Ep 122: Championing Community and the Freelance Future with Yurii Lazaruk

[00:00:09] Hey everyone, welcome back to Elevate Your AIQ, your go-to source for insightful conversations on human-centric AI readiness, talent transformation, responsible innovation, and the future of work. Today I'm joined by Yurii Lazaruk. He's a digital community consultant and freelance talent advocate who has spent more than a decade building and leading professional communities across Europe, most recently as a core team member behind the Freelance Unlocked Conference.

[00:00:34] Yurii and I explore the rising of freelance economy, the role of community in sustaining independent careers, and why human connection remains the foundation of a thriving professional network even as AI reshapes how and where we work. In fact, I have found communities to be essential for elevating my own AIQ. If you're navigating the shift towards more independent, human-centered ways of working or want to hear why communities are as important as ever, this is a great conversation. Thanks so much for listening. Let's go talk to Yurii.

[00:01:05] Hey everyone, welcome back to Elevate Your AIQ. I am your host, Bob Pulver. With me today, I am excited to talk to Yurii Lazaruk. How are you doing today, Yurii? Yeah, I'm good. Thank you for inviting me. And I remember the first conversation that we had. It was pretty exciting. And I can't wait to continue it now on a podcast. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's always, I always regret not recording like so many conversations, even the prep, we wind up getting into a lot of great, great topics.

[00:01:34] I have a friend, his name is Saeed Sadok and we had a coffee chat with him, like we are Zoom and he told, you know what? Every coffee chat, every conversation you have on Zoom, it's like unrecorded podcast episode. So yeah, you know, some episodes are going out there and some episodes we are keeping for ourselves.

[00:01:50] Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Yurii, you know, before we get into a whole bunch of topics around, you know, the future of work and AI and community and the freelance economy and things like that, I thought you could just share with my listeners a little bit about your diverse background.

[00:02:07] You know, I started, I don't remember how many years ago, like 15-ish years ago, plus minus as a risk analyst at the bank. And I was working with insurance companies and banks counterparties just to ensure that they are good enough to work with our bank. And the funniest thing is that no matter how much I tried to be compliant to keep those companies in a good shape, like it was always management decision.

[00:02:33] Even if I were saying that it's a shitty bank, it's a shitty insurance company, if management sees money, if business sees money, nobody cares. But yeah, I had a really good experience, you know, like using my analytical skills there. And then I went into this entrepreneurial journey. So I was doing, I was doing an internet shop, I was selling good for kids. And the funniest thing is that I was a pretty good salesperson.

[00:02:57] So I never tried to sell someone, something to someone who doesn't need things. But it was about more understanding what do they really need and giving them exactly what they need. And afterwards, it kind of transformed the community. Because when I was running this internet shop, I had problems with my SEO. So I went to SEO forum. Okay, first of all, I hired people to do this. Then I understood that nothing is happening, like six months, no results.

[00:03:23] I was like, what the hell is going on? And then I went, met some people at SEO. And long story short, this was my first community for SEO experts. And it was like very, very good community in Ukraine. And then I continued doing this journey for marketers, for sales experts. I even hosted a conference for sales experts for 700 people by myself without ever doing this. I was like, yeah, let's just have a bigger community meeting.

[00:03:47] And then, you know, when the war started, I suddenly lost all the sources of income because they were all mostly around communities of experts that I've built. And I was like, what do I do? I've been doing communities for seven last years. But I didn't know that there is a job of being a community expert, community manager. I was thinking that this was just connecting people and having fun with them. But then I find out that there is an industry. And some of the experts, they are older than me.

[00:04:15] They've been in industry more than I'm alive. And I was like, oh, it looks like I know something. So that's how I became community consultant, community professional, because I was doing community for over 10 years already without, and six of them without knowing that it's called community. I was just thinking that it's like meeting people and having fun together. But now I'm working as a freelancer myself. I'm working with different companies. I'm helping them to grow their communities, to build relationships with people.

[00:04:44] And currently, two of my main clients are FreelancerMap. It's a company that connects independent talent freelancers with companies who wants to hire them, of course. And Freelance Unlocked is like one of our biggest conference, I believe, not just in Germany, but overall in Europe for freelancers. And for independent talent this year, we are going for a thousand participants. Pretty, pretty great community, I can tell you. So yeah, like I'm talking to hundreds and thousands of people.

[00:05:11] I'm getting all this experience, and I love sharing it with others. So, you know, and why I love being on the podcast as a guest or as a host, because I also host a few podcasts myself, because it's always elevating a human. It's always sharing, like having a fun conversation, and then sharing all this experience with all more people around it. So it's like highlighting humans, elevating them. I just love that, you know?

[00:05:37] So yeah, it's a very short story, and you better stop me, because I still can go on and go on. Well, I think it's great that you've navigated, you know, different areas to find something that you're really passionate about. And I bet you're really good at it. I can tell by the energy level that you bring to the conversations, your attitude. And, you know, you don't need a fancy title to be a leader, right? I think community is more important than ever, which, you know, we're going to get into over the course of this conversation.

[00:06:07] But I think as people are trying to navigate, you know, the AI, you know, landscape, what does this mean for my career? Do I, you know, do I want to rely on a company? Do I, can I go off on my own like you did or like I did? You know, what does it take to do that? And underneath all of that is the fact that you're not, even when you work as a solopreneur, you're not really always by yourself.

[00:06:34] I mean, you have communities that you can, you know, rely on and tap into, whether that's for specific subject matter expertise, like you did with the SEO, you know, community. Or it's just, you know, other, I'm in one community that I recently joined, it's all solopreneurs, right? So you've got to have that support system, you know, family, friends, but also, you know, people who can help you in different industries and with different, you know, different skills, different activities and things like that.

