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Work’s taking over your life.

And it’s not just you.

People are lonely, burnt out, and stuck choosing between food or rent.

Bosses are dodging blame, AI is speeding up, and somehow… showering is now a workplace issue.

In this episode, we cover:

✅ Signs work has taken over your identity

✅ Why weak leaders make everything worse

✅ The work-life balance trap no one talks about

✅ Real talk on regret, survival mode, and the AI race

Unfiltered stories. No fluff. Just what it’s really like to work right now.

👇 Comment: What's one thing at work that drives you crazy?

Subscribe if you're done pretending everything’s fine.

📌 Timestamps:

0:03 – Signs Work Matters Too Much to You

3:53 – Jocko Willink: 5 Signs You're a Weak Leader

9:48 – Finding Real Work-Life Balance

14:38 – How to Avoid Career Regret

17:58 – “Food or Rent?” You Can’t Afford Both This Month

21:15 – When Managers Give the Classic CYA Response

24:39 – Gen Z Didn’t Invent the Meme

29:47 – It’s Not Your Boss’s Job to Make Sure You Showered

35:40 – The AI Race—And How to Win It

➡️ Go ahead and hit that like button!

Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.

What are some signs that work is too important to you? You don't have any friends outside of the office. You don't have any hobbies outside of the office.

FOMO. FOMO. I think if there's something and you don't feel like you're in the middle of the know of everything going on at the company and you're unable to disconnect because you've gotta know every little detail that's going on because you feel like you're gonna be missing out, I think that's a huge sign. Yeah. And, you know, it it may feel like you're being you feel like you're adding value or you're you know, it's an important thing to you.

But the real question is is what are you shortcutting? Or what what's the whole saying? You work to live, not live to work? Mhmm. When your life revolves around working and fear of missing out of being part of it, that's a sign of it not going well.

A sign could be part of the fear of missing out is if you're checking your email or Slack notifications in the middle of the night when you're not supposed to do that, and then your brain starts working and instead of sleeping or doing what you're supposed to be doing, you're still thinking about work. When you're not really truly off, that's when it gets unhealthy.

Sounds like, some experience there.

It does. It's come

from experience. May have been a little bit of a conversation the other day. Yes. Just maybe.

But there has been rules set around it, and I've been able to overcome that. So that's been good.

Yeah. One of one of my favorite quotes, and I can't remember where it comes from. I should probably look this up, but I think it's very powerful. The guy said, many of us are never truly on because we're never truly off. I know I've been guilty of waking up in the middle of the night thinking about work problems, but I've also found that by leaving work and going for a run or going for a walk or, you know, whatever it is that you do to recharge and unwind, I actually end up bringing more creativity and energy with me back to the problem because it's still waiting for me.

But actually shutting my brain off or shutting my work brain off for a good bit of time actually helps me solve problems faster than just continuing to grind on them when I'm at that point of diminishing returns.

Well, you know what's crazy is everybody's gonna go through that. You're always gonna have a project or a deadline or something, and you're gonna have that night. Like, if you had it once or twice, you're not what we're talking about. It's when it's every night for, you know, weeks, months on end, and you're not able to disconnect. I think, Tom just brought up a good point here.

You know, what if what if this is coming from my fear I'm gonna be fired? You know, if I don't get this work done, if I don't stay on top of this, then I'm gonna be fired. I can't afford to be fired. So then your work identity is tied up into making sure your boss is happy.

That's a tough spot to be in.

But is that really the case though? Is your boss ever really thinking if this person doesn't do anything but work for me and think about my work and how to achieve my goals in this company, I'm gonna fire them? Or is that something that we fabricate in our heads due to overthinking, due to this fear of missing out, due to this making work too important for you?

I think you're exactly right. I mean, I think Yeah. I think your case is more what it is. I think there's a few scenarios where there is a boss that's on a power trip. And at that point, like, leave your job.

Don't stay in that toxic environment. But if you're creating this in your head that that your boss is gonna fire you, I guarantee you if you go talk to your boss and say, this is what I'm feeling and and, you know, help me come this. If they're a good manager, they're gonna tell you, you should take a day off. The work will be fine. We'll get through this.

