new hires, ai, & building the randstad/torc brand | ep.26

Hey horses! Wait, how'd y'all get in? Walter, leave him alone! Walter! Great way to start the trip to Raleigh. Let's go. All right, we just parked at the airport. Uh, you know, all over X right now it's like 4-hour waits in Atlanta, 4-hour waits, 4-hour waits in New Orleans. So I hope to Lord Jesus, that BNA is a lot faster. I think so. I did an X search. It looks like wait times is good, so we should be able to get through this. We got our new hire coming out a week before they even start anyway, so can't wait to announce them on the vlog. But let's go ahead. Let's get through BNA. Let's unpack, and let's see if we can get through in a timely manner. The grand reveal. Not bad at all. Thank you. We are through security. It literally took all of like 7 minutes, so we're good. I got a lot of training I gotta do for Ron Stab that I'm behind on. If there's anything about me, I posted this, if there's anything about me, I'm gonna fail a phishing test on email. I love to click links. I love to click emails. I love to open emails. So email marketers, come at me. And I'm also gonna be late on training. So I need to get some trainings done. So my boss, Mark Bosma, Bosma, if you watch this, he has to keep texting me to finish these. So we're gonna knock these out and then head to Raleigh. All right. My second home at this point. We are here in Durham. We are in for the night, excited for the next 2 days. So basically, you know, I was, I was speaking with a founder, uh, this week, just a friend of mine who's, who's a founder at a startup. And, you know, he was asking, he was like, man, like, you know, I, I feel like you have like 4 or 5 different jobs. And I was telling him, I was like, yeah, it's crazy. Like, especially with how lean the community team is, you know, one call this past week, I was like on a call with Brianna, like checking the content and copy of like a handout we're going to give at at a conference like this week's in Mexico. And then the next minute I'm on like a strategic call with how to build community with Java engineers in Chicago. So, you know, I'm very much in the dirt and in the clouds at the same time. So right now I'm gonna work on getting— I've started using Claude. I've started to do a state of the market job report email that goes out every week. One week it highlights more like AI and tech startups and the hiring trends. And the other week, which is gonna be this week, kind of highlighting just software engineering roles that are in, that are hot right now and the skill sets and what does the market look like. And I really did this as a way to like add value to, to give people a holistic view. I feel a lot of times in the job search, people are so siloed and they don't really know what's going on. And X can be kind of an echo chamber. So I'm going to write that. I need to write the ambassador email that goes out tomorrow morning. Typically Jason writes it, but Jason moved on. And so I'm handling the ambassador email. So got to create that. And then a few other housekeeping things before we get started tomorrow. So off to do that. Great day traveling in, spend time with the fam this morning, going to church, and then hanging out with the kids outside. Excited to be here, excited to be back in my second home of Raleigh-Durham, and excited for all things Open tomorrow. Y'all have a good one. Peace. Durham, what is going on? It is 7:35 in the morning. I've not had cold brew yet, and I'm a little tired. It's 6:30 Central, and my body— I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. With the time change. I don't know what they put in the water this year with the time change, but I still have not recovered. So anyways, tired. Gonna get some cold brew. Gonna get today going. Gonna set up at the coffee bar. Talk more about it here once I get some coffee in me. And let's have a day, Durham. All right, we are off. So, so this year at All Things Open, we are doing a coffee cart. So we sponsored 2 days Um, for the coffee cart. And, you know, the reason why we did this over a booth is because we wanted to show up differently, right? I think— and really, if you want to get kind of cheesy, like, the whole thing is like the Torque platform and the community powers the Ronstadt digital ecosystem. So like powers coffee, You know what I'm saying? Something like that. So, uh, so we're doing that for, for 2 days. So, uh, we're gonna go get set up. We got some new pop-up banners, excited about. Um, and, uh, yeah, showing up differently. That's our goal, just showing up. And also too, uh, the coffee chat on the Torque Discord is like crazy. So, you know, everyone loves coffee. We're the talent that powers Wrong Side Digital. Just makes sense. All right, we got Roxy. Hey, so why are you here? Right here. I think I work here though. Yeah, let's go. There's T back there. T and I both went to South Carolina. He's great. He's great. He's great. Hey, T, you have something to say for the camera? Something to say for the camera? This guy was awesome. He didn't pay me to say that. No, not at all. That was a freebie. One thing I've seen is that there's so much you can do with the job search. