← The Angry Designer Graphic Design, Freelancing, Branding & Creative Business Podcast
The Angry Designer Graphic Design, Freelancing, Branding & Creative Business Podcast
How Graphic Designers Can Turn Chaos Into Creativity with Rocky Roarke
00:33:44
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Foreign.
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You're listening to the Angry Designer podcast, where we help frustrated graphic designers crush the industry chaos, ditch the social BS and build badass, rewarding careers that actually pay now. Powered by WIX Studio.
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What's up, Angry Designers? Today we've got our next awesome guest at Creative South. I was just practicing. I was just practicing. We have got our good friend, Rocky Rourke. Yeah. Okay. Your agency's name. I love the logo, but what's the name?
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C
Blue Cyclops.
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A
That's it. And the icon is a blue cyclops. Yes. I was jealous. Yeah. I want to steal that price.
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C
Very cool. Well, you know, what's. You know what's so interesting about it is it's been my avatar, my logo for so long.
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A
Oh.
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C
Like, going back to college. But then it was like, it came to me in college. I was like, you know, I started creating this, like, blue Cyclops poster. The poster then became my logo, then became my website. And, you know, people kept asking, where did it come from? Like, it just came to me. I was going back and looking at old drawings from a kid, as a kid, and I realized I had a imaginary friend that was a 50 foot blue cyclops named Bob.
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Oh, shit.
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C
And mind you, I was already calling my cyclops Bob.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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C
Already calling him that.
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Oh, really?
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C
So it was like, subconsciously just like coming back from my childhood.
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Yeah.
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C
So it was just perfect.
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It's what makes us weird as kids, makes us successful as adults, especially in this space. Anyway, I think, you know, you embrace your inner weirdness to be awesome.
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C
I think.
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You know what? I think too many people run away from that.
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C
This is true. Yeah.
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We were just talking to, you know, some awesome ladies this morning from California, and they were going on about, you know, how they weren't sure how to pull back or not. And it was like they have a whole punk vibe. Punk history. And I'm like, you. You got to own that. Right? I remember not. Not embracing that earlier on. And I was so fricking miserable. Yep.
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C
Yeah. I still remember the first time I came to Korea stock. Because I've. I've been into every creative south since 2013. Yeah.
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A
I actually thought for a little while you were Big Mike.
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C
Yeah. Right.
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Because you've been here.
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C
So much thing that's missing.
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Right.
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C
That's the only thing. But, like, I've been here so long, the first year I came, I had no idea what to expect.
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Yeah.
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C
You know, I was like, okay, this is a conference, a design conference. I need to, like, I need to look presentable.
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Yeah, yeah.
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C
I came with a polo shirt, khaki pants, and as soon as I. As soon as I got there, I saw. And it's the same landscape that you're seeing today.
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Yeah.
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C
Beards, hats, T shirts, jean jackets. I was like, so original. Like, I freaked out. I was like, I need. As soon as they gave me a T shirt, I went, ran to the restroom and changed. I was like, I had to change. And the, the crazy thing was I didn't bring anything to wear except for polos and khakis. So I had to go run to the store. I had to go find stuff. Like, I had an I love New York T shirt on. Somehow I got goodwill. Like. Yeah. It was crazy.
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Yeah. Yeah. But you know, the ironic thing is though, that probably would have stood out more than the black T shirts. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty funny. Yeah. Oh, my God. So, okay, so let's talk about business. So, you know, you said something really cool. Yeah. You have now hired on a project manager. Yep. Because, you know, business growth is good. You know, however, you know, the times are kind of funny right now and you're like both, you know, saying you're busy enough to maintain this. But then, of course, it's also getting a little hungry out there to get work. So. So what are you feeling like? Like, how did it get to the point where now you realize you need to bring in someone else because that's an out of pocket expense?
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C
Oh, yeah, yeah. We. We started working with our project manager December last year. Yep. And it was crazy because I, like, my wife has tried to be a project manager. She hated it. She's like, I want nothing to do with your business. It's. It's been a thing.
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Funny like that.
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C
Yeah. But one of our teammates, one of my team members, they were like, hey, I know someone's a project manager. She's looking for freelance work. You know, I can introduce you. One call, 20 minutes. And she was on, on board helping us. And cool. It was. It was the easiest hiring process I ever had.
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Yeah.