No. That's not what I really want. And I'm willing to bet they'll probably change their approach because they probably didn't realize they're doing something to put you in that situation if they're a good boss. If they turn around and come back and say, like, no. I want you to work harder.

You're not working hard enough. Go find a new job. Plain and simple. I mean, I know that's easier said than done, but I think that's the reality check you'd have to have with yourself is what is it? What's the phrase?

Everybody has the right to be well led. And if you're not being well led by your manager or your leader, then it is your freedom to go find a better leader. We're big fans of Jocko Willock, and he's got the five signs you're a weak leader. So we're gonna watch this video live. We're gonna react to it.

We're gonna riff on it. We're gonna see how this goes.

Have I trained him that when he makes a call, I'm gonna second guess him? I don't know if I do that. But to give the cover my own ass response, I'm training people not to make decisions. Ultimately, how are you interacting with your team? What are you missing?

So let's think about some of those 92 mistakes that you might have made. I gotta ask the other day. You know, I I was we just kinda got done with a little fundamentals leadership talk maybe. An hour I've been talking and gets q and a, and I get asked, how do I give direct orders without seeming like a dictator? You see, if you have to give an order, if you have to bark an order at someone, you've already messed up.

If you have to yell at someone, you've already messed up. If your first attempt, your first salvo is a direct order, then you're making 92 other mistakes as a leader.

Alright. I'm stopping right there. If you have to mark an order, you're basically a crappy leader.

I think I agree. I think you're using power and position and authority rather than buy in and engagement to get what needs to be done. Now, maybe in a moment of crisis, of true crisis, there's not time to engage. There's not time to solicit input and feedback. Okay.

We'll put that one aside. But that is the very, very rare occasion. The vast majority of the time, if that's where you're starting, you've missed a lot.

Yeah. I I agree. I wanna listen to a little little more to see the context he's talking about. He just made the statement. If you bark an order now I get if you're jump yelling and screaming and you're having to get frustrated, I I agree with that.

But he basically said, if you have to give an order, you've made 92 mistakes before that. Let's let's see what he has to say here. Because I'm already I'm already kind of, I half agree depending on where you take this. So let's see.

What are you missing? So let's think about some of those 92 mistakes that you might have made. So if you're a person that right now is thinking, yeah. But sometimes you gotta just tell people too. I get it.

I get what you're saying.

And there he is. Right? Right. But we paused it, and there he goes. Alright.

So let's see what he says.

You you but I'm telling you, you're messed up. Let me ask you some questions. Have you made sure that they know what the mission is? Because if they don't know what the mission is, guess what you gotta do? You gotta bark an order at them.

That's what you gotta do. That's what you gotta do. They don't know what the mission is. They don't understand why they're doing what they're doing. And when when something changes, you gotta bark an order at them.

That's what's gonna happen.

Agree or disagree? I mean, that's what I was talking about. It's like, if if you don't have the engagement, and engagement comes from not only understanding the mission, but understanding their role in the mission. Right. If that's not clear, then yeah.

You've got to interpret everything for them. And that's like, that's a game that you you can never win. So, yeah, I'm I'm feeling super guilty about this. Not so much from a professional standpoint, but from a personal standpoint of like my kids. Like, if the first thing you do is bark orders, I I don't do that a lot at work, but I do that a lot at home.

And so this this is stinging pretty bad right now because there's a lot of times I'm like, what are you doing? Put your shoes on. And it's like, okay.

But did I

but did I explain to them that we're, you know, where we're going, what we're doing, and why? Sometimes, but not as often as I bark.

Alright. So we we could definitely improve on this personally because I I'm in the same boat. The other day, I was just furious and barked a bunch of orders to the family Mhmm. Because things weren't getting done. So alright.

So what's the mission? Got it. I think professionally, I it it's that's why we always start with vision. If you don't have the vision, then how you know the journey to to find the culture to get the results. So I think so far, we are in agreement with Jocko.

Let's see what he says next.

Have you let them come up with a plan?

No. No. No.

Because if if I if I let Dave come up with a plan and something changes, Dave adjusts the plan. If I came up with a plan and now something changes, I got to bark an order at Dave. He can't doesn't know what to do because he I came up with a plan. It's my plan. I have the deeper vision.

