— yeah, yeah, yeah.

Working at Stripes and places like that gives you a certain— it's a certain, a certain key in your brain about how to get—

dude, the urgency is unmatched.

Get things done.

Yes.

Now I carry that into everything I do, including tech. So I've seen you do the same thing with Twerk and other places.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, man, so let's—

Wait, wait, wait, tip my hat to Elliot Sanford.

Yeah, yeah.

At Jackson, Mississippi. He is a Christian brother. I love that guy. I met him at the Magnolia JS inaugural conference years ago. So big time.

I love it. I love it. That's awesome. All right, a lot to talk about today. So, um, I, I love it. You were organized. You kind of sent me a list of things to talk about.

And you can go anywhere because I know you, you're gonna just go off the rails.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, I like it. I like it. I like it.

It'll be good.

It'll be good. No, I like it. I like it. All right. So, so let's, let's, let's talk about the layoff, right? I mean, again, I think I want to get into the psyche of people. I think people see you online, people see me online, people see other people online, they're like, oh, they don't have to deal with layoffs. I mean, even Aaron Francis's talk at Epic Web that he's been kind of doing lately is around how he got laid off from PlanetScale and how, you know, how no one's untouchable. So talk about just receiving the news of getting laid off. How did you process it? What were your thoughts? Let's unlock that part first.

Yeah. Remind me if it was Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali who said, everyone has a plan to fight until they get punched in the mouth.

I have no idea. That sounds a little bit more like Ali, a little bit. That seems a little bit more thoughtful than Tyson, but who knows?

Yeah. Yeah. But listen, you can read about layoffs, watch videos about layoffs all day long, but take layoffs. Like, it's just this amorphous thing. But when you're in the meeting, and for me, it happened on January 9th, 2025, and you're in the meeting, And your manager and the CEO are across the table or the virtual aisle, as we say, looking through Zoom. And they tell you, we're sorry, we're going through a reorg. We've got some layoffs and yours is one of the positions. Man, that hits like nothing before. Yeah. And I'm asking, is there anything I could have done? Is this performance?

I know immediately, immediately. It's like, what could I have done? What did I do wrong?

Because I didn't see it coming. Usually, I'm a pretty observant guy. I think my Superpower is just being nosy. Like, I'm noticing everything about everybody, and I didn't see this coming, Taylor, I promise you. And it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I'm thinking, what just happened? That crap hurt. It hurt.

I mean, I was surprised, I'm not gonna lie. I mean, listen, you've been, I think, a wonderful champion of your last company. I think, you know, you were, you were doing the thing, you were traveling, you were going to Finland. Your whole entire series of you being in Finland was like one of my favorites.

Brothers in Finland.

Yeah. So it's like, it's like all that being said, like, again, no one's untouchable.

Exactly. Exactly. And I knew that intellectually because when James Q. Quick, one of my OG mentors, was laid off from a job, I was like, oh, if James can get it, yeah, anybody can get it because James is up here.

Sure.

I knew that up here. I didn't know that in my heart. So when it happened to me, and I'm going back to my original post when I was Got on with Vodden, people are like, you're the only reason I even know Vodden exists. I'm like, yeah, Lawrence the DevRel. And then it's Lawrence the breadwinner who's no longer winning bread. That crap hurts. Yeah. And so, uh, it took me a minute. In fact—

So, go ahead. So, yeah, so I want to go into that. So it took you a minute. What did— what'd you do next?

Right?

Like, like, I'm always fascinated. You get the layoff news. How— like, what did— like, what did the next 48 hours look like for you?

Oh gosh, crying, thinking about how to tell my wife.

Yeah.

Telling my wife.

Yeah.

Together, getting all the emotions out. So anything I felt, I just felt it fully. I didn't want to hold back on anything because I've learned in my old age it is good to let all of that just process. Otherwise it's going to show up in a worse way later. So all the emotions, went through them, prayed hard, tried to find some scripture for the moment. I couldn't find one. And just took an entire week, Taylor, after I processed all the emotions and let all that out, to just sit down and figure out what's going to be next and how. I didn't apply anywhere. I didn't ask for any referrals or anything for like a week. I didn't, I didn't ask for any referrals at all. We'll get to that later. But I did nothing job-wise.

