Career Pivot: Escaping Corporate

Your Work Friends Podcast: Escaping Corporate with Brett Trainor

Burned out, boxed in, and dreaming of a way out? You’re not alone. In this episode, we’re breaking down exactly how to exit corporate life without blowing up your life. Whether you're plotting a pivot or planning a full escape, this one's your blueprint.

Learn the art of the entrepreneurial leap with Brett Trainor, The Corporate Escapee, and embrace the power of fractional/freelance work that fits into the life you want to have. In this episode, we tackle: 

• What's a Corporate Escapee?

• Who Should Escape? Who Shouldn't?

• The Market for Fractional / Freelance, etc

• The Money in Fractional / Freelance

• Planning Your Pivot out of Corporate

• The First Three Steps You Need to Take 

• And the Biggest Piece of Advice to Make the Leap 

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Brett: 0:00

seeing the number of solar businesses with seven figures, folks think they need to build the next Google or Microsoft. Like if I leave corporate I've got to start a company. Like not anymore.

Mel: 0:25

Well, hey, friends, this is your work. Friends, we're two HR leaders who have no filter, and we're here to expose all of the stuff that you need to know about work. I'm Mel, I'm Francesca, and with us today is Brett Schreiner, who is the founder of the corporate Escapy. You can find him on LinkedIn. He has an awesome podcast. He also just launched a Slack community. That's pretty rad. I just joined that community myself, and he's from a fun town called Wheaton who has a annual fair called the cream of wheat, in which just made my day last week when I heard this news. So, brett, welcome to the pod.

Brett: 1:08

No, it's great to be here. I'm thrilled that you asked me to come on and looking forward to the discussion. And yes, the cream of Wheaton. Never thought of it as a big event here, but it is kind of clever.

Francesca : 1:18

And they don't serve cream of wheat at cream of Wheaton, which I feel like is a miss, it's a sponsor miss, for sure, right, and they're using the name for it.

Brett: 1:26

Yeah, so funny.

Francesca : 1:27

The cocoa wheat still out there. If you grew up in the Chicago Land area, there used to be the show called the. Bozo show and it was sponsored by Cocoa Weets. You remember Bozo?

Brett: 1:35

I remember Cocoa Weets. Yeah, we went down memory lane that too long ago with some of those cereals that are no longer available, but they should bring them back. I know some people are bringing back those retro brands yeah. They went out of business or bankrupt, but the name still means a lot, so I think we're starting to see more of that.

Mel: 1:53

I just bought Captain Crunch Crunch Berries a couple of weeks ago for the first time in 15 years. Scrape the hell out of the top of my mouth, but it was delicious. It was delicious and worth it.

Brett: 2:04

I'm more of a peanut butter crunch, but I do like the crunch berries. Yeah, remember the old like Count Chocula in Franklin.

Mel: 2:11

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Brett: 2:12

Boo-Berry. Was Boo-Berry a seasonal or was that a? It was at a ongoing.

Mel: 2:18

I think it's seasonal right Boo-Berry with the ghosts.

Brett: 2:21

Yeah, so good.

Francesca : 2:23

So good it's so funny.

Mel: 2:25

Oh, look at on top of that. How do you, how do we get this? Yeah Well, brett, the corporate escapee. I love your mission, which is to help 10,000 corporate Gen Xers escape the nine to five. Tell us more about it. What's the corporate escapee?

Brett: 2:42

Yeah, it was funny because I got to that point about four, four and a half years ago after a 30-year career, mostly corporate, a couple of stints out to the entrepreneurial world and back into corporate, ended it with a year and a half running management consulting Cause that's what you should do at the end of a corporate career is go into traditional management consulting but just realized that I was just done right. It wasn't like where is this going? What am I going to be doing? Right, we don't have pensions. I shouldn't say we, the collective, we just didn't. The right corporate didn't offer pensions. So am I just going to be fighting this treadmill for the next 10 to 15 years or is there something better? And, like I said four and a half years ago, didn't have a plan High inside. I highly encourage folks if you're leaving, have a plan. Don't have to, but it makes the transition easier. And then the last year really there's got to be more of me out there, right?

Brett: 3:34

Cause for the first two years 95% of what I was doing was the fractional work, did some consulting in the B2B space, I was by myself, really didn't tell anybody that I was doing it, and then slowly gain momentum, caught up with some different folks and I'm like, yeah, the corporate escape, be that's, it's more than just work, it's the lifestyle.

Brett: 3:55

And then I just started playing with it. I decided just to have some fun, to get on Tik Tok and test cause. I'm like short attention span at 60 seconds, 90 second, and all of a sudden that took off, no idea why. But what it reaffirmed was that there is a lot of people. I think I've got like 20,000 followers on Tik Tok and to a person that I talked to it's like, yeah, I didn't know I was stuck, I didn't know there was other folks, but man, it really resonates with me. So I decided to make that more my personal mission to say if anybody's out there that wants to get out, there is opportunity, there's a path forward, there's tools, et cetera. So, even though it's been around for probably about a year I was in the last two to three months it's really found its footing.

Mel: 4:41

I will admit I found you on Tik Tok. I am a recent corporate escapee and I immediately was like, yes, let's connect on LinkedIn, join your Slack community, because I think what's really appealing for me to what you're doing is the community that you're building around. It is someone who's new to trying it out, and I think that community is so important just to help you succeed right Lessons learned, sharing. So I really love what you're building over there. Who is this for? Who is this not for?

Brett: 5:12

Yeah, good question. I say I tell everybody that if you've got 20 to 30 years of experience and if somebody's paying you to do a job, you can do it right. The can and should are two different things. I think who it's not for is if you're really risk adverse we're not talking super risky ventures, you're not putting your family's savings into a new business or something like that but what corporate does give you assuming you don't get laid off is a steady paycheck and they pay some form of your benefits, and so there's a floor in corporate that you always know you're going to have that paycheck. But with freelance, fractional what I call the corporate escapee the ceiling is much higher, the utility is much higher, but there could be lows. Right, you could have a zero month where you're not bringing any revenue in, and you have to be comfortable with that and knowing that it's not going to stay that way, but it's not for everybody.

Brett: 6:06

The other thing that I found is important is you have to be accountable to yourself.

Brett: 6:11

I really took that for granted as I transitioned from corporate into the solo space was I own the priorities, I own my schedule and for the longest time I found myself just cramming more work into the day, but I really wasn't getting stuff done until I flipped and scheduled and put some structure into my day. But yeah, if you're not accountable to yourself and you like somebody else's direction, then this may not be for you Everybody else. I think you want more flexibility, freedom, control, opportunity than absolutely you can. I had probably 120 conversations with TikTokers, genxers that have came in and more for my learning to say what else can I do or what can we do to support what I was finding is the nichiest of niches in corporate. There's still businesses that are looking for that help. I call them the SME. Small and mid-sized businesses, startups, nonprofits are looking for that type of help. If you've got experience and somebody's paying you to do a job, there's an opportunity to help free yourself from that task.

Mel: 7:16

What do you think is for folks who are successful? When they do this, do they have a specific mindset, skill set that stands out to you?

Brett: 7:24

I think, open mind, because one thing in corporate it just teaches you to go follow the rules, don't rock the boat. Incremental improvements are good and you just have to have more of an open mind. We use the cliche of Gen X, but it's released back into the wild. We grew up without the rules and the restrictions and then 20 to 30 years in the box of corporate. You have to go back and be okay with experimenting and asking. We talk about can and should and it's will A lot of people. I can do that, I can go, so I do have that experience. I can run this project, I can work for it, but will you do it? It's the people that actually take action are the ones that are successful. I know I mostly work with Gen X, but I've had some 20-somethings that are super curious about how do I do this. I said well, look, if you get your job, you do this. What is the problem that you're solving for this company? There's probably a bunch of smaller companies that have this problem. You can just restructure it. 20 minutes later he's like okay, I got this. Thanks, see you.

Brett: 8:25

He was going to go take action when I think, if we've been around longer, we like to over engineer it, we like to overthink it and we're trying to look for the perfect plan. I'm guilty. One of my colleagues in Mansion Consultant used to tell me Brett done is better than perfect. That was a harder thing for me to transition from. Just go do it, it's okay. If this little experiment doesn't work, you try something else. And it's going to be okay Because at the end of the day, if it doesn't work, you can go back and find your corporate job. If it's not for you but I encourage anybody that's thinking about it just give it a 100 percent and see. If it doesn't work, don't have acid and then, if it doesn't work, go out. Wasn't for me. If you're going to do that, then maybe it's not for you anyway.

Mel: 9:08

If this is your new business, you treat it like a business. Otherwise, it's a hobby. It's just a hobby.

Francesca : 9:15

There's something suffering about going back to thinking about your feralness as a kid or thinking about the world of opportunity that you get as a child. I remember being in college and thinking, wow, anything's possible, anything could happen, and I think you get that when you're creating your own space. I'm wondering if you're seeing that in the landscape now. What is the market for folks that want to do freelance fractional? Do you see it's picking up, it's growing, it's depleted. What do you think?

Brett: 9:45

Yeah, I absolutely think it's picking up, because that's one of the concerns I hear from folks is it's saturated. I'm like we're the farthest thing from saturated when you think about the number of small businesses that are out there and the help that they need. I think we're in the early stages of this. And what kind of opened my eyes is I was on a podcast called the Human Cloud and John and Matthew do a lot of work in freelancing at the enterprise. I have more focus on the small business and part of our conversation was me flipping out of him and asking well, why are you seeing this rise in freelance? And what he told me was we haven't seen. Even three years ago there wasn't somebody with your experience or expertise that was open to fractional work for small businesses, so small businesses have never had access. You two are a perfect example of that as well. If a small business was looking to hire you, they couldn't afford you, and so what do they do? They have to hire somebody junior just to take a chance on somebody new or promote somebody within. Not all bad choices, but if you really need help and your org's growing, this is a perfect solution. It's the rare, perfect, perfect or win-win, especially with fractional. There's other ways you can slice it, but fractional is easiest transition, I think. And so what fractional is? Basically? It's a day per week per client and most of the time it's focused on strategy work, not a lot of the tactical and the doing stuff, because it would be hard to do that one day a week. But what you will be able to do is save that business a third of the cost. If they're going to hire a full-time equivalent for that HR lead, they couldn't afford it, but with you, for a third of the cost, they can. Now they can start to build a team with a couple of other fractionals. That gives them expertise that they couldn't have otherwise had.

Brett: 11:33

And the other last piece that I encourage people to think about the business owner is it minimizes risk. If you make a higher, it's an 18 month mistake if you get it wrong. And if you're hiring a type of role you've never hired before, that's hard. And if you can bring somebody in, that's fractional. Maybe it's a three month to start, but then it's month to month and a lot of what the fractionals will do is work with that business to transition out. If they're ready for a full-time, they can help you find that full-time person.

Brett: 12:02

So I think where the industry or where the overall market's got to catch up is fractional, still in relatively new term. But when you explain it to the business owner, they're like yeah, I get it and we're starting now to actually see hey, we are actually looking for fractional CFO for this role. So you won't find it in LinkedIn job postings yet. But it's not like this is just one-sided, where it benefits the escapees because they can charge a premium for what they do. It gives them more flexibility. But the businesses are actually going to benefit from this as well.

Francesca : 12:35

Yeah, you see a lot of movement in organizations trying to outsource works or work that is not core to their competence, because they don't want to be in that business, and this is one of the ways I think that they could do that either through fractional or contract full outsource. It does seem like we're at this wave of this coming right. Business is understanding the benefit of not holding on to full-time labor because that's so expensive. It's expensive for turnover too if they don't work out and also people wanting a different lifestyle. Work to means different things and still get paid and paid well. Do you feel like in five years this is going to just get bigger, or do you feel like it's going to go the other way? My gut is it's?

Francesca : 13:17

going to get nuts.

Brett: 13:18

It's going to get nuts. I think Every last dollar I had it's going in this direction. Just because a couple of reasons, and think about it from when you were in corporate, what percentage of your week was actually spent on the job that they brought you in to do? 30%.

Mel: 13:34

It's really.

Brett: 13:35

Maybe at a high end. So you're paying 60% of overhead from the business perspective and that's where fractional is there. They're super intentional about using you only for what you're good at, because they don't want you on unnecessary meetings. It just doesn't make sense. So I think just economically it's going to make sense and that's why I think that the small and mid-sized can really take advantage of this, because the bigger orgs they're still trying to figure out sales and marketing alignment. How do we go? Digital Things they probably should have figured out 15 years ago they're still struggling with. So how do they incorporate a more flexible workforce is going to be hard. I think certain organizations or operating units within bigger companies are starting to figure out how to do it, but for the most part it's not there.

Brett: 14:19

I've used a couple of analogies that help people see it. The one is think about it as if you're making a major movie Hopefully it's a blockbuster but you got hair, you got makeup, you got actors, you got film. You got all these different, mostly small entities that come together for 12 to 18 months, build this thing. They go away and this group may work with each other here and they may work over there. And then the other one that's similar to that, if you remember the movie Ocean's Eleven.

Brett: 14:46

George Clooney wanted to rob the casino. What did he do? He needed a make disguise artist, he needed a bomb guy, he needed X-Wines. All specialists that come together, get paid for what they do, drive towards an outcome and then go back to their separate ways. I just think the Industrial Revolution pushed us into offices. There was value in having people side by side because everybody was doing the same job. You can learn now All that side by side stuff is going to be automated, and what are you actually learning? When we did answer Francesca, your question, I think it's fundamentally going to change it and it just depends on how quick. I think we're in the early stages, so it's going to be fascinating to see where this goes.

Francesca : 15:28

That's a thing for employees. I've been hearing from a lot of people that they feel they're stuck in organizations, they're at a manager plus level and they're like I thought I was being brought in for my expertise, but I'm not being listened to sometimes, and or to your very good point the majority of their day is spent on shit that is absolutely not even relevant to their job, and there's something so beautiful about having an agreement that you're being brought in for your skill set, you're being paid for your skill set and all the other minutia goes away. So from a business, this makes sense. From an employee or from someone that this is their craft, this can be a really beautiful way to work too, because you're actually getting paid for your expertise.