[00:07:02] So community, I think, is just as important, if not more important than ever. You know, family and friends, they do not understand you because you usually work in different scenarios. And I, I'm, I'm double on that. First of all, I'm working with community. Secondly, I'm working with freelancers. So, okay, let's be honest. Community is not very sexy thing that everyone talks about. If we are talking about sales, marketing, customers, because everyone knows that. Community is kind of like a rising star. The same as freelancers. Yes.

[00:07:30] So it's like everyone, like 90% of people, they are full-time employees. And when I'm talking that I'm a solopreneur, that I'm a freelancer, that I'm working with different clients, that I'm finding clients myself and they do not understand me clearly. So to really grow in those two industries, I need to have friends from community side. And I need to have friends from freelancers side because otherwise it's a hell. Like it's hard. Totally. Totally.

[00:07:54] Well, I think there's, I agree on the friends and family saying they don't necessarily understand all the aspects of what I do. But I do think knowing that they're there and, you know, they just have to trust that you are doing constructive. It's better for them to trust. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The Freelance Unlocked conference, that's coming up, right? It'll be in June. Okay. 11th, 12th of this year. And we are hosting it already for the third year.

[00:08:21] So we started it as like, hey, so it were three companies. It was 9AM, Freelancer Map and Uplink. And it was like three different companies that kind of competitors. Like if we're really honest, they are competitors, but they are not competing. They are working together to bring better experience for independent talent. And for me, it's like the best scenario because currently when I'm talking to companies, when I'm talking to different platforms that are working with freelancers and telling them about what I'm doing,

[00:08:51] what we are doing. And if someone ever tells me that we are competitors, I'm like, are you kidding me? There is like the whole growing market of independent talent. There is like uncharted territory of so many. There are so many businesses who haven't even heard about independent talent working with freelancers. And you are telling me that we are competitors? Why would we compete? We better work together. We better grow this market and get better results altogether. Why the hell do we compete?

[00:09:18] I think there's some, so in the U.S., I don't know if you have this term in Europe, but coopetition. I've heard that term. Like you can, sometimes you compete because somebody needs to, you know, pick a specific, you know, solution provider or whatever. And maybe you compete for talent, of course. But sometimes for the greater good for the industry to thrive, sometimes you need to collaborate. Maybe it's around standards.

[00:09:43] Maybe it's around, you know, moving, showing more people that, you know, careers are, you know, thriving in the freelance economy, you know, things like that. So there's, depending on the day, depending on the context, you may be competitive and you may be collaborative. And also the funniest part is that if we're talking about like freelancing platforms, freelancers are everywhere. It's not like they stick to one platform and they are there with this forever.

[00:10:11] They have accounts, they have like profiles on like dozens of platforms because they always, they need to build their pipeline. They need to find for their clients. They have to do it continuously. You cannot be a freelancer having one client and start searching for the next client when your project ends. No, you have to continuously build your funnel. You just reminded me of a situation.

[00:10:35] I haven't been on those, some of those platforms in a while, but as you alluded, I have profiles on probably at least eight or 10 different, you know, freelance platforms. I don't know if they would give permission to do this. Just like, I don't know that the community platforms would let me pull data, extract data out of that.

[00:10:59] But as if you were a freelancer, it'd be nice to have your own sort of dashboard that pulled all your profile data, whatever. Because I haven't looked for project-based work like that in a while, but I would have to go in and log into each of those systems. Most of them, even if they email me that there's new projects, that's all they say. Oh, hey, there's new projects. Go back and log in. Like, they don't even do like what Indeed or LinkedIn would do if you have like a job alert.

[00:11:29] They don't even send you, oh, here's five new jobs or whatever that fit your criteria, research criteria. It's just come back in and look for yourself. So, I mean, I don't know if I want to get too sidetracked here, but is there anything that allows, is anyone building anything that allows a freelancer to, you know, pull all that stuff together in one unified platform? I don't think so. As far as I know, I don't think so. And once again, you've told that Edge platform wants you back.

[00:11:57] So basically they want you to be on their platform. And I remember we were talking a lot about like having this unified profile that you update in one place and then you have the same profile on different platforms. It would like save lives, you know, time of people lives. Because like, I don't even remember that I have some profiles on some platforms unless they send me an email telling me, hey, it's been six months. We are deleting your profile. I'm like, yeah, okay. Like if I don't remember you for six months, maybe it's a good time to delete my profile.

[00:12:27] But, you know, I feel like it's once again, it's kind of back to competition. And I have this feeling that each platform competes for attention. And even though freelancers are on all of those platforms, they are not collaborating in this way. And for example, if we see a lot of everyone is using like Google sign identification. So you can basically use Google sign up for I don't know how many platforms.

[00:12:51] I really hope that at some point, maybe even Google will create it, like freelance Google profile or something like that, that you will use just this profile and sign up for any platform. I don't really see it in the nearest future, but who knows? Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like there are, you know, big AI, you know, companies building frontier models. Some of them are already dabbling in the talent space, right?

[00:13:20] I mean, OpenAI has said they're going to build something. And yeah, it seems like somebody like that could easily do that. I mean, not violating the terms of the individual, you know, platforms, but it just seems like there's got to be a way to do that. I mean, I see in general in the talent acquisition space, there's a lot more, you know, 98% of the investment goes to the solution providers.

[00:13:50] And that's the tech that, because that's the tech that big companies with deep pockets are going to buy to manage their recruiting, you know, pipeline. And there's that 2%, probably increasing these days, based on what I've seen, but there's not a lot of investment into candidate tools. And similarly, you know, not a lot of investment into, you know, tools that help the freelancer as opposed to the people hiring the freelancers.