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C
But my whole team is freelancers. Nobody is employees. It's freedom and everything. You know, I. I think my project manager works maybe 20 hours a week for us. Yeah. You know, I've got designers who work from five hours to 30 hours, you know, just depending on, you know, what we're working on, what our needs are, what their needs are, and everything like that.
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So the brilliance here, of course, is that it's like, you know, you can land, you can expand or contract.
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Yeah. Basically market.
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But your Brand still stays intact.
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C
Exactly. Yep.
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Speaking to some people last night, you know, they said that, you know, know what happens a lot out here is that agencies, they. They pop up overnight. They grow from zero to five. Overnight.
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C
Yep.
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But then they realize that, you know, maintaining five salaries and getting to work in this isn't what it was, you know, as easy as they thought.
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Yeah.
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And then they disappear a year later, two years later. So what you're doing is actually brilliant.
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C
Yeah. Right.
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Thank you. Yeah. So how. Okay, so. So here's. Here's a question. How do you take ownership of having a business if your team is comprised of freelancers?
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Yeah. So the crazy thing is with us is our team, even though everybody's freelancers, we actually work like we're a team.
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Yeah.
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Like, if anyone who comes in and sees, like, what we're doing, they would think that, you know, everybody's employees, everything like that. And we all work that way. Like, it just. It happens to mesh and, you know, synchronize and everything. But the good thing, what helps out is a lot of times, like, people get sick or people get busy with, like, other things, and so we're able to, like, move things around or. Like, right now, you're talking about lean times, right?
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Yep.
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I already started working to where we're now starting to contract a bit, where we're still. Like, I talked to the team, everybody's still going to be working on internal projects, even if we don't have client work, because I built a Runway to where I can still hire, even if it's just like 500amonth they're making from us, and at least it's something that they're making during these lean times and they don't have to worry.
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Yeah.
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You know, like, I make sure that my team is. Is first.
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Yes.
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I defend them when clients get too crazy. Yeah. God knows that I pay them first. Like, I don't take any money out of the business until I make sure all of the invoices have been paid.
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Yeah.
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Like, that's the way that I want to do it, because I never want to have to say to one of my teammates, hey, it's going to be another week before I can pay you. You know, I do everything. Everybody gets paid first of the month. Or, sorry, everybody sends invoices first of the month, and I pay within that 15.
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Yep.
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Sometimes I pay as soon as they send me the invoice. You know, it just depends on what money's in the accounts.
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Yeah.
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But I don't pay. I don't pay myself until all the. All the client invoices have been paid and all the team has been paid.
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Crazy.
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Yeah. Nice.
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That's great, actually. So when freelancers commit to you, is it like, let's. Let's go down this road because this is actually really interesting. So when they commit to you for, you know, to join your team or to be like an office, do. Do they give you a discount?
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No. So what we do is we set an hourly rate. And, you know, I have a max that I can spend.
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Yeah.
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And I'm very upfront. As soon whenever I talk to somebody about possibly working with us, I tell them, listen, this is the range that I can afford.
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Yep.
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You know, if as business, you know, booms, I can increase your amount usually like every six months to a year, like, I'll increase the hourly rate that. That I pay PE and, you know, this is what I can afford. You know, we don't make a lot of money. I'll be honest with you. We're not making a million dollars a year. We're not one of those big agencies, you know. But the one thing I can always offer you is that I will give you work even when we don't have client one.
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Yeah. Cool.
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You know, I find side projects. I find internal projects. You know, sometimes half of the invoices are internal projects, you know, and so I do that because I want to take care of my team. I want to also push their creativity. I want them to learn. And so I buy courses, I buy subscript stuff for everybody to learn and to, like, you know, increase their skill sets. If somebody wants to start learning animation or somebody wants to learn framer, I find a course. I buy it for them. I give it, you know, I give it to them even though they're not employee, you know, they're just still a freelancer. You know, they could tell me tomorrow, like, hey, I'm leaving. I'm by. But still, I want to make sure that I'm helping them. I'm, like, fostering that growth.
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Very cool.
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You know, if I could make everybody employees, I would do it.
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Yeah.
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I don't make enough money to be able to do that.
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So there are some advantages here because as freelancers, you know, obviously they, I'm assuming, would take care of their own expenses, but then they can write off their own expenses.
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Exactly.
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So it's to their best interest. And you're, like, guaranteed, like, a retainer.
