On this episode of the Design Hustle Show, we’ll talk about social media posting – what to post on social media and why with my friend and former colleague, Jesse Nicoli.

Jesse Nicoli has a 13-year background in graphic design and front-end website development. He’s worked in studio and corporate environments and has been freelancing a variety of website services since 2011. Currently, he works in the marketing field as a Product Marketing Manager at Axis Communications and has expanded into video editing and production. He’s an avid disc golfer and content creator and enjoys spending time going to farmer’s markets with his wife Bonni, and dog Barney. When he’s at home he’s either editing content or woodworking in his workshop. Find him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-nicoli-860b9b57/

Topics we discuss:

On this episode of the Design Hustle Show, hosted by myself, Jeff Brown, I discuss how to know when you should strike out on your own and become a freelancer. I go in depth into my own experience and career, how and when I started and how it became what it is today. Knowing when to become a freelancer, or to create a side gig, no matter what industry you’re in, is different for everyone. That said, there are three questions that you need to ask yourself when considering becoming a gig worker:

These (and perhaps many more) can help you decide quickly if you should pursue a freelance career or at least test the waters.

As I mentioned with the anecdote regarding my daughter, you’ll need to ask the five W’s and H – who, what, where, when, why and how. Answer to these questions will help you get started. To be clear though, you don’t need to have EVERYTHING figured out to start freelancing. You should, however, have a basic idea how what you’ll do to make money and what/how much you’ll charge.

Additional “nice-to-haves” would include (in no particular order):

I want to reiterate – the items above are not necessary to start freelancing/creating a side gig, however, you’ll probably need them at some point and should be part of your thought process for determining if a side gig is right for you (sounds like one of those ridiculous medication commercials).

Additionally, I discuss how many gig workers are operating in the United States as of 2022 – which is 57.3 million freelancers/gig workers. Of those, freelancers tend to work between 11 and 30 hours a week – far less than the 40 hours the rest of us put in for our employer. 25% of gig workers (which include Uber drivers and Doordashers) are freelancers – IE freelance designers, developers, accountants, etc.

Give the show a listen – it’s full of good info and nuggets of wisdom.

https://www.statista.com/topics/4891/gig-economy-in-the-us/#topicOverview

On this episode of the Design Hustle Show, I’ll ponder the question “Is graphic design dead?” with my friend and former colleague, Jesse Nicoli. Graphic design has changed greatly over the years – since my first days out of college in 1996 to now with digital media playing an integral role in modern day marketing. Has graphic design gone the way of the dinosaurs? Is graphic design as we know it, dead?

Jesse Nicoli has a 13-year background in graphic design and front-end website development. He’s worked in studio and corporate environments and has been freelancing a variety of website services since 2011. Currently, he works in the marketing field as a Product Marketing Manager at Axis Communications and has expanded into video editing and production. He’s an avid disc golfer and content creator and enjoys spending time going to farmer’s markets with his wife Bonni, and dog Barney. When he’s at home he’s either editing content or woodworking in his workshop. Find him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-nicoli-860b9b57/

Topics we discuss:

This is a great episode for a couple reasons. First, if you’re new to the industry or looking to start a career as a graphic designer, we discuss what design jobs currently entail and how they have evolved and how we think they evolve going forward. Second, we talk about use case scenarios where designers are needed and how they are utilized with existing services and software like Canva and other subscription based services.

As generative AI matures, it’s quite possible that we’ll see in increase in AI designed collateral going forward, however that’s a topic for another time (or upcoming show, hint, hint).

Wait, what? There was a Season 1?

There most definitely was. Just a mere two episodes, the Design Hustle Show Season 1 came out in 2018. One heart surgery and twin daughters later, it’s back. New shows lined up and everything. More straight-talk about marketing and design, more tips and tricks on how to do more with less, “ahas” for your “hustle” and much, much more!

In addition to bringing in colleagues who work in the industry, I’ll be chatting with some entrepreneurs, business owners and nonprofits about their marketing and what’s working for them to achieve their goals.

The Design Hustle Show is hosted on Blubrry and can be found on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and now on Amazon Music. Check it out!

Have an idea for our podcast? Know someone who’d be a great guest on our show? Tell us about them! Email us at [email protected].

For this episode of The Design Hustle Show, hosted by myself, Jeff Brown, I sat down with my friend and colleague, Jesse Nicoli, a front-end web developer and graphic designer who has design agency experience and is great at finding better, faster ways to do design tasks. We decided to talk about WordPress plugins and design resources that everyone should be using and why.

There are plugins that we think that every WordPress site should have and you should know how to get the best use out of them. Jesse explains what he likes and why he uses plugins like Yoast for SEO and Wordfence for website security. We also talked about services, like Google Analytics, that coincide with some of these plugins and why they are important. Jesse also shares some of his go-to design resources for graphics, images and more.

In this episode, Jesse and I talk about both free and premium WordPress plugins and design resources that not only make life easier, it can really help your site function better. Fed up with iStock Photo? Jesse has some suggestions on how to get quality imagery at a much more affordable cost. Before we end the episode, Jesse tells me his favorite lunch stop and what’s good there.