[00:14:18] Let's see, you know, what I see right now that AI is making more problems that helps. I mean, like in a way of matching, because how did it work before? A recruiter has a job, they have to come up with a description. Of course, they have some templates, they put them together, they put it out there. Freelancer or any type of worker, you have to somehow reply to this application. You had to use your brain to adjust your CV, to send a cover letter, to have a conversation with this person.

[00:14:47] You couldn't just go to ChagPT and, hey, ChagPT, here is a job description, please give me an answer how to reply to this. And like recruiters go to ChatGPT, it creates a job description, then applications, the people who apply go to those same tools. And it's like AI fight. So you have some easy idea and you transform it into some heart with like 10 extra points of like, what do you need to have? Then you have the same reply and you have to deconstruct it into like the real answer.

[00:15:17] So we are losing the human connection part. And I would say that the best platform that can ever do this, it will be like the real human related thing that will gather. Okay, yes, of course, it's all about data. It has to gather all this data, all the proof, because it's all about proof. Did you really do this work? Did you really had these outcomes? Have you ever achieved those results you are talking about? It's the number one question.

[00:15:45] And those platforms can do this. They can create this like proof of like validation for this freelancer, for this expert. It would be helpful, but not in a communication way, because you still have to, you know, human, human conversation. And I like on this independent workforce podcast, where I talk to experts about how to hire freelancers. Many of them talk about cultural thing.

[00:16:11] So you have to not just be a great expert for a job that you are doing, but you have to have this human fit. You have to fit with their team. You have to have this culture approach. You have to be just the right piece of the puzzle for this specific company. Because otherwise, no matter how amazing expert you are, but sometimes if you do not match on this human level, you won't have great results. Yeah, I agree.

[00:16:35] I just, I feel like the companies don't always are good at articulating that. Like even if they wrote, even if they didn't use AI to write the job description, it just seems like, you know, to your point with this, you have this sort of AI battle. It just seems like you've got these inexact, you know, two sides of this batch, right?

[00:16:59] And it's never going to be perfect if you don't have the, you know, human to human, you know, conversation and inject the human judgment. And of course, humans should be making all talent related decisions ultimately as well. But even just from a decision support standpoint, it's giving you its sort of assessment and its judgment based on what it's got in front of it on that training data or the data that it's analyzing.

[00:17:29] And unfortunately, that's not necessarily accurate. I mean, humans are complex and organizations are even more complex. So it's, I'm not saying this is easy. You know, the best job description I've ever seen. So I recently saw a job description, like it was a post on LinkedIn from one of my community friends. And she literally wrote that it's not a sexy job. That's something that I love doing. So I love digging in the data, like doing this analysis. That's what I do like in daily.

[00:17:57] I will not promise you like fast results. There will be challenges. I'm dealing with challenges every day. Blah, blah, blah. And then she wrote like the real human piece. How does it feel to work on this role? And she told, and yes, I'm looking for someone to help me on this journey. If you like the same thing that I like, let's talk. And it was the most honest job description. It was not like 10 years of experience, like high results, blah, blah, blah.

[00:18:25] So as you usually see everywhere, it was no this high words and like this, I don't know, magic unicorns and stuff. No promises, just human to human. I was like, yeah, if it would be my type of role, I would apply. Because like, I clearly see what it takes. Yes, I might not have all the skills that is needed for this job. But it speaks to my heart.

[00:18:51] And if it speaks to my heart, it means that I will find the way out of how to make it or how to make it work. So yeah, but I don't know. I feel like it's moving in the wrong direction. Actually, people are moving from human to human to AI to AI. And who knows? Maybe at some point we'll be so fed up with all the things that we'll come back to human to human. Well, I like what you're describing because I'm trying to envision like what the candidate side of that would look like, right?

[00:19:20] It's not just a matter of matching, you know, keywords and certain phrases and whatever. I mean, you could probably tell more easily with a job description like that whether people actually read it with their human eyes and responded. It's probably easier to tell who used an AI augmented, you know, resume or other information to submit against that.

[00:19:50] I was always also thinking about the comments you made about like the AI that we're all using now. You know, we're starting to build, you know, these sort of personal operating systems and second brains and chiefs of staff and all these things to support our work.

[00:20:13] And, you know, for someone like myself and I'm guessing you as well, I mean, these things can be really impactful and, you know, make you feel like you've got, you know, some semblance of a team to support you. But I was also thinking about like having this one sort of profile to rule them all, like getting into, you know, digital credentials a little bit.

[00:20:39] And why couldn't you have your, you know, this is, this would all be opt in, of course. Basic change in the world of business is fast and that drives incredible complexity for the world of human resources. Welcome to the HR data labs, brown bag lunch series of conversations with experts inside and outside the world of human resources on how to innovate, measure and evolve our practices.

[00:21:04] Our goal is to help provide you with practical examples of how HR has to change and to meet in this complex business environment. Every week we'll talk to new and different voices on all aspects of human resources. And guess what? You get to chat with us live. Live? Live. So they can answer questions or, or they can ask us questions. They can ask, they can answer whatever they want. They get to talk with us live. That's awesome.

[00:21:35] Sometimes we geek out on the data and technology that underlie the processes that drive the world of HR. But the conversations are always insightful and fun. So please enjoy the HR data labs, brown bag lunch. But if I had my digital credentials and I had my, you know, second, second brain, so it knew all the work that I did. It had all that proof that you mentioned before.

[00:22:02] Or if it had all that and I could selectively share things from my digital credentials, it could basically, it could be my own, you know, recruiter. Right? It could go out and do all that sort of negotiation on my behalf. And you don't have to, I don't have to fill out, you know, 20 different profiles. I don't have to retake assessments that I've already taken, you know, at different companies.