We're gonna get to that in a second. Yeah, that was a good, that was a good point.

Job-wise for a solid week.

Okay, so you did nothing?

Nothing at all, brother. Just sit down And eventually sat down before that week was over and mapped out strategy. What strategy do I want to use? And I went through a whole bunch of steps for that. But yeah, I took time.

I had to take time. So, I think a lot of people, I think in today's world, we're always like, we got to go, we got to go, we got to go, right? Going back to the restaurant mentality, we got to go, we got to go, we got to go.

Yep.

Why did you wait a week?

Same reason you don't grocery shop when you're hungry. You make bad decisions. You make horrible decisions.

I make horrible decisions when I grocery shop hungry.

And then you end up at home like, wait a minute, where's the food?

Especially if you go to Costco. I went to Costco one Sunday. That was wild.

Exactly. Or Sam's Club. And so I didn't want to shop for my next job when I was that emotionally hungry and not in my full capacity mentally and intellectually and thinking about my strategy that I wrote later and all my capabilities. I wanted to come in prepared, calm. I've got 2 or 3 pennies in the bank, so it's not like we're on beanies and weenies yet. I can wait a minute. I can wait. We're not on noodles and noodles yet. I can wait a minute until all of that settles down and I'm back to Lawrence. Not emotionally strung out Lawrence. So I can make better decisions that started with the strategy. Yeah.

Do you, do you recommend, do you recommend, I mean, that's one of the things I say a lot is take time. Um, I just want to make sure I'm not crazy. Would you recommend that time?

Oh, absolutely. As long as you can afford it.

But sure.

Again, for any emotional state that takes you out of your best decision mode, you need to wait. Yeah. Because you're in fight or flight and fight or flight is not a good way to approach an employer. Because let's just say, for instance, on day 1, day 1 after firing, I applied somewhere. Day 2, they called me. And day 3, I had an interview, right? Which would be the miracle scenario. That would be the worst thing possible because the desperation would come out in the voice. The, you know, can y'all— are y'all hiring? Like, it would be a wrong Lawrence. Not the one that inspires confidence. Not the one that makes the company feel like we want him to represent us. We want him to be the face of us in video, in conferences with the— public-facing position that I'm focused on, all the best assets about me would be hidden behind an emotional mask.

That's good.

The reason you take time is for that mask to be enjoyed and, and not enjoyed and fully realized, but then to go away so you're back to yourself fully.

Yeah. All right, so you— so, so got the news. You know, I think one of the toughest things, and maybe, maybe I can bring this up to my Dads in Tech virtual meetup next week, but That's— I, I, I, yeah, it's next week. I, I, I, I think, I think trying, especially if you're the main breadwinner as a man, trying to tell your wife and your family that you were laid off, I think is a whole nother conversation. And it really hurts.

It does. It's, it's— well, you feel like you let yourself down, which means you let down everybody else, right? Everybody's dependent on. And that's, that's just how I see— Ellie mentioned how I'm wired. I'm wired like everybody's dependent on me. And that may or may not be All that. Might be a little codependency going on. Yeah, a little bit. Like, everybody's depending on me to make it work, whether or not— yeah, you're in the family. And so if I let myself down, I let them down, and what their emotions are going to be like, and how do I need to comfort them while I'm going through it? Like, that's just a lot. Like, it's like you're about to walk into a fire.

Yes.

But you have to walk into it.

Yep.

You have to. And whatever it freaking is, you have to deal with that. That's the first step to be— before— towards becoming whole again. Yeah. Avoiding it in any way means you're going to deal with that thing again later and it's going to be worse. So right off the bat, first day, babe, I was laid off.

Yeah.

And there's not some huge severance and there's not this and there's not that. We're gonna have to just deal with this. Yeah. With a plan. We're gonna be okay.

Yeah.