Francesca : 16:09

Yeah, and you can do it where you want right?

Brett: 16:12

Yeah, that's what I'm watching. These return to office mandates. I'm like you got to be kidding me. You've been in the workforce for 30 years and this is the way I love your viewpoint on this. We just talked about it, yeah.

Mel: 16:23

Yeah, yeah, feelings. We agree with you wholeheartedly. You hire adults. These are experts You're hiring to come into your organization, but you don't trust them to get the job done, and that's a larger issue we think is happening.

Brett: 16:38

If you don't trust them, they're not going to work any harder in the office and you can argue they're more inefficient at the office. I grew up in it, so I saw the value at times when having colleagues and working. I just think that those days are gone.

Francesca : 16:51

They're gone, they're gone. It's interesting because there's these decision makers that are making really regressive decisions, like we're just going to keep going back, we're going to keep going back, and it's like that ship has sailed and I think the people that are willing to think about a new way will win.

Brett: 17:06

And as long as we're on this, culture is something I've been thinking about from a pure execution standpoint, from a company, and I think culture matters for the ownership group. This is what the vision, this is the thing we want to create. And once you get below a certain level, everybody's just doing it for the paycheck. And you can tell me there's companies that believe in the mission, which I'm 100% sure there are, but I'm saying 80% of the companies, 80% of the workers, and they just want to be paid fairly, treated with some flexibility, right, and then they'll do a good job. I don't want to say culture is overrated, because it's not, but don't think the 10,000 employees are all going to buy into your culture. You're never going to get that, especially with return to office man and all that other stuff. But if you plug in specialists for a lot of these key roles that just love to do this job they like you and the company you're going to get a lot further than trying to force people into a box again.

Francesca : 18:00

My whole thing on companies right now is they are not everybody, but most of them are misrepresenting themselves in terms of what they're offering from an employee experience perspective, because a lot of organizations are we're a great place to work, we're a great place to work for mothers, we're a great diversity, equity, inclusion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We have all of these benefits, we care about mental health, we care about all this stuff, and the actual working experience day to day doesn't match the brand that they've been sold, and so there's this sense of betrayal, there's this sense of like. What the fuck you know? Excuse my French, yeah.

Brett: 18:37

I get it.

Francesca : 18:38

I'm going to get it out. To me, one of the best relationships you can get into in anything romantic friend, parent, job is when it's honest. Yeah, contracts are honest. Yeah, my dogs are honest. You know what you're gonna get. Oh, I love your point of view on this. I think a lot of employees feel like I thought I was signing up for something completely different. Then what I've been given.

Brett: 19:01

Yeah, the one-way street.

Mel: 19:04

Yeah, we're hearing that from a lot of folks who independently reach out to us to share, and I agree with you wholeheartedly, francesca, because culture is the responsibility of the organization, team and individual.

Mel: 19:15

But it takes all three of those elements for it to be effective throughout. But if at each of those levels you don't have everyone bought into your good point, brett, there there comes a point sometimes when an organization Potentially is just too large where they're not going to be able to manage all of the micro cultures that have now popped up. It's like having a core set of values and making sure that Everyone operates within that core set of values and how they work is so critically important. But if they're not really paying attention to that or have expectations around that or build performance management around those expectations and they're really measuring it, then the culture and the micro cultures get out of control. Into Francesca's point yeah, there's a sense of betrayal from people who were sold hey, this was a great working environment from others. But you know, I joined this team and my direct leader won't let me leave early to go watch my kids soccer game Then that's not a great organization for that mom, but maybe a mom on another team is getting the opportunity to do that.

Mel: 20:18

But, it all depends on your direct team. Yeah, what's?

Brett: 20:21

interesting when I was starting to have these conversations is the the relationship between, as a corporate escapee or an employee employees. Definitely, it's mostly command and control some companies to give you some flexibility. But I heard that command and control. I talked to a executive recruiter friend of mine who told me that there was a CEO, they were hiring a chief people officer and the board was basically dictating who he was gonna hire. I'm like, so he's being micro managed at the highest. And this wasn't a family-owned company. This was a pretty good-sized business and when I started to think through this, this is why I think fractional can start to even that playing field.

Brett: 21:01

So the way I think the old days of freelancer is really transactional Okay, we're hiring you to do this job, we'll pay you this. We both agree, done, done. Where fractional is more of a partnership right, I'm part of that organization just on a part-time basis. I've got to be on the same page as the owner of the sea level. That's bringing me into that organization. We've decided together what's gonna work. Right, you can't tell me what to do all the time because, one, that's not why you brought me in, but two, that's not the way our relationship is. So you got like commanding controls and employee Partner is a fractional, transactional, is freelance and there's some service Businesses in there that are definitely more transactional. But at least give the employee a leg up.

Brett: 21:42

The other thing I encourage folks to think about even if you're staying in corporate, think of it as you are a still the CEO of your own company, company of one, and your product is your expertise, and what this company is paying you to do that job is salary, benefits and the requirement of you being on site three days, five days, one day, just everything that's involved. And would you run your business that way? If this is the way the customer, maybe you would and you're willing to trade off because this is what you need, but for me, I forever I just take it All right, this is what you're paying me, this is what I get, right, this is the vacation and all those things, and just accepted it, versus thinking if I treated this as this was my company and this is my skill, I probably would have done things differently, maybe not have had as many options, but too often I think we're just way too reactive and not as intentional with it.

Francesca : 22:29

I think a lot of people think that that's the only way. I grew up thinking you're gonna go to college, you're gonna go to grad school, you're gonna get a job at Accenture and you're gonna keep on did it, did it did and this is. This is the way, this is the path, and it's not the same thing.

Brett: 22:41

It's the right thing. Right. My plan was I was the first one in my family they actually went to college, so business.

Mel: 22:48

I do.

Brett: 22:49

That was, and so my goal before I started was game warden in Wisconsin. That sounds awesome, yeah. Then, 30 years later, I'm like what the hell happened? You get into that. Somebody called it a treadmill and I think it's the perfect thing. Somebody said that salaries the drug that keeps you going. It's that next level. I just get promoted to that next position. Then I'll end up with enough money to do this. But it's never really enough, and what's happened this last year Is the fear factor against him. Yeah, lay it off. What are you gonna do? There's nothing out there, and they scare you into Staying into a job longer than maybe that you would want to, and times are changing, which is so exciting. There's enough signs that we're moving in the right direction.

Mel: 23:40

I think so. I think the sign of how many folks and younger folks who are looking at exploring this space too and not just going into corporate. There's a real desire, I think, for people to own their time and how they spend it and who they spend it with. And I think that's so beautiful about this type of work too, because you have a bit more autonomy around what you're working on, who you're working with, when, after COVID, I will say my personal experience was really reflecting on how do I want to spend my time and I tell Francesca this all the time I went to work where there's a three-legged stool of Respect, relationships and meaningful work. So in everything I do, that's what I want to do and that that's appealing to me about your messaging and going out on your own, and it seems possible.

Brett: 24:28

It's true, an author, steve Glovesky, australian guy wrote time rich and he's like look, you can always earn more money, but you can never earn time back.

Brett: 24:36

I'm like so true and you think about our corporate careers. We built our lives around those jobs, whatever it was right vacation, school Workouts. You had to get up at 6 am If you wanted to go to the gym. A little more flexibility now, but not Completely so. Our lives really revolved around whatever corporate job that we were doing and not the other way around, which, again, we're gonna look back in 50 years. You know what the heck, yeah right.

Francesca : 25:22

We talk about the money for a second, because I think this might be one of the things that People get nervous about when they think about this. Do you find in general, that the money is like net-net it's better, it's worse. I think it's better.

Brett: 25:34

You've got the risk, because when I left, it was all about the money. What had happened to me was, as a management consulting firm, I saw they were billing me out as, and I saw what I was taking home about that billable rate. I'm like this is crazy. What it did teach me is what my market rate was, and that's one thing I think we all do is undervalue what we have and what we do. Where it's definitely going and I can speak from the fractional and from the service side, because when I say fractional, it's again that on average it's a day per week, probably no more than 10 hours a week, no more than two hours per day, depending on how you spread out per client and the billable range that you can charge is between six and twelve thousand dollars per month and and what I see more consistently is between seven and ten.

Brett: 26:21

Now it's a bigger company that you're doing some work for. Maybe it's a couple more hours. It's on the higher end, so definitely outliers. In either way, this is for sales leaders, marketing leaders, customer success folks, hr Recruiting, anything that needs a leadership or strategy component within those companies. You can transition that to fractional, and this isn't just my experience. You can like voyage, or you, which works with exclusively fractionals and fractionally. United with Karina she's got six thousand fractionals in there and they just had a data Study that came out that showed wages or the hourly rate Amongst different levels of skills and what role on the organization, and it was consistent. If it's more of a less strategic role, you're gonna be down in the $150 per hour or $100 per hour.

Brett: 27:10

One rule of thumb that I think if people at home want to do the math is whatever your corporate salary is, chop off the three zeros and that's what your hourly rate. And if you do the math backwards which I'm not a fan of the public math so if you're making a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in corporate, think about it is about a hundred and fifty dollars per hour. You know times that by ten hours you know per week, per client, and it adds up to being able to replace your income with two to three Clients and only working two to three days per week, and that's ideal. That's after you get running. If you don't leave corporate, that instantly happens, but it's definitely more. I wouldn't call it an industry standard yet, but it's definitely becoming accepted. And the other data point I'll share is one of the companies that I was a chief Revenue officer for. They were less than three million in annual revenue and they were still paying in that range, so it's even a smaller company is willing because they need to invest.

Francesca : 28:07

Right, and so if you do worth it, yeah.

Brett: 28:10

So that's what I'm saying, and when people say it's a tree, I'm like do you how many companies that are between two, five ten million dollars that could use your skill set for 12 to 18 months as they figure it out? The other beauty of this is you can start to think about your expertise as a service. I know we're going to level two now, but I think there's that's where I encourage folks at your new CRM specialist, maybe they're not gonna bring you on as a fractional CRM Person, but what do these small businesses need that you do really well that you could do for three thousand dollars a month. They're five thousand dollars a month. One their entire CRM, do whatever it is.

Brett: 28:48

And the other example I'll use from the design sites there's a graphic designer named Brett, his company's design join. He's been super open about publishing his track record. The last year he did two million dollars as a solo company. He does all his own design works. He charges brands, I think between 5k and 7k per month. I think the rule is you can only do one design at a time. You can't send him six design requests at once. Maybe do the math backwards of how many customers he needs he can manage that. He said to get overwhelming at that level but like well, if you don't want to do two million one, bring somebody in which he didn't want to do. We'll just reduce the number of clients you have. So that's why I said, if the rules don't exist, if you can solve a problem and add value to a customer, there's a way that you can structure that that it's gonna make sense for you and for the business.

Francesca : 29:39

I mean in two million dollars a year, is that's kind of livable?

Mel: 29:47

Right in your recent newsletter. I loved the template that you shared around what's problem Are you solving for people? What skills are you bringing to solve that problem? We'll link to that because I think it's super valuable. I'd love to talk about if you're in corporate. Today we hear from a lot of folks in high-pressure industries so think law firms, the finance world's, banking, all of that who are Looking to pivot. For folks who are in these intense industries, they're also highly regulated so you might not be able to start a side gig because it could be seen as sort of competing priorities with what you're doing. What do you recommend for them to be able to make space to plan for this kind of pivot?

Brett: 30:31

Yeah, it's a good question. It's this highly regulated, maybe a bigger issue. There's still gonna be a way around it. It's still gonna come back to what the problem that you solve you solve it for and even if you solve it for free on the side, for a few folks, you can test the idea. Target maybe a different industry.

Brett: 30:49

Because that's one thing I've found is, unless you're specific in, like a healthcare technology or whatever it is that doesn't translate, then you may be a little trickier and you may just have to get yourself set up, build some runway and say, alright, I'm going all in, I see the, the future of this. But short of that, there's no reason why you can't start to have these conversations and do some mini engagements with folks. Right, everything that we're building to go solo. You can build on the side and then just start to have the Conversations one off with people and then you get a sense of is this really a need to solve problem? Is this a nice to solve problem? Hopefully it's really the need to solve that the business has. So I think there's date ways around and that's the number of the folks I'm actually working with and I'm testing a new Offering 60 days, your first customer and it originally had the grandiose plans of you know, end to end of all the things that you should Be thinking about.

Brett: 31:46

What I found was all these folks are really smart and don't necessarily need all the pieces, but when you get down into what is the specific offering look like who is the target customer cut through all the noise because we all like To chase the shiny objects and go too many. But let's pick one path. What's the problem? What is it you want to solve and work on and then build the offer into that? Most of the people I'm working with they're still Incorporate, so it can't be just broadcast to your network that you're open to fractional and contract work. It's not gonna work. So we're gonna have to be a little more targeted with some of the outreach.

Brett: 32:20

But it's absolutely possible I think that's what we talk ourselves into that when nobody's gonna want this or we have to have a full-on marketing plan. I'm like the end of the day, for us to be successful and I say most, if you have ten customers that you're not gonna be able to service ten. So you think about it really to read if you're thinking about replacing that income and still working less. Two to three customers is all you need. That's not very many. That's super targeted and through relationships Referability of John arms talks about all the time and then just solving that problem. You got to Break the ice with the first one, but then it's much more manageable even than it was five years ago when you tried to. You almost Did have to have a marketing plan.

Mel: 33:00

It's just starting the conversation with folks and offering Advice for free to build those relationships. I've also seen this done, where folks start to have the conversation with their employer and they've turned that former employer to a client Once they've transitioned into Freelance. Have you ever seen that happen with any of your I know people have done it.