So I'm the one that's gonna have to bark an order. Let me ask you this. Have you trained your team to make decisions?

Alright. So I'm I'm I'm tracking here. It sounds like he basically went straight from vision to journey. Yep. You have a vision.

Alright. You got a clear vision. Do you have a journey that allows them to be successful? I e, did you train them?

Well, do you have a plan? And and have you trained them how to come up with plans and execute plans?

Well, and how many managers? Well, I think this goes into, like, we talked about in the previous episode, the the the heroes. Right? How many times does the hero come up with the plan and nobody else knows the plan, and therefore, that's why the hero is always the hero?

Right.

Or and or the manager finds their value in being the one that comes up with the plan, and then their people don't know how to pivot on it. And they're like, well, I have to manage these people, and they they need me because I'm the only one that capable of managing this team.

I see a lot of managers. Not only they come up with the plan, but they're kind of the glue that holds all of the pieces together. They may even do a decent job of delegating, but it's like, okay. You do your thing. You hand me the ball.

I hand it the next person. Then they hand me the ball. I hand it to the next person. And so it actually can't work without them. They're required at every step of the process, even if they're not the ones doing the work.

And I think that's a subtle way that people can think they're delegating. When they're they're delegating tasks, but they're not delegating authority and responsibility. Manager leader. You've got direct reports.

They are bought into the company and they are just working themselves to the bone to get to, you know, produce results for the company. What advice can we give the manager or the manager leader, anybody with a direct report? How can we empower them to help those employees still find meaningful value in their work, yet find find value outside of work.

Yeah. Find balance.

You know, I have a recent example of of this happening to me because I think that also answers the question of how you as a manager can support your people to to not be so into work and not make work this pillar super important thing in your life that you cannot go without. So I had one of my direct reports because we have weekly one on ones and I am in a very good terms and I, at this point, I can take out from them and put them in a position where they feel comfortable to share how they really feel about work, about life, or whatever they feel like they wanna share. So I had this person come to me and say, I I love everything that I'm doing, but I am very stressed out and tired. And I'm gonna need a couple of days to relax. So can I get a vacation or, like, two paid days off in three weeks?

And I said, no. You cannot do that. You're gonna take a day off tomorrow and the day after. And if you need another one, you're gonna do that as well. You cannot you're stressed out now.

You're burnt out. You you need to recharge. And he goes, yes, but there's so much work to do now. Yes. But we're gonna take care of it because you're not feeling well.

So you need to take care of yourself. And if you take care of yourself, you're gonna be able to take care of the rest of the work. So no. You cannot go and take a vacation three weeks from now. You're gonna do this right now.

You're gonna come back free charged. So that's what I would do or what I did, actually.

Yeah. Which is interesting because you recognized you valued the individual. You within and I'm I'm assuming all the work, nothing not no. Nothing got dropped.

Did you notice any drop?

No. I didn't notice at all. Okay. Apparently, this was within our own company. So, no, I did not notice the drop at all in capacity or throughput.

And, she didn't even know this was going on because of a good manager taking care of the people. I think it's if you're that manager, it's like she said, having the conversation one on one, but it's finding what motivates them. What keeps you connected to the work? I'm gonna assume and I'm I'm I'm now I'm making a lot of assumptions, but I'm gonna assume it was it was a it was a fear of of results. Mhmm.

You know, they were trying to drive the results, and there was probably a level of journey or culture that they needed. And so by identifying the connection to the results, disconnecting them, she changed the journey. They were trying to focus on the result. The journey they put together was vacation in three weeks. Ria changed the journey and said, no.

We're gonna do it now because I value you as an individual, and we still achieve the vision.

Yeah. One of the other ways that I have helped employees who've worked for me is, yes, understanding which one of those kind of really motivates them, what it is about their job that they really love. But I've used this framework as well on kind of the personal level. So I talk about the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical dimensions of their life. You know, you gotta be careful with that and you can push too far and not earn the right to ask some of those questions.

But I have found in my own life that I need to recharge all four of those batteries. Right? The spiritual. Am I becoming the person I want to be? Mental.

Am I thinking about good things? Am I finding ways to challenge myself and grow mentally, emotionally and relationally? Do I have good support? Do I have good relationships? And then physically, am I taking good care of my body?