You know, right now I have no job.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's almost exactly how I sounded.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, yeah. And again, it's like Jay says, a lot of mental crap we go through when that happens. Yeah, 100%. And that's, and that's, I think that's a great topic. Actually, I'm probably going to talk about on Tuesday for the Dads in Tech group. So, all right. So waited a week, told the wife. What next?

Man, I need a strategy. I need a strategy for how I'm going to get my next job. I've been preaching, Taylor, and you've probably heard me on a Twitter Space or a podcast or something about the use of strategy in job acquisition and how many times I run into people at all levels, not just junior, junior, mid-level, senior, They're just randomly applying with no thought in mind. So, I had to sit down and figure out, hey, I've had this theory about using a strategy for job search. Now would be a good time to test that theory.

Yep.

Sat down, pencil and paper, and wrote down what my strategic approach would be, asking myself questions like— and I wrote a couple of notes just to make sure I brought this correctly. Where do I show up the most competitive? Right? What strengths do I have that companies are willing to pay for And what does that role look like?

Love that.

What is my SMART goal, right? Okay, I want to get hired. That's not a goal, right? That's just, that's just, that's just amorphous in the clouds. What is my specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based goal? What data do I have to make that goal around? And I ended up writing a goal to be hired as a developer advocate at a senior level within 90 days. which is super ambitious because I'm hearing about people unemployed for 9 months, 6 months, a year or more. Where did I get this from? I felt like my brand was going to stand up for me. And I know we're going to talk a lot about branding because you're a branding guy and a community guy.

Yeah.

My honest assessment when I sat down and wrote strategy, because you have to look at strengths and weaknesses. It can't just be, I'm great, I'm great, I'm great. Let me go apply. Where do I not show up so well? Where are my points? Like, where do I need to avoid and where do I need to go all in? The all-in areas that I have that I thought represented my brand were sufficient enough to lock that in in 90 days.

What areas? Let's unpack it a little bit more, a little bit second, third level in depth. What are some things that you felt like you could really bring to the table?

I love being a person who can take my technical expertise and share it with anyone on the planet.

Yes, I think you're great at that.

More technical than I. You can be my peer. You can be in marketing. It doesn't matter. I can translate it. And again, good old food service background. You deal with a wide variety of people.

Yeah.

When I worked at Ryan's Steakhouse as a general manager, I could easily have the mayor. Yes, I was general manager for Ryan's Steakhouse in Bartlett, Tennessee. I could easily have the mayor and a janitor at neighboring tables. And I need to greet and deal with both of them at their level in a way that they can respond to. So, you have to do some without even trying some quick mental switches about how to relate information.

So good.

Works in tech. And it's a benefit to companies to be able to meet out audience segments and what voice needs to be used for audience segments, whether we're talking like this or in socials. I'm good at that crap.

Yeah, you are.

You're good at that crap. And I have a reputation for it. So, that's the strength of my brand. My technical expertise by itself has been proven out multiple times, both in the jobs but also because I build in public. Not only build in public, but here's a phrase I've never shared with anyone. You're going to be the first to ever hear it. My goal is to impact in public.

Yeah.

I don't want it because people hear building in public and they think, all right, I'm gonna start 100 Days of Code. Today I learned a for loop. Tomorrow I learned the switch statement. That's not getting you hired anywhere. That's what you do to help you establish your own rigor for programming every day. That's what that building in public is for. But now when it comes to job acquisition, you want to be sharing items that show your impact in public? How do you move the needle? Whether it's something innovative that you learned, innovative that you built, someone you helped. That's a whole different level of building in public. And it helps to build that brand that this person is capable of moving my needle. My meaning the company that might be looking at you. Which means when they pull your resume, if they pull your resume, or they pull your application, if they pull your application, and they go to search for social proof, There's this whole litany that backs up the things that we put on paper. This is the day of the AI resume. People are using AI to make perfect resumes overnight. And very, very often the people behind it don't back up what's on the paper. So, having social proof that goes back for weeks, months, and years means I almost don't even need a resume.