[00:22:31] You have visibility and assurance that I have actually achieved these, you know, credentials that are important for a lot of, a lot of different jobs. And so, I don't know, it just seems, I know that would take a lot of investment and coordination or whatever. But I just, I feel like people keep, like, chipping away at some of these systemic, you know, challenges that we have in the talent, across the talent ecosystem.

[00:23:01] And nothing's really changing. I mean, technology should be making this better and more efficient. And sometimes I feel like it's just setting us back at the end of the day. I know individual freelancers who already built these systems for themselves. So, they do not actually apply for jobs. Yeah, sometimes they apply, but it's not them, it's their agents. So, they build a sequence of agents who acts like them and they go through this process by itself.

[00:23:31] So, they create the digital twins or something like that. And then they just show up on, like, a human-to-human face-to-face interview. And they are totally open to, they believe the agents because they gave those agents the information. And they clearly know what those agents will write, what they will tell, how they will answer to any questions that recruiter might have, etc.

[00:23:55] So, what's the only thing that they need just to actually show up and show their human side during the interview? Also, there is a great human, Nuri Demirji Lopez, who is building currently Digital Twins. And he is talking a lot about this, like, from the company side and from the freelancer side. So, from the company side, you have the digital twin for different people in your company, for management, for specific people who are hiring.

[00:24:21] And they don't actually have to spend their time on all those interviews. So, they create Digital Twin. And then it can be 100 people who apply, who can answer all the questions they want, who can have a conversation with the digital twin. Like a real face-to-face interview. And then it helps a lot to go through all those things. And it's the same thing for freelancers. So, you have a digital twin.

[00:24:46] And your clients, they do not really have to jump on a call with you for, like, 15, 30 minutes, whatever. They talk to your digital twin. They ask your twin about your experience, about use cases, what you've done, how it works. And basically, it helps to identify if you are a good fit for them. And you don't really have to go on a call with them unless they are ready to work with you. Or if they have some specific questions that your digital twin do not know answers to. And what's the beauty of it?

[00:25:15] That it's not an LLM. So, it's not like getting information from everywhere. It's getting information specifically from what you've told to it. If you didn't tell anything to this information, it will tell, I don't know. Because it doesn't know. And only if you put some data from your side into this that, yeah, it will answer the question. So, once again, there are so many conversations about the future of work. And, you know, I remember this movie, Back to the Future.

[00:25:44] And they promised us fly boards and the shoes that we'll, like, make themselves. But I didn't see them yet, you know. So, that's the hardest part. I think there was, wasn't there a band a couple decades ago that said we were promised jetpacks? Yeah, yeah, exactly. The name of a band? The name of an album? Yeah, no, I hear you.

[00:26:06] I think the closest we're getting for any of that Back to the Future stuff is maybe the Mr. Fusion, you know, using food scraps for fuel. Yeah, that's probably the closest. Where are we going there, especially with all this crisis that we have right now? Yeah, the digital twin, I know a bunch of people building digital twins. I have a digital advisor myself that someone built for me. And it's not comprehensive necessarily.

[00:26:32] I mean, it was based on a 45-minute interview that, you know, talks about how I think and how I work through problems and things like that. So, I would need to build that out, of course. But I guess one of the concerns I'm sure that people would have is, you know, technically you could build that to have any competency you want that you don't necessarily have, right?

[00:27:00] So, it could take, it could go off the rails pretty quickly in terms of exacerbating the candidate fraud situation. So, I still think you need, like, the validation that says, you know, I can actually do these things. I didn't just, you know, build, you know, a super-powered version of myself. And now it's out there as my proxy, you know, conducting, you know, interviews or whatever.

[00:27:28] So, we do need to be careful about how we proceed in that regard. But I do agree that there's a lot that can be taken off of, you know, the human-to-human plate. Because oftentimes that is even just the coordination of getting these meetings through not just an individual recruiter, but through a hiring team and things like that.

[00:27:51] I mean, that is extending unnecessarily, in many cases, the time to hire, you know, just the recruiting, you know, cycle time, right? Look, people are already faking it. You know, I see some people that I connect with on LinkedIn. I see in their company placements, there's like YouTube or TikTok or LinkedIn. Oh, you're working for this company. And actually, no, they're just creators. And I can say not the best creators.

[00:28:18] So, they're just shooting some videos and they tell that they're working for YouTube. But you're not, okay, maybe you're working for YouTube. You're creating more content for them and maybe bringing more users to them. But you're not working, like, for YouTube in a way that you are, like, as an employee of this company. You're not getting experience of the team. Like, you self-proclaim that you are working for YouTube. And the same thing here. So, at some point, you can fake it however you like.

[00:28:47] But everyone will very clearly and very fast understand that it's not who you are. You start working with one person and they will see it, like, in one, two days. Okay, it's the worst case scenario in, like, a few weeks. But it has to be also another side of the coin that people have to prove, you know, how you, when you buy a product on Amazon, you go and, like, add the rating. What is it real? What is it not real? Et cetera, et cetera.

[00:29:12] And then when you see that there are, like, 4.9 out of 5, yeah, maybe this product is good. But if you see, like, 2 out of 5, it's a question. But once again, as we see it on Upwork and other platforms like this, there are a lot of people who are faking even ratings. And you kind of trust them. But no, it's just, like, dozens of their friends added, like, five-star rating or something like that. So it's always about this.

[00:29:37] And as long as people are doing this, you know, I don't really think that AI can remove this part, like, all the fraud part overall. Maybe it can be some kind of technology, but it has to be very, very, like, connected technologies that connect it to your identification, to your passport, to your bank account or something like that, like a high-level identification. But, like, for freelance profiles, you just have to be honest because you are building your brand.

[00:30:05] And, yeah, you can make some quick money working with, like, two or three clients. But I don't really know if it's good long-term. Yuri, I wanted to get back to some of the, like, themes that you're seeing at past, you know, conferences and just how you think about, you know, some of the key topics that drive the community engagement.