Healthy, productive people have routines that help them recover and most professionals, especially here in The US, especially executives, have no routine. They have no recovery strategy. They work until they collapse. They collapse in bed. They wake up two days later and they go back to work and it's just not sustainable.

And so one of the things I think managers can do for employees that are under that work is not important enough or for work that's too important is maybe think about that context of, okay, spiritually, who do you want to be when you grow up? Up? Mentally, how are you growing and developing yourself? Emotionally, relationally, who's your support network? Physically, how are you doing taking care of yourself?

If we're doing all of those in some ways, then they're gonna become a healthy and effective employee. They're gonna find their passions and they're going to be better, whether it's here or someplace else, than they were that when we first started working together. And I think that applies for every manager, for each of us as individual, you know, leading our own lives. At any or at any level of the organization, finding that motivating pillar and then also thinking about that on the personal level, how am I taking care of myself spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically? That'd be my advice.

You know,

as we're looking at this article, it talks about people have regrets. You know, they're late in their career, and they have regret career regrets.

Mhmm.

So if we were to bring it into how to make work not suck for those that are, you know, either closer to that mark and or far away from that mark, how can you prevent regret in your career decisions?

So, I think that might kinda lead towards the the main regret that I have in my career. My biggest career regret is that I did not do entrepreneurial things earlier in my career. I went straight from school to, you know, pretty quickly. I was within a fortune 500 company within two to three years of graduating. And that was great.

I learned a lot, but I think entrepreneurial ventures are easier earlier in life. You don't have a wife, you don't have kids, you don't have a mortgage, you can eat Ramen noodles, you know, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Like that's easier to do then to try it entrepreneurial thing later in life when your burn rates a lot higher, the expectations are a lot higher and there's more people depending on you. I think I would have spent less time in corporate if I had done more entrepreneurial things earlier. And so even if entrepreneurial isn't your bent, I think trying something to see if it's worth it, trying that in your twenties or thirties, is good career advice.

Because then you get to the end of your career and you have less regrets because you're like, look, I stayed in corporate for thirty years and it was great. I tried that one entrepreneurial thing. I hated it. Glad I got that out of my system. As opposed to getting to your sixties and be like, I wonder what would have happened if and that entrepreneurial thing could be a side hustle.

Like, it doesn't have to be quit your job and go try to make it on your own. It's something that you could do on the side and begin to kind of flex some of those entrepreneurial muscles.

It's interesting you say that you wish you would have been more entrepreneurial earlier on, except for maybe I'm the crazy person here is is I had kids young. I was a crazy person that wanted kids young. So I was I had kids in my twenties, married in my twenties, and starting biz you know, companies in my well, my late teens, but twenties. You were talking about you wish you were more entrepreneurial younger in life. And I I think I'm I'm on the interesting, track of I was entrepreneurial early in life, and I had, you know, married young, kids young, like, all by choice.

I didn't wanna have kids in my thirties and then have them graduating when I was much older. Like, I wanted to be, you know, in my forties when my kids started graduating high school, so I had plenty more life with them. But that also meant in those younger years when I, you know, was eating ramen and running a company and managing a family, it was run very, very ragged. So there was a lot of times I missed some of the early childhood days with with the kids. But I think that's because I just did everything at once as opposed to, you know, starting a company young and then waiting to have kids.

I just did it all early. I may be the exception to the rule again, so maybe not. Maybe this doesn't is irrelevant.

I saw this meme yesterday and it said, you know, homeless man sees a shooting star and wishes for, his next meal only to realize that the shooting star was a billionaire going to the moon for fun. And it's like,

that's kind of that that

I get it. Like, I get why so many people are so angry when there are people who have, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars. And then there are other people who struggle to have enough, you know, it's like food or rent, but you can't have both this month. I think that that's been that trend has been accelerating. That's getting worse.

It's not getting better. And I think people who have been impacted by that are in some senses rightfully upset about the system. Not that that excuses murder. Murder's not gonna fix that, but I understand their frustrations. So what do we do about it?

It argued that health care systems prioritize profit over patient care, and it needed to be held accountable. So I think we got a we got a picture here. Now let's let's see what the public the public is saying about this. So you cut a level of social media that is has got a painted both as the hero and the villain. Right.