Brett: 33:20

I wouldn't be comfortable going to my most really recent employer. But if you were like me and worked for three or four or five other companies, maybe there's some folks in the past that know you, the work that you do, and need some additional help to get that going. You can be super targeted with LinkedIn and I'll give you just an example. When the corporate escapee took off, I didn't want to forget about the work that I was doing with the small business, so these corporate escapee work. So everything you see on my social and LinkedIn now is mostly the escapee stuff. But I did some targeted outreach to some clients saying, hey, I've got this full network of Estapies now misses or? Mr Business owner, are you still stuck in your traditional Recruiting ways? Are you only looking at a full-time equivalent? Are you open to ideas around flexible staffing and fractional those types of things? And I was just sending that out to Not direct connections but second-degree connections.

Mel: 34:17

Yeah.

Brett: 34:17

I probably an 80% connection Acceptance rate. Most of them would say, now, that's not my business because I was targeting too small. Then I went up the next level 10 to 25 employees and Most people accept the connection or say no, I'm not in that. But a handful are now saying, yeah, I'm interested in learning more. We're just about to that point. Again, I'm not selling anything on those things, but I've got three or four leads that I'm working. If I was still employed, they'd have no idea that I'm even talking to these companies Can't, don't do anything illegal, but you know they can't keep you from right, trying to to grow you.

Brett: 34:53

Whatever you want to do on your own, you're free time and your own time and what you want to do the future so. So the point is there's ways you can start to Identify customers, even if you're linked in. It says I'm fully employed, just have to be a creative sometimes just building relationships as key.

Mel: 35:10

Yeah, like my name.

Brett: 35:13

That's what I've found with this community. Everybody is super helpful and maybe Great myself.

Brett: 35:19

But yeah, again, everybody realizes we're breaking the mold in corporate. Where it was every person for themselves, it was the political if either be eaten and all that. We're here. Everybody's more than willing to help. And again back to the community. That's really what I want out of this group is to say, hey, this I came across an opportunity. Doesn't make sense for me, but I know somebody that was an IT that this would be a good fit for and we just start referring each other into Opportunities. All of our networks are big or big enough for us to figure out what we need to have. I've never been more optimistic about a path then, if you would ask me this three years ago. I think you get work really hard and figure it out, but now we can eliminate some of those blockers there that the traditional learning curves.

Mel: 36:02

I love your slack community. I'll keep plugging it because being a new Corporate escape me myself joining that slack community. I think it's been an invaluable experience because everyone's just wanting to help each other, learn from one another, help each other grow, and I think that's the beauty in this is that Community piece and you're sort of indirectly creating your own quote-unquote corporate culture through that community Culture of just helpers, people who are interested in helping organizations and helping each other, and it's really nice. I'm so glad you're here. I love you too. I'll see you next time. Folks don't talk about this often, but it's hard to get your first client. But how was it having to fire your first client?

Brett: 37:00

It's usually mutual. Usually If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Usually you get a sense in the first three, six months of it's going to work. And I was working with a client doing some sales but really what they needed was marketing support, some branding. They had a really good tool, really strong, competitive product, but nobody knew them. Less than 3% of the industry knew who they were and I basically said, look, take the money that you're paying me and go invest in a marketing and, more specifically, a product marketer. That's really going to help, because their entire business was contingent upon. If this one product hit the growth targets, you can understand the product from the customer research all the way to how do you position it and move it into the marketplace. Spend your money there, because it's going to be much better than me trying to help you figure out how to cold call our way to that business. And so we agreed to move on just because it didn't provide the right fit. You get a sense of the cultural fits going to be there.

Brett: 37:58

But the way I like to structure my engagement is the first ones a. Don't call it a get to know you, but as we're having a conversation and we're saying, hey, this is what I think my organization needs and I'm saying I think this is what I can deliver. Until you actually get involved into the business and know what you have, it's hard to know, so I always liked the 30 or 60 day. Let's validate everything that we thought we knew and then build the roadmap from there. Even if you're fractional, that's really what you're doing is helping them build the strategy and go from there. So I always build an out after that paid assessment period I hate that term, but I don't know a better way of a paid validation. Right, those are going to be value. We'll build the roadmap and at that point we'll know if I'm the right fit for what your business needs and if not, then we can find somebody else to go in there.

Mel: 38:48

Love the concept of a paid assessment time when everyone gets to test it out and see if you're still in alignment after that 60 day is really nice actually.

Brett: 38:56

There's a few businesses, like one guy that was working on a corporate development and really the work that he needed to do it's a six month right to do the due diligence, so he can't do that one month a month, but almost all of them you absolutely could do a trial one month, two months three months just to make sure everybody's happy. And again it takes the risk out of the business zone. It's an easier sell at that point too.

Francesca : 39:20

It's actually beneficial, Like yeah.

Mel: 39:22

Where there's an out.

Francesca : 39:41

What are the things that you want to avoid when you're getting into this space that you don't need?

Brett: 39:46

Yeah, that's a really good point. I see less of the scammy, right, they're there, right, but I think, yeah, we over complicate what we're doing and you don't need a hundred tools. The thing that I found that would have been helpful would have been how do I reduce the learning curve? Because everything I did was the first time it was on my own. There was nobody to share what was going on, and that's kind of the way I've approached that with TikTok and the newsletter. I'll tell you everything I know you know for free. And then if there's still stuff that you want help with, then fine, and that's the way that I approached with other folks as well.

Brett: 40:23

That said, hey, I really need some help, like, I've got somebody helping me on the community Never done a community. I've got an escapee that does it for me to help eliminate some of those big potholes that I don't need to hit. And so I think that's the biggest thing is don't let somebody sell you on. There is no secret sauce. If you do this one thing, you'll get 10 customers. No, it just doesn't work like that. I think it's the fundamentals. The basics. It's everything you already know, but people will tell you you have to do more than what you know, and that's just just not the case.

Francesca : 40:55

You're talking to somebody the other day and they're like I don't even know how to get started. I'm here, I know I hate my job, I'm in the muck, have the talking heads like this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful life. On repeat, right. What are the first? Like two to three things you just need to do.

Brett: 41:11

Yeah, if you would have asked me two years ago, I wouldn't have necessarily thought of this. But it's what do you really want, right when?

Francesca : 41:20

Best question ever. Best question ever.

Brett: 41:22

It's hard to answer and it might changes, but I've gotten much more settled into it because, if you can answer, that is your number one goal just to replace your double your income Cause that's going to send you down a path of doing X, y or Z. But if it's, hey, if I can just supplement my income or get 50% of it and it. But I only want to work one day or two days. I want to be able to do it from the beaches of Florida in the winter and on a lake somewhere in the summer and really think through what is it you want from this next phase. And there's no wrong answer. But having that answer makes it easier to figure out. What are the next steps that you do to drive that business Cause. Again, if you want to build the design joy with the two million revenue, you're going to have to put a little more work into. I just want to replace my income and work a couple of days a week and I'd be able to do whatever else I want on the other five or four or five days. So in the more macro sense, I think some people probably roll in their eyes and say, trust me, I was that person. But now I always encourage you to go down that path. This is personal work on it. If you've got a spouse, partner or whatever, be on the same page, because if you're not on the same page it's going to make it really difficult not impossible, but really difficult to go through this. And then from there, I would find that problem right. I tell people to go through a skills and experience inventory and if you've done something for 20 to 30 years, you'll be shocked at how many different things you have to do. But from that then think about what is it you like to do, cause you're at it now a point you get a little bit. You may have to take some jobs or a couple of projects that aren't exactly what you want to do to get started. But start to think about what that is, who you want to work with, what type of business? Right, because some of the folks I talk with they could go into sales, so they could help small business with sales. But they're also really good at software, so they understand right, are you getting at the ROI off your current software? So there's multiple paths. You just get it down on paper and say, all right, here's in, francesca. Back to your point. There's three or four main problems that you can probably solve that you've got the expertise and your LinkedIn profile will show you can walk into these small business and say, yeah, I've done this type of thing and then you can start to figure out what does that offering look like?

Brett: 43:44

I think too often we go straight from well, I've got 30 years, I want to be fractional, but make it happen now. Just take the steps to go through it. Did you maybe make it happen Again? That was part of my learning curve. Was in consulting.

Brett: 43:58

Really like man, why did I do this? This isn't even what I like to do. I like the conversations, I like the problem solving, but I don't like project management. I don't like tracking down stakeholders, I don't like recapping meetings, those types of things. So I think it's figuring out what you want, identifying that problem at the most accurate or clearest point you can from a business owner standpoint, whoever you're solving it for in the business, and then the type of work that you want to do, and then you can start to craft options again, because those $3,000 to $5,000 a month engagements add up pretty quickly and if it's in your core expertise, it's probably not going to take you a lot of time to do it either. I don't like to oversimplify it, but it's not as hard as people make it out to be.

Francesca : 44:42

Yeah, those are such important questions and things to define and I'm surprised when I talk to people and they're in these situations and I ask them what do you want, like what is it you really really want? And they don't know or sometimes they don't want to admit what they really want because it's very far from where they are today. These are really important questions to ask yourself, for you to get to a space that you are meant to play in and that it'll be easy to play in as well.

Brett: 45:11

Yeah, I get feedback from folks that said that they took me two days right, they were longer to go through and actually think through what it was. But when you think about what's next for you, we've got a lot of options and flexibility. So that was the time. Like I said, I'm planning on living a while and healthy. So what am I going to do for the next 20, 25 years? Jesse Itzler he's NetJet's guy. He's Sarah Blakely's husband. He's built a really successful business, but one of the things that he had equipped not too long ago. He's like look, I think he's a year younger than me. So, statistically speaking, I've got 23 years left to live, which means I've got 23 summers and I want to do as much in those 23 summers as I absolutely can. I'm like yes, it's so true. And again, I think we get so conditioned that we can't think like that, like that's not for me, that's only for the rich can do this. No, that's the whole point of this exercise is, you can start to define what does that life look like? And then how do you incorporate your business into it? I'll give you one quick example.

Brett: 46:16

And she was my poster child forever. She and I worked in our last corporate job together. She was training and development, just hard charging corporate. She was moving up the corporate ladder. Then after that she's like you know what I'm done? And she wanted to start a business training and development and her whole mission was I want to take the month of August off so I can go climbing it didn't matter where in the world. So when she set up her training she worked with companies and basically said I'm not working in August. So they knew up front that she wasn't available for that. From that point on she grew her business. She hired some contractor to just do some work. She ultimately lived intentionally in her van, the van life, and then I think she's been in Australia now for six months running her company. But the whole point of that is she built this, she built her life and then figured out how to work, actually fits into it and I'm like that's so good.

Francesca : 47:08

Right, we're to do it. Yeah, it's build your life and then figure out how to put the work into it. I think that is the right equation. Right, that's the right stack of that story.

Brett: 47:19

It should be, like I said, better late than never for me figuring that out now. The other thing folks think they need to build the next Google or Microsoft, like if I leave corporate I've got to start a company. I'm like not anymore, I've solo businesses. Seeing the number of solo businesses with seven figures, I mean if you start to do the math and we can do that afterward you can see it's not that difficult. With the right couple of right freelancers or VA's to help with certain tasks you can build that. So I'm like how is it possible that these one person companies are doing one million or two million in revenue but yet there's three and five million dollar companies that have 22 employees?

Francesca : 47:55

There's so much opportunity. It's very exciting to think about.

Mel: 47:58

I love that, the concept of designing your life and then figuring out how work fits into it. That's how it should be. That's a great point. The one thing we can never get back is time. Well, hey, we have something we call a rapid round. Fun questions, yes or no? Are you up for a rapid round?

Brett: 48:37

Fire away.

Mel: 48:37

Okay, have you ever regretted leaving corporate?

Brett: 48:42

No.

Mel: 48:42

Have you ever had to turn down a dream project because it didn't align with your freelance goals?

Brett: 48:48

Not yet.

Mel: 48:50

Did leaving corporate improve your life 100%. Is it easier to say no to projects now that you're your own boss? No, it is TensorFlow. Think of what you needed when you came here.

Brett: 48:59

Yes, ish, Instinct still wants to take jobs, but my getting better at saying no if it does in a line, and usually I've figured that a little bit earlier in the process than I would have before, but yet still tempting right. If they're willing to pay a certain amount of money, it's do. I want to do this, so that's a car.

Mel: 49:24

Do you attend more or fewer meetings now than when you were in corporate?

Brett: 49:30

You were much fewer Good answer.

Francesca : 49:32

Good answer.

Mel: 49:34

Do you think contracting has made you a better negotiator overall?

Brett: 49:39

That's a good question. I would say yes. You go through more negotiations with potential customers, you get much more comfortable. The first couple are like oh my God, I can't you get. You're prepared for three days, right, and whatever they say, you're going to say yes to you because you don't want to jeopardize the deal. But then, as you start to go through a few, you realize it's more of a value based exchange than it is them walking away because you wanted a few extra dollars.

Brett: 50:09

It's good to hear you got nervous on your first negotiations too, oh for sure Common thing the bigger deals that you do get nervous because again, especially if it's a project I want, then it tends to get more nervous. The more you really want something, the more you tend to get nervous for.

Mel: 50:27

Have you ever worked from an unconventional location?

Brett: 50:31

That's a good question. I can't think of what an unconventional would mean anymore. I was actually working at home for a few years prior to the pandemic, so I kind of worked where I've been. So I wish I had a more exotic answer for you Like a treehouse in Costa Rica?

Mel: 50:49

or something.

Francesca : 50:50

Not a closet.

Brett: 50:53

No, I've been on a Zoom call with some guy that was cruising down the highway at 65 miles an hour from Detroit to Chicago on a. Zoom video. I'm like dude. It's okay, you can put it down and sound. I don't need to be seeing you scooting down the highway.

Mel: 51:08

Please don't get into an accident. Do you have your midday naps taken an uptick?

Brett: 51:15

No naps. I haven't figured out the naps, but definitely more. If I want to shut it down, nice, nice, can I give you just one tip?

Mel: 51:24

that I learned from this.