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It's not a retainer. There's no, like, guaranteed amount of work or money, no matter what. I will try to give them work.
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Yes.
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I think like, and the thing is, for me, I'm open to share numbers. So, like, you know, I think the smallest invoices I've ever seen from one of our team is like $500 a month. And that was because they work like, I think only a few hours or something like that because they got sick or their kids got sick and it's just like, at least it's an extra $500. 100 had from other client to hunt for. Exactly. I'm the one doing all that stuff. Yeah.
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Yeah. Wow.
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Yeah.
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A
We talked about a client that kind of went. Client relationship kind of went south.
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C
Yep.
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How, what was that experience like? That was pretty difficult.
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It was definitely very difficult. Like I've had, I've had clients from hell. We've all had clients from hell, you know, and it never gets easier.
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Podcast based on it. Yeah, right.
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It never gets easier when you have to deal with that. And it actually, you know, in hindsight, I could have handled the situation way better than I did. I was going through stuff personally and the client wasn't understanding that or wasn't Willing to like, you know, hey, actually let's take a break. You know, let's like not, you know, jump into this. And so it kind of put me in the wrong mindset. But at the same time they were gaslighting, they were trying to gaslight me. I had my project manager on the call and she's like, that's not what they've said. I've got the records. You know, it was a really tough situation and ultimately like we, there was no way we could work together. So we had, you know, we both agreed, you know, that we had to part ways, that we had to leave and that was it. You know, after our last call, 30 minutes later, all files over to him. A week later, Slack disconnected, Figma disconnected, you know, and it was. We haven't heard from them. There has been no, like, I don't know if there's any ill, ill will or anything like that.
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You know.
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Unfortunately three days later we had a client that went on pause too. Yeah. So it doubled up the amount of like financial. Financial like hurt.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And everything. So. Yeah.
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Geez, those are never fun. Especially you know, when you have commitments to employees and when you have good ones, you don't want to lose them or team members like freelancers.
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So.
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Yeah. How do you overcome this? Like you just because you've only got so much savings.
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Yeah.
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You try to find new make ready work for them.
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Yeah. Well so this is the interesting part with this. This is my third time going through this.
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Yeah.
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Yeah. Blue Cyclops has been around since 2016.
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Cool.
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When I first started it, I had two free, two retainer clients.
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Yeah.
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Paid all the bills. I was like, oh yeah, I got money coming, I'm good. We worked together for like six to seven months and then literally one after the other, a month apart. Canceled.
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Wow.
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Just like completely canceled. One was being bought out by, by another company so they didn't need our services anymore. The other one, my main point of contact had left and so there wasn't a relationship with the new person that took their, their spot. So unfortunately that happens and you just have to roll with the punches.
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Yeah, yeah.
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You know.
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Yeah.
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And you know, I had this happen again during the pandemic, you know, where I, I've fallen into this trap where I become too reliant on retainer work.
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Yeah.
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And it's something a lot of freelancers do, a lot of agencies do is they become so reliant on, on retainer work that they don't look for projects. They don't try and like Increase their lead gen until something like this happens and then it's like, okay, I gotta turn that up. I gotta start looking.
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Yeah. So, yeah, we're definitely in that boat. I rely on our retainers and, you know, and knock on wood, they're still working for us. But you're right, it's. Things could change pretty quickly if all of a sudden, like within a quarter, you know, you could go from, you know, being profitable to. Well, not. Yeah.
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C
I mean, I've seen it. Not just with, with what I do, but when I worked at agencies, you know, I saw an agency where they were thriving and then in literally two months span, they lost. I think it was four or five projects.
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Yeah.
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Like they got, they just completely got canceled.
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Yep.
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And so they were relying on that money and then they had to lay off, you know, three or four people.
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Yeah.
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So it happens. These are, this is the ebbs and flows of our business. You know, we have to accept that there are going to be these times.
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Yeah.
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And we could sit there and just wallow in self pity. You know, we could cry about it and whine about it on social media, which we have all done at some point.
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They go to Reddit for this. They go to Reddit and about it.
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Yeah. Instead, you know, in those times where you don't have client work.
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Yeah.
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You create client work. Side projects.
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Work on your own stuff.
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Exactly.
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Get your own brand up, you know, put your own content.
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Yeah. My most successful project like that has brought in the most revenue. Where clients talk like any potential client, they're like, oh, I saw that project. I loved it.