They're criticizing it. The health care system was what turned him into this vigilante.

Right.

And then you got a lot of

go ahead. He's the victim. He's not it's it's not his fault. He's the victim.

He's the victim.

Right.

And it's exposing a large I mean, 49,000,000 people insured by one health care company. And I'm I'm sure he's not the only person in that 49,000,000. And that's that's not even this is only one insurance company. This is not all of them. Right.

I'm sure there's, you know, probably about 48,000,000 people, if not 49,000,000 people that probably share a similar sentiment or frustration overall.

Yeah. I've I've flipped through a little bit of Reddit and some of the comments about him. I mean, they're called there there are some people that are calling this guy a hero. Some people that are saying

80%. Eighty a particular poll, 80% condemn the murder but empathize with his motives. 80%.

I was watching. It's huge. And I I think that that would probably skew younger. I think the younger generation, the millennials and Gen z's are probably the most sympathetic because they have experienced the downsides of capitalism. And let's be honest, there there there are downsides to it.

I think it's also a little messed up that

a lot of people

are calling they're almost turning this into, you know, he he's becoming this hero. I remember watching Saturday Night Live a couple weeks ago and they were doing something. And again, it's a comedy show, but everybody in the audience started, like, hooping and hollering about this guy. And the the comic was just shocked. Right?

Here's this guy who lives in New York. The the murder happened in New York. And he's talking about what's going on and everybody else is celebrate. Like, the audience members are celebrating. And he's like, this is a murderer.

Right? Like, this guy's accused of murder. Why are we celebrating this? And it just shook him and you could watch it happen live on TV. He just didn't know how to respond to an audience that was pro murder and anti capitalism.

Unsaved, here's what we're gonna do if that happens. Oh, okay. Great. You got it covered. Or he says, oh, no.

I hadn't think about that. That act actually makes it seem like a bad idea. Let me think about it more. But to give the cover my own ass response, I'm training people not to make decisions.

That's that's another interesting one. The cover my ass. As a manager, I'm giving the cover my ass response.

Mhmm.

Yeah. You're just being a crappy manager. Yeah. You're thinking about your own CYA as opposed to the the efficiency, execution, and well-being of the team.

So, ultimately, how are you interacting with your team? Because if you interact correctly all the time, then every time you interact with your team, you're actually training them to be able to step up and be able to lead.

You know, I just realized this as he was saying it. I think too often, we think too much about training as being this, like, you know, here's the SOP, and we want you to memorize this and do all these things. Whereas he's literally talking about the interactions are the training. How often are we putting on an SOP one thing, and we're executing our training on something totally different?

I think in most organizations, they are almost counterproductive. Right? We're gonna go to this workshop, and we're gonna learn how to, you know, communicate better as a team. But then we never practice it. And in fact, what we practice is exactly the opposite of what we learned in the workshop last week, but we're not actually we're just gonna go back to keep doing what we've been doing.

And so that kind of implementation of how do we how do we actually do what we have learned is I think a big gap in a lot of organizations.

You you know what he just fundamentally said from my vantage point? You know the whole phrase, culture trumps strategy or what no. It's it's a culture

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Peter Drucker.

Right. That phrase basically is the essence of what he's talking about is you're training your people this. He's talking about the habits and behaviors. Mhmm. And so it doesn't matter what the SOP says if the culture slash habits and behaviors contradict it.

It and, what I find infuriating is a company goes, well, we need to modify the processes. The processes just haven't been set clear enough. Let's just modify the SOP. If we just or or we just need this training. If we just do this training, then everybody will be on the same page.

And it's like, no. There's no amount of training. There's no amount of SOP that's going to make up for the fact that the culture is not on the same page, and it doesn't matter how much you update. I mean, it's one company. I joke because they they said I was like, oh, you have 37, SOP.

He said, no. No. No. It's 37 pages.

Mhmm.

Why is it 37 pages? Because of all of the gotchas and the lack of decision making and empowerment that they had had over the years. And it turned into a process. CYAs that turned a simple process into a 30 page 37 page SOP. That's huge.