Brett: 51:26

Because when I started it, everything was I'm like ah, it's your contract, I can schedule my day however I want. But what I found was it was chaotic. And again back to that book time rich. It said, hey, if you calendarize and block time, it changed my life. It really did so. If people are struggling with that, I'm not saying you have to calendar or block. Find a system that works for you, because you'll be surprised at how much more time you actually do have.

Mel: 51:53

Time blocking. I also am a fan of the time block and I love that you're building in walks because that's good. Get some vitamin D. Last question, more of like a superstitious thing Do you have a favorite coffee mug or something that you're superstitious about for your work days?

Brett: 52:08

I wouldn't say superstitious, but that's funny. I don't know if you can see, oh puppy yeah, it was unfortunately, she was 18. We had lost her last year, but she was my office mate for like five years, and so my oldest daughter got me this cup as a gift, so I keep that as the good luck cup, so not superstitious, but more of a comfort feeling.

Mel: 52:32

I love that. I love that yeah.

Francesca : 52:53

Right before we adjourn. If you were talking to your kid or a best friend who is contemplating this, what would you tell them?

Brett: 53:01

Yeah, don't wait. Right, If there's a way to take control at the big macro, and it's don't run your life around your job. You may have to in the short term, but figure out a plan to get away from that as soon as possible. Get the skills you need to pay your dues, but always keep in mind that there is another way. You just want to be in control. Easier said than done sometimes, but it comes back to that time factor, and maybe now I'm just more sensitive to it as I'm older. But the earlier you can get that that it's okay to find alternative paths. My daughter's no by now.

Brett: 53:38

That corporate I'm not a big fan of anymore. It served me well, it had its purpose. But I think there's better ways to do that. And just again, take control of your own. Figure out a way to build your life and then incorporate work into it. And the last thing I'll add to that is figure out what you want. You may not know it at 25 to 29. You may not know, but I'd still have a plan. Even if it's this plan changes, think about where you go, Cause if you're not driving towards something, then it's you're just along for the ride.

Francesca : 54:09

And there's a lot of good work to do right and a huge space like wide open spaces.

Brett: 54:13

And people that appreciate that. These business owners and business small businesses appreciate it. They're open to it. There's enough that appreciate what you can do If appreciate your point of view, appreciate your thoughts on something, and I've heard from a number of folks that said that's one of the most refreshing things is somebody's actually listening to me. They're out there and they're hungry for your expertise.

Mel: 54:34

Time to tap into your main character energy.

Brett: 54:38

I like that yeah.

Mel: 54:39

I like the main character of your story, so build the story you want.

Francesca : 55:00

Brad, thanks so much for joining us today. We'll post in the show notes your Slack channel, your podcast, tiktok and your LinkedIn, just so everyone can go out and be part of your corporate escapee community. Thank you for joining us today.

Brett: 55:14

Yeah, that's my pleasure.

Francesca : 55:34

We'll be back next week with new week, new headlines. Thanks so much for joining us today. Like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends. Thanks, friend.

Open Talent

Your Work Friends Podcast: Open Talent with John Winsor

Rigid roles are out, and fluid talent is in. John Winsor breaks down the open talent revolution—and why your next big opportunity won’t come from climbing a ladder, but from thinking like a portfolio builder.

In this episode, we sit down with John Winsor, Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School’s Digital, Design, and Data (D³) Institute, Open Assembly Founder and Author of many books including Open Talent: Leveraging a Global Workforce to Solve Your Biggest Challenges,

We dug into how the open talent revolution is transforming how we work. John unpacks why both companies and workers are shifting to portfolio careers, and reveals why "we own employees" is a dying concept being replaced by "I'm gonna make it so sexy and attractive that I'm gonna attract you into it." Adopting an abundance mindset can unlock new career growth.

Listen or watch the full episode here

---

Speaker 1: 0:00

One of the things I could never figure out is like leaders, where did the concept of we own employees ever come from? It's such a crazy concept, right? It's all my people. I do the work that I am demanding they do. What the fuck? That's so crazy. Hey guys, I've got a cool project over here. I'm going to make it so sexy and so attractive that I'm going to attract you into it, and then I'm going to take you into it, and then I'm going to take really good care of you, and that always seems to work out better, right.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Welcome to your Work friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We are breaking work down, so you get ahead, Mel.

Speaker 3: 0:52

How are you doing? I am doing excellent. Thank you very much. It is like 70 degrees, I can't complain. How about you Listen?

Speaker 2: 1:00

it's good, Mel. Do you know where your water meter is?

Speaker 3: 1:05

No, I have no freaking clue. It's somewhere outside of my house, but I just get those ads all the time about buying insurance in case the water pipe breaks from the street to your house.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Yeah, I came home from dropping off Enzo and the city was outside, they're flushing the fire hydrants, but they couldn't find our water meter, and so I was like, do you know where your water meter is?

Speaker 3: 1:24

And I'm like if the city can't find it, what does that mean for you?

Speaker 2: 1:28

You're just shit out of luck. Yeah, not stealing a lot of confidence from our friends? Are you guys billing me? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:35

Yeah Well, we had such an amazing conversation and just fun conversation with John Windsor. Conversation and just fun conversation with John Windsor, the author of Open Talent. For those of you who don't know John, he's an entrepreneur, he's a thought leader and he's a global authority figure on the future of work. He's currently the executive in residence at Harvard Business School's Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard Lish. Founder and chairman of Open Assembly and, among many. First, john founded Victor and Spoils in 2009, the world's first ad agency that sourced from the crowd. He is the co-author of Open Talent and also the author of Flipped Spark Beyond the Brand and the co-author of Baked In Just an all-around rad person doing pretty amazing things. How do you feel about this conversation?

Speaker 2: 2:28

Listen, john's one of those guys you just want to. Can I just talk to you about life in general?

Speaker 3: 2:33

The insights from this episode awesome, and we've been talking about open talent for years.

Speaker 2: 2:40

If you don't know what open talent is in general, it's basically that organizations will move to having contract or gig like work, either sourcing those gigs either internally in their organization so you can move around and do more projects, as opposed to being decked to one team and one boss for years and years and years. Right, you're going to move around to different projects based on your skills, or they're going to get that talent externally. You and I have been working in this way, mel, for the last 10 years with Deloitte. We worked with this all the time.

Speaker 3: 3:13

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:14

You. We had what was called adaptive organizations, where you had a core of full-time folks that were really geared towards strat and relationship and we hired out right when we needed to for the projects. We did this all the time. This is something that's going to become more and more the norm, especially with AI, especially as organizations are getting really focused on only having full-time workers that serve their core competence or, quite honestly, it makes sense financially for them to carry full time. It has massive benefits to an organization. It has really interesting benefits to employees that want to live a portfolio type of life.

Speaker 3: 3:54

It's also a huge retention play for that core group if they can get it right internally.

Speaker 2: 4:00

Listen, if you're going to learn about this topic from anyone, you're going to want to learn about it from John. Not only has he lived this with Victor and Spoils, with Open Assembly and with Harvard, he sees this all the time. Plus, he just gets life Great person to learn from.

Speaker 3: 4:15

With you on that. Listen, get the book. Get the book, go to his website. We'll include all the socials here so you can follow him, because you absolutely should and with that here's Jon Windsor.

Speaker 2: 4:43

All right, jon, we're here to talk about open talent.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Yeah, which is very exciting.

Speaker 2: 4:48

I loved reading this book. It actually brought me back to my Deloitte days because and you mentioned Deloitte in the book- multiple times. Yeah, yeah, and you've lived this life with Victor and Spoils and Open Assembly. This has been your world.

Speaker 1: 5:02

It has been how would you define open talent.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Open talent is just an operating system. Where you have it depends on the side of the situation, though. From a company perspective, it's really relying on variable costs. Talent right From an individual side, it's having a portfolio career and having the confidence to do that. It's hard because I think we've all been taught at work there are all these rules and regulations and you can't step over the line and you might have to do something that breaks some kind of unsaid cultural rule or legal rule, whereas when you're on your own, you got to pay attention to everything. You've got to be way more optimistic and way more aggressive, and that's a huge shift for a lot of people. It's really been difficult for people to shift.

Speaker 1: 5:44

So for us I use the term because I was trying to figure out a term that certainly born out of open source software. That, to me, was the first thing, but secondly, it's like how do you think about open talent externally, building external talent clouds and internally, like how do I create a system that allows everybody in the company to participate in a way that helps the company get to the outcomes they need but yet gives the freedom to people for them to explore and be a part of advancing their career. It could be a software engineer going. This stuff sucks. I want to be in marketing. What's the opportunity? Most people have to leave the organization to do that and how do we create an internal talent marketplace that allow for that exploration.

Speaker 1: 6:26

And then my history is more around the idea of crowdsourcing ideas and we built a bunch of stuff at Harvard with NASA, around the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation to solve really hard problems. And over again we see that crowds always trump experts and it's because of the adjacent knowledge and the ability to not be encumbered by tried and true ways of doing things that are very linear. It's very much throwing caution to the wind and trying new things. So those are the three legs to the Open Talents Tool and I tried to use a term that built off some history, played to the idea of open and then laid some groundwork that you can use it anywhere.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Organizations. In my experience, they'll start with the external marketplace. Oh, we're going to start hiring folks from open assembly or Upwork or something like that. They'll do an external marketplace where they're trying to bring in folks to do project-based work or at the most basic level. One of the things that's been so interesting to me is, to your very good point, I find most organizations lag on the internal marketplace. My entire career has been in talent development and it's so interesting that most organizations are sitting on such raw talent that career development is the number one thing people want, more than pay your rear, and that mobility internally is such a key thing. Have you found the same thing that most people feel like it's easier to go external than it is to queue that up internal? Do they do it at the same time and why? Yeah, I love compound questions.

Speaker 1: 8:01

No, it's great. I think that the issue really is the managerial level and it's really talent hoarding. If you've got a really great team, you're like, oh, I can't have them, instead of going hey, you guys, in the context of my team, you guys are all hired guns, like you're working here because you want to on this team. You're working here because I need you. If I do something wrong, you might want to jump off the team. So need you. If I do something wrong, you might want to jump off the team. So why not start from the basis of just hey, come if you want, leave if you want, if you need some help doing something else, totally fine. But if you're not passionate about it, you're like life's way too short. But I think it's that change in the leadership and the bureaucracy and the allowing. One of the things I could never figure out is like leaders. Where did the concept of we own employees ever come from? It's such a crazy concept. Right, it's all my people. I do the work that I am demanding they do. What the fuck? That's so crazy. Hey guys, I've got a cool project over here. I'm going to make it so sexy and so attractive that I'm going to attract you into it and then I'm going to take really good care of you and that always seems to work out better, right? If you can say it's an honor to work with you guys, come be a part of it. I'll make it really important for your career, for you as an individual, instead of saying you got to be here at this time and these are the requirements and blah, blah, blah, blah blah.

Speaker 1: 9:23

I think it's the old white man issue in culture, right? I think that's what happened over COVID and I think that's why there's been some push to return to office. Is that, like old white guys sit in a corner office all by themselves, they've judged their importance and their identity on how many people were in the cubicles outside their office and, sorry, it doesn't work that way anymore. People do great work all over the world and you just want the best talent. So that's a shift, right? Do I want to control the talent? Because if you want to control the talent, you are not going to get the best talent. Or do I want to work with the best talent and like, how do I do that? How can I be curious? How can I get people engaged?

Speaker 2: 10:09

Yeah, it also reminds me of something that I read in the book. Mel and I both sorry Mel, not to out you. It's fine, we're both a bunch of woo-woos and one of the things that you talked about in the book was abundance and this idea of abundance. It's so funny because more and more I'm just like oh shit, it's everywhere. Woo-woo is everywhere.

Speaker 1: 10:19

As in Vine's new book, right, yes, I mean which is fantastic, and I agree.

Speaker 2: 10:25

I feel like there's been this model of scarcity. This is mine, this is my piece of the pie. I'm going to piss through everything, so I protect my territory. No, you can't have this talent, even if it's in the same company versus.

Speaker 3: 10:41

Even if they aren't doing anything right now. It's so selfish.

Speaker 2: 10:48

It's so selfish, it's so selfish it is. It is, and moving into that kind of abundance mindset is a really interesting flip around. There's enough great work to go around. There's enough currency from a leadership perspective to go around. The other thing that I was always so surprised by as someone running a team there are always times where it's way cheaper to contract that out or bring in somebody for a smaller period of time, or you can be the best planner and still have these oh shit moments. We need staff, aug here, or we need someone to take this on. It's so interesting that even in the most numbers-driven organizations that they don't get the efficiency play and a budget play. It's a slam dunk Totally. I think you a slam dunk Totally.

Speaker 1: 11:25

I think you're really hitting into something. It is a scarcity mindset, but I can't. Maybe I'm trying to defend the old white guys, being an old white guy.

Speaker 1: 11:33

But I think what's happened is the whole world was set up for white guys to be managers, right, you go to Harvard Business School, where I work, and you get your degree and you have a system and you have a process. And then you go to a big company like a Deloitte and then they have a process and a system and anything that's variance outside that system just doesn't work. But one of the problems so many companies are having is that mindset is a vestige of an industrial age and truly you think about Drucker's work or even more modern thinkers like Jim Collins work. The philosophy is a scarce philosophy because the raw materials, the talent it was scarce. He didn't know where to get it. Education was really scarce, but I have to hire from an Ivy league school because that Ivy league business school education is way better than anything else and not so much. It was like I, I gotta get this raw material from somewhere because there's only one place in the world to get it and it's really limited. Probably not that way anymore and now that we're in this digital age where there's much, much more abundance, I think we're going to see that completely accelerate. With ai, yeah is that we don't have to think that way anymore, but it's's a vestige.