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Yeah.
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Is. Is a side project.
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Yep, yep.
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Yes. I did the math and it's brought in over a quarter of a million dollars.
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Shit.
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Like I did it in 2019 and every couple of years I expand upon it, I update it. And with all those years, it's brought in over a quarter of a million dollars. It's really good, dude.
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Yeah, that's good. And that's a side project.
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C
Yeah, it's a side project.
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I love that.
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I really believe that client work does not lead to other client work unless it's that client.
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Yes.
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You know, side projects is something that you're more passionate about no matter what. We are not passionate about client work.
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Yeah.
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You know, because clients always throw a wrench into it. You know, we love our clients.
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Yep.
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You know, they're our best friends. Yeah. But they definitely like can throw wrenches into it and they can, you know, cause our creativity to tank.
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Yeah.
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With side projects, they're Ours, we are putting our full creativity into it, our full passion into it. And so it shows and people can just. They see.
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See it. Yes.
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C
The potential clients see it and that's where they go to. Half of my. Of our new site that we're currently working on is side projects.
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Yeah.
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Because that's what people want to want.
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How do you get side projects, though, out of freelancers? Because, I mean, like, how are they to your brand? Like, you're acting as creative director, I'm guessing. Right.
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C
Yeah. So, like, for instance, we. We just got done doing two side projects for the new case studies. Yep. And what I did was I. I used ChatGPT to help me come up with a brief. We actually trained ChatGPT to act as a client. Oh, that was the best part of this. Yeah. Like, we trained it. We were like, hey, so this is what, this is how, like, a client normally would interact. You know, we gave it different Personas.
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Yeah.
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C
And so we were like, okay, this is what we want to do. We want to do a brand for a project management SaaS company and we want you to act as a client. It's a small startup, only about five to 10 people, and you are a hungry, like, founder who is looking for blah, blah. And it ended up generating a brief. I went through, did some iterations on it and everything, and then I took it to my team and we started working on it, like, just like that. It's just like, you know, just like what? A client would fill out a branding questionnaire for us. ChatGPT filled out the branding questionnaire and we were able to treat it as it was an actual project. That's actually a really good idea.
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A
Right. Damn.
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C
And the best part is we submitted the work to ChatGPT to review.
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A
Yeah, that's right.
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C
And it gave us the feedback. And there was, at one point, it wasn't with that project in particular, another one where it, it flipped it on its head. It said it actually gave us a curveball. It said, we actually don't like this direction. At halfway through the project, we want to go back to an original sketch that you had and do that instead. It did a client curveball, a real world curveball that I'm sure a lot of people have seen before.
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A
Yeah.
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C
You know, and I didn't tell them to do that. I didn't tell it. It just did it from doing, like, its own, like, research and everything like that.
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A
So can you imagine what that prompt would be like? Please act as a ridiculous client who knows. No idea what the hell they want. They change their mind that it was.
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C
Actually added in there.
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A
Yeah. Afterwards, Right. Yep. Well, that's actually a really smart way to use chat. And the funny thing is. So this is not real client work. This is your own personal projects and it was chatgpt work. So I mean, you're using chat. It's actually brilliant.
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C
Yeah. It's like ChatGPT was not part of the actual creation process. It was just part of the brief, it was part of the feedback, you know, that's all it was. And that's the thing, like as long for me, it's okay to use AI as long as you are still the one creating the pieces. You know, it's a tool.
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A
Exactly. So, okay, so freelancers struggle all the time because they're always looking for projects.
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C
Yep.
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A
They're always looking for customers. You have a different business model. What kind of advice can you give freelancers like this? Is. Is this common what you're doing or is this something that they should pitch to smaller agencies, smaller consultants? I mean, I think, I think, I think it's a brilliant concept for freelancers personally, but.
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C
Yeah. So not in the side projects or, or.
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A
No, no, no, just your, your business model using freelancers.
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C
Oh, okay.
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A
Because I know freelancers struggle always with business, but this is, you know, whether it's a week's worth of work, a month's worth of work, ongoing work. Like what. What advice can you give to freelancers to embrace something like this?
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C
Yeah. So it's actually interesting because if you actually look at the industry, most agencies are actually doing this.
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A
Yeah.
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C
The thing is, is that they.
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A
How are we.