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In Claude to help. That's, that's true. Yeah, you can do a lot of cool stuff. Like you can set up alerts and, you know, and so I don't think people understand that. So that's, that's a little bit of the angle I'm taking in my talk tomorrow. Just like, how do you use, how do you use AI to help? All right, it is 9 o'clock in the morning. We just finished the Breakfast Rush. Great conversations, uh, great shaking hands. I really love the coffee booth situation. A lot of great traffic. But I just want to recap like a, a conversation I had. There's a gentleman that attended our resume review, LinkedIn review sessions we do. And he came up to me and he goes, hey, I just want to let you know, you and Jason reviewed my resume and you like roasted it and it was great. And he goes, I made the necessary changes and because of it I found an internship at Intuit. I'm moving out to California next month. That is why we do this. That is why we always try to give back, whether we can help people directly or not. This gentleman was like, I'm so thankful for the community you've built. Conversations like that just really, really, really pump me up and just continue to affirm what we're doing and what we're building. You know it's a problem with your cold beer addiction when you go to the Durham Hotel and the woman goes, I remember you from last year. Wow, you drank so much cold You literally emptied us out of cold brew. And she was like, she was like, I was like, you have a great memory. That's a problem. It is 1:40 in the afternoon, back from a great lunch with my dear friend Jake Shepherd. Talking about brand, talking about staffing industry. It was a great conversation. I was in a podcast called Unicorn Finders with Jake Shepherd for 4 or 5 years. We were really early into this kind of podcast thing, vetting startups and founders. And so it's just always good to reconnect with them. So back at the hotel room, just got off a call with Rebecca, who is like events coordinator with the Durham Hotel, just kind of going through walkthrough there, gonna get there at 4:30. I am working on my talk. I'm gonna work on my talk and kind of run through it. Um, get ready for tomorrow morning. I'm actually in the Graham Ballroom tomorrow. So Todd, thank you for that. But now I'm nervous. I feel like I gotta pack it out. So hopefully people show up. Um, so yeah, get that done. Roxy is crushing it, um, at the coffee bar right now. Supposedly we've already handed out most of our swag, which I did not expect. Uh, there's been a lot of great conversations. People remember me from my talk, All Things Open in October. Um, just loving what we're doing. So yeah, just, uh, just awesome morning so far. So, let's prep my talk. Let's work on my talk. Let's prepare my talk for tomorrow. Great first day. Headed to the Durham Hotel to set up for our event tonight. Have over 50 people RSVP'd. Absolutely crazy. Let's go to the Durham Hotel. Let's get set up. We are back at the hotel room. It is 8:50 in the evening. Tonight was special. And you're like, Taylor, you say this all the time. Hear me out. Today was really special, and I got in a conversation tonight with Todd Lewis, who runs all things Open. And I'm gonna try to make this as clear and coherent as possible. I recruited in the Raleigh area from 2013 to 2014. It was a very short stint in my life, uh, at the time, and moving back, I didn't think it would really matter. I came back to recruit Nashville. I was only here for 11 months. I literally moved out pretty much like the week my apartment lease ran up in Raleigh. So I was like, I'm never gonna come back. It's not gonna matter. Fast forward like 11 years later, and the relationships that I've built in Raleigh are like coming back tenfold right now. I will tell you that like we had about 50 people tonight at our event. Like 10 of them at least were like people I made relationships with 11 years ago. It was just crazy. My biggest thing is like all this comes back around, all of it. All business comes back around. Like people burn bridges way too fast, and I think like in this in today's age, like it all comes back. It's like Gary V always says: doing the right thing is always the right thing, and treating people well. Todd and I got in a conversation about like doing business and like treating people right, and like just. It's, it's a grind. Building community is a grind. And Todd Lewis has like one of the biggest communities. He has the biggest meetup series thing in North Carolina. Um, and he's just been doing it. And what I found out is most of Todd's staff is from my hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. So anyways, just a special night. I'm gonna try to go to bed a little early tonight because tomorrow is speaker day. I'm excited. I'm gonna get up, try to go over my slides. It's gonna be great. I'm excited. Y'all have a good one. Uh, peace. Good morning. It's 30 degrees outside. I'm gonna drop the banners off at the booth and then talk