Speaker 1: 12:43

One of the things we talked for a second about the Ezra Klein book and one of the things I found so interesting is he really takes on kind of democratic cities that have created scarcity through bureaucracy around housing, and I noticed it here in Boulder. One of the things that's really interesting is, yeah, boulder's become way bigger than it was and it's a bummer for all of us. You guys live in Portland, right? One of the problems is we've had this kind of let's shut the gate after we're here, and so one of the things that's happened, which I didn't really understand and I really resonated with that Ezra Klein abundance idea, was that boulders become outrageously expensive. There's still a three-story limit to buildings, and if you could take a building and build a five-story building instead of a three-story building, all of a sudden it makes economic sense to do low-income housing, but at a three-story building you can't cost it out to do that, and so by having this, we've got to make the place beautiful. We've got to make sure this is a scarce resource. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that there's not enough pie to go around. I think that same thing applies inside companies that over decades have had this kind of scarce commodity Even in the beginning of the digital age.

Speaker 1: 14:07

I still have this vestige of I got to get rid of some of the photos on my phone because there's just so much shitty. I took a picture to send to my wife on a piece of pizza. Do I really want that as a memory? But then I think about like in the IFD of abundance is like. It doesn't cost me anything, it doesn't. I shouldn't worry about. Like. Why would I worry about that? Why would I sit around for two hours and select the photos on my phone that I need to throw out?

Speaker 1: 14:36

The reason we do that is because at one time there was only so much room on our computer or our phones to do it, and so we needed to continually manage our resources, and so I think we're just seeing this kind of natural evolution towards abundance.

Speaker 2: 14:47

Yeah, I think there needs to be that switch right and there's that opportunity for that switch towards abundance in corporations. I'm wondering what your perspective is on folks that are working right now, because I feel like there is also a scarcity feel. Consumer sentiment is in the tank, hustling employers is in the tank. There is a fear that AI is going to take my job, absolutely. What's the abundance lens for employees, or is there one?

Speaker 1: 15:14

Yeah, I think there is. I think, first of all, that you got to dissuade the scarce mindset of living beyond your means. I don't know about you guys, but the happiest people I know doesn't matter where they are on the economic scale If they are somehow having more income than they spend. It could be some dude living on a beach. He gets, catches tons of fish and he does the whole like coconuts and he's totally happy, right, yeah, so I think that's the thing, right, that the kind of abundant mindset. There's more tomorrow, that. And I find that interestingly in places like mexico or indonesia or even japan. I was just in japan skiing and I just so surprised how people are just so gentle and so thoughtful, and I think it's because they have this abundance they don't have to be on that bus or even though the bus is small, there's abundant space to put another two or three people in. So it's just this really beautiful sense of it's all going to be okay. But it's hard if you've got a huge mortgage and you're stressed and you buy into all this stress. I don't know. I think that's part of it is refactoring things.

Speaker 1: 16:19

I'm teaching some stuff at Harvard, but I'm teaching a class at Denver University and on freelance and what? My assumption is that we're all going to have portfolio jobs. You guys do, I do. That's just the future, right, it's just what we do. But how do we train these kids to do it? And so it's like a one-day sprint. But one of my really odd takeaways is there are all these rules and regulations around AI. So I decided it's going to be a class about using AI to create a class about AI, and the kids are going to be in charge of designing a class with AI about the best way to teach kids about AI. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3: 16:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:00

So I only want to do it because I want to poke the bear. There's lots of 20-year-old professors that have been there for 20 years. They use the same syllabus and I want the kids to so rock new kinds of syllabuses and say, oh, this took me 10 minutes to do, oh, I can bring this out in a half an hour.

Speaker 1: 17:16

And I want to be open about it. I want to be like the next time a professor tells you not to use AI. Use AI, Sure to use AI, Because this is the future. This is what we need to learn. We all need to learn this. It's a new skill we've got to learn and we've got to look at it abundantly. Try to be creative about it.

Speaker 3: 17:43

I love where this is going because I'm a huge believer in open talent concept. I think as someone who's worked in talent my whole career and then worked in talent acquisition, and you see the talent that comes into an organization. You also see when it leaves and you're like what happened to that guy? He was awesome and I think a lot of it is like that lack of opportunity, as you said, like things can get stale or they might have a leader who's holding on to them for dear life Right but they're not really thinking about the employee and what they need to feel purpose and meaning in the work that they do. So I love this concept and really believe in it. I also think there's a huge opportunity to unbreak innovation within an organization, because what keeps me up at night is how much innovation is lost because we don't have this type of model.

Speaker 1: 18:26

When you think about who didn't we tap into to find, like hot Cheetos no it's funny because I just was on a conversation yesterday with a consulting company that won't be named.

Speaker 2: 18:37

Does it rhyme with Beloit? Yeah, just joking.

Speaker 1: 18:41

That's a good guess but I can't confirm or deny. And there was a new senior person and we were having a conversation and I was like how's it going?

Speaker 2: 18:50

And I don't know.

Speaker 1: 18:50

I'm like how's it going? He's on board. He's been like six weeks and I'm getting there and I got another five weeks and I'll talk to you in six or seven weeks about this project that we were supposed to start like eight months ago and I was like I don't know if I'll be around then, but try my phone and if I'm up for something then great. But good luck with that onboarding. I'm glad you're going. Everything about the family history of the organization and what they were doing back in the 1800s.

Speaker 3: 19:15

Exciting stuff. Exciting stuff, exciting stuff.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Really relevant to how you do your job.

Speaker 3: 19:20

Yeah, oh man, I'm really excited about where your work is headed. One of the things that you talked about was moving away from hierarchies to networks. I love that because I think about the silos and all the dollars lost on redundant work that happens across organizations. But you have those organizations that are just holding on to this so tight, like this is how it works. How do organizations who are so used to this hierarchical structure, how do they even start to begin to make that shift so this works for them?

Speaker 1: 19:49

If you figure that out, will you let me know?

Speaker 3: 19:53

Yeah, what's one small step they can take to test and learn.

Speaker 1: 19:57

It starts with an open dialogue, right, and, unfortunately, the things that I see. I don't know if you guys see it, but the bottom's just begging for this, right, like Z folks trying to be more flexible, and the very top is really focused on the outcomes and it goes beyond the C-level and gets dropped into some bureaucracy and everybody starts following the rules and it's just crazy. It's just really crazy, I think, especially with ai, for those leaders that are more curious.

Speaker 1: 20:26

They're just going to go around the bureaucracy, right, they're just going to go yeah I'm going to take some smart people, give them some ai tools, go build, build something. Blow up the bureaucracy. We did a case study recently on Coursera and they have a really amazing CEO and he's trying to figure out how to push things with AI and one of the examples he used his team came up with and one of the examples was when you have a course and you want to translate it into 20 different languages right, so 20 courses, 20 different languages. It was 12 weeks and $10,000 per translation, and so that's $4 million. Somebody on his team said I think I can do this in chat, gpt, and now the system costs him $40 per translation and takes about three hours to do with that, with the fact checking and somebody leaning into it. So I, so it's saved them.

Speaker 1: 21:22

What is that? Eight hundred dollars or something like that. It's such a radical shift in cost. But to me, the really magical thing is that was a huge friction point. Certainly some people who are translators lost their jobs and that's a real bummer. But but for the rest of the organization sitting around waiting 12 weeks for a translation, it just kills the organization. Like I got a new course. Is it in Spanish? Damn, it's not in Spanish. It won't be in Spanish for 12 weeks. I'm off to the next thing.

Speaker 3: 21:50

But it's also like thinking about those translators and how do you continue to use them to be that human checkpoint for AI, right? Like how do you take that group of people and use them elsewhere?

Speaker 1: 22:00

I think some of it has to be mandated.

Speaker 2: 22:02

I was at this.

Speaker 1: 22:02

Eric Von Hippel is this crazy, really amazing guy that in his eighties at MIT works on user innovation, and Charlie Shee's guy from Harvard. We had this round table and we're talking about innovation. So charlie told the story which just totally blew my mind. The port of la, the biggest port in america, 10 000 workers, all union longshoremen, just had a strike last year. What they didn't resolve in the strike was automation. That's still on the table. They're still arguing about it. It takes five minutes to load a container. Once the truck pulls up a container onto a ship, right. So 10,000 people, five minutes to get the work done, organized, but very disorganized. Then he showed a picture of a port in Shenzhen in China, four times as big. It takes 10 seconds not five minutes, but 10 seconds to put a container on a ship Four times as big. Guess how many employees works at the dock 200.

Speaker 1: 23:05

Zero, oh yeah, really, yeah. Zero. It's all automated, it's all powered by hydro. There are like 25 people sitting in a control tower oh sure, yeah, the core crew yeah, but nobody is down near the ships, it's all automated.

Speaker 1: 23:22

And and charlie's point is a really good point we're sitting here fighting about people holding on to legacy jobs, saying my grandfather was a longshoreman, my dad was longshoreman, I deserve to be a longshoreman, my dad was a longshoreman, I deserve to be a longshoreman. And in China their point is sorry, technology replaced that. Here's three training modules or three different training paths you can do, but you don't have a job as a longshoreman. That is no longer a job that you have. And I know that we get into this weird place, especially in the US, on like self-determination and choice and things like that, but unfortunately we can decide to change the type of employment that we have and mandate it, or the market's going to decide for us, and I would suggest that the turn of the last century. There are probably a lot of buggy whip manufacturers and people that made buggy whips that were really good, but I don't know too many buggy whip manufacturers anymore that are around and a lot of people got displaced, but that's just the way it goes.

Speaker 3: 24:18

What are those folks that used to walk around to light the lanterns or to wake people up in the morning? That job went away too. I feel like in every generation there's that shift. It's great that legacy existed in some of these jobs with your family, and there's something really special about that when you think about it. But at the same time it's did you want to do this job because of that or because it's what you really wanted? If, now that you have the opportunity to think about something else, you could maybe do, what does that look like for you?

Speaker 1: 24:43

What do you need to pay attention to, right? Do you guys remember? In the book there are all horses in one car and then, 10 years later, in 1913, there were all cars and one horse in 10 years. We're thinking that our progress is up going through the roof and we're changing so fast, but that would mean that our streets were all horses in 2015. And that there would be cars now. That would be like saying, oh, we had cars and now we have flying right autonomous and if you consider that tesla's been going since 2003, like this transition is not that fast.

Speaker 1: 25:29

And you could say that, oh, isn't it sad for all the people that took care of the horses and the stables and the people that picked up the shit on streets, and Some of those jobs weren't really great, but they needed to change. Sorry, we don't need your services for shoveling shit.

Speaker 2: 25:45

Here's my thing on that, though. China, for example, is offering retraining opportunities for people. So here are the three paths you can go on. I'm looking at organizations, and there are only 18% of organizations that are actively reskilling their people for new jobs.

Speaker 1: 26:02

And then, beyond that, what skills are human skills and what skills are synthetic skills? Right, a thousand percent.

Speaker 2: 26:08

Or hybrid or hybrid. My concern comes from whose responsibility is that to retrain those people? Is it government? Is it corporations? Because I don't see anyone taking up the reins there.

Speaker 1: 26:23

I know it's an irresponsibility right. Unfortunately, our unfettered capitalism is all about maximizing profits or shareholder return in the very short run and you can't think beyond the next quarter. So AI is a hot thing. Let's get rid of all these people and hire a bunch of AI people and not oh, that's's going. Let's retrain a bunch of people. They've already committed to the company. It's going to save us a ton of money. Here are the people that can really do that. It challenges the core western philosophy of self-determination. Right, you should have trained yourself on ai six months ago. We're going to hire somebody that has six months worth of experience.

Speaker 2: 27:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:07

And I think we just need a little bit more of a collective mentality. There are pockets of companies that get it and usually, in my mind, they're usually singularly owned. They're owned by some maverick who doesn't really care that much. Yeah, I want to make more money, I want to do this, but I like Judy down in shipping, I'm going to take care of her. It's interesting, right, because I would say because Patagonia is always a really interesting case for me.

Speaker 1: 27:26

There are a lot of people at Patagonia that were there way too long, but they just so added to the culture. He answered the phones way after you needed a receptionist, but his name was Chipper Bro, and Chipper Bro remembered everybody's name. He remembered everything. You didn't go on hold. You talked to Chipper Bro. He's like where are you going on your next surf trip, dude? Oh yeah, I'd go here. It made Patagonia who they are, just that human connection.

Speaker 1: 27:56

But I think what happens is, if you have that kind of feeling, then, in the same breath, yvonne walked in one day, and long time ago, and 10% of the revenue was non-organic t-shirts, and he didn't like that idea. So he cut the t-shirt line and said let's put the money that we're going to make here into subsidizing farmers to grow organic cotton and then in five years we can buy that back and start t-shirts again, and that's really bold. But if you're secure, knowing that you're going to have employment, you're part of it. Even if you get let go in an honest, thoughtful way, then you're fine with it. But it's these kind of dark room, black box oh, this division has to go, no rhyme or reason. It sometimes feels. Oh, the CEO is not going to make his bonus unless he lops off a thousand employees.

Speaker 3: 28:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:44

And it just doesn't work.

Speaker 3: 28:45

Agree, you mentioned we have a very short window to start to get this right. So, when you think about this, if you test this tomorrow I'm thinking of the renegade we were just talking about that's not going to pay attention to the rules. And just let me try this out. For the renegade leaders out there who are like, yeah, I'm going to try this open talent model and how that lines up with AI too and what we need to look at, what would you advise for them to do to dip their toe in this?

Speaker 1: 29:11

I think first you have to have a mental model right. So you've got to have a thesis and you got to get agreement on the thesis. So, francesca, like you said, going from scarcity to abundance I think that's the first thing is saying the world's abundant. We have so many opportunities and we have to figure out how do we get to the opportunities we need to grow or to do whatever we want to accomplish. Above that, most companies even struggle with the idea of purpose, like why are you even in business, besides making a few people rich? So, understanding what your purpose is, understanding that it's really an abundant mindset. But then, after that, I think it's really getting focused on outcomes. What are the outcomes I need?

Speaker 1: 29:46

And then let's what are the tasks we need to do to get to those outcomes? And then what are the skills we need? And we know that right now, in the next few years, it's going to be AI 24 seven. So how do we retrain people? How do we get people up to speed? How do we get the right talent in place?