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C
They use freelancers all the time for overflow and certain things. Right. And when my first job at college, we were contractors at the agency. There was no employees, it was all contractors. And I was like, I like that. Except you're working a full time job, you're working 40 hours a week and everything, overtime, all that stuff. And I was like, I actually want to do it different. Like, I love working with freelancers. You know, I'm a. I've been a freelancer for so long, why don't I start bringing people in? It started with bringing in one designer to help with podcast designs and everything. And then eventually he started working on, on client work with me. And we kind of were like, okay, we like this arrangement.
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A
Yeah.
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C
And we have at any time we have between five to 12 freelancers working on projects, depending on capacity, depending on like what it is, and it allows us to be so much more flexible than a Traditional agency. Because if you think about it, most people have to stay in specific wheelhouses. Right. Branding and web illustration, graphic design, product design, all that. Right. When you're an agency that uses freelancers as your team, you can bring in other freelancers to support in areas that you don't normally can do.
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A
Right.
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C
I'm a traditionally brand web and illustrator and you know, I can't do motion, I can't do animation. I've got two people on my team who can do that and I can bring them in for projects, internal or external. You know, I have a copywriter I can bring in to help write not only blog posts for us, but also help with copy for websites. You know, I can bring them in whenever I can. There's probably about three or four people in the core team that we're working together like every single week. Like we're working like we have an all hands meeting. We all talk, we all like talk about like, you know, any struggles we're having both with Blue Cyclops and with clients and everything. And it's a lot of fun. Like it feels like a real agency. You know, the only difference is everybody has their own thing. They all freelance. They all, you know, some people have full time jobs.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:48]
C
And they do this on the side. So it's a lot of fun.
- [21:52]
A
Do you ever have any reliability issues?
- [21:54]
C
Yes, we've had, we definitely had a few. A few people over time where we had issues with not being able to deliver on time or they were a little bit flaky.
- [22:05]
A
Yeah.
- [22:06]
C
And so that was a little bit difficult. And unfortunately that happens though, because even if you hire an employee, that could happen. Yeah, it's just easier once a freelancer.
- [22:17]
A
So then what's the vetting process for freelancers?
- [22:19]
C
So what we do is we usually do a onboarding period of about a month usually. And we do some internal projects first. Then we'll test them out on some client work and we'll see like how they do, see their process, see how they fit well with us. Because the biggest thing is coming in, bringing freelancers in is they come in there thinking, okay, it's just like traditional freelancer agency where it's like, oh, I just do a quick project, I'm out, versus us, where it's like we're in slack all day every day. We're like acting like a traditional agency. And so some people don't, don't make it. They're like, this isn't what I'm looking for. I'm out. Yeah, it's Happened a couple times. It doesn't hurt me when that happens, because it's not for everybody.
- [22:58]
A
Yep.
- [22:59]
C
You know, and you got other people.
- [23:01]
A
That could pick up the slack.
- [23:02]
C
Exactly.
- [23:02]
A
Yeah. That's kind of good.
- [23:03]
C
And there's. There's been times where I had to jump in, you know, to pick up the slack or to do certain client projects, and that's okay. That's what I'm here for. Yeah. You know, if tomorrow, you know, knock on wood, you know, we were. Had to go so lean to where it's just me and my project manager working. Yeah, we'll have to do that.
- [23:25]
A
Yeah.
- [23:25]
C
You know, but the goal is to be able to have as much of the team going as possible.
- [23:32]
A
Yeah.
- [23:32]
C
So cool.
- [23:33]
A
That's awesome.
- [23:34]
C
Yep.
- [23:35]
A
So it sounds like you're juggling a lot of stuff.
- [23:38]
C
Yeah.
- [23:39]
A
And we had an interesting thing that I discovered last night from you and I, you know, you for a little while now. So you're juggling all this, and you've got a project manager to come keep everything in line. I was like, yeah, that makes sense. And then I find out through this conversation, it's because you have add.
- [23:54]
C
Yep.
- [23:55]
A
Right.
- [23:55]
C
Adhd. Adhd, yeah.
- [23:57]
A
So sorry. Yeah.
- [23:58]
C
What did I say?
- [23:58]
A
Add. Did I just mess that up?
- [24:01]
C
Disorder. What is add? So ADD was what it was originally. They used to have in two categories.
- [24:06]
A
Okay, okay, okay. I thought maybe I insulted you. Yeah. No, no, no.
- [24:08]
C
Oh, no, you're fine. Can you imagine?