[00:30:28] Obviously, you know, AI is a huge topic and the freelancer gig economy has grown steadily. Just curious to get your thoughts on how people are, excuse me, reacting to AI in the talent, you know, ecosystem. Is it, do they see, freelancers typically see it as an advantage for them because they can, you know, scale their own capabilities and impact?

[00:30:55] Has it affected, you know, the readiness of, you know, companies to hire them as they try to figure out, you know, what can be, you know, automated? What can be given to AI? And then what do I do with my full-time staff, let alone my extended workforce? What are some of the, you know, themes that you're seeing? It's hard to say about the company side because companies see it as a new sexy thing and they invest a lot of money and time into this.

[00:31:24] But it doesn't mean that they are using it in a correct way. But what I see from the freelancer side that, of course, like freelancers are always those people who are on the forefront of technologies. They are always trying something new. They're always playing with new tools. They're always like implementing those things because it's all about their time of their life. And me personally, look, when I'm preparing the podcast episode, I can tell you like three years ago, it took me a lot of time. Now it's so much faster because I have everything in my mind.

[00:31:54] I have all the conversations that we had with a guest in my mind, but I don't really have to review it, release it. I don't have to summarize it, to write all the text, to create all those images and stuff. Like it's done by tools. So I just save time of my life and do it so much faster. And the same thing for each and every freelancer. They are using a lot of AI tools that help them to be more productive and to make things faster. And they act like managers, like experts.

[00:32:24] Imagine that you are a team of one and then in a moment you are a team of 20. But those 20 are not real humans, but agents. And basically you give them tasks, they come back to you with a result and you check if it works or not. If it works, good, you use it. But like in real life, if you're a manager and you have 40 people on your team, you don't really have to go and control everyone what they are doing. You give them a task, they come back to you.

[00:32:54] If they did something wrong, you help them and then teach them how to make it better. And that's how it works. The same thing. So actually currently freelancers with AI tools, they are becoming bigger teams. Even like the one man team, it feels like 20 people team or like 50 people team. It depends on how good you are in this AI literacy. But yeah, like it's definitely moving people forward.

[00:33:21] And once again, there are freelancers, like as I call them geek freelancers, who know like everything about AI, who know like more than all the things that's going on in the world. But usually they call themselves AI experts. And there are some freelancers who are not that geeks, but they are still using it pretty much very good as a second brain, as you've mentioned it before. As a second brain, they use a lot of, for example, for offers.

[00:33:49] They don't really have to write everything from scratch. So it saves a lot of time and I can tell you sanity. So it makes you more like more real. It prevents your burnout as a freelance expert. Yeah, I've talked to a lot of folks around, you know, of course, responsible use and responsible design as well. Right. We're all builders now. And I talked to people about this, you know, who are in the current workforce. And I talked about it.

[00:34:19] Actually, yesterday I had a prep call for my daughter's school system as I'm on the AI task force. And we talked about, we actually heard from some kids in grade school that were like probably like 11 years old. And these kids are amazing. Just talking about the different ways in which they're using AI already. I mean, one of these kids was, I guess his dad's like a cybersecurity expert.

[00:34:46] And so he's already teaching him Python and he's teaching him, he was using an AI notetaker on the call if we didn't even realize he was using. And which is problematic, but we'll talk to him about that separately. But, you know, people are anxious to get in and use it, you know, beyond, you know, the chat box, you know, interface and get into some, you know, autonomy, autonomous use cases.

[00:35:14] And so we talked about like when is it appropriate to use AI in some of these situations. And so when, when Canva came up in conversation, I was, I was glad to hear that the focus was really on using the, the, the templates and having AI help them figure out which template to use. Because that is just sort of helping you with the starting point.

[00:35:39] And then the kids can start to use their own, you know, creativity and curiosity and, and, and build from that.

[00:35:47] So you, you're basically just having AI give you that starting point and that baseline and then the kids can start to use their own imagination and, and those, those human skills to build on top of that, which, which I thought was good as opposed to using it to, you know, out, you know, outsource your, your creativity or your critical thinking and things like that. So I think all those things are important for people to, to keep in mind.

[00:36:13] But I mean, I just used your example just the other day. I had a contract and, and statement work that I needed to prepare. And yeah, of course it just used my AI to, you know, create that template. Here's the presentation. Here's all this sort of source material. And I just had to do some basic tweaks and then of course review the entire thing to make sure everything was, was accurate and, and appropriate.

[00:36:38] But yeah, I mean, I think otherwise I would have to, you know, hire an intern or carve out more time out of my day that I could be doing something more constructive. As they say, the hardest part is to start and AI tools are removing this starting point problem. Because even if you don't know what to do, you can go to the LLM of your choice and tell, Hey, I'm like, describe what you are trying to deal with.

[00:37:07] And it can give you like first steps to try things, where to check for more information. So people use Google before, but once again, it's not that easy to find something in Google. So basically AI is like moving this search on the next level. So it helps you to deal with a starting point problem. And also, you know, as you've mentioned, it's very hard to validate. So what I see, like my kid is 14 years old.

[00:37:32] So the biggest problem with him and AI, what I see is that he not always know how to validate the information that he receives. And he can trust it, fully trust it. And that's what I'm afraid of. And that's what I'm always telling. Look, great. You asked for this information. Amazing. Super cool. You asked some extra questions. Great. Ask for the resources.

[00:37:55] So if you got your answers that you wanted to have, ask for the resources and go check the resources. Go check if it's true. Because AI can tell you whatever you want to hear. It's like a very like great people pleaser. It will tell you what you want to hear. And it's the hardest part. And another challenge that I see a lot, that currently there are so many tools and everyone tells it they're AI powered.

[00:38:20] But the main problem is people are not having a challenge to deal with and then they search for AI tool. But they have AI tools and then they think, oh, what is the challenge that I may fix with this tool? It's not, it doesn't work that way. Because if you have a specific problem, you find a solution for that. But not like you have a solution and then you search where to implement it. No, it doesn't work that way.

[00:38:45] Well, I think that's good advice for anyone, you know, whether you're an individual or, you know, a company, right? Start with what problem needs solving. Maybe it doesn't need AI or whatever you're calling AI. Maybe there's a simpler way to approach it. Maybe there's a more ethical way to approach it. Just thinking about, you know, certain problems that we're trying to solve.

[00:39:07] Or when you get into cases where, again, in a case of education, you know, there's an appropriate use of AI as, you know, to build study aids and things like that. But, you know, you also, as you're doing the kind of research that you're just describing, you've got to make sure that you're not, that it's not leading you down a certain path because maybe you gave it too much information. I've talked to my wife about that.

[00:39:34] Like, don't, you need to frame the question. Ask better questions, yes. But you need to frame the question so that it's not making an assumption in its logic and leading you down a path. Hi there. I'm Peter Zollman. I'm a co-host of the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces podcast. And I'm Stephen Rothberg. And I guess that makes me the other co-host. Every other week, we're joined by guests from the world's leading job sites.

[00:40:03] Together, we analyze news about general niche and aggregator job board and Recruitment Marketplaces sites. Make sure you sign up and subscribe today. You know, isn't presenting all, you know, options to you, right? Like, don't lead the witness, I guess is one way to think about it, if that makes sense. Look, I have an example. So recently, the battery on my car died and I needed to change. I didn't know what's going on.

[00:40:31] So it started, I couldn't, like, turn it on. So it were some noises out of the engine and things. So where do I went? I actually go to an AI and ask, hey, here is what I hear. Here is what I see. Here is a photo of, like, the panel, what I see, like, all the lights. And here are the noises that I hear. Here is my engine. Like, what should I do? And it actually helped me to check that, yes, it's a battery problem.

[00:40:58] So I basically, like, asked another driver to light down my car with their engine. Then I went home. Then I changed battery and everything is okay. It costed me, like, one hour of, like, checking how it works. And the battery, like, yeah, it was not that expensive. But if there were no AI, I needed to call mechanics. I needed to call them to come back to the place where I was to identify what's the problem,

[00:41:27] to take my car somewhere. And why would I know if they were telling me the truth or not? And they could, like, charge me so much more of time and money that I've spent because of the stool. But to make it happen, I had to know how usually engine works. If I didn't know how engine works, it might be hard for me to understand what was the problem, even with the help of AI. So you still need general... You have to be smart.

[00:41:56] You have to educate yourself constantly. And even if you are creating, like, the digital twin or, like, the second brain, it doesn't have to turn into your first brain. Because the moment your second brain is smarter than your first brain, yeah, it's the end. You know, you stop learning, you are moving nowhere. So it's always... You have to continuously, continuously, continuously grow. And currently, with all this amount of information, we have another problem. How to identify that it's real information.

[00:42:25] How that is reality, that it's truth. That it's not, like, AI-generated fake video or, like, an article or whatever. So it's getting harder and harder to understand what is real, what is not. And people have to actually be very mindful of that and not trust everything they see. And also, you know, coming back a little bit to the community part, it's been, there are many reports, talking, especially in the US, talking about the loneliness epidemics. And I believe it started even before COVID.

[00:42:55] But during COVID, it's, like, getting harder and harder. And now, with AI, people are becoming more lonely. Because why would you ever go ask someone if you can go ask ChatGPT? Why would you ever go to the courses if you can learn from some LLM or go to AI tools and, like, do it yourself? So people are becoming disconnected. And that's why I love community. Because communities are building human-to-human connections.

[00:43:23] So the more AI tools we have, the more disconnected people are becoming. The more disconnected they are becoming, the more we need to return this human-to-human connections. And the more people need this connection, the more they need communities. So, yeah, it's like bingo. You know, it's coming back to, like, human-to-human connections. No, I think that's incredibly important. Especially, like we talked about at the beginning, it's easy to get caught up. I mean, I work from a home office and I'm a solopreneur.

[00:43:52] So, you know, yeah, it's easy for me to just not. I don't have to leave for that many reasons. But I choose to because we are social beings and it's important to have those kinds of, you know, relationships. Not just, I mean, not that it's not valuable to talk here over the video.

[00:44:16] But it's important to, you know, maintain and maintain relationships and to, you know, continue to have that type of, you know, connection with friends and others. And so I know you, I mean, you guys talk about that in your communities and conferences and things like that, right? Like mental health.

[00:44:37] And, I mean, this is a big part of, we talk a lot about human centricity on this show and that can go in a lot of different directions. But certainly, I think, you know, mental health and wellness and well-being are all, you know, part of human centricity. So it's the hardest part, as you've said. Like you are working in a home office and basically you don't, you kind of don't need anyone. And you have everything you need on your own.

[00:45:03] And like if you need to talk to people, you just jump on a Zoom call or whatever video tool you use and have a conversation. And it feels kind of okay. But no, it's not. You know, any internet connection, whether it's chat, video, whatever you call it, they will never replace human to human connection. For example, me personally, we have these meetings happening every two weeks, in-person meetings. There are some speakers and there are people gathering and it's open for everyone to join.

[00:45:30] So I'm going there bi-weekly, not always to learn something, but just to catch up with real humans, just to have this casual conversation, just to shake hands. Because at the end of the day, it's different. It's like the energy. You are not getting any sort of energy from your computer, but you are getting energy from other people and you are sharing your energy. So you are doing this exchange. And I can tell you, like, I clearly believe in energy. So Einstein didn't create his laws from nowhere.