today. It's gonna be good. All right, I'm running late. Let's go. What up? Hey, what's up, dude? It's good to see you, brother. What's up, y'all? We just finished, uh, the Dads in Tech meetup. I'm currently holed up in like a nook, uh, looking over my talk again. I'm getting ready to go present in an hour and a half. They put me in the grand ballroom, so hopefully people show up. I'm excited for this talk. It's gonna be great. And let's prep a little bit more and let's go crush this thing. Alrighty, I'm gonna be honest with you. I hated I couldn't get any content. I get so focused on like setting up my talk and my PowerPoint slides and all this stuff that I forgot to take pictures and videos. I gotta get better about that. So much to remember. Anyways, my talk is done. I asked Todd, I was like, hey, how many people? I was like, it was a packed ballroom. So they split the ballroom into 3 divisions. And he said there's about 350 people in there. So I just— the feedback was tremendous. And, you know, it's really crazy as a course of my career and how these talks have progressed. And now I'm talking about working AI into the job search and how to stand out. It just, it was just super awesome. We're done for the day. We're gonna head to lunch here soon with some developers, but I'm gonna get some work done. I'm on cloud nine. That was awesome. That was so cool. That was great. I'm just now getting onto my computer and logging in. The amount of DMs I have to respond to is unbelievable. Or when I was prepping my talk, there was like 3 college kids and they were just like, they were ripping apart my talk like next to me. They were like, oh, this talk is gonna be doomed. and gloom, the market sucks, like it's not gonna be a good talk. And like my talk actually is words of encouragement to people that the market's actually good and that you're not falling behind. It's really like an encouraging talk. And like, you know, like messages like, your statistics were encouraging, you know, energetic session, you gave me some great perspective, I appreciate your perspective and career growth in a fast-changing landscape, love the information you include on the slides. And I have a bunch more DMs too I gotta respond to. So just, just thankful. And again, just wanna, just wanna give words of encouragement. The market's hard, don't get me wrong. But the whole point of this talk is to encourage people to get out there, make friends, shake hands, and good things will happen. So I gotta respond back to DMs now. I'm in for the night. I'm tired. I'm toast. That talk in the last like 36 hours took everything out of me. I'm definitely a social sprinter. I'm pretty good for a day and a half, but I've literally been staring at my computer for the last like 3 hours trying to work and I'm just brain dead. So I'm going to eat, relax a little bit. I'm going to bring you along. I'm going to kind of record some of this. I'm going to a marketing— I'm doing a marketing branding webinar call. With Orion John tonight. Orion's a part of the Brand Fathers, and I'm taking advantage of like not being at the house, being with my family, and jumping on this webinar call at 9 PM tonight. So I'm gonna document that a little bit. I think it's gonna be really cool. I look up to Orion a lot. He's brilliant when it comes to branding and marketing, and it's just— it's a free webinar and there's gonna be other people on it. So really excited for that. And in the meantime, I'm gonna get some worked in, crush this pizza, and, uh, learn a little about marketing tonight. But great day, but, uh, I need a nap. I'm tired. So see you on a little bit for this webinar. You will be in the mix there. But yeah, the goal of this is getting more people just off instead of just viewing the channel in a venue where we can like get a little bit deeper on it and where we can actually answer questions. Hopefully you are somewhat involved in brand content, whether you're making it for your own brand Whether you work at a brand, whether you're doing freelance stuff around it, or you just wanna learn. If not, then you may be in the wrong Zoom, but feel free to hang out either way. Or you have a brutal scenario where basically you are trying to keep up with algorithmic changes, you're trying to get stuff approved, you're putting out stuff that sucks and you don't like, and there's really no shortcuts to getting around this. You need a system to solve this, and we're gonna work through that here today. All right, it is 10 o'clock at night. It's time to go to bed. Great session by Orion. Um, you know, one of the things that kind of came out of it, and I'm not kidding you, at the very end started talking about community, community-led brands, and how really if you are leading like a community-led brand, like the storytelling behind it that needs to occur. So I took some notes, some things I want to implement in the Torque community. I think telling more stories about our community is something we need to do. So, uh, it's off to bed and, uh, up early in the morning. All Things Open, thank you. It was a blast. We'll see you next stop. Mexico City.