Yeah. You need one.

But to a certain degree, they want to look at what's the history of this person? What's the background? They claim that they are a conference speaker. If you Google my name right now and put developer, within the first page, you'll find at least 2 conferences I spoke at. Yep.

Yep. I love that. I love that. Talk about, did you have a certain company profile in mind? Did you obviously, I mean, did you want an advocate role? Were you open to take it? Like, talk to me about that stuff. Sure.

So the 90-day thing, let me, let me, let me parse that out for you.

Oh, and by the way, I'm gonna interrupt you real quick. Do you have a hard stop in 14 minutes? Because I feel like we're gonna go longer.

Uh, oh, uh, yes. Okay, I'll speed up.

No, you're good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was that fast, right?

I'm telling you, I'm telling you.

Another 10.

Yeah, 10.

Crap. All right, so first of all, the 90-day thing. The 90-day thing was my goal, my SMART goal, to land my ideal role. With that, as I told myself, God, and my wife, If I do not land it in 90 days, I'm open to a whole assortment of things.

Okay.

I'm going for the best because I think I've earned it at this point. I think I've put in the time. I've earned the stripes. I've gone through the work. I've been in the trenches where I can deserve a certain type of role. And my role was— and the ideal company to your question was I want to work for best of class in their industry.

Yep.

Or simply a very large, highly well-known company. One of the two. It's got to be something that helps my brand.

Yeah.

I want to help them, but the company has to help me. That was my goal. So, if it's a small company, they got to be the best at what they do. Like, they're, they're it. They're the gold standard. There is no second place.

Okay.

Not that it needs to be a large, you know, tech-forward company that's going to help my brand because I want to be there from now till I retire. But in case this happens again, sure, and I need, I need those resume points. Sure. I'm thinking, so I'm thinking I'm beginning with the end in mind. I'm Stephen Covey-ing this thing. If I'm not with you until retirement, I need you to do something for me Even before I start. Yep.

I love that. All right, let's get into the meat and potatoes of this thing. Yep. You cold applied.

Yeah. So remember when you literally went the complete opposite of what I talk about?

Explain that.

Yeah. So again, I'm a— I want to say I'm a scientist at heart, but I'm like 5th grade scientist. But we all learn 5th grade science. Yeah.

I'm more like 4th grade. Yeah.

Then you bring it up to a theory. And then you test it. You get the results and you get a conclusion. So, my theory and hypothesis was I've done the sufficient work on my assets— resume, LinkedIn, projects— the sufficient work on my overall brand— how I've shown up on Twitter, how I've shown up on LinkedIn, the videos that I've done, the podcasts that I've done. I feel like that brand enough is strong enough to get me hired.

Yep.

Without any help from what's usually the most important thing in the world, my network. I made a strategic decision. It was risky that I am not going to use my network in the first 90 days. That was—

That's crazy.

Anybody on earth. But I wanted to prove to myself that what I've been teaching people on Twitter Spaces is not just vain, empty words. This stuff works if you're working it correctly. That was important to me. It was vital.

Okay, so, so I miss— I misunderstood. This makes a lot more sense because when you messaged me, I was like, that doesn't— I like— I didn't quite understand it. But now, so what you're saying is what you wanted to prove is all the things you've been doing in public, impacting the public, which I love— I'm gonna start using that— you wanted for that to speak for yourself?

Yes, without any help from a person saying, yes, give him a shot, here's a referral link. I had referral links that I denied. And let me shout out my network. I don't know who's watching this or who will see it. I have so many people that didn't ask to be named. So many people reach out to me via DM, dropping me links.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you, you had an outpouring.

All over the place. I'm talking about individuals.

Yeah.

In addition to actual recruiters who don't know me, but turn on my open to work, I had hits. And that's because I built up the SEO of my LinkedIn page. I had people—

Got it.

Please apply. I'm like, who are you? Like, like a lot of companies. And some met the mark and some didn't. But the point is, my brand was doing what I wanted it to do. My theory was proving out well.

Unbelievable. I'm getting goosebumps.