- [24:09]
A
So said he's an animal lover.
- [24:10]
C
No, it used to be that you had add, and by my. Let me just phrase this. I am not a medical professional. Do not seek my advice on anything. I do that same thing on my podcast. I. So they used to have ADD, and then they would have ADHD.
- [24:25]
A
Okay.
- [24:26]
C
That was in the. In the 90s to early 2000s, they made the switch to where now it's just ADHD they all get. Because it's. There's no. There's no. You can't. You can't divide it up. There's no way to say that this person has the same ADHD as this person.
- [24:40]
A
Got it.
- [24:40]
C
It's like 36 flavors except for 10,000 flavors.
- [24:43]
A
Okay.
- [24:44]
C
Everybody's different.
- [24:44]
A
Right, right, right. Okay. So, interestingly enough, and, you know, we'll talk about. You know, we'll talk about his meds and the fun name that his meds have, but. Okay, so what's that like, then? So, you know, because you own an agency and you. You have this, and I mean, to me, we always joke about it's just like, you know, it's hard to keep focus and you're just like all over the place. I mean, in one sense it would seem like it's the life we live. Yeah, but I mean, we just joke about it. You're actually living it. So what is that?
- [25:14]
C
So you ever get into that flow state where you're like, you're designing, you're in the groove and everything like that Times that by 10.
- [25:21]
A
Yeah. Like, so are you saying like you can focus?
- [25:23]
C
I can hyper focus to where it goes from night to day or day to night.
- [25:28]
A
Okay.
- [25:29]
C
Like there's been times where if nobody, if I'm just in my, my living room and I'm working on something at night, I'll look at the time and it's like 9:30 at night and next thing I know it's 2:30 in the morning and I have no concept of time drifting or anything like that. I'm going and going, going. And it wasn't until last year my good friend Peter Deltondo, who is here with Career south, he finally convinced me, dude, you need to go and get diagnosed. Because he knew just on our conversations, like I'd always assumed that I had it. My mom would always say, you don't have it. Yeah, like you would always say that. Oh yeah, of course. But you know, it's something where, for me, if, if there's something that I, that I like, like I, I latch onto, I will hyper fixate. Yes. On that. And it could be hobbies, it could be subjects in school, you know, anything like that. And so like for instance, Magic the Gathering, the trading card game. Right. That was a hobby of mine when I first moved back to Georgia from San Diego and I hyper fixated on it.
- [26:31]
A
Yeah.
- [26:31]
C
I ended up spending over $1,000 a month on buying cards.
- [26:36]
A
Oh shit.
- [26:37]
C
Like it got bad. And then once, once we had our son, I realize, oh, I can't be doing this anymore. And I start to rethink and I'm like, how many cards did I buy? How much did I spend? Which are over $10,000.
- [26:51]
A
And it's just like, you're clueless. You're not seeing me at all.
- [26:53]
C
You don't see it. Yeah. And even my wife, she sees it a lot, where I will continuously bring up the same topic again and again. Because in my head I'm going through that again and again. And the other thing too is, at least with my flavor of ADHD is I can literally have multiple thoughts going on at the same time. So like we could be Having a conversation. This side of the head is. Is thinking. Is thinking about something at home. This side of the head, while I'm talking, is also thinking about the next thing I want to say. So it can get very confusing very quickly.
- [27:26]
A
Crazy. Wow, dude. And then here's. Here's the fun part. Your meds.
- [27:32]
C
Yeah, let's.
- [27:33]
A
Let's talk about these.
- [27:34]
C
Yeah.
- [27:34]
A
Wait, tell them what you told me last night.
- [27:37]
C
Yeah, yeah. So I first, like, I went through different types of meds, and the one I'm currently on, I remember when I picked it up from the pharmacy, I go in because I never saw the name of it. Yeah. They just like, okay, you're going to have this many milligrams of this medication. And they told me the brand name. They didn't tell me the medical name.
- [27:53]
A
Yep.
- [27:54]
C
The first four letters of that. Of that name spell meth. And I brought this.
- [28:00]
A
I mean, it's not funny, but.
- [28:02]
C
Yeah. Yeah. I actually brought it up to the nurse practitioner.
- [28:05]
A
I was like, is this right?