Yeah. You're training your people every single day based on how you behave. And you know what's crazy is let's be honest. Like, Gen z didn't invent the meme. It was actually a millennial.

And Okay. And well, Gen some Gen xers will say, well, no. Actually, we did. But, we'll we'll we'll we'll figure out there a little bit. We'll bend a little bit.

Agree to disagree. But I think what's interesting is the amount of memes and messaging and those components that I just see across generations now. I actually think what what you see more from the Gen z is more of the language, the wording. They've almost created their own dictionary of words. Right.

Whereas I still think the more Gen x and millennials are using the emojis and I mean, we we were the king of the text emojis, you know, back when it was, like, semicolon and and parentheses.

Mhmm.

And so, like, if you do that, you're totally dated now. Sure. And, you know, your iPhone auto corrects it for you anyway because technology has sped up, if you will.

Those changes are coming faster. They're coming faster and faster.

But we still have all these legacy systems like email, for example. And to some degree, you know, how many times has email been reinvented? You know, now you've got what is it? Like, superhuman or, you know, the Yep. The SaneBox and, you know, these tools that all they've done is optimized the email box to make you even more efficient.

But one of the things that they've done is put is basically merge chat with emails so I can have a chat with you about an email. And you're like, okay. So is this another channel I've gotta keep my eyes on? Right.

So I think I think it just ultimately gets down to, like, all we've done is just screwed ourselves up on what we need to do, which ultimately comes down to inside of an organization, you've gotta set the rules. Yeah. That's that is super important to define. Where have you seen

an organization do that well? Because I've got a couple of ideas, but I'd love

to hear what you've seen.

So there's one digital marketing company I work with and they I would actually say, well, love hate relationship with their Slack usage. Okay. They're actually pretty decent at structuring Slack when it comes to, like, why you create a channel, naming conventions of channels, using threads. The problem where they suck at Slack is they've over engineered it so much. Mhmm.

They don't have actual systems. Like, the way they manage work is so chaotic and they because they've super structured Slack, it creates this, like, natural systematic bottleneck. And it somehow works, but it's not scalable beyond, you know, about 50 to Right. 60 people. Like, as soon as soon as they grow to a hundred people in the organization, it's gonna be a complete disaster.

You've worked with a lot of companies. Who has done communication well? And I'm talking about well holistically because just because you use Slack well doesn't mean there aren't people sitting for hours and hours in worthless meetings where they're contributing nothing. I think you got to think about it holistically.

So there's this is probably going the complete opposite direction. There was this Australian company I worked with a few years back, multibillion dollars, ten, twelve thousand employees. And they had an entire, like, communications department built around streamlining communication throughout the organization very efficiently, effectively. And I mean, it was the most rigorous process that I went through to get this communication out, but it was very it was very fluid too. But we kind of valued, like, hey.

We you know, we're getting in you know, we've trained all of our team members to be in front of you know, to read this this communication, and therefore, we've gotta take. We have to be we can't just put junk in it and expect them. So everything was very thoroughly vetted. Everything had precision to it because they had done a lot of work to make sure that everybody reads this one communication because it contained a lot of important information. Now inside corporate office, man, it was absolute insane.

It was complete chaos. You'd had people running around the building all day long, but when it came to communicating to to 10,000 people in the in the field across the entire country,

Mhmm.

Nailed it.

How best to communicate with me. And so for me, I broke this down in kind of an urgent versus simple urgent versus not urgent, simple versus complex. If this is urgent and it is simple, text me. I will get back to you within the hour. If this is urgent and complicated, give me a phone call.

I will get back to you in twenty four hours unless I hear otherwise that it's got to happen faster. If it's not urgent but simple, send me an email. I'll give you a twenty four hour turnaround on emails. If it's not urgent and complex, send me an email, and I'll get it back to you in a week.

I love that. I mean, I think that's one of those. That's that's great. But if everybody does that and everybody's is different, then it creates that level of complexity whereas Yes. Well, in in in my terms, it's, if you need something urgent, don't text me.

Don't Slack me. Don't email me. Don't send a pigeon. Don't come to my house. Don't do anything.

If you if you want to talk to me, period, talk to Chelsea. Right.