Speaker 1: 30:02

What I've noticed in leaders that get it, it's not that sensitivity and wavy grave, it's also even a more radical, I wouldn't say brutality, but at least honesty. So I was in a meeting in New York last week and we had this big kind of ai training for this large company and that so the head person, that's, the editor, and all her staff. They literally just blew off the owner ceo to request to be there and they flew to a concert and it's because they had to cover it for the magazine and they've refused to adopt ai and refuse to do anything like. That's cheating. Can't have AI write our articles. So we spent five hours working through some of this stuff and the CEO looks around the room and looks like he won't have a job on Monday, meaning the editor that decided to take her staff and do something else. To me that was not a brutal move, but it was more of an acknowledgement that, hey, this is scary times.

Speaker 1: 31:05

Thank you so much for committing your time and being here at my request. If you don't want to be here, it's totally fine, I get it. I don't have time to babysit, sorry. We've got a lot of great things to do and we're going to use technology and we need to satisfy our customers and our customers have a lot of friction in their lives and we got to solve for that. And if're going to use technology and we need to satisfy our customers and our customers have a lot of friction in their lives and we got to solve for that. And if you want to not do what's best by our customers, then that's great. There's a lot of other great things to do in the world and I love that. I love the kind of just like certainty because, as much as it's a bummer for a few people, it shows the rest of the organization like whoa. We're going for it.

Speaker 1: 31:42

And there's not some like clandestine non-talked about conversation in a non-transparent way, but if it's very transparent and very open. So that's the third part of the stool. What's my purpose? The abundant mindset and then the ability to move fast and make great decisions.

Speaker 3: 31:58

And that story is so poignant because you hear that all the time when change happens, where someone really just is like fighting versus how can I lean into it? How can you reframe your mindset right now, maybe be open to what's possible? It might have a positive effect for your experience here.

Speaker 1: 32:15

Yeah, it's almost like we could never have an AI aggregate comments on our website, because somebody has to take the time and understand the nuance. Good luck with that.

Speaker 3: 32:25

I've done a lot of synthesis and I will tell you I am so glad AI exists to help with that. How can someone listening today, who's in that traditional space of wherever they are, start to really think about how they can? What would they be as a freelancer, even while they're still within this assigned job? How can they start to test that for themselves of what that might look like, so that when things do change, they're ready for it?

Speaker 1: 32:51

Yeah, definitely do some side gigs. Yeah, like Moonlight. Start right away. Doesn't even matter, right, like the cost of failure is so low. Start a podcast. I don't mean to set up a bunch of people. You guys are already wrong. Sorry, you guys have already pierced through the stratosphere. Just go try some shit. Right, like? I think that's the sad thing, right? It's like when we're kids the world's our oyster. We have so many possibilities and somewhere along the way we forget we have to do all these things we have to do, and that's just total bullshit we don't have to do them we have these mental models that we feel so obligated to do things.

Speaker 1: 33:29

And then for most people we've had a lot of tragedy and we've gotten stung on some things. But I think back to our opening comments. This is the time for optimism. I think everybody has to grow into an optimist. I think pessimists are going to have a really difficult time because the world's not paid to be the same.

Speaker 3: 34:00

All right, we're going to jump right in with some rapid round questions for you. Typically one word answers are okay, we're not going to judge if you do that, but if you'd like to elaborate, please do. How's that sound?

Speaker 1: 34:11

Yeah, for sure, all right Perfect.

Speaker 3: 34:14

All right, it's 2030. What is work looking like?

Speaker 1: 34:28

looking like. Oh man, it's looking somewhere in Indonesia with your phone and waiting for the next set to come in as your agents do all the work for you.

Speaker 3: 34:34

Sounds nice, actually, sign me up. What's one thing about corporate culture that you'd like to just see die already?

Speaker 1: 34:41

Bureaucracy.

Speaker 3: 34:43

Sometimes it's like turning a cruise ship to get things done.

Speaker 1: 34:46

Oh my God, it's horrible.

Speaker 3: 34:48

What's the greatest opportunity most organizations are missing out on right now?

Speaker 1: 34:53

Tapping to the people's passion, or not just their people's passion, but the passion of the culture, and what I mean by that is like the larger culture of customers and suppliers, and it just that's so sad that there's like us against them inside, outside all that stuff. It doesn't work.

Speaker 3: 35:09

Yeah, I like that. Okay, all right, now we're going to get personal Are you ready yeah. Okay, what music are you listening to right now? What's on repeat on your playlist?

Speaker 1: 35:18

I'm a discover weekly guy, oh okay, and I love that because I love so much music. But the idea of just sitting down every Monday morning going, oh my God, a whole new playlist Some weeks it's awesome, some weeks it sucks. And the thing that kind of has been turning me out lately are these two guys, hermanos Gutierrez, these guitar players. Okay, and they would be a funky Spanish flamingo kind of thing Anyway.

Speaker 3: 35:44

Oh, that's so nice, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 35:46

Yeah, top of mind, okay, Expecting, like Katy Perry or something.

Speaker 3: 35:50

No, I had no expectations. I do this because one I'm interested. Like you, I like music from everywhere and I love that DJ feature that they have on Spotify. Have you tried your personal DJ yet?

Speaker 1: 36:01

No.

Speaker 3: 36:02

They haven't, I gotta do it, okay, yeah, I'm old school Okay. They throw in some of your favorites and some new stuff into the mix. Good for road trips. Yeah, what are you reading right now?

Speaker 1: 36:17

Reading could also be listening to a book. I was just talking about an amazing book the other day that I've read a couple times and I just love it. It's called Perfume and it's got the subtitle something creepy the smell of death. It's all like 1400 or 1600s in France about a super smeller. Unfortunately, right now I'm like totally absorbed. There's too much going on in the world, although I have to tell you guys, somebody just sent me this great podcast. My wife and I both listened to it. It's called fierce intimacy. It's really good. I was like, yeah, it's like in. The old concept is like you have to fiercely fight for the relationship and you've got to give each other space about it. You got to likecely fight for your relationship and you've got to give each other space about it.

Speaker 3: 37:04

You've got to like total transparency. I like that. Yeah, just get in. Be in it.

Speaker 1: 37:06

You're in it, be in it. Yeah, don't avoid it.

Speaker 3: 37:09

I love that. Okay, the perfume one is so interesting to me. Francesca and I talked about this when we went to Tuscany. You recommended the Santa Maria Novella perfumery place. It's just such an interesting history with perfume, yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:21

And the whole super smeller thing and the people that they used to hire do that, and oh, it's so crazy, that's so cool. What a cool history. Who do you admire most? Oh my God, that's a good question. My dad, for sure. My dad's still alive. He's a modern day Ernest Hemingway. Such a stud, I would say. There's a collection of people right. I think that there are lots of people that inspire me for different reasons. Tinker certainly one of them. Good friend, like we talked about, Francesca.

Speaker 1: 37:49

My wife Emily she's definitely kept me going, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 37:56

Good stuff. We like to hear it. What's a piece of advice you would love to give to others because you didn't have it for yourself a long time ago?

Speaker 1: 38:05

The guy told me this and my wife at the time, bridget, and I we just adopted two kids from Russia and we always hung out at this coffee shop and this guy kind of looks like Albert Einstein. I used to have a one man, albert Einstein show, len, and he didn't have any kids Kind of looked at our kids and they were like two or three and looked at us and looked at the kids and he's I have some parenting advice for you. She was like oh no, lynn, I don't know if you want to hear it, and he said that some mother had told him this said most parents when kids do things that are outside the norm, they always say be careful.

Speaker 1: 38:51

But be careful creates all this fear. It's like be careful, you might hurt yourself. Be careful, that's too high, be careful, that's too fast. So instead just always say pay attention. And so if your son or daughter says I'm going to climb that tree, if you say be careful, it's should I or shouldn't I climb the tree, instead of saying pay attention, meaning go as high as you want, but pay attention to your inner feeling and how you're willing to explore, and when you're not feeling comfortable, come back down, it's all about you.

Speaker 1: 39:19

And so that's something that was really magical for me as a dad to allow my sons to explore. But it's also, I think, a really good thing to think about in work, right, and it's like there's so much fear, especially around this new world of AI, and like how do we be less careful and pay more attention?

Speaker 3: 39:38

I really love that shift in thinking.

Speaker 1: 39:41

It's crazy, just to pay attention.

Speaker 3: 39:42

Yeah, what a shift, and it totally eliminates the fear out of things.

Speaker 1: 39:46

I know right it does.

Speaker 1: 39:48

One of the things I just love about AI is back to Einstein. It's that Einstein quote that says if you gave me a problem and an hour to solve it, I spend 55 minutes on the problem or the question, five minutes on the solution. And I think somehow in the industrial age we got so focused on the execution and the solution right and solving the problem properly. And what's so great is now the cost of execution is going to zero. But it's really the value of what's the problem you're trying to solve. How do you really define that in an interesting way? It's an exciting time, it is. There's a lot to look forward to solve. How do you really define that in an interesting way?

Speaker 3: 40:20

It's an exciting time, it is. There's a lot to look forward to. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 40:23

A time to pay attention.

Speaker 3: 40:25

A time to pay attention. For sure, we loved having you here. We love the book Open Talent, everybody. We appreciate you being with us today. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1: 40:36

Me as well. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3: 40:41

It's been such an honor. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

Employment is Dead

Your Work Friends Podcast: Employment is Dead with Deborah Perry Piscione & Josh Drean

In this episode, we dive into why the traditional nine-to-five no longer cuts it and explore how AI, gig economies, and decentralized organizations are reshaping work as we know it.

We sat down with futurists, innovation thought leaders, and founders of Work3 Institute’s Deborah Perry Piscione and Josh Drean to get into the mindset shift from “I work for you, you pay me” to a future where skills and purpose matter more than a desk and a paycheck. You’ll hear bold predictions about money possibly disappearing, villages re-emerging, and why flexibility, community, and entrepreneurial thinking are now non-negotiables.

If you’re curious about what work—and your role in it—might look like in the next five to ten years, this episode will give you plenty to think about.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Traditional models of employment are failing to meet the needs of the evolving workforce. Employment as it looks from an industrial age kind of model of you work for me, I'll give you X amount of dollars for Y amount of hours, I'm the boss, I tell you exactly what you need to build and exactly what you need to do, and you don't ask questions. Just does not serve us anymore.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Hey, this is your Work Friends. I'm Mel Plett and I'm Francesca Ranieri. We're breaking down work to help you stay ahead.

Speaker 3: 0:48

We're also joined by Lucy, a 60 pound boxer, who is breathing into the mic right now.

Speaker 2: 0:53

How is that a hot breath going for you?

Speaker 3: 0:55

It's like the best dog, but her breath is just. Here's a mint. Here's a mint. I know I gotta get some of those greenies. I'm like here's a mint, here's a mint. I know I gotta get some of those greenies. I'm like I don't want to know.

Speaker 2: 1:08

I don't want to know oh, I mean, here she is just, but this is the panting, is not francesca it?

Speaker 3: 1:12

is not. It is not. It's just like in a brand new, whole new audience base after this episode and in other news we'll do a class for only fans oh my god, a new way of working. A new way of working. Yeah, speaking of a new way of working, we had a mind-blowing conversation the other day we did we met with the authors of employment is dead.

Speaker 2: 1:38

deborah perry piscione is a globally recognized innovation thought leader. She's an architect of improvisational innovation, a New York Times bestselling author the Secrets of Silicon Valley, serial entrepreneur of six companies, a LinkedIn learning author, and she also worked on Capitol Hill. And then Josh Dreen joined us as well. He's the co-author, co-founder and director of employee experience at the Work3 Institute. His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, forbes, fast Company and the Economist. They both speak globally actually to bring work and tech insights to digital first leaders, but they're very focused on human-centric workplaces as well. Very interesting concept Employment is dead. What I also took away from that conversation is it's mainly how we think about traditional employment. But work is still here to stay. It just might look a little bit different. How about you? Yeah?

Speaker 3: 2:35

One of the things in this whole AI conversation that I think we've been really missing is what could work really look like in the next five to 10 years. Both Josh and Debra brought some very mind-blowing perspectives of how work could feel decentralized and gigged and really exciting Potentially, how we don't even have money anymore. Are we going to return to villages? If you are looking for a futurist's view of what the world of work, what your life might look like, especially on this whole AI trajectory, this is the episode for you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:14

Listen, it's a thought piece for sure. Noodle on it. Let us know what you think. With that, here's Debra and Josh. All right, welcome Josh and Deborah. We're so excited to see you both. All right, we're going to set the stage and jump right in, because we're in it. The title Employment is Dead. Really bold statement. What led you both to this conclusion?

Speaker 1: 3:44

Oh yes, employment is dead. Our bold pitch is that traditional models of employment are failing to meet the needs of the evolving workforce. Employment, as it looks from an industrial age kind of model of you work for me, I'll give you X amount of dollars for Y amount of hours, I'm the boss, I tell you exactly what you need to build and exactly what you need to do, and you don't ask questions, just does not serve us anymore. And when Debra said it's dead, we do make the distinction that work and employment are two very different things, and we've just bled it together and don't think too much about it. But in the very first chapter of the book we say employment is this construct that we designed. That doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Work, on the other hand, individuals who want to build skills, who want to be a part of a company or a movement bigger than themselves, to belong to a community. That is what is important. So how do we reclaim some of those elements? And we talk more about this and we can get further into it, but I'm curious to have you weigh in on that, debra.

Speaker 4: 4:50

Well, I wanted to give a little bit of another additional nugget on the backstory. Josh and I really thought we'd have a multi-year run rate with this book, and we'll be lucky if we have five months, because this concept of these jobs eroding is happening so quickly. So the world really needs to wake up and, on the one hand, we're going to get back more time so that we can be better citizens, better family members, have more time to do things. We just really have been desiring this European lifestyle for so long. Now we're going to be able to get it, but we do need to look down the road, not only for ourselves, for subsistence, but how do we all collectively work together, which can look quite different from an economic model that we've known for over 150 years?