- [28:06]
C
Like this. Like that scared me. I hesitated for a minute. For a bit. Yeah. And she's like, she literally. With not straight face. The meth. Meth users wish they had that. And I was like, that makes me feel so much better. Right. But that's. That's because the. The chemistry of. Of people's brain who have adhd.
- [28:25]
A
Yeah.
- [28:25]
C
Is they need stimulant.
- [28:27]
A
Yes.
- [28:27]
C
They have to have stimulants. So I take that in the morning when I wake up.
- [28:31]
A
Yeah.
- [28:32]
C
And then. And she doesn't know this, but I go and take a caffeine supplement halfway through the day to extend.
- [28:40]
A
Extended.
- [28:41]
C
Because, like, even right now I haven't taken it.
- [28:43]
A
Yeah.
- [28:43]
C
I'm exhausted.
- [28:44]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [28:45]
C
Like, I'm tired. And so I know that I need to take it whenever I. Next time I get some water. Yeah. But if I don't do that, then it, you know, I start to get drained midday and everything. Because I also don't want to take too much of the medication itself.
- [28:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
- [29:00]
C
Fair enough.
- [29:00]
A
Wow, that's. That's crazy.
- [29:03]
C
Geez. So.
- [29:04]
A
So in this case, then what you experience isn't so much lack of focus, but it's almost the opposite effect. And it's hyper focus. And you get well, it's needed.
- [29:15]
C
Yes and no. So it's hyper focused, but also it's. You bounce around. So there's. There's moments.
- [29:21]
A
And that's where. That's what I thought. Traditionally.
- [29:23]
C
Yes. Yeah. So it could be. And you see this on. On instagram reels all the time about people talking about adhd where you literally like you take a bowl into the kitchen to wash it, right. Then you see something else and you go to that and you start doing that and you're like, oh, I got to get that ball. Oh, wait, I gotta do this first.
- [29:38]
A
And you leave like a tornado trail right behind you.
- [29:40]
C
Everywhere you go, there's even. You ever. You ever seen the show Malcolm in the Middle? Yeah. Right. There's an episode where how the father, he does that exact same thing to where he was going to change a light bulb. Next thing you know, he's, he's removing the engine out of his car. And I have never related more to a character on TV until that moment.
- [29:58]
A
Brilliant.
- [29:59]
C
Yeah. Okay, shoots. Yeah, it drives my wife crazy and.
- [30:04]
A
Maybe some of your employees.
- [30:05]
C
Oh, yeah, yeah. My project manager has definitely had some issues with that where I will say, okay, this is what we're going to do. And next thing you know, there's like three other versions of that plan going. But that's unfortunately just is what happens.
- [30:19]
A
So with this superpower or what you've turned into a superpower and your awesome team, what's the future look like?
- [30:27]
C
The future is that hopefully this time next year we will be double the size that we are. I'm looking to hit half a million revenue this year. Even with how the economy is. Yep. Still going to work to hit that goal and possibly put on a business workshop next year here at Korea South.
- [30:46]
A
Oh, really?
- [30:48]
C
There's brief conversations about that. Doing like some sort of business workshop around a branding agency.
- [30:55]
A
That's important. I think that is huge. That's value. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [30:59]
C
Good, good.
- [31:00]
A
Well, I'll be excited to do that one next year. I'll be a heckler in the back room.
- [31:07]
C
I'll appreciate it.
- [31:09]
A
Rocky. Dude, I'm glad we did this.
- [31:11]
C
Yes, I am. Great.
- [31:12]
A
Thank you for coming on. And here you were the first time in person, like podcast.
- [31:15]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [31:15]
A
Did you're rock star, right? Yeah, totally.
- [31:19]
C
Yeah.
- [31:19]
A
All right, everybody, I hope you got some really cool insights into this one. I think it's brilliant, this idea about, you know, using freelancers and incorporating that into a new business model. Business. Brilliant, dude. And I hope freelancers got got a whole new way of thinking about how they can acquire some new clients, do business, new long term work, you know, finding people like Rocky. All right, where can they find your website? Www.bluecyclops.co and you do have an Instagram account.
- [31:45]
C
Yep. I would just go with Rocky Rourke. Easiest way, Rocky Rourke.
- [31:50]
A
All right, my friend. Thank you very much for this.
- [31:51]
C
Yes, thank you.
- [31:52]
A
My name is Massimo. My name is Sean. And you are?
- [31:55]
C
Rocky Rourke. Stay creative. Stay ang.