It's not my job to call you and make sure you woke up this morning. It's not my job to make sure you took a shower before you showed up to work. It's not my job to make sure you got both of your shoes on. Right? Like, it's crazy, but there are people that run businesses and I coach them and they're like, you would not believe how stupid some of these people are that think they're gonna keep a job and can't show up with, you know, the right shirt on.

That's what I meant by parenting.

Like Okay. That that makes more sense. Okay. That I agree with. Yes.

If you're if you expect your boss to call you because you overslept, reality check. You're getting fired.

Right. You're getting fired. Maybe your next boss.

Work is gonna suck because you can't wake up to an alarm.

Right. Right. The the other thing that I think is interesting though, and this is probably speaks more to the younger generation that I think is more interested in feedback. They are more open to coaching and and hungry for that development. I think it's important to temper that with the understanding that it's not your boss's job to get you promoted.

Like, it is your job to grow your career, to figure out what you want, and to figure out a plan to get there. Now there's lots of people who want to help you, but I can't tell you what you wanna be when you grow up, nor can I or nor will I open the doors for you to get there if you haven't demonstrated, a vision for where you wanna go and a hunger to do the work required to get there?

So that that's a big distinction there. Okay. You're you're right. It's not your boss's job to build your career path. It's your own.

Mhmm.

But it also is your boss's job to help you achieve that career path. Yes. And and and maybe coach you on it or give you guidance, etcetera. But to your point, it's not your boss's job to lay out the nine point journey for you because you're entitled to it. Right.

Or you think they should do it. You have to do your right. You have to be the one that's in charge of your career, and your boss should help you get there, not do it for you.

I would say a good boss will help you get there. Yes. Many won't. Good ones will. And but but you have to you've gotta know what you want, and you've gotta know and you've gotta be willing to do what it takes to get there.

Yes.

Right? People that are like, oh, I wanna make more money. No shit. Everybody wants to make more money. That that doesn't help me.

Right? What do you want to do? What's the value that you want to add that would enable me to give you more money? And if you can't answer that, then I can't help you. So figure out what's the work that you really want to do, and then we'll find ways to help you get there.

And once you get there, you will get paid more. But don't chase the dollar because nobody wants to pay you more unless you're adding significantly more value than the paycheck they're giving you.

Yep. You know, another thing is as I think for older millennials and older, there was a level of just kinda figure it out and you just kinda got dumped into the workplace and you just discovered and to some degree, you knew what your path was before you got out of high school and you just Right. You figured it out. I think there's so many options and so many dynamics for the Mhmm. The younger generation, but here's where I think a gap is.

I think the younger millennials and, the Gen z, I think they were given they were forced, like, you have to make a decision in high school and go to college, and you have to know what you want. You have to know what you wanna do, and you have to make a selection or what the hell you do it. And that's what's led to all this anxiety and fatigue and I don't know what to do and, etcetera. I think society put a lot of pressure on them to achieve this perfect path or a result without a clear lack of journey. Now, what my younger son is going through right now is I think this is one of those that, you know you know, five to ten years of of what didn't work well coming back is they have this career research class they force every kid to go through, and they're literally like, how much money do you wanna make?

Well, I I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars. Or what what kind of car do you wanna drive? What kind of house do you wanna live in? Do you wanna travel? Like, they ask all these questions.

It's, like, okay. You need to make this much money. And then they go over here and they're, like, what do you like doing? Okay. Here's a career path.

And then it's like, okay. You wanna be a welder, but you need $200,000 a year. And they're like

Actually, welders right now might make

Well, yeah.

Closer to 200 than some college graduates. But yeah.

Probably. I

get your point.

But but but it shows the, you know, the the gap and then they have to start picking and choosing, like, what lifestyle do I wanna have versus what career do I want? And so I do think there's a level of, I think Gen Alpha or the the younger Gen Zs that are, like, the fourth my 14 year old son who's right on the edge of Gen Z and the Alphas that are right behind him, I think they're gonna be a little bit more balanced than the younger Millennials and the and the Gen Zs right now. So I really think the younger Gen Zs or the the the yeah. Younger millennials and and older Gen Zs, I think, are the ones struggling with it the most. Like, my Yeah.