Speaker 2: 5:38

Yeah, I think everyone's pretty cozy with how it's always been right. That's always hard, but what I gained from the book was traditional jobs are gone, but work is here to stay. So the optimistic realist in me is employment might be dead, but work is here to stay. There's work that's going to happen For the time being. Yeah, for the time being.

Speaker 4: 6:00

I almost got, even though Waymo has been in San Francisco for quite some time I haven't seen it in my Silicon Valley neighborhood until recently and I was waiting to wave at the car, not realizing it was a Waymo, because I smile at people when I they're waiting for me to cross the street. I was like there's nobody in that car so soon. Just as much as AI is evolving, so are robots and humanoids, and so we are getting to, you know, that general AGI, artificial intelligence, where it can rationalize, teach itself and be in concert with robots being able to learn on their own, and so that's happening a lot faster than we anticipated as well, and so that's happening a lot faster than we anticipated as well.

Speaker 3: 6:45

The evolution of work has changed. A lot of people haven't studied this so deeply, so I'm wondering if you can talk through how expectations of work have changed over the years, just to set the stage.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Yeah, I can jump in here. I spent a lot of time working with HR professionals and when you look at HR in general, that field has just shifted so much. When you look at the beginning of HR, right, it was personnel and I think that it was birthed out of this idea of we have people who work at the company. We need to pay them. They could get into trouble and we could be sued as a company for whatever they say or whatever they do after hours, and so let's get ahead of that. So the traditional model of HR was how can we do the paper things it's paying people PTO and then we got into this era of discretionary effort where it was like people work for us nine to five. It's very contractual, but how can we almost trick them into doing more work, staying later, creeping into some of their personal time? What can we do to make the workplace exciting? To be there at 6 pm, at 7 pm, come in earlier, and so there's the carrot and the stick. Your bonuses are tied to that. And there's also the look we've got snacks in the break room, We've got beer on tap, we have a lot of different things. And that birthed the employee engagement movement which was yeah, we're Apple, we're Google, we want you to have an amazing experience at our organization. So how can we engage you more? And that's where we have hot yoga, or we cater food every single day, or we'll watch your pet. We have a pet daycare on campus right, it's very much this 2000s view and that has shifted into employee experience.

Speaker 1: 8:34

I think is where we are today is how can we design experiences that employees want to have and need to have? The problem is we're still falling behind because we're unwilling to look at the deep and true needs of employees. We actually write about it in the book. We call them the 10 operating principles of work, three, the non-negotiables of the modern workforce. And, just to give you an example, employees want flexibility. That's one of our operating principles. Can we offer them flexibility? And, like we did during the pandemic, we don't really do it now, and so we see a lot of companies who are more. How do we get them back into the office? The RTO mandate over. What if we customized their schedules and individualized it so they can work according to their circadian rhythm? Yes, you can go get your kids at 3 pm, Because we know that you log back on at 7 and you work until midnight type thing, and so there's a lot of flexibility that we can be offering employees. It's just it feels like we're still stuck in that model.

Speaker 3: 9:34

Why do you think that is? Why are we still stuck?

Speaker 4: 9:39

Today's model is based on really Taylorism, which Taylor was an engineer in the early 1900s who came up with the concept and said people do not have emotions. They don't have feelings, they're just cogs on a wheel to get that widget job done. And that was really the creation around middle management as well. We became very consumed with time and for someone like myself, I never understood if I didn't eat lunch on a particular day in my Washington DC Capitol Hill office and my work was done at two o'clock, why do I have to sit there until six? Because our hours were eight to six. And then, if you pulled all-nighters in Washington DC, at least in my generation, you got like a badge of honor. Rather than looking at the output or the productivity behind work, we just got into the concept of time, and so it is really hard if you may be very innovative and I think, sitting here in Silicon Valley around companies like Google who did try to do things very differently Marissa Mayer was very famous at Google for allowing people to tap into their rhythm, as Josh mentioned and just when do you work best? It may not be within that eight to six timeframe, and I had to adopt that engineer model when I first moved to Silicon Valley, because every engineer I worked with was really extraordinary in the middle of the night and that's when they got their work done.

Speaker 4: 11:13

Technology and products and consumerism in foods. But yet our cost of living is at its highest, in part because of premium pricing. So Gen Z has like 82% less buying power than baby boomers did because of all this additional abundance and the fees around it. So if you're always trying to catch up in order to pay your rent or your mortgage, it's just hard to grow beyond. You just don't have time to think about it because you're on that treadmill.

Speaker 3: 11:54

Yeah, it's such an interesting thing because we know that a 30-year-old today is worse off than their parents were. To your very good point right, the buying power in the younger generation is not there, and I think there's a lot of reasons for that too. And then we're also looking at potentially jobs going away, work going away. This idea of job security non-existent definitely now doesn't exist anymore. Technology is going to drive this so much faster, right, we're going to get into these holes so much faster. My biggest concern is this economic wealth gap is going to get even bigger, from the people that have to the people that don't have.

Speaker 3: 12:37

And does technology exacerbate that or does it democratize that?

Speaker 4: 12:41

Yeah, that's such a great question because, as Josh knows, I used to always say AI is going to democratize opportunity, but really what it's coming down to is digital fluency. I sit in the middle of this stuff and trying to keep up with it day to day. I'm like, oh, you haven't heard about Manus, that's going to build out the company for you. That's Reid Hoffman's new startup and Josh and I are very much on the global speaking circuit and I'm lucky of a speech last two weeks. I'm constantly revising it. So there's exhaustion with keeping up and you cannot keep pace with the five or so AI companies. Where they're going to be the winner takes all situation. There was a venture capitalist who made a famous statement as the SaaS kind of model where you would eventually exhaust those sales. In an AI model, you can not only take all the jobs, but you can take all the salaries of the people that used to work for you. It's endless. The money is endless.

Speaker 3: 13:46

Yeah, I was just reading AI 2027, that white paper that's out there too, and it just feels like it all starts to funnel up into three big things at the end of the day, and it's just holy shit, as all the wealth and all of the abundance, if you will, going to ladder into these three conglomerates, whatever we want to call them.

Speaker 2: 14:19

It's fascinating to watch, and the3, because I and Josh. You started to talk about it a little bit, but can you both break down what Work3 is all about for our listeners?

Speaker 1: 14:29

Yeah. So the Work3 Institute is an HR and AI advisory where we help companies marry emerging technologies with workforce strategies. It's hey, we want to use AI. We have no idea how to get started. We want to help our people better use AI and upskill them to be able to 50x productivity, 10x productivity, whatever the promise of AI is going to be. We just don't know how to do that, and a lot of it tends to be.

Speaker 1: 14:57

These forward-thinking human-centric companies who see the change happening don't know how to get on board and we match them with some of this technology. A lot of it, to be honest, is like you've never touched a generative ai tool. Here's a few options. And generative AI tool here's a few options. Here's some homework to start using it today. Just use it in your daily life. We are big on helping reclaim human fulfillment at work and satisfaction. It's something that, especially as companies are being squeezed right now economically, how do we not lose sight of employee satisfaction? How do you continue to do well by your people? Because if you look at the stats, they're not great either. Most employees are burned out. Most employees would take a new job in a heartbeat. Most employees don't trust their companies to do right by them at this time, and so tackling those human-centric projects head on.

Speaker 2: 15:51

You talked about the principles earlier and I loved, debra, what you were saying too. Just, things are changing so quickly and Josh mentioning RTO, right, we swung all the way over here during COVID. Now we're all the way back and something about the traditional model and I know we started to touch on those barriers that actually are gonna get people to the future. Some of it has to do with, like, executive leadership still thinking in that very traditional way, right, like even some of these folks who are really tech forward are still like I need to see your face and I need to see it every day from eight to six, as you mentioned, deborah, and if you're not a butt in a seat, I don't trust you're getting the work done. How do you get them to cut through that old way of thinking to get them to the future?

Speaker 4: 16:38

So the last chapter of our book is on the work three transformation. How do you go from the traditional organization into the era of AI? And a lot of it has to do with communication and, as Josh mentioned, it's about the people. First, the human element. When we wrote this book, we really thought the adoption would come from a lot of the big organizations and the consulting firms. But what happened, with Doge coming out and the geopolitical component of this is, people were losing their jobs so much faster. And then there needed to be a proof point If you were in the hiring business, that you had to prove that AI couldn't do that job.

Speaker 4: 17:21

This book quickly shifted to the individual wanting to know what do I need to do? Because we can't call this unemployment anymore. We need an entirely new economic model in this era of AI, because moving into that next job, it's just not going to be there. But I think, mel, it's more about fear and holding on as long as they can, because they know this is happening. So I don't care if you're Accenture or you're a law firm or whatever you are. You know that AI is going to take over your business. It just is. And so let me hold on to the work element as long as I can, and Josh and I have certainly talked about it. They probably sign these long-term real estate leases. They're just holding on as long as they possibly can, and I know you want to talk about some recent articles where one of the anthropic co-founders has talked about job loss.

Speaker 4: 18:21

That's going to happen at the entry level, but CEOs, boards of directors, can all be taken out by AI, so why not hold on as long as you can and let's work together as long?

Speaker 2: 18:31

as we can. We saw it even two years ago, right when they were testing AI, taking the bar exam or the accounting exam, and they're passing with flying colors Like absolutely it's at all levels, not just entry level, For those types of business leaders or even in professional services that are kind of holding on with fear. How do you move them to the place of opportunity of the portfolio worker in those environments so that everyone can continue to feel?

Speaker 4: 18:58

whole to some degree. What's happening simultaneously is Gen Z coming up. We often talk about various kind of use cases or individuals, young people that have made a tremendous amount of money at 15 years old, generating, creating a game on Roblox, and I think the average Roblox developer, Josh teenager, makes about $65,000 a year. So you know they're not going to want to necessarily come into what traditional work offers when they've had so much control and ownership over being that gain developer. And so you are having this market. Yes, 50% of these entry-level jobs, white-collar jobs, are going to go away in the next one to five years. There's also a lot of interesting things happen on the Web3 side in the metaverse. Josh, you're really the expert here, so you should weigh in.

Speaker 1: 19:58

Yeah, the answer is if you look at the pattern over time, companies who operate in fear, especially large companies who don't take the risks that Debra's talking about and don't push things forward, will risk obsolescence. That's just how it is. And the argument that we make again is that if we are still having the employment conversation and that's exactly what we're having right now which is oh, are you at a nine to five full-time employment with one company or unemployed? Those are the only two options. This doesn't make sense. And the younger generation to Debra's point already has abandoned traditional nine to fives. They are abandoning college right now, they are adopting AI and they are pushing forward in a way that doesn't even make sense to these aging leaders who have been doing this for so long. In a certain way, it's just outside their scope. Mel, you mentioned a DAO or a Decentralized, autonomous Organization. Some of our more progressive clients are piloting DAOs within their organization right now, which sounds like a scary word or a Web3 new thing, but really all it is like we don't need decision makers at the top of one person, a manager making all of the decisions and just telling us exactly what we need to do. You hired me because I have skills and I have a voice and I'm creative and there's a lot more that I can offer to the team. So what if we distributed tokens to them, voting power? Essentially it's you want to make a choice for the team? Get on Snapshot. It's just a Web3 tool that will allow you to vote in real time which direction the company could go, and you can make hundreds of these decisions every week together in an instant. And once the group has decided collectively which direction they need to move, then a smart contract will execute and say all right, that's the direction that we're headed.

Speaker 1: 21:55

And now you have hyper agile teams that don't. They're not bound by the same red tape, their hands aren't as tied as other teams and they're moving quickly and they're producing more results than other teams. And so there are companies that are doing it that way. What I think this large scale global DAO, like a global gig economy, is going to be more so the mainstream than an internal gig economy. Why should I work for you only when I can do my same skills for several companies and several projects? That feels better to employees. And so again, how do you attract Gen Z? A lot of companies can't even answer that question. They just label them as lazy or entitled. And then there are companies who are like oh, let's pilot some DAOs. And then there's, oh, let's operate outside of traditional employment, which feels like I don't even get the value out of the work that I contribute, so pay me more for the work that I'm doing. There's a lot to unpack there, but that's just a teaser.

Speaker 2: 22:58

We know Gen Z is already making up 30% of the workforce. Between Gen Z and millennials, I guess borderline zennials, that's 70% of the workforce already. Right, and Gen Z want to feel like they're co-creating the workplace with you, they're not just showing up and being told what to do. So I actually love that concept of the voting piece that you talked about. Where is this working really well? I know you can't share client names, understood, but where are you seeing this working really well? What are you hearing from feedback where you are testing this out Abroad, abroad, good.

Speaker 4: 23:32

Of course Switzerland, Germany I might ask them out. Josh and I do a lot of global work overall, so yeah, there's definitely forward-thinking individuals overseas.

Speaker 1: 23:52

We share case studies with them. Individuals overseas we share case studies with them.

Speaker 1: 23:58

It just feels like a couple standard deviations away from what they are willing to do, right, Even if this was working really well, like JuiceboxDAO is a great example, right?

Speaker 1: 24:05

This is a vibrant, interoperable community that doesn't employ anyone, and yet they have so many people core contributors, or bounty hunters, as you call it in the Web3 world who are contributing and adding value and getting paid based on the value that they are generating. And so, again, it's very difficult to come into a leadership place and say, hey, work is changing. And they're like give us some answers and it's yeah, but the answers aren't going to be what you're used to and they're going to challenge everything that you know and like AI added to all of that which is moving so rapidly. It's difficult, and that's part of the reason why, with AI, we see a large group of companies who are like oh yeah, AI is going to replace my expensive workforce, and people are tossing around oh yeah, we're just going to be unemployed, Everyone's going to be unemployed. It's guys like broaden your horizons, maximize the skills that you have and you will always be working.