It's so good. And getting interviews. And even before applying, having recruiters reach out and say, hey, have you considered XYZ company? Hey, are you interested in doing this kind of take, that kind of thing? And that happened multiple times. I meant to pull the numbers before I got here and I didn't. But there were multiple interviews and multiple recruiters and hiring managers reaching out before I even knew who they were from Adam or Eve.

So, the open to work actually does work?

It 100% works. Within the same week, I had people reaching out to me. But it only works if you have a reason to be called. See, when you have the analytics in LinkedIn that shows the number of search results, if you have like search results is like 10, You know, 10 in a week and you have open to work turned on. You feel like you have a good LinkedIn profile. You do not have a LinkedIn profile for being found. The purpose of your LinkedIn profile from an SEO, search engine optimization point of view is to be found. When people, if you're a software engineer, when random Joe or Jane types software engineer as a recruiter, you want to show up in their list. And LinkedIn gives you some measure of how often you're showing up. I have hundreds of times I was showing up in search. Yeah, I didn't get called hundreds of times, but I did get called enough to know open to work actually works. So this is, again, you have a lot of theories like, does this work? Does that work? I was seeing these things work, play out in real time.

Unbelievable.

I'm gonna fast forward. We're in the last 9 minutes. Um, as you know, uh, the goal was 90 days. January 9th, I was laid off. 90 days would have been April 9th. I started my first day at BeFree on day 89.

Crazy.

One day prior. And I do believe in speaking those things. And I did pray about this. And I am a man of faith. Hope it doesn't offend anybody. If it does, sorry, not sorry. But I put this out there. I put this out there to my God that this is what I want to be hired by. I love that. Here's how I want it to look. And it happened. And I signed the papers on day 78. But I started on one day before, and I think that was a sign that I still got you, son. You don't do anything right, but I still got you.

Oh my God, there's so much to talk about. Um, uh, what else you got? I'm just gonna keep you talking. Anything else? Anything else you want to talk about? Anything else?

Let me try to throw in BeFree. We might have a second or two for questions. So I got hired by BeFree. What the heck is BeFree? Yeah, BeFree. First of all, I applied to BeFree on Easy Apply.

I can't. Everything that I talk— listen, this is why I bring on— listen, I— this is why I bring on different guests.

Easy Apply.

And like, like a LinkedIn thing, right? Like a LinkedIn Easy Apply.

Click, click, click. It took maybe 30 seconds, tops, and no cover letter. But And I found this out later from different sources. They were able to go and look at my videos and look at my blog posts and see a conference talk or 2. So the social proof was there. So what they were looking for, which in this case was going to be their first ever developer advocate, at least one of the committee members, a person who had some say in it, said, he's going to be all we want and more. Because we've got the evidence right here. This is what we want. And this is more than we expected. Get that guy on board. And I'm happy to do what I do for them because this is a first-class company. BeFree is the company— was a business unit out of Growin. It's an Italian company that does multiple things in tech. But they are the company that is the go-to solution for email design and content creation. They're it. Like, there's competitors, but there's no competition. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

They're it. Many people who have enterprise-level email— I'm not talking about the email you sent to your boss, looks good to me, signed Taylor. I'm talking about when you need scale, and scale just means a whole bunch of them. So, you're sending out thousands, millions of emails that need to be designed well. They need to be designed for conversion because not every pretty email actually converts. And they can be done by your marketing department in-house. We are the go-to solution above and beyond all others. Integrate with so many platforms. And the cool thing— here's where I come into play— is we offer it in 2 different ways. There's the app. You can go use the app right now. You can buy Taylor's subscription to the app and just drag and drop, make beautiful, amazing responsive emails, start sending them out to tons and tons of customers. That's doing its own thing on its own. But I come in for the other half of the world. Which is the SDK, Software Development Kit. I know, you know, like you like to know acronyms. Software Development Kit, which means you can get the benefit of the BFree email technology and bring it in-house in your own systems, in your own SaaS. And there's a couple of ways that that plays out. You can say, say you are a marketing company. You have Taylor's Marketing Company and you have tons of products that you offer your customers. You can embed our first-class email solution via white label, put your branding on it, and now it's part of your suite of products that you push out. We have tons of customers that do that. They have the best email builder and designer in the world, and people don't even know it's BeFree because they put their own thing on. We have a market for that. But we also have other customers that say, we want to do it in-house. We have a marketing team, we have developer time, and and availability in our marketing team, but we want to completely own our email provider solution in terms— not provider, but design and content creation. And it's got to be responsive. It's got to be beautiful. It's got to return actual results. It's got to convert. Can we embed what you have into our systems in-house? 100%. That's the SDK. That's what I'll be talking about.