My 17 year old son didn't have any of these options. So I'm just between a three year age difference between my two sons. One has it, one does not. Older son getting ready for college was panicked and trying to figure out what to do and where he wants to go and this, that, and the other. Mhmm.

Younger son is already asking those questions in eighth grade.

There's an AI race to the bottom and an AI race to the top. And the race to the bottom is probably like that red line of how do I use AI to micromanage my people, to give them more work, to make them do more. And and I think there's gonna be people who do that, and it's gonna end poorly for them and for their employees. I think there is another option, which is how does AI elevate? How do I get rid of the crappy work that nobody wants to do that is in every job, right?

Your best job, just as a side note, your best job is 80% what you want and 20% suck. Right? There's just every job has some part of it that sucks. How can we make that as small as possible? So you spend the majority of your time doing the thing that's truly valuable, doing the thing that's you love to do, that you actually get excited to get out of bed for.

Like, I want that to go from ten hours a week to thirty hours a week. And I gotta get all these other things off of your plate. That's where the AI gets focused. That's what we're trying to do. I want to get rid of the low value add repetitive work to free you up to do more of the high value add, which would be creative work, which would be, relationship building.

So, you know, high touch, service, sales, creativity, product, like, you know, engineering, like, building things, not building version 10,000 of the same thing, but, like, building new things. I think that's where humans are really gonna be able to always be differentiated from AI and and robots is our ability to create and form connections. And so that's where the value is gonna go. People who know how to use AI to automate the repetitive, so they focus more on the creative, and the connection. I think those are gonna be the winners in the new economy.

Yeah. Well, I'll I'll throw one out there, and then I've got some stats I wanna throw out. There's, I've always said there's a difference between a programmer and a developer. A developer is one that creates, you know, the somebody's got an idea for an application. They gotta, you know, start the architecture and the the codes, you know, the the the framework they're gonna use, the technology, start actually writing the code to build the functional system.

Versus a programmer is someone that comes in and refactors codes, cleans up, bug fixes, etcetera, etcetera. OpenAI is not a developer. Now maybe there's an AI system out there that's getting closer to it, but Mhmm. Like, even me, I've taken some existing systems or some, some ideas, and I've tried to prompt OpenAI to get to get it there. And and me as the human had to put so much more intellect into it to get the AI to a destination, whereas I've taken a a a particular file, threw it in, gave it the parameters, and said refactor it.

The ten seconds. That's the thing is is we still need developers, whereas OpenAI can replace some of the programming, bug fixes, QA, stuff like that. Yeah. But here's here's going back to the culture impact. According to this, this Pew Research here, 50 per 52% of workers feel AI implementation is poorly communicated in their companies.

Why? I'm surprised it's that low.

Well, you

know I would've said, like, 90%.

Well, I think I think you got two forms. I think there's a lot of companies that that just don't know how to even use AI that they're they're probably the owners, the small business. You know, they're going back to the pirate ships. I don't know. That may be, I won't use that analogy.

I think there's a level of of maybe older, small business owners are not messing with it. I'll figure it out when it becomes a thing when I have to.

Mhmm.

And then I think there's a level of of organizations that are leading with that trying to figure it out. I think a lot of startups are using it. I think legacy companies are not. I think big big enterprise is probably kind of implementing it more behind the scenes. But I think the real reason why that's 52% is for those that are doing it is because they're not communicating why.

And I'm gonna guess a vast majority of those is because they're trying to, get the business equation in line. They're trying to increase profits and reduce cost. Here's another interest when IBM paused hiring 7,800 roles, citing AI automation. That's from Reuters.

Go ahead. Didn't Meta recently lay off 11,000 people? A lot of

them in development because they're saying that more and more of that, you know, entry level and mid level development roles can be automated? Maybe. But this is interesting. They paused hiring 7,800 people. Not they laid off 7,800 people.

This goes back into what we were talking about earlier with the culture. The reason why people are so resistant to this is because it impacts literally every role in the business, anywhere from, you know, person taking phone calls to a call box at a at a fast food restaurant, to sending emails to the guy door knocking, you know, on roofs Mhmm. To, you know, engineering, development, code writing, marketing. It touches everything. Right?

Which is why which is why I think it's such a, gonna have such an impact.

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