Here are some of the WordPress plugins and design resources that Jesse suggests using:

Yoast – An SEO plugin that helps optimize your website pages with keywords to help your site to be found in the search engines. Site: https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

Wordfence – A security plugin that protects your site against brute force attacks, mailicous uploads, malware and more. Site: https://www.wordfence.com/

Contact Form 7 – A simple but solid contact form plugin. Site: https://contactform7.com/

Google Analytics by Monster Insights – Google Analytics plugin – you must have a Google Analytics account setup for this to work. Site: https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

Super Cache (or W3 Total Cache) – A site caching plugin to help web pages to load faster. Site: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/ or https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

WP Slider (Optional) – An optional slider for your website. Site: https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-slider-ssp/

Pop-Up Maker (Optional) – A cool, optional plugin to help make pop-ups for your site. Site: https://wordpress.org/plugins/popup-maker/

WP Post/Page Clone – A great plugin that simply clones posts and pages. Site: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-post-page-clone/

WP Limit Login Attempts – A simple but effective plugin that limits login attempts. Site: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-limit-login-attempts/

Plugin Vulnerabilities – A must-have plugin that identifies any plugin vulnerabilities in installed plugins. Site: https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-vulnerabilities/

WP Bakery Page Builder (Visual Composer) – A great plugin that allows you build your webpages using an easy-to-use UI. Cost: $45. Site: https://wpbakery.com/

Spoon Graphics – A great repository of graphics assets, tutorials and templates. Site: https://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/

Envato Market – A hub for templates, graphic elements, audio and video clips and more. https://envato.com

Audio Jungle – Part of Envato Market, Audio Jungle has a plethora of audio clips, royalty free music and sound affects. https://audiojungle.net/

Unsplash – A robust repository of high resolution images. https://unsplash.com

Morgue File – Another collection of free and paid images (pulling images from iStock, Shutterstock and Getty images) Site: https://morguefile.com

Pixabay – Pixabay is much like Unsplash, with several great high resolution images. Site: https://pixabay.com/en/

Thanks for checking out this episode of The Design Hustle Show. If you like the first episode, feel free to give us a review on iTunes (click here) and subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Next time, I’ll be sitting down with friend and colleague Chris Busby and discussing enterprise level websites and how I enterprise level website project should go, so join us next time for that.

Want to stay in the loop when future episodes are available? Sign up for our email newsletter, Inspire, and you’ll get notifications when each episode is published. Additionally, we’ll send periodic emails with design and marketing tips to help your business or organization. Don’t worry, we won’t spam you and you can cancel anytime.

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For the first episode of The Design Hustle Show, hosted by myself, Jeff Brown, I sat down with my friend and colleague, Mike Conley, a digital marketing specialist, who has worked in the apparel, footwear and food service industries, as well as a couple marketing agencies. Mike’s forté is in search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing. The idea was to demystify SEO and to see what role content marketing plays in the current state of search engine optimization.

During the first episode, we talk about SEO and what it means to today’s small businesses. Mike and I talk about how to structure your site and pages to make sure that they can be found by the search engines using keywords and proper HTML markup. We discuss differences between SEM (search engine marketing) and content marketing and his take on why you should try SEM to see what it can do.

Mike and I talk about content marketing and why every business needs to use it in their SEO strategy. I ask Mike about what he thinks the future of SEO holds and what’s the next “biggest” thing. Lastly, Mike reveals his favorite lunch stop and what’s good there.

Additionally, Mike recommends two resources for assistance with SEO. The first is the perfectly optimized page (click the images for bigger versions):

The second is the SEO Periodic Table

Thanks for checking out this episode of The Design Hustle Show. If you like the first episode, feel free to give us a review on iTunes (click here) and subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Next time, I’ll be sitting down with friend and colleague Jesse Nicoli as we discuss WordPress plugins that every site needs to have, design and development resources and more, so stay tuned for that.

Want to stay in the loop when future episodes are available? Sign up for our email newsletter, Inspire, and you’ll get notifications when each episode is published. Additionally, we’ll send periodic emails with design and marketing tips to help your business or organization. Don’t worry, we won’t spam you and you can cancel anytime.

We hate spam and will never spam you. Unsubscribe anytime.

A HUGE announcement for DPi Graphics and myself – I am starting a new podcast, The Design Hustle Show – a podcast about marketing and design and everything in between. While we’re not “on the air” quite yet, there’s a trailer below to whet your appetite for what’s to come. Look for a special guest each episode and lots of good stuff!

Ok, Jeff, but why “Design Hustle”?

OK, ok, I get it – you want to know more. I chose The Design Hustle Show because, well, it’s a show. I DJ’d a radio show back in college for the campus radio station (610 WSAM for those who were privileged enough to remember it back on the University of Hartford campus) and this is a lot like that – ONLY BETTER.

Back to why it’s called the “Design Hustle” Show – a freelance business or side business is often referred to as a “side hustle” – supplemental income to your main job, occupation, etc. Since DPi Graphics was originally created as a design business (we offer a lot more now than we did in the beginning), and it is my “side hustle”, it saw it only fitting that it be dubbed The Design Hustle Show.

More on what the show will consist of (or you could just listen to the trailer) – with my guests who are both colleagues and friends, we’re going to provide some tips and tricks, insight into the marketing and design industry, how to do more with less and a whole lot more.

I can hardly wait. Like I said, checkout the trailer and remember to subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. See ya soon!