Speaker 3: 25:10

I think that's my question. How are people going to make money? I think that's my question. How are people going to make money? And you've mentioned, like the creator economy with Roblox, right, or, for instance, these DAOs. I find it very lazy when companies go oh, I'm just going to fire everybody, or we're just going to get efficiency gains, or we're just going to dump a bunch of money in AI and throw spaghetti at the wall to try to figure out what's happening, without really thinking about what the art of the possible could be in their organization. And we see this very commonly when technology hits. It's like tech for tech's sake, as opposed to actually enabling your business to be something better than it could be. Yep, like, how are people going to make money? And my secondary sub question of that is do companies really go away?

Speaker 4: 25:54

I'm going to tell you what I think is going to happen in five years, when money goes away. Josh, why don't you do the interim step? Because that's the beauty of our collaboration is Josh is in the thick of things and I am looking more at the economic models of the future.

Speaker 3: 26:09

Can we have both, though, because I'd love to know the now and the future.

Speaker 4: 26:12

if you'd be willing to share, yeah for sure, josh, you want to begin, and then I'll follow up future, if you'd be willing to share.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Yeah, for sure, Josh. You want to begin and then I'll follow up. Yeah, and just to clarify how are individual employees going to make money in kind of a gig economy, space creator economy, or how are companies going to make money knowing that employees are probably going to choose alternative work models?

Speaker 3: 26:32

Let's start with employees like individual people, because I think that's the biggest concern for a lot of folks right now is will jobs exist? Will work exist?

Speaker 1: 26:40

Yeah, it's so funny. So many TikTokers who are like I'm unemployed. I just got laid off for the second time this year, so blow up my TikTok and collectively we can hopefully make some money. Everyone's trying to carve that space out, and I would say the reason why the creator economy has stagnated, the reason why the gig economy isn't hot right now, the reason why Airbnb and Uber is not excelling like they used to, is partially because plenty of reasons right, but from an employee's perspective, if I'm driving for Uber, you have a centralized company. They need massive amounts of cashflow in order to keep the business running, and so where are you going to get that cash? You can go to investors and you're tied down to being more and more profitable, and the employee just gets to a place where this isn't even worth it. I'm not even making enough money.

Speaker 1: 27:33

Too much of it is flowing back to a centralized organization, and so one answer could be decentralized organizations, which is we cut out the middleman. We don't need them. We have technology that exists where you can open an app and get to work. It runs peer to peer, which means I offer my skills and my services outside of an Upwork. Upwork right now is the only way. There's other platforms, sure, but if you want to be a freelancer, the only way you're going to find work is through some of these channels. Again, upwork takes a large cut of that.

Speaker 1: 28:09

So how do you make this make sense? Plus, benefits are tied up into employment. Specifically, there's a lot of challenges that have not materialized yet, and I'm just letting everyone know on this podcast today that smart people are working on this technology and the minute that it becomes viable for the masses, why would an employee work a full-time job when they could have just as much, if not more, money, working on projects that they love with, like passionate individuals, single mothers working three hours a day because that makes sense to them over other options? And Reid Hoffman he has said that traditional jobs will be dead by 2034. And I think a lot of people misinterpret that to be like AI is taking all of your jobs. You'll be done by 2034. What he's really saying is that model, that decentralized gig economy, will be viable by 2034 and everyone will be choosing that.

Speaker 4: 29:02

And Josh, he revised that year in the next two to four years.

Speaker 3: 29:06

Oh Jesus.

Speaker 4: 29:08

Yeah, if you look at his Manus AI, you'll understand why because it can create the company for you. So, francesca, your question is the question I hope that I always get asked and rarely do so in the interim. We're gonna have to be incredibly entrepreneurial, whether you're entrepreneur or not. So you could be driving for Uber right now and you also make these delicious gluten-free chocolate chip cookies that people have been asking you to provide for parties and locally, but now you're giving it to your Uber customers and they're starting to take orders. So what I mean by that is you want multiple revenue streams and getting those revenue streams to work together.

Speaker 4: 29:50

My head is really where are we going to be when money goes away? So I'll give you an example, and this is a geopolitical issue as well we may move back towards communal living. We're seeing a lot of that pop up around the world. We may grow our own food. I think we're going to see much more of the rise of the family-run business, and I don't mean just the mom and pop small storefronts. These can be multi-billion dollar businesses, but we are going to have to be much more reliant on our families and our immediate community.

Speaker 4: 30:30

And then government is going to have to figure out an entirely new support system, a safety net, because you can't just call it unemployment anymore. If President Trump wants to pay women $8,000 to have a baby, which he's asked for because of our birth rates being in decline, then you're going to actually have to pay people to, whether it's mom or dad, to take care of that child on top of it. So you're going to have to pay for childcare or elder care Again. It is going to be so fundamentally different from what we know today, and I'm heading off to Copenhagen and a few other Scandinavian countries next week just to continue to look at some of their ways, of the way they live their life and what can be adopted around the world.

Speaker 4: 31:23

I was just in Mexico City. They certainly have the family-run multi-billion-dollar business nailed down, not that it doesn't come without its challenges, but we are going to move much more towards the village, if you will, almost back in time, because it's not about the big corporation anymore. They say the average company. Big company in the future is going to be 50 to 200 people, and then you're going to have the company of one, the big unicorn, and then you're going to have the company of one, the we going to barter? Are we going to be more providing subsistence to ourselves, our families, our communities? And that is the big unknown question at the moment.

Speaker 2: 32:27

If money goes away, how do you have a multi-billion dollar business?

Speaker 4: 32:30

There'll be a few of those people that do have the digital fluency because you are capturing, as I said earlier, the SaaS or any technological kind of innovation. There was a market that you target to. Now, in an AI economy, as jobs go away, you can capture those jobs and the salaries you are paying people. So there's still going to be services that need to be provided for, but we do have to services or functions. I used to say we'll have the barbell economy where you're either the AI engineer or you're the plumber. Now I say you've got to do both. Really, the generations of the future can have some degree of cognitive functionality before AI completely takes it over. We do need those physical skills in the interim before humanoids are fully developed.

Speaker 3: 33:30

Are you guys freaked out by this, or is this exciting to you, or is this exciting to?

Speaker 4: 33:34

you. It's exciting to me because I think we know, had it not been for COVID, we wouldn't have evolved, We'd still be in the same kind of mindset. And so when we think about the problems of the environment, right, we don't need to drive to work anymore. You go to a place like Copenhagen. Everybody is biking. Things become more localized. So I think we had this great big globalization and if anything the president is doing right now is bringing it back to the US, whatever your politics are manufacturing consumerism, and I think eventually that's going to become more and more localized.

Speaker 3: 34:25

Knowing humans' capacity for change, and this is happening so quickly that will there be in the short term a lot of pain.

Speaker 4: 34:36

No matter what your religious perspectives are, there is a belief that we're coming into the era of the feminine, and in that feminine it is more about the heart rather than the head. We've been chasing capitalism for so long, and the haves and the have-nots, the dichotomy and the spread continues to get larger and larger. And, to your point, has that made us happier, having money, or has it made us more lonely? Because we're always on the chase, even among the world's richest men. It's just a continuous battle. Who's on top? Who cares? How much money do you really need?

Speaker 4: 35:18

And so I do think we will be in a position where we will have more time to give back in ways that families need. Particularly children need. They need that love and support. And there's something very beautiful about that family farm, with those children getting up at 3 am and all working together to contribute to the family wealth. And I think it's scary because, again, we've been in this kind of world of work that we've known for 150 years now. But we will have to evolve. We don't have a choice. With or without the AI hype, it's happening. So we're not going to have a choice, but to evolve at this time.

Speaker 2: 36:02

The beauty of this. It brings us back to a place for why we're all here anyway, which is to live, because I think one thing that I heard as a common theme throughout COVID post-COVID was this mass reflection that took place because people finally had an opportunity to slow down and remove the blinders of the hamster wheel that they were just on and they're like whoa, I didn't realize how much of my life I'm missing on, and so it's interesting. It seems pretty optimistic to me, although I think there's a lot to work through and there may be a lot of scary things too, but at the same time it gives us the opportunity to be just human beings and exist.

Speaker 3: 36:41

What about the people that are like freaked out? We talk to people all the time that are I'm going to lose my job, AI is going to take my job. You've got obviously anthropic guy saying you're not going to have a job. What do you say to those folks?

Speaker 1: 36:56

I would say it's not black or white. I have a job and I don't anymore. If you have skills that you want to develop, if you have things that you're passionate about, start chasing them now and don't worry about the certifications or the college degrees. That stuff is irrelevant. Just build your skills alongside AI and there will be a place for you, whether it's gig economy 3.0, whether it's in a creator economy world. Youtube has shown us that you can make a video on anything and you can find a following and make money off of that. A decentralized gig economy will be more than that. It'll be what skills do you have? Let's apply it. In these ways, ai will be able to match you on projects. You don't have to look for clients. You don't have to beg companies to hire you with your cover letter. It'll be as easy as opening an app and getting started. But definitely hone those skills. God. The death of the cover letter, please go.

Speaker 2: 37:50

I was going to say you just made every employee happy to hear that.

Speaker 4: 37:53

I don't know if you guys are of the generation. I actually had to mail it in the mail.

Speaker 3: 37:57

Oh yeah.

Speaker 4: 37:58

Oh yeah, you didn't have to go through that, but I'm a little bit more draconian.

Speaker 2: 38:12

I am wake the hell up, wrap it round, and this is to get to know you better as human beings and your personal POVs on a couple of things. It's 2030. In one word, or one sentence what's work? Going to look like Dead.

Speaker 1: 38:34

Decentralized.

Speaker 2: 38:36

What's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear for good?

Speaker 4: 38:41

All of it.

Speaker 1: 38:44

Management.

Speaker 2: 38:46

Interesting. Okay, what's the greatest opportunity that most organizations are missing out on?

Speaker 4: 38:55

Treating their people as human.

Speaker 1: 38:59

AI.

Speaker 4: 39:01

Okay.

Speaker 2: 39:03

What music are you listening to right now? What's on your playlist Keeping you happy?

Speaker 4: 39:08

I'm going to Coldplay tomorrow night. Oh, that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 39:14

Do you have a favorite?

Speaker 4: 39:15

song from their albums oh many.

Speaker 2: 39:17

Just love it. Yeah, okay, how about you, josh?

Speaker 1: 39:22

Yeah, all of my early 2000s punk rock fans. They're all putting out albums now. So we've got some All-American Rejects in there, some Jimmy World. They're keeping me happy by feeding me more music.

Speaker 2: 39:35

Yeah, Listen, Gen X and the millennials and Xennials. Over here we have the best generation of music coming up. In that time Everyone's coming back.

Speaker 1: 39:43

No one can argue that.

Speaker 2: 39:44

No, what are you guys reading right now? It could be audio book too. No judgment.

Speaker 1: 39:53

I'm reading Open Talent right now. It's a book that actually came out Harvard Business Review Press about the same time as ours, very much in the same vein as the work that we wrote about, but it's very much talking about the now of work, which is how do we open up our workforces to a talent marketplace or an internal gig economy.

Speaker 2: 40:15

So it's very fascinating marketplace or an internal gig economy. So it's very fascinating. Yeah, we we had john on the pod recently. It was an awesome book and very in line with also your concepts as well in terms of that portfolio work of the future. So it's really good. Who do you?

Speaker 1: 40:39

I am a work nerd, so I all of the greats the Adam Grants, the Marcus Buckinghams come to mind. There's a lot of great work, social media individuals right now who are doing some great work. So a shout out to Chris Donnelly, there Just changing work, one TikTok at a time.

Speaker 4: 41:00

Yeah, and I hit it more from a historical perspective, of a lot of women who were the first Amelia Earhart, just somebody I admire greatly, even someone like Oprah, who understood the concept of ownership rather than just being a successful broadcaster. So people who really broke the mold and were first and likely told no quite often and just continue to persevere.

Speaker 1: 41:30

Yeah, I like that. And shout out to Debra, who is a modern Amelia Earhart in my mind. She does all the value she puts on conferences in Silicon Valley of these powerful women who are making big waves in the investment space, innovation space, keeping that trend moving forward. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 41:50

So what's one piece of advice you want everyone to know? And it doesn't necessarily we're going to get to the advice you want employees to have at the end. So this could be personal or professional, but if you were talking to someone you care about, what's one piece of advice you would give them today that you'd want them to take away To?

Speaker 4: 42:06

take risks. There are no wrong answers. I was always that person and this is something I do see, quite a dichotomy between men and women, not to generalize. But men will just jump and women will come to the edge of the cliff and it's almost analysis by paralysis, by analysis. At this stage, you got to try a lot of things and figure out what sticks, and there are no wrong answers and there's nothing embarrassing or just by. I don't even want to call it failure, because you learn along the way. The worst thing is to not try.

Speaker 1: 42:44

I love that, debra. The worst thing is to not try. It's so true. I would say and this tends to be aligned with the content that we write about is prioritize skills over experience. I have a younger brother who's considering going to college right now and he's hey man, is it worth it? I'm seeing a lot of stuff about it, and when I was a kid there was no other option. It was like go to college, that's the only way to get skills. But nowadays there are so many other options to learn and grow, and so I would say don't worry about the piece of paper and learn and grow. And so I would say don't worry about the piece of paper. And, yes, college is a great experience. The community side of it is great, but you need to make sure that you are at least graduating with skills that are going to be attractive in the marketplace.

Speaker 3: 43:27

This has been an amazing conversation and super appreciate the glimpse of what's actually going on today and what will be coming and how people can get on the bus for their own benefit. You both are doing work and keeping up to date with this. As it's changing every two weeks, how can our listeners stay?

Speaker 1: 43:45

connected with you. Find us on LinkedIn Debra Perry-Pershoni or Josh Dreen. The Works for the Institute is there as well. We love to chat about any of the challenges that you are facing and love to connect Debra Josh thanks so much for joining us today.

Speaker 3: 44:00

Thank you for having us.

Speaker 2: 44:02

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on linkedin. We have a linkedin community page and we have the tiktoks and instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.