That's awesome.

Videoing about, writing about, and going crazy about. And of course, I'll be doing this on social and everywhere else. Um, it's just a lot, a lot of fun, man.

So, man, if you're open to it, I want to get you on for part 2. I want to dive into a little bit more tactical strategy stuff. But obviously, like, you know, we're, we're, we're at the pretty much at the end of time. Any last pieces of advice for people who are struggling looking for a job right now?

I've said it for 2 years now. This was my theme of last year. It's still my theme this year. You have to have a strategy. If you don't know where you fit in the market, you don't know where you can position yourself the best. It'll be like 2 football teams going against each other, but the defense has never watched tape. So you have no idea what plays are coming, where you need to put your people. You have no clue because you've never watched the tape of the competition. You are in a competition when you are applying for a job. You are in a competition. People say you're competing against your better self or your old self. That's hogwash. You're competing against other people who want your job. So, you need to know, where are my strengths? Where do I show up well? You have to be able to— this happened on Twitter Space 2 weeks ago. I asked someone who was struggling, what are you capable of doing very well? And they unfortunately struggled and stuttered with that for about the next 2 minutes. And I shared with them as kindly as I could, if you can't state to me concisely and confidently what you are great at, No other company will know either. And they have no reason to hire you because you haven't inspired confidence in them. Have a strategy. Know where you show up well. Figure out where you can place yourself. What job role speaks to your strengths? And then lock the freak in. My schedule was military regimented.

Well, and I want to— that's part 2 if you're open to it. I want to dive into that.

Locking in. Locking in.

All right. Well, let me hear— you know what?

And listen, I've already bumped up our social media following by 3.2% in 4 days. So everybody who's watching here, if you're not following BeFree, go follow BeFree on Twitter, on LinkedIn. Uh, yeah, we were at 1,697, now we're well over 1,700. So I did the numbers earlier, 3.2%. Um, because I bring impact, I move the needle. That's what I do when I believe in something. And I really believe in what BeFree's got going on. It's pretty amazing. Not even to mention community. Do you know the, you know, the most trusted community in all of email? Really Good Emails. Guess who has a 1-year anniversary of acquiring Really Good Emails in 4 days? BeFree. There you go.

All right, Lawrence, are you free? We're gonna do this right now because people want it.

People want it.

Are you free?

Lock the freak in. That's right, Will. Lock the freak in. I love it.

Uh, are you free? It would be a little— I'll be coming in hot, but are you free Monday?

Uh, absolutely not. No. Okay, send me some stuff on DM, man.

Yeah, I'll send you something on DM. Okay, cool. Well, we'll get a part 2 scheduled.

Go connect with Lawrence, and we'll be talking locking, locking in and community in that part. Sorry, in that part.

Yes, and, and, and your actual like schedule.

Yeah, yeah, that's part of the lock-in. Yeah, cool.

Awesome, awesome. All right, y'all, go connect with Lawrence. Lawrence, you're a gem. I love you, brother, for real. Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm so— yeah, everybody said this needs to be an hour episode. Yeah, 100%. Um, all right, go connect with Lawrence. Y'all have a great one. I'll see y'all at noon Central for my, uh, panel on the Torque LinkedIn. I'll share that. Um, y'all have a great one. Appreciate you, Lawrence. Please stay on real quick so I can say bye to you backstage. Yeah, peace.