[00:45:58] So energy is not coming from anywhere and it's not going anywhere. It's always about this exchange. And the more people are meeting in real life, the more they are recharging. The more they are like, we are still social animals. We need other humans to survive. No matter how often we say that we are introverts, that we don't need other people, we need other people. Maybe we just don't know this.

[00:46:25] And the funniest thing that sometimes people tell me, oh, Yuri, you are so extroverted. You are running these communities. You are knowing so many people. And I'm like, yeah, but only because I host communities, only because I host conferences, because I'm kind of like creating the space for you to come and to enjoy. And I'm kind of like inviting you to my home because of that. But when I'm joining some random event where I don't know anyone, like it's very, very hard for me personally to go and meet someone, to go and talk to someone.

[00:46:55] I usually they're checking out what's going on. I'm not that extroverted, you know? So it's always a difference. It depends where you are. The same is for a freelancer. However, there might be, okay, let's talk about developers. Yeah, who is the most socially introverted people? Developers. They don't need anyone. They just need. But if you gather like five developers passionate about the same thing in one room and give them beer, okay, we'll see who is introvert and who is extrovert.

[00:47:25] So it's very, yeah, I cannot say for sure who is introvert or who is not. Yeah, I consider myself an introvert. But you're right, under the right circumstances. I mean, I can be pretty social. Yeah. It's all about the right people, the right topic, the right place. And that's also what I'm always telling to people that I'm talking to. Look, I've struggled with this myself.

[00:47:51] Every connection that I've made, I was thinking that I have to continue moving this connection forward. So I have to be this person who messages, like remind about myself and like kind of like make this relationship work. But no, if you meet someone that you want to grow together, this person will also message you from time to time. It will be like two-way street. It won't be just one-way street. It won't be like me pinging you or you pinging me all the time. It will be mutually mutual.

[00:48:19] And if not, look, there are 8 billion people out there in the world. You will definitely find a soulmate. You will definitely find a person to talk to. You will definitely find someone who is curious about the same things that you are, who are talking about the same topics. You have to just continue searching. So, yeah, that's my like key takeaway out of talking to like hundreds and maybe even thousands of people. You will always find someone to talk if you are interested in that.

[00:48:45] And I think, well, as a freelancer, solopreneur, I mean, you should be, even if you're not a good natural salesperson, like I'm not like that. But those human, you know, face-to-face interactions at these events, whether they're local events or bigger events, the bigger events can certainly be overwhelming. But I think if you can find your cohort, you can find like-minded people.

[00:49:15] You'll have plenty to talk about and you build those relationships. So, for me, any selling that I do, it's much easier if you've established rapport and started to build and foster those relationships. And then if you can help each other, that's great. But for me to show up and just start, you know, it's not natural for me to just show up and just start pitching something to you. It's all about practice.

[00:49:45] You know, I also hate these people who are coming up and they're just exchanging their business cards and like, hey, I'm doing this, let's connect. Yeah, why? Why should I even care about you? But usually when people are talking about something that are interested, something that they are interested in, and you are just, once again, you know, I've mentioned the word human so many times during this conversation. But it's all about connecting on a human level, about finding something that you have in common to talk about.

[00:50:13] And, you know, to your point of being natural, look, if I go back like 10 years back or like 15 years back in my professional journey, I would be this person who would stay in the queue with like 50 people in this queue just to understand that I was staying in the wrong queue. I will never ask if it's the right place for me to be. I will wait like to the door and then I open it and I understand it was the wrong door. But now it's totally different.

[00:50:43] So it's all about the practice. If you will go out and speak to 100 people, I can tell you, you will have great conversational, social, and maybe even sales skills. It depends on what kind of conversation you will have. So it's all about practice. And there are so many resources. There are so many books, podcasts, like conversations, whatever, everything. If you want it, you will make it. So the question is what you really want. Sort of a random question, but I was just thinking about some of these larger events.

[00:51:14] And like if you know people that are going to be there, then you've got, you know, your own, you know, chatter and small, maybe a group chat or something like that. Oh, let's meet up here or whatever. But these events can be pretty overwhelming if you haven't like laid that groundwork and you just walk in and it's, you know, overwhelming. One of the things that I've never seen in all my time going to some of those big conferences, and this goes back probably 20 years.

[00:51:41] Because I think my first IBM conference I went to was 2007. No one's ever done a good job like matching you up with suggestions. I mean, I know some of these conferences, like they'll have an app and it'll be like suggested. They'll have you fill out a profile and then they can use that profile to suggest connections or whatever. But does anybody use that? In my experience, like that has not gone years.

[00:52:09] I've never met someone that said, oh, the app suggested we meet or whatever. Every, most every time someone reached out to me through an event app, it was because they were trying to sell me something. Or at least say, you know, stop, we're at booth 205, stop by. You need to make it human. So one of the things, so once again, I've hosted myself like three conferences. Then we are running already the third freelance unlock conference.

[00:52:37] And I've never used this matching apps. So it was always about kind of like building connections before the conference. So my ultimate goal is that every person who's coming to the conference will already have at least one person that they know to meet during the conference. So how do I do this? First of all, I personally connect, if I can, of course, on LinkedIn with all the participants. It's not that hard to find their profiles if you want to.

[00:53:05] Yeah, it takes a lot of, you can imagine 1000 people, connect with 1000 people and invite them somewhere. Yeah, it takes time. You can automate it if you want, like it's a question. We, for Freelance Unlocked, we have a WhatsApp group. We have a WhatsApp community. And there are, so let me show you the numbers. First year, we had 500 people. Second year, we had 700 people. So it's like 1200 already.

