On Wednesday, I moderated a panel at @Sub_Summit with my good friends @DataDavidATX and @BryantJaquez. We talked about all things freelance and fractional work— from why it's so important to take advantage of now to how to properly find, vet, and manage freelancers. Here are the 3 main takeaways from the panel: ➡️ 1. Most brands are turning to freelancers not only to save money, but to bring in highly specialized expertise in specific domains This insight originated from the audience— an entrepreneur realized he much rather bring in 2-3 specialized, fractional workers over 1 junior-level “jack of all trades, master of none” employee. He wanted David and Bryant’s guidance on that approach. Both of them fully agreed with it. As digital worker productivity improves in the world of AI, you no longer need full time resources to get things done. Instead, bringing highly specialized expertise and arm them to do more with less. ➡️ 2. Most meetings are a waste of time. If you work with employees, agencies, and freelancers, you need to adjust your ways of working to be more asynchronous and rely less on meetings Bryant even went as far as to say that he has eliminated all of his standing one-on-one meetings in favor of ad-hoc conversations as needs arise. I couldn’t agree more. Especially when working with freelancers, who are much more productive when letting them work on their own schedules. When you do have meetings, record the insights and store them in a central repository that’s available for all employees to access. That way, you don’t continue to have the same conversations over and over again. ➡️ 3. Legitimate businesses do not use Upwork or Fiverr to hire I specifically asked David and Bryant if they use these mass freelancer marketplaces to hire for their teams, and the answer was a resounding no. Yes, they make it incredibly easy to find and hire talent that seemingly fits your requirements. But all the problems surface after that— they rarely produce quality work. Finding great talent on these platfomrs is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Chances are, you won’t be able to. They used to be incredible platforms, and for some use cases, still are. But not for serious organizations looking to make top tier hires. There’s way too much spam, fake reviews, and bots plaguing them today. If David and Bryant don’t hire from these marketplaces, neither should you.