[00:53:30] And out of this 1200, we have only 350 people in WhatsApp community. So there is already like 25% who wants to connect with others. So when I connect with a person, I tell them, hey, look, we're doing introductions in the community. There is a group of all the participants who are joining the Freelance Unlocked Conference. Would you like to join it? Not that many people tell that, yeah, I would like to. Some people say, oh, no, I don't like this group, blah, blah, blah.

[00:53:58] Okay, let's imagine 50% are joining. Out of those 50%, 50% of them are doing actual introductions. So what do I do? I encourage them. I give them a template. I go share it. Then I put all this information into a simple Google Sheet. And then I share this Google Sheet with each person who introduced themselves. So it's kind of like make it very mutually beneficial. So random person won't get access to this information. Only those who made their introductions.

[00:54:27] And then before the conference itself, we host Zoom online meeting. Very simple, like small event up to 30 minutes. We have three rounds of seven minutes of one-on-one conversation. And every person who is coming to this event, who is coming to the conference, during this event, during the 30 minutes, they can make three connections. Or maybe one, it depends because it's random. You never know. Sometimes you may meet one person for three times. Yeah, sometimes it happens.

[00:54:56] But usually it works that way. And I can tell you, we are doing this conference for the third year. And more than 50% of people are coming back, not just because they love content. Yes, they love content. But they tell me that they are coming back to meet friends. Meet friends that are made on previous conference. So my ultimate goal is to ensure that every person made at least one friend before, during, or after the conference.

[00:55:22] Because once again, it's so much easier to go somewhere where you already know at least one person. And it doesn't always, it's not always easy. I cannot ensure that each person has this one friend. But I'm doing my best to make it happen. Well, it sounds like you're doing an amazing job because it's, I mean, that's what it takes. It takes a strong community leader who understands the power of human connection,

[00:55:48] understands how to make the event more impactful and memorable for everyone who's coming, who might be coming for the first time and decide whether they're going to come back, right? So I think those things are incredibly important and impactful. You did remind me as you were describing that, that I have one community where we do have a WhatsApp group, the talent, I'll give a shout out to Toby Colshaw, who's also, like you, a fantastic community manager.

[00:56:17] But he, yeah, he's got this WhatsApp group with like, you know, people analytics people and workforce planning and talent intelligence and all of this. And that fed into like a people analytics world conference, which is like sort of a medium sized conference, probably about the size as you're freelance on love. And, and yeah, it makes, it makes a big difference because you know who you can expect to see. You can set your agenda. I want to hear this, this talk, you know, this panel, whatever.

[00:56:45] I want to stop by this booth because, you know, I've heard about that, but it's not, people aren't selling to each other. It's all like relationship driven. By the way, it's very important point. One of the main feedbacks that we received during two previous years, what people love about freelance on love, that nobody's selling anything to each other. So we built such a space. So, you know, it's also about, about the hosts. So if hosts selling you tickets, if hosts selling you some stuff,

[00:57:15] like you, you also want to kind of like make your money back. You also go and you want to sell something. But if they feel this human approach, if they see that you are creating a community, if they see that there is another human on another side of the screen and behind the scenes, you want to act human yourself. So it's all about the energy that you are putting out there. And, you know, once again, it's always about humans taking actions because no matter how hard I try,

[00:57:43] if people don't want to, they won't do anything. I just give them guidelines. Like the easiest way. So we have freelance unlocked event on LinkedIn. And every person that is going to a conference, I know, I send them a link to this page and say, hey, go click that I'm going. And then afterwards, to other people, I tell them, hey, here is your link to LinkedIn. Go check who is going there.

[00:58:09] Go check like 10 profiles and go connect, like send connection requests to one or two people. And you already be much forward than just going to the conference without like knowing anything. And you will have also less expectations because you will understand that, okay, there is at least one person that I am going to meet. And if you will meet this person, you already achieved what, you already achieved your goal. And then if you don't know anyone, you will come and like, yeah,

[00:58:36] maybe you will be staying somewhere in the corner with your phone and nobody will ask you out or something like that. And I even had some feedback. It was like very, very small. It was like up to three people who told me that they didn't make a single connection during the conference. And I asked them like, what did you do? Like, did you sit somewhere in the corner for the whole conference? Like, why didn't you find me? Like, you know me. Why didn't you come to me and talk to me if you're like...

[00:59:03] So no matter how hard you try, if people don't want to, nah, you know, they won't make. So it's also like, I would say it's like part of the people who are hosting the event of the conference, like their energy, their approach, but it's still a huge part from your approach. How do you see this conference and what do you do to connect with someone? Yuri, we could talk for hours, but I want to be respectful of your time and kind of wrap up for this conversation.

[00:59:33] But before we do, just to give people some places to find you. So Freelance Unlocked is coming up in June, second week of June. It's in Berlin, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And so if you're in Europe and you're interested in freelance economy, go talk to Yuri and the rest of the community in Berlin. And then you've got how many podcasts that you're hosting? Two more.

[00:59:56] So one more is the independent workforce where I talk to experts who are hiring freelancers or like within the companies or who are helping companies to hire freelancers. And another one called Community ROI, where I talk specifically about how to connect community goals with business goals and how businesses can grow with the help of community. Awesome. I'm going to put links to your shows, to the conference. Although by the time this gets published, the conference may be over.

[01:00:25] But nonetheless, I'll put a link in there so people can come next year if they miss it. It's very easy. Yurii.community. And then you will find me on LinkedIn. Send a connection request. If you have a note, please add a note. How do you find me? Because every time when I receive a connection request, when it's spam, of course, I see it's spam, then I decline it. But when it's not, I always ask, why did you decide to connect with me? So please, please, please mention it. And yeah, let's continue the conversation. Excellent. All right.

[01:00:55] Thanks so much, Yuri. Great to see you again. Thank you both. See you in the world. Good luck at the conference